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by Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here on January 2nd, 2010

Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here

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Help answer this question below.

Based on your research, how did Joseph Smith, Jr. accomplish his famous 'seer stone in the hat' dictation of the Book of Mormon?

From Craig Criddle's watershed white paper, "SIDNEY RIGDON: CREATING THE BOOK OF MORMON" http://www.i4m.com/think/history/Book-of-Mormon.pdf

Theory 1: Smith had no written source materials at hand. Two explanations have been offered as to how Smith could have composed The Book of Mormon under such circumstances:

1. Composition of The Book of Mormon was a prodigious feat of memorization and dictation.

2. Composition of The Book of Mormon was an example of “automatic writing” (Dunn, 2002).

This phenomenon has been previously invoked to explain authorship of improbable literary works in short periods of time by authors who seemingly lacked the ability to do so.

Theory 2: Smith previously prepared source documents that he used for dictation. When dictating, he was actually reading from his concealed source documents.

While it is theoretically possible that Smith performed an amazing feat of memorization and dictation or engaged in automatic writing (Theory 1), the likelihood is small because these capabilities are rare, and there is no evidence that Smith had such skills. But we have abundant evidence that Smith was capable of spinning a convincing tale on the spot with any material at hand.

This has led several researchers to propose that some events in The Book of Mormon derive from incidents or stories told within the Smith family. For example, Smith’s mother, Lucy, attributed a vision to her husband that is similar to Lehi’s dream of the Tree of Life in 1 Ne 8 and 1 Ne 11-15. The similarity suggests that Smith may have incorporated his father’s tale into The Book of Mormon. But there is no evidence that this storytelling ability would have enabled dictation of a narrative as lengthy and convoluted as The Book of Mormon without benefit of written source materials

Naturalistic theories proposing dictation without written source materials are on shaky ground for other reasons as well . . .

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  • by Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here on January 2nd, 2010
    voted: He was actually reading from his concealed source documents in his white top hat.

    Mister IT is trying to Liahona outta here

    AND THIS QUESTION WAS ERRANTLY PUT INTO THE 'BRIGHAM YOUNG' RATHER THAN JOSEPH SMITH SECTION - AB SYSADMIN PLEASE RECTIFY. THANK YOU.

    AND HERE IS THE FULL ARTICLE EXCERPT - WHICH WAS TRUNCATED IN THE QUESTION'S DESCRIPTION:

    From Craig Criddle's watershed white paper, "SIDNEY RIGDON: CREATING THE BOOK OF MORMON" http://www.i4m.com/think/history/Book-of-Mormon.pdf

    Theory 1: Smith had no written source materials at hand. Two explanations have been offered as to how Smith could have composed The Book of Mormon under such circumstances:

    1. Composition of The Book of Mormon was a prodigious feat of memorization and dictation.

    2. Composition of The Book of Mormon was an example of “automatic writing” (Dunn, 2002).

    This phenomenon has been previously invoked to explain authorship of improbable literary works in short periods of time by authors who seemingly lacked the ability to do so.

    Theory 2: Smith previously prepared source documents that he used for dictation. When dictating, he was actually reading from his concealed source documents.

    While it is theoretically possible that Smith performed an amazing feat of memorization and dictation or engaged in automatic writing (Theory 1), the likelihood is small because these capabilities are rare, and there is no evidence that Smith had such skills. But we have abundant evidence that Smith was capable of spinning a convincing tale on the spot with any material at hand.

    This has led several researchers to propose that some events in The Book of Mormon derive from incidents or stories told within the Smith family. For example, Smith’s mother, Lucy, attributed a vision to her husband that is similar to Lehi’s dream of the Tree of Life in 1 Ne 8 and 1 Ne 11-15. The similarity suggests that Smith may have incorporated his father’s tale into The Book of Mormon. But there is no evidence that this storytelling ability would have enabled dictation of a narrative as lengthy and convoluted as The Book of Mormon without benefit of written source materials

    Naturalistic theories proposing dictation without written source materials are on shaky ground for other reasons as well. For a time, Smith’s wife, Emma, recorded dictation from her husband. She described the process this way:

    "When he stopped for any purpose at any time he would, when he commenced again, begin where he left off without any hesitation, and one time while he was translating he stopped suddenly, pale as a sheet, and said, 'Emma, did Jerusalem have walls around it?' When I answered 'Yes,' he replied 'Oh! I was afraid I had been deceived.' He had such a limited knowledge of history at that time that he did not even know that Jerusalem was surrounded by walls."
    See: http://www.mormonstudies.com/author1.htm

    If this account is accurate, Smith could continue dictation from one session to the next, picking up exactly where he had left off on the previous session. Such a skill would be remarkable in the absence of written source materials, but easily explained if such material were available.

    Emma’s account also indicates that Smith was unfamiliar with the text that he was translating, indicating source material written by someone else.

    During production of the first 116 pages (April 12 – June 14, 1828), Smith separated himself from Harris with a large blanket. For part of that time, the gold plates were reportedly hidden in the woods. As Cowdrey et al. (2005) asked - “Why would Smith need the blanket?” What was he concealing? Later, Smith used his seer stone in the hat trick, as he had previously done in his treasure seeking con. Again, we have to ask why? And, if he was dictating with his head in a hat, how did he manage to quote long passages from the King James Version of The Bible - including errors in the edition of his day? The only plausible explanations would be an exceptional memory or dictation from The Bible. Of these two options, the most probable is the latter. If he dictated from the Bible, then what would prevent him from dictating from a hidden text that he himself had previously written?

    So Theory 2 appears more probable than Theory 1. But all of the evidence we have of Smith’s ability to write at the relevant time suggests that Theory 2 is also unlikely, if it does not allow for source material written by someone else. Moreover, if Smith did have some source material at hand - such as the King James Bible - then there is no reason that he could not have had other texts - such as a Spalding manuscript either altered by Rigdon or not. Historian and LDS General Authority Brigham H. Roberts advocated Theory 2 but his analysis notes inconsistencies:

    “There is a certain lack of perspective in the things the book relates as history that points quite clearly to an undeveloped mind as their origin. The narrative proceeds in characteristic disregard
    of conditions necessary to its reasonableness, as if it were a tale told by a child, with utter disregard for consistency.”
    Excerpt of Roberts' thoughts, in, B. D. Madsen, ed., Studies of The Book of Mormon (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), page 244.

    While Roberts attributed the inconsistencies in The Book of Mormon to an "undeveloped mind", another possible explanation would be clumsy or hurried copying and/or editing of texts created by others.

    A related evidentiary issue concerns the type of errors made by Smith’s scribes in surviving fragments of the hand-written “original” of The Book of Mormon. Chandler (2004) identified errors that appear to be copying errors. It is not clear how the Smith-as-Sole-Author Theory would explain anything other than dictation errors, but the Spalding-Rigdon Theory would explain either copying errors or a mix of hearing and copying errors.2
    See: http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=167
    See: http://www.mormonstudies.com/scribe.htm

    When I weigh the above factors together with evidence linking Ridgon and Spalding to fabrication of The Book of Mormon, as summarized below for Rigdon and in a companion essay for Spalding, I am persuaded that Smith-as-Sole-Author theories are far less probable than alternatives that incorporate Ridgon and Spalding.

    NOTES:
    1 And it also appears quite possible that his father’s tale actually came from the pen of Solomon Spalding.

    2 I recently came across a small discrepancy in The Book of Mormon that lends some support to Chandler’s interpretation. 1 Ne 12:18 uses the phrase “word of the justice of the Eternal God”. Ether 8:23 uses the phrase “sword of the justice of the Eternal God.” Contextually, the word “sword” makes more sense than “word”. Given that “word” and “sword” have distinctive pronunciations, a copying error seems more likely than a dictation error. 1 Nephi 12:18 evidently contains a copying error in which the initial “s”
    in sword was omitted.

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