Mormon and Moroni, the book says, had abridged earlier historical records from other sets of metal plates.

The Book of Mormon itself portrays the golden plates as a historical record, engraved by two pre-Columbian prophet-historians from around the year AD 400: Mormon and his son Moroni. The credibility of the plates has been a 'troublesome item', according to Bushman. Mormon scholars have formed collaborations such as Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies to provide apologetic answers to critical research about the golden plates and topics in the field of Mormon studies. They were reportedly shown to several close associates of Smith. In the words of Mormon historian Richard Bushman, 'For most modern readers, the plates are beyond belief, a phantasm, yet the Mormon sources accept them as fact.' Smith said that he returned the plates to the angel Moroni after he finished translating them, and their authenticity cannot be determined by physical examination. See also: Origin of the Book of Mormon and Historicity of the Book of Mormon

Latter Day Saints believe the account of the golden plates as a matter of faith, while critics often assert that either Smith manufactured them himself or that the Book of Mormon witnesses based their testimony on visions rather than physical experience. After the translation was complete, Smith said that he returned the plates to the angel Moroni thus they could never be examined. Smith eventually obtained testimonies from 11 men who said that they had seen the plates, known as the Book of Mormon witnesses. Smith published the first edition of the translation in March 1830 as the Book of Mormon, with a print run of 5,000 copies at a production cost of $3,000 (or 60 cents per book). Eyewitnesses to the process said Smith translated the plates, not by looking directly at them, but by looking through a transparent seer stone in the bottom of his hat. Smith dictated the text of the plates while a scribe wrote down the words which would later become the Book of Mormon. He allowed others to heft the box but said that the angel had forbidden him to show the plates to anyone until they had been translated from their original ' reformed Egyptian' language. He returned home with a heavy object wrapped in a frock, which he then put in a box. He returned to that site every year, but it was not until September 1827 that he recovered the plates on his fourth annual attempt to retrieve them. He said that the angel prevented him from taking the plates but instructed him to return to the same location in a year. Smith said that he found the plates on September 22, 1823, on a hill near his home in Manchester, New York, after the angel Moroni directed him to a buried stone box. Some witnesses described the plates as weighing from 30 to 60 pounds (14 to 27 kg), gold in color, and composed of thin metallic pages engraved with hieroglyphics on both sides and bound with three D-shaped rings. According to Latter Day Saint belief, the golden plates (also called the gold plates or in some 19th-century literature, the golden bible) are the source from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, a sacred text of the faith.

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