[Ensign Magazine, October 2015]
Joseph the Seer
By Richard E. Turley Jr., Assistant Church Historian and Recorder, Robin S.
Jensen and Mark Ashurst-McGee, Church History Department
...
What Happened to the Seer Stone?
The stone pictured here has long been associated with Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon translation. The stone Joseph Smith used in the Book of Mormon translation effort was often referred to as a chocolate-colored stone with an oval shape.
Photograph by Welden C. Andersen and Richard E. Turley Jr.
According to Joseph Smith’s history, he returned the Urim and Thummim, or
Nephite "interpreters," to the angel. But what became of the other seer stone or
stones that Joseph used in translating the Book of Mormon?
David Whitmer wrote that "after the translation of the Book of Mormon was
finished, early in the spring of 1830, before April 6th, Joseph gave the stone
to Oliver Cowdery and told me as well as the rest that he was through with it,
and he did not use the stone any more."
...
A Treasured Testament
By Elder Russell M. Nelson
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Adapted from an address given 25 June 1992 at a seminar for new mission
presidents, Missionary Training Center, Provo, Utah.
A Treasured Testament
The details of this miraculous method of translation are still not fully known.
Yet we do have a few precious insights. David Whitmer wrote:
“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.” (David Whitmer,
An Address to All
Believers in Christ, Richmond, Mo.: n.p., 1887, p. 12.)
[Ensign Magazine, Jan. 2013]
Great and Marvelous Are the Revelations of
God
BY GERRIT DIRKMAAT
Church History Department
Joseph Smith Received Revelations through the Power
of God
Those who believed that Joseph Smith’s revelations
contained the voice of the Lord speaking to them also accepted the miraculous
ways in which the revelations were received. Some of the Prophet Joseph’s
earliest revelations came through the same means by which he translated the Book
of Mormon from the gold plates. In the stone box containing the gold plates,
Joseph found what Book of Mormon prophets referred to as “interpreters,” or a
“stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light” (Alma 37:23–24). He
described the instrument as “spectacles” and referred to it using an Old
Testament term, Urim and Thummim (see Exodus 28:30).
He also sometimes
applied the term to other stones he possessed, called “seer stones” because they
aided him in receiving revelations as a seer. The Prophet received some early
revelations through the use of these seer stones. For example,
shortly after Oliver Cowdery came to serve as a scribe for Joseph Smith as he
translated the plates, Oliver and Joseph debated the meaning of a biblical
passage and sought an answer through revelation. Joseph explained: “A difference
of opinion arising between us about the account of John the Apostle … whether he
died, or whether he continued; we mutually agreed to settle it by the Urim and
Thummim.” In response, Joseph Smith received the revelation now known as section
7 of the Doctrine and Covenants, which informed them that Jesus had told the
Apostle John, “Thou shalt tarry until I come in my glory” (D&C 7:3).
Records indicate that soon after the founding of the
Church in 1830, the Prophet stopped using the seer stones as a regular means of
receiving revelations. Instead, he dictated the revelations after inquiring of
the Lord without employing an external instrument.
...
[Ensign Magazine, Sept. 1977]
“By the Gift and Power of God”
BY RICHARD LLOYD ANDERSON
...
The person who best reflects Martin Harris is probably Edward Stevenson, since
he spent nearly two months with the Witness after going to Ohio to escort him
back to Utah in 1870. On the means of translation Stevenson reported, “He
said that the Prophet possessed a seer stone, by which he was enabled to
translate as well as from the Urim and Thummim, and for convenience he then used
the seer stone.”
After Martin Harris lost the part of the translation
done in 1828, Oliver Cowdery became chief scribe for the entire Book of Mormon
as it is now printed. Toward the end of this new work of 1829, David Whitmer on
occasion watched and afterwards spoke of the seer stone.
...
Book of Mormon Translation
Joseph Smith and his scribes wrote of two instruments used in translating the
Book of Mormon. According to witnesses of the translation, when Joseph looked
into the instruments, the words of scripture appeared in English. One
instrument, called in the Book of Mormon the “interpreters,” is better known to
Latter-day Saints today as the “Urim and Thummim.” Joseph found the interpreters
buried in the hill with the plates.16
Those who saw the interpreters described them as a clear pair of stones bound
together with a metal rim. The Book of Mormon referred to this instrument,
together with its breastplate, as a device “kept and preserved by the hand of
the Lord” and “handed down from generation to generation, for the purpose of
interpreting languages.”17
The other instrument, which Joseph Smith discovered in the ground years before
he retrieved the gold plates, was a small oval stone, or “seer stone.”18
As a young man during the 1820s, Joseph Smith, like others in his day, used a
seer stone to look for lost objects and buried treasure.19
As Joseph grew to understand his prophetic calling, he learned that he could use
this stone for the higher purpose of translating scripture.20
Apparently for convenience, Joseph often
translated with the single seer stone rather than the two stones bound together
to form the interpreters. These two
instruments—the interpreters and the seer stone—were apparently interchangeable
and worked in much the same way such that, in the course of time, Joseph Smith
and his associates often used the term “Urim and Thummim” to refer to the single
stone as well as the interpreters.21
In ancient times, Israelite priests used the Urim and Thummim to assist in
receiving divine communications. Although commentators differ on the nature of
the instrument, several ancient sources state that the instrument involved
stones that lit up or were divinely illumined.22
Latter-day Saints later understood the term “Urim and Thummim” to refer
exclusively to the interpreters. Joseph Smith and others, however, seem to have
understood the term more as a descriptive category of instruments for obtaining
divine revelations and less as the name of a specific instrument.
...
[Ensign Magazine, June 1994]
Highlights in the Prophet's Life
A time line of some key events in the life and
ministry of Joseph Smith
...
20 Mar. 1826: Tried and acquitted on fanciful charge of being a “disorderly person,” South Bainbridge, Chenango County, New York. New York law defined a disorderly person as, among other things, a vagrant or a seeker of “lost goods.” The Prophet had been accused of both: the first charge was false and was made simply to cause trouble; Joseph’s use of a seer stone to see things that others could not see with the naked eye brought the second charge. Those who brought the charges were apparently concerned that Joseph might bilk his employer, Josiah Stowell, out of some money. Mr. Stowell’s testimony clearly said this was not so and that he trusted Joseph Smith.2
Seeing that the above quote contains the following corresponding endnote reference:
2. Gordon A. Madsen, “Joseph Smith’s 1826 Trial: The Legal Setting,” Brigham Young University Studies, Spring 1990, p. 93.
Let's turn to Madsen's work to see what he wrote about Stowell's testimony:
"The pivotal testimony, in my view, was that of Josiah Stowell. ... 'that he positively knew that the prisoner [Joseph Smith] could tell and professed the art of seeing those valuable treasures through the medium of said stone.'" (Joseph Smith's 1826 Trial: The Legal Setting, BYU Studies, p. 105)
Other Articles of interest:
■ Joseph Smith, the stone and the hat: Why it all matters?
■ Printer's Manuscript of the Book of Mormon (press conference)
■ Disturbing Early Versions of The Golden Plates Accounts
■
FHE 1 — Am I a
Seeker of Truth? 1826 Glass Looking Trial
-----------------------
Resources
16. Michael Hubbard MacKay,
Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Grand Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley,
eds., Documents, Volume 1: July 1828–June 1831, vol. 1 of the Documents series
of The Joseph Smith Papers, edited by Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, Richard
Lyman Bushman, and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press,
2013), xxix.
17. Mosiah 28:14–15, 20; see
also Mosiah 8:13, 19; and Ether 4:5. Joseph Smith seems to have used the terms
“interpreters” and “spectacles” interchangeably during the early years of the
Church. Nancy Towle, an itinerant Methodist preacher, recounted Joseph Smith
telling her about “a pair of ‘interpreters,’ (as he called them,) that resembled
spectacles, by looking into which, he could read a writing engraven upon the
plates, though to himself, in a tongue unknown.” (Nancy Towle, Vicissitudes
Illustrated in the Experience of Nancy Towle, in Europe and America [Charleston:
James L. Burges, 1832], 138-39.) Joseph’s 1832 history referred to “spectacles.”
(Joseph Smith History, ca. summer 1832, in Joseph Smith Histories, 16.) In
January 1833, the Latter-day Saint newspaper The Evening and the Morning Star,
edited by William W. Phelps, equated “spectacles” and “interpreters” with the
term “Urim and Thummim”: the Book of Mormon “was translated by the gift and
power of God, by an unlearned man, through the aid of a pair of Interpreters, or
spectacles— (known, perhaps, in ancient days as Teraphim, or Urim and Thummim).”
(“The Book of Mormon,” The Evening and the Morning Star, January 1833, [2].) By
1835 Joseph Smith most often used the term “Urim and Thummim” when speaking of
translation and rarely, if ever, used the terms “interpreters” or “spectacles.”
(Joseph Smith, Journal, Nov. 9-11, 1835, in Journals: Volume 1: 1832-1839, 89;
Joseph Smith, History, 1834-1836, in Davidson et al., Histories, Volume 1, 116;
John W. Welch, “The Miraculous Translation of the Book of Mormon,” in John W.
Welch, ed., with Erick B. Carlson, Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine
Manifestations, 1820–1844 [Provo, UT, and Salt Lake City: Brigham Young
University Press and Deseret Book, 2005], 123-28.)
18. Joseph Smith probably
possessed more than one seer stone; he appears to have found one of the stones
while digging for a well around 1822. (Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the
Beginnings of Mormonism [Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1984], 69–70.)
19. According to Martin
Harris, an angel commanded Joseph Smith to stop these activities, which he did
by 1826. (See Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, 64–76; and
Richard Lloyd Anderson, “The Mature Joseph Smith and Treasure Searching,” BYU
Studies 24, no. 4 [Fall 1984]: 489–560.) Joseph did not hide his well-known
early involvement in treasure seeking. In 1838, he published responses to
questions frequently asked of him. “Was not Jo Smith a money digger,” one
question read. “Yes,” Joseph answered, “but it was never a very profitable job
to him, as he only got fourteen dollars a month for it.” (Selections from
Elders’ Journal, July 1838, 43, available at josephsmithpapers.org.) For the
broader cultural context, see Alan Taylor, “The Early Republic’s Supernatural
Economy: Treasure Seeking in the American Northeast, 1780–1830,” American
Quarterly 38, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 6–33.
20. Mark Ashurst-McGee, “A Pathway to Prophethood: Joseph Smith Junior as Rodsman, Village Seer, and Judeo-Christian Prophet,” (Master's Thesis, Utah State University, 2000).
21. For example, when Joseph
Smith showed a seer stone to Wilford Woodruff in late 1841, Woodruff recorded in
his journal: “I had the privilege of seeing for the first time in my day the
URIM & THUMMIM.” (Wilford Woodruff journal, Dec. 27, 1841, Church History
Library, Salt Lake City.) See also Doctrine and Covenants 130:10.
22. Cornelius Van Dam, The
Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 1997), 9–26.
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