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TitleA Writer Looks at the Book of Mormon
Publication TypeMagazine Article
Year of Publication1960
AuthorsJones, Helen Hinckley
MagazineImprovement Era
Volume63
Issue Number11
Pagination798-801, 834, 836
Date PublishedNovember 1960
KeywordsBook of Mormon Authorship; Book of Mormon Translation
Abstract

A testimony of the Book of Mormon from the point of view of a successful and professional writer, Helen Hinckley Jones. In order to write an excellent book, it takes tremendous research, painstaking effort to build distinct characters, a complex form, a unique style of writing, and an appropriate theme, followed by laborious retracing, redoing, and revising. Joseph Smith had neither the talent nor the time to author the Book of Mormon. Jones concludes that Joseph Smith “was reading the Book of Mormon, not writing it.”