The Kinderhook Plates: A Scholarly Response

Examining the evidence, the primary sources, and the arguments — and why this episode does not undermine Joseph Smith’s prophetic claims

Overview

The LDS Discussions overview of the Kinderhook Plates presents the incident as evidence that Joseph Smith was a false prophet who could not resist attempting a fraudulent translation of obvious forgeries. The argument is emotionally compelling on the surface, but it collapses under rigorous historical and scholarly scrutiny. This response addresses each major claim in turn, drawing on the best available primary sources, peer-reviewed scholarship, and the Church’s own transparent handling of the episode.

The conclusion of this analysis is straightforward: the Kinderhook plates episode, properly understood, is not a faith-threatening problem. The Church openly acknowledges the plates were nineteenth-century forgeries. Joseph Smith never canonized a translation, never presented it as scripture, and never even finished examining the plates. The critical case depends on conflating two entirely different modes of translation — prophetic and scholarly — and on selectively reading primary sources. Neither move survives careful examination.

Claim 1: “Joseph Smith Translated a Portion of the Kinderhook Plates”

LDS Discussions quotes the History of the Church as though it were Joseph Smith’s own words: “I have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found.” This is the linchpin of the entire critical argument — and it is based on a textual error that the Church itself identified and published in the Ensign in 1981.

“Although this account appears to be the writing of Joseph Smith, it is actually an excerpt from a journal of William Clayton. It has been well known that the serialized ‘History of Joseph Smith’ consists largely of items from other persons’ personal journals and other sources… The Clayton journal excerpt was one item used in this way. For example, the words ‘I have translated a portion’ originally read ‘President J. has translated a portion…’”

Stanley B. Kimball, “Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to Be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax,” Ensign, August 1981, p. 66.

The phrase “I have translated” was introduced in 1909 when B. H. Roberts compiled and edited William Clayton’s third-person journal entry into a first-person narrative for the History of the Church — a standard nineteenth-century biographical practice. The original reads: “Pres[iden]t J[oseph]. has translated a portion.” This is not Joseph’s first-person claim; it is Clayton’s third-person observation.

LDS Discussions acknowledges this, but then attempts to rehabilitate the Clayton entry as unimpeachable. The question, however, is not whether Clayton was reliable in general — he was. The question is what “translated” meant in this specific context, and what method Joseph was using. That is where the critical argument completely breaks down.

The Church’s official Gospel Topics essay on the Kinderhook Plates, published openly on ChurchofJesusChrist.org, states plainly: “Chemical and metallurgical analysis of the one surviving plate confirms the artifact was not an ancient production.” The Church does not hide this fact. It has been publicly acknowledged since 1981.

Claim 2: The Translation Method Proves Joseph Was a False Prophet

This is the heart of the LDS Discussions argument, and it depends entirely on conflating two fundamentally different activities: prophetic, revelatory translation (as claimed for the Book of Mormon) and ordinary scholarly investigation. Joseph Smith practiced both, and he never confused them.

Historians Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee, in their seventy-page chapter “‘President Joseph Has Translated a Portion’: Joseph Smith and the Mistranslation of the Kinderhook Plates,” published in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity (University of Utah Press, 2020), provide the definitive scholarly treatment of this episode. Their central finding is critical:

Joseph Smith did not attempt to translate the Kinderhook plates by revelation. He used his “Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language” (GAEL) as an ordinary linguistic reference tool — the same way a scholar might reach for a lexicon. This was natural, non-revelatory effort: a scholarly exercise, not a prophetic claim.

Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee, “‘President Joseph Has Translated a Portion’,” in Producing Ancient Scripture, ed. Mark Ashurst-McGee et al. (University of Utah Press, 2020), pp. 470–545.

The eyewitness account of Sylvester Emmons — a friendly non-Mormon in Nauvoo who observed the episode — confirms this directly. He reported in the New York Herald (May 30, 1843) that Joseph “compared [the plates] in my presence with his Egyptian alphabet.” No seer stone. No Urim and Thummim. No claim of divine inspiration. Joseph was doing what any linguistically curious person of his era would do: he was comparing characters to a reference document he had previously compiled.

Bradley and Ashurst-McGee demonstrate that exactly one character on the Kinderhook plates bore a superficial resemblance to a boat-shaped glyph in the GAEL. The GAEL assigned that glyph a meaning that encompassed genealogical descent through Pharaoh — which matches precisely what Clayton recorded Joseph saying. Joseph found one plausible character match and observed what the GAEL said it meant. He then apparently stopped, never producing a full translation, never presenting it as scripture, and never returning to the plates.

This is profoundly different from the Book of Mormon translation, where Joseph made explicit, repeated, public prophetic claims over a sustained multi-month effort that produced more than five hundred pages of text. The Kinderhook episode produced one character identification and a brief remark to his clerk. Treating them as equivalent events requires ignoring every relevant distinction.

Claim 3: The GAEL Proves the Book of Abraham Is False

LDS Discussions argues that because Joseph used the GAEL on the Kinderhook plates, this confirms he authored the GAEL himself — and since the GAEL-based translations are wrong by modern Egyptological standards, the Book of Abraham is false and the Kinderhook episode proves it. This argument contains multiple layers of logical error.

First, the Kinderhook plates are already known to be forgeries. Demonstrating that Joseph’s scholarly attempt to read forgeries was incorrect does not demonstrate that his prophetic translations were incorrect. These are categorically separate claims. A physician who misidentifies a counterfeit X-ray is not thereby shown to be incapable of reading real X-rays.

Second, whether Joseph “authored” the GAEL or received it through inspiration is a separate debate from the Kinderhook plates. Using the GAEL as a reference does not settle that question either way. Bradley and Ashurst-McGee explicitly note that Joseph was engaging in what he elsewhere called the “study of languages” — he wrote in 1836 that he was “determined to pursue the study of languages until I shall become master of them.” The scholarly mode of engagement was entirely consistent with his stated intentions.

Third, modern Egyptology confirms that no nineteenth-century person — not Joseph Smith, not scholars in Europe, not anyone — could reliably read Egyptian hieroglyphics in the early 1840s. The Rosetta Stone was first decoded in 1822 by Champollion, but scholarly consensus on hieroglyphic reading was still being refined for decades afterward. Holding Joseph to a standard that no contemporary could meet is not a fair historical test.

The Book of Abraham debate is extensive and belongs in its own treatment. The Kinderhook plates do not resolve it in either direction. Stacking one contested argument on top of another does not produce certainty — it produces cumulative speculation.

Claim 4: The Church Taught the Plates Were Authentic for 140 Years — Proving False Prophetic Discernment

LDS Discussions devotes considerable space to documenting that various Church leaders and publications treated the Kinderhook plates as genuine from 1843 to 1981, and argues this proves the prophets have no special discernment. Several responses are in order.

First, the plates were never canonized. No Church president declared them scripture. No General Conference address established their content as doctrine. No lesson manual made their translation a point of faith. They remained a historical curiosity — occasionally referenced by enthusiastic believers, but never elevated to theological significance.

Second, the Church itself corrected the record when scientific evidence became clear. The 1981 Ensign article was published by the Church in its own official magazine, openly stating the plates were nineteenth-century forgeries and walking through the metallurgical analysis in detail. This is not the behavior of an institution trying to hide embarrassing truths — it is the behavior of an institution willing to correct itself when evidence warrants it.

Third, the claim that prophets must possess infallible scientific or forensic discernment is not a claim the Latter-day Saint tradition makes. Latter-day Saint theology has always held that prophets are mortal men who can be wrong about non-doctrinal matters. The standard LDS Discussions applies here — that a true prophet must immediately detect any forgery — is not derived from Latter-day Saint theology, from the Old Testament, or from any mainstream Christian tradition. It is a standard invented for the purpose of this argument.

The biblical prophets were themselves deceived at times. The New Testament explicitly warns that false prophets and false miracles will be “so great as to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24). Susceptibility to deception is a universal human condition — not evidence of false prophecy.

Notably, the Mark Hofmann forgeries — cited by LDS Discussions as a parallel example of failed discernment — also fooled the FBI, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and virtually every document expert in the world. If failing to detect Hofmann’s forgeries proves the Church lacks discernment, it equally proves that the world’s leading secular institutions of scholarship lack discernment. The argument proves too much.

The more honest framing is this: the Kinderhook plates were a sophisticated and deliberately planted deception. They were examined by multiple scientists and historians as plausibly “genuine” through the 1960s and 1970s — including secular experts — before 1980-era metallurgical analysis settled the question. Nobody looked good in this episode. That is a different conclusion from “Joseph Smith was exposed as a charlatan.”

Claim 5: The Church Dishonestly Reframed the Episode After 1981

LDS Discussions argues that the 1981 Ensign statement — “Joseph Smith did not make the hoped-for translation” — is “beyond disingenuous” because the Church had spent 140 years defending Joseph’s translation. This criticism misreads the 1981 article.

The Ensign piece was not attempting to deny Clayton’s journal entry. It was making a carefully worded and technically accurate point: Joseph never produced a formal, published, completed translation of the Kinderhook plates. The broadside published in the Nauvoo Neighbor announced that a full translation “will be published in the Times and Seasons as soon as the translation is completed” — and it never was. That full translation was the “hoped-for translation.” Joseph made a brief scholarly observation about one character; he never completed what early Nauvoo saints hoped would be another scriptural translation project.

Is the 1981 framing precisely the framing used in 1843? No. But the fundamental point is accurate: the Kinderhook plates produced no canonized scripture, no completed translation, and no prophetic truth claim that can be evaluated against a known correct answer.

LDS Discussions itself concedes this, writing: “I do not feel that the Kinderhook plates are a ‘smoking gun’ against the church’s truth claims.” This concession is significant. If the episode is not a “smoking gun,” then the elaborate institutional narrative constructed around it does not carry the weight critics place upon it.

A Note on a Truncated Quote

LDS Discussions correctly identifies that FAIR Mormon omitted several words from an 1843 New York Herald quote by Sylvester Emmons. The full quote reads: “He compared them in my presence with his Egyptian alphabet, which he took from the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated, and they are evidently the same characters.” FAIR’s ellipsis obscured this clause. This criticism is valid — apologists, like all scholars, are obligated to quote accurately.

However, the force of this omission is less damning than LDS Discussions implies. Emmons was not an LDS insider; he was a non-Mormon observer who appears to have confused the GAEL (derived from the Egyptian papyri) with what he understood as Joseph’s linguistic work on the gold plates. His account remains fully consistent with the core finding: Joseph was comparing characters linguistically, not claiming divine revelation.

The restored Emmons quote, read in full, still describes a scholarly character comparison — not a prophetic revelation. The correction of FAIR’s ellipsis does not alter the underlying argument about translation method. Ironically, this illustrates the kind of honest engagement Latter-day Saint apologetics must consistently practice: the strongest response to the Kinderhook plates does not require obscuring uncomfortable evidence, because the full evidence, properly contextualized, does not threaten the faith.

What the Evidence Actually Establishes

A fair, evidence-based accounting of the Kinderhook plates episode establishes the following:

1. The plates were nineteenth-century forgeries, confirmed by metallurgical and chemical analysis in 1980. The Church has openly acknowledged this since 1981.

2. Joseph Smith examined the plates briefly using his GAEL as a reference tool. He identified one character match and made a brief observation to his clerk. This was a scholarly exercise, not a revelatory claim.

3. Joseph never completed a translation, never published a translation, and never presented any Kinderhook content as scripture or canonized doctrine.

4. The first-person phrase “I have translated” in the History of the Church is a known editorial alteration of Clayton’s third-person journal. This is not disputed by any serious scholar.

5. Multiple Church leaders over 140 years treated the plates as potentially authentic — a human error in historical judgment, not a doctrinal claim, and one shared by secular experts of the same era.

None of these facts, individually or collectively, constitute evidence that Joseph Smith was a false prophet. They establish that a forger nearly succeeded in tricking Joseph into endorsing forged plates using a scholarly (not prophetic) evaluation method, and that the forgery was not definitively exposed for 137 years — a timeline that speaks to the sophistication of the hoax, not to Joseph’s fraudulence.

The strongest evidence for Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling is not the Kinderhook plates. It is the Book of Mormon itself — its internal complexity, its geographical and cultural coherence, its doctrinal consistency, and the multiple witnesses to the plates — together with the Doctrine and Covenants, which contains prophecies fulfilled with documented precision. The Kinderhook plates are a footnote to that story, not a refutation of it.

Conclusion

The LDS Discussions overview of the Kinderhook plates is well-researched in its historical timeline and makes one valid criticism: FAIR Mormon should not have truncated the Emmons quote. But its central argument — that the episode proves Joseph Smith was a false prophet who could not resist fabricating translations — does not survive the best available scholarship.

Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee, working from primary sources and using the standards of peer-reviewed historical scholarship, conclude that Joseph engaged in a natural, scholarly character comparison — not a revelatory translation. He identified one plausible glyph match, offered a brief observation consistent with what that glyph meant in his reference document, and then set the plates aside forever. No scripture was produced. No doctrinal claim was made. The Church has been transparent about the forgery since 1981.

LDS Discussions itself acknowledges the Kinderhook plates are not a “smoking gun.” That concession is the most honest sentence in the entire overview. The honest follow-up is to acknowledge that an episode this historically constrained — one cursory character comparison by a man who was never claiming prophetic inspiration in that moment — cannot bear the weight critics place upon it.

The Restoration stands or falls on the Book of Mormon, on the prophetic record of Joseph Smith, and on the witness of the Holy Spirit to sincere seekers. The Kinderhook plates, honestly examined, do not touch any of those foundations.

Sources & Further Reading

Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee, “‘President Joseph Has Translated a Portion’: Joseph Smith and the Mistranslation of the Kinderhook Plates,” in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity, ed. Mark Ashurst-McGee, Brian M. Hauglid, and Michael Hubbard MacKay (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020), pp. 470–545.

Stanley B. Kimball, “Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to Be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax,” Ensign, August 1981, pp. 66–74.

Brian M. Hauglid, “Did Joseph Smith Translate the Kinderhook Plates?” in No Weapon Shall Prosper: New Light on Sensitive Issues, ed. Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011).

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Kinderhook Plates,” Gospel Topics, ChurchofJesusChrist.org, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/kinderhook-plates.

FAIR Latter-day Saints, “Kinderhook Plates,” FairLatterdaySaints.org, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Kinderhook_Plates.

Mark Ashurst-McGee, “The Kinderhook Plates,” Interpreter Foundation Podcast, InterpreterFoundation.org.

William Clayton, Journal, May 1, 1843, as cited in James B. Allen, Trials of Discipleship: The Story of William Clayton, a Mormon (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), p. 117.

Sylvester Emmons (“A Gentile”), Letter, New York Herald, May 30, 1843.