Summary

• Details a recently surfaced Arabian gold book with Hebrew inscriptions, which has generated excitement due to its resemblance to the Book of Mormon gold plates.
• The artifact's origins, style, inscriptions, and material inconsistencies indicate modern creation.
• Warns against uncritically accepting such artifacts as evidence for the Book of Mormon, to avoid undermining genuine evidence.

Dig Deeper

Clues That The Arabian Gold Plates Are a Fraud?. Springville, UT: Scripture Central, 2024.

Book of Mormon Central, “Why Should Latter-day Saints Beware Fraudulent Artifacts? (2 Nephi 26:23),” KnoWhy 493 (December 13, 2018).

Believers in the Book of Mormon have long sought for archaeological evidence that supports belief in the book's claims of being an ancient American record. From time to time, suspected archaeological hoaxes have surfaced which some have attempted to use in support of the Book of Mormon. Appealing to archaeological frauds, however, is deeply problematic, and may actually damage rather than encourage faith in the Book of Mormon.

John A. Tvedtnes, The Book of Mormon and Other Hidden Books: "Out of Darkness Unto Light". Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2000.

If it existed in only one ancient copy, says John Tvedtnes, the Book of Mormon may have been unique. But in virtually every other way it resembles many ancient books. In this present volume, Tvedtnes shows perhaps fifty things about ancient records that must have been hilarious in 1830 but make perfect sense today: the ubiquity of intentionally hiding books in all kinds of ingenious containers made of many materials, including stone boxes and ceramic jars; books incised on obdurate surfaces, like metals, bones, and ivory; inked papyri and parchments treated with swaddling cloths soaked in cedar and citrus oils to prevent decay; many sealed and open records; waterproofing sealants like bitumen and white lime mortar; caves serving as repositories of treasures buried in many sacred mountains; the ancient perception of permanence and eternalism associated with the preservative functions of writers and guardians of written records. Many twentieth-century discoveries of ancient documents have made all of this visible.