Original sentence: In 1827, on his fourth annual attempt to retrieve the plates, Smith returned home with a heavy object wrapped in a frock, which he then put in a box.Smith dictated a translation using a seer stone in the bottom of a hat, which he placed over his face to view the words written within the stone.Smith eventually obtained testimonies from a number of claimed witnesses saying they had seen the plates, although it is unclear whether these witnesses saw a physical object or a vision.Smith published the translation in 1830 as the Book of Mormon.Smith said he found the plates on September 22, 1823 at a hill near his home in Manchester, New York after an an angel directed him to a buried stone box.Some witnesses later described the plates as golden or brassy in color, with leaves engraved on both sides and bound with one or more rings, weighing from 30 to 60 pounds.The angel at first prevented Smith from taking the plates because he had not followed the angel's instructions.The plates are both a central belief among Latter Day Saints, but outside of the movement their existence is questioned.Therefore, if the plates existed, they can not now be examined
Edited sentence: According to Smith, he found the plates on September 22, 1823 at a hill near his home in Manchester, New York after an angel directed him to a buried stone box.After his 1827 visit to the hill, Smith returned home with a heavy object wrapped in a frock, which he then put in a box.Smith said the angel at first prevented him from taking the plates because he had not followed the angel's instructions; but Smith said he made annual attempts to get the plates during four succeeding years.Smith then produced the text of the Book of Mormon using a seer stone in the bottom of a hat, which he placed over his face to view the words written within the stone.Smith told several stories about the origin and nature of the golden plates that are accepted by most Latter Day Saints as a matter of faith and sometimes also on the basis of apologetic scholarship that thus far has received no mainstream academic recognition.Some witnesses described the plates as weighing from 30 to 60 pounds, being golden or brassy in color, and being composed of thin metallic pages engraved on both sides and bound with one or more rings.Whether these were actual metal plates, perhaps manufactured by Smith himself, or whether the witnesses of the plates based their testimony on what they had seen in visions, is the subject of debate and speculation