A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon presents the first extensive study of the primary sources chronicling the origin of the long-ridiculed narrative that has now been reprinted more than one hundred and eighty million times in one hundred and ten languages.
The scores of documents transcribed and annotated in A Documentary History include family histories, journal entries, letters, affidavits, reminiscences, interviews, newspaper articles, and book extracts, as well as revelations dictated in the name of God. These texts tell the captivating story of what happened (and what was believed or rumored to have happened) between September 1823 -- when the seventeen-year-old farm boy Joseph Smith announced that an angel of God had directed him to an ancient book inscribed on gold plates -- and March 1830, when the Book of Mormon was first published. From the late 1820s to the present, the controversy -- as well as the curiosity -- has never ceased. By bringing together for the first time a substantial compilation of both first- and secondhand accounts relevant to the inception of the divine revelation -- or clever fraud -- that launched a new world religion, A Documentary History makes a highly significant contribution to the rapidly growing field of Mormon Studies.