Will the Real Book of Mormon Author Please Stand Up?: Volume 2 (The Authentic Book of Mormon: A Study and Faith Series)

Asiatic-Mulekites, Missing “Small Plates,” and Fictive Genealogies

200 years have passed since the Angel Moroni visited Joseph Smith, and over 1600 years have passed since the warrior Moroni buried the plates. Michael Ash applies our 21st-century knowledge to interpreting how the authors of the Book of Mormon might have understood the world in which they lived. Why did they believe that the Mulekites came from Jerusalem? Were the Small Plates of Nephi really preserved for over 2400 years until they came into Joseph Smith’s hands? Who abridged which records?

The second 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 others 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.