On the night of September 21, 1823,
Joseph Smith claims that he had a visitation by
an angel. The angel supposedly spoke to this seventeen
year old, and said that there were golden plates
(metal pages of manuscript) buried in a hill called
Cumorah, near Palmyra, New York.
The angel said that these plates
contained an account of the history of former inhabitants
of the Americas, and "the fulness of the everlasting
Gospel."
Four years, and one day later, Joseph
Smith received these golden plates and began to
translate them. They were written in a language
Joseph called "reformed Egyptian heiroglyphics,"
a previously unheard of language, which was supposedly
the tongue of the people who had migrated from Israel
to the Americas in the second millenium BC.
It is told by witnesses, that Joseph
utilized a seer stone to translate the plates. He
placed the stone in a hat, and put his face down
into the hat closing the sides around his face.
In the dark hat, Joseph supposedly would have the
translation of the plates appear written upon the
stone. While the translation occurred, the plates
remained hidden in the woods. Martin Harris (one
of the three witnesses in the front of the Book
of Mormon), and Joseph's wife Emma, spoke of
sitting with Joseph and dictating his translation,
as he received it in this manner.
In 1830, this book was printed,
and it comes down to us today under the title The
Book of Mormon. After the Book of Mormon
was translated, the golden plates were returned
to the angel Moroni, and so today, we have no physical
evidence for these plates.
Interestingly, Joseph's earlier
search for buried treasure with a seer stone, which
brought him before the court to be charged with
fraud, sounds strangely familiar to this story.
