Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?

Craig Criddle, Environmental Professor at Stanford, demonstrates that the Book of Mormon is actually the work of Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery and Parley Pratt working on the foundation of Solomon Spalding (A Manuscript Found).  Dr. Criddle (not an evangelical) uses statistical analysis to get a literary fingerprint of various authors based on common phrases used.  He is the co-author of The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry.  Here is an in-depth article by Dr. Criddle on Rigdon.  

This chart shows Spalding’s literary signature in the Book of Mormon (the RED lines).  The long lines in 2^nd Nephi represent passages taken from the Bible.

Notice the occurrence of unique Spalding phrases (this vid @ 4:23):

Judge W. Lang, Cowdery’s law partner said,

The plates were never translated and could not be, and were never intended to be.  What is claimed to be a translation is "The Manuscript Found" worked over by C. [Cowdery]  He was the best scholar among them. ...  Rigdon got the original [of Spalding’s historical novel] at the job printing office in Pittsburgh ... Without going into detail or disclosing a confidential word, I can say to you that I do know, as well as can now be known, that C. revised the manuscript and that [Joseph] Smith and Rigdon approved of it before it became the Book of Mormon.

Here is a chart from Dr. Criddle portraying the origin of the Book of Mormon.  The detail is not clear – this is just to show the complexity of how the Book of Mormon was created (this vid @ 5:33):

Check out this vid from Christian authors explaining the Spalding origin of the Book of Mormon.

You’ll love this testimony of an ex-BYU Professor who became a Christian.  The author of Is the Mormon my Brother? is featured in this broadcast.

This farcical song from the Tony award winning musical The Book of Mormon is a hoot!  Our prior blog on LDS teaching examined Kolob.