In this interview, William related the details of Joseph discovering the plates and informed Murdock that they "were eight or ten inches long, less in width, about the thickness of panes of glass and together, made a pile about five or six inches high."ĭecades later, William recounted a more direct experience with the plates, stating in a public sermon, We handled and could tell what they were.
In 1841, for example, a minister named James Murdock interviewed William. While we can make physical sense of the miraculous events that happened to Joseph Smith in the early days of the Restoration, a real testimony of the Book of Mormon is acquired spiritually, through prayer and faith.Īlthough not an "official" Book of Mormon witness, William Smith did report handling the plates when his brother Joseph brought them home from the Hill Cumorah. Though “gold-and-copper plates” has less of a ring to it, it would match contemporary witnesses. which matches up with the historical record. Assuming the plates were not a solid brick, but were made of loose plates, and assuming the plates were not made of pure gold, but made of a common Mesoamerican gold and copper alloy, the math works out to a reasonable weight of 40-60 lbs. Does that call into question the legitimacy of the plates or the narrative surrounding them?įortunately, there is a way for the math to work. That’d be much too heavy for the events described in the historical record. Though those plates were given to him by miraculous means, the plates themselves seemed to have been a normal, physical object that Smith carried.īut according to dimensions given by witnesses, an object of that size made of gold would weigh 200 lbs.
The original claim that the Church is founded on asserts that there were real “gold plates” that Joseph Smith possessed for a time.
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