Importantly, this idea--namely, that the Book of Mormon is evental--has been argued before, and by a non-Mormon.  Jan Shipps, in her study Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, describes "the profound historylessness of early Mormonism," effected precisely by the appearance of the book of Mormon.  At some length, she analyzes that rupture in history, brough about for the believer: "Since [the Book of Mormon] was at one and the same time prophecy (a book that said it was an ancient record prophesying that a book would come forth) and (as the book that had come forth) fullfillment of that prophecy, the coming forth of the book of Mormon effected a break in the very fabric of history."  Latter-day Saints are thus, according to Shipps, "suspended between an unsusable past and an uncertain future," giving themselves to a "replication" (an evental resurrection) that amounted to an "experiential 'living though' of sacred events in a new age."  Mormons are, for Shipps, a thoroughly typological people.

I believe this analysis clarifies the problem of hte Book of Mormon's historicity.  On my argument, the Book of Mormon must be regarded as neither historical nor unhistorical, but as non-historical.  This is not to suggest that the events it records did not happen.  On the contrary, it is to claim that it must be subtracted from the dichotomy of the historical/unhistorical because the faithful reader testifies that the events--rather than the history--recorded in the book not only took place, but are of infinite, typological importance.  Any enclosure of the Book of Mormon within are totalized world history amounts to a denial of the book's unique claim on the attention of the whole world.  In the end, then, to take the Book of Mormon as either historical or unhistorical may be to miss the nature of the book entirely.  Both positions in the debate about Book of Mormon historicity--whether critical or apologetic--are founded on a common, backwards belief.  The historicity of the Book of Mormon is not in question.  Rather, as Alma makes clear, it is the Book of Mormon that calls the historicity of the individual into question.

Joseph M. Spencer, "An Other Testament: On Typology" pg. 28

It is perhaps this that is most deeply meant when Latter-day Saints speak--quite commonly--of the Book of Mormon as the "missionary tool for conversion."  It does not mean that scriptural texts are means to an end, but ends in themselves--or perhpas means without end.  It is a tool of conversion indeed, but the work of conversion is not therefore outside or beyond the task of reading the book; conversion is, rather, the work of reading the book itself, of reading the book in a certain way--on its own terms or in the way it itself prescribes.  The Book of Mormon thus comes, as every graceful thing does, announcing only itself.  It asks its reader nothing more than to read it, nothing more than to be converted in reading it.

Joseph M. Spencer, "An Other Testament: On Typology" pg. 27