PUZZLE #6 - Brass Plates

Nephi states repeatedly that one of his main reasons for going back to get the records was to obtain the genealogical history of his ancestors. The records they retrieved showed that Lehi's lineage came from Jacob/Israel, through Joseph. Lehi found that the record-keeper, Laban, was also a descendent of Joseph.

Were these records kept so well for each of the people living in Jerusalem? Did they contain everyone's genealogy? Even if they didn’t, there would have been a
lot of records. Can you even imagine the genealogical records of the entire city of Jerusalem recorded on brass plates? How much would they have weighed, and how
bulky were they?

The records that the boys brought back were all on brass plates. Nephi tells us that those brass plates contained not only genealogies, but also the writings of the prophets from the beginning of time down to Nephi's day (1st Nephi 3:19-20), the Law of Moses (1st Nephi 4:16), and the records of the Jews from Adam to Lehi (1st Nephi 5:11-16). That’s a lot of records. That's a lot of brass plates.

Nephi supposedly carried those brass plates from the house of Laban to a place outside the city wall, all by himself, in the dark, with Zoram at his side. No one questioned them at the city gate? No one thought it was suspicious that Nephi, dressed as Laban, was carrying all those records to a point outside the city?

His brothers were waiting outside the city wall. With all those plates, how did Nephi get past the guards? In fact, how did he get into the city in the first place? The gates were closed at night. The city wall was not something that
you could just jump over or go around. It was a major barrier. That same wall would keep Nebuchadnezzar's army at bay during the three years of the Babylonian
siege of Jerusalem just a couple of years after these events supposedly happened.

If someone went in or out of the city, they had to go thru the gate and past the guards. No mention is made of any contact with the guards. Nephi makes it sound like he and his brothers just waltzed in and out of Jerusalem like you or I might enter and leave any major city today.

It is obvious that the author of this text never saw the city of Jerusalem. His description of Nephi passing in and out of the city shows a complete ignorance of the situation about which he was writing. The text was not written by a young man from Jerusalem, but by someone who had read just enough of the Bible to have a limited idea of the layout of the holyland in those days.

Lastly, Nephi had supposedly stolen the records of the Jews and killed the record-keeper. The Jews would have sent patrols out after the thieves the very next day, and they would have scoured the countryside along every trail leading from the city. Three boys on foot would not have escaped the mounted police. Isn't that a PUZZLE?

REF: Pages 6-11