In a document a former member of the Church in my area has written to justify his family leaving the Church, we find the following “argument” which is really insightful into how little critical-thinking skills people have these days:
The following is something that I personally always found hard to accept: the BOM we are told was scripture engraved with a form of hieroglyphics, (called reformed Egyptian) upon metal plates. With the BOM being 531 pages long, depending on which version you have. But they are all very close to this. As I look at a page of the BOM there is a considerable amount of text in it. If one page of the BOM (single side) came from one metal plate (single side). (And I think that would be quite generous) Also consider that, with two thirds of the plates being sealed up by the lord, and 116 pages lost. There would have to have been approx 1700 plates, single sided. My figures come from the following information:
The BOM has 531 pages, so we have approx 531 single sided engraved plates. (The plates being so thin, as they would have to be for weight and space purpose, when engraved upon the engraving indents into the light metal, so on the flip side you could not engrave into it again. It’s logical if a person has any understanding of metal work. Then that stated fact that two thirds were said to be bound and thus not translated, and the missing 116 pages. I hope you can understand where my figure of 1700 plus metal sheets come from. 530 x 3 = 1590+ 116=1706. Whatever metal, gold or otherwise it was said to be made from, it would have weighed a vast deal, and would have been very large. I find it very hard to believe that such a metal book could be physically constructed, 1700 metal plates set in a form of ring binder. It would be nice to see it, pity we can’t, we are told a spiritual angel took the earthly physical metal book to heaven. Again we are told JUST BELIEVE!
Firstly, his calculations are way off. What we have with the 1981 printing of the Book of Mormon is 531 pages printed back-to-back; that would make 266.5 individual pages/plates (531/2). Multiply that by 3, and one would 800 (rounding). However, the 1830 Book of Mormon was not 531 but 588 pages. His 1,700 figure, from the get-go, even before answering his false assumptions, is dead-wrong.
Secondly, 1 Nephi until the Words of Mormon are not part of Mormon’s abridgement, but were part of another source, unlike the book of Lehi. Even throwing in, for good measure, 116 pages, that would be 58 plates, not 116, so that would be 856, not 1,700.
However, his assumption (that there would be a 1:1 correspondence between the number of pages to print the English translation with the plate texts) is fallacious to the nth degree. Instead of reinventing the wheel, let me quote Jeff Lindsay:
Easy. It was written with small characters. Janne M. Sjodahl addressed this issue thoroughly in the April 1923 Improvement Era. His article, "The Book of Mormon Plates," is reprinted in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2001, pp. 22-24. The first page of the article shows Hebrew script written by Henry Miller. In a rectangle originally seven by eight inches in size (now less than six by seven inches as printed), Miller has written legible Hebrew script containing a translation of fourteen pages of the Book of Mormon. Sjodahl estimates that at this density of text, the entire Book of Mormon could be put onto 21 plates having dimensions of seven by eight inches, as Martin Harris estimated the size to be. If there were 50 plates per inch in a 4-inch thick volume, then the one-third of the plates that were unsealed would be about 67. Since legible Hebrew characters could hold the entire Book of Mormon on 21 plates, a figure of 67 plates would allow larger, more legible characters to be used. In 1927, Henry Miller repeated his exercise with a larger paleo-Hebrew script, in which 7 pages of the Book of Mormon were written in a small box (less than six by seven inches as printed on page 24 of the 2001 publication). At this density, about 42 plates would be needed for the whole Book of Mormon. The dimensions of these characters and those of the 1923 Hebrew translation are consistent with the dimensions of Hebrew characters found in other ancient engravings. While Hebrew written with pen or brush is usually larger, when it was engraved on ancient seals, bullae, or weights, small characters were used, with dimensions as small as one millimeter square and typically in the range of 1 to 3 millimeters square (see John Gee, "Epigraphic Considerations on Janne Sjodahl's Experiment with Nephite Writing," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2001, p. 25). Miller's 1927 document uses characters that are 1.5 millimeters square.
Of course, the script used to write the Book of Mormon was not classic or paleo-Hebrew, but something later called "reformed Egyptian," which presumably was more compact. In any case, it would have been possible to have put the entire Book of Mormon on one-third of the metal plates, based on the physical descriptions we have of the plates. The small size of characters required to fit the text on the plates is consistent with the observation of witnesses. Joseph Smith and Orson Pratt said, "The characters on the unsealed part were small, and beautifully engraved," and John Whitmer said, "There were fine engravings on both sides" (see Kirk B. Henrichsen, "How Witnesses Described the Gold Plates," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2001, pp. 16-21). And John Gee (op. cit.) observes that the use of small characters might explain Jacob's comment about "the difficulty of engraving our words upon plates" (Jacob 4:1) and Moroni's comment that "we could write but little, because of the awkwardness of our hands" (Ether 12:24).
Now stop and think: if the plates had never existed, and no witnesses had seen them, would we expect there to be any reasonable correlation between the alleged dimensions of the plates and the length of the English text? Joseph knew nothing of ancient Hebrew engravings and the use of small characters. He knew nothing about the relationship between Hebrew and English and how much English one could expect from a given amount of Hebrew. Was he just lucky that there would be a plausible mathematical explanation for the amount of text obtained from the stated dimensions of the plates? Anti-Mormon critics with much more formal education than Joseph Smith have long ridiculed the Book of Mormon on this point, saying that Joseph blundered in telling the world that he got the whole book from just one-third of the plates, for they couldn't possibly hold the text. Was he just fortunate that it wasn't a blunder after all? Or did the witnesses actually see plates with real characters, that Joseph translated by the power of God? (Hint: the Book of Mormon is true. Don't reject the sacred word of God!)
Here are the online versions of the articles Jeff referenced above:
Janne Sjodahl, The Book of Mormon Plates
In terms of “arguments,” this is one of the lousiest arguments I have encountered against the Book of Mormon.
It should be noted that this person is my former branch president; had he actually wished to discuss the issues with someone, as we did with various topics over the years, he could have. He is being intellectually dishonest by portraying himself as an honest truth seeker who only has questions he wishes to find answers to. I can guarantee "just believe!" has never been my response or the response he has ever been given to his issues by anyone. Such was said within the context of claim that the plates were simply taken away. Sadly, he does not engage with the witnesses to the plates; in fact, he doesn't even mention them at all, giving the impression there were no witnesses. In the case of David Whitmer, although he would later reject Joseph Smith as a fallen prophet, in his 1887 monograph, An Address to All Believers in Christ, he affirmed the reality of Moroni and the gold plates, and even ensured that he would have his testimony engraved on his tombstone when he passed away in 1888.
For those who wish to read a meaningful discussion of the Three and Eight Witnesses, see Richard Lloyd Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses (Deseret Book, 1981).
