The Kinderhook Plates: Another Testimony of Smith's Deceptio

[_Calculus Crusader]

Sethbag writes:

I may just have to go back and re-read the apologetics on this one, but I find it pretty funny that William Clayton's journal is being doubted - it looks awfully like it's only being doubted because of the implications about Joseph's true prophethood. Elsewhere Clayton's journal entries even became scripture. William Clayton was his scribe, an eyewitness to a lot of things that went on, was let into the practice of polygamy by Joseph, ie: he was "inner circle".

Clayton's journal contains a number of incorrect elements. Most prominent among them is the non-existent skeleton. But we have the wrong county for the discovery and other issues. So, there are reasons in the text to be skeptical of the account.

What's more interesting is the late Fugate retelling of the event contains the simple sentence "There was no skeleton". The only published account of the Kinderhook plates that contains a skeleton (Pratt's account was not published then) was the History of the Church reworking of the Clayton journal entry. Fugate is responding specifically to Clayton's journal entry and not to some other account.

Given this, and the fact that (from Pratt's account which contradicts and supports in a way Clayton's account) there seem to have been other versions floating around, I think there is more than reasonable support to suggest that Clayton is recording heresay.

Furthermore, this is all of it. We don't get any more journal entries. No continuing details. This is a flash in the pan and its gone.

Scribes, who have direct access to the person for whom they are scribing, typically do not rely on hearsay. The part about the skeleton was probably Smith doing what he did best, i.e., bull****ting his moronic followers.

[_Sethbag]

The Utah-based Mormon church is in a pickle with this one, I believe. Some prophet, whether it was Joseph Smith, or any of the follow-ons should have been clued in by Divinity that the Kinderhook Plates were a fraud and either that quote was not Joseph Smith's, or that his translation was, in effect, bogus.

It's not as if there's no precedent in Mormonism for God to give his Prophets a "heads up" about potential trouble, is it? Remember the lost 116 pages? God is supposed to have warned Joseph off retranslating those pages, specifically to avoid being trapped by critics of the church.

Ought this same God not to have given his Prophets a heads up on the Kinderhook Plates?

Of course, what stands out to me is that Joseph knew he'd lost the 116 pages, and what to you know, the Lord gives him a revelation on how to handle it. Joseph didn't know the Kinderhook Plates were fake, and what do you know, the Lord didn't give Joseph a heads up about it. This is really, really easy to understand when you consider that Joseph Smith was, himself, the source of his revelations - not the invisible Creator of the Universe.

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Calculus Crusader writes:

Scribes, who have direct access to the person for whom they are scribing, typically do not rely on hearsay. The part about the skeleton was probably Smith doing what he did best, i.e., bull****ting his moronic followers.

I am pretty certain that you are wrong on all counts. One of the interesting things about this, is that there were many very public accounts of the discovery and so on. So the fact that there are errors is in my opinion quite telling. What fascinates me is that we have idiots like yourself who really don't care what the explanation is as long as its bad for all things LDS.

It may not have been typical. I think that's irrelevant really though to the other questions. Why would Joseph have to make up the county of discovery? Perhaps the Mormon who was included in the discovery team forgot when he brought them to Joseph ...

I mean, its not like this is the end of the world if the critics are wrong here. It was a rather minor incident. But, heaven forbid ...

[_Calculus Crusader]

Calculus Crusader writes:

Scribes, who have direct access to the person for whom they are scribing, typically do not rely on hearsay. The part about the skeleton was probably Smith doing what he did best, i.e., bull****ting his moronic followers.

I am pretty certain that you are wrong on all counts. One of the interesting things about this, is that there were many very public accounts of the discovery and so on. So the fact that there are errors is in my opinion quite telling. What fascinates me is that we have idiots like yourself who really don't care what the explanation is as long as its bad for all things LDS.

I'm not the one who believes in a convicted charlatan; that's you.

It may not have been typical. I think that's irrelevant really though to the other questions. Why would Joseph have to make up the county of discovery? Perhaps the Mormon who was included in the discovery team forgot when he brought them to Joseph ...

Why would a personal scribe rely on hearsay? Why would Holy Joe allow hearsay to be published in the church newspaper when he was in a position to correct it? Why was there no correction or retraction afterward? Why do you believe in a transparent charlatan?

I mean, its not like this is the end of the world if the critics are wrong here. It was a rather minor incident. But, heaven forbid ...

True, it's not the end of the world, but it is hardly a minor incident. If William Clayton's account is correct, then it serves as further proof that Holy Joe was a fraud. (As if more evidence were required.)

[_Sethbag]

Ben, I've read replies by Don Bradley and others to this criticism, and frankly, I think they've already addressed your criticisms.

Nobody claims that William Clayton was there when the plates were dug up. Nobody claims that William Clayton, while at Joseph's house viewing the plates and talking with Joseph about them, was talking to anyone who had been there when the plates were dug up. Therefor, Clayton was limited to hearsay about the event of the plates being dug up, which hearsay went through multiple people (think telephone game) before it finally wound up in his journal.

In contrast to this, if he heard Joseph say what he wrote about the plates himself, then his journal entry represents a firsthand record of it.

In short, the hearsay about the event of the plates' discovery, and the recollection of what Joseph is supposed to have said, ought not to be considered on the same level of reliability.

Joseph had a very long and colorful history of seeing artifacts and making stuff up about them - see Zelph, altar of Adam, the Egyptian papyri, and so forth. Once presented with the plates, it's 100% in character for him to say something like what Clayton wrote. In other words, there's not only not any reason to doubt that Clayton heard what he wrote in his journal, but in fact there's no good reason to doubt that Joseph would have said what Clayton wrote. If anything, we would expect Joseph to say something like this - it was his MO.

[_Brent Metcalfe]

Hi folks,

Assessments of William Clayton's journal entry are not nearly as polarized as this thread portrays. Some believing Mormon scholars, for instance, share my view that Clayton's report about Joseph's preliminary translation of the plates is largely reliable, including Mark Ashurst-McGee (see here) and Brian Hauglid (see here and here).

For those interested, you can find a sampling of my numerous responses to my friend Ben McGuire on the Kinderhook plates here, here, and here (I posted under the moniker "exegete").

Also, please note that Wade's quotation from Wilbur Fugate's 1878 letter is misleading because it omits a critical detail:

We understood Jo Smith said they [i.e., the Kinderhook plates] would / make a book of 1200 pages but he would not / agree to translate them until they were sent / to the Antiquarian society at Philadelphia / France, and England, they were sent and / the answer was that there were no such / Hyeroglyphics known and if there ever had / been they had long since passed away / then Smith began his translation[.]

[Wilbur Fugate to James T. Cobb, 8 April 1878, virgule line breaks and emphasis added, Schroeder Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI]

My best to all,

</brent>

http://mormonscripturestudies.com
(© 2009 Brent Lee Metcalfe. All rights reserved.)
——————————
The thesis of inspiration may not be invoked to guarantee historicity, for a divinely inspired story is not necessarily history.
—Raymond E. Brown

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Oh my. A stunning deception by Mr. Englund.

Very Respectfully,

Doctor CamNC4Me

[_wenglund]

Did not Joseph Smith supposedly send a copy of characters from the Golden Plates to Charles Anthon? How is Joseph asking the KHP to be sent to the Antiquarian Society any different?

Isn't there a significant difference between sending plates and sending characters from the plates? Was it Joseph's idea to send the characters from the Golden Plates to Anthon? And, most importantly, did he condition his translation of the Golden Plates on Anthon authenticating them?

Also, what if him asking for them to be sent there was just stalling for time?

Stalling for time to do what? The plates were headed back to Kinderhook about five days after they arrived in Nauvoo. What's to translate? What's to wait for? What difference does it make if he was stalling for whatever reason?

Either way, I don't see how the Fugate testimony hurts the critical theory around the KHP like you apparently do.

Contrary to what you suggest, I am not exactly sure how much it may hurt or help any of the theories. I just think it worthy of at least some consideration.

Also, I don't regard the Clayton journal as "infallible". What I do think is that William Clayton wrote down in his journal what he heard Joseph Smith say. Joseph could have been lying to him you know, or, you know, making it up.

We agree, then, that Clayton's journal is fallible. We also agree that Clayton wrote down what he believed were the words of Joseph. Where we may disagree is whether or not lying was involved. I don't think there was. We also may or may not disagree on how accurate were Clayton's recollections of the day, and whether his recollections were first or secondhand.

Given that I have come independently to the same conclusion as Don Bradley, I am quite comfortable accepting Clayton's account as fairly accurate and even a firsthand account. It is just that I think the historical data is sufficiently vague so as to allow people to reasonably conclude otherwise. There isn't sufficient data for any party to rationally become dogmatic. As such, my mind is open each position--figuring that regardless of the position one takes on this issue, it has no real bearing on the verity of the restored gospel of Christ or the antiquity of the Book of Mormon as translated by Joseph Smith through the gift and power of God.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Anonymous]

Ok, well since Don apparently doesn't sit around looking at this board just waiting to respond to posts directed at him, and hasn't responded in my other thread, I'll ask the question to you.

If you have come to the conclusion, as Don has, that Joseph Smith did indeed attempt a translation, only it was a "secular" translation, then would you mind opining on what sort of "secular" translation process would lead a man to believe that some gibberish characters actually mean that some guy was a king, from the loins of Ham, and that he received his kingdom from the God of Heaven and Earth?

I mean, isn't that some pretty darn specific stuff? If Joseph wasn't attempting to be prophetic or seerific about his statement, and instead was relying on some "secular" means of translation, what could he possibly have possessed, or had access to, that A) wasn't created by him in the first place (like some gibberish "grammar" of whatever language), or B) actually leads one to the translation given?

I'm really having a hard time seeing this in any way that doesn't imply an imposture on Joseph's part. Either he pretended to have revelation that he really just made up, or else he pretended to create some kind of grammar or dictionary, which he likewise made up. Either way, he was pulling the wool over his followers' eyes with it.

Just like he'd done with the Book of Abraham. Just like he'd done with the Zelph story. Just as he'd done identifying the rocks in Missouri as the altar Adam first offered sacrifice on. Just as he'd done as a youth when, as his mother reports, he spent hours and hours telling tall tales to his family about the ways of the ancient inhabitants of the land. Just as he did with the angels commanding him to have sex with other women behind his wife's back. And so on, and so forth.

The thing about the Kinderhook Plates incident is not how much of an aberration it represents in Joseph's story, but how much it doesn't represent an aberration.

[_wenglund]

Also, please note that Wade's quotation from Wilbur Fugate's 1878 letter is misleading because it omits a critical detail:

We understood Jo Smith said they [i.e., the Kinderhook plates] would / make a book of 1200 pages but he would not / agree to translate them until they were sent / to the Antiquarian society at Philadelphia / France, and England, they were sent and / the answer was that there were no such / Hyeroglyphics known and if there ever had / been they had long since passed away / then Smith began his translation[.]

[Wilbur Fugate to James T. Cobb, 8 April 1878, virgule line breaks and emphasis added, Schroeder Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI]

My best to all, </brent>

It would be misleading were the so-called "critical detail" pertinent to the specific question that I had in mind. It wasn't, and so it's not. Were I to have thought it pertinent, I would have included it. As such, and ironically, calling it a "critical detail" is, itself, misleading.

But, if any of the critics would like to express their opinion about the accuracy of the "critical detail", as perhaps contrasted with what I quoted from Fugate, or even in light of the ongoing discussion about Clayton's journal, then by all means, have at it.

I would be particularly interested to know how Fugate, who lived in Kinderhook, would have a clue whether Joseph supposedly started translating the kinderhook plates once word got back from the Antiquarian Society.

Some interesting questions to explore are: 1) when were the plates supposedly sent to the Society? 2) Who sent them (i.e. who had them in their possession at the time)? and 3) When did they get them back along with the unflattering assessment from the Society?

I ask because, according to a letter from R. Wiley (one of the co-conspirators) to a J.J. Harding in November of 1843 (see HERE), Wiley mentioned his interest in selling the plates to 'the National Institute,' and that he was also interested in the 'opinions of your different Entiquarian friends'.

So, evidently, the plates were in Wiley's possession, at Kinderhook, for nearly 7 months after they were shown to Joseph in Nauvoo (the plates were presumably only in Nauvoo for 5 days), and it was likely Wiley, if anyone, who sent the plates to the Society after that time. We also know from a letter written by a W.P. Harris in 1855, that Wiley had given the plates to Professor McDowell, and that they had been seen in McDowell's possession shortly before the letter was written in 1855. This would mean that the plates were out of Joseph possession from early May of 1843 to at least June of 1855, well after Joseph's death in 1844. This is corroborated by Fugate's letter to Cobb in 1879.

With this in mind, then in addition to the questions asked above, one may ask: Assuming the critics accept the accuracy of what Brent calls the "critical detail", then: 4) When did Joseph start translating the plates? 5) How did he supposedly translate them if they were obviously not in his possession? 6) what hard evidence do we have that there was a translation? And, 7) how do you reconcile the "critical detail" with what Clayton wrote in his journal?

I am particularly interested in Brent's answers to these qustions since he is the one that thinks the detail is "critical".

Thanks, -Wade Englund-