the narrator

I have not looked into them, nor have the skills to easily recognize them like Nick Frederick does. However, we have a whole slew of revelations from Joseph that do that same and which, according to Grant Underwood and other JSPP editors, Joseph definitely had a role in the language. This is all really besides the point, though. The seamless integration of biblical passages in Joseph's letters, revelations, and the Bible are all similar and mirror the same in the revivals sermons that Joseph was attending and apparently paying close attention to. Furthermore, the BofM directly quotes published sermons from Joseph's time. That is indisputable. That does not preclude it from being a translation, but it does demand that the English language translation originate in the 19th century. And a simple application of Occam's Razor points to Joseph being the one quoting KJV passages in each.

And besides books, Joseph had access to newspapers that republished stories from across the country and were a wealth of information.

It's simple. Either Lucy was wrong or she was lying. Besides Lucy also reporting an even younger Joseph saying: "But I will take my Bible and go out into the woods and learn more in two hours than you could if you were to go to meeting two years," it is VERY clear that by the time he was speaking the Book of Mormon he could seamlessly interweave passages from all over the Bible into he sermons and writings. Now, it could be the case that Lucy was only saying that Joseph had never read the Bible from beginning to end, and that may very well be true, though unlikely. It is far more likely that she, like Emma, was concerned with defending Joseph's legacy and deliberately overplayed the idea of Joseph being the village idiot.

As far as I'm aware it was all in her head. I did record a couple of her story-tellings and had them auto transcribed, but I don't think I have them anymore. I don't know how much she could even recall from that now, but it was quite impressive when she was still playing it with her friends.

I did this a few times with her, and each time her voice would change into a story-telling mode with a different cadence and tone until she was finished.

Between her 4th and 7th grades, my (even more than me) autistic daughter and her little group of neurodiverse friends would spend every lunch recess playing a story-telling game they called "Realm." It basically involved telling stories within a fantastical land, Realm. My daughter had created an entire culture in Realm, with its own religion, myths, histories, clothing, and several dozens of names. She's incredibly gifted and an endless force of creativity. (Her room is FILLED with drawings, puppets, costumes, and other sorts of crafted arts.) One day as we were driving together I asked her to imagine that she found an ancient history of Realm in our backyard written by an ancient Realm historian and to read it to me. She began, "The History of Realm, by So-And-So, and then without pausing proceeded to immediately just tell an improved 20 minute "reading" until we reached our destination. Like most childhood paracosms though, hers suddenly faded when she became a teen. Thankfully, people like Tolkein, CS Lewis, and James Cameron kept their paracosms going into adulthood to bring us the various stories they tell within theirs.

Other: Joseph's paracosm

Aren't these subtitles in a YA fantasy series?

Please explain how this responded to anything I asked.

What do you mean? Do you have privileged information on how it was put together to add as an amici brief to a lawsuit opposing SSM in Hawaii?

I just recently rediscovered Mormon twitter after actively avoiding it for several years. It's weird. Not sure if they a version of the DezNats or something else. But it's not overrun by right wing conservatives really adamant that women should be trad wives. Along side that are influencer wannabes endless putting out the worst apologetic arguments with the confidence of the current POTUS.

There is so much proof and common sense as there is. Sorry, but they are hopeless. Are they flat earther's too? They seem to go hand-in-hand now.

That's why I said "majority of"

I thought it was pretty obvious that I was referring to the top 15 leadership in the FP and Q12, but if I wasn't I hope that this reply makes that clear now.

I guess by whether or not they actual consider changing a policy and how long it takes them to consider it. For example, it seems pretty clear that the racist priesthood and temple ban/policy/doctrine would have been lifted much earlier if a majority of leaders didn't assume it was rooted in revelation.

Yes, mostly, but this fixes it: Rather, there’s a very human tendency among members and leaders to treat existing policies that way...

Maybe I'm just ignorant of when it hasn't, but in my experience virtually every current policy is viewed and treated as rooted in revelation--especially those that have gone through years or decades of members asking for change. However, once the policy changes it suddenly retroactively becomes simply a tradition.

In hindsight that always seems to be the interpretation, but before the change the policies are almost always determined to be rooted in revelation and doctrine.

Didn't know he was a proto-Nibley

As an 18 yr old pre-missionary in '98, I was a naive apologist on the internet (ZLMB being one place) and arguing that Ethan Smith was actually evidence for the historicity of the BofM.

Focusing on supposed plagiarism and details completely misses the biggest point--which is that even if Joseph himself never touched one of Ethan Smith's books, what they show is that the broader themes of the BofM concerning the origins of Native Americans were widely held and speculated on at the time. Ethan Smith wasn't coming up with these things himself.

So for all the talk of moral agency, we're just supposed to instead be blind lemmings and pass on moral responsibility to others?

Seems there was inspiration in early revelations to Joseph Smith requiring revelations and policies by top leadership to be adjudicated by the general membership rather than giving them unilateral authority. Perhaps much wrong could have been prevented over the past nearly two decades.

Over the past few years, several friends I have in BYU faculty have told me that fears of being spied on, censored, and the pressure to portray a particular type of conservative orthodoxy is the worst that it has been in decades, particularly in Religious Education.

Yeah, that was something I had never heard about and found delightful. There are a few pages dedicated to Edwin and Norma Morrell, and he is named a dozen other places in different chapters.