Happy Trumpet Day. On this day 185 years ago, Joseph Smith Jr was directed by the angel Moroni to a place on Cumorah Hill in Manchester, New York, where he found a set of golden plates from which he translated the Book of Mormon – or at least, so he claimed. Smith allowed visitors to touch the chest in which the golden plates were said to have been found, but he never allowed them to look inside. According to Smith, writing on the plates was in a “reformed Egyptian” language, and he translated them by looking into a hat containing “stone spectacles” which enabled him to see the translated words.
The golden plates are no longer available, because Smith gave them back to the angel Moroni. There were eleven other men, all close associates of Smith, who claimed to have seen the plates. The plates were said to have been engraved by Mormon and his son Moroni, two American prophets, in around the year AD400. Moroni had buried them just prior to his death, and he had come back as an angel in 1823 to lead Joseph Smith to the place where they were hidden.
The Book of Mormon purports to be a historical record of God’s dealings with the inhabitants of America from 2,500 BC to around 400 AD. However, the events which is describes are contradicted by the archaeological and scientific evidence. There is no correlation between locations described in the Book of Mormon and American archaeological sites. The Book of Mormon refers to animals, plants and technologies which did not exist in pre-Columbian America. There is no linguistic connection between any native American language and any form of Egyptian. And there is no DNA evidence linking native Americans with descendants of Israel.