What is the Best External Evidence for the Book of Mormon?​

Aside from the text of the Book of Mormon itself, and a personal witness from God’s Spirit, what is the best evidence for the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon? Different people might answer this question in different ways, but in today’s episode of Church History Matters, Casey and I propose that the very best external evidence for the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon is the collective testimony of the three and eight witnesses. Their experiences appear to have been premeditated, anticipated, and orchestrated by God in order to help the rest of us have reason to pause and take seriously both Joseph Smith’s testimony and, most importantly, the primary evidence of the text of the Book of Mormon itself. In every copy of the Book of Mormon every published, the written witnesses of these three and eight men have been printed for all to consider. Now, it’s true that several of these eleven men either left the church because of difficulties with Joseph Smith or were excommunicated from it. Yet none of them ever denied the reality of their experience as a Book of Mormon witness. Today we discuss why this matters.
This is the fifth episode of our 6-part podcast series on the translation of the Book of Mormon. For a full transcript of this episode, as well as show notes and additional resources, visit our website at doctrineandcov...
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Originally published May 9, 2023
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