Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: hall@vice.ico.tek.com (Hal Lillywhite) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Book of Mormon Witnesses (was Multiple Isaiahs) Message-ID: Date: 7 Oct 90 03:04:58 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Tektronx Inc., Beaverton, Or. Lines: 55 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes: >Not quite. In fact, all of the three witnesses [to the Book of >Mormon] (Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, Martin Harris) later >denied the key part of their sworn testimony: that they had >physically seen the gold plates and the engravings thereon.... How about a reference for this? In fact you may have noticed that Charles Ferenbaugh posted an article which appeared here just after yours quoting David Whitmer *strongly* supporting his testimony of the Book of Mormon even as he claimed that the LDS church itself had gone astray. While some people have claimed the witnesses denied their testimony, I have never seen any believable documentation tracing that to anything verifiable. By that I mean a reference to something written by one of the 3 men or at least to first-hand written testimony of a reliable people who were present at their denial. The fact that 2 of the 3 later re-joined the church gives at least some evidence that they did stand by their testimonies. The one who did not re-join was David Whitmer and I've already mentioned his testimony in the preceeding paragraph. (Unfortunately I'm here in the position of trying to "prove a negative." Unless we can somehow find everything these men ever said or wrote we really can't prove that they never denied their testimonies. However we do have their statements from after the time they left the church indicating that they still stood by what they said.) >In addition, if one counts Smith himself as a witness, four out >of four changed their testimony. Smith's first account was that >he was led to the plates not by an angel but by a dream, which >is confirmed in a holograph letter from his mother written in >1829. He also claimed he was told how to obtain the plates by >a glost: "like a Spaniard having a long beard, with his throat >cut from ear to ear, and the blood streaming down." It was only >in 1842 that he drafted the account that we now find in copies of >the BoM, where he has replaced a story very like a contemporary >gothic romance with a different story very like the Masonic >legend of the Book of Enoch. Again you neglect to provide any references except to "the account that we now find in the BoM." While it is true that Joseph Smith wrote 3 accounts of what happened none of them mention your gory "Spaniard." The accounts differ from one another less than the gospels do. (And yes, I have read all 3, have you?) (Actually, if my admitedly hazy memory is correct the source of the "Spaniard" as well as the letter you mention from Joseph Smith's mother is the Mark Hoffman forgeries. They were total fabrications partly designed to discredit the church.)