The Authentic Book of Mormon: A Study and Faith Series: Volume 1: Unearthing the Book of Mormon

Treasure-Spirits, Bad-Fitting Spectacles, and Moriancumer’s Stones.

Although the traditional Book of Mormon “coming forth” narrative is well known to Latter-day Saints, there’s much more to the story. Michael Ash explores the event's finer details, peculiarities, and circumstances. How would a real 19th-century frontier farm boy understand the angel and the plates in light of the common belief that peepstones could find buried treasure? Did Joseph Smith actually use the “Urim and Thummim"? If so, what did it look like, and how did it get from the Brother of Jared to the young prophet?

The first volume in this series explores a variety of Book of Mormon topics, probed with the conviction that the people and scenarios are authentic. Real people, whether ancient or modern, prophets or heretics, intellectually brilliant or cognitively mediocre, will respond similarly to other people in their milieu. While Ash accepts Joseph’s prophetic calling and the prophetic callings of the Nephite prophets, he also advances the discussion with the belief that prophets are fallible, sometimes make false assumptions, and are products of the environment in which they lived.