If Joseph Smith had metallic plates why didn't he make a paper rubbing of them? He could have taken a piece of paper, a pencil and quickly and precisely reproduced the Nephite characters. Instead he wrote a bunch of "caracters" down on a piece of paper and told Martin Harris to take them to New York for validation. These characters are clearly some idiot's attempt at making up a written language with all sorts of Roman and Arabic characters hidden inside them. "Joe" is even visible if you look hard enough. I read once online that the reason he didn't do a rubbing was because he "simply did not have a pencil." Yes, that argument came from the mind of a Mormon apologist. This argument is ridiculous. Doing a rubbing would have saved him a lot of time and shored up the reality of his being in possession of something physical that had a texture. He could have easily obtained the requisite materials if not by his own means but by his friend, Martin Harris. Martin shoveled money and resources in Joseph's general direction for years. Once he gave him $50 (rough estimate: worth ~$1,300 in 2017 dollars) to further the Lord's cause. He financed the publication of the Book of Mormon for $3,000 (~$75,000 in today's dollar). It would have been a whole lot cheaper and quite reasonable for Martin to give Joseph $.05 worth of paper and pencil/charcoal/etc. and say "make me a rubbing of the top page so I can take it to scholars" instead of allowing himself to be fleeced. If only Martin Harris had common sense. The simplest reason there is no rubbing is because there never was a set of metallic plates. Ever. Joseph could not have allow the idea of a rubbing to even come up because it would have betrayed his lack of having anything at all. I feel pretty stupid that I ever believed such a story.

Such a good and obvious point, yet I have never heard anyone mention this! Thanks!

no pencil ? just put wood ashes on your fingertip and start rubbing.

A con man does not deal in logic!

MORmON Jesus is an epic screw up, so much like Joseph SMith for some reason. MORmON Jesus had the golden plates taken up to Heaven where they can not be inspected and He left the translated text of the Golden Tablets on earth where they can be read and inspected which casts heavy doubt on the Book of MORmON story, because the story from the gold plates known as the Book of MORmON is shoddy garbage the likes of which would come about with shoddy fraud.

IF MORmON Jesus wanted to bolster the credibility of the Book of MORmON story, then He should have had the translated text taken up to heaven and the gold tablets left on earth where the plates could be openly inspected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxJ7gKIymVo