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The documents in this chapter deal with the experience reported by Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris in June 1829. Both first-and secondhand accounts are included. The statement of Cowdery, Whitmer, and Harris, titled “The Testimony of Three Witnesses,” states that “we, through the grace of God have seen the plates which contain this record, and we also know they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us. And we declare with words of soberness than an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon.”

Around June 1, 1829, David Whitmer arrived in Harmony, Pennsylvania, to move Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery to Fayette Township, New York, a journey of more than one hundred miles. With the help of David and his family, the translation was completed at the Whitmer farm by the end of June. Several individuals witnessed the translation, including David Whitmer and his sister, Elizabeth (future wife of Cowdery). During this same period, Jesse Smith wrote a hostile letter to Hyrum Smith—this is the first extant letter mentioning the Book of Mormon. This chapter also includes a contemporaneous letter from Oliver Cowdery to Hyrum Smith as well as Cowdery’s “Articles of the Church of Christ.”

The period from the autumn of 1828 to March 1829 was an interregnum of sorts because Joseph Smith was in Harmony, Pennsylvania, providing for his family, as shown by David Hale’s store ledger. Joseph “Could not translate But little Being poor and nobody to write for him But his wife and she Could not do much and take Care of her house and he Being poor and no means to live But work.” In another sense, however, this interregnum proved quite significant because Oliver Cowdery arrived on the scene. In September 1828 he likely knew nothing of any gold plates, but by the end of March 1829, he was well on his way to becoming the cofounder of Mormonism. When the rehabilitation of Martin Harris and the curiosity of newcomer David Whitmer are figured into the equation, this seven-month period looks anything but routine.

dLate in March 1829, Oliver Cowdery traveled from Manchester, New York, to Harmony, Pennsylvania, to assist Joseph Smith with the translation of the Book of Mormon. The two men had not met prior to this but begin translating on April 7 and translated at a furious pace, completing the project in about fifty-seven working days. Accounts from Pomeroy Tucker, Joseph Knight, and others offer views from both skeptics and believers. Cowdery’s letters to W. W. Phelps present the perspectives of both Cowdery and Smith. During this same period, Smith dictated several revelations that later were incorporated into the Book of Commandments and subsequently the Doctrine and Covenants.

Christian creeds go back to the first Christian centuries. Catholics produced creeds largely to establish the lines demarcating orthodoxy and heresy. Protestants at first were hostile to creeds and often invoked the Bible as the lone and sufficient creed for Christians. Joseph Smith’s hostility to creeds was common, especially among other restorationists. Eventually virtually all Protestants realized that without a creed, boundary maintenance was impossible. Early missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found it necessary to summarize and define the uniqueness of their message—effectively creating the first creeds. Joseph Smith, explicitly hostile to creeds as too circumscribing of belief, found himself forced by the same imperative to articulate his own summation of Mormon teachings. His Thirteen Articles of Faith are, however, wholly inadequate as a creed, since they omit many of the most core doctrines of the church. They are best understood, in Rodney Stark’s formula, as establishing an optimum tension with competing religious faiths—not too radical and not too familiar.