What the Hoffman Forgery of the Anthon Transcript Tells Us About the Golden Plates

From time to time, my thoughts return to the Anthon Transcript and the Hoffman forgery.

Background

The transcript itself is, as yet, lost to history. It was presented to Martin Harris by JS as a transcription (not a rubbing) of the rear facing side of the final plate. In the 1980s, Hoffman created a forgery and sold it the church. The forgery was based on the accounts given by the people who saw the transcript: Anthon himself, and a few others to whom Martin Harris showed the transcript on the way to NYC. The characters in the forgery are drawn from the widely circulated "Caractors" document, which appears to be sourced to 1829 (after the destruction of the Anthon Transcript, written in the hand of John Whitmer).*

Anthon gave multiple descriptions of the document:

Anthon described the transcript in that letter as containing "(g)reek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted or placed sideways... arranged in perpendicular columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks."

The import of what I wrote was, as far as I can now recollect, simply this, that the marks in the paper appeared to be merely an imitation of various alphabetical characters, and had, in my opinion, no meaning at all connected with them."^([10]) In the 1841 account, Anthon described the characters as "arranged in columns like the Chinese mode of writing .. (g)reek, Hebrew, and all sort of letters ... intermingled with sundry delineations of half moons, stars, and other natural objects, and the whole ended in a rude representation of the Mexican zodiac

Anthon described the transcript as containing "in one or two parallel columns rude imitations of Hebrew and Greek characters together with various delineations of sun, moon, stars, &c..

Don Bradley has catalogued the other descriptions, but they are consistent with these. One noting that seal looked like the seal on a "Turkish passport". (Bradley actually found a contemporaneous Turkish passport)

Here's forgery:

Hoffman Forgery

What does it mean?

A number of conclusions can be drawn from this:

• The forgery seems to be a solid representation of the way the document described is in the various historical accounts.
• The forgery thus gives us a good sense of what JS alleged to be the appearance of the plates themselves.
• But there are also good grounds for believing the remainder of the plates had a similar appearance.
• Namely, Martin Harris saw both (1) this document and (2) the actual plates. Had the plates he witnessed dramatically differed from the transcript, it's reasonable to conclude Martin's testimony of the plates would not have been as strong and as enduring as it was. He would have felt duped; but instead, he felt his faith in Joseph had been confirmed.

If that inference is correct, it's little wonder the 11 witnesses were persuaded by the plates. This forgery is an interesting, compelling document. And if every plate had a similar look, it's easy to see why they said: "had the appearance of ancient work".

To intercept the exmormons, yes, I know it's possible that Martin Harris lied or was deluded by religious fervor. But I don't think the history supports either of those conclusions very well. He was pressed too many times and spoke too clearly about the matter.

As a consequence, I think a reasonable inference from the history is that the individual plates probably looked quite a bit like the Hoffman forgery above.

*It's unclear to me where the Caractors came from. At one point I thought they were a copy of the characters on the Anthon Transcript, but the Caractors document has recently been dated to after the supposed destruction of the Anthon transcript, so now I don't under their provenance.