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The use of the rod | A FAIR Analysis of: An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, a work by author: Grant Palmer
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Far removed from our own modern empiricism, the world view of the witnesses is difficult for us to grasp. The gold plates they saw and handled disappeared when placed on Cumorah's ground.[54] The witnesses believed that a toad hiding in the stone box became an apparition that struck Joseph on the head.[55] (emphasis added)
We know of the three and eight witnesses of the gold plates. The problem here is that the author has created an entire new class of "witnesses" based upon third-hand accounts. For example, Fayette Lapham recalled an interview with Joseph Smith, Sr. forty years before, and noted that something "struck" Joseph on the breast, "always with increasing force." Willard Chase and Benjamin Saunders told the story of the "toad" hiding in the stone box. None of these men actually saw or handled the gold plates, and in all cases were relating second or third-hand information, sometimes many years after the events occurred.
In order to convince the reader that the Three and Eight witnesses had a "magical world view," the author promotes individuals who never actually saw or handled the plates to the status of "witnesses," and conflates various second and third-hand accounts of Joseph's attempts to obtain the plates. According to the author, anyone who had a story to tell regarding the plates was a "witness." None of the Three or Eight witnesses ever told a story of a toad as "treasure guardian" of the plates, yet, according to the author, "The witnesses believed that a toad hiding in the stone box became an apparition that struck Joseph on the head."[1]
Notes
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