Book of Mormon hypothetical

If you were trying to pass the Book of Mormon off as a work of fiction by a 19th-century American fantasist, I would look at it and say, "Nice try. But your attempts to mimic contemporary 19th-century racial attitudes are too superfical and ham-handed to be believable. Sure, you have a superficial references to 'skin of blackness' as a curse, but then you slipped up--there is no discernible stigma against miscegenation with these supposedly 'loathsome' people. Amalickiah, Lamoni, and Amulon and all his followers all contemplate miscegenation with no qualms, and the purported narrator Mormon says not a word disparaging it. Your characters' racism is too shallow to be believably antebellum."

Also I would add, "Your attitudes toward monarchy are way too positive too. Your characters may object, but it's on purely pragmatic grounds, while speaking positively of the theoretical virtues of a good king. This is anachronistic for a book which was purportedly written in 1830, in New England no less, with memories of British misrule still vivid."

"It's an obvious fraud," I would say.

~Max Wilson, August 12, 2012


--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."