Appearance
Kinderhook Plates
In 1843, six small brass plates covered in strange characters were dug up near Kinderhook, Illinois. They were a hoax — fabricated by local men hoping to embarrass Joseph Smith. Everyone agrees on that, including the Church, which published the finding in the 1981 Ensign.[1]
The CES Letter treats this episode as proof that Joseph Smith was a fraud. It opens with what looks like a damning first-person confession:
"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."[2]
Then it builds to the real punchline — bundling the Kinderhook Plates with the Book of Abraham to argue that two of Joseph's three "translations" failed, so the third (the Book of Mormon) should be presumed fraudulent too: "Wouldn't you buy a third car from a man who had already sold you two clunkers?"[3]
Did Joseph Smith actually translate the Kinderhook Plates? And does the "two out of three" argument hold up?
The quote the CES Letter attributes to Joseph isn't his
The first-person 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.[4]
Joseph's own journal entry (May 7, 1843) says only that he was "visited by several gentlemen concerning the plates."[5] No translation claim. No manuscript. No scribe. No further mention.
The "translation" was one character matched to a notebook
Don Bradley reconstructed what actually happened. Joseph compared a single boat-shaped character on the plates to a matching character in the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL). He used a Hebrew lexicon — secular tools, not revelation.[4:1]
The GAEL's pre-existing definition became Clayton's one-sentence report. One character. One match. Then nothing.
No manuscript, no scribe, no published text. The Times and Seasons stated the plates' contents were "not yet ascertained." Five days of casual interest, then the plates disappear from the record.
The forgers waited thirty-six years to claim victory
If the trap worked and Joseph produced a public translation, the forgers had every reason to expose him immediately. He was alive. He was controversial. A public unmasking would have been devastating.
Wilbur Fugate didn't confess until 1879 — thirty-six years after the incident and thirty-five years after Joseph's death.[6] The simplest explanation: there was nothing to expose.
The "two clunkers" argument depends on a false equivalence
The CES Letter's rhetorical payoff requires treating three radically different projects as interchangeable data points:
"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?"[3:1]
The Kinderhook Plates produced nothing — five days, 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, and no substantive revisions.[8]
Scoring these pass/fail as "three translations" isn't analysis. It's a bumper sticker.
A fraud would have translated them
Six metal plates with strange characters, brought by eager believers who wanted another ancient record. If Joseph fabricated scripture at will, this was a gift.
A con man would have produced something. Joseph compared one character to a notebook and walked away.
That behavior makes no sense for a fraud. It makes perfect sense for someone who believed his translation ability came from God and knew he hadn't received anything.
The real track record
The CES Letter asks what the Kinderhook incident tells us about Joseph's "gift of translation."[9] Here's 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, internal complexity, and ancient features 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 words -- it's a clerk's third-person note rewritten decades later. The actual event was one character matched to a notebook, followed by silence. 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 the same thing.
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 ↩︎
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. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Kinderhook Plates & Translator Claims," pp. 72–73. ↩︎ ↩︎
Don Bradley, "President Joseph Has Translated a Portion: Solving the Mystery of the Kinderhook Plates," FAIR Conference (2011). See also Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee, "Joseph Smith and the Kinderhook Plates," in A Reason for Faith, 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 ↩︎
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. ↩︎
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. ↩︎