Apologists, namely Nibley source and Hales source often argue that the Book of Mormon MUST be authentic revelation because divine help would have been necessary to produce the book in an unhumanly speedy timeframe. Their argument follows the follows the same general points:

• Joseph was uneducated, only having a 3rd grade education, and therefore incapable of such a significant undertaking.

• The book was entirely dictated without the use of notes in 63 to 70 days, and despite this, it is free of contradictions, over 500 pages in length, and did not have subsequent drafts to clean up the narrative (Nibley states that there are no changes, not just no drafts).

• The Book of Mormon is on par with the Bible and far too complex for Joseph to have concocted it, especially with regards to

  • the Egyptian and Hebrew names,

  • the details regarding the society and economy,

  • the geography, and

  • the length that the history spans.

Nibley further notes that copyrighting the book and listing himself as author was a rooking translator mistake. This explanation is plausible, and I don’t think Joseph listing himself as the author is definitive evidence of anything.

The problem is that nearly every assertion made by these apologists is completely wrong, as has been often noted by scholars such as Dan Vogel. Allow me to summarize the most salient…