Recent anti-Mormon attempt to Answer the Three and Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon

In his book, Jesus’ Resurrection and Joseph’s Visions: Examining the Foundations of Christianity and Mormonism (Tampa, Fla.: DeWard Publishing Company, 2020), Robert Bowman discusses the Three and Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon on pp. 206-20. Notwithstanding the number of pages he dedicates to these issues, the discussion, frankly, is pathetic. There is no interaction with the best work on the witnesses (e.g., the work of Richard Lloyd Anderson). Instead, Vogel’s essay in the 2002 book, American Apocrypha, “The Validity of the Witnesses’ Testimonies” (pp. 79-121), a work that is largely reliant, not upon primary sources or even second-hand sources, but often hearsay from anti-Mormon sources.

For those who actually want to study the case for the Three and Eight Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, their reliability, and other issues (something you will not get if you rely upon Bowman’s screed), one should start with the following:

Richard Lloyd Anderson, Investing the Book of Mormon Witnesses (the book on the issue)

Idem, Attempts to Define the Experience of the Eight Witnesses

Matthew P. Roper, Review of Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? (pp. 170-76)

Idem, Comments on the Book of Mormon Witnesses: A Response to Jerald and Sandra Tanner

Notwithstanding his (desperate) attempt to answer the Book of Mormon Witnesses, Bowman, like Vogel and others, is forced to admit that many, if not all, the witnesses were honest/sincere. For example, commenting on the Three Witnesses:

The assumption being made in the analysis so far is that the witnesses ought to be granted at least a provisional assumption of their sincerity. On the basis of that assumption it may be reasonable to conclude that the Three likely had some sort of religious, spiritual experience that they interpreted to be a vision of the angel and the gold plates. On the other hand, the possibility should at least be entertained that one of the Three was a willing party to a deception orchestrated by Joseph Smith. The most likely candidate for such an accomplice would be Oliver Cowdery. By all accounts of persons both friendly and hostile to Mormonism, Harris and Whitmer were probably sincere if spiritually gullible. (Bowman, Jesus’ Resurrection and Joseph’s Visions, 216)

Funnily, as with some critics such as Brodie and Vogel, Bowman is open to Smith, somehow, having forged metallic plates. Consider the following comments about the Eight Witnesses:

In the end, the T[estimony of the]E[ight]W[itnesses], even assuming it referred to a literal inspection by human eyes and hands of the gold plates, is of marginal significance. At most it might be thought to establish that Joseph at the time had in his possession something that looked like a bound stack of gold-colored metal plates. None of the witnesses described the engravings on the plates beyond affirming the presence of such engravings. Although the TEW states that the plates had “the appearance of ancient work,” none of the witnesses could have had any way to know or verify that the plates were many hundreds of years old. And none of the Eight saw an angel when they allegedly saw the plates. (Ibid., 219-20)

In other words, Joseph should have invited experts on ancient metallurgy and ancient scripts to have been witnesses to the golden plates instead. This is like a critic of the resurrection saying that, no matter the evidence Bowman and others will present for it, they are right in rejecting it as God did not “video record” the event for others to witness the event or, like Richard Carrier and other atheists, if God truly existed, he should visit each person “proving” His existence to everyone. Does that sound stupid? Good. So are Bowman’s comments above. Using Bowman's "logic," the resurrected Christ should have presented Himself to medical experts, otherwise, His physical resurrection would not be credible.

Elsewhere, Bowman, while desperately trying to downplay the significance of the witnesses and the significance of their later disputes with Joseph (e.g., Hiram Page and his seer stone [D&C 28]), wrote the following, admitting to their sincerity and honesty in seeing an angel:

Mormons routinely argue that the checkered history of the witnesses all the more underscores the fact that they never disavowed their testimony that Joseph did have the plates. The evidence does support the conclusion that at least most of the witnesses were sincere, but it does not prove that they were right. It is possible that they sincerely believed that they had seen the plates (and even the angel, in the case of the Three) and yet had been deceived. (Bowman, Jesus’ Resurrection and Joseph’s Visions, 303)

On the issue of the plates themselves, an excellent book on the use of metal plates and related issues in antiquity, see:

John A. Tvedtnes, The Book of Mormon and Other Hidden Books: “Out of Darkness Unto Light” (Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2000)