Chap wrote:Hmm. So far we have this:
“Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the 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 character 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.” (David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ, Richmond, Mo.: n.p., 1887, p. 12.)
Russell M. Nelson, “A Treasured Testament,” Ensign, Jul 1993, 61
I asked:
I wonder what you will say if one of your audience comes up to you next week and asks:
"Y'know <bcspace>, I've been thinking: seeing as the Lord gave Joseph the exact words of the right translation through the seer-stone, and he just had to read them off, and they couldn't get to the next bit until the Lord had checked they had written it down just right - seeing all that, how come the Book of Mormon as we have it today isn't exactly the same as when it was first published?"
bcspace responded:
Any significant changes made (if any) were made by Joseph Smith himself to clarify, not alter the meaning.
Wait a minute - the Lord himself causes to appear on the stone an English text, which is read off by Joseph from the stone, and written down by Oliver at his dictation. Oliver then reads what he has written back to Joseph - and if and only if what Oliver has written is correct, then the Lord makes the text disappear, and shows the next portion. The process is then presumably repeated until the book is completely translated. That is what David Whitmer is telling us, is he not?
Now if that account is right:
(a) The text of the Book of Mormon translation written down by Oliver was the Lord's own translation, word for word. The idea that this could ever need 'clarifying' seems simply blasphemous, since it would suggest that Joseph Smith was claiming to know what the Lord meant
better than the Lord did himself. Do no LDS find this idea disturbing?
(b) A subsidiary point arises: if the translation comes from the stone, why does Joseph need the plates at all? Clearly many features of the early stories about the Book of Mormon suggest that the plates were essential, and that Joseph looked at them, either directly or with the aid of special spectacles while translating. It appears that generations of LDS have been raised on stories and pictures based on such accounts. But the seer-stone makes the plates unnecessary, does it not?
Does question (a) never get raised at DCP's "firesides" when he tells the story of the seer stone? If so, I wonder how he responds, or how he or other LDS intellectuals would respond if the questions were to be put.
Please note that I just want to hear how one would respond in the context of an informal conversation, when only a few sentences of answer are possible, and one cannot argue at length, with footnotes and learned citations. That should make it possible for the response to be posted on this board. (Of course if someone wants to post a link to a 20,000 word article
as well as giving a "fireside" style answer, why not?)
(Obviously one way of avoiding the difficulties of (a) and (b) is simply to say that Whitmer's account is unreliable in crucial respects. In that case someone, somewhere (Whitmer?) was very careless with the truth in relation to an important matter, and it does seem odd that his story was given so much publicity amongst modern LDS by an Apostle without very strong caveats being entered.)