Tonight we begin a fascinating investigation of how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. This is one you won’t want to miss!
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Radio Free Mormon: 126: Lost in Translation, Part 1
Radio Free Mormon
Broadcasting Behind Enemy Lines
Dear Radio Free Mormon. Im an avid listener from Sydney Australia and look forward to each of your podcasts. I was a convert at age 19. In 1976, married a young Mormon girl and eventually went on to have 5 children – 4 serving missions and my wife and I serving in many leadership roles including as a Bishop in a ward that included the Pacific Area Presidency at that time. I began to struggle with my testimony around 2014 when I stumbled on to the Gospel Topics Essays and the last straw for my wife was the Ensign article on the Seer Stone in 2015. My wife and I have resigned, 3 of my children and their 2 spouses are out and we are all navigating this new world in front of us.
What I wanted to share with you was in relation to this podcast. I came across an article in the Improvement Era August 1946 the link is
https://archive.org/details/improvementera4908unse/page/n63/mode/2up
at page 542 / 543 the article written buy Apostle John A Widstoe berates so called historians that dare to sully the name of Joseph Smith in suggesting he used a seer stone or that he was a treasure digger. I thought it may be of use to part 2.
Keep up the great work.
To be fair, JoW attacks stories of JS being a money digger, not using the seerstone for translation. It would be another 69 years before the Church admitted that those stories were true.
Thanks for the great cite to Elder Widstoe!
I am definitely going to use it in part 2.
With attribution!
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Everything I produce is published immediately for all to hear!
Thanks for listening!
RFM
RFM: First of all, thank you! I love your podcasts. Keep up the great work.
You mentioned that during the early translation of the Book of Mormon that Martin Harris had switched the seer stone out for a similar looking stone he found. When J Smith returned to looking at the stone in the hat, JS said he could not see any words to read out, and the switch was discovered. My question is, what would be the critic’s explanation for this? In other words, if JS was in fact dictating the story from his own imagination, it shouldn’t have mattered that MH changed the stone. I suppose JS could have noticed the rock looked different. Thoughts?
JS cared deeply about whatever made his stone unique and had spent hours staring at it. I imagine that a slight during swirl pattern would be obvious to him but not noticed by MH.
Also, JS was an expert trickster. He may have seen MH make the switch, or MH may have accidentally given JS a clue. MH was honest but not too smart.