Seer Stones and the Miracle of Book of Mormon Translation

[00:00:00] Speaker A: The reliability of the restoration rests on the Book of Mormon. Yet time and time again, critics claim that the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be, that its translation was more deceptive than it was divine. So was Joseph Smith using a seer stone? Was he looking into a hat with his head? Is this a real translation or is this just a figment of his imagination? Welcome to Informed Saints, where we love to study the gospel, but we also bring receipts. I'm Jasmine Rapley and I'm joined in studio today by researchers Neal Rapley and Stephen Smoot. And we're also joined by. By a special guest, BYU Professor Garrett Dirkmaat. So welcome. [00:00:33] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. [00:00:34] Speaker A: Garrett is a professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young university, specializing in 19th century American expansionism. He is also the editor of the academic journal Latter Day Saint Historical Studies, and he is a host of the podcast Standard of Truth. So we're really excited to talk about this. The other thing he's done is he's written a couple books on the Book of Mormon translation. So there's really no one better to talk about this than Garrett. This is a book you wrote quite a number of years ago. This is From Darkness Unto Joseph Smith's translation and the publication of the Book of Mormon. And this was published with Deseret Book and the Religious Study center at byu. Really, really great. But then recently, this one just came out, a much more palatable one for those of us who struggle with reading. So this is. Let's talk about the Book of Mormon. This is just like a very short introduction to Book of Mormon translation. And so I'm really excited to talk about the work you've done in both of these. So let's just dive in. What is. [00:01:29] Speaker C: Oh, well, I was just gonna say, before we dive in, let's acknowledge he has a co author on both of these. Mike McKay. Let's, you know, no Mike McKay erasure here. [00:01:39] Speaker D: Mike McKay is the Ringo star of this duo. No, I'm just kidding. We all love Mike McKay. [00:01:44] Speaker C: Mike, we see you, we recognize, we acknowledge you. [00:01:47] Speaker D: You are valid. Yeah. Can I say real quick, too, your book, From Darkness Unto Light, it was like one of the first things I read. Like, this was in the throes of the Joseph Smith papers, right, coming out. [00:01:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it was very early on, actually. [00:01:59] Speaker D: But, like, I remember reading this, and in fact, I remember I bought a copy for Neil, I got a copy for myself, a Deseret book, and I thought, this is so cool. I ran and got a copy for Neil, and We just nerded out about it for, like, a whole week. [00:02:10] Speaker C: I was gonna. I was gonna tell that story too. Like, this is. This book was, like, so monumental in, like, as a publication. It, like, it really was kind of the floodgates. Like, the first time all the data that Joseph Smith papers had been putting together on something had come together in, like, Jasmine says, this book's more palatable, but this is actually a pretty palatable narrative. It's a very readable book. And it, like, people who had been complaining about, like, the seer stone in the hat, stuff like this, this integrated it in, and it showed that, like, no, you can actually still believe all of this and be historically grounded, grounded. And, of course, the other thing it was big for was the artwork that showed up in it. Right. You guys had original art. Original art of Joseph Smith translating with head and hat with various different scribes. Really great book. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And then, you know, Anthony Sweatt actually contacted multiple different artists. And so the appendix of the book actually has an essay that he wrote where he asked artists, you know, why did you portray the translation the way that you did in this popular image? And what he found was twofold. Some of them were not totally aware of the various different sources, which, you know, you don't expect an artist to be a historian. You should see me draw. Some of them were unaware of the various sources of translation. And so they. They depicted it the way that they envision it in their own mind, which is. That's a pretty natural thing to say, well, how do I think translation looked? And so they did it. He did talk to some who were well aware of the sources of translation. But when push came to shove creating their image, they. They didn't know how they could portray that and still have the spiritual experience, because it wasn't what the expectation of the audience was. [00:04:01] Speaker A: So we've been talking about how there's this disconnect between what the historical sources support about a certain event and then how artists often portray. Portray that being at odds with each other sometimes just by the nature of the craft of art. And so let's like, kind of get to the heart of this. How was the Book of Mormon translated? What did the historical sources say that might be at odds with our artistic depictions of Joseph Smith? [00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's a great question, because first and foremost, the translation of the Book of Mormon is a miracle. Right. So this is the gift and power of God. So I can't. I can't explain how. How the translation took place fully because it's a miracle. I don't, I, you know, one of the things that I wasn't taught at the University of Colorado was, you know, under, you know, Discerning Miraculous Power 101. I mean it was, it was a higher level class. [00:04:51] Speaker D: Disappointed. Garrett, I was expecting you to tell us how Sierra Stones work. Come on, man. What are we doing here? [00:04:56] Speaker B: So what can historians do? And this is one of the points we make in, in, in, in the let's Talk about book. You know, we can't prove the miraculous. Okay, so, so a historian can't prove that Jesus walked on water, right? I, I, I can't prove it. What I can say is Jesus followers consistently stated and believe that he walked on water. Now that is providing what does the historical record say? And part of the way that, you know, whether or not someone is doing history or they're doing propaganda is whether or not they allow the historical sources to speak for themselves. So you know what miracles are? They are by definition impossible essentially. Right. We're not impressed when someone just walks across the room. No one's like, my goodness, you know. [00:05:56] Speaker C: Well, if it's a toddler. [00:05:58] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, it's his first step. But the whole reason that miracles have power is because they are not possible outside of the intervention of the power of God. So we can't get to the bottom of how exactly does Jesus walk on water? We know that his followers say that he did. And what can a historian say? A historian, if they're being a good one, isn't going to try to prove whether or not Jesus walked on water. They're not going to say like, well, they said Jesus walked on water, but obviously he didn't because I don't think he did. Because you notice like, well, that's just. [00:06:34] Speaker A: Well, can I actually push a little bit more on that? Because I have heard a lot of non Latter Day Saints, atheists, secular historians, or even former Latter Day Saints claim because history cannot prove a miracle by definition, therefore we should assume that miracle didn't take place. Like that should be the default assumption. [00:06:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, well, and frankly, that's the default assumption that people have. I mean, miracles have power because they couldn't happen otherwise. Right? So, so people, you know, as we say in the book, you people can't call down fire from heaven. People can't walk on water, people can't raise the dead. Except when they do. And when they do is the reason why it's this demonstration of the power of God to say, well, I find it very unlikely that this Miracle happened. I mean, frankly, any Latter Day Saint should be like, yeah, like that's literally. [00:07:27] Speaker A: That'S the definition of a Holy Spirit. [00:07:28] Speaker B: You actually get it. I find it pretty hard to believe that God gave Joseph Smith revelations. Yeah, we're on the same page. That's actually the whole point. [00:07:39] Speaker C: Joseph himself said, I wouldn't, you know, I don't blame anyone for not believing my story. Right. I wouldn't believe it if it hadn't happened. [00:07:46] Speaker A: It's not a miracle unless it's extraordinary. [00:07:47] Speaker B: But there is a really good point. I mean, you know, I know this made the rounds on social media not terribly long ago, you know, with Alex OConnor's whole discussion about this, that frankly, that for, for people criticizing the truth claims of Latter Day Saints, it's not any different than people criticizing the truth claims of, of, of early Christians. Right. Where you have people who are witnesses of miracles saying that they happen. When someone says, well, I find it really unlikely that, you know, Jesus was resurrected, that's literally the entire point. The whole point of Christianity is the most impossible thing that could ever happen, happened. And that's why we believe. And so sure, someone can always say, well, I find it much more likely that Joseph just, you know, stole a novel from someone and then also read a bunch of esoteric books that he didn't have access to and copied portions of them and then piece that together with a secret Sidney Rigdon conversion that he came over and helped him write also. And that that's where the book actually came from. I mean, I call that, you know, unisom anti Mormonism because it's, it's what helps you sleep at night. You know, I mean, that's pretty good. It makes you feel better because you're providing an explanation. Yeah, but you don't have historical records that, that, that point to those things. And so when we're talking about the translation of the Book of Mormon, what, what can we do? Historians always want to look at firsthand participants. Right. That doesn't mean that you can't get something from someone who said they heard something. But the further you get away from event and the further you get away from a firsthand participant, the greater likelihood there is, there might be something not quite accurate. As someone who speaks a lot, I have had multiple occasions where I've come down off the stand of speaking and had someone come up to me and say, I just really love the part where you talked about how as long as we follow the gospel, bad things would happen to us. And I'm like, what in the world. Not only did I not say that, I, I literally don't believe that and yet. But that's, you know, people hear sometimes what they're expecting. And so we try to get to what the actual sources say. In this case with the translation of the Book of Mormon. Our best primary source, our closest primary source, Joseph Smith doesn't say a whole lot about it. Now he does in Joseph Smith history, explain, you know, what the angel tells him right from the beginning, that God has prepared to stones that are going to be used in the translation, that those stones are what constituted seers in ancient times. So from the very beginning, any depiction, any depiction of the translation of the Book of Mormon that you don't see stones in, you have to immediately stop and say, I understand why the artist is doing this, but this can't be exactly how it was translated, right, because the angel declared to him, God prepared these stones for you to translate. So if you see a depiction of Joseph translating and there's not a stone in sight, there's just a hearthstone on the fireplace behind him or something, then you need to take a step back and say, you know, I appreciate what the artist has done here. You know, they're, they're demonstrating the reality of the gold plates, they're demonstrating the holiness of the translation. This can't be a photograph of the translation because the angel declares that there are stones that are going to be used in the process. We're very literal with our, I mean, in general, American Latter Day Saints are very literal with their art. They want their art to be photographs and that's just how they perceive of things. And so oftentimes you'll talk with people say, oh, well, you know that I was taught that the way Joseph translated was this. And when you ask further questions, you find, well, you never actually were taught that you saw an image or, and that image kind of meshed with how you thought of it in your head and you said, oh, okay, then that's how it happened. But I never, I mean, you obviously had more aggressive primary teachers than me. I never, I never had a Sunday school teacher or a primary teacher who said, okay, well, we are going to talk about the mechanics of the translation of the Book of Mormon. And this is how it happened. And Joseph had the plates in front of him like this, and he held the stone. I never had that lesson. So did I have assumptions? Absolutely. In fact, when I first started researching on the translation of the Book of Mormon, my initial assumption, and this is back when I was in early graduate school was that the only thing he used was. Was the Urim and Thummim stones. Because that's all I had thought in my. I hadn't researched any of this. I mean, I did 19th century American history. I hadn't studied church history really, you know, and, you know, you read. You read, you know, rough stone rolling, or you read other things and you're like, wait a minute, that doesn't seem to. And so you start to read the different accounts of people who participated in the translation. And at first they can be jarring to people, right? So if in my mind, all I've ever thought is that Joseph had the two stones bound together and they somehow attached to a breastplate and. And he had the plates open in front of him and he was, you know, doing this with it or whatever, then when I find something else out, it can be shocking. And one of the things that historians are taught is to follow where the sources say, and even if it's not what people have previously thought, to see what is the weight of those sources. So we have Joseph, who doesn't say a whole lot about it, but does explain that God had prepared stones. Joseph actually buttresses this by alterations he makes to the Doctrine and Covenants. So in the earliest iterations we have in the Book of Commandments of, say, Doctrine and Covenant, Section 3, it doesn't mention the Urim and Thummim in Joseph Smith's translation. When Joseph edits it for publication in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, he includes by the means of the Urim and Thummim in that. Which we know wasn't in the original because it was published in the Book of Commandments without that phrase in there. Right. But he adds that phrase. So he's certainly not ashamed of the fact that stones were used in the translation. We don't know this to be the case, but it's incredibly likely that he did the same thing with Doctrine and covenant section 17. Because the term Urim and Thummim is just not used to describe the stones in any early document. In all of our early documents, the way that Joseph Smith himself describes it is spectacles or stones. [00:15:09] Speaker D: Is it? It's William Phelps, I think, right. Who's one of the earliest Latter Day Saints to make this connection. And I think the reason why, and maybe you can correct me, is as. As early Latter Day Saints, they know Joseph is using stones to translate the Book of Mormon. That's going to be kind of weird and unsettling for a lot of people. And so linking it to a biblical device, Urim and Thummim. Right. [00:15:30] Speaker B: And. [00:15:31] Speaker D: And in the Bible the is a syric miracular device that the high priest uses to divine the will of God for the ancient Israelites. [00:15:40] Speaker C: It seems that by it is two. [00:15:41] Speaker D: Stones, and it's two stones he keeps in a breastplate. So it seems like the thinking may have been if we can appropriate this language from the Bible, which again, the Nephites don't call it Urim and Thummim, it's interpreters. Right. So my understanding is William Phelps and others, Oliver Cowdery. Right. They're probably thinking if we can appropriate this language from the Bible, this will sort of help contextualize for American Christians what's happening here. Right. It's not hocus pocus Oogie boogie stuff. That's what Joseph Smith skeptics and critics were saying, but rather they want to emphasize by calling these things Urim and Thummim. It's a God ordained miraculous device of revelation like the ancient Israelites have. [00:16:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Because you have people mocking the accounts of translation. So I honestly don't think it's much of a problem with Latter Day Saints themselves at all. [00:16:28] Speaker D: Maybe this discussion of stones is a good moment to briefly contextualize what's this talk about folk magic that I hear the Smiths are involved in? There's this book that D. Michael Quinn published back in the 80s, early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. And I still see this book routinely trotted out there, both by skeptics of Joseph Smith, to say, look, these are just a bunch of superstitious hillbillies that believe all this nonsense about stones and divining rods. That's the one hand. [00:16:57] Speaker B: All. [00:16:57] Speaker D: On the other hand, you might get members of the church who earnestly are worried about like, well, wait a second, the Bible says you're not supposed to do things like witchcraft, so surely the Smiths were never involved in any of that kind of thing. Right. So you kind of get it from both angles. So, Garrett, would you like to walk us through just briefly, why are we using stones in the first place? What's this folk magic? Oliver Cowdery is said to have the gift of the rod or something in early sections of the Doctrine Covenants that get edited. [00:17:20] Speaker B: The sprout. [00:17:21] Speaker D: The sprout, yeah. So help us contextualize what's going on. [00:17:24] Speaker B: Here so early in Europe. These folk ideas are not always, although sometimes they are at odds with Christianity. They're integrated into it. And the line of Demarcation between science and folk magic. That's a gigantic line to us because, like, we understand science, they don't. And so, you know, for instance, take Oliver Cowdery. Oliver Cowdery apparently has the ability to use a scrying rod. Apparently, usually it's used to find water. Water, Right. But apparently also he uses it to receive answers. Right. That he gets, you know, he feels something. They don't see this as magic. They see it as, again, giant air quotes. Science. [00:18:25] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think it's important people sometimes. I'll encounter people online sometimes because we're these enlightened ones who are like, well, it's stupid to think that is a thing, and it's stupid to believe that would work. And so therefore, Joseph Smith must have been lying when he said he saw stuff in seer stones, and he must have been conning people when he claimed to be able to, like, find, you know, money or whatever. Dude. Like, they think it's all. It's gotta be a con. It's got to be deceptive that this whole, you know, you know, the rod stuff with all it, like, it's all got to be fake. And so these guys are. Not only are they, like, they're not. They're not stupid. They're. They're con men who are charlatans. But the reality is, like, no, people are actually really sincere in this. And I don't know that we can really say cognitively exactly what's going on, but it seems to work. The reason they believe this is because it worked. [00:19:22] Speaker A: It functioned for their lives. [00:19:24] Speaker C: It does seem to function. Hyrum page actually seems to be seeing text. Right. [00:19:28] Speaker B: The Revelation Doctrine of Covenants 28 affirms that. That the words that are on that stone are from Satan. It's not. He's pretending that there's words on stone that. It's not that. He just thinks there really are Words really is a power of Satan. [00:19:42] Speaker C: So what. However you want to approach it, secularly or religiously or whatever, the. The reality is, like, the. These people in this time, in this place, they really believe this stuff is happening. They. There's something cognitively going on in their brains when they stick their head in a hat with a seer stone in there and they're actually seeing something. Right. [00:20:00] Speaker B: Well, so. And I think God uses, you know, people where they're at. I mean, to say that, well, this physical action that someone does shouldn't have anything to do with a miracle is. Is to say, well, why does Jesus put clay on the man's eyes. Why? [00:20:19] Speaker D: I was just going to say we have plenty of examples in the Bible. Magic rocks and magic sticks are in the Bible. I don't want to hear other Christians. [00:20:27] Speaker B: Especially, I mean I cannot possibly believe. [00:20:29] Speaker D: Or Aaron's rod that magically sprouts in the Ark of the Covenant. Right. So I don't want to hear other Bible believing Christians especially, you know, thumb their nose at seer stones. [00:20:38] Speaker C: Yeah, well. And I mean to the point of how sincere these people are and the fact that something seems to really be happening for some people and that's why they believe they have these gifts and stuff like these are things that persisted for centuries. Like folk magic didn't just like come out of Nowhere in the 1800s in New England alone. In New England. Like it's something that persisted for centuries among people and it doesn't. Like it wouldn't persist if the. There was absolutely nothing to it. I'm not saying I believe in folk magic. [00:21:03] Speaker D: Speak for yourself, Neil. See, your stones are based. [00:21:05] Speaker B: I have to tell you, every single class I've ever taught where I explain scrying rods and Oliver Cowdery and finding water the sprout. I've never taught one where I haven't had at least an student and usually multiple who have parents or grandparents who continue to use scrying rods to find water on their. [00:21:24] Speaker A: Really? [00:21:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it is. And. And when you try to explain it, it's like there's no explanation. And. But, but they don't perceive of this as somehow the occult. They perceive of this as the difference between Oliver Cowdery and someone else who can't find water that way. [00:21:41] Speaker C: Right. [00:21:41] Speaker B: Is his hands are perceptive enough that he can feel what I mean, they call everything electromagnetism. [00:21:47] Speaker D: Right. [00:21:47] Speaker B: It's like their favorite. Anything that's like power that we can't explain. It's electromagnetism that, that you have this sprout and you can feel. Feel the pulsations as it's brought towards the ground. And that's the difference. That is that you have this gifted hands that you can feel. [00:22:02] Speaker A: Honestly, the way you're describing it reminds me of the way that energy healers talk about what they try to do as well using stones and they're feeling for certain like energy waves. And so to say that like, oh, those benighted people back then in the 19th century who just didn't have science, they were so stupid and naive and dumb. Like those kinds of impulses still persist today. [00:22:22] Speaker B: In. I think I saw a survey that 25% of Americans believe in the idea of clairvoyance. So a quarter of people today in the United States believe that. There are people that have that ability now and they can't explain it. And I'm not saying that that exists. What I'm saying is in Joseph's time, this would not have been odd. Now would it have been ridiculed, especially because of the age of Enlightenment and people saying only of course it would be. Which is part of what people like Eber Howe are doing. They're making fun of the idea. One of the things that comes out of the Reformation is a mockery of the miraculous. And in some ways, you know, as a latter day saint, you can kind of like go along with that. Like, yeah, probably we don't actually have the piece of the true cross that if we go and kiss that all of our sins go away. You know, I mean. Right. Which is part of what's going on with the Protestant Reformation. This, this, this elimination of the mysticism that has enveloped Catholicism for, for so many years. And that hits with the age of enlightenment so well that you end up getting people to get to this point where they're deists, right, where there's no miracles in the, in the known world. They're sure God might exist, but everything's natural, everything's scientific. And so many of the early critics of Joseph Smith are coming from that, that, that realm. I mean, Eber Howe makes fun of all kinds of organized religion because he thinks it's all stupid. Now he's in the minority of most Americans love organized religion in the 1840s, 1830s. So for Joseph, when he, when he finds that first stone, and we have multiple accounts of how, we don't know exactly when, but at least according to many of the accounts, he finds it digging a well. Now that would have been most likely after his first vision, but before he meets with marillion sometime between 1820 and 1823. Now he finds this stone. If he would have said to anybody, hey, I found this stone and there's something about it, the response from anybody would have been, oh, you might be one of those people who can see things in stones. Because I mean, the very fact that you think that there's something, you know what that's probably. And so I don't doubt that Joseph is influenced by his culture. And before God reveals everything to him, what Joseph thinks about the stone that he's found is what every adult around him tells him that the stone is for. Oh yeah, there's some people can find lost things in that. You're probably one of those people to that point. [00:25:12] Speaker C: You know, later we get the affidavits from the hurlbut affidavits that Edie Howe relies a lot on in his. In how he goes after Joseph Smith. And you have Willard Chase in there, right, who's kind of. Who's acting very skeptical of this seer stone stuff. But we know that his own sister, Sally Chase, has a stone herself. Has a stone and is known as like a village seer and is believed to be able to see things. And so, you know, these Palmyrans, they kind of rewrite the narrative themselves. Be like, oh, yeah, the Smiths were kind of these weirdos who did this folk magic stuff. But like, really, they're all also participating. [00:25:51] Speaker B: In the folk magic. It's a pretty common thing. Now, are there skeptics, loud skeptics, public? Of course there are. Generally in America. [00:25:58] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:25:58] Speaker B: The further away we get from it, the more ridiculous it's going to seem. [00:26:03] Speaker A: So can we just like, can you summarize in a word for me? Is using seer stones in the Urim and Thummim, is it fake? Is it occult folk magic? Is it divine? What's your take? [00:26:13] Speaker B: It's clearly divine for Joseph Smith. Now, it's not for Hyrum Page. So obviously, obviously there are people that can claim to interact with stones and objects that are either not doing it honestly or that are being misled by Satan. In the case of Hyrum Page for Joseph, all of the witnesses of translation, they see Joseph interacting with these sacred stones as part of the miracle. So they don't see it as like, I mean, the Book of Mormon is true, but it's really crazy. It was using a rock. And they actually see that as the miraculous because, you know, look, anyone can dictate a book. Now, you can have lots of arguments about whether or not someone can dictate a book. That's the Book of Mormon. But in practical terms, anyone can dictate a book, but not anyone can make words appear on a stone. Yeah, that's a miracle. [00:27:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:27:18] Speaker B: And so when Joseph Knight Senior describes the translation of the Book of Mormon and he says that, you know, you know, Joseph would put this, the stone into the hat and. And he'd look in or the Urim and Thummim is the terminology, that words would appear on it and that he would read them off and then that that would disappear and more words would appear. The way he finishes his explanation of the translation is and so we see it was marvelous. He is arguing for the divinity of the translation because words are appearing on a stone, because that is not replicatable, right? I can't make words appear on a stone. I can dictate a book. It wouldn't be as good as the book, but I can start dictating a book right now. It'd be terrible. It would be nothing like the Book of Mormon. But let's say Joseph's, you know, super special and has all kinds of wonderful means that, you know, outside of his education, where he can do it. But Joseph can't make words appear on a stone that involves some kind of divine power. And so many of these early witnesses, they see the words appearing on the stone as proof of the divinity of the translation, not the other way around. Today we have people that are like, I don't know. I've never heard of that. That makes me feel uncomfortable. They see it the exact opposite. This is evidence of the divinity. [00:28:48] Speaker D: I think you're totally right there. I was just rereading from my class on the Book of Mormon I'm teaching this semester. The accounts from Emma Smith and Martin Harris, and Emma's accounts especially, are some of my favorites because to your point, she explicitly says, you know, my husband would put the stone in his hat and he would look at it and the words would appear and he would dictate hour after hour without any breaks or interruptions. And she says it was a marvel and a wonder, right? Using that language from the Book of Isaiah. [00:29:15] Speaker C: So she even says. She says something like, though I was a participant in these events, in these events, it's still a marvel to me. [00:29:21] Speaker D: So I think you're totally right, and that's a good way to help us contextualize because we are so detached from that worldview in many ways, right? To understand that having seer stones doesn't default have to mean either Joseph Smith's superstitious huckster or that he's, like, satanically possessed or whatever. I think those are the way extreme ends that people jump to. We can, like Emma, like Martin Harris, like Joseph Knight, Alder, Cowdery, right? We can see his use of sacred stones as part of the miracle, right? It's part and parcel of it. [00:29:52] Speaker B: And again, for those who feel uncomfortable, we only need to reread Joseph Smith history to listen to the fact that the angel declares to him that stones will be used in the translation. So whatever we've conjured up in our minds about how the translation took place, if we aren't in Some way using sacred stones, then we are doing it in a way that the angel declared differently than the way the angel declared. [00:30:21] Speaker C: So you've been talking about how the angel himself tells Joseph Smith, according to Joseph's own account. Right. That there are going to be these stones involved in the translation. But one thing that a lot of people get hung up on and we even see this within the church. In fact, there's some people who are ardently like, you know, Urim and Thummim only means the Nephite interpreters. Right. So some people get hung up on this idea that there were other stones or Joseph had his own personal stone that he sometimes used. And we've got a whole host of other witnesses who do describe Joseph using a single stone. David Whitmer, Emma Smith, Martin Harris, Elizabeth Ann Cowdery, Slash Whitmer, Whitmer, Cowdery. Should we hyphenate who she talks about watching the translation for hours. Right. I wonder why she just watched Joseph and Oliver sit there for hours at a time. Yeah. But anyway, these people who watch and they describe him just using a single seer stone. So could you maybe speak to that? [00:31:21] Speaker B: And yeah, I think that's actually one of the. One of the problems with our sources is it's a natural thing for someone to say. I don't know about this idea of a seer stone and a hat and stuff. I've never really heard of that. That's not in the pictures that I've seen. I think that that sounds like it's some kind of anti Mormonism. I'm just going to only go off of what Joseph said. Right. So it's a. It's a natural thing to say. Well, I don't want to be led astray by some other source. But historically speaking, these sources are multiple independent attestations, which is a. It's big historian talk for the fact that when you're trying to determine what actually happened in the past, the most effective thing you can have is. Is multiple independent sources that aren't just copying. Look, you have lots of sources copy off each other. Anyone who's done any time doing any anti Mormon stuff at all is well aware. Welcome to John C. Bennett's book. Like, you know, I started writing it and I just threw the rest of Mormonism unveiled in there. I mean he. Those sources aren't very valuable. It's not super valuable to have John C. Bennett copying what Eber Howe copied of what philosopher's hurl, but copied of what someone in Palmyra said about Joseph it's not John C. Bennett's source. He's just copying another source. So historians value independent attestations that say the same thing or similar things. So, for instance, someone might discount the fact that, as you said, you have these witnesses, like Martin Harris said that he used a separate stone and that he placed that stone into his hat. Someone might say, well, didn't Martin Harris apostatize, though? Had Martin Harris and his apostasy self, of course he's going to say apostate things like, Joseph did that. Now, of course Martin Harris might apostatize, but where does he deny his testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon? Is Martin Harris ever trying to prove that Joseph Smith did not translate the Book of Mormon by the power of God? Is there ever a time that Martin Harris is like, you know, what actually all made up? So I understand the impulse to say we can't trust what Martin Harris said because he apostatized, but that's why it matters a lot of what he's trying to do. When Martin Harris is talking about the translation, is he trying to make you not have a testimony of it? Is he trying to make you think it was made up? Or is he trying to show you that it was a miracle? And if the answer is he's still trying to show you it's divine, why would Martin, who participated in all of the early translation, you know, half of the Book of Lehi, if you want to put it that way, why, instead of saying how it actually happened, would he invent a fake way that it didn't happen, even though he was trying to convince you that it happened? [00:34:27] Speaker C: Right. [00:34:28] Speaker D: He's playing 4D chess here. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it's the same way. [00:34:31] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:34:31] Speaker B: Someone might say, well, Emma, Emma apostatized. Yeah, Emma. Emma is not a fan of the church in Utah. When she's giving interviews about. About the translation, is she trying to claim that Joseph Smith didn't translate the Book of Mormon? Is she trying to destroy faith in the divinity of the translation? No. So what are we trying to say? That Emma, who has the. The whole point is to prove that Joseph Smith's a prophet. She still believes that. But instead of saying what her actual experience was, that Joseph took a separate stone that he translated with multiple devices, she said that he translated with the two stones that were bound together, that he also translated with a separate brown stone, that he would place them in the ha. That he would translate that way. That instead of saying what actually happened, as she's trying to prove that the Book of Mormon is divine. She's decided to appropriate the arguments of anti Mormons who hate and defame her husband. Why is she doing that? Why wouldn't she just say what actually happened and what she actually experienced? And so I understand the impulse to say, well, if Emma's the only one who said that he put a stone in a hat, there's no way that he did. Well, first of all, Emma's not the only one. Well, Martin Harris too. He's also an apostate. What about Joseph Knight? He's not an apostate. Well, but he also, I mean, you start to get to the point where you have all of these different sources. Emma is not aware of, of Joseph Knight Sr. S account. She doesn't have that. She's not working through the church archives that don't exist yet. So how is it that she describes the translation almost exactly the same way that Joseph Knight, not apostate, describes the translation? [00:36:31] Speaker C: Or you know, another one that's fun is Josiah Stowell in court testimony in 1832 before any. Before Ed Howe and his book where this becomes a narrative that critics are using and stuff, which you kind of talked about a little bit earlier. But he's literally trying to defend Joseph in court against the charges of fraud. Fraud. Of defrauding him with a seer stone. And he talks about how Joseph took a certain stone, put it in a hat. [00:37:02] Speaker D: Or we could talk about one of my favorite accounts, Jonathan Hadley, Palmiera Freeman. Probably one of the. Probably the earliest published account, in fact. [00:37:09] Speaker B: And so it's a great example of how all of our accounts are early accounts and our late accounts, our firsthand accounts and our secondhand accounts, all of them that try to provide details. Now, not all of them try to provide details. Right, Right. Joseph simply says, I would inform you that by the medium of the Urim and Thummim, I translated the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God. Okay. So that's not a lot of details. It does say by the medium of the Urim and Thummim and by the gift and power of God. So Joseph's using some device. Now for some people, they say, well, I only perceive as Urim and Thummim, meaning only the stones that were found in the box. That's it. That's all they apply to. The problem for historians is that's clearly not what Joseph Smith is calling those stones when he first gets them. We know this from Joseph Smith's 1832 history. Right. What does he say? The Lord had Prepared spectacles for to read the book. Wherefore I commenced translating Joseph's earliest account from himself is using this term spectacles. Now, why does the Jonathan Hadley account matter if it was Jonathan Hadley, He's a newspaper editor in Palmyra in 1829 who they actually approached to publish the Book of Mormon. Because initially that the. As much as we sometimes lionize Grandin. [00:38:32] Speaker A: Grandin is not, he's not a friend of mine. [00:38:34] Speaker B: He's not a friend, no. According at least to his brother in law, Grandin not only refuses to print the Book of Mormon that he actually tries to enlist Martin Harris's friends to try to prevent Martin Harris from paying for the printing of the Book of Mormon. So they go to the other printer in town, and that printer is Jonathan Hadley. Hadley's going to give multiple accounts of what happened over the course of his life. But why is he so invaluable? Well, after they don't. So he says, I can't print this, he sends them to the master he apprenticed under who was Thurlow Weed up in Rochester. When they come back down to Palmyra, they then go to Grannon with a very different argument. Right before it was like, will you publish this? And Grant? And of course won't. Now it's look, this is getting published either way, we will publish it with Elhu Marshall in Rochester. We'd much rather publish it here. And Grantin relents and then charges them an exorbitant fee to do it. But when Hagley finds out that it's not his buddy in Rochester, but his political and economic hated rival, I mean, these guys hate each other so much that in the summer of 1829, Jonathan Hadley is a witness for the prosecution in a criminal libel case against Brandon. Wow, they hate each other. And so Hadley's reaction when he finds out that it's his enemy that is now getting all this money is to go just unhinged on both Grandin and on the publication of the Book of Mormon. Now you might be thinking, why do you care about the source? Well, because it's our earliest source that exists on the translation of the Book of Mormon that's published. There aren't other published accounts. So. So unlike everything else where you have to try to track down, okay, so this person said this, but they're obviously borrowing this from the New York Post that says this because they're borrowing it from the right. This is the earliest account, so he. [00:40:35] Speaker D: Can'T be borrowing from any other published account. [00:40:37] Speaker B: And he says he's not Borrowing it. He says, this is what they told. [00:40:41] Speaker D: Me, the proselytes, I think tells them, right. [00:40:44] Speaker C: Joseph and Martin come into his office because they're trying to get him to print it. Right. And those are probably his source. [00:40:49] Speaker B: I mean, he will, multiple times as he's explaining the process of this, he will interject and say. They say so at least, Right. He doesn't want anyone to think that he thinks it. Like he's like, they say that there's points they said, you know. But the best part about the earliest, and I know this isn't what you plan on having on your podcast, but the best, the best part of early anti Mormon literature, the earliest anti Mormon literature, is how accurate it is. [00:41:18] Speaker D: There's a hot take right there. [00:41:21] Speaker B: I'm not saying that anything in Mormonism unveiled this. That's not the earliest. But in these super early accounts, they're telling the story, obviously getting some particulars. [00:41:34] Speaker C: Wrong and injecting some snark or whatever. [00:41:37] Speaker B: Or all kinds of dripping with. With sarcasm, but there's no threat that exists. So. So the problem with later antagonistic anti Mormon sources, I mean, again, John C. Bennett's a perfect example. I mean, everything he says is a lie. But in the introduction to his book, I mean, for all I know, ketchup, pills, surely everything's. Everything's lied. [00:42:00] Speaker A: We're going to heal me. [00:42:02] Speaker B: In the introduction to his book, he claimed that he never, ever, ever believed in Mormonism, ever. That in fact, he knew that it was an evil that was growing in the face of the country. And so he surreptitiously pretended to become a Mormon and ingratiated himself with him so that he could expose their lies. Of course. [00:42:21] Speaker D: Classic. [00:42:22] Speaker B: No, it's best. And then I guess he was doing the same thing with James Strang. What a great job you're doing as you explain. Expose all these things. But the point is, how can Bennett make that argument? Well, because there are tens of thousands of Latter Day Saints and they're all over the national sphere, and they do appear to be this growing religion and they do terrify some traditional Christians. In 1829, there are no members of the church because there's no church. There's like four people who believe Joseph Smith. And, you know, some of them are Martin Harris. There's sometimes. Right. I mean, like, outside of Joseph's family in Palmyra, no one believes him, him and Martin Harris. So there's no threat. There's no reason why we need to go off on a long soliloquy of the horrible Nature of Joseph Smith. Because if you're Jonathan Hadley in August of 1829, before there's a Book of Mormon, the story itself is so ridiculous that no one could possibly believe it. So he tells the story pretty straight up. He says this. The proselytes give the following account of it. That. That. That, you know, one Joseph Smith of Manchester, Ontario county was, you know, visited, you know, thrice visited in a dream by the spirit of the Almighty is what they call it. And told that in a hill by his home was deposited these ancient plates of divine nature and origin. And, And. And so he's telling the story because the story itself, he thinks, is ridiculous enough that no one will believe it. You know, he mocks the fact that they claim that the words of this book are going to be superior to the Bible. Now, it's easy to make that claim because there is no book. And then he even makes fun of the fact that Joseph, uneducated Jonathan Hadley knows Joseph Smith because Joseph Smith from Palmyra. And he's. And so he even mocks it and says it's, you know, stunning, you know, that. That someone like this Smith, very illiterate, he puts in parentheses, could have been. Could have been gifted by God to find and interpret it. So what does he say in that description? He says that. That by taking this. But, you know, found with. Together with the plates was a huge pair of spectacles. Taking the spectacles and placing them in a hat, he said, so at least this is what he says, that he could interpret the characters. So now we have our earliest account. They're at least claiming that this is what the followers of Joseph Smith are saying Hadley is. But that earliest account, that Joseph took stones and placed them in a hat to translate, just so happens to be the same thing that Emma says in a later account, that Martin Harris says in multiple accounts, that David Whitmer says in multiple accounts, that Joseph Knight says in his account. What's more likely. Is it more likely that Jonathan Hadley, in his attempt to smear Joseph Smith just so happened to guess exactly what Emma and David Whitmer would later claim the translation took place as or reverse it? Is it more likely that Emma and David and Martin Harris and Joseph Knight, instead of saying how it actually happened, said, you know what, that Jonathan Hadley hated Joseph Smith? Let's just say what he said. I know I was there. I know I served as a scribe for most of it. But let's just. You know what, let's just take his argument and claim that there was a hat involved, even Though there wasn't. I mean, to a historian, when you have early sources and late sources, antagonists and defenders of Joseph, when they're all saying the same basic thing, the only historically responsible thing to do is to say there appears to be a couple of things going on here. One, Joseph appears to use multiple different stones in the translation. Again, the Book of Mormon itself is a source. If you're a historian, you have to use the Book of Mormon itself as a source. What does it describe? Stones being used in translation? [00:46:47] Speaker C: Mosiah. [00:46:48] Speaker B: 8. Yeah, exactly. And a separate stone with its own name apparently being used. So the Book of Mormon describes at least two different translation devices. And frankly, it. You have to invent text that's not there to have it not be three translation devices. Why? Well, because if we assume that the stones Mosiah is using to translate the Jaredite records are the ones that Jaredites had, well, then you then have to explain how he got them, because they didn't have the Jaredite records. They found them when they're out looking. [00:47:23] Speaker C: Right, right. [00:47:23] Speaker B: But what does, you know, what does Ammon not chops everyone's arms off? Ammon other Ammonia. What does he say to King Limhi as an already established fact? Oh, yes, assuredly, O King, there is a man who can translate, for he has wherewith he can look and translate records which are of ancient date and is a gift from God. Right. So clearly now, again, you could invent a narrative whereby somewhere in what's lost, maybe it's in 116 pages, the people of Zarahemla came into possession of those Jaredite stones that were mentioned, even though they didn't have the Jaredite records. Maybe that happened. But it is probably far more likely that there are Jaredite stones that are buried up with the record, as discussed, that Mosiah has stones that he uses to translate, and that there's this separate other stone that is then mentioned in Alma. So at the very least, though, taking the Book of Mormon text alone, you have to say that it talks about multiple stones being used for the purpose of translation. So then we turn to what do the witnesses say? They say Joseph has multiple stones that he uses for translation. Only by saying that the Book of Mormon is not a source, do you say, well, there's no record from Joseph saying that there's multiple sources stones. I mean, there kind of is. Right? I mean, and, you know, here's another source that we haven't talked about yet. In 1841, Wilford Woodruff has a private meeting with Joseph Smith and in that meeting, he exults in his diary. I was shown today for the first time the Urim and thumb. Cool. Now, Brigham Young is very clear that after Joseph Smith translates the gold plates, that those stones that were found with the plates, that they go back with the angel. So what is Wilford Woodruff seeing now? Later, Wilford Woodruff will take a seer stone. We don't know which one, but he will take a stone and he will consecrate it on the altar in the Manti Temple at the time of the Manti Temple dedication, saying that he consecrated the seer stone that Joseph Smith had with him throughout his life. Wow. [00:49:45] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:49:46] Speaker B: So clearly it's seen as a holy thing because Wilford Woodruff's consecrating it there. But what appears to be going on back to our earlier discussion, is that Joseph is using the term Urim and thummim to describe any seer stone. We have tended to say, you know, well, he found two stones in the box, and this one's probably named Urim, and I guess this one's named Thummim. And that's, you know, that's why it's called Urim and Thummim. But Joseph is obviously not doing that. And that's something that we actually all know. We just don't know that we know it. And you're like, no. What do you mean? I think I know the things I know. No, because if I were to ask you, what is the planet like that God resides on? You would say a giant, massive Urim and Thummim. You mean the ones Joseph found in the box? Obviously not. Obviously, Joseph is using the term Urim and Thummim generically. He is not claiming that God is living on the stones that were found in the box. [00:50:45] Speaker D: We could take it further. Book of Abraham. Abraham has a Urim and Thummim that. I mean, are we saying that he had the same thing as the Jaredites? [00:50:52] Speaker A: Like, how many angels can fit on a pin head? How many can you. How can God fit on the Urim and Thummim? [00:50:58] Speaker B: How many angels dance? Well, so you have that, and then you also have, you know, what is this earth going to be like in its glorified, sanctified, and immortal state? A giant Urim? Not the ones found in the box. So Joseph is clearly using. What is every member of the church going to get when they go to the celestial kingdom? Their own Urim at the. Not the ones that were found in the box. It is obvious to Historians that Joseph is using the term urim and thummim to mean seer stone, any seer stone, by the Nauvoo period, when the history is being written. Because we have these revelations and these discussions where he's doing that. He's telling Wilford Woodruff, when he shows him a single stone, this is a Urim and thummim. And he's not saying, oh, yeah, and these are the ones found in the box. Right. And so I think that that nomenclature drives a lot of the confusion where someone's like, joseph did not use seer stones. He used the urim and thummim. Well, first of all, the angel says that the stones are seer stones. So the angel says the use of these constitutes seers in ancient and former times. So the stones of the Urim and Thummim, you know, you know, device found with the plates, they're seer stones. That's literally what the angel calls them. The. The. The stones that Joseph finds otherwise, digging a well, maybe in a kettle, according to Brigham Young, one of the ones that he finds, he's using them as these divine instruments to receive revelation. And so, from a historian's perspective, even if you weren't a believer, the conclusion you would have to come to is Joseph appeared to use multiple different stones. And at least according to most witnesses, the way that he used them was by placing them in a hat. According to believers, he placed them in a hat in order to block out the light so we could see the words that were written on the stone. Now, someone might say, well, that's not how I envision the translation. Or that makes me feel uncomfortable. [00:53:08] Speaker C: Or, what's the point of the plates if that's how he translates? [00:53:10] Speaker B: Yeah, someone might say that, like, so he's not directly looking at the plates. I mean, again, we're talking about miracles. So if someone wants to say, well, could God have given Joseph Smith the entire translation of the Book of Mormon without Joseph having the plates? Well, I said the word could God. So. [00:53:26] Speaker C: Yes. [00:53:26] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Whenever. I mean, because a lot of times people will say, well, then why would God do it that way? I barely have the credentials as a historian. I can't tell you why God does the things that God does. I will say this. I don't know what it took for Joseph to be prepared to translate. He has those plates, and he's studying them. He's drawing an Alphabet off of them. He is studying those characters, making copies of them for months and months before he begins to translate the Book of Mormon and Ernest. So maybe that was necessary. Maybe that's a necessary part of the preparation. It's part of how he prepares himself as a seer. I. I don't know. I do know, however, that the existence of the plates remains today the most difficult thing for either secularists or antagonists to dismiss. I mean, the recent biography of Joseph Smith that was published by John Turner. The weakest part of the entire book. [00:54:33] Speaker D: Is how he treats the witnesses in the plates. [00:54:35] Speaker B: Pretend that those witnesses don't actually exist. Well, Joseph was able to make people think that they saw plates, say those. [00:54:46] Speaker D: To me, it's even better. Gary, he said, many Americans had visions in Joseph's state. Joseph had the rare ability, or the much more rare ability to have other people see visions. It's like a marvel superhero power. Yeah, well, now it's like, I want that X Men power, right? Like Wolverine gets the clock laws. I want the Superman power to make people see visions. [00:55:05] Speaker B: The, the interaction with the plates are what makes Joseph's truth claims so different than every other person. So, for instance, Ellen White is the founder of Seventh Day Adventism. She claims that she had revelations from God. Interestingly enough, she doesn't tell anyone about them for years. But you don't have people running around going, see, that proves it. Obviously. She's like, she, she claims she has revelations from God and that those revelations told her that the entire Christian world has gone astray because they're worshiping on the wrong day, among other things. Now, historians don't spend time trying to prove how Ellen White's a liar. Historians. If I write a paper on Seventh Day Adventism, I'm not like, well, obviously Ellen White's lying about that, because God wouldn't ever tell people the wrong day. I mean, you simply, as a historian, say what Ellen White said. You say, Ellen White this. And then the other thing you can say as a historian, does she seem to be sincere in this? Well, how do you measure sincerity? It's tough. But, you know, I can tell you with politicians, you can find some black sincere if you're doing 19th century, because you'll have a politician say something like, I have never supported that war. And then you'll go read their journal and they're like, I've been totally opposed to this. Yeah, like that, that, that, that. I really think that we're going to have to fight this war. Even though I said publicly, not. I mean, the reality is some people say things publicly and then privately, they. They think something else, you know, and you see this A lot with, like I said, politicians or other figures. So you could say, well, here's Ellen White publicly saying that she thinks that the whole world's wrong about worshiping on the wrong day. But privately she's like, actually, I know it's Sunday, I don't know. Yeah, right. So. So a historian could do that to prove that they're not sincere. But in general, you just simply say, she sincerely believed that God spoke to her. And you don't try to undermine that and say, but obviously he didn't. I mean, that's criticism, that's opinion. That's not provable. But Joseph's truth claims are different for two reasons. One, he is saying that he has plates. Now, you either have plates or you don't have plates. That actually is something in the secular realm that you either have a tactile physical actuality or you do not. It's not a matter of, you know, there's a lot of people like, well, I'm sure that Joseph sincerely thought that God spoke to him, but of course he didn't. Okay, you're right. Do. Are there people who, who sincerely think that God spoke to them when God didn't? Hyrum Page. Yes, of course there are people who believe that sincerely. But in Joseph's case, there's the added witness of the plates when people say, well, why does Joseph have the plates? The plates are the demonstration of the actual historicity of the events that Joseph is now receiving through revelation. Because Joseph has something. [00:58:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:58:07] Speaker B: Even his antagonists are picking up the box that the plates are in and hearing it and feeling it. So you're left with only a couple of options. Joseph manufactured somehow, you know, stole hundreds of pounds of tin from a neighboring village that was never reported, fashioned a bellows, figured out how to make the tin look tarnished like gold, enough that you could confuse and convince even somebody knows what looks like, figured out, figured. [00:58:33] Speaker C: Out how to engrave on tin, which people, ex Mormons who've made fake tin plates to be like, oh, look how easy it is, have admitted it's actually really hard to engrave them. And so they haven't engraved their plates yet. [00:58:46] Speaker B: Yeah, well, so you're left with this argument that Joseph either manufactured plates, which again, helps you sleep at night, but there's no sources that demonstrate that or that he actually has something. And that's the reason why some historians who don't accept Joseph Smith's truth claims, they've actually come to the point where, well, how do I deal with the fact that there's 12,000 Joseph Smith documents hundreds of thousands, millions of words, hundreds of thousands of pages. And in all of them, Joseph really seems to be sincere, that he really believes he was called by God. Well, how can you really believe you were called by God and also fashion plates on your own, that you then lied to people and told you that an angel brought to you in order to convince people that actually that they were a record of an ancient civilization? How do you do both things outside of being just a lunatic? And so, you know, you have some people that have even suggested, well, maybe, maybe he did find something, but what he found just wasn't. He found like copper printing plates or he found, maybe he did find some Native American Indian artifact. [00:59:57] Speaker D: I've heard that, yeah. [00:59:59] Speaker B: Because that way he can be both sincere, but then also sincerely wrong. And that's all derived from the fact that what do I do with plates? And frankly, you find people do a lot of what John Turner did, and that is don't engage on it at all. Because there is not a good answer. We're not talking about a bunch of men who spent the rest of their lives in insane asylums. We're talking about people who in all other aspects of their life appear to be normal functioning people who make attestations, legal attestations, that we did heft and did see, we know that the said Smith has those plates in his possession. And so for me, when people are troubled by that, well, why does Joseph need the plates at all? Frankly, the fact that Joseph had plates is the greatest defense of Joseph's seership that there is from this early period. [01:00:55] Speaker D: Yeah, well said. [01:00:56] Speaker B: The word for the book itself. [01:00:57] Speaker D: Well said. [01:00:57] Speaker C: And I think speaking to that, that's not just true for us today as we go through the historical record. Like you literally, like you see for Emma, right, Her, her opportunity to like feel the plates through the covering. Right. For Martin, before he becomes a formal witness, the fact that he's able to like hold the plates and heft them in the box and later he talks about having them like rest on his knee while they're covered. And he's able, like those are the experiences that gave them confidence this is real, that this is real. Right. And that. Okay. And like Emma gave up so much, right, to support her husband, Martin gave up so much to support Joseph. And it was those tangible experiences with the plates that convinced him to do it. [01:01:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think demonstrates the. It demonstrates the reality of what Joseph is claiming. This can't just be a vision that Joseph, what's really Interesting is even Joseph in his 1832 history, when he talks about trying to retrieve the plates and not being able to get them, what's his reaction? You know, I cried to God because it like, was this just some kind of vision? Because he wasn't able to actually tangibly, you know, tangibly grab and feel the plates. So I understand why people have the concern. If the question is, could God have given Joseph Smith the translation of the Book of Mormon without him having the plates? The answer is, of course he could, because it's God. [01:02:22] Speaker C: He can do whatever he wants the. [01:02:23] Speaker B: Same way that he gave Joseph Smith Dr. And Covenant, Section 7, which is a translation of a Johannine parchment which Joseph did not go to the Holy Land and dig up and find. And yet there it is. Right? Yeah. But in some way that there is a connection between the plates and the stones, that they, they come as a group and they go as a group when Joseph hasn't taken away. [01:02:47] Speaker D: It's a package deal. [01:02:48] Speaker B: Package deal. And I. And I don't know what that is, but I do know that as Latter Day Saints, we should be, you know, incredibly grateful for the physical reality of the plates. And the fact that Joseph isn't directly looking at them when he's translating or appears not to be, at least according to the sources we have, shouldn't in any way affect whether or not those things are real. [01:03:14] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:03:14] Speaker B: Those plates are still sitting on the table. [01:03:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:03:16] Speaker B: Like, whether he's looking at them or not, where do those plates come from? And Joseph avered they came from an angel who told them that they were the records of ancient prophets and that they were buried. [01:03:26] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:03:27] Speaker A: This has been really enlightening. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode. If anyone wants to learn more about this topic, I'd recommend reading From Darkness unto Light or let's talk about the translation of the Book of Mormon. So thank you, Garrett, for joining us. [01:03:40] Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me.