Abstract: Two recent reviews of By Means of the Urim & Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration by Jeff Lindsay and Brant Gardner seriously misrepresent the book’s argument. Perhaps most significantly, they largely sidestep the book’s central thesis that the statements by Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery that the Book of Mormon was translated from the plates using the “Urim and Thummim” interpreters which God provided with the plates should be at the center of any account of the Book of Mormon’s production. Prioritizing problematic and unreliable seer stone accounts conflicts with the testimonies of these primary eyewitnesses, and thus is not a useful basis for formulating any faithful understanding of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon.
[Editor’s note: We are pleased to present this response to two recent book reviews in the pages of Interpreter. Consistent with practice in many academic journals, we are also publishing a rejoinder from the authors of those reviews immediately following this response.]
Volume 63 (2025) of the Interpreter includes two reviews of the book By Means of the Urim & Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration by Jonathan E. Neville and me. These are “Trust Us, We’re Lawyers: Lucas and Neville on the Translation of the Book of Mormon” by Brant A. Gardner (pp. 135–68) and “Through a Glass Darkly: Restoring Translation to the Restoration?” by Jeff Lindsay (pp. 169–202).
[Page 90]Both reviews are so replete with misunderstandings and misrepresentations of our book that I find myself chagrined to be in the position of authors I previously would have chuckled at, wondering if the reviewers actually read the book as opposed to skimming through it just to find points to attack. On point after point, despite sixty-seven combined pages, they ignore the book’s explicit responses to issues they raise, leaving the reader with an inaccurate and distorted misinterpretation of the book’s argument.
I appreciate the Interpreter’s editors’ willingness to allow me to: (1) succinctly summarize the book’s argument since readers would not be able to garner that from these reviews, and (2) lay out how going forward we might better construct a faithful narrative of the Book of Mormon’s production. (My co-author and I have posted a detailed commentary on the reviews elsewhere.1)
The Key Question: Joseph and Oliver’s Honesty in the Shadow of Royal Skousen’s Honesty
In what is called the Wentworth Letter, Joseph Smith gave the following particulars on the source of the Book of Mormon:
These records were engraven on plates which had the appearance of gold, each plate was six inches wide and eight inches long, and not quite so thick as common tin. They were filled with engravings, in Egyptian characters and bound together in a volume, as the leaves of a book with three rings running through the whole. . . . With the records was found a curious instrument which the ancients called “Urim and Thummim,” which consisted of two transparent stones set in the rim of a bow fastened to a breast plate. Through the medium of the Urim and Thummim I translated the record by the gift, and power of God.2
[Page 91]Oliver Cowdery, principal scribe for the Book of Mormon we have today, gave a similar account:
These were days never to be forgotten to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom! Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated, with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, “Interpreters,” the history or record called “The book of Mormon.”3
By Means of the Urim & Thummim includes an appendix with thirty written or other reliably sourced statements from Joseph and Oliver attributing the translation to the use of the “Urim and Thummim” interpreters which were deposited with the plates, but neither Gardner nor Lindsay mentioned this in their reviews. Instead, both reviews studiously avoid any material references to Joseph Smith or Oliver Cowdery as historical sources. This is disappointing but expected as it is the common practice of all advocates of the stone-in-the-hat narrative.
As we suggest in the book, the quantity of these statements from Joseph and Oliver on this specific point may be due to the appearance of the stone-in-the-hat narrative in 1834 in the first anti-LDS book, E. B. Howe’s Mormonism Unvailed. Howe states that Joseph produced the Book of Mormon using “the old ‘peep stone,’ which he formerly used in money-digging [which was] placed in a hat, or box, into which he also thrust his face.”4 Decades later other accounts relating to Joseph’s use of a scrying stone with the Book of Mormon appeared. (I use the term scrying stone rather than seer stone for the rock Joseph may have used in his possible folk magic related activities to distinguish it from the two stones in the interpreters which some also refer to as seer stones.) The longest chapter of By Means of the Urim & Thummim provides a critical analysis of these accounts, which [Page 92]scholars have largely accepted at face value, i.e., without detailed examination as to their credibility. Our chapter 2 examines the most frequently used stone-in-the-hat accounts and finds them to be of questionable reliability.
For example, both reviews refer to the “Last Testimony of Sister Emma” as an authoritative source for their arguments. The “Last Testimony” is an account published on 1 October 1879 by Joseph Smith III of an interview of his mother, Emma Smith, that he conducted in February 1879, not long before her death on April 30. The “Last Testimony” includes a claim ascribed to Emma that Joseph Jr. used a seer stone in a hat when Emma was scribing for the Book of Mormon.5 However, we discovered that only seven years later, in 1886, after performing his own extensive research, Joseph III repudiated the stone-in-the-hat narrative.6 This undermines the credibility of the “Last Testimony,” whether or not Emma actually stated what Joseph III reported. This 1886 document from Joseph III was not hidden; it did not come out of an attic. It was sitting in The Saints’ Herald for 137 years, but neither Gardner nor Lindsay inform their readers about this key previously unrecognized source. To the contrary, they promote Emma’s “Last Testimony” as fully credible.
In By Means of the Urim & Thummim, we argue that the conflict between the stone-in-the-hat narrative and Joseph and Oliver’s testimonies is fundamental and irreconcilable. For example, the source of the largest number of stone-in-the-hat accounts, David Whitmer, repeatedly claimed that the reason Joseph had to use the scrying stone was because the Urim and Thummim interpreters were not returned to him after the 116 pages entrusted to Martin Harris were lost (despite David not even being in Harmony when these events occurred). According to Whitmer, this punishment was due to Joseph’s “transgressions.”7 However, Joseph specifically claimed [Page 93]that, although he was rebuked for the fiasco with the lost pages, the interpreters were, in fact, returned to him and he used them for the rest of the translation.8 Both accounts cannot be true. Either Joseph got the interpreters back, or he did not. We each must decide whether to believe either David or Joseph (and Oliver) on what, for believers, is a critical factual matter.
For non-believers this is not a critical question, since they generally do not believe that either the plates or interpreters existed, and think that Joseph and Oliver were lying about them entirely. That he was contradicting Joseph Smith was not an issue for David Whitmer either, as he came to believe that Joseph was a fallen prophet in all respects except for the Book of Mormon.9
However, this should present a dilemma for believers who want to accept E. B. Howe’s stone-in-the-hat narrative. David Whitmer is the most prominent corroborator for the stone-in-the-hat narrative, and he was adamant that Joseph never got back the interpreters. To argue otherwise—that the interpreters were returned to Joseph but then he never or almost never used them—is unsupported by, and indeed contradicts, both sources. Yet this is what Lindsay argues (p. 170).
Supporters of the stone-in-the-hat narrative have also tried to dodge this dilemma by obfuscating the term “Urim and Thummim.” They argue that in all instances where Joseph and Oliver used the term, they meant the scrying stone as well as the interpreters. This contradicts the historical record.10 Mormonism Unvailed clearly distinguished [Page 94]between the two on a single page. Joseph and Oliver almost always qualify their use of the term by indicating that these were the instruments which came with the plates. Even those who claimed to be witnesses of the translation who are used to support the stone-in-the-hat narrative, such as Emma Smith and David Whitmer, always use the term “Urim and Thummim” to refer only to the interpreters, and referred to the scrying stone as a separate object.
For example, Edward Stevenson recorded the following in his journal about a visit with David Whitmer in December 1886:
David Whitmer says that the Josephites was displeased with him because he maintained that the 116 pages which were translated & written by Martin Harris was translated by the Urim & Thummim or Interpreters as he preferred calling them, but after the loss of the 116 pages the remainder of the translation was done with the Seer stone.11
By Means of the Urim & Thummim includes a number of other quotes along these lines, and an entire subchapter addressing the issue. However, again, no one would learn that from the reviews, even though both resort to this effort to obfuscate the term in order to dodge the unavoidable conflict between Joseph and Oliver’s testimonies and the stone-in-the-hat narrative.
Which brings us to Royal Skousen.
The historical record gives stone-in-the-hat advocates a clear choice for how we received the Book of Mormon we have today. Either accept that Joseph and Oliver were telling the truth about the plates being translated using the interpreters, or follow Howe, Whitmer, and a [Page 95]few other late, largely secondhand reports that Joseph used the scrying stone without the plates. Believers in the Book of Mormon accept claims by David Whitmer (and one attributed to Emma Smith) that the interpreters were used for the lost pages. However, that is largely irrelevant as this narrative makes the scrying stone, rather the plates and interpreters, the source for the entire Book of Mormon as published in 1830.
Those who profess belief in the Book of Mormon have not wanted to acknowledge this dilemma, and have instead resorted to historically untenable dodges as described above. However, in the final weeks of 2024, one of the most prominent LDS Book of Mormon scholars courageously confronted the issue straight-on and acknowledged that accepting the stone-in-the-hat narrative means that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery lied about the translation of the Book of Mormon.
I assume that readers of Interpreter need no introduction to Royal Skousen. Although not a named author of either review, he is listed as having commented upon Lindsay’s review, and indirectly figures significantly in Gardner’s as well. Thus, it is relevant that in the newest volume of his work on the Book of Mormon manuscripts Skousen plainly concludes that
Joseph Smith’s claim that he used the Urim and Thummim is only partially true; and Oliver Cowdery’s statements that Joseph used the original instrument while he, Oliver, was the scribe appear to be intentionally misleading.12
Just to quickly unpack this, Skousen, like Gardner and Lindsay, is basing this on David Whitmer. Joseph’s claim is partially true only because he did use the Urim and Thummim for the lost pages whereas Oliver’s claim is entirely false because, according to David Whitmer, the entire Book of Mormon Oliver scribed came from the scrying stone and not from the plates using the Urim and Thummim interpreters.
Skousen’s courageous clarifying confession allows us to finally set aside several decades of muddled speculation from “trained LDS historians” (Gardner’s term, pp. 144, 165) who, driven by their acceptance of the stone-in-the-hat narrative and unacknowledged rejection of Joseph and Oliver’s plates-and-interpreters narrative, have generated [Page 96]many theories about the Book of Mormon’s translation. These theories are, unfortunately, unmoored from the primary eyewitness’ testimonies and the rest of the historical record. (In the interest of space, I will only address translation theories directly relevant to the reviews. See By Means of the Urim & Thummim for fuller discussion of the broader topic.)
Translation and the Stone-in-the-Hat Narrative
As Richard Bushman has pointed out, many people in Joseph’s time had visions of Jesus.13 It was launching his ministry by declaring himself a translator that set Joseph apart.14 The Lord gave “Joseph to be a presiding elder over all my church, to be a translator, a revelator, a seer and prophet” (Doctrine and Covenants 124:125). And the foundation upon which the Restored Gospel was presented to the world was the translation of the Book of Mormon. This was the testimony born to proselytes from the beginning. Testimony of ancient prophets and scribes who struggled to preserve their nation’s sacred history for a millennium on metal plates, those plates being passed by angelic labor to Joseph, who risked his and his family’s life and safety to protect them and the even more ancient instruments provided for the plates’ interpretation (Joseph Smith—History 1:35).
Yet modern advocates of the stone-in-the-hat narrative have made the entire divine saga of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon largely irrelevant. At the end of his book on the plates, Bushman asks,
Why the plates at all? So long as it was believed Joseph read from the plates through the Urim and Thummim, their purpose was clear. But if he read the text from a seer stone while the plates lay covered on the table, as many now believe, . . . why the effort to preserve them through the centuries, why the trouble to recover and protect them, why their presence?15
Just as the stone-in-the-hat narrative makes the plates and [Page 97]interpreters superfluous, it also renders the concept of Joseph as translator meaningless. Joseph and his fellow early Saints understood perfectly well that the word translate meant “to render into another language; to express the sense of one language in the words of another.”16 To their south lay the largest non-English speaking immigrant group of the early United States, the Germans of Pennsylvania (progenitors of the Whitmers) and to their north were French Canadians. Many New York Knickerbockers like the Roosevelts still spoke Dutch at home and western New York was home to many Native Americans of the Iroquois Confederacy who still spoke their tribal languages. These Protestants all knew the history of their Reformation forebearers’ struggle to have the Bible “translated out of the original tongues” as the first page of every one of their Bibles declared. Christian ministers who had formal training typically studied those original tongues.
Joseph explained in History, circa 1841:
The title page of the Book of Mormon is a literal translation taken from the last leaf on the left hand side of the collection of plates which contained the record which has been translated; the language of the whole running the same as all Hebrew writings; and that said title page . . . [of the English version of the Book of Mormon] . . . is a genuine and literal translation of the title page of the Original Book of Mormon recorded on the plates.17
Unlike the rest of the Book of Mormon, the title page is a series of sentence fragments rather than full (if run-on) English sentences, suggesting that this “literal translation” was different from the more functional translation of the rest of the record. Joseph appears well-acquainted with the nature of translation and of the text and document he was working with. As well, it was under his purview that every copy of the Book of Mormon printed after 1830 bears the legend “Translated By Joseph Smith, Jun.” The 1840 edition reads “Carefully revised by the translator.” Obviously, he differed from traditional translators in that he did not go to school to learn the source language. This is why he (and Oliver) so emphasized the role of the Urim and [Page 98]Thummim interpreters, which gave him some kind of rendering of the text in English to work with.
While I am working on a longer paper on how the widespread acceptance of the stone-in-the-hat narrative has derailed study of the translation of the Book of Mormon, the reviews by Gardner and Lindsay illustrate some of the damage. They take somewhat different approaches (although they end up in the same place), so I will discuss them separately.
Lindsay openly tracks Royal Skousen’s theory. Skousen argues that Joseph was lying not only about the translation process, but in his claim to be a translator as well. Briefly, Skousen and his colleague Stanford Carmack contend that the entire Book of Mormon was not only given through the scrying stone, but that the text Joseph saw in the scrying stone “must have involved serious intervention from the English-language translator, who was not Joseph Smith.”18 Skousen and Carmack have never identified who this real translator is, but claim that he or they, for some unexplained reason, wrote their translation in the Early Modern English of the 1400s and 1500s.
By Means of the Urim & Thummim devotes two subchapters to the problems with this theory. But again, one would not know that from Lindsay’s review. Instead of addressing our critique of his preferred translation theory, Lindsay devotes a third of his review (pp. 175–86, 11 of 32 pages) not to our book, but rather to attacking B. H. Roberts. And this even though our translation theory is quite different from Roberts’s and that we do not cite him as authority for our views. (He is only referenced in footnotes for thoroughness as Roberts was a prominent LDS thinker who did write about the translation.)
I am not going to reproduce those rather long subchapters here. For purposes of this response, I note just that Skousen’s Early Modern English theory (and those who support it like Lindsay) are arguing not only that Joseph Smith lied about the translation process, but about being a translator altogether. I do not see rejecting the testimony of the primary eyewitness and first prophet of this dispensation as helpful in coming to a faithful understanding of the Book of Mormon’s origins.
Initially, Gardner appears to take a different approach. The abstract of his review declares that he agrees “Joseph was an active participant in the translation,” although he disagrees with our explanation [Page 99](p. 135). However, in the end Gardner effectively rejects Joseph as an active participant in the translation almost as much as Skousen and Lindsay. Gardner does not share his theory of the translation process in his review but, as one of the more elaborate stone-in-the-hat-based explanations, it merits a brief review as it underlies the problems with Gardner’s review of By Means of the Urim & Thummim.
Briefly, Gardner adopts a proposal from Steven Pinker (which in turn is based on Noam Chomsky’s theories on the origin of human language) to argue that Joseph received some sort of awareness of the text’s meaning in a part of the mind that precedes linguistic formation.19 Pinker calls this “mentalese.”20 We unconsciously think something before forming it into language. In Gardner’s theory, God put the meaning of the text into this subconscious mentalese faculty of Joseph’s brain, which then was filtered through Joseph’s conscious language faculty. The difficulty of this argument that God skipped the plates and interpreters (after all the effort to get them to Joseph) and just put the meaning directly into Joseph’s brain is that such a process does not account for how Joseph came up with Hebraisms and other non-English grammatical structures, as well as the Book of Mormon’s very complex and detailed narrative and literary framework.
Of course, it could be that God put all of those into Joseph’s brain as well, but it would then be hard to see what might be left to make Joseph an “active participant” in the translation, as it is this unconscious mentalese precognition which controls the mind, not our linguistic faculties. In that case, Gardner ends up the same place as Skousen, with Joseph having no real involvement with the formation of the Book of Mormon, despite Gardner having written entire books arguing otherwise.21 I would also note that Gardner presents this mentalese concept as settled science, but fails to inform readers of his [Page 100]review or his books that the concept is, in fact, highly controversial and far from universally accepted in linguistics and cognitive science.22
At some point Gardner (among other LDS apologists) has come across the term “functional equivalence,” although it is unclear whether he (or they) understand what it really is supposed to mean. In LDS apologetics it generally means that “Joseph used his own words,” which is useful in explaining issues such as anachronisms and poor grammar in the Book of Mormon. This is not inaccurate as such, but the term is part of a much larger understanding of translation which Gardner seems to not have processed, even after reading our book where we try to explain it at length and use it as the center pole of our theory of the translation.
Briefly, that theory is based on the work of the dean of modern Bible translation, Eugene Nida, who served for decades as the chief linguist of the American Bible Society, overseeing hundreds of Bible translations. In Nida’s framework, translation can run on a spectrum from “formal” equivalence to “functional” equivalence. Formal equivalence is not a word-for-word translation; it is a translation which hews as closely as possible to the source text given the grammatical and semantic requirements for it to be coherent in the receptor language. Functional equivalence is not just the translator using his own words. Even a formal translation uses the translator’s own words; he has no others. Functional equivalence rather centers on translating meaning, allowing the translator greater range in conveying ideas within not just the receptor language but its host culture as well.
Our theory uses this framework to propose that the interpreters provided Joseph a more formally equivalent translation, giving him a direct sense of the voice of the Nephite writers (including linguistic structures like chiasmus, etc.). Joseph then rendered this into a functionally equivalent text which would be better understood by his contemporaries, including the use of language and style from the KJV and the sermons and speech he knew from his culture. This two-step process can account for the peculiar double nature of the English translation of the Book or Mormon. The interpreters supplied Joseph [Page 101]with a formally equivalent text preserving ancient linguistic forms and an elaborate narrative structure. Joseph then adapted this text (while preserving much of the ancient substrata from the interpreters) into a functionally equivalent text which reflected Joseph’s linguistic and cultural environment.
Yet again, no reader would understand this from either review. Both reviewers misrepresent what we say Joseph received from the interpreters. Lindsay calls it “a crude, possibly literal translation—I prefer the term ‘fractional translation’” (p. 173) and a “crude or literal translation . . . word-for-word translation . . . crudely translated” (p. 187). Even Gardner, who I thought would know the term “formal equivalence,” instead calls it a “literal translation” (p. 158) and a “deficient translation” (p. 161). He even becomes quite testy when discussing our discussion of his own terminology (pp. 166–67).
After reading Gardner’s review and rereading his books on translation, I now think that we have been talking past each other, so to speak. Given the widespread influence and acceptance of Nida’s framework in modern translation scholarship, and Gardner’s use of the term “functional equivalence,” which was coined and first explicated by Nida, I assumed Gardner was familiar with this scholarship.23 However, I now realize he is not, even after supposedly reading By Means of the Urim & Thummim where it is discussed at some length. Instead, I now realize that Gardner is working within his own idiosyncratic framework and definitions developed in opposition to Royal Skousen’s ironclad/tight/loose translation framing.24 (Note that neither Gardner’s nor Skousen’s terminology would fit into current translation scholarship.) However, even Gardner’s definition of “literal translation” allows that “there are times when syntax or semantics might require changes in the target language to retain sense.”25 First, Gardner does not even allow that much flexibility in describing our translation theory. Second, and more important, Nida’s concept of formal equivalence which we use in the book is much broader and more supple than what Gardner labels as “literal translation.”
Both Gardner and Lindsay ask why the interpreters would give such translations, but ignore our book’s extensive response to that very [Page 102]question. Basically, we argue that Joseph’s translation of the plates is another example of God working through humans to help them learn and grow. God does not hand us learning on a gold platter—we need to search and study first, and the translation of the Book of Mormon followed this process. This is the same process which modern scholars (including LDS scholars) see in the production of the Bible—the word of God passed through the minds and cultures of the prophetic and apostolic writers (see Doctrine and Covenants 1:24). The reviewers are certainly free to disagree with the book’s explanation that this same process applied to the translation of the Book of Mormon. However, to criticize the book for not addressing the issue of why God tasked Joseph with reframing the formally equivalent text from the interpreters while ignoring the response the book does give is a serious disservice to readers. Similarly, neither reviewer uses the term “formal equivalence” in the correct sense, even though it is carefully defined and regularly used in the book. The reviewers’ refusal to do so appears to be deliberate misrepresentation intended to bias readers against the book’s translation explanation.
Gardner offers one more critique of the book’s translation theory. He states that there was not enough time for Joseph to study out text in his own mind before conveying it to the scribe. Gardner’s basis for this is an amalgamation of sources apparently drawn from his most recent book.26 These include a David Whitmer quote that Gardner acknowledges is both late and includes details Whitmer could not have seen, a writing experiment by Jeannie and John Welch, and Royal Skousen’s surmises about the number of words written at a time. These sources simply do not add up to support Gardner’s conclusion that “Joseph would dictate to the scribe who wrote it down. No historical account ever hints at any time passing as Joseph worked out what to dictate. Instead, it seemed to be a flow of words” (p. 157). The Welches’ experiment shows how fast the manuscript could be written, but not that it was actually written so quickly. Royal Skousen was not present for the dictation and, like Gardner, his claims to know how the translation took place all, in the end, rely on David Whitmer.27
[Page 103]However, there is no direct evidence that David Whitmer ever saw the actual translation process. As discussed more fully in our book, I agree with Richard Lloyd Anderson that decades of bitter enmity against Joseph led David Whitmer to reform his secondhand and hearsay memories in a way that fit his belief that Joseph was a fallen prophet.28 As Professor Anderson points out, David had an inerrantist view of scripture and could not conceive of a human, especially a fallen prophet as he considered Joseph to be, as having any input into the text of the Book or Mormon. For his part, Gardner seems to be of two minds on this last issue. At one point in his review he says that Joseph was “an active participant in the translation” (p. 135) yet then also argues against our agreement with this point by claiming that Joseph did not have time “for any pondering or working out of the translation” (p. 158).
Fortunately, the historical record does resolve this contradition. While we argue that David Whitmer was not a witness to the translation itself, we certainly can agree that he was around his family home while Joseph and Oliver were working on translating the small plates of Nephi. Contrary to Gardner’s assertion that no “historical account ever hints at any time passing as Joseph worked out what to dictate” (p. 157), E. C. Briggs reported that David told him that Joseph and Oliver “worked hard, early and late, while translating the plates. It was slow work, and they could only write a few pages a day.”29 This would [Page 104]certainly accommodate Joseph carefully and prayerfully studying out in his mind how to express in his contemporary English the sacred words of the ancient text God entrusted to him.
Translation and the Restoration
The explanations of Gardner, Skousen, and Lindsay are not the only ones for the production of the Book of Mormon. LDS scholars’ rejection of Joseph and Oliver’s testimonies has engendered a free-for-all on this question. In addition to Gardner and Skousen, Blake Ostler, Samuel Brown, Michael Ash, Michael Mackay, and Gerrit Dirkmaat, among others, have all seized the opportunity to travel back in time two centuries to tell us with great confidence exactly what was going on in Joseph Smith’s head (and hat) as he dictated the Book of Mormon. And, as illustrated by the analysis above of Gardner’s mentalese translation model, these prolific theories raise more issues than they solve.
Moreover, there is another team on the field. They contend that Joseph and Oliver lied not only about the translation of the Book of Mormon, but about the restoration of the priesthood and temple keys as well. As with the translation process, these key elements of the Restored Gospel are also only sourced in the historical record from Joseph and Oliver, and are far more sparsely documented than their claims about translating from the plates using the interpreters. By discarding the testimonies of the first and second elders of the restored Church of Christ, pro-stone-in-the-hat Book of Mormon defenders at best turn it into a Quran instead of a Bible, something poured into the prophet’s brain (or scrying stone) rather than the product of a man’s struggle to understand the mind and will of God. From an objective external point of view, it is these real physical objects—the plates and interpreters—which distinguish the Book of Mormon from the ephemeral spiritual origins of other worthy texts. These stone-in-the-hat based theories about the Book of Mormon unloose the sacred book from this mooring in reality. Furthermore, what is the reason for the Witnesses if nothing they saw was used for the translation sent out into our modern world?
I would extend two invitations to these defenders of the Book of Mormon. First, examine the stone-in-the-hat accounts critically rather than just accepting them at face value like Skousen, Mackay, and Dirkmaat. The stone-in-the-hat sources do exist in the historical record, but they are all late, secondhand, and/or contradictory, [Page 105]and all are unreliable.30 They were well-known to Joseph’s contemporaries and successors in Church leadership who dismissed them and repeatedly emphasized that Joseph translated from the plates by means of the Urim and Thummim. Most importantly, as discussed in By Means of the Urim & Thummim, there are several satisfactory alternative explanations for the origins of the stone-in-the-hat accounts. These explanations show how these sources could have mistaken what they saw for the actual translation. (Note that the Demonstration Hypothesis, discussed in the reviews, is only one of these, and that that hypothesis is based upon an interview with the stone-in-the-hat advocates’ favorite source, David Whitmer, yet another point unmentioned in either review.31)
Second, please reconsider your rejection of the testimony of the two primary eyewitnesses in favor of these unreliable stone-in-the-hat accounts. Such a rejection is inherent in the stone-in-the-hat narrative and has been so since E. B. Howe first presented it (although only Royal Skousen has had the gumption to openly say so). With the exception of Skousen (and apparently Jeff Lindsay), I believe that most Book of Mormon defenders, like Gardner, think their theories leave room for Joseph’s engagement with the production of the Book of Mormon beyond simple dictation of someone’s else’s translation.32
In addition to the afore-mentioned, I believe I have seen this view advanced by many others, such as Stephen Ricks, Dan Peterson, and Brian Hales. They may not use the specific term “functional equivalence,” but I think that there may even be a consensus that Joseph had conscious input into the English translation of the Book of Mormon he dictated (making Skousen the outlier33). There are many good reasons for this position in addition to its usefulness in rebutting most criticisms of the Book of Mormon. It helps explain why the text is the way it is, reenforces the idea that the Book of Mormon speaks to our times, and shows its deep kinship with the Bible.
[Page 106]Yet, that argument is fatally debilitated if it relies on speculative historical mind-reading, stone-in-the-hat accounts which contradict the primary eyewitnesses, and otherwise lacks support in the historical record. Joseph himself told us how he was engaged in helping produce the Book of Mormon. He translated (as he and his contemporaries understood the term) the engravings from the plates using the Urim and Thummim interpreters, supplied by God for that purpose (Joseph Smith—History 1:35), studying it out in his mind as guided and confirmed by the Holy Spirit (Doctrine and Covenants 9:8). Would not the argument that Joseph had conscious input in the Book of Mormon be far stronger if it was grounded in this eyewitness testimony of the translator himself and his chief scribe?34
James W. Lucas is an attorney who has lived in New York City most of his adult life but is now living in Utah. He received his undergraduate degree from BYU and law degree from Columbia University. In recent years he has written both books and articles on constitutional and public policy matters. In the field of LDS history, he has presented at several conferences, co-authored (with Warner Woodworth) Working Toward Zion: Principles of the United Order for the Modern World, and done research on the history of the Latter-day Saints in New York City. The latter has included writing the entry on Mormons for the Encyclopedia of New York City and a chapter in New York Glory: Religion in the City (NYU Press). He is co-author with Jonathan E. Neville of By Means of the Urim & Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration (Salt Lake City: Digital Legend, 2023).
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21 Comment(s)
James Lucas, 04-01-2025 at 12:11 pm
To Brant Gardner re comment dated 3/21 (I do not see a reply button specific to that comment)
There are many references to the Urim & Thummim (U&T) which very clearly use the term in connection with the translation of the Book of Mormon to refer only to the spectacle-like Jaredite/Nephite interpreters which came with the plates. See in Appendix B to our book quotations 1, 8, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31 and 32 (Joseph, Oliver and Lucy). Even persons who are cited in support of the stone-in-the-hat theory such as Emma Smith and David Whitmer used the term U&T only to refer to the interpreters, and referred to the seer stone as a separate object. (See quotations in Chapter 2(E)). Further, even when the term came to be used more broadly in the 1840s, such as in D&C Section 130, if it was applied to seer stones it was used to refer to other revelatory seer stones, not Joseph’s scrying stone. The concerted effort to try to include the scrying stone under the term U&T has arisen only in modern times as a dodge (contrary to the historical record) to try to get around the obvious use of the term only for the interpreters in all the earliest most reliable sources.
Replies
Brant A. Gardner, 04-01-2025 at 1:56 pm
James, the problem with all the citations you list is that they postdate the publication of the Book of Mormon and provide ample time for Urim and Thummim not only be added to the vocabulary (which is unquestionably post printing), but also to be used generically. There is nothing that indicates that it necessarily, at any time, referred to the Nephite instruments exclusively. As an example, from one of the references you suggest in your Chapter 2 (E), you draw an inference that is not supported by the actual evidence. The document in questions is from Edward Stevenson, 1887, Typescript journals, volume 28, page 52. What it says is: “David Whitmer says that the Josephites was displeased with him because he mantained [sic] that the 116 pages which were translated and written by Martin Harris was translated by the Urim & Thumin [sic] or Interpreters as he preferred calling them, but after the loss of the 116 pages the remainder of the translation was done with the Seer stone, and that Martin wrote some & it was at this time when Martin when Martin put the wrong stone in the hat deceiveing [sic] the Prophet.” https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/bc546251-522d-430a-a259-964bd8bde02f/0/0. The right page is 202/330 in the longer document.
This is a quotation you assert shows that the Urim and Thummim were used to describe the Interpreters. That is true, as far as it goes, but note that we don’t have an exact quotation, but rather Stevenson’s recollection. Stevenson rather specifically separates the term Stevenson used, Urim and Thumin [sic]l from what Whitmer preferred to use, which was the Interpreters. Whitmer is clear on what Harris said, and while the Interpreters were used early, they were only used for the lost pages. You have made an inference from the source that is does not actually support your opinion, and rather affirms that the seer stone was used, and used for the translation we now have. The interview with Whitmer supports Harris, and testimony you attempt to discredit because it contradicts your hypothesis.
There is good historical evidence that the seer stone was used (the above has two witnesses, Whitmer and Harris, confirming it). The term Urim and Thummim is late, and not original. Suggesting that Urim and Thummim covered more than the Interpreters isn’t a modern dodge, it is consistent with the best testimony of those who were witness to, or part of the process.
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James Lucas, 04-03-2025 at 12:27 am
Brant –
The primary issue is not when the term “Urim & Thummim” came into use by the early Saints. The real issue is that it did, and the important question is what those sources meant by it. As anyone can see from the sources referred to in my last post, when examined without the filter of preexisting biases, the sources closest to the translation used the term only to refer to the Nephite interpreters which came with the plates, which instruments were provided by God for the work of translation. And, as we have shown in two books, the stone-in-the-hat sources are not reliable, especially in contrast to the firsthand testimony of the two primary eyewitnesses, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery.
You have done some amazing work of the Book of Mormon. May put it to you that almost everything you have written would still stand if you acknowledged that Joseph and Oliver told the truth about the Book of Mormon being translated from the plates using the Nephite interpreters. Otherwise you (and others) are in the odd position of proclaiming that the Book of Mormon comes from God, but that the two men who God entrusted to bring it forth repeatedly lied about how that happened.
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Brant A. Gardner, 04-03-2025 at 8:08 am
James: You stated: “but that the two men who God entrusted to bring it forth repeatedly lied about how that happened.” You keep saying that. Frankly it is offensive because it is objectively untrue. That we differ in how we read history doesn’t mean that I think they lied.
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James Lucas, 04-12-2025 at 2:10 pm
Brant –
I’m sorry you are offended. I would like to believe that you disagree with Royal Skousen’s negative assessment of Joseph and Oliver’s accounts of the translation. However, as your written statements now stand, you appear to agree with the many other Book of Mormon supporters who reject, ignore or downplay the testimonies of the first and second elders of the Restored Church (see D&C 20) and primary eyewitnesses to the translation process. Rather than getting into a round of unproductive “I’m more offended than you” tit-for-tat, let’s just look at the record. Joseph’s last and most detailed account is the Wentworth Letter:
“With the records was found a curious instrument which the ancients called “Urim and Thummim,” which consisted of two transparent stones set in the rim of a bow fastened to a breastplate. Through the medium of the Urim and Thummim I translated the record by the gift, and power of God.”
I do not see how Joseph could have been more clear and straight-forward. As Royal Skousen has acknowledged, the necessary and logical conclusion of the stone-in-the-hat narrative is that Joseph and Oliver’s accounts of the translation are misleading. The conflict has been obvious since E. B. Howe first unveiled the stone-in-the-hat narrative. (I do have to respect that Skousen did not resort to the historically untenable dodge that Joseph and Oliver meant the scrying stone when they used the term “Urim & Thummim,” a work-around clearly refuted by the quote above and numerous other sources.) Unlike Jeff Lindsay, who appears to accept all of Skousen’s views uncritically and without qualification, you have been willing to openly take exception to some of Skousen’s work, a point I noted in my response article. There are enough in addition to Skousen who question Joseph’s honesty. Please consider joining us in defending Joseph on this critical issue.
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Brant A. Gardner, 04-15-2025 at 9:22 pm
Once again, your statements about scholars questioning Joseph’s honesty are offensive–and very untrue. Repeating your argument is not the same as interacting with contrary evidence.
Val Larsen, 03-28-2025 at 5:39 pm
It is no accident that for most of the 20th century, depictions of the Book of Mormon translation showed Joseph looking at gold plates as he translated. That conception of the translation—a conception that Brothers Lucas and Neville support and flesh out—is more congenial to the modern mind than translation made with a stone in a hat. Brother Lucas and Neville’s allusion to modern technological analogs makes their account still more well adapted to the experience and beliefs of ordinary people thinking about Book of Mormon translation today. Given that all involved in this particular discussion believe and want others to believe that the Book of Mormon is a translation of tangible plates written by flesh and blood Nephites, the sensibilities of ordinary people are relevant to where the burden of proof should rest as we evaluate competing theories. At a minimum, it is helpful if at least one plausible translation theory can preserve and validate this more congenial conception of translation. The Lucas and Neville theory has the virtue of doing that. If it were valid in no other way—which is not true—it would be a pragmatically valid theory. It may help some people sustain something that is inestimably valuable: faith in the Book of Mormon.
To be sure, valid reasoning and compatibility with historical evidence matter. Brothers Lindsay and Gardner have posed some interesting objections. But none of the various faithful translation theories (or, for that matter, the faithless theories) can account for every feature of the remarkable text we indubitably have or for every fact discernible in the historical record. Some theories are better adapted to one aspect of the text, other theories to another aspect. Perhaps some hybrid of these competing theories can eventually give us an account that keeps the happy image of Joseph using the interpreters to look at the plates, the involvement on the other side of the veil of faithful 16th century English martyrs giving, in their own idiom, input into what Joseph sees as he looks at the plates through the interpreters, Joseph thinking about and adapting the text to the 19th century (and, thus, explaining the presence of Jonathan Edwards’ phrasing and explaining away anachronisms through loan shifts, etc.), and can account for the production of a translation sufficiently literal that it preserves, as the text clearly does, a great deal of impressive Hebrew and Nephite rhetoric.
I personally welcome the contribution of Brothers Lucas and Neville to our set of translation theories. It, more than any other I am acquainted with, sustains the views many have traditionally held about how the translation was done. And more than any other, it fits the modern weltanschauung. For this and all the theories, it is helpful to list, objectively, without partisan rancor, any facts about the text or its history that are not fully accounted for by the theory. And in every case, there things unexplained. But let’s presume good will all around. Let’s presume an all-around good faith effort to shore up faith in this book that has brought millions to better know and love Christ.
Mike Parker, 03-17-2025 at 12:19 pm
James Lucas and Jonathan Neville repeatedly and continually abuse their sources. Here’s just one example:
In their August 2023 interview with the Gospel Tangents podcast, Lucas made the following claim:
“In [Emma Smith’s] last testimony, which was published in 1879, she just says [Joseph] used the hat. She doesn’t talk about the Urim and Thummim. So, there’s two issues. One is with the 1870 letter. One, we really don’t know the context of what she was responding to there. And she says in that letter, she has this thing, like somebody stole all my copies of the Times and Seasons. So, I could give you a better answer, if I could go back and look at the Times and Seasons. So, you’re left with the impression that she wasn’t really remembering, or she was not certain about her memory.”
https://gospeltangents.com/2023/08/why-emma-smith-isnt-reliable/
That is a grievous distortion of what Emma Smith said in her March 1870 letter to Emma Pilgrim. Here is what she wrote:
“Now the first that my translated, [the book] was translated by the use of the Urim and Thummim, and that was the part that Martin Harris lost, after that he used a small stone, not exactly, black, but rather a dark color. I can not tell whether that account in the Times and Seasons is correct or not because some one stole my books and I have none to refer to at present, if I can find one that has the account I will tell you what is true and what is not.”
https://archive.org/details/volume-1_202010/page/532
Lucas claimed that Emma “was not certain about her memory” and that she wished she had her copies of the Times and Seasons so she could better recall how Joseph translated the Book of Mormon. But what Emma actually wrote is that Joseph translated using a small stone and that she can’t comment on what the Times and Seasons published about the translation because someone stole her copies of the newspaper.
Emma’s firsthand, eyewitness testimony of the translation process is absolutely clear. Lucas misrepresented her words and unjustifiably questioned her mental state in order to support his revisionist claims.
Sadly, this kind of abuse of the evidence has been part and parcel of the “Heartland” movement from its beginning.
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James Lucas, 03-18-2025 at 12:22 pm
1. Possible geographic settings of the Book of Mormon are irrelevant to the nature of the translation. Many who favor a Mesoamerican setting also believe that Joseph and Oliver told the truth about the translation using the Nephite interpreters which came with the plates. Therefore the remarks about “Heartlanders” are inapplicable and gratuitous.
2. The main focus of the “Last Testimony of Sister Emma” is its claims that Emma knew nothing of Joseph’s involvement with plural marriage, a claim now universally rejected by all reputable scholars. Unless the author of the comment has also joined the polygamy denier camp, he is being completely inconsistent in elevating the document’s translation claims while ignoring its polygamy denial. A better view of the document is Eliza R. Snow’s claim that it was actually written by Joseph Smith III. This view is supported by the fact that only a few years later Joseph III felt free to reject stone-in-the-hat claims and instead supported Joseph and Oliver’s plates-and-interpreters narrative.
3. Joseph III’s change of view followed his extensive research of the original sources, which included the Times and Seasons which his mother said in her letter to Emma Pilgrim that she (Emma) did not have access to. Her claim in that letter that the scrying stone was used after the lost pages incident is dubious hearsay since Emma’s service as scribe largely ended after the lost pages incident. Her replacement, Oliver Cowdery, consistently testified that the translation used the Nephite interpreters. Therefore, as with the “Last Testimony,” the letter to Emma Pilgrim is of very questionable reliability. I would note that is useful as one of the many sources showing that everyone involved with or adjacent to the translation used the term “Urim & Thummim” only to refer to the Nephite interpreters, and referred to the scrying stone as a separate object.
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Mike Parker, 03-18-2025 at 2:14 pm
Mr. Lucas,
1. The “Heartland” movement, as I’m sure you’re aware, is rooted in more than just Book of Mormon geography; it encompasses many claims and beliefs. Your colleague, Jonathan Neville, is a notable personality in that movement. The allegation that Joseph Smith used only the Nephite interpreters and never used a seer stone (which his critics called a “scrying stone”) is an article of faith within the “Heartland” movement; virtually no one outside of it makes that contention.
2. Emma Smith’s claim in her “Last Testimony” that Joseph Smith did not practice plural marriage was false. Emma had strong incentives to be disingenuous about this because of her personal antipathy toward plural marriage and her desire that it not be practiced within the RLDS Church. On the other hand, she had no motive to lie about her firsthand eyewitness of the translation method of the Book of Mormon. There are also numerous firsthand witnesses who contradicted her plural marriage claims, and numerous firsthand witnesses who corroborated her testimony regarding the translation. I (along with most Book of Mormon scholars) side with the preponderance of the evidence: Her statement about plural marriage is easily disproven, while her statement about the translation is easily validated. Eliza R. Snow’s view about Emma’s “Last Testmony” was supposition, as is yours.
3. What Joseph Smith III believed is immaterial, since he wasn’t a witness to the Book of Mormon translation. Your statement “Emma’s service as scribe largely ended after the lost pages incident” is factually incorrect: The 116 pages were lost in July 1828, over two months before Joseph told his mother “Emma writes for me now.” Oliver Cowdery’s consistent references to the Nephite interpreters need to be understood in the context of what he was responding to in his 1834 letters (i.e., Eber Howe’s claims), and veracity demands that we incorporate Oliver’s statements into a holistic view that includes all the eyewitness accounts, rather than simply rejecting firsthand statements that don’t agree with your preferred, predetermined beliefs. Your claim that Emma Smith’s 1870 and 1879 statements are “of very questionable reliability” is based solely on the fact that you don’t like what she had to say.
James Lucas, 03-17-2025 at 12:44 am
Robert – The spectacle-like double-lens Jaredite/Nephite interpreter instrument was almost certainly different than the “Urim & Thummim” described in the Bible, and the use of the term for the interpreters has given rise to some confusion. However, the canonized account in the Pearl of Great Price ascribes the use of the term for the interpreters to Moroni (JS-H 1:35) and, even if one dismisses that scriptural account as dating from 1838 when the use of the term had become widespread, the use of the term for the interpreters began very early, The W. W. Phelps account you refer to is from 1832, not 1833, and we have even earlier report of its use in Boston by Orson Hyde and Samuel Smith. Most importantly, almost all contemporary accounts of the translation use the term only to refer to the interpreters, usually specifying that it was the instrument which came with the plates, which clearly distinguishes it from Joseph’s scrying stone. Even sources who are used to claim that Joseph used the scrying stone for the translation, such as Emma Smith and David Whitmer, used the term Urim & Thummim to refer only to the interpreters, and refer to the scrying stone as a separate object. See chapter 2(E) of “By Means of the Urim & Thummim.” Later broader uses of the term in the 1840s should not obscure the fact that sources relating to the translation of the Book of Mormon only use the term to refer to the Jaredite/Nephite interpreters which came with the plates. Thus, when Joseph and Oliver used the term, they meant the interpreters only, and efforts to slip the scrying stone into those sources distort and belie the testimonies of these primary eyewitnesses.
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Robert F. Smith, 03-18-2025 at 11:37 pm
Thank you, James. Since you admit that “Urim & Thummim” are different than the Nephite Interpreters, then you should agree with me that only “Nephite Interpreters” should be used to refer to them. Introducing foreign terms into the discussion should be completely off limits. “Scrying stone,” for example, is never used by early Latter-day Saints, so why do you use it? Serious scholars never play that game. In order to avoid confusion, all claims need to be cited, with quotes. Instead, we find the discussion to be dominated by obfuscation. That gets us nowhere.
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Mike Parker, 03-19-2025 at 11:53 am
Why does James Lucas use the term “scrying stone”? That’s easy: He wants to discredit Joseph Smith’s seer stone. Using a loaded term (a form of begging the question) makes it easier to sway uninformed people to his beliefs.
It’s the same reason why, since February 2020, Jonathan Neville has used the acronym “SITH” (stone-in-the-hat). The term “Sith” is popularly known from the Star Wars franchise, where it refers to a group of people who use the dark side of the Force to overthrow the democratic government and spread fear. Jonathan Neville knows exactly what he’s doing when he uses that loaded term; although he professes that his intentions are innocent, no one believes him.
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James Lucas, 03-19-2025 at 3:14 pm
Robert and Mike –
Any discussion of “seer stones” in the early Restoration must deal with the fact that the term is used in several different ways in the historical record:
(1) the dual lenses in the interpreters created by God for the Jaredites and passed down to Joseph Smith to use for the translation are sometimes referred to as “seer stones.” Joseph and Oliver said this was the “Urim & Thummim” used to translate the Book of Mormon we have today.
(2) the brown striped rock Joseph found during his treasure digging employment which David Whitmer and Emma said was used to translate the Book of Mormon we have today.
(3) used generically to refer to stones through which some revelatory function is granted. For example, in1841 Brigham Young recorded a meeting with Joseph and other apostles where Joseph “explained to us the Urim and Thummim which he found with the plates, called in the Book of Mormon the Interpreters. He said that every man who lived on the earth was entitled to a seer stone, and should have one, but they are kept from them in consequence of their wickedness, and most of those who do find one make an evil use of it; he showed us his seer stone.” See reference in note 10 of my article. This “seer stone” was not stones (1) as the interpreters had been returned to the heavenly messenger, nor was it stone (2) as Joseph had given the stone he had in his early days to Oliver, who was out of the Church and no where near Nauvoo in 1841. (Note that this is also yet another place where all those involved in or close to the Book of Mormon translation used the term “Urim & Thummim” exclusively to refer to the Jaredite/Nephite interpreters.)
In order to have any coherent constructive discussion of “seer stones” we need to distinguish these three uses of the term in the historical record. Most scholars agree that Joseph used stone (2) in some way customary in his culture. For example, there are accounts of Martin Harris claiming Joseph used it to find a pin. The correct neutral term for such activities is “scrying,” and that seems to me to be a precise neutral term to use to distinguish stone (2) from uses (1) and (3) for the term “seer stone.” Otherwise, we are going to continue to have confusion and a lack of clarity in discussing this topic.
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Brant A. Gardner, 03-19-2025 at 3:20 pm
Thank you for recognizing that “seer stones” had multiple applications. Please expand that to the Urim and Thummim and you understand the problem. There are historical records where members of the 12 (including later prophets) specifically used “Urim and Thummim” when they were talking about the brown striped seer stone. There is no single exclusive definition of Urim and Thummim. Continuing to assert that there was goes against all evidence.
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James Lucas, 03-21-2025 at 11:33 am
Brant –
When historical accounts differ we cannot just accept them all at face value as equally probative. We have to analyze further to assess their reliability. This is the case with the use of the term “Urim & Thummim,” which broadened over time from its original use to describe the Jaredite/Nephite interpreters.
When one does this analysis, one sees that any accounts which use the term in connection with the translation of the Book of Mormon to mean anything other than the interpreters are rare, late and remote from the relevant events, and often involve oral transmission at some point. All accounts relating to the translation of the Book of Mormon which use the term only to refer to the Nephite interpreters which came with the plates are numerous, early and come from sources directly involved with or immediately adjacent to the translation process.
Therefore, the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence is that, with respect to the translation of the Book of Mormon, the term “Urim & Thummim” was only used to refer to the Nephite interpreters which came with the plates.
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Brant A. Gardner, 03-21-2025 at 10:44 pm
James. You stated, “This is the case with the use of the term “Urim & Thummim,” which broadened over time from its original use to describe the Jaredite/Nephite interpreters.” This tells me two things. The first is that we agree that Urim & Thummim was a generic and covered multiple instruments. The second is that there is no a disagreement about the timing of when your posited exclusive meaning shifted to a generic meaning.
All references to the Urim & Thummim come after the end of the translation. Therefore, that term was never applied at the time period where we have the question of which instrument was used. You assert, “All accounts relating to the translation of the Book of Mormon which use the term only to refer to the Nephite interpreters which came with the plates are numerous.” Unfortunately, that is precisely the issue at hand. I disagree with that conclusion. The historians who have looked at the issue disagree with that conclusion.
The term Urim & Thummim was applied post-translation. It was a later term used to describe the process of translation. We don’t have Joseph using the term until later. Since it was applied after the fact, it applied whether the translation was done only with the interpreters, or with a combination of the interpreters and the seer stone. Since it is not contemporary, your declaration that the “evidence” supports the exclusive application is not actually evidence, but simply confirmation of the way you have chosen to read the data. What you must do to hold your position, is find evidence that it was exclusive. There is none. The later uses are generic, but there is nothing that allows you to point to a time when it was not generic.
Mike Parker, 03-19-2025 at 3:29 pm
Mr. Lucas,
You could have just as easily used the term “Joseph’s brown seer stone,” or simply “the brown seer stone.” Instead you chose the term “scrying stone,” which, despite your assertion above, does have a “neutral” connotation. Even a cursory internet search readily demonstrates that only critics of Joseph Smith called his seer stone by that term, on webpages like “Top 10 Wacky Things You Should Know About Mormonism,” “Caucasion Witchcraft & Magick,” and “My Mormon Deprogramming.”
I’m afraid that your explanation rings as hollow as Jonathan Neville’s protests that “SITH” was an innocent coincidence.
Robert F. Smith, 04-02-2025 at 9:57 am
Yes, James, “the first use of the biblical term Urim & Thummim in connection with Book of Mormon translation wasn’t until August 1832, two years after its publication!” citing “Questions proposed to the Mormonite Preachers and their answers obtained before the whole assembly at Julien Hall,” Boston Investigator, Friday, 10 Aug. 1832, p. 2, col. 3, GenealogyBank.com . Thanks for the correction.
However, your claim that the “overwhelming preponderance of the evidence…the term ‘Urim & Thummim’ was only used to refer to the Nephite interpreters which came with the plates” is constrained by your “almost all.” That means not all, and you admit to the “confusion” which results.
In the 1830s, Joseph Knight Sr recalled: “Now the way he translated was he put the urim and thummim into his hat and Darkened his Eyes then he would take a sentance and it would apper in Brite Roman Letters. Then he would tell the writer and he would write it. Then that would go away the next sentance would Come and so on.”
The Nephite Interpreters were too large to fit into Joseph’s hat, and 14-year-old Elizabeth Ann Whitmer similarly observed that Joseph “translated the most of it at my Father’s house. And I often sat by and saw and heard them translate and write for hours together. Joseph never had a curtain drawn between him and his scribe while he was translating. He would place the director in his hat, and then place his face in his hat, so as to exclude the light, and then [lacuna] [remainder of letter has been lost]”
Emma Smith’s two separate descriptions mesh perfectly with this: “sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us,” and “Now the first that my husband translated, was translated by the use of Urim and Thummim, and that was the part that Martin Harris lost. after that he used a small stone, not exactly black, but was rather a dark color,”
Emma’s father, Isaac Hale, provided yet another corroborative description of the seer-stone-in-the-hat method for a local newspaper in early 1834, while Presbyterian minister Robert Hullinger and several others have noted, the phrase “Urim and Thummim” could be and was used to refer to both the glasses and the single seer-stone.
Long after the Nephite Interpreters had been taken back by the angel, Heber C. Kimball reported that Brigham Young had possession of the Urim & Thummim, and Wilford Woodruff claimed that Joseph had shown him the Urim & Thummim at a meeting with the Twelve on December 27, 1841, in Nauvoo, while Brigham himself reports of that same meeting: “I met with the Twelve at Brother Joseph’s. He . . . explained to us the Urim and Thummim which he found with the plates, called in the Book of Mormon the Interpreters. . . . he showed us his seer stone.”
John H. Gilbert, the typesetter for the first edition of the Book of Mormon, referred to the Nephite Interpreters as “spectacles.” Joseph Smith Jr also called them “spectacles” in an 1831-1832 account in his own hand.
In a letter ca. Dec 9, 1886, from Richmond, Missouri, David Whitmer says: “A few months after Joseph had finished translating, he gave the ‘stone’ to Oliver, and told me and all of us that he was through except to preach the gospel; and he did not use the stone any more.”
Martin Harris was explicit that Joseph replaced the Nephite Interpreters with his seerstone, and even played a trick on Joseph by replacing the seerstone with a common river stone. Martn also told of an occasion when Joseph used his seerstone in his hat to find a pin dropped by Martin. However, since Joseph had more than one seerstone, that does not end the matter. Full documentation on request.
The upshot is that none of us should be using the fake term “Urim & Thummim” when we have a perfectly fine, accurate term “Nephite Interpreters” available directly from the Book of Mormon itself, although LDS Alma 37:24, “interpreters,” is incorrect – the Original and Printer’s Manuscripts read “directors” (and at 37:21 in the P MS, which has always been correctly used in RLDS editions of the Book of Mormon, and in LDS editions until 1920). It is understandable that many of the country bumpkins in the early Restoration would use fake terminology with the best of intentions. That should not control or influence any of us. All of us should adhere to strict scholarly standards.
Steve Mordecai, 03-16-2025 at 10:14 am
I miss Hugh Nibley! That said I found your response to the critics convincing, to the point that I want to read your book.
Robert F. Smith, 03-14-2025 at 8:00 pm
It is now and always has been a fundamental mistake to refer to the Nephite interpreters as “Urim & Thummim” – a term which is never used in the Book of Mormon, and which is specifically a biblical term referring to equipment used by the Israelite high priest, and much earlier by Abraham (Book of Abraham 3:1,4). In fact, the Nephite interpreters originated with the Jaredites in the time of the Brother of Jared.
Perhaps W. W. Phelps thought that using the term “Urim & Thummim” would lend some biblical cachet and respectability to discussions about translation of the Book of Mormon. So, in January 1833, he introduced that biblical term (Evening & Morning Star, 1st ed., I/8:58b = 2nd ed., 116b), which theretofore had not been used at all to refer to Nephite interpreters or seerstones.
The consequences of this unscholarly approach to Book of Mormon translation questions (and much else besides) is that one cannot even be sure what is being discussed. For example, we have two separate accounts of a meeting of Joseph Smith with the Twelve at Nauvoo on December 27, 1841. Wilford Woodruff states that Joseph showed them the Urim & Thummim (W. Woodruff Journal, Dec 27, 1841), while Brigham Young says that Joseph “explained to us the Urim and Thummim which he found with the plates, called in the Book of Mormon the Interpreters. . . . he showed us his seer stone” (Millennial Star, 26:118). Later, Heber C. Kimball reported that Brigham Young had possession of the Urim & Thummim (Journal of Discourses, 2:111; cf. JD, 16:156) = Joseph’s seerstone, which Brigham had gotten from Oliver’s widow, Elizabeth Ann Whitmer Cowdery, and which is in the possession of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to this day – https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng (color photo of Joseph’s seerstone at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/imgs/df88ebdcf830ae6a22dbe94b5eb8b4f73500d955/full/%21640%2C/0/default ).