Mormonism (LDS)Exposed

Is there one account of the First Vision?

No. There are at least four accounts written or dictated by Joseph Smith, plus others recorded by contemporaries, and they differ on material points — including who appeared. The earliest, written in his own hand in 1832, describes the Lord alone; the 1838 version, the one members memorise, describes two personages. The Church's own essay acknowledges the multiple accounts and the differences.

Do the Book of Abraham papyri say anything about Abraham?

No. The papyri were recovered in 1966 and can be read by any Egyptologist. They are ordinary funerary documents — a Book of Breathings and a Book of the Dead. The Church's essay concedes that none of the characters on the surviving fragments mention Abraham or any event in the Book of Abraham.

What does the Church concede about the marriages?

That the youngest woman sealed to Joseph Smith was Helen Mar Kimball, sealed to him several months before her fifteenth birthday, and that he was sealed to a number of women who were already married to living men. Both statements are quoted word for word from the Church's own essay on plural marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo. We deliberately put no total number on the marriages — see the note below.

The first written account of the visionNot held

Smith's earliest account, partly in his own handwriting, describes a single divine figure and frames the experience around forgiveness of his sins. It says nothing about being told all churches were false by two personages.

The 1838 account — canonised as Joseph Smith–History and taught in every ward — describes the Father and the Son appearing together and condemning all existing creeds. Both are Smith's. They are not the same story.

How the translation was actually doneIn corpus

For most of the twentieth century members pictured Smith reading the plates behind a curtain. The Church's own essay describes the method attested by those present: a seer stone placed in a hat, the face pressed into the hat to exclude light, and the plates frequently not in the room at all.

Joseph Smith and his scribes wrote of two instruments used in translating the Book of Mormon… the Prophet also used a seer stone… he placed the seer stone in a hat, pressed his face into the hat to block out extraneous light.

“Book of Mormon Translation,” LDS Gospel Topics essay · lds://gospel-topics/book-of-mormon-translation

This matters less as ridicule than as evidence about the kind of claim being made. If the plates were not needed in the room, their role in the story changes considerably.

The witnesses — and why they are the strongest thing hereNot held

Eleven men signed statements about the plates, and their testimony is still printed in the front of every copy. Three of them later left the Church in bitter circumstances. None of the eleven is known to have retracted. Anyone arguing this subject who does not know that is not ready to argue it.

Papyri bought from a travelling exhibitorNot held

Smith purchases Egyptian papyri and mummies from Michael Chandler and announces that they contain the writings of Abraham. He produces a translation, published as the Book of Abraham and canonised in the Pearl of Great Price, complete with facsimiles and his explanations of the figures in them.

The papyri are rediscovered — and readNot held

Fragments long thought lost in the Chicago fire turn up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Egyptology by then is a mature discipline. The fragments are identified as a Book of Breathings and associated funerary texts, of a common type, dating roughly to the Ptolemaic or early Roman period — over a thousand years after Abraham.

The facsimile explanations can also be checked against standard Egyptological readings of the same scenes, and they do not match.

The Church concedes the point in printIn corpus

The Gospel Topics essay does not dispute the Egyptology. It relocates the claim — arguing that the papyri may have been a catalyst for revelation rather than the source of a literal translation.

None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham's name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham.

“Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham,” LDS Gospel Topics essay · lds://gospel-topics/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham

This is the load-bearing item in the whole case, because it is the one testable translation Joseph Smith left behind. The Book of Mormon plates are unavailable by definition. The papyri are in a museum. Where his translating could be checked, it did not hold — and the Church has now said so itself, in its own words, on its own website.

Freemasonry and the endowment, seven weeks apartNot held

Joseph Smith was initiated as a Freemason in March 1842 and introduced the temple endowment in May 1842. The two ceremonies share signs, tokens, penalties and phrasing; the resemblance is acknowledged by LDS historians, who explain it as inspired restoration using familiar forms.

We state the chronology because it is documented, and we leave the explanation contested. It is evidence, not proof of fraud.

Plural marriage: instituted, denied, then ended by revelationIn corpus

Practised privately from the early 1840s while being publicly denied, announced openly by Brigham Young in 1852, and ended by the Manifesto of 1890 under federal pressure that threatened the Church's property and Utah's statehood.

The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Joseph's close friends Heber C. and Vilate Murray Kimball, who was sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday.

Following his marriage to Louisa Beaman and before he married other single women, Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were already married.

“Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo,” LDS Gospel Topics essay · lds://gospel-topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo

Both sentences are the Church's own, quoted exactly. We do not put a total number on the marriages, because the essay's own text does not give one — the commonly cited figure of thirty to forty comes from historians' tallies rather than from this essay, and attaching it to the essay is an error we have made ourselves and corrected.

The priesthood ban, and its disavowalNot held

Black members were barred from the priesthood and the temple from the mid-nineteenth century until 1978. Church leaders taught doctrinal justifications for the ban during that period. In 2013 the Church published an essay disavowing those explanations outright — including the theories that black skin was a curse or a sign of less valiance in a pre-mortal life.

That disavowal is genuinely creditable. It also raises the question this page keeps returning to: if prophets taught those explanations as doctrine for over a century, what is the standing of what prophets teach today?

DNA and the origin of Native AmericansIn corpus

The Book of Mormon presents its peoples as Israelite migrants who became a principal ancestral population of the Americas. Population genetics places Native American origins overwhelmingly in Asia.

The evidence assembled to date suggests that the majority of Native Americans carry largely Asian DNA.

“Book of Mormon and DNA Studies,” LDS Gospel Topics essay · lds://gospel-topics/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies

The essay's response is a limited-geography model — a small group whose genetic signal would be swamped. That is a serious reply. It is also a substantial retreat from how the book was understood for a century and a half.

Objects in the text that are not in the groundNot held

The Book of Mormon describes horses, chariots, steel swords, silk and wheat in the pre-Columbian Americas. None of these is attested archaeologically for the relevant period and region. No named city, king, battle or inscription from the book has been located.

A caution against the sloppy version of this argument: barley is often included in such lists, and should not be — domesticated barley has been identified at pre-Columbian sites in North America since 1983. Using a refuted item hands the whole list away.