Is it Consistent to Believe Biblical Eyewitnesses and Reject Book of Mormon Witnesses?

The Book of Mormon witnesses offer mutually reinforcing historical testimonies that challenge both secular skeptics and mainstream Christian defenders. While critics often dismiss these eleven men using theories of shared hallucination or physical forgery, their accounts mirror the ancient eyewitness testimony widely used to defend the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because the Three Witnesses experienced a miraculous angelic visitation while the Eight Witnesses hefted a tactile artifact, their combined statements resist easy dismissals. In this interview, independent historian Walker A. Wright explores this apologetic double standard and his belief in the historical credibility of the gold plates.

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Walker A. Wright’s *Nourishing the Roots: Seeking the Foundations of Latter-day Saint Testimony* argues for a philosophical basis for belief in the Restoration

The Historical Jesus and the Nature of the Gospels

— Ancient eyewitness testimony establishes the Gospels as reliable historical biographies of Jesus Christ.

You recount an experience from high school where a peer confidently asserted that Jesus of Nazareth never even existed. How does the “Jesus mythicism” theory hold up against the actual historical and textual evidence of the first century?

According to “Jesus mythicism,” the story of Jesus is no more grounded in historical reality than the myths and legends surrounding other dying-and-rising gods. For some, disbelief in the resurrection of Jesus entails a disbelief in the existence of Jesus. But this is a fringe theory.

The historical figure of Jesus is attested in numerous independent sources within a century of His death. These include the various traditions preserved in the Gospels, the letters of Paul, and other New Testament writings. We also have references from non-Christian sources such as the Roman historian Tacitus and the Jewish historian Josephus. But Paul is especially important because he personally met both Jesus’s chief disciple (Peter) and Jesus’s own brother (James) according to his letter to the Galatians (Galatians 1:18-19). It’s very difficult for a non-existent man to have either of those.

It’s very difficult for a non-existent man to have either of those.

Moreover, a crucified messiah is an extremely odd and offensive claim in Second Temple Judaism. Jewish expectations generally anticipated a victorious Messiah who would triumph over Israel’s enemies and deliver the chosen people. That is the furthest thing from a publicly humiliated and executed criminal. Rather than being made up out of whole cloth, it’s more likely that a man named Jesus aroused messianic expectations and ended up being crucified. For reasons like these, historians across the ideological and theological spectrum tend to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical person.

To understand the New Testament, you argue we must understand its genre. How does reading the Gospels as Greco-Roman bioi (ancient biographies) change our expectations for what kind of history they are trying to convey?

Greco-Roman bioi (“lives”), such as Plutarch’s Lives, were not quite the same as modern biographies. They do not necessarily cover a person’s entire life or offer sustained psychological analysis of the person. They usually touch only briefly on ancestry, birth, and early life before moving quickly to the subject’s public activity. Some accounts follow a mostly chronological order, while others are organized by topic. A significant portion of these works consists of the subject’s own words (their sayings or speeches). Finally, the subject’s death is often treated at length, revealing their greatest teaching, deed, or defining character.

Most New Testament scholars understand the Gospels to fit within this broader literary genre. And this means that when the ancients read the Gospels, they were looking for and expecting historical information rather than fiction. This doesn’t mean that there are no theological purposes or biases in the texts. And it doesn’t mean that the accuracy of the history can’t be debated. But it at the very least means the Gospel authors understood themselves to be recounting real events from the life of Jesus. This means that we should approach the texts as works of ancient history rather than a collection of fables, even if we do so with necessary caution.

Latter-day Saints and the New Testament

Critics sometimes compare the transmission of early Christian oral traditions to a game of “telephone” where the message is inevitably corrupted. Why does the work of scholars like Richard Bauckham suggest we should actually read the Gospels as preserved eyewitness testimony?

Scholars like Richard Bauckham, Craig Keener, and others have argued that the “telephone” analogy seriously underestimates just how strong and disciplined oral culture was in the first century CE. The early Christians were part of an organized community, led by recognized teachers who sought to preserve the words and deeds of Jesus, likely using the formal memorization-based methods common among Jewish rabbis.

Modern psychological and sociological studies confirm that while memory is reconstructive rather than a perfect recording, people reliably retain the gist of events. The accuracy of specific details may vary, but the overall picture generally remains intact. Collective oral traditions tend to preserve the essence of the story, even while adjusting the details to fit current circumstances.

The overall picture generally remains intact.

Bauckham argues that the Gospels are rooted in the testimonies of named eyewitnesses who remained active voices in early Christian communities throughout their lifetimes. He points to a literary device he calls inclusio of eyewitness testimony, in which a narrative is bracketed by references to a primary witness. Furthermore, named individuals scattered throughout the narratives functioned as what one scholar calls “living footnotes.” In a world without bibliographies or citations, it was the author’s way of pointing readers toward verifiable, identifiable sources. These were real people that members of the early Christian communities would have known or known of. They could, in principle, talk to the witnesses themselves.

Now, this view hasn’t become the scholarly consensus like, say, the biographical genre of the Gospels. But it has meaningfully reshaped the conversation.

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The Plausibility of the Resurrection

— Early creedal traditions and eyewitness accounts provide historical bedrock for defending the resurrection.

When looking at the resurrection, you point heavily to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Why is the creed found in 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 considered the “bedrock witness” of the resurrection by modern scholars?

Scholars believe the material in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 predates Paul’s apostolic activity and was received by him within only a few years of the initial resurrection appearances. Furthermore, Paul says he “delivered” (Greek paredoka) that which he “received” (parelabon), using language that referred to carefully transmitted traditions. Some infer that Paul received this tradition from Peter and James when he visited Jerusalem (Galatians 1:18-24).

That means that the resurrection claims are not late developments. They go back to the earliest stages of Christianity. But Paul then adds himself to the list of resurrection witnesses. And what makes Paul’s claim truly strange is that he was originally an enemy of the church. Something radically transformed Paul from active persecutor to one of the important missionaries in Christian history. Something that led him to suffer and die for the sake of his message. That something, Paul claimed, was an appearance by the resurrected Jesus.

The Resurrection We Didn’t Expect

The centrality of the resurrection in this early material is puzzling too. A crucified messiah is already extremely odd, but a resurrected one? Jewish belief was not expecting an individual resurrection to happen within human history, ahead of all the rest at the end of time. What’s more, Jesus–who would have been understood as a crucified criminal–was then worshipped as a divine figure. Paul and others preached the resurrection as the culmination and fulfillment of God’s covenantal promises to Israel. So both people and ideas suddenly changed following the death and burial of Jesus. We have to ask ourselves, “What kind of experience would be powerful enough to create these behavioral and theological innovations?”

The inclusion of women as the first witnesses to the empty tomb is considered by scholars to be “historically impressive.” Why would this detail actually work against the credibility of Christianity in the first-century Mediterranean world if it had been fabricated?

In this cultural context, the testimony of women was not taken very seriously. For example, the 2nd-century Greek writer Celsus mocked the testimony of Mary Magdalene, calling her “a hysterical female.” Many saw women as gullible or unreliable. If you notice, the women at the tomb are conspicuously absent from Paul’s list in 1 Corinthians 15. They were perhaps omitted due to embarrassment, either by Paul himself or those he received it from. Because if you were trying to convince people of your resurrection story in the 1st-century CE, making women the earliest witnesses would be one of the worst ways to do it. This means that the Gospels’ inclusion of the women’s testimony went against the cultural grain and consequently is a major reason to take the discovery of the empty tomb seriously. It didn’t help their case. They were included, it seems, because it was true.

Who Was Mary Magdalene?

The Apologetic Double Standard: Christ and the Gold Plates

— Dismissing Book of Mormon witnesses while accepting biblical testimony exposes an apologetic double standard.

You highlight debates involving Christian apologists like William Lane Craig and Dinesh D’Souza, where secular skeptics trap them by bringing up the Book of Mormon witnesses. Why do you think mainstream Christian apologists struggle to address the gold plates when defending the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

I think a couple things are going on. First, I think most Christian apologists simply aren’t familiar with the historical record surrounding the Book of Mormon witnesses. They often make elementary mistakes when discussing the subject. And many don’t feel it necessary to educate themselves about it. Joseph Smith was obviously a con man or whatnot, so why look too hard at the claims? Honestly, I think many of them would be surprised by the wealth of material we have on the witnesses and the consistency of their testimonies over time.

I also think, however, that many Christian apologists are uneasy with the implications. They lean heavily on the testimonies of the resurrection witnesses as evidence for Jesus’s resurrection. Rightfully so. But if the same reasoning can be applied to the Book of Mormon witnesses, then they’re faced with a dilemma: they can either follow their own line of argument and accept the evidence of Book of Mormon witnesses. Or they can reject that line of reasoning and undermine their own case for the resurrection. No one wants to be between a rock and a hard place.

The signed statement of the Three Witnesses is highly supernatural, whereas the statement of the Eight Witnesses is incredibly empirical and tactile. Why is the contrast between these two types of testimony actually a strength?

This goes back to a point made by B. H. Roberts around a century ago. He noted that if we only had the “miraculous testimony” of the Three Witnesses, then it would be easier to dismiss it as hallucination. Not completely, mind you. There would still be the fact that it was an event experienced by multiple people simultaneously: first three (Oliver, David, and Joseph) and then two (Joseph, Martin). You’d have to generate the hallucination twice. Nonetheless, it’s easier to dismiss that lone statement as having no grounding in reality.

B. H. Roberts Quotes

On the other hand, if we only had what Roberts called the “ordinary testimony” of the Eight Witnesses, then the fabrication of fake plates seems like a no-brainer. But when you put them together, then you have multiple variables that have to be explained away. If the Three hallucinated, what do we say about the plates that the Eight handled? If the plates the Eight handled were fake, what do we say about the plates the angel showed the Three? The two different experiences end up reinforcing one another.

Painting of the Eight Book of Mormon witnesses physically examining and hefting the gold plates. — The Eight Witnesses provided physical, tactile witness to the golden plates, which directly counters claims of a shared spiritual hallucination.

Critics often dismiss the Three Witnesses by claiming they only saw the plates with their “spiritual eyes.” How do scriptural precedents and the witnesses’ own matter-of-fact comparisons to everyday objects challenge this dismissal?

Martin Harris is the only witness who reportedly used the language of “spiritual eyes” or “eye of faith” when describing his experience. And many have latched on to this to claim that the experience was internally subjective, non-physical, or even imaginary.

The language, however, draws on (at least in part) scriptural precedents. By the “eye of faith,” the Brother of Jared was able to pierce the veil and see the finger of God (Ether 12:19-20). Moses sees God with his “spiritual eyes” because he would have “withered and died” otherwise (Moses 1:11). In both of these scriptural cases, the encounter with heaven is meant to be understood as quite real. No one walks away from these passages thinking the experiences are meant to be imaginary or solely subjective. David Whitmer even stated that “of course” they “were in the spirit” when they saw the angel and plates because “no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view.” But he said that everything was still “natural to us, as it is at any time.”

The Book of Mormon: Academic and Devotional Insights

Harris himself had a pattern in which he called attention to nearby objects and compared the experience of perceiving them to his experience with the angel and the plates. None of the witnesses thought the experience was anything other than a legitimate angelic visitation that was as real as anything else.

And, honestly, does the description really matter? If you don’t think there is a God or angels, what difference does it make if it was his “spiritual” or “natural eyes”? If it turned out that Harris never said anything about “spiritual eyes,” would critics suddenly say, “I’ll be, he must have actually seen an angel”? I doubt it. The “spiritual eyes” fixation kind of misses the point.

A Marvelous Work: The Translation of the Book of Mormon

— Eyewitness records demonstrate that the Book of Mormon translation defies simple natural explanations.

You draw a fascinating contrast between J.R.R. Tolkien’s decades-long, highly educated creation of Middle Earth and Joseph Smith’s dictation of the Book of Mormon. What makes the speed, complexity, and lack of notes during the 1829 translation so difficult to explain naturalistically?

It’s not so much that the speed, complexity, and lack of notes by themselves make a natural explanation impossible. The feat is certainly impressive, but on its face doesn’t automatically require supernatural intervention.

However, for me, the question to consider is this:

If I asked you to give me the profile of the kind of person who could or would author a book like the Book of Mormon, would it look anything like Joseph Smith?
In your heart of hearts, does he match what you have in mind? Or would your profile look more like Tolkien?
How long do you think it would take to write such a book?
What would the process of its writing look like?
Does any of that match the historical record?

According to both witnesses and manuscript evidence, the Book of Mormon was dictated in 2-3 months amid interruptions, travel, and daily life by a largely uneducated farmboy with magic rocks and his head in a hat. Not only that, but he would pick up dictation where he left off without looking at the manuscript. He was also surprised by the text as he went along. Those who knew him best thought the book was far beyond his capabilities. And the historical case for the Book of Mormon has gotten better–not worse–with time. I don’t think people realize how unexpected this all is. The strangeness of the situation should at the very least raise some eyebrows.

Let’s Talk About the Translation of the Book of Mormon

Why do you believe that the coming forth of the Book of Mormon holds up in similar ways to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but other scriptures in alternative Latter Day Saint traditions—such as Jame Strang’s Voree plates or Matthew Gill’s Book of Jeraneck—do not?

I only briefly address the Strang plates in a footnote. For me, these alternative traditions bear only a superficial resemblance to the Book of Mormon witnesses.

At first glance, they have a number of similar features. But those tend to be the least compelling ones. The mere existence of plates, for example, is ultimately not that interesting. As I noted before, if the Eight Witnesses were all we had, then the power of their testimony would be significantly diminished. And vice versa with the Three Witnesses.

What gives the Book of Mormon witnesses their distinctive edge is the coupling of these different kinds of experiences. Plus, we have several unofficial witnesses who saw or handled the gold plates that complement the official statements.

The alternative traditions lack this experiential variety and mutual reinforcement.

By contrast, the alternative traditions lack this experiential variety and mutual reinforcement. They also lack the volume and consistency of the witnesses’ testimonies over time, especially in the face of hardships and estrangements. These alternative traditions just don’t rise to the same level.

Ultimately, if a person can accept the miraculous, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ based on ancient eyewitness testimony, why is it intellectually consistent to take the 19th-century witnesses of the Restoration seriously?

In a revelation received by Joseph Smith, the Lord explained that one purpose of the Book of Mormon was to prove “that the holy scriptures are true,” “that there is a God in heaven,” and that Jesus Christ “was crucified, died, and rose again on the third day” (D&C 20:11, 17, 23). That’s the point of the book. It is, as the title page states, meant to convince all that “Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God.” The book is, above all, a testimony of the risen Jesus. The witnesses of the Restoration aren’t simply testifying about a book for the book’s sake. They are testifying that God is real, Jesus is His Christ, and Joseph is His Prophet.

If you find the testimonies of the ancient apostles and resurrection witnesses compelling, then I think you will be both shocked and moved by the witnesses of the Book of Mormon. The pattern is incredibly similar to that of the early Christians. It admittedly can feel strange to take their words seriously, but we should feel that way when we read the New Testament as well. The testimonies of the Book of Mormon witnesses demonstrate that the risen Jesus not only in fact rose, but continues to speak and reveal Himself today. And that’s pretty exciting.

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About the Scholar

Walker A. Wright is an independent researcher and author who is involved in a Yale-based institution dedicated to promoting free speech and intellectual diversity. His academic expertise spans the intersections of government, economics, and theology, with a specialized focus on historical methodology and Latter-day Saint scripture. Wright has contributed extensively to respected scholarly outlets, including BYU Studies Quarterly, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. Holding a master’s degree in government from Johns Hopkins University alongside advanced degrees in strategic management, his multidisciplinary background brings a highly analytical framework to his historical research.