Hi, this is John Hammer. Last week the LDS Church in a rare joint press conference with my church, Community of Christ,

announced that the Joseph Smith Papers Project was releasing a high resolution facsimile reproduction

of the printers manuscript of the Book of Mormon, which is in the vault of the Community of Christ Archives. That announcement was immediately overshadowed by news that the volumes included pictures of one of Joseph Smith's

seerstones from the LDS church vaults that had never before been photographed.

Although the historical records of Joseph Monsierstone have been well known to historians for many years,

Mike Quinn's book, Early Mormonism in the Magical World View,

is the standard text on the subject and I highly recommend it.

The fact that we have this actual picture of the primary stone used in the Book of Mormon

translation process has clearly made the story more real for lots and lots of people.

Because the record isn't popularly known, we decided that it might be valuable to our listeners if we take a few of the

dozens of accounts and testimonies of this particular stone as told by

Joseph Smith's contemporaries both his friends and his enemies that are published in Dan Vogel's

early Mormon documents series and with parts read by Glenn Randy Matt Jake and myself we

decided to put the story of Joseph the Seer and this particular

seer stone into context. Where did he get the stone? How he used it as a young

treasure seer? How he used it to find the plates,

and testimony that this stone and not the Urim and Thumbham were ultimately used to translate the Book of Mormon.

And so, without further ado, we give you de-romancing the stone,

a documentary reading of the stone's historical record, D romanticized.

D.

I'm a man's in the store.

Never leaving a poor heart of the home, every night and every day.

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