Review of Brant Gardner's review of By Means of the Urim and Thummim

Review of Brant Gardner’s Interpreter article

In the ongoing pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding, I thought it would be useful to review Brant’s article published in the Interpreter, here:

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/trust-us-were-lawyers-lucas-and-neville-on-the-translation-of-the-book-of-mormon/#more-79547

[Note: I’m doing an interlinear commentary as a combined peer review/response to make sure I don’t overlook anything, to avoid claims that I’m taking anything out of context, and to assure Brant that I read his entire article up to the point where I stopped, as indicated. I’m posting it on this blog because the Interpreter would never allow me to publish this on their site.]

I appreciate Brant taking the time to read and review our book. I assume he read all of it, but if so he read it with a preconception because he makes claims that are neither in the book nor anything I’ve said or written. But I suppose everyone does that, so it’s not a problem for me.

I’ve always like Brent. He’s one of my favorite M2C/SITH scholars because he is fairly open about his views, he owns his views and articulates them on social media, and he doesn’t hide behind anonymous articles.

And he doesn’t write scripts for attractive young people to read on social media the way the scholars at Scripture Central do.

Plus, he’s willing to engage with others, at least more so than most M2C/SITH scholars.

I also like his pithy statements, some of which we will discuss below.

My comments in red below.

_____

Trust Us, We’re Lawyers: Lucas and Neville on the Translation of the Book of Mormon

Let’s begin by discussing this title.

As Brant admits below, “Lucas and Neville didn’t really say ’trust us, we’re lawyers.’ I confess that is my translation of what they said.”

Nevertheless I like the title because it’s an example of Brant’s pithy statements that reveal far more than it seems at first glance.

As summarized by the title, the essence of Brant’s review is that readers should trust the “trained LDS scholars” (a phrase he repeats 10 times) instead of a couple of lawyers whose views diverge from the Interpreter orthodoxy.

This is the overall message, and objective, of not only Brant but the Interpreter Foundation itself. The principals want people to trust them because of their credentials. In their view, the credentialed class deserves (by virtue solely of their credentials) our deference, our appreciation, our awe, and ultimately our adherence to their opinions.

That’s why it’s called the “Interpreter” Foundation in the first place. They have set themselves up as the “interpreters” of Church doctrine, practices, and theology for those of us who (according to them) can’t properly think for ourselves and assess scriptures, teachings of prophets, and extrinsic evidence without their guidance.

The Interpreters’ self-appointed role strikes the rest of us as quaint, funny, and even absurd, but it’s all too real in their minds.

As Brant makes abundantly clear in his review.

But as I said at the outset, I like Brant and appreciate his style and thoughtfulness.

Brant A. Gardner

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 63 (2025): 135-168

 

Review of James W. Lucas and Jonathan E. Neville, By Means of the Urim & Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration (Cottonwood Heights, UT: Digital Legend Press & Publishing, 2023). 288 pages. $19.95.

Abstract: In their book, James Lucas and Jonathan Neville present two major theses relative to translation of the Book of Mormon. The first is that the translation was always done by means of the interpreters that were delivered with the plates. The second is that Joseph Smith was an active participant in the translation process. A theory is laid out for how that might happen. Although this reviewer can agree that Joseph was an active participant in the translation, neither the first thesis nor their explanation of the second thesis can be accepted by those familiar with the historical record.

 

The last line is another example of Brant’s pithy statements. It epitomizes the dogmatic approach taken by the Interpreters. No alternative to the Interpreters “can be accepted.” Brant himself unwittingly or intentionally ignores relevant historical facts, but according to the Interpreters, you have no right to even know about such evidence. To be accepted by the Interpreters, you simply cannot escape the SITH orthodoxy. (Brant says the same about the M2C orthodoxy, but that’s a tangential topic here.)

I just love the way Brant spells out this dogmatic, intolerant approach.  

This review requires a disclosure, right up front. James Lucas and Jonathan Neville wrote a book that introduces a theory on how the Book of Mormon was translated.¹ I also wrote a book on that topic.² [Page 136] They include my book in their book’s bibliography and in a couple of footnotes. They didn’t like my book. I return the favor: I don’t like theirs. Nevertheless, I hope to provide an analysis that can transcend my obvious personal involvement in the issues. Well, mostly avoid personal involvement.

I don’t recall saying we didn’t like Brant’s book. To the contrary, we thought he did a good job making his arguments. Framing a response to a book as “liking” or “disliking” introduces an element of emotional response that seems out of place in an academic discussion.

We agreed with some of Brant’s book, disagreed with some of it, but are happy to acknowledge multiple working hypotheses. Unlike Brant, we don’t take any of this personally. We think Brant is a great guy, smart, scholarly, and articulate. We just don’t agree with all of his assumptions, inferences, and theories. I’ve discussed this before, here: https://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2023/08/epic-interview-with-brant-gardner-on.html

Lucas and Neville didn’t really say “trust us, we’re lawyers.” I confess that is my translation³ of what they said: “The authors are both attorneys, and the law has long and well-tested criteria for evaluating secondhand or hearsay testimony, which we apply to sources about the origins of the Book of Mormon” (p. 27). This statement is part of the introduction to the first part of the book which takes on historical testimonies to argue that Joseph Smith never used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon. The assertion is important because they are also asking us to prefer their interpretation to that of trained Latter-day Saint historians.

This is Brant’s interpretation, which is fine, but in the pursuit of clarity, we don’t ask anyone to prefer anything; we simply encourage people to make informed decisions for themselves. That said, we don’t value arguments based on credentials. Arguments rise or fall on their merits and the relevant evidence, not on who makes them. And especially not on the credentials of the person making them. We only mentioned that we are lawyers to explain our inherent bias, training and experience in assessing witness statements and other evidence. We wouldn’t want anyone to trust us; instead, we encourage people to trust Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and the related evidence.

Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat represent the opposition: “Recently, historians of the Joseph Smith Papers Project carefully analyzed all of the known accounts about the translation to document the use of the seer stone.”⁴ Lucas and Neville are asking us to favor their reading of their selected set of sources over the interpretations of the trained historians who have “analyzed all of the known accounts about the translation to document the use of the seer stone.” Did those trained historians really miss what the lawyers found? That would be astonishing. Perhaps it could be true, but “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” in Carl Sagan’s aphorism.⁵

It’s strange that Brant uses MacKay and Dirkmaat (D&M) as exemplars. They’ve done a lot of great work, and they’re great guys, careful scholars, etc. I like them personally and I’ve used their work because they’ve brought several obscure sources to our attention.

But beyond that, I wouldn’t say they have earned any sort of deference. Certainly no one should delegate their beliefs to D&M. Anyone interested in Church history should read their work, including their references, and then read other sources, and make up your own mind.

I’ve recognized some of the good work they’ve done, such as here:

https://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2024/03/march-liahona-gerrit-dirkmaat-almost.html

On the other hand, they are well-known for having fabricated a historical narrative around Jonathan Hadley, as discussed here:

https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2023/10/update-on-jonathan-hadley-and-sith.html

or more formally here:

https://www.academia.edu/108771925/The_1829_Jonathan_Hadley_account_of_the_translation_of_the_Book_of_Mormon

(Note: I’ve tried to contact them to discuss this but they’ve ghosted me, so make up your own mind about the Hadley narrative.)

I’ve discussed the work of D&M several times on https://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/ . If anyone’s interested, go to that page and search for Dirkmaat to see the articles.

 

In this review I do not discuss specifics of how the historical accounts are interpreted. The arguments that the historical accounts do not actually point to the use of a seer stone were laid out in Neville’s previous book.⁶ Spencer Kraus reviewed that book and went into the [Page 137] details sufficiently that I elect not to repeat that analysis; please see his review.⁷ Kraus didn’t convince Neville, as evidenced in Neville’s response to Kraus and in the nearly wholesale repetition of his arguments and evidence in By Means of the Urim & Thummim.⁸ I simply note that I agree with Kraus’s reviews.

Fun anecdote here. The Interpreter allowed me a relatively brief response, which I provided. They asked for edits, which I made. Then they held back publication to give Kraus time to prepare another response, in which he raised additional points. When I asked to respond to those additional points, the Interpreter refused. Such is the nature of “scholarship” at the Interpreter.

What I propose in this review is not a detailed analysis of the evidence, but rather a more detailed examination of how Lucas and Neville use the evidence. I will use David Hackett Fischer’s descriptions of historians’ fallacies⁹ as the measure against which I evaluate Lucas and Neville’s arguments. Although Lucas and Neville are lawyers, the law isn’t history. When they enter discussions of history, they act as historians. The question is how well they, as lawyers, do that.

Fair enough.

By Means of the Urim & Thummim presents two major theses. The first is that the translation of the Book of Mormon was only accomplished using the interpreters delivered to Joseph Smith. The second thesis is a new explanation for how the translation was accomplished. Most of the comparisons to Fischer’s historians’ fallacies therefore concentrate in the discussion of the first thesis.

Sounds good.

The Problem of Approach

Early in his book, Fischer notes: “Historians must, moreover, develop critical tests not merely for their interpretations, but also for their methods of arriving at them.”¹⁰ Without those critical tests for their interpretations, historians are open to perhaps the most common error. Fischer calls it the “fallacy of declarative questions.” As he defines it:

If a historian goes to his sources with a simple affirmative [Page 138]proposition that “X was the case,” then he is predisposed to prove it. He will probably be able to find ‘evidence’ sufficient to illustrate his expectations, if not actually to sustain them.¹¹

This is a good description of confirmation bias, which I discuss regularly. In my view, confirmation bias is unavoidable, but can be mitigated by a declaration of the author’s bias.

SITH and M2C are the creation of scholars who started with a belief and then corroborated (confirmed) it by assembling, organizing, and presenting information and arguments. Brant’s own books are prime examples. Naturally, I did the same with my book on geography, Moroni’s America. As I explained there, I started with the bias that Joseph and Oliver told the truth about Cumorah. Then I assembled, organized and presented information and arguments that corroborated what they taught.

One key is not pretending to eliminate or avoid bias, but to acknowledge one’s bias and factor it in. This I think we did pretty clearly in our book.

Another key is separating facts from assumptions, inferences and theories. I call this the FAITH model of analysis (Facts, Assumptions, Inferences, Theories and Hypotheses).

It is a well-known problem. G. J. Renier underlined it when he quoted the French historian Fustel de Coulanges as saying “if we approach a text with a preconceived idea we shall read in it only what we want to read.”¹² John Gee underscored it specifically in reference to research on the Book of Mormon:

As anyone who has studied geometry since Nikolas Lobatchewsky knows, the entire shape of your geometrical system depends on your assumptions. So, too, with Book of Mormon scholarship: the shape of the resultant system depends upon the assumptions brought to bear on the text.¹³

This is so axiomatic it barely needs to be said again for the umpteenth time, but it’s always a good reminder.

It is difficult for anyone but the authors to know their motivation for writing, but I feel safe asserting that Lucas and Neville have a preconceived assumption that they are attempting to demonstrate.

Didn’t we make that explicit? We wish every scholar would announce personal bias up front, but few do.

Those of us who seek to understand appreciate knowing an author’s bias. We realize that there are no objective authors. It’s far better for an author to announce his/her bias than to leave readers wondering what that bias is. As the recent example from Royal Skousen’s Part Seven illustrates, unexplained bias can mislead readers who, unaware of the author’s bias, might assume the author is providing all the relevant information, even if it contradicts the author’s own opinions, interpretations, etc.

Perhaps the best explanation of their perspective comes from Neville’s previous book. In the preface to that book he states:

Long-time members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints remember being taught that Joseph Smith translated the ancient plates by using the Nephite interpreters known as the Urim and Thummim. Artwork, lesson manuals, and teachings of Church leaders uniformly presented this narrative for many decades.

Younger members (and new converts) learn instead that Joseph used a seer stone that he placed into a hat. Joseph would read out loud the words that appeared on the stone. The plates sat nearby, covered with a cloth the entire time. Artwork created in the last decade, as well as lesson manuals and other media, depict this scenario.

The dichotomy between old and new approaches leaves people with a sense of ambiguity and confusion. The current [Page 139]version of the anonymous Gospel Topics Essay on Book of Mormon translation muddies rather than clarifies the issue, as we’ll see in this book.

For some faithful members, the question is unimportant. They believe the Book of Mormon is the word of God and it doesn’t matter how it was produced.

But other faithful members, as well as those who have lost their faith and those outside the Church who investigate the Church’s truth claims, think the translation of the Book of Mormon is a core issue.

This is not only a matter of historical interpretation. The nature of the translation implicates theological and historical issues related to the historicity and divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon itself.¹⁴

Good quotation. I’d forgotten I’d written that, but it sounds great to me.

Neville lays out the problem he wants to solve: History was taught one way for a long time, and now it has changed. Some are upset about it. Neville wants to resolve that upset by returning to the former way of understanding history. Thus, in A Man That Can Translate, Neville argued that the current historians’ understanding that Joseph Smith used a seer stone during the translation of the Book of Mormon must be wrong because it isn’t the way history used to be taught.

This is absolutely not what I’ve argued. It’s a ridiculous caricature. Adhering to tradition for the sake of tradition is the exact opposite of what I advocate.

I’ve written around 10 books on LDS history and related topics. Each one presents a new approach to long-held interpretations. One, The Rational Restoration, consists of dozens of reframes of traditional views, both faithful and critical.

In fact, it is the adherence to the new traditions of SITH and M2C that I encourage people to re-examine for themselves.

Contrary to Brant’s assertion, I’ve pointed out that there is nothing new in terms of historical references. Church leaders, historians, and lay members were all aware of what was written by or attributed to David Whitmer, Emma Smith and others back when it was originally published.

A handful of influential scholars created the “New Mormon History” that includes SITH and M2C not by discovering new historical sources or uncovering new evidence, but by shifting their biases and weighing of the evidence away from the teachings of the prophets and toward the speculation of scholars.

SITH is an all-time classic example of this. Like M2C, the study of how historical narratives are created should use SITH as a case study.

It is not readily apparent how much Lucas contributed to or shared that perspective, but as co-author of By Means of the Urim & Thummim he is at least complicit in the commission of this historians’ fallacy.

I agree with Brant that there is a fallacy to the idea that history should be taught the way it was always taught simply because that’s how it was always taught. To repeat: my own books demonstrate the opposite of this approach. Every book I’ve written argues for a new approach to well-known sources.

It’s difficult to believe that Brant is unaware of this. It is he, not I, who argues in favor of sticking with traditions and the “consensus” of the scholarly class on the basis of their credentials.

The First Thesis: SITH and Darkness unto Light

The first major thesis in By Means of the Urim & Thummim is a defense of Lucas and Neville’s position that Joseph Smith’s seer stone was never used in the translation of the Book of Mormon. They assert that the whole of the translation was accomplished by means of the instruments delivered to Joseph Smith along with the plates. That opinion contrasts with the conclusions found in a book from two LDS historians. Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerritt Dirkmaat published From Darkness unto Light in 2015 after working with all of the available evidence from multiple sources, including the Joseph Smith papers.

Again with D&M. This is a reprise of the theme of Brant’s title; i.e., “Trust us, we’re ‘trained LDS historians.’”

In the pursuit of clarity (in case people are skipping around through this review), I respect, admire and appreciate D&M for the research they’ve done, the sources they’ve made available, and their contributions to the Joseph Smith Papers, as it involves facts. But I don’t defer to their assumptions, inferences and theories.

I think everyone should approach the work of historians this way. Deferring to, or even accepting, the assumptions, inferences and theories of historians or other scholars is lazy learning.

The problem of definitions

It is difficult to read anything Jonathan Neville has written about the [Page 140]translation of the Book of Mormon without noticing that he is fond of his creation of the acronym SITH. SITH stands for “stone in the hat” and refers to descriptions of how Joseph Smith used a seer stone in the translation process. As an acronym it has some humor, especially to those familiar with the fantasy universe in which the Star Wars sagas occur. Lucas and Neville use the acronym to characterize the opinions of the scholars that they want to contradict.

This acronym must be a sore spot for the Interpreters. They asked me to delete the acronym from my response to the Kraus review, which I did. But the purpose of an acronym is to avoid repetition of long phrases, to make reading easier and clearer, and to summarize concepts to simplify communication. I’ve told the scholars I’d be happy to use a different acronym if they have one but they haven’t suggested one. Just because SITH invokes Star Wars in the minds of some doesn’t offset its utility.

I hope it’s okay that I use the acronym U&T instead of typing out Urim and Thummim throughout this article. I’ll keep using the acronym D&M so I don’t have to retype DIrkmaat and MacKay every time Brant refers to them.

Their position, diametrically opposed to SITH, is: “In this book we will generally use the original Book of Mormon term ‘interpreters’ to avoid confusion due to recent obfuscation of the term ‘Urim and Thummim’” (p. 6). First, it is important that Lucas and Neville attempt to clarify terms. The claimed “obfuscation” is that LDS trained historians understand “Urim and Thummim” as a term created later in early Church history and applied retroactively to previous events:

Back with the “LDS trained historians” appeal to authority. Let’s see what they say.

Joseph Smith and members of the Church generally stopped differentiating between the seer stones and the spectacles by simply calling all of them the Urim and Thummim. By 1833, for example. W. W. Phelps published an article in the Church newspaper in Missouri, The Evening and the Morning Star, that declared that Joseph translated the plates “by the gift and power of God. . . through the aid of a pair of Interpreters, or spectacles—(known, perhaps, in ancient days as Teraphim, or Urim and Thummim).” By the time Joseph Smtih’s later history was written in 1839, Joseph was using the term Urim and Thummim to reference any seer stone. Thus it is impossible to tell from his own later accounts precisely which device he was using to translate the Book of Mormon or to receive revelations.¹⁵

It's unbelievable that Brant or anyone else keeps referring to the Phelps article, now that we know the term Urim and Thummim was being used by missionaries to describe the interpreters as early as 1832. In 1833, Phelps wrote an article for a general audience, introducing the term for an audience familiar with the Bible. Phelps didn’t coin the term for LDS culture.

Off the top of my head, I don’t know what Brant’s referring to regarding 1839. D&M and other SITH scholars usually point to the December 1841 Wilford Woodruff (WW) journal to make this point.

Contrary to the WW version of his meeting with Joseph and the 12, Brigham Young explained that Joseph clearly differentiated between the Urim and Thummim he used to translate the Book of Mormon and the seer stone he showed the 12. Surely Brant is aware of this. He should inform his readers, too, so they can make informed decisions about what he’s claiming here.

Lucas and Neville create a false dichotomous definition where Urim and Thummim is synonymous with interpreters. That allows them to ignore the complications of reading the texts and to insert their interpretation of meaning into them.

It wasn’t us who equated the terms. It was Joseph and Oliver, as anyone can see by reading what they wrote and published. And the 1834 book Mormonism Unvailed made the distinction between the “peep stone” and the Urim and Thummim crystal clear, pardon the pun. As of 1834, there was zero confusion about the difference between SITH and U&T.

Opposed to the position of the trained historians,

How many times is Brant going to appeal to the authority of “trained historians” in his review? We disagree with their assumptions, inferences, and theories, but we’re all looking at and we all accept the actual facts.

Lucas and Neville use Urim and Thummim as though their assumption that it must refer to the interpreters means that any text referencing the Urim and Thummim therefore refers to the interpreters.

Not so. We all recognize that Joseph used the term in 1843 (D&C 130) to describe two locations and the stone mentioned in Rev. 2:17.

Remember that the trained historians were much more cautious,

Maybe I should start counting Brant’s references to “trained historians.” Of all the appeals to authority in the universe, this might be one of the ineptest.

There is nothing in the training of historians that makes their interpretations authoritative, let alone immune from scrutiny. “Trained historians” argue among themselves all the time.

The relative value of the work of a trained historian (not counting the discovery, accumulation, organization, and presentation of historical documents and related evidence) depends largely on how closely they adhere to the AHA Historians’ Standards of Professional Conduct. But the historians to whom Brant refers don’t always adhere to those standards. That’s how D&M ended up with their fictitious narrative about Jonathan Hadley.

indicating that it was “impossible” (their word) to know to what instrument(s) the later term Urim and Thummim referred. When Lucas [Page 141]and Neville insert the word interpreters where the source has Urim and Thummim, they are hiding the actual data from their readers. Lucas and Neville use that method to make the historical accounts they cite say something that they do not actually say.

I can’t find what Brant is referring to here.

The approach that Lucas and Neville utilize is one of the problems Fischer highlights:

The law of the excluded middle may demand instant obedience in formal logic, but in history it is as intricate in its applications as the internal revenue code. Dichotomy is used incorrectly when a question is constructed so that it demands a choice between two answers which are in fact not exclusive or not exhaustive.¹⁶

I agree with the Fischer point, but it doesn’t apply here.

Lucas and Neville suggest that we have only two options: the seer stone or the Urim and Thummim (in their exclusive definition equating the Urim and Thummim with the interpreters).

No matter how many times Brant repeats this refrain, it doesn’t change the historical fact that it was Joseph and Oliver who equated the Urim and Thummim with the Interpreters.

The historical record shows that Urim and Thummim is a later term and was applied more broadly than Lucas and Neville may appreciate.

It was “later” only in the sense that no documentary use prior to 1832 has survived. We’ve already seen that in 1834, the Urim and Thummim was specifically and unambiguously distinct from the “peep stone.” And no matter how many times Brant repeats this refrain, we can all see that until 1843’s D&C 130, Joseph used the term Urim and Thummim exclusively for the interpreters, regardless of how Wilford Woodruff used it. 

By restricting the meaning of Urim and Thummim to the definition that facilitates the conclusion they want their readers to reach, they create a much more critical obfuscation than the one they accuse the historians of committing.

This is inverse reasoning. Surely Brant knows this. We can only hope his readers recognize it, too.

To try to provide some clarity to the discussion, there are four terms that deal with the instrument(s) Joseph used: interpreters, spectacles, seer stones, and Urim and Thummim. Let’s look at each very briefly.

• Interpreters. Only interpreters and Urim and Thummim appear in a scriptural text. The word interpreters appears in the Book of Mormon; it does not appear in the King James Version of the Bible.¹⁷ On the other hand, Urim and Thummim does appear in the Old Testament, but never appears in the Book of Mormon.
• Spectacles. The term spectacles is an early label given to the instruments received with the plates. Mosiah’s interpreters were “two stones which were fastened into the two rims of a bow” (Mosiah 28:13). That fits the description of the instrument delivered with the plates. Joseph Smith—History 1:35 confirms that accompanying the plates “were two stones in [Page 142]silver bows.” Joseph Smith’s brother, William noted that they were “much like a pair of spectacles.”¹⁸ The term spectacles is only applied to the instruments delivered with the plates. It is not a scriptural term but a very human description rather than a technical device name. The use of spectacles exclusively refers to the interpreters as a descriptive term.
• Seer stones. Joseph Smith possessed at least two seer stones prior to Moroni’s visit.¹⁹ Prior to Moroni’s visit, Joseph Smith used his seer stones in the same way that other local seers used theirs. They, and he, used them to find lost objects or to see what could not normally be seen.²⁰ 

Here we should note that Brant commits the common fallacy of stating as a fact what is actually only a claim by some historical sources. There’s a big difference between a fact and a claim. That’s why we assess the credibility and reliability of witness statements.

We can all agree that, when we have a document, the existence of the document is a fact. If documents relate claims, we can all agree it is a fact that some people recorded claims they made, and some people recorded claims they heard or believed were made by others. But a claim and a fact are not the same thing. People make false claims all the time. This is why historians and scholars such as Brant owe it to their readers to stop making statements of fact when they are actually merely assuming that a claim is true.

In 2015, the Joseph Smith Papers Project published the photographs and transcription of the Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon. The introduction included, for the first time, photographs of Joseph’s brown seer stone, with the caption: “This stone matches some descriptions of the seer stone used by Joseph Smtih during the translation of the Book of Mormon.”²¹ That this stone (or the white seer stone) was used in translation, is where Lucas and Neville disagree with the historians.

Definitely. This is a good example of an appeal to authority that doesn’t hold up.

The provenance of the depicted stone is murky because there is no clear chain of custody. (I think it’s more likely someone picked it up in Wyoming on the way to Utah but that’s another story.)

It doesn’t match the description given by David or Emma. It’s not the stone that Joseph showed to the 12, including Brigham and WW, in December 1841, because Oliver possessed it at that point.

If it is the stone that Joseph gave Oliver, then Oliver possessed it when he testified in 1848 that Joseph translated the plates with the Urim and Thummim; i.e., instead of holding up the stone to testify about the translation, he referred to the Urim and Thummim, which he equated to the interpreters.

“I wrote with my own pen the entire Book of Mormon (save a few pages) as it fell from the lips of the Prophet as he translated it by the gift and power of God by means of the Urim and Thummim, or as it is called by that book, holy interpreters. 

I beheld with my eyes and handled with my hands the gold plates from which it was translated. 

I also beheld the Interpreters.”

https://www.mobom.org/oliver-returning-to-the-church

Yet Brant claims it is we who have equated the terms.

• Urim and Thummim. Urim and Thummim is a biblical term. As Dirkmaat and MacKay explain: “it may surprise many Latter-say Saints to learn that the term ‘Urim and Thummim,’ though certainly known by early members because of its biblical origins, is not used in any of the earliest documents to describe any of the seer stones, including the two stones found with the plates.”²²

 

The more Brant quotes and cites D&M, the more we can all see the weakness of his appeal to authority.

D&M cite very few “earliest documents” because so few of those documents exist.

We’re all looking at, and we all accept, the same facts. Where we differ is in assumptions, inferences, and theories.

The “earliest” documents include Joseph’s earliest personal history, written in 1832, which was roughly contemporaneous with the earliest extant description of the Urim and Thummim as the instrument for the translation. If the SITH scholars want us to believe that Samuel Smith and Orson Hyde first coined the term in 1832 as missionaries in Boston, that’s an assumption we can compare with the assumption that they learned it from Joseph and/or Oliver before they left on their mission.

If the SITH scholars want us to believe that Joseph and Oliver misrepresented what Moroni told Joseph, that’s an assumption we can compare with the assumption that Joseph and Oliver accurately quoted (or paraphrased) what Moroni told Joseph Smith.

 

The clarification of terms is important because Lucas and Neville [Page 143] consistently use later documents which explicitly said Urim and Thummim as though they said interpreters. This violates a principle they emphasized themselves: “Sources written close in time to the events are generally considered more reliable than those written down long after the events” (p. 27).

And yet, Brant, along with D&M, rely primarily on sources dated decades after the events to promote SITH, while rejecting sources dated closest to the events.

In our view, 1832 is closer in time than 1877, or even 1853, or even 1843. And direct, first-hand published statements by Joseph and Oliver are more reliable than hearsay accounts and recollections recorded decades later.

But we encourage everyone to compare the relative reliability of these sources for themselves.

Here is how it plays out:

Joseph Smith—History 1:35 implies that it was Moroni who first identified the interpreters as the “Urim and Thummim.” Similarly, our earliest and most detailed account of Moroni’s visit, written by Oliver Cowdery with Joseph’s assistance and published as Letter IV in the first history of the Church, also describes Moroni using the term. However, because the term does not appear in the historical record until 1832, historians have inferred instead that Joseph (or another contemporary such as W. W. Phelps) borrowed the term from the Bible and applied it to the spectacles. (p. 77)

Exactly. Well said.

Lucas and Neville even admit that what they propose as evidence was written years after the fact.

The pejorative framing (“admit”) is a clever rhetorical device, but readers readily spot that tactic. It’s not an admission. It’s a statement of fact, because most of what we know about the translation was “written years after the fact.”

Of course, they do not mention the absolute absence of the term Urim and Thummim prior to Phelps’s article.

What is this? Brant just quoted our reference to the 1832 article from Boston. Do readers of the Interpreter really so mesmerized by the credentialed class that they don’t notice what Brant just did here?

This is what Fischer called the fallacy of pseudo proof, which is “committed in a verification statement which seems at first sight to be a precise and specific representation of reality but which proves, on close inspection, to be literally meaningless.”²³ What they argue is that Joseph and Oliver first used the term “Urim and Thummim” because they used it when they later wrote about earlier events. Lucas and Neville invoke Joseph and Oliver because, of course, they should be the ones who know. Since they “knew,” they must have been the first to use the term “Urim and Thummim.” That appears to be a strong argument, but only on the surface.

It’s not a superficial argument. It’s our bias in favor of believing Joseph and Oliver told the truth about what happened. Brant’s bias is the opposite, which is fine, but he’s a little cagey about his bias.

Lucas and Neville simply assert that because it was Joseph and Oliver, their use of Urim and Thummim must carry the exclusive meaning Lucas and Neville give to the term.

Okay, this repetition is progressing beyond ridiculous. Everyone familiar with the sources, such as the one from Oliver I quoted above, knows that Joseph and Oliver equated the U&T with the Interpreters exclusively, until Joseph expanded the meaning in 1843 by describing places and objects as “a” Urim and Thummim (D&C 130).

They then use that assertion as though it is an accepted fact. This is the “fallacy of the circular proof.” This is “a species of a question-begging, which consists in assuming what is to be proved.”²⁴

It was an accepted fact for Joseph and Oliver and their contemporaries and critics. While it may not be accepted by certain “LDS trained historians,” the dubious assumptions that led to their position was one of the points we made in our book.

Typically, the early descriptions called the interpreters spectacles. Martin Harris, Hyrum Smith, Lucy Smith, and even Oliver Cowdery [Page 144]used spectacles as a description of the instruments of translation.²⁵ Phelps’s suggestion was actually more of a possibility than a firm identification: “a pair of Interpreters, or spectacles—(known, perhaps, in ancient days as Teraphim, or Urim and Thummim).”²⁶ 

How many times is Brant going to cite Phelps in this article?

Dirkmaat and MacKay describe the history of the application of Urim and Thummim to any reference of either the interpreters or seer stones:

Most of the histories of the early Church were written after 1838, including the History of Joseph Smith, which would eventually become the History of the Church. By the time that later history was written in 1839, Joseph was using the term “Urim and Thummim” to reference any seer stone, not just the ones that had originally been found in the stone box with the plates.

Stop here. D&M flew right by the first history of the Church, Oliver’s essays written in 1834-5 with the assistance of Joseph Smith. The first essay was published in the same month as Mormonism Unvailed, which made the distinction between the U&T and the “peep stone” crystal clear. D&M don’t even tell their readers about this.

This changing terminology makes it very difficult to determine which stone or device is being referenced since all seer stones, even the separate stone showed to Wilford Woodruff in 1841, were called “Urim and Thummim” by Joseph Smith.

IIRC, D&M forgot to tell readers that Brigham Young’s account of this same meeting clearly distinguished between the U&T and the seer stone that Joseph showed them on that occasion. The one who confused the terms was Wilford Woodruff, not Joseph, Brigham, or anyone else.

That Joseph came to see this term as a generic descriptor of a seer stone, rather than a reference only to the stones found in the stone box, is evident in the way he would later describe the planet upon which God resides, what the earth would become after its destruction and rebirth, and what each believer entering into the celestial kingdom would receive (see Doctrine and Covenants 130:6–9). In each case Joseph described the very different things as “Urim and Thummim.”²⁷

No, D&M are confusing people here with this misquotation. In D&C 130, Joseph described them as “a” Urim and Thummim, a generic term. When Joseph and Oliver referred to the interpreters that came with the plates, they referred to them as “the” Urim and Thummim. (D&C 10:1, 17:1, JS-H 1 (7 places), the Elders Journal, Letter IV, Wentworth letter). Even Abr. 3:1 refers to “the” U&T.

The position of Lucas and Neville that Urim and Thummim could only mean the interpreters (or spectacles) falls before the weight of the larger body of evidence Dirkmaat and MacKay consider and bring to the argument.

This is nuts. The “weight of the larger body of evidence” consists of two pieces of dubious evidence to offset 12+ specific documents directly from Joseph and Oliver. D&M offer Wilford Woodruff’s journal entry (which contradicts BY’s account) and D&C 130, which “late” compared with the other sources and has nothing to do with the translation anyway.

Of course, Lucas and Neville do understand that they are proposing a hypothesis that is contrary to that presented by the trained LDS historians.

Okay, I did a word count. Brant appeals to the authority of the “trained” LDS historians 10 times in this article. Even once was too many. The credentials of these historians is irrelevant because we can all assess the evidence for ourselves. 

To make sure I do not misrepresent them, here is their statement:

Some proponents of replacing the canonical narrative with [Page 145]the SITH narrative have argued that Joseph and Oliver used the term “Urim and Thummim” to apply to both the seer stone and the Nephite interpreters. These proponents argue that Joseph’s 1843 broader use of the term should apply retroactively so that references to the Urim and Thummim even in 1834 also include the seer stone. (p. 78)

Perfectly stated. 😊

As with much of their text, this needs some unpacking. First, the conclusion of what other LDS scholars suggest about the application of the term Urim and Thummim is correct. Second, however, notice how subtly the interpretation by Lucas and Neville has become “the canonical narrative” and the scholars are proposing this new SITH narrative. This is the fallacy of the insidious analogy: “an unintended analogical reference which is embedded in an author’s language, and implanted in a reader’s mind, by a subliminal process which is more powerfully experienced than perceived.”²⁸

? Is Brant saying the narrative in D&C and JS-H is not canonical?

In this case I would argue that it is a completely intentional analogical reference. The implication of Lucas and Neville that their interpretation is canonical borrows the term from the process of sacralizing a text as scripture.

There’s a difference between an inference and an implication. Brant may have inferred this, but we didn’t imply it. The canonical narrative is what we can all read in the D&C and JS-H. Our interpretation incorporates that, but also incorporates non-canonical sources (Wentworth letter, Elders’ Journal, Oliver’s letters, etc.). We clearly distinguish between what our interpretation is and what the canon says. Certainly there is nothing in the canon to suggest that Joseph did not use the U&T to translate the plates.  

Implicitly, their interpretation thus becomes “official” while that of the scholars is clearly inferior.

Another inference by Brent. We’re not saying our interpretation is official or that the scholars’ interpretation is inferior. We’re arguing that the actual official statements in the canon are corroborated and vindicated by the extrinsic evidence we present, and that the scholars’ interpretation contradicts that evidence. But we leave it up to readers to decide for themselves what they want to believe.

This is a fascinating attempt to reverse reality. The Church’s essay on the translation of the Book of Mormon is as close to canonical as the official Church gets.

Now this is perhaps the core issue, and I’m glad Brant articulated it.

It’s a takeaway quotation that summarizes the state of LDS academia today.

Most Latter-day Saints believe that the scriptures are the canon, the authoritative declaration of doctrine for the Church. But now Brant claims that the essay composed by his “trained LDS historians” supersedes the scriptures because the essay “is as close to canonical as the official Church gets.”

Brant’s interpretation of the “canonical” authority of these essays contradicts the introduction to the essays itself. I’ve discussed that here:

https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/p/gospel-topics-essays-do-not-supersede.html

Furthermore, the essays are (i) anonymous and (ii) subject to change at any time without notice or documentation. Plus, they have actually been edited in the past. This makes them the antithesis of “canonical.”

The essay “Book of Mormon Translation” was commissioned by the Church and vetted before being published.²⁹ The introduction to the Gospel Topics essays explains the vetting process:

Recognizing that today so much information about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be obtained from questionable and often inaccurate sources, officials of the Church began in 2013 to publish straightforward, in-depth essays on a number of topics. The purpose of these essays, which have been approved by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, has been to gather accurate information from many different sources and publications and place it in the Gospel Topics section of ChurchofJesusChrist.org, where the material can [Page 146]more easily be accessed and studied by Church members and other interested parties.³⁰

Readers should look at the link I gave above, where I quoted the entire introduction instead of just the one paragraph that Brant gives us. Nothing in the Introduction, in the Gospel Topics Essays (GTE) themselves, or in the teachings of Church leaders ever says or implies that the GTE are canonical in any way. Only the scholars who wrote these essays, and their peers and friends, consider them “canonical.” Which is why contemporary LDS scholarship is in such disarray and has lost so much credibility among Latter-day Saints (active, inactive, and former) as well as outsiders. It’s the arrogant assumption of authority by the credentialed class that Brant exemplifies that has led these scholars to reject, repudiate and even ridicule what Joseph and Oliver (along with their contemporaries and successors) clearly taught about the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon.

Hence, we have SITH and M2C.

The Church’s as-close-to-canonical-as-it-gets resource endorses the historians’ interpretation of the evidence:

Ha-ha, this is classic circular reasoning.

The historians wrote these essays.

They cited themselves.

Therefore, the essays confirm the views of the historians who wrote them.

How could the essays do anything but endorse their authors’ interpretation of the evidence?

Apparently for convenience, Joseph often translated with the single seer stone rather than the two stones bound together to form the interpreters. These two instruments—the interpreters and the seer stone—were apparently interchangeable and worked in much the same way such that, in the course of time, Joseph Smith and his associates often used the term “Urim and Thummim” to refer to the single stone as well as the interpreters.³¹

Obviously, this is what D&M, Brant, and their colleagues think, but that’s the precise reason why we wrote the book. We don’t think their balancing of the evidence—their preference for late sources that promote SITH over the earlier sources direct from Joseph and Oliver—makes sense or is even justifiable from the perspective of ordinary historical analysis.

But we also recognize multiple working hypotheses. Those who prefer to follow the scholars’ interpretation are free to do so. We’re just offering an alternative perspective and interpretation of the same facts and we’re inviting people to make informed decisions for themselves.

In doing so, we recognized that “trained LDS scholars” such as D&M and Brant would prefer to have Latter-day Saints defer to them. They don’t want people to think for themselves by considering alternative interpretations of the evidence. They want people to read these essays and accept them as “canon” without even checking the footnotes, let alone alternative faithful interpretations of the facts—especially the facts that the scholars don’t want Latter-day Saints to even know about. Brant’s position is clear. And that’s great.

Readers can decide whether they want to delegate their beliefs to these “trained LDS scholars” or whether they want to be well informed and “seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”

To make it as clear as I can, Lucas and Neville use the term canonical to refer to their own interpretation, which is opposed to the Gospel Topics essay that was vetted by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve.

Haha, Brant should trust readers to understand his claim without his having to continually repeat it. Anyone who reads the book can see for themselves that we don’t claim our interpretation is “canonical.” We simply say that what is in the scriptures is “canonical.”

Of course, Lucas and Neville have something to say about this particular Gospel Topics essay:

Soon even more senior historians were rejecting Joseph and Oliver’s testimonies in favor of giving priority to the SITH narrative. In 2013 the LDS Church released a Gospel Topics essay promoting the SITH narrative and in 2015 the LDS Church released photos of a seer stone of Joseph’s which it held. Today, Latter-day Saints are told by LDS academics that they should make a “paradigm shift” to accept the SITH accounts instead of what Joseph and Oliver taught in the Pearl of Great Price and elsewhere. (pp. 18–19)

Perfectly stated.

The first part of the statement is factual. Senior historians examined all the historical accounts and noted that Urim and Thummim was applied to the seer stone which was used at some point in the translation of the Book of Mormon. However, the semantics of the way they couch that factual statement is telling. The senior historians are “rejecting Joseph and Oliver’s testimonies in favor of giving priority to the SITH narrative.” Remember, however, that Joseph and Oliver’s statements specifically mention the Urim and Thummim. The scholars[Page 147] don’t reject Joseph and Oliver; they much more carefully attempt to understand them.

? Not a single SITH scholar accepts what Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery claimed.

Joseph and Oliver were both aware of the claims made in the 1834 Mormonism Unvailed, (U&T vs “peep stone”) as well as the Jonathan Hadley claims and others. When Joseph answered the question about the translation, he explicitly said he translated by means of the U&T that came with the plates.

I’ll reproduce that here because readers of the Interpreter probably have never seen this before:

Responding to ongoing confusion about the translation, Joseph Smith answered the question  in the Elders Journal in 1838.

Question 4th. How, and where did you obtain the Book of Mormon?

Answer. Moroni, the person who deposited the plates, from whence the Book of Mormon  was translated, in a hill in Manchester, Ontario County, New York, being dead, and raised again therefrom, appeared unto me and told me where they were and gave me directions how to obtain them. I obtained them and the Urim and Thummim with them, by the means of which I translated the plates and thus came the Book of Mormon.

(Elders’ Journal I.3:42 ¶20–43 ¶1)

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/elders-journal-july-1838/11 

Let’s adopt Brant’s tactic and repeat the point: Not a single SITH scholar accepts what Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery claimed. (emphasis added)

Royal Skousen recently published Part Seven: The Early Transmission of the Text. To his credit, he articulated the position of the SITH scholars in unmistakable fashion:

"Joseph Smith’s claim that he used the Urim and Thummim is only partially true; and Oliver Cowdery’s statements that Joseph used the original instrument while he, Oliver, was the scribe appear to be intentionally misleading."

See my post on this here:

https://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2024/11/thank-you-royal-skousen.html

The SITH scholars, including D&M, Brant, and the rest of the Interpreters, couch their views more carefully than Royal, but not one of them will publicly state that they believe what Joseph and Oliver wrote because they believe instead that Joseph produced the Book of Mormon by reading words off a stone he put in a hat.

One of the biggest tells is that the GTE doesn’t even quote what Joseph and Oliver said!

Are we really to trust the lawyers who self-anoint their theory as canonical when they know that it is directly opposed to a position vetted by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve?

It’s interesting that Brant frames this in terms of trust. His appeal to the authority of the “trained LDS scholars” is based purely on trust, not independent thought and analysis. That’s a recurring theme with the credentialed class of contemporary LDS intellectuals.

But it’s not how Lucas and I approach the topic.

I haven’t and wouldn’t ask anyone to “trust” me on any of this. Instead, I encourage people to trust what Joseph and Oliver said, and to consider all the historical evidence and interpretations, pro and con, then reach their own conclusions.

I propose that believing Latter-day Saints are better off following the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve than these two lawyers.

I 100% agree. But none of their names are on these GTE. None of them have ever said or implied that the GTE are canonical, close to canonical, or in any way supersede the scriptures and authentic Church history documents. To the contrary, Church leaders have always taught Latter-day Saints to study the scriptures and the teachings of the prophets. In a paragraph Brant forgot to quote, the introduction to the GTE itself says

Seeking “out of the best books” does not mean seeking only one set of opinions, but it does require us to distinguish between reliable sources and unreliable sources.

Notice the irony? Brant wants his readers to seek only one set of opinions—the set that agrees with him! And that explicitly contradicts the guidance given by the Church on the GTE website.

If Latter-day Saints follow the Church’s guidance, they will never delegate their knowledge about Church history, doctrine and practices to a handful of “trained LDS historians.”

The problem with stones

Neville, as evidenced in his two books, has a problem with stones—Urim and Thummim stones are good; interpreter stones are good; seer stones are bad.

Notice this is not a quotation. This is Brant’s imaginative reframing of something I’ve never said.

There is even the interesting possibility that seer stones in a hat are bad, but an interpreter in a hat might be good (p. 87). There is enough confusion that we really must understand what is going on with stones and seers.

For most Latter-day Saints, the interpreters have become linked to stones the Lord provided the bother of Jared:

And it came to pass that the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: Behold, thou shalt not suffer these things which ye have seen and heard to go forth unto the world, until the time cometh that I shall glorify my name in the flesh; wherefore, ye shall treasure up the things which ye have seen and heard, and show it to no man.

And behold, when ye shall come unto me, ye shall write them and shall seal them up, that no one can interpret them; for ye shall write them in a language that they cannot be read.

And behold, these two stones will I give unto thee, and ye shall seal them up also with the things which ye shall write.

For behold, the language which ye shall write I have confounded; wherefore I will cause in my own due time that these stones shall magnify to the eyes of men these things which ye shall write. (Ether 3:21–24)

The two stones are not named interpreters, but verses 23 and 24 associate them with being able to understand an otherwise uninterpretable language. Moroni also declares, in the book of Ether, that:

Behold, I have written upon these plates the very things which the brother of Jared saw; and there never were [Page 148]greater things made manifest than those which were made manifest unto the brother of Jared.

Wherefore the Lord hath commanded me to write them; and I have written them. And he commanded me that I should seal them up; and he also hath commanded that I should seal up the interpretation thereof; wherefore I have sealed up the interpreters, according to the commandment of the Lord. (Ether 4:4–5)

I like that Brant has rejoined us in focusing on the canon instead of the GTE.

Moroni clearly speaks of the interpreters, and the context of the book of Ether might imply that the interpreters are the very stones that Moroni sealed up.³² Indeed, most scholars have also equated the Jaredite stones with those in Mosiah’s possession. The Book of Mormon problem is that the Jaredite stones could not have been in Mosiah’s possession until after the people of Limhi merged with those in Zarahemla. It was Limhi’s search party who looked for Zarahemla but found Jaredite ruins. That search party brought the plates of Ether to Limhi in the land of Nephi. There is no record of the Jaredite stones coming with the plates of Ether, nor do the Jaredite stones (identified specifically as the Jaredite stones) appear at all in the Book of Mormon until the mention in Ether that they were sealed up with the record of the brother of Jared (Ether 3:23).

This is all true, but obviously does not preclude Mosiah having had possession of the Jaredite stones before Limhi’s explorers showed up.

Nevertheless, prior to the time that Mosiah could have possibly had the Jaredite stones,

Ah, here Brant makes an assumption that is not required by, or even supported by, the text.

Ammon declared to king Limhi:

I can assuredly tell thee, O king, of a man that can translate the records; for he has wherewith that he can look, and translate all records that are of ancient date; and it is a gift from God. And the things are called interpreters, and no man can look in them except he be commanded, lest he should look for that he ought not and he should perish. And whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer. (Mosiah 8:13)

Mosiah, in Zarahemla, already had “the things . . . called interpreters” [Page 149]while king Limhi, who was not in Zarahemla, had the Jaredite record and artifacts. With Mosiah having interpreters and Moroni sealing up interpreters, did Moroni mean Mosiah’s interpreters or the stones originating with the brother of Jared?

There’s no reason to insist that Mosiah’s “interpreters” are not the same ones that Oliver Cowdery referred to as “interpreters.” The Lord could easily have provided the Jaredite interpreters to Mosiah (or his predecessors). One possibility: Coriantumr could have repented when he went in search of the New Jerusalem that Ether told him about, and he could have taken the interpreters with him when he met the people of Zarahemla. Obviously Mosiah had a need for interpreters because he was using them; that’s how Ammon knew about them. This is just one of multiple working hypotheses.

It is clear that what Mosiah had was something different from those had by the brother of Jared. Mosiah’s interpreters were described as “two stones which were fastened into the two rims of a bow” (Mosiah 28:13). That is very much the description of the interpreters Joseph Smith received.

Exactly my point.

When Mosiah gave over the symbols of the kingdom to Alma, the first Chief Judge, they included “the plates of brass . . . all the records, and also the interpreters” (Mosiah 28:20). It would seem to be a reasonable assumption that the Jaredite stones were included, but the text only mentions the interpreters, and the only stones receiving that label belonged to Mosiah.

Do you notice what Brant’s doing here? He’s assuming, without evidence, that Mosiah’s interpreters were not the Jaredite interpreters, even though the text mentions only one set of interpreters.

Based on the Book of Mormon evidence, the best interpretation is that Joseph Smith received Mosiah’s interpreters, not the stones had by the brother of Jared.

Why is this the “best interpretation,” apart from it being Brant’s interpretation? We can all see that the text refers to “the interpreters” consistently, without distinguishing between “Mosiah’s interpreters” and “Jaredite interpreters.”

Stones and seers

Mosiah’s interpreters were stones (Mosiah 28:13). Mosiah was a seer (Mosiah 8:13). Mosiah’s interpreters were two stones joined in such a way that the modern witnesses called them spectacles.

This is Brant stating his assumption as a fact.

The point of calling them spectacles was to look through them. When Joseph’s brother, William, described the spectacles he said that: “they were much too large for Joseph and he could only see through one at a time using sometimes one and sometimes the other.”³³ William confirms that Joseph used the spectacles for looking, and indicates that although there were two of them, he could only use one at a time.

Oliver and Lucy Mack Smith also said Joseph looked on the plates through the U&T.

It was the possession of the instruments that allowed Mosiah to be called a seer:

And now he translated them by the means of those two stones which were fastened into the two rims of a bow. Now these things were prepared from the beginning, and were handed down from generation to generation, for the purpose of interpreting languages; And they have been kept and preserved by the hand of the Lord, that he should discover to every creature who should possess the land the iniquities and abominations of his people; And whosoever [Page 150]has these things is called seer, after the manner of old times. (Mosiah 28:13–16)

Mosiah had two stones. Because he could use them, Mosiah was a seer. It isn’t much of a semantic leap to say Mosiah had two seer stones.

It’s not a leap, but it’s not what the scriptures, or Joseph or Oliver, called them. It’s Brant’s effort to reframe the scriptures by creating his own canon.

When Joseph received them, and was able to use them, he too was a seer; he too had Mosiah’s seer stones. Trying to make some kind of exclusive separation between the interpreters and the seer stone is avoiding the obvious—regardless of whether they were called interpreters, spectacles, or even the later Urim and Thummim, the sacred instruments were seer stones.

Good, solid sophistry from Brant.

Seers using stones

The idea that one might find things with a seer stone was not unusual in Joseph’s Palmyra. The local Chase and Stafford families had seer stones that were used for hunting treasure or finding lost objects.³⁴ Martin Harris was familiar with the concept of using a seer stone to find lost objects. However, as a skeptic, he did not immediately accept that Joseph might be able to see what could otherwise not be seen. He spontaneously requested a demonstration:

I was at the house of his father in Manchester, two miles south of Palmyra village, and was picking my teeth with a pin while sitting on the bars. The pin caught in my teeth, and dropped from my fingers into shavings and straw. I jumped from the bars and looked for it. Joseph and Northrop Sweet also did the same. We could not find it. I then took Joseph on surprise, and said to him—I said, “Take your stone.” I had never seen it, and did not know that he had it with him. He had it in his pocket. He took it and placed it in his hat—the old white hat—and placed his face in his hat. I watched him closely to see that he did not look one side; he reached out his hand beyond me on the right, and moved a little stick, and there I saw the pin, which he picked up and gave to me. I know he did not look out of the hat until after he had picked up the pin.³⁵

We readers remember that Brant didn’t like “late” accounts. Previously, he thought the 1832 account of the Urim and Thummim was late. Now an account from 1859 is virtually canonical.

Martin recalled a scenario that was probably typical of the way a [Page 151]folk seer used a seer stone. What is important is the way the seer stone was used—Joseph Smith put it in a hat. William Smith described how Joseph used the spectacles. After noting that they were too large to look through both stones simultaneously, he added:

By putting his head in a hat or some dark object it was not necessary to close one eye while looking through the stone with the other. In that way sometimes when his eyes grew tires [tired] he releaved them of the strain.³⁶

Now Brant is relying on an even later account! His evidentiary standards are amazingly flexible.

The explanations for how a seer stone and the interpreters were used is the same. Of course, the interpreters might not always have been used in that way. Nevertheless, the fact that they could be used that way continues to suggest a greater commonality with the seer stone than a qualitative difference.

Even Lucas and Neville suggest that the stones from the spectacles could be separated and used by placing one of the stones in a hat.

[There is] the possibility that the stones could be removed from the rims and used independently of the plates for purposes other than translation. In such cases, Joseph may have placed the stone from the Urim and Thummim interpreter instrument in a hat, both to exclude exterior light and to hide it from the view of unauthorized persons, as per Moroni’s instructions. (p. 88)

One of the multiple working hypotheses.

Neville has promoted his SITH acronym because it highlights what he considers an uncomfortable image of Joseph translating with his head in a hat as well as the pop-culture reference to the evil Sith in Star Wars. However, we now have Joseph also using the stones from the interpreters (which Lucas and Neville call the Urim and Thummim) in a hat!³⁷

Wow, the Interpreters really don’t like that acronym!

It appears that Lucas and Neville are only arguing that in the very specific case of translating the Book of Mormon do the interpreters matter. Outside of that special-use case, the interpreter stones could be used in the very same manner as any other seer stone. Also, as William Smith suggested, they could be used in the same “in-the-hat” method as Joseph’s previous seer stones.

However it may “appear” to Brant, all we’re saying is that Joseph used the Nephite interpreters, which he (and Moroni) called the Urim and Thummim, to translate the plates because the interpreters were prepared by God for that purpose, as the scriptures and the words of Moroni make clear.

[Page 152]Mackay and Dirkmaat summarize:

Lucy Smith wrote that “Joseph kept the urim and thummim constantly about his person as he could by this means ascertain at any moment if the plates were in danger.” In one instance . . . Joseph also saw Emma in the spectacles. When he was in Macedon, soon after Moroni gave him the plates, Joseph “looked into them before Emma got there [and] perceived her coming and came up out of the well and met her.”³⁸

And?

They further explain:

Joseph’s use of seer stones before 1827 helps us understand why he only used the Nephite interpreters to protect the plates. He used the spectacles like a seer stone, to identify or find lost items, unlike his later use of them to translate ancient characters.³⁹

And?

For Joseph, a seer stone enabled someone to see. It was not restricted to translation, although that was a function that Mosiah’s seer stones performed in the Book of Mormon and for at least part of the translation of the Book of Mormon. Lucas and Neville even declare “Joseph made other inquiries through the interpreters, including those leading to a number of early revelations” (p. 88). Their argument against the use of a seer stone in translation is therefore limited to only translation, a limitation they do not explain or explicitly defend.

That’s because we never made the argument that Brant invented here.

Lucas and Neville argue that there really was a fundamental qualitative difference between the interpreters and the seer stone. The instruments were “sacred holy instruments of heavenly design,” and they assume that the seer stone was not:

We have a seer stone with a chain of custody back to Joseph Smith.

To clarify, it is “a” chain of custody, but a dubious one.

It is in the LDS Church’s archives. But anyone can see it is just a common, striated rock.

We do not have the Urim and Thummim interpreters, but we are informed by the scriptures that, unlike the rock, the interpreters were specifically prepared to assist with transaction. Sacred holy instruments of heavenly design, which have existed at least since they were given to the brother of [Page 153]Jared untold millennia ago (see Doctrine and Covenants 17:1), they have been returned to their angelic caretakers. (p. 152)⁴⁰

Well said.

According to the historical record, however, the seer stone had a similar divine sanction as did the interpreters:

Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff told others about some of the details, but instead of implying that Jospeh simply happened upon the stones, they emphasized that the stones were discovered by revelation. They insisted that God delivered the stones to Joseph. Woodruff, who esteemed Smith’s seer stones throughout his life, recorded a similar story in his journal on 18 May 1888, stating that the stone was found thirty feet in the ground, “by Revelation.”⁴¹

So far, Brant’s discussion dances around the main point that neither he, nor the other SITH scholars, believe what Joseph and Oliver said about the translation.  

Lucas and Neville highlight the divine circumstances of the interpreters but ignore the Church leaders who applied similar divine circumstances to the seer stones. Even with that divine sanction on the seer stones, it is quite evident that they are, as Lucas and Neville underscore, just common rocks.

We can’t lose sight of the reality that neither Joseph nor Oliver ever said or implied that any such seer stones were used in the translation. Instead, they explicitly claimed that Moroni instructed him to translate with the U&T, that Joseph was forbidden to show the plates or the U&T to anyone, and that Joseph did in fact translate the plates with the U&T that came with the plates.

Brant’s discussion of seer stones is a red herring to deflect from his open rejection and repudiation of what Joseph and Oliver taught.

To create a difference, they develop a fascinating hypothesis that the interpreters were not stones, but some kind of advanced technology. They state:

[Page 154]The eminent science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, in his Third Law, famously observed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The interpreters represent an incredibly advanced technology—they are of the technology of the heavens. However, it is understandable that they may have seemed no different than magic to early 19th century rural Americans. (p. 156)

It is an incredibly advanced technology that was miraculous and divine. Apparently they were only an advanced technology when used in conjunction with the plates, because they functioned just as did a seer stone both prior to and after the translation. Ironically, this divinely advanced technology was not nearly as capable as Google Translate. This is discussed further in this review’s section on the translation theory of Lucas and Neville.

We’ll get to that.

We don’t have the interpreters, so they cannot be examined for divine technologies that might transcend the fact that they were stones. That absence of evidence allows Lucas and Neville to create a hypothesis of how they worked that is only slightly less miraculous than the idea that Joseph had the full text to read (see the next section). This argument, which is built on an absence of the interpreters, is what Fischer calls the fallacy of the negative proof. It is “an attempt to sustain a factual proposition merely by negative evidence.”⁴²

The Second Thesis: The Lawyers on Translation

As we begin to analyze the theory of translation proposed by Lucas and Neville, it is important to clarify their definition of SITH. The primary meaning for SITH is “stone in the hat,” and the primary reference is the suggestion that Joseph Smith used a seer stone placed in a hat as part of his process of translating the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately for readers, Lucas and Neville tack on a second definition that is not a reference to the mechanics but rather to the result.

Conflated with the instrument is the resultant translation.

This looks like a good point by Brant. Except it isn’t us who conflated the “stone-in-the-hat” explanation with the claim that Joseph didn’t really translate anything. All the SITH scholars say Joseph didn’t really translate, and the basis for that claim is that Joseph read words off the stone after he put it in the hat. Part of that includes their claim that he didn’t even use the plates, as Mormonism Unvailed also claimed. Hence, the rejection of Joseph’s claim about the U&T is actually conflated with the claim by the SITH scholars that Joseph didn’t really translate the plates.

In this aspect of their use of SITH, “some believing scholars interpret Joseph’s use of the term translate to mean a supernatural phenomenon whereby Joseph read words that appears on a seer stone at the bottom of his hat. Again, for convenience, we refer to this scenario as ‘SITH’ (stone-in-the-hat)” (p. 32).

Fischer declares: “The fallacy of ambiguity consists in the use of [Page 155]a word or an expression which has two or more possible meanings, without sufficient specification of which meaning is intended.”⁴³ Lucas and Neville have created a fallacy of ambiguity not by using an existing word with two meanings, but in conflating two different meanings into their acronym of choice. The unclear separation makes it more difficult for their readers to carefully analyze the data because anything that discusses a concept of translation that Joseph read is imputed to the mechanism.

It's such a clear distinction that Brant readily sees the difference. We assume readers can, too.

The lawyers present a theory

The new and therefore more important part of their book is the presentation of a unique theory about how the translation of the Book of Mormon took place. Lucas and Neville offer an explanation of how the interpreters were used. The method required both the interpreters and the physical and unimpeded view of the plates.⁴⁴ The theory also posits that Joseph was an active participant in the creation of the English text dictated to scribes.

Well stated.

At this point, if anyone is still reading, it’s time for me to stop. Life is short and I can already predict all of what Brant will say in the rest of his review. He published a book about the translation, and he wants everyone to know he was correct and we’re wrong.

And that’s fine.

Theories about the translation have proliferated since the Book of Mormon was translated. Even today, some people believe the Spalding theory, which was the predominant explanation among non-Mormons in the 1800s. This was the theory that, while concealed behind a curtain (vail), Joseph read a text that had been written by Solomon Spalding and edited by Sidney Rigdon, who added the Christian terminology.

Some people believe Joseph “performed” the dictation by expanding on headlines or key points of an outline, based on the assumption that he had been imagining these stories for many years.

Some people believe Joseph may have concealed notes of some sort in the hat.

Some people believe Joseph may have memorized long portions of the text the night before each dictation session.

Some people believe Joseph read words out loud as they appeared in the stone-in-the-hat (SITH). Among this group, some believe the words were provided by Satan or another malevolent source, while others believe the words were provided by God or another mysterious incognito supernatural translator (MIST) or even someone living in the era of Early Modern English such as John Wycliff.

Some people believe that Joseph Smith was prepared by God from an early age to become a translator and prophet, which gave him an intimate acquaintance with those of different denominations that enabled him to articulate the English translation he saw when he looked at the engravings on the plates through the Urim and Thummim, after having first copied the characters and translated them with the U&T.

There are undoubtedly other theories.

Pick which one you want.

For me, the last one makes the most sense and fits best with the facts as we know them. Others disagree, and that’s great.

Let’s all isolate the facts, then explain our various assumptions, inferences and theories that lead to our overall hypotheses.

Then everyone can make informed decisions for themselves, all in the pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding.

It’s going to be awesome.  

In summary, I’ll take the historians over the lawyers, thank you.

 

1. James W. Lucas and Jonathan E. Neville, By Means of the Urim and Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration (Cottonwood Heights, UT: Digital Legend Press & Publishing, 2023). Technically my review is of the second edition of the book, though that is not explicitly stated in the copy I have in-hand. In the front matter, the authors state “Updated May 2023 and January and August 2024 from first edition.”

2. Brant A. Gardner, The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2011).

3. There is no good way to explain why using the word translation here is a pun on the Lucas and Neville theory of translation. Their idea will be discussed later. But trust me, I’m the reviewer.

4. Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith’s Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University [BYU]; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015), 67.

5. Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science (New York: Random House, 1979), 62.

6. Jonathan Neville, A Man that Can Translate: Joseph Smith and the Nephite Interpreters (Cottonwood Heights, UT: Digital Legend Press & Publishing, 2020).

7. Spencer Kraus, “An Unfortunate Approach to Joseph Smith’s Translation of Ancient Scripture,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 52 (2022): 1–64, journal.interpreterfoundation.org/an-unfortunate-approach-to-joseph-smiths-translation-of-ancient-scripture/.

8. Jonathan E. Neville, “A Man That Can Translate and Infinite Goodness: A Response to Recent Reviews,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 53 (2022): 171–84, journal.interpreterfoundation.org/a-man-that-can-translate-and-infinite-goodness-a-response-to-recent-reviews/. See also Spencer Kraus, “A Rejoinder to Jonathan Neville’s ‘Response to Recent Reviews,’” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 53 (2022): 185–98, journal.interpreterfoundation.org/a-rejoinder-to-jonathan-nevilles-response-to-recent-reviews/.

9. David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: HarperCollins, 1970).

10. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, xix.

11. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 24.

12. G. J. Renier, History: Its Purpose and Method (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 219.

13. John Gee, “La Trahison des Clercs: On the Language and Translation of the Book of Mormon,” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 6, no. 1 (1994): 54.

14. Neville, A Man That Can Translate, v-vi.

15. MacKay and Dirkmaat, From Darkness unto Light, 129.

16. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 10.

17. Interpreters in the plural is not in the KJV. The singular interpreter appears, but is not associated with an instrument of translation.

18. “William Smith Interview with J. W. Peterson and W. S. Pender, 1890,” in Early Mormon Documents, vol. 1, ed. Dan Vogel (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996), 508.

19. Michael Hubbard MacKay and Nicholas J. Frederick, Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2016), 29–44.

20. Gardner, Gift and Power, 69–78.

21. Partial caption. The photographs and caption cover a two-page spread in the printed volume. Revelations and Translations, Volume 3, Part 1: Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 1–Alma 35, ed. Royal Skousen and Robin Scott Jensen (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2015), xx.

22. Gerrit J. Dirkmaat and Michael Hubbard Mackay, Let’s Talk About the Translation of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2023), 81.

23. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 43.

24. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 49.

25. Dirkmaat and MacKay, Let’s Talk About the Translation of the Book of Mormon, 82.

26. MacKay and Dirkmaat, From Darkness unto Light, 129.

27. Dirkmaat and MacKay, Let’s Talk About the Translation of the Book of Mormon, 83–84.

28. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 244.

29. “Book of Mormon Translation,” Gospel Topics Essays, accessed 4 October 2024, churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-translation.

30. “Gospel Topics Essays,” Gospel Topics Essays, accessed 4 October 2024, churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/essays.

31. “Book of Mormon Translation.”

32. The conflation of the Jaredite stones and the Urim and Thummim is not unusual. We see it in Charles Swift, “Upon Mount Shelem: The Liminal Experience of the Brother of Jared,” in Illuminating the Jaredite Records, ed. Daniel L. Belnap (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 127n61: “The two stones hidden with the plates of Ether will be the Urim and Thummim, called “interpreters” (see Mosiah 8:11–12), and later buried with the gold plates.”

33. “William Smith Interview,” 508.

34. D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), 41.

35. “Martin Harris Interview with Joel Tiffany, 1859,” in Early Mormon Documents, vol. 2, ed. Dan Vogel (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), 303.

36. “William Smith Interview,” 508.

37. Perhaps we now need to modify Neville’s SITH label. He must now include the interpreter-stone-in-the-hat, so it is a newer “iSITH” model, designed for greater accuracy.

38. MacKay and Dirkmaat, From Darkness unto Light, 69.

39. MacKay and Dirkmaat, From Darkness unto Light, 67.

40. Lucas and Neville cite Doctrine and Covenants 17:1, which clearly states that the Urim and Thummim was used. In the notes on that verse, the editors of The Joseph Smith Papers Project note:

In this version of the revelation, the use of “Urim and Thummim” (rather than the Book of Mormon term “interpreters” or the term “spectacles,” which JS used in 1829 and 1832) is probably a later redaction since “Urim and Thummim” does not appear in JS’s writings before 1833. The revisions in this section may in part be correcting errors made while copying from a source text that had itself been revised. (See Book of Mormon, 1830 ed., 172–173, 546 [Mosiah 8:13; Ether 4:5]; JS History, ca. Summer1832; and “Joseph Smith Documents Dating through June1831.”) “Revelation, June 1829–E [D&C 17],” p. 119n5, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed 15 October 2024, josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-june-1829-e-dc-17/1.

Another possible issue is that the verse also specifies that the Urim and Thummim was what was given to the brother of Jared. That identification represents the common association already discussed in this review. Just as the term Urim and Thummim was later applied to the text, it is plausible that the association with the Jaredite stones was also a later cultural assumption rather than a divine declaration. As noted in this paper, the description of the interpreters Joseph received matched Mosiah’s stones rather than the Jaredite stones.

41. MacKay and Frederick, Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones, 39. Emphasis added.

42. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 47.

43. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 265.

44. I have not discussed the objections of Lucas and Neville to the historical evidence that the plates were often covered and not necessarily used for translation. The descriptions of Joseph using either the interpreter stone or the seer stone in a hat rather preclude any direct visual interaction with the plates. Lucas and Neville object to that description and insist that the plates had to have been used. I elect not to deal with that particular issue. Those interested are referred to Spencer Kraus’s review of A Man That Can Translate, cited earlier in this review.