According to LDS traditions, Joseph Smith, Jr. is the translator and compiler, not the author, of The Book of Mormon, but his influence is critical to understanding the development and usage of the text. Smith was born in 1805 to a New England family who then moved to western New York state—the middle of the so-called “burned-over district” that had experienced significant waves of revivalism and the appearance of new religious movements in the early 19th century. As he grew into his teenage years, Smith’s family earned its living from a modest farm and from treasure-seeking using forms of magical divination common to the period (such as divining rods). Smith himself was sympathetic to religion but uncommitted to any church or denomination.

Smith would later report that in 1820, when only 14 years old, he received a vision in the woods in which God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared before him. This was followed three years later by a visitation from the angel Moroni, who directed him to the location of the buried records of the Nephites on a hill in Palmyra, New York, where Smith discovered a book made of golden plates and a set of seer stones for the interpretation of the text.