Vivid Imagination

What Vision?

From the age of three until eleven I attended church in a chapel that was a throwback to late pioneer times.  It had a facade of European steeples and windows. Inside the architecture was similar to the Tabernacle.  In some respects the structure resembled the Assembly Hall on Temple Square.  Between the two main doors was placed a stained glass window nearly two stories in height.  It was a rendition of the First Vision with the Father & Son in the air above Joseph Smith.  Inside the chapel it was reminiscent of the Tabernacle’s interior with the pillars and oak benches.

Behind the podium on the wall was a very large painting of Moroni standing in the air above Joseph, who was kneeling before a stone box on a hill side.  This painting was created by Lewis Ramsey who had moved into a home directly opposite the chapel.  The chapel was eventually torn down and replaced with a nursing home.  I don’t know what happened to the stained glass.  The painting was salvaged as discussed at http://home.comcast.net/~laramseyart/Joseph_Smith_Site/Restoration_Paintings.htm.

Sometimes I find it remarkable those early experiences of worship are so vivid.  The sacrament meetings could be very hot in the summer time.  The chapel seating was larger than what we have today, and most of the benches were filled during the evening meeting.  In the morning meetings, and during Primary, I would sometimes get up close to the stained glass and peer at it from various angles.  My imagination would unleash visions of my own, wondering what Joseph was like, what made him so special that two Gods would appear to him, but not to the thousands of other devout people through the ages.  I tried to imagine what it would have been like had I been Joseph, and failed every time to identify with so unusual an experience.

The picture of Moroni was a bit of an enigma to me.  He was dressed in white robes, had white hair and fair skin, having all the Caucasian features.  He was depicted with a benevolent countenance, the moment captured as symbolic of mentor and acolyte in wholesome rapport.  It was daylight, and the background was an impressionistic representation of the Hill Cumorah.  The entire aspect was one of normalcy, as if it was common for angels to appear to certain people in the world and carry on a conversation with them while being levitated.

Not until late in mid-life did I realize that Moroni could not be Caucasian, nor did Cumorah look anything like depicted in the picture, nor did I find out that Joseph did not retrieve the plates in daylight (History of the Prophet Joseph), nor “return” each year in daylight.  If you examine the calendar, you will find that the night he “retrieved” the plates was a new moon (totally dark).  In fact, the date he claims he was directed to return upon was the autumnal equinox, a date more significant to the family’s astrological beliefs than visiting with Moroni. (The calendar calculator shows Sept 22, 1823, and Sept 21, 1827 as new moons.  Over the intervening years the new moon is several days earlier or later, respectively.)  B.H. Roberts apparently did not know his church history as well as it is assumed, for all his coaching of Mr. Ramsey during the painting.  The sacred grove as depicted in the chapel’s stained glass windows was obviously not like the real thing. The propensity to inaccurately represent in picture events in Church history is rampant everywhere in Church publications.  Take the painting of Moroni appearing to Joseph in his room:

Of course the artist can take whatever license they desire.  That isn’t the problem.  The problem is, the room was not big enough for any large man to appear to Joseph standing in the air and still have his head below the roof!  If you’ve been to the house you will remember climbing a steep narrow staircase and having to watch your head as the ceiling is low.  Joseph surely had attained his full stature by 1823 (age 18, Dec 23) so he being taller than I would necessarily have to stoop going to his room.  Likewise, the ridge beam height above the floor is just barely over six feet.  However, the pitch of the roof is typical New England, on the order of at least thirty degrees.  This means that a person of average height MUST stoop to avoid banging into the roof standing anywhere in the room except directly below the ridge beam!  If Moroni did indeed appear in this room, levitated off the floor, at least his shoulders and maybe down to the breastbone would have to protrude above the roof line.  Joseph says nothing of Moroni having his “head in the clouds” during his appearance, only when ascending and descending in a shaft of light.  In fact, Joseph said it was Nephi who appeared to him (Times and Seasons vol 3 p753), not Moroni as rewritten in the History of the Church vol1 p11.  In addition, the dimensions of the room are such that if Joseph slept in a bed long enough to accommodate his stature, there is little room between the end of the bed and the wall, particularly if a dresser were placed there.  As exhibited the last time I was there (1990) the furnishings allowed only four to five adults, fully crowding the room.

  Another example of misrepresentation is translating of the Book of Mormon found in the Church library:

It never happened like this.  Where is the curtain?  Where is the Urim & Thumim I was told so many times as a youth he used to translate?  The journals of various people including Joseph’s family say he never had the plates present when he “translated.”  What he did was look through his “peep stone” placed in his hat, and the hat over his face, dictating what he claimed he saw written in English, as though it was a moving marquee.

Most of the time the plates were “hidden” during the translating process (Millenial Star 4 July 1881).  No one, not even Emma ever got to physically see them, nor physically handle them.  During this time he made various promises to people they would get the opportunity to see them on display, but whenever asked about it, some extenuating reason was supplied for not keeping the promise.

Another example is a picture of Joseph as a teenager sitting in a rocking chair, with the Bible open to James where he obtained the motivation to pray.  The perspective is one of the viewer looking over Joseph’s left shoulder.  Now his mother Lucy said Joseph hardly ever touched the Bible.  It is small wonder, as depositions by people that knew him state while attending school in the area most of the Smith siblings were poor scholars, and Joseph was not apt.  Others state that he never received a decent education until he lived in Kirtland.  Of course this is the time of the School of the Prophets.  It is a novel idea how this illiterate person could “study” Reformed Egyptian characters (as asserted on the Church website) without a “Rosetta Stone”, make sense of them, and simultaneously not be skilled in his own English language.  It strains credulity to think he could recognize English words he was unfamiliar with, either reading or writing.  Having studied Russian, Spanish, and Norwegian I found myself often referring to a dictionary to get the meaning and pronunciation correct. W.R. Hine deposed that Joseph could hardly read or write while in New York.  Apparently he was exceptionally gifted in pronouncing unfamiliar words to his scribes in spite of his inability to read!  Some authors have attempted to show that Joseph was educated enough to read and write because his father was at one time a school teacher, and he received instruction from both him and Oliver Cowdery.  However, the only evidence of Joseph’s abilities are found in documents he penned from 1832 forward.  It wasn’t until the Kirtland era (1831) that Joseph began receiving instruction in languages, and acquired skill in writing.

  The CES never told us the rest of the story when a copy of those Reformed Egyptian characters were taken to professor Charles Anthon.  Charles wrote to Mr. Howe: "This paper was in fact a singular scrawl. It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters... Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted or placed sideways, ... decked with various strange marks" .… This is NOT what Martin Harris claimed Professor Anthon said.*  Here is a facsimile of those characters as maintained by the RLDS church:

Do they bear any resemblance to Egyptian?  Let’s take a sampling.  Here are some definitions of certain Egyptian words taken at random from Tempest & Exodus p.161 by Ralph Ellis:

Even the Book of Abraham Facsimiles bear no resemblance to the Anthon submission.  To fill out the background, here is a reproduction of the Tempest Stele, a piece of inscribed stone from a monument to Ahmose I, which relates a terrible storm about the time of the Exodus:

In Tempest & Exodus Ralph Ellis examines the common roots of the Hebrew and Egyptian languages.  While they are written with different characters, the pronunciations and meanings are quite close in numerous instances.  So if the Nephites did write in reformed Egyptian, and knew Hebrew well, their characters and method of writing ought to bear some resemblance to modern knowledge concerning these languages.  Mormon says that although they altered their language, they kept records to preserve it among the people.  Why is there no intelligibility to the characters Charles Anthon was asked to interpret?  And what could Joseph possibly have “studied out in his mind” having no introduction to foreign languages until the Kirtland era (1831, Joshua Seixas 1835-36), and therefore no context within which to study a language?  Further, if he saw the words in English through his stone (as in David Whitmer's account), of what need was there for language study at all?  Philologists have been able to trace present day languages back to their roots more than six thousand years ago.  The Mayan language is now being decoded.  The Disc of Phaestos though still untranslated bears markings similar to other finds of its era.  All written languages contain patterns which are eventually decipherable.

    The CES has taught for years that the 116 pages of the initial translation were lost.  They were never “lost”, except to the knowledge of church authorities after the church moved to Kirtland.  Historical records indicate clearly Lucy Harris took them while Martin was away, burned most of them and gave the the rest to a Dr. Seymour, who then exhibited them to interested parties in the area.  What happened to them the church does not know because the Book of Mormon by then had been published and all contact with Lucy subsided.  And of course the Church at that time would lose contact with Martin's wife because she and Martin had a dispute over Martin's credulity and throwing away their fortune to publish a forgery, in the which Martin beat Lucy and they subsequently divorced.  How could Joseph know about their fate?  Lucy was out of the picture early in the Church's rise.

    Another item I have not heard anyone discuss is How did these so called Reformed Egyptian characters get inscribed onto gold plates in a neat and concise manner?  Start with the idea of using gold for a recording medium.  Ask any jeweler today how difficult it is to inscribe gold.  The average person would respond, How silly! Gold is soft and can be scratched easily! Yes it can, and as a jeweler will tell you, pure gold does not retain inscribing well for that very reason.  It must be hardened with other metals of just the right content to make it durable.  Copper, and sometimes nickel, silver, and zinc are used to enhance the durability of jewelry.  So if you’re a scribe and you want to preserve your inscriptions, you have to come up with the proper alloy of gold that will withstand handling.  You’re not going to get a flexible sheaf of gold to inscribe.  And you’ve got to have the proper tools to roll it out, form it, punch it, and inscribe it.  Mormon and his predecessors did not have vibro-engravers, so the stylus they had to use required a hard metal, harder than gold alloy.  What type of metal would that be?  Let’s summarize it:

•  9kt gold contains 37.5% of pure gold; hardness 70-105
•  14kt gold contains 58.5% pure gold; hardness 125-165
•  18kt gold contains 75% pure gold; hardness 85-125
•  22 kt gold contains 91.66% pure gold; hardness 70
•  24kt gold contains 100% pure gold; hardness 40

An engraving tool to be useful for any length of time would need to be harder than the gold, up to as high as 200.  Carbon steel is 55-120, stainless steel from 140-180, chrome 600-700, and nickel 800.  Stainless steel requires chrome, which in a form useable in steel is carcinogenic.  It is not likely that Native Americans had metallurgy this sophisticated.  No such metal alloys have ever been discovered.  However, nickel being used to create a gold alloy can also be mixed with carbon steel to produce a stylus hard enough for engraving.  But this becomes problematic as sharpening the styles would require something even harder, which would have to be quartz, topaz, corundum or diamond tip.  That ancients had such materials is evident by the stone cuttings in granite in South America.  However, one would wonder how such gems could be solidly attached to a shaft to use as a stylus, and how it could be pulverized for grinding and sharpening a nickel steel alloy.  Further, it has never been determined how the ancients cut granite and diorite, with precision equaling and surpassing our own.  One of the great modern mysteries is the absence of tools needed to produce these artefacts.

    Vibro-engravers use a fine hammering movement to create the engraving.  It is quite unimaginable that a scribe could etch characters onto one of the harder gold alloys of the reproduction of Martin Harris took to Professor Anthon and produce a neat, legible text lasting a millennium.  Just for comparison so you get the idea, quarter hard cartridge brass has a hardness of 49-59.  Quarter red brass is about ten points less.  The next time you have an ammunition cartridge, try inscribing it legibly with one of the alleged Reformed Egyptian characters and see how neat and durable a job you can do!  Just as it is highly unlikely anyone engraved their history on gold alloy, so is it also for brass plates.  To date, no gold or brass artefacts with such inscribing has been found anywhere in the world.  What has been found has been cast embossed figures.

    Now Joseph claims he was attacked the night he brought the plates home from Cumorah (Martin Harris story A New Witness for Christ).*  He had to run from his assailants while clutching the plates and fell at least once.  From the dimensions reported on the size of the plates and volume, they would weigh in anywhere from 90-120 pounds (156lbs by volume), depending on stackup.  Doesn’t sound like an excessive amount, unless you have hauled hay.  I used to stack first crop hay bales weighing in at 90-110 pounds.  I was 16 and in fairly good shape.  But I huffed lugging those things around, and even the seasoned cattle farmers were hard pressed to maneuver those things from truck to hay stack.  For comparison, try picking up a petite 110 pound woman and running with her on a new moon night!  Martin's story is incredulous, for he is totally ignorant of how much volume of gold would weigh for the size of the plates, and never stops to think how difficult it would be to stash that much weight in the top of a hollow tree.  Once upon a time I could carry a 50 pound sack of rock salt under each arm, but not run with them for any distance.  And speaking of distance, how did Mormon manage to transport several hundred pounds (tons if Joseph’s story is to be believed ; JofD 19:38) of metallic records from central America all the way to Cumorah in New York?  No evidence has ever been found of wheeled vehicles in antiquity.  And Mormon would have had considerable difficulty concealing them against the Lamanites.  You just can't transport that much metal without leaving obvious tracks.

The Church has maintained for nearly two centuries that the whole foundation of Mormonism rests upon the validity of the First Vision, and the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.  The curious aspect of this declaration is that the “proof” does not reside in historical, scientific, or empirical evidence whatsoever.  They have insinuated and at times outright stated such evidence cannot be had nor trusted.  But, to gain a witness of its truth by the Spirit IS to be trusted and relied upon without hesitation.  This is a test that is purely metaphysical.  It is dependent upon a person’s spiritual capacity.  It cannot be verified.  It cannot even be reliably reproduced, although some claim that when the supplicant is sufficiently humble and in the right frame of mind, that “knowledge” can be obtained by divine influence.  This perspective was driven home to us as seminary students when recounting the first vision of Martin Harris.  What they never told us in any seminary classes is what Martin declared to his religious associates in Kirtland several years later:  He never actually saw them with his eyes, nor touched them with his hands, as an ordinary person sees and touches a book when reading it.  It was experienced with his “spiritual” eyes.

And yet, Church leadership starting with Joseph, has maintained that faith has its roots in correct knowledge or it cannot produce the desired results (Church Bible dictionary).  This is a circuitous way of saying faith must be rooted in fact and truth to develop properly.  In other words, for faith to develop properly, it must be founded upon verifiable evidence!  How can anyone verify the First Vision?  This is much more difficult than it seems, simply because there are so many conflicting accounts.  The first account was written in 1832.  It is odd that so momentous an experience as this would not be written down until eleven years after the fact.  As was the custom in those days, family events of great significance were inscribed in the family Bible.  But not only is the experience not found there, the First Vision is hardly noticed among the family members who continued to attend various denominations until Joseph formerly established his church.

There have been many apologetic essays written on the discrepancies and inventive explanations produced to resolve them.  What is apparent in all the visionary accounts (two extended accounts, and eight other fragmentary hearsay accounts), is the unwillingness to let the evidence speak for itself.  In the first account, Joseph said he prayed in his 16th year.  The circumstantial evidence of revivalism and family journals support this statement.  Yet modern apologists want to confute this fact so that other statements by Joseph can be reconciled to the orthodox view presently promulgated by the Church.  In Joseph’s revised account, he states he was in his 15th year.  Now, who cares what year it was really?  What is important is consistency in crucial elements, and general facts that tend to corroborate rather than differentiate one another.  Only his 1838 (April 27) account has the Father in it.  Originally, his reason for praying was forgiveness of sins.  Later, it was to determine which of the several denominations was correct.  Wait, is it both or neither?  Did Moroni call him to start a church, or was it Jesus?  Were there two people in the pillar of light, or just one?  Did it happen in 1823 or 1820?  It’s as though after nearly two decades he can’t remember what happened or which facts were important enough to mention.  But the world is expected to accept any rendition of the First Vision as heralding the re-opening of the heavens and the beginning of the “restoration” of the original church!

If a person waits eleven years to write down such an astounding and far-reaching account as this, surely that is excessive time to reflect on the crucial essentials and commit to writing a consistent story.  Each of my spiritual experiences were recorded within a few days of the event.  I have never gone back to rewrite them.  Only in one experience, did I append details that I was aware of, but had failed to remark upon because the most important ones overshadowed them.  Not once have I changed the crucial facts as to what happened and why.  I’ve never had to change the account of who I saw, where we went, and the purpose of the visitation.  I wanted my account to be as accurate and as pristine as possible, so that as my memories faded I would always have the written account to refresh them.  (Unlike the claims of William Hartley at BYU, my diary experiences show the more that is written immediately after the event, the more accurately they are recounted later.  This is precisely why a written account of automobile accidents are taken on the scene.)  Apparently not so with Joseph.  His last dictation of his vision is precipitated by a mass departure from the Church during 1838.  What is consistent about his First Vision accounts, is that he changes critical elements, the same as he did with the Book of Commandments, the significance and order of the High Priesthood, and the appearance of Peter, James, and John.  Again, a person would think that if Priesthood authority was so critical to the restoration of the Lord’s Church, the date would be burned into one’s memory or written down immediately (as the dates of my spiritual experiences have always been), and the fundamental facts would not be tampered with, nor new critical facts later inserted on the heals of leadership credibility issues.  As a friend stated to me: So modest a detail!

In my researching the First Vision one detail no one has ever raised a question upon is, What was so significant about the sins of a middle aged teen that God deemed it necessary to appear with Jesus, to an obscure boy to tell him his sins were forgiven?  The apostle Paul said he saw a light and heard a voice. (Incidentally, The two accounts of Paul's conversion are also inconsistent with each other.)  Now what Paul was doing up till then was really bad stuff, but he excused himself because of the Jewish law.  Thousands upon thousands of people have petitioned God over the millennia for a remission of their sins, without ever receiving such a divine manifestation.  Surely Joseph could explain the first time around why he was chosen?  Remember, the earliest version of the First Vision says nothing about starting a church, just that his sins are forgiven. When my OBE happened, the first thing to be discussed was “Why the visit?” and laying the issue of worthiness to rest.  But apparently nobody was impressed with Joseph’s vision to observe this fact (Why should anyone be impressed with teenage angst cum revival?), for the persecution he lays claim to for the event, is historically shown to be due to his money-digging scams.  His story of persecution from having a vision of Deity is the only historical record of such.  It seems mighty peculiar and suspect that he would re-write persecution into his 1838 vision story at the very time when he IS being maligned by those who once trusted and believed him.  It was not uncommon during the 1823 revival period for “converted” people to profess a vision at the time of their youth, especially for having received a forgiveness of sins.  The story the Church relates of Joseph’s maligning by a preacher, saying that such things don’t happen anymore, is a distortion of what really took place.

It is quite suspicious that the “restored church” of God arises out of the religious fervor extant in New England, preceded by the same kind of events seventy years earlier.  Especially since nothing was ever said about a restoration until Sidney Rigdon appeared, who had been desirous of finding the restored church, and found haven within the Church of Christ.  Sidney was not the only preacher who had been looking for a restoration.  Alexander Campbell had also, as did many of their predecessors for over a hundred years previous.  A close inspection of the history of the church, as well as New England’s, reveals much of what happened with the founding of the church was consistent with the founding of many other churches. There was an obsession with visions, manifestations of spirits, finding God or Jesus, and remission of sins coupled with dramatic conversion.  The area where Joseph had his first vision wasn’t called the “Burned Over District” for nothing.  A large portion of the population at that time consisted of people seeking a religion they could hang their hat on.  And that is another element of the “restoration” one must take into account.  Why were there so many people looking for religion, some moving from one to the next, all feeling insecure about their souls until they found a doctrine they were content with?  It is clear upon examination of the lives of prominent men in the church, especially Rigdon’s, they were suffering from stunted maturation.  None of them were satisfied with themselves, nor with their lot in life, and behaved as frustrated, unfulfilled juveniles.  It is interesting to note the same zeal and fervor was extant in the church in the late 1880s, as many including Wilford Woodruff were expecting the return of Jesus, the millennium, and the destruction of the wicked.  Again, expected Last Days fulfillment about seventy years after the “restoration.”

The entire business of how the Book of Mormon came into existence, the First Vision, and the Priesthood restoration is fraught with ambiguities, contradictions, distortions, and outright lies.  The history of the church is rife with fraud, scandal, subterfuge, derision, divisiveness and dissension, covetousness and lust for power.  Even murder is quietly conceived and condoned in the name of Israel’s God.  I never met anyone who actually believed the Crusades were an inspiration of God, yet church Authorities expect the world to believe theirs with a history paralleling the Crusades?  Or the Inquisition?

One aspect of the Restoration story has always bothered me.  If restoring the true Gospel of Jesus was mighty important, why has not “His church” grown faster in anticipation of Christ’s return? (And why is Christ’s return no longer dealt with?)  At present the church constitutes approximately 0.18% of the world population.  Even in the beginning, when the growth rate was at its highest, it was only 0.01% of the world population.  The rate of growth change peaked around the mid 1960s, and has dropped to the same level as in the 1930s.  All church growth figures (except BIC members) have been showing a steady decline since 2002.

To summarize:

•  The recorded story of retrieving the plates does not match that which the church proclaims (it took place after midnight)
•  No one ever saw the plates; not even Joseph, based on totality of evidence
•  No one ever saw nor touched the Urim & Thumim, nor the sword of Laban (available accounts are contradictory)
•  The alleged BofM plate volume in gold alloy is virtually impossible to run with, much less at 2AM in the dark.
•  The plates were never used for translating
•  Joseph could hardly read or write until at least 1831, therefore he could not have relied on a photographic memory nor been able to "study in his mind" any dead language
•  The Book of Mormon was "dictated" with a peep stone in a hat, acknowledged recently in General Conference
•  The 116 page manuscript was never "lost"; Dr Seymour, an acquaintance of Lucy Harris frequently exhibited them
•  Joseph's bedroom loft dimensions cannot validate his account of Moroni's visit
•  The church proclaims a truncated story of Professor Anthon, insinuating he initially validated the proffered characters
•  The Tempest Stele characters do not bear any resemblance to a single character presented to Professor Anthon
•  Joseph's First Vision accounts are inconsistent and non-corroborative; the first writing does not match the last, and Brigham's and Pratt's do not match that sanctioned by the church

SethSmee

5-23-14 Addendum
Morgdumb celebrates Joseph Smith as a martyr to the Restoration. It is the substance of their hymn Praise to the Man, and this theme is often denoted at this time of year in conjunction with the celebration of Priesthood Restoration. First let us be clear on the meaning of Martyr. Webster's defines it thus: "a) any of those persons who choose to suffer or die rather than give up their faith or principles b) any person tortured or killed because of his or her beliefs." One does not need to investigate far into the history of the CJCLDS, from the printing press destruction to Joseph's murder, to learn his death was never a martyrdom. Joseph was not murdered because of his beliefs, religious or otherwise. He did not choose to suffer by way of submitting to incarceration, nor did he expect to die without a fight since he premeditatively used a smuggled pistol to aid his escape. Joseph was a fugitive from justice, wanted for murder in Missouri, and bank fraud in Ohio. He was incarcerated for inciting insurrection, destruction of private property, polygamy, violation of State and Federal statutes related to Constitutional law, as well as sought for accountability on violation of Masonic procedures and practices. Integrating the religious, political, and personal events of the last few months of his life into a composite picture, it is clear he was caught in the nexus of his own web of deceit, extortion, and criminality. That he was murdered by a mob was a miscarriage of the law. That he was ultimately encircled by the consequences of his actions was the immutable justice of Nature. What he sowed, he reaped.

* 3-29-15 Addendum
At thedigitalvoice.com we find the proposed Harris document is actually a second, the first being a circular form in imitation of a zodiac. A very worthy read. Also found there is a copy of The Early Days of Mormonism. In it we find a conflicting account by Chase stating that the book was deposited in the tree for ten days. On some suggestion it might have been taken Emma alerts him and he returns to recover the book, subsequently being attacked in daylight. With Joseph, we find inconsistencies in his stories everywhere. But Faith trumps inconsistency!

REFERENCES
Tempest and Exodus Ralph Ellis
Joseph Smith’s New York Reputation Reexamined Rodger Anderson
The Keystone of Mormonism Arza Evans
Who really Wrote the Book of Mormon? Cowdery, Davis, Vanick
The Pearl of Great Price
Journal of Discourses
History of the Prophet Joseph Lucy Smith
A New Witness for Christ in America Vol2 Francis Kirkham
An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins Grant Palmer
Studies of the Book of Mormon B.H. Roberts
Documentary History of the Church B.H. Roberts
The Papers of Joseph Smith Dean Jessee
New Mormon Studies CDROM; A Comprehensive Resource Library Smith Research Associates
The Book of Mormon Plates Maxwell Institute Sjodahl http://www.farmsresearch.com/display-print.php?table=jbms&id=236

Weights/cubic foot; Relative Hardness
    Gold    1204#   2.5-3
    Brass    534#    5.5
    Copper 542#    3.5-4
    Iron      450#    5
    Steel     490#
    Silver    653#    2.5-3
    Tin        459#    2
    Zinc      440#    4-4.5
    Diamond          10

1832 First Vision Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Papers of Joseph Smith: Autobiographical and Historical Writings, 2+ vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1989-), :57.(figs. 52-53).

Joseph Smith History 1:15-20, 1838

The True Believer, p99 Eric Hoffer