Book of Mormon Evidence: Three D-Shaped Rings

In addition to Joseph Smith himself, eleven other individuals submitted their names to the world as having seen the metal plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated. Their official statements—the Testimony of Three Witnesses and the Testimony of Eight Witnesses—have been included in each edition of the Book of Mormon since it was first published.¹ Some of these individuals left additional information and descriptions about the plates, including the rings that held them together. These descriptions provide surprising evidence for the Book of Mormon.

Eyewitness Descriptions of the Rings on the Plates

David Whitmer, one of the Three Witnesses who were shown the plates by an angelic being,² reported in an interview in 1878 that “three rings kept the plates together; one above, one on the middle and one below, so that the angel could turn every leaf entirely over.”³ In another interview in 1886, Whitmer said that the plates “were bound together at the back by having 3 rings run through & when a page was translated it turned back on the ring.”⁴

Other Witnesses of the Book of Mormon left similar remarks about this distinctive feature of the rings. On September 10, 1831, William McLellin, a recent convert to the Church and Hyrum Smith, one of the Eight Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, preached to a congregation in Jacksonville Illinois about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. McLellin recorded in his journal that Hyrum “arose and bore testimony to the truths which they had heard and gave them his evidence of the truth of the book.”⁵

A reporter who attended the meeting reported Hyrum’s description of the plates: “The plates were minutely described as being connected with rings in the shape of the letter D, which facilitated the opening and shutting of the book.”⁶  John Whitmer, another one of the Eight Witnesses said that the plates were bound together “in three rings, each one in the shape of a D with the straight line towards the center.”⁷

Three Rings

Research by Warren Aston and Jeff Lindsay has shed light on these descriptions.⁸ Three-ring binders for paper were unknown in America at the time of the publication of the Book of Mormon. Jeff Lindsay notes that a patent was issued to William Mann on July 3, 1840 for a somewhat primitive form of binding in two places, not three. The following year, another patent was issued to Isaac Deterree on May 22, 1841, which mentioned “two or more screws” for binding paper together. These, however, were not ring binders. On April 5, 1859, Henry T. Sisson received what appears to have been the first patent for a three-ring binder in which the rings could pass through sheets of paper.⁹ Two-ring and three-ring binders were not marketed, however, until the late Nineteenth Century.¹⁰

Interestingly, many examples of copper plates have been discovered in India which date to the Medieval period. These are bound with one or sometimes two rings, although no examples with three rings are currently known.¹¹ A couple examples of ring-bound gold plates from the Middle East are known, but their authenticity is questionable.¹² 

D-Shaped Rings

Nephite record keepers mentioned that space was sometimes a significant concern when they wrote on plates (1 Nephi 6:1–6; Jacob 1:2–4; Jarom 1:14). Moroni, the final Nephite historian noted that the difficulty of finding available ore in his day limited what he was able to record on the plates (Mormon 8:5, 23). In light of these comments, the testimony of Witnesses that the rings on the plates were D-shaped is of interest.

Aston notes “the D-shape offers stability by allowing the leaves to stack vertically against the straight side of the rings. Although it occupies much the same space, a D-shaped ring also offers a full 50 percent more storage capacity than a circular ring (and 20 to 25 percent more storage capacity than a slanted semicircular shape.”¹³  This would allow for more plates to be attached to one set. “To the Book of Mormon prophets who labored to inscribe their records on metal plates, space was clearly an important consideration. D-shaped rings offered them a means to keep the maximum number of plates together.”¹⁴ As Lindsay observes, “it makes sense that experienced users of metal plates would use an efficient binder system.”¹⁵

Through correspondence with Aston M. Frankena, curator of the Early Office Museum in London, Aston learned that D-shaped binder rings were not developed until the mid-Twentieth Century.¹⁶ While that may have been true for Great Britain, Lindsay, shows several examples of American patents for two-ring binders given in 1882 and 1885 that have elongated D-shapes, yet these are still more than fifty years after the publication of the Book of Mormon.

Conclusion

Hyrum Smith, John and David Whitmer, and others affirmed that the plates of the Book of Mormon were held together by three rings that were D-shaped. They were viewed by witnesses many years before ringed binders were invented or known, and they were described as D-shaped, a most efficient shape for maximizing space, a system that was, again, not invented for ringed binders until many decades later. In light of such evidence, Jeff Lindsay’s conclusion is persuasive: “The shape of the rings and their observation by eye-witnesses can best be explained by the hypothesis that there were actual gold plates made by actual experts in plate-based writing systems that were seen by actual witnesses.”¹⁷