Scholars Can’t Agree on the Gold Plates… Here’s Why

Comments · 524

• GG

  @ggarza · 5 months ago

  The real gold plates are the friendships we make along the way.

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• TE

  @Tewhill357 · 5 months ago

  Here's my question, did Matt Foley really sleep in a van down by the river, or is the 'van' to be understood in a more spiritualized sense?

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• BE

  @Bert-k9s · 5 months ago

  On Rough Stone Rolling, NYT Book review of Book by Walter Kin stated “ Since logic  played almost no part in Joseph Smith’s life, it may be fitting that it is largely absent from this respectful biography as well”

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• HU

  @hughb5092 · 5 months ago (edited)

  This is a perfect example of JS's unrecognized or understated religious genius. I view all of this (The Plates / BofAbe / BofM) as completely fictional, yet I tip my hat to JS that so much actual scholarly effort has been exercised trying to understand this. Give the man his due, this is impressive.

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• FU

  @furmansmith5620 · 5 months ago

  I can see religious scholars bending over backwards to placate Mormons but it’s a bad look for historians

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• PO

  @pokeytemplar · 5 months ago

  Plates at his house upstairs on a table..... "OK men let's go out to the woods and pray to God that he will allow you to see the gold plates in my house, here in the woods".

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• QU

  @quemaspana · 5 months ago

  To be clear, Turner also mentions that Smith probably had a prop.

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• BR

  @Brent.Erin.Metcalfe · 5 months ago

  I’ve spent considerable time in the archival trenches assessing early Mormon encounters with gold plates. I frame the question of their existence differently than most scholars, irrespective of belief.<br><br>I noted in a 1993 ‘Dialogue’ essay that JS’s revelations (D&amp;C 5, 17) give spiritual prerequisites to see the plates (i.e., one must be chosen by God; God’s directive alone would allow a mortal agent to manifest the plates; witnesses must be accorded divine power; viewing the plates depended on one’s faith). Given this context, JS’s gold plates are best understood as otherworldly artifacts akin to the treasures and guardian spirits in money digging lore.<br><br>JS had a penchant for showing off this-worldly ancient records, not hiding them. When he acquired Egyptian papyri in 1835 he proudly displayed them to visitors—believers and nonbelievers alike. When JS briefly possessed the Kinderhook plates he not only showed them to visitors, he also allowed friends like William Clayton and Brigham Young to trace a plate in their journals.

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• J-

  @j-dub.d-trey · 5 months ago

  imagine the number of people who would convert if the plates could be inspected and verified. to keep them from the public is to withhold the most convincing piece of evidence in support of the Church&apos;s Gospel.

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• AU

  @authalic · 5 months ago

  Has anyone addressed the absence of writing on metal plates of any kind in the Americas? &nbsp;If this was a utilized method of recording history, it seems like we should have found other examples, unrelated to the Book of Mormon. People have been scratching notes on broken pottery for more than 3,000 years, and tens of thousands of examples have been found in Greece, Egypt, and the Middle East.

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• EL

  @Elena9308 · 4 months ago

  Joseph Smith, was very young when supposedly he found the golden plates, and some people were chasing<br>him carrying probably 200 hundred pound plates. Impossible!!

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• MA

  @mamasbasementgaming3776 · 5 months ago

  Firstly, I love your channel. I earned a BA in history several years ago from Utah State University. I’m definitely a history nerd and specifically love early American history; of which the history of the LDS church is an important part. I remember taking a class on the history of Utah which the professor seemed to try to twist into a tool to convince all these Mormon kids at USU that their church was terrible. So I absolutely appreciate the way you approach these topics from a mostly neutral viewpoint. <br><br>It’s so difficult to frame something like the golden plates, and other such “miracles” of religion, in a scholarly and secular way. I love the point you make that “taking a stance” on the veracity of the plates distracts from the overall purpose of these studies. <br><br>I know it’s not completely apples to apples but I’ve never once read a book about ancient Greece where the author-historian felt obliged to inform us that he had come to the conclusion that Zeus didn’t actually exist. <br><br>Framing the story of the golden plates within the context of the early 1800’s and upstate New York and analyzing how the story affected the people of that time and place (for both good and bad) and then trying to ascertain just how and in what ways that story is still affecting people 200 years later is much more important than giving your opinion about whether they were real or not. <br><br>In this sense it really doesn’t matter that much whether the plates were real or not. Everything that happened because of Joseph Smith’s story would have played out exactly as it did regardless of whether or not the plates were real.

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