Could This Book Have Been Written By An Uneducated Young Man In About Seventy-Five Days?

perhaps one the best evidences of the veracity of the Book of Mormon is that its opponents have had to work so hard just to come up with their attack. They have claimed Joseph Smith copied it from other books,from the Bible,was given it through magic,got others to write it or did it through some sort of psychological delusion. All of these have been proven quite false.That no credible argument has been found is incredible given the fact that Joseph Smith, an uneducated farm boy, would hardly seem a match for a world of scientific,linguistic,archaeological, and historical scholars-particvularlt because the  task of presenting to the world something as bold as the Book of Mormon as a product of fiction simply defies any odds. Hugh Nibley described this impossibility in the following chalenge to his college class to create a book like Joseph Smith did:
  " Since Joseph Smith was younger than most of you and not nearly so experienced or well-educated as any of you at the time he copyrighted the Book of Mormon, it should not be too much to ask you to hand in by the end of the semester(which will give you more time than he had) a paper of, say, five to six hundred pages in length.Call it a sacred book if you will,and give it the form of a history.Tell of a community of wandering Jews in ancient times; have all sort of characters in your story, and involve them in all sorts of public and private vicissitudes;give them names-hundreds of them-pretending that they are real Hebrew and Egyptian names of circa 600 B.C.;be lavish with cultural and technical details-manners and customs, arts and industries,political and religioud institutions, rite, and traditions; include long and complicated military and economic histories;have your narrative cover a thousand years without anylarge gaps; keep a number of interrelated local histories going at once;feel free to introduce religious controversy and philosophical discussion,but always in a plausible setting; observe the appropriate literary conventions and explain the derivation and transmission of your varied historical materials.
Above all,do not ever contracdict yourself! For now we come to the really hard part of this little assignment. You an I know that you are making this all up-we have our little joke-but just the same you are going to be required to haveto have your paper published when you finish it,not as fiction or romance,but as a true history!After you have handed it in,you may make no changes in it(in this class we always use the first edition of the Book of Mormon);what is more,you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your  work freely, explaining to them that it is a sacred book on a par with the Bible.If they seem over-skeptical, you might tell that you translated the book from the original records by the aid of Urim and Thummin- they will love that! Further to allay their misgivings,you might tell them that the original manuscript was on golden plates, and that you got the plates from an angel. Now go to work and good luck!
To date no student has carried out this assignment,which of course, was not meant seriously.But why not? if anybody could write the Book of Mormon,as we have been so often assured, it is high time that somebody, some devoted and learned minister of the gospel,performed the invaluable public service of showing the world that it can be done."
From a purely doctrinal and philosophical point of view,Truman Madsen also notes the following about the enormity of the task accomplished by the Book of Mormon relative to Joseph Smith's training and knowledge. He writes:
"As to the 'originality of the Book of Mormon,'B.H. Roberts found in the book of doctrines exceeding the native intelligence of Joseph Smith, and his associates, and indeed the combined intelligence of the nineteenth century.Among these truths were the definition of truth itself(Jacob 4:13); the doctrine of opposite existences(2 Nephi 2); the doctrine(with cosmological implications) that the universe splits into two categories,"things to act and things to be acted upon ( 2 Nephi 2:14); a foundation for an unqualified affirmation of man;s agency ( 2 Nephi 2:27; 2 Nephi 10:23; Alma 61:21); a doctrine of the fall of Adam as instrumental to a higher good ( 2 Nephi2:10-11,15; Alma 42:16-17);a doctrine of the nature of evil as "among the eternal things"-"as eternal as good; as eternal as law; as eternal as the agency of intelligence"( 2 Nephi 2:15-25); and a doctrine of the purpose of man's existence ( 2 Nephi 2:25). Here he contrasts the classical catechisms,confessions, and creeds of the major christian and jewish faiths. He formulates this doctrine from the words of Lehi as folloes: 'Earth life became essential to intelligences-Adam fell that this earth life might be realized. The purpose of man's earth life is that he might have joy. The purpose of the gospel is to bring to pass that joy."'
As a 20-year-old with no reference material, Joseph Smith orally dictated the remarkable Book of Mormon record in sixty to seventy-five days- an impossible feat for even an educated man. Therefore,one should never be surprised that researchers continue to discover nwe and growing evidence which supports the Book of Mormon's claim to be a translation of an ancient sacred record. Likewise, because evidence takes time to discover, one should also not be surprised that not every city, plant or name mentioned in the Book of Mormon has been scientifically foung. But just as the critics once said that there was no cement, or horses, or writing on metal plates in the New World, we now know they were absolutely wrong.