There's a narrative among some LDS scholars that Joseph began using the term "Urim and Thummim" because he was embarrassed about the seer stones.
That narrative contradicts the historical record. Plus, it is based purely on mind-reading and a "presentism" approach.
For example, Richard Bushman promoted the "embarrassed" narrative recently. Bushman is awesome, one of the most open-minded LDS scholars I'm aware of, as well as articulate, measured, and thoughtful.
Bushman was interviewed in a video titled "Translation with Richard Lyman Bushman" on CES Letters.
https://youtu.be/OAAKV1JDBHk?list=PLyz16Fi98u5xf53bZYEF74m6pGUtDpzTO&t=970
The interviewer asked a good question here:
20:07 What are some of the other theories when it comes to what the translation process looks like?
Bushman: Well, actually there are a number of them. There's a lot of speculation. The one that is most relevant to the seer stone is by a man named Jonathan Neville and his co-author Jim Lucas who say that over and over again, when the story is told the word Urim and Thummim is used, which for them means the breastplate and the crystals in the frames.
So we have to accept that and the sources that talk about the stone, Emma Smith and David Whitmer, have reason to be doubted. And they have some explanations of how that could get started. They're very much in the minority at this point but their scholarship has enough merit to it that at least it has to be considered.
I myself think it's quite possible the seer stone was used and I'm not at all embarrassed by it. It's not something to be embarrassed by. If that's what happened it's just history.
I fully agree with Bushman that if that's what happened--if Joseph used the stone-in-the-hat (SITH) instead of the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates--it's just history. And I agree with Bushman that there is nothing to be embarrassed about if SITH was actual history.
But we all realize we cannot know what actually happened in history.
To claim one thing or another is the "truth" or "actual history" is misleading at the outset. All we can say is that a specific historical source related a specific account. We cannot know if the account was accurate. We can only weigh the credibility of the account and compare it to other historical evidence.
FAITH model. To assess historical evidence, we can apply the FAITH model and compare multiple working hypotheses. This means we first all agree on the Facts (the the historical sources). Recognizing that the Facts about the translation are not only inconsistent but directly contradictory, we then isolate and identify the Assumptions we make about those facts and the Inferences we draw to fill the gaps, leading to our respective Theories and overall Hypothesis or worldview. People can then make informed choices for themselves about the alternative hypotheses.
Pursuant to the FAITH model, we recognize that the "embarrassed" narrative is one of multiple working hypotheses about the translation. But we also recognize it is based not on direct evidence (facts), but on assumptions and inferences.
In my view, the "embarrassed" narrative obfuscates the issue because it deflects from the core issue for believers: the credibility and reliability of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery.
Core issue. We can all see that Joseph and Oliver presented a consistent, clear and unambiguous narrative about the translation: Joseph translated the plates by means of the Urim and Thummim (aka spectacles or Nephite interpreters) that came with the plates.
We have competing narratives because other people contradicted the narrative Joseph and Oliver related.
Some people accept all of what Joseph and Oliver taught; others accept some of what they taught; others reject what they taught. Even some faithful, believing scholars have concluded that Joseph and Oliver deliberately misled everyone about the translation.
The "embarrassed" narrative amounts to an excuse for why Joseph and Oliver misled everyone.
I don't think the "embarrassed" narrative is persuasive for the reasons set out below in interlinear comments.
Original in blue, my comments in red.
14:25 Interviewer: Why is it [SITH] not ludicrous? The CES letter author says these are kind of crazy things and you're saying well they're not as ludicrous as they may seem. Why is that?
Bushman: Well this is an old Mormon embarrassment that the seer stone was something that had to be obscured because it was degrading to think of Joseph Smith as a treasure Seeker.
I'm unaware of any historical source that expresses embarrassment and Bushman doesn't cite any, apart from his assumptions about the sources and his gap-filling inferences.
That I think is a mistaken historical outlook. The folk magic which we're talking about here was prevalent all through the Western World. I'm talking about Europe and England now. Right up to the middle of the 18th century, about then as the enlightenment comes on, what was commonplace belief in seer Stones as a member of parliament who uses a seer stone in the 1600s, that was just part of, sort of the edges of Christian belief.
I assume this is all accurate.
Then as science began to increase in authority and influence, that became considered blow grade, crude, raw, but it remained in the farm and lower class levels of society, especially all over England but especially in New England and Pennsylvania in the United States.
I assume this is all accurate.
So the Whitmers were into folk magic as many Germans were.
I assume this is all accurate.
And so what we think is shameful was just part of, sort of working class culture and the Smiths absorbed it.
Here, we are veering into assumptions and inferences.
What happens is in 1834 Eber Howe, a journalist from Paynesville nearby to Kirtland, published a book in which he trotted out all the evidence he could find from the neighbors that the Smiths were practicing money digging, and this was to discredit them.
Now we have a conceptual conflict. Howe interviewed working class people from western New York who supposedly were "into folk magic," so why would it be discrediting? Apparently the argument is that the folk magic would be discrediting among the higher classes of society, but the Smith's neighbors themselves supposedly found it discrediting, which raises the question why the Smiths would have "absorbed" it. Related to this is the questionable accuracy and reliability of the statements by the neighbors.
And I think that's the first time that the Smiths begin to feel like, well, this is something to be embarrassed about.
 |
| Mormonism Unvailed (click to enlarge) |
Neither was less "embarrassing" than the other.
https://archive.org/details/mormonismunvaile00howe/page/18/mode/2up?q=Urim+
The ridicule was based on the claim that regardless of whether Joseph used the peep stone or the Urim and Thummim, he didn't use the plates. Both alternatives existed "to enable Smith to translate the plates without looking at them!"
Not looking at the plates is a running source of ridicule throughout Mormonism Unvailed. For example, after discussing Joseph's explanation that the Lord told him to "translate from the plates of Nephi, until you come to that which ye have translated, which ye have retained," Howe wrote, "how could Smith know when he came to that which he had translated, without looking at the plates, (which he could not read if he did,)..."
Later, Howe writes, "Let us ask, what use have the plates been or the spectacles, so long as they have in no sense been used? or what does the testimony of Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer amount to?"
The claim that Joseph did not actually translate the plates is the same narrative Joseph had sought to dispel four years earlier when he wrote the Preface to the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon.
To the Reader—
As many false reports have been circulated respecting the following work, and also many unlawful measures taken by evil designing persons to destroy me, and also the work, I would inform you that I translated, by the gift and power of God, and caused to be written, one hundred and sixteen pages, the which I took from the Book of Lehi, which was an account abridged from the plates of Lehi, by the hand of Mormon… thou shalt translate from the plates of Nephi, until ye come to that which ye have translated, which ye have retained…
The "false reports" that had been circulating were published by Jonathan Hadley, who claimed that Joseph produced the Book of Mormon by reading off spectacles he put in a hat. The Hadley narrative made its way into Mormonism Unvailed. Joseph refuted that narrative by explaining he "took" the translation from the Book of Lehi, not by merely reading words that appeared on spectacles (or any other instrument) in a hat.
We've discussed this before here:
https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2023/10/update-on-jonathan-hadley-and-sith.html
and here
https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2023/08/the-jonathan-hadley-account-and-sith.html
And so they begin to change the story. Instead of talking about seer stones or spectacles, they use the word Urim and Thummim because that was a biblical term. And sort of gave some dignity to this searching.
In the first place, as we just saw, the Urim and Thummim narrative was ridiculed just as much as the "peep stone" narrative, so changing the story would serve no purpose.
Furthermore, they did not "begin to change the story" in 1834. In the summer of 1832, two years before Howe's book was published, Orson Hyde and Samuel Smith gave a published interview in Boston in which they explained that Joseph used the Urim and Thummim to translate the plates. Unless they invented the term, which is highly unlikely, it was being taught among Joseph's followers. While there are no extant accounts prior to 1832, the fact that two missionaries in Boston were relating this account publicly strongly indicates it was a well-known narrative.
There are also no extant faithful accounts of the seer stone prior to 1834 when Howe published his book, so there was no pre-existing faithful narrative to change.
17:17 And so ever since then we've been embarrassed by something that for the Smiths was part of everyday life. It wasn't embarrassing at all. In fact it probably played a large part of their ability to accept the gold plates as legitimate.
There is no evidence that this was part of everyday life for the Smiths. And if it wasn't embarrassing from the outset, the neighbors wouldn't have given the statements to discredit them.
Q: There's a lot of presentism in that, right? Of recognizing, well, we're in the 21st century so it's going to seem a little bit different than it would have in the 19th century.
Bushman claims SITH was embarrassing as of 1834, so it's not presentism.
As part of that though I think that some people may have concerns that the history was changed or that the narrative was changed a little bit.
Here the interviewer makes a good point because people are concerned that the history/narrative was changed. But there are two stages of change to consider.
(i) was the original history of SITH changed to U&T in 1834? Or was the original history of U&T (from Joseph and Oliver) changed to SITH (by David and Emma)?
(ii) was the original history of U&T, maintained by Joseph's contemporary and successor Church leaders, changed in the modern era by LDS historians (the New Mormon History movement) and then spread through the Church?
How would you help those people recognize the history and what is actually true and how to determine what is changed of the narrative or what is the actual truth of it?
Here the interviewer veers into a question about "what is actually true" as if that is knowable, presuming that SITH is the "actual truth" instead of merely one set of historical sources that contradicts what Joseph and Oliver said.
Bushman: Well it was changed. The Smiths immediately began trying to bury the fact, Joseph Smith played down his treasure seeking background as just a little episode with Josiah Stowell, you know just to dismiss this as something. Lucy Mack Smith did the same.
We've already seen that Joseph refuted SITH from the outset, in the 1830 Preface. Whether Joseph "played down his treasure seeking background" or clarified his activity for the record is debatable. Lucy Mack Smith's comment is often quoted out of context, as we've discussed before.
https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2024/07/lucy-mack-smith-and-seer-stones.html
And what I think significant is they changed from the Book of Commandments to the Doctrine and Covenants, they changed one of the revelations to insert the word Urim and Thummim.
This is in D&C 10.
See, that's the acceptable, desirable, versus seer stone.
But the original version did not mention a seer stone.
So the church was trying to cover up, in that case, Joseph Smith's involvement with treasure seeking.
The change could be construed as either a "cover up" or a clarification.
As we know from the Boston article, missionaries were explaining the Urim and Thummim even before the Book of Commandments was published. The omission from the revelation as originally published could have been an oversight in retrospect because at the time of publication, everyone knew about the U&T. In this scenario, the D&C version was a clarification (and not a cover up) to avoid the very confusion that later arose from David Whitmer and Emma Smith.
I think that may make some people nervous that the church is trying to cover up the truth.
Most people would be nervous if the church was trying to cover up the truth. But as we just saw, there is no evidence of a cover up. Instead, the evidence points to a clarification.
Q: How would you help them through a something that might cause dissonance like that?
Bushman: You just have to accept the fact that they didn't want to be made to look silly.
This isn't a fact. It's an assumption on Bushman's part that contradicts the historical evidence.
Who wants to be made to look silly?
Mormonism Unvailed presented the U&T as equally silly.
So if Joseph's past associates with the wrong class of people you do your best to make him look better. It wasn't a real lie. It was just sort of subordinating or retelling the story and who doesn't retell the stories of their lives to make them look better? Especially after the fact when you've been able to kind of process how things have gone down. You do want to make yourself look a little bit better.
This is a fair observation about human nature, but it doesn't fit the historical evidence we have in this case because the earliest descriptions we have of the translation involved the plates and the spectacles, not the seer (or "peep") stone.
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