I am curious as to how Joseph Smith was able to translate the ancient (unknown) language on the golden tablets into English. It must have taken him a long time. How could he lose the golden tablets before anyone else could see them?
Another good question. You would think he would want people to see the tablets, I know I would.
It's worse than that. Eyewitness testimony is that Joseph would peer into a hat, using his so-called seer stone that would yield a phrase by phrase dictation. He would call it out; the person recording it would read it back to him for accuracy.
If all that was needed was a seer stone dictator, why even bother with gold plates? From a divine preservation perspective, why bother having your people etch something that would take years to record on gold plates if no reader is ever going to benefit from them?
The fact is the gold plates were irrelevant to what came out in the Book of Mormon; the original Greek & Hebrew was irrelevant to what came out in Joseph Smith's version of the Bible (called the JST), as he didn't know Greek & Hebrew; the original funeral document content of what Smith called the "Book of Abraham" was irrelevant since not only did Smith not know what he called "Reformed Egyptian," there wasn't even such a language. (Yeah, right, Israelites frequently used the languages of their enemies)
“I am curious as to how Joseph Smith was able to translate the ancient (unknown) language on the golden tablets into English.”
God gave him the means and ability to do so.
“It must have taken him a long time.”
Actually, about 3 months time was spend in translating it, but it wasn’t consecutive.
“How could he lose the golden tablets before anyone else could see them?”
They were not lost, an angel of God took them back. Several people saw, touched, and lifted the plates.
So the whole book of Mormon is supposed to have been translated from these gold tablets?
Just how big were these things and how much did they weigh?
And how could anybody have just *lost* them?