Great question, lola. I believe the answer to your question lies in the first word of your question. The book of mormon is tangential.

First of all, where did you get that number? It gets ballyhooed about enough, but I’ve never once seen a citation for it. The actual number of changes between the original manuscript and the current version number in the hundreds of thousands, since the original was written with neither punctuation, capitalization, standardized spelling, verses, etc.. Conversely, the number of changes that can even be construed as to change the meaning number significantly less than 100. Secondly, you make it sound like the Church is somehow covering up the changes in the text. If that were the case, why are reprints of the first edition of the Book of Mormon readily available at any LDS bookstore (including online)? http://deseretbook.com/store/product?sku=2609476 For a much lengthier treatment of this subject than I care to give, please see Jeff Lindsay’s page at http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_changes.shtml . HTH!

I have asked many questions and as usual, I get a run around answer from a person I give alot of credit to. He is lost and intelligient, very polite and patient. But none the less lost. So once again Can you just please answer the question? I do not want to go to some LDS site that spins your brain around and around. It is plain and simple, if your god told Joeseph Smith through words in his hat, the big revolation that is the book of Mormon. If it was told word for word, then repeated by the documentor of this revolation word for word. This needed to happen before the next group of words appeared. Then your god is as bad a speller as I am. This is setting aside docterinal changes and only focusing on the 3000 + spelling. puncuation and word changes.

Thomas Stuart Ferguson was one of the most noted defenders of Book of Mormon archaeology. Mr. Ferguson planned the New World Archaeological Foundation which he hoped would prove The Book of Mormon through archaeological research. The Mormon Church granted hundreds of thousands of dollars to this organization, but in the end, Thomas Stuart Ferguson admitted that although the Foundation made some important contributions to New World archaeology, all his work with regard to the Book of Mormon was in vain. He admitted, in fact, that he had wasted twenty-five years of his life trying to prove the Book of Mormon. In 1975 Ferguson prepared a 29-page paper in which he wrote: "I'm afraid that up to this point, I must agree with Dee Green, who has told us that to date there is no Book-of-Mormon geography." In a letter to Mr. & Mrs. H.W. Lawrence, dated Feb. 20, 1976, Thomas Stuart Ferguson plainly stated: "…you can’t set Book of Mormon geography down anywhere - because it is fictional and will never meet the requirements of the dirt-archeology." Dr. Ray T. Matheny, professor of Anthropology at the church’s Brigham Young University, admitted that he has a difficult time reconciling New World archaeology with the Book of Mormon: