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John Whitmer and other witnesses are clear that they were personally shown the plates by Joseph Smith, something they would have assumed was possible only by God’s power, even without any divine manifestation as part of their experience. Plaque image courtesy of Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

Abstract: This article critically examines the credibility of the claims made by Stephen Burnett about the experience of the Eight Witnesses of the Book of Mormon. A disaffected Latter-day Saint who lost his faith in Joseph Smith after the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society in 1837, Burnett wrote a scathing letter in early 1838 in which he claimed he heard Martin Harris admit that the Eight Witnesses did not physically see and handle the gold plates as claimed in their printed testimony. This article argues that Burnett is not a credible source for accurately understanding the experience of the Eight Witnesses. It uses Burnett’s letter and the controversy surrounding it as an example of how students can develop mature historical thinking skills when they are confronted with potentially faith-damaging information.

Keywords: Book of Mormon, Eight Witnesses, Church history, Martin Harris, Stephen Burnett

In a 2016 address directed toward religious educators, President M. Russell Ballard noted how many students are increasingly “exposed through the internet to corrosive forces of an increasingly secular world that is hostile to faith, family, and gospel standards.” Continuing, he declared, “Gone are the days when students were protected from people who attacked the Church.” To combat these forces, religious educators need to help “students learn the skills and attitudes necessary to distinguish between reliable information that will lift them up and the half-truths and incorrect interpretations of doctrine, history, and practices that will bring them down.”[1] More recently, in a 2020 article on helping students critically evaluate Latter-day Saint history, Anthony Sweat and Kenneth L. Alford open with what might be an obvious but no less important point: “Historical claims about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are repeatedly shared in classrooms, conversations, books, manuals, videos, podcasts, and online in a variety of ways. There is no shortage of information about the history of the Restoration,” they observe. They then ask: “When you learn about Church history from these various sources, however, how do you know which claims to accept and which to question? Are all perspectives about Church history accurate and trustworthy? And, if all historical sources are not of the same value and veracity, what guidelines can be used to differentiate them?”[2]

Educational psychologist Sam Wineburg refers to these critical skills as “mature historical thinking” and notes that such thinking “is neither a natural process nor something that springs automatically from psychological development.” In fact, it “actually goes against the grain of how we ordinarily think,”[3] thereby underscoring the need to help students develop these important skills.[4] Wineburg’s more recent studies illustrate how the rise of social media and fake news online has exacerbated the problem, finding that young people—including graduate students—often struggle to know how to critically evaluate the information they are exposed to on the internet.[5] This need to better equip youth and young adults with good critical thinking skills represents a widespread problem facing educators of the rising generation that is not unique to Latter-day Saints. Nonetheless, Latter-day Saint young adults face unique challenges in this regard as it pertains to their faith and religious identity, as witnessed by a flurry of recent publications and devotional talks.[6]

Many attacks against the faith of young adult Latter-day Saints—especially those online or on social media—often take statements from lesser-known historical sources and use them to undermine a student’s testimony. Typically, these sources are presented as a “gotcha” or a damning fact that was deliberately hidden or suppressed by the Church because it is damaging to the faithful narrative of the Church’s origins. Often these sources are presented in isolation or with no other context as, for example, a meme or shareable quote that is designed for maximum online virality.

As Sweat and Alford have observed, such “meme-worthy, bumper sticker platitudes critical of events in Church history” inherently “leave out complexity and can reflect a kind of bias as well.”[7] One common trait Wineburg found among mature historical thinkers is the ability to resist jumping to conclusions based on a single source, but instead being able to patiently work through multiple sources to create a context in which to understand and interpret the new information.[8] “Ideally,” write Sweat and Alford, “supporting evidence for historical claims should be found in other corroborating sources.”[9] They have proposed five factors to consider when evaluating claims made about Church history, including a document’s “relationship to other sources”:

1. Is it a primary [i.e., firsthand] source?
2. Is it a contemporary account?
3. Does it have an objective perspective?
4. What is its relationship to other sources?
5. Are its claims supported by evidence?[10]

Because a case study in how applying such guidelines—especially examining the relationship of multiple sources—can diffuse criticism and build faith, in this study we will compare the claims made about the Eight Witnesses’ testimony of the Book of Mormon in an 1838 letter by Stephen Burnett with other historical sources describing the Eight Witnesses’ experience.

Stephen Burnett and His Letter

A crucial step in evaluating the specific claims made in any given historical source, especially a contested piece of historical data such as the claims about the Eight Witnesses in Stephen Burnett’s letter, is to seek information about the source itself so that its perspectives and biases can be understood and its claims can be contextualized. This involves learning some biographical details about Stephen Burnett as well as learning about the events narrated in the letter itself. In many cases, even just this preliminary step can require tremendous effort and research, but fortunately when dealing with early Church history, the Joseph Smith Papers and other accessible resources have made the basic biographical details in the lives of many of the early Saints readily available. The biographical information on Burnett that follows here is mainly gleaned from the Joseph Smith Papers and an accessible volume on the people mentioned in the Doctrine and Covenants.[11]

Born on December 15, 1813, in Trumbull County, Ohio, Stephen Burnett joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on November 21, 1830, having received baptism on that day at the hands of John Murdock. A year after his conversion, at age seventeen, Burnett was ordained an elder and then a high priest (on October 11 and 25, 1831, respectively). A revelation given to Joseph Smith on January 25, 1832, called Burnett to undertake a mission with Ruggles Eames (Doctrine and Covenants 75:35), although it is unknown if the two elders actually served that mission. What is known is that Burnett was the subject of another revelation given on March 7, 1832, which instructed him to serve a mission with Eden Smith (Doctrine and Covenants 80). “However, the two did not preach together until August 1832 because Eden Smith became sick. . . . Instead, two weeks after this revelation was dictated, Burnett began his mission with John Smith, Eden’s father.”[12]

Despite faithfully serving as a missionary and a local Church leader in New Hampshire and even vocally defending the Restoration in print,[13] Burnett eventually became totally disillusioned with Joseph Smith. After joining with a group of dissenters in Kirtland, Ohio, in the winter of 1837–38, Burnett denounced Joseph Smith and his revelations. In a letter to Lyman Johnson dated April 15, 1838, Burnett excoriated Joseph and Sidney Rigdon as “notorious liars.” Through what he deemed was their avarice and fraud, these two leaders had, Burnett avowed, brought the Saints “nigh unto destruction.” Burnett’s letter burns with emotion, especially a feeling of betrayal. “My heart is sickened within me,” he wrote, “when I reflect upon the manner in which we with many of this Church have been led & the losses which we have sustained all by means of two men in whom we placed implicit confidence.” Accusing Joseph of “filch[ing] the monies of the Church” and “squander[ing] the hard earnings of those to whom it justly belonged,” Burnett went on to report to Johnson how the breaking point for his faith was when he heard Martin Harris make a startling admission “in public” about his experience and the experience of the Eight Witnesses with the Book of Mormon. According to Burnett,

when I came to hear Martin Harris state in a public congregation that he never saw the plates with his natural eyes only in vision or imagination, neither Oliver [Cowdery] nor David [Whitmer] & also that the eight witnesses never saw them & hesitated to sign that instrument for that reason, but were persuaded to do it, the last pedestal gave way, in my view our foundations was sapped & the entire superstructure fell a heap of ruins.

Paraphrasing Martin, Burnett recounted how the former “said he had hefted the plates repeatedly in a box with only a tablecloth or a handkerchief over them, but he never saw them only as he saw a city through a mountain. And said that he never should have told that the testimony of the eight was false, if it had not been picked out of air but should have let it passed as it was.” This was too much for Burnett, who accordingly felt he had no other choice than to “renounc[e] the Book of Mormon with the whole scene of lying and deception practiced by J[oseph] S[mith] & S[idney] R[igdon] in this church, believing as I verily do, that it is all a wicked deception palmed upon us unawares.” In this opinion Burnett was joined by Warren Parrish, Luke Johnson, and John F. Boynton, “all of whom concurred with [him]” that the Book of Mormon was fraudulent. Putting his interlocutor on the defensive, Burnett demanded of Johnson, “If you have any thing to say in favour of the Book of Mormon I should be glad to hear it.”[14]

On the other hand, dissenters Cyrus Smalling and Joseph Coe, to say nothing of Martin Harris himself, still believed in the Book of Mormon, causing a division among the dissenters.[15] Coe, according to Burnett, “proposed an investigation of the subject,” meaning presumably an inquest into what exactly the Book of Mormon witnesses claimed to have experienced, but was stonewalled by Parrish. Closing his letter, Burnett reiterated, “I am well satisfied for myself that if the witnesses whose names are attached to the Book of Mormon never saw the plates as Martin [Harris] admits that there can be nothing brought to prove that any such thing ever existed.” He reasoned that “if they only saw them spiritually or in vision with their eyes shut” then Joseph “never saw them in any other light way & if so the plates were only visionary” and therefore the book was fraudulent.[16]

With this background in mind, there are a few key takeaways that mature historical thinkers should notice. First, in considering whether this source has an objective perspective (evaluation criterion no. 3 above), even a cursory glance at this letter shows Burnett is hardly a dispassionate, objective reporter in this situation.[17] Burnett very clearly had an axe to grind against Joseph Smith and other Church leaders in the wake of the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society. His letter is infused with highly emotional, polemical language, and understandably so, since by his own admission Burnett was at the time of writing totally disenchanted with his former faith.[18]

Second, as two biographers of Martin Harris have noted, Martin took an “unwavering position on the revelatory nature of the Book of Mormon,”[19] something Burnett confirmed in his letter: “M[artin] Harris arose & said he was sorry for any man who rejected the Book of Mormon for he knew it was true.”[20] This is a strong indication that Burnett was not fairly reporting Martin’s words, a point further strengthened by the fact that, as noted, some of those present at the meeting found Martin’s testimony powerful and persuasive. Whatever Martin actually said in these meetings about his and the other Book of Mormon witnesses’ experience, it likely was not as negative as Burnett made it seem since at least some of the dissenters in Kirtland came away from these meetings still believing in the divine authenticity of the book.

Ironically, Burnett’s jeremiad against Joseph Smith and his damning remarks about the Book of Mormon witnesses would likely have been lost to history had Joseph not had it copied into his letterbook on May 24, 1838,[21] as Burnett’s original is not extant. Indignant at the charges made in Burnett’s letter, Joseph fired back at Burnett with a commensurate countercharge by denouncing him as “a little ignorant blockhead” whose heart had been corrupted by greed. Burnett, Joseph decried, “was so set on money, that he would at any time, sell his soul for fifty dollars; and then think he had made an excellent bargain.” The former missionary had “got wearied of the restraints of religion, and could not bear to have his purse taxed,” and so was doomed to apostasy.[22]

It is interesting that while Joseph took the opportunity to respond to Burnett’s accusations of greed and corruption, he did not respond to his claims about the Book of Mormon witnesses. While some have suggested (see below) that Joseph was incapable of refuting Burnett’s charges, a more likely reason, as we will explain, appears to be that Joseph simply did not consider the claims worthy of his consideration, since all but two of the Book of Mormon witnesses were still alive to speak for themselves on the matter. Whatever the case, by 1852, Burnett had moved to Vincennes, Knox County, Indiana, and rejoined the Disciples of Christ (Campbellites). There he remained for the rest of his life, serving in leadership roles with the Campbellites and on the board of trustees for Vincennes University until his death on February 14, 1885.

Burnett’s Claims about the Eight Witnesses

With this contextual reading of Burnett’s letter, we can now ask, Is what he claimed about the Book of Mormon witnesses dependable? Should students or others rely on Burnett to understand what these men really experienced? Those skeptical of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon have long pointed to Burnett’s letter as a sort of smoking gun that proves the witnesses’ testimony is unreliable, or that their experience should be regarded as purely visionary or metaphysical. Are they correct? To address these questions, we need to break down what exactly Burnett claimed in his letter.

Burnett made essentially five claims about the Eight Witnesses and their testimony. Three are direct claims attributed to Martin Harris, and two are inferences Burnett made based on how he interpreted what Harris said. First, Burnett claimed that Harris said “the eight witnesses never saw them [the plates],” presumably meaning they did not see them with their “natural eyes,” as will be discussed below. Second, Burnett stated that Martin said the Eight Witnesses “hesitated to sign that instrument for that reason,” referring to their official testimony printed in the Book of Mormon. Third, Burnett said that Harris had claimed “that the testimony of the eight was false.” Fourth, Burnett implied that anyone who claimed to have seen the plates “only saw them spiritually or in vision with their eyes shut,” which goes beyond simply claiming that the Eight Witnesses did not see the plates with their natural eyes to claiming that, in fact, their eyes were not even open when they supposedly saw them. Fifth, he concludes from this that “the plates were only visionary,” thereby implying that the Eight Witnesses did not physically interact with the plates because no physical plates actually existed.

At the outset, mature historical thinkers should notice the important fact that as a source for anyone besides Martin Harris, Burnett’s letter is at best thirdhand (see evaluation criterion no. 1 above). What’s more, it is a thirdhand source for two individuals who were dead at the time (Christian Whitmer, who died on November 27, 1835, and Peter Whitmer Jr., who died on September 22, 1836) and who, accordingly, were unable to possibly defend themselves or otherwise set the record straight should they have felt it necessary. As Sweat explains, “A secondhand or thirdhand source can introduce miscommunication, factual errors, reinterpreting of events, or other discrepancies because the source was not an actual participant.”[23] For these and other reasons that we will detail below, a number of scholars have urged for restraint in using Burnett uncritically as a source on the witnesses. Historian and Joseph Smith Papers Project editor Steven C. Harper, for instance, has raised important words of caution against using Burnett uncritically.[24] So too has Richard Lloyd Anderson before him[25] and Larry E. Morris more recently.[26]

Nonetheless, many of those skeptical of what the witnesses said they experienced use Burnett’s letter as a foundational source in their arguments.[27] Independent historian Dan Vogel, in particular, goes to great lengths to justify his use of Burnett in part because “six of the eight were still alive at the time Harris [as reported by Burnett] made his statement . . . and none of them contradicted him.”[28] Mature historical thinkers should not take this claim from one of the Book of Mormon’s more informed skeptics at face value, but should directly test it against the historical context and record.

When Burnett’s letter is viewed in a broader historical context and not as a document isolated in a specific moment, it is unsurprising that none of the Eight Witnesses—besides probably Hyrum Smith (discussed below)—ever directly responded to Burnett, since by the spring of 1838 two were already deceased, five were already in Missouri, and by the end of 1839 the disputes of the Kirtland dissenters had naturally been forgotten in the wake of the chaotic events of the Missouri expulsion, the imprisonment of Joseph and Hyrum in Liberty Jail, and the establishment of Nauvoo. It is thus unclear whether any of the Eight Witnesses besides Hyrum were even aware of Burnett’s accusations. Even without direct responses from most of the Eight Witnesses to the allegations made by Burnett, his statements about them can nonetheless be compared against other sources—especially firsthand statements made by the witnesses themselves—to determine whether or not any of them ever “contradicted” him.

Comparing Burnett’s Claims to Other Sources

Thanks to a fairly robust surviving documentary record, much of which has been made freely available through online resources,[29] all five of Burnett’s claims made in his letter can be compared against other sources relating to the Eight Witnesses and what they were reported to have experienced (see evaluation criterion no. 4 above). We will proceed with an examination of each claim one at a time.

Claim 1. The Eight Witnesses never saw the plates (with their “natural eyes”)

Burnett claims that Martin Harris said “the eight witnesses never saw [the plates].” This can be interpreted in two ways. One possibility is that Harris was claiming that the Eight Witnesses never saw the plates at all, an interpretation that Larry E. Morris points out is consistent with a statement from Harris reported by Joel Tiffany: “The plates were kept from the sight of the world, and no one, save Oliver Cowdery, myself, Joseph Smith, jr., and David Whitmer, ever saw them.”[30] If this is how Burnett’s statement is interpreted, then it is clearly and unambiguously contradicted by virtually every statement made by any of the Eight Witnesses. Hiram Page, for instance, responded to an inquiry about his testimony from William E. McLellin by saying, “As to the book of Mormon, it would be doing injustice to myself, and to the work of God of the last days, to say that I could know a thing to be true in 1830, and know the same thing to be false in 1847. To say my mind was so treacherous that I had forgotten what I saw.”[31] After Page died, his son Philander said that his father “seemed to rejoice exceedingly in having been privileged to see the plates and thus become one of the Eight Witnesses.”[32] Likewise, in an 1836 editorial, John Whitmer wrote, “I have most assuredly seen the plates from whence the book of Mormon is translated.”[33] Finally, Lyman Wight recorded in his journal hearing Peter Whitmer Jr. testify that “he had seen the plates.”[34] Clearly, if Burnett’s claim was that Harris said the Eight Witnesses had not seen the plates at all, then these explicit affirmations of having seen the plates contradict such a claim.

Alternatively, this statement can be interpreted to mean that Harris was claiming that the Eight Witnesses never saw the plates with their natural eyes. Just before mentioning the Eight Witnesses, Burnett claimed that Martin Harris said he “never saw the plates with his natural eyes only in vision or imagination.” Later in the same letter, Burnett claims that “the witnesses whose names are attached to the Book of Mormon never saw the plates as Martin admits” (emphasis added). Clearly, Burnett either used “never saw the plates” as shorthand for not seeing with natural eyes or interpreted the claim of having seen in vision as not really seeing at all (or both). Thus, several writers, Vogel included, interpret Burnett’s statement to mean “that the eight witnesses [also] never saw them [with their natural eyes].”[35] The various statements in which the Eight Witnesses affirm having seen the plates are thus interpreted by skeptics to mean that they saw them in a vision or with “spiritual eyes,” despite the fact that this kind of language is never used by any of the Eight Witnesses themselves, and in fact several of them used language that gives the opposite impression.

Take, for example, Hyrum Smith, who explicitly responded to the claims being made about the Book of Mormon by the Kirtland dissenters. Hyrum was the only one of the Eight Witnesses remaining in Kirtland by March 1838 when Martin Harris and the dissenters were “entering into a long debate upon the Book of Mormon and [the] Revelations.”[36] Whether he was around long enough to actually hear the claims made about the Eight Witnesses in the dissenters’ meetings is uncertain. By his own account, given in December 1839, Hyrum “left Kirtland, Ohio, the beginning of March 1838.”[37] Other sources indicate he may not have left until March 26, the day after the second meeting of the dissenters.[38] In any case, while he was stopped at the home of Sally Parker in Sunbury, Ohio, he and others in his company had evidently heard about the claims being made by the Kirtland dissenters. Sally Parker reported in a letter that Hyrum gave a sermon apparently in response to the rumors: “His discourse was beautiful. We were talking about the Book of Mormon, [of] which he is one of the witnesses. He said he had but two hands and two eyes. He said he had seen the plates with his eyes and handled them with his hands.”[39] The expression “he had but two hands and two eyes,” as even Vogel admits, seems “especially designed to counter claims that the eight witnesses saw the plates with their spiritual eyes.”[40] The implication is that he saw and handled the plates with the only eyes and hands he had—his natural ones.

Hyrum likely had the same meaning in mind about a year and a half later when he wrote: “I felt a determination to die, rather than deny the things which my eyes had seen, which my hands had handled, and which I had borne testimony to, wherever my lot had been cast.”[41] This statement should be considered in light of Hyrum’s 1838 sermon at the Parker home, given the proximity in time and similarity in language. Thus, the most natural meaning of Hyrum’s statement here is that he saw and handled the plates with his natural eyes and physical hands. These statements clearly contradict Burnett’s claim that the Eight Witnesses did not see the plates with their “natural eyes,” and that was likely Hyrum’s intent.

To avoid admitting to such a contradiction, Vogel attempts a rhetorical sleight-of-hand. He asserts that Hyrum’s “statement is not unlike the response of David Whitmer, who evidently became weary by questions about the nature of his visionary experience.”[42] He then quotes from Nathan Tanner’s report of a conversation he had with David Whitmer in 1886: “I [Whitmer] have been asked if we saw those things with our natural eyes. Of course they were our natural eyes. There is no doubt that our eyes were prepared for the sight, but they were our natural eyes nevertheless.”[43] Vogel concludes from this that “Hyrum was not necessarily denying dissenter claims that he and the other witnesses had seen the plates in vision, only objecting to the implication that a vision was somehow inferior to a purely physical experience.”[44]

Yet Hyrum’s statement is unlike David Whtimer’s in one especially important respect: Hyrum gives no indication that his “eyes were prepared for the sight,” nor otherwise gives any hint that his was a visionary or spiritual encounter with the plates. In insisting that he saw and handled the plates with the only hands and eyes he had—his natural ones—what Hyrum was objecting to was not the implication that visions are “inferior” to physical experience, but rather the implication that his experience with the plates was not a physical one.

Furthermore, David Whitmer was not objecting to the implication that visions are “inferior” to physical experience either, but rather the implication that seeing spiritually was separate from physical experience. Whitmer maintained that while the Three Witnesses “were in the spirit” and saw the angel and the plates “in a spiritual view,” nevertheless “everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time.”[45] In short, he was claiming to have seen with both spiritual and natural eyes—a claim that also contradicts Burnett, who presents an either-or dichotomy between spiritual or natural sight and thus asserts that because the witnesses saw the plates spiritually, they therefore did not see them naturally. Thus, Burnett was in fact contradicted on this first point by members of both the Three and the Eight Witnesses, and Vogel’s attempt to argue otherwise is not persuasive.

Claim 2. The Eight Witnesses “hesitated to sign” their official statement

The next claim Burnett makes is that Martin Harris said that because they had not seen the plates with their “natural eyes,” the Eight Witnesses “hesitated to sign that instrument [their printed testimony] for that reason, but were persuaded to do it.” No other source gives any indication that the Eight Witnesses had any reluctance to sign their official statement, but Vogel justifies trusting this claim because, he reasons, “Harris was on intimate terms with the eight witnesses and was therefore in a position to know the details of their experience.”[46] In contrast, Morris notes that other than Burnett’s letter, no other source on Martin Harris says he ever mentioned the Eight Witnesses, nor is there any record of him talking to them about their experience. Perhaps most significantly, Morris notes “there is no indication that Harris was even present at the Smith farm in Manchester . . . when the Eight saw and hefted the plates.”[47]

In contrast, Lucy Mack Smith was there at her family’s farm when “those eight witnesses, whose names are recorded in the Book of Mormon, looked upon [the plates] and handled them,” and was in a position to observe their reactions right after the experience.[48] She remembered specifically that the day after Joseph showed them the plates, they held a meeting in her home “in which all the witnesses bore testimony to the facts” reported in the official statement (which Lucy even reproduces for good measure).[49] She records no signs of uncertainty or hesitancy in their initial reactions.

Similarly, John Corrill, in his history published in 1839, recounted how before joining the Church he made “every diligent inquiry” into “the origin of the Book [of Mormon].” This, he explained, included “getting acquainted” with the witnesses of the Book of Mormon.[50] From his investigation Corrill discovered that “in the course of the translation, these plates were shown to eleven persons, by the special command of God: three of whom had it manifested and shown to them by an Angel from Heaven, who declared the truth of the Book, and the other eight saw the plates and handled them.” Corrill goes on to explain that “all were commanded to bear testimony to the world, of the truth of what they had seen and handled, which they did, and published their testimony in the end of the Book.”[51] Coming to a dramatically different conclusion than Burnett, Corrill specifically said how “after getting acquainted with [the witnesses], I was unable to impeach their testimony.”[52] Corrill’s “diligent inquiry” into the origins of the Book of Mormon pre-dated his baptism in January 1831. Thus, it was only months after the Book of Mormon was published, and less than two years after the Eight Witnesses had seen the plates, that he became acquainted with them and was unable to “impeach their testimony,” which would probably not be true had he had detected any uncertainty or hesitancy from any of them about maintaining they had both seen and handled the plates.

Another source, Phineas H. Young, remembered meeting Samuel H. Smith as a missionary in 1830. According to Young’s recollection, Samuel went up to him and said, “There is a book, sir, I wish you to read,” and handed him a copy of the Book of Mormon. Young took the book, and “by his request looked at the testimony of the witnesses.” Young asked the missionary for his name, and upon learning that he was Samuel H. Smith replied, “Ah . . . you are one of the witnesses.” Samuel then replied, “Yes, . . . I know the book to be a revelation from God.”[53] This story illustrates that as a missionary, Samuel displayed no hesitancy in directing people toward his testimony as printed in the Book of Mormon and affirming its truth. In fact, Samuel’s only known surviving missionary copy of the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon has his name starred and underlined on the Eight Witnesses testimony page (see images below), presumably so that he could readily point it out to people.[54] In Samuel’s case, we thus have both historical and material evidence that refute Burnett’s claim.[55]

Figure 1. 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, personal copy of Samuel H. Smith, Reid Moon collection; photographed by Benjamin Tyler Griffin, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen O. Smoot. The bookplate on the inside cover of this copy confirms Samuel’s ownership and dates possession to the Kirtland period, circa 1831–38.

Figure 2. Testimony of Eight Witnesses, 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, personal copy of Samuel H. Smith. Samuel’s name is starred and underlined.

These direct testimonies from those who interacted with the Eight Witnesses relatively early on generally show a lack of hesitancy on the witnesses’ part to affirm the details of their official statement. In addition to these examples, John Whitmer explicitly denied having any hesitation or lack of confidence in his official testimony: “To say that the book of Mormon is a revelation from God,” he wrote in March 1836, “I have no hesitancy; but with all confidence have signed my name to it as such.” He then went on to reaffirm the basic details of the statement for good measure: “Therefore I desire to testify to all that will come to the knowledge of this address; that I have most assuredly seen the plates from whence the book of Mormon is translated, and that I have handled these plates.”[56] This explicitly contradicts the claim in Burnett’s letter that the Eight Witnesses had “hesitated to sign” their official statement. There is no other evidence to suggest that they wavered or hesitated about any of the statement’s details, and on several occasions various members of the Eight Witnesses explicitly affirmed that the statement was true, as discussed in response to the next claim.

Claim 3. The Eight Witnesses testimony was false

The last claim made explicitly about the Eight Witnesses in Burnett’s letter is that their testimony is outright false. Burnett said that in a follow-up meeting, where he and others renounced the Book of Mormon as “nonsense,” Martin Harris pushed back against them, saying “he was sorry for any man who rejected the Book of Mormon for he knew it was true.” Harris also “said that he never should have told that the testimony of the eight was false, if it had not been picked out of air.” For mature historical thinkers, alert to potential biases in their sources, the claim that Harris so bluntly stated that the Eight Witnesses’ testimony was “false” should raise red flags: it most likely reflects Burnett’s negative spin on what Harris actually said.[57] Nonetheless, that is how Burnett represented what Harris said, and skeptics like Vogel accept his claim, reasoning that “Harris evidently denounced the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses as false in the sense that it implied a purely natural and physical experience with the plates.”[58] Yet this claim that their testimony was “false” is unequivocally contradicted by the witnesses in several sources.

John Whitmer, in particular, made several concise and direct statements to the contrary toward the end of his life, such as this one from an 1876 letter to Heman C. Smith: “From what you have written, I conclude you have read the Book of Mormon, together with the testimonies that are thereto attached; in which testimonies you read my name subscribed as one of the Eight witnesses to said Book. That testimony was, is, and will be true henceforth and forever.”[59] E. C. Brand wrote a short note about his visit with Whitmer on February 18, 1875, in which he said Whitmer “bore his testimony to me concerning the truth, and declared that his testimony, as found in the ‘Testimony of the Eight Witnesses,’ in the Book of Mormon, is strictly true.”[60] As the last of the Eight Witnesses still living at the time, Whitmer acted as spokesman for them all in a letter written in 1876: “I have never heard that any one of the . . . eight witnesses ever denied the testimony that they have borne to the book of Mormon as published in the first edition of the Book of Mormon.”[61] P. Wilhelm Poulson visited Whitmer in April 1878, just a couple of months before the latter’s death, and asked, “I am aware that your name is affixed to the testimony of the Book of Mormon, that you saw the plates?” to which Whitmer responded, “It is so, and that testimony is true.”[62]

Beyond these statements made by John Whitmer toward the end of his life, others among the Eight Witnesses were also reported as affirming the truth of their printed testimony. In eulogizing his brothers-in-law Christian Whitmer and Peter Whitmer Jr., Oliver Cowdery wrote that “they were both included in the list of the eight witnesses in the book of Mormon, and though they have departed, it is with great satisfaction that we reflect, that they proclaimed to their last moments, the certainty of their former testimony.”[63] Some years later, in April 1843, a newspaper in Salem, Massachusetts, reported hearing Hyrum Smith preach and noted how “we heard him declare, in this city in public, that what is recorded about the plates, &c. &c. is God’s solemn truth.”[64]

The children of Jacob Whitmer and Hiram Page indicated that their fathers affirmed the truth of their testimonies throughout their lives. John C. Whitmer, Jacob’s son, said how his father “was always faithful and true to his testimony to the Book of Mormon, and confirmed it on his deathbed.”[65] Philander Page, son of Hiram Page, similarly confirmed, “I knew my father to be true and faithful to his testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon until the very last.”[66] Philander also told George Edward Anderson that his father “never faltered in his testimony about the plates and the characters.”[67] The implication of these statements about the signatories of the Eight Witnesses’ testimony is that they upheld that printed testimony as true until the day they died. All told, then, we have reliable reports that six of the Eight Witnesses—John Whitmer, Hyrum Smith, Christian Whitmer, Peter Whitmer Jr., Jacob Whitmer, and Hiram Page—all affirmed that their printed testimony was true. We can make it seven if we factor in Phineas Young’s account of Samuel H. Smith proudly drawing attention to the printed testimony with his name affixed (see claim 2)—a gesture clearly indicating his acceptance that the statement was true to his experience.

Vogel downplays the value of these statements, saying they “shed very little light on the historical event behind their Testimony,”[68] but these affirmations of the truth of the Eight Witnesses’ testimony undeniably contradict the claim made in Burnett’s letter that their testimony was outright false. Furthermore, mature historical thinkers should recognize that Vogel’s own biases provide a motive for dismissing the significance of these statements. Vogel tries to argue that the accuracy of the official statement cannot be taken at face value, claiming that “their experience was probably more complex than their group statement implies,” insinuating that it conflated “varying and diverse experiences of the eight men” together, and thus arguing that “despite the naturalistic tone of the published Testimony of Eight Witnesses, . . . their experience was at least partly visionary.”[69]

Such a position is much harder to maintain when the various reports of the individual witnesses affirming the printed testimony as true and correct are taken into proper account.[70] Each affirmation of their printed statement also serves as an assurance from the individual members of the Eight Witnesses that the details in that official testimony are an accurate reflection of their experience—and those details clearly describe a physical, material examination of the plates.[71] Thus, each of these statements also constitutes a reaffirmation that (1) Joseph Smith, rather than a supernatural agent, showed them the plates; (2) they could see that they were golden in color; (3) they were able to handle the individual leaves and examine their engravings; (4) the plates and engravings looked ancient; and (5) they both saw and hefted the plates. These details from the official statement contradict several of Burnett’s other spiritualizing claims about their experience.

Claim 4. The plates were seen only in vision, with “eyes shut”

As mentioned, Burnett goes beyond the claims he attributed to Martin Harris to make his own inferences and conclusions. Specifically, he concludes that “there can be nothing brought to prove that any such thing [as the plates] ever existed” because the revelation now known as Doctrine and Covenants 17 indicates that “the three [witnesses] should testify that they had seen the plates even as J[ospeh] S[mith] Jr & if they only saw them spiritually or in vision with their eyes shut—J[oseph] S[mith] Jr never saw them in any other light way.” Although Burnett does not mention the Eight Witnesses here explicitly, his conclusion that there could be no testimony “brought to prove that any such thing ever existed” implies that he assumed the eight, too, only saw the plates “spiritually or in vision with their eyes shut.” Warren Parrish, Burnett’s fellow dissident, makes it more explicit that they interpreted Martin Harris and section 17 to mean that no one could have seen the plates, except in vision: “Martin Harris, one of the witnesses to the book of Mormon, told me and others a few days since, that he never saw the plates with his natural eyes, but in a vision. He also said that Joseph, nor any other man, ever saw them in any other way; which agrees with the revelations.”[72] Thus, the Eight Witnesses must have been included among those who, in Burnett’s words, “only saw them spiritually or in vision with their eyes shut.”

Claiming that the witnesses’ eyes were physically shut when they “saw” the plates adds a new wrinkle to the claim that they had not seen the plates with their “natural eyes” that almost certainly goes beyond anything Martin Harris said.[73] This puts this claim on even shakier ground than the three previous claims. Nonetheless, the same sources that contradicted the claim about “natural eyes” (see claim 1) also naturally contradict the claim that they saw the plates “with their eyes shut.” Remember that Hyrum insisted throughout his sufferings in Missouri that he could not “deny the things which my eyes had seen.”[74] The explicit mention that it was his eyes that did the seeing can only be reasonably interpreted as meaning that his eyes were open when he saw the plates. This is especially true when, as noted above (see claim 1), we keep in mind that this was only a year and a half after his sermon at Salley Parker’s home, where he insisted “he had but . . . two eyes” and “he had seen the plates with his eyes.”[75] Again, the clear implication of Hyrum’s words, most notably his explicit mention of his eyes, is that he saw the plates with the only eyes he had—so they must have been open when he saw them.

Hyrum’s brother William said that not just Hyrum but “a number [of] persons” specifically testified that they “Saw with their eyes . . . the said record.”[76] William had been “personaly acquainted with the persons whose names are given in testimony of the record” for many years,[77] and based on that close familiarity understood their testimony to mean they had seen as one naturally sees—with open eyes.

Poulson’s report of John Whitmer’s response to the question, “Did you see them [the plates] covered with a cloth?” is also relevant here: “No. He [Joseph Smith] handed them uncovered into our hands, and we turned the leaves sufficient to satisfy us.”[78] Although this does not speak of the eyes or state whether they were opened or shut, the clear implication of Whitmer’s answer is that they saw the plates in the way in which one ordinarily sees any object—uncovered, and with open eyes. This is clearly a contradiction of Burnett’s more visionary, “eyes shut” portrayal of the Eight Witnesses’ experience.

Although other sources are not quite as explicit as these, their general thrust is often toward a more naturalistic interpretation of how the witnesses saw the plates. Daniel Tyler, for instance, remembered hearing Samuel H. Smith testify that “he knew his brother Joseph had the plates, for the prophet had shown them to him, and he had handled them and seen the engravings thereon.”[79] The most natural reading of this source is that Samuel was claiming to have seen and examined the plates with open eyes, using his natural senses. In the absence of any reliable evidence to the contrary, other sources that simply speak of the Eight Witnesses seeing the plates (many of which have already been cited) should likewise be understood as referring to seeing in the ordinary way with open eyes.

Claim 5. The plates never existed, but were only visionary

Burnett’s ultimate conclusion is that “there can be nothing brought to prove that any such thing [as the plates] ever existed” and thus “the plates were only visionary.” Burnett is thereby implying that the Eight Witnesses never physically handled the plates, because there were no physical plates for them to handle. This is clearly contradicted by the abundant accounts of the Eight Witnesses testifying to having handled or hefted the plates, several of which have already been cited. Hyrum Smith, as previously noted, refused to “deny the things . . . which my hands had handled,”[80] even amid suffering and persecution. As with his eyes, he insisted that the hands with which he handled the plates were the only hands he had—his physical, bodily hands.[81] Similarly, Hyrum’s brother-in-law Joseph Fielding wrote, “My sister [Mary Fielding, Hyrum’s wife] bears testimony that her husband has seen and handled the plates.”[82] As noted above, Hyrum’s brother Samuel also reported that “he had handled them.”[83] Their younger brother William knew from his many years of personal acquaintance with them and the rest of the Eight Witnesses that they “not only Saw with their eyes but handled with their hands the said record.”[84]

John Whitmer also forthrightly proclaimed, “I have handled these plates.”[85] Several others—beyond those already cited throughout this paper—reported hearing John Whitmer talk about physically interacting with the plates. Oliver Cowdery, for instance, reported that John Whitmer spoke “openly, candidly, and seriously, of what he has seen, hefted and handled with his own hands” at an 1835 conference.[86] By April 1839, John Whitmer had joined the dissenters in Missouri. At one point he was confronted by Theodore Turley about his testimony in front of an anti-Mormon crowd. Turley called Whitmer out, saying, “You have published to the world that an angel did present those plates to Joseph Smith,” evidently conflating the Eight Witnesses’ testimony with that of the Three Witnesses, or possibly confusing John for his brother David. In any case, Whitmer replied by emphasizing the physical nature of the eight’s experience: “I now say, I handled those plates, there was fine engravings on both sides—I handled them.” Turley followed up by asking “why the translation is not now true,” to which Whitmer replied, “I cannot read it [the characters on the plates], and I do not know whether it [the translation] is true or not.”[87] It seems that upon leaving the Church, Whitmer apparently experienced some doubt about the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon itself, but even then he could not deny he had physically examined real plates with writing engraved on them.

Later in life, John Whitmer continued to affirm both seeing and handling the plates and expressed renewed confidence in their translation. Myron H. Bond heard him testify “with tears in his eyes, that he knew as well as he knew he had an existence that Joseph translated the ancient writing which was upon the plates which he ‘saw and handled.’”[88] In January 1878 he gave a discourse in which he said that “he had often handled the identical golden plates which Mr. [Joseph] Smith received from the hand of the angel.”[89] The most materialistic report comes from Poulson’s interview shortly before John Whitmer passed away. Poulson asked, “Did you handle the plates with your hands?” and Whitmer replied, “I did so!” Poulson followed up by asking further, “Then they were a material substance?” to which Whitmer answered, “Yes, as material as anything can be.”[90] He went on to ask questions about the size, weight, and thickness of the plates, to which Whitmer gave answers providing a highly material description of the plates, the details of which are consistent with those given in other sources.[91]

In addition to all these, there are also the many occasions in which various people physically interacted with the plates while covered or in a box.[92] By Burnett’s own admission, Martin Harris was one of these, as “he had hefted the plates repeatedly in a box [or] with only a tablecloth or a handkerchief over them.” Other sources confirmed that Harris had hefted the plates in a box or felt them through a cloth covering on various occasions.[93] While these accounts from informal witnesses who reported handling the plates (in a box or under a cloth) generally fall beyond the scope of this paper,[94] William Smith’s report of when Joseph first brought the plates home is relevant since it involves his family members who would later become official witnesses:

When the plates were brought in they were wrapped up in a tow frock. My father put them into a pillow case. Father said, “What, Joseph, can we not see them?” “No. I was forbidden to show them until they are translated, but you can feel them.” We handled them and could tell what they were. They were not quite as large as this Bible. Could tell whether they were round or square. Could raise the leaves this way (raising a few leaves of the Bible before him). One could easily tell that they were not a stone, hewn out to deceive, or even a block of wood. Being a mixture of gold and copper, they were much heavier than stone, and very much heavier than wood.[95]

William reports that his father, Joseph Smith Sr., specifically handled the covered plates, taking them while covered in a tow frock and placing them into a pillowcase. He then describes the family feeling and handling them, sufficiently that they could clearly tell what kind of object was in that pillowcase. This included William’s brothers Hyrum and Samuel, who along with their father later became three of the Eight Witnesses.[96]

Burnett’s conclusions completely ignore Martin Harris’s report of handling and hefting the covered plates, which in and of itself makes Burnett’s “visionary” plates theory untenable, but the numerous accounts of the Eight Witnesses plainly handling the plates further contradict Burnett’s theory. Even while leaning heavily on Burnett’s letter in their attempt to explain the experience of the witnesses, Vogel and other modern critics have had to concede that Burnett’s view that “the plates were only visionary” is indefensible and have thus proposed the use of “fake” plates as a prop to try to explain the physical and material experience of the Eight Witnesses and several informal witnesses.[97]

Conclusion

Having systematically compared the claims made in Burnett’s letter to the broader historical record on the Eight Witnesses’ experience, we find no basis for giving credence to the former. The evidence compels us to concur with the late Richard Lloyd Anderson, who concluded after his own careful study that Burnett’s letter “has no value when the Eight Witnesses themselves contradict it consistently and clearly.”[98] The simple fact is this: every one of Burnett’s claims made about the Eight Witnesses is fatally undermined by stronger historical data. To give singular emphasis or preference to Burnett’s thirdhand hearsay testimony over the direct, unambiguous testimonies of the Eight Witnesses themselves or those close to them (including immediate family) is nothing short of historiographical malpractice. In no other circumstance and for no other historical subject would it be considered acceptable by the catholic standards of critical methodology to favor a source like Burnett over far better and reliable testimonies. The fact that so many do favor Burnett uncritically as a source for understanding the experience of the Eight Witnesses speaks either to their biases (whether conscious or unconscious) or to their inability to exercise mature historical thinking. We hasten to add that we do not think Burnett was consciously lying about what he thought he heard Martin Harris say. Instead, giving him the benefit of the doubt, we believe that Burnett sincerely mistook what Martin was saying and jumped to several hasty, unwarranted conclusions about the Eight Witnesses and their experience based on that misunderstanding.[99] This is the most charitable we can be with Burnett, since, as we have shown at length, his claims simply do not withstand scrutiny.

To succinctly underscore the weakness of Burnett as a source on the Eight Witnesses when critical standards are applied, we return to Sweat and Alford’s five factors for evaluating sources mentioned in the introduction. Sweat proposes ranking sources on each of these five criteria on a scale of 0–2, with 0 meaning the source does not satisfy the criterion at all and 2 meaning it fully satisfies the criterion, and then adding up the scores to determine the source’s overall reliability. A score between 8–10 means the source can be considered reliable, a score between 4–7 suggests that it is somewhat reliable, and 0–3 indicates that it not a very reliable source.[100] When Burnett’s letter is graded as a source for the Eight Witnesses’ testimony using this method, it scores a 3 out of 10, unequivocally showing that it is not a very reliable source (see table).

We hope that this exercise does not come off as needlessly laborious or overwrought. Professional historians or those without ideological blinders may not see why it was necessary for us to expend so much effort just to show how a single, thirdhand, hearsay source is problematic, especially when it is contradicted so powerfully by better evidence. To them this paper may justifiably appear to be overkill. Nevertheless, our intention here has been to show students how mature historical thinking takes time and effort and requires close attention to detail, and to provide religious educators with an illustrative exercise for their students, and so we have felt it necessary to examine these sources and the secondary literature so thoroughly. The sort of cognitive behavior one typically encounters in the digital landscape of social media, podcasts, memes, or other online “hot takes” is utterly inimical to mature historical thinking but is endemic among college-aged young adults, and so helping students develop critical thinking skills can only be done through slow, systematic effort. Hopefully, this study serves as a helpful example of how this can be done with critical issues in Latter-day Saint history.

Postscript: “By a Supernatural Power”

One statement, that appears in the account of John Whitmer’s interaction with Theodore Turley has been used by critics to justify their dependence on the Burnett letter because it depicts Whitmer saying that the plates “were shewn to me by a supernatural power.”[101] For example, Grant Palmer writes how “this added detail of how he saw [the plates] indicates that the eight probably did not observe or feel the actual artifact, just as Harris testified [according to Burnett].”[102] Other scholars, however, have pointed out several reasons why this detail should be considered more critically. Thus, this account provides an additional opportunity to illustrate how critically examining sources and their relationship to other documents can help diffuse criticism and build faith.

In April 1839 the Saints were being forced to leave Missouri, but Turley had remained behind as part of a committee appointed to settle some of the Church’s business affairs. A group of eight men, including John Whitmer, confronted Turley about one of Joseph Smith’s revelations, insisting that it could not possibly be fulfilled. They encouraged Turley to give up his faith in Joseph Smith as John Corrill had. The account, as it appears in Joseph Smith’s manuscript history, then proceeds as follows:

Turley said, Gentlemen, “I presume there are men here who have heard Corrill say, Mormonism was true, Joseph Smith was a Prophet, and inspired of God &c I now call upon you, John Whitmer, you say Corrill is a moral and good man, do you believe him, when he says the Book of Mormon is true, or when it not true, there are . . . many things published that they say is true, and again turn around and say it is false” Whitmer asked do you hint at me? Turley replied “if the cap fits you, wear it, all I know, you have published to the world that an angel did present those plates to Joseph Smith” Whitmer replied “I now say, I handled those plates, there was fine engravings on both sides—I handled them,” and he described how they were hung, and “they were shewn to me by a supernatural power” he acknowledged all—Turley asked him “why the translation is not now true,” he said “I cannot read it, and I do not know whether it is true or not”—Whitmer testified all this in the presence of Eight Men.[103]

This account was incorporated into Joseph Smith’s history from a memorandum initially written as a first-person account as if from Turley himself but in Thomas Bullock’s handwriting with editorial markings from Willard Richards.[104] As Larry E. Morris has noted, because we do not know the exact relationship between this document and Turley’s original (now lost) account, this means statements attributed to Whitmer here are effectively thirdhand.[105]

As a unique detail in a thirdhand source, the reference to “supernatural power” here needs to be considered critically. Within the narrative context of the Turley memorandum itself, the idea that Whitmer was referring to some kind of visionary or miraculous experience is entirely inconsistent with the overall tenor of the account. The whole point of Whitmer’s response is that despite having physically examined the plates and their engravings, he could not be sure of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon because he had no way of knowing if the translation was accurate—a position that is entirely consistent with the official testimony of the Eight Witnesses (which says nothing about the accuracy of the translation), but makes less sense if he was claiming that the experience was divine or miraculous in some way.

The late Richard Lloyd Anderson pointed out that “Turley erroneously thought the published statement of the Eight Witnesses testified of the miraculous” (because Turley, as quoted above, attributes the mention of an angel to the Eight Witnesses’ statement), while Whitmer’s response “reinforced the physical terms” of the Eight Witnesses’ actual written testimony. Consequently, Anderson reasons, “the phrasing ‘supernatural power’ corresponds with Turley’s preconception, not the written testimony that John [Whitmer] was supporting,” and therefore concludes that “the idea of a supernormal event evidently came from the interviewer [i.e., Turley]” rather than from Whitmer.[106] Morris also points out that the original memorandum lacks editorial polish, which creates some ambiguity around the use of the expression “supernatural power”:

and he said <Whitmer replied> “I now say I handled those plates - there was fine engravings on both sides. I handled them.” and he described how they were hung and they were shown to me by a supernatural power. he acknowledged all - I <Turly> asked why the translation is not <now> true,” he said “I cannot read it, and I do not know whether it is true or not”- he <Whitmer> testified all this in the presence of 8 men.[107]

Morris thus notes, “Not only does the narration make an unnatural shift from the [third]-person he to the first-person me, the critical phrase they were shown to me by a supernatural power is not in quotation marks, leaving doubt as to whether Turley intended to be directly quoting Whitmer.”[108] Not only is it impossible to know from this document if “Turley intended to be quoting Whitmer directly or paraphrasing” him, but it is also unclear “what Whitmer meant if he indeed said, they were shown to me by a supernatural power.”[109] Whatever is meant by “supernatural power” in this source, it must not contradict the physical, tactile experience of handling and examining the plates and engravings otherwise described in Turley’s account. Indeed, given the combination of physical examination and “supernatural power,” it is likely that John Whitmer—assuming he is the source of the “supernatural” claim—like his brother David, did not hold to the spiritual-versus-natural dichotomy promoted by both Burnett and present-day critics alike.

As with the claims of Burnett’s letter, examining additional sources can help contextualize this statement and allow us to make better sense of what John Whitmer may have meant by “supernatural power”—if, indeed, this detail is to be attributed to him. The official testimony of the eight states that “Joseph Smith, Jun. . . . has shown unto us the plates of which hath been spoken,” and in a history he started writing in 1831, John Whitmer himself confirmed this detail:

And also other witnesses even eight Viz. Christian Whitmer, Jacob Whitmer, John Whitmer, Peter Whitmer Jr. Hyram [Hiram] Page, Joseph Smith [Sr.], Hyram [Hyrum] Smith, and Samuel H. Smith. are the men to whom Joseph Smith Jr. showed the plates, these witnesses names go forth also of the truth of this work in the last days.[110]

Likewise, Daniel Tyler remembered Samuel Smith testifying that “the prophet had shown them [the plates] to him.”[111] William Smith also recalled that Joseph personally “showed the plates to my father and my brothers Hyrum and Samuel.”[112] Like the official statement, these sources corroborate that Joseph Smith personally showed the plates to the Eight Witnesses and give no indication of a miraculous or visionary experience.

Vogel counters that it contradicts the logic of the revelation now canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 17 for anyone to see the plates in a nonvisionary way, since the Lord says that even Joseph Smith saw the plates only by divine (“supernatural” per Vogel) power (v. 5). “[This] creates problems for those who wish to maintain that the experience of the eight witnesses was mundane,” Vogel writes. “Indeed, considering the inclusive tone of the revelation, it seems unlikely that the eight witnesses would have been exempted from the conditions required by it. . . . To maintain a purely physical experience for the eight witnesses, one must believe that Joseph Smith violated the logic of this revelation only days after its reception.”[113] Yet the belief that divine power was involved in their experience need not mean that the eight themselves observed anything visionary or miraculous. Myron Bond said that John Whitmer had testified that during the translation of the Book of Mormon, “as one of the scribes, he helped to copy, as the words fell from Joseph’s lips, by supernatural or almighty power.”[114] As Morris has noted, Whitmer appears to use the same (or an equivalent) expression attributed to him in the Turley memorandum “to describe a purely empirical event—Joseph looking at the seer stone inside the hat while dictating—that was believed to be inspired.”[115] Similarly, Oliver Cowdery described an address given by John Whitmer as occurring “in the presence of a God who sees and knows the secrets of the heart,”[116] but this should hardly be taken to mean that anyone visibly saw the presence of God on that occasion.

Religious believers of many kinds throughout the ages have long experienced divine presence or spiritual power in experiences that outside observers would regard as entirely mundane. According to Mark Webb, sometimes “religious experience comes through sensory experiences of ordinary objects but seems to carry with it extra information about some supramundane reality,” or in other cases, “the religious experience just is an ordinary perception, but the physical object is itself the object of religious significance.” In these cases, outside observers can “see exactly the same phenomenon” but “would not necessarily have the further religious content to his or her experience.”[117] Since the plates were an object of religious significance to Whitmer and the other witnesses, it was surely a spiritual experience to see and handle them, and they likely felt a “supernatural power” while doing so—but this does not mean their sight or touch was not that of ordinary experience. Thus, perhaps Whitmer was referring to having powerfully felt the Spirit while examining the plates when he mentioned “supernatural power” to Turley.

Furthermore, we should not consider the logic of section 17 without also considering the logic of the revelation now canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 5. Here the Lord declares to Joseph, “You should not show [the plates] except to those persons to whom I commanded you; and you have no power over them except I grant it unto you” (v. 3).[118] This logic indicates that if Joseph Smith showed the plates to the Eight Witnesses, then it was possible only because God had granted him the power to do so (and, indeed, as described by his mother Lucy quoted below, the plates, which after their translation had been returned to the Lord’s keeping, were again entrusted to Joseph’s care by an angel for that very purpose); thus, even Joseph’s simply showing them the plates in the woods would have meant that it was ultimately by divine or “supernatural” power that they had seen the plates—consistent with both the logic of section 17 and Whitmer’s alleged statement in the Turley memorandum—even though they themselves observed nothing supernatural.

This same rationale appears to be at play in a failed attempt to show Martin Harris the plates around the time the section 5 revelation was received. According to Joseph’s father-in-law, Isaac Hale, Harris had come to Harmony seeking “a greater witness” that Joseph had the plates. Knowing he could not show the plates directly to Harris without the Lord authorizing it, “Joseph apparently constructed a plan for Harris to see them if it was the will of the Lord.” As historians Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat further explain:

According to Isaac Hale, Harris arranged with Joseph to follow his footprints in the snow to the place where he hid the plates, so that Harris could see the plates without Joseph showing them to him. If Joseph wanted to show Harris the plates he could have easily uncovered them and handed them to him, but instead he buried them in the woods for Harris to find them—if it was the will of the Lord.[119]

Had Harris succeeded in finding the plates, both he and Joseph would have assumed it was by God’s power he had been able to find and examine them, even though he would not have seen anything visionary. This failed attempt by Martin at finding the plates in the woods can be contrasted with Lucy Mack Smith’s account of the Eight Witnesses going out to the woods and successfully finding the plates, thanks to a revelation to Joseph Smith:

Soon after they [the Whitmers] came, all the male part of the company, with my husband, Samuel and Hyrum, retired to a place where the family were in the habit of offering up their secret devotions to God. They went to this place, because it had been revealed to Joseph that the plates would be carried thither by one of the ancient Nephites. Here it was, that those eight witnesses, whose names are recorded in the Book of Mormon, looked upon them and handled them. . . . After these witnesses returned to the house, the angel again made his appearance to Joseph, at which time Joseph delivered up the plates into the angel’s hands.[120]

A similar account, attributed to a “Whitmar” who had been “permitted, not only to see and handle [the record], but to examine its contents,” appeared in the March 19, 1831, issue of the Palmyra newspaper, The Reflector: “Whitmar relates that he was led by Smith into an open field, on his father’s farm near Waterloo, when they found the book lying on the ground; Smith took it up and requested him to examine it, which he did for the space of half an hour or more, when he returned it to Smith, who placed it in its former position, alledging that the book was in the custody of another; intimating that some Divine agent would have it in safe keeping.”[121]

In this scenario, the witnesses themselves do not see or experience anything miraculous or visionary, and it is indeed Joseph Smith himself who shows them where the plates are. Yet his learning by revelation that the plates had been set out in the woods by “one of the ancient Nephites,” and his delivering the plates back into the custody of an angel after the witnesses had left, would certainly have signaled to the witnesses that it was truly “by a supernatural power” that they had seen the plates.

Bringing the discussion back to the Turley memorandum, it is clear that if John Whitmer did indeed say that the plates were “shown to me by a supernatural power,” it is unlikely in the context of these other sources that he meant anything visionary by that phrase. Such an interpretation is contradicted by the physical details of handling and examining the plates within the account itself. Furthermore, Whitmer and other witnesses are clear that they were personally shown the plates by Joseph Smith, something they would have assumed was possible only by God’s power, even without any divine manifestation as part of their experience. It is therefore entirely unwarranted to claim that the Turley memorandum supports Burnett’s theory that the Eight Witnesses saw the plates in vision.

Notes

[1] Elder M. Russell Ballard, “The Opportunities and Responsibilities of CES Teachers in the 21st Century” (address to Church Educational System Religious Educators, Salt Lake Tabernacle, February 26, 2016), www.churchofjesuschrist.org/; later published as M. Russell Ballard, “By Study and by Faith,” Ensign, December 2016, 22, 25.

[2] Anthony R. Sweat and Kenneth L. Alford, “A Method for Evaluating Latter-day Saint History,” Religious Educator 21, no. 3 (2020): 61.

[3] Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 7.

[4] In his case studies published in Historical Thinking, Wineburg often finds that traditional pedagogy in history often does not adequately equip students with these skills.

[5] Sam Wineburg, Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

[6] See, for example, Anthony Sweat, Seekers Wanted: The Skills You Need for the Faith You Want (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019); Keith A. Erekson, Real vs. Rumor: How to Dispel Latter-Day Myths (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021); Steven C. Harper, “How I Became a Seeker” (Brigham Young University devotional, June 8, 2021), https://speeches.byu.edu.

[7] Sweat and Alford, “Method for Evaluating Latter-day Saint History,” 72.

[8] Wineburg, Historical Thinking, 17–22.

[9] Sweat and Alford, “Method for Evaluating Latter-day Saint History,” 74.

[10] Sweat, Seekers Wanted, 11–12. Compare Sweat and Alford, “Method for Evaluating Latter-day Saint History,” 66.

[11] Susan Easton Black, Who’s Who in the Doctrine and Covenants (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1997), 39–41; “Stephen Burnett” (biographical entry), www.josephsmithpapers.org/person/stephen-burnett.

[12] “Historical Introduction,” Matthew C. Godfrey, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, eds., Documents, Volume 2: July 1831–January 1833, vol. 2 of the Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, Richard Lyman Bushman, and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2013), 200.

[13] See Elders’ Journal, October and November 1837, 9–15, 23–27, respectively.

[14] Stephen Burnett to Lyman Johnson, April 15, 1838, Joseph Smith Letterbook 2, p. 64, www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letterbook-2/69. Compare Warren Parrish’s version of what transpired in this meeting in Warren Parrish, letter to the editor, March 13, 1838, Waldo Patriot (Belfast, ME), May 4, 1838, 1. See the observations made in Steven C. Harper, “Evaluating the Book of Mormon Witnesses,” Religious Educator 11, no. 2 (2010): 42–44; Steven C. Harper, “The Eleven Witnesses,” in The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon: A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, ed. Dennis L. Largey, Andrew H. Hedges, John Hilton III, and Kerry Hull (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015), 124–27.

[15] George A. Smith, writing from Kirtland to Josiah Fleming, reported how “last Sabbath A division arose among the Parish party about the Book of Mormon John Boyington W Parrish L Johnson and others said it was nonsense Martin Harris then bore testimony of its truth and said all would [be] damned that rejected it C. Smalling <Joseph> Coe and others declaire his testimony was True thus a division arose.” George A. Smith to Josiah Fleming, March 29, 1838, [1], George A. Smith Papers, 1834–1877, MS 1322, Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter CHL).

[16] Burnett to Johnson, April 15, 1838, 65.

[17] See Sweat, Seekers Wanted, 14–16; Sweat and Alford, “Method for Evaluating Latter-day Saint History,” 72–73. Sweat and Alford acknowledge that “there is no such thing as truly objective history” and “a complete lack of bias does not exist for any historical claim,” but wisely note that “we should look for the motivations and the degree to which an author may introduce bias.”

[18] Sweat and Alford, “Method for Evaluating Latter-day Saint History,” 73: “Bias can often be detected through the selective omissions of facts and details or a lack of balance that favors only one perspective. Judgmental or emotion-laden trigger words can also indicate bias.”

[19] Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter, Martin Harris: Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2018), 310–12.

[20] Burnett to Johnson, April 15, 1838, 64.

[21] Burnett to Johnson, April 15, 1838, 66.

[22]Elders’ Journal, August 1838, 57.

[23] Sweat, Seekers Wanted, 12. Compare Sweat and Alford, “Method for Evaluating Latter-day Saint History,” 67.

[24] Harper, “Evaluating the Book of Mormon Witnesses,” 42–44; “Eleven Witnesses,” 124–27.

[25] Richard Lloyd Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1981), 155–59; “Attempts to Redefine the Experience of the Eight Witnesses,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 23–27.

[26] Larry E. Morris, ed., A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 418–20; “Empirical Witnesses of the Gold Plates,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 52, no. 2 (2019): 74–76.

[27] See, for example, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Changes in Mormon Doctrine and Practice (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 108; Robert N. Hullinger, Mormon Answer to Skepticism: Why Joseph Smith Wrote the Book of Mormon (St. Louis, MO: Clayton, 1980), 132; Grant H. Palmer, An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 204–6; and Ann Taves, Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 41.

[28] Dan Vogel, “The Validity of the Witnesses’ Testimonies,” in American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon, ed. Dan Vogel and Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 101; compare Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), 2:288–93.

[29] This includes websites hosted by the Joseph Smith Papers Project (www.josephsmithpapers.org), the Interpreter Foundation (www.witnessesofthebookofmormon.org), and the B. H. Roberts Foundation (www.mormonr.org/qnas/0Eiiyt/book_of_mormon_witnesses).

[30] “Mormonism—No II,” Tiffany’s Monthly 5, no. 4 (August 1859): 166; emphasis added. See Morris, “Empirical Witnesses,” 75; Documentary History of the Book of Mormon, 419. This is also how Harper interprets Burnett (“Evaluating the Book of Mormon Witnesses,” 38, 42; “Eleven Witnesses,” 119, 124).

[31] Hiram Page, letter, May 30, 1847, in “Bro. William,” Ensign of Liberty, January 1848, 63.

[32] “The Eight Witnesses,” Historical Record 7, nos. 8–10 (October 1888): 614.

[33] John Whitmer, “Address,” Messenger and Advocate, March 1836, 286–87.

[34] Heman C. Smith to Joseph Smith III, May 16, 1882, “Correspondence,” Saints’ Herald, June 15, 1882, 192.

[35] Burnett as quoted by Vogel, “Validity,” 100 (bracketed insertions are Vogel’s); compare Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 2:291n7: “Harris had probably said the eight witnesses ‘also . . . never saw’ the plates with their natural eyes.” See also Anderson, “Attempts to Redefine,” 25; Palmer, Insider’s View, 206; Ann Taves, “History and the Claims of Revelation: Joseph Smith and the Materialization of the Gold Plates,” in The Expanded Canon: Perspectives on Mormonism and Sacred Texts, ed. Blair G. Van Dyke, Brian D. Birch, and Boyd J. Petersen (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2018), 102.

[36] Smith to Fleming, March 29, 1838, [1].

[37] Hyrum Smith, “Communications,” Times and Seasons, December 1839, 21.

[38] See Jeffrey S. O’Driscoll, Hyrum Smith: A Life of Integrity (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 166–68, for details and sources.

[39] Sally Parker to John Kempton, August 26, 1838, in Janiece L. Johnson, “‘The Scripture Is a Fulfilling’: Sally Parker’s Weave,” BYU Studies 44, no. 2 (2005): 115, edited version. The original transcript reads: “his dissorse wass butifull wee wass talking about th Book of Mormon which he is ons of the witnesses he said he had but too hands and too eyes he said he had seene the plates with his eyes and handled them with his hands.” Both Vogel, “Validity,” 101, and Anderson, Investigating, 158–59, consider this a response to the dissenters’ claims.

[40] Vogel, “Validity,” 101.

[41] Smith, “Communications,” 23.

[42] Vogel, Early Mormon Documents 3:470; compare “Validity,” 101.

[43] Nathan Tanner Jr. to Nathan A. Tanner, February 17, 1909, typescript, 6, MS 4190, CHL (Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 5:170); compare Nathan A. Tanner Jr., Journal, May 13, 1886, MS 3836, CHL (Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 5:166): “[David Whitmer] then explained that he saw the plates and with his natural eyes, but he had to be prepared for it.”

[44] Vogel, “Validity,” 101.

[45] David Whitmer to Anthony Metcalf, April 1887, in Anthony Metcalf, Ten Years before the Mast. Shipwrecks and Adventures at Sea. Religious Customs of the People of India and Burmah’s Empire. How I Became a Mormon and Why I Became an Infidel (Malad City, ID: 1888), 74.

[46] Vogel, “Validity,” 101.

[47] Morris, “Empirical Witnesses,” 75–76.

[48] Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845, 156, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/163.

[49] Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845, 156–57. Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 3:465n2, includes this among sources that report hearing the Eight Witnesses bear “public testimony as a group” but that “unfortunately . . . neglected to give details” of what they testified of. But in telling us that these men “bore testimony to the facts” stated in their official statement, Lucy is in fact giving several details about their testimony—if we take their official statement seriously, as Lucy’s history and other sources (see the discussion on claim 3) suggest we should.

[50] John Corrill, A Brief History of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints (Commonly Called Mormons;) Including an Account of Their Doctrine and Discipline; with the Reasons of the Author for Leaving the Church (St. Louis, MO: 1839), 11.

[51] Corrill, Brief History, 12.

[52] Corrill, Brief History, 11.

[53] “History of Brigham Young,” Deseret News, February 3, 1858, 1.

[54] Samuel H. Smith’s personal copy of the 1830 Palmyra edition of the Book of Mormon is in the private collection of Reid Moon, owner and proprietor of Moon’s Rare Books in Provo, Utah. On February 2, 2023, Moon kindly permitted the authors to photograph this copy. According to Moon, this copy was in the Smith family for four generations until he acquired it from a private seller, and it is the only extant copy that is known to have belonged to Samuel. That the copy is indeed Samuel’s cannot be doubted, as his possession of the book is confirmed by the bookplate on the inside of the front cover that bears his name. This copy, according to Moon, is with all certainty one of the copies Samuel used as a missionary, although it is not the one that he gave to Phineas Young, as that copy (CHL, M222.1 B724 1830 no. 6) is in the possession of the Church and on display at the Church History Museum. See “Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise: Ohio & Missouri,” Pioneer 63, nos. 2–4 (2016): 90.

[55] Furthermore, John Taylor, “Obituary,” Times and Seasons August 1, 1844, 606–7, eulogized Samuel shortly after his death on July 30, 1844, thus: “His labors in the church from first to lats [sic], carrying glad tidings to the eastern cities; and finally his steadfastness as one of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon, and many saintly traits of virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity, shall be given of him hereafter, as a man of God.” We thus have sources that portray Samuel before and after 1838 as remaining faithful to his printed testimony.

[56] Whitmer, “Address,” 286–87; emphasis added.

[57] Anderson, in “Attempts to Redefine,” 25, plausibly suggests, “If we compensate for Burnett’s loaded language, Harris’s retraction was essentially this: he never would have agreed that the Eight Witnesses saw the plates through spiritual sight if he had not been confused by leading questions, but would have let their written testimony speak for itself.”

[58] Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 2:291n7.

[59] John Whitmer to Heman C. Smith, December 11, 1876, in Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 5:244; underlining represents emphasis in the original (per Vogel).

[60] “Visit of E. C. Brand to John Whitmer,” February 18, 1875, in Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 5:250.

[61] John Whitmer to Mark H. Forscutt, March 5, 1876, in Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 5:243. John Whitmer strikes us as a better spokesman for the Eight Witnesses as a whole than Martin Harris via Stephen Burnett, not only because Whitmer was one of the Eight Witnesses and we have his words firsthand, but also because several others among the eight were his brothers (and brother-in-law) and he lived near all of them that lived past 1844 until they died. He was, therefore, better situated than anyone else to know what most of the eight believed about their experience throughout their lives.

[62] P. Wilhelm Poulson, letter, July 31, 1878, “Correspondence. Death of John Whitmer. Testimony to the Book of Mormon,” Deseret News, August 14, 1878, 2. Poulson also notes that Joseph Smith III had “sent word to John Whitmer to reaffirm his testimony,” to which Whitmer replied, “I have never recalled it, and [so] I have nothing to reaffirm,” thus indicating that he had always regarded the testimony as printed as true. Vogel disputes the general accuracy of this interview (discussed further in n. 78), but there is no reason to doubt the basic accuracy of this detail since it is consistent with the other John Whitmer sources cited here.

[63] Oliver Cowdery, “The Closing Year,” Messenger and Advocate, December 1836, 42. Technically, Vogel, in “Validity,” 101, only says that the six of the Eight Witnesses still living did not contradict Burnett, thereby excluding Christian and Peter Whitmer Jr., but there is no reason their testimonies should be discounted when evaluating the accuracy of Burnett’s claims and whether any of the witnesses “contradicted” him or not.

[64]Salem Advertiser and Argus, April 12, 1843, in Morris, Documentary History of the Book of Mormon, 444; compare Times and Seasons, June 15, 1843, 234–35. The most logical interpretation of “what is recorded about the plates” in this context is the published testimony of the Eight Witnesses. See Anderson, “Attempts to Redefine,” 30.

[65] “Historical Landmarks,” Deseret News, September 26, 1888, 7. In this same report, John C. Whitmer also spoke thus about Hiram Page’s testimony: “I was closely connected with Hiram Page in business transactions and other matters, he being married to my aunt. I knew him at all times and under all circumstances to be true to his testimony concerning the divinity of the Book of Mormon.”

[66] “The Eight Witnesses,” Historical Record 7, nos. 8–10 (October 1888): 614.

[67] George Edward Anderson, journal, May 10, 1907, 29, MS 8795, CHL. Page also told Anderson he was “with John Whitmer during his last sickness about a week, was firm to his testimony of the B. of M and it was frequently refe[r]red to during his last illness” (p. 28) and that “Jacob Whitmer of the 8 witnesses . . . was firm to his testimony” (p. 29).

[68] Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 3:465.

[69] Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 3:469, 471. Anderson, in “Attempts to Redefine,” 27, notes that both Lucy Mack Smith and David Whitmer contradict Vogel’s theory that the Eight Witnesses’ official testimony was a blending of separate events. Likewise, William Smith (quoted below, n. 96) made clear that the Smith family’s experiences of handling the plates while covered were separate from the experience that made his father and brothers official witnesses. Vogel selectively quotes Lucy Mack Smith’s account in a way that obscures how it undermines his theory: “According to Lucy, Joseph Jr. chose eight men . . . and ‘repaired to a little grove where it was customary for the family to offer up their secret prayers,’ where they then saw the plates.” Vogel goes on to say “she does not describe the actual viewing of the plates” (Vogel, “Validity,” 97–98, emphasis added; compare Early Mormon Documents 3:465). In fact, Lucy gives more details than Vogel wants to admit, for she does not say that the witnesses merely saw the plates but says they “looked upon them and handled them” (Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845, 156), thereby contradicting Vogel’s theory that the witnesses’ viewing of the plates and handling of them occurred on separate occasions.

[70] See additionally Gale Yancey Anderson, “Eleven Witnesses Behold the Plates,” Journal of Mormon History 38, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 145–62.

[71] Compare Anderson, “Attempts to Redefine,” 30–31: “Although current critics claim a conflict between later sources and the original published testimony, its accuracy is the stated or implied theme of all interviews with the Eight Witnesses. . . . Since the original testimony refers to a material event, such restatements do the same and therefore qualify as physical descriptions.”

[72] Parrish, letter, March 13, 1838, emphasis added; see also Warren Parrish to Erastus ��Ӱֱ��s, August 11, 1838, The Evangelist October 1, 1838, 226: “Martin Harris, one of the subscribing witnesses, has come out at last, and says he never saw the plates, from which the book purports to have been translated, except in vision, and he further says that any man who says he has seen them in any other way is a liar, Joseph not excepted” (emphasis added).

[73] Anderson, Investigating, 156. References to “imagination” and “eyes shut” indicate that Burnett was influenced by Ezra Booth, as suggested in Anderson, “Attempts to Redefine,” 24.

[74] Smith, “Communications,” 23; emphasis added.

[75] “Sally Parker’s Weave,” 115, edited version; emphasis added.

[76] William Smith, “Notes Written on ‘Chamber’s [sic] Life of Joseph Smith,’” ca. 1875, holograph, 13, MS 2807, CHL; emphasis added.

[77] Smith, “‘Chamber’s Life of Joseph Smith,’” 15.

[78] Poulson, letter, July 31, 1878. Vogel, in Early Mormon Documents, 3:468–69, attempts to undermine the general reliability of this interview and this detail in particular, claiming that it is contradicted by other sources, yet in his annotations in Early Mormon Documents, 5:247–49, Vogel notes only a single, minor contradiction with Lucy Mack Smith over whether the witnesses saw the plates in the Smith home or in a grove at the Smith farm (5:248n3). While questioning the detail about seeing the uncovered plates because he says “it conflicts with Turley’s 1839 report” (3:468), Vogel makes no mention of John Whitmer’s own history that is consist with Poulson’s report (see the postscript for more details). Vogel also notes that because David Whitmer elsewhere complained that Poulson had misquoted him, it is possible Poulson misquoted John Whitmer here, and since the latter had passed away by the time this interview was published he could not correct the record. Anderson, in “Attempts to Redefine,” 27, responds by pointing out that David Whitmer only denied the accuracy of a single statement in his twenty-question interview with Poulson, while two-thirds of David’s interview is corroborated by other sources, so on the whole Poulson appears to be reliable. Furthermore, it is worth noting that Sarah Whitmer, John’s daughter, indicated that he was looking forward to seeing Poulson again (Poulson, letter, July 31, 1878), suggesting the Whitmers generally liked and trusted Poulson. Other than two minor details (on which see Anderson, “Attempts to Redefine,” 28), Poulson’s report of John Whitmer’s answers is generally consistent (albeit more detailed) with other sources on the Eight Witnesses, and some details are specifically corroborated by other sources (see nn. 62, 90–91).

[79] Daniel Tyler, “Incidents of Experience,” in Scraps of Biography: Tenth Book of the Faith-Promoting Series (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1883), 23.

[80] Smith, “Communications,” 23.

[81] “Sally Parker’s Weave,” 115, edited version.

[82] Joseph Fielding to Parley P. Pratt, June 20, 1841, rep. “Communications,” Millennial Star 2, no. 4 (August 1841): 52; emphasis added.

[83] Tyler, “Incidents of Experience,” 23.

[84] Smith, “‘Chamber’s Life of Joseph Smith,’” 13. A crossed-out letter f following handled has been omitted for clarity and readability.

[85] Whitmer, “Address,” 287.

[86] Oliver Cowdery, “New Portage Conference,” Messenger and Advocate, June 1835, 143.

[87] History, 1838–1856, volume C-1 (2 November 1838–31 July 1842), p. 913, www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-c-1-2-november-1838-31-july-1842/95. This account and its enigmatic detail about being shown the plates “by a supernatural power” is discussed in greater detail in the postscript. Despite the issues discussed there, we regard the details about Whitmer saying he handled the plates but could not read the translation as reliable because it is consistent in its essential details with both the official testimony of the Eight Witnesses and the numerous other accounts from John Whitmer in which he insists that he handled the plates.

[88] Myron H. Bond, letter, August 2, 1878, Saints’ Herald, August 15, 1878, 253.

[89] I. C. Funn, in Kingston Sentinel, repr. Saints’ Herald, February 15, 1878, 57; a second, shorter report of this same discourse by John Whitmer is provided on the next page: “Bro. R. F. Hill writes . . . of a visit made by Brn. F. W. Curtis . . . and himself, to Kingston and Far West. They saw John Whitmer, one of the eight witnesses to the Book of Mormon, and he assured them that his testimony was still the same concerning that book and the redemption of Zion and the restoration of the Saints to it. He preached there January 13th [1878], the first time since June, 1838.”

[90] Poulson, letter, July 31, 1878. Although more detailed and explicit, these statements are generally consistent with all the other accounts from John Whitmer and the other Eight Witnesses that report they saw, hefted, and handled the plates, examined the engravings, and so on. Thus we see little reason to doubt the general accuracy of these statements, contra Vogel (see n. 78).

[91] See, for instance, Jonathan A. Hadley, “Golden Bible,” Palmyra Freeman, August 11, 1829, repr. Rochester Advertiser and Daily Telegraph (New York), August 31, 1829; Orson Pratt, A[n] Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions, and of the Late Discovery of Ancient American Records (Edinburgh, Scotland: Ballantyne and Hughes, 1840), 12–13; Parley P. Pratt, “Discovery of an Ancient Record in America,” Millennial Star, June 1840, 30; Joseph Smith, “Church History,” Times and Seasons, March 1, 1842, 707; Martin Harris, in “Mormonism—No II,” 165–66 (see n. 30 above); Martin Harris, interview, Iowa State Register, August 28, 1870, 1; “David Whitmer Passing Away,” Chicago Tribune, January 24, 1888, repr. “David Whitmer Dead,” Saints’ Herald, February 4, 1888, 67; J. W. Peterson, “Wm. B. Smith’s Last Statement,” Zion’s Ensign, January 13, 1894, 6; and generally Kirk B. Henrichsen, “How Witnesses Described the ‘Gold Plates,’” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 10, no. 1 (2001): 16–21, 78.

[92] See Morris, “Empirical Witnesses,” 60–67, for several of these accounts.

[93] John A. Clark, letter, August 31, 1840, in John A. Clark, Gleanings By the Way (Philadelphia: W. J. & J. K. Simon, 1842), 256–57; Martin Harris, in “Mormonism—No II,” 165–66; David B. Dille, statement, September 15, 1853, in “Additional Testimony of Martin Harris (One of the Three Witnesses) to the Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon,” Millennial Star, August 20, 1859, 545; Testimony of Martin Harris, September 4, 1870, Salt Lake City, Edward Stevenson Collection (1849–1922), MS 4806, CHL; William S. Sayre to James T. Cobb, August 31, 1978, in Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 4:144–45, and Morris, Documentary History of the Book of Mormon, 298–99; Metcalfe, Ten Years Before the Mast, 70–71.

[94] See generally Anthony Sweat, “Hefted and Handled: Tangible Interactions with Book of Mormon Objects,” in Largey, Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon, 43–59; Amy Easton-Flake and Rachel Cope, “A Multiplicity of Witnesses: Women and the Translation Process,” in Largey, Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon, 133–53.

[95] William Smith, sermon, June 8, 1884, “The Old Soldier’s Testimony,” Saints’ Herald, October 4, 1884, 643–44.

[96] Peterson, “Wm. B. Smith’s Last Statement,” 6: “Father and my brother Samuel saw them as I did while in the frock. So did Hyrum and others of the family.” William confirmed elsewhere that the Smith family members who were official witnesses had a separate experience in which they were actually shown the plates by Joseph Jr. William Smith, William Smith on Mormonism (Lamoni, IA: Herald Steam Book and Job Office, 1883), 12: “He showed the plates to my father and my brothers Hyrum and Samuel, who were witnesses to the truth of the book which was translated from them. I was permitted to lift them as they laid in a pillow-case; but not see them.” As quoted previously, he understood them to have seen the plates “with their eyes,” thus making their experience categorically different from his own.

[97] See, for instance, Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, The Mormon Prophet, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), 79–80; Ann Taves, “History and the Claims of Revelation: Joseph Smith and the Materialization of the Golden Plates,” Numen 61 (2014): 182–207; Sonia Hazard, “How Joseph Smith Encountered Printing Plates and Founded Mormonism,” Religion and American Culture 31, no. 2 (2021): 137–92. Vogel himself has acknowledged the material existence of (modern, forged) plates, writing in his 2004 biography of Joseph Smith, “For me, the most compelling evidence against unconscious fraud is the existence of the Book of Mormon plates themselves as an objective artifact which Joseph allowed his family and friends and even critics to handle while it was covered with a cloth or concealed in a box. The plates were either ancient or modern” (Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004], xi). More recently, Vogel reasoned, “If the history described in the Book of Mormon is fictitious, then there were no ancient Nephites to make gold plates or to appear to Smith many centuries later. It therefore follows that Smith constructed the plates, probably out of tin, which he then placed in a box or wrapped in a cloth and allowed others to handle” (Dan Vogel, Charisma Under Pressure: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1831–1839 [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2023], ix).

[98] Anderson, Investigating, 158.

[99] See Neal Rappleye, “Material Plates, Spiritual Vision: Martin Harris, Divine Materiality, and Seeing with ‘Spiritual Eyes,’” in Steadfast in Defense of Faith: Essays in Honor of Daniel C. Peterson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2023), 271–98, esp. 289–96, for an attempt at taking Burnett’s report seriously, filtering out his misunderstandings, and thereby reconstructing what Martin Harris meant to communicate about his and the other witnesses’ experiences.

[100] Sweat, Seekers Wanted, 20–22. Compare the exercise in Sweat and Alford, “Method for Evaluating Latter-day Saint History,” 79–81, which uses a color scheme rather than numbers.

[101] History, 1838–1856, volume C-1 (2 November 1838–31 July 1842), p. 913.

[102] Palmer, Insider’s View, 205–6. See also Vogel, “Validity,” 102.

[103] History, 1838–1856, volume C-1 (2 November 1838–31 July 1842), p. 913; compare B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1905), 3:307–8.

[104] Theodore Turley memoranda, ca. February 1845, CR 100-396, CHL.

[105] Morris, Documentary History of the Book of Mormon, 420. Morris explains: “Moreover, the document, labeled ‘Theodore Turley’s Memorandums,’ in Bullock’s hand, includes no date, offers no information about possible interaction between Turley and Bullock, and does not contain Turley’s signature. We simply don’t know if Bullock copied from an earlier manuscript, if he acted as scribe as Turley dictated, if he created the document by himself after Turley left, or any other possible scenario.” In contrast, Morris, in “Empirical Witnesses,” 76, assumes this account “is based on notes taken by Thomas Bullock in Nauvoo around February 1845 when he interviewed Turley.”

[106] Anderson, “Attempts to Redefine,” 23. Compare Morris, “Empirical Witnesses,” 80.

[107] Turley, memoranda.

[108] Morris, “Empirical Witnesses,” 78, brackets modifying an incorrect reference to he (a third-person singular masculine pronoun) as “second-person.”

[109] Morris, Documentary History of the Book of Mormon, 421.

[110] John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847, p. 25, www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/john-whitmer-history-1831-circa-1847/29.

[111] Tyler, “Incidents of Experience,” 23.

[112] Smith, William Smith on Mormonism, 12.

[113] Vogel, “Validity,” 100.

[114] Bond, letter, August 2, 1878, 253. In “Address,” 286–87, John Whitmer himself used the customary expression “by the gift and power of God” to describe the translation, but in either case he is describing the experience as involving divine power.

[115] Morris, Documentary History of the Book of Mormon, 421. See Morris, “Empirical Witnesses,” 79: “While confirming Whitmer’s inclination to use the phrase, Bond’s account also demonstrates an instance of Whitmer using it while describing a purely empirical event, namely his acting as scribe in the Whitmer home in June of 1829 while Joseph dictated the text of the Book of Mormon as he was looking at the seer stone in his hat. Despite the belief of Whitmer and others that Joseph was inspired as he dictated, the process of translation was neutral in terms of whether a miracle was involved,” meaning the mundane activity that Whitmer observed and participated in of giving an oral dictation to a scribe who recorded the words could have been empirically observed by anyone present, whether they were a believer or not. Since only Joseph looked into the seer stone, no one else present directly saw or witnessed anything miraculous or supernatural.

[116] Cowdery, “New Portage Conference,” 143.

[117] Mark Webb, “Religious Experience,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (Fall 2022 edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-experience/.

[118] The precise wording of the original revelation read: “he [Joseph] should not show them except I Command him & he hath no power over them e[x]cept I grant it unto him.” See Revelation, March 1829 (D&C 5), handwriting of Oliver Cowdery, copied in April 1829, The Joseph Smith Papers, online at https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-march-1829-dc-5/1 (accessed January 28, 2023).

[119] Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith’s Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015), 109; emphasis added. See Isaac Hale to E. D. Howe, March 20, 1834, in E. D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, OH: E. D. Howe, 1834), 262–66.

[120] Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845, 155–57.

[121] “Gold Bible, No. 6,” The Reflector (Palmyra, New York), March 19, 1831, 126. Which of the Whitmer brothers provided this account is not specified, but it’s implied that it was one of the “three witnesses,” and thus Howe, in Mormonism Unvailed, 15–16, attributes this account to David Whitmer. However, with the exception of the setting in a field near the Whitmer farm in Waterloo, all the other details in this account are inconsistent with other accounts from David Whitmer (see Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 2:249n56) and better align with accounts about the Eight Witnesses. It seems likely that Abner Cole (the editor of The Reflector) or his informant has conflated David with one of his brothers among the Eight Witnesses—perhaps Peter Whitmer, who stayed in Palmyra after being shown the plates to help protect the Book of Mormon manuscript (see Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845, 157, 161).