“On The Latest Anti-Mormon Attack On The Book Of Mormon I”

Brother Knaphus's Moroni — Atop the Hill Cumorah, near Palmyra, New York, is a statue of the Angel Moroni that shows him holding the golden plates that contained the Book of Mormon. At least two articles recently published by the newly redirected Maxwell Institute at Brigham Young University have indicated that those plates didn’t actually exist.
(Click to enlarge. Click again to enlarge further.)

My friend John Gee is — to put it mildly — unimpressed by a recent publication (written by someone whom we both actually like) from BYU’s post-2012 Maxwell Institute:

http://fornspollfira.blogspot.com/2015/03/on-latest-anti-mormon-attack-on-book-of.html

Incidentally, a few days ago I described the “Howlers Index” on the wonderful blog “Ether’s Cave,” which describes itself as “A Place for Book of Mormon Research,” as “very much in the spirit of the old Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies and the first years of its successor organization, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.”

And that it is.

I was apparently wrong, however, in crediting it solely to Matt Roper. It’s evidently the work of both Matt Roper and John Gee, both of them friends and former colleagues at the Maxwell Institute. Kudos to them!

The LA Temple Moroni — At least a few statues of Moroni atop modern temples (such as this one, on the Los Angeles California Temple) also depict him carrying the plates as he sounds his trumpet.
(Click to enlarge. Click again to enlarge further.)

“On the Latest Anti-Mormon Attack on the Book of Mormon I”