It has recently come into academic vogue to believe that when translating the Book of Mormon plates that the Prophet Joseph Smith used a small, oval, chocolate colored stone to translate the portion of the Book of Mormon that we have today (minus the 166 lost pages.) The scholars claim it, the apologists claim it, even the church has accepted it. But, in the last few years, some renegade scholars have arisen to challenge the accepted historical dogma. In their book, By Means of the Urim & Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration, James W. Lucas and Jonathan E. Neville argue that the seer stone wasn’t used to translate the Book of Mormon plates, but the Nephite interpreters (which have traditionally being called the Urim and Thummim) were the only instruments used to translate the Book of Mormon plates into English.
In this article, I will explore the evidences for both claims and look at which has the best evidence in support of its claims. After doing so, we will be able to conclude with surety which theory is the likeliest to be true and the one which we should accept as being most correct and the basis for our understanding of the actual historical events in question.
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.
Origins of The Stone in the Hat
I must admit, I have always had trouble accepting the theory that Joseph used his seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon plates. Not from any theological reasons – the seer stone and the Nephite interpreters both function similarly enough in description that whether brown stone or doesn’t really seem to matter. No, the problem is purely historical in nature because no Latter-day Saint (current or former) before 1870 seems to have claimed that the translation was done with a seer stone.
The accusation of a the seer stone being used to translate the Book of Mormon actually comes from the first ever major anti-Mormon publication, Eber D. Howe’s Mormonism Unvailed. (Though it is not the origin of the story, we will discuss that in detail in Part 2.) The book is a collection of affidavits collected by Philastus Hurlbut, a former Latter-day Saint excommunicated for “attempting to seduce a young female.” He had been expelled from the Methodist Church previously for the same conduct, “for unvirtuous conduct with a young lady.” He would later be excommunicated from the United Brethren for, “having engaged in improprieties with the opposite sex.” He was even convicted by a court hostile to the Saints of publicly threatening to kill the Prophet Joseph Smith. (pgs. 41, 47) It was this bitter, violent lecher that produced the affidavits and sold them to Howe for him to publish. It is no wonder that the affidavits themselves have been shown to be deeply flawed and historically untrustworthy, showing evidence of Hurlbut manipulating the “evidence” to get what he wanted – statements hateful of Joseph Smith, factually true or not.
It is from this highly untrustworthy and murderous source that the first accusation that Joseph Smith used a seer stone appears. On page 265, Isaac Hale, the father of Emma Hale (Smith) wrote:
The manner in which he pretended to read and interpret, was the same as when he looked for the money-diggers, with the stone in his hat, and his hat over his face, while the Book of Plates were at the same time hid in the woods!
There are several reasons to doubt his claim. First and foremost is that Joseph was very careful about just who got to see the plates and the translation process. In 1831, an 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.
This is the earliest account. 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, pre tended 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
Now, why would I accept the word of Martin Harris over Isaac Hale? It isn’t because Harris was a faithful member. In fact, Harris had been excommunicated from the church in 1837 and wouldn’t return to it until 1870. (pgs. 12, 39-40) So, when Harris gave the account recorded in the second quote, it cannot be claimed that he was in any manner motivated to make the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints look good to its critics. He was simply reporting his experiences as an actual scribe for the Book of Mormon. And we can trust this later account because it accords with what we know from much earlier accounts.
Given Joseph Smith’s care to create a private, sacred space set apart from the rest of the home where he could work translating the Book of Mormon without being seen by anyone, including the scribe, I find it highly unlikely that Isaac Hale was ever able to see the translation process and therefore able to know in any degree how it was done. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that Hale’s report was accurate in any manner. He likely just assumed that Joseph used the seer stone and may not even have known that the Nephite Interpreters existed.
The whole stone in the hat theory emerged without evidence from an anti-Mormon whose sources came from a serial adulterer, liar, and murderous thug. There is no reason to take it seriously, except that it gets repeatedly in the 1870s by David Whitmer and Emma Smith Bidamon, Joseph’s first wife and widow.
So let’s look at these accounts in detail to see if they’re trustworthy.
Emma’s Account
I want to start with Emma’s account because it is the earliest. On March 27, 1870, Emma wrote a letter responding to a previous letter from Emma S. Pilgrim. In her letter, Emma (Joseph’s widow), wrote:
Now the first that my translated, was translated by the use of the Urim, and Thummim, and that was the part that Martin Harris lost, after that he used a small stone, not exactly, black, but was rather a dark color
This statement seems to clearly indicate that Emma believed that Joseph used the seer stone, the small “dark color” stone she mentions. But, could Emma know this for a fact? I’m not sure that she could. Emma had acted as scribe for Joseph, but only during the translation of a part of the lost 116 pages. Except for the first 20 pages of what is now 1 Nephi, the entire Book of Mormon, as it now exists, was written by Oliver Cowdrey as he took dictation from the Prophet Joseph Smith. Emma had no part in the work of transcribing this part of the Book of Mormon. And, as already established, Joseph took great care to ensure that no one saw him actually translating the plates.
There is one statement from Emma that challenges things. In Last Testimony of Sister Emma, published in 1879 (the year of her death), Emma claimed:
In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us.
Emphasis my own.
That tells us she saw the translation happened right? She is an eyewitness to the seer stone being used! Well, not so much. Because, just before she made this statement, Emma was asked about what she knew of polygamy and plural marriage in Nauvoo. She responded:
There was no revelation on either polygamy or spiritual wives. There were some rumors of something of the sort, of which I asked my husband. He assured me that all there was of it was, that, in a chat about plural wives, he had said, “Well, such a system might possibly be, if everybody was agreed to it, and would behave as they should; but they would not; and besides, it was contrary to the will of heaven.” No such thing as polygamy or spiritual wifery was taught, publicly or privately, before my husband’s death, that I have now, or ever had any knowledge of.
…He had no other wife but me; nor did he to my knowledge ever have. …I know that he had no other wife or wives than myself, in any sense, either spiritual or otherwise.
Why is this relevant? Because it is all, 100% a bald-faced lie. Emma was personally there when Joseph was married to four other women in Nauvoo in 1843. Emma even participated in the sealing of Emily Partridge and Joseph by placing Emily’s hand in Joseph’s during the ceremony. Hyrum Smith himself presented the revelation commanding polygamy (now D&C 132) to Emma, only for her to lash out at him over it. Emma not only knew about polygamy/plural marriage, she had participated in it and personally saw Joseph participate in it. All of which Emma lied about, repeatedly, to her son’s face right before telling him about the seer stone. Which brings us to some very important possibilities about her story about the seer stone:
- She may have just lied about it. If she was willing to lie about something so serious as plural marriage and polygamy, then why would she hesitate to lie about the seer stone? This whole issue significantly tarnishes her reliability as a witness. Just as a court would discard all of the testimony from a witness who had lied on the stand because once you can prove part of the testimony is a lie, you can never be sure all of it isn’t a lie, I see no reason to trust anything Emma said at this point in her life.
Why would she lie? Any number of reasons. Maybe she felt like she should know how the Book of Mormon was translated, but didn’t. So, she used the story she was most familiar with, the by know infamous stone in the hat story spread by Howe, because she couldn’t think of a better story herself. Another possibility is that she wanted to enhance her own importance. By this point she, along with other former Latter-day Saints, had convinced her son Joseph Smith III to become the leader of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (now Community of Christ.) That church was composed of former Latter-day Saints who had left the church over various issues, number one of which was polygamy. (pgs. 16-17, 20) By denying polygamy and claiming to know how the Book of Mormon was translated, Emma not only affirmed her own elevated status, but that of her son as well. - She experienced confabulation and false memories. Decades after events that she had no part in, Emma was asked about the translation process of the Book of Mormon and in her memory remembered something she hadn’t actually seen. In constructing this false memory, she may have suffered form the illusory truth effect and instinctively called upon a story that she had heard throughout her life, the stone in the hat story, likely divorced from its origins in Mormonism Unvailed. Believing it to be correct on instinct, she shared it with those who asked her about it.
That second possibility is the most charitable interpretation of Emma’s words. Does it seem far-fetched? I understand. It intuitively feels like we should be able to trust our memories and automatically conclude that anyone going against established facts is lying. But that isn’t what we have discovered about how memory actually works. It is very possible that Emma actually remembered the past incorrectly, especially when it was something she would have never had firsthand experience with to begin with. At 66 years old, decades removed from the events in question she was never privy to, it is extremely likely that she simply misremembered and experienced a false memory or confabulation trying to conjure a memory of something she hadn’t seen or participated in – the translation of the Book of Mormon as it currently exists – but which people expected her to know something about.
Having discovered that Emma is an untrustworthy source because her statements contradict the information we have from other sources (Harris’s repeated statements about Joseph putting up sheets to hide himself during translation), that she is a liar whose word itself is called into question (her lies about plural marriage), and the possibilities that she may have just had false memories, we turn to the other source for the stone in the hat story that historians rely upon.
David Whitmer’s Account
In 1887, one year before his death and at the age of 83, David Whitmer published a book titled, An Address to All Believers in Christ.
On page 12 of that book, Whitmer wrote:
I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.
Emphasis my own.
We can already point out some significant errors in this account. Notice that Whitmer calls Oliver Cowdrey the “principal” scribe as if there were many others and Oliver was just the main scribe. This is nonsense. Oliver Cowdrey transcribed all but the first 20 pages of the first book of the Book of Mormon. That means Cowdrey wrote down 97% of the total text. He wasn’t just one of a multitude, as Whitmer’s account suggests. Cowdrey was the scribe of the Book of Mormon and the previous two did so little they have been forgotten to history. Which of course raises a significant question about Whitmer’s account.
Where did Whitmer get his information? It wasn’t from firsthand experience. David Whitmer was never a scribe for any part of the Book of Mormon. He had no firsthand knowledge there. A part of the translation took part in his home, but as we’ve already noted, Joseph hung up a blanket as a barrier so that no one could see the translation process. In Nathan Tanner, Jr.’s account, Whitmer clearly remembered Joseph putting up some sort of screen to make it impossible for anyone to see him translating:
[David Whitmer] said that Joseph was separated from the scribe by a blanket, as I remember; that he had the Urim and Thummim, and a chocolate colored stone, which he used alternately, as suited his convenience, and he said he believed Joseph could as well accomplish the translation by looking into a hat, or any other stone, as by the use of the Urim and Thummim or the chocolate colored stone. …He said that Joseph would — as I remember — place the manuscript beneath the stone or Urim and Thummim, and the characters would appear in English, which he would spell out, and they would appear in English, which he would spell out, and they would remain there until the word was fully written and corrected, when it would disappear and another word appear, etc.
Though itself a later account, Tanner’s story has many of the elements of the facts as so far established. Whitmer claims Joseph used the seer stone by placing it into a hat and that words would appear in English which was then spelled out by Joseph and written down. Once written down, a new word would appear. Tanner seems to have misunderstood Whitmer’s claim that a parchment paper would appear with the words on them, but all the particulars of Whitmer’s story seem to be present in Tanner’s recount. This suggests that Tanner’s story is likely trustworthy in terms of conveying an actual experience Tanner had with David Whitmer earlier in Tanner’s life. This is important because there is one specific detail in Tanner’s account that Whitmer left out of the book version of the account: David said that Joseph hung up a blanket in order to prevent those in the Whitmer home from seeing him translate.
This is relevant because it shows that Joseph’s pattern with Martin Harris continued with his latter scribes and wherever he was translating – he always sought to ensure privacy by making sure no one saw him translating the text. Which means that not only did David Whitmer never participated in the translation process, he never saw the translation process either! And, considering that Joseph and Oliver never talked about it in detail their entire lives (see Note 21), it is highly unlikely that anyone ever told Whitmer about the translation process. His whole story is untrustworthy because he has no way of knowing what he is talking about. And that is before accounting for problems of confabulation, false memory, and the illusory truth effect, which themselves may explain why he thought the seer stone in the hat story was true. He had heard it so often that he assumed it was true instinctively.
Finally, we cannot ignore why David Whitmer wrote his book, An Address to All Believers in Christ -he was trying to start his own church. Along with the apostate William E. McLellin (a former Apostle who had been excommunicated and joined the Missouri mobs to persecute the Saints and rob the home of Joseph Smith), David Whitmer claimed to be the true successor to Joseph Smith, ordained as such by Joseph Smith, and founded his own church, the Church of Christ – often called the Whitmerites. The best history of the church that is easily accessed is Erin Metcalfe’s essay, Whitmer Family Beliefs and Their Church of Christ, starting on page 38. David Whitmer’s An Address to All Believers in Christ was both a proclamation of Whitmer’s authority to found such a church and a laying of the foundational doctrines that church would be built upon. Consequently, he had a deeply vested interest in appearing as knowledgeable and important as possible in order to claim as much prestige and authority as he could in order to make his church seem as legitimate as possible.
His claims to have seen the Book of Mormon be translated or to knowing exactly how it was translated were not the claims of a disinterested man of truth, but those of a rival claimant to priesthood authority and power against any others who were claiming a similar authority. Not the least of which was Joseph Smith III as the Reorganized Church was strong in nearby Illinois and Iowa, with members in Missouri where Whitmer lived. Whitmer had to stake a powerful claim if he was going to challenge the man with Joseph Smith’s very name and draw away his followers to a new church. And everything in his book, including his claims to knowing how the Book of Mormon, must be seen in that light – especially considering the evidence that suggests that there was no way that David Whitmer would’ve ever seen any of the translation process.
Nail In The Coffin, Stone In The Hat
Whitmer’s accounts then face the same problems that Emma’s does: Whitmer is either lying and trying to elevate his own status for personal reasons or has created false memories of something he never did or saw. In either case, there is no reason to accept their accounts as authoritative. They’re far too historically suspect as neither person was involved in the production of the Book of Mormon, nor could they ever have seen the translation process take place. All they’re doing is repeating a story they’re heard before which was popularized by an extremely hostile and untrustworthy source. They are not primary sources for the translation of the Book of Mormon and their accounts should not be privileged as such. Thus there is no solid, significant, or trustworthy historical sources for the claim that Joseph put a brown seer stone into a hat in order to translate the Book of Mormon.
This brings up an important question: If all the sources for the seer stone in a hat translation story are so poor, why has the story become so accepted by historians in recent years? I have no solid answers for this, but I do have a theory. As Dr. James A.S. Evans one said, “the typical modern historian is belligerently ‘secular'” and rejects all attempts at philosophical or religious meaning and truth in human history. (pg. 92) The discipline of their academic field indoctrinates them into a worldview where God not only isn’t present, but in which he doesn’t exist at all. Historians are professional atheists. And it is far easier for them to believe a story about a small brown stone found in a well than it is to believe in an instrument touched by God’s power and delivered by the hand of angels. So they favor the later, less trustworthy sources because those sources fit better within their worldview. This happens even amongst our own LDS academics, themselves indoctrinated into history as a secular institution and required to write it if they ever expect to be taken seriously by the institutions of history that write their checks.
The public, largely ignorant of history and indoctrinated into an automatic acceptance of the pronouncements of so-called experts by the education system, just believe what they’re told. Often people have been so starved of critical knowledge and thinking skills that they’re incapable of even evaluating the pronouncements of academics. The average person cannot distinguishing fact from the biases of the academics doing the writing. So, people just accept whatever the professional “experts” say without doing the difficult work of seeing if their understanding of the facts and interpretation of how they interrelate are reasonable, rational, or correct. Public education has left them stupid and obedient and they think and act as such. Thus, they leave their minds and their bodies in the hands of others to tell them what to believe and therefore what to do.
In Part 2 of this series, we will look at the earliest evidence and the primary sources we have and see what they say about how the Book of Mormon was translated.