The Book of Mormon Is Not Just Literature

In 2002, a collection of essays appeared under the title of “Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon.” John Gee’s essay, “The Wrong Kind of Book,” begins by observing that critics commonly try to explain the Book of Mormon as a product of early 19th-century America, wholly explained by that environment.

“We know exactly what kind of book Joseph Smith’s contemporaries expected the Book of Mormon to be like,” Gee writes, “because we have two other works from that same period that are said to be of the same general sort.”