A depiction of Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith in the Susquehanna River, performing the very first authorized baptisms of this dispensation, just after the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood.\u00a0 (Still photograph by James Jordan from a set of the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s forthcoming \u201cWitnesses\u201d film project)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joseph Smith\u2019s father in law, Emma\u2019s father, the hunter and farmer and innkeeper Isaac Hale (17763-1839), was anything but a fan of his son in law.\u00a0 He had disapproved of Joseph\u2019s past money-digging and he strongly disapproved of the marriage with Emma.\u00a0 A year after their marriage, though, Joseph and Emma left Palmyra, New York, for a small cabin on the Hales\u2019 property in Harmony township \u2014 modern Oakland township \u2014 on the bank of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mistrustful of Joseph and skeptical of Joseph\u2019s claims about the Book of Mormon, Hale confronted him on the subject, demanding to see the plates.\u00a0 Joseph responded that he had been commanded to show them to nobody except by divine command.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, Joseph permitted Hale to lift the wooden box that, he said, contained the plates.\u00a0 Of this relatively little-known experience, Hale later recalled that<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was allowed to feel the weight of the box, and they gave me to understand, that the book of plates was then in the box\u2014into which, however, I was not allowed to look.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Holding the box failed to mollify Isaac Hale, who said that\u00a0he was<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
dissatisfied, and informed him [Joseph] that if there was any thing in my house of that description [the plates], which I could not be allowed to see, he must take it away; if he did not, I was determined to see it. After that, the Plates were said to be hid in the woods.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
(See Isaac Hale Statement [1834], in Vogel,\u00a0Early Mormon Documents<\/em>, 4:286; also Howe,\u00a0Mormonism Unvailed<\/em>, 257\u201358.)<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, as Book of Mormon witness statements go, Isaac Hales\u2019s is of at most only modest significance.\u00a0 Still, it\u2019s not absolutely without value.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Friendly skeptics and historians of religion who would prefer not to commit themselves on the truth or falsity of Joseph\u2019s prophetic claims find it much easier, on the whole, to regard him as a sincere person who was telling the truth (as he perceived or imagined it to be) about his subjective mental and spiritual states.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, his handing of a heavy box to Isaac Hale in which, he claimed, the plates were hidden gives a tangibility to the matter that makes it more difficult \u2014 not quite impossible yet, but definitely more difficult \u2014 to maintain that Joseph\u2019s experiences were purely personal and subjective.\u00a0 This palpable object seems to point, instead, to either genuine authenticity or deliberate fraud.\u00a0 It begins to confront us with a very stark either\/or choice.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Joseph Smith\u2019s father in law, Emma\u2019s father, the hunter and farmer and innkeeper Isaac Hale (17763-1839), was anything but a fan of his son in law.\u00a0 He had disapproved of Joseph\u2019s past money-digging and he strongly disapproved of the marriage with Emma.\u00a0 A year after their marriage, though, Joseph and Emma left Palmyra, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56,21037,259,1809,21218,21221,4579,10669,316,319,12218,21215,380,2905,1812,1815,788,55,1667,2265,10582,1615,12988,4003,921,6384],"class_list":["post-90040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-of-mormon","tag-book-of-mormon-plates","tag-book-of-mormon-witnesses","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-emma-hale","tag-emma-hale-smith","tag-emma-smith","tag-fayette","tag-gold-plates","tag-golden-plates","tag-harmony","tag-isaac-hale","tag-joseph-smith","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-latter-day-saints","tag-lds","tag-mormon","tag-mormonism","tag-mormons","tag-new-york","tag-pennsylvania","tag-plates","tag-susquehanna","tag-witness","tag-witnesses","tag-witnesses-film"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>