Twenty years ago, one of the best books on the Book of Mormon was published by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies:
Noel B. Reynolds, ed. Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins
Noel B. Reynolds, ed. Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins
To quote the
back cover of the volume:
Members of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints view the Book of Mormon as
scripture written by ancient prophets, while critics believe that it is a
19th-century fraud. The 15 essays in Book of Mormon Authorship
Revisited present the latest research by LDS scholars on the
question in an effort to demonstrate that the weight of scholarly evidence is
on the side of authenticity.
Part 1 contains essays dealing with accounts of how the
book was produced in 1829 and 1830, with emphasis on the translation process
and the witnesses who saw the plates. Part 2 takes a look at the logical
structure of the authorship debate and reviews the history of alternative
theories and criticisms of the Book of Mormon. Part 3 presents textual studies
that demonstrate the plausibility of the Book of Mormon as an ancient book, and
part 4 updates scholars’ attempts to understand the ancient cultural and
geographic setting of the book in both the Old and New Worlds.
The book is online here and, although there has been great progress in Book of Mormon studies since 1997 much of it remains pretty solid today.