Oh my, I confess to not having read the whole article today. I have heard DCP make that claim on multiple occasions before -- about a woman being the actual "first witness" to the plates -- so I googled "Daniel Peterson woman first witness" and that link came up. I then confirmed with a page text search and voila.
Fascinating. Who did he say it was? I've been reading this dialogue paper written by a TBM / apologist that includes all naturalistic witness accounts available. He suggests Josiah Stowell was the first witness:Oh my, I confess to not having read the whole article today. I have heard DCP make that claim on multiple occasions before -- about a woman being the actual "first witness" to the plates -
L. Morris wrote:If accurate, this means Stowell was the first person other than Joseph to
handle the plates
Since we're on the subject, what does Dr. Taves mean by a "greenish cast"? Cast copper? Or it's just that copper oxidizes green? Here is what Morris is responding to in that second quote:L. Morris wrote:These two statements indicate that when Joseph reached the house,
he handed the frock-covered plates to Stowell, who apparently caught a
glimpse of them as he set them down, making Stowell the only witness to
see the plates “by accident.” As for the color of the plates, Ann Taves writes,
“A greenish cast would suggest copper rather than lead or gold and pages
could be made out of copper more easily than lead
Let's see, one foot square, six inches thick. Resembles a stone. Hmm. could it be a tile brick? That's a pretty standard dimension. And by green cast, that literally means the cast the stone was created in. When making a standard white tile brick, if there is too much iron content in the cast, it can turn weird colors. Not a saturated green like the top of the Utah State capitol, but a "greenish cast" -- that's trade language. "Ah crap, my cast turned green". White with a green hue.L. Morris wrote:A Colesville, New York court record sheds further light on Stowell’s
experience with the plates. On June 30, 1830, Stowell testified in a case in
which Joseph was accused of “a breach of the peace . . . by looking through a
certain stone to find hid[den] treasures.” After being sworn before Justice of
the Peace Joel K. Noble, Stowell said “that about two years since, witness was
at Palmyra, and saw prisoner; that prisoner told witness that the Lord had
told prisoner that a golden Bible was in a certain hill; that Smith, the prisoner,
went in the night, and brought the Bible, (as Smith said;) witness [Stowell]
saw a corner of it; it resembled a stone of a greenish caste; should judge
it to have been about one foot square and six inches thick; he would not let
it be seen by any one; the Lord had commanded him not; it was unknown
to Smith, that the witness saw a corner of the Bible, so called by Smith.”
L. Morris wrote:William S. Sayre, who apparently talked to Harris in 1829, wrote that Joseph
Smith “would not let him [Harris] see the Bible but let him feel of it when it
was covered up.”12 In 1853, Harris told David B. Dille he had once held the
plates on his knee “an hour and a half, whilst in conversation with Joseph,
when we went to bury them in the woods. . . . And as many of the plates as
Joseph Smith translated, I handled with my hands, plate after plate.”13 In
addition, Tiffany reported Harris’s saying, “I hefted the plates many times,
and should think they weighed forty or fifty pounds,” adding that the plates
were held together by three silver rings and were about four inches thick,
with each plate about as thick as a plate of tin.1
What's wrong with this picture? The material in the two quotes doesn't belong in the same story. Harris is split-brained.The Prophet, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and myself went into a little grove to pray to obtain a promise that we should behold it with our own eyes. That we could testify of it to the world. We prayed two or three times and a length the angel stood before Oliver and David and showed them the plates. But behold I had gone by myself to pray and in my desperation I asked the Prophet to kneel down with me and pray for me that I may also see the plates. And we did so and immediately the Angel stood before me and said, “Look” and when I glanced at him I fell but I stood on my feet and saw the Angel turn the golden leaves over and I said, “It is enough my Lord and my God.” Then I heard the voice of God say the Book is true and translate correctly!”
If you tell them, when you submit your paper, that you are Dean Robbers from "that shady place", then I think you are pretty much guaranteed that they will publish it.
most likely. let's hope, for the sake of what's left of 3 witness apologetics.Physics Guy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 7:47 amI take "caste" to be a loose spelling of "cast", and to my ear at least, "of greenish cast" is just an archaic idiom for "of greenish color", perhaps with the nuance that it's a surface color rather than deep-dyed. Hamlet mused on how fear of an afterlife inhibited suicide: "the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." It's still a (probably dead) metaphor to talk about something "taking on the cast" of something else, literally meaning that it changes to the other thing's color.
So I don't think we're talking here about the plates having been cast in a mould. I mean, they might have been, but I don't see how casting could be greenish.
Except for when they weren't troublesome to care for because angels did the heavy lifting for him.Richard Bushman wrote:The plates’ double nature was evident for the twenty-two months Joseph possessed them. On the one hand, they were troublesome to care for. He had to hide them in various places: a wooden box, under the floorboards, in flax in the loft, in a barrel of beans, in the woods, under the bed covers, wrapped in a linen cloth.
(shades, R B = Richard Bushman as much as it does somebody else)Me wrote:He got them in September of 1827 and kept them in the house. He moved in October, hiding the plates in the barrel of beans. But they'd moved in with Emma's dad, who refused to have a secret item in his house. And so Joseph hides them in the woods, where they were left disrespectfully buried until June of 1829, when he and Emma moved to David Whitmer's house in Feyette New York. Were they hidden in a barrel of beans again for the journey? Well, it's a bit awkward given the controversy, and since everyone has had expectations managed over the last nearly two years, Joseph leaves them in the forest and heads for New York without the headache. At some point, Moroni sneaks into the forest, gets the plates, and then flies to New York and hides the plates somewhere in David Whitmer's backyard.
oh absolutely.