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What mainly concerns me is the very text of the book. You say this often, but then you chase it with comments like: It’s clear to me that while Smith was dictating the story of Jesus in America, he fully intended to expand his mission as a prophet and start a new church. The statement Jesus made to...

Note how the testimony of their fathers would serve to convert their descendants. Those people who lived anciently lived in America just as their descendants do in Joseph Smith’s own time. Again, we see that testimony of ancient forefathers who once lived in America will convert their descendants, ...

Zosimus, what you thought was original writings of Whitmer in 1828 was copied and written after the publication of the Book of Mormon! Correct. Everything we know about the treasure guardian before 1830 was that he was a man (or spirit) with bloody clothes, presumably from having been murdered. Can...

Let’s see what the character Moroni says in the Book of Mormon as Smith is dictating the stories therein. I think it’s quite clear that it takes place in the land of promise (America) where Joseph Smith lived. I [Mormon] made  this record out of the plates of Nephi, and hid up in the hill Cumorah a...

Let’s take a peek at the narrative, shall we? Sure, but let's go direct to John Whitmer's writings in 1828 , instead of the narrative that came after the publication of the Book of Mormon. "Nevertheless, my work shall go forth, for inasmuch as the knowledge of a Savior has come unto the world, thro...

Whatever Smith had in mind with Asia may have been an influence but did not come to fruition and ultimately does not represent the Book of Mormon. I can go into the primary influence for the story of the golden plates as I see it. The quick version is that the first Congregationalist and Baptist mi...

So, everything *in* the text of the Book of Mormon had already been expressed and manifested prior to that event. In my view the text within that very book supersedes everything said *about* the book Yes, but to understand how the plates get to New York, we need to understand who the guardian of th...

That’s possible. But no matter what, the object of the game was to get the plates to New York. OK, to get the plates to New York. Question for you. When Joseph Smith Sr. spoke to Fayette Lapham in 1829/1830 of a very large (and bloody) man in an ancient suit that had been guarding the treasure and ...

The imaginary treasure never arrived. Rhetorical or not, the answer is whatever was thought. We know now that there was no buried treasure from the Kedah Merchant in Vermont, Palmyra or along the Susquehanna. After departing the Comoros, the Kedah Merchant was scuttled off Catalina Island in the Do...

Location, location, location! Yes location and timing. Joseph Smith, Sr., had been "at times engaged in hunting for Captain Kidd's buried treasure" in Vermont. Captain Kidd brought this treasure to Vermont from where , and when did it arrive there? he and other members of his family were regularly ...