The church has made some strides in conceding that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon using the same stone that he claimed to see buried treasure with, but unless you’re willing to dig deep for it, they will still show you the same version they told me as a teenager as they did in the January 2021 Liahona.

In the first two sections we covered Joseph Smith’s involvement in treasure digging and how that treasure digging was embedded in the account of Joseph Smith retrieving the gold plates. Now we’re going to look at the translation process, and what role both Joseph Smith’s involvement in treasure digging and the gold plates played in them.
 

How the Book of Mormon was Translated

We’ve shown you the images above and I could show you so many others that you would see in your local building or in church materials, but the narrative of the Book of Mormon translation to members has been that Joseph Smith had first First Vision, was visited three years later by the Angel Moroni, visited Hill Cumorah four times until retrieving the plates in 1827, and then translated the Book of Mormon by using the golden plates on a table next to his scribe.

Even in the year 2021 the church is using artwork depicting that exact scene as we have above, and they used the narrative in videos and other materials showing Joseph Smith studiously translating the gold plates. I have been told by many apologists that they’ve “known all along” that Joseph Smith did not translate the Book of Mormon that way, but you would never have known that if you followed the church’s teachings until the internet forced them to acknowledge that, as church historian and patriarch Richard Bushman admitted, the church’s “dominant narrative is not true.”

We have multiple accounts that describe the Book of Mormon translation process, and I want to highlight them here:
 

David Whitmer: "Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man." (Address to All Believers In Christ, 1887)

Emma Smith: "I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us." (Last Testimony of Sister Emma, Saints’ Herald 26, Oct. 1, 1879)

Edward Stevenson related this account from Martin Harris: "By aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the Prophet and written by Martin and when finished he would say "Written," and if correctly written that sentence would disappear and another appear in its place, but if not written correctly it remained until corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely in the language then used." ("One of the Three Witnesses," Millennial Star, Volume 44, p 86-87)

There are of course some differences in the accounts, and Emma Smith’s testimony has issues as she denies that Joseph Smith ever engaged in polygamy, but we can see that all of the accounts give a very similar description of the translation process.

Joseph Smith would put his “seer” stone in his hat, stick his face in the hat, and then read off the characters as he claimed to see them. The scribe would repeat the words back as they were written, and if they were correct, the stone would change to the next word or line of text. If they were not written correctly, they words would stay lit up on Joseph’s stone until they were corrected.

And to be clear, when I say Joseph’s seer stone in a hat, I mean the same seer stone that Joseph Smith claimed to see buried treasure with. This is the same stone that Joseph Smith defrauded people out of their money in digs that never once yielded the promised treasure. To really further this point, I want to bring back a few quotes from the treasure digging section about how Joseph Smith would conduct his treasure digs:
 

Joseph Capron, 1833 (Joseph Smith would conduct a dig on Joseph Capron’s farm in 1827): “I, Joseph Capron, became acquainted with Joseph Smith Sen. in the year of our Lord, 1827... The family of Smiths held Joseph Jr. in high estimation on account of some supernatural power, which he was supposed to possess. This power he pretended to have received through the medium of a stone of peculiar quality. The stone was placed in a hat, in such a manner as to exclude all light, except that which emanated from the stone itself. This light of the stone, he pretended, enabled him to see any thing he wished.... I will mention one circumstance, by which the uninitiated may know how the company dug for treasures. The sapient Joseph discovered, north west of my house, a chest of gold watches; but, as they were in the possession of the evil spirit, it required skill and stratagem to obtain them. Accordingly, orders were given to stick a parcel of large stakes in the ground, several rods around, in a circular form. This was to be done directly over the spot where the treasures were deposited. A messenger was then sent to Palmyra to procure a polished sword: after which, Samuel F. Lawrence, with a drawn sword in his hand, marched around to guard any assault which his Satanic majesty might be disposed to make. Meantime, the rest of the company were busily employed in digging for the watches. They worked as usual till quite exhausted. But, in spite of their brave defender, Lawrence, and their bulwark of stakes, the devil came off victorious, and carried away the watches.” (Mormonism Unveiled, E.D. Howe, pgs 258-260)
 
William Stafford, 1833 (Joseph Smith conducted digs on Joshua Stafford’s farm between 1822-1835): “I first became acquainted with Joseph, Sen., and his family in the year 1820. They lived, at that time, in Palmyra, about one mile and a half from my residence. A great part of their time was devoted to digging for money; especially in the night time, when they said the money could be most easily obtained. I have heard them tell marvellous tales, respecting the discoveries they had made in their peculiar occupation of money digging. They would say, for instance, that in such a place, in such a hill, on a certain man's farm, there were deposited keys, barrels and hogsheads of coined silver and gold - bars of gold, golden images, brass kettles filled with gold and silver - gold candlesticks, swords, &c. &.c They would say, also, that nearly all the hills in this part of New York, were thrown up by human hands, and in them were large caves, which Joseph, Jr., could see, by placing a stone of singular appearance in his hat, in such a manner as to exclude all light; at which time they pretended he could see all things within and under the earth, - that he could see within the above mentioned caves, large gold bars and silver plates - that he could also discover the spirits in whose charge these treasures were, clothed in ancient dress.” (Mormonism Unveiled, E.D. Howe, pgs 237-239)

I want to be perfectly clear here that not only was Joseph Smith using the same stone to translate the Book of Mormon that he used on his treasure digs, but that he used the exact same method to claim to see the Book of Mormon text that he did to see buried treasure.

Not only was Joseph Smith using the same practices from treasure digging to translate the Book of Mormon, but the gold plates were never used during the production of the Book of Mormon as we have it today. Our entire last section was about the gold plates, but the reality is that they played no substantial role in the translation process as Joseph Smith used the exact same stone and method from treasure digging to dictate the text.

This led church historian and patriarch Richard Bushman to state the following:
 

“I will begin by saying that we still have pictures on our Ward bulletin boards of Joseph Smith with the Gold Plates in front of him. That has become an irksome point and I think it is something the church should pay attention to. Because anyone who studies the history knows that is not what happened. There is no church historian who says that is what happened and yet it is being propagated by the church and it feeds into the notion that the church is trying to cover up embarrassing episodes and is sort of prettifying its own history.

So, I think we ought to just stop that immediately. I am not sure we need a lot of pictures in our chapels of Joseph looking into his hat, but we certainly should tell our children that is how it worked... It’s weird. It’s a weird picture. It implies it’s like darkening a room when we show slides. It implies that there is an image appearing in that stone and the light would make it more difficult to see that image. So, that implies a translation that’s a reading and so gives us a little clue about the whole translation process. It also raises the strange question, ‘What in the world are the plates for? Why do we need them on the table if they are just wrapped up into a cloth while he looks into a seer stone?’” (Fair Mormon Podcast, Episode 3: Richard L. Bushman P.1, 47:25, October 2010)

This is a question I ask myself because I just spent the time doing the section on the gold plates, but the reality is that the story of the gold plates is important both in how his treasure digging directly influenced the Book of Mormon and by helping us better understand how Joseph Smith was able to convince those around him that the Book of Mormon was a true record by invoking the story of the plates.

Because a few of the apologetic rebuttals claim the above Richard Bushman quote is edited, I want to also note that Bushman did clarify a few weeks later (presumably after some blow-back to this quote being cited) during a completely separate event to say the following in response to a question about abandoning the historicity of the plates:
 

“What would we gain and lose [if we abandon the plates]? What we would lose would be a powerful form of the evidence that the Lord gave to Joseph Smith and to us of the actuality of these experiences and therefore the actuality of the transcendent sphere... that would be gutting some of the most gritty and appealing parts of the Mormon story." (Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum, October 2010)

Even in that quote, Bushman is not denying the problem with the plates with regards to the church’s narrative, but is saying that if the church were to abandon the plates it would gutting a big part of Mormon history. It’s the same problem that the church is running into today when asked if the church needs to abandon the idea that the Book of Mormon is a historical book. We can show that it is not an ancient, historical text, but the moment you abandon that belief, there entire church crumbles with it.

This is all so much different than what I was taught as an investigator, and I can understand why the church does not want to teach this history. We will get to the apologetic responses to how to reconcile this problem, but the idea that Joseph Smith is using the same stone and method to produce the Book of Mormon that he used to defraud people out of their money in treasure/money digs is highly problematic.
 

The Book of Mormon “Caractors”

One of the more well known stories about the Book of Mormon’s production is Martin Harris being sent to Charles Anthon in order to receive some confirmation that Harris was not being duped by Joseph Smith. Before the visit, Joseph copied a set of characters from the Book of Mormon to take to Anthon, and Harris met with Anton leading to very different accounts of what occurred during this visit. We cover the Anthon visit and how Joseph Smith retrofitted this account and reinterprets Isaiah in another post, but I want to focus here on the Book of Mormon characters.