Joseph Smith as an Honest, Honorable, and Sincere Man

[Daniel Peterson]

So Joseph could not have been deceived?

By clever humans? A sort of prototype Industrial Light and Magic?

Conceivable, but very, very doubtful.

Accepting that Joseph really did think that he saw visions etc, there are four possibilities.

1. The visions were from God.

2. Joseph was mad.

3. The visions were from the devil.

4. The visions were part of an elaborate hoax by a human to trick Joseph.

Somebody or some organization, for motives that are not at all obvious, chose Joseph sometime prior to the spring of 1820, and then followed him around on the American frontier for the next quarter of a century, from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois, using relatively primitive technology to create elaborate faux theophanies and angelophanies and mock gold plates and lengthy spurious scriptural texts and so on and so forth?

Sorry. I'm not gullible enough to swallow that one.

I think you should elaborate on #3 because there is scriptural support for such a scenario.

That, I'll grant, is an additional theoretical possibility. If I encounter very many people who give it serious credence -- I'm relatively confident that you don't -- I'll devote some time to examining it. As things stand, though, I don't find it even remotely plausible, and not too many others seem to, either -- apart from Bill Schoebelen and Ed Decker and that ilk.

[Daniel Peterson]

Why must we assume that all the witnesses were lying. Would it really be that difficult in the1800s to fake plates.

Not really. James Jesse Strang did it, evidently.

But he faked a few very small brass plates. He didn't create sixty pounds worth of golden plates.

And his witnesses experienced nothing miraculous, no angelophany, no voice of God, whereas the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon did.

The fact that there are two sets of witnesses to the Book of Mormon, with very different experiences -- one quite visionary and miraculous, and the other quite mundane and down-to-earth -- is, I think, fundamentally important. It complicates considerably the task of the would-be reductionist critic.

.

[Jaybear]

Not really. James Jesse Strang did it, evidently.

But he faked a few very small brass plates. He didn't create sixty pounds worth of golden plates.

We don't really know much about the plates the witness purportedly saw.

The witnesses didn't weigh them, or take a sample for testing. They don't take the time to create a facsimile of what was engraved on the plate. We don't know for example, how many pages of the plates were even engraved.

As witnesses go, they were not very good at their job. They didn't even bother to write down in their own words a contemporaneous account of what they saw, heard, felt and smelt that day. They simple played the role they were asked to play.

And his witnesses experienced nothing miraculous, no angelophany, no voice of God, whereas the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon did.

Or so they claimed.

The fact that there are two sets of witnesses to the Book of Mormon, with very different experiences -- one quite visionary and miraculous, and the other quite mundane and down-to-earth -- is, I think, fundamentally important.

Yes, I agree. Those who claimed to have visionary experiences were more likely conspirators, or were delusional, while those who had the mundane experience were more likely simply duped.

It complicates considerably the task of the would-be reductionist critic.

Not really. The world of full of people, including former mormons, who don't find the witness statements the least bit persuasive. Seiously Dan, its true. You are just preaching to the choir.

Witnesses to claimed miraculous events are a dime a dozen. Its not coincidental that the subject of the miracles, whether it be golden plates, UFOs, big foot, fairies, or angels never stick around for objective measurable observations.

[maupayman]

Yes.

It simply renders the notion that he was using a book during the translation process yet a bit more unlikely:

a) The translation process seems to make such use difficult, if not impossible.

I don't understand your point here. Why could he not have used a bible, for select sections of the BoM?

b) The eyewitnesses expressly deny such use.

Nobody is saying that he always had a bible open, he only would have needed it for a few sections.

c) The manuscript shows no discernible traces of such use.

Again, if Joseph, or someone else, was reading the Bible verses to Cowdery, you wouldn't expect those traces to show up.

There is, in other words, no direct evidence that Joseph used a copy of the KJV Bible during the translation process, and there are strong reasons to believe that he did not.

Aren't the KJV errors, present in the BoM, direct evidence that Joseph used it?

But, obviously, people can still believe that he did, just as people are free to believe, without supporting evidence (and, in fact, against some quite significant evidence), that some or all of the Book of Mormon witnesses were participants in a con.

This brings to mind the oft repeated mantra of this site: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[maupayman]

From memory? Wow, now we're ascribing all manner of talents to the man.

I never ascribed those talents to him.

[maupayman]

Lets put it this way: if all were involved in a fraud, all would lie to safeguard that fraud. And so your question is mute. However, the problem comes up as such: if all were involved in a fraud, they must have hadsevere narcissitic, pyschopathic, sociopathic tendencies because they all stuck to their story come high or low tide. And that is amazing when one considers the suffering that was involved with the faith. Members were driven out of their homes, members were murdered and persecuted and these guys just went about their normal lives even when they left the church. And so the question is: could JS have been so lucky as to find 12 sociopaths in such a small population of people? Now mind you...it wasn't ask and hope for a yes answer. He just picked them straightaway. Now that is amazing.

Nice straw man whyme Nobody said everyone was involved in a fraud. I think every post I read of yours deals with the same point.

[Daniel Peterson]

I don't understand your point here. Why could he not have used a bible, for select sections of the BoM?

He could have. There's simply no evidence that he did; all of the relevant evidence is against your claim.

Aren't the KJV errors, present in the BoM, direct evidence that Joseph used it?

No. They're indirect evidence for that proposition, but they leave the conclusion underdetermined.

This brings to mind the oft repeated mantra of this site: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

An absolutely valid principle in both archaeology and historiography.

[maupayman]

He could have. There's simply no evidence that he did; all of the relevant evidence is against your claim.

No. They're indirect evidence for that proposition, but they leave the conclusion underdetermined.

Ok, so there is indirect evidence that he used a Bible. Where do you think these errors came from, if not read or copied from the Bible?

[Daniel Peterson]

We don't really know much about the plates the witness purportedly saw.

We have eyewitness testimony regarding their weight, their dimensions, even the rings that bound them together.

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=10&num=1&id=235

Those who claimed to have visionary experiences were more likely conspirators, or were delusional, while those who had the mundane experience were more likely simply duped.

LOL. Obviously, you're a man of strong faith.

Not really. The world of full of people, including former mormons, who don't find the witness statements the least bit persuasive. Seiously Dan, its true. You are just preaching to the choir.

No, I think I'm preaching to people who haven't acquainted themselves with the quality and the depth of the relevant evidence.

I'm betting that you haven't read Richard Lloyd Anderson's Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses, let alone his other very serious academic work on the topic, nor Lyndon Cook's collection of David Whitmer Interviews, nor much, if any, of the other research that has been published in this area.

[Daniel Peterson]

Ok, so there is indirect evidence that he used a Bible. Where do you think these errors came from, if not read or copied from the Bible?

Oh, I don't doubt for a moment that Book of Mormon Isaiah is dependent in at least some sense upon KJV Isaiah.

There's simply no evidence that Joseph had a Bible with him. The relevant evidence, such as it is, argues consistently the opposite.

All of which I find very, very interesting.

(I actually addressed your question in one of the articles to which I linked above. I realize that that may have irritated you, and that any suggestion that I might make about reading something would be received with displeasure, so I won't make it. But I've got to head out the door in a few minutes.)

[Jaybear]

He could have. There's simply no evidence that he did; all of the relevant evidence is against your claim.

No. They're indirect evidence for that proposition, but they leave the conclusion underdetermined.

I would like to hear your explanation for the difference between direct and indirect evidence.

Its strikes me that the discovery of KJV translation errors (made in the early 1600s) in the BOM, is in fact direct, compelling and conclusive evidence that the BOM is not what it purports to be, which is an original 19th century translation of ancient document found in America.

How is that not direct, and what do you consider "direct."

[Daniel Peterson]

I would like to hear your explanation for the difference between direct and indirect evidence.

It's not conceptually difficult.

One is a matter of direct perception, or of reliably reported direct perception. The other is a matter of inference, sound or unsound, from somebody's perception.

Its strikes me that the discovery of KJV translation errors (made in the early 1600s) in the BOM, is in fact direct, compelling and conclusive evidence that the BOM is not what it purports to be, which is an original 19th century translation of ancient document found in America.

I've already commented on your rather strange focus on "originality." Latter-day Saints have never emphasized "originality," ancient writers didn't emphasize "originality," and I see no particular reason why we have to meet a standard that you've set up for us but that plays no essential role in our claims.

Gotta go.

[ttribe]

I never ascribed those talents to him.

By default you did. How, in the world, did the man dictate said verses of scripture to his scribes then?

[ttribe]

Nice straw man whyme Nobody said everyone was involved in a fraud. I think every post I read of yours deals with the same point.

How many had to be involved in the fraud then and who?

[Kevin Christensen]

Speaking of the notion of fabricating fake plates to fool the yokels, around a decade ago my wife and I were asked to be ushers for the traveling Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit that FARMS had in Topeka. For a time, I was assigned to stand next to a mock-up of the golden plates. At that time I was powerfully struck by how difficult the job would be. I could tell at a glance that the prop plates were not gold, were not "beautifully engraved on both sides", and only the first few leaves on the top had obviously faux engravings, obviously done mechanically, poorly, not by hand, and not convincingly ancient,not even trying to imitate the characters on the Anthon transcript. The leaves were too thick to match Emma's description, too uniform, obviously made of cheap, lighter, harder material by modern machine methods. The first and obvious characteristic of the prop plates is that they were a modern fake. Something that would fool the witnesses, the three, the eight, and the informal witnesses, would have to be much much better. In responding to the witness claim that Joseph didn't have credit to "buy that much lead" for fakes that would weigh as much as sixty pounds, Vogel proposed that Joseph could have stolen raw materials, like tin. The actual business of materials, fabrication, and then hand engraving beautifully, all of that convincingly, would involve huge investments of time and money. At at time when the family was working frantically to pay a mortgage.

As far as King James language in the Book of Mormon and errors in Isaiah, in reading Professor Wright's essay on the topic in American Apocrypha, I noticed that his argument basically amounts to saying, "It's not the way I would have had it translated if I were God." But when has God ever worked that way? No examples were provided. As Nibley pointed out sixty years ago, the use of familiar language increases the utility for most readers, making it easier to recognize the references. The New Testament claims that one of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to bring all things to your remembrance. Such feats of memory are known, particularly in altered states of consciousness.

Kuhn says that paradigm debate always involves deciding which problems are more significant to have solved. It seems to me that obsession on the King James trivia to the exclusion of other issues involves an implicit inability to account for other aspects of the existence of the Book of Mormon. Personally, I think the other stuff, the geographic details, the First Temple Theology, the Arabian desert details, the brilliant insights, poetry, type scenes, unusual but accurate details patterns of human experience like Survivor witness, or NDE, or guerrilla warfare, complex military campaigns, elaborate ritual patterns, as in Benjamin's discourse, etc., is far more important, and hard for critics to both frankly acknowledge, and convincingly account for. It's easy to treat it like a bubble to burst with a pin prick, but very hard to provide a comprehensive and convincing explanation. Easy to cherry pick something like the translation errors. Hard though, to demonstrate that God would never work that way, when we have no evidence that God has done things any other way, as Professor Peterson's citation of the use of the Septuagint errors in the New Testament demonstrates.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[Hamba Tuhan]

As Nibley pointed out sixty years ago, the use of familiar language increases the utility for most readers, making it easier to recognize the references.

I can personally vouch for this. In one of the languages which I read, the current translation of the Book of Mormon was produced by a paid translator who was not a member of the Church and, most probably, not even a Christian. His translations of the Isaiah (and Malachi) passages in this edition of the Book of Mormon are his own and do not follow the corresponding passages in the Bible translation prepared by the national Bible institute and used by all Christians. As a result, they simply don't 'resonate' the way the corresponding passages in English (and other languages do)--a deficiency which I hope very much will be remedied when the long-awaited translation by Church translators is complete.

[why me]

Why must we assume that all the witnesses were lying. Would it really be that difficult in the1800s to fake plates. Especially considering that the witnesses already believed the plates existed that smith was a prophet of god and that they were chosen because of their righteousness. Throw in a shill, and you have witnesses for life.

Let's assume that the plates were a crude forgery, what portion of the statement where the plates are described is false?

You really aren't the least bit suspicious that the plates "were taken back to heaven". It doesn't trouble you that the other artifacts were also gone. You don't wonder why smith didn't include someone skeptical of his claim or an expert. Your faith is to be commended.

My faith is not that strong. I am not a hypocrite and I have been rather truthful about my church status. However, I also remember what happend when I prayed about the book of mormon. The yes answer was very powerful and unforgetable. And when I was baptised, I also remember the feeling of peace and wonderment that was inside me. If I did not experience these things, my faith would not be there at all. However, when dealing with the book of mormon, we need to marvel at the early beginnings with all these people involved.

It is not a question of faking plates but of seeing an angel with the plates and being administered by heavenly beings. This is what they signed up to. I also don't think that these guys were stupid and could be easily fooled.

And for the life for me, I just don't see why Joseph needed to create such a foundation. Personally, as a fraud, it was a dismal failure. And if sidney were involved he would have been more successful without the book of mormon. Sidney and Joseph did not need a book of mormon to create a new religion. Sidney already was a successful preacher and Joseph certainly had a personality that was likeable. And so why create such a foundational fraud? And continue in it with all the persecution and death?

They would have been more successful creating a new protestant religion. And happier.

[maupayman]

Oh, I don't doubt for a moment that Book of Mormon Isaiah is dependent in at least some sense upon KJV Isaiah.

There's simply no evidence that Joseph had a Bible with him. The relevant evidence, such as it is, argues consistently the opposite.

All of which I find very, very interesting.

(I actually addressed your question in one of the articles to which I linked above. I realize that that may have irritated you, and that any suggestion that I might make about reading something would be received with displeasure, so I won't make it. But I've got to head out the door in a few minutes.)

, I gotta hand it to you Daniel, you can be quite funny in your posts. I had a good laugh about the stuff in brackets there. Though, in my defence, posting a quote that answers his question is a little better than telling him to go read a book about it. So, regarding your post to Jaybear:

But this principle has been rejected by all but the most hard-core fundamentalist Christians with regard to the Bible. Why should anyone accept it with regard to the Book of Mormon?

Well, Joseph did claim that it was the most correct book on earth...just sayin.

Their reading of chuppah is, it must be admitted, correct. It has the support of the majority of modern translations. But does the Book of Mormon's "defence" represent so serious a distortion of Isaiah's meaning, so serious an error, as to call into question its own antiquity? I think not. The ancient Latin translation of the Bible known as the Vulgate seems to have interpreted Isaiah 4:5 in the same way as did the King James translators, rendering the last phrase of the verse as Super omnem enim gloriam protectio. The ancient Greek Septuagint, on the other hand, has pase te doxe skepasthesetai, in which the final verb is clearly related to the nouns skepas and skepe, both of which mean "covering" or "shelter." The Jewish Publication Society's translation, Tanakh, says that the "canopy . . . shall serve as a pavilion for shade from heat by day and as a shelter for protection against drenching rain." The New Jerusalem Bible says that it will give "refuge and shelter from the storm and the rain," using much the same language as does the New English Bible. The Evangelical Protestant New International Version says that the "canopy . . . will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain." Is "defence" really so very out of place in such a context?

Ok, I follow you to this point. Not a significant difference.

* In 2 Nephi 15:25, say Ankerberg and Weldon, the Book of Mormon follows KJV Isaiah 5:25 into error when it reads the Hebrew suchah as "torn," rather than as "refuse" (p. 322). The full text of Isaiah 5:25 reads as follows in the King James Version:

Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble, and their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

This is identical to 2 Nephi 15:25, as anti-Mormons like to point out. What of it? Let me clearly say, first, what no thinking Latter-day Saint has ever dreamed of denying: There is some sort of close relationship between the King James translation of Isaiah and the version that appears in the English translation of the Book of Mormon. The precise nature of this relationship is not altogether clear, despite what critics of Joseph Smith are wont to allege.

Then what do you think that relationship is?

(

Eyewitnesses to the translation process, for example, insist that Joseph had no books or written materials with him when translating, other than the plates themselves.)

This seems like a strange argument. There were not always people there with Joseph and Oliver, so, if they used a Bible for small portions and made sure others weren't around at the time, this lack of eyewitness info on the Bible would not be surprising.

Secondly, it is true that "refuse" is a better translation of suchah than is "torn." However, one must ask whether the difference is really so great as to justify total rejection of the Book of Mormon. I have already quoted KJV Isaiah 5:25. Now, let us compare the rendering of that verse in the New International Version of the Bible, so popular among conservative modern Protestants:

Therefore the Lord's anger burns against his people; his hand is raised and he strikes them down. The mountains shake, and the dead bodies are like refuse in the streets. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.

Obviously, the meaning and significance of the verse are essentially unaffected by taking suchah as "refuse" rather than as "torn." The point is still the same. We can only speculate as to why the Lord inspired Joseph Smith to render these passages in the idiom of the King James Version. Perhaps early nineteenth-century Bible believers would have been offended by seeing Isaiah in "unbiblical language." Perhaps, for the same reason, there would have been more loss than gain in making alterations, even improvements, to unimportant elements of the text. (The English translation of the Book of Mormon is unafraid to make changes in quoted biblical texts, as the work of such scholars as John Tvedtnes and John Welch, characteristically unnoticed by Ankerberg and Weldon, makes abundantly clear.)101

This is where you lose me, Joseph openly stated that the Bible had many errors and that the BoM was a more correct book. He also went through the Bible and translated parts of it, including Isaiah! Why would he shy away from these improvements in the BoM, so as to not offend christians that might read it??. Furthermore, much of the Isaiah stuff strays from the KJV.

Is the fact that the translation of the Book of Mormon follows the King James Version any more remarkable than the fact that the New Testament almost invariably follows the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament, even when the Septuagint disagrees with the Masoretic text? If we are to denounce the Book of Mormon as an uninspired fraud because it generally (but not slavishly) follows the standard translation of its day, must we not also jettison the New Testament?

These books were translated in very different ways. Your argument makes my head hurt, but to each their own I guess. These minor errors you noted here are interesting, but for me, quotes like "go with him twain" from 3 Nephi are more problematic. Anyways, I thank you for posting your explanation, but it just seems much more simple that Joseph was likely just reading certain passages out of a Bible to Oliver Cowdery. Your obsession with the absence of evidence in this regard is not evidence of absence.

[maupayman]

By default you did. How, in the world, did the man dictate said verses of scripture to his scribes then?

By reading them.

[maupayman]

How many had to be involved in the fraud then and who?

I think Rigdon, Smith, and Cowdery were likely in on it. If Criddle's wordprint has any merit, Pratt may have been in on it too.

[maupayman]

As far as King James language in the Book of Mormon and errors in Isaiah, in reading Professor Wright's essay on the topic in American Apocrypha, I noticed that his argument basically amounts to saying, "It's not the way I would have had it translated if I were God." But when has God ever worked that way? No examples were provided. As Nibley pointed out sixty years ago, the use of familiar language increases the utility for most readers, making it easier to recognize the references. The New Testament claims that one of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to bring all things to your remembrance. Such feats of memory are known, particularly in altered states of consciousness.

Kuhn says that paradigm debate always involves deciding which problems are more significant to have solved. It seems to me that obsession on the King James trivia to the exclusion of other issues involves an implicit inability to account for other aspects of the existence of the Book of Mormon. Personally, I think the other stuff, the geographic details, the First Temple Theology, the Arabian desert details, the brilliant insights, poetry, type scenes, unusual but accurate details patterns of human experience like Survivor witness, or NDE, or guerrilla warfare, complex military campaigns, elaborate ritual patterns, as in Benjamin's discourse, etc., is far more important, and hard for critics to both frankly acknowledge, and convincingly account for. It's easy to treat it like a bubble to burst with a pin prick, but very hard to provide a comprehensive and convincing explanation. Easy to cherry pick something like the translation errors. Hard though, to demonstrate that God would never work that way, when we have no evidence that God has done things any other way, as Professor Peterson's citation of the use of the Septuagint errors in the New Testament demonstrates.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

Ok, so for clarification, do you guys think the errors were included on the gold plates, or were simply inspired by God during the translation?

[maupayman]

Speaking of the notion of fabricating fake plates to fool the yokels, around a decade ago my wife and I were asked to be ushers for the traveling Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit that FARMS had in Topeka. For a time, I was assigned to stand next to a mock-up of the golden plates. At that time I was powerfully struck by how difficult the job would be. I could tell at a glance that the prop plates were not gold, were not "beautifully engraved on both sides", and only the first few leaves on the top had obviously faux engravings, obviously done mechanically, poorly, not by hand, and not convincingly ancient,not even trying to imitate the characters on the Anthon transcript. The leaves were too thick to match Emma's description, too uniform, obviously made of cheap, lighter, harder material by modern machine methods. The first and obvious characteristic of the prop plates is that they were a modern fake. Something that would fool the witnesses, the three, the eight, and the informal witnesses, would have to be much much better. In responding to the witness claim that Joseph didn't have credit to "buy that much lead" for fakes that would weigh as much as sixty pounds, Vogel proposed that Joseph could have stolen raw materials, like tin. The actual business of materials, fabrication, and then hand engraving beautifully, all of that convincingly, would involve huge investments of time and money. At at time when the family was working frantically to pay a mortgage.

I love that you seem to know how critically astute the witnesses would have been regarding gold plates. Most of them were eager to be involved in the formation of the church. I doubt they were looking with a critical eye on the plates. The problem of Smith being poor would be removed by Rigdon's involvement. I'm sure he could have come up with the materials and means to pull off something similar to Strang.

[Daniel Peterson]

If Criddle's wordprint has any merit, Pratt may have been in on it too.

That's a perfectly enormous if.

Your obsession with the absence of evidence in this regard is not evidence of absence.

It's amusing that you imagine that my pointing out the utter lack of evidence to support your position on this matter, along with the evidence that weighs against your position, represents an "obsession" on my part.

[maupayman]

That's a perfectly enormous if.

It's amusing that you imagine that my pointing out the utter lack of evidence to support your position on this matter, along with the evidence that weighs against your position, represents an "obsession" on my part.

You already admitted there is indirect evidence to support my position. Again, do you think the translational errors were written on the plates or were they inspired during the dictation to make the verses sound more familiar?

[why me]

I think Rigdon, Smith, and Cowdery were likely in on it. If Criddle's wordprint has any merit, Pratt may have been in on it too.

What we think is what we think. However, I see no reason why sidney needed to spend hours and hours and days and days and weeks and weeks writing a new book to create a new religion. What would be his purpose? What was the goal? The only thing sidney had to do was to break away from the people he was involved with and their religion and form a new protestant faith. It would have been that simple. And less cumbersome and he would have been a success. Instead what we have is sidney writing a book, finding Joseph, who in turn finds Oliver who finds parley who finds all the witnesses and signs them all up for a huge fraud. Who in their right mind would believe in success of such an endeavor through the involvement of all these people?

And then once the foundation is in place and the fraud begins, instead of the joy of a new faith, we have blood, wars, destruction and misery. And yet, all continue on minus a few witnesses who disagree with joseph and polygamy but nonetheless keep their mouths shut about the fraud. Not to mention sidney who was not a happy camper after his beating by mobs and left for dead. And having his daughter nancy asked by Joseph to be his plural life. But he continues on with his unsuccessful fraud.

Quite amazing to be sure.

However, without the book of mormon...no controversy, sidney is the main man in the new protestant faith, Joseph Smith is a main speaker and all live a happy and peaceful life dying in comfort. And who knows such a faith could still be around today, settled somewhere in upstate new york.