Book review: The Book of Mormon

[_Darth J]

I have been looking for a book that explains the basic teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A friend recommended that I start with The Book of Mormon, which was published by Joseph Smith in 1830.

Unfortunately, this book did not serve my purpose at all, as it has no discernible relationship with the teachings of the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although I did recognize a few quotes here and there that are occasionally seen in LDS teaching curricula or heard in General Conference talks, it turns out that when these quotes are seen in their original context, they have little to nothing to do with the points the LDS Church and its leaders are attempting to make when cherry-picking such quotes.

In summary, if you are in the market for literature about modern Mormonism, I cannot recommend The Book of Mormon.

[_krose]

Well, it does provide an impressive justification for murder.

So at least there's that.

[_Quasimodo]

The best book review I've seen on the Book of Mormon (no doubt all of you have seen it before). Still, worth reading again.

"All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle--keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two--he
ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet…

[Guest]

I have also read The Book of Mormon. Here are the official ratings:

Entertainment: 2
Quality of information: 9
Command of the Efficient Market Hypothesis: 8.2

As Quasimodo pointed out, the book is not an adrenaline rush. The quality of information is high, however, as a proprietary story about a lost civilization, it's the official source to learn about the people and events it describes.

The author has a reasonably good understanding of market efficiency and emphatically rejects the idea as not only false, but demonic, and as is the cases of much other material i've read recently, the belief in market efficiency often contributes to widespread crisis in society. The author sees market failure in terms of informational efficiency as two-fold. Information is wildly assymetric, and market participants are on the average irrational.

Key characters like Lehi and Nephi continually receive inside information on market events and follow these hot tips to outperform the market. Nephi, for instance, uses the strategy of prayer to find "loose change on the ground" in the form of supernatural bows and magical compasses. Using these items, he is able to bring home more game than those who do not pray. Lehi is told by the greatest insider of them all to flee Jerusalem because it will be destroyed and does so, soaring high above the crisis. While information assymetry is rife, the author makes it a point to show that information assymetry is an incurable situation that does not self-correct due to agent rationality. No matter how many times hot tips and secret formulas are revealed to society as a whole, the information is ignored. Time and time again, the prophets beat the market using simple strategies that anyone can replicate and time and time again, their advice is ignored and scorned.

Key players who contribute to the problem of informational friction and systemic irrationality are students of the Chicago-School theory, such as Laman and Lemuel. There's an old story many of us have heard where Laman and Lemuel are walking in the wilderness and Laman spots a Senum of silver on the ground and points it out to Lemuel who simply responds, "it must be fake," and the two walk on. Lamen and Lemuel are blinded by the myth of a rational market and fail ad nauseum to take advantage of the secret formulas Nephi offers them time and time again. Even when angels appear to them personally to give them a tip, they reject the information as useless, confirming their belief in the strong form of market efficiency that not even inside information can be used to achieve better returns than the market average.

A great example of an academic who lured a civilization into complacency and ruin is Korihor, who approached Alma and his brethren to argue that the "fund" they were running ate up capital in terms of management fees and that the people would do just as well in a passive strategy. Alma is a proud chartist who can read the motions of the heavens and guide the allocation of resources in his society better than the market can do on its own. Korihor convinces many people that Alma cannot predict the future and has no information advantage above the collective wisdom of men, many believe him, and go their own way to their own peril, bringing about widespread unemployment and crimes, as irrationality drives the children of men into unconstrained whoredoms and debauchary.

The author of the book understands the value for those who read it. Those who learn simple strategies such as prayer and trend-watching (prosperity cycle etc) can "time the market" and beat the competition. Of course, while the author understands his message well, we are left with some inconsistencies. What if everyone prayed and found Liahona, then how can prayer work when there are only so many animals in the forest to hunt? There are implications that God can simply remove the resource constraint such that everyone bags their game. But this has limited application to today's world where men have contrived their own zero-sum institutions that are difficult even for God to get around. Consider BYU students who all pray to do well on tests but the advantage of prayer on average is nullified by the fact that teachers grade on a curve.

One is also amazed at the disconnect between the Book of Mormon's message about market failures and the demand by Mormons to live under a free-market regime. However, there are also intuitions that this is just rhetoric used to justify poverity and that Mormons would elect an official who combines Book of Mormon strategies such as prayer with a successful career in asset pricing to create a production powerhouse for America that is broadly market socialist; so in this way, there is consistency between faith and scripture.

[_honorentheos]

Gad, that may be the post of the year. At least for originality and wit it gets my vote.

[_Kittens_and_Jesus]

The best book review I've seen on the Book of Mormon (no doubt all of you have seen it before). Still, worth reading again.

"All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle--keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two--he
ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet…

It never gets old to me.

[_Fence Sitter]

Well maybe they can improve it a bit by making a musical out of it. If you add some catchy songs and snappy costumes people may overlook the storyline, just look at how long CATS lasted on Broadway.