The Book of Mormon. Less than three years before his death, Joseph Smith said, "I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book upon the earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book." Nonetheless,since the 1830 edition of this "most correct" book, at least 3,913 changes have been made in the text, some relating to grammar and spelling and others to obvious distortions of the tex. The original handwritten manuscripts in the possession of both the Reorganized Church and the LDS church agree with the 1830 edition in several key sections that disagree with today's edition. The Mormon Apostle James Talmage is responsible for many of the changes in the present edition of the Book of Mormon, and this was done without benefit of the Urim and Thummim.

The Book of Mormon tells the story of those who traveled to the Western Hemisphere from the Near East. Most of the book deals with the descendants of righteous Nephi and his brother Laman. The Lamanites warred against the Nephites and destroyed them. So God cursed the Lamanites with a dark skin, and they are the American Indians of today. The last of the Nephite prophets was Moroni, who hid the golden plates and later appeared as an angel to Joseph Smith at the appointed time to deliver up the records.

The Smithsonian Institution has issued a statement that "Smithsonian archaeologists see no connection between the archaeology of the New World and the subject matter of the Book." Several theories give alternate explanations for the origin of the Book of Mormon. Fawn Brodie in No Man Knows My History proposes that Joseph created the book himself, using his native genius. Others claim it grew from an unpublished novel about the origin of the American Indians by Solomon Spaulding, who died before the book was printed. They claim that Sidney Rigdon stole the manuscript, assisted Joseph Smith in producing this new American scripture and then pretended to become a convert after publication of the Book of Mormon. However, even late in life, after being excommunicated from the LDS church, Sidney Rigdon still held that he was not its author. A third theory is that Joseph borrowed some of the leading ideas from View of the Hebrews by Ethan Smith, a book published in 1823 and in 1825 in Poultney, Vermont, where Oliver Cowdery (Joseph's scribe for the Book ofMormon) lived before coming to New York in 1825. There is obvious proof that Joseph borrowed heavily from the KJV Bible. And he may also have borrowed from the Westminster Confession and a book by Josiah Priest called The Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed, published in Albany, New York, in 1825. A fourth view is that Joseph actually thought he had these visions and operated under the influence of demonic powers when he received this new gospel. This is a distinct possibility in light of Paul's warning, "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed" (Gal 1:8). Perhaps the origin of the Book of Mormon contains elements from all of the suggestions listed above.