The LDS Church this week published Joseph the Seer, which explains how Joseph Smith used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon and includes the first pictures ever of the stone itself. The article, by Assistant Church Historian Richard Turley, is reasonably accurate but omits important context in places. I’d like to fill in some of those gaps. I will quote Turley extensively, so I recommend reading his article in its entirety first.

Scrying for treasure

The young Joseph Smith accepted such familiar folk ways of his day, including the idea of using seer stones to view lost or hidden objects.

This is a bit of slight of hand, designed to conflate two ideas and dismiss them both with implied presentism: first, that today modern Americans don’t believe in seer stones, but also that we don’t believe in them because seer stones don’t actually have supernatural powers. People in the 19th century who believed in scrying with stones were no more justified in doing so than people who believe that in the 21st. This audience consisted primarily of the uneducated; “pretending to have skill in physiognomy, palmistry, or like crafty science, or pretending to tell fortunes, or to discover lost goods” were punishable crimes where Joseph lived.

Turley also glosses over how Joseph not only “accepted the idea” of scrying for “lost or hidden” objects, he sold his services with his stone to locate hidden treasure. Of course, Turley isn’t the first Mormon historian to avoid this somewhat less than reputable part of Joseph’s scrying. Joseph himself described the episode that he stood trial for as follows:

In the month of October, 1825, I hired with an old gentleman by the name of Josiah Stoal... After I went to live with him, he took me, with the rest of his hands, to dig for the silver mine, at which I continued to work for nearly a month, without success in our undertaking, and finally I prevailed with the old gentleman to cease digging after it. Hence arose the very prevalent story of my having been a money-digger.

This may not quite be a lie, but it is certainly disingenuous. By omitting that it was Joseph scrying in his stone who directed the party, it leads readers to incorrectly conclude that Joseph was an ordinary laborer and that the money-digging reputation is therefore undeserved. It also gives the false impression that this kind of activity was an anomaly for him, when in fact it was Joseph’s well-established reputation as a scryer that led Stowell to engage him in the first place.

It’s worth noting that while Martin Harris was convinced that Joseph used his stone successfully to find a pin he dropped, Joseph was unsuccessful in finding any of the treasure he claimed to see in it. Nor was he able to use it to find the missing 116 pages of the Book of Mormon.

One can only imagine the chagrin of his father-in-law Isaac Hale, by all accounts a sincere man, to whom Joseph promised to give up glass-looking and become a respectable farmer.

Other magical practices

Turley:

In later years, as Joseph told his remarkable story, he emphasized his visions and other spiritual experiences. Some of his former associates focused on his early use of seer stones in an effort to destroy his reputation in a world that increasingly rejected such practices.

Joseph’s former associates weren’t trying to destroy his reputation because they were jealous and vindictive. In fact, they weren’t trying to destroy his reputation at all. They were true believers in the magical world of seer stones and hidden treasure, and they thought Joseph had finally found treasure and was trying to keep it all for himself.

One of these associates, Willard Chase, claimed that Joseph’s stone, the same one in the photo above, rightfully belonged to him since Joseph found it while employed to dig a well on his property:

In the year 1822, I was engaged in digging a well. I employed Alvin and Joseph Smith …. We discovered a singularly appearing stone …. Joseph put it into his hat, and then his face into the top of his hat. After obtaining the stone, he began to publish abroad what wonders he could discover by looking in it …. I ordered the stone to be returned to me again. He had it in his possession about two years.

Some time in 1825, Hiram came to me, and wished to borrow the same stone …. I told him if he would pledge me his word and honor, that I should have it when called for, he might take it.

Willard also gives us a description of how Joseph got the golden plates from Moroni:

In the month of June, 1827, Joseph Smith, Sen., related to me the following story: “That some years ago, a spirit had appeared to Joseph his son, in a vision, and informed him that in a certain place there was a record on plates of gold, and that he was the person that must obtain them, and this he must do in the following manner: On the 22d of September, he must repair to the place where was deposited this manuscript, dressed in black clothes, and riding a black horse with a switch tail, and demand the book in a certain name, and after obtaining it, he must go directly away, and neither lay it down nor look behind him.

Corroborated by several other accounts, Joseph’s earliest descriptions of acquiring the golden plates from Moroni were strongly influenced by hermetic magic.

The Nephite interpreters

Turley:

Joseph related that when he finally obtained the plates from Moroni in 1827, he also received two stones to be used in translating them… The text of the Book of Mormon calls these stones “interpreters” and explains that they “were prepared from the beginning, and were handed down from generation to generation, for the purpose of interpreting languages,” being “kept and preserved by the hand of the Lord” … By the time Joseph Smith finished dictating his translation of the Book of Mormon to scribes in mid-1829, the meaning of seer had been further clarified in the text.

How was it clarified? Turley leaves out that part. Here it is:

Now Ammon said unto [King Limhi]: I can assuredly tell thee, O king, of a man that can translate the records; for he has wherewith that he can look, and translate all records that are of ancient date; and it is a gift from God. And the things are called interpreters, and no man can look in them except he be commanded, lest he should look for that he ought not and he should perish. And whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer.

Today, we sustain the members of the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve Apostles as “prophets, seers, and revelators,” but to my knowledge there is no record of any revelation received through a stone since Joseph himself, although at first it was left open as possible, even likely. In fact, there is no canonical revelation at all in almost a hundred years. Thinking about that for too long might lead to some uncomfortable conclusions.

Historical evidence shows that in addition to the two seer stones known as “interpreters,” Joseph Smith used at least one other seer stone in translating the Book of Mormon, often placing it into a hat in order to block out light.

Partly correct. More accurately, the Nephite interpreters/Urim and Thummim were only used for the lost 116 pages. After those pages were lost, the angel Moroni confiscated both plates and interpreters. Eventually, he returned the former, but not the latter; thus, the entirety of the Book of Mormon we have today was translated by seer stone alone.

The bulk of this translation took place at David Whitmer’s house. Here is his explanation of the process :

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.

The evidence that the interpreters could have been used instead comes from Lucy Mack Smith. She wrote, quoting Joseph,

On the twenty-second of September [1828], I had the joy and satisfaction of again receiving the Urim and Thummim, with which I have again commenced translating.

But the Urim and Thummim was a later interpolation by her editors, which included apostle Orson Pratt. The original manuscript read:

on the 22 of September I had the joy and satisfaction of again receiving the record into my possession and I have commenced translating [emphasis added]

Emma’s account agrees with Lucy’s original version:

Now the first that my husband translated, was translated by 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.

From these, and from Whitmer’s description of the translation process (corroborated by other witnesses like Joseph’s brother in law Michael Morse), scholars today conclude that the Book of Mormon we have today was translated entirely by seer stone. Some doubt that the Nephite interpreters existed at all.

One more thing: we are so conditioned by the correlated narrative, that most readers probably won’t have noticed an additional implication of this translation process: the plates themselves were unnecessary, even an afterthought. Whitmer again:

The plates were not before Joseph while he translated, but seem to have been removed by the custodian angel.

Joseph’s father in law Isaac Hale agreed:

The manner in which he pretended to read and interpret, was the same as when he looked for the money-diggers, with a stone in his hat, and his hat over his face, while the Book of Plates were at the same time hid in the woods.

Hale is blunt, but if Joseph were receiving the translation through his seer stone, there was no reason for the plates to be in the same room or even in the building. (Paul Malan has a humorous take on Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni discussing this.)

Depictions of the translation

Turley:

Over the years, artists have sought to portray the Book of Mormon translation, showing the participants in many settings and poses with different material objects. Each artistic interpretation is based upon its artist’s own views, research, and imagination, sometimes aided by input and direction from others.

That is, the Church accepts no responsibility for how correlated material misrepresented the translation process for years. I don’t know how to characterize this as anything but misleading. Yes, no doubt independent artists were responsible for some of the traditional depictions of translation. But many, even most, were commissioned by the Church from illustrators over whom it exercised full creative control, just as public affairs director Michael Otteson recently explained how Church leaders have direct and tight control over his department’s statements.

Several examples illustrate this creative control.

This ubiquitous painting of the second coming in Church meetinghouses originally included winged angels. The Church hired a second artist to paint the wings out.

Even Carl Bloch’s classic painting of the resurrection was edited by the Church to remove wings — and to add sleeves to the dresses of the female angels.

Turley would have us believe that the Church could find artists to remove wings or add sleeves, but was unable to find anyone who would accept a commission to depict the translation process in a manner consistent with the historical record.

Brave new world

I’m delighted that the Church is finally opening up about its past with the seer stone article and the Joseph Smith Papers project in general.

But I can’t shake the feeling that it would have been a lot more authentic if they had done this twenty years ago, instead of fighting disclosure tooth and nail until the Internet took that choice away from them. Kind of like the sinner who repents, but only after he’s caught: it’s a lot less genuine than if he had confessed without external pressure.