Angel or Treasure Guardian?
– an excellent article by Mark Ashurst-McGee in Mormon Historical Studies, Volume 2, Number 2, Fall 2001. This article refutes the charge of some anti-Mormons that Joseph initially claimed that he encountered Moroni as a “guardian” of the gold plates, in a way consistent with folk-lore and magic, rather than as an angel of God. The critics say that the angel story came later as Joseph dressed things up. But the evidence suggest that the revisionism in this story comes from anti-Mormon critics, not Joseph Smith.
