Who wrote the Book of Mormon?

Q: Who wrote the Book of Mormon?

A: The Book of Mormon was written by prophets of God who lived a long, long time ago. Many of them lived in a world not unlike our own: full of conflict and confusion, doubts about whether God really exists, how to be truly happy, and so forth. These prophets exercised great faith in the Lord and loved their people, and God called them to teach the people and counsel them to keep His commandments. Some heeded their advice, others did not, and still more fought against them.

The Book of Mormon contains accounts of a) conflicts between the faithful and those who put worldly things such as power and material possessions at the center of their lives, b) great miracles brought to pass by prophets and others through faith in Jesus Christ, c) individual counsel by prophets to their children regarding how to live their lives to be happy and resist the temptations of the devil, and d) an account of Jesus Christ’s visit to the people who lived on the American continent after His resurrection in Jerusalem and the wonderful works He did among them. Of course, the book contains much more, and is best appreciated by reading it for one’s self.

Background Notes

The prophets who wrote the book used a stylus to engrave their words onto metal so they would last for centuries. They knew what they were writing was sacred, and the Lord commanded them to do it, so they did the painstaking work of writing their words, laboriously forming the characters onto metal plates; they did so using a script known as “reformed Egyptian,” which is akin to Hieratic or Demotic, which were also stylized and abbreviated versions of the original hieroglyphs (i.e., characters) that were highly detailed and expansive, and thus very difficult to write long documents with. By being more compact, the reformed version allowed these ancient prophets to place more words into the limited space on the plates and relate the important points of their accounts to the fullest.