Golden Plates

[alterserver_07]

edmondhall:

If the point of the witnesses is to provide compelling evidence for the validity of JS, then surely JS could have arranged for objective disinterested parties to see for themselves? You want to talk about compelling witnesses–how about 70,000 at Fatima??

Very true! You have to count the other countless miricles that have happened and still are happening today. The whatever amount of hispanics that converted when Our Lady of Gueadalupa(sp is really bad I know). Just so many whitnesses to the Catholic faith.

 

[harinkj]

I read a book once that said that someone tried to sell some documents to the LDS leadership that said a White Salamander gave the gold plates to Joseph Smith. :whacky:

But then the guy’s documents turned out to be total fakes.

I think a murder was involved too. :bigyikes:

Wow, I just found something about it on line:

utlm.org/onlinebooks/trackingcontents.htm

Weird. :banghead:

Kathie

 

[flameburns623]

Some answers to the question which prompted the thread:

1. The Gold Plates were taken by the Angle Moroni after the ‘translation’ of the BofM was completed. See the introductory material to the BofM for more information about this.
2. The original transcription of the ‘translation’ executed by Joseph Smith and his scribes is in the archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints–the one we all know as the ‘Utah’ LDS Church. I believe they–or the Tanners–may have published mimeographed/photocopied volumes of some or all of these transcriptions.
3. Joseph Smith made some sloppy hand-written copies of some of the characters he claimed were on the plates. They resemble something one might find in a box of cereal along with a “Secret Decoder Ring”. This transcription of characters from the plates is widely reproduced but I don’t know who has the original transcription. In the early 1980’s a ‘cleaner’, more credible-looking version of this ‘transcription’ turned up. I have heard very little about this in decades and presume that the ‘discoverer’ of this version of the transcription was Mark Hoffman, the same forger and crypto-apostate who perpetuated the ‘Salamander Letter’ fraud. Hoffman is serving time in federal prison and has freely admitted that he created a number of forgeries simply to embarrass the LDS General Authorities. He was very good and special techniques actually had to be created to detect some of his forgeries. One ought not to hold this against the LDS Church–many, including the RCC, have been victimised by forgers.
4. The papyri of the Book of Abraham were believed for decades to have been destroyed by fire. At least some of those papyri–the ones featured prominently in the Pearl of Great Price–turned up in the 1960’s(?). On their face the translation offered by Joseph Smith bears no resemblance to the translations of modern Egyptologists.
   Hope this clarifies matters.