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In 1827, an American named Joseph Smith discovered golden plates buried in a hill in rural New York. Smith said that an angel named Moroni had appeared to him and given him the collection of golden tablets written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and two "seer's stones" that made translations of the tablets possible. Smith sat behind a curtain and dictated a translation of the sacred tablets, and the translations became known as the Book of Mormon. It was first published in 1830, along with the testimonies of 11 people who declared that they had also seen the tablets before the angel Moroni came to take them back. Thus was born the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The book attracted a following shortly after publication. The 1830 edition contained 590 pages and was later revised and corrected by Smith. Later editions were divided into chapters and verses, and it has been published in more than 40...