Translating the Book of Mormon with Stones in a Hat?​

If we had video footage of the translation process of The Book of Mormon, what would we see? What would we actually watch Joseph Smith do during a translation session? Now, of course, we don’t have such video footage, but we do have perhaps the next best thing: multiple eyewitness accounts of those who saw the process up close, firsthand. And what they said they saw was a decidedly nonsecular, nonacademic, one-of-a-kind translation method involving a young, 22- and 23-year-old Joseph Smith looking at seer stones in a hat, a process many of these witnesses described as, “truly miraculous.” In today’s episode we take a closer look at what we can know from the historical record about Joseph Smith’s translation process. We’ll also briefly explore the New England subculture in Joseph’s day in which some believed that people with certain spiritual gifts could use special objects, like seer stones or divining rods, to channel to divine power to do things like find lost objects or find underground water sources. We’ll also discuss the fascinating details of what we know about how and when Joseph came upon two seer stones in addition to those that came with the plates and were bound together in silver bows, and what we know about his using these during the Book of Mormon translation.

This is the third episode of our 6-part podcast series on the translation of the Book of Mormon. For a full transcript of this episode, as well as show notes and additional resources, visit our website at https://doctrineandcovenantscentral.o...

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Originally published April 25, 2023

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