Translation Of The Book Of Mormon

[omni]

Facts don't speak for themselves, but must be interpreted. For example, meet a fact:

"Some of the accounts describing the translation say that Joseph wasn't looking at the plates through a Urim and Thummim, but that he put his face in a hat and looked at a seer stone."

Interpretation 1: "Ahhhgh! I've been LIED to. Conspiracy and deception on a massive scale! How can I get my tithing back? Maybe I can also sue for the back pains that must be due to setting up chairs or helping with moves?"

Interpretation 2: "Oh... that's interesting. I did not know that. Either my teachers didn't know or perhaps I wasn't paying attention. I wonder where I can go to find out more?"

Interpretation 3: "Yeah. I've known about that for longer than I can remember. Old news. I have the Dialogue on The Gift of Seeing, and several other books and articles that talked about it, including Ricks's FARMS essay, and Welch's Opening the Heavens with all the eye-witness accounts gathered, and Gardner's new book. At the moment I'm reading Sorenson's new book, Mormon's Codex. Pretty cool stuff. Why is it that when the critics grouse and complain about what no-one told them before, it's never the really interesting stuff that suggests that the Book of Mormon contains all sorts of eye-witness details? Did you notice that the author of the Letter to a CES Director obviously hadn't bothered to google Olmec Iron? Didn't refer to Nibley's Abraham in Egypt or Ostler's essay linking Abraham and Osirus? Pretty sad stuff, if you're halfway informed."

Expectations matter. Context matters. Perspective matters. Facts do not speak for themselves, but are interpreted against backgrounds of expectation, and within conceptual frameworks, and contextualized against the information a person has squirreled away in their own memories.

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

Kevin,

In your opinion, why do you believe the illustrations shown in official church publications never show the hat and seer stone?

[Kevin Christensen]

Kevin,

In your opinion, why do you believe the illustrations shown in official church publications never show the hat and seer stone?

I think it has to do with tinfoil hats, the Bermuda triangle, Area 51, the Illuminati High Council, the presence of alien parasites invading the minds of the curriculum committee, pod people replacing Church artists, shadow dimensions, the influence of the Lovecraftian Old Ones plotting their re-emergence, a lot of cackling by those whose gaudy palaces are built of gems and precious metals bought with tithing conned from dupes, and more than that, the kind of thing that Thomas Kuhn describes in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that after a paradigm shift, education until graduate school for the society functioning under a paradigm is based on textbooks written in light of a current paradigm, rather than original documents. And most of the people involved in CES or curriculum are just ordinary, devoted saints, generally conservative in their approach (SJ temperament), who generally trust the traditions they were taught from old textbooks and manuals. Oddly though, with things like the Joseph Smith Papers project, along with the general thrust of LDS scholarship since Brodie has been towards going to the source.

Personally, I think the fixation on "official" church art makes about as much sense as complaints about how come Medieval and Renaissance Christian art illustrating the Old and New Testaments is overwhelmingly anachronistic in presentation of dress and manners. It amounts to making a black hole out of an ant hill and then diving in head first, and complaining of the subsequent headache.

To me, the church contains all kinds, and gathers all kinds. It is a bunch of people, some of whom are more curious, and better informed than others, and that has little to do with their innate goodness, and much to do with temperament, age, opportunity, and socialization. To me the church is all of the membership, and it has been church members who have provided me with all of the information I have been willing to seek out. I've been charged to seek out of the best books wisdom, not to sit like a baby bird, waiting to be "officially" fed. The scriptures nowhere describe a contractual obligation that the CES and Sunday school be comprised of omniscience sages who have been empowered to cram perfect and complete truth into my passive brain, so that I never have to suffer the shame and betrayal of having to re-think or relearn anything as crucial to my spiritual foundation as the location and contents of Joseph Smith's hat. I happen to think the product of the translation is a bit more important than the exact method.

Amazingly, I find that the people who complain most bitterly about the hat and the deficiencies of "official" church are not the ones who produce the most interesting scholarship on LDS history, the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, the nature of God, the meaning of the atonement, or the relevance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the modern world. In the search for the best books and wisdom, I find that I have to look elsewhere. And it's not that difficult to find good information. It is as easy as complaining and accusing, and far more productive of useful knowledge. I could search for examples of church art, or read Brant's recent book on the translation, or John Welch's collection of source documents, Opening the Heavens, and come away with far more useful information.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[Bob Crockett]

Interpretation 3: "Yeah. I've known about that for longer than I can remember. Old news. I have the Dialogue on The Gift of Seeing, and several other books and articles that talked about it, including Ricks's FARMS essay, and Welch's Opening the Heavens with all the eye-witness accounts gathered, and Gardner's new book. At the moment I'm reading Sorenson's new book, Mormon's Codex. Pretty cool stuff. Why is it that when the critics grouse and complain about what no-one told them before, it's never the really interesting stuff that suggests that the Book of Mormon contains all sorts of eye-witness details? Did you notice that the author of the Letter to a CES Director obviously hadn't bothered to google Olmec Iron? Didn't refer to Nibley's Abraham in Egypt or Ostler's essay linking Abraham and Osirus? Pretty sad stuff, if you're halfway informed."

 

I certainly learned about it from my seminary teacher in the late 1960s.  

 

I personally don't put much stock in the head in the hat theory because it is so improbable to dictate an entire book that way, and Joseph Smith didn't mention it.  I'm not saying it didn't happen; I'm just suggesting that perhaps that occurred when Joseph Smith didn't want observers seeing the process.

[Tacenda]

I certainly learned about it from my seminary teacher in the late 1960s.  

 

I personally don't put much stock in the head in the hat theory because it is so improbable to dictate an entire book that way, and Joseph Smith didn't mention it.  I'm not saying it didn't happen; I'm just suggesting that perhaps that occurred when Joseph Smith didn't want observers seeing the process.

This was before correlation and Pres. Packer's "truth is not always useful" talk to the CES teachers, possibly.    

[cinepro]

Are you familiar with the concept "artistic license"?  For example, the common artistic rendition showing both the shepherds and the three Magi visiting the baby Jesus in the stable.

 

Just a thought.

 

"Artistic license" is a descriptive term, not an excuse or justification.  

[Anijen]

Is it just me or does that one guy [Kevin Christensen] just nails it every time?

[Paddy]

I have never been taught it. I have never taught it in a class.

I taught it in my gospel doctrine class and was attacked and accused of undermining the class members faith by one particular member. I think we have a little way to go before some members are comfortable with the suggestion that the physical plates had a minimal role in the translation process.

The point I was making was the fact that they were transmitted by the power of god. Some seem more comfortable in a physical traation and not a spiritual one.

[cdowis]

"Artistic license" is a descriptive term, not an excuse or justification.  

 

I completely fail to get your point.  "Artistic license" is not an excuse, not a justification, but a teaching aid, as in the magi and the shepherds in the same picture.  In this case, it is a group of separate events bound into one picture to teach a simple lesson in church history and scriptures, not to get a PhD in history.

 

I agree that such a picture would be inappropriate in an advanced church history class.

 

But I guess you and I disagree on many things.

[cdowis]

I personally see the stone in the hat as a confirmation that the BOM was translated in a miraculous manner.  For our anti friends, it is a double edged sword, when you ask them how he was able to write the BOM text.  He obviously was not reading from a manuscript, and anyone with a nodding acquaintance with the BOM knows that this is not some streaming dictation.

 

With his face in the hat, exactly how did he do it?

[Kevin Christensen]

Is it just me or does that one guy [Kevin Christensen] just nails it every time?

Thanks. Perhaps it comes from being a baby-boomer, and listening to Simon and Garfunkel singing "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail..." and Pete Seeger and/or Peter, Paul and Mary singing, "If I Had a Hammer, I'd hammer in the morning..."

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA