At the FairMormon conference earlier this month, Dan "the Interpreter" gave an excellent presentation titled "'Idle Tales'? The Witness of Women."
He discussed the way women have been mistreated by societies throughout history, specifically in terms of rejecting them as credible witnesses.
John (or Andrew Jenson, who interviewed him), decided Mary couldn't be correct.
He discussed the way women have been mistreated by societies throughout history, specifically in terms of rejecting them as credible witnesses.
He pointed out how women were not allowed to serve on juries, even in the U.S., because their "lack of intelligence" and "emotional instability" made them incompetent to be jurors. He used several examples very effectively.
This was all great material, presented in an engaging fashion. It's difficult now to look back and see how our own legal system treated women historically.
But then he treated Mary Whitmer the same way!
Right there, in front of the FairMormon crowed of fellow "Interpreters," Dan the Interpreter displayed this artwork and declared that it was Moroni who showed Mary Whitmer the plates.
Instead of using this as an example of how women have been mistreated (which is what he should have done, because that is exactly what this is), Dan the Interpreter perpetuated the mistreatment!
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Predictably, Dan the Interpreter cited an article from, you guessed it, The Interpreter.
You can follow along at this link:
The article quotes David Whitmer's account of meeting an old man on the side of the road while he was taking Joseph and Oliver from Harmony to Fayette. The man declined a ride to Fayette, saying "No, I am going to Cumorah."
David recalled this because, as he said, "This name was somewhat new to me. I did not know what Cumorah meant." David went on to say "It was the messenger who had the plates, who had taken them from Joseph just prior to our starting from Harmony."
In another account of this meeting, not included in this article, David said the man was wearing a wool suit, was about 5'8", and was a little portly. Joseph explained it was one of the Nephites.
The account in the article continues with David's explanation of what happened in Fayette, when the messenger brought the plates from Cumorah.
Sometime after this, my mother was going to milk the cows, when she was met out near the yard by the same old man (judging by her description of him) who said to her, “You have been very faithful and diligent in your labors, but you are tired because of the increase of your toil, it is proper therefore that you should receive a witness that your faith may be strengthened.” Thereupon he showed her the plates.
Next, the article quotes John C. Whitmer's 1878 account.
I have heard my grandmother (Mary Musselman Whitmer) say on several occasions that she was shown the plates of the Book of Mormon by a holy angel, whom she always called Brother Nephi. (She undoubtedly refers to Moroni, the angel who had the plates in charge.)
Notice that parenthetical.
John (or Andrew Jenson, who interviewed him), decided Mary couldn't be correct.
After all, she was a woman!
Instead, John (or Andrew) mansplains to us that "She undoubtedly refers to Moroni, the angel who had the plates in charge."
And what does Dan the Interpreter do?
He not only agrees with Mary's male descendant (or his male interviewer), but he perpetuates the offensive discrediting of Mary Whitmer's testimony by promoting a painting of the event and telling the world this old man is not Nephi, but is actually Moroni in disguise!
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It turns out, Mary is the credible one here. Her statement that she called the messenger Brother Nephi is consistent with what Joseph told David (that the messenger was one of the Nephites). We don't know the names of the 3 Nephites, but they were chosen from among the 12 disciples, one of whom was named Nephi.
Mary's description of the stranger carrying a knapsack aligns with David's description of the messenger who was taking the plates to Cumorah.
By contrast, the spin provided by Dan the Interpreter and these other men would force us to believe that Moroni, described by Oliver and Joseph as glorious and larger than average, shape-shifted into a 5'8" old man carrying the plates around in a knapsack.
The article goes on to quote from the "Cox Bulletin II (1958)," an item from their family history.
One morning, just at daybreak, she came out of her cow stable with two full buckets of milk in her hands, when a short, heavy-set, gray-haired man carrying a package met her and said,
“My name is Moroni. You have become pretty tired with all the extra work you have to do. The Lord has given me permission to show you this record:” turning the golden leaves one by one!
This is awesome. Compare this 1950s version of what Moroni said to David Whitmer's account. David never gave the name of the messenger, but only described his appearance and explained that Joseph said he was one of the Nephites.
Here, we have the messenger saying "My name is Moroni." It's laughable, really, especially when we look at the explanation for the provenance of this account.
I talked to O C Day’s children (he is the one that published the pamphlet) and they do not know of any earlier written stories. O C’s mother, Euphrasia, liked to tell family stories at night to the children, and her mother Elvira Pamela Mills Cox probably did the same. O C was 18 when Elvira died, so he would have heard the stories from her, and also from his mother. I have another Cox history pamphlet from 1957 that has genealogy with many tidbits of stories interspersed. O C was born in 1885, so he was in his 70s by that time. The pamphlet we are interested in was published just a little later....
I believe that O C Day heard the stories from his grandmother, Elvira, and from his mother, Euphrasia, in his youth, but didn’t write them down until the 1950s, when he decided such history needed to be shared. His daughter and granddaughter that I talked with only knew of them after the stories were printed in 1958. And at the beginning of the compilation of Elvira’s stories he said: “While spinning and weaving wool, grandma liked to tell us stories about her people.”
IOW, this is hearsay upon hearsay, not recorded until the 1950s.
This is 80 years after the John C. Whitmer account that claimed Mary Whitmer was wrong when she identified the messenger as Brother Nephi.
I think what Dan the Interpreter and his fellow intellectuals are doing to Mary Whitmer is even worse than the other examples Dan the Interpreter gave in his presentation, because these intellectuals know exactly what they're doing.
They don't want members of the Church to realize that Mary, David, Oliver and Joseph were telling the truth about these events because that would mean the real Hill Cumorah is in New York.
And that would be the end of M2C.
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BTW, Mary Whitmer's statement about "Brother Nephi" makes sense of the original version of Joseph Smith's history (JS-H in the Pearl of Great Price), which stated it was Nephi, not Moroni, who appeared to him in 1823.
That account was not actually written by Joseph; it was compiled by his scribes and contemporaries, and then published in the 1842 Times and Seasons. Joseph obviously recognized the messenger on the road to Fayette; he had given him the Harmony plates before leaving Harmony because he had finished translating them and needed the plates of Nephi to complete the record (D&C 10).
It is easy to see why the compilers of Joseph's history could be confused if Joseph spoke of both Moroni and Nephi. But that's a topic I've discussed before.
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