Roger,
The hint comes in the form of a blanket. Being devoted followers they're not going to give us many more hints.
Whitmer is clear that the purpose of the blanket was to shield people calling at the door.
And why should they be wary of that? Mormon missionaries were sent out into the public to promote the Book of Mormon. To generate curiosity. Why the need for such secrecy? If Joseph Smith could rattle off sentence after sentence of coherent narrative, why block access to anyone? Why not allow all comers? Heck, they might have even charged admission to cover the eventual printing costs! There was obviously a good reason Joseph only wanted a few close friends observing and even then all we have to go on is their biased word.
Why should I have to explain obvious things to you, Roger? There aren’t any Mormon missionaries. Not even a church in June 1829. You are trying to create a red herring. The important thing is that the Whitmers had access. It’s a little difficult carrying on with dictation when someone is gawking at the door—“Oh, is that Smith translating now? What is he doing with his head in the hat?” On and on with annoying questions. And all we have is your biased baseless speculations.
Emma worked in the room as the translation was progressing. The Whitmers could sit around the room and observe and listen. This is what we know.
And this from people who were heavily invested in the cause.
Are you saying Emma and the Whitmer family were part of the conspiracy and saw Joseph Smith using the Spalding MS? I thought you were arguing that they were dupes and Joseph Smith hid the MS from them. You seem confused. Can we get back to you dealing with Emma and the Whitmer being casual observers? It would be nice to see you deal real evidence instead of your wild speculations. I gave a list of reasons to accept the testimony of multiple witnesses, but you never responded.
It is speculation and yours is as sinister as mine. You don't accept what the witnesses tell you, Dan. Most of them went to their graves never denying that words appeared in a stone--which was the reason for the head in the hat. But you and I agree that didn't happen. You and I agree that a Bible was used but none of your witnesses back you up on that and I have no doubt if they were here today they'd flat out deny that any Bible was used and say we are both pawns of the devil for doubting it.
Mine aren’t speculations, sinister or otherwise, yours are. I do accept what the witnesses say they observed. What was in the stone came from Joseph Smith—I already proved that. Why do you keep repeating your argument from silence? It’s been demolished over and over in this thread. You have not responded to my challenge to show where use of the Bible was intentionally withheld. You haven’t answered that. The last sentence is meaningless.
The way you've stated this is confusing. Positive or negative, the fact remains that you cannot prove they were completely innocent dupes. In fact the evidence is against you in drawing that conclusion for reasons I've already given. And as Dale has adequately pointed out Cowdery was NO innocent dupe when he made his spectacular claims. There is no getting around that. It is then up to you to show that at some point in the process Cowdery's word was reliable and objective before it became unreliable and unobjective. The way I see it, there is no good reason at all to believe that Cowdery's bias and unobjectivity came later in the progression.
I was trying to say that your assertion that “we don’t know the level of deception” sounds like doubt, but it’s really another way of asserting “the level of deception was higher than we have evidence”—which is meaningless. Your argument was that if we know Joseph Smith was deceiving with the stone, he therefore could have been deceiving in any way you imagine. That’s not the way it works. You can’t move from the known to the unknown so easily. Try sticking with what you know. As I said, I have shown why one should accept the testimony of multiple witnesses regarding the head in the hat. I have met my burden. Now, the burden is on you to prove Emma, Cowdery, and the Whitmers were coconspirators.
It was I, not Dale, who gave serious reasons to question Cowdery’s account of angelic priesthood ordinations. However, that doesn’t give you a free pass to make him a coconspirator in April-June 1829. You are trying to shift the burden to others. The historical situation is that OC came to the Smiths as a teacher in Manchester and he eventually expressed a sincere interest in the plates. He met Joseph Smith in Harmony and became a scribe. Joseph Smith had no reason to induct OC as a coconspirator. The head in the hat routine that was used for Emma and Harris continued under OC. Witnesses saw OC writing as Joseph Smith dictated with head in hat.
You are the one who asserted the door was locked,
No I said it is a possibility, and it is.
And you say it with a straight face as if it supposed to make sense.
The blanket supports my speculation and works against yours. Your ignorance on the matter is similar to mine. The only difference is that you think you can take the word of highly biased witnesses and I strongly disagree. But even taking them at their word still gives us clues that something needed to be blocked from public view. And they also leave you with the problem of not being able to account for every hour of translation. In fact, I would guess that all you really have is speculation about what a typical translation day might look like--as told by highly biased, highly interested, devoted followers of a charismatic figure. It's not unlike asking the followers of Warren Jeffs about a typical day inside an FLDS compound. They may or may not outright lie, but either way, you're not going to get the full story.
The blanket doesn’t support your speculation. I have no speculation connected to the blanket. Tell me how the witnesses’ bias relates to David Whitmer’s disclosure that a blanket kept people at the front door from seeing the translation? Bias can be mitigated through attestation of multiple witnesses, giving independent testimony in various settings and times.
Your ignorance is self-inflicted, but it doesn’t allow you to insert whatever you imagine. I don’t have to account for every hour; I just have to stick with what is known.
Yet, Warren Jeffs was convicted with testimony given by former followers, was he not?
How do we know that? The "for hours" part? How do you know that? What exactly do you base that on?
That’s explicitly stated in Emma’s testimony, as well as Elizabeth Ann Whitmer’s.
Dan, any number of excuses can be used when Smith and Cowdery want more privacy.
...Brother Joseph is tired of all the curiosity seekers, Brother David, and they are causing a distraction that is hindering the work. So tomorrow we're going to work upstairs and we'd prefer not to be disturbed as we work. -or better yet... God has informed us that the translation is not progressing as quickly as it should and he has informed us that the reason is that we are too distracted. He has instructed us to move the work upstairs where we will be less distracted.
You think Whitmer is going to become suspicious and send spies up the stairs? Of course not. And that's just one small example of the limitless potential excuses that could have been used. The key to it all, Dan, is that devoted followers believe in the cause, are dedicated to it and will act (and speak) accordingly to the best of their ability.
Of course we know that Joseph employed some technique that involved placing his head in the hat and spouting off sentences, but we don't know that all of the work was accomplished in that manner, and in fact all indications are that the Isaiah and other KJV portions were not. So we already know that the Book of Mormon likely represents a combination of head in hat routine and outright reactive plagiarism.
We don’t know any of what you said. We do know how the curiosity seekers were handled. We know Joseph Smith translated with head in hat, and we can surmise the routine was modified for the Bible based on evidence. Anything besides this is pure speculation.
Do you think Whimter could confidently say the Spalding MS could not have been used, if he was repeatedly shut out of the translation? David Whitmer told a reporter in 1885:
In order to give privacy to the proceedings a blanket, which served as a portiere, was stretched across the family living room to shelter the translators and the plates from the eye of any who might call at the house while the work was in progress. This, Mr. Whitmer says, was the only use made of the blanket, and it was not for the purpose of concealing the plates or the translator from the eyes of the amanuensis. In fact, Smith was at no time hidden from his collaborators, and the translation was performed in the presence of not only the persons mentioned, but of the entire Whitmer household and several of Smith’s relatives besides.
The work of translating the tablets consumed about eight months, Smith acting as the seer and Oliver Cowdery, Smith’s wife, and Christian Whitmer, brother of David, performing the duties of amanuenses, in whose handwriting the original manuscript now is. Each time before resuming the work all present would kneel in prayer and invoke the Divine blessing on the proceeding. After prayer Smith would sit on one side of a table and the amanuenses, in turn as they became tired, on the other. Those present and not actively engaged in the work seated themselves around the room and then the work began. …
--Chicago Tribune 17 Dec. 1885 (EMD 5:153-54)
Obviously the reporter got the part about the plates being used wrong. Whitmer on numerous occasions said the plates were not present. The picture you paint of Joseph Smith sneaking around the Whitmer residence with his accomplice Cowdery is fiction.
On the contrary! The 116 pages could have been restarted much sooner and completed much faster if Joseph could simply spout off coherent tales at will that he's been rehearsing since 1827. Once he's figured out an excuse for not having to duplicate the same exact wording, he's off to the races! If it's all coming from his own head, then it's all still up there.
But think of what a mess results if the 116 pages represented a combination of reliance on a ms as well as unique material added by Smith! All is lost! Such a conundrum matches the intensity of Joseph's reaction! It fits perfectly with what is known. We would not expect such a dire pronouncement from a man capable of spouting off coherent tales at will.
This is a rather feeble response to my evidence that a MS was not used—“The long periods of dictating in front of onlookers shows that he didn’t need a MS. The loss of the 116-page MS shows that a MS wasn’t used.”
“… it’s still up there”? Seriously! You’ll make anything up to get out of adverse evidence. The excuse didn’t come until May 1829, just before moving to Fayette and replacing the lost MS with a new beginning. Evidently he waited until the last moment, hoping the MS would be returned. It had nothing to do with Rigdon secretly rewriting it.
Joseph Smith’s inability to replace the MS supports the eyewitness testimony that no MS was used; it doesn’t support your speculation that a S/R MS was used with additions by Joseph Smith. Your theory is further troubled by Spalding witnesses who state that some portions of 1 Nephi are verbatim to Spalding’s MS.
You can't possibly know that. Instead you surmise it because you uncritically accept the word of highly biased witnesses. But let's say it was for both... and let's say Whitmer is a dupe. Then the head in hat is necessary when David is nearby, but not when David is not nearby. The blanket is an obvious clue that something needed to be covered up. The same technique was used for Martin Harris which is one of the reasons I suspect Harris was a dupe.
Whitmer says Joseph Smith translated with head in hat, and then he says a blanket prevented those at the door from seeing. You speculated that the blanket was to keep people from seeing Joseph Smith using a MS. Where do you get that? It makes no sense. Harris said the translation was done with Joseph Smith’s head in hat—no blanket.
Now you're the one legitimately in fantasy land. David Whitmer practically spells it out for you. The blanket was used to block something from public view. There's no getting around that. The blanket accomplished the same purpose with Martin Harris.
Read the source I supplied. It doesn’t say what you are trying to make out of it. Whimter specifically denies your interpretation.
Which no one disputes! So in short, the answer is, you don't know where the deception stopped and you can't rely on witnesses who were highly devoted, interested and biased and very likely deceived to boot!
You can’t argue from the known to the unknown. You don’t know that the deception included the Spalding MS. You don’t get to insert your speculation until someone can prove it didn’t happen the way you imagine. Your shifting the burden for your case to others.
More likely that when someone comes upstairs the work takes a small break. To add believability, Joseph grabs his hat (with stone already inside no doubt) and holds it in his lap as though he's lost his concentration while Oliver slides a supplied page under the stack of recently completed Book of Mormon ms pages.
It’s almost like I’m talking to Marg again. This is purely ad hoc gibberish. Not worth my time.
What adverse evidence am I responding to that yours is not? You mean the testimony of biased witnesses?
This repeated mantra rings hollow when you never responded to my defense of the reliability of these eyewitnesses. Understand this, bias means that the version is slanted a certain way, not that it’s invented or a lie. So if you are accusing all these witnesses of lying, that would involve a different accusation and evidence. When I produce two non-Mormon witnesses, you dismiss them with your speculation of Joseph Smith putting on a temporarily show. So you have an answer for every possible counter-evidence.
I'm not trying to get you to accept anything. I'm just responding to what I think are flaws in your theory and logic.
Then, consider the flaw in your theory, speculations, and logic that I have pointed out and stop repeating them.