SOURCE: “The Gentle Blasphemer: Mark Twain, Holy Scripture, and the Book of Mormon,” in Brigham Young University Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2, Winter, 1971, pp. 119-40.

In the following excerpt, Cracroft describes Mark Twain's literary treatment of the Book of Mormon as humorous and witty, resulting from Twain's ability to mix the lofty and solemn ideas of the sacred text with his own irreverent and flippant outspokenness.

Chapter Sixteen of Mark Twain's Roughing It begins, “All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the ‘elect’ have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it.”¹ Conversely, all Mormons have heard of Twain's caustic burlesque on the Book of Mormon, but none seems to have taken the trouble to demonstrate to Gentiles that Twain was obviously one of the multitude who had not read the book. Indeed, the four chapters in Roughing It (1872) devoted to the Mormons...