Forgive me for asking such an elementary question but I am new to all of this.

I have gathered that JS did some translating while burying his face in a hat that had peepstones, right? Does this mean that the golden plates never existed at all? Or were the plates in a different location?

So, I am confused. According to the LDS, did the plates exist or not?

LDS would claim that the plates existed, as attested to by the 3 and 8 witnesses. However, according to translation witnesses, the plates were not used in the process. Joseph Smith's father-in-law stated that the plates were hidden out in the woods while Joseph was translating them with his face and seer stone in a hat.

The problem with the 3 and 8 witnesses is that based on statements by 2 of the 3--Martin Harris and David Whitmer--the "seeing" the plates was a metaphysical experience as opposed to a literal/tangible one. Martin Harris went so far as to say that this "spiritual eye" seeing of the plates was also the case for the 8 witnesses, which is why they hesitated to sign their statement in the BoM today. My understanding is that there is no signed statement, but just the names of the 8 witnesses written by the hand of Oliver Cowdery.

"My understanding is that there is no signed statement, but just the names of the 8 witnesses written by the hand of Oliver Cowdery."

Correct. There's no evidence that they signed anything. You can view the statements that Oliver wrote at josephsmithpapers...along with a lot of other stupid documents...

OK. Thanks for the clarification.

It sounds like you are describing a spiritual "wi-fi" mechanism that enabled Joseph to translate. In other words, are you saying that the golden plates had some "wireless router" qualities that could transmit to the peepstones?

LOL...I am guessing that Mormon and Moroni implanted RFID chips into the plates to enable Joseph Smith's peep stone reader to display their content from a range of up to 30 meters.

BTW, here is a good essay on the witnesses: http://signaturebooks.com/2012/03/book-of-mormon-witnesses-revisited/.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2014 11:26AM by Facsimile 3.

After reading some of the sources available on this subject, I believe that the Hat and the Stone is a red herring to distract those who have doubts about the gold plates from the truth. The Book of Mormon was not translated by any method. It was written by JS with help from some of his acquaintances using available source material.

Start at Mormon Think and then if you are still interested in this subject, read some of the books. There are several theories about how JS wrote the book, but the ones I have read agree on two points. It isn't a translation and JS had help.

Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon were in on it IMHO.

We may never know for sure who all may have been involved in writing it...but there is a lot of good information out there to consider.

Check out the book "Who Really Wrote The Book Of Mormon" (Cowdery) for starters.

Agreed. We know it wasn't translated, and I think we can be pretty sure that Joseph Smith didn't dictate the whole thing with his face in a hat. A few parts, certainly, while other people were watching, but they certainly wouldn't have needed such a cheap trick in private! We know Oliver Cowdery was the person with his hands actually on the paper, and there's no question that Oliver Cowdery was in on the con later on (just think about all the important events that only Joseph and Oliver witnessed), so Oliver Cowdery wrote the Book of Mormon. Did he copy much or most of it from a Rigdon/Spaulding manuscript he brought with him? Probably. Were the golden plates real? Hell no.

mormonleaks.com

Very good overview of the Rigdon/Spalding theory.

the take-home message of the peep stone story is that if that's what TSCC is going with then it kills all apologetics about anything contained in the BoM - they have to take every word in that book at face value because according to the peep stone story joseph saw the words and spoke them for the scribe

iow - god did the translating, not Joseph

so if Mormon used the word deer Joseph should have seen the word deer on the stone

why would god cause the word horse to appear?

this is silly when talking about horses and deer (or tapirs, whatever) but if a translation can't get the simple nouns correct how can you trust it with abstract concepts - like sin, repent, forgive, salvation, etc.?

(and no, the plates never existed...)

This is the best Mormon video ever produced.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s07e12-all-about-mormons

HA! Dum(b), dum(b), dum(b), dum(b), dum(b).....

Lucy Harris smart, smart, smart, Martin Harris dum(b).

Group hypnosis has been practiced for eons. There is nothing new about it. Adolph Hitler is a prime example in the 20th century.
Stage hypnotists have mezmerised groups while pickpockets availed themselves of opeertunities. There is no reason to believe that Joe Jr. did not have this skill. He was on of history's greatesd confidence men,brilliant in his application.

Peepstones, faces in hats, seer goggles, bows... the translation process can get quite confusing. But there is in the D&C a scripture, not a tale, that tells how the BOM was translated. Joe was letting Oliver try his hand at translating, giving him pointers along the way. Oliver kind of failed miserably, according to Joe, and the Lord let Oliver know why. The scripture follows...

“But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong; therefore, you cannot write that which is sacred save it be given you from me.”

this scripture is known to all Mormons, and is established as the barometer of truth. Just apply it to yourself and you will find out the truth, they say. Well, how about we not apply it to ourselves? How about we apply it to the situation at hand. So according to Joseph (the Lord), Oliver was supposed to look at something (a text presumably), study it out in his mind, and then develop a translation. He was then supposed to ask the Lord if what he had translated was right, and if it was right, he would FEEL it was right. If not, it would just FEEL wrong and he would forget the whole thing.

So what was this text Oliver was reading. If Oliver were reading something illegible, like heiroglyphics from Gold plates, lets say, studying it out in your mind would yield nothing. If you have no knowledge of Chinese characters, it doesn't matter how long you stare at the characters, you won't figure anything out, not in 10, 20, 30 years. You might start to see somethings, but nothing approaching what the text actually says, and certainly not anything that would remotely be called a translation.

So what was Oliver studying out in his mind? An English text. something he could understand. If you want to understand more, look up the Spalding-Rigdon theory, which is well explained on Mormon Leaks. In short, the text Oliver was looking at, or “translating” was the Spalding manuscript, modified by Rigdon. As he read this, he would “translate” or insert religious material as the spirit inspired him. Rigdon believed, possibly based on a text from a British author on how scripture was created, that this was the same way in which the inspired text of the bible was created. The steps were.

-The author would immerse themselves in source material. (Spalding manuscript BOM, Bible for JST, Payrii for BofA)
-The author would ask for divine guidance, and write an “inspired version” If it felt good, it was right. If it was wrong, the author would get writers block. (I think this is how most writers feel as they write "inspired" works)
-This was scripture.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Try reading the full context of that revelation, as it existed in the Book of Commandments *before* Joseph Smith later changed it for the 1835 D&C.

The instructions to Oliver were how to translate using his diving rod (i.e. rod of nature or "sprout"). The diving rod is a non-visual device, thus the need to work it out in your mind. Joseph, on the other hand, was using a seer stone, which is a visual device, thus the need to place it in a hat to exclude the light so he could see the roman letters appear beneath the character being translated that also appeared visually in the stone.

Sorry if I came off sounding nasty. I did not intend it that way, but I would prefer that we never muddy the waters of the tight translation model.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2014 04:01PM by Facsimile 3.

Yes, I have read the text. Oliver used his Rod of Nature. Joe used his peepstones. Neither one worked. So Joe's peepstones were no more a visual device than Oliver's rod. It was just the ruse he would use.

But it is possible that they both THOUGHT they worked, and that their tools allowed them to channel spiritual truth out of secular texts (i.e. the Spalding manuscript) OK, I think Joe knew it was a fraud, but Oliver could have actually believed in the whole prophetic medium thing.

This is my opinion.

Fair enough. My personal view:

* Oliver was a co-conspirator. The best proof for this conclusion is that he knowingly helped revise the revelations after their initial publication to invent the John the Baptist/Peter, James, and John priesthood restoration stories.

* The revelation explaining his translation failure was for the benefit of onlookers when Oliver failed to recite text like Joseph Smith. I think he wanted to succeed, but just lacked Joseph's talent.

Well, its certainly a good detective story, and I'll admit others have done much more solid research on this than me.

But I think Rigdon *may* have started with motives he thought were pure (he had an ancient manuscript delivered into his hands and he would channel the authentic, uncorrupted, primitive gospel out of it through prophetic means), and that Cowdery *may* have been a willing dupe.

Cowdery in 1834 when he was willing to fabricate stories of angelic visitations was also a different man than Cowdery in 1828, when he was an apprentice sent by Rigdon to work with Joseph. Rigdon may have though he controlled Cowdery, but gradually Joseph came to dominate. The whole experience of the restoration may have changed Cowdery as well, and once he had power and saw it slipping away, he may have 'got with the program.'

But he seemed to hold on to a belief that "if in the end it gives people faith in Christ, and causes them to do good, then the means justify it." The BOM chapters attributed to Cowdery do exactly that, they express typical Christian sentiments. The chapters attributed to Smith do the opposite, they are self-serving and narcissistic. (Mormon Leaks)

Cowdery seems to have reached a breaking point when Joseph's polygamy/adultery/seductions started to take over the church. It is at this point that Cowdery the willing dupe seems to have finally realized he was in over his head and walked away.

Since JS wrote the D&C as well as the BOM we can hardly use the D&C to understand how the BOM was written. JS clearly used the "revelations" contained in the D&C to control his flock. Did he use it to control Oliver, perhaps, or maybe he was controlling the opinions of others about Oliver. Was Sidney controlling JS, for a while maybe, but we know that didn't last.

Agree (partly)

D&C was also probably written by multiple authors. Some evn suggest the D&C chapter that rebukes Oliver's translation method was written by Oliver himself.

In the end, there are many stories about the translation process, as many stories as there are tellers (which should tell you something).

I think the major point that I'm bringing up is that the only "scripture" that relates to the translation process pretty much admits that it wasn't a literal translation, but that it was something the translators would study out in their mind, and that the truth of what they had translated was based only on a FEELING.

These same feelings tell us today if the feelings the translators had were true.

Talk about a con job.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2014 05:13PM by greensmythe.

You can rest assured that NOBODY (profits, revelators, seers, assholes, whatever) have EVER seen anything: angels, plates, spirits, Jesus, etc. NOTHING! It has all been FRAUD since April 6, 1830. Bet your house on it. Everything they supposedly saw was IMAGINARY, part of the FRAUD.

As they say "that why they're in trouble now." It came back to bite them....and I hope it bites hard.

Oliver's rod - this looks like a good moniker for some guy on this board. Funny. Any takers?

By the way - my bosom burns in the summer under the bra sometimes - it is called heat rash!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2014 04:40PM by verilyverily.

Smith never produced plates to the public, and only a handful of insiders claimed to have seen them. Their testimony is lauded by the church but critics argue they were lying or duped.

Smith produced a written copy of a small number of characters supposedly from the plates. It exists today and has been attributed to another source. They dont resemble egyptian at all although they are claimed to be "reformed egyptian", which is unknown except to Smith.

The irony of the peepstone and hat story is that, of course, it's just as preposterous as the plates story...but theres no way to contradict it like the characters. Maybe the church should go with it.