This is the second of a three part series looking at what the historical sources tell was the tool Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Mormon. In the last article, I looked at the historical sources claiming that Joseph used a brown seer stone that he had found digging a well to translate the Book of Mormon. Uniformly those sources were all historically questionable, really just awful sources. They all came from people with ulterior motives who had never actually seen the actual translation process. They came decades after the events described, contradicted earlier more trustworthy sources, and/or are from known and proven liars who did not hesitate to manipulate information and data to achieve their own ends. As a consequence, there is no reason to believe any of the sources about their claims regarding the usage of the seer stone. Especially not when earlier, more primary sources exist.
This article is about those sources and what they tell us about how the Book of Mormon plates were translated by the Prophet Joseph Smith. Herein we will study what the primary sources tell us about the role of the Nephite Interpreters, often referred to today as the Urim and Thummim, in the translation process. We will see if they are trustworthy or not. Finally we will draw conclusions from the evidence about which narrative is best supported by the historical sources – translation by seer stone in a hat or translation by the Nephite Interpreters as the church has long claimed.
The Historian’s Craft
A note before we go further. This next section was included in the previous article, but as our need to understand some of the basic foundational principles of historical research hasn’t changed, I have included it here as well as a refresher about the guidelines that we will follow in evaluating these narratives and their sources for historical reliability. Two of the most basic principles of doing historical research are:
- 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.
The Importance of Terminology
In what is otherwise a laughable excuse for a book review (really just a temper tantrum thrown by an academic outraged that anyone other than a full time historian would dare challenge his pet theory), Dr. Brant A. Gardner does get two things right. In his review of By Means of the Urim & Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration, by James W. Lucas and Jonathan E. Neville, Gardner points out that they frequently incorrectly use the term Urim and Thummim to only mean the Nephite Interpreters when it was used to mean multiple revelatory objects early in church history (including both the seer stone and the Nephite Interpreters) and that their theory that Joseph’s translation process was more like a traditional translation method where the translator has to work out which words to use in rendering a final translation is weak. But these are largely making mountains out of molehills and actively ignores the significant primary source evidence that Lucas and Neville present showing that the Book of Mormon translation was performed solely with the Nephite Interpreters. As a result, Gardner’s entire review is more of a poisoning the well fallacy full of ad hominem invective than it is an actual book review.
Nevertheless, Gardner’s two meaningful points are well taken. We have to be clear here with the terms we use and exactly what we mean by them. Consequently, instead of using the more colloquially familiar term Urim and Thummim, I will use the term Nephite Interpreters (or Interpreters for short) for the tool of revelation buried with the Book of Mormon plates. And because sources don’t always use the terms Nephite Interpreters, but sometimes “spectacles,” “the spectacles,” or simply describe them, it is worth discussing what they actually looked like so we can understand those sources. The problem is that there are no contemporaneous primary source accounts of what the Interpreters looked like. The earliest accounts are all secondary accounts that we are forced to rely on because we have nothing better. What they reveal about the Interpreters is fascinating though.
What The Interpreters Looked Like
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 Interpreters this way:
[Joseph Smith] reported that he had been visited in a dream by the spirit of the Almighty, and informed that in a certain hill in that town, was deposited this Golden Bible, containing an ancient record of a divine nature and origin. After having been thrice thus visited, as he states, he proceeded to the spot, and after having penetrating “mother earth” a short distance, the Bible was found, together with a huge pair of spectacles!
Emphasis my own.
The second source is from the article Mormonite, an anti-Mormon source published April 19, 1831. It references a testimony given by Oliver Cowdrey, Joseph’s scribe for the Book of Mormon, in which Oliver described the Interpreters:
Oliver Cowdry, one of the three witnesses to the book, testified under oath, that said Smith found with the plates, from which he translated his book, two transparent stones, resembling glass, set in silver bows. That by looking through these, he was able to read in English, the formed Egyptian characters, which were engraved on the plates.
Emphasis my own.
The next is from an article written by journalist Fayette Lapham from an interview he had with Joseph Smith Sr. in 1830, but which wasn’t published until 1870. (For a discussion of Lapham and his trustworthiness, see pgs.120-121, including the footnotes.) Lapham reports Joseph, Sr. describing the Interpreters thusly:
In answer to our question, as to what it was that Joseph had thus obtained, he said it consisted of a set of gold plates, about six inches wide, and nine or ten inches long. They were in the form of a book, half an inch thick, but were not bound at the back, like our books, but were held together by several gold rings, in such a way that the plates could be opened similar to a book. Under the first plate, or lid, he found a pair of spectacles, about one and a half inches longer than those used at the present day, the eyes not of glass, but of diamond. …Returning home, he [Joseph Smith, Jr.] one day tried the spectacles, and found that, by looking through them, he could see everything—past, present, and future—and could also read and understand the characters written on the plates.
Emphasis my own.
Finally, we have Lucy Mack Smith, mother of the Prophet Joseph Smith. The following quote was in the first draft of her book History of the Prophet Joseph, by His Mother but was removed from later drafts.
I trembled so from fear lest all might be lost on account of some failure in keeping the commandments of God, that I was under the necessity of leaving the room to conceal my fealings. Joseph saw this and said, “do not be uneasy, mother, all is right— see here, I have got a key.” I knew not what he meant but took the article into my hands; and, upon <for I> examination <examined it> found, that it consisted of two smoothe three-cornered diamonds set in glasses, and the glasses were set in silver bows, which were connected with each other in much the same way, as old-fashioned spectacles.
Rough Draft Copy of History of the Prophet Joseph, by His Mother
All of these accounts adhere to the same basic facts about the Interpreters. They consisted of transparent stone, like a crystal or diamond, which looked somewhat like spectacles or glasses because the stones were set in silver bows. Further, the two most direct sources imply that the Interpreters were bigger than normal glasses, but not extremely so. Joseph, Sr. recounted that they actually fit on one of the plates of the Book of Mormon plates and Lucy’ recorded ‘s record suggests that she could hold them in her hands easily enough. Despite The Freeman‘s mocking tone that the Interpreters were huge, it explains that they were actually small enough to fit into a hat. (more on that delicious detail later.) So, it also emphasizes that the Interpreters weren’t overly large either.
Where Did The Interpreters Come From?
There is one more account, from the Book of Mormon itself, that sounds as if it is also describing the the Interpreters. Before going to it though, I want to look at another part of the Lapham account. This part describes Joseph, Sr.’s explanation of the migration of Lehi’s colony to the Americas with details that aren’t in the Book of Mormon as we have it today. Historian Don Bradley is convinced that these details originate in the Lost 116 Pages and are thus details that were in the part of the Book of Mormon translation that has been lost. These details give us essential insight into how the Nephites gained the Interpreters:
After sailing a long time, they came to land, went on shore, and thence they traveled through boundless forests, until, at length, they came to a country where there were a great many lakes; which country had once been settled by a very large race of men, who were very rich, having a great deal of money. From some unknown cause, this nation had become extinct; “but that money,” said Smith, “is here, now, every dollar of it.” When they, the Jews, first beheld this country, they sent out spies to see what manner of country it was, who reported that the country appeared to have been settled by a very large race of men, and had been, to all appearances, a very rich agricultural and manufacturing nation. They also found something of which they did not know the use, but when they went into the tabernacle, a voice said, “What have you got in your hand, there?” They replied that they did not know, but had come to inquire; when the voice said, “Put it on your face, and put your face in a skin, and you will see what it is.” They did so, and could see everything of the past, present, and future; and it was the same spectacles that Joseph found with the gold plates.
Fayette Lapham article
The extinct nation that Lehi and his people (“the Jews” here) encountered the ruins of were undoubtedly the Jaredites. Apparently among the ruins of the Jaredite nation they found the Interpreters. This is important because in our current Book of Mormon text the Interpreters simply just appear in the story with no antecedents or explanations whatsoever. Yet they are so special that they are preserved by Mosiah, who used them for translating the written remains of the fallen Jaredite nation (Mosiah 8), all the way to Moroni, who sealed them up for Joseph to use. Mosiah 28:20 tells us the important detail that the Interpreters were given by Mosiah to Alma. This detail is important because in Alma 37: 21-25, the Prophet Alma explains the cause of the destruction of the Jaredites based on what he has learned from the twenty-four plates they had found from which Moroni derived the Book of Ether. (Ether 1:2) During this explanation and warning, Alma says that the Lord looked down on the Jaredites and, seeing that they were becoming consumed by darkness and sin:
And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem, a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover unto them the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works, their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations.
And now, my son, these interpreters were prepared that the word of God might be fulfilled, which he spake, saying: I will bring forth out of darkness unto light all their secret works and their abominations; and except they repent I will destroy them from off the face of the earth; and I will bring to light all their secrets and abominations, unto every nation that shall hereafter possess the land.
Alma 37: 23-25, emphasis my own.
Traditionally, the word Gazelem here has been interpreted as a reference to a person with the assumption being that Jaredite words were unknown to the Nephites and therefore Gazelem is a Nephite word. But the work of Jerry D. Grover calls these assumptions into question in a significant manner. In his book, Sumerian Roots of Jaredite-Derived Names and Terminology in the Book of Mormon, Grover has shown that the Jaredite language derives from ancient Sumerian. This makes sense as the Jaredites originated at the Tower of Babel and the Tower of Babel itself was likely in or a reference to ancient Sumeria and Sumerian pagan temple worship.
In this work, Grover has shown that Gazelem is a compound word, constructed of Sumerian words that respectively mean wisdom/understanding, shining, and a stone/gem. (pgs.15-16) This means that the word Gazelem is a Jaredite word and its meaning is something like, “a shining stone or gem for gaining wisdom and understanding.” We see this etymology play out in other ancient sources as well. (See Note 8.) The Book of Daniel is the story of an Israelite prophet named Daniel and his captivity in Babylon, where the Tower of Babel had been built and where the ancient Sumerians had lived. In many ways, the Babylonians were the heirs of the Sumerians. (pg. 90) Thus, we shouldn’t be surprised to see the linguistic influences of the Sumerians in the text of Daniel which would’ve been written in Mesopotamia in the same area the Jaredites originated, ancient Sumeria.
In Daniel 2:27 and Daniel 5:11 the word translated into English as soothsayer, someone who foretells the future through mystical means, is gā·zə·rîn. An ancient Sumerian poem, not rediscovered until 1840, refers to “gazelle stones” which are described as “blazing holocausts” and as having “flared up against me in the rebel regions like a conflagration.” According to Grover’s book, “gazelle” here would be translated from the Sumerian as something like “stone of wisdom/understanding.” The full meaning the gazelle stones of the poem then, including their description as blazing and flaring, could be understood as “glowing/shining/blazing stones of understanding and wisdom.” (pgs.15-16) Not unlike the Gazelem itself. In fact, if you were to make a Sumerian compound word that meant “shining stone of wisdom/understanding” all you have to do is add to “Gazelle” what Grover transliterates as “lum” and which this Sumerian Lexicon translates as “lam” in order to get “Gazellam,” a.k.a. Gazelem.
Gazelem alone, and its match to ancient Sumerian texts which Joseph Smith and no Westerner had any knowledge of until decades after the Book of Mormon was published, is a powerful witness of its ancient origin and divine transmission. There is no way that anyone, least of all Joseph Smith, could have constructed one perfectly Sumerian word in 1829, much less the hundreds that Grover found in the Book of Mormon during his research. The work truly is an ancient text preserved by the hand of God and translated by the power of God through Joseph Smith for us today.
The Jaredite/Sumerian meaning of Gazelem becomes even clearer when we remember that John H. Gilbert, the non-member printer of the original Book of Mormon, added at least 30,000 punctuation marks to the text before printing it. This is because the original Book of Mormon manuscript had almost no puncuation whatsoever. This is significant because if you read Alma 37:23 without those punctuation marks it reads, “I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem a stone which shall shine forth in darkness unto light…” The word Gazelem is left untranslated, but the text following it provides us an appositive gloss, an in-text interpretation of the untranslated word used by Alma. The verse is not saying that the Lord will give a stone to his servant Gazelem, but that the Lord will give His unnamed servant a Gazelem, a stone which will “shine forth in darkness unto light,” and provide wisdom and understanding to His unnamed servant. The Gazelem enables the servant to “see everything of the past, present, and future” and therefore reveal the sins of the Jaredites, the consequences of those sins, and call them to repentance.
This makes me wonder if Alma himself used the Interpreters to read the Jaredite plates, which explains why he is using the Jaredite word for the Interpreters. The description of the Gazelem calls to mind the story of the Brother of Jared in Ether 3 obtaining shining stones touched by the finger of the Lord so that they will shine in the darkness of the Jaredite barges. This all leads to an obvious conclusion. The Gazelem that Alma has are not like the Nephite Interpreters. The Gazelem is the Interpreters. The Gazelem was lost during the Jaredite Civil Wars and found by the Nephites as they explored the Jaredite ruins, searching for a safe haven from the Lamanites. The Nephites called the Gazelem the Interpreters because it allowed them to interpret the ancient writings they found amongst those ruins, including the twenty-four plates of Ether, of which Alma was telling his son Helaman.
Thanks to the Lapham Account, we have, at least partially, a restored account from the Lost 166 Pages explaining how the Nephites obtained the Interpreters by finding them amongst the Jaredite ruins. These Interpreters could be worn, like spectacles, and shone when in the dark to reveal secrets that couldn’t be discovered by other means. These Interpreters were passed down to King Mosiah and from him to the Prophet Alma when the Nephite monarchy came to an end. Alma tells us the Jaredite name for them, Gazelem, and describes what they were – shining gemstones that could reveal truth in darkness and by doing so dispel the darkness of sin. And the origin of those Interpreters may well be with the shining stones touched by the hand of God Himself.
These Interpreters were then passed down through the prophets until they arrived in the hands of Moroni, who sealed them up with the gold plates so that they could be used to translate the plates by a future prophet. (Ether 4:5) And in the latter-days, both Joseph, Sr. and Lucy Smith both testified that the Interpreters were like diamonds, a gemstone, while the account attributed to Oliver Cowdrey said that they were transparent like glass. How they looked and how they were used, worn on the face and looked through like spectacles, retains remarkable cohesion throughout both the scriptural account and the historical accounts.
Now that we know what the Interpreters were, their origins, how they looked, and the purpose for which they were created, we can now look at what the primary sources texts tell us about how they were used in the translation of the Book of Mormon.
The Primary Sources
The first comes from Oliver Cowdrey himself. The reason we should trust Oliver’s account here is not just because it is an early one or even because Oliver was Joseph’s scribe. D&C 8 and D&C 9 record an attempt by Oliver, at God’s direction, to translate the Book of Mormon plates himself. The attempt fails, Oliver cannot translate for reasons laid out in D&C 9, but the fact that he was allowed to do so makes him utterly unique amongst all the other people claiming to know how the translation was accomplished. It means that Oliver actually used the tools that Joseph used to translated and went through the process that Joseph went through in order to try and translate the plates. Other than Joseph himself, this makes Oliver Cowdrey the only other primary source, eyewitness account for how the Book of Mormon was translated.
So, with what did Oliver say the plates were translated?
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 whould have said, “Interpreters,” the history, or record, called “The book of Mormon.”
Oliver Cowdery, Latter-day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate Vol.1, Page 14 (1834). Bold emphasis my own.
Oliver knew from firsthand knowledge what the tool was that was used to translate the Book of Mormon and he clearly stated that it was the Nephite Interpreters. Not the seer stone.
What about the only other firsthand, primary witness account? What did Joseph himself say he used to translate the Book of Mormon plates?
In the July, 1838 edition of The Elder’s Journal, the Prophet Joseph answered some questions that had been put to members of the church. This is his response to “how and where” he obtained the Book of Mormon:
Moroni, the person who deposited the plates, from whence the book of Mormon was translated, in a hill in Manchester, Ontario County New York, being dead; and raised again therefrom, appeared unto me, and told me where they were; and gave me directions how to obtain them. I obtained them, and the Urim and Thummim with them; by the means of which, I translated the plates; and thus came the book of Mormon.
Emphasis my own.
Now, following Dr. Gardner’s counsel from before, we should be careful about just assuming that when Joseph says Urim and Thummim here that he means the Nephite Interpreters. Thankfully, he gives us a clear indication of what he is talking about when he says he obtained the Urim and Thummim with the plates. The seer stone was found by Joseph either at Lake Erie or while digging a well, sometime in 1821 or 1822. (pg. 119) Joseph didn’t get the Book of Mormon plates until 1827. So, the only Urim and Thummim that Joseph could be referring to when he says it got the Urim and Thummim with the plates are the Nephite Interpreters. He then tells us that he used this Urim and Thummim, that he used the Nephite Interpreters, to translate the Book of Mormon plates. Not his seer stone.
And if that isn’t convincing, then in his 1842 letter to Congressman John Wentworth, editor of The Chicago Democrat newspaper, Joseph makes it abundantly clear. Commonly referred simply as The Wentworth Letter, it contains, amongst other things, an explanation of the origin and translation of the Book of Mormon:
The whole book exhibited many marks of antiquity in its construction and much skill in the art of engraving. 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.
Emphasis my own.
Through the medium of the Urim and Thummim I translated the record by the gift, and power of God.
Here Joseph says that he used the Urim and Thummim, an indistinct phrase, but then follows it up by providing a description of them that can only mean The Nephite Interpreters. As we established above, the Interpreters were two transparent stones set a silver frame or bow. Thus, Joseph, the most primary, firsthand witness account possible as he is actually describing what he actually did, says that he used the Nephite Interpreters to translate the Book of Mormon plates. He didn’t use a brown seer stone.
Final Thoughts
In the seer stone article, we discovered that the sources for the story of Joseph using the seer stone are highly suspect. Philastus Hurlburt and E.D. Howe were dedicated anti-Mormons spreaidng every rumor they heard. David Whitmer was trying to discredit the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in order to give legitimacy to the church he was founding as the supposed true successor to the one founded by Joseph Smith in 1830. And he never saw Joseph translate anything. Emma Smith suffers from the same problem, but worse. In addition to trying to use her name and position as Joseph’s widow to secure the position of Joseph Smith III as President of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Emma repeatedly and openly lied about polygamy to thousands of people, denying it when she had in fact participated in it. Emma was a bald-faced liar and there is no reason to trust anything she claimed. And both David and Emma’s accounts of the seer stone being used all came decades after the translation itself.
In this article, we have established what the Interpreters looked like, traced the scriptural and historical accounts of how they functioned, and looked at what the primary sources say happened. We have established that the earliest primary accounts from eyewitness sources -Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdrey. Indeed, as the only ones directly involved in the translation itself, they have exclusive information about how it was done. And they say that the Nephite Interpreters were exclusively use to translate the Book of Mormon plates. Further, Joseph and Oliver make those claims over decades, from the earliest accounts to those given by Joseph just a few years before his murder and martyrdom. The story doesn’t alter over the course of years to include the seer stone or to hide its use. The judgment of the historical record then, or at very least the best conclusion to be drawn from good historical work is simple:
Only the Nephite Interpreters were ever used to translate the Book of Mormon.
This does leave one last element of the story for which we need to account though.
What about the hat?
Could Joseph have used the Nephite Interpreters in conjunction with a hat at any time during the translation process and thereby lay the seeds of the seer stone in the hat story?
This issue will be explored in the third and final part of this series because there is more to that hat than you may think.