Misquoting the Gold Plates

Ralph Olsen claims he does not know how the plates got to New York from his Malay Peninsula Land of Promise, except possibly by a miracle. But he also points out that John L. Sorensen doesn’t adequately explain how the 200 lb plates moved from Guatemala 3000 miles north to NY without a wheeled vehicle.

We are not sure how he arrived at 200 pounds. Even if the plates were made of 24-carot gold, which Joseph Smith never claimed they were, the plates would have weighed only about 140 pounds. However, Nephi does not tell us what the plates were made of, but said, “I make an abridgment of the record of my father, upon plates which I have made with mine own hands” (1 Nephi 1:17), and “I did make plates of ore that I might engraven upon them the record of my people” (1 Nephi 19:1).

In Joseph Smith’s day, ore was defined as “the compound of a metal and some other substance. Metals found free from such substances are not called ores, but native metals.” Today, ore is defined as “a type of rock that contains minerals with important elements including metals,” and “a mineral or an aggregate of minerals from which a valuable constituent, especially a metal, can be profitably mined or extracted.”

In any event, the word “ore” is not exclusively gold. Gold is “a malleable and ductile metal,” but not all metals are gold. Consequently, the idea that the plates Nephi wrote upon, and which Joseph translated, were “golden plates” has become a common term, but has no bearing in scriptural fact. They were described as “being golden or brassy in color, and being composed of thin metallic pages engraved on both sides and bound with one or more rings.”

These plates are generally referred to as “the plates of Nephi” and “the plates of Mormon.” While the “plates of Ether” are referred to as being made of gold (Mosiah 28:11), and the plates Lehi sent his sons back to obtain from Laban containing the record of the Jews as the plates of brass (1 Nephi 3:3), the material of the plates we have as the Book of Mormon is not defined. However, its substance or appearance is described by several who saw them, including their weight—generally speaking some witnesses described the plates as weighing from 30 to 60 pounds.

Late in life, Martin Harris stated that the rings holding the plates together were made of silver, and he said the plates themselves, based on their heft of "forty or fifty pounds" "were lead or gold."

Joseph's brother William Smith, who said he felt the plates inside a pillow case in 1827, said in 1884 that he understood the plates to be "a mixture of gold and copper...much heavier than stone, and very much heavier than wood, and thought they "weighed about sixty pounds according to the best of my judgment."

According to Joseph Smith's one-time-friend Willard Chase, Smith told him in 1827 that the plates weighed between 40 and 60 pounds most likely the latter.

Joseph Smith's father, Joseph Smith Sr., who was one of the Eight Witnesses, reportedly weighed them and said in 1830 that they "weighed thirty pounds."

Joseph Smith's wife, Emma, never estimated the weight of the plates but said they were light enough for her to "move them from place to place on the table, as it was necessary in doing my work.”

The point is, when one is going to write a book, have a website, and claim his theory is correct, etc., one should really be accurate in his statements. 200 pounds makes it appear impossible for a man to transport over any distance; however, 40 pounds or so makes it a lot easier to lift and carry.

Yet, the main point is that we do not know for certain how much the plates weight, nor how the plates were transported from the area of the Land of Promise, wherever that might have been, to upstate New York where Joseph Smith found them in a hill Moroni called Cumorah. While some doggedly maintain there can only be one Hill Cumorah, others feel upstate New York and surrounding area does not match the geographical and topographical descriptions in the scriptural record, necessitating the movement of the plates. Having visited the Hill Cumorah recently, I have to agree that the area in no way matches the scriptural account of the Book of Mormon Hill Cumorah.

How they were moved, by Moroni before his death, by Moroni as a resurrected being or a “man made perfect,” is not known. Obviously, the Lord certainly has the ability for the plates to be placed somewhere different from where they were originally buried or hidden.