Appearance
Kinderhook Plates & Translator Claims
In April 1843, six small bell-shaped brass plates were dug up near Kinderhook, Illinois. Strange characters covered them. Locals brought them to Joseph Smith.
The CES Letter opens with what looks like a devastating admission:
"I have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, King of Egypt."[1]
Did Joseph Smith actually "translate" a known hoax?
That quote isn't from Joseph Smith
The passage comes from History of the Church, Volume 5. Joseph didn't write it. William Clayton's journal (May 1, 1843) records in the third person: "Prest J. has translated a portion." Decades later, compilers converted it to first person — standard nineteenth-century biographical editing practice.[2]
Joseph's own journal entry (May 7, 1843) says only that he was "visited by several gentlemen concerning the plates."[3] No translation claim. No manuscript. No scribe. No further mention.
The CES Letter presents a ghostwritten editorial conversion as a personal confession.
One character, one notebook, no revelation
Don Bradley's research reconstructed what actually happened. Joseph compared a single boat-shaped character on the plates to a matching character on page 4 of the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL). He used a Hebrew lexicon — secular tools, not revelation.[2:1]
The GAEL's pre-existing definition read: "honor by birth, kingly power by the line of Pharaoh...possessor of heaven and earth." That became Clayton's one-sentence report. One character. One match. Then nothing.
No manuscript was produced. No scribe was called. No purchase was made. No publication was attempted. Five days of casual interest, and the plates disappear from the record.
The forgers' thirty-six-year silence
The plates were a hoax — everyone agrees on that. The 1981 Ensign acknowledged it. The Church's Gospel Topics page addresses it. This isn't a cover-up; it's a four-decade-old public acknowledgment.[4]
But if the plates were a trap and the trap worked, the forgers had every reason to expose Joseph immediately. He was alive. He was controversial. A public unmasking would have been devastating.
They waited until 1879 — thirty-six years after the incident and thirty-five years after Joseph's death.[5] The simplest explanation: there was nothing to expose. Joseph didn't produce a translation, didn't claim revelation, and didn't take the bait.
The "two clunkers" argument falls apart
The CES Letter's real play comes at the end of the section:
"Joseph Smith claimed to have translated three ancient records. The Book of Abraham: proven a fraud. The Kinderhook Plates: found to be a hoax... Wouldn't you buy a third car from a man who had already sold you two clunkers?"[6]
This works only if the three "translations" are equivalent. They aren't.
The Kinderhook Plates produced nothing — a five-day curiosity, secular tools, no revelation claimed. The Book of Abraham contains ancient content Joseph couldn't have known (the place name Olishem, divine council theology, Apocalypse of Abraham parallels).[7] The Book of Mormon is 269,510 words dictated in roughly sixty working days with no notes, no outline, no substantive revisions, and features — chiasmus, Hebraisms, ancient names — that resist nineteenth-century explanation.[8]
Bundling a non-event, a contested text with strong ancient attestation, and the most remarkable dictation in literary history as "three attempts at the same task" is not analysis. It's a rhetorical trick.
If Joseph were a fraud, he would have translated them
A con man who could fabricate scripture at will had the perfect setup: six metal plates with strange characters, brought by eager believers. A fraud would have produced a full translation to reinforce his prophetic authority. That's what con men do — they exploit opportunity.
Joseph compared one character to a notebook and walked away.
That behavior makes no sense for a con man. It makes perfect sense for someone who believed his translation ability came from God and knew he hadn't received anything.
The track record, honestly examined
The CES Letter asks what the Kinderhook incident tells us about Joseph's "gift of translation."[9] Here is what it tells us:
When Joseph used scholarly tools (a Hebrew lexicon, the GAEL), he produced one speculative sentence and stopped. When he used the means he claimed God provided, he produced the Book of Mormon — a text whose production timeline and content remain unexplained by any naturalistic theory.
The Kinderhook plates didn't expose a fraud. They exposed the limits of a man working without divine help. Which is exactly what you'd expect if the divine help was real.
Bottom line: The "translation" quote isn't Joseph's. The actual event was one character matched to a notebook, followed by nothing. The forgers waited thirty-six years to claim success. And the "two clunkers" argument requires treating a non-event, a contested text with ancient attestation, and the most remarkable dictation in literary history as interchangeable. They aren't.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Kinderhook Plates & Translator Claims," pp. 70–71. The passage is attributed to Joseph Smith via History of the Church, Vol. 5, p. 372, but was compiled posthumously from William Clayton's third-person journal entry. ↩︎
Don Bradley, "President Joseph Has Translated a Portion: Solving the Mystery of the Kinderhook Plates," FAIR Conference (2011). Bradley's research identified the specific GAEL character Joseph matched and the secular method he used. See also Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee, "Joseph Smith and the Kinderhook Plates," in A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine and Church History, ed. Laura Harris Hales (Provo, UT: RSC, BYU; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2016), 93–115. ↩︎ ↩︎
Joseph Smith, Journal, May 7, 1843, in Joseph Smith Papers, Journal, December 1842–June 1844, Book 2, p. 195. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-december-1842-june-1844-book-2-10-march-1843-14-july-1843/203 ↩︎
Stanley B. Kimball, "Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to Be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax," Ensign, August 1981. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1981/08/kinderhook-plates-brought-to-joseph-smith-appear-to-be-a-nineteenth-century-hoax ↩︎
W. Fugate letter to James T. Cobb, 30 June 1879. Fugate's confession came thirty-six years after the incident and thirty-five years after Joseph Smith's death. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Kinderhook Plates & Translator Claims," pp. 72–73. ↩︎
Kerry Muhlestein, "Egyptian Papyri and the Book of Abraham," Religious Educator 14, no. 1 (2013): 117–136. See also John Gee, An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (Provo, UT: RSC, BYU; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017). ↩︎
Royal Skousen, "How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7, no. 1 (1998): 22–31. https://scripturecentral.org/archive/periodicals/journal-article/how-joseph-smith-translated-book-mormon-evidence-original-manuscript ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Kinderhook Plates & Translator Claims," p. 72. ↩︎