I’d forgotten the objectively hilarious “translation by putting face in a hat” bit that I originally learned from the South Park episode. I wish it had made it to the stage in the Book of Mormon musical…
Pretty rock. Could it be petrified wood?
From a historical standpoint, the fact that the stone actually existed, and ostensibly still exists today, is pretty neat - I can’t think of many other artifacts significant to the formation of major religions that are still around today. (The Black Stone in the Kaaba, and (possibly) the Japanese crown jewels, but that’s all that comes to mind.)
He may not have been a prophet, but Smith was at the very least a talented storyteller - as literature, the Book of Mormon is an epic fantasy and a national history of Tolkienesque scale that predates the Professor by nearly a century, and if he literally dictated the entire thing letter by letter with his head stuck in a hat then that’s just plain impressive.
The papyri that formed the basis of the Mormon Book of Abraham turned up in the colections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art back in the 1960s
The golden plates, of course, were “translated” (in the other sense of the word) and are no longer with us (although I like Mormom cartoonist Calvin Grondhal’s – or was it pat Bagley’s? – suggestion that the angel moronic simply re-buried them in Hill Cumorah).
Many of Brigham’s Young’s possessions are still around, as well as Mary Baker Eddy’s (One of the things about Christian Science that Mark Twain used to poke fun at was the way they treated the chair she wrote Science and Health in was treated like a holy relic).
Of course, there are Holy Relics of Christian saints aplenty, but most if not all of them are dubious.
the Koh-I-Noor diamond, purportedly once the Eye of a Hindu goddess statue, is still extant.
Interesting pic. The stone is pretty cool. Funny, somehow I always thought it would be clear.
It’s often easier to identify if we can observe a fresh surface. Does anyone have a rock hammer?
What errors are in the Book of Mormon?
Which were, for those who aren’t interested in visiting the Wikipedia, actually Egyptian funerary texts, and Joseph Smith’s translation of them bore no resemblance to what was actually written.
Wait, so if this is the rock that did the translating, what Smith use the other two rocks for?
Bad** lieu**. Here I was thinking that there was something wrong with me that I could look at those pictures and think, 'you know, that pouch is starting to look like a testicle." But your thought’s wronger. I feel better now.
Oh, that’s not what I thought **Tokyo **meant. Those problems are problems whether or not the translation is considered divine and inerrant, or just Joseph and friends’ best dictation of divine communication.
Three sacred rocks? Was Mola Ram the reincarnation of Smith?
It’s a misprint. What it was is that Smith had Uma Thurman help with the translations. The time machine isn’t mentioned, either.
For people who aren’t as familiar with church history, these documents contained information which would have been very embarrassing for the church if true. The Church would arrange to have someone quietly buy them and then donate them to the Church with the intent of ensuring they never saw the light of day again, but Hoffman would leak the discovery to the press which would force the Church to come public with the document.
Hoffman was a disillusioned former believer who set out to damage the Church.
Jan Shipp, a non-Mormon scholar of Mormon history said that its study is interesting because we have not only the history as written by the winners but also the losers and can see how things developed.
Smith was quite talented as a storyteller, and his mother relates that this predates the production of the BoM. According to his mother, he would tell the family stories about the ancient inhabitants of the Americas long before translating the book.
The Urim and Thummim or the other seer stones? Smith had other seer stones, including a white one.
I don’t believe we have any accounts of people who actually saw the U and T or Smith’s use of them in translation. Their existence was first given in the text of the BoM, which would be after Smith would have already been using the seer stone for the translation.
The tight translation theory, the standard one for most adherents over history, was that the divine power provided the English words and Smith was the conduit for the divine translation.
With this view, any but very small errors would be problematic. Not simply counting the thousands of grammatical changes and dozens of anachronisms including the use of steel and horses in the pre-Colombian Americans, there are a number of serious issues which forced apologists to introduce the loose translation theory in which Smith would be putting concepts into his own words.
These issues include the extensive passages quoted from Isiah which contain translation errors carried over from the King James Version of the Bible. Some of the errors were found only in one particular late 18th century translation of the KJV, so it becomes obvious that Smith used that in the production. This wouldn’t be a problem, but the passages are embedded in the BoM and it had been claimed to be inerrant.
Other errors include passages discussing the divine nature of God which directly contradict current, radical Mormon theology, but are more inline with Smith’s earlier Trinitarian beliefs. Most, but not all of these were changed in later editions.
The theology of the BoM is clearly contemporary to the early 19th century and does not reflect that which would be expected of ancient sources.
These type of things.
It’s just not that old.
People who see and are fooled by a stage magic trick and afterward asked to describe how it was performed usually overlook the critical details that reveal how it was done. Cult leaders invariably have a very strong “reality distortion field” surrounding them, which (in less sci-fi terms) really means they are able to assert counterfactual things and convince their followers to suspend their critical faculties and play along. Additionally, cults (religions) change their history over time (“we have always been at war with Eurasia”) when required to paper over any parts of their history that become inconvenient (several posters above give examples).
There is no more reason to believe that Smith dictated his book in exactly the way the tenets of the religion he founded describe, than there is to believe there is any truth in the fairy stories the book contains. He probably did dictate some of it while staring into his hat - though even then note as above per TokyoBayer’s quoted description of the process he clearly revised as he went. As I understand it large parts are lifted from other sources, so it’s more likely he had those sources with him and read from them, and this has been conveniently wiped from the cult’s memory. And if he went back and revised or re-wrote parts I don’t believe for a second that those in his thrall would necessarily have seen that or reported that, if he didn’t want them to do so.
I have neglected to common directly on the stone. I, too find it fascinating and find that it makes sense for that stone to be considered to have magical properties. The descriptions I’ve read did not do it justice.
As is outlined in the wiki article linked in the OP, this particular stone was found when digging a well on a neighbor’s property. It actually belonged to the neighbor but Smith borrowed it (and wouldn’t give it back). I guess that the descendants of the neighbors don’t have a case to recover it.
There are some apparently fascinating books which connect Smith and the occult, they are on my someday list to read. Smith’s father, Joseph Smith Sr., was heavy into magic and treasure hunting, and more importantly for Mormons, Joseph’s ability to see with stone was accepted by the credulous farmer, Martin Harris, who mortgaged his farm to pay for the first printing of the BoM. The opinion of Harris is accepted by LDS scholars as well, as he tended to follow whoever was speaking at the moment.
Many of the early followers believed in using stones diving rods and other physical objects to discern the will of God. While us modern people find it strange, apparently they placed more stock in messages coming from rocks than ones not. We tend to want prophets who can speak directly to God, but his earlier followers liked this methodology.
As a former amateur magician, it used to surprise me on how other people could not see how the illusions were done. It was interesting to go to a David Copperfield and have to contain myself to not give away the spoilers. (Of course, there were many tricks which I had no idea how they were done.)
One of the advantages Joseph Smith had was he grew up surrounded by people who already believed in folk magic so he was able to able to learn his trade from an early age. He seems to have thoroughly convinced his family and their circle of friends of his abilities, including being able to find lost treasure with this seer stone.
There is a debate as to where to place Smith. Obviously Mormon adherents believe him to be a prophet, but for others the question was if he was an intentional fraud, someone who believed himself to have special powers or what.
Many former members believe he was a deliberate fraud who was out for personal gain. Others disagree and one of the more interesting hypotheses given is by Dan Vogel, an expert on early Mormon history, as that of a pious fraud.
Vogel points out a number of deliberate steps Smith took, such as his apparently commissioning of a tin version of the Gold Plates to show people (he would have it covered but others were allowed to feel the plates), which would place Smith as a fraud, but Vogel thinks that Smith genuinely believed he was doing this for a good purpose, to bring more people to God. (Naturally, believers do not accept the hypothesis that there was a set of tin plates, rather that others were allowed to feel the actual Gold Plates given by the angel.)
The question if Smith could have written it himself, if parts were copied from other sources or if someone else wrote it has fascinated many people and has proven to be controversial from the very beginning.
One major claim as been that a book by an obscure unpublished author Solomon Spalding was used as a template for the BoM. That was discredited when a copy of the manuscript was found. In a mind boggling exercise worthy of any half decent CT, a Stanford professor has stitched together a theory which involves another manuscript by the same author, the secret participation of another key leader who historically was not known to have known Smith before the Church was formed, and then a massive coverup by all of the participants.
Most historians do not accept these theories, and believe Smith was capable of writing the book himself. There are some parts of Isiah which were copied verbatim, but while phrases match other contemporary sources, it’s more likely that Smith drew on his previous readings of these books.
Initially, there was a good sized chunk created with using various non-professional scribes including Martin Harris and Smith’s wife Emma. This is where the head in the hat process was likely employed. Although how much was done for show isn’t known.
The bulk of the translation was done over a two month period with Oliver Cowdrey who served with Smith as one of the top leaders. He also helped rewrite early history so his credibility for details cannot really be accepted.
TokyoBayer, your experience and perspective have been very informative, thank you.
In short, he was talking through his hat.
Now I’m confused. Without bringing the validity of Mormonism into question here, I say let those who believe do so and those who don’t don’t do so, I’m trying to figure out what the story is.
Smith was in a dark room with gold plates. He puts the stone in the hat, puts his face into the hat, and sees the letters/words forming on the gold plates. He transcribes his scripture to a listening scribe. But only Smith, with his face in the hat, sees the letters. The scribe, presumably in the same room and able to gaze directly at the plates, does not. Is that an accurate description of how the story goes?
If this was a trick, how was it done? Did Smith simply recite the texts that he wanted recorded?