JSJr's Face-in-the-Hat: Troubling to the Faithful

[_Darth J]

Too much, evidently.

Please forgive me for reading your statement and taking at face value, rather than examining the context of it within this thread, within the church, within the state, country, world, universe etc. My mum always told me to say what you mean and mean what you say; I assumed you were brought up with similar teachings. My mistake, of course.

Your mum was quite right to teach you that words and statements exist in a vacuum. If you read the statement, "Dude, you kill me!" your mum would be correct to interpret this as a fancy dresser in the Old West murdering the speaker, without fussing about things like the context in which it was said.

Do you have a rough estimate of how many times you will continue saying this...

I was responding to an inquiry posted by sock puppet.

That's funny, given how many times you have said your irrelevant third-party hearsay is specifically addressing what I said.

No one is asking you to believe Joseph Smith, I am simply saying that I do.

Belief in Joseph Smith is irrelevant to the issue of whether what the LDS Church depicts is consistent with what witnesses say they observed.

The seer stone placed in a dark area for better visibility was one method Joseph used to translate. Another was the Urim & Thummim/Nephite Interpreters. They are both valid; they are both true. The official account speaks about Nephite Interpreters, so it is little wonder that the pictures and paintings commissioned by the church would correspond to the official account.

Okay, so there's one time you're going to continue to say this, despite it being shown repeatedly in this thread that no contemporary witness said they saw that, and that conflating the seer stone with the Nephite interpreters was an after-the-fact invention by someone who wasn't present when the Book of Mormon was allegedly being translated.

So there's one more time. Will it be more than one more time? Can you cite me a single person who was present at the time who says he or she saw Joseph Smith using the Nephite interpreters?

Can you cite me a single contemporary witness who said he or she saw this?

[_Chap]

The seer stone placed in a dark area for better visibility was one method Joseph used to translate. Another was the Urim & Thummim/Nephite Interpreters. They are both valid; they are both true. The official account speaks about Nephite Interpreters, so it is little wonder that the pictures and paintings commissioned by the church would correspond to the official account.

Okay, so there's one time you're going to continue to say this, despite it being shown repeatedly in this thread that no contemporary witness said they saw that, and that conflating the seer stone with the Nephite interpreters was an after-the-fact invention by someone who wasn't present when the Book of Mormon was allegedly being translated.

So there's one more time. Will it be more than one more time? Can you cite me a single person who was present at the time who says he or she saw Joseph Smith using the Nephite interpreters?

No he can't. (If he could, he would certainly have done so by now.)

Nevertheless, he will go on and on asserting that there is good eyewitness evidence to justify the pictures of Joseph Smith translating by looking at the plates, until you get so bored of pointing out his failure to produce any supporting evidence that you fall silent.

Then he will have won.

Haven't you any experience of dialog with mopologists?

[_why me]

Samual Richards said this is the way oliver cowdery told him it was done.

[_why me]

I believe that this was one way it was discribed. Joseph woujld have a piece of paper and stencil it and attempt a translation.

[_Drifting]

Why Me.

I think the key phrase used by Darth was 'someone who was present'.

[_Chap]

Why Me.

I think the key phrase used by Darth was 'someone who was present'.

Oh, like David Whitmer, writing in his own words in David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ (Richmond, MO: n.p., 1887), 12?

I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph would put the seer stone into a hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.

Did anybody else who was present leave us a first-person narrative of this kind that has reached us in their own words, as they wrote them, without being recalled or reported by someone else?

[_Drifting]

Why Me.

I think the key phrase used by Darth was 'someone who was present'.

Oh, like David Whitmer, writing in his own words in David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ (Richmond, MO: n.p., 1887), 12?

I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph would put the seer stone into a hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.

Did anybody else who was present leave us a first-person narrative of this kind that has reached us in their own words, as they wrote them, without being recalled or reported by someone else?

David Whitmer is only a reliable witness when he witnesses what members want to believe.

[_Chap]

David Whitmer is only a reliable witness when he witnesses what members want to believe.

Oh, of course. I was forgetting. So that would mean David Whitmer's first-person eyewitness account (and he was one of the Three Witnesses too, wasn't he?) would be more than cancelled by what Samuel Richards (1824–1909) is reported as having said in 1907 at the age of 83 about what Oliver Cowdery (1806-1850) said to him at least 57 years before about what had happened as long as 21 years previously, in 1829.

However, even our report of what Samuel Richards said Oliver Cowdery had said still doesn't support the picture reproduced above, which shows Smith looking directly at the plates without the use of any instrument as if reading a normal translation from a language he understood:

He represented Joseph as sitting at a table with the plates before him, translating them by means of the Urim and Thummim, while he (Oliver) sat beside him writing every word as Joseph spoke them to him. This was done by holding the "translators" over the hieroglyphics, the translation appearing distinctly on the instrument, which had been touched by the finger of God and dedicated and consecrated for the express purpose of translating languages. Every word was distinctly visible even to every letter; and if Oliver omitted a word or failed to spell a word correctly, the translation remained on the "interpreter" until it was copied correctly.

Is Smith ever shown 'holding the "translators" over the hieroglyphics, and reading off the words that "appear[ed] distinctly on the instrument"? No? I thought not.

Of course this post may be ignored, since its data come from an avowedly anti-Mormon source.

[_Drifting]

Interestingly, Oliver Cowdrey is to be believed as another of the three witnesses but yet not to be believed when he articulates events relating to a barn, Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger.

I like the way believing Mormons are quick to point out that the three witnesses are not to be trusted!

[_sock puppet]

Samual Richards said this is the way oliver cowdery told him it was done.

Who gives a flying fig what Samuel Richards said? He wasn't there. He didn't see it. And yet you dismiss the 6 or 7 eyewitness accounts--all face-in-hat. Not one mention by any eyewitness of Studious Joe. There is simply no basis for it. Those paintings are canards. They mislead.

The Brethren know it. Yet they continue to shovel it out to Church members and investigators. That's basic lying--knowing the actual facts to be one way, but in the face of that knowledge continuing to promote the event as having occurred another way. Your precious Church is a misleading, fraudulent institution. It cannot even own up to the way JSJr supposedly translated what it claims to be the Word of God--with his face planted in the crown of a hat, the sides pulled tight so in the darkness he could see the words appearing on the magic parchment.

Thankfully, the producers of South Park were more interested in an accurate description than COJCOLDS. Why don't you start attending the Church of Trey Parker? At least he is honest with these facts, something that the truth-challenged Brethren yet struggle to achieve.