S4 E5 The Real Translation Story: a Seer Translating the Book of Mormon from Gold Plates (D&C 3-5)
The Scriptures Are Real
Kerry Muhlestein
4.8 • 540 Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2025
⏱️ 96 minutes
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Summary
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In this episode Gerrit Dirkmaat and Kerry explore the translation of the Book of Mormon. They analyze the sources from which we can learn anything, and teach how to evaluate them. They help us think through what it means to be a seer, the nature of having seer stones like the Urim and Thummim, and what we know about Joseph's translation. They help us see things from the point of view of people from Joseph's time, place, and culture, and help us understand the divinely aided translation of this sacred book.
We are grateful for our generous donors who make the podcast possible. We are also grateful to Launchpad Consulting Studios for producing the podcast and to Rich Nicholls, who composed and plays the music for the podcast.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The hat is probably the thing that makes people feel the most of the coming. |
| 0:04.0 | What do you mean he has a hat? |
| 0:06.0 | Is it like a magic hat? |
| 0:08.0 | Is he not looking at the plates? |
| 0:09.0 | I think most people picture him looking at the plates. |
| 0:12.0 | Or is it pretty clear most of the time he's not. |
| 0:14.0 | I think 90% of the time, |
| 0:17.0 | Joseph would not be able to point and say, |
| 0:19.0 | this is what I'm translating from. this is what I'm translating from. |
| 0:31.0 | Hello, and welcome to the scriptures are real podcasts. This is the podcast where we talk about |
| 0:35.2 | elements of the scriptures that make them more real to us so we can draw more power out of them because we need all the hope we can get. I'm your host, Kerry Mielstein, and I'm so happy to have with me. Very special guests. We have Garrett Dirkmont with us today. Thanks for being here, Gary. Thanks for having me. And Garrett hosts his own podcast. We'll ask him to tell you a little bit about that in just a minute. But first of all, |
| 0:54.2 | let me just give you briefest introduction of you, Garrett. Garrett, I love Garrett. He is so much |
| 1:01.1 | fun and has the best stories ever. He came, so he teaches in our college in the Department of Church |
| 1:06.9 | History and Doctrine, but came to us from the Joseph Smith Papers Project. And currently, they've partially stolen him back. Yeah, I'm working on a project with the church history department now. Yeah. So I think you're still technically part of us. I'm still a UIU employee. Yeah, but you're spending your time there. I don't want anyone to think I'm not. Yeah. And I think they learned their lesson with that because, like, when they pulled Steve away |
| 1:29.5 | and he had to go through the retiring process, that was just a tricky process. |
| 1:33.2 | So they're not doing that to you. |
| 1:35.7 | So you're glad he can pave the way for us. |
| 1:37.9 | I am grateful to be employed doing both things. |
| 1:41.4 | So tell us more about yourself. |
| 1:42.9 | What should we know? |
| 1:43.7 | What do you do? |
| 1:44.2 | Tell us about your podcast. Okay. Well, so my PhD's in American history. I got my PhD at the |
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