Golden Plates considered in differing viewpoints
Richard Bushman, a former Harvard University professor and a leading authority on Mormon studies, delivered a speech on the Golden Plates said to have been translated by Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS church.
“My contention is that the plates shift their meaning every time they pass from one kind of narrative to another,” Bushman said.
Bushman, who was invited to USU by Phillip Barlow, director of USU’s religious studies department, spoke in the Eccles Science Learning Center on Thursday.
Bushman said he has done research over the past couple of years for a book he’s writing about the different ways the plates are viewed in different contexts.
“We have two characterizations of Joseph Smith,” he said. “He can be seen either as a fraud or as a prophet, with the plates being a hinge between the two. My approach to the plates is to think of them as living many lives … By this, I mean they figure in many stories.”
The Book of Mormon, histories written by early church critics, lore within the church and children’s primary songs each depict the plates slightly differently, he said.
“In each of these environments the plates take on a different coloration,” Bushman said.
First, the plates can be considered as a historical artifact, Bushman said.
“They bear The Book of Mormon history – the equivalent of the parchment and paper on which the Bible is written,” he said.
Second, the plates are sometimes viewed as a temptation because of their monetary value, he said.
“The plates … are most notable of being gold, an object of immense monetary value,” Bushman said.
Third, the plates are seen as “a forbidden and holy object,” Bushman said. “No one can look on them without permission.”
Bushman said these traits of the plates were never mentioned in The Book of Mormon itself.
Bushman said when writing his book, “Rough Stone Rolling,” he had to acknowledge that to most modern readers the plates were beyond belief. The LDS sources he interviewed, however, accepted them as fact rather than fantastic, he said.
In the early 19th century, when The Book of Mormon was first published, many people were examining long-held religious beliefs, he said.
“God, Christianity and the spirituality realm were brought into question,” he said. “The gold plates played on their anxieties and uncertainties, as all fantastic stories did.”
From the beginning of the plates’ history, critics have questioned their existence and believed others would as well, Bushman said.
“Critics assumed that only the lowly and degenerate would subscribe to such outlandish beliefs,” he said.
After his lecture, Bushman held a brief Q-and-A session, which gave way to discussion on how the testimony of 11 other witness of the plates has been questioned, the manner in which Smith translated the plates and evidence of reformed Egyptian – the language Smith claimed the plates were written in.
The accounts of the translation process before and after the summer of 1828, when 116 pages of translated manuscript were said to have been lost, and statements about the plates by Emma Smith, Joseph’s wife, were also discussed. Bushman said in the past information on the plates has been hard to obtain, but the publication of “The Joseph Smith Papers,” volumes of the archives written and kept by Smith, should change that.
Alex Hall, a senior studying art education, said she came to the lecture to hear about the plates from a historic view, rather than religious.
“Mostly I was interested in hearing more of a historical, factual, unbiased recount of the Golden Plates,” Hall said. “Obviously there is this unanswered, almost mystical and magical part of the religion. I thought it was also interesting that he never touched on any of his opinion.”
Hall said she especially enjoyed the Q-and-A session.
“(Bushman) was able to be less of a speaker and more of a person, which was easier to identify with,” she said.
Bushman said he encourages others who may have information to contribute to the research on the plates.
– kiwijackman@gmail.com