Silence Speaks Volumes: Why Critics Ignore The Book of Mormon Informal Witnesses?

Joseph Smith Receives the Gold Plates, by Kenneth Riley

In a courtroom, attorneys rarely ignore testimony unless they believe it will not help their case. When a witness goes unchallenged, jurors notice. Silence can sometimes be revealing.

History is not a courtroom, but the analogy is useful. For nearly two centuries, critics have focused almost entirely on impeaching the Three Witnesses and Eight Witnesses of the Book of Mormon. Entire books and lectures have attempted to discredit their unique and compelling testimonies.

Yet there is another body of testimony that often receives far less attention, if any.

For any honest seeker of truth, their testimony deserves careful consideration.

Who Are the Informal Witnesses? 

The formal witnesses signed a published declaration. Their names appear in every copy of the Book of Mormon. But they were not the only people who interacted with the plates during the translation period.

At least fourteen individuals left accounts describing either physical interaction with, or had visionary experiences connected to the plates Joseph Smith used to produce the Book of Mormon. Between 1827 and 1829, these witnesses included family members, friends, employers, early converts, skeptics, and even enemies who used every possible means to coerce, bribe, or steal the plates from Joseph.

This was not a sealed circle of carefully selected insiders. The plates were part of the lived experience in the Smith household and the surrounding community. The existence of the plates was not disputed among these informal witnesses.

Those Who Handled the Plates

According to the historical record, these people report having a physical experience with the plates that were usually covered under a linen cloth: 

• Katharine Smith Salisbury picked them up and “rippled her fingers up the edge of the plates and felt that they were separate metal plates and heard the tinkle of sound that they made.” 

• William B. Smith, said: “We handled them [the plates] 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 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.”

• Emma Smith moved them routinely while cleaning, thumbing through the leaves “as one does the leaves of a book,” hearing a metallic rustling.

• Josiah Stowell, Joseph’s former employer, testified under oath at an 1830 court hearing that he had glimpsed the plates as Joseph passed them through a window, and he provided the court with their dimensions.

• Lucy Harris and her daughter, notably skeptical, hefted the plates in their wooden box and found them almost more than they could lift.

The wording of these accounts differs, and some were recorded years later. That is common in historical testimony. What is striking is the convergence of key details. The accounts repeatedly reference weight, metallic texture, separate leaves, and binding rings.

Something tangible was present.

Those Who Sought to Steal Them

There were also individuals who did not believe Joseph was a prophet yet were convinced he possessed something valuable. These hostile witnesses were often engaged in money digging, and included Willard Chase, Samuel T. Lawrence, Luman Walter, and up to a dozen associates who spent weeks trying to locate, steal, or even bargain with Joseph for the plates. They employed divining rods. They rummaged through the Smith home. They ambushed Joseph on the road. Whatever opinion these men had about Joseph Smith, they behaved as though he had something of great value. And they were willing to invest their time, effort and resources to get it from him.

These antagonistic witnesses do not affirm Joseph's divine claims and they do not prove the authenticity of the plates. It does complicate explanations that reduce the entire episode to imagination.

Those Who Saw More

A smaller group reported visionary experiences connected to the plates.

Mary Whitmer described being shown the plates by an angelic messenger during the translation period. Her account states that this experience occurred during a time of personal discouragement while she was supporting the translation effort. No evidence exists that Joseph was nearby. He did not mention it in his journal, nor did he direct his scribes to record such an important angelic event.

Others, including Zera Pulsipher and Harrison Burgess, later recounted spiritual manifestations involving angels and the Book of Mormon.

These experiences are different from physical handling reports. They should not be conflated. Still, they represent multiple individuals describing encounters tied to the same object.

A Two-Front Challenge

Given the breadth and diversity of this testimony, one might expect that the most prominent critics of Joseph Smith would have devoted considerable effort to discrediting them. Yet they have not.

Their silence is telling.

Fawn Brodie’s book No Man Knows My History (1945), remains among the most oft-quoted critical source among church critics. As the niece of President David O. McKay, she was among the first critics to apply academic rigor to her critical theories. Her book mentions only one informal witness: Mary Whitmer. What’s her explanation? Joseph possessed “the talent for making men see visions.” He had an unconscious hypnotic ability he didn’t even know he had. When confronted with the problem that Mary Whitmer’s vision occurred without Joseph being present, Brodie conceded that “it is probable that no one was more surprised at this than Joseph Smith” Tellingly, she simply shrugged and moved on. She offered no natural mechanism, no parallel case, no plausible explanation for how an unconscious talent could elicit such a powerful spiritual manifestation without being in her presence. She ignores the remaining thirteen-plus informal witnesses.

Dan Vogel, writing in American Apocrypha (2002) and Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (2004), proposed that Joseph was a “pious fraud” who fabricated tin plates as a prop and induced “subjective hallucination” in the formal witnesses through suggestion or something resembling hypnosis. His framework is considered more sophisticated than Brodie’s, but he again refused to engage with the informal witnesses at all. His prop theory can partially account for those who hefted the plates while covered in a linen or in a wooden box, but his theory cannot explain 1) the supernatural witnesses, 2) the hostile witnesses who tried to steal the plates, or 3) multiple independent witnesses describing sensory details like the weight of Joseph’s plates, their metallic sound, and the tangibility of separate leaves.

Grant Palmer, in An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins (2002), argued that all witnesses experienced the plates only through “spiritual eyes” in a prayer-induced visionary state. Yet his theory never addresses the informal witnesses who report having a physical interaction with the plates. They picked up heavy objects, felt metal edges through cloth, and heard the clinking of metal leaves while sweeping a room.

Three of the most prominent critics.

Three separate and often opposing theories. And collectively they have essentially ignored these fourteen-plus informal witnesses whose testimony corroborates Joseph Smith’s account.

The Right Standard of Evidence

Critics sometimes demand proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the plates existed at all. That standard of proof is quite high, and is usually reserved for criminal cases where someone's life or liberty is at stake. History typically does not operate at that unusually high level of certainty.

Most historical events, including those recorded in the Holy Bible, are accepted based on things like how witness testimonies converge, the strength of documentary evidence and its plausibility. That standard of evidence is how we’ve come to accept the existence of Socrates or that early the Christian movement existed. We believe it without scientific verification. We believe it because the evidence is consistent, plausible and credible.

The question here is whether the cumulative testimony of the informal witnesses is consistent, plausible and credible.

I join millions of Latter-Day Saints who have come to believe the cumulative testimony of the formal and informal witnesses. Their testimony is compelling.

For Those Carrying Quiet Questions

If you are wrestling with Church history, you are not alone. It’s okay to question. It’s great if your questions are aimed at determining truth.

Doubt often grows not because the evidence is missing or collapses, but because someone claims that the evidence is missing or has collapsed. When loud, confident voices mock or shame you to convince you that Joseph fabricated everything, you can begin to feel duped. Worse yet, you may feel it’s irresponsible to remain faithful.

But the broader witness record suggests the situation is more complex. And what is often missing in their mocking claims, is the consistent, reliable and documented record of the informal witnesses.

For those who have wrestled with doubt, as most thoughtful believers do at some point in their faith journey, you should not ignore the powerful evidence provided by the informal witnesses.

They offer something valuable: a rational foundation upon which faith can rest. This is not to say that evidence is more compelling than the witness of the Holy Ghost.

It does not.

But as Neal A. Maxwell once observed, rational argument “does not create belief, but it maintains the climate in which belief may flourish.”

I believe the evidence is compelling. That the gold plates were real.

And so did many of the informal witnesses. They tell us they were heavy. They were metallic. They had separate leaves fastened by rings. People who loved Joseph Smith felt them, and people who wanted to rob him tried to steal them. Angels showed them to people Joseph had never met. And in nearly two hundred years since, no critic has managed to construct a coherent theory that accounts for all of these facts.

Perhaps that is because there is no such theory to construct. Perhaps the simplest explanation is, as it has always been, the one Joseph gave himself.

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Additional Sources

Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (2005). https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/295038/joseph-smith-by-richard-lyman-bushman/

Richard Lloyd Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses (1981). https://deseretbook.com/p/investigating-book-mormon-witnesses-richard-lloyd-anderson-732?variant_id=110042-paperback

Larry C. Porter, 'The Book of Mormon Witnesses,' BYU Studies. https://byustudies.byu.edu/

Dan Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, Vols. 1–5. https://signaturebooks.com/books/p/early-mormon-documents

Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History (1945). https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/321948/no-man-knows-my-history-by-fawn-m-brodie/

Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (2004). https://signaturebooks.com/books/p/joseph-smith-the-making-of-a-prophet

Grant Palmer, An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins (2002). https://signaturebooks.com/books/p/an-insiders-view-of-mormon-origins

The Joseph Smith Papers Project. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/