https://bookofmormoncentral.org/content ... liest-text
By any measure, the Book of Mormon belongs in the select category of recent world scripture. First published in upstate New York in 1830,the book has been translated in its entirety into over seventy languages, with thirty more partial trans-lations and more than 140 million copies printed since 1830. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), or Mormons, consider the Book of Mormon a sacred revelation equal in authority to the Bible.The Book of Mormon is probably the most successful new scripture of the past few centuries, and while it can profitably be compared with other similar texts, there are at least two ways in which it is unusual. First, most recent holy books consist of doctrinal expositions, ritual instructions, moral codes, scriptural commentary, or devotional poetry. The Book of Mormon, by contrast, is narrative—a much rarer genre of religious writing.
Most world scriptures were created over decades, if not centuries, often under rather obscure circumstances, and they achieved their current form only after lengthy processes of editing and canoniza-tion. Nearly all of the Book of Mormon, as we have it, was revealed to the twenty-three-year-old Joseph Smith from April through June 1829. Several persons were eyewitnesses to the method by which Smith dictated over six hundred manuscript pages to his scribes. And in less than a year after the completion of the translation,the work was published and accepted by believers as authoritative scripture. Both of these distinguishing characteristics—its narrative and its production—are worth considering more fully.
A new addition to the library of world scripture is a relatively rare phenomenon. In every age there are individuals who claim revelations, some of which get committed to writing and eventually published, but very few of these texts come to be regarded by millions of believers as sacred and authoritative and then, through translations, gain readers and adherents beyond their culture of origin.
Regards,
MG