New year, new Come, Follow Me curriculum. This year it’s the Doctrine and Covenants, which is sure to bring about all sorts of conversations about church history. The church has been preparing for this year for some time now. Expect the church to draw heavily on their recently published Saints books and the trove of online articles they have created as a part of this series. Also expect numerous references to the Restoration Proclamation issued in the April 2020 General Conference. Finally, anticipate heavy reference to the Joseph Smith Papers project, which has truly been a wonderful historical resource.

Normally, I don’t pay the Come, Follow Me curriculum much attention, but this year might be different. Not only do I have a newfound interest in Mormon history, but much of that interest stems from issues of historiography. Specifically, who writes history and how they choose to portray it. Traditionally, the church has taken an approach to telling their history that has favored telling a carefully curated narrative that seeks to affirm faith and loyalty to the church at every opportunity. Indeed, this was one of the goals in mind when the church developed the Priesthood Correlation Program in the mid-twentieth century “to correlate the instruction and curriculum of all priesthood and auxiliary organizations of the church.” The result has program has been that most members are exposed to a highly-controlled and whitewashed version of Mormon history, unless they venture into uncorrelated materials, which they are expressly discouraged from doing.

Covering the Doctrine and Covenants presents an interesting challenge for the church. On the one hand, the church in recent years has made increasing efforts to be more transparent with their early history, largely in response to the increasing availability of uncorrelated material via the internet. On the other hand, there is a lot that the church would still rather not talk about regarding the history of Mormonism, and we can be sure that much will remain obfuscated. Because early Mormon history is such a thorny and oft-cited cause of individual faith crises, this year’s curriculum should prove interesting regarding how the church chooses to present its own narrative in a climate where they are increasingly unable to prevent members from accessing outside resources.

Therefore, this year I will likely peruse the Come, Follow Me curriculum, and I hope to share some of my impressions on each month’s lessons here on this blog. Of course, I will be approaching these from the lens of a nonbeliever, and will be attending to areas that I perceive as lacking in transparency or honesty. These posts will be my initial reactions, rather than an in depth dive into each lesson’s content. However, I will as much as possible be looking for themes across the curricula for Individuals and Families, the Primary, the Sunday School, and the Youth. With that upfront, let’s take a peek at January’s lessons…

January 2021 Overview

Jump to the sections for each week’s lessons via the links below:

Week 1 | January 3
Week 2 | January 10
Week 3 | January 17
Week 4 | January 24
Week 5 | January 31

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Week 1 | D&C § 1

The Prophet’s Words are God’s Words

The overwhelming theme of the lessons of this week is loyalty to the leaders of the church and treating their words as the direct words of God. This is especially prevalent in the Primary lesson, which explicitly teaches that “the prophet’s words are God’s words” and that “following the prophet is the same as following the Lord.” For the children, this is coupled with singing that all-time favorite: Follow the Prophet, with special attention to the last verse regarding following modern day leadership.

This is neatly paralleled for the adults in the Sunday School lesson, which encourages members to discuss how “God speaks through His servants, and His words will be fulfilled” and likewise encourages members to sing this conviction with the hymn, Come, Listen to a Prophet’s Voice. Interestingly, this is couched in the context of responding to “family members, friends, and acquaintances who do not share our beliefs about living prophets.” This is interesting framing because D&C § 1 was created in the context of criticism levied by disaffected members, that Joseph Smith covered up his frequent false predictions. Indeed, Saints: The Standard of Truth provides the following context:

Ezra Booth had recently published a letter in a local newspaper accusing Joseph of making false prophecies and hiding his revelations from the public. The letter was widely read, and many people had begun to grow wary of the Saints and their message. Many Saints also wanted to read the Lord’s word themselves. Since there were only handwritten copies of the revelations Joseph had received, they were not well known among most church members.

Saints (Vol 1): The Standard of Truth, p. 141

This context is insightful as it shows that the modern church is using D&C § 1 to respond to similar problems for which it was produced. Namely, to reassure members—in the face of skepticism over the authenticity of the prophet’s revelations—that the President of the LDS church speaks as directly inspired by God.

The Obedient Need Not Be Afraid

The second major theme of this week’s lesson is that when members hearken to the prophet’s words as though they were God’s words, they will be protected from the wrath of the anticipated turmoil of the imminent eschaton. This is, of course, a major theme in early revelations of the Saints of the Latter-days, which remains true in 2021. Specifically, questions from each of this weeks lessons ask students to consider the following:

Individuals and Families:
How does the Lord warn us? What has He warned us about recently? Perhaps you could watch or read parts of recent general conference messages and look for examples of God’s “voice of warning.”

Primary:
Help the children think of some of the problems in the world today. Help them identify some of the problems that the Lord prophesied would occur.

Sunday School:
What is happening in the world today that fulfills these prophesied descriptions?

Come, Follow Me — 3 January 2021

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Week 2 | JS History 1:1–26

A Curated Experience with the First Vision

This week’s lessons are all about Joseph Smith and the First Vision. As expected, this includes a heavy focus on the canonized 1838 version. What’s new, however, is actual mention that other accounts exist, that they differ in detail, and that there is a faithful apologetic response to why that’s not something that should concern you. This a huge step from the church’s history of hiding these disparate accounts, and reflects the new focus on “inoculating” members with small bits of controversy to protect them from doubting the church if they encounter this information elsewhere. Notably, as they did for controversial topics in the Book of Mormon curriculum, mention of the multiple First Vision accounts is only found in the home curriculum for Individuals and Families. While the church seems more than happy to enable members to infect each other with SARS-CoV-2 when gathering for church, they are much more cautious about potentially spreading the infection of doubt throughout the congregation.

Actually, there is one other place that mention of the multiple First Vision accounts occurs—the Youth lesson. This makes sense because the church’s primary target demographic in their new “inoculation” efforts is the youth. The youth are a safer audience because they haven’t already encountered the traditional narrative to the degree that adults have, they are more impressionable, and they are the most likely to encounter this material on their own via uncorrelated resources on the internet. The efforts to inoculate the youth into accepting a faithful apologetic interpretation of the First Vision becomes apparent when you see how it is delivered:

Are those you teach aware that there are several accounts of the First Vision? Each of these accounts provides unique details that give a more complete understanding of what happened in the Sacred Grove. You might summarize the “Overview” section of the Gospel Topics essay “First Vision Accounts.” Then you might ask those you teach to review the summaries of the four accounts found under “Accounts of the First Vision.” They could also read some of the actual accounts by using the links provided. What did they find that strengthens their testimony of the First Vision? You could watch the video “Ask of God: Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” which portrays the First Vision by using details from these accounts. Why is it good to have several accounts of the First Vision? How do these accounts help us better understand Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ?

Doctrinal Topics 2021, Youth Curriculum
Emphasis my own.

The way these questions are worded—with the assumption that multiple accounts that significantly contradict each other in detail is both good and faith-affirming—is intentionally designed to normalize this information for the youth. The hope is to prepare them to dismiss out of hand the critical arguments against the multiple First Vision accounts. Notably, there is no mention in any of the lessons of how common theophanic experiences like the First Vision were at the time in the “burned over district,” nor that the church at large seemed to be ignorant of the First Vision and subscribed to a Trinitarian view of God in its earliest years.

The Smith Family and the Sterilized Worldview

Apart from buoying faith in the First Vision story, the other major theme of these lessons is that Joseph Smith and his family were upstanding, pious citizens of their community, who were persecuted unjustly because Joseph shared his theophany. This is especially highlighted in the Voices of the Restoration section of the manual for Individuals and Families, which will become a series throughout the year of carefully selected, faith-affirming quotes. Of course, there is no mention of the Smith family’s extensive practice in treasure seeking and total immersion in the culture of using peep stones, divining rods, magic lamen, and other elements of “folk magic.” Nor is there mention of Joseph’s 1826 conviction for being a disorderly person resulting from defrauding his neighbors in attempts to find buried treasure protected by guardian spirits.

Also notable is the section in two manuals with the heading: “We can remain true to what we know, even if others reject us.” This again demonstrates how focused this lesson is on reinforcing member’s faith in the church and preparing them to dismiss criticism of the church. Consider the following quotes:

Individuals and Families:
As you read Joseph’s account, what inspires you to remain true to your testimony? What other examples—from the scriptures or people you know—give you courage to stay true to the spiritual experiences you have had?
How can we respond when people question our testimonies?

Sunday School:
If you know of ward members who have experienced opposition because they are members of the Church, consider asking them to come to class prepared to share how they keep their faith strong.
Perhaps they can share passages that inspire them when others challenge their beliefs.

Come, Follow Me — 10 January 2021

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Week 3 | D&C § 2; JS History 1:26–65

This week’s lesson focuses on the appearance of Moroni to Joseph Smith and how Smith came to acquire the golden plates said to contain The Book of Mormon. Each of the lesson manuals focus particularly on the promise given by Moroni that Elijah would return to restore the sealing power to Joseph Smith as a part of the Restoration in preparation for the apocalypse.

Guardian Moroni and the Quest for the Golden Plates

These lessons rely exclusively on the 1838 Manuscript History of the Church to tell the story of Moroni’s visit to Joseph Smith in 1823. In so doing, members are given a version of this story that had been refined and reinterpreted considerably in 15 years of retelling. Importantly, the context of the writing of the 1838 history (which wasn’t published in its entirety until 1902) was the fracturing of the church in Kirtland and Missouri and the increased scrutiny that Smith experienced from disaffected members, who were beginning to see that the church and its origins were not what they had been led to believe. Several apostles and other prominent members had left the church, including many witnesses of the golden plates (including Martin Harris, see Week 4), and the reliability of their testimonies to The Book of Mormon were challenged. It is in this environment of perhaps the most serious challenge to Joseph Smith’s authority up until that time, that Smith engaged in having an official history written.

Notably, this 1838 version of the emergence of The Book of Mormon is scrubbed entirely of any obvious reference to treasure seeking and the magic worldview in which the appearance of Moroni and the acquisition of the golden plates originally emerged. Additionally, Joseph reframed his charismatic authority by appeal to the 1820 First Vision, rather than the visitation of Moroni and the translation of The Book of Mormon. Indeed, this history can be read as Smith’s attempt to rewrite the narrative of the origins of the church so as to distance himself and The Book of Mormon from his treasure-seeking past. This is a strategy that the church has relied on over and over again up through the present day—these lessons being a prime example.

Nowhere in these lessons will you find any mention, even obliquely, of the treasure-quest context in which Joseph originally framed his experience with Moroni and the finding of the golden plates. The closest we ever get is reference to the passage in which Joseph cryptically portrays his early treasure-seeking activities as “foolish errors,” the “weakness of youth,” and the “foibles of human nature.” He disguises his extensive participation in the treasure-seeking community as being “sometimes associated with jovial company, etc.” How do the lessons treat this passage?

Individuals and Families:
How did Joseph Smith feel about his mistakes? What did he do in response to those feelings? What do we learn from him about what to do when we make mistakes?

Primary:
Read with the children Joseph Smith—History 1:29. How did Joseph Smith feel about his mistakes? What did he do about them? What can we learn from Joseph’s example that can help us when we make mistakes? Ask the children how it makes them feel to know that Joseph was called by God even though he was not perfect.

Sunday School:
How does this story strengthen our testimonies of Joseph Smith’s divine calling? What lessons do we learn from this story about how God does His work?
Come, Follow Me — 17 January 2021

Retconning Elijah into 1823

Section 2 of the Doctrine and Covenants is a short excerpt from the 1838 Manuscript History of the Church. It is presented as the words of the angel Moroni to Joseph Smith in 1823, promising the return of the Hebrew prophet Elijah to “turn the hearts of the children to their fathers” before the coming of the “great and dreadful day of the Lord.” All three Come, Follow Me lessons pay special attention to this section and teach that Elijah’s mission was to restore the sealing power that enables families to be forever, citing the 3 April 1836 vision in the Kirtland Temple as fulfillment of that promise.

What none of these lessons highlight, however, is that there appears to be no mention of Moroni saying these words until 1838, and there is no evidence that members in 1836 or prior interpreted the vision in the Kirtland Temple as fulfillment of a promise give by Moroni. Indeed, there is nothing to indicate the general membership were even aware of the 1836 vision until several years afterwards. Notably, the section containing the narrative of the 1836 vision wasn’t included in the 1844 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, and the narrative of this event in the Manuscript History of the Church wasn’t written until sometime between 1843 and 1845. Indeed, the vision wasn’t added to the LDS Doctrine and Covenants until 1876!

It’s also strange that the sealing power was supposedly restored by Elijah, but D&C § 132 makes no reference to Elijah or this restoration when introducing eternal marriage, which revelation the church also tries to retcon back to 1831—before Elijah’s visitation! This is how the church tries to peddle the apologetic that Joseph’s relationship with Fanny Alger was an early plural marriage, rather than a “dirty, nasty, filthy affair.” However, in doing so, the church disrupts the timeline of its own narrative such that Joseph supposedly received revelation on plural marriage as early as 1831, and then married Fanny Alger in a 1835-ish plural union, all before he is said to have received the sealing power from Elijah in 1836.

This is not the first time LDS leaders have tried to retcon events in the restoration narrative into an older historical timeline. For instance, the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants added substantial changes to earlier revelations that had been previously published in the 1833 Book of Commandments, such as the first published reference to a visitation by Peter, James, and John in restoring the higher priesthood. Notably, this same revision does include a reference to Elijah using the same language found in the Manuscript History, making this perhaps the first published reference to such a prediction, though it does not put it on Moroni’s lips or make any explicit reference to sealing power. This edition of the Doctrine and Covenants was printed and sold in the latter half of 1835, roughly six or seven months before the Kirtland Temple vision.

All of this is obviously lost context, and the Come, Follow Me lessons give the impression that Moroni in 1823 definitively foretold of the 1836 return of Elijah to restore the sealing power that will bind together the eternal human family. Let’s not even get into the Elias vs Elijah thing.

Primary:
Moroni told Joseph Smith that Elijah would come to “reveal … the Priesthood." This refers to the sealing power of the priesthood that allows families to be united eternally and enables us to receive ordinances for our ancestors in the temple.

Ask the children to read the prophecy in Doctrine and Covenants 2:1. Ask them to look for who the Lord would send in the last days and what this person would reveal. Display a picture of Elijah in the Kirtland Temple, and talk about how this prophecy was fulfilled 13 years after Moroni’s visit.

Sunday School:
Would your class benefit from a discussion about who Elijah was and about the sealing power he restored? Class members could read about Elijah in the Bible Dictionary or Guide to the Scriptures or review a story from his life. What does this information add to our understanding of Doctrine and Covenants 2?

Individuals and Families:
President Henry B. Eyring said: “It is important to know why the Lord promised to send Elijah. Elijah was a great prophet with great power given him by God. He held the greatest power God gives to His children: he held the sealing power, the power to bind on earth and have it bound in heaven."

Come, Follow Me — 17 January 2021

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Week 4 | D&C § 3–5

The themes of this week’s lessons are: trust in God and distrust in the world, giving 100% devotion to God in the service of His church, and gaining a personal witness of the truthfulness of The Book of Mormon. To stage these themes, the lessons present the story of Martin Harris, one of the Three Witnesses to The Book of Mormon, and the loss of the 116 pages of the first translation manuscript.

Trust in God, Because the World is Out to Get You

Notable quotations from this segment in the lessons include phrases such as:

Individuals and Families & Sunday School:
I should trust God rather than fearing man.

When someone is pressuring us to disobey God, what truths in these verses can help us remain faithful? Perhaps family members could role-play a situation in which someone remains faithful despite pressure to disobey God.

Primary:
I can choose the right when others try to get me to do wrong.
I should care more about pleasing God than pleasing others.

Come, Follow Me — 24 January 2021

The gist of this segment of the lessons is that others will ask us to violate God’s commandments and we need to be wary of those people at all times, lest we transgress God’s law and fall into ruin. The story of Martin Harris asking Joseph for a copy of the 116-page translation manuscript—which he subsequently loses—is used to drive this lesson home. Critically, Harris is portrayed as a well-meaning and devoted friend who nevertheless leads Joseph to commit sin when Joseph—also through good intentions—capitulates to Harris’s requests, despite God’s warnings against. On the one hand, it is a valuable lesson that we shouldn’t let the pressures of others lead us to betray our better judgements. On the other hand, this story can easily be used to reinforce the trope of “us vs the world,” in which even loyal and well-intentioned friends become a threat if they encourage us to do something contrary to the edicts of the church.

Whenever the story of the lost 116 pages comes up, you can expect a discussion of the conspiracy theory promoted by Joseph in the revelation of the Lord’s response found in D&C § 10:10–20. Namely, that Satan had convinced wicked men to steal the manuscript so that they could alter it in a plot to ‘disprove’ the prophetic abilities of Joseph Smith as a translator. The idea was that if Joseph retranslated the original 116 pages, the altered manuscript would not match and these wicked men would use the discrepancy to accuse Joseph of being a fraud. After a 9-month hiatus from translating the plates following the loss of the original manuscript, Joseph restarted the translation by picking up where he left off, rather than retranslating the portion that was lost. Importantly, Joseph reveals that God had foreseen this event and had provided an alternate record that Joseph would later translate, covering the same information from the lost manuscript but in abbreviated form.

I don’t want to get into the weeds too much on this story, as it will come up again in February when D&C § 10 is covered. Rather, what I want to highlight now is how D&C § 3 (assigned this week) is riddled with rhetoric that undermines self-confidence, creates a fear of “worldly” ideas, and prioritizes strict reliance on God’s edicts (which the average member accesses through the leaders of the church).

3 Remember, remember that it is not the work of God that is frustrated, but the work of men;
4 For although a man may have many revelations, and have power to do many mighty works, yet if he boasts in his own strength, and sets at naught the counsels of God, and follows after the dictates of his own will and carnal desires, he must fall and incur the vengeance of a just God upon him.

6 And behold, how oft you have transgressed the commandments and the laws of God, and have gone on in the persuasions of men.
7 For, behold, you should not have feared man more than God. Although men set at naught the counsels of God, and despise his words.

11 Except thou do this, thou shalt be delivered up and become as other men, and have no more gift.

Doctrine and Covenants § 3:3–4, 6–7, 11

Becoming a Witness to The Book of Mormon

Continuing with a focus on Martin Harris, the lessons also focus on his role as one of the Three Witnesses to The Book of Mormon. The standard narrative is that Martin Harris was one of three men who were granted a personal vision of an angel and the golden plates. These men therefore stand as testators to the reality of the plates and the historicity and truthfulness of The Book of Mormon. There are some problems with the traditional narrative, which we’ll discuss briefly in a moment, but first let me highlight some of the ways that Harris’s testimony of the plates is sold via the rhetorical questions asked in the lesson manuals:

Individuals and Families:
If you were called to testify in court about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, what evidence would you provide?

What do you learn from D&C 5 about how the Lord feels about those who won’t believe in spiritual truths unless they have evidence?

Sunday School:
If the gold plates were displayed for the world to see, would that convince everyone that the Book of Mormon is true? Why or why not? (see Doctrine and Covenants 5:7).

Primary:
We won’t see the plates like Martin did, but we can receive a spiritual witness of the Book of Mormon.

Why would seeing the plates likely not be enough to convince someone that the Book of Mormon is true?

Even though we haven’t seen the plates, what can we do to be witnesses of the Book of Mormon?

Come, Follow Me — 24 January 2021

The problem with the traditional narrative surrounding the testimony of the Three Witnesses is that it leaves out a great deal of contextual information about their experience, and about the men who served as the witnesses. These men—Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer—were all completely immersed in the magic worldview of the 19th-century treasure quest, just like Joseph Smith. One can argue whether this is actually a challenge to their credibility or not, but it is certainly information that the church has not be forthcoming with in its portrayal of the events surrounding The Book of Mormon and the roles of these men in its “coming forth.” The apparently purposeful obfuscation of this aspect of the story by the church suggests that they do indeed worry that it undermines the credibility of their narrative.

Since the lesson focuses exclusively on Martin Harris, for the moment, so will I. Harris’s testimony is often considered the most problematic of the three, as an examination of his life shows that he isn’t exactly someone that most people today would consider a reliable witness. Yes, Harris was a strong voice of support for the authenticity of The Book of Mormon, but he was also the primary financial backer of the translation project and its publication well before he supposedly had a vision of the plates, providing a considerable conflict of interest. He also voiced emphatic support for many other things that most Mormons would consider dubious: James Strang’s translation of the Voree Plates, Gladden Bishop’s independent translation of the golden plates, and the Shakers’ A Holy, Sacred and Divine Roll and Book. The church rejects each of these as inauthentic, while simultaneously promoting Harris’s testimony of the golden plates and Joseph Smith’s translation.

Of critical importance, Martin Harris (and the other witnesses) claimed to have seen the plates “in a vision.” When asked about this later, Harris is said to have affirmed that he only saw the plates with his “spiritual eyes” and “as one sees a city through a mountain.” That is, Harris and the others had a visionary experience that does not appear to correspond with an actual physical manifestation of the plates or an angel. That is pretty notable in itself, especially when you consider how the lesson sets up his testimony with rhetorical questions regarding what evidence would be persuasive in a court of law, or having the golden plates “displayed for the world to see.” It does provide an interesting parallel, however, to how the lessons ask members to pursue their own “spiritual witness” of The Book of Mormon, and to be a testator of its truthfulness like Martin Harris, despite not seeing the plates “like Martin did.”

For a detailed discussion of the lost 116 pages and Martin Harris, read this excellent post by LDS Discussions.

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Week 5 | D&C § 6–9

This week’s lessons cover the story of how Oliver Cowdery became involved with The Book of Mormon translation project, and focus primarily on the theme of revelation: how one receives it and its role in confirming one’s testimony of the Restoration. I will focus on the story that is portrayed in these lessons and highlight the historiographical decisions that the church has made in presenting a tidy, faith-affirming narrative by selectively excluding details that interrupt that narrative.

Hold to the Rod, the Divining Rod

The lessons relate the story of Oliver Cowdery’s attempts to translate the gold plates. What is conveniently left out of the lesson manuals is that Oliver’s attempts at translation were through the means of his divining rod. This contextual information can be found if the reader is curious enough to dig deeply through the “Historical Resources” in the Individuals and Families manual, assuming they are using the digital version. Here, readers can find links to articles on “Oliver Cowdery’s Gift” or brief apologetic explanations of divining rods or seer stones. These are pretty buried and the average member is unlikely to come across these unless they are incredibly curious. These resources provide a thoroughly apologetic view of the references to Oliver’s use of a divining rod and oblique reference to his attempt to translate through it.

In reality, Oliver Cowdery was in all likelihood a practiced “rodsman.” His father is believed to have been involved in the New Israelite movement led by Nathaniel Wood and his “fraternity of rodsmen.” This group believed they were decendents of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and practiced divination and polygamy. The group also undertook the building of a temple. Sound familiar? It turns out that Joseph Smith Sr. may have also been involved with the group in Vermont. The movement fell apart in 1802 when a militia dispersed the group as they gathered in preparation for the predicted commencement of the Apocalypse, in an event later known as the Wood Scrape.

That Oliver Cowdery was a practiced rodsman and sought to employ the use of these skills in translating The Book of Mormon is attested by the original language of D&C § 8, in which Oliver is told he has “the gift of working with the sprout: behold it has told you things: behold there is no other power save God, that can cause this thing of Nature to work in your hands.” This phrasing was later changed to read as “the gift of working with the rod” and “this rod of nature” for publication in the 1833 Book of Commandments, and again changed to “the gift of Aaron” and “this gift of Aaron to be with you” for the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. Oliver is also instructed that his gift with the rod “is the gift of God; and you shall hold it in your hands, and do marvelous works.” These descriptions of Oliver’s gift are entirely consistent with the common 19th-century use of divining rods.

Again, none of this is even remotely hinted at in the Come, Follow Me lessons, which continue in a long LDS tradition of whitewashing the magic worldview of its founders from the narrative of its origins. How would this week’s lessons regarding how members can receive personal revelation be changed if the prescribed passages were presented in their true historical context of divining rods and seer stones?

The Disappearing/Reappearing Nephite Interpreters

When Martin Harris lost the 116-page manuscript (see Week 4), translation of The Book of Mormon halted for nine months. This was in part because, according to Joseph, the angel Moroni had confiscated the golden plates and the Nephite “interpreters” as a punishment for his disobedience. Eventually, Moroni saw fit to return the golden plates to Joseph, but did not return the interpreters. This is attested by statements of first-hand witnesses, like Emma Smith:

Now the first that my <husband> translated, [the book] was translated by use of the 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 Bidamon to Emma Pilgrim, 27 March 1870

The loss of the Nephite interpreters and subsequent switch to the chocolate-colored seer stone is also recorded in official church history:

As a chastisement for this carelessness [loss of the 116 pages], the Urim and Thummim was taken from Smith. But by humbling himself, he again found favor with the Lord and was presented a strange oval-shaped, chocolate colored stone, about the size of an egg, but more flat which it was promised should answer the same purpose. With this stone all the present book was translated.

The Historical Record, 1890, p. 623

The above account is somewhat inaccurate, as the chocolate-colored seer stone is the same Joseph reportedly found with the aid of Sally Chase’s seer stone, which he had borrowed for the purpose. It was with this same stone—which Joseph had extensively employed in the treasure quest—that he subsequently produced The Book of Mormon.

Where things get confusing is that the church and figures like Oliver Cowdery frequently assert that The Book of Mormon was translated through the Urim and Thummim, a term that is equivocally applied to the Nephite “interpreters” and Joseph’s seer stone. The lesson manuals muddy these waters by applying the term Urim and Thummim to mean specifically the interpreters as distinct from the seer stone:

We don’t know many details about the miraculous translation process, but we do know that Joseph Smith was a seer, aided by instruments that God had prepared: two transparent stones called the Urim and Thummim and another stone called a seer stone.

Come, Follow Me — Individuals and Families Manual, 31 January 2021

This confusion is further exacerbated by the inclusion in the lesson of the following reported quotation from Oliver Cowdery:

I wrote with my own pen the entire Book of Mormon (save a few pages) as it fell from the lips of the prophet, as he translated it by the gift and power of God, by means of the Urim and Thummim, or, as it is called by the book, holy interpreters. I beheld with my eyes, and handled with my hands, the gold plates from which it was translated. I also beheld the interpreters.

Oliver Cowdery, in Reuben Miller journal, Oct. 21, 1848
Emphasis my own.

However, how did Oliver Cowdery witness the translation by means of the “holy interpreters” if they had been confiscated by the angel Moroni prior to his involvement in the translation project? Why does the church continue to present the idea that The Book of Mormon was translated by means of the Nephite interpreters? Witness statements suggest that they were only used for the lost 116 pages—which were never retranslated—and the whole of what we have today was reportedly translated using the chocolate-colored seer stone.

Days of Deception

The lessons feature media that include inaccurate and deceptive portrayals of the translation of The Book of Mormon. The image below is found in the Doctrine and Covenants Stories, originally published in 1983, and included as a video in the 2021 Primary lesson. It shows Joseph reading straight off the uncovered golden plates by candlelight, rather than by the historically accurate accounts that state that Joseph used a seer stone occluded in a hat, and that the plates were either entirely absent or at best, entirely obscured by a cloth.

The video below, entitled Days of Harmony, is a far worse offender. The video was released in 2015 to be shown at the Priesthood Restoration Site in Oakland (formerly Harmony), Pennsylvania—well after the church had published the Gospel Topics Essay on the Book of Mormon Translation on 30 December 2013. The video was therefore made in the context of public acknowledgement of the seer stone as the method whereby The Book of Mormon was translated. Indeed, the church published for the first time pictures of the seer stone this same year. However, this historical fact is nowhere to be seen in the Days of Harmony video. Rather, the video makes considerable efforts to obscure this detail, presenting instead the impression that Joseph translated either directly from the plates, or via channeled inspiration without the aid of props. Importantly, the cinematography intentionally prevents showing what Joseph is doing when dictating The Book of Mormon by repeatedly presenting shots that obscure Joseph and focus on Oliver’s transcription.

There are many other historical conundrums presented in this video, but I want to briefly highlight one thing in particular: tight translation. In the video, Joseph dictates the words of The Book of Mormon to Oliver Cowdery, who is tasked with taking them down with word-perfect accuracy. At one point, Oliver misses a few words, and Joseph corrects him by emphasizing that it must be exact. Additionally, Joseph is portrayed as spelling out words that he does not know how to pronounce, and Oliver takes these down verbatim. These all portray what is known as the “tight translation” theory of The Book of Mormon. Briefly, this is the notion that Joseph translated word for word the content on the golden plates, and that the results are therefore the exact words that were written thereupon. That is, God revealed the precise wording of The Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith, who essentially repeated this exact wording to his scribes.

There are historical accounts from firsthand witnesses that this is precisely how the translation took place. One of these is included in the Voices of the Restoration section of the Individuals and Families lesson, the words of Emma Smith to her sons in 1879:

When my husband was translating the Book of Mormon, I wrote a part of it, as he dictated each sentence, word for word, and when he came to proper names he could not pronounce, or long words, he spelled them out, and while I was writing them, if I made any mistake in spelling, he would stop me and correct my spelling although it was impossible for him to see how I was writing them down at the time. Even the word Sarah he could not pronounce at first, but had to spell it, and I would pronounce it for him.

"Last Testimony of Sister Emma,” Saints’ Herald, Oct. 1, 1879, p. 290
Emphasis my own.

We also have the following account from one of the Three Witnesses, and first-hand witness to the translation in his own home, David Whitmer:

Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.

David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ, 1887, p. 12
Emphasis my own.

There are other testimonies that corroborate this tight translation model, but for the sake of brevity I wont go into further detail here. Rather, I would refer you to this excellent write up by LDS Discussions.

What I will highlight briefly is that there are problems with the tight translation theory that church apologists have had to grapple with for decades. One of which is that The Book of Mormon has undergone considerable revision since the original manuscript, correcting approximately 4,000 errors in: (1) punctuation, (2) uneducated 19th-century American vernacular, (3) editing out obvious mistakes, and (4) changing 2 Nephi 11 to coincide with Smith’s evolving belief system about God (cf. MormonThink). Furthermore, The Book of Mormon includes extensive passages with the wording of the 17th-century King James Version of the Bible, including translation errors. LDS apologists have attempted to dismiss this anachronism by proposing a “loose translation” theory wherein Joseph occasionally conferred his family Bible for these passages. However, as demonstrated by the first-hand testimonies above, this loose translation model is not corroborated by historical evidence.

Given the significant efforts LDS apologists have made to explain away these problems raised by a tight translation of the golden plates, it is interesting to find the church promoting such in this video. Here, at least, the church remains true to the historical accounts provided by first-hand witnesses to the translation project.