How The Book of Mormon was translated.

Book of Mormon Translation

This topic is something that I feel the Mormon Church does a great job at not talking about.  That is, the way the Book of Mormon was translated.  Members of the church, as well as any non Mormons that have looked into the Mormon church, have probably come across many artworks that show Joseph Smith sitting at a table with the golden plates and a scribe sitting opposite of Joseph.  The artwork always depicts Joseph sitting with the gold plates (claimed to be written in reformed Egyptian) looking at these plates like he is reading them.  This is the artwork I have always seen my entire life.  Now in the legal world, if a Police Officer leaves out facts of a case from his report, or draws a diagram of a crime scene and changes it to look the way he wants it to look like, this Police Officers credibility is in question and is no longer a reliable witness and would end up being out of a job.  This is exactly what the Mormon church has done.  They leave out facts and depict paintings of scenes that are not correct.  When we look at the artwork of Joseph reading the gold plates and a scribe sitting at the same table writing, we infer that the art depicts the scene accurately to how Joseph translated the gold plates.  We assume he was reading the reformed Egyptian.  The Mormon Apostle Dallin H Oaks is a law man.  Dallin H Oaks was on the Utah Supreme Court and such a position is reserved for individuals who are very intelligent in the field of law.  Now I am not questioning Dallin Oaks intelligence, I believe him to be an extremely intelligent man.   I would love to hear what Oaks has to say about the deceiving artwork the Mormon Church uses for the world to see.

With the artwork and the constant reminder that Joseph Smith was able to translate the gold plates by the power of God; it is left out that Joseph put his face in a hat to translate these gold plates into  the Book of Mormon.  Now I don’t dispute that through Gods power a person can do great things.  But, reading and learning that Joseph Smith put his face into a hat with a rock (the rock was called a seer stone that Joseph found years earlier) sounds pretty dumb.  If the Mormon church had paintings showing Joseph with his face buried in a hat, I’m sure the Mormon church would get more criticism.  Now I am Mormon, but obviously with my blog you can see that I have some issues and questions with the religion I follow.  And rightly so.  The Mormon Church has deceived as well as left our very important facts regarding the history of the Mormon religion that I have been taught my entire Mormon life.  Because of all the deceit and history that is never talked about, I have looked  like a fool when followers of other religions would ask me questions regarding topics the church does not ever talk about or taught in all my years of church and seminary.  Tired of telling people I have never heard of things like Joseph putting his face into a hat to translate the Book of Mormon, and multiple First Vision accounts, etc…. I finally decided I had to go and learn Mormon church history on my own, because my own church does not teach it in the weekly 3 hours of church, or the 4 years of Seminary I attended.

Where do I find references to Joseph Smith putting his face into a hat to translate the Book of Mormon? Let me show you a couple of places to begin your own search.

Here is a talk given by Mormon Apostle Russel M Nelson https://www.lds.org/ensign/1993/07/a-treasured-testament?lang=eng

This is a link talking at length about the translation process and also talks of Joseph putting his face in a hat and a scribe even saying he never saw the gold plates until the translation was completed. https://www.lds.org/ensign/2015/10/joseph-the-seer?lang=eng

Just as in my past blog posts, I include the links to the topics I discuss so anyone in question can look up the information for themselves.  The links I use are generally from the church website or I also point people to the Joseph Smith papers and the archive website where you can search old texts that have been scanned.  I encourage people to read from the links provided.  Maybe your experiences are different than mine have been.  But I was tired of non Mormons asking me about Joseph putting his face into a hat to translate the Book of Mormon and I had no clue what these people were talking about. I will always wonder why the Mormon church never taught me the full history of how the Book of Mormon was translated.  The South Park episode that showed Joseph Smith with his face buried in a hat was the last straw that really pushed me to learn more about this topic.  How sad is that, South Park is what led me to look into researching the translation of the Book of Mormon, not the Mormon leaders of the church.

Now there are some other translation facts that I have not mentioned in this blog post.  The other issues will be included in a later blog post that will talk about the witnesses to the gold plates.  The other issues that I was never taught and what I have learned about the witnesses to the gold plates, warrant their own blog post.  Happy studying!!!