How was Joseph Smith dictating the B of M out of his hat?

[Mormon 8]

Does anyone know of any information out there from LDS or non-LDS historians who know how Smith was really dictating the Book of Mormon out of his hat? Obviously, he wasn't seeing special characters appearing on his magic rock and so this begs the question... was he reading from something in print that was very small in nature that went in with the rock? Was he simply coming up with words/stories like he did when he would entertain his family with all of his imaginative tales when younger? If the former, how would he even see the words with it dark in his hat? The latter seems like the more likely scenario, especially given all of the books he had read that he most likely plagiarized from, as well as the Bible. Just trying to get an idea for how he did it since the essay on B of M translation tries to explain it as the characters appearing on the rock in the dark resembling something as parchment, but this explanations insults your intelligence given he was using the same rock he used to con people out of their money during his treasure seeking/money-digging years and the fact that why would God preserve an ancient record from prophets of old only to never have it used in the process?

[Corsair]

I think you have a good explanation on how Joseph produced the text of the Book of Mormon. He was good at storytelling and he was good at public speaking. A common apologetic explanation was that Joseph was a terrible write. But the crucial difference is that Joseph did not write the Book of Mormons. He dictated it. He had several starts and stops and his family remarked on his storytelling abilities about the ancient inhabitants of North America.

The rock is a red herring. Did he ever try dictating at night when Oliver could simply write by the light of a candle? Or maybe, Joseph kept the rock in a hat so that Oliver would never know that the rock never lit up with ancient writing. We simply have Joseph Smith's completely untestable testimony on this point. We have to take his word on this point and then there is still a long list of anachronisms in the text.

I fully accept that the Book of Mormon testifies of Jesus Christ. But so do a lot of other books that are not considered scripture and don't involve an author espousing plural marriage. LDS believers are welcome to continue their embrace of what the rest of Christianity sees as some combination of foolishness and heresy. I don't have to give them any further regard.

[Red Ryder]

Go grab a hat and let’s do an experiment!

Got your hat?

Now close your eyes, put your head down in the hat, and tell us a story.

Here’s mine:

Two Vikings from opposite war torn villages met at a pub in Iceland. They fell in love and secretly dated over an Internet forum designed to bitch and whine about Viking religion. And it came to pass, that the female Viking chose to leave her village and cleaved unto the male Viking’s endowment and bore him 12 children. Each of these children were raised in righteousness and split across the vast lands of their forefathers and conquered their enemies. They ruled in utter righteousness until one of their sons began to look at scantily clad Vikettes cheering for the local football team. This breach of righteousness, thus saith the lord, caused him to continue to search out naked women on the local library computer until he began to be overcome by his temptations and stayed at home thus giving up his church attendance. Branches of the vineyard died affecting millions of his progeny thrusting them into war and destruction of their neighbors. Then one day the son of the porn addicted unrighteous war mongering leader met a wonderful women at pub and they eloped. Thus it all came to pass full circle.

The Book of Vormon, Another Testament of Secret Viking Love

And there you have it. A hat does wonders for the imagination!

[Palerider]

I think most folks here see Joseph as practicing a type of "scrying". If he spent many hours working out the details in the previous 4 years before he actually started "translating" it's possible he could have dictated a practically memorized book. You have to remember, the Smith family pretty much announced that the book was forthcoming 4 years before they actually claimed Joseph had gained possession.

Additionally, I don't see the hat as a big issue. Joseph had picked up some tricks of the trade from a traveling magician who he had spent time with in Palmyra if I recall. One of those tricks could easily have been an understanding of the principles of what is called a "pinhole camera" or a "camera obscura". If you take a box or a hat and create a small "pinhole" in it and then use it as a viewer it can change the focal point of incoming light and actually enable one to see or read things from inside the hat that are at a bit of a distance, such as a very small script on a small piece of paper. This paper could have been nearly palm sized and if placed in a inconspicuous area not too far from the viewer, it still could have been read.

The pinhole in the hat would have been pretty difficult to spot. And even if seen would have been judged innocuous.

I haven't heard many people espouse this theory. It's one that either a professional photographer or artist (of whom I know several) would be aware of. Or a studied magician who had learned it as a trade secret.

Whichever theory a person goes with, I think it's critical to remember how long Joseph really had to prepare for the BoM production. At least four maybe five years? Being a good story teller and using family history such as his father's dream about the iron rod, coupled with sermons he had heard from local preachers, readings from religious writers, etc., I think he had plenty of time to flesh out the story. Oh, and don't forget a ton of Biblical scripture. All borrowed directly from his family Bible.

Something else to consider is that Joseph, (as I have heard about Thomas S. Monson) may have been one of those gifted people who have near "photographic memory".

I've never doubted he was somewhat gifted. But even that couldn't keep him from making some very telling mistakes.

[wtfluff]

Two Vikings from opposite war torn villages met at a pub in Iceland. They fell in love and secretly dated over an Internet forum designed to bitch and whine about Viking religion. And it came to pass, that the female Viking chose to leave her village and cleaved unto the male Viking’s endowment and bore him 12 children. Each of these children were raised in righteousness and split across the vast lands of their forefathers and conquered their enemies. They ruled in utter righteousness until one of their sons began to look at scantily clad Vikettes cheering for the local football team. This breach of righteousness, thus saith the lord, caused him to continue to search out naked women on the local library computer until he began to be overcome by his temptations and stayed at home thus giving up his church attendance. Branches of the vineyard died affecting millions of his progeny thrusting them into war and destruction of their neighbors. Then one day the son of the porn addicted unrighteous war mongering leader met a wonderful women at pub and they eloped. Thus it all came to pass full circle.

The Book of Vormon, Another Testament of Secret Viking Love

Only one, single "And it came to pass" ???

If that phrase doesn't make up 10-20% of your scripture, well... FAIL!

[moksha]

Putting on my apologetic wizard hat:

The seer stone had memory transfer abilities much like a smartphone memory card. Once the seer stone had scanned and downloaded the information from the golden plates, it could display the contents on its screen. Due to the sedimentary process, its power levels were low, so in order to boost the illumination level, Joseph placed the stone in his hat to better see the screen display.

Hope that helps.

[Corsair]

The seer stone had memory transfer abilities much like a smartphone memory card. Once the seer stone had scanned and downloaded the information from the golden plates, it could display the contents on its screen. Due to the sedimentary process, its power levels were low, so in order to boost the illumination level, Joseph placed the stone in his hat to better see the screen display.

I have disliked the "cell phone" analogy for the seer stone from the moment that Uchtdorf brought it up. No one wants a low power device that can only be seen in the dark. This also makes a metaphorically bad object lesson. "Be sure to block out the light when you look for messages from God!" Exactly why did God give a low power device to Joseph? Did Joseph run the battery down by too frequent "swipe right" on his 19th century Tindr?

[DPRoberts]

Give Dieter a break. The rock was/is advanced technology

AppleRock2a.png (60.61 KiB) Viewed 4392 times

[felixfabulous]

I agree with the scrying theories, this was a way JS focused his mind and was able to dictate the story. I do not think that is true of the portions lifted from the KJV. In the recent RFM interview (if you can stick out all 6 hours to the end) he talks about this a little, especially about Emma's later account of the translation. There is one big gaping lie about polygamy in her story and RFM believes her account was meant to be faith-promoting and whitewashed and the other witnesses were essentially the same. He thinks JS had a bible open that he was reading from, which is also what most apologists propose, even though the witness accounts do not mention it. I would guess there was more of a staged dramatic translation for people who were walking in and out of the house with all the mystery around the stone in the hat and prop plates on the table. I would guess when he was working with Oliver that he could let his hair down a bit and did not have the prop plates around, had a bible open and maybe occasionally used the stone in the hat to focus.

Back to RFM's point, there are some major problems with the witness statements, namely about English words appearing on the stone and then disappearing if written correctly and stay on the stone if they were written incorrectly. There are all kinds of problems with this, including the grammar, KJV translation errors, etc.

[Hagoth]

Joseph Smith is one of many people who have dictated apparently miraculous books and lengthy dictations out of thin air: Philemon Stewart, Pearl Curan, James Strang, Madame Blavatsky, to name a few others. His money digging gave him plenty of practice using the seer stone to tune into whatever capacity of your brain allows you to free associate all of the stuff you have packed away in there. Martin Harris said when he ran out of steam he would take long walks and then come back ready to dictate more.

That a "naive farmboy" could produce such a book seems unimaginably fantastic as long as you believe it to be so. When you approach it from a question of how a person might go about doing it, and put it into context of others who have done similar things, a lot of the magic goes away. When you stop listening to what church leaders and apologists claim about the book and limit to yourself to what's really in it you lose more of the magic. But even after that there is still some magic left and that is a little thing we might call genius. Or at least giftedness.

[moksha]

Joseph as a gifted writer and banjo player