The Book of Mormon repeatedly uses a rare, outdated grammatical structure hundreds of times, yet that same pattern does not appear in Joseph Smith’s other writings. Why would a made-up text contain a consistent translation-like system he never used again? If the Book of Mormon is a 19th-century production, then it should sound like one…
If Book of Mormon names were just invented in 1829, why do so many of them match ancient Hebrew and Egyptian patterns and then appear in the text with meanings that fit the story around them? One of the easiest ways to dismiss the Book of Mormon is to treat its names as fantasy. Critics…
How did the Book of Mormon describe an ancient covenant-curse ritual and a lost tradition about Joseph’s coat that are absent from the Bible but match ancient Near Eastern practices discovered long after Joseph Smith’s time? Alma 46 describes one of the most dramatic moments in the Book of Mormon. Captain Moroni tears his garment,…
If Joseph Smith was simply copying the Bible, why does the Book of Mormon repeatedly quote early Old Testament material, and later Old Testament Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, but completely avoid the historical books scholars now say were compiled after the Babylonian exile? One of the most common criticisms of the Book of Mormon is…
If Joseph Smith made up the Book of Mormon in 1829 without knowing Hebrew, why do so many non-biblical names behave like Semitic names in structure, root-building, and narrative wordplay? How Did Joseph Smith Know Hebrew Naming Patterns? The usual explanation is that Joseph Smith invented the Book of Mormon names. That sounds simple until…
How did Joseph Smith turn one of the Bible’s most obscure figures into a fully developed prophetic tradition that later discoveries showed was already ancient? Dear CES Letter, One of your recurring assumptions is that when Joseph Smith expands a biblical figure, he must be inventing material to serve his own theology. The logic sounds…
If Facsimile 2 is “just random Egyptian nonsense,” why did Joseph Smith keep landing on themes modern scholars say a hypocephalus was designed to teach? Dear CES Letter, You treat Facsimile 2 like an easy win. A weird circular Egyptian disk equals “Joseph guessed,” “Joseph invented,” “Joseph failed.” But when I slow down and see…
If Facsimile 1 is “just a common funerary scene,” why does its closest known parallel point to ritual violence, and why did Joseph Smith get multiple low-probability details right? Dear CES Letter, You lean hard on Facsimile 1 because it feels simple. You frame it like this: modern Egyptologists can read the picture, the picture…
Dear CES Letter, Your treatment of the Book of Abraham assumes that when the Book of Abraham differs from the King James Version of Genesis, that difference must mean corruption, invention, or theological drift. But I keep running into a problem. What if some of those differences are not distortions at all? I mean, there…
Dear CES Letter, I keep re-reading your Book of Abraham section because you frame it like a case closed. If the surviving papyri fragments do not match the English text in a straightforward way, then the Book of Abraham is treated like obvious proof that Joseph Smith was not a prophet. But there is a…