The 8 Witnesses

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A quibble, but, from a historian, a heartfelt one:

There is no justification for assuming that the generations before us were fools, or that foolishness ended when we were born.

Here's a relevant paragraph from my "Editor's Introductionâ??Not So Easily Dismissed: Some Facts for Which Counterexplanations of the Book of Mormon Will Need to Account," in FARMS Review 17/2 (2005):

Moreover, it strikes me as amusing that the witnesses, a group of early nineteenth-century farmers who spent their lives rising at sunrise, pulling up stumps, clearing rocks, plowing fields, sowing seeds, carefully nurturing crops, raising livestock, milking cows, digging wells, building cabins, raising barns, harvesting their own food, bartering (in an often cashless economy) for what they could not produce themselves, wearing clothes made from plant fibers and skins, anxiously watching the seasons, and walking or riding animals out under the weather until they retired to their beds shortly after sunset in "a world lit only by fire," are being portrayed as estranged from everyday empirical reality by people whose lives, like mine, consist to a large extent of staring at computer and television screens in artificially air-conditioned and artificially lit homes and offices, clothed in synthetic fibers, commuting between the two in enclosed and air-conditioned mechanical vehicles while they listen to the radio, chat on their cell phones, and fiddle with their iPodsâ??all of whose inner workings are largely mysterious to themâ??who buy their prepackaged food (with little or no regard for the time or the season) by means of plastic cards and electronic financial transfers from artificially illuminated and air-conditioned supermarkets enmeshed in international distribution networks of which they know virtually nothing, the rhythms of whose daily lives are largely unaffected by the rising and setting of the sun.[

url=http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index.php?act=Post&CODE=02&f=11&t=36520&qpid=1208456340]http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index.php...qpid=1208456340

While the point is taken, I just have to say "wow", at 233 words that has to be the most egregious run-on sentence I've ever read.

[Honorentheos]

There is one account that is given where William Smith describes the plates as being a mixture of gold and copper. It was given in 1884, while he was a member of the RLDS church, and it was published in the Saints' Herald-

Saints' Herald October 4, 1884

I would like to point out two things from this account-

First, his story of the first vision is interesting as it reflects some of the variety that is had between the various accounts. While this does not pertain to this thread, it should be kept in mind while we discuss what he says later on.

Second, he gives his description of the plates while telling about the night that Joseph brought them to their family. But he never saw them. So where does this information come from? and why is there no other account for this alloy combination from another source?

Also note the timeline for JS's recovery of the plates, which differs from the 1823 Moroni vision if one takes into account the eight years required to finally retrieve the plates.

I point these out because I think there is much in his statement that some would not agree with. And despite his own statement that he recalls specifically the event that happened then better than events two years prior to the telling, it seems his story of the recovery of the plates omits large details from the other facts as they are understood.

I'm not sure why he mentioned a copper and gold mixture for the plates. It's curious. Maybe it was common knowledge among the saints then or who remained in the now CoC, but it seems to have not been preserved into either the writings or the culture that came to Utah.