The authority that Mormonism promised rested not on the subtlety of its theology. It rested on an appeal to fresh experience—a set of witnessed golden tablets that had been translated into a book whose language sounded biblical. Joseph Smith instinctively knew what all other founders of new American religions in the nineteenth century instinctively knew. Many Americans of that period, in part because of popular enthusiasm for science, were ready to listen to any claim that appealed to something that could be interpreted as empirical evidence. R. LAURENCE MOORE, RELIGIOUS OUTSIDERS AND THE
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