By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion

Terryl Givens is an academic scholar of American religious history, and this is a scholarly study of the Book of Mormon's origins, its own claims, its reception and the historicity debate that surrounds it, working from that debate's actual documented positions on multiple sides rather than advocating one conclusion as settled. That balanced, source based treatment of a genuinely contested question is the study's real evidentiary basis. Use it for established scholarly facts about how the Book of Mormon has been received and debated and for a balanced account of the historicity question; a claim about the movement's own confessional position on its origin needs the Book of Mormon itself or the church's own statement instead.