1. Description of the Gold plates: "The volume was something near six inches in thickness, a part of which was sealed. The characters on the unsealed part were small, and beautifully engraved. The whole body exhibited many marks of antiquity in its construction and much skill in the art of engraving." Givens says, "The passage reads rather like a catalogue description penned by a connoisseur of fine books."
2. Words are empty, experience gives meaning. Miram Levering defines three categories of scripture: 1. those that have supernatural origin 2. those that are used to define our relationship to the sacred 3. or those that are treated as sacred. Levering admits that the categories do not give justice to the many ways the scriptures can be experienced by the community: people respond of the scriptures, they read them and understand that can have in their religious projects. Shlomo Biderman agrees, "to understand scripture is to understand the conditions under which a group of text has gained authority over the lives of people and has been incorporated into human activities of various important kinds."
3. The Book of Mormon is the second most widely distributed book in the world after the Bible: distribution of 15,000 a day and over 100 million total distribution. The Book of Mormon has been printed in 94 languages. The keystone of the LDS faith. The Book of Mormon contains the words of Isaiah. Vast numbers of religious academic mind have studied the Book of Mormon, evaluating it literary style, the stories of human drama and tragedy, historicity of three ancient American cultures and their rise and fall (Nephites, Mulekites, and Jaredites), unique revealed doctrine, and the moral battle between good and evil. Harold Bloom extends the analysis and calls the LDS religion the America religion. One researcher said, "of becoming the first major faith to appear on earth since the Prophet Mohammed rode out of the desert."
4. Theologians and religious scholars of the first rank, from Jacob Neusner to James Charlesworth to Harold Bloom have been suggesting it is time to take the writings of Joseph Smith more seriously. Wilhelm Benz and Finn Heikki Raisanen have argued that Joseph Smith needs to be taken more seriously as a theologian. Jan Shipps says, "the Book of Mormon occupies a position of major importance in both the religious and intellectual history of the United States."
5. 1820, Joseph Smith received the first vision; in1832, Joseph Smith recorded the first vision; and in 1842, the first vision was published.
6. Moroni conveyed message was something of complexity and variability: 1. the Gold plates were deposited in the earth, a physical, tangible medium. 2. the angel characterized the book as an account of the ancient inhabitants of the continent and he was one of those inhabitants, chronicler of their history, and keeper of the sacred plates. The Book of Mormon would be subjected to the exacting glaze of scholarly verification to satisfy expectations of confirmatory evidence. 3. the angel indicated that the fullness of the gospel was contained in the plates, "as delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants." The angel's description foreshadows the paradoxical charges to come. The plates were in a hillside, nearby, and had been there for 1,400 years.
7. Joseph Smith, a new Mose: a. Malachi - "messanger, who shall prepare the way before me: after which the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come." B. Isaiah - "an ensign to the nations", "second gathering of Israel". C. Joel - the Lord pouring out his spirit upon all flesh in a new Pentecostal era, "your young men shall see visions". C. Daniel - "stone cut out of the mountain without hands."
8. "Moroni had made clear that an era of history-changing turmoil was now dawning, that the end time was near, and that spiritual forces were being unleashed while the wicked would soon burn as stubble."
9. "I had been tempted of the adversary and sought the plates to obtain riches...Therefore, I was chastened" - the temptation of wealth and easy life. "On attempting to take possession of the record a shock was produced upon his system, by an invisible power which deprived him, in a measure, of his natural strength." Lucy Mack, Joseph Smith's mother said he was "hurled to the ground with great violence" as was Uzzah for steadying the ark. The implicated value of the Gold plates is construed as sacred by divine.
10. Joseph Smith confirmed through the Urim and Thummin that David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, and Martin Harris could see for them the mysterious and holy relics (sword of Labon and Liahona), and view the Gold plates. The three witnesses were commanded to bear testimony to the world of what they had seen. "These plates have been revealed by the power of God, and they have been translated by the power of God."
11. "The centeredness on Christ, the Messiah, in a document purporting to have been written by New World Israelites over a period from the six centuries before Christ to 421 AD is certainly one of the more remarkable-and daring-features of the Book of Mormon, theologically." The Book of Mormon is a history of pre-Christian Christians, who talk, rejoice, and prophesy of Christ.
12. Joseph Smith maintained that Adam was taught faith in Christ, baptized, and received the cleansing fire of the Holy Ghost. The career same pattern emerges: Solomon and the molten sea=font resting on the back of 12 oxen, Elijah prophesy of turning the hearts of the children=eternal families and genealogy work, Jonah and the bell of the whale=premortal life.
13. "Joseph Smith is no Luther, pouring over the scriptures to provide revisionist interpretations of Christian doctrine, or a King Josiah, rediscovering neglected scrolls of scripture. He is Moses, bringing down utterly new tablets from the mount, to a people still possessed of shadowy recollections of a former, fuller knowledge of Jehovah."
14. "Joseph predicted to Wentworth, `no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing, persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say they work is done."
15. "The Book of Mormon is preeminently a concrete manifestation of sacred utterance, and thus an evidence of divine presence, before it is a repository of theological claims."
16. Mikhail Bakhtin says authoritative discourse demands that we acknowledge it, that we make it our own; it binds us, quite independent of any power it might have to persuade us internally; we encounter it with its authority already fused to it." Joseph Smith's words, by the spirit of revelation he embodies, are validated by the authority to which they are fused-not by linguistic analysis, scholarly opinion, rhetorical charm, or anything else and the words stand or fall with the authority.
17. "The particular models of seership that Smith exemplified and the authoritative nature of the text he produced were powerfully shaped by the nature of the translation process itself. In translating the Gold plates, Joseph Smith more close match the prophetic role modeled by Moses than Paul. Where the tablets of God were written by the finger of God, the epistles of Paul captured all the frailties of one who spoke as a man."
18. The Urim and Thummim, played the following roles: 1. The sacred instruments established the Book of Mormon's claim to a scriptural status not just equivalent to the Bible, but reminiscent of the sacred tablets them-selves. 2. The prophetic authority connected Joseph Smith to Moses and Aaron, as prophet and priest. 3. The Urim and Thummim is connected to the priestly office when people came to seek divine consultation. 4. The Urim and Thummim by its palpability, divine provenance, and miraculous powers polarize the Book of Mormon around the issue of authenticity rather than theological merit. 5. The oracular function of revealing God's will anciently is unimpeachable. As signs of priestly authority, the interpreters make Joseph a holy medium rather than human sour of the record. 6. The Urim and Thummim, in other words produced a translation precisely in accord with the original plates - no approximation or near-hits.
19. Joseph Smith was fascinated by the historical dimension to the ancient records and his mother states, "In the course of our evening conversations, Joseph gave us some of the most amusing recitals which could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, their manner of dwelling, the animals which they rode, the cities that they built, and the structure of their buildings with every particular, their mode of warfare, and their religious worship as specifically as though he had spent his life with them."