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Book of Mormon/Witnesses/Viewing gold plates would result in death
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Contents
Criticism
The penalty for viewing the gold plates was death. This was just a way for Joseph to hide the fact that the plates really didn't exist.
Source(s) of criticism
- Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 37, 53. ( Index of claims )
- Grant H. Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002) 206-7. ( Index of claims )
- Affidavit of Sophia Lewis, 20 Mar. 1834, Susquehanna Register, 1 May 1834, 1.
- Charles Anthon to E. D. Howe, 17 Feb. 1834, in Howe, Mormonism Unvailed, 272.
Response
Joseph Smith-History 1:42 describes the conditions under which Joseph was to handle the plates:
- Again, he told me, that when I got those plates of which he had spoken—for the time that they should be obtained was not yet fulfilled—I should not show them to any person; neither the breastplate with the Urim and Thummim; only to those to whom I should be commanded to show them; if I did I should be destroyed. While he was conversing with me about the plates, the vision was opened to my mind that I could see the place where the plates were deposited, and that so clearly and distinctly that I knew the place again when I visited it. (emphasis added)
According to this, it was Joseph who risked destruction if he showed the plates to anyone unless explicitly commanded to do so by the Lord, not the person to whom he showed them.
Fawn Brodie claimed that Joseph told Martin Harris that God's wrath would strike him down if he examined the plates or looked at him while he was translating.
In the Eber D. Howe's anti-Mormon book, Mormonism Unvailed, Peter Ingersoll and Sophia Lewis claimed that Joseph told them that anyone who viewed the plates would perish.
Peter Ingersoll was a hostile source. Here is what he claims that Joseph said to him:
- ...On my entering the house, I found the family at the table eating dinner. They were all anxious to know the contents of my frock. At that moment, I happened to think of what I had heard about a history found in Canada, called the golden Bible; so I very gravely told them it was the golden Bible. To my surprise, they were credulous enough to believe what I said. Accordingly I told them that I had received a commandment to let no one see it, for, says I, no man can see it with the naked eye and live. However, I offered to take out the book and show it to them, but they refuse to see it, and left the room." Now, said Jo, "I have got the damned fools fixed, and will carry out the fun." Notwithstanding, he told me he had no such book, and believed there never was any such book...[1]
According to Peter Ingersoll, Joseph came up with the entire idea of the "golden bible" on the spur of the moment as a way to have "fun." There are so many inconsistencies between this story and the statements of numerous other witnesses that one wonders if Peter Ingersoll was the one who was having some "fun" with his audience.
Conclusion
Endnotes
- [note] Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed, pp. 235-6