If you know anything about Mormonism, you probably know the story: Joseph Smith was led by an angel named Moroni to a set of ancient gold plates buried in a hill in upstate New York. These plates supposedly contained a record of ancient Americans, written in a language called “Reformed Egyptian,” which Smith translated into what we now know as the Book of Mormon.
Today, we’ll focus on the plates: their far-fetched description, the (literally) unbelievable translation process, and shaky-at-best eyewitness testimony.
The Math Ain’t Mathin’
The Book of Mormon is huge—clocking in at over 269,000 words, longer than the New Testament. But let’s do some quick math on how much text could fit on metal plates that small.
Joseph Smith and his followers described the plates as 6 inches wide, 8 inches long, and 6 inches thick. That’s a stack of metal the size of a brick—which raises some serious questions when we consider just how much text would have to fit on them.
Based on what researchers know about other ancient languages, even if Smith’s “Reformed Egyptian” script was super compact, the likely maximum word count that could fit front and back on 200 plates is about 200,000— already about 70,000 words short of the Book of Mormon.
Here’s some representations (from LDS Bookstore itself, no less):
So you’re telling me that a historical account that is longer than even the New Testament fit on these? At least try to be believable.
But it gets worse: If the plates had any formatting or space between words (which they almost certainly did), that 200,000 word count drops significantly. Which, according to these renders, would be much, much lower than 200,000.
(Take it with a grain of salt though because even Mormons have no clue what these looked like… no one does, actually!)
And think about this: if the plates were pure gold, they’d weigh nearly 200 pounds, making them impossible to carry around. If they were an alloy (like tumbaga, as some apologists claim), then calling them “gold plates” is misleading.
Some Mormon apologists argue that “Reformed Egyptian” was an ultra-efficient script where one character could represent entire phrases, sentences, or even paragraphs. This is the only way their math could work—if each character in this mysterious language somehow condensed a massive amount of information.
But there’s a few problems with this. For one, no known ancient language works like this. Egyptian hieroglyphs, Akkadian cuneiform, and Mayan glyphs all used individual symbols to represent single sounds or words—not entire paragraphs.
Not only that, even shorthand systems still require a lot of space. While some ancient scripts (like certain Chinese characters) can pack more meaning per symbol, the idea of a language where each character condenses full sentences or ideas is completely unheard of
In my opinion, most damaging of all is the fact that Smith never produced an actual “Reformed Egyptian” translation. The only sample of this script—the so-called “Anthon Transcript”—was dismissed by Charles Anthon, a linguist Smith supposedly consulted, as meaningless scribbles. In linguistic studies, facsimiles and recreations are a common practice. But I guess that’s not necessary when you claim to be a prophet of God.
So even if the plates existed, and even if Smith translated them, the idea that Reformed Egyptian was some superhuman compression algorithm for language is totally far-fetched. It’s a convenient excuse for how the Book of Mormon could fit, but it has no basis in linguistics or history.
The bottom line? There’s no way all the Book of Mormon text fits on the plates Smith described, and the physical description of the plates makes absolutely no sense.
The Hat Trick
Let’s grant that the plates actually existed and that Joseph Smith actually translated them. There are still plenty of other issues with the plates and their translation.
Early Mormon art usually depicts Joseph Smith carefully studying the plates as he translates them. Something like this:
The reality? He didn’t even need them in the room.
According to multiple eyewitness accounts—including David Whitmer, Martin Harris, and Emma Smith—Smith stuck his face in a hat, put a seer stone inside, and dictated what he saw.
Harris described it like this:
“By placing the Urim and Thummim (seer stone) in a hat, and putting his face in the hat, he could see as in daylight” (Interview with Martin Harris, Tiffany’s Monthly, 1859).
So it actually looked more like this:
This method mirrors 19th-century folk magic, where people used stones in hats to find buried treasure. In fact, Smith was convicted in 1826 for “glass-looking”—a common term for this practice (New York court records).
So here’s the questions: why would God go through all the trouble of preserving these ancient plates if Smith wasn’t even going to use them? If this was truly an inspired translation, why does it look exactly like the same treasure-digging tricks Smith was using before he claimed to be a prophet?
The Case of the Missing 116 Pages
One of the biggest plot holes in the translation process was the sudden disappearance of the first 116 pages of the Book of Mormon.
Here’s what happened: Martin Harris, one of Smith’s earliest followers, asked to take the first part of the translation home to convince his skeptical wife. The pages vanished—allegedly stolen or lost. Most likely, Martin and his wife kept the pages to see if Smith would come up with the same translation, and if he could, then his wife would be convinced.
Smith refused to retranslate the same section, claiming that God warned him that enemies would alter the stolen pages to make him look bad (D&C 10). Instead, Smith wrote an entirely new version of that section, claiming it was from a different source (the “small plates of Nephi”).
Let’s think: If Smith was truly translating by divine power, why wouldn’t God reveal the exact text again? And why does the “replacement” text have a totally different focus from what Harris originally lost?
The simplest explanation: Smith didn’t seem to remember what he wrote the first time, so he devised a way to explain the difference.
The Witnesses: Conflicting Stories & Unreliable Testimonies
Mormonism often relies on the Three and Eight Witnesses as proof that the plates were real. But the story gets messy when you look at what these men said later.
David Whitmer later admitted he only saw the plates in a vision. He said,
“I was not under any hallucination… I saw them just as distinctly as I see anything around me—though at the time, I was wrapped up in the vision of the glory of the Lord” (Kansas City Journal, 1881).
Martin Harris described seeing the plates with his “spiritual eyes.” He later joined and left multiple religious movements and even admitted at one point that he never physically saw the plates.
Some of the Eight Witnesses later distanced themselves from Mormonism, and none left behind independent writings affirming their testimony.
Even Brigham Young hinted that the plates weren’t real in the way people assumed:
“The plates upon which the Book of Mormon was engraved were never intended for the eyes of this generation.” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 3, p. 347).
If the plates were genuine, solid gold artifacts, why did even the witnesses describe them in visionary, spiritual terms?
A House of Cards?
When you add it all up, the story of the gold plates falls apart under scrutiny.
- There’s no physical evidence that the plates ever existed.
- The size and word count of the plates don’t match what’s claimed.
- The translation process was more like a magic trick than a scholarly effort.
- The 116 pages vanished, and Smith conveniently wrote a different version.
- The witnesses gave conflicting testimonies, and some later admitted their experience was spiritual, not physical.
And yet, because Smith conveniently claimed Moroni took the plates back, Mormon apologists can always fall back on personal revelation and faith rather than evidence. It’s an argument that preys on people’s spirituality and shifts the burden of proof onto the skeptic rather than the one making the extraordinary claim. But that’s a discussion for another day.
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