To summarise, the "testimony" is written in Legalese. That is, to look like a "Truth, Whole Truth and Nothing But..." style document, finished with a prayer - in which they testify that they have seen these plates and the records which they contain."Shown to us by the power of God, not man, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true."
I wonder if they saw the tablets or the "translations", as in the original "reformed Egyptian" I am sure they would be quite unreadable. It did take a magic stone and guidance from God to translate them after all.
This is signed by three men - Cowdery, Harris, and Whitmer.
They had a disagreement with Joseph in 1838, causing them to be excommunicated and for him to say they were "too mean to mention; and we had liked to have forgotten them."
The relation to Smith has some points of interest (and even bias): Harris was paying for Smith's "research", and accidentally lost the first, incomplete manuscript of translation.
Whitmer was a friend of Cowdery and Cowdery was a lodger of Smith's. Cowdery's family were also writing a book about how Native Americans would have originally been Hebrew. Funny that, it's got a lot of similarities to the plates... especially as the book was being written before the transcript of the plates.
Interestingly Harris was later disturbed by this "official document" and in a moment of crisis with his religion, confessed that he hadn't actually seen them at all. Cowdery and Whitmer told him that they had, and so he agreed to sign anyway. He changed his mind shortly after, recanting this statement and swore for the rest of his life that it was all the truth.
The Eight Witnesses:
Pretty much the same thing. It's a bit shorter, and signed by eight people claiming they were not drunk: Christian Whitmer, Jacob Whitmer, Peter Whitmer, Jr., John Whitmer, Hiram Page, Joseph Smith, Sr., Hyrum Smith, and Samuel Harrison Smith.
Three of whom were his direct family and the other five were family of Whitmer. Again, the Whitmers fell out with "the Church", never to rejoin.
A further interesting comment by Harris comes into play here - whilst the eight swore that they had seen and hefted (shown to them by Joseph and not God this time), Harris mentions to a former Mormon leader in 1938 "the eight witnesses never saw [the plates] & hesitated to sign that instrument for that reason, but were persuaded to do it."
(February 9, 1843, microfilm reel 2, pp. 64-66, LDS archives; quoted in "Facts On The Book Of Mormon Witnesses," )
These characters define Mormons to me. I dearly want Mormons to QUESTION everything, instead of inherently believe what they are told, copying the role models of the eight.
There is a lot more worthy reading to be found here on the testimonies.
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