Dear Mr. Lindsay,

You state:
When the Book of Mormon was published in 1830, the idea of ancient people in this continent keeping a written record was hilarious, and the idea of them or anybody else writing on metal plates was simply bizarre — "too funny for words," as Hugh Nibley puts it. It was ridiculed many times, and still is by some critics. http://www.jefflindsay.com/myturn.shtml

This is hilarious! But not for the reasons you state. You can cite all of the Mormon "apologists" you like (Paul Cheesman made this idiotic and insupportable claim for years), but someday you're just going to have to look at sources written BEFORE the Book of Mormon was published. When you do, you'll find that —

Jahn's BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY published in English in 1823 (Andover, MA) states that "Those books [of the ancient Jews], which were inscribed on tablets of wood, lead, brass, or ivory, were connected together by rings at the back ..."

Now you know: a scholarly work on archaeology before 1830 claimed the Jews wrote on metal plates AND bound them with rings at the back. Curiously, Joseph Smith knew about this book — he mentions it in the TIMES AND SEASONS (Sept. 1, 1842) to vindicate the Book of Mormon.

Tellingly, Joseph (as editor) leaves out the fact that that Jahn's book was published seven years prior to the Book of Mormon. (In case the terms confuse you, the T & S points out that "Tablets, tables, and plates are all of the same import ...")

In ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS (Philadelphia, 1823) William Brown, D. D. wrote "It is generally thought that engraving on brass and lead, and on rock or tablets of stone, was the form in which the public laws were written ..."

Did you catch that? "IT IS GENERALLY THOUGHT." How could it be "Too funny for words" if it was something "generally thought" by antiquarians in 1823?

In AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF BIBLIOGRAPHY (Vol. I, London, 1814), Thomas Hartwell Horne devotes pages 33 - 35 to lead and brass as writing materials of the ancients.

And let's not forget the Apocrypha and Bible. I Macabees 8:22 mentions an epistle written on "tables of brass." The Bible states that "ancient writings were inscribed on gold (Exodus 28:36; 39:30)." That last quote is from p. 48 of Paul Chessman's ANCIENT WRITING ON METAL PLATES. Curiously, he too claims Joseph couldn't have known about ancient writing on metal plates.

Here's an UNSUBSTANTIATED claim from the THE NATURAL AND ABORIGINAL HISTORY OF TENNESSEE (1823) by Judge John Haywood:

"two or three plates of brass, with characters inscribed upon them resembling letters" found in West Virginia, and a circular piece of brass with letter-like characters found in North Carolina (328-30).

Haywood later concludes "since we can trace this art into Egypt prior to the exodus ... there seems to be incontrovertible evidence that the inscriptions in America were made by people of the Old world." (372)

Who were these people who thought in 1830 that the ancients writing on metal plates was "too funny for words"? It wasn't Jahn or Brown or Horne or Haywood or ANYONE familiar with the Bible and the Apocrypha (which all Bibles included at that time — even Joseph's).

As to your ridiculous notion that the idea in 1830 that any ancient Americans kept a written record was considered "hilarious" let's look at a book about American archaeology published ten years before the Book of Mormon called ARCHAEOLOGIA AMERICANA published by the American Antiquarian Society — which is still in existence in Worcester, MA.

In it, Baron von Humboldt quotes Montezuma as saying to Cortez: "We know from our books ... that myself, and those who inhabit this country, are not natives, but strangers, who came a great distance." Where did Montezuma of the Aztecs get this information? From BOOKS written by earlier Aztecs.

Humboldt didn't find that hilarious. Or Cortez. Or Montezuma. Or the American Antiquarian Society. Can you tell me who did?

I'll close with a quote from Joseph Smith's hometown newspaper the WAYNE SENTINAL of June 1, 1827 (printed on the same press as the Book of Mormon) — nothing indicates the editor found this article, "Decyphering Hieroglyphics," hilarious: The article claimed a Professor Seyffarth of Leipzig had found:

". . . a Mexican manuscript in hieroglyphics, from which he infers that the Mexicans and the Egyptians had intercourse with each other from the remotest antiquity, and that they had the same system of mythology."

(Hmm. Ancient American Indian writing based on Egyptian. Could this be where Joseph got the idea for reformed Egyptian, reading the local newspaper?)

I suspect you knew much of the above already. If so, you're just another Mormon liar. If not, then, like Hugh Nibley, you don't do very thorough research — you just repeat other Mormons without bothering to check. However, I'll keep an eye on your web site. If your hilarious (and pathetic) claims remains up a month from now, I'll know it's the former.

Oh, I'd appreciate your citing instances that the idea that the ancients wrote on metal plates or that ancient Americans had a writing system "was ridiculed many times, and still is by some critics." I don't want citations that ridicule Joseph Smith's claims regarding the book of Mormon — that's not what you said.

I want to see just one writer ridiculing these ideas UNRELATED to Joseph Smith. You see, one can scoff at Joseph's claims of a golden book and Nephite authors and still accept the ancient Hebrews wrote on metal plates and that ancient Americans had a writing system. I'd especially be interested in any modern scholars who doubt Jahn and Humboldt.

Very sincerely,
"Mr. S." (full name withheld)

Stephens's late discoveries in Central America of Egyptian hieroglyphics, great numbers of which he has given in his drawings, and published in his able book of that curious region, and the still later discovery of many thousands of mummies in the caverns of Mexico, similar to those of Ancient Egypt, are evidences so pointed, that Ancient America must have been peopled from the highly civilized nations of Asia, that the learned are at last convinced of the fact.

The unlearned, however, have got the start of the learned in this instance, for they found it out about nineteen years ago through the medium of the Book of Mormon. The Latter-Day Saints Millennial Star. Volume X, p. 343.

Now no one will dispute the fact that the existence of antique remains in different parts of America was known long before Mr. Smith was born. But every well-informed person knows that the most of the discoveries made by Catherwood and Stephens were original — that the most of the forty-four cities described by [Stephens] had not been described by previous travelers." "Reply to a Pamphlet Printed in Glasgow, Entitled, "Remarks on Mormonism," part 3. Millennial Star, Vol. 11, No. 8, 15 April 1849, pp. 115-116.

The acceptance of an "Indian civilization" demanded, to an American living in 1839 [when the first edition of Stephens appeared in England], an entire reorientation, for to him, an Indian was one of those barbaric, tepee dwellers against whom wars were constantly waged....

Nor did one ever think of calling the other [e.g., Mesoamerican] indigenous inhabitants of the continent "civilized." In the universally accepted opinion [of that day], they were like their North American counterparts — savages." (Victor Wolfgang Von Hagen, Maya Explorer: The Life of John Lloyd Stephens, Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1948, p. 75, as cited by John L. Sorenson, "How Could Joseph Smith Write So Accurately about Ancient American Civilization?")

If on comparison it appears that these characters are similar to those recently discovered on those ruins in Central America, which have attracted so much attention lately, and which are decidedly of Egyptian architecture, it will make a very strong point for Smith. It will tend to prove that the plates are genuine, even if it does not establish the truth of his inspiration, or the fidelity of his translation....

But after a very careful study of the book, a conscientious and painstaking examination of all the evidence he has been able to gather both for and against it, the author of these pages has been forced to reject every one of the above claims.

He is compelled to believe that no such people as are described in the Book of Mormon ever lived upon this continent; that no such records were ever engraved upon golden plates, or any other plates, in the early ages; that no such men as Mormon or Moroni or any other of the prophets or kings or wise men mentioned in the book, ever existed in this country; that Jesus Christ never appeared upon this continent in person, or had a people here before its discovery by Columbus.

In short, that no such civilization, Christian or otherwise, as is described in the Book of Mormon had an existence upon either North or South America.

The plates. We must remember that it is a Hebrew youth, who "has lived at Jerusalem all his days," until he leaves for "the wilderness." ... The writing materials then in use, and it was only very few who could use them, would be those such a youth would be familiar with. Now the Jews did not use plates of brass at that time. Their writing materials were
1. Tablets smeared with wax.
2. Linen rubbed with a kind of gum.
3. Tanned leather and vellum.
4. Parchment (invented by Attalus of Pergamos).
5. Papyrus. (M. Sturat, O. Test. Can.)

All the writings of the Jews long anterior and subsequent to Zedekiah were in rolls. (Isa., xxxiv. 4; Jer. xxxvi. 25; Ezek., iii 9, 10l Ps. xl. 7; Zech. v. 1, etc., etc.) These rolls were chiefly parchment and papyrus.... The use of this material superseded the stones filled with lead (Job), Hesiods leaden tables, Solon's wooden planks, the wax tables, so clumsy and easily erased. This material rolled up could be bound with flax and sealed.... The Jews used this material. The Egyptians, whose language Nephi gives his father, used this material. Contradiction and inconsistency are stamped on any other assertion. This is another strong proof of imposture.

The genealogies were kept by public registrars and were written in Hebrew on rolls of papyrus and parchment, not on plates, nor in the Egyptian language. They were very extensive, embracing all members of the family, and were sacredly preserved.... This mass of names, embracing from Joseph, son of Jacob, down to Lehi, even though they had been, as pretended, engraved on brass plates, would have formed an immense volume and a great weight. (p. 219)

To have told one of those old Levites, specifically punctilious and even superstitious, that some one had copied their law in the language of the Egyptians (idolaters and enemies) in the first place, and had it durably engraved on brass, when they were handling so delicately these papyrus rolls, would have called it an infamous imposture. Every wise man will imitate the skepticism of that Levite. (p. 220)

All this vast mass of matter, it is pretended, was on these singular brass plates: the Pentateuch, history, prophecies, and of course the Psalms, for was not David a prophet? Add to all this the genealogies of their families ever since Abraham! One man could never have carried it all. (p. 221-222)

The book of Mormon purports to have been originally engraved on brass plates.... How could brass be written on? (p. 44)

This book speaks... of the Jewish Scriptures, having been kept by Jews on plates of brass, six hundred years before Christ. The Jews never kept any of their records on plates of brass. (p. 46)

In 1839 a young American lawyer, fresh from his astonishingly successful publication of two books of travel, secured an appointment as charge d'affaires to the Republic of Central America.

His official task was to locate the seat of government of that civil-war-torn country (then a confederation of states that are today the independent countries of Central America) and conclude a trade agreement with it.

His real reason for this journey, however, was to explore the jungles of Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula for the remnants of a once-great civilization whose existence was only hinted at in the literature of the period.

In 1841 John Lloyd Stephens published Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, bringing to the world for the first time a reliable account of the Xculoc, Palace of the Figurespre-Columbian ruins of the Yucatan Peninsula and northern Central America, ruins of a civilization we know today as the Maya.

The existence of the fabulous cities of Palenque, Copan, and Uxmal was finally, unequivocally confirmed. The romantic image of ancient stone cities mouldering beneath the thick tropical rain-forest captivated the public's imagination, and the two volumes, illustrated with Frederick Catherwood's phenomenally accurate engravings, caused a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic.

Scarcely three months after the publication of Central America Stephens and Catherwood organized a second trip to Yucatan to continue their explorations, which had been cut short at Uxmal by Catherwood's illness. The results of this expedition were published in 1843 as Incidents of Travel in Yucatan.

These books were the first accurate and reliable descriptions of the Maya ruins of southern Mexico and northern Central America to be published. (emphasis mine)

Exactly when and where Stephens' interest became piqued by the antiquities of Yucatan and Central America is uncertain. While he was in London he may have heard of the reports of Juan Galindo, the English-born governor of the state of Peten, Guatemala, whose notices concerning the ruins of Palenque and Copan were published in London and Paris between 1831 and 1836.

Earlier, an edited version of Antonio del Rio's report to the governor of Guatemala had appeared in London in 1822, with illustrations by Frederick Waldeck. In its appendix, entitled Teatro Critico Americano, one Dr. Pablo Felix Cabrera, of Guatemala, purports to prove that the ruins are Egyptian in origin.

In 1834, the two volume Antiquites Americaines had been published in Paris, which also attempted to show that the ancient monuments of the New World were not indigenous, but rather the products of the civilizations of Egypt and India.

The European ethnocentricity that dismissed the inhabitants of the Americas as "men just emerging from barbarity" insisted that if there had been an "advanced" civilization in the New World, it had been brought over by the Egyptians, the "Hindoos," the lost tribes of Israel, or survivors from Atlantis.

In 1838, Jean Frederick Comte de Waldeck published Voyage Pittoresque et Archaeologique dans le Province d'Yucatan. At the age of 68 Waldeck, under the sponsorship of the Mexican government, had spent two years living in the ruins at Palenque, where he took a teenage Maya bride. He returned to Paris in 1838 to publish Voyage Pittoresque, his first work.

Waldeck's magnum opus was not published until 1866 (he lived to be 106 years old) and he is today dismissed as an eccentric whose "ideas are so absurd as to preclude any intelligent discussion of them."

Although F. L. Hawks (whom Stephens had met in London) and John Russell Bartlett each claim to have called his attention to the reports of ruined stone cities in Yucatan and Central America, their conflicting accounts agree that it was this 1838 work, with 22 of Waldeck's inaccurate and romanticized drawings of Maya sculpture and architecture, that was the final spur to Stephens.

John Russell Bartlett, a New York merchant, bookseller, and ardent "antiquarian," was later librarian for John Carter Brown's collection of books on the Americas and chief of the U.S.-Mexican Border Comission of 1854.

He was a founder, in 1842, of the American Antiquarian Society (Stephens and Catherwood were charter members) and was active in the circle of American intellectuals who were the forerunners of the anthropologists and ethnologists of today.

In an autobiographical memoir prepared for his family Bartlett wrote, "...I claim to have first suggested these [explorations in Central America and Yucatan] to Mr. S."

Hawks, too, in his obituary of Stephens in "Putnam's Monthly Magazine," claimed, "In repeated conversations with the present writer, the attention of Mr. Stephens was called to the ruins of Guatemala and Yucatan, as represented in the works of Del Rio and Waldeck."

From the accounts of Hawks and Bartlett and the date of publication of Waldeck's Voyage Pittoresque (1838) we may assume that Stephens' plan to explore the ruins did not crystallize until the latter half of 1838 or the early part of 1839.

"Fortunately for him," Bartlett continues, "Mr. Frederick Catherwood, a distinguished architect and draughtsman who had spent much time in Egypt and the Holy Land, and with whom he was on intimate terms, was then in New York. Mr. Catherwood had great enthusiasm in every thing (sic) appertaining to architecture, and was an ardent lover of the picturesque, and of archaeological research. Mr. Stephens made him a favorable offer to accompany him to Central America, which offer he at once accepted."

The recent discoveries in Central America have attracted a new attention to these questions. The time for constructing a theory is not yet. The materials are still too scanty. But they are accumulating in great richness; and to no part of the world does the historical inquirer look with a more intense interest, than to that country, lately as little thought of as if it did not exist, now known to be so fruitful in marvels.

It would be all but incredible, if it were not now shown to be certainly true, that in the wilds of Central America are found vast architectural piles, with complicated decorations chiseled in hard stone, which, different as is their style, might without extravagance be called worthy of the best eras of European art. The "vast buildings or terraces, and pyramidal structures, grand and in good preservation, richly ornamented," struck Mr. Stephens on his first approach, as "in picturesque effect almost equal to the ruins of Thebes."

There is no rudeness or barbarity in the design or proportions; on the contrary, the whole wears an air of architectural symmetry and grandeur; and as the stranger ascends the steps and casts a bewildered eye along its open and desolate doors, it is hard to believe that he sees before him the work of a race in whose epitaph, as written by historians, they are called ignorant of art, and said to have perished in the rudeness of savage life.