Editing Book of Mormon (section)

=== Views on composition ===
[[File:EBGrandinPrintingPress.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Smith Patented Improved Press (no relation to Joseph Smith family) used by [[E. B. Grandin]] to print the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon]]Multiple theories of naturalistic composition have been proposed.<ref name="Hales-2019" /> In the twenty-first century, leading naturalistic interpretations of Book of Mormon origins hold that Smith authored it himself, whether consciously or subconsciously, and simultaneously sincerely believed the Book of Mormon was an authentic sacred history.<ref>See {{Harvnb|Davis|2020|p=160}}: "Whatever position the reader might take on the origins of the Book of Mormon, a careful review of historical claims favors the idea that Joseph Smith himself sincerely believed, to one degree or another, that his epic work contained an authentic historical account of ancient American civilizations"; and {{Harvnb|Taves|2014|p=13}}: "If we consider Joseph's directive, the obedient response of insiders, and their willingness to protect the plates from skeptical outsiders, we can envision an alternative way to view the materialization of the plates that involved neither recovery and translation in any usual sense nor necessarily deception or fraud, but rather a process through which a small group—who believed in the power of&nbsp;revelatory dream-visions, in ancient inhabitants&nbsp;of&nbsp;the&nbsp;Americas, and&nbsp;in&nbsp;golden records&nbsp;buried&nbsp;in&nbsp;a&nbsp;hillside—came to believe that a material object covered by a cloth or hidden in a box were the ancient plates revealed to Smith by the ancient Nephite Moroni. Either/or views of the plates rest on a narrow conception of the materialization process, such that he either dug them up or he did not. Highlighting the crucial role played by those who believed in the reality of the ancient plates suggests a broader view that embeds the recovery of the plates in a process of materialization". For the significance of these interpretations in scholarship on Book of Mormon provenance, see {{cite journal |last1=Mason |first1=Patrick Q. |date=2022 |title=History, Religious Studies, and Book of Mormon Studes |url=https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/jbms/article-abstract/doi/10.14321/23744774.37.03/317120/History-Religious-Studies-and-Book-of-Mormon?redirectedFrom=fulltext |department=Roundtable Discussion: The Present of Book of Mormon Studies |journal=Journal of Book of Mormon Studies |volume=31 |pages=35–55|doi=10.14321/23744774.37.03 |doi-broken-date=1 November 2024 }}</ref>

Most adherents of the Latter Day Saint movement consider the Book of Mormon an authentic historical record, translated by Smith from actual ancient plates through divine [[revelation]]. [[The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]] (LDS Church), the largest Latter Day Saint denomination, maintains this as its official position.<ref>{{Harvnb|Southerton|2004|pp=164–165, 201}}; {{Harvnb|Bushman|2005|pp=92–94}}; {{Harvnb|Vogel|1986|pp=|p=3}}; and {{Cite Q|Q124395703|last=Hardy|first=Grant|pages=vii–xxviii|chapter=Introduction|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/bookofmormonearl0000unse/page/n11/mode/2up?view=theater}} "Latter-day Saints believe their scripture to be history, written by ancient prophets."</ref>

==== Methods ====
The Book of Mormon as a written text is the transcription of what scholars Grant Hardy and William L. Davis call an "extended oral performance", one which Davis considers "comparable in length and magnitude to the classic oral epics, such as Homer's ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey''".<ref>{{Cite Q|Q124395703|last=Hardy|first=Grant|pages=vii–xxviii|chapter=Introduction|ol=23212827M|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/bookofmormonearl0000unse/page/n25}}</ref><ref name="Davis-2012" /> Eyewitnesses said Smith never referred to notes or other documents while dictating,<ref>There is some disagreement over this point and whether eyewitnesses may have exaggerated. William L. Davis notes some authors on the subject, [[Hugh Nibley]] and [[B. H. Roberts]] among others, believe Smith might have consulted a King James Bible while dictating. {{Harvnb|Davis|2020|p=199n4}}</ref> and Smith's followers and those close to him insisted he lacked the writing and narrative skills necessary to consciously produce a text like the Book of Mormon.{{sfn|Taves|2020|p=180}} Some naturalistic interpretations have therefore compared Smith's dictation to automatic writing arising from the subconscious.<ref name="Hales-2019" /> However, Ann Taves considers this description problematic for overemphasizing "lack of control" when historical and comparative study instead suggests Smith "had a highly focused awareness" and "a considerable degree of control over the experience" of dictation.{{sfn|Taves|2020|pp=170–171, 185–186}}

Independent scholar William L. Davis posits that after believing he had encountered an angel in 1823, Smith "carefully developed his ideas about the narratives" of the Book of Mormon for several years by making outlines, whether mental or on private notes, until he began dictating in 1828.{{sfn|Davis|2020|p=190}} Smith's oral recitations about Nephites to his family could have been an opportunity to work out ideas and practice oratory, and he received some formal education as a lay Methodist exhorter.{{Sfn|Davis|2020|p=35–37, 165–168|ps=. Though Smith never became an ordained exhorter, perhaps because he was not a Methodist member in full standing (36).}} In this interpretation, Smith believed the dictation he produced reflected an ancient history, but he assembled the narrative in his own words.<ref>Davis describes a "ubiquitous presence of nineteenth-century compositional techniques", and "sermonizing strategies" in the Book of Mormon's text (such as figures describing their preaching in terms of "heads" as an outline to "touch upon" in further detail as the text progresses) which "point directly and specifically to Joseph Smith as the source and assembler of these narrative components" (see {{Harvnb|Davis|2020|pp=63, 91}}). A review published in ''Choice'' disagrees as to whether there is sufficient evidence of these oratorical techniques in the Book of Mormon; see {{Cite magazine |last=Alexander |first=Thomas G. |author-link=Thomas G. Alexander |date=September 2021 |title=''Visions in a Seer Stone: Joseph Smith and the Making of the Book of Mormon'' |magazine=[[Choice Reviews|Choice]] |type=review |volume=59 |issue=1}}</ref>

==== Inspirations ====
Early observers, presuming Smith incapable of writing something as long or as complex as the Book of Mormon, often searched for a possible source he might have plagiarized.{{Sfn|Maffly-Kipp|2008|p=xxvi}} In the nineteenth century, a popular hypothesis was that Smith collaborated with [[Sidney Rigdon]] to plagiarize [[Spalding–Rigdon theory of Book of Mormon authorship|an unpublished manuscript]] written by [[Solomon Spalding]] and turn into the Book of Mormon.{{Sfn|Gutjahr|2012|pp=47–51}} Historians have considered the Spalding manuscript source hypothesis debunked since 1945, when [[Fawn M. Brodie]] thoroughly disproved it in her critical biography of Smith.<ref>"Thus in 1945 the Spaulding theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon was still strongly in vogue, most scholarly works accepting it as the explanation of the origin of the Book of Mormon. Following [Fawn Brodie's] trenchant attack on the theory its popularity quickly declined. Today nobody gives it credence" ({{Harvnb|Hill|1972|p=73}}); and "Brodie demolished the theory" ({{Harvnb|Albanese|2008|p=148}}).</ref>

Historians since the early twentieth century have suggested Smith was inspired by ''[[View of the Hebrews]]'', an 1823 book which propounded the [[Jewish Indian theory|Hebraic Indian theory]], since both associate American Indians with ancient Israel and describe clashes between two dualistically opposed civilizations (''View'' as speculation about American Indian history and the Book of Mormon as its narrative).{{sfn|Gutjahr|2012|p=51}}{{sfn|Bushman|2005|p=24}} Whether or not ''View'' influenced the Book of Mormon is the subject of debate.<ref>Elizabeth Fenton summarizes, "Some argue that [Oliver] Cowdery must have read ''View of the Hebrews'' and shared its contents with Joseph Smith, laying the groundwork for the latter's development of ''The Book of Mormon''<nowiki/>'s Hebraic Indian plotlines. Others contend that it is unlikely Cowdery ever interacted with Ethan Smith—indeed, to date no archival evidence has surfaced to link them directly—and highlight the numerous differences in style and content between ''View of the Hebrews'' and ''The Book of Mormon''." See {{Harvnb|Fenton|2020||pp=71, 224n16, 224n17}}</ref> A pseudo-anthropological treatise, ''View'' presented allegedly empirical evidence in support of its hypothesis. The Book of Mormon is written as a narrative, and Christian themes predominate rather than supposedly Indigenous parallels.{{Sfn|Bushman|2005|pp=96–97}} Additionally, while ''View'' supposes that Indigenous American peoples descended from the [[Ten Lost Tribes]], the Book of Mormon actively rejects the hypothesis; the peoples in its narrative have an "ancient Hebrew" origin but do not descend from the lost tribes. The book ultimately heavily revises, rather than borrows, the Hebraic Indian theory.<ref name="Fenton-2019">{{Cite Q|Q123497267|pages=277–297|chapter=Nephites and Israelites: The Book of Mormon and the Hebraic Indian Theory}}</ref>

The Book of Mormon may creatively reconfigure, without plagiarizing, parts of the popular 1678 Christian allegory ''[[The Pilgrim's Progress|Pilgrim's Progress]]'' written by [[John Bunyan]]''.'' For example, the martyr narrative of Abinadi in the Book of Mormon shares a complex matrix of descriptive language with Faithful's martyr narrative in ''Progress''. Some other Book of Mormon narratives, such as the dream Lehi has in the book's opening, also resemble creative reworkings of ''Progress'' story arcs as well as elements of other works by Bunyan, such as ''[[The Holy War]]'' and ''[[Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners|Grace Abounding]]''.<ref name="Davis-2012">{{Cite journal |last=Davis |first=William L. |date=October 30, 2012 |title=Hiding in Plain Sight: The Origins of the Book of Mormon |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hiding-in-plain-sight-the-origins-of-the-book-of-mormon/ |url-status=live |journal=[[Los Angeles Review of Books]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160606184014/https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hiding-in-plain-sight-the-origins-of-the-book-of-mormon/ |archive-date=June 6, 2016}}</ref>

Historical scholarship also suggests it is plausible for Smith to have produced the Book of Mormon himself, based on his knowledge of the Bible and enabled by a democratizing religious culture.{{Sfn|Maffly-Kipp|2008|p=xxvi}}