Translation method: the seer stone in the hat

Joseph dictated the book with his face in a hat looking at a treasure-seeking stone, usually without the plates in view; the Church depicted something else until 2013-2015.

What the Church claims

Joseph Smith translated the gold plates 'by the gift and power of God', traditionally pictured as reading the plates through the Urim and Thummim.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Weak. The facts are undisputed and conceded; the damage is to institutional candour and to any coherent model of 'translation', not a knock-down disproof of inspiration.

The record

  • The Church's essay states that Joseph 'placed either the interpreters or the seer stone in a hat', pressed his face into it and read aloud English words; Emma recalled Joseph dictating 'with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it' while the plates lay wrapped in a cloth.
  • The stone was one Joseph had found years earlier and used to look for lost objects and buried treasure.
  • Russell M. Nelson quoted David Whitmer's account in 1993: a parchment-like image appeared in the stone with a character and its English rendering, which vanished only when the scribe had it right.
  • 'By 1833, Joseph Smith and his associates began using the biblical term Urim and Thummim to refer to any stones used to receive divine revelations'; the essay treats the term as a category covering both the interpreters and the seer stone.
  • Photographs of the brown stone were first published on 2015-08-04 in JSP Revelations and Translations vol. 3, and in the October 2015 Ensign; Richard Turley said members might be 'surprised to learn that Joseph often used a seer stone'. Brigham Young had the stone by 1853 and it came to the Church through Zina D. H. Young.
  • Royal Skousen concludes from the manuscripts that the text was revealed 'word for word and even letter for letter', while Joseph's 1837 revisions were those of a 'human editor'.

The moving target

  • 1833: Begin calling the instruments 'Urim and Thummim'.
  • 1993-07: Quotes Whitmer's stone-in-hat account approvingly.
  • 2013-12: Affirms the hat, the seer stone and that the instruments were interchangeable.
  • 2015-08-04: Publishes photographs of the seer stone.

The exchange

FAIR; Gospel Topics essay; Richard Turley

Nothing was hidden: the stone appears in Church magazines (for example Nelson in 1993) and the artists simply did not know the sources. The instrument does not matter; God can work through a stone as through the biblical Urim and Thummim, Aaron's rod or Joseph of Egypt's cup.

The answer: A handful of magazine mentions across a century do not outweigh the pictures in every manual, visitor center and missionary flipchart, which showed plates on a table and no hat. The Church's own historian conceded in 2015 that members would be 'surprised'. The surprise is the measure of what had been taught. The deeper issue is continuity: the same stone and the same method Joseph had used in treasure-seeking produced the Book of Mormon, and the plates, the reason for the entire angel-and-hill narrative, were not used in the process.

What they get right: The essay and the 2015 publication are candid, and the Church deserves credit for publishing the photograph. Critics who say the Church 'still hides' the stone are out of date.

Brant Gardner (The Gift and Power); Blake Ostler's expansion theory

'Loose control': Joseph received ideas and expressed them in his own language, which explains the KJV phrasing, the grammar and his freedom to revise in 1837 and 1840.

The answer: Loose control solves the textual problems but contradicts the witnesses, who describe English words appearing and being checked before the text would move on, and it contradicts Skousen's manuscript evidence for word-level, even spelled-out, dictation. Tight control fits the witnesses but then God is the author of the KJV translation errors, the italicised KJV words, the nineteenth-century phrasing and the grammar Joseph later corrected. Apologists are divided between the two because each fails on the evidence the other explains.

What they get right: Believers are not obliged to have a complete theory of revelation, and Skousen's 'tight control' view is an evidence-based position, not a dodge.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

The historical facts are now conceded by the Church. What remains is their implication. First, presentation: for generations the institution taught a version (plates, no hat) that its own sources contradicted, and corrected it only when the internet forced the issue, as Turley's remarks at the 2015 press conference acknowledge. Second, method: the instrument was Joseph's treasure-digging stone, the plates were covered or absent, and the witnesses describe reading off text. If the words were given, the text's errors are God's; if they were Joseph's, the witnesses were wrong and the 'translation' is indistinguishable from composition. See the separate authorship entry for the composition theories.

The apologetic case

Every witness who watched the dictation, hostile or friendly, agrees Joseph dictated for hours without notes or manuscript, face in a hat, picking up where he left off. Whatever one makes of the stone, that is an extraordinary performance for a 23-year-old with little schooling, and the hat makes a hidden-manuscript explanation harder, not easier.

What would change this

Evidence that the pre-2013 curriculum routinely taught the stone-in-hat account would remove the candour critique; nothing is likely to change the underlying facts.

Sources

An independent project. Not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or with any organization cited here. Summaries are written here; short quotations are attributed and linked. Every page names its sources so that it can be corrected, and every page can be challenged.