Story of the Plates

One of the most important narratives of the Restoration is Joseph Smith, Jr.'s discovery and recovery of the Gold Plates upon which the Book of Mormon was inscribed in Reformed Egyptian. Up to the present this story both inspires faith and drives some people away from the Restoration. I am not interested in revisiting or debating the facts and veracity of the details of the story, but I would like to take a little time to think about the significance of the story itself within the Western tradition. In writing "Western," I do not intend to say that there is nothing of value to be achieved by investigating the Book of Mormon in the Eastern tradition, because surely there is. My particular expertise, however, is in the Western tradition, and so it is in this regard that I write.

Non-believers, or, that is, most people, might regard the discovery of the Gold Plates as a tall tale. A story of a young man on an adventure to make a name and a fortune on the American frontier. Such a story has its truth. But it only captures a small slice of the truth, and it excludes a lot more than it reveals. Still, I want to talk about the allure of that version of the story before I talk about the larger meaning of Joseph's recovery of the plates. The story of Joseph Smith the unknown boy who used his wits, creativity, and smooth talking to convince people he had found something important, and thus became someone important, is a very American story. And Joseph Smith was an American man. A man of the frontier. But he was also a young man who was genuinely searching for more than mere fame and fortune, although he was not inimical to those either. He was searching for wisdom, and he was downtrodden by the blows and misfortunes of a society caught up in financial speculation and riven with religious confusion.

Joseph Smith was looking back in time to find his bearings. He believed that God had revealed himself to him, and that God had directed his mind to a religion of the deep past. Wisdom would spring forth out of the earth, and voices would speak to him out of the dust. From those ancient sources, he would find his way to laying the foundation of a new faith tradition that rooted itself deeply in antiquity. The idea that the past could be recovered or reborn comes from a more circular view of time. Our dominant Western construct of time is one of progress--an upward evolution to greater things than happened ever before. Joseph Smith was not against progress, but he clearly saw something in the past worth heeding. The deep past needed to be brought forward with us into the future, if it would be both bright and enduring.

The Gold Plates represent the past that would help people find a salutary path forward into that enduring bright future. The idea that ancient books of wisdom were buried and could be recovered from the earth by those who had proven themselves worthy was not new. Deuteronomy was suddenly "re-discovered" in the reign of Josiah. The Hellenistic Egyptian novel of Prince Setne Khamwas tells the story of a man who was seeking for truth and was guided to a magical book written by Thoth that would allow its possessor to see the Nine Gods of Egypt. King Numa's books elucidating Roman religion were recovered from the earth in the early second century BC, but they were ritually destroyed by fire to prevent the Romans from learning too much about the origins of the Roman religious system. The magical books of Democritus were discovered in a tomb in Phoenicia. A legend about the emperor Julian depicts him finding the Gospel of John in the foundations of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The body of Charlemagne, sitting on a throne, was found holding a book, when Otto III entered his tomb at Aachen.

The discovery of such a consequential book at the right time might overturn the prevailing order and initiate a new age, if its finders are prepared to embrace its message. Whether the story recounts events that bring about that new age of restored wisdom, or it is used to symbolize the inauguration of such an age is not important. The association may work one way or another. Joseph Smith's recovery of the Gold Plates symbolized the inauguration of a new movement dedicated to the restoration of the temple and its rites for a new dispensation. It was, in many ways, the alchemical transmutation of Joseph Smith's magical activities into a holy temple cultus that could, for those who accepted it, revivify their faith and help them pursue a holy society founded on something deeper than modernity's economically rational individual actor.

Joseph Smith did not altogether live in the modern world, and his calculations were not those of the modern world. In a sense, the story of the Gold Plates is one of the poor boy who rejected the easy economic advantage fifty pounds of gold might bring for the much more laborious and transformative pursuit of spiritual gold. By pursuing this spiritual gold, that young man might bring more salutary and enduring benefits to a community instead of being satisfied with the quick buck of treasure-digging ventures or other schemes. Understanding the story of the Gold Plates in this light helps us see the shallowness of criticisms of Joseph Smith the slippery, self-aggrandizing adventurer. Was Joseph Smith an adventurer? Yes! But the usual skin-deep measure of his spirit of adventure reflects our own failure to see beyond that thin slice of truth, the one our modern material age has taught us to fixate on.