Does Book of Mormon translation method matter? Many people don’t care whether Joseph used a seer stone or a Urim & Thummim to translate the Book of Mormon. Why does it matter so much to Jim Lucas & Jonathan Neville? They answer in our next conversation!
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Why Book of Mormon Translation Matters
Jonathan 00:44 I guess the final thing I wanted to mention, (maybe you are too) [pointing to Jim] is what difference does it make? Right?
GT 00:49 Well, that was exactly where I was going.
Jonathan 00:51 I know.
GT 00:52 Because I know we had this conversation. I think it was on the Monday night Book of Mormon meetings.
Jim 00:55 Yeah. It was the Book of Mormon Perspectives Forum.
GT 00:56 Because there’s a lot of people, who are like, “I don’t care if it was a stone in a hat. I don’t care if it was the Urim and Thummim. It was a miracle. Who cares how it was done? I don’t know if it was loose or tight or whatever. I just have a testimony of the Book of Mormon.” And so, it seems like to me, and I know you have your multiple working hypothesis, and hey, let’s kumbaya. Everybody get along. But it seems like to me, you guys are really putting a lot of emphasis into, “No, it was the Urim and Thummim.” It seems to me that there’s a big stake in this.
Jonathan 01:35 There is.
GT 01:36 And I don’t feel like it needs to be that way.
Jonathan 01:38 Let me address that. Let me answer that and then Jim can. For me, it’s an issue of the credibility of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. Because the whole restoration depends on those two only. It’s only those two.
GT 01:48 My first thing before we go on there is because Joseph lied a lot about polygamy. So, when it’s about his credibility. It’s like hmmm…
Jonathan 02:02 Well, okay, polygamy’s a different topic.
GT 02:06 And I don’t want to get off into polygamy, but clearly, at minimum, if you don’t want to say he lied, at minimum, he hid the Fanny Alger incident. He hid a lot of the other polygamous wives. So, whether lying is too strong of a word for you, clearly, he was deceptive to Emma for sure, with regards to polygamy.
Jonathan 02:25 Well, first off, there’s so many gaps in history that when everybody decides what did and didn’t happen, and what was said, what wasn’t said, to me is a cloud of mystery. Because people don’t write down every single thing that happened. And people later on, they remember things the way they want. So, we all assumed that he misled Emma about Fanny Alger. Right? We don’t really know what went on between them. And the “Saints” book is pretty good about that, by saying that there’s a lot of vague areas in here. And people reach conclusions like this Emma Pilgrim. One phrase and one sentence becomes the gospel truth, when it was never intended for that in the first place. I’ve handled a lot of divorce situations as a lawyer, and everybody has two sides. And if you listen to one, they are the gospel truth. You listen to the other, they are. So. all this stuff about polygamy to me is a little bit vague. A lot of people have asked me to dig into it. And I, I haven’t, I just don’t have time.
GT 03:23 You’re smart.
Jonathan 03:24 But that’s entirely separate situation.
GT 03:26 It’s a can of worms, I’ll say that.
Jonathan 03:27 It’s a can of worms, but partly because of our society, or anti-polygamy bias as well. And I’ve worked in a lot of Muslim countries. I’ve worked with polygamists, and to them, it’s no big deal. It’s like why do you guys’ care about Joseph being polygamous to us? To us, that’s a positive. So that’s a cultural thing, I think more than a religious thing. But anyway, that’s a separate topic.
Jonathan 03:51 Here, we’re not talking about any vague statements or miscommunication. Joseph Smith, in the Elders Journal, was asked specific questions. He did a Q&A. They asked, where did the Book of Mormon come from? And he said, “Well, Moroni is a resurrected being. He came to me, gave me the Urim and Thummim, and by means of those, I translated the Book of Mormon.” In the Wentworth Letter, he did the same thing. And so, no one contradicted him at that time, until much later. But all of this was after the “Mormonism Unveiled” came out, which he denounced as full of lies and so on. And so, for me if he had any credibility at all, which I think he did, he and Oliver just reported what happened, then you can’t say that those statements of his that were that explicit, were false. I mean, if you want to disagree and disbelieve the restoration, you can. But if you believe the restoration, how can you reject what Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery said about the Book of Mormon? That just doesn’t make sense to me. People can do it, and I have no problem with that if that’s what they want to do. But I don’t think they should do it ignorantly. I think they should confront what Joseph and Oliver said, be aware of what they explicitly said and published, and then intentionally reject it if they want. But don’t say it doesn’t matter because I have a testimony anyway, I don’t even want to know what Joseph said about it.
GT 05:20 There’s a lot of people who do that.
Jonathan 05:22 They do. That’s fine. People make decisions in ignorance all the time. And that’s fine. That’s not an informed decision.
Privileging Joseph & Oliver
Jonathan 05:54 And I think that’s why so many people are susceptible to what John Dehlin and these others are saying, because Dehlin pretends like he knows the truth. And it’s been hidden from the Saints. And it hasn’t been. Joseph was explicit about it early on in this whole thing and published the answers too. People just have kept them out of the Gospel Topics essays.
GT 05:48 Except for polygamy. He wasn’t publishing a lot about polygamy.
Jonathan 05:54 Again, polygamy is another issue, and just think of it this way. Oliver had nothing to do with polygamy either. So, I think one of the reasons Oliver and Joseph had the falling out was over polygamy, right?
GT 06:03 Absolutely.
Jonathan 06:04 Okay, so that lends even more credibility to Oliver Cowdery. And he’s reaffirming exactly what Joseph said about all this. So, when people say Joseph uses stone in the hat to translate the entire Book of Mormon we have today they are saying, like Royal Skousen did, that Joseph and Oliver deliberately misled everybody. If that’s what people want to believe, I have no problem with that. But to say it doesn’t matter to me is naive and misleading, because it leaves members of the church who want to be faithful, who are ignorant of what Joseph and Oliver said, it makes them susceptible to what John Dehlin and these others are saying, which to me is misleading, also. And that’s why it matters. Well, and from a spiritual-philosophical standpoint, to me, it’s one thing to say I translated an ancient text, going plate by plate, looking at the characters and all that. And that’s nothing else to say, well, these words appeared on the stone, and I just read them off.
Jim 07:02 Or I just got them in my head somehow.
Jonathan 07:04 Yeah. So to me, if missionaries had come to me and said, we’ve got this cool book, and it all appeared on a stone and a hat, I’d say thank you very much. I don’t have time. I wouldn’t be interested. Even today, if the Book of Mormon really came from the words on a stone in a hat and had nothing to do with an ancient record, I would really question where the source of it was. And that’s why I think it’s so important. I think the reason Joseph and Oliver were so declarative and definitive is because they knew it mattered. Otherwise, they would have said, Fine, believe what “Mormonism Unveiled” says. We’re not even going to refute it, because it doesn’t matter. It’s still an inspired book. They didn’t do that; just the opposite. So, I think it matters as much today as it did in their day. And I think all we have to do is go back to what they said, and say we believe what they said, not with these others said.
Jim 07:59 And I would add to that, not only are Joseph and Oliver the primary witnesses to the translation of the Book of Mormon, but remember, they’re also the only eyewitnesses to the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood and the Melchizedek priesthood.
Jonathan 08:17 And the temple blessings.
Jim 08:18 So take away the Book of Mormon, the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthood, and the temple, and what do you have left? But those all stand on the testimony of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery.
Jonathan 08:33 And David Whitmer refuted all those.
Jim 08:35 Yeah. And so, if you take those away, where you end up is David Whitmer. He was an old man, but he was coherent. His book, “An Address to All Believers in Christ,” is a coherent book. I mean, it’s kind of a rant. But the sentences follow. It’s a logical presentation. He clearly had his mental faculties about him when he wrote it. And his argument is, I accept the Book of Mormon, because I have this personal witness that I accept the Book of Mormon, but everything else that all of the Latter-day Saint-ites have come up with, all this priesthood, and this idea of priesthood restoration, and plural marriage….
GT 09:29 Temple ceremonies.
Jonathan 09:30 Doctrine & Covenants.
Jim 09:31 He actually talked about all that. He rejected it all. He rejected it all, and that is the logical conclusion of his position. And so, that’s where you are, if he’s the one you’re going to follow, then follow him. Basically, what you have is a Protestant church with the Book of Mormon. You don’t have priesthood. You don’t have temples. You don’t have any kind of church organization. You don’t have a Doctrine and Covenants. I mean, that’s the logical conclusion of saying, it doesn’t matter whether Oliver and Joseph were telling the truth.
Jonathan 10:11 One of the most controversial blogs I ever posted was when I put the “Mormonism Unveiled” and “An Address to All Believers in Christ” on the cover of the Ensign. I said, “Well, if you’re going to quote from the sources, how can you take one paragraph out of it without leading people to read the entire thing? Let’s just publish them both in the Ensign.” And boy, I heard from General Authorities even about that.
GT 10:35 Oh, you did?
Jonathan 10:36 But I said, Well, come on, guys.
GT 10:38 We’ll it’s copyright. Right? You can’t be using the Ensign cover for your [blog.]
Jonathan 10:41 Yeah. But I just took the Ensign cover and put a mock one.
GT 10:45 I know. I know.
Jonathan 10:46 But seriously, if you’re going to take David Whitmer’s statement about the translation, as if it was in isolation, without considering everything else he said in there.
Jim 10:59 And definitive.
Jonathan 11:00 Yeah, and definitive, you have to consider the whole thing. “Mormonism Unveiled” articulates the stone in the hat theory exactly the way the guys at The Interpreter and Book of Mormon Central do today. I mean, it’s like they’re plagiarizing “Mormonism Unveiled.” It’s unbelievable. And yet they don’t want people to believe all the rest of it. So, to me, it’s just like, you don’t have to be a historian or a lawyer to realize that when you take a little part out of context, you’re misleading whoever’s reading what you’re doing.
GT 11:27 Well whenever you talk to a historian, they always say over and over and over and over, “You’ve got to put it in context.”
Jonathan 11:35 Yeah. Okay. Well, Gerrit Dirkmaat doesn’t, in that book you’re referring to. He doesn’t put it in context.
GT 11:41 I’m sure he would disagree with you there.
Jonathan 11:42 Well, he can’t, because he doesn’t have the context in the book. I mean, I’ve gone through this before with lots of them. And he just omits stuff that contradicts his theory.
GT 11:54 I hope he answers my email.
Jonathan 11:57 Yeah, well I’d be happy to have a discussion. Because if I’m wrong, I’d love to know I’m wrong. And if I’ve overlooked any piece of evidence, I’d love to know about it.
Critiquing Gospel Topics Essays
Jonathan 12:05 But we can see the Gospel Topics essay. If we only stick to that, we can see that’s entirely misleading, because it’ll miss what Joseph and Oliver said. In fact, it even says, “The only thing Joseph Smith said about the translation is by the gift and power of God,” that’s just a false statement. And it omits what he actually did say. So, historians, I’m not going to say who wrote that essay. But certainly, we know the main principles who are advocating that point of view.
GT 12:32 You can say it. John said it. John Dehlin said on there. Who was it?
Jonathan 12:35 Well, then, go with what he said.
GT 12:36 I can’t remember.
Jonathan 12:37 Let’s put it this way. The people who had the input on it have published books about it that Deseret Book has published, like the one you just referred to.
GT 12:47 Gerritt Dirkmaat? I don’t remember his name on there.
Jonathan 12:48 On the essay?
GT 12:50 On the translation.
GT 12:56 Who wrote the Gospel Topics Essay?
Jim 12:57 The Gospel Topics essays are anonymous.
GT 12:58 Well yeah, but…
Jonathan 13:00 That’s the beauty of them.
GT 13:02 I know Ugo Perego did the DNA one.
Jonathan 13:04 It’s still anonymous. And it was edited.
GT 13:07 I mean, he admitted that on my podcast, and Paul Reeve did the race essay. He admitted that on my podcast, Brian Hales did one of the polygamy essays. I think the other two were Kathleen Flake, and oh, shoot. Who was the other one? I see her name, but I can’t say it.[1] But anyway. So we know a half a dozen of them already.
Jonathan 13:33 Well, here’s my answer. It doesn’t matter who wrote it.
GT 13:36 Oh come on.
Jonathan 13:36 No, it really doesn’t, because it reflects the views of the people, Gerrit Dirkmaat. Michael MacKay.
GT 13:44 To be fair, Paul did say, “I didn’t write the race essay. I wrote the first draft, but they edited it down.” He doesn’t take credit for it.
Jonathan 13:52 They edited his down. That’s right. Ugo said the same. They edited his down. So, they’re all edited by a committee. And there’s usually an Area Seventy or something.
GT 14:00 But who was the original guy?
Jonathan 14:01 I don’t know. I’m going to say I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter is the point.
GT 14:06 I’ll have to go back to John’s episode I guess.[2] I wrote it down somewhere.
Jonathan 14:08 Because it’s the philosophy behind it that matters. What’s the editorial agenda of those essays? In the Gospel Topics essay, the editorial agenda is not truth. It’s not accuracy. Because if it was, it would include what Joseph and Oliver said. The agenda is to respond to John Dehlin’s Faith Crisis Report. That was the origin of those essays in the first place. And the big thing he talks about in there is the stone in the hat. He still talks about today on his podcast, because it’s so inimical to the idea that Joseph and Oliver told the truth. It supports his whole theory that Church leaders are misleading everybody about Church history.
Jim 14:50 And it also plays into the whole folk magic origins narrative that is very popular, not only with critics, but with the Mike Quinn school of Church historians. So let me just make this point. So our book has several appendices. But from page 237 to page 254 are nothing but quotes from Joseph and Oliver on the translation. None of that stuff, except for like little out-of-context excerpts appears in the books that have been written about the stone in the hat, and certainly not in the Gospel Topics essay.
Jonathan 15:33 or the Saints book.
Jim 15:34 or the Saints book.
Jonathan 15:35 It’s just like it didn’t happen. And that feeds into Dehlin’s narrative. And that’s why we object to that.
GT 15:43 I kept wondering, why are you bringing up John Dehlin so much? This is why. Okay. It makes sense.
Jonathan 15:47 Because he was the origin of the Gospel Topics essays.
Jim 15:50 And he’s the current leading proponent of the of the whole, I mean, they have a coherent narrative. Joseph Smith was a treasure digger, a superstitious kid. He had a seer stone. He got some attention from his seer stone activity.
GT 16:12 You don’t disagree with any of this so far. Right?
Jim 16:13 No.
GT 16:14 Okay.
Jim 16:15 But then the narrative flows into saying, and then he came up with a story about gold plates, and he started to get more attention.
GT 16:26 Well that’s an anti-Mormon thing.
Jim 16:28 But the point is that narrative flows. And then he came up with a book and he started religion and realized, hey. Let’s roll with this one. I could really get big off of this. That’s the narrative. And the point is, is that the stone in the hat is integral to that narrative, because it links the Book of Mormon to the folk magic origins.
GT 16:52 So the stone in the hat, that’s too anti-Mormon narrative for you, basically.
Jonathan 16:55 Yeah, that’s why it’s in “Mormonism Unveiled.” Because it says there’s no real plates to begin with. “Mormonism Unveiled” says that. They even made the point. They didn’t use the plates. They used the stone in the hat. And so, at what point was it for the three witnesses to say they saw the plates because they weren’t using them?
GT 17:14 You said they’re not quoting anybody when they said that?
Jonathan 17:16 No, it’s just a narrative they’re presenting.
Jim 17:19 But the point is, to come back to why this is important. It’s because the stone in the hat is a piece of the new anti-Mormon narrative.
Jonathan 17:37 It’s not new. It’s revived.
Jim 17:38 Revived, shall we say, okay. That’s revived narrative that goes back to “Mormonism Unveiled” in 1834. But it’s gotten new vigor as LDS historians have bought into the stone and the hat thing. That has reinvigorated the folk magic, “Mormonism Unveiled” criticism of Joseph Smith. So you asked the question, why does this matter? Well, to faithful Latter-day Saints who have testimonies of the Book of Mormon, and those are the people you’re talking about. Right? “I believe in the Book of Mormon. I don’t care where it came from.” Well, this is an answer to your question. One is that it goes to the core of the credibility of the two primary witnesses to all the major events of the restoration. If you take away Joseph and Oliver, you have nothing. You might as well lock up the key, shut down the temples, lock up 40 East North Temple, and everybody can keep their 10%.
GT 18:43 You could become a Bickertonite or a Cutlerlite, well, not a Cutlerite; Bickertonite, Community of Christ, Strangite.
Jim 18:47 Yeah, maybe. If you’d like the Book of Mormon, yeah, you maybe go and check them out.
GT 18:52 Well Strangite’s have temple stuff too.
Jim 18:54 Yeah, so check out the Bickertonites, or if you want to have gay marriage, then you go to the Community of Christ, if you want to have women priests and gay marriage because you can get that stuff there. But of course, they don’t really even have much Book of Mormon left except for our friends. But okay, but to get back to it. The point is, if you’re a believer in the Book of Mormon, and a member of the church, it matters because the credibility of Joseph and Oliver, the whole thing stands on them. And two, if you accept the stone in the hat narrative, you’re basically buying into the major premises of the current anti-Mormon narrative explanation of where the Restoration came from, which is that it just came out of Joseph Smith’s imagination, based on the folk magic culture that he grew up in.
Critiquing Richard Bushman
Jonathan 19:54 But let me mention one last thing that we talked about early on about Richard Bushman and his book because his book kind of pre-dated.
GT 20:00 He’s not a favorite among the FIRM Foundation people. I’ve always been surprised. They take his name in vain all the time.
Jonathan 20:10 I know.
GT 20:10 Even you.
Jonathan 20:13 No, I don’t. I have always advocated for Richard in these meetings. I’ve done that many times at the FIRM Foundation things. And afterwards, people come up to me. “How could you say something good about Richard?”
Jonathan 20:24 I say, “Because he’s an awesome guy. He’s honest.” But when I read Rough Stone Rolling, which was really the genesis of this. It predated even the faith crisis study. And it brought this whole stone in the hat to the forefront.
GT 20:38 Right.
Jonathan 20:39 And so my criticism of that book is that he relates a version of events as factual. And so, I went through his chapter on the stone in the hat. And I said, here’s how I would have done it differently, not changing any of the evidence he cited, but adding evidence that he omitted. And so I have it on my blog,[3] I can give you the link, because I just took it line by line and said, “Here’s Rough Stone Rolling, and here’s how it would have been written more, I would say objectively, let’s say.
GT 21:11 Not faithfully?
Jonathan 21:13 Well, not faithfully. I mean, objectively. Because, as he says, Joseph did this, Joseph did that.
GT 21:17 Because most people say he’s pretty objective.
Jonathan 21:19 Well, okay. You can look at my analysis and see which is more objective. Because he just omits stuff that contradicts that—it’s the same problem we have as Dirkmaat, where he just omits stuff that contradicts his theory. And so, I tried to say, instead of saying this happened, I would say so-and-so said this happened. That’s an example.
GT 21:38 Okay.
Jonathan 21:39 And when you do it that way, the whole stone in the hat narrative becomes much less solid and much less credible, because instead of stating it as a fact, you say what someone said happened. Okay, do you see the difference? And from a lawyer’s perspective, that’s all the difference in the world. If you say, I mean, we see plenty of examples of that in modern society where you can look at the Trump situation. Who said what? What are the facts? Well, you can have completely dueling narratives based on the same facts. Right? And that’s what I’m trying to say. Richard only took one version of those facts. And I think he’s acknowledging that a little more that he could have included additional material or different perspectives. And that’s why he gave us a blurb on the book.
GT 22:28 Yeah, he did have a quote. You had him on the back cover of your book.
Jonathan 22:30 Because he’s saying that we’re changing this narrative from Joseph Smith as a young magic practitioner looking for lost treasure, into Joseph Smith as a young man who had a fear of death because of his near death experience. He became a religious seeker, started reading Christian material, including Jonathan Edwards, to seek to know God. So that by the time he had the First Vision, it wasn’t just some farm boy plucked off the farm. It was someone who had been prepared for years to have that experience. And he knew the significance of it. And then he was also prepared to translate the Book of Mormon. There were a few people of his, let’s say, generation who could have translated the Book of Mormon the way he did, because he was so conversant with Christian ideas. I guess I’d say idioms or language, even concepts that he could articulate. And he did it to some degree, even as shorthand. Because as I pointed out in the Edwards thing when he talks about the natural man is an enemy to God. If you weren’t familiar with Jonathan Edwards, that phrase comes out of nowhere. What does it mean? People have written talks and books about trying to interpret it. If you’re familiar with Jonathan Edwards, it is shorthand for what Edwards said about that. It’s much more meaningful that way. And I’ve been documenting more and more examples of that in the Book of Mormon, which we don’t have time to talk about now. But the point is, the narrative of Joseph Smith, as a young religious seeker, who sought God is something we can all relate to. The narrative, Joseph Smith is a farm boy who had this amazing vision, none of us can relate to. And I think it makes a big difference for people, for young people particularly to understand the Joseph Smith story. And it’s the same with the narrative of this. Someone translating an ancient record, given by divine means, but it was still an ancient record of real people, is a completely different narrative than some story that appeared on a stone.
Jim 24:26 Or just popped into his head.
Jonathan 24:28 And that stone in the hat feeds the narrative that the Book of Mormon is fictional too. And that’s a whole ‘nother topic, but that’s one of the reasons it matters.
Joseph Smith was a Nerd!
Jim 24:36 So to pick up here, this is something that our book, we’ve been mostly talking about the issue of seer stone versus Urim and Thummim.
GT 24:49 Right.
Jim 24:50 But that’s really only the first part of our book is rebutting the- or let’s put it this way. Because as Jonathan said, what we’re really looking for is balance. I mean, we quote, at length. We quote all the last testimonies of sister Emma. We quote at length David Whitmer, and so forth. We put all the sources in our book, as well as Joseph and Oliver, which other people omit from their book. So we acknowledge David Whitmer did publish “An Address to All Believers in Christ.” The last testimony of Sister Emma was published in at 1879. And so, we’re not saying that the sources don’t exist. And we’re not saying that these people were liars, either. But what we are saying is that we need to do context and put them all in the larger context of where they came from. And we need to have all of the sources covered that are reputable. And if you’re not going to say Joseph and Oliver are reputable, then okay. You can go leave the church, then because that’s what it’s all based on.
Jim 26:06 But just to emphasize what Jonathan’s saying, that’s like the first part of the book. The whole second part of the book is our exploring what translation means. How was it translated? I summarized the process. We elaborate on that looking at Bible translation scholarship and the leading Bible translation scholar of the last century, Reverend Eugene Nida. And we go through the narrative that Jonathan just mentioned, of studying. Joseph Smith, if he actually was an actively engaged translator, which is essential to the loose translation theory. Does he make sense? If he’s a dumb kid who couldn’t even write a letter, does that make sense to say that he was a translator. We make the argument at length with sources, that, in fact, as he’s the kind of person Jonathan was describing. We think that’s important that he was a young religious seeker, because I think that’s something that people can relate to today. The way I put it is that Joseph was a kid with a shelf. Joseph had a shelf. He had a shelf that was about Christianity rather than Mormonism. But he had issues. He had issues that bugged him a lot. That’s why he went to the grove to pray, because he had a shelf. He had a bunch of issues that were really bugging him.
GT 27:40 Alvin.
Jim 27:41 Alvin. He came from a family, Grandpa Asael was a Universalist.
GT 27:46 Right.
Jim 27:46 Uncle Jesse was a hardcore Calvinist. How different can you get? Inside his own family, there’s the tumult of opinions and so forth, that was in his outside environment as well. So we think that this portrait leaves behind the whole seer stone/Urim and Thummim issue. But this portrait of Joseph as a young religious seeker, is a person, the way I like to put it is that God chose a religious seeker to be the first prophet of the dispensation of the fullness of times. What does that tell you that God chose a religious seeker to be the first prophet? Joseph was very much a religious seeker. We think that’s a Joseph that people today can relate to, much more so either than Joseph the smarmy folk magician that the critics make out, or this diffuse Joseph that we get now from the church.
Jonathan 28:53 The ignorant farm boy.
Jim 28:54 The ignorant farm boy, or who knows really who he was or so forth? We have a whole narrative. This leads to a whole narrative of who Joseph was, and what he was doing, when he was reestablishing the gospel, which we hope is something that people can relate to. At the end of the book, we have this interpretation of the Urim and Thummim in terms of technology. So, we won’t go into detail about that, but we see it as technology. We say, “Don’t think of the Urim and Thummim in terms of it being magic, seer stones, folk magic stuff. It’s technology.” We should understand it in our terms today. You look at the description of what the Urim and Thummim did, and it sounds like technology. So, we say it’s technology. And then we say, look at Joseph Smith. Who was he? He had this near-death experience. He was intellectually curious. He had questions. He read the Bible extensively. He was exposed to all of this stuff out of his environment, which Jonathan Edwards was a big part of. And so he became a religious seeker. So, he was a nerd. Joseph Smith was a nerd. So that’s our reframing of Joseph Smith and the translation of the Book of Mormon.
GT 30:18 That’s my title. Joseph Smith was a nerd. [chuckles]
Jim 30:21 We’ll defend that. We’ll defend that. That’s what we defend in the book, is this new way of looking at Joseph and the origins of the church. I just like to emphasize. We feel that we grapple honestly and completely with the Urim and Thummim versus the seer stone issue. That’s just the beginning of what this book talks about.
GT 30:50 It’s a good thing we didn’t discuss the whole book. We’d be in trouble.
Jonathan 30:21 That’s for sure.
Jim 30:52 And yet, it’s only 208 pages. And that includes lots of footnotes at the bottom of page so it’s not a long read.
{End of Part 5}
[1] Kathryn Daines did the polygamy essay on the Utah period.
[2] Matt listed the other authors. He believes Terryl Givens wrote on Becoming Like God. Matt McBride worked on Book of Mormon Translation. Steve Harper wrote about the First Vision accounts. Patrick Mason wrote on Peace & Violence. Jed Woodworth wrote about Book of Abraham. Lisa Olsen Tait and Jenny Reeder wrote about Mother in Heaven and Priesthood, temple and women.
[3] It is also available at http://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/p/rough-stone-rolling-analysis-part-1.html
transcript to follow
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