excerpt:

> This text, depending on where one stands on the Mormon question, was
> either discovered by the 17-year-old Joseph Smith in upstate New York
> after the Angel Moroni directed him to golden plates written in
> reformed Egyptian, or it was the product of a budding confidence man
> who copied and pasted other pieces of scripture into a totally
> improbable tale in which ancient Israelites found their way to the New
> World. Whatever one’s views on the authenticity of the text, it has
> been widely regarded as a rather inferior work of literature,
> especially when compared to the King James Bible. “Chloroform in
> print,” is Mark Twain’s famous dismissal of it.

and (to spoil the ending) the author concludes:

> Mormonism’s success suggests that a religion can flourish in spite of
> rather than because of its founding texts.

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