Marg,
Comments on your remarks to Glenn:
There is no reason for Dan to have misrepresented Anderson...hence I believe him.
At this point I can't remember why you recommended reading Anderson. At the moment I really have too much to read...that's another factor.
Anderson simply explores the lives of the three and eight witnesses and compiles sources showing their honesty and trustworthiness, especially in their post-Mormon years.
You see where I said "And then this evaluation extends into judging other claims they make with regards to their vested interest..the promotion of this religion."? It’s not simply a matter of their beliefs in the supernatural, it’s a matter of what claims they make and have made and a critical evaluation of those claims is necessary with an eye to determining the most likely explanation for their current claim being evaluated.
You assumed they were lying about the vision, then used that assumption to support another assumption that they also lied about seeing Joseph Smith with head in hat. There is no support for either assumption. Instead, non-Mormons testified to Harris’s and Whitmer’s integrity and honesty. Moreover, there is evidence that both had a propensity for hallucination prior and following their vision with Joseph Smith. Lying isn’t the best explanation of what occurred.
I find it very difficult to appreciate what the process entailed. The story seems to change, some say it's spectacles others a seer stone, some mention a head in a hat but Cowdery the main scribe doesn't mention seer stone or hat. Cowdery and Smith don’t talk much about it, but other scribes and witnesses talk as if they’ve been told what to say. Some talk about the stone glowing each word some entire sentences glowed, yet they’ve never seen the stone do this and not only do they not seem skeptical but their story just happens to fit in with a perfect propaganda story…of a Smith incapable of writing and spelling but is guided by a magic stone. Sometimes a blanket was supposedly used to protect from view of others, but other times a show was put on for public consumption.
The inconsistencies and the sort of claims made, along with what I know of the witnesses and their connection to the enterprise...leads me to conclude none of them are reliable when it comes to making claims regarding the translation process. Stronger evidence than their say so is required in order to accept what they claim. And so to use the Book of Mormon witnesses as reasoning to dismiss the S/R witnesses is unreasonable.
Historians are used to dealing with imperfect sources. The elements of the story unsurprisingly vary, especially given the different circumstances under which the statements were taken and time-span involved. I took the time to explain the origin of the spectacle story and its use by Joseph Smith and OC to suppress the stone in hat story as part of a general trend to make the coming forth of the Book of Mormon less folk-magical and more mainstream Christian. Historians strive to make such connections, because they help explain what might superficially appear as contradiction and randomness.
Your statement that some “witnesses talk as if they’ve seen told what to say” is not in evidence, but a belief of yours that can’t be demonstrated from the evidence. It’s part of your ad hoc conspiracy theory sneaking in.
The glowing-words description comes from Joseph Smith. Whitmer said one character would represent a word or several words. Part of their descriptions of the translation process incorporates what Joseph Smith told them. His aim was to convince them that he was really translating and had the gift of scrying with the stone—the same as he had done as a treasure seer. He had to build their confidence the same as any confidence scheme works. Creating an illusion requires the active participation of the audience—that’s why psychics have difficulty with skeptics. A psychic who uses what is called “cold reading” (the apparent ability to know all about a person without having previously met them) creates this illusion with the help of the person being read, without them knowing it. So, for example, when the psychic says he senses someone close to you has recently suffered an illness, and you say that’s right, my uncle Bob had a heart attack last year, and you later tell this story to someone else, you might say—“The psychic told me my uncle Bob had a heart attack.” Thus the account that the historian gets is something that is considered impossible, but the person reporting isn’t lying. They are unknowingly participating in the illusion. Obviously, a trained magician will view what the psychic did and report it differently. We need to be more sophisticated about such matters when dealing with Joseph Smith, who had a history of creating such illusions prior to becoming the Mormon prophet. In the 1826 court record, Josiah described first meeting Joseph Smith in 1825 and his hiring Joseph Smith to find treasure in Harmony, PA. He testified that Joseph Smith could see in his stone his house, outbuildings, and a tree with a hand painted on it. What Joseph Smith really said is lost. All we have is Stowell’s interpretation of what Joseph Smith told him, which is mixed with the part of the illusion that he contributed as a believer. It’s also possible Joseph Smith got this information from Stowell’s son, who lived in the area of Manchester and simply exploited it.
Like any confidence man, Joseph Smith was in the habit of creating witnesses and collecting testimonials to his abilities, which creates more confidence and more followers. The part of the story where Joseph Smith is unlearned and too stupid to produce the Book of Mormon, not even knowing Jerusalem had walls, is part of the illusion he created that is contradicted by the facts.
The blanket has been explained. It was only used briefly in conjunction with the spectacles story. Only Harris mentioned it to Anthon and Clarke prior to his becoming a scribe, and apparently when Joseph Smith was supposedly copying the characters from the plates. Thereafter the stone in the hat is consistently seen by all the witnesses, even Cowdery, who changed his story as part Joseph Smith campaign to sanitize his early history. The consistent reliable part of the story is that Joseph Smith put the stone in his hat, then his face to exclude the light, and read off the translation sentence by sentence to a scribe, who recorded it and read aloud what had been written so that Joseph Smith could verify its correctness before proceeding to the next sentence. In the process, Joseph Smith did make corrections to what had been written, as is evidenced in the original MS. However, he needed to explain why he was making corrections to a supposedly inspired translation. Undoubtedly, he explained them as either his lack of education and poor reading skills, or somehow passed them off as the scribe’s error. This would not be unlike a psychic who covers mistakes by saying they misinterpreted the meaning of what they saw or other such explanations. At any rate, people tend to forget mistakes and remember the hits. The accounts mention Cowdery helping Joseph Smith with pronunciation and spelling of words and his professed lack of education all seem like covers for making changes and corrections like any writer. None of which justifies dismissing the witnesses as liars. This is all expected for the situation being described.
Multiple witnesses to the translation process, both friendly and unfriendly, giving similar details independently, are a problem for the Spalding theory.
Don’t you find that rather strange Glenn? If an acquaintance told you a stone glowed words..would you believe him? Would you be willing to invest large sums of money based on you believing that claim to translating a stone. Or could another explanation be likely perhaps you might be willing to invest if you thought a book could be written which might have large sales appeal (such as in that day) explaining where Indians came from...and might be of interest if it could be presented as historically true? Don't you think that could be as valid a motivating factor for what harris was interested in and why he got involved..as opposed to he truly believed?
In describing the translation process, the witnesses are telling us why they believed what Joseph Smith claimed. To them, it was impossible for anyone to sit with face in a hat and dictate a book hour after hour, day after day, without being inspired. And in other ways dealing with the spelling of words, Joseph Smith was able to make the process look miraculous. Harris maintained his belief long after the Book of Mormon was published. He said he was eventually paid back, but he didn’t make a profit off Book of Mormon sales. That might be reason to expose it if he could.
Well it sounds as if they are telling the party line as opposed to what they actually do know. I see a problem with those who claim that Smith while not looking at what they were writing and while looking into the hat...would stop when they made a spelling error and until they corrected it wouldn't continue. Dan explains this by saying they were being fooled by Smith. I don't find this a likely probability that Smith should consistently be correct. Was he 100% correct or did he at times stop when they hadn’t made errors..and if so why didn’t they mention that? Or is it also likely that what they claimed never happened, that it was all part of the propaganda they agreed to tell. The claim that Smith knew when they were making spelling errors even though he wasn't observing their writing is too convenient a claim which supports the propaganda that Smith was being directed by supernatural powers and that it couldn't possibly be Smith doing the correcting because they noted he couldn't spell and wasn't watching what was being written. That's too convenient a story line...meant for the gullible and naïve.
How can you say the witnesses were giving the party line when I took great pains to show that the party line was the spectacles story? That they went against the party line shows integrity and independence. For correcting spelling you are relying on Briggs’ sixty-year-old memory. Of course it didn’t happen the way it was described, but it may have seemed like it happened based on a less miraculous episode. It’s certainly much more likely than postulating a massive conspiracy without evidence.
Actually they do provide counter evidence that other material was used for the Book of Mormon. And unless Smith is noted to have an extraordinary memory..then an explanation is required how that material became part of the Book of Mormon.
William Miller also had an extraordinary memory, claiming to remember after twenty years passages from Spalding’s MS that were verbatim in the Book of Mormon, although the portion of the Book of Mormon he remembered had been rewritten twice. Joseph Smith’s translation method is firm evidence against the Spalding theory, which was born and thrived in ignorance of this information. Spalding witnesses only make claims about the contents of a MS that no longer or never existed; they say nothing about the translation process except by inference. This kind of evidence can’t be used to overturn the Mormon witnesses, because it is on less secure ground than the Mormon testimony. The Spalding witnesses could very well be mistaken in their memories about names they heard twenty years earlier, while the Mormon witnesses don’t have the same problem—memory isn’t an issue, which has you creating an ad hoc conspiracy theory to explain their testimonies away.
Well the 2 hostile witnessses had extremely limited exposure under Smith's control.
You don’t know any of this. Michael Morse said he called at the Smith home on business many times and went immediately into Joseph Smith presence while he was dictating with face in hat. This was apparently casual observation of Joseph Smith. That it was a controlled sham put on by Joseph Smith is your ad hoc theory motivated by a need to explain away testimony. You are trying to immunize your cherished Spalding theory.
Glenn another problem with all this is that Smith and company were controlling the propaganda at the beginning and at most stages. The amount that Harris knew was likely limited. At this point I’m not convinced that with Harris a blanket wasn’t used between him and Smith. I think Harris was more motivated by potential return on investment than on belief in the religion.
Only Anthon and Clarke mention a blanket, and this was before Harris started as scribe. This need to be supplemented with Harris’s other statements that Joseph Smith dictated with stone in hat with nothing between them. The possibility of Harris being financially motivated doesn’t explain his life-long belief in the Book of Mormon and the statements he gave years after Joseph Smith’s death.
I don't agree. D. Whitmer's statement in the Book of Mormon affects the credibility of his claims with regards to the translation process in that it indicates a willingness to lie in support of the church. The extent of the rest of the family's involvement needs to be assessed.
You can’t assume Whitmer lied about his vision of the angel and plates. People hallucinate, you know? This seems more probable than Whitmer lied. You sense the limited value of your assertion. D. Whitmer’s sister without is on record (1870) testifying to the translation before her brother. Two unidentified scribes, probably from the Whitmer family, would have had to be coconspirators.
That's not the way witness evidence works. It depends on what the claim is, what the witnesses’ potential involvement is, their potential motivation, their potential vested interest. That’s not all inclusive ...but merely being a witness is not grounds for their claims to be assumed reliable.
These “potential” drawbacks are overcome by independent multiple witnesses. When David Whitmer made his earliest statement to Mullin in 1874 (published in 1880), he probably did not know what his sister had said to McLellin in an unpublished affidavit in 1870. When Martin Harris made his earliest statement in 1852 (published in 1888), he didn’t know what the Whitmer’s were going to say, and they didn’t know what he had said. When Emma Smith gave her first statement in 1856 (published in 1916), she didn’t know what Harris had said or what the Whitmers were going to say. And Harris didn’t know what Emma was going to say, and the Whitmers didn’t know what Emma had said.
When Harris made his most detailed statements to Edward Stevenson in 1870 (published in 1881), he didn’t know what Emma had said in 1854 (published in 1916), and what she was going to say in 1879; and he didn’t know what David Whitmer was going to say in 1874 (published in 1880).
When Emma made her most detailed statements to her son in 1879 (published in 1879), she didn’t know what Harris had said in 1852 (published in 1888), or what he had said in 1870 (published in 1881); and she didn’t know what Elizabeth Ann Whitmer had said in 1870 (unpublished), or what David Whitmer had said in 1874 (published in 1880), and it’s doubtful she knew of his statement published in the
Chicago Times, 7 August 1875, which problematically reported that Joseph Smith “placed the Urim and Thummim in his hat.”
When David Whitmer made his earliest statement in 1874 (published in 1880) and earliest published interview in 1875 (
Chicago Times, 7 August 1875), he did not know what Harris had said in 1852 to Mullin (published in 1888), or to Stevenson in 1870 (published in 1881); and he didn’t know what Emma had said in 1854 (published in 1916), or was going to say in 1879 (published in 1879).
I have quoted Gottschalk on not throwing out testimony by interested witnesses, especially those who meet the four criteria of access, willingness, accuracy of reporting, corroboration. You have questioned the
willingness, which is overcome by the independent multiple witnesses. Your only recourse is to postulate the improbable germination of a massive conspiracy at the foundation of Mormonism that all involved adhered to throughout life, but didn’t start telling until decades after Joseph Smith died.
I don't find consistency with the Book of Mormon witnesses..as I mentioned above. There are spectacles without a hat, spectacles with a hat, seer stone with a hat, at one point the public is shown with a purposeful demonstration but most of the time only the Whitmer and Smith family are able to see. It's all under Smith's & Cowdery's control...as to who gets to see what and when. The whole process was extremely secretive and yet if there was nothing to hide, if Smith was able to put his head in a hat and dictate the Book of Mormon without review from the previous session or review during the session…then they should have wanted more people with greater objectivity to have observed. But of course that wouldn't have worked for them, because what they claimed in not the likely probability of what actually occurred.
Discrepancies between the accounts is expected owing to confusion resulting from two stories of translation being told to reporters unfamiliar with the nuances of Mormon history. The stories of spectacles and stone in hat are difficult to explain and difficult to understand for non-Mormon reporters. But using logic and historical methodology, it can be worked out. David Whitmer claimed free access to the room where Smith and Cowdery worked. The so-called secretiveness was a result of being persecuted.
Conspiracy theory tabulation—so far, we have as coconspirators with Joseph Smith: Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, Emma Smith, Elizabeth Whitmer Cowdery, David Whitmer, two unidentified scribes in First Nephi (probably Whitmers, possibly one being Christian Whitmer).