Golden Plates on Display in Bulgaria
The world’s oldest multiple-page book — in the lost Etruscan language — has gone on display in Bulgaria’s National History Museum in Sofia. And something about that book has particular interest for Latter-day Saints.
As is evident from the photograph, this book was created on metal plates that are bound together with metal rings similar to the original source documents that became the Book of Mormon.
The book dates back to 600 B.C., which is roughly the time that Lehi and his family left Jerusalem.
The small manuscript, which is more than two and a half millennia old, was discovered 60 years ago in a tomb uncovered during digging for a canal along the Strouma River in southwestern Bulgaria. It has now been donated to the museum by its finder, on condition of anonymity.
Reports say the unidentified donor is now 87 years old and lives in Macedonia.The authenticity of the book has been confirmed by two experts in Sofia and London, museum director Bojidar Dimitrov said quoted by AFP. The six sheets are believed to be the oldest comprehensive work involving multiple pages, said Elka Penkova, who heads the museum’s archaeological department.
There are around 30 similar pages known in the world, Ms Penkova said, “but they are not linked together in a book”.
The Etruscans — one of Europe’s most mysterious ancient peoples — are believed to have migrated from Lydia, in modern western Turkey, settling in northern and central Italy nearly 3,000 years ago. They were wiped out by the conquering Romans in the fourth century BC, leaving few written records.
The long debated question about bound metal records existing in the Middle East 2500 years ago as claimed by the Book of Mormon can now be put to rest. Critics should take note and check that item off their list of objections to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
Hi!
I just came across your blog today and read this post with interest. I hadn’t yet heard of this discovery.
I wondered what you meant when you said, “Critics should take note and check that item off their list of objections to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.”
To me the greatest challenge has not necessarily been the logistics of such an endeavor as creating an entire book on golden plates, it was rather the fact that no such plates are known to exist. And the language in which the plates were said to be translated also does not exist. The difficulty within the text itself (DNA contradicting the Lamanites being Jewish, no known geographical location for the BoM events, anachronisms within the text such as metal works, coins, elephants, horses in the New World) are not as significant as the fact that we have no original source or material for the Book of Mormon. We can argue about the translation of the Bible by comparing the English version to the Greek manuscripts. Extant sections of the New Testament date to within 100 years of Christ. But no such comparable original material exists for the Book of Mormon, making it impossible to test its translation.
I did enjoy reading your article, but wondered if you might reconsider the wording of that last statement. It doesn’t appear, to me at least, to be factually true.
God bless,
Stephanie
Stephanie
February 6, 2010
First of all. The Book of Mormon does not ever claim that Laminites are Jews. That would nulify it’s contents. The Nephiyes and Lamnites are decendents fr the tribe of Joseph not Judah. There are 11 tribes of Israel. Next there many eyewitnesses to swing the plates. Just because those witnesses are long dead does not reduce the witness to it. If you are saying that in order for the BoM to be an actual translation of those plates means that the plates have to be on display, then I guess the next
thing you would say is that in order to claim Christ is the Savior of the world, then there would have to be pictures of the event. The key is Faith. All the plates in Boliva prove is that an ancient people their accounts on plates which demonstrates that for Moroni having buried plates of this ancient people was not only plausible, but probable that what Joseph Smith brought forth was real.
Christy
April 18, 2010