I
will not pretend to have found compelling answers for all of my questions
regarding the Book of Mormon. But after all, it is rare that a lawyer can hope
to build an absolutely airtight case. There are almost always unanswered
questions—at least a few loose ends. But I do claim that compelling overall case
can be made that Joseph Smith’s story of the book’s origin—no matter how
implausible it may seem at first blush—is in fact the most plausible account.
Indeed,
I view the very concreteness of the Book of Mormon as the most solid piece of
physical evidence for the reality of Mormonism. If it were not for the Book of
Mormon, it would be easy to conclude that Joseph Smith was merely another
religious visionary who experiences some type of mystical encounters with
angels, but which have no connection with reality. But the Book of Mormon takes
the story out of the realm of the vague and mystical and places it dead square
in the real world. (Gregory Steven Dundas, Explaining Mormonism: A Believing
Skeptic’s Guide to the Latter-day Saint Worldview [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and
Stock, 2022], 197)
But
what would happen the next morning when he went to fetch the plates? He could
have dug up the entire hill and never would have found anything. At that point
he might have had second thoughts about his dream and decided that it was a
mere dream after all and dropped the whole matter. Or, if he had a particularly
strong conviction that the dream was truly from God, he might have reimagined
it in his own mind, concluding that perhaps God would reveal the content of the
plates to him if he were able to return to his trance. He might then have been
able to draft a few pages of some type of divine message and then present it to
others as a divine revelation to the world.
But
Joseph did nothing of this kind. Instead, he claimed that he went to the hill
and actually found the plates, but that the angel forbade him from
taking them out for several years. That might sound at first like a clever ploy
on Joseph’s part to avoid having to produce the goods, yet at the culmination
of the four years he went with his wife, Emma, to the hill and retrieved the
plates. The translation process initially went very slowly. Joseph spent most
of his time in gainful employment and had very little time to devote to the
plates, although at the beginning he had to keep thieves from stealing the
plates. He and Emma were finally forced to move to Harmony, Pennsylvania to
avoid the aggressive treasure seekers. For months he translated only in fits
and starts, preoccupied as he was by the need to earn a living. At first he
used his wife as a scribe to write out his dictation, and later an associate
named Martin Harris. After more than a year of effort with only limited
results, a schoolteacher named Oliver Cowdery moved into the area and began
working as Joseph’s full-time scribe. From that point the process took a huge
leap forward, and nearly the entire book was completed in a period of two to
three months. Although exactness is impossible to achieve, a reasonable
reconstruction of the actual time of translation shows the whole process of
translating a book of over 500 pages (the original edition had 590 pages) and
over 250,000 words took place during 63 working days. The book was then printed
and published, much to the scorn of many of his neighbors. (Ibid., 199-200)
Another
oddity is that Joseph did not shy away from revealing his own divine
reprimands. On one occasion, before he actually took possession of the plates,
he reported that Moroni told him that he had not been sufficiently engaged in
the Lord’s work. Afterwards he described this as “the severest chastisement I
ever had in my life” (HOTC 1:18). (Ibid., 201)
