008 Translating the Book of Mormon with Stones in a Hat?

Church History Matters

Scripture Central

Religion & Spirituality:christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.9 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

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Summary

If we had video footage of the translation process of the Book of Mormon, what would we see? What would we actually watch Joseph Smith “do” during a translation session? Now of course we don’t have video footage, but we do have perhaps the next best thing—multiple eyewitness accounts of those who saw the process up close first hand. And what they said they saw was a decidedly non-secular, non-academic, one-of-a-kind translation method involving a young 22 and 23 year old Joseph looking at seer stones in a hat—a process many of these witnesses described as truly miraculous. In today’s episode we take a closer look at what we can know from the historical record about Joseph Smith’s translation process. We’ll also briefly explore the New England subculture in Joseph’s day in which some believed that people with certain spiritual gifts could use special objects—like seer stones or divining rods—to channel divine power to do things like find lost objects or find underground water sources. We’ll also discuss the fascinating details of what we know about how and when Joseph came upon two seer stones in addition to those that came with the plates and were bound together in silver bows, and what we know about his using these during the Book of Mormon translation. For show notes and more go to https://doctrineandcovenantscentral.org/church-history-matters-podcast/

Transcript

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0:00.0	If we had video footage of the translation process of the Book of Mormon, what would we see?
0:12.0	What would we actually watch Joseph Smith do during a translation session?
0:16.0	Now, of course, we don't have such video footage, but we do have perhaps the next best thing.
0:21.0	Multiple eyewitness accounts of those who saw the process
0:25.5	up close firsthand.
0:27.7	And what they said they saw was a decidedly non-secular, non-academic, one-of-a-kind translation method involving a young 22 and 23-year-old
0:37.7	Joseph Smith looking at Seer Stones in a hat, a process many of these witnesses described as truly miraculous.
0:46.4	In today's episode we take a closer look at what we can know from the historical record
0:50.9	about Joseph Smith's translation process.
0:53.2	We'll also briefly explore the New England subculture in Joseph's day in which some believed
0:58.9	that people with certain spiritual gifts could use special objects like seer stones or divining rods to channel
1:06.2	divine power to do things like find lost objects or find underground water sources.
1:12.3	We'll also discuss the fascinating details of what we know about how and when Joseph came
1:17.4	upon two seer stones in addition to those that came with the plates and were bound together
1:22.2	in silver bows. and what we know
1:24.1	about his using these during the Book of Mormon translation. All of this and
1:28.4	more coming your way on today's episode of Church History Matters, a
1:32.1	podcast of Scripture Central.
1:34.0	I'm Scott Woodward, a managing director at Scripture Central, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths,
1:39.4	also a managing director at Scripture Central.
1:42.0	And today Casey and I dive into our third episode in this series dealing
1:45.8	with the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. Now let's get into it. Hello and welcome back to Church History Matters. I'm Casey Paul Griffiths and with me as always is the
	...

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