Original sentence: In the Book of Mormon, the Nephites are a people descended from or associated with Nephi, a prophet who, according to the text, left Jerusalem at the urging of God in 600 BC and traveled with his family to the Western Hemisphere, arriving in the Americas circa 589 BC.Most non-Mormon scholars contend that the Nephites never existed outside of the text of the Book of Mormon.The book describes the Nephites as an initially righteous people, who eventually fell into wickedness and were utterly destroyed by their rivals the Lamanites circa A
Edited sentence: In the Book of Mormon, the Nephites are a people descended from or associated with Nephi, a prophet who left Jerusalem at the urging of God in 600 BC and traveled with his family to the Western Hemisphere, arriving in the Americas circa 589 BC.Nephites, according to the universal contention of non-Mormon scholars, never existed outside of the imagination of Joseph Smith, who Mormons believe wrote the Book of Mormon.The Nephites, initially a righteous people, eventually fell into wickedness, and were utterly destroyed by their rivals the Lamanites circa A