Customer Reviews

The Book of Mormon

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This is a review of MacMay's version of the Book of Mormon (Kindle edition).

This appears to be the standard contemporary version of the text, but is missing the LDS chapter summaries. Also it does *not* have a table of contents and is thus difficult to navigate. For starting at the beginning and reading straight through, it will suffice. But for going to any specific book or chapter, there is no easy way to do so except for text searching. Regarding the formatting, each sentence has a title. ie, a sentence will start:

1 Nephi 2:20
20 (a single sentence)

1 Nephi 2:21
21 (a single sentence)

complete with 2 or three lines of white space between each sentence. This makes the text look awkward and interrupts the flow, but it does give the user something to search on when navigating.

Recommended only for the price; if ease-of-use and/or readability is more important to you, I suggest getting a different version.

And it came to pass that every sentence starts with "and it came to pass" in this exceptionally ridiculous book. The faux King James English boreth me ever so much. However, the anachronisms are a hoot- Jews riding chariots and horses in the Americas pre-Columbus, and using steel and elephants. (Oops, Smith forgot his pre-Columbian history.) It is all so silly except for the overt racism. The bad guys, Lamanites, are cursed with a dark skin and become a "degenerate" people i.e. the Native Americans. It is so repugnant.

It is also humorous that the author, Smith, condemns polygamy in the Book of Mormon and then goes on several years later to marry over 30 women himself! Some of his wives like Helen Mar Kimball were as young as fourteen- quite pathetic.

It's said that if the Book of Mormon is true, all other religions are not. What if it is false? Smith said he translated the plates which were written in Reformed Egytpian. He also claimed he translated Regular Egyptian in the Book of Abraham. Egyptologists have looked at Smith's translation of facsimiles and papyri and determined he could not translate Egyptian in the least. He had lied. I read the Book of Mormon and got a bad feeling about it. Learning that he lied about translating Egyptian, I don't believe the Book of Mormon is true in the least.

Well, not really but having read the Book of Mormon twice, I thought it might be good to review it here.

The Book of Mormon claims to be a history of two groups of people who came from the Middle East to either North or South America (no LDS leader has ever made the exact place clear) in the year 600 B.C.

When I joined the LDS Church in 1981 I was told that the people who came over (a prophet named Lehi and his family) came to a land that had no people in it but had been reserved for just for them. Now it seems that LDS leaders claim that there were people here and cities....yet the Book of Mormon prophets never seemed to notice them or write about them.

The book is a record of the Nephite civilization, their wars and their religious teachings.

In the end the bad guys (Lamanites) kill off all the good guys (Nephites) and then the Lamanites just disappear. No DNA, no nothing!

As a former member, I finally had to admit that the book is nothing more than the fictional stories of it's author, Joseph Smith, mingled with scriptures from the Bible. It has none of the unique Mormon doctrines in it (temple marriage, endowments, polygamy, pre-earth life, special underwear, Word of Wisdom, etc.).

Also, the book is very boring and hard to get through. Perhaps that's why Mark Twain called it "Chloroform in print".

Unless you are a Mormon, I'd skip getting this. Read the Cliff Notes version on Wikipedia.

10 pages into the book, the protagonists have broken 3 commandments:coveting someone else's belongings(gold plates), stealing them, and killing a sleeping drunk in order to procure them. If nothing else, the first few chapters provide a glimpse into the author's own morality-Its OK to do something bad if it furthers your own agenda.
Christ said, The sun shines on the good and the evil, the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Not so in the Book of Mormon. The primary message of the book, which is repeated over and over again-Righteousness is rewarded with material wealth, and if you do bad things, you will get killed in a natural disaster. If the earthquake doesn't kill you, then war with your white-skinned enemies will.

Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, started off as a sci-fi writer and then when he wasn't having much success with that he turned his fiction into a religion to get money and power. Okay, you see where this review is going.

If a Mormon missionary asks you to read this book and pray about it to receive an answer from God, OK - that's perfectly within their right to ask and it's perfectly within your right to try it out. But just for the sake of intellectual integrity and, oh I don't know, SANITY, shouldn't you at least fact check some of the claims the book makes before you go trusting in "divine" responses? I mean maybe the "answer" to your prayer isn't coming from any place divine - maybe your head's off-kilter or maybe it's coming from unholy sources. Personally I'm agnostic and don't believe in the latter but for the sake of this review I'll concede it as a possibility.

So here are some of the facts:
* DNA proves Native Americans didn't descend from Hebrews as the Book of Mormon claims they did. They came from Siberia/Mongolia several thousand years before the time frame of the Book of Mormon.
* Joseph Smith didn't "translate" this from plates as he claimed he did - he stuck his "seer stone" in his hat and peeked inside and dictated what the "seer stone" showed him while the plates were nowhere near.
* Joseph Smith's mother says he used to keep the family entertained at dinner by making up the most wonderful stories about the ancient American Indians and their customs. Her account of when this happened puts it several years before the Book of Mormon was written/published. In other words - he had a well established history of just making crap up for entertainment purposes (see why I started off mentioning Hubbard).
* Joseph Smith couldn't accurately translate the Egyptian characters on the papyri that became the Book of Abraham - so why is anyone trusting his translation of "Reformed Egyptian" in the Book Of Mormon (which "language", as stated above, he never even bothered to look at)?
* There were no horses, steel, etc. in the Americas during the time period covered by the Book of Mormon as the book claims there were.

There are many other facts too numerous to put in this review. My point here is to encourage you to look at both sides and do some basic fact checking before you go trusting your emotions like the Mormons will tell you to do.

If you are curious to read this book as fiction then there are some interesting stories in its narrative. I'd give it 3 stars. If you read this book to gain an understanding of what the Mormons believe or for its relevance to 19th century American history then it's invaluable - I mean you can't even begin to understand Mormon doctrine and history until you've read this. I'd give it 5 stars. If you want to read this book to gain insights into the literal history of ancient American inhabitants then there is a good chance you are either ignorant of the facts or you are in denial of them. I'd give it 0 stars for being a complete load of crap!

I made the mistake when I was younger of trusting my emotions without fact checking and I ended up buying the load of crap part for many years. The disillusionment and pain that came with the realization that I'd been duped was most unpleasant and I'm writing this review in the hope that I might spare someone else that unpleasantness.

From a fiction perspective, this is a very boring book that in some way parallels the founding, rise and fall of the Roman empire. It humorously attempts to explain where the Native Americans come from however the prose is dry and uninteresting. If you are interested in a similar type of story I recommend reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series about the rise and fall of a Galactic Empire.

From a religious perspective, the doctrine of this book -- especially the original 1830 edition -- is astoundingly 1800s protestant christianity. Really nothing new here other than the retelling of New Testament in the Americas. Ironically the doctrine in this book is at conflict with the rest of the LDS scriptures (Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price). However, this shouldn't be too much of a problem for the average christian person as the Bible is self contradictory as well.

On a side note, I highly recommend the Book of Zelph as a companion guide to the Book of Mormon. It better explains away the problems of DNA, anachronisms and other problems introduced by the Book of Mormon.

Aside from the many contradictions between this book and mormon doctrine, one fact comes to mind and it is because of this fact that I cannot take this book seriously. The Book of Mormon preaches that all Native Americans are of Hebrew descent. I believe mormon apologists in recent years have made the statement that this is not true, that there were other people in the Americas already. However, the last time I read the Book of Mormon, twenty years ago, it stated there were no other people in the "promised land". The LDS church may have changed the book since then, as they have changed it many other times in the past. Recent DNA testing of Native American tribes reveals they are of solely Asian descent. Not a drop of Hebrew blood. Other comments have suggested one only need pray to have the lord tell you this book is true. It is story of war, love and loss. It is designed to give you a nice warm fuzzy feeling. If you read this book for fiction, you may enjoy it. I read it once and was quite bored. The warm fuzzy feeling evaded me. I do get that feeling when reading modern stories also designed to bring up emotion. However, that does not make them "true".

Back when I was 8 years old, with limited exposure to true writing, I thought it was pretty cool someone with just a 4th grade education could write such an amazing piece of literature. Then I read it. I'm a pretty fast reader and just getting through 2nd Nephi was the biggest chore I ever faced. It didn't add to the plot -at all- was repetitive, the language archaic and it was a total bore. I realize now that almost all of 2nd Nephi was lifted straight from the Isaiah in the KJV Bible so that sure did explain a lot. The story picks up a bit after that, but is still over the top ridiculous with tall tales so unbelievable and historically inaccurate any thinking person will realize this is nothing but a poor work of fiction that would be completely unintelligible if it weren't for the 2500+ edits made to later editions to correct the author's poor grammar, spelling and other errors.

Remember kids, horses are really tapirs ! This book completely fails the academic criteria to qualify it as a historical work. Warm fuzzy feelings do not apply.