Chapter XVI ['Roughing It' - Mark Twain]
"All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have
seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a
copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a
pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of
inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this
book, the act was a miracle--keeping awake while he did it was, at any
rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain
ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he
found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of
translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.
The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the
Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New
Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint,
old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the
Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and half
ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained;
the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his
speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two--he
ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came
to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to
pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been
only a pamphlet. "
Actually Mark Twain was being somewhat generous when he likened The Book Of Mormon to chloroform. And of course it does contain a section, and I am not making this up, entitled 'The Book of Ether' so it would appear that even Joseph Smith was aware of its letheal qualities.
A true story, a la B.o.M.:
And it came to pass that many years yore, as a resident of Mexico, I received a free copy of this book from a cute Mexican Mormon friend [actually a long time fuck-buddy, but won't go into that now.]
It came to pass, yea verily, that I did open its contents and peruse within. Yea, I fell asleep exceedingly quick. When I came to awake, though, yea, I did read many of its chapters, which attempt to rewrite accepted anthropological conclusions about the origins of Native Americans. They are transplanted Jews, not Asians? They are cursed with dark skin, not whitesome and delightsome as the Nephites were? Yea, their DNA shows no markers of the middle east, but rather they came from Siberia.
It came to pass that I became troubled that so many people could believe such invented BS. Yea, for there is greater wisdom to be found in the writings of Lewis Carrol's 'Alice in Wonderland'. But lo, he did not write his words on plates of gold that disappeared into the heavens. And, yea, as I pondered these matters my heart grew sad indeed. Yea, exceedingly heavy did it grow. But, as I wished to be kind to my cute fuck-buddy who gave me this book, I began again to search for wisdoms it might contain. But, since the obtuse language of the B.o.M. was almost as stiff as his weenie, it came to pass that I did fall asleep once more.