Most naturalistic views on Book of Mormon origins hold that Smith authored it, drawing, whether consciously or subconsciously, on material and ideas from his contemporary 19th-century environment, rather than translating an ancient record. Smith said that the last prophet to contribute to the book, a man named Moroni, buried it in the Hill Cumorah in present-day Manchester, New York, before his death, and then appeared in a vision to Smith in 1827 as an angel, revealing the location of the plates and instructing him to translate the plates into English. Īccording to Smith's account and the book's narrative, the Book of Mormon was originally written in otherwise unknown characters referred to as ' reformed Egyptian' engraved on golden plates. Many Latter Day Saint academics and apologetic organizations strive to affirm the book as historically authentic through their scholarship and research, but mainstream archaeological, historical, and scientific communities have discovered little to support the existence of Book of Mormon civilizations, and do not consider the Book of Mormon to be a record of historical events.

The majority of Latter Day Saints believe the book to be a record of real-world history, with Latter Day Saint denominations viewing it variously as an inspired record of scripture to the lynchpin or 'keystone' of their religion. The denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement typically regard the text primarily as scripture and secondarily as a record of God's dealings with ancient inhabitants of the Americas. The Book of Mormon is one of the standard works of the Latter Day Saint movement and one of the movement's earliest unique writings. It was first published in March 1830 by Joseph Smith as The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi. The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, which, according to Latter Day Saint theology, contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from 600 BC to AD 421 and during an interlude dated by the text to the unspecified time of the Tower of Babel. For other uses, see Book of Mormon (disambiguation).

Personalized lds scriptures