Book of Mormon witnesses

The Book of Mormon witnesses are a group of contemporaries of Joseph Smith who said they saw the golden plates from which Smith said he translated the Book of Mormon. The most significant witnesses are the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses, all of whom allowed their names to be used on two separate statements included with the Book of Mormon.

The Three Witnesses were a group of three early leaders of the Latter Day Saint movement who wrote in a statement of 1830 that an angel had shown them the golden plates from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon and that they had heard God's voice testifying that the book had been translated by the power of God.

The Three Witnesses were Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer, whose joint testimony, in conjunction with a separate statement by Eight Witnesses, has been printed with nearly every edition of the Book of Mormon since its first publication in 1830. All three witnesses eventually broke with Smith and were excommunicated from the church. In 1838, Joseph Smith called Cowdery, Harris, and Whitmer "too mean to mention; and we had liked to have forgotten them." In 1839 Cowdery published a tract rejecting the Latter Day Saints and in 1840 become a member of the Methodist Protestant Church. In later years, all three testified to the divine origin of the Book of Mormon, and near the end of their lives rejoined one denomination or another of the Latter Day Saint movement. Harris and Cowdery rejoined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shortly before their deaths, and Whitmer founded the Church of Christ (Whitmerite).

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