The Brass Plates Conspiracy

Did the powers that be of Jerusalem collude to keep an invaluable sacred text out of the hands of the people?

Critics of the Book of Mormon like to attack the concept of a bound set of plates being used in ancient Jerusalem. Aside from this being an absence of evidence is evidence of absence fallacy and the fact that plates dating back to that time have been discovered, these critics failed to consider one major component of the Mormon faith that explains this problem, the belief in prophets.

Prophets can see things that other people cannot. Before Noah, arks did not exist. Before Moses, tabernacles did not exist. Before Isaiah, lengthy and confusing analogies did not exist. The list goes on and on. What if plates never existed in Ancient Israel? Would that prevent a prophet from being shown a new form of record keeping? No. God can command and instruct as He sees fit. Case closed.

Except it wasn’t for me. This "problem" got me thinking about plates. The first use of plates in the Book of Mormon occurs in the house of Laban, a wealthy and powerful resident of Jerusalem. These plates hadn’t been collecting dust on his shelf for a century as I had once assumed. They contained the prophecies of Jeremiah, a contemporary of Lehi, and the reign of Zedekiah who was king during the Babylonian invasion which Lehi warned of. Someone had written in them recently when Nephi took them (1 Nephi 5:13).

Beyond having been written in just prior to Nephi obtaining them, I would bet that the plates were not very old to begin with. The idea that scholars in Laban’s family had been recording in them for generations (as a professor kindly informed me when I presented him with this whole theory that he deemed crazy) seems unlikely to me. Plate writing is inconvenient and seems like an uncommon medium to record things for that time and place in history, it would be weird for the wicked Laban to command his scholars to record prophecies and, most importantly, the Law of Moses had been restored to Jerusalem less than forty years prior to Lehi’s flight from Jerusalem (Bible Chronology). King Josiah restored the law during his reign. Any record that contained the Law of Moses was completely unknown to him and I believe that is because no such record existed yet.

So where did the plates come from? My theory is that their author was a prophet who was commanded by God to compile the written history, genealogies and prophecies of Israel in one place. This was how the Book of Mormon itself was compiled by Mormon near the end of Nephite history and that compilation was not for his time, it was for us. God could have chosen a person to create the brass plates for the same reason. These plates were not for Israel, but for the Nephites.

Here are the facts:

1.     Laban was unwilling to part with the brass plates even when offered money and attempted to kill Lehi’s nosy kids when they poked around too much. This seems like the reaction of a man with something to hide. (1 Nephi 3:24-25)

2.     Nephi had to kill Laban so that the Nephite nation would not perish. Had he tied him up or left him otherwise incapacitated, Laban would have likely gone after and killed Lehi’s whole family for the theft of the plates. This potential act of vengeance would have ended the Nephite nation before it began. (1 Nephi 4:13)

3.     The priests of the day were corrupt. They threatened to ignore, mock, kill, imprison or cast out prophets. (Jeremiah 26:8)

4.     Laban had been visiting with the leaders of the church by night prior to Nephi’s appearance. (1 Nephi 4:22)

5.     When Nephi poses as Laban and says that he is taking the brass plates to a meeting with his brethren outside of the city wall, Zoram immediately assumes that he is referring to the priests as if meeting in the dead of night outside of the city with a group of wicked priests is a common occurrence. (1 Nephi 4:26-27)

The scholarly take on the brass plates is that they were in Laban’s possession because he was “probably a kinsman” of Lehi according to the documentary Journey of Faith. The documentary claims that the brass plates were a Josephite record held by Laban’s family as a status symbol. I reject that idea because no evidence suggests that Lehi and Laban were related or that anyone knew that Laban had the plates.

The Book of Mormon says that the plates contained, “…the prophecies of the holy prophets, from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah; and also many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah. And it came to pass that my father, Lehi, also found upon the plates of brass a genealogy of his fathers; wherefore he knew that he was a descendant of Joseph…” as if the discovery of their genealogy was a side effect of getting the plates (1 Nephi 5: 13-14). Nephi had mentioned the plates containing his genealogy earlier in the narrative that makes up First Nephi, but that is likely because of hindsight and does not necessarily mean he knew when he went to get the plates that their genealogy was in them (1 Nephi 3:3). It is possible that their genealogy just happened to be a matter of public record and that the prophet commanded to compile these plates included it because of their value to the Nephites.

Why would any of this happen in the way I have described it? The best answer I can come up with is that the priests wanted to stifle the truth by preventing people from reading. If this had fallen into the hands of the people it could have vindicated the prophets and indicted the wicked church. The priests took the plates and gave them to Laban because they were a natural fit in his large treasury. He was explicitly ordered and likely paid not to allow them to fall into anyone's hands and to kill anyone asking after them. 

The Brass Plates conspiracy is really just my own way of explaining things that have been lost to history. Obviously, I do not know if any of these things happened as I described them. If nothing else, let this be a lesson in imagination. It makes reading the scriptures a lot more fun. And if someday we find that Laban and the priests did conspire against a prophet, then remember that you read it here first. If you have any questions or want to tear my theory apart just leave a comment.