There is one thought on “Joseph and Oliver Told the Truth about the Translation: A Response to Brant Gardner’s and Jeff Lindsay’s Reviews”.

  1. It is now and always has been a fundamental mistake to refer to the Nephite interpreters as “Urim & Thummim” – a term which is never used in the Book of Mormon, and which is specifically a biblical term referring to equipment used by the Israelite high priest, and much earlier by Abraham (Book of Abraham 3:1,4). In fact, the Nephite interpreters originated with the Jaredites in the time of the Brother of Jared.

    Perhaps W. W. Phelps thought that using the term “Urim & Thummim” would lend some biblical cachet and respectability to discussions about translation of the Book of Mormon. So, in January 1833, he introduced that biblical term (Evening & Morning Star, 1st ed., I/8:58b = 2nd ed., 116b), which theretofore had not been used at all to refer to Nephite interpreters or seerstones.

    The consequences of this unscholarly approach to Book of Mormon translation questions (and much else besides) is that one cannot even be sure what is being discussed. For example, we have two separate accounts of a meeting of Joseph Smith with the Twelve at Nauvoo on December 27, 1841. Wilford Woodruff states that Joseph showed them the Urim & Thummim (W. Woodruff Journal, Dec 27, 1841), while Brigham Young says that Joseph “explained to us the Urim and Thummim which he found with the plates, called in the Book of Mormon the Interpreters. . . . he showed us his seer stone” (Millennial Star, 26:118). Later, Heber C. Kimball reported that Brigham Young had possession of the Urim & Thummim (Journal of Discourses, 2:111; cf. JD, 16:156) = Joseph’s seerstone, which Brigham had gotten from Oliver’s widow, Elizabeth Ann Whitmer Cowdery, and which is in the possession of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to this day – https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng (color photo of Joseph’s seerstone at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/imgs/df88ebdcf830ae6a22dbe94b5eb8b4f73500d955/full/%21640%2C/0/default ).

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