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Let’s talk about Enoch: Biblical, Extra Biblical & Joseph Smith’s Account.
Let’s talk about the Biblical account of Enoch, the Joseph Smith accounts of Enoch, and all...
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Is The Book of Mormon an Ancient Document?
This is an Analysis from GROK 3.0 about the claim that The Book of Mormon is an Ancient Document....
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Joseph Smith the “Money Digger”? Treasure Seeking in 1820s New England
"Joseph Smith was a money digger." He said so himself in 1838, for fourteen dollars a month. What critics leave out: treasure seeking was widespread among churchgoing Christians in 1820s New England and New York, the man who hired Joseph was a Presbyterian who later joined the Church, and the Bible has its own seer for lost property in 1 Samuel 9.
Joseph Smith the “Money Digger”? Treasure Seeking in 1820s New England
“Joseph Smith was a money digger.” He said so himself in 1838, for fourteen dollars a month. What critics leave out: treasure seeking was widespread among churchgoing Christians in 1820s New England and New York, the man who hired Joseph was a Presbyterian who later joined the Church, and the Bible has its own seer for lost property in 1 Samuel 9.
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The Canon Was Never Meant to Close
From the voice in Eden to Sinai, the prophets, Christ, and the apostles, God always spoke through prophets, and every major change came with a prophet’s name, a date, God’s own words, and a reason. The closing of the canon has none. Here is the full story: the councils and the Reformation that drew the lists, the books the Bible cites but we don’t have, the prophets it promises for the last days, the “we are Moses’ disciples” pattern, and how God reopened the heavens.
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Seer Stones in the Bible: Urim and Thummim, Joseph’s Cup, Gideon’s Fleece
Critics mock Joseph Smith’s seer stone as “a rock in a hat.” The Bible tells a different story: Urim and Thummim in the high priest’s breastplate, Joseph of Egypt’s silver cup, Gideon’s fleece, apostles casting lots, Aaron’s rod, the brass serpent, and Jesus healing with clay. Here is the context critics leave out, plus what the witnesses in the room actually described.
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Book of Mormon Evidence, Part 4 of 10: The Wordprint Track Record
Forty years of Book of Mormon wordprint studies, misses included. Function words and word-pattern ratios keep finding many distinct authors and no match for Joseph Smith. The one study that found a single author used a method that picked the right known author only 23% of the time. Part 4 of 10.
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What Non-LDS Scholars Really Think of Joseph Smith: From “Impostor” to “Religious Genius”
Critics say every historian knows Joseph Smith was a fraud. The historians say something else. From Josiah Quincy’s “phenomenon to be explained” to Jan Shipps’s “Prophet Puzzle,” Harold Bloom’s “religious genius,” and even Fawn Brodie’s “mythmaker of prodigious talent,” here is how non-LDS scholars moved from “impostor” to something much harder to dismiss, and why it matters.
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Emma Smith’s Last Testimony (1879): “Neither Manuscript nor Book”
In February 1879, a few months before she died, Emma Smith answered her son’s questions about the Book of Mormon. Joseph’s first scribe said he dictated “hour after hour” with his face in a hat, the plates wrapped in her linen tablecloth, and “neither manuscript nor book to read from.” She never went west, split with Brigham Young, and still never denied the book. Plus the polygamy objection, answered honestly.
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