This is the third and final part in a series examining what the historical evidence says about what was used by the Prophet Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Mormon plates. In Part 1, we found out that the evidence supporting the claim that a seer stone was used is terrible. In Part 2, we found out that all of the earliest accounts, firsthand and secondhand, say that the Nephite Interpreters (what most people today mean when they talk about the Urim and Thummim) were used. But, throughout all the history, there was one detail that kept popping up in different accounts, both early and late.
Many of them talk about the use of a hat during the translation process. We will look at these claims below. We will then look at the evidence for whether or not these are facts that the reports could have known or whether or not the reporters are merely explaining what they believed happened based on the cultural “common knowledge” of their time. Finally, we will draw the firmest conclusions we can about whether or not the Prophet Joseph used a hat during the translation process of the Book of Mormon plates.
The Historian’s Craft
Before we go further, we need to understand some of the basic foundational principles of historical research.
- Historians prefer earlier sources to later sources.
- Historians prefer primary sources to secondary sources.
In short, good historical analysis is based on the evidence from those as directly involved in historical events as possible to achieve. There are multifaceted reasons for this, but the simplest ones are that those involved directly in the historical events understand better what happened than those who didn’t and that later accounts, even by those involved, can be erroneous due to the fluid nature of memory. People can remember things incorrectly and not even realize it. Memories can change and people won’t even realize it. Scientists have termed these events confabulation (when you unknowingly invent a false memory to fill gaps in what you remember) and false memory (when you remember something differently than how it actually occurred.) Humans can remember events that happened to others as memories of those events happening to themselves. And the illusory truth effect means that we can believe that something is true not because we saw it ourselves, but because we’ve heard it repeated so often that we come to believe it is true, even if we have no way of knowing it is true or not.
In order to avoid these problems as much as possible, we give primacy to the earliest accounts from those actually involved that are possible to access. We only accept later accounts when no earlier primary accounts exist or we measure the accuracy of later accounts by the facts we know from earlier accounts to ensure the legitimacy of the later account. If the facts align with what we know from the primary accounts, then we accept the later accounts.
Martin and The Hat
The first description comes from one of the earliest articles on the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. It was published in The Palmyra Freeman‘s August 11, 1829 article, “Golden Bible” (a mocking term to describe the Book of Mormon since it originated from gold plates). It describes the translation process this way:
It was said that the leaves of the Bible were plates, of gold about eight inches long, six wide, and one eighth of an inch thick, on which were engraved characters or hieroglyphics. By placing the spectacles in a hat, and looking into it, Smith could (he said so, at least,) interpret these characters.
Emphasis my own.
As explained in Part 2 of this series, the “spectacles” was a term used repeatedly by believers and non-believers to describe the Nephite Interpreters, which most members today call the Urim and Thummim. What is unique here is the idea of placing the Interpreters in the hat, something most historians and members either don’t know about or they discount. (As Don Bradley did on page 6 of his book.) But here, in one of the earliest accounts that exists, we see the idea that it was the Interpreters that was placed in the hat. And this isn’t the only example.
Almost a month later, on September 5, 1829, The Gem: A Semi-Monthly Literary and Miscellaneous Journal, published in Rochester, New York published an article titled Golden Bible. This article directly quotes Martin Harris as saying:
He states that after the third visit from the same spirit in a dream he proceeded to the spot, removed earth, and there found the bible, together with a large pair of spectacles. He had also been directed to let no mortal see them under the penalty of immediate death, which injunction he steadfastly adheres to. The treasure consisted of a number of gold plates, about 8 inches long, 6 wide, and one eighth of an inch thick, on which were engraved hieroglyphics. By placing the spectacles in a hat and looking into it, Smith interprets the characters into the English language.
Emphasis my own.
Again we see the claim that the Interpreters, the spectacles, were placed in a hat. This time the claim is given a specific source, Martin Harris, and the language is so similar to the previous article that it seems likely that Harris was the unnamed source for that one as well. This was a story that Martin maintained over decades as we see from this statement he made in 1859:
The two stones set in a bow of silver were about two inches in diameter, perfectly round, and about five-eighths of an inch thick at the centre; but not so thick at the edges where they came into the bow. They were joined by a round bar of silver, about three-eighths of an inch in diameter, and about four inches long, which, with the two stones, would make eight inches.
The stones were white, like polished marble, with a few gray streaks. I never dared to look into them by placing them in the hat, because Moses said that “no man could see God and live,” and we could see anything we wished by looking into them; and I could not keep the desire to see God out of my mind. And beside, we had a command to let no man look into them, except by the command of God, lest he should “look aught and perish.”
Emphasis my own.
The two stones here are clearly the Nephite Interpreters as they are found with the plates and are set in a silver rim. And they are once more said to have been put into the hat when translating. In fact, I only know of one account from Martin that varies from this story. That is an account originally published in the November 30th, 1881, edition of the Deseret News (pgs. 78-79 and 86-87 in this collection.) And it records Martin saying that Joseph would switch between using the Interpreters and the seer stones while translating the Book of Mormon plates and that the Interpreters were clear. But this account is problematic for a number of reasons.
First, it stands out starkly in the history of statements by Martin Harris. It doesn’t match up with what we knew Martin said earlier and maintained for decades and decades of his life. Why the sudden change when he was 87? It doesn’t add up.
Second, the events it records took place in 1870, a full decade before the article recording those events was written down. That is a great deal of time for the author to misremember the events that took place, especially as he is trying to record the exact details of something he heard someone else say 11 years before. It is entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that the author of the article simply misremembered what Martin had said. This is a likelier possibility to me than Martin himself suddenly changed his story to include the seer stone.
Third, Martin was old by this time in his life. He was less than five years away from his death. It is possible that he was suffering from confabulation and/or false memories. After decades of being exposed to the story of the seer stone translation repeated from anti-Mormon sources, as outlined in Part 1), maybe Martin simply came to believe it was true. This may not be a satisfactory conclusion for readers, but as explained in the above Historian’s Craft section, it is a significant problem in a historian’s work. A secondhand account of something Martin may have said in the last years of his life and not recorded until over a decade after it was supposedly said is simply not a trustworthy source. Especially since it directly contradicts everything else we know that Martin said on the subject, including how the Interpreters looked and how they were used, from the very start of his involvement in the Book of Mormon as early as 1829.
There is no reason to privilege this extremely late secondhand account as being equal to Martin’s earlier ones or to believe that it is more representative of the actual history of what took place and plenty of reasons to reject it as being too problematic and flawed to be accorded historical authority. So we shouldn’t. It would be poor historical practice to do so.
Other Possibilities
So, is that the final word on the subject? Not necessarily. Technically, we only have a single source saying that Joseph ever put the Interpreters in a hat to translate – Martin Harris. And one source is a small hook to hang your hat on when coming to historical conclusions. There are a couple of huge reasons we shouldn’t assume that Martin was reporting an eyewitness account instead of something he just assumed was true over the years.
First, Martin wasn’t an eyewitness to the translation process. The Prophet Joseph was very careful about just who got to see the plates and the translation process. An 1831 article from The Reflector, a local Palmyra, NY newspaper, reported:
[Joseph] Smith and [Martin] Harris gave out that no mortal save Jo could look upon it and live; and Harris declares, that when he acted as amanuenes, and wrote the translation, as Smith dictated, such was his fear of the Divine displeasure that a screen (sheet) was suspended between the prophet and himself [Martin].
Emphasis my own.
This is the earliest account of Joseph screening himself from the eyes of everyone while translating. But it wasn’t the last. Another, later account coming from Martin Harris and published in 1842, similarly reported:
The way that Smith made his transcripts and translations for Harris was the following. Although in the same room, a thick curtain or blanket was suspended be tween them, and Smith concealed behind the blanket, pretended to look through his spectacles, or transparent stones, and would then write down or repeat what he saw, which, when repeated aloud, was written down by Harris, who sat on the other side of the suspended blanket. Harris was told that it would arouse the most terrible divine displeasure, if he should attempt to draw near the sacred chest, or look at Smith while engaged in the work of decyphering the mysterious characters. This was Harris’s own account of the matter to me.
pgs. 230-231. Emphasis my own.
Martin himself testified throughout his life that he never actually saw the translation take place. It always took place behind a screen, out of his eyesight. Based on our sources, the most that Martin could’ve known was that Joseph also had a hat. But Martin would’ve never actually seen Joseph put the Interpreters into the hat. And that leads us to the next point.
Second, Martin may have just assumed that Joseph did so based on Martin’s own cultural context. Dr. Ronald W. Walker wrote a stellar historical study on the society wide use of seer stones and divining rods by Christians from the Medieval all the way through the 19th Century, the era during which the Restoration occurred. On the popularity of seer stones and how they were used, Dr. Walker wrote:
A second treasure finding device used by some adepts was the “peep” or “seer” stone whose acclaimed gifts excelled even those of the divining rod such stones seemed to be everywhere and were of every possible description…
Practitioners were literally “seers,” that is lookers into the stone. An eyewitness described the process: “Tim placed the diamond – for so we must term the [seer] stone – in his cap, put the cap over his face in such a manner as to exclude every particle of light, and after a long and steady ‘view’ moved the cap slowly away from his face, his gaze still fixed on the stone.” With most village seers requiring that the light be secluded, this stone-in-the-hat procedure was standard. By this method, an adept could see within the stone crystal a helpful spirit or the precise locality of the underground treasure.
The Persisting Idea of American Treasure Hunting, pg. 442
The prevalence of seers explains a lot of assumptions people made about how Joseph translated the Book of Mormon. It explains why Isaac Hale, despite never seeing the translation occur, was absolutely positive that Joseph used a seer stone in a hat. It may be why Emma Smith and David Whitmer both thought the seer stone was used, assuming they weren’t lying – a big assumption on Emma’s part. It may be why the seer stone in a hat story spread like wildfire. People were already using seer stones and the seer stone translation story merely plugged what was happening with the Book of Mormon into this larger narrative that everyone was already familiar with and which many accepted. And, it may be the assumption that Martin made when thinking he understood how the Interpreters worked even though he outright refused to use them. He saw the hat, he saw the Interpreters, and being a man of his time and place, put two and two together.
Final Thoughts
If that seems like I am reading more there than the evidence absolutely states, well, I am. But in doing so, I am not doing more than most other historians who have approached this subject. The proponents of the seer stone translation story want you to accept that every statement by people near Joseph Smith early on are equally valuable and trustworthy. Even when they clearly aren’t. John Lucas (@36:06) and James Neville argue that Joseph merely used the hat as a hiding place for the Interpreters when he got interrupted while translating or after he was done for the day. Martin Harris wanted you to believe that Joseph put the Interpreters into the hat to translate. And I am saying that Martin assumed he knew what he was talking about, but didn’t because he never saw it happen, so we don’t know for certain whether Joseph actually put the Interpreters in the hat or not.
So, where does that leave us?
Well, the seer stone translation story is clearly too weak. At least the idea that Joseph put the Interpreters in the hat to translate at some points seems plausible. The primary accounts from Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdrey exist which have them asserting that the Interpreters alone were used to translate the Book of Mormon plates. The evidence suggests that the Interpreters worked by shining in some manner. As a friend of mine noted, one of the effects that erecting screens and thick blankets between Joseph and others would have been making the area Joseph was in dark enough to allow him to use the Interpreters.
Perhaps, if that still wasn’t dark enough, Joseph, calling upon his own experiences with treasure-seeking and using a seer stone (pg. 439), would put the Interpreters in the hat and put his face in the hat in order to get a more absolute darkness. And Don Bradley has found some interesting connections between the type of hat that Joseph may have used and the animal skins involved in the ancient use of the Interpreters. The idea that Joseph may have used the hat with the Interpreters is, therefore, plausible. But it is equally plausible that he didn’t and may have just used the hat as a way to store/hide the Interpreters when they were not in use.
The use of the hat then is up for debate. But one conclusion becomes pretty clear from all the best evidence, the earliest sources and primary accounts:
The Prophet Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon plates by the power of God through the means of the Interpreters preserved by the hand of God over millennia and he never used the seer stone to translate.
Thank you for the good writeup.