J.K. Rowling recently tweeted about the golden plates that “nobody else was allowed to look at them” besides Joseph Smith.

Deseret News responded in a Sept 29/22 article, mentioning “what American literary scholar Terryl Givens called “the pure physicality of the plates.”

The phrase ‘the pure physicality of the plates’ caught my attention. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that term before.


https://www.deseret.com/2022/9/29/23378965/jk-rowling-mormons-golden-plates-joseph-smith-latter-day-saints


Excerpts:

“Harry Potter” series author J.K. Rowling tweeted Thursday about Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the “golden plates,” saying that “nobody else was allowed to look at them” besides Smith.”

“The claim that Smith didn’t allow anyone else to see the plates, from which he translated the Book of Mormon, is not a new one. Rowling later amended her statement to say that 11 people saw the plates after she went “to look it up.”

“This claim [re the plates], however, is not historically accurate.”

“According to former Joseph Smith Papers editor and Oxford published author Larry E. Morris, “seventeen people reportedly saw or handled the plates (or both).”

“Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris and David Whitmer are known as the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon. The three witnesses were, according to their own accounts, shown the Book of Mormon plates by an angel.”

“About this experience, Whitmer said, “Of course we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view, but we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time.”

“Des News concludes: To paraphrase renowned historian Richard Bushman, those around Joseph Smith — and Joseph Smith himself — acted as if he had the plates.”

“And material evidence seems to indicate that he did.”


As mentioned in the Des article above, Terryl Givens, known as an “American literary scholar” has referred to “the pure physicality of the plates.”

Times and Seasons published an interview with Givens (in January 2005). The interviewer referred to Givens’ comment about the “physicality of the plates”:

“The importance you attach to the plates’ objective physical reality is established in your book’s memorable opening paragraphs and beyond, with references to “the pure physicality of the plates” (p. 4), the “artifactual reality” of this “tangible medium” in a “realm . . . of empiricism and objectivity” (p. 12), the “tactile reality of supernaturally conveyed artifacts” (p. 22), and an extended discussion of the eight witnesses’ experiences, who “matter-of-factly . . . handled them, turned over the leaves, and examined the engravings” in an ordinary human instance of empirical observation” and “tactile experience” (p. 40).”


I note that Des News refers to Givens as “an American literary scholar”. Only after I read the two above-referenced articles did I look Givens up, to discover that he’s also a Mormon. That puts a different slant on the conclusions he states about the plates. It explains the following response he made in the Times and Seasons interview:

“I would like to see a day come when the textual approaches to the Book of Mormon so convincingly situate the Book as an ancient text that it is studied alongside other ancient texts.”

If a non-LDS scholar made such a statement it may carry some weight. Knowing after the fact that the source is a Mormon detracts from any significance the statement may otherwise have.

When the writer of the Des News article states: “And material evidence seems to indicate that he [JS] did [have the plates]” you think, yeah, of course a Mormon would say that.

A non-LDS scholar giving credence to the Book of Mormon could be somewhat significant. A member of the Mormon Church doing so is just another day at the office.


Mainly I just wanted to say that the phrase “the pure physicality of the plates” caught my eye. I don’t recall having seen that before. It’s intriguing.


And too, why is JKR tweeting about the plates I wonder. I note it was a sarcastic reply she made to someone who had tweeted a negative comment about her. Kind of interesting that she went to the BoM for her response though.



(OK, I'll quit editing now... Spacing, punctuation, sheesh).



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2022 02:52PM by Nightingale.

Oh so sorry - I didn't realize that Elder Berry had already started a thread on this topic. I just saw his post. He obviously got up earlier this morning than I did. :)

Can I just erase myself?

I'd like to see them talk about "material evidence" of the sword of Laban and the Liahona and "spectacles" (Urim and Thummim) and table full of treasures and the cave with all those other goodies.
It seems the same people who are quoted as solid evidence because they swore they saw and touched the plates are rarely quoted when they swore that they saw a lot of that other weird stuff.....

I want to know why Moroni went to so much trouble to write a fictional story on such an expensive medium.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Orphism_Book

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2939362.stm

(2003)

The small manuscript, which is more than two-and-a-half millennia old, was discovered 60 years ago in a tomb uncovered during digging for a canal along the Strouma river in south-western Bulgaria.

It has now been donated to the museum by its finder, on condition of anonymity.

Reports say the unidentified donor is now 87 years old and lives in Macedonia.

The authenticity of the book has been confirmed by two experts in Sofia and London, museum director Bojidar Dimitrov said quoted by AFP.

The six sheets are believed to be the oldest comprehensive work involving multiple pages, said Elka Penkova, who heads the museum's archaeological department.

There are around 30 similar pages known in the world, Ms Penkova said, "but they are not linked together in a book".

The Etruscans - one of Europe's most mysterious ancient peoples - are believed to have migrated from Lydia, in modern western Turkey, settling in northern and central Italy nearly 3,000 years ago.

They were wiped out by the conquering Romans in the fourth century BC, leaving few written records.

Reposting for educational purposes.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,968331,968331

This probably has been put up before but I thought I'd do this to provide basic common sense information:

The "plates" were said to be a stack of gold metal sheets "as thick as common tin" six by eight inches in size and six inches high. Gold is a very dense metal -- density 19.3 times more than water, which weighs sixty four pounds per cubic foot. This alone would be enough for the story not to pass the smell test but if you need more proof, here's the analysis:

Density of Gold: 19.3 g/cm^3

Volume of Plates: 6" x 8" x 6" = 288 in^3, 4719.474432 cm^3

Plate Thickness, "thick as common tin," 1/64" = 0.015625" = 0.396875 mm, approx 0.4 mm

Number of Plates: stack 6" high, 152.4 mm / 0.4 mm = 381 plates

Volume of Plate: 6" x 8" x 1/64" = 0.75 in^3 = 12.290298 cm^3

Mass of Gold Plate: 12.290298 cm^3 x 19.3 g/cm^3 = 237.2027514 g = 0.522 lbs

Total Mass Of Gold Plates: 381 x 237.2027514 g = 90.374 Kg = approx. 200 lbs

Running or casually carrying a small dense stack of gold sheets weighing two hundred pounds would be absolutely impossible.


But wait, now say the Mormons. The plates weren't really made of gold as they were previously said to be to be but were actually the copper/silver/gold alloy called by the ancient Greeks orichalcon and called in the New World tumbaga. Estimates vary but a composition consisting of eighty per cent. copper, fifteen per cent. silver and fiver per cent. gold has been proposed. Using this metal we now have the following estimate:

Copper 8.96 g/cm^3 80%
Silver 10.49 g/cm^3 15%
Gold 19.3 g/cm^3 5%
===============================
Tumbaga 9.7065 g/cm^3


Total Mass Of Tumbaga Plates: 381 x 119.29578g = 45.452 Kg = approx. 100 lbs

Joseph Smith would have to be unusually strong to carry and run with a small dense object weighing a hundred or two hundred pounds or more. To paraphrase Terryl Givens, that's the "price you pay" to believe in a made up fantasy religion like Mormonism.

Wasn't there a radio critic of Mormonism back in the day who offered a standing reward to anyone who could run some distance carrying the plates while fighting off attackers as JS claimed to have done? Was it John Henry Yant?

The church has had to admit this. They wrote a "gospel topics" little thing about it and everything. The plates were never there during the translation process, and it is very possible that the same group superstition that Smith gamed to make money diggers enthusiastic to find his pretend buried treasure and even make up details for him was the same he used on his family and on the Whitmers. So, really, you should take take old man Josiah Stoale into account. They never found shit, but Stoale swore to Smith's gift much to the consternation of his sons who were the ones having the charges pressed against Smith for the old man's sake. By the same means that Smith did that, he was obviously, through a mixture of charisma and shared superstitions and apparent Christian sincerity, able to make the a fringe group of scriars, half of whom he was related to, swear to just about anything he had warmed them for. Half the pressure to swear to such and such was that every single one of them had a seer stone or a witching stick of his own and would have taken a huge hit to his own reputation if neither his gift of seeing nor his Christian righteousness was equal to see what everybody else in the room was seeing at Joseph's suggestions. There's no need for them to have ever been physical, and if there was a prop on occasions where people felt them but dared not look, the recurring description of "common tin" might not be too far from the mark. But surely no prop made of common tin roofing sheets is being used in a grand vision of the heavens opening. Honestly, who didn't see the plates -- be it a dream or daytime vision or whatever. I don't care how the culture of second sight worked, because I know across many fronts that all of Smith's claims were abject bullshit.

If you throw BS at a wall hard enough, it sticks.

up next: harry potter, the book of abraham, and the greek psalter. it's all legit

Jo has never been the same since she was attacked by that Twitter mob.