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Quote by: Zhavric  If you can't prove it, then it's false. People who lived a couple hundred years ago in the middle of nowhere America don't magically learn Egyptian. |
Smith did not spend all his time in Utah. He spent a lot of time in the eastern part of what is now the USA.
While in the east he spent a lot of time with the Native Americans who use the same style of writing as they used in Eqypt. They use drawings of things and symbols of things rather then "words" like we do in our English culture. The Indians might draw a deer ro buffalo and that image would have a special meaning to them for reasons other then just being a documentation of what an animal looks like. Just like we see in Egyptian writings on those pyramids. So he did in fact educate his self in that manner of communication and the newer versions used in the Native American culture. And could have been given a scroll presented to him by some elder in the Native American tribe. Smith did not know about the simular pyramids in centrial or South America that show some influence of "sameness" with the Egyptian culture. But he knew of that connecton none the less, long before most of the rest of the Western World, other then the Spanish explorers who built the missions along the coast of California. The pyramid builders in America might be directly connected to the pyramid builders in Eqypt because they shared the same knowledge and construction concepts. So it not "out of context" that Smith came across such writings as he claimed. The flood story discovered in the digs in Mexico are simular to the flood stories written about in the story of Noah.
Now about "golden tablets" I do not know much about that. But we speak of the Golden Rule. Not because it is wrtten in gold but because it is of utter most value. As gold is thought of as the most valued material next to silver. So it could have been a "highly valued tablet" or scroll in his opinon and not a tablet made out of actural gold. Although the Native cultures did make a lot of things out of gold and such objects might of made their way into North America by someone on a explorative journey, and that golden object might have ended up in the hands of Joseph Smith. If it was gold then of couse he would keep it in a very safe place to prevent some greedy cowboy form stealing it. Which is a logical thing to do.
I am not a Mormon but that is how I would have answered the question if I was a Mormon.