{"id":3793,"date":"2016-04-18T08:16:53","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T14:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/?p=3793"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:40:09","slug":"ces-reply-a-rock-in-a-hat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/ces-reply-a-rock-in-a-hat\/","title":{"rendered":"CES Reply: A Rock in a Hat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Book of Mormon Translation Concerns & Questions:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike the story I’ve been taught in Sunday School, Priesthood, General Conferences, Seminary, EFY, Ensigns, Church history tour, Missionary Training Center, and BYU…Joseph Smith used a rock in a hat<\/a> for translating the Book of Mormon. <\/span><\/p>\n

What did they teach you in Sunday School, Priesthood, General Conferences, Seminary, EFY, etc.? In my experience, there was some discussion about the Urim and Thummim, which were, in fact, used during the process, although it\u2019s true that the rock in the hat never came up. But, for the most part, no one really brought up any real specifics about the process, which means that, once again, in the absence of solid information, speculation fills in the gaps. I think each of us had different ideas about the process and never thought to question our assumptions.\u00a0 I don\u2019t recall hearing any official rejection of the rock in the hat taught in any of the places you cite. And if you did, I would think you\u2019d be able to provide a link to a manual or article that explicitly rejected the rock in the hat idea.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the first time I heard the rock-in-the hat story was on my mission, when Joseph Fielding McConkie, son of Bruce R. and grandson of Joseph Fielding Smith, quoted David Whitmer on the subject and claimed that Whitmer didn\u2019t know what he was talking about. Whitmer\u2019s account about the process came decades later, after Joseph Smith\u2019s death, and J.F. McConkie, taking a position he attributed to his father and grandfather, insisted it couldn\u2019t have been that way, because reading words off a seer stone seemingly contradicts D&C 9,<\/a> which is the only contemporaneous document on the subject that we have. D&C 9 chastises Oliver Cowdery for his translation attempt because he \u201ctook no thought save it was to ask\u201d the Lord rather than trying to \u201cstudy it out in [his] mind.\u201d So if the rock in the hat idea wasn\u2019t widely disseminated, which it wasn\u2019t, it may have been because there was significant disagreement among the Brethren as to its veracity, with President Smith and Elder McConkie on the side that (probably incorrectly) maintained it was nonsense.<\/p>\n

(I wish I had some kind of link for you, but I don\u2019t. I do know that J.F. McConkie gave recorded speeches on this that were at one time sold by Deseret Book, but since his passing in 2013<\/a>, all his stuff is out of print.)<\/p>\n

Joseph Smith himself dodged questions about specifics of the translation process, saying only that it was accomplished \u201cby the gift and power of God\u201d and that it \u201cwas not intended to tell the world all the particulars of the coming forth of the book of Mormon.\u201d That was largely the extent of the official story I heard until the Church published its essay on the Book of Mormon translation.
\n<\/a>
\nIn other words, he used the same “Ouija Board” that he used in his days treasure hunting where he would put in a rock \u2013 or a peep stone \u2013 in his hat and put his face in the hat to tell his customers the location of buried treasure. <\/span><\/p>\n

Those are some other words, all right. How is a stone the same thing as a Ouija Board? Have you ever seen Ouija Boards? They don\u2019t look like rocks in a hat.<\/p>\n

He used the exact same method while the gold plates were covered or put in another room or buried in the woods during translating the Book of Mormon. These facts are not only confirmed in Rough Stone Rolling (p. 71-72), by FairMormon here<\/a> and here<\/a>, by Neal A. Maxwell Institute<\/a> (FARMS), but also in an obscure 1992 talk given by Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles<\/a>. Update: The Church\u2019s December 2013 essay admits this<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

It admits that the translation process included the rock in the hat method, but, contrary to the implication you\u2019re making, it was not the exclusive method. From the Church\u2019s essay:<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the scribes and others who observed the translation left numerous accounts that give insight into the process. <\/i>Some accounts indicate that Joseph studied the characters on the plates. <\/b>Most of the accounts speak of Joseph\u2019s use of the Urim and Thummim (either the interpreters or the seer stone), and many accounts refer to his use of a single stone. <\/i>[Emphasis added]<\/p>\n

The fact that both \u201cunofficial\u201d apologists like FAIR, quasi-official apologists like BYU, respected Mormon scholars like Bushman, and entirely official apologists like Elder Nelson openly acknowledge the seer stone in the hat make it hard to argue that the church was actively engaged in \u201cdeception,\u201d to use your word. We\u2019ll talk more about it after looking at the pictures you provide.<\/p>\n

Book of Mormon translation that the Church portrays to its members:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"rock<\/a><\/p>\n

Book of Mormon translation as it actually happened:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Rock
\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, there are a number of inaccuracies in this second group of pics, too. Which hat did he use \u2013 the straw hat in the far right, the top hat in the bottom center, or the cowboy hat in the top center? The one on the far left looks like it has some kind of feather in it.<\/p>\n

Those are quibbles, of course. The second group of pictures is undoubtedly more historically accurate than the first. Although many of the first group of pics can be interpreted as being consistent with the reports that Joseph, at least occasionally, \u201cstudied the characters on the plates.\u201d I especially like the one on the top left, which shows Joseph wearing the breastplate and using the Urim and Thummim, something that witnesses insist was a part of the translation process, at least early on. (Looks weird, though doesn\u2019t it?) But the two showing Joseph and Oliver with the plates in full view are clearly wrong, as all accounts say that the plates were hidden from Oliver\u2019s view at all times during translation. Although I\u2019ve always wondered what resources Oliver had at his disposal when he attempted to translate. Was he only given a stone and a hat? Maybe just his rod, which you complain about later? Wouldn\u2019t it have been likely that he\u2019d insist on having the plates, too? We\u2019ll probably never know how that worked.<\/p>\n

Why is the Church not being honest and transparent to its members about how Joseph Smith really translated the Book of Mormon? How am I supposed to be okay with this deception?<\/span><\/p>\n

You call those<\/i> paintings \u201cdeception?\u201d Brother, you haven\u2019t seen nuthin\u2019 yet. Let me show you some real<\/i> deception in Mormon art.<\/p>\n

Witness \u201cAbinadi before King Noah\u201d by Arnold Friberg, which has appeared in every edition of the Book of Mormon in my lifetime.<\/p>\n

\"jaguar\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty sure that just about everything about this picture is wrong, from Abinadi\u2019s ripped physique\/six-pack to the weird fez things the priests are wearing, but, especially, to Noah\u2019s pet leopards. Where\u2019d he get the leopards? Aren\u2019t they African? How\u2019d they get to America? How did he domesticate them? Do they share a litter box?<\/p>\n

[Note: Since first writing this, I found an interview with Friberg<\/a> where he states these are jaguars, not leopards, which, alas, undermines my point, as, according to the infallible Wikipedia<\/a>, jaguars are \u201cthe only extant<\/a> Panthera<\/i> species native to the Americas.\u201d So Noah could conceivably have had jaguars. Although, really, no, he couldn\u2019t. The Book of Mormon says nothing about jaguars, and people don\u2019t have pet jaguars, even if they\u2019re kings. Again, how did he domesticate them? Do they share a litter box?]<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Friberg\u2019s depiction of Ammon:<\/p>\n

\"ammon\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Those pecs! Those biceps! Man, they had good gyms back in ancient America, as well as funny looking hats. But guess what? All research we have suggests what they didn\u2019t have is domesticated sheep. In fact, the Book of Mormon never mentions sheep in connection with Ammon, who was defending the king\u2019s \u201cflocks,\u201d but never says what animals were in those flocks. In my daughter\u2019s Book of Mormon class at BYU her freshman year, the teacher made a convincing argument that these were flocks of turkeys<\/i>. Turkeys, of all things! Yet here Friberg paints a bunch of sheep, or, at the very least, the hairiest turkeys I\u2019ve ever laid eyes on.<\/p>\n

Or howsabout Friberg\u2019s stripling warriors?<\/p>\n

\"helaman\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Again with the zero percent body fat! Didn\u2019t the Nephites have access to carbs?<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s our friend Helaman, leading his troops on horseback.<\/p>\n

Wait a minute. On horseback<\/i>? As we established earlier, nobody rode a single horse in the Book of Mormon. Nobody rode anything, not even a tapir. And why does Helaman get a horse while making all his troops walk on foot? What a jerk. Fortunately, I\u2019m pretty sure this isn\u2019t how it happened.<\/p>\n

And on it goes.<\/p>\n

The fact is that religious art has a very long history of inaccuracy, in and out of the church. It\u2019s undeniable, for instance, that a Jewish fellow born just over two thousand years ago in Bethlehem wouldn\u2019t grow up to look anything like this:<\/p>\n

\"heartjesus\"<\/a>This blonde, pale, delicate-featured blue-eyed waif looks more likely to be the lead singer of ABBA than anyone with a drop of Middle Eastern blood in their veins. Yet pictures like this one have been the dominant artistic depictions of Christ for centuries, and long before Joseph Smith came along.<\/p>\n

And, to be fair, I don\u2019t think Mormon depictions of Christ do it much better. In every chapel, you can\u2019t help but come face to face with this guy:<\/p>\n

\"mountainjesus\"<\/a>I love that he\u2019s standing in front of a background you\u2019d find in a modern photography studio, as if he\u2019s posing for a senior portrait or something.<\/p>\n

This seems to be the favored image of Jesus among most Mormons, but I confess I\u2019ve never liked it at all. This doesn\u2019t look like a kind and loving savior to me; it looks like a cross between a young Grizzly Adams and a BYU football player, the kind of guy who would have probably beaten me up back in middle school. Did Jesus work out at Arnold Friberg\u2019s gym, too?<\/p>\n

While we\u2019re at it, let\u2019s talk Christmas for a moment. You do realize that every nativity scene on display in every home is terribly, hopelessly, and woefully wrong, right? Mary and Joseph were poor people taking shelter in a dirty, stinky cave they shared with livestock, and they had to put their baby in a filthy pig trough, probably stepping through piles of poop to get there. Every nativity set I\u2019ve seen shows a well-dressed couple in a rustic wooden cabin that\u2019s entirely poop-free.<\/p>\n

The Three Wise Men, who are always beatifically swooning over the child as the shepherds stand back in awe, didn\u2019t arrive until at least a year after the birth, and, in fact, we don\u2019t know if there were, in fact, three of them. There may have been two; there may have been a dozen or more. But tradition says three, so that\u2019s how many strike a contorted swooning pose in deceptive plastic figurines that are hauled out of the attic in every Christian home during the month of December. And if your kids are anything like my kids, the figures all get rearranged and stuck in weird places, and maybe Luke Skywalker or My Little Pony end up making an appearance in the stable sometime along the way.<\/p>\n

I also want to share a story with you that doesn\u2019t really help my point here, but it does give some insight into where the Brethren are coming from on this.<\/p>\n

I once had a meeting with a high-level church employee, and we had a very interesting conversation that included the following story:<\/p>\n

It seems that, on one occasion, the Church commissioned an artist to paint a depiction of the First Vision. In this case, the artist did a considerable amount of research, and he determined that, back in the early 19th Century, a 14 year-old impoverished farmboy who went out into the woods to pray would almost certainly have been barefoot at the time. That makes sense \u2013 shoes were expensive, after all, and wearing them outside while working crops in the Spring would likely have been ridiculously extravagant and probably uncomfortable to boot.<\/p>\n

So the artist painted his shoelessly and historically accurate portrayal of the First Vision, turned it into the Church, and found himself in the center of a controversy he had not anticipated, but which I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve guessed.<\/p>\n

The Church wanted to know where Joseph\u2019s shoes were.<\/p>\n

The artist began by patiently explaining his research and conclusion, but it didn\u2019t matter. The Church was unwilling to accept the painting as is. They insisted that the artist paint some suitable footwear, and the artist refused. One of the members of the committee suggested a compromise \u2013 that Joseph be depicted in a position where his feet would not be visible. The artist was unwilling to do that, either, and he ended up rejecting the commission altogether and withdrawing the painting. I have no idea what happened after that \u2013 I don\u2019t know if he left the Church or if he just chalked it all up to experience and sucked it up, but I am interested in the questions this thing raises.<\/p>\n

First off, what would I do in this situation? The artist has a point, certainly, but with regard to my relationship with the Church, I doubt this would be the hill I would want to die on. I\u2019d probably just accept the compromise option, paint Joseph with his feet hidden, and recognize that the focal point of the painting shouldn\u2019t necessarily be 19th Century podiatry.<\/p>\n

But it has to be asked: why on earth should the Church care? Who are they protecting? What member of the Church is going to be offended by the idea of a barefoot prophet?<\/p>\n

This is a problem of cultural groupthink more than deliberate deception.<\/p>\n

I once asked a high-ranking mucky-muck on the Church\u2019s Temple Committee why we didn\u2019t see more original, interesting art in temples instead of the prints of prints of Harry Anderson and Del Parson magazine illustrations that you see everywhere else. His answer was that every piece of art that is approved to hang in temples has to go through umpteen layers of committee approval, and particularly with any portrayal of the Savior, it\u2019s almost impossible to get consensus. So that\u2019s why we stick with the tried and true \u2013 and boring.<\/p>\n

Which is sad, really. Harry Anderson\u2019s paintings are the ones that are used more often than any others, and the guy was a Seventh-Day Adventist! Can\u2019t we rely on homegrown artists for a change?<\/p>\n

Back to the main point, which is that religious art isn\u2019t now and, really, never has been about historical accuracy. Like all art, it\u2019s largely about evoking an emotional response by telling a story in a single static image, even if it has to take \u201cartistic license\u201d to do so. An image of Joseph poring over the plates by candlelight is evocative, and it tells a story that helps people feel an emotional connection to the translation process. An image of Joseph with his face in a hat just looks like he\u2019s throwing up.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that excuses the fact that the art you provide is misleading and inaccurate, as it is definitely both of those things. But it\u2019s noteworthy that the only way you can demonstrate that the church has been deliberately deceptive is to produce pieces of art, not actual false statements. Art is seldom, if ever, truly accurate, and every painting of the First Vision has Joseph Smith in shoes.<\/p>\n

But if the Book of Mormon itself isn\u2019t infallible, why should we expect Arnold Friberg to be?<\/p>\n

The Church, to my knowledge, has never denied the rock in the hat; they\u2019ve just chosen not to talk about it because it\u2019s weird and embarrassing. Like you, I think that\u2019s the wrong choice, and that bringing the weird, embarrassing bits of our history out in to the open is a much better approach. Thankfully, it\u2019s the approach that the Church is starting to take. Although, like you, I believe there\u2019s a lot more they can and should do on that score in the days ahead.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow: The First Vision<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Book of Mormon Translation Concerns & Questions:\u00a0Unlike the story I've been taught in Sunday School, Priesthood, General Conferences, Seminary, EFY, Ensigns, Church history tour, Missionary Training Center, and BYU...Joseph Smith used a rock in a hat<\/a> for translating the Book of Mormon. <\/span>What did they teach you in Sunday School, Priesthood, General Conferences, Seminary, ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3793"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5150,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793\/revisions\/5150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}