The Book of Mormon made a list published within Book Magazine called the “20 -Books That Changed America” reported KSL TV in Utah.
But this list included “novels or nonfiction works.”
So which category does the Book of Mormon fit within?
Overwhelmingly, historians apparently agree that the book is clearly fiction created by Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith.
According to American history senior lecturer Raymond Richards of Waikato University in New Zealand, Smith was a “fruadster” who ran a “scam.”
The church founder claimed he unearthed ancient “golden plates” in an unknown language outside Palmyra, New York. He then translated them to become the Book of Mormon.
These plates supposedly told a previously hidden history about the Americas, replete with prophets and peoples never heard of before.
However, no serious scholar outside of Mormon apologists has ever designated Smith’s book as history. Instead, it is seen essentially as a yarn. And as for his golden plates, they conveniently disappeared, never to be meaningfully authenticated as historical artifacts.
This must mean Book Magazine considers the Book of Mormon one of its listed “novels.”
Never mind.
Teachers at Brigham Young University (BYU), a Mormon institution, seemed breathless. One called the inclusion of the book “exiting.” Another said, “The more that [the Book of Mormon is] discussed and…talked about…the more curious people become.”
Does this mean the BYU faculty thinks such secular attention might help Mormon missionary efforts?
Historian Richards says the church that was made in America is “aggressive, racist and sexist.”
And for comments like that the teacher made a list too. Richards is listed by a Mormon website as “anti-Mormon” reported Waikato Times in New Zealand.
The lecturer’s reaction was to point out that Mormons don’t “allow freedom of thought and academics needed to be alerted to that.”
Given the penchant of the church’s leaders to excommunicate scholars with inquiring minds and its efforts to muzzle free speech in downtown Salt Lake City Richards words don’t appear far fetched.
A BYU professor acknowledged that the Book of Mormon was “spawned in controversy.” And it looks like that controversy continues even today.
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