Were the plates too small to fit the Book of Mormon — or too heavy to be carried?
The Bible answers
King James Version
Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
NRSVUE
O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!
Our explanation
They already knew durable records could be cut into metal and rock.
King James Version
And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it, like the engravings of a signet, HOLINESS TO THE LORD.
NRSVUE
You shall make a rosette of pure gold and engrave on it, like the engraving of a signet, ‘Holy to the Lord.’
Our explanation
A gold plate, engraved. Sacred metal text is in their Bible.
The Book of Mormon answers
Mormon 9:32–33
We have written this record … in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian. … And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew.
Our explanation
They used reformed Egyptian because the plates were not large enough for Hebrew. The book already answers ‘too small.’
Jacob 4:1–2
I cannot write but a little of my words, because of the difficulty of engraving our words upon plates.
Our explanation
Engraving on plates is hard and slow. That is why the record is tight, not padded.
Dead Sea Scrolls and related extra-biblical texts that illuminate the same pattern the Restoration restores.
Copper Scroll (3Q15); Indian copper-plate grants; tumbaga in the Andes
The ancient world wrote long records on metal: Qumran’s Copper Scroll, large ring-bound copper-plate collections in India, and gold-copper alloys (tumbaga) in the Americas that look gold and weigh far less than pure gold.
Metal books exist. Gold-looking alloys exist. A 6×8×6 stack of thin leaves is in that world — not a 19th-century joke.
Interpreter Foundation / FAIR
Josh Coates
Coates, a computer scientist, ran millions of combinations of thickness, gold content, leaf count, and character size against what Joseph and the witnesses actually said. The configurations that work are not solid gold. They are a gold-looking alloy under about 20% gold, a stack a little over 50 pounds, roughly 187–259 leaves (sealed portion included), dimensions within 10% of Joseph’s 6×8×6, and characters averaging under 5 mm — in the range of compact Egyptian scripts like Demotic, where one sign can stand for several English letters. The translated Book of Mormon is the unsealed portion. Pure-gold 200-pound cubes and ‘only 40 thick plates of English handwriting’ are not the object anyone described.
The plates likely had less than 20% gold content, weighed more than 54 lb., contained between 187 and 259 plates, and had dimensions slightly smaller than, but within 10% of, Joseph Smith’s description.
FAIR / Ancient America Foundation
Neal Rappleye
Rappleye compares the witness dimensions to real metal books. Matthew Roper (Scripture Central) points to Indian copper-plate sets whose total surface area matches 174 to 258 Book of Mormon plates, and a gold-gilded Quran on 604 copper leaves equivalent to hundreds of Book of Mormon plates. The ‘too small’ argument treats our stack as if it were 40 thick English pages. Ancient scribes packed more. Rappleye’s FAIR chapter, Written Upon Gold Plates, is the long comparison of witness descriptions with pre-modern artifacts.
Large sets of engraved copper plates, bound by rings, already exist in the archaeological record with surface area in the same range as the Book of Mormon plates.
Jasmin Rappleye / Informed Saints
Jasmin Rappleye
Jasmin’s short walks the Coates numbers against a popular critic clip (Trent Horn): the plates are denser in script, smaller per character, thinner per leaf, and more numerous than that clip assumes. With a compact hand (2–5 mm) and a script that does not spend one sign per English letter, the unsealed text fits. She points to Coates’s Interpreter paper and to Neal Rappleye’s FAIR chapter. Watch the short. Then read the paper.
The gold plates are denser, smaller, thinner, and more numerous than the critic suggests — which makes it plausible for the text to fit.
Scripture Central / Mormonr
Scripture Central / Mormonr
Eyewitnesses independently put the weight around 40–60 pounds and the size around 6–8 inches by 4–6 inches thick. Metallurgists have long pointed to tumbaga — a gold-copper alloy used in ancient America — which can look gold and come in at that weight. Mormonr collects the witness numbers and Coates’s 2025 combinations. Scripture Central’s KnoWhy on whether the accounts are believable is the short public version: the reported weight, dimensions, and composition are in range.
Individuals who hefted the plates estimated their weight to be around 40–60 pounds. Pure gold of those dimensions would weigh far more. An alloy does not.
Faithful voices only. Most of these are independent — not official Church productions unless marked as such.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Be the first to tell us if this case is strong.
