Mike Reed Drops Bomb on Metal Plates

[_Mike Reed]

Welch claimed that metal plates were not known in Joseph's day?

I didn't want to bring Welch into this, since we had (I thought) ironed things out between us. But as for what Welch said. He didn't make such a claim explicitly, but rather implicitly. Welch afterwards said he was interested in reading my paper when it is available. I hope to send him (and others) a copy soon, once all my documentation is added... I had to leave a ton of documentation out of the paper I read from, since I was already having to skip entire pages full of footnotes.

Yet, Joseph Smith, according to people like Joseph Antley, had to have had a particular Bible Dictionary in the 1820s

In all fairness to Antley, he was responding to a specific implication he remembered hearing in my presentation. He thought I said that Joseph Smith "had to" have the Bible Dictionary. As it turns out, however, I was more tactful in what I actually said. I talked Antley via PM, and it seems we are pretty much on the same page now.

Anyway, I am glad that this was such a non-issue that Matt Roper and John Gee were able to hand you pertinent softball questions about your reliance on Hofmann forgeries for your sources in your "flawed" research and the like. Heaven knows how they would have reacted if this wasn't already old news and a non-issue to them!

:) And if Gee and Roper never said anything in the QA session, few people would be talking about it today. Few people would be emailing me, asking for copies of my paper.

[_Kishkumen]

I didn't want to bring Welch into this, since we had (I thought) ironed things out between us. But as for what Welch said. He didn't make such a claim explicitly, but rather implicitly. Welch afterwards said he was interested in reading my paper when it is available. I hope to send him (and others) a copy soon, once all my documentation is added... I had to leave a ton of documentation out of the paper I read from, since I was already having to skip entire pages full of footnotes.

Well, excellent. I am glad to hear that Professor Welch took an interest in your paper. Congratulations again. Please send me your final draft for the presentation too. I wasn't interested on pulling Welch into this either, but just found it curious that LDS scholars seemed to have such varying views on this. Dr. Hamblin and others think this is no news at all, yet clearly some apologetic publications, even fairly recent ones, claimed exactly the thing you were arguing against. I was just surprised by the possibility that on a question like the 19th century knowledge of metal records, Hamblin and Welch might differ in their opinion so widely. Maybe that isn't the case after all.

In all fairness to Antley, he was responding to a specific implication he remembered hearing in my presentation. He thought I said that Joseph Smith "had to" have the Bible Dictionary. As it turns out, however, I was more tactful in what I actually said. I talked Antley via PM, and it seems we are pretty much on the same page now.

Yes, I understood he was responding to you. And I figured he might not be apprehending your position exactly correctly. I was just marveling at the state of confusion that presently prevails among the apologists who have commented on your argument. Various people are scrambling to respond, and they are taking contradictory positions. It is rather amusing to watch. I am of the opinion that you did good historical sleuthing, although admittedly I haven't given your paper a thorough going over, but that, as you said to a mutual friend of ours, ultimately this is not intended as, or substantially, a threat to Mormon faith claims. So the apologetic drama is all the more humorous.

And if Gee and Roper never said anything in the QA session, few people would be talking about it today. Few people would be emailing me, asking for copies of my paper.

Well, as the apologists know from their encounters with actual anti-Mormonism, nothing piques interest like an inordinately passionate response! I am glad you are getting a good response to your paper. I hope we see this published in article form.

[_Kevin Graham]

Be careful Mike, you don't want Dan to lower his opinion of you (as he warned you). Because we know he has made it abundantly clear how fond he is of you so far. LOL!

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight!

[_Kevin Graham]

Joseph,

Joseph Smith clearly read the scriptures at a young age. He studied them profusely which would naturally include perusing available Bible Commentaries such as Clarke/Henry. I don't know why you think it is unlikely he studied this stuff when he admitted it himself that:

"thus from the age of twelve years to fifteen I pondered many things in my heart concerning the situation of the world of mankind the contentions and divi[si]ons the wicke[d]ness and abominations and the darkness which pervaded the of the minds of mankind my mind become exceedingly distressed for I become convicted of my sins and by searching the scriptures."

So we have him studying the scriptures between 1817 and 1820. You know, those same scripture that provide ample evidence of ancient records on metal plates.

[_Mike Reed]

Sources published prior to 1828 (some more obscure than others) not only mention metal records, but also records

• engraved on softer metals (gold, silver, brass, copper, lead)
• with paper thin pages
• closely written characters
• engraved on both sides of plates
• containing Egyptian figures and unintelligible writing
• sealed
• bound together by rings
• rod passed through the rings to carry them by
• records containing inscriptions that were filled with dark substance to make characters more legible
• buried
• in stone boxes
• deposited in sacred hills/mountains/caves
• guarded by spiritual beings.
• Signed by witnesses.

[_Gadianton]

And so we see that all the fuss is over NOTHING.

Not so fast, Reverend. Is it not possible that Mike Quinn inserted those references?

...what do you think, Simon?

[_Gadianton]

Doctor Scratch,

Is Gee so pissed off and cantankerous that it's impossible even to sit with him?

I was thinking about writing a short story. Well, what do you think, here's what I've got so far:

He was a senior apologist who mocked alone in a skiff in the FAIR conference and he had gone eighty-four seconds now without skewering a critic...

[_Doctor Scratch]

I think that sounds promising, Dean Robbers, though I wonder if you might consider an intro like this:

One morning, when John Gee woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a Book of Abraham Mopologist. He lay on his dough-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his pale belly, slightly domed and bloated from stress-induced gastritis. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, twitched about helplessly as he looked.

"What's happened to me?" he thought. It wasn't a dream.

[_Joseph Antley]

That is very interesting, since now we have been assured that, as the idea is present in the Bible, this is no big deal. Yet, Joseph Smith, according to people like Joseph Antley, had to have had a particular Bible Dictionary in the 1820s in order to have known about something Dr. Hamblin has "repeatedly" told everyone was in the Bible.

What are you talking about? I said in my previous post:

I think Mike's overall thesis is certainly correct, but I think the ideas would have circulated to Joseph and his neighbors through oral means rather than through Joseph Smith's copious adolescent book reading or that of his family members.

[_Joseph Antley]

Joseph,

Joseph Smith clearly read the scriptures at a young age. He studied them profusely which would naturally include perusing available Bible Commentaries such as Clarke/Henry. I don't know why you think it is unlikely he studied this stuff when he admitted it himself that:

"thus from the age of twelve years to fifteen I pondered many things in my heart concerning the situation of the world of mankind the contentions and divi[si]ons the wicke[d]ness and abominations and the darkness which pervaded the of the minds of mankind my mind become exceedingly distressed for I become convicted of my sins and by searching the scriptures."

Considering Joseph's disdain for organized religion and the "scholars of religion" combined with statements from his mother to the effect that he devoted his religious study exclusively to the Bible, I think it unlikely that Joseph Smith would have been an avid reader of biblical scholarship in the 1820s.

So we have him studying the scriptures between 1817 and 1820. You know, those same scripture that provide ample evidence of ancient records on metal plates.

I'm trying to think of a witty remark to show that you're arguing a straw man.