In his new book, “Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History,” historian Richard Bushman calls the Book of Mormon, the signature scripture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...

Latter-day Saints might be surprised at how “Joseph ... as Smith dictates his personal history, available on the church’s website. They come across stories of angels and gold plates and ...

They see their work as a kind of corrective for historians who have leaned too far into Joseph Smith ... much of the record, Smith reportedly did not look at the plates but rather into a ...

Vote: Your Most Anticipated Movie of May Link to Vote: Your Most Anticipated Movie of May Photos: Joseph Smith - Volume 1: Plates of Gold Lindsay Farr as Emma Smith and Dustin Harding as Joseph ...

But the year was 1844, the state was Illinois, the parties were the Whigs and the Democrats, and the candidate was Joseph ... retrieve the plates buried in Hill Cumorah. By then, Smith had married ...

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The question of just how church founder Joseph Smith produced ... continues to be debated. Did Smith “translate” the Reformed Egyptian writing from gold plates or did he invent the story ...

Smith and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were in Illinois due to religious persecution and violence they had experienced. The martyrdom of both Joseph and Hyrum Smith ...

For more than 190 years, critics of Mormon founder Joseph ... gold plates containing text written in “reformed Egyptian” — a language no scholar knows — that only Smith could translate.

Peter Manseau's new book suggests that Joseph Smith and the Book ... lectured in Palmyra just one month before Smith claimed to have found the golden plates. Manseau: Handsome Lake’s nephew ...

Four years later Smith removed the plates, and spent 3 months translating the words engraved on them into the Book of Mormon. Before Joseph could fulfil the task of restoring the Church it was ...