In most cases, scholars and historians can easily identify the forgery of an ancient document if that document attempts to describe the intellectual, cultural, and social heritage of a specific civilization. This is accomplished by comparing the document with known information about the history that the document pretends to describe. Because the Book of Mormon sets forth a great deal of historical detail, if the book were fabricated by Joseph Smith, any forgery would be simple to expose.
In Orphism, a Greek religious movement that focused on purification of the soul, gold plates were buried with the dead. These plates were engraved with ritualistic writings designed to guide spirits in the afterlife. Orphics believed that a deceased person would find two paths, one of which would lead to a white cypress tree near a spring. Significantly, as Noel B. Reynolds states, “Egyptian ritualistic funerary texts also contain similar references to a ‘tree growing by the fountain or spring of living water.’” (See Echoes, 138–140.)