Oh, Them Golden Plates!

I've been corresponding with a prison inmate who happens to be a Mormon. So I've spent time investigating some of the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Some of my findings turn into blog posts, and here's the latest one.

    Anyone considering the claims of Mormonism needs to take a careful look at the account of the gold plates that were supposedly translated into the Book of Mormon. This book is the founding document on which the entire religion rests. Mormons believe the BofM and their other principle books of doctrine to be more reliable than the Bible.

    Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, purported to have a number of visions in his youth that ultimately led to the formation of his new religion. One of them concerned the discovery of gold plates on the Hill Cumorah (near Palmyra, NY) that when translated contained the Book of Mormon. Here is his account, in part, of that vision:
 
“While I was thus in the act of calling upon God, I discovered a light appearing in my room, which continued to increase until the room was lighter than noonday, when immediately a Personage appeared at my bedside, standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the floor."

"He had on a loose robe of most exquisite whiteness..."
 
"He called me by name and said unto me that he was a messenger of God to me, and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do..."

 "He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent...”

    According to Smith, he was not permitted to dig up the gold plates immediately. He claimed to have received other messages over the next three years from this same “personage,” including instructions about the treasure he would find buried, and also about the woman he would marry.  Smith, who was from western New York, dated Emma Hale of Pennsylvania against her father’s wishes.   After returning to New York in the fall of 1826, he again visited the Hill Cumorah (known locally now as Mormon Hill) and was told he could go ahead and dig up the gold plates, as long as he “brot with him the right person.” That turned out to be Emma Hale, of course. So back to Pennsylvania he went, where he proposed to Emma. They promptly eloped without the consent of her parents. Smith would have been 21 years old at the time of that “revelation.”

    Back in New York, the Smiths proceeded to dig up the plates one night in the early autumn of 1827. One night, as in “the better to fool you, my dear,” in my opinion. Amazingly, Joseph also dug up a special pair of eye glasses by which he was able to read the inscriptions on the plates. He called these eye glasses the Urim and Thummim, which should not be confused with the biblical Urim and Thummim. (See Exodus 28:30) 

    Biographers report that a great deal of the Smith’s early marriage revolved around getting the plates translated. Even with the special glasses and then later a small divining stone, the work of translation was a tedious affair. Smith was a poor writer, so Emma often sat for hours writing the messages Joseph dictated to her “with his face buried in his hat, which had the stone in it.”  Who performs serious translation work with their face covered by a hat, for Pete’s sake? I think he buried his face in it to to hide how hard he was laughing to himself over the con job he was pulling off!  Fawn Brodie writes, “Perhaps in the beginning Joseph never intended his stories of the golden plates to be taken so seriously, but once the masquerade had begun, there was no point at which he could call a halt. Since his own family believed him (with the possible exception of his cynical younger brother William), why should not the whole world?” (Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 40).

    Although Emma was with her husband the night he dug up the gold plates (or whatever he previously buried in secret) Emma would relate that she never actually laid eyes on them. Even after they were brought back to their home she “never felt at liberty to look at them.” Really? What normal woman is not going to at least take a peak at a mysterious set of gold plates stored in her home? That just doesn’t seem likely, to me. Not only that, these plates were treated rather casually by Joseph Smith in light of their supernatural origin. According to Emma, “they lay in a box under our bed for months” and sometimes were kept on a living room table “wrapped in a small linen table cloth,” which she had to move each time she dusted the table. Try and imagine Moses’ wife moving the Ten Commandments around so she can straighten up the tent, and you see the absurdity here!

    Joseph even lent his only copy of the initial translation to a friend and benefactor, Martin Harris, who proceeded to lose it. So poor ol’ Joseph had to start his translation all over again, only this time the angel Moroni explained “he was not to re-translate the same material but use a second account to avoid being trapped by inconsistencies.”  Right. This is clearly how Joseph Smith covered his backside about coming up with a different version of his translation, since he probably couldn’t remember what he fabricated the first time around.

    Predictably, Joseph Smith’s closest associates (Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, aka the Three Witnesses) began to press him for the privilege of actually seeing the fabulous gold plates for themselves.  What’s a false prophet to do? Smith actually needed confirming witnesses to corroborate his story, so he conveniently received a new revelation for them:

 “You shall testify that you have seen them, even as my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., has seen them, for it is by my power that he has seen them, and it is because he had faith.”

Needless to say, Smith never showed them any plates.  The testimony of the Three Witnesses became that while they were “in the woods,” the usual location for early Mormon visions, the plates were shown to them “by the power of God and not of man.” Also that “an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon.”   (This is rather like the spiel given to adventurers who travel to Ethiopia in hopes of seeing the Ark of the Covenant. They pay their money only to be told by its custodians, “if you’re suppose to see it,  you’ll see it.”)  I can imagine what probably went through the minds of these three men. They were all told by their prophet buddy that God was about to privilege them with a supernatural vision of the plates and they were expected to testify to it. Who among them was ever going to admit to the others, “I don’t see a dang thing!” A certain fairy tale comes to mind. Altogether now:  “The Emperor has no clothes!”

     So whatever became of these famous gold plates? Surely something so important to “the restored Gospel” would be safely secured as proof to Joseph Smith’s critics. Not surprisingly, they are nowhere to be found. The official Mormon position is that some time after the Three Witnesses claimed to have also seen them, Joseph Smith returned the plates to the custody of the angel Baloney... uh, Moroni. 

     The ruse is pretty obvious. Joseph Smith's gold plates only existed in his very fertile imagination. 






Source: Another Gospel, © 1989 Ruth A. Tucker, Academie Books (Zondervan).