If Joseph Smith made up the Book of Mormon...How did Joseph he know about all these things?

Question

How did Joseph know so much about the Arabian Peninsula?

If the gold plates never existed, how did Joseph get numerous witnesses to stand by their stories until their dying day, even when some of them later became angry with Joseph and left the Church?

How could Joseph have known about ancient cement technology in the first century B.C. in Mesoamerica?

Why does ancient Mesoamerican geography AND culture provide a plausible setting for the Book of Mormon?

How could Joseph Smith make up dozens of names in the Book of Mormon that would later be shown to be authentic ancient Semitic names?

Where did Joseph Smith get the idea of ancient scriptures written on metal plates?

How did Joseph Smith know about ancient practices regarding preservations of sacred texts?

Why do other ancient documents support the Book of Mormon's idea that the ancient Joseph prophesied of Moses and Aaron?

I got these question from the following site; which backs all of it up with evidence.

http://www.jefflindsay.com/myturn.shtml

Have a great day! :)

Also you can find evidence of all of these in the Book of Mormon itself!

Suspender: A house divided against itself cannot stand.-Jesus

If you actually read the Book of Mormon you would know that had Satan inspired the Book of Mormon he would've been fighting heimself.

MrPeeper: I can see these things upset you, I'm sorry they do. Truth is a real taskmaster sometimes.

Answer 1

Please excuse the length, but it is necessary

CHALLENGES OF THE BOOK OF MORMON

Occasionally someone will say, “I could believe your Mormon Doctrine if I just didn’t have to swallow the story about Joseph Smith being a man of God and that he translated the Book of Mormon from some golden plates which he claimed to have found on a hillside.”

It is possible that you have doubted his story. Consider some facts or conditions that must first be followed for you or someone else to produce a similar record under comparable conditions.

1.You must be between 23 and 24 years of age.
2.You cannot be a college graduate. In fact, you can have only three years of schooling.
3.Whatever you write must be based on what you now know; no research is done.
4.You must write a book with 239 chapters, 54 of them about wars, 21 about history, 55 about prophecy, 71 about doctrine, 17 about missionaries, and 21 about the mission of Jesus Christ.
5.You must write a history of an ancient country, such as Tibet, covering a period from 600 B.C. to 421 A.D.
6.You must include in your writings the history of two distinct and separate nations, along with histories of different contemporary nations or groups of people, of which no one ever knew existed.
7.Your writings must describe the religious, economic, social, and political cultures and institutions of these two nations.
8.You must weave into your history the religion of Jesus Christ and the pattern of Christian living.
9.When you start to produce this record, covering a period of 1,000 years, you must finish it in approximately 80 days.
10.When you have finished you must not make any changes in the text. The first edition must stand forever.
11.After pauses for sleep and food, if you are dictating to a stenographer, you must never ask to have the last paragraph of the last sentence read back to you.
12.Your record must be about 522 pages with over 510 words per page. You must add 180 proper nouns to the English language. William Shakespeare added only 30.
13.You must announce that your “smooth narrative” is not fiction, but true, yes, even that it is a sacred record of history.
14.In fact, it must fulfill the Bible prophecies; even in the exact manner in which it shall come forth, to whom given, its purpose and accomplishments (respectively—Psalms 85:10-11, Isaiah 29:2-4, Isaiah 29:11-14, Ezekiel 37:18-21, and so forth).
15.You must publish it to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, declaring it the Word of God.
16.You must include with the record itself, this marvelous promise: “And when you shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, He will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.”
17.Tens of hundreds of thousands must bear record to the world for the next 165 years that they know the record to be true. Because they put the “promise” to the test and found it to be true, the truth manifested to them by the power of the Holy Ghost.
18.Thousands of great men, intellectual giants, and scholars must subscribe discipleship to the record and its movement even to the point of laying down their lives for it.
19.Your descriptions of the culture and people in these civilizations of which you write include the manner of their written and spoken languages, type of buildings, geographic locations, governmental types, monetary system, types of tools and materials used, and many other facts completely unknown to the rest of the world.
20.There can be no flaw whatsoever in the entire record.
21.Yet, you must not make an absurd, impossible, or contradictory statement.
22.Even so, many of the facts, ideas, and statements given us as true in your record must be entirely inconsistent, even the direct opposite of the prevailing beliefs of the world where very little is claimed to be known about these civilizations and their 1,000 years of history.
23.You must invite the ablest scholars and experts to examine the text with care. You must strive diligently to see that your book gets into the hands of all those eager to prove it a forgery and who are most competent to expose any flaw in it.
24.Thorough investigation, scientific evidence, and archaeological discoveries for the next 166 years must verify your claims and prove even the minutest details of your history to be perfectly true, even to the types of roads they built.
25.After 166 years of extensive analysis, no claim or fact is disproved, but all is vindicated. Other theories and ideas as to its origin, rise, and fall, leaving your claims as the only possible ones.
26.Internal and external prophecies must be confirmed and fulfilled in the next 166 years.
27.Three honest, creditable witnesses must testify to the whole world that an angel from heaven appeared to them and showed them the ancient records from which you claim your record is translated.
28.You must call out of heaven the voice of the Redeemer to declare to the three witnesses that your record is true and that it is their responsibility to hear the testimony. And they do it. They must handle and feel the engravings on the record.
29.Eight other witnesses must testify to the world that they saw the ancient records in broad daylight and they handled them and felt the engravings on the record.
30.The first three and the second eight witnesses must bear their testimony not for profit or gain, but under great personal sacrifice and severe persecution, even to their deaths.
31.You must find someone to finance your book with the understanding that neither he nor you will ever receive any monetary enumerations from it. You must sell the book at cost or at less than its production value.
32.You must tell the world that the written record you have translated from was engraved gold plates, even though up until the time you made this claim, no one has ever found anywhere in past history any civilization using gold as a method of keeping records, and not until about 100 years later were any similar engraved gold plates found.
33.Many of the chapters and verses must be written in a chiastic style, characteristic of the Hebrew style of writing. This style of writing was discovered very recently, long after the publication of the Book of Mormon.
34.Finally, after suffering persecution and revilement for 20 years after you finish the book, you must willingly give your own life for your testimony that the record is from God.

Surely, no one without God’s help could produce a similar record and comply with all of the above conditions. Wouldn’t you say that Joseph Smith was indeed a man of God and that he was an instrument in God’s hands to bring forth such a record?

Added note: In response to Referral's comment about writing a similar book. I am a novelist and short story writer and I am quick to admit I am incapable of writing such a collection of scriptures as the Book of Mormon.

Answer 2

I don't really believe in any of those claims. The guy wrote it in a 17th century style english and the guy lived in the 19th century. Makes no sense!

A god doesn't need a human to translate anything and to write it down. He can make his own book (or DVD or VHS). Now, that makes more sense!

Also, you do know that the church modifies the BoM once in a while? How many revisions has it gone through?

There is no reformed egyptian. Archeology doesn't support Joe Smith. No golden plates have ever been found and never will be.

~~~~atheist, serving the atheist agenda

Answer 3

There were other written works being published around this time by anthropologists and ancient historian scientists that already had much of the same information that was eventually placed into the Book of Mormon.

Answer 4

Some people have theorized that Joseph Smith had a Native American nursemaid, abut even that wouldn't explain all of this.
Good questions.

Answer 5

A true prophet must be correct 100% of the time. No ifs, ands, or buts. No wiggle room. He was NOT a true prophet and he married 14 year old girls. Enough said.

Answer 6

Several ecclesiastical groups come from the same wellspring which is the Campbellite movement. They are:

Church of Christ
Seventh Day Adventist
Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints
Jehovah Witnesses

There are also schismatic churches from these churches. The most orthodox of this family of churches is the Seventh Day Adventists who are no longer Arian but are Trinitarian.

All of these churches claim to be the restored church claiming that the original church founded by Christ and the apostles fell into apostasy. The disturbing claim is that it suggests that Jesus was a liar and that the gates of hell did indeed prevail against the church and that the church that Jesus claimed would endure until the Parousia is no longer His Church but is instead a new, modernist restored church started in thee mid 19th century.

All the evidence points to Joseph Smith's friend, a former Campbellite, Sidney Rigdon as the author of the book of Mormon as he had the theological knowledge and it is probable that he plagiarized some of the information from other sources. the Mormons are not Arians like some of the other Campbellite offshoots but are instead polytheistic like the ancient Greek and Roman pagan religions. God bless.

In Christ
Fr. Joseph

Answer 7

You can find the answer in this short history of his life.

http://www.allaboutcults.org/joseph-smith-faq.htm

Joseph Smith was born on December 23, 1805 in Sharon, Vermont to Joseph Smith, Sr., a struggling farmer and sometime treasure hunter who descended from an early American family of more than average means and influence. Lucy Mark Smith, Joseph's mother, was a highly mystical woman who was given to unimaginable tales of exaggeration. Lucy's father claimed experiences of divine visions from God.

At the age of 14, Joseph Smith, Jr. claimed he was visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ. In 1823, according to his account, he was visited by an angel who told him of thin golden plates containing an ancient record of God's dealings with the early American inhabitants. During this same time, Smith was enamored of the "seer stones" used in occult practices and gained some small reputation as a clairvoyant able to locate lost objects.

In 1827, Joseph Smith began translating the golden plates using what he claimed as the "gift of God." Three years later, the Book of Mormon was published. In that same year (1830), Smith organized The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and became its first president. He continued to claim receipt of various prophecies and revelations, earning him the title "The Prophet" until his death in 1844 when he was arrested for treason and murdered by a mob.

Joseph Smith's writings are the foundation of Mormonism (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). The influences from the occult, Shakers, Quakers, Seekers, teachings of William Miller which formed the basis of the Seventh Day Adventist church, as well as Jewish cabalistic traditions and the Masonic order can all be found throughout Smith's writings. Most of these came out of the nineteenth century religious environment of western New York during his lifetime.

In 1833, ten years before Joseph Smith's death and three years after the publication of the Book of Mormon, the Smith family men were described in an affidavit signed by several prominent citizens of Manchester, New York, as "lazy, indolent, intemperate, destitute of moral character and addicted to vicious habits."

Answer 8

Good question. Ya why would people think he could just make that all up. He had a third grade education didn't he? That's what i heard. Anyways, people don't just make that stuff up. He was inspired to translate the plates and that's what he did. Not to take the place of the bible, but to add to it!!

Answer 9

Hey! this is good, so the haters and doubters can read it.
Joseph Smith was a real prophet and each word the Book of Mormon says is true ;)

Answer 10

I guess a young man with what was it... a third grade education or something? I guess he was just able to *miraculously* bust out with a book right out of his vivid imagination!!! Like OH MY GOSH!!! Get real people. It was inspired of God, I know it, you know it, and that's why most of your responses are so hostile, it wouldn't bother you at all if it wasn't true.
In the words of free2bfearless, "Have a good day!!!!!"

Answer 11

It took Joseph Smith years to find the tablets. It was like looking for pirates treasure WITHOUT a map. He was guided by angels covering a large distance. With god's help it took a year to translate.