There Was No "Stone in Joseph's Hat Translation"

[The Nehor]

44 minutes ago, Nofear said:

Do you even read anything people post or link or do you just spout off without a thought to anything aside from your preconceptions?

Ouch, must have touched a nerve there.

[Nofear]

19 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Ouch, must have touched a nerve there.

No. Merely confuzzled by statements contradicted by posts with even the most cursory of reading.

Edited January 14, 2025 by Nofear

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 1/13/2025 at 7:09 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

There was no Urim & Thummim in the mix.  The Urim & Thummim are a purely biblical instrument, never used by Nephites or Joseph Smith.  For Joseph there was only the seerstone and the Nephite Interpreters.

I think that this is a problematic oversimplification.

We have the seer stone, and we have the Nephite Interpreters. Both of these things are attested to very early. But then there is a shift - and there are easy to identify steps in that shift:

1: Some time in 1830 or perhaps a little earlier, William W. Phelps acquires a copy of Jahn's Biblical Archaeology (translated by Thomas Upham). The first edition was published at Andover in 1823, and the second edition was published in 1827. Phelps probably had the second edition (there isn't a lot of difference between the two editions, and Phelps tends to paraphrase rather than quote the book).

2: After reading it, Phelps begins writing some articles dealing with its contents beginning in January of 1831. These articles are incredibly influential among the early members of the church - and his ideas actually become the basis for some changes made to the first edition of the D&C published in 1835 (changes from the Book of Commandments published in 1833). He also provides the most detailed early description of the Gold Plates in January of 1831 in connection with a discussion about this book. Two examples of the changes in the D&C follow (one is of interest because it deals with this subject). In January 1831, Phelps is the first LDS to discuss the concept of sticks as records (interpreting Ezekiel 37). This later is incorporated into Section 27, interpreting it as a prophecy of the Book of Mormon (incorrectly - except perhaps in the loose sense of likening the scriptures). Also in January 1831, Phelps is the first member of the church to identify the Nephite Interpreters as Urim and Thummim on the basis of a comparison made using the discussion in Jahn's text. This becomes an insertion into Section 10 of the D&C. So we have this book, which is read by Phelps, and influences Phelps a great deal, which then gets published by Phelps in his paper (The Evening and the Morning Star, published in Independence, Missouri). These ideas become sufficiently popular among members of the church that they are then incorporated into the revelations beginning with the publication of the D&C in 1835.

3: It is also likely that with the growing criticism of the Church and the Book of Mormon, along with Joseph's recognized transition through several potential stages of translation process, that the members of the church (including Joseph Smith) were growing wary of using terms that smacked of folk magic in their descriptions. This means that the shift wasn't just to provide a better understanding (although that is quite possible even if unlikely in my opinion) but it was also aimed at making the restoration sound more Biblical in tone. This wouldn't just be an apologetic argument in the sense of dealing with critics. It would also make the events of the restoration feel more like a restoration (appropriate for a restorationist movement). If the ancients had Urim and Thummim, so too did the restoration church. These changes are fundamentally apologetic though, and meant to create a shift within the church and among potential converts about how to understand these elements within the restoration movement.

4: Because of these issues, when we see references to Nephite Interpreters, we are always (I believe) referring to the spectacles. Anytime we see a reference to a seer stone, we are always referring to a seer stone. When we see the term Urim and Thummim, we are referring to either a seer stone, the spectacles, or both (speaking collectively of the process).

5: I note in passing that the comparison to the Urim and Thummim is problematic since the Urim and Thummim were never used in any way similar to the use of the seer stone/Nephite interpreters by Joseph Smith. What clues Phelps into the comparison is the breastplate (referenced in Upham's translation) and the fact that the Urim and Thummim as used in Israel were labeled as oracles by Jahn (Upham).

In my opinion, anyone who uses the term Urim and Thummim to describe the translation process - and doesn't attempt to differentiate between the three potential meanings of this phrase in the early LDS context is inevitably going to end up with a misleading narrative. But that isn't to say (as Robert does here) that Joseph himself didn't adopt Phelp's view. That he did so is evident in the changes made in the D&C. Joseph Smith seems to have accepted the idea that both the Nephite interpreters and the seer stones could be called Urim and Thummim. So to say that Joseph never used a Urim and Thummim is a problematic claims - because after the mid-1830s, Joseph would have suggested that he did use Urim and Thummim.