Introduction

One of the most consistent claims made by eyewitnesses1 to Joseph Smith’s translation process is that Joseph used a chocolate colored seer stone, placed in a hat, to translate much or all of what would become the book.

Eyewitness statements on use of the seer stone

All witness statements are taken from John Welch’s The Miraculous Translation of the Book of Mormon2, and I provide Welch’s title for each in italics. They are arranged according to a simple estimate of the likely frequency that each individual observed the translation process3 and chronologically per individual.

Emma Smith

Emma Smith - 1870

Emma Smith Bidamon to Emma Pilgrim (1870)

Now, the first part my husband translated, was translated by the use of Urim and Thummim, and that was the part that Martin Harris lost After that he used a small stone, not exactly black, but was rather a dark color.

Emma Smith - 1879

Emma Smith Bidamon, as interviewed by Joseph Smith III (1879)

… In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us.

Martin Harris

Martin Harris - 1881

Martin Harris, as recorded by Edward Stevenson (1881)

By aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear … Martin said further that the seer stone differed in appearance entirely from the Urim and Thummim that was obtained with the plates, which were two clear stones set in two rims, very much resembled spectacles, only they were larger.

Martin Harris - 1886

Martin Harris, as interviewed by Edward Stevenson (1886)

[Martin Harris] also stated that the Prophet translated a portion of the Book of Mormon, with the seer stone in his possession. The stone was placed in a hat that was used for that purpose, and with the aid of this seer stone the Prophet would read sentence by sentence as Martin wrote,

Martin Harris - 1887

Martin Harris, as published by Andrew Jenson (1887)

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.

David Whitmer

David Whitmer - 1885a

David Whitmer, as interviewed by Zenas H. Gurley (1885)

Q—Did Joseph use his “peep stone” to finish up the translation? if so why? Ans—He used a stone called a “Seers stone,” the “Interpreters” having been taken away from him because of transgression. . . .

David Whitmer - 1885b

David Whitmer, as interviewed by the Chicago Tribune (1885)

… The plates, however, were not returned [after 116 pages], but instead Smith was given by the angel a Urim and Thummim of another pattern, it being shaped in oval or kidney form. This seer’s stone he was instructed to place in his hat, and on covering his face with the hat the character and translation would appear on the stone.

David Whitmer - 1886

David Whitmer, as interviewed by the Omaha Herald (1886)

[After the loss of the 116 pages, the Lord] took from the prophet the urim and thummum and otherwise expressed his condemnation. By fervent prayer and by otherwise humbling himself, the prophet, however, again found favor, and was presented with a strange oval-shaped, chocolate-colored stone about the size of an egg, only more flat, which, it was promised, should serve the same purpose as the missing urim and thummim. . . . With this stone all of the present Book of Mormon was translated.

David Whitmer - 1909

David Whitmer, as interviewed by Nathan A. Tanner Jr. (1909)

Whitmer describes the Urim and Thummim and seer stone as being used “alternately” in this account.

He [David Whitmer] said that Joseph was separated from the scribe by a blanket, as I remember; that he had the Urim and Thummim, and a chocolate colored stone, which he used alternately, as suited his convenience, and he said he believed Joseph could as well accomplish the translation by looking into a hat, or any other stone, as by the use of the Urim and Thummim or the chocolate colored stone.

William Smith

William Smith (1883)

William Smith (1883)4

William Smith uses the term Urim and Thummim and describes them as being found with the plates, but his description is consistent with the use of the chocolate colored seer stone.

where he translated them by means of the Urim and Thummim, (which he obtained with the plates), and the power of God. The manner in which this was done was by looking into the Urim and Thummim, which was placed in a hat to exclude the light, (the plates lying near by covered up), and reading off the translation, which appeared in the stone by the power of God.

William Smith (1884)

William Smith (1884)5

William Smith uses the term Urim and Thummim and describes them as being found with the plates, but his description is consistent with the use of the chocolate colored seer stone.

When Joseph received the plates he a[l]so received the Urim and Thummim, which he would place in a hat to exclude all light, and with the plates by his side he translated the characters …

William Smith, as interviewed by J. W. Peterson and W. S. Pender (1921)

William Smith, as interviewed by J. W. Peterson and W. S. Pender (1921)

In this account, William Smith describes the Urim and Thummim and the seer stone as separate instruments and their use alternating based on Joseph Smith’s eye strain.

Explaining the expression as to the stones in the Urim and thummim being set in two rims of a bow he said: A silver bow ran over one stone, under the other, arround over that one and under the first in the shape of a horizontal figure 8 much like a pair of spectacles. That they were much too large for Joseph and he could only see through one at a time using sometimes one and sometimes the other. By putting his head in a hat or some dark object it was not necessary to close one eye while looking through the stone with the other. In that way sometimes when his eyes grew tires [tired] he releaved them of the strain.

Analysis

A narrative spectrum

Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith consistently claimed Joseph translated the Book of Mormon with the Urim and Thummum (or Nephite Interpreters), which they identified as having been obtained with the plates. For instance, in 1834 Oliver Cowdery wrote:

Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, ‘Interpreters,’ the history or record called ‘The Book of Mormon.’

And Joseph Smith’s answered questions that were then published in the Elder’s Journal in 1838 (emphasis added):

Question 4th. How, and where did you obtain the book of Mormon? Answer. Moroni, the person who deposited the plates, from whence the book of Mormon was translated, in a hill in Manchester, Ontario County New York, being dead; and raised again therefrom, appeared unto me, and told me where they were; and gave me directions how to obtain them. I obtained them, and the Urim and Thummim with them; by the means of which, I translated the plates; and thus came the book of Mormon.

Including Joseph and Oliver’s descriptions, we can arrange these descriptions in a spectrum.

Joseph translated the Book of Mormon (alternatively or complementarily):

  • With the Urim and Thummim, obtained with the plates (e.g., Oliver Cowder 1834, Joseph Smith 1838)
  • With the Urim and Thummim, obtained with the plates, which Joseph placed in a hat to exclude light (William Smith 1883)
  • With the Urim and Thummim (like spectacles) and the seer stone as suited his convenience (David Whitmer 1909, see also Martin Harris 1881)
  • [After some initial period, identified by several as the lost 116 pages episode] [entirely] with the seer stone (Emma Smith 1870, Martin Harris 1887 “then used the seer stone”, David Whitmer 1885a, 1885b, 1886).

At least the far ends of the spectrum seem irreconcilable. On one hand we have Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith claiming that Joseph translated with the Urim & Thummim found with the plates and on the other end Emma Smith, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer claiming that the seer stone was used for all of the Book of Mormon after the lost 116 pages.

Alternate versus consecutive

There is some tension between descriptions of A) alternate usage, and B) consecutive usage where the seer stone was used for all of the Book of Mormon after a period of using the Urim and Thummim. We can observe that:

  • The most complete description (that of David Whitmer) of A is later than several earlier statements of his indicating B.
  • Other statements by Emma Smith and Martin Harris clearly indicate or hint at B.
  • Qualifying A allows it to fit comfortably within the B model: Joseph may have alternated methods during the 116 pages translation, but the rest could have been translated with the seer stone.

Given the data and arguments, it is reasonable to conclude that B is a subset of A. The synthesis of these accounts that seems most likely, then, is that Joseph may have alternated use of the Urim and Thummim during the 116 page translation, but then he used the seer stone in his dictation of all of what we know as the Book of Mormon today.6

  1. Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery (the scribe responsible for writing the dictation of virtually all of what is known as the Book of Mormon today) both consistently taught that Joseph used the Urim and Thummim—found with the plates—to translate. As discussed in the Analysis section, this is in some tension with most other eyewitness accounts. ↩

  2. A chapter from Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820-1844. ↩

  3. Witness statements are arranged by individual according to a simple estimation of how likely each were to observe the most of the translation process: Emma Smith was Joseph’s wife and lived with him through almost all the translation process; Martin Harris was involved in translating the first 116 pages and was one of the three witnesses to the golden plates; David Whitmer was interested in the translation, the translation concluded at his father’s farm, and he was one of the 3 witnesses to the golden plates; and William Smith was the brother of Joseph. ↩

  4. Welch identifies this statement as being from: William Smith, William Smith on Mormonism (Lamoni, Iowa: Herald Steam Book, 1883), 80. William was excommunicated in 1845 and joined the RLDS Church in 1878. ↩

  5. Welch identifies this statement as being from: “The Old Soldier’s Testimony,” Saints’ Herald 31 (October 4, 1884): 644. This is an excerpt from a sermon delivered by William B. Smith in the Saints’ Chapel at Deloit, Iowa, on June 8, 1884, as reported by C. E. Butterworth. ↩

  6. Broadly, this anlaysis agrees with Roger Nicholson’s analysis that Joseph seems to have used a stone in the hat for the translation of the text after the 116 pages. Perhaps to reconcile with statements from Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery pointing to use of the Urim and Thummim, Nicholson posits that Whitmer may have been wrong about the Interpreters being returned with the angel and also that the witnesses would not have been able to necessarily tell which stone Joseph was using. He does acknowledge that Emma, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris speak as if they could clearly distinguished between the seer stone and the Interpreters (which Nicholson refers to as the stones from the Nephites but which were used in the hat like the seer stone). The fact that the seer stone but not necessarily the interpreters are still in the possession of the Church today seems to argue in favor of Whitmer’s story. Furthermore, it is difficult to understand why the witnesses would have discussed the temporal sequence of stones used if they had not been exposed to such information to then convey. And, in at least two accounts, it was communicated that Joseph carried the seer stone in a pocket (“he had it in his pocket” from here and William Purple’s account here, so pulling the stone from his pocket and placing it in the hat would have given witnesses a chance to observe it (although he presumably did not always carry it on his person based on Harris’s story of swapping out the stones). Finally, Harris’s account of swapping out stones suggests that Harris was able to match the stone Joseph was using at least to a first approximation, so we have some evidence that a scribe or witnesses was able to observe the stone one way or another. ↩