▲ 13 r/mormon
The idea for the gold plates came from edge gilding on bibles, right?
There's no way to prove this, of course. But when you look at a closed book with edge gilding, the book appears as a stack of gold.
As a bajillion people have pointed out, what Smith describes would be a gold codex. Assuming the "brass plates" are constructed like the gold plates, they would predate the invention of the codex by several centuries.
Anyway. My guess is that Smith was inspired by edge-gilded bibles.
u/questingpossum — 2 days ago