Zosimus

Ryan, I was responding to this comment from you: Now you are saying that the article is not trying to make that point?

Kindly reread my response. My reasoning is explain very clearly in there. I don't want to copy/paste back and forth things that in a forum, for example, the things the Whitmers (including Cowdery) said about Smith and then the things that Smith said about Cowdery and the Whitmers and then the reasons why Brigham Young excommunicated Cowdery, Whitmer and Strang, and then the things the Cowdery, Whitmer and Strang said about Young etc etc etc Why is that so odd? Its becoming odd that you continue to push the point, even after I apologized for contributing to the conversation veering off to talk about the moral character of Smith, Strang and the witnesses. Now if you'd like to talk about metal plates, or pseudo-biblical histories, or even the similarities between Smith's plates and Strang's plates, I'm down

Well, this entire comment from you is a good example of the kind of problem we often find ourselves in. "Run-of-the-mill charlatan" was not my choice of words. I view the projects of both Smith and Strang as pious frauds, but even then I don't like the word fraud because I don't think Smith was necessarily a fraud. I believe he was sincere. So I definitely don't consider Joseph Smith to be a run-of-the-mill charlatan and its frustrating to even have to respond to your comment, because it makes me feel combative and icky. if I said anything previous to this comment that contributed to the discussion veering off to talk about the moral character of Smith and Strang or the witnesses, I apologize. I'm not going to slip down the slope of comparing all the garbage that the detractors of Joseph Smith said about him with the garbage that detractors of James Strang said about him. I don't want to get into the bog of some witnesses later said about Joseph and what nasty things some witnesses later said about Strang, and the nasty things defenders would later say about the Smith and Strang witnesses. I've read a lot of that mess, and its not something I want to start copy/pasting all over this forever online public forum with my profile attached to any of it Besides, I feel I've already responded adequately to Smac's queries. Firstly, I largely agree with Vogel's conclusions on the witnesses and the pious fraud projects. Secondly, I have already explained why I consider the gold plate witnesses as equivalent to the Strang witnesses. Recap, they were all members of the same two families (plus Harris) and its really really hard to recant testimonies that would completely wreck the reputation of their entire family and put themselves and their family members at risk. I know both Cowdery and David Whitmer even feared for their lives at different points after they were excommunicated. This alone explains it for me, and I don't feel the need to then veer off into all the different nasty things all these people later said about each other in a futile effort to defend (or whatever you want to call it) some of them And yet I remain absolutely willing to defend my full statement. "After studying it all out in my head for many decades, there is not enough difference in motive or execution between Smith, Strang and dozens if not hundreds of others that played the same pseudo-biblical-history-found-in-a-hole-and-then-miraculously-disappeared playbook." If you'd like to discuss the long history of pseudo-biblical histories then, great I'd much rather talk about that. Which reminds me, you made the claim that several examples of metal plates in Asia provided evidence of lengthy documents written on metal plates. I took an hour to write up a response to that, providing evidence that they are not. But instead of responding to that (a topic I would much rather talk about) you wrote the above implicitly characterizing me as someone who is dodging a conversation. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for your response. So let's reset. I consider the gold plates, the Record of Rajah Manchou and the Book of the Law of the Lord to be fine examples of the "pseudo-biblical-history-found-in-a-hole-and-then-miraculously-disappeared playbook"

Nah that's not what's happening here. I'd made it very clear in my previous post that if Smac took the conversation that way, I was not interested in continuing. Here: And then a good deal of Smac's follow up response was exactly him piling up queries on the topics I'm not interested in discussing here. Because If I were to respond to those queries, then inevitably this conversation will veer off into a long miserable thread where I post links to evidence that the Joseph Smith and the gold plate witnesses had all these human flaws, and then Smac would post links to evidence about how James Strang and the Strangite witnesses had the same human flaws. By default it becomes a conversation where everyone is obligated to make moral judgements on people that are highly respected by the majority of members here. I just don't want to go down that path, mostly because its already available ad nauseam on Youtube and Google and ChatGPT. And I'm just not interested in having that conversation in a public forum. If Smac wants to continue than he can DM me, I'm happy to proceed in private.

I'll be honest, I'm not at all interested in defending the actions of James Strang or Joseph Smith. Not going to slide down this slope of putting taking on any of that burden. For me, after studying it all out in my head for many decades, there is not enough difference in motive or execution between Smith, Strang and dozens if not hundreds of others that played the same pseudo-biblical-history-found-in-a-hole-and-then-miraculously-disappeared playbook. I believe Smith and Strang were both products of the conflict between the Enlightenment and Romanticism mixed into a nascent American history with a little bit of orientalism and freemasonry on the side. Strang basically admits it in his journals, and several scholars have reached similar conclusions with Smith. So I'd rather spend my time discussing something more interesting than whether the witnesses of Smith or Strang were more likeable. I've already given my reasons for being skeptical of both Smith and Strang, so not interested in defending either

The Whitmer family were 7 out of 11 of the gold plate witnesses if you include Page and Cowdery as Whitmer-in-laws. If we throw Mary in for good measure, then the Whitmerites were batting .667

When I say Strang ran the Smith playbook twice, I'm referring to the eight witnesses. As I suggested, we'll have to treat the extraordinary claims of the three witnesses in a different conversation, because there are unique problems with those claims. Setting the three witnesses aside for now, I don't see the testimonies of the Strangite witnesses being significantly different from Smith's eight witnesses. More below. As mentioned above, we'll have to treat the extraordinary claims of the three witnesses in a different conversation, because there are unique problems with those claims. This is where it gets tricky. Many of the witnesses would fall away from the Church. Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris included and they all had harsh things to say about Smith and other leaders of the Church. Sure, they never denied their witness statements, but there are a number of reasons why they might have chosen not too. Reputation, pride, fear of God...cough, Danites, cough. Like Nehor mentions above, the Whitmerites had great reason to not torpedo the Book of Mormon as they were starting their own Book of Mormon book club. Then it gets more complicated when we consider that Martin Harris even joined the Strangites and served a mission for Strang in the UK. Which would suggest that after the death of Joseph Smith, at least one of the three witnesses considered Strang to be the prophetic successor. Hiram Page (eight witnesses) also showed support for Strang, and claimed that the Whitmers were also supportive of Strang, at least until they all became the Whitmerites. So, to me, it does seems like Strang succeeded in running the Smith playbook. He captured a number of Smith's witnesses, followers and quite a few prominent leaders, including Joseph Smith's brother William. Like Smith, most would eventually leave Strang due to polygamy, but that's added confirmation that Strang mimicked Smith quite successfully, and had very similar outcomes. wrt Samuel Bacon, if you want to get into hearsay and antagonists, then there's way too much to sort through. Let me just say that Joseph Smith and the gold plate witnesses had plenty of detractors saying all sorts of things to discredit them. And only then did Smith and the witnesses begin to badmouth and discredit each other. Do you really want to open that can of worms? As I keep saying, Strang was a Mormon, he'd been baptized a member of the Church and never excommunicated under Smith's leadership, unlike all of the three witnesses. Strang was a priesthood holder. In other words, he also had the capacity of confirming the veracity of the Book of Mormon through the Holy Spirit and he also had access to the Moroni 10:3-5 mechanism. Strangites to this day, accept the Book of Mormon as canon. (source) So, yes, he did. See above. Strang was a critical part of the movement that Joseph Smith founded. The Brighamites were more successful in the end, but that says nothing about how well Strang ran the Smith playbook. See above. If we are to extend your analogy properly, Strang was not only a full member of the Chiefs, he was one of the coaches. Oh come on, you can't pick and choose the evidence you allow, and dismiss. There's just as much, if not more, so called "evidence" that Smith fabricated his plates as there is that Strang fabricated his. For example... and... Both Smith and Strang had enemies, we don't have enough space here to go back and forth around the hearsay to determine who had the most detractors vs who had the most evidence, so please don't @ me with points. I'm not interested in discussing whether Smith or Strang was more hated by the villagers Youtube videos make this claim a lot, but Strang's brass plates of Laban were quite close and elaborateness in size to Smith's. See Weeble's comment above. Have you ever read Strang's translation of the brass plates of Laban?

I'm mostly responding to the (in)accuracy of the claims within the article, not the motives of the authors. But none of the examples (apart from the purely mythical and legendary ones) are anything close to the length of the Book of Mormon. 1. "According to Jeremiah Losty, Buddhist canonical texts were inscribed on gold sheets as early as 88 BC, although none of these have survived from that early period." Losty is clearly referring to later traditions that, for political reasons, were an attempt to legitimize the theravada canon over other schools. The claim was that Ashoka's brother feared the destruction of the teachings so he sent monks to Sri Lanka to write the teachings down on gold or copper plates. This was later known as the "copper plate school". There's no extant examples of any written Buddhist canon in Sri Lanka until the 4th Theravada Council around 30 BC, and that was on palm leaf. The earliest evidence for Buddhist canon written on gold plates comes from 5th century Burma. The first actual Buddhist epigraphy was, you'll never guess ... Aramaic, the former administrative language of Babylon and the Levant. Findings like these are what drove many 19th century writers like Charles Anthon to run with their wild theories that the Buddha was an Egyptian/Israelite priest, and the sculptures of the Buddha in Bamiyan (Afghanistan) were constructed by the descendants of Israelite kings. Ethan Smith get's into that a bit in View of the Hebrews. Charles Anthon had a book by Carl Ritter called "The Stupas, or the architectural monuments on the Indo‑Bactrian royal road, and the colossi of Bamiyan", and it was Anthon's view that these Indo-European peoples migrated to the Americas bringing the Old Doctrine of Noah with them. 2. "In the 5th century AD, the Buddhist writer Buddhaghosa claimed that a stupa (a mound-like structure) built during the reign of King Ajatsatru in eastern India contained a trove of relics including a prophecy inscribed on a gold plate about the deeds of King Ashoka and his role in the spread of Buddhist teachings." This is entirely legendary, written in the 5th century AD by a monk in Sri Lanka. We're unsure there even was a King Ajatsatru to build a stupa in the 5th century BCE containing a trove of relics of the Buddha and a gold plate about the deeds of Asoka, because Asoka wouldn't even by born for another 200 years after the construction of the stupa. 3. "The Jatakas (stories about former incarnations of the Buddha) refer to “important family records of wealthy merchants, royal edicts, poetic verses, and moral maxims on gold.” Only problem is the author of the article left off the sentence in the original source leading the discussion of legends of gold being used for writing: "Gold: this metal, being costly, was rarely used for writing." And the cited source confirms, the earliest examples we have of gold being used is 5th century AD Burma. 4. The Perfection of Wisdom sutra, an important text in Mahāyāna Buddhism, refers to an ornate box containing a Buddhist inscription “written with melted vaidurya on golden tablets.” Again, legendary. The sutra is describing events that took place between bodhisattvas in imaginary realms. No such golden tablet exists. 5. In 1982 archaeologist discovered a set of seven gold plates in a stupa in Sri Lanka inscribed with parts of this sutra. Examples of inscriptions on either gold plates or more delicate gold foil have now been recovered from various parts of India, Burma (Myanmar), Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Indonesia. This is all true, but the inscriptions are all far from lengthy. 6. The Borobudur Plates are a set of eleven gold plates now held in the National Museum in Jakarta. They are the oldest known inscription of Buddhist texts from Indonesia. Eight of the plates have inscriptions on both sides, similar to the plates of the Book of Mormon. Also true, but the provenance of the Borobudur plates is unknown as they were found in a museum after World War II. The inscriptions are far from lengthy. 7. A set of nineteen gold plates were recovered during repairs to a pagoda in Iksan, southwestern Korea in 1965. These were inscribed with a portion of the Diamond Sutra and are believed to date to the 7th century AD. The plates and other relics recovered from the site were part of an exhibition at the Chonju National Museum in 2015. This set of “19 pure gold sheets” was found inside a double-walled reliquary box with a lid. Small portion of the Diamond Sutra, not lengthy. 8. Some inscribed gold plates were actually attached together in various ways and have, for this reason, been described as “books” by scholars. In 1926–1927 Charles Duroiselle excavated several brick mounds in Burma (Myanmar) on the land of a farmer named Khin Ba. Among the many artifacts he discovered was a small gold “book” containing twenty leaves set between two gold covers. Each plate measured 6 ½ inches long (16.5 cm) and 1 ¼ inches (3.2 cm) wide. The plates were “held together by a gold wire placed through two holes in the covers of each page, and then wound around the book. Carved on the gold pages are brief excerpts from eight Pali Buddhist texts.” The text has sixty lines and dates to the 5th–6th centuries AD. Too small to contain any inscriptions of length. 7. Chinese archaeologists recently discovered a set of artifacts from a pagoda (a tiered tower) in Inner Mongolia with two rectangular sheets, one in silver, the other in gold. The gold sheet was inscribed with a Tantric mantra written in Sanskrit Short tantric mantra inscription, nothing like a Book of Mormon length historical record.

Yes. In short, Strang runs the same Smith playbook, with two different sets of metal plates, and he succeeds both times. That’s a problem for any argument that treats the 8 gold plate witnesses as evidence against a “cheap hoax” model. First, the Voree plates. Four men testify in plain language that they recovered the ancient record. You are correct, no angel or divine voice appears in their testimony, but Strang’s larger claim is certainly supernatural, an angel revealed the record’s location, Strang received divine interpreters, and translated the plates by the power of God. Their affidavit does the same thing for Strang as the Eight witnesses do for Joseph. This was intentional. Strang intentionally repeated the gold plate witness playbook. The 4 witnesses to the Record of Rajah Manchou provided a mundane naturalistic witness to underwrite Strang's intentional imitation of Smith's extraordinary narrative of ancient American prophets and metal plates. But then Strang did something even closer to the 8 gold plate witnesses with his follow-up witnesses to the brass plates of Laban. Seven men signed a testimony printed at the front of the book affirming that Strang “has the plates of the ancient Book of the Law of the Lord given to Moses,” from which he translated, and that he “has shown them to us.” They said they “examined them as closely as we could,” found eighteen brass plates about 7⅜ × 9 inches, of brass, “beautiful antique workmanship,” “occasionally embellished with beautiful pictures,” covered in characters resembling “ancient oriental languages.” Again, there's no angel involved, but there is the same familiar pattern. Multiple men in daylight physically handling and inspecting with natural eyes a stack of beautifully engraved metal plates with “curious workmanship,” all in support of supernatural claims about angels revealing ancient metal plates to a modern prophet. So Strang's witnesses give us two additional concrete examples of a 19th‑century proof‑of‑concept confirming: it was possible for two different Mormon prophets to claim angelic revelations of three distinct ancient metal records, it was possible to stage multiple discovery and/or show-and-tell event with credible witnesses, it was possible to obtain multiple detailed sober, non‑supernatural affidavits describing hands‑on examination of ancient metal plates, it was possible that all those witnesses never formally recant, For anyone framing the evidence provided by the eight gold plate witnesses as important, how to simultaneously dismiss the Strangite witness evidence as unimportant? Because whatever arguments we might make for Smith's witnesses have to be framed so they don't also canonize Strang’s witnesses. note: I do acknowledge that you also might assign additional weight to the testimonies of the three witnesses because they claim to have seen an angel, but I agree with Vogel here. We really should discuss Vogel's work on this

ikr, I have a stream of comments on here going back years about the cooper plates in India, and wider east Asia. But then I discovered that all that was known and discussed in 1820s America. Its even discussed in the appendix of View of the Hebrews with source and citations to more detailed discussions provided. So the evidence of historicity, for me, became evidence for a simpler explanation. I didn't want it to go that way, but I could no longer argue with the data. As an example of what was known in the 1820s about Israelites using metal plates for their records, here are the sources Ethan Smith referenced in VoTH: Claudius Buchanan "The plates are six in number: they are composed of a mixed metal: the engraved page on the largest plate is thirteen inches long, by about four broad. They are closely written: four of them on both sides of the plate, making in all eleven pages. On the plate reputed to be the oldest, there is writing perspicuously engraved in nail-headed or triangular-headed letters, resembling the Persepolitan or Babylonish. On the same plate there is writing in another character, which has no affinity with any existing character in Hindostan. The grant on this plate appears to be witnessed by four Jews of rank, whose names are distinctly written in an old Hebrew character, resembling the alphabet called the Palmyrene; and to each name is prefixed the title of Magen; that is, chief. It may be doubted whether there exists in the world another document of equal antiquity, which is at the same rime of so great a length and in such faultless preservation, as the Christian tablets in Malayala. The Jews of Cochin indeed contest the palm of antiquity and of preservation; for they also produce tablets containing privileges granted at a remote period. The Jewish tablets are two in number. The Jews were long in possession of a third plate, which now appears to be the property of the Christians. The Jews commonly show an antient Hebrew translation of their plates. Dr. Leyden made another translation, which differs from the Hebrew: and there has lately been found among the old Dutch records at Cochin, a third translation, which approaches nearer to Dr. Leyden’s than to the Hebrew. In a Hebrew manuscript, which will shortly be published, it is recorded that a grant on brass tablets was given to the Jews in A. D. 379. (source) George Stanley Faber "At Cochin there is a colony of Jews, who retain the tradition that they arrived in India soon after the Babylonian captivity. There are in that province two classes of Jews, the white and the black Jews. The black Jews are those who are supposed to have arrived at that early period. The white Jews emigrated from Europe in later ages. What seems to countenance the tradition of the black Jews is, that they have copies of those books of the Old Testament which were written previously to the captivity, but none of those whose dates are subsequent to that event—The latest information respecting them is contained in a letter lately received from a learned missionary in the south of the peninsula, who had resided for some time in the vicinity of Cochin. He states, that he had constantly been informed that the Jews at Cochin had those books only of the Old Testament which were written before the Babylonian captivity; and that thence it is generally believed by the Christians of the Decan, that they had come to India soon after that event. He adds, that the M.S. was on a material resembling paper, in the form of a roll; and that the character had a strong resemblance to Hebrew, if not Hebrew." (source) Both Faber and Buchanan identify Cochin where these ancient plates and books were found as Comara or Comorin. tl;dr Ethan Smith and others in the 1820s knew that ancient Jews and Christians inscribed their records on metal plates. IMO the more plausible explanation for metal plates in the Book of Mormon are these early 19th century accounts, not the more recent epigraphical studies of metal plates being found throughout India and the Far East

I have a long frustrated relationship with most of the examples cited in the article, will write that up separately I work in the region, and have heard about this from Malay Muslims. Even they are skeptical. Notice how the owner claims the gold book worth millions travelled overland from Ottoman Empire → Uyghurstan → Yunnan → Malaysia → A gift to his wife? → Dubai Notice there's no documented provenance for it Notice how according to their own forencis (sic) analysis the plates are 93% copper and only 0.0001% gold Notice they are selling it on worldtopantiques.blogspot.com instead of a legit auction house, because I'm guessing nobody will certify it as authentic Notice on worldtopantiquities.blogspot.com you can also buy a Glow-in-the-dark Quran for only $40,000,000 USD Notice how even if it isn't fraud, it would only be evidence that people etched scripture into copper plates with the "appearance of gold" 500 years ago If anything that whole auction site is a good example of how possible it is to forge books on metal and all other kinds of materials, and how it is not too difficult to convince people that the golden books they want to be believe are real, aren't actually elaborate fake copper books of dodgy provenance

That's how I see it. After closely rereading the testimonies of the 3 witnesses and 8 witnesses, I believe there was significant curated (as Analytics called it) transfer of faith from Joseph to the witnesses and then Strang followed a similar playbook to convince his own witnesses, and even Martin Harris and Hiram Page, that he was the spiritual successor to Joseph. The Record of Rajah Manchou pretty much says that's what was going on. There are things in the 3 witnesses testimony that are hard to reconcile with the timeline. Makes me think the three witnesses just allowed Joseph to put their name on the statement as he wrote it. That's fine, but curation of testimonies is also what Hurlbut did for the Spaulding witnesses, and everyone agrees that pretty much invalidates those affidavits. If I were to tell you that an angel appeared to me and told me there were ancient gold plates buried behind the Creamery on 9th in Provo, 6 feet down at the precise coordinates shown to me by the angel. Would you go look? Would you have someone you know in Provo go look for you? Maybe, maybe not. I might be telling the truth but more likely I'm playing some trick on you. Now, if someone you consider to be a Prophet, Seer and Revelator, let's say President Oakes, told you the same thing, would you go? You'd be crazy not to, right? The same kind of experience can be both mundane and divine, depending on the prior assumptions of the observer Let's say you go, on the advice given to me be an angel, and lo and behold you find the treasure chest! Would you consider it a mundane event? Probably, you know I'm skeptical of such things, or maybe you even consider me to be dishonest or deceptive. You'd have questions for me, like where did I get the gold and how did I bury it there without anyone seeing, but you'd have doubts an angel was responsible. Right? Now let's say you go, on the Prophet's advice given to him by an angel, and lo and behold gold plates, right where he said. Would you consider it a mundane event? Or would you believe an angel put it there, by divine means and it was revealed to the Prophet by divine means? My guess is you'd consider that an angel did actually manifest those plates. Where I think your position runs into trouble is consistency. You’re willing to take the gold plate 8 witnesses at their word, as having had a genuinely divine experience, but you insist the Strangite witnesses experience was purely mundane, even though structurally, the two situations are extremely similar: trusted prophet, plates buried and revealed by an angel at a specified spot, small group of witnesses, and no reversals of the testimonies. If you classify Smith's events as supernatural and Strang's events as mundane, the difference isn’t in the documented testimony, but in your prior judgment about which Mormon prophet and set of witnesses you’re prepared to trust. My point is, you guys are both right to be skeptical of reports of ancient metal plates being dug out of a hill by a Mormon prophet. You trust Joseph Smith, and that's fine, but most people will look at the two similar events and not see enough difference to do the same

This apologetic (I see it all over the place in videos and articles about the gold plate witnesses all the sudden) confuses me. Strang's witnesses are not reporting a mundane event. There statement is clear that they perceived it as a sort of miraculous event. Strang, an approved "Prophet and Seer of God" had it "revealed to him in a vision that an account of an ancient people was buried in a hill" The angel had told Strang where to dig the witnesses confirm that the "sole inducement to our digging was our faith in his statement as a Prophet of the Lord that a record would thus and there be found". They went to the spot revealed through a vision, and behold, a box with plates! What is mundane about any of this? By comparison, the 8 witnesses account is far more mundane: "And this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shewn unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken" The three witness account is certainly not mundane, but I tend to agree with Vogel, there are some critical problems

Strang’s “brass plates of Laban” are a useful comparison because they also involve an angel, they are also Nephite artifacts, and seven witnesses who saw and hefted them. Yet almost no one outside Strangite circles feels obligated to explain “how it happened”. Strang was a Mormon prophet, yet we probably all agree here that from a non-Strangite viewpoint, the best explanation for his brass plates is the simplest most ordinary one: Strang fabricated a set of brass plates and a set of witnesses either conspired with him, or were otherwise duped. We do not have to account for the exact method or provide evidence for a conspiracy to justify the easiest explanation. The same applies in principle to Joseph Smith’s gold plates, including the overlap in some witnesses (Martin Harris and Hiram Page) who later accepted Strang, and claimed that other gold plate witnesses (David Whitmer, John Whitmer Jacob Whitmer) also accepted Strang. We can confidently say of those gold plate witnesses: People sometimes exaggerate ambiguous experiences. Groups can define and reinforce collective memories and interpretations over time. Multiple sincere witnesses are compatible with natural explanations. It is possible that the gold plate witnesses and the brass plates witnesses really handled ancient Nephite records brought from Jerusalem to America, but that explanation is less plausible than fraud. Most everyone can see this easily in Strang's case. If Strangites believe the brass plates were authentic and translated by Urim and Thummim, the burden of providing evidence falls on those that believe that extraordinary claim. Those who have no interest in the claim can be comfortable saying that “something happened here" and the most likely explanation is naturalistic. The precise details of how Strang did it, or where he got the brass, or how did he engrave oriental characters in the plates without anyone seeing him or why didn't anyone ever rat on him?! are underdetermined and aren't needed to justify skepticism

Anthon was there front and center for the early days of Aryan nationalism, only back then it was called Indo-Germanic. All the stuff Anthon was wrapping up for American students was eventually co-opted by German nationalists as evidence of a superior Hamitic/Japhetic root race that out-civilized the Semites. From the Ark to the Aryans: A Dangerous Revelation

Looking closer, it wasn't ubiquitous, as in it wasn't lying around in piles in places like Palmyra. But also, if someone in Palmyra needed some tinplate, they wouldn't need to custom order it from abroad. It was produced in America from the early 1700s, with production increasing after the War of 1812. Tinplate was available for tinsmiths and tinplate goods were distributed by village-to-village peddlers: https://hylandhouse.org/early-guilford-days/virtual-early-guilford-days-2020/tinsmithing "A Short History of Tinsmithing: The tinsmith has been plying his trade in America since 1720. Colonial tin products were made of imported tinplate. England banned the production of tinplate in the colonies, thus restricting the amount of goods the colonists could produce. Tinplate is thin steel that has been dipped several times into molten tin. If there is rust on a piece of tinware, it is because the tinplate has worn away or a cut in the metal has exposed the steel which has rusted. Colonial tinsmiths used tinplate, wire, sodder, and a few simple tools to produce their wares. When tinplate was finally produced in America in the early 1800’s the products of the tinsmith became more widely available. They in turn saw an increase in demand and a need to speed up production. This brought about the development of many ingenious hand powered machines which sped up production and helped the tinsmith meet the demands for his products. The goods were “brought to market” by peddlers traveling from village to village."

That's fair of you. Your thoughts on Vogel's presentation today? Could Joseph Smith Have Made the Plates? His idea is that Joseph could have used tin roof shingles that were commonly used in America in the early 19th century. It wouldn't require much smithing or effort to put some rings on a stack of tin roof shingles. Its even something that could be done without anyone noticing

That was my first thought, but Anthon was still publicly discussing his theory that American Indians came from the same source population as the Egyptians and India Indians as late as 1836 in his letters supporting the United States Exploring Expedition to the South Seas. Anthon continued to embed the theories of Ritter, Creuzer and Gorres in his later editions of A Classical Dictionary, greatly expanding on his articles about Egyptus, Pelsagians and Pyramids to include his speculations like the Mexican Votan being a grandson of Noah who helped build the Tower of Babel and who was related somehow to Woden and Buddha, an idea that passed from Sir William Jones through Ritter to Humboldt, who was a close associate of Ritter. Anthon discusses all this in his 1842 edition, so he was still convinced there was a connection between the religions of the east and west at least 15 years after announcing his plans for the textbook. In the preface of his 1842 Classical Dictionary, Anthon ramps up his commitments to the German Mystics Creuzer, Ritter and Guigniaut: "The subject of Mythology has supplied, next to that of Ancient Geography, the largest number of articles to the present work. In the treatment of these, it has been the chief aim of the author to lay before the student the most important speculations of the two great schools (the Mystic and anti-Mystic) which now divide the learned of Europe. At the head of the former stands Creuzer, whose elaborate work (Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker) has reappeared under so attractive a form through the taste and learning of Guigniaut." The entire battle between the Creuzer Mystics and the Lobeck anti-Mystics was over the origins of Western civilization. The mystics placed the source in the Hindu Kush area east of the Caspian Sea and west of the Indus, and the anti-Mystics rejected this in favor of Greece. Anthon says of the division "It has been the aim of the author to give a fair and impartial view of both systems, although he cannot doubt but that the former will appear to the student by far the more attractive one of the two." Anthon was on Creuzer's side, that Western civilization began in the highlands of Bactria, Hindoostan and Little Tibet, As I mention above, Joseph Smith in 1842 (same year Anthon publishes his updated dictionary to include hundreds of citations of Creuzer and Ritter) lines up almost precisely with the diffusionist theories of the Mystics. "In the opinion of the most learned among the moderns, Mount Ararat, where the ark of Noah rested, after the deluge, was in Armenia, or Thibet, and between 90o and 100o E. long. and between 30o and 35o north lat. north of Hindostan and Persia, west of the river Indus and of central Asia, and east of Mesopotamia and of the Caspian Sea." - Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842

Dan Vogel is discussing this in a livestream right now: Could Joseph Smith Have Made the Plates?

The Book of Mormon is impressive, but it has nothing on this guy. Annius of Viterbo didn’t produce just one ancient book, he forged a entire library of lost Babylonian, Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek and Latin texts all cross‑referencing each other to neatly fool Europe’s top scholars for centuries. Annius' Biblical chronologies are still occasionally cited today by people that mistake his forgeries as authentic. And on top of that, as evidence for the claims found in his texts, Annius secretly buried counterfeit inscriptions, carved pillars, and marble statues all around Viterbo. He'd sit it out until an opportunity (like a hunting trip through the forest with the Pope) for a big reveal. His forged books authenticated his forged props and the forged props authenticated his forged books. It was a massive pious fraud designed to do things like link his tiny hometown of Viterbo to Noah and give Pope Alexander III Egyptian ancestry. In a way the Book of Mormon links America to Noah and the Mosaic chronology in the same way Annius' books linked Europe to Noah and the Mosaic chronology, only in a way that was not quite as elaborate and complicated

IMO View of the Hebrews does provide at least some evidence for the historicity of the broad underlying narrative of the BoM, just not in the Americas. The one person in America that was attempting a synthesis of hundreds of Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, German, French etc. texts to include America in the Biblical genealogy was Charles Anthon. In 1827, Anthon was working on a school textbook laying out all the evidence for a diffusion of civilization from the sons of Noah to the Americas. He was in the middle of this project when Harris turned up with the gold plate characters The Lost Key to an American Revelation: Reconstructing Charles Anthon’s Phantom Textbook

All valid points, but I find his translation of Laban's brass plates called the Book of the Law of the Lord most relevant to this discussion: Strang’s witnesses described eighteen brass plates, each roughly 7–7.5 by 9 inches, engraved with characters and “beautiful pictures.” They emphasized physicality: substantial size, brass material, “beautiful antique workmanship,” and resemblance to “ancient oriental languages.” These plates were said to contain the lost Mosaic law (the “Book of the Law”) as preserved on the plates of Laban. Strang claimed to translate them by Urim and Thummim. No direct physical examinations by modern scholars are known. After Strang’s death, the large plates disappear from the historical record.

Having some ancestors with ties to the Strangites, the Book of the Law of the Lord and the Record of Rajah Manchou have long fascinated me. James Strang also claimed that an angel informed him of the location of the plates containing the Record of Rajah Manchou buried in a hill. Strang took four witnesses to dig up the plates for him. They all testified: Finding witnesses willing to sign their names to a pre-written statement describing their experiences handling ancient metal plates and scripture is clearly not as difficult in the early 1800s as it might seem to us today.

Why apples to oranges? Very also claimed he received his words from some supernatural power or Holy Ghost: "What he did and what he said, he felt that he was directed to do and to say by the Infinite Power. In fact, he claimed that he acted not of his own will, but always as he was directed. This theory he accepted with the utmost literalness, so that he said to Dr. Channing that even the putting his hand upon a mantel in the room where they were was not of his own free-will He wrote his poems and his prose essays as they were given to him. and he regarded himself as only the messenger or spokesman of the Spirit. His sonnets on religious themes. especially, he regarded as containing a message that was “given him” by the Spirit. He had an absolute confidence in the word that was thus spoken through him, and he gave it to others as something that had authority behind it, not as his own. He wrote to Emerson: “I am glad at last to be able to transmit what had been told me of Shakespeare. You hear not mine own words. but the teachings of the Holy Ghost.” (source) Do you believe his claim, or do you believe there is a naturalistic explanation for his use of an archaism that we also find in the Book of Mormon?

But a shrink gun can't be reverse-engineered. There's no known physics to explain for it. That's what makes an alien abduction suddenly credible. But the BoM isn't a shrinking raygun. It's a book and humans have produced 130 to 150 million books. The extraordinary thing about the BoM is that it does well synthesizing KJV, EMod english, biblical and apocryphal narratives, and other materials that were floating around 19th-century New England. Sure thats all very impressive but there is a plausible explanation for all that. It's not something that "those seeking a counter explanation" have to resort to wild speculation to account for. The simplest counter explanation is that a deeply faithful, religiously creative mind produced a impressive literary revelation, like hundreds or thousands of deeply faithful minds have done before. I collect apocyphal texts on PDF. I've been at it for almost three years, and I'm nowhere close to completing the collection. otoh, I have never ever seen a raygun that can shrink mailboxes. Also, its telling that the BoM doesn't predict any syntax. Is there any Present-Day English (PDE) in the Book of Mormon? Anything that wasn't in circulation before 1830? all the multifaceted archaisms you identify are exactly that, archaisms. Everything in the text was in circulation somewhere, in a book or in conversations at the local debate club. We might bicker about whether or not Joseph had access, but we still can't find anything in the book that wasn't already out there. I'd argue that there's nothing in the book that couldn't have been learned from a conversation with a knowledgable Palmyra acquaintance like Luther Bradish. So here's a somewhat relevant analogy. Could Luther Bradish have written the BoM? Not saying he did, but did he have the experience and knowledge to write it? How about Samuel Mitchill? Gilbert Hunt? Charles Anthon? Nathaniel Hawthorne? Washington Irving? I'd argue there were several humans capable of writing and dictating the Book of Mormon in 1828-1829. The book does a lot of innovative sythesisizing, but its nothing like a raygun