Golden Plates
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The Golden Plates is the name most frequently used to refer to the "gold plates" that Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, said that he had received from the angel Moroni and had used to translate the The Book of Mormon. During the 1830s, the Book of Mormon was sometimes referred to as the "Golden Bible."<ref>Often 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. overheard treasure hunters "devising many plans and schemes to find Joe Smith's 'gold bible,' as they termed it." (EMD 1: 332.)</ref>
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[edit] Story of the plates
[edit] 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 in the area while using folk magic to search for buried treasure.<ref>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."</ref> For a number of years prior to 1827, Joseph reported visitations from a spirit, whom he later identified as an angel, Moroni. Moroni said that he had once been an important member of one of the nations that had inhabited ancient America and that a record of his people, engraved on gold plates, was deposited in a hill (now known as the Hill Cumorah) not far from the Smith farm. The angel told Smith that he would one day receive the plates and translate them.
Smith said that he visited the hill annually but was forbidden to take the plates until 22 September 1827, four years after he said that he had initially gone to the site.<ref>There is no corroborating evidence that Smith actually visited the hill before 1827.</ref> Smith said that the angel had earlier forbidden him to take them because he "had saught the Plates to obtain riches"--perhaps a reflection of his contemporary money-digging activities. (Smith was convicted of disturbing the peace as a "glass looker" in March 1826)<ref>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.</ref>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.<ref>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."</ref> 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.<ref>Bushman, 61.</ref>
Shortly after he had retrieved the plates from the Hill Cumorah, Smith claimed to have escaped from unknown assailants. Joseph said that 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, Joseph 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.<ref>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.</ref> The plates probably weighed at least sixty pounds.<ref>However, in 1859, Martin Harris said that he had "hefted the plates many times, and should think they weighed forty or fifty pounds." Martin Harris interview with Joel Tiffany, 1859 in EMD, 2: 306.</ref> (Solid gold plates would have weighed at least 140 pounds because gold is heavier than lead.)<ref>"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).</ref>
The Smith family's dire financial need encouraged Joseph to relocate to his father-in-law's farm in Harmony, Pennsylvania. Martin Harris also recalled that the local money diggers had threatened Smith believing that "they had as much right to the plates as Joseph had, as they were in company together."<ref>Martin Harris interview with Joel Tiffany, 1859 in EMD, 2: 307.</ref>The box containing the plates was placed "into a barrel about one-third full of [dry] beans" and the barrel was then filled with more beans. Smith's father-in-law Isaac Hale recalled that he was "shown a box, in which it is said they were contained, which had, to all appearances, been used as a glass box of the common sized window glass." Hale said that he "was allowed to feel the weight of the box, and they gave me to understand that the book of plates was then in the box — into which, however, I was not allowed to look." <ref>Isaac Hale Statement in Early Mormon Documents 4: 286.</ref>
[edit] Translation of the plates
Smith began translating the plates in Harmony. Joseph's wife Emma 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."<ref>Grant Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 2-3.</ref> Smith claimed that he had copied characters from the plates and translated them by using "Urim and Thummim," but there is no independent witness to this procedure.<ref>Joseph Smith-History 1:62</ref>.Michael Morse, Smith's brother-in-law, said that he watched Joseph 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."<ref>Grant H. Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 2-5.</ref> 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.<ref>Lyndon W. Cook, David Whitmer Interviews: A Restoration Witness (Orem, UT: Grandin, 1991), 173; Palmer, 2-3.</ref>
[edit] Witnesses
As Smith completed 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 and the Eight Witnesses) signed joint statements, written by Smith, which were subsequently published with the text of the Book of Mormon.<ref>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.</ref>
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 hefted the plates: "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."
[edit] Plates returned to Moroni
In the summer of 1829, after the completion of the translation and the visionary experiences of the Special Witnesses, Smith reported that the plates had been returned to Moroni. Some Latter Day Saints, such as 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 Interpreters, special spectacles given to Smith to aid the translation process.
[edit] Physical description of the Golden Plates
In a letter of 1842, Smith said that the "records were engraven on plates which 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."<ref>Joseph Smith to John Wentworth, March 1, 1842., also at EMD, 1: 171. </ref> Others who lifted the plates while they were wrapped in cloth or enclosed in a box agreed that they weighed about sixty pounds. Joseph's brother William said, "I was permitted to lift them 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."<ref> 1883 account of William Smith." 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 make religious objects. Tumbaga plates of the dimensions Smith described would weigh between 53 and 86 pounds.</ref> Of course, Smith could have easily made the plates himself out of tin, which was readily available in the Palmyra area; and that much tin would weigh about sixty pounds.<ref>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."</ref>
[edit] 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:
- The brass plates originally in the custody of Laban, containing the writings of Old Testament prophets before the Babylonian Exile, as well as the otherwise unknown prophets Zenos and Zenoch, and possibly others.
- The large plates of Nephi, the source of the text abridged by Mormon and engraved on the Golden Plates.
- The small plates of Nephi, the source of the first and second books of Nephi, and the books of Jacob, Enos, Jarom and Omni, which replaced the lost 116 pages.
- A set of twenty-four plates found by the people of Limhi containing the record of the Jaredites, translated by King Mosiah, and abridged by Moroni as the Book of Ether.
[edit] 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. Although after Smith's assassination the Kinderhook Plates were presumed lost, 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.<ref>Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 489-90.</ref>
- 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.<ref>Palmer, 208-09.</ref>
[edit] Metal plates outside the Latter Day Saint tradition
Some ancient European and Meso-American 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. <ref>[1], [2]</ref>. A six-page gold book, written in Etruscan, was found in Bulgaria.<ref> BBC news report</ref>. 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) and 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, no ancient record of any length, written on metal plates, is extant.
[edit] Notes
<references/>es:Planchas de oro (mormonismo)
