Emma Smith served as Joseph Smith’s scribe for most of the Lost 116 pages and likely knew how Joseph translated better than almost anyone. Yet Jim Lucas and Jonathan Neville discount Emma Smith’s testimony that Joseph used the seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon? Why? Check out our conversation…
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Emma was Book of Mormon Scribe
GT 00:40 I want to segue a little bit into Emma, because my understanding of both Richard Bushman’s analysis of the translation as well as, I would say most [historians.] Can I call them “mainstream historians,” like Gerrit Dirkmaat. I just read his book, which I thought was fantastic. I’m trying to remember, “Let’s talk about the Translation of the Book of Mormon.” Did you guys read that? I think you did.
Jim & Jonathan 01:10 Yes.
GT 01:11 Because I really think especially after reading Don Bradley‘s book on the Lost 116 Pages, he makes it sound like what was lost was about four times bigger than 116 pages. So, it would make the Book of Mormon twice as big as it is, if we had it. And so, Emma probably translated, (it seems like if I remember right) two-thirds of the lost 116 pages. And so Richard Bushman and most historians—because Emma split the difference between seer stone and Urim and Thummim and said, “Joseph used the Urim and Thummim on the lost 116 pages,” and she was the scribe for that. And then he used the seer stone for what we have now. So, what’s wrong with that opinion? Because to me, that’s the so-called mainstream opinion.
Jonathan 02:20 Well, there’s a couple of things wrong with it. Jim will address it probably in more detail. But two things: one is, Emma was clear that there was a distinction between the Urim and Thummim and the seer stone, which Gerrit Dirkmaat and those guys say, well, the Urim and Thummim meant both.
GT 02:36 Yes, he does say that quite a bit.
Jonathan 02:37 She said, no, it’s two different things. And David Whitmer was the same.
GT 02:39 He also said that Joseph put the Urim and Thummim in the hat. And I was like, oh, I hadn’t heard that one before.
Jonathan 02:46 Yeah, well, those early newspaper accounts said that he put the spectacles in the hat. Don Bradley’s theory is interesting, but it’s just a theory. I mean, other people look at that same evidence and say, No, there was 116 pages, Joseph Smith said.
GT 03:02 Well, let me say this. Because I know you guys really privilege Oliver Cowdery and who’s the other one?
Jonathan 03:10 Joseph Smith.
GT 03:11 Joseph Smith. You really privilege those two over everybody else. But I would say Emma should be right there, shouldn’t she? Because she did a lot. She did all the translation that we lost.
Jonathan 03:24 Here’s a couple of problems with Emma. First, she never said what she wrote. So as far as what she actually wrote, it’s all speculation. She never said, “I wrote about Nephi.” Or I wrote up at the Whitmer farm. She never said. So, what Don Bradley and others say is just speculation, as far as what she actually wrote. I’ve speculated also that she wrote the Book of Mosiah, and I have reasons for that, before Oliver Cowdery came, as well as I think she wrote the whole Book of Mosiah.
GT 03:55 The first couple chapters of Mosiah that were lost.
Jonathan 03:59 The whole book of Mosiah.
GT 04:00 The whole book of Mosiah. Oh?
Jonathan 04:01 And that’s because when Oliver Cowdery was recopying it for the printer’s manuscript, where it says Helam in the Book of Mosiah, he always wrote Helaman. Because he had written the book of Helaman. And he thought Emma had written it wrong. And then later he had to cross out the last two letters because he was corrected, either Joseph or Emma had said, “No, it was Helam. It wasn’t Helaman.” So, when he was the scribe, I’m saying when he was copying the printer’s manuscript, he was unfamiliar with the Book of Mosiah. And there’s other evidence, but that’s the one that’s easiest to explain. The earliest part of Oliver Cowdery’s handwriting was the first part of Alma. None of the part of Mosiah is extant. But there’s evidence that Emma was his scribe for that before Oliver came, or possibly Martin Harris also.
Jonathan 04:50 But as far as how much was in the 116 pages? It’s just anyone’s guess. There’s evidence both ways. Emma, really, her statements boil down to two: one is a response to the letter from Emma Pilgrim who wrote her a letter. We don’t have the letter that Emma Pilgrim wrote to her, but we have Emma’s response. So, we don’t really know exactly what the question was. But that’s where Emma says the first part was done with the Urim and Thummim, and the second part with the seer stone. But that’s where her last testimony is inconsistent. Because she said she sat there and wrote day after day with Joseph had his face buried in the hat in that last testimony. But in her letter, she said the first part was done with the Urim and Thummim, which is a different modality.
GT 05:35 Well he put it in the hat.
Jonathan 05:37 Well, yeah, he could have.
GT 05:38 I mean, that’s what Gerrit Dirkmaat says.
Jonathan 05:40 I know. He does. I know. I realize that. But the other problem with the last testimony is—I don’t know if you want to talk about that.
Jim 05:49 Yes.
Jonathan 05:50 There’s a lot of reasons why that’s just not credible. But even more than that she was again responding to the Spaulding theory. And that’s how her testimony starts off with questions about the Spaulding theory.
Jim 06:00 So to do a quick summary, we really only have two sources from Emma. One is a letter she wrote in 1870 to a woman named Emma Pilgrim who was in the Reorganized Church. And then her last testimony that was published in the Reorganite newspaper. It was published after her death, but it was supposedly an interview with her son, Joseph Smith III, who was then the head of the Reorganized Church. So as Jonathan said, in the 1870 letters, she said that the pages that Martin Harris lost, were translated with the Urim and Thummim. And then after that, Joseph used a seer stone.
GT 06:39 Right.
Jim 06:40 Okay. David Whitmer also says that. But in the last testimony, which was published in 1879, she just says he 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. And the important thing is that at the time this letter was written, William McLellin had been around to visit all the Reorganized folks. And he was pushing the stone in the hat theory. Because it was part of his Joseph was a fallen Prophet narrative. It’s hard for us to think that Emma would forget how the translation was done. But we have to remember that was in 1828. We’re now talking in the 1870s. This is 50 years later. Think of what happened in Emma’s life in those 50 years. You know.
GT 08:24 Just one or two things. {chuckles}
Jonathan 08:25 And even in that letter, did she even say she couldn’t remember when she was baptized?
Jim 08:27 Yeah, right.
Jonathan 08:27 Who baptized her? She couldn’t even remember that.
Jim 08:31 Right. And so, she couldn’t remember a lot of stuff. And she had had a really crazy, horrible, tough life in that interim period of time. So, it’s not like this account was written like with Joseph and Oliver, where it’s only a few years after the translation experience. This is 40-50 years later, after all this stuff. She’s never had occasion to repeat this story. We don’t have any evidence that Emma ever told the story of how the translation was done before this 1870 letter. And she can’t remember things. She in the letter herself testifies, “Somebody took all my Times and Seasons. I could give you a better answer if I could go back and look at what the Times and Seasons says.” So, there are questions even about that 1870 letter on that basis.
GT 09:31 So you think Emma is wrong when she said that the Book of Mormon we have now was translated with the seer stone. But you’re saying that’s wrong.
Jim 09:50 We’re saying that she had participated. Well, first of all in the letter, she says that the part that was lost was all done with the Urim and Thummim.
GT 10:01 Right.
Jim 10:02 And it’s very important because I’m going to take a little side step here. But you mentioned the fact that Gerrit Dirkmaat and his colleagues make a big deal about the fact that the term Urim and Thummim is meant the seer stone as well.
GT 10:22 Right.
Jim 10:23 Okay. So that’s just absolutely baseless. There is no base. Because even Emma in that 1870 letter, clearly, uses the term Urim and Thummim, only to refer to the interpreters. And then she refers to the seer stone, but she uses she calls it a seer stone. So, she makes that distinction in the 1870 letter.
GT 10:47 But she’s still saying that the seer stone was used for the second part. But you still throw that out just because it’s late?
Jim 10:55 We’re saying that it’s not clear. She could have been referencing two things. One, we believe that she saw this demonstration at the Whitmer home. In fact, I think David Whitmer, in his account says that Emma was one of the scribes who was writing things down for that. So, she’s remembering that. And she knows by this time that this has a good refutation to the Spaulding theory, which is, of course, the prevalent theory.
Jonathan 11:25 In fact, wasn’t the first question her son asked, was if Sidney Rigdon had married them? Because there was a rumor that that’s where Joseph met [Sidney.]
GT 11:33 Sidney Rigdon had married who?
Jonathan 11:35 Joseph and Emma.
Jim 11:36 This is in the last testimony.
Jonathan 11:38 That was one of the rumors associated with the Spaulding theory
GT 11:41 Oh it was?
Jim 11:41 Yes.
Jonathan 11:42 So the first question he asked his mother was, did Sidney Rigdon marry the two of you?
GT 11:52 Which was not true.
Jonathan 11:53 She said no. But I mean, that was the gist of that interview was the Spalding Theory.
GT 11:53 Because the purpose was to tie Sidney to Joseph Smith earlier.
Jim 11:56 Because that’s the big gap in the Spaulding theory.
GT 11:59 Right. You can’t tie Sidney before November of 1830.
Jim 12:03 Right.
Jonathan 12:04 That’s how this interview started.
Jim 12:07 Right. So, to finish with that Pilgrim letter, you have this passing reference to after that, he used the seer stone. So, she does say that. But then she goes on, say, “But if I had my Times and Seasons, I could give you a better answer.” So that leads to some other questions.
GT 12:22 So you think that throws out all her testimony?
Jim 12:26 Well, we’re only talking about one letter written in 1870, decades and decades after the fact.
Jonathan 12:36 Plus, we’re not saying he didn’t use a seer stone. We say he used it for a demonstration.
Jim 12:41 And that’s what she could be remembering. Because that demonstration, the stone in the hat is a good refutation for the Spaulding theory.
GT 12:52 You guys sound like lawyers. {chuckles}
Jonathan 12:53 That’s just how we look at the evidence.
GT 12:54 I’m not sure this jury’s convinced, but anyway.
Jim 12:55 That’s okay. Okay. So just to wrap this up. So what we’re saying is, to go back to my analogy, it’s not that we’re saying that the account from 40 years later from the guy who wasn’t an eyewitness doesn’t exist.
GT 13:09 Or Emma. Because I don’t care about David Whitmer so much. I feel like you guys focus way too much on David Whitmer. To me, it’s Emma. Emma’s the big deal to me.
Jim 13:18 So, okay, so let’s finish with Emma.
Jonathan 13:22 Real quick.
Jim 13:23 Okay, so we’ve already talked about the letter to Emma Pilgrim. Alright, and the fact that it’s a quick summary. It’s made in the context of the Spaulding theory. She did see Joseph use the stone in the hat.
Jonathan 13:36 And we don’t know what question was asked in the first place.
Jim 13:39 And we don’t know what the question was asked. And she says, “if I had my Times and Seasons, I could give you a better answer,” which raises questions. We’re not saying Emma was lying. We don’t think Emma was lying.
GT 13:53 She’s just not reliable.
Jim 13:54 It’s just that one sentence needs to be put into this broader context. And there’s issues about whether that letter can carry the weight that’s being placed on it. Now, let’s go to the last testimony real quick. So, nine years later in 1879.
GT 14:12 Is this David Whitmer you’re talking about now?
Jim 14:14 No this is now Emma. You love Emma, so we’re going to talk about Emma.
GT 14:18 That’s where I want to go. Good!
Jim 14:19 We all love Emma. So, she writes this letter that goes to Emma Pilgrim, and eventually it ends up in the Reorganized Church files because Emma Pilgrim was a member of Reorganized Church. So that’s how it comes to light.
Jonathan 14:36 You said Emma Pilgrim. You meant [Smith.]
Jim 14:36 Emma Pilgram was also a Reorganite also.
Jonathan 14:39 Okay.
Jim 14:40 So any event, then nine years later, 1879 Emma is on her deathbed. Joseph III has been fighting ever since he became president of the Reorganized Church, to argue that Joseph, his father, had nothing to do with plural marriage. And he’s had a problem all along, because all the older members of the Reorganized Church are telling him, “Look. We don’t like plural marriage. We don’t believe in plural marriage. That’s why we’re in the Reorganized Church instead of out in Utah. But I’m sorry. I was there in Nauvoo. And yes, your father was the source of plural marriage.” And they’re telling this to Joseph Smith III, who just doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t believe it. So, these older members of the Reorganized Church, tell him. “Go ask your mother if you don’t believe me. Go ask your mother.” And he puts it off, and he puts it off, and he puts it off. So finally, in 1879, Emma’s in very poor health. And he realizes that he’s got to go have an interview with his mother, or else he’ll never hear the end of these people in his church saying, “Look, we can’t make our position that Joseph had nothing to do with polygamy, because he did. We can say he was wrong. We can say it was a mistake, which is what a lot of those folks then said, because they stayed in the Reorganized Church. But he knows. He is adamant that his father had nothing to do with it. So, he knows if he doesn’t go talk to his mother, he’s never going to hear the end of it.
Jim 16:27 So he goes with his brother Alexander to visit his mother, which is a nice thing for him to do since she was on her deathbed, and has this meeting with her. And then, three weeks later, she dies. So, six months later, Joseph III publishes the interview. In the interview, it covers two topics. One is plural marriage. And this is where Emma is reported to have said things that imply that Joseph did not have anything to do with plural marriage, and that she didn’t know anything about it. And then the second half of the interview is about the Book of Mormon. And this was where she, again, is reported to have made stone in the hat statements about the translation. And this is where she says Joseph couldn’t write a letter, and so forth. This is where all this comes from. And as Jonathan pointed out, clearly, the context of this interview is the Spaulding theory, because the first question is “Did Sidney Rigdon marry you and Joseph?” And she says, ““No. She can’t remember who baptized her, but she can remember that it was not Sidney Rigdon. She remembers the name of the guy, some justice of the peace in Pennsylvania, too, and so forth. It basically bounces back and forth between plural marriage and rebutting the Spaulding theory. That’s the interview. Now, here’s the issue. Now, obviously, on the plural marriage stuff, no historian agrees with her story.
GT 18:21 No good historian. Bad ones do but yeah.
Jonathan 18:22 There’s some that certainly do.
Jim 18:24 There’s some that do.
GT 18:25 They’re all amateurs. They don’t have a Ph.D.
Jonathan 18:28 They cling to her last testimony.
GT 18:31 Oh, they love that.
Jim 18:32 But even the Community of Christ historians now agree.
GT 18:35 Exactly. They’ve all got an excuse for that too.
Jim 18:39 Right. That’s the first half of this “interview.” The second half is the Book of Mormon stuff. And first of all, you have this schizoid approach to this document, where historians who are reasonably reputable and try to follow the facts say, “Well, okay. We can’t really believe what she said about plural marriage, although we still believe what she said about the Book of Mormon,” which is really schizoid. But here’s the issue.
GT 19:11 So you want to throw it all out?
Jim 19:13 We’ll get to that. I’ll try to get to it very quickly. So, she does make some stone in the hat statements. And she makes the statement that Joseph couldn’t write a letter and stuff like that. That’s all in this this one document, this last interview with Joseph Smith III. So, she dies. And 6-9 months later, he publishes it in the Saints Herald. And that becomes a very famous historical document. She’s very eloquent in it. She’s very fluent. I mean, it’s really good language. She sounds really coherent and decisive and precise, just like a lawyer. Oh, wait a minute. Joseph Smith III was a lawyer, wasn’t he? Right. In any event, it’s there. It’s on the record. Everybody knows about it. And she’s saying, this is where she says she doesn’t talk about the Urim and Thummim like she did in the letter to Emma Pilgrim. She just says, the stone in the hat, and the plates were covered on a cloth nearby.
GT 20:24 In think I took a picture of that. I’ll have to pop it in.
Jim 20:26 So this is this is what the account says. And it’s published and it exists, and there’s no question about it, except that, we went looking to say, okay. Emma’s dead. But Joseph Smith III lives until 1916. What did Joseph Smith III say? Did he repeat the stone in the hate?
GT 20:46 In 1920.
Jim 20:48 1820 is when he died? I thought it was 1916.
GT 20:50 Oh I thought you said 1960. 1916 that makes more sense.
Jim 20:54 I think so. I think so. It was just two years before his cousin, Joseph F. Smith.
GT 20:57 Yeah, that sounds right. I heard 1960. I’m like, he didn’t live that long.
Jim 20:59 Oh, no, no, no. I’m sorry. 1916 I think. And let’s see what he said. We dug into the Saints Herald, and sure enough, in 1886, only six years after the last testimony was published there’s a big, long front-page article about how the Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith III. And what does he say? He says, no seer stone. It was all the Urim and Thummim. He goes back to the article. It doesn’t make any reference to the last testimony. But he goes back, and Emma didn’t have her Times and Seasons, but Joseph III did. So, he went back. He dug into his Times and Seasons. He dug into the Evening and Morning Star. I mean, he’s got extensive quotations from all of these early sources. And he did his research. And he basically says, “Well, it’s obvious that Joseph and Oliver, who were the primary witnesses,” Joseph Smith III…
GT 22:00 So you’re going to Community of Christ sources now. Holy cow. You guys are heretics for sure.
Jim 22:04 Joseph Smith III, this essay that he wrote is, in my view, the earliest comprehensive essay on the translation of the Book of Mormon. It’s a brilliant piece of work by Joseph Smith III. And yes, I am saying, this is Joseph Smith, III, who wrote the best, earliest comprehensive essay on the translation. And he says, it was clearly the Urim and Thummim. It was not the seer stone. And they’re responding to David Whitmer in the article. Somebody wrote them a question that said, “I read this thing from David Whitmer saying it was all done with the stone in the hat.” And that’s what they’re responding to explicitly in this front-page article in the Saints Herald, where, as I said, Joseph III goes back. He went through all the sources, and he says, well it was clearly the Urim and Thummim, not the seer stone. And then at the end, he has this little thing he says, well, if Joseph used a seer stone, it would be like it was a Urim and Thummim. But it was evidently not the chief instrument. That’s Joseph Smith III’s phrase, the chief instrumen was the Urim and Thummim.
Jim 23:19 So how do you reconcile that? The fact that he publishes this interview with his mother in 1879, that says stone in the hat, and yet in 1886, he is absolutely, definitively repudiating the stone in the hat and saying clearly, it was the Nephite interpreters. Because that’s what Joseph and Oliver said. So, our view of the last testimony is, we’re not saying it’s a total fabrication by Joseph Smith III. I think that Emma was alive, and she talked to her son, and he got some stuff from her. But we believe and there’s other people who have come to this conclusion, too, that it’s primarily authored by Joseph Smith III because his mother, he got there too late.
Jim 24:14 Well let me say a couple of things about that. So, from the Community of Christ library I got the actual letter, or the original document of this interview.
Jim 24:23 With Joseph Smith III’s notes.
Jonathan 24:25 Joseph Smith III, he wrote the questions and the answers in his own handwriting. And it’s interesting that when it was published in Utah, the people here responded to it because of the polygamy stuff. And Eliza R. Snow said, it doesn’t look to her like Emma had anything to do with that. It was all Joseph Smith III who wrote it. Because she says Emma was present with me when some of these events took place. And she’s supposedly denying it in this last testimony. And so, Emma never publicly acknowledged it. There was no one else present that talked about her having answered these questions.
Jim 25:01 Because she died a few weeks later.
Jonathan 25:03 Yeah, she died shortly after. And he didn’t publish it until she died. So, she couldn’t have refuted it if she objected to it. And so, it appears to us that it was a highly apologetic document that he prepared, probably based on some things that she may have said. But there’s no indication she was that articulate at that age shortly before she died. And again, he had been engaged with other critics about the Spaulding theory. And that was the predominant—I don’t know how I can overemphasize this. It was a predominant objection to the Book of Mormon at that time in the East Coast media and so on. And so that’s what he was having to deal with: polygamy, and the Spaulding theory, and that’s what her testimony addresses.
Jonathan 25:45 So, first, to begin with, from a historian perspective, you can’t say Emma actually gave those answers. It’s not in her handwriting. No one else witnessed it. It’s all in Joseph’s handwriting. The questions and answers are all in his handwriting. Second, there’s elements of it that the vast majority of other witnesses, at least on the polygamy, have refuted and shown as just totally false. And third, Joseph Smith himself, later on, refuted it. And so, when I see these historians, Gerrit Dirkmaat, for example, since we’ve talked about him, just accept it on its face as the gospel truth, I just can’t even understand how they can reach that conclusion. And so, I think what we’re trying to say is, let’s take another look at all this stuff. And let’s not exclude evidence that contradicts our theory the way Dirkmaat does. Let’s include all the evidence, and then let’s assess it all as we would if it was in a trial, and in a legal proceeding. What are the bias, motivation, opportunity and all that? And that’s what we did in the book. And that’s how we reached the conclusions we did. And we welcome alternative points of view. We’ve cited everybody we can think of including Dirkmaat in this book, because we think everybody needs to know this.
{End of Part 3}
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