Martin Harris: “I never saw the golden plates, only in a visionary or entranced state......Sometimes the plates would be on a table in the room in which Smith did the translating, covered over with a cloth. I was told by Smith that God would strike him dead if he attempted to look at them, and I believed it" (Anthony Metcalf, Ten Years Before the Mast, n.d., microfilm copy, p. 70-71.)”

So the plates which we're told were laboriously inscribed by hand and passed down through numerous generations of Nephites (some of whom were less than righteous) suddenly become something like the Ark of the Covenant, so that even JS has to keep them hidden under a cloth or God will kill him?!

- How would apologists/TBMs defend this? Is there any justifiable reason why God wouldn't allow JS or witnesses to see them?
- What does it say about the Mormon god?
- how can members that learn about this still not see that it was an obvious con?

MORmON god won't allow people to see the plates without killing them!!!, so if people see the plates then MORmON god will have to kill them.

HOWEVER MORmON god will allow hostile people to chase Joe SMith through the woods while Joe is carrying the plates with out killing them.

It all makes sense, to MORmONS!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxJ7gKIymVo

I've said it before, I will say it again. If looking at the plates unworthy would result in your death, then why was Joe Smith so concerned about protecting them from thieves? That sounds like a pretty good anti-theft system right there.

Oh right, that's because the plates didn't exist, and both this lie, his locked boxes, and stories about hidden compartments all served to conceal that fact.

Yes, it would be much easier to just set the plates down and run without them (if he was afraid of being shot). After the thieves stopped to pick up and looked at the plates, all JS had to do was go back and pick them up from the dead thieves. Much easier than trying to run carrying 200 pound plates.

EXACTLY! EXCELLENT POINT!

I mean if it is better for one man to perish, then it's time to reenact the climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

you have hit the nail on the head.

Similar issue with hiding the plates in he bean barrel

Lucy Mack Smith said that she touched the plates through the old cloth they were wrapped in. I think she mentioned flipping through them and hearing them sort of "clang" when she did that. To my mind it sounded like they were made of some sort of pounded tin. I'm guessing Joe made up something like the plates, made of some scrap metal or something? Or maybe Lucy made it all up, or heck maybe they were really made out of solid gold. Snerk.

Lucy Mack SMith said a lot of really stupid things, ( LIED A LOT) just like her son.

forbiddencokedrinker Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If looking at the plates unworthy would result in
> your death, then why was Joe Smith so concerned
> about protecting them from thieves? That sounds
> like a pretty good anti-theft system right there.
>


This is brilliant.

Thinking further - if the running away from thieves stories are true, it clearly wasn't so much that JS was scared of losing the plates because they were so precious, in terms of both material and content, but it was more about his scam being uncovered.

It was a win-win for any thief. You either steal real gold plates that are highly valuable, or you find some dummy tin plates that uncover the scam once and for all.

How does TSCC explain their being written in "Reform Egyptian," as opposed to Hebrew or Aramaic? I ask this with the understading that the entire thing is worse than fiction; it is a fraud. And I surmise that Smith claimed "Reform Egyptian" with the certainty that nobody could reasonably demand to see his source material. Just wondering what the official "back story" is on "Reformed Egyptian."

(The above was translated from the original post which was in Reformed Esperanto.)

In 1798 Napoleon invaded Egypt. However in addition to his army
he also brought along a large team of scholars to study the
ancient ruins and antiquities.

The discovery of the Rosetta Stone was one result of this
foray. This generated a lot of information about Egypt. The
generation afterward was gripped in a sort of "Egyptomania."
Egypt was regularly looted of it's artifacts which went on the
antiquities market. The mummies and papyri that Joseph Smith
purchased in 1935 were an example of this.

So "Egyptian" was the sexiest language for the plates. Joseph
knew that Hebrew was the tongue of the Hebrews (duh!) so he had
to make up the "Reformed Egyptian" idea to make it not be too
obvious.

Does anyone have a link, or a reference for one of the "witnesses" claiming to have seen the golden plates with his "spiritual eye"?

Why do the witness statements in the BoM fail to mention "visionary eye" or "trance" or "spiritual eye"? The witness statements lead one to believe that the witnesses saw the plates with normal human eyes. No trickery.

I found the information I was looking for here:

http://exmormon.org/d6/drupal/file9

The "spiritual eye" reference is there, as well as the "visionary" reference.

Yes, well, it makes about the same sense as it would to tell a married woman God will strike her down with a sword if she didn't let horndog Joe have her.

But it would be stupid to fall for that, no? Wait....

Joe used that scenario a lot. God or angels (or both) threaten a good man until he, supposedly reluctantly, escapes the bonds of normal ethical behavior.

How many times did Nephi have to be threatened by God before he committed murder?

Somebody always looks at the Eye of the Idol on the Indiana Jones ride. "Foolish mortals! You looked into my eyes. Your path now leads to the Gates of Doom!"

My point: it's already-used mythology.

The Nephites must have been as stupid as a box of rocks.

They could have won the great final battle at Cumorah,
by just holding up the golden plates where the Lamanite
warriors could have seen the forbidden sight.

The Lamanites would have immediately perished by the
hundreds of thousands (along with any unworthy Nephites
who did not temporarily cover their eyes, I suppose).

UD

Ha! Reminds me of a Monty Python sketch where allied forces use the funniest joke ever to kill German forces.

Or those guys whose faces melted/exploded at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The plates must have been a part of the story Joe conjured up. Once he added them in, he had to keep the story going.


Other than that, they were useless. He didn't use them to translate. He used a rock in a hat. The plates weren't even in the room. Nobody could see them or they would be struck dead. They didn't serve any purpose other than to make the story a bit more interesting. The plates make no sense. What was the point of Joe having them? What was the point of hiding them? What was the point of giving them back? None of it makes any sense.


Why wouldn't God just send Moroni to tell the story himself? That would have made more sense. Would have been just as believable as JS seeing God and Jesus in person. Oh, I forgot, he didn't see God and Jesus. Someone else added that tidbit in years down the road.

So, he translated a book that nobody was allowed to look at or touch. He translated it with two rocks and a hat while the book wasn't even in the room. He had to hide the book so people wouldn't steal it. This was a book that would strike people dead if they laid eyes on it. In the end, he gave the book to God. Why didn't God just have it and keep it to begin with? Why would he leave it buried all those years?

Then he came across some scrolls that he said he translated. Everyone was allowed to look and touch those. They were supposed to be from the time of Abraham. I would think that would be way more important than an unknown like Moroni. Lucy charged people money to see them. Why didn't they charge people money to look at the BoM? Why weren't people struck dead to look at those?

If God did let JS have the plates for awhile, then took them back once they were translated, why would it be ok for JS to sell the manuscript? I would think God would be inclined to strike JS dead for that. If God had given me the plates to translate, it wouldn't occur to me to try and sell it for money later. I would be terrified of doing that. Why would God go to all the trouble of hiding the plates, not letting JS have them for a few years, giving him translating glasses, putting his life in danger, causing a mountain of turmoil, only to give no instruction what to do with the manuscript? God left it up to JS to figure out what to do with the information he'd just been given. None of it makes any sense.

It made no sense. However, a few people realized it could be a money maker. They rewrote and refined the story to make it sound and feel a bit more spiritual and believable. They then correlated the story so everyone would tell the same story. They refined the lies and made up a few new ones. Their still doing it to this day. They've had to come up with some new lies and tweak the story a bit more. Racism,archeology and DNA are bringing out the lies. That will never do.They must make adjustments. The internet is kicking their butt. The internet will continue to kick their butt. Don't you think that they would have seen the internet coming, and made changes before their lies were outed? The prophets, seers, and revelators got caught with their pants down.

Pants up, I think you mean. Clearly, if they had been obedient to Heavenly Father and practicing polygamy, they wouldn't have lost the power of prophecy.

Here's the box that contained the golden plates, and what happened to two unfortunate women who looked inside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9OozypJ4tw