Kinderhook Plates and Don Bradley

[Shulem]

William Clayton and Brigham Young (member of the Quorum of the Twelve) traced the outline of a Kinderhook plate into their personal journals because they felt it was important enough to do so. They were moved to just that. Therein was motivation and purpose. Now, consider William Clayton’s actions in tracing the plate and affixing the statement therein which was supposedly a statement made by Joseph Smith in which the personal secretary and confidant took the time to record it faithfully and accurately as though Joseph Smith was in his very presence which he surely must have been. Yes, Joseph Smith was there with brother Brigham and his trusted scribe, William.

It all makes perfect sense to me. Joseph Smith gave yet another revelation which he was accustomed to do and made a general statement about the origins of the plates in which he believed were AUTHENTIC. This declaration was giving in a simple manner, generally, as if it represented a book or a chapter heading for a lost story the prophet would one day reveal to the world just as he did with the Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, and Book of Abraham. Joseph Smith was on the cusp of coming up with another invention but sadly the responsibilities of the construction of the Nauvoo House and Nauvoo Temple kept him from taking the matter up further. Smith had no time to take the Kinderhook plates up. He literally was consumed with his mayoral responsibilities and construction projects. The Kinderhook plates and the Book of Joseph from the papyrus would have to wait. Smith simply did not have the time or the will.

Everything I know about the Kinderhook plates leads me to believe that Smith thought they were authentic and the declaration he gave of their origin was given by revelation. So, we now have the case of the Catalyst Kinderhook Plate theory. Par for the course! Go Joseph!! Yeah baby!

[Shulem]

His incorrect translation of the Kinderhook plates was simply a mistake—something he had never thought himself above.

Simply a mistake? Why is it simply? How about complex? When it comes to making a mistake, what determines whether it’s simply or complex? The difference between the two is vast and can imply different conclusions on how the mistake was made in the first place.

Some may feel that we also need to account for Joseph Smith believing the plates were genuine.

Yes, and I would be one of those “Some”. You too, should be one of those who feel Joseph should be held accountable for his error or, the fact that he was willing to pretend to translate an ancient language yet again. Smith was not capable of translating any ancient language let alone point out a king’s name on Egyptian papyrus or know how to spell Shulem! He was an absolute fraud.

Although he was a prophet, he was a man who could make mistakes.

Writers (Joseph Smith) in the Book of Mormon warned readers that there might be mistakes in that book because of the weakness of man. After all, all men make mistakes. But God does NOT make mistakes and if he says the papyrus rolls are GENUINE rolls written by the hands of Abraham and Joseph and that the Kinderhook plates are genuine then we will hold God’s feet to the fire! And if he proves wrong, then let him burn.

Joseph Smith believed that the Holy Ghost could warn him of trouble and help him discern truth from falsehood, but he also admitted that he could be tricked by others.

Sure, everyone can be tricked and fooled. That is the nature of life and something experienced by everyone. One would think (I certainly would) that the Holy Ghost would have warned Smith that the Kinderhook plates were fake and cannot be translated by the power of God because they are the bogus works of man.

For example, he explained that when the Missouri state militia took him and others as prisoners in 1838 it was because George Hinkle, a fellow Latter-day Saint whom they trusted, had taken them to negotiate with the militia and, as Smith wrote, “decoyed us unawares.”

Comparing apples and oranges, are we Don? The two do not compare.

Because Joseph Smith never claimed that he could not be deceived, his mistaken belief that the Kinderhook plates were genuine does not detract from his prophetic claims.

Oh, but it does. Smith trusted in the arm of flesh and was fooled because the circumstances brought up another opportunity for him to flaunt his divine gift to translate. His fakery over the papyrus scrolls being authentic writings of Abraham and Joseph are evidence in which to indict Smith for being a conman. The Kinderhook plates add to that.

Moreover, Joseph Smith’s belief that the Kinderhook plates were genuine could be used to argue that he was a true prophet. It suggests that he believed in real buried records, as one would expect if he had found such a record himself. The only real problem for Latter-day Saints is how or why Joseph Smith translated from the Kinderhook plates

Nobody is going to join the church on this account. Imagine asking potential converts to pray about whether Joseph was inspired to translate the Kinderhook plates? What a mess.

[Shulem]

In contrast, there is no mention of Joseph Smith using the Urim and Thummim or a seer stone or divine revelation of any kind in any of the sources close to the event.

In contrast, there is no mention of Joseph Smith *NOT* using the Urim and Thummim or a seer stone or divine revelation!

William Clayton mentioned nothing about revelation in his journal entry about the translation of the plates.

The absence of professed revelation in William Clayton’s journal does NOT prove that Joseph Smith failed to imply that revelation was associated with the translation.

He mistakenly accepted the Kinderhook plates as authentic artifacts; he mistakenly identified their characters as Egyptian; and he mistakenly thought that he had translated one or more of these characters.

• Mistakenly accepted

• Mistakenly identified

• Mistakenly thought

As a man thinketh, so is he. THAT was what Joseph Smith thought and believed, a prophet who claimed to be constantly guided by the gift of the Holy Ghost. We may compare these same mistakes with what Joseph Smith revealed about the writings and persons in Facsimile No. 3! Again, he was mistaken! But is it not so that those translations were given as far as he had any right to give at the present time?

However, there is no evidence that Joseph Smith believed he had experienced a revealed translation or that he led others to believe he had.

On the contrary there is no evidence that Joseph Smith believed he did NOT experience a revealed translation or that he did NOT lead others to believe he had. Just because this particular account neglects to mention “revelation” does not mean it did not occur. Joseph Smith was known to consistently boast of revelation time and time again, repeatedly, ad nauseam.

[Don Bradley]

Hey Shulem!

I'll post soon to dialogue more fully with your thoughts and Philo's. For now, I just wanted to say that I appreciate very much you lining up and processing through all the parts of the chapter that represent Joseph Smith's translation the KP character by comparing it with "ho-e-oop-hah" on the GAEL as a linguistic mistranslation, because, even though I think that is the most accurate way of framing this process, your lining up of all these statements from the chapter shows that Mark and I really belabored that point. In light of how you're showing that there were so many restatements of that point, if I had to do it over again I would make sure that point was understated rather than overstated and too frequently restated.

The reason Mark and I took pains to draw out that point is that we wanted to write the definitive work on Joseph Smith's translation of the Kinderhook plates and the questions of whether Joseph Smith translated from the Kinderhook plates and of how he derived the content Clayton reports from those plates are the key questions people have discussed regarding this topic. By settling those questions we hoped that this would open up new questions for exploration, rather than circling around the same questions over and over again. One of the questions opened up by this research is, as we noted in the chapter, what shall we make of Joseph Smith's relationship with the GAEL in light of his use of the GAEL to translate from the Kinderhook plates? It would also be great to have fuller narrative of the whole history of the plates, from their production through their delivery to Joseph Smith in Nauvoo to their return to their creators, etc. I'm curious, for instance, why the saints didn't actually purchase the plates and so on. Yet another fascinating question, which I've been delighted to see you pursuing, is how the forgers created the script on the plates. I hope you'll continue that!

Don

[Don Bradley]

I'm hoping also saw my PM about JWHA.

Don

[Philo Sofee]

Yeah, the fact that Smith went Old Testament the GAEL to check on the characters opens up very interesting avenues for the LDS Egyptologists who imagine Smith had nothing to do with the GAEL. It will be interesting to see how you guys handle this. When we do, we are labeled critics and not worth looking at or into. If other LDS take on the Egyptologists myopia it could be more effective. I really like your research Don!

[Shulem]

Yeah, the fact that Smith went Old Testament the GAEL to check on the characters opens up very interesting avenues for the LDS Egyptologists who imagine Smith had nothing to do with the GAEL. It will be interesting to see how you guys handle this. When we do, we are labeled critics and not worth looking at or into. If other LDS take on the Egyptologists myopia it could be more effective. I really like your research Don!

I plan to take this up soon enough. All in good time.



PS. The Book of Mormon reformed Egyptian characters in the characters transcript and Broadside are another serious problem for the church. Those characters take up a lot of space and would quickly hog up the surface on the gold plates. Have you ever considered that? Have you studied the characters transcript in any detail and questioned the spacing of the characters? Those characters are nothing like cuneiform writing or a writing system designed to take up less space. Of course, I believe Smith invented those characters and perhaps borrowed some from other known sources in order to spoof Martin Harris. Inventing characters is exactly what Smith did with his Anthon transcript.

Something to think about.

[Shulem]

On May 7, 1843, Joseph Smith and several others examined the Kinderhook plates. From this event, we have three sources that corroborate each other and indirectly corroborate Clayton’s journal entry from a few days earlier. A close examination of these sources indicates that Joseph Smith attempted to translate from the Kinderhook plates by traditional methods. The first of these is Parley P. Pratt’s letter discussed earlier, which reported that Joseph Smith displayed both the Kinderhook plates and the characters from his Egyptian papyri to his visitors, allowing them to compare the two. The second is Joseph Smith’s own journal, where he notes that either William Smith or Willard Richards (depending on how the abbreviated entry is read) was sent to get a “Hebrew Bible & lexicon.” That one of the Apostles was reportedly dispatched to get a Hebrew lexicon suggests that the men who were examining the Kinderhook plates may have been comparing their characters to Hebrew as well as Egyptian characters, languages connected by both the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham. All of this further suggests that the group was taking a traditional approach to translation.

Don,

The red writing (forgive me for using red font but I simply must) and the blue writing in your paragraph serve to demonstrate a very important point I wish to make. First, I want to point out that your analysis in my view is fatally flawed and the conclusion you reach therefrom is in error.

How so?

Nobody was performing a traditional translation by appealing to other source material that might help them understand the contents of the Kinderhook plates. It was an INVESTIGATION and no more than that. It was not a translation of any kind. The blue words in your paragraph serve to demonstrate exactly what they were up to. They were comparing! They were searching! They were looking for any known references that might identify or legitimize the characters on the Kinderhook plates. Hence, “compare the two” and “comparing their characters” does NOT serve to show that anyone was translating. They were not! They were simply trying to identify the characters by seeing if they could be found from other sources such as the Hebrew Bible & lexicon. It was part of an investigation in identifying characters. It was NOT a translation! Although it could have been a prelude to a translation it was only an investigation to find out if they could match the characters elsewhere.

More to come, of course.

[Shulem]

The plates are evidently brass, and are covered on both sides with hieroglyphics. They were brought up and shown to Joseph Smith. He compared them in my presence with his Egyptian alphabet, which he took from the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated, and they are evidently the same characters. He therefore will be able to decipher them.

Don,

Here we have a published report from a “Gentile” that Smith personally COMPARED the Kinderhook plate characters with that of his Egyptian alphabet which he took from the gold plates wherein he translated the Book of Mormon. There you have it, the reporter states for the record that “characters” in question were compared to and match hieroglyphics copied from the gold plates.

Recall earlier that permission was given to fetch the Hebrew Bible & lexicon to see if characters therein might match. But nobody said anything about Hebrew being a match. Only that the characters from Smith’s gold plates. Curiously, there is nothing in the New York Herald about the Book of Abraham or hieroglyphic writings from papyrus. Only the gold plates, right? So, this report tells of characters in which Smith COMPARED were from a transcript of characters taken from the gold plates!

I find it curious that opening statements for the report state that Joe Smith “is now preparing to issue another Book of Mormon” because “New revelations and fresh predictions are also in the sack, and will soon be out. The new batch of brass plates will be the foundation of more prophesy, wonder, excitement, and increase.”

I think we need to compare the characters transcript a little more closely with the Kinderhook characters because we will find more similarity there than we ever will from the GAEL. I think we need to take a closer look at the letter from Parely P. Pratt to Cott in reference to “A large number of Citizens here have seen them and compared the Characters with those on the Egyptian papyri which is now in this city.”

Something does not add up with what you and apologists imply which is the GAEL was involved. You see, Pratt mentioned that the people examined the Egyptian papyrus by a large number of citizens and they were on display in Nauvoo, were they not? The papyrus fragments were framed and on display. BUT what of the GAEL manuscripts? It seems the apologists throw that into the works on account of the reporter mentioning an Egyptian alphabet to the Book of Mormon, or the characters transcript.

I have yet to conclude any solid evidence that the GAEL was put on public display or that large numbers of people thumbed through it. On the contrary, I believe those manuscripts were locked up in the President’s office.

More later.

[Don Bradley]

Yeah, the fact that Smith went Old Testament the GAEL to check on the characters opens up very interesting avenues for the LDS Egyptologists who imagine Smith had nothing to do with the GAEL. It will be interesting to see how you guys handle this. When we do, we are labeled critics and not worth looking at or into. If other LDS take on the Egyptologists myopia it could be more effective. I really like your research Don!

Thanks, Philo!