Peach, a Mormon apologist who has been posting in the comments of this blog, brought up one of my favorite Mormon missionary tools – the infamous Hugh Nibley’s Book of Mormon Challenge. In case you missed the comments, you can click on this link to read the challenge in its entirety. I’d like to present arguments from a page that I found that refutes that challenge, point by point, using the same type of logic as the original challenge. This will be a three part series, as it’s a lot of data for one blog post.

The Book of Mormon challenge was popularised by Hugh Nibley, and often presented to hisstudents in a course on the Book of Mormon. Basically, the idea is that the detractors of the Book are invited to try their hand at writing a similar epic, the point presumably being that it is so difficult that it could only have come about with divine help.

It should be noted at the outset that there are several problems with the whole concept. The first is the very obvious
point that this test is by no means unique. The Koran, for example, contains a very similar test within its pages.

Sura 2:23 And if you are in doubt as to that which We have revealed to Our servant, then produce a
chapter (sura) like it and call on your witnesses besides Allah if you are truthful.

Sura 10:38 Or do they say: He has forged it? Say: Then bring a chapter (sura) like this and invite whom you can besides Allah, if you are truthful.

One wonders if the Mormons have ever handed the Muslims the Book of Mormon as fulfillment of this challenge, and vice-versa.

A second problem centers around the concept of the onus of proof. Since the Mormons have claimed that the
Book of Mormon has a divine origin, it is up to them to provide satisfactory evidence of this claim, something which has not been performed to date. The Challenge is actually a subtle attempt to shift the burden of proof onto the detractor, and as such should be disregarded.

By far the major problem with the Book of Mormon Challenge, however, is the simple fact that the Book itself does not meet the requirements outlined in the challenge! It will be evident that the Mormon apologist has made grandiose claims for the Book, claims which far outstrip the meagre evidence. This article will demonstrate that the Challenge is only valid if one first assumes the historical validity of the Book of Mormon, which thus results in a circular argument.

Here then are the main points of the Challenge, with comments added.

1. Write a history of ancient Tibet covering a period from 2200 B.C. to 400 A.D. Why ancient Tibet? Because you know no more about Tibet than Joseph Smith (or anyone else) knew about ancient America.

It is here assumed that the Book of Mormon is a history of ancient America. Unfortunately for the Mormon apologist, this claim is completely lacking in anything approaching proof. The earliest manuscript evidence for the Book of Mormon reaches no further than a few years before it was published in 1830. Prior to that, there is no mention whatsoever of a book of this kind in any ancient American historical archive. Further, the events and artifacts described in the Book can quite easily be shown to be anachronistic and problematic.

2. You are 23 years of age.

3. You have had no more than three years of formal school education, and have spent your life in backwoods farming communities.

This challenge has been accepted and met time and time again. The history of the world is replete with examples of people who were young and unlearned producing great works of literature. Mohammed, for example, was barely literate, which did not seem to prevent him from producing the Koran, widely regarded as a work of high literary quality.

4. Your history must be written on the basis of what you now know. There was no library that held information for Joseph Smith. You must use none. There is to be no research of any kind.

How exactly, we are forced to ask, are we to tell what Smith did or did not have access to? The only way that this statement could be remotely valid is to have access to the diary of an impartial observer who followed Smith around for every day of his life. We have no such thing. What we do know is that the books that appear to have had the greatest impact on the Book of Mormon, the King James Bible and Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews were freely available in the area in which Smith lived.

[Note: Here is another list of possible references for the Book of Mormon, of books that were available during the time of the writing of the Book of Mormon with startling similarites.]

5. Your history must be 531 pages and over 300,000 words in length.

This is irrelevant. The Koran is even longer than the Book of Mormon, and was similarly produced by an unlearned man.

6. Other than a few grammatical corrections, you must have no changes in the text. The first edition as you dictate it to your secretary must stand forever.

Again, this is stretching the truth a little. The "few" grammatical and spelling corrections actually number in the thousands, and there are in fact a few changes which correct contradictions in the original, and also seem to reflect evolving doctrinal positions.

7. This record is to contain the history of two distinct and separate nations, along with histories of different contemporary nations or groups of people.

8. You must describe their religious, economic, political, and social cultures and institutions. Cover every phase of their society, including the names of their coins.

There are numerous works of fiction which describe in great detail the social life and political structures of wholly imaginary cultures. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings cycle (the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, the Silmarillion et al) is a massive work which covers many thousands of years of history of Middle Earth, a place that existed only in Tolkien’s vivid imagination. Tolkien even went one better, and created syntactically correct anguages for a number of his imaginary subcultures.

In contrast, more than one detractor has noted that the Book of Mormon is repetitous, superificial and lacking in maturity.The great LDS historian, B.H. Roberts, had this to say about one aspect of the Book of Mormon story:

There were other Anti-Christs among the Nephites, but they were more military leaders than religious innovators… they are all of one breed and brand; so nearly alike that one mind is the author of them, and that a young and undeveloped, but piously inclined mind. The evidence I sorrowfully submit, points to Joseph Smith as their creator. It is difficult to believe that they are the product of history, that they come upon the scene separated by long periods of time, and among a race which was the ancestral race of the red man of America. (Studies of the Book of Mormon, page 271)

9. Change your style of writing many times. Many ancient authors contributed to the Book of Mormon, each with his own style.

This is very hard to sustain. A cursory examination of the Book of Mormon will show that whenever the style abruptly changes, it is inevitably due to a protracted quote from the King James Version of the Bible. LDS scholars often point to "wordprint" studies conducted at BYU (hardly an objective setting), but fail to point out that subsequent studies have contradicted the original conclusions.

10. Weave into your history the religion of Jesus Christ and the pattern of Christian living.

Completely irrelevant. This is not difficult to achieve at all.