Theos-Talk Archives (November 2002 Message tt00092)

--- In theos-talk@y..., Larry F Kolts <llkingston2@j...> wrote:
> Not totally accurate. The Mormons have the Three Witnesses and the 
Eight
> Witnesses. The three testified to having seen the Angel Moroni and 
to
> have being shown the gold plates by that personage. The eight passed
> around the plates, turning the pages and noting the engravings.

Very true. It should be entered into evidence that the witnesses 
were self-proclaimed liars as they themselves admitted later. see:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10570c.htm

Here is the relevant text:

"Joseph Smith states that he received the record from the Angel 
Moroni in September, 1827. It was, he alleges, engraved upon metallic 
plates having the appearance of gold and each a little thinner than 
ordinary tin, the whole forming a book about six inches long, six 
inches wide, and six inches thick, bound together by rings. ... The 
result was the "Book of Mormon"; ... in the preface eleven witnesses, 
exclusive of Joseph Smith, the translator, claim to have seen the 
plates from which it was taken. On renouncing Mormonism subsequently, 
Cowdery, Whitmer, and Harris - the three principal witnesses - 
declared this testimony false. 

What is interesting about this is that Cowdery, who proclaimed 
himself to be a bare faced liar of the lowest possible order when he 
said he saw the golden plates, was not just a witness but Smith's co 
author of the BOM. That is a pretty worrisome defection. It is 
almost as bad as if Smith himself had 'fessed up and just about as 
significant as to the truthfulness of te angel Moron story.

Cowdery was also accused of enlisting Sidney Rigdon and ripping off a 
novel by a fellow named Spaulding. The premise is that as a writer 
he was as unimaginative as he was untalented and untruthful. The 
article says of this:

"Six months after its inception, the Mormon Church sent its first 
mission to the American Indians. ... Oliver Cowdery was placed at the 
head of this mission, which also included Parley P. Pratt, a former 
preacher of the Reformed Baptists, or Campbellites. The missionaries 
proceeded to northern Ohio, then almost a wilderness, where Elder 
Pratt presented to his former pastor, Sidney Rigdon, a copy of 
the "Book of Mormon", published several months before. Up to that 
time Rigdon had never seen the book, which he was accused of helping 
Smith to write. The Mormons are equally emphatic in their denial of 
the identity of the "Book of Mormon" with Spaulding's "Manuscript 
Story", now in Oberlin College; they quote in this connection James 
H. Fairchild that institution, who, in a communication to the "New 
York Observer" (5 February, 1885), states that Mr. L.L., Rice and he, 
after comparing the "Book of Mormon" and the Spaulding 
romance, "could detect no resemblance between the two, in general or 
detail". 

Maybe so, but I don't buy it.