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Why did the angel Moroni took the Golden Plates back from Joseph Smith after the translation was completed?

I can not see any logic to that, and I usually can see some logic in the scriptures.

Here is my thinking.
As far as I know, no other holy scriptures unearted have been witheld by God from humanity. For example, the dead sea scrolls were found and not taken away by God. Religious artifacts are found in Israel and surrounding areas from time to time, and God does not take them back. Where there something peculiar with the Golden Plates compared to other ancient scriptures in Chrisitanity that made God take possession of them?
There were sealed parts in the book. Then the angel Moroni could have let Joseph Smith taken off the unsealed pages from the Book and kept them, and Moroni could have taken the sealed ones if necessary. They could not possibly have missed that solution?

Could the purpose have been to keep them safe? Well, God kept them safe when Smith had them, so I think that God could have them kept safe also after the translation.

I am thinking, by leaving the unsealed plates here on Earth, it could have increased the support for the church because people could see them and take part of what scholars would say about them. It really is not a question of belief, I think. Why? In religion it is the content of scriptures that demands faith to beleive, not the existence of the scripture itself. The content of the Book of Mormon provides, as do other holy scriptures I believe, enough messages for persons to have or not have faith about.
Further, in linguistics they would be an excellent addition, a new language they could study. Like the rosetta stone, Joseph Smiths translation of the plates could have been used to learn the language.

If the unsealed plates were left on Earth in the posession of the LDS church, I speculate that it would be far easier to attract new members. What would be more important than that?

The most reasonable answer I can give to the question why the angel Moroni took the unsealed Golden Plates after the translation is that he did not. That Joseph Smith hid them somewhere for some reason, and then told a lie that the angel Moroni took them. And then did not tell anyone about it.
Or could it be that God wanted Jospeh Smith not to have the Golden Plates so that Smith did not have to spend a lot of mental energy on protecting them from people who wanted them for some ungodly puropose? Well, if God would protect them after the translation was finished, and revealed that to Joseph Smith, then Smith could have felt comfortable enough to have the plates and not put too much mental energy on the protection of the Plates.

If you recall in the Bible Moses held up a brass serpent in the desert and those bitten by snakes would be cured if they looked at the brass serpent. In time the Jews treated that chunk of metal as a god and worshiped it. It became such a problem that the brass serpent was melted down. To have a relic around you run the risk of people concentrating on the relic and not the message. So having this history with man it seems reasonable to remove the plates.

There have been several books published which claim to be the sealed portion. There are other books which claim to extend the scriptures or translate the more symbolic parts of the scriptures. But none of this matters if one can not discern truth from myth. You must do as Christ told us to do to obtain discernment.

Why did God take back the Plates after their translation?

People would alway want to take a peek, not just the Saints but the heathen looky-loos as well.

So-called "scientists" would want to do continual metallurgical analyses to see how lightweight gold was made - physical chemists trying to assess its properties and physicists wanting to understand gravity alterations. So-called "linguistic specialists" would always want to study the Reformed Egyptian and so-called "cryptographers" would seek to replicate the algorithms used to condense so much information into the crystalline matrix of the seer stone. Military men would have sought to enlist the seer stone in the so-called "Enigma Project" during WWII. All told, it would be a nightmare for the vault security guards and night janitors. God spared them that task.

The arguments you offer are very worthy of concidering I think. They seems plausible. The focus for the church in the early days would be on material things, that is the plates themselves and not its contents. I can see that.

It is true that I need or needed to start using discernment.

I was only distantly aware of the situation with the brass serpent that needed to get destroyed. That example shows that God had withdrawn material things before for the reason of turning the focus of humans to God.

Thank you very much for your answers and all the arguments in them. I feel grateful for them and it has helped me I think.

moksha wrote:Why did God take back the Plates after their translation?

People would alway want to take a peek, not just the Saints but the heathen looky-loos as well.

So-called "scientists" would want to do continual metallurgical analyses to see how lightweight gold was made - physical chemists trying to assess its properties and physicists wanting to understand gravity alterations. So-called "linguistic specialists" would always want to study the Reformed Egyptian and so-called "cryptographers" would seek to replicate the algorithms used to condense so much information into the crystalline matrix of the seer stone. Military men would have sought to enlist the seer stone in the so-called "Enigma Project" during WWII. All told, it would be a nightmare for the vault security guards and night janitors. God spared them that task.

They had served their purpose.

What we know of them is their size, that they had the appearance of gold, and the thickness of common tin. It is pure speculation to assign a weight based on that description.

It is reformed(an adjective not a noun) Egyptian. Demotic is a good example of such.
SEE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demotic_%28Egyptian%29

Not quite sure that the people who made the ancient Rosetta Stone used algorithms.

The CCC wrote:They had served their purpose.

Did they need to be nearby in order to be read by looking at a stone in a hat?

spotlight wrote:

The CCC wrote:They had served their purpose.

Did they need to be nearby in order to be read by looking at a stone in a hat?

A stone is just a stone. But it can be a means by which we concentrate. Really no different that closing our eyes when concentrating a difficult math problem.

The CCC wrote:

spotlight wrote:Did they need to be nearby in order to be read by looking at a stone in a hat?

A stone is just a stone. But it can be a means by which we concentrate. Really no different that closing our eyes when concentrating a difficult math problem.

And yet Joseph treated certain stones as deserving of special attention, even going so far as to, ahem, misappropriate one because it was so exceptional.

Maksutov wrote:And yet Joseph treated certain stones as deserving of special attention, even going so far as to, ahem, misappropriate one because it was so exceptional.

"All is as dark as Egypt."

But the issue I raised still stands even granting the CCC his apologetic, namely that the physical presence of the plates were not necessary for the "translation" to take place.

The CCC wrote:A stone is just a stone. But it can be a means by which we concentrate. Really no different that closing our eyes when concentrating a difficult math problem.

Or closing our eyes right before we go to sleep and perchance to dream.