Duly forewarned by this amazing and brazen assessment of the persuasiveness of his own work, [Lars] Nielsen presents a theory of how the Book of Mormon was created:

Nephi in The Book of Mormon was to some degree intentionally modeled on (or named after) [Athanasius] Kircher’s Barachias Nephi. . . . More than one hundred years after Kircher had passed away, memes from his life and works got into the mind of Dartmouth’s Professor of Oriental Languages (the second link in the Kircherism chain) as he read, translated, and studied the works of the immortal encyclopaedist. Professor [John] Smith transmitted some of those memes to his student, Solomon Spalding (the third link) as part of his graduate-level research and in the form of a fiction that Professor Smith had started but did not publish, fearing that it might injure his reputation as a theological writer. Professor Smith was therefore both a source and an influence on what eventually became The Book of Mormon. After finishing his master’s work, Spalding served as a Dartmouth missionary for ten years, after which he deconstructed his faith and became an atheist. When Professor Smith died in 1809, Spalding decided to finally finish what I now call Stories from Lost Manuscripts Found, which consisted of several nested storylines, including the F, N, J, and M texts. Some or all of these sources ended up in the possession of Sidney Rigdon (the fourth link). (pp. 245–46)

What we can say definitively is that there is absolutely no evidence at all for any of these supposed “links.” But we can say much more than that. It is demonstrable that the claimed links are extremely improbable given more solid evidence. There is no evidence that John Smith ever heard of Kircher, read Kircher, or even had access to anything written by Kircher. Indeed, Kircher (1751–1809) was almost unknown in scholarship during John Smith’s lifetime and copies of Kircher’s works were extremely rare. Nielsen speculates that perhaps Sidney Rigdon accessed Kircher through John Smith, who was at Dartmouth. But the catalogues of Dartmouth’s library holdings in 1775 and 1825 don’t list any works by Kircher. Dartmouth College Library didn’t contain Kircher’s three-volume Oedipus Aegyptiacus or any other works by Kircher during Smith’s lifetime. There were no books by Kircher in the library in 1775, when Smith started teaching at Dartmouth, and there were no books by Kircher in the library in 1825, years after his death. The student society libraries didn’t have any books by Kircher either. Further, the Dartmouth student library also didn’t have any Kircher works.

. . .

In other words, Nielsen built his “link” on speculation and, in the process, has fudged the facts and sources. Nielsen fills in historical facts with fictional narratives or “gap filling narrative” to pretend to give us a cozy relationship between John Smith and Solomon Spaulding. There is no evidence for Nielsen’s theory except for his sheer creative imagination.

. . .

Nielsen purports to offer two previously unknown items in his book (the rest is a bad rehash, at best, of theories regarding Solomon Spaulding and Ethan Smith): (1) The supposed use of the name Nephi in Kircher’s writings and (2) supposed parallels between Kircher’s writings and the Book of Mormon. Neither item, when it comes to explaining the Book of Mormon, has even one iota of merit.

The problem with Nielsen’s assertion that Joseph Smith cribbed the name Nephi through the bewildering maze of “links” that he constructs is that it is impossible. The only place that Kircher uses the name Nephi is in (until recently) unpublished letters to Pietro della Valle between 1628 and 1632, which are now only located in the Vatican archives. In published books, the reference is, without exception, to Abenephius the Arab. Nielsen relied on recently published sources that refer to the name “Rabbi Barachias Nephi.” However, the name was not available to Joseph Smith or any other reader in the nineteenth century from anything related to Kircher.

. . .

Conclusions

What can we conclude from Nielsen’s self-vaunted work? Absolutely nothing—except perhaps that flights of fancy, speculation, sheer bravado, and self-aggrandizement are not a substitute for actual evidence. Reading the book is a sheer waste of time. Neilsen leads us through supposed connections to explain the existence of the Book of Mormon, connections that are based on a lack of evidence and leaps of logic so great that not even Mike Powell, the world-record long jumper, could make the leap.