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Goldplatten

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An 1893 engraving of Joseph Smith receiving the Golden Plates and the Urim and Thummim from Moroni. The sword of Laban is shown nearby.

Vorlage:Portalpar Vorlage:LDS


The Golden Plates is the name most frequently used to refer to a book with engraved metallic leaves that Joseph Smith, Jr. said was the source for his 1829 translation of the Book of Mormon, a scripture of the Latter Day Saint movement. Smith said that he found the plates together with other ancient artifacts in a hill near his home, where they had been protected for centuries by an angel named Moroni. Since the 1820s, belief in the reality of the Golden Plates has been a “keystone” of the Latter Day Saint movement because Smith said that they were the source for the Book of Mormon.[1]

Physical description of the Golden Plates

Full-scale model of the Golden Plates based on Joseph Smith's description.

Appearance

In a letter of 1842, Smith said that the "plates...had the appearance of gold, each plate was six inches [150 mm] wide and eight inches [200 mm] long, and not quite so thick as common tin. They were filled with engravings, in Egyptian characters, and bound together in a volume, as the leaves of a book, with three rings running through the whole. The volume was something near six inches [150 mm] in thickness, a part of which was sealed. The characters on the unsealed part were small, and beautifully engraved. The whole book exhibited many marks of antiquity in its construction, and much skill in the art of engraving."[2]

Weight

Because the plates were never weighed or measured, their precise weight and dimensions remain unknown. Joseph Smith's brother, William, said that he "was permitted to lift [the plates] as they laid in a pillow-case; but not to see them, as it was contrary to the commands he had received. They weighed about sixty pounds according to the best of my judgment."[3] Others who lifted the plates while they were wrapped in cloth or enclosed in a box agreed that they weighed about sixty pounds, although Martin Harris said that he had "hefted the plates many times, and should think they weighed forty or fifty pounds." [4] Had the plates been made of 24-karat gold (which Smith never claimed), they would have weighed at least 140 pounds (gold is 70% more dense than lead).[5] Plates of such a weight and size might have been made of tumbaga, an alloy of gold and copper.[6] Joseph Smith might also have made plates of similar dimensions and weight from tin, which was readily available in the Palmyra area.[7]

Story of the plates

Obtaining the plates

In the 1820s, Joseph Smith, Jr. lived with his parents Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith on a farm at the edge of Manchester Township near Palmyra, New York. There he worked at various farm-related jobs while using folk magic to search for buried treasure.[8] Smith said that on the night of September 21, 1823, he received three visitations from an angel named Moroni. The angel told Smith that a record on gold plates was deposited in a prominent hill about three miles from Smith's home and that Smith would one day receive the plates and translate them.[9] On September 22, 1823, a day listed in local almanacs as the autumnal equinox, Smith said that he visited the hill and found the the artifacts inside a stone box. [10]

An 1841 engraving of "Mormon Hill" (looking south), where Smith said he found the Golden Plates on the west side, near the peak.

Nevertheless, the angel told him that "the time for bringing them forth had not yet arrived," that he should return to the site annually on the same day until the proper time had come.[11] Smith said that he visited the hill each year but was forbidden to take the plates until September 22, 1827.[12] Smith said that the angel had kept the plates from him earlier because he "had saught the Plates to obtain riches"—perhaps a reference to his continued money-digging activities. (Smith was convicted of disturbing the peace as a "glass looker" in March 1826.)[13]Shortly after Smith told his family about the plates, rumors of them began circulating in the Palmyra area, especially among those who had been associated with Smith in his treasure hunting activities.[14]

Datei:Josephreceivingtheplatesccachristensen.gif
A 19th century painting by C.C.A. Christensen, showing Joseph Smith, Jr. kneeling while receiving the golden plates from a standing or floating Moroni.

Shortly after he retrieved the plates from the Hill Cumorah, Smith claimed to have escaped from unknown assailants. Smith said he had wrapped the plates in his frock and started for home with them "under his arm," when he was chased through the woods by a man who gave him a "heavy blow with a gun." Knocking the man down with a single punch, Smith ran "at the top of his speed" for a half mile and was assaulted in the same manner two more times before arriving safely, suffering only a dislocated thumb.[15]

Several of Smith's neighbors made attempts to find and seize the plates, and Smith claimed to have moved them from place to place to keep them from being discovered.[16] Smith said that he had at first kept the plates in a chest under the hearth in his parents' home, then under the floor boards of his parents' previous log home nearby, and finally in a barrel of flax shortly before the chest was discovered and the place ransacked.[17]

Transcription of the plates

With some financial assistance from a prominent, though superstitious, local landowner Martin Harris,[18] Smith and his wife Emma moved to Harmony, Pennsylvania, Emma's home town, in early October 1827, with the golden plates reportedly hidden for the trip in a barrel of beans. [19] In Harmony, Joseph and Emma stayed for a time in the home of Emma's father Isaac Hale, but when Smith refused to show Hale the plates, Hale banished the concealed object from his house.[20]

Smith claimed that he copied characters from the golden plates and translated them by using "Urim and Thummim," the "interpreters" that he had also found with the plates in the hill; but there is no independent witness to this procedure.[21] Quickly Smith abandoned the Urim and Thummim and returned to the seer stone that he had previously used for treasure hunting. Emma Smith later recalled that when she took dictation from her husband, she "frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us.... The plates often lay on the table without any attempt at concealment, wrapped in a small linen table cloth, which I had given him to fold them in. I once felt of the plates as they thus lay on the table tracing their outline and shape. They seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sometimes thumb the edges of a book."[22]

Usually, however, the golden plates were not even in the same room. Michael Morse, Smith's brother-in-law, said that he watched Smith on several occasions:"The mode of procedure consisted in Joseph's placing the Seer Stone in the crown of a hat, then putting his face into the hat, so as to entirely cover his face." David Whitmer said that "the plates were not before Joseph while he translated, but seem to have been removed by the custodian angel." Isaac Hale said that while Joseph was translating, the plates were "hid in the woods." Joseph Smith, Sr. said they were "hid in the moutains."[23] During the translation process a curtain or blanket was placed between Smith and his scribe or between the living area and the area where Smith and his scribe worked. [24] Sometimes Smith dictated to Martin Harris from upstairs or from a different room. [25]

Smith used a number of assistants during the process of transcribing The Book of Mormon, including Emma Smith, Martin Harris, and most notably, Oliver Cowdery. Nevertheless, Smith's "translation" processs did not involve his understanding of an ancient script. As he looked into the seer stone, the words of the text appeared to him in English. When in mid-1828, Smith loaned the manuscript pages to Martin Harris, and Harris lost them, Smith feared that opponents would attempt to see if he could "bring forth the same words again."[26] In other words, Smith assumed that a second translation of the missing 116 pages should be identical to the first rather than be filled with the natural variants that would occur if one translated a text from one language into another.[27]

Shortly after baptizing each other in the Susquehanna River and experiencing a vision of John the Baptist, Smith and Cowdery moved on to the farm of the Whitmers, a family of supporters in Fayette, New York. Rather than hide the Golden Plates for this trip, Smith gave them over to an angel for safekeeping until they had completed their journey.[28]

Witnesses

As Smith finished the translation of the plates, he revealed that witnesses would be asked to testify to their existence. In June 1829, two sets of witnesses (the Three Witnesses[29]and a separate group of Eight Witnesses[30]) signed joint statements, written by Smith, which were subsequently published with the text of the Book of Mormon.[31] The Three Witnesses — Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris — affirmed that an angel had descended from heaven and presented the plates, which they saw but did not touch. Then they heard a voice from heaven declaring that the book was translated by the power of God and that they should bear record of it. The Eight Witnesses were members of the Joseph Smith and David Whitmer families. Like the Three Witnesses, the Eight signed a joint statement that they had seen and (in their case) hefted the plates. [32]

Plates returned to Moroni

After the translation was completed around July 1 1829, Smith returned the plates to the angel.[33] Some Latter Day Saints, including Brigham Young, have believed that Moroni returned the plates to Hill Cumorah and that other ancient records lie buried there, including the Sword of Laban and the special spectacles given to aid the translation process.

Other metal plates mentioned in the Book of Mormon

In addition to the Golden Plates, the Book of Mormon refers to several other sets of books written on metal plates:

Other metal plates in the Latter Day Saint Tradition

  • In 1843, Smith acquired a set of six small bell-shaped plates, known as the Kinderhook Plates, found in Kinderhook, Pike County, Illinois. Joseph said that they contained information about a descendant of Ham "through the loins of Pharaoh" but never produced a translation. After Smith's assassination, the Kinderhook Plates were presumed lost, but for decades The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published facsimiles of them in its official History of the Church as evidence that ancient Americans wrote on metal plates. In 1980 the Kinderhook Plates were proved to have been manufactured in the nineteenth century, probably in an attempt to catch Smith in a fraud. Today the LDS Church acknowledges the plates as a hoax and makes no attempt to defend their authenticity.[34]
  • James J. Strang, one of the rival claimants to succeed Smith, also claimed to have discovered and translated a set of plates known as the Voree Plates. Strang likewise produced witnesses to their authenticity. Although Strang's movement was short-lived, Joseph Smith's mother, Lucy Mack Smith, and all living witnesses to the Book of Mormon, including the three Whitmers and Martin Harris (although perhaps excluding Oliver Cowdery), accepted "Strang's leadership, angelic call, metal plates, and his translation of these plates as authentic."[35]

Metal plates outside the Latter Day Saint tradition

Some ancient European and Mesopotamian cultures kept short records on metal plates. Those found to date have been extremely thin to facilitate being engraved with a pointed tool. In 500 BCE, Darius the Great of Persia inscribed a history on a gold plate and sealed it in a stone box in the temple at Persepolis. [36]. A six-page gold book, written in Etruscan, was found in Bulgaria;[37]and in 2005, an eight-page golden codex, allegedly from the Achaemenid period, was recovered from smugglers by the Iranian police.[38] The Pyrgi Tablets (now at the National Etruscan Museum, Rome) are gold plates with a bilingual Phoenician-Etruscan text. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls is a Copper Scroll (which seems to be a list of treasure locations). Gold Laminae funerary texts similar to Books of the Dead have also been found in Italy. Legendary gold, silver, copper and brass books are also discussed in Masonic Hiram Abif and Enoch legends. Nevertheless, the longest extant ancient record written on metal plates is only eight pages.

Notes

  1. ↑ Vorlage:Harv. During the 1830s, the Golden Plates were sometimes referred to as the "Gold Bible." Usually the term was a derisive one, used by opponents of Joseph Smith and the fledgling Church, but in 1829 Martin Harris told people in Rochester that Joseph Smith had been "visited by the spirit of the Almighty in a dream, and informed that in a certain hill…was deposited a Golden Bible."(Early Mormon Documents 2: 272) Also, Joseph Smith, Sr. said that he had overheard treasure hunters "devising many plans and schemes to find Joe Smith's 'gold bible,' as they termed it." (EMD 1: 332.)
  2. ↑ Joseph Smith to John Wentworth, March 1, 1842., also at EMD, 1: 171.
  3. ↑ 1883 account of William Smith."
  4. ↑ Martin Harris interview with Joel Tiffany, 1859 in EMD, 2: 306.
  5. ↑ "A block of solid tin measuring 7 x 8 x 6 inches, or 288 cubic inches, would weigh 74.67 pounds. If one allows for a 30 percent reduction due to the unevenness and space between the plates, the package would then weigh 52.27 pounds. Using the same calculations, plates of gold weigh 140.50 pounds; copper, 64.71 pounds; a mixture of gold and copper, between 65 and 140 pounds."(Vogel, 600, n. 65).
  6. ↑ Some LDS scholars have speculated that the metal was tumbaga, the name given by the Spanish to an alloy of gold and copper that could be "cast, drawn, hammered, gilded, soldered, welded, plated, hardened, annealed, polished, engraved, embossed, and inlaid." Tumbaga can be treated with a simple acid, like citric acid, to dissolve the surface copper. A shiny layer of 23-karat gold then remains on top of a harder, more durable copper-gold alloy sheet. This process was used by the pre-Columbian cultures of central America to craft religious objects. Tumbaga plates of the dimensions Smith described would weigh between 53 and 86 pounds."Were the Plates of Mormon of Tumbaga?" Improvement Era(September 1966), 788–89, 828–31; also in Ross T. Christensen, ed., Papers of the Fifteenth Annual Symposium on the Archaeology of the Scriptures (Provo, Utah: Extension Publications, BYU Division of Continuing Education, 1964), 101–9. Putnam's findings are summarized in "The 'Golden' Plates," in John W. Welch, ed., Reexploring the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992), 275–77
  7. ↑ Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004), 98. "The construction of such a book would have been relatively easy. There were scraps of tin available on the Smith property and elsewhere in the vicinity, and during the several hours Joseph was separated from Emma the night they went to the hill and on other occasions, he could have easily set up shop in the cave on the other side of the hill or in some corner of the forest."
  8. ↑ Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 50-51, 54-55: "The Smiths were as susceptible as their neighbors to treasure-seeking folklore.…Joseph, Jr. never repudiated the stones or denied their power to find treasure. Remnants of the magical culture stayed with him to the end."
  9. ↑ Vorlage:Harv name="punctuation"Punctuation has been modernized.
  10. ↑ According to Smith's account, "the vision (of the hill) was opened to my mind that I could see the place where the plates were deposited, and that so clearly and distinctly that I knew the place again when I visited it." (JS-History 1:42). This conforms to an account by Smith's friend Joseph Knight, Sr. Joseph Knight, Sr. Reminiscence, c. 1835-47 in EMD, 4: 15. However, according to an account by Martin Harris, Smith discovered the location of the Golden Plates through the use of the seer stone he had used to seek treasure as part of the Stowell-Hale team in 1825 (Martin Harris interview with Joel Tiffany, 1859. EMD, 2: 303-04).
  11. ↑ JS-History 1:53. Smith was also told not to show the plates "to any person." JS-History 1:42.
  12. ↑ There is no corroborating evidence that Smith actually visited the hill before 1827.
  13. ↑ Joseph Smith, "Joseph Smith History, 1832, Early Mormon Documents, I, 29-30; John L. Brooke, The Refiner's Fire: The Making of the Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), 154.
  14. ↑ Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004), 99-101; Bushman, 59: "Joseph foresaw the possibility that Samuel Lawrence, a neighbor who searched for treasure with the Smiths, would try to interfere.…As Joseph's former partners, the treasure-seekers thought the plates were partly theirs."
  15. ↑ Lucy Smith, "Preliminary Manuscript," LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah, in Dan Vogel, Early Mormon Documents (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996), I, 335-36.
  16. ↑ Bushman, 61.
  17. ↑ Vorlage:Harv Vorlage:Harv
  18. ↑ The local Presbyterian minister, Jesse Townsend, described Harris as a "visonary fanatic." A acquaintance, Lorenzo Saunders, said "There can't anybody say word against Martin Harris...a man that would do just as he agreed with you. But he was a great man for seeing spooks." Quoted in "Ronald W. Walker, "Martin Harris: Mormonism's Early Convert," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 19 (Winter 1986): 34-35.
  19. ↑ Vorlage:HarvVorlage:Harv
  20. ↑ Vorlage:Harv; Vorlage:Harv; Vorlage:Harv
  21. ↑ Joseph Smith-History 1:62
  22. ↑ Grant Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 2-3.
  23. ↑ Grant H. Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 2-5. In March 1829, Martin Harris returned to Harmony and asked to see the plates. Smith reportedly told Harris that Smith "would go into the woods where the Book of Plates was, and that after he came back, Harris should follow his tracks in the snow, and find the Book, and examine it for himself"; after following these directions, however, Harris could not find the plates Vorlage:Harv.
  24. ↑ Lyndon W. Cook, David Whitmer Interviews: A Restoration Witness (Orem, UT: Grandin, 1991), 173; Palmer, 2-3.
  25. ↑ Vorlage:Harv
  26. ↑ D&C 10: 17-18, 31.
  27. ↑ Palmer, 7.
  28. ↑ Bushman, 74-76; Vorlage:Harv.
  29. ↑ The Three Witnesses were selected soon after a visit by Martin Harris to the Whitmer home in Fayette, accompanied by Smith's parents Vorlage:Harv, to inquire about the translation Vorlage:Harv. According to Smith's mother, this trip was prompted by news that Smith had completed the translation of the platesVorlage:Harv. When Harris he arrived, he joined with Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer to request that the three be named as the Three Witnesses referred to in the much earlier revelation directed to Harris, and also referred to in a recently-translated portion of the plates called the Book of Ether (2:2–4) Vorlage:Harv. In response, Smith dictated a revelation that the three of them would see the Golden Plates Vorlage:Harv. Thus, Smith took the three of them to the woods near the Whitmer home and they had a shared vision in which they all claimed to see (with their "spiritual eyes", Harris reportedly said Vorlage:Harv) an angel holding the Golden Plates and turning its leaves (Vorlage:Harvnb; Vorlage:Harvnb). The four of them also said they heard "the voice of the Lord" telling them that the translation of the plates was correct, and commanding them to testify of what they saw and heard (Vorlage:Harvnb; Vorlage:Harvnb).David Whitmer later stated that the angel showed them "the breast plates, the Ball or Directors, the Sword of Laban and other plates" (Vorlage:Harvnb; Vorlage:Harvnb; see also Vorlage:Harvnb).
  30. ↑ The Eight Witnesses were selected a few days later when Smith traveled to Palmyra with the males of the Whitmer home, including David Whitmer's father Peter, his brothers Christian, Jacob, and John, and his brother-in-law Hiram Page. Smith took this group, along with his father Joseph Smith, Sr. and his brothers Hyrum and Samuel to a location near Smith's parent's home in Palmyra Vorlage:Harv. Because of a foreclosure on their Manchester property, the Smith family was then living in a log cabin technically in Palmyra (Vorlage:Harvnb; Vorlage:Harvnb) where Smith said he showed them the Golden Plates Vorlage:Harv. Like the Three Witnesses, the Eight Witnesses later signed an affidavit for inclusion at the end of the Book of Mormon Vorlage:Harv. Though the Eight Witnesses did not refer, like the Three, to an angel or the voice of God, they said that they had hefted the plates and seen the engravings on them Vorlage:Harv.
  31. ↑ Bushman, 76-79. A comparison of "The Testimony of Three Witnesses" to Doctrine and Covenants 17, written in 1829, shows "the marks of common authorship." Grant Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 195-96.See Oliver Cowdery to Hyrum Smith dated June 14 1829, quoting the language of this revelation. Joseph Smith letterbook (22 Nov. 1835 to 4 Aug. 1835), 5-6. Commentators generally agree that this letter refers to the revelation. See Larry C. Porter, "Dating the Restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood," Ensign (June 1979), 5. A revelation by Smith commanded Cowdery and Whitmer to seek out twelve "disciples", who desired to serve, and who would "go into all the world to preach my gospel unto every creature", and who would be ordained to baptize and to ordain priests and teachers Vorlage:Harv. Soon thereafter in the second half of June 1829 Vorlage:Harv, a group of Three Witnesses and a separate group of Eight Witnesses were selected, in addition to Smith himself, to testify that Smith had the Golden Plates.
  32. ↑ "The translator of this work, has shown unto us the plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship."
  33. ↑ Vorlage:Harv;Vorlage:Harv
  34. ↑ Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 489-90.
  35. ↑ Palmer, 208-13. Cowdery's father converted to Strang's movement in the summer of 1846, and a year later Oliver Cowdery was living in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, twelve miles from Strang's headquarters and was associated in some way with his church. Stanley R. Gunn, Oliver Cowdery: Second Elder and Scribe (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1962), 189.
  36. ↑ [1], [2]
  37. ↑ BBC news report
  38. ↑ Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies website

References

  1. Bidamon, Emma Smith (March 27, 1876), letter to Emma S. Pilgrim, published in Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  2. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
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  5. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
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  7. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  8. Vorlage:Harvard reference, republished in Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  9. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  10. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
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  12. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  13. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  14. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  15. Smith, Joseph, Jr. (1832) History of the Life of Joseph Smith, in Joseph Smith Letterbook 1, pp. 1–6, Joseph Smith Collection, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, published in Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  16. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  17. Smith, Joseph, Jr. et al. (1838–1842) History of the Church Ms., vol. A–1, pp. 1–10, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, published in Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  18. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  19. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  20. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  21. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  22. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  23. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  24. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  25. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  26. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
  27. Vorlage:Harvard reference.
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