Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a Biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. We continue our examination of a book titled The LDS Gospel Topics Series, a Scholarly Engagement.
It was edited by Matthew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst. And the reason why we feel it's important to look at some of the chapters that are in this book is because the Gospel Topics Essays, as we've explained throughout the series, were written in order to hopefully assuage some of the angst, you might say, that some members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were having about their history and their theology. And as we've mentioned, though these essays were supposed to help the member who was struggling with some of their Church's history and doctrine, it ended up actually causing some more problems for many Latter-day Saints, because now the Church, through its transparency in these essays, were admitting to things that many members had been led to believe were mere lies by enemies of the Church. Well, one of those areas certainly has to do with how the Book of Mormon was translated. And chapter four is titled The Book of Mormon Translation Essay in Historical Context.
It was written by a man by the name of John Charles Duffy. His bio says what, Eric? He's an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Comparative Religion at Miami University in Ohio, where he teaches courses on religion in U.S. history and culture.
He received his Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He's a co-author of Mormonism the Basics from 2016, and he's published articles on Mormon intellectual and cultural history in several venues. Now, a lot of the things that Mr. Duffy is going to bring out in this chapter you might feel is a bit intimidating.
I don't want you to feel that way. We are going to throw out some words that you're probably not familiar with, and I'm sure many Latter-day Saints are not familiar with them either. But it's important to understand one of his strong arguments in this chapter.
So let's just dive right into this, and when we get to those areas, which we are going to, we'll explain a little more fully what he's talking about so that we can have a good understanding of what Mr. Duffy is saying. So on page 97, he writes this, the essay presented selected statements from Smith and his scribes about the translation process, attesting that the golden plates were a real tangible artifact, and that Smith had translated them by reading English words that appeared on a miraculous interpretive instrument. To corroborate these 19th century claims, the essay drew on work done in the late 20th and early 21st centuries by LDS scholars associated with the Foundation for Ancient Research in Mormon Studies, known as FARMS, housed at Brigham Young University, who argued that the earliest Book of Mormon manuscripts display grammatical features characteristic of Near Eastern languages, evidence that the Book of Mormon really is a translation of an ancient text.
That statement right there is going to build the platform, you might say, for what Duffy is going to bring out later on. But let's explain that the Foundation for Ancient Research in Mormon Studies, according to footnote number two, it says that FARMS became part of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University in 2013. Some FARMS supporters who did not share the Maxwell Institute's Mormon Studies emphasis founded the Interpreter Foundation in 2012. Now what that tells me, and I admit I am a critic of Mormonism, but it shows me that there are some differences of opinions among the scholars. And as you and I were discussing before we started recording, Eric, I'm sure that most Latter-day Saint members are completely oblivious to some of the controversies that the scholars within the LDS Church are very much aware of. Duffy is going to speak of some of those controversies just when it comes to the subject of how the Book of Mormon was translated. And again, if you were to ask most Latter-day Saints how was the Book of Mormon translated, let's say before the year 2013, most of them, wouldn't you agree, Eric, would say, well, Joseph Smith had the plates and he had the Urim and Thummim, which were the stones that were buried with the plates. And through wearing these stones in front of his eyes, he was able to translate the Reformed Egyptian into English.
In other words, he's reading the Reformed Egyptian and translating it at the same time as he reads it to his scribe. And we're going to talk about that in more detail later. But would you agree with that?
I would say yes. And I think the church art helped out a lot because, for instance, in February of 2001, on the front cover of the Ensign magazine, you have a picture of Joseph Smith and his finger is on the plates as he's reading off of those plates. And so I think that's how most Latter-day Saints understood the translation process. And the things that we're going to be talking about, such as seer stones and other things like that, were not really popular, I would say, for many Latter-day Saints.
And you mentioned the seer stone and that gets mentioned in the very next paragraph on page 98. He writes, The seer stone that he's talking about was found while Joseph Smith was digging a well with his brother Hyrum. So he had this very early, around the early 1820s.
And as Duffy admits, he uses it to look for lost objects and buried treasure. That was one reason why Joseph Smith was hired by a man by the name of Josiah Stoll. Joseph Smith was known to be a money digger. And because he was known to be a money digger, Josiah Stoll hires him to look for a silver mine. Now, Joseph Smith, in his testimony found in the Pearl of Gray Price, actually lies about that whole scenario. He says that as a result of looking for the silver mine, that's when he got the reputation of being a money digger.
That's not true. And the Joseph Smith papers prove this. According to the Joseph Smith papers, it shows that Joseph Smith was already known to be a money digger.
And that's why Josiah Stoll hired him. He mentions the spectacles-like pair of stones called the Urim and Thummim. The Urim and Thummim may sound familiar because that's a phrase that we read in the Old Testament. They were stones that were found on the high priest's breastplate. And I have to admit, as a 21st century Western Christian, it sounds kind of strange to me how these things operated.
As far as we know, it gave yes and no answers. But one thing we do know, never do we find in the Old Testament that the Urim and Thummim was ever used for translation purposes. And that's exactly what Joseph Smith tells us these stones were used for in bringing forth the Book of Mormon. But when it talks about this oval-shaped seer stone, as he admits, this is where the controversy arises. Because we have had numerous conversations over the years, again, prior to 2013, when we would bring up this seer stone and the hat that Joseph Smith used to bring forth the Book of Mormon translation. Many Latter-day Saints who were more familiar with the picture of Joseph Smith running his finger across gold plates, such as on that cover of the Ensign magazine, they would say that we were making this up and that was not true. So that idea was not commonly held, even though, we will admit, it's not as if the LDS Church leadership completely hid that part of its history, because that's not true either.
Bill, I'd like to revisit those two instruments mentioned here on page 98, the first being the Urim and Thummim. Well, the question is, how did Lehi, or whoever got it that left Jerusalem in 587, somewhere in that time period, how did they ever get possession of these stones? Because there was apparently only one set, and it would have been owned by the high priest, so that's never explained in the Book of Mormon how that would have happened.
And then second, with the seer stone itself, this is a magic stone. At what point would you say that it's okay to use a magic stone in using that for the interpretation of Scripture? It doesn't seem like that would be something that God would have intended to have happened.
You raise an excellent point, and this is something that's always befuddled me, you might say. It's interesting how before 2013, when the Church comes out with these essays that really do have their stamp of officiality, because the Church leadership told the members they're supposed to know what's in these essays, and so they supported the essays, even though they are anonymously written. Why, I don't know, but I'm sure the Church has its reasons. But the Church has backed this up.
It's interesting to me that prior to 2013, many Latter-day Saints that we spoke with on this issue who found the seer stone in the hat to be an offensive story, I would guarantee you today, Eric, probably would have no problems with it. And that's what I find fascinating with Latter-day Saints. You bring up something in their history, they find it to be offensive, accuse you of making it up or taking it out of context, but then when you show them the Church supporting what you just said, or what I just said, they go, oh, I guess we do believe that, as if there's no problem now. And that's the value of the Gospel Topics essays, as we have mentioned in the last couple of weeks, because what you have here is a gold mine for apologists like us that we're able to use this information and say this is on the Church's official website. They're admitting, for instance, that Joseph Smith had between 30 and 40 wives. A lot of Latter-day Saints didn't know that before those essays were published. A lot of Latter-day Saints didn't know that the Book of Abraham is a spiritual translation and not a literal translation. And so these are the things that bring great value and why we're spending so much time talking about a book called the LDS Gospel Topics series, because this is what it's all about, to be able to understand what is truth. And Latter-day Saints don't always know everything about their history. And I think you're absolutely correct on that, Eric, that these are really what we call a gold mine of information. And if a person is serious about sharing your faith with a Latter-day Saint, and in order to do that, you have to at some point start talking about what Mormons are supposed to believe.
I don't know how you can escape that. Yes, we should give them the Gospel. There's no doubt about that.
But at the same time, remember, they already have a belief system in place that needs to be replaced. And you're going to have to touch this subject at some point in the conversation. The essays are very good at helping us in that area. Tomorrow, we're going to talk more about why the seer stone was so controversial. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org, where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism. Since it was first released back in 2009, the book, In Their Own Words, a collection of Mormon quotations, has helped many Christians better understand what Mormon leaders and manuals have taught regarding the Mormon faith. Compiled by Mormonism Research Ministry's Bill McKeever, the new enlarged and expanded edition comes with a CD that includes a searchable PDF version of the book. In Their Own Words is available at the Utah Lighthouse Bookstore, located right there in Salt Lake City. Or order it directly online at MRM.org.
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