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Kinderhook plates
The Kinderhook plates are a set of six small, bell-shaped pieces of brass with unusual engravings, created as a hoax in 1843, surreptitiously buried and then dug up at a Native American mound near Kinderhook, Illinois, United States. The plates were forged by three men from Kinderhook as part of a plan to discredit Latter Day Saint movement founder Joseph Smith. According to Mormonism, the Book of Mormon is a record of the ancient Judeo-Semitic inhabitants of the Americas, originally translated by Smith from golden plates engraved in the language of reformed Egyptian.
Latter Day Saint residents of Kinderhook sent the plates to Smith in Nauvoo for translation, where Smith said they were of ancient origin and translated a portion of them. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) defended the plates until 1981.[2]: 131 In 1980, scientific testing confirmed the hoax, and that the plates were a modern creation. Within the Latter Day Saint movement, Smith's translation was never accepted in the canon of scripture, but was generally considered authentic.
- ^ History of the Church. Vol. 5. LDS Church. 1909. pp. 374–75.
- ^ Peters, Jason Frederick (2003). "The Kinderhook Plates: Examining a Nineteenth-Century Hoax". Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. 96 (2). Illinois State Historical Society. ISSN 1522-1067. JSTOR 40193471.
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