What was the functional purpose of the blanket hung up between Joseph and his scribe?

My theory seems pretty solid based on other evidence.

Before disclosure, I wanna see if anyone else out there has figured it out.

No hints yet.

I had slept in it with Fanny Alger.

It must be the actual value of the metal plates themselves that made them so special. JS clearly didn't have a problem with the 'actual Egyptian writing of Abraham' being on show..... in fact they were publicly exhibited, for a fee of course. I guess 'metal plates of Mormon' beats 'papyri of Abraham' in the sacredness stakes.

Is it because he was such a perfect husband that he could multitask and do Emma's work even while he was doing god's work?
Can I have a sports qustion next:)

I am inclined to believe he didn't.
It is just what his co conspiritors said he did.
They probably all sat around the table together and decided what to include from the king james bible and all the other urban myths that were kicking around at the time.

My understanding is that a blanket was only used at one of the early locations, and it was not to separate Joseph and the scribe, but to give them both some privacy from visitors to the home while they worked. That is the one where the nails were still found in the walls some years after the event, and is likely the source for the confusion of non-eye-witnesses who reported a blanket was used to separate scribe and translator.

None of the eye witnessnes reported that a blanket was used, and some explicitly denied that it was. David Whitmer, an eye witness, mentions the blanket in the context I describe above.

Check out the FAIR page below and you will notice that the misinformation about the blanket often shares the stage with the claim that the plates were with Joseph behind the blanket and that he used the oversized spectacles during the translation. My guess is that this was the official back story invented by Joseph and Oliver at some point, but the various eye witnesses did not play along.

http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Translation/Method/1846-1900



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2014 06:35PM by Facsimile 3.

he was afraid we'd say "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" if he'd used one of Emma's curtains.

Literally 'pulling the wool over their eyes'.

Where were you in Sunday School? It's because if anyone besides Joseph saw the plates they would immediately be struck blind. That's why the witnesses had to see them with their spiritual eyes (i.e.imagination). It was to protect their natural eyes.

it was because a lot of the scripture is straight out of the bible, especially Isaiah bits; So he was reading straight the bible a lot of times and didn't want to get caught.

My theory is that if JS did indeed hang up a blanket, it was to keep the scribe from seeing JS surreptitiously whip out a KJV to either quote verbatim or glance over the NT pages looking for key words to seed the yarn he was spinning.

Years ago the Tanners generated a plausible correlation between NT keywords and BoM text. They reconstructed impressive evidence showing keywords from the NT appearing sequentially in BoM pages. Their findings may be printed in "Mormonism-Shadow or Reality" or maybe other Tanner pubs.

Could be in this Tanner book:

http://utlm.org/booklist/digitaltitles/samplepdfs/josephsmithsplagiarism_sample.pdf

Anyway, that's my blanket theory, if there was a blanket. It's a plausible reason for JS to hide himself behind a curtain. After all, his Seer Stone didn't have any key words on it, whereas the NT has hundreds on every page.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2014 01:15AM by beyondashadow.

Maybe it was a baby blanket for one of his wives.

Joseph Smith did not use a blanket. That is a total lie TSCC made up. Because it is way more believable than the truth which is Joseph Smith place a rock in his hat and read the rock instead of reading gold plates. There were never any gold plates. Just lies upon lies.

Probably so he could urim his thumim

Showmanship. Smoke and mirrors to bamboozle the gullible.

"Ooooo, the plates are SO special and sacred and magical that we aren't allowed to see them, lest something horrible happens to us, like the guy who touched the Arc of the Covenant! Cool! It's like we're living in Bible times! Hallelujah! Jesus is about to return!"

The same reason he gave himself a loophole in Jacob 2:30.

Maybe he had some flaming sword to stroke, err, sharpen

Same reason that Oz hid behind the curtain.