Coming to the October Ensign: Joseph Smith’s Seer Stone

Wanna know what Joseph Smith’s seer stone looks like? BEHOLD:

Picture of Joseph Smith’s seer stone, found in “Joseph The Seer,” https://www.lds.org/ensign/2015/10/joseph-the-seer?lang=eng.

Minutes ago, coinciding with a Joseph Smith Papers Project press conference announcing the publication of Revelations and Translations Volume 3, Parts 1 & 2, the Church’s website for their flagship magazine, The Ensign, posted an essay that will appear in the October issue. This essay, titled “Joseph The Seer,” was written by Richard Turley, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and our very own Robin Jensen. It discusses the translation of the Book of Mormon and gives a very candid and frank account of Joseph Smith’s usage of a seer stone. It also includes the picture above.

So, this is probably a big deal. Again, you can read the essay here. I’ll update with quotes an other relevant information as it becomes available.

UPDATE:

Here are a few choice quotes from the essay, which I again encourage everyone to read:

?Seeing? and ?seers? were part of the American and family culture in which Joseph Smith grew up. Steeped in the language of the Bible and a mixture of Anglo-European cultures brought over by immigrants to North America, some people in the early 19th century believed it was possible for gifted individuals to ?see,? or receive spiritual manifestations, through material objects such as seer stones.

The young Joseph Smith accepted such familiar folk ways of his day, including the idea of using seer stones to view lost or hidden objects. Since the biblical narrative showed God using physical objects to focus people?s faith or communicate spiritually in ancient times, Joseph and others assumed the same for their day. Joseph?s parents, Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith, affirmed the family?s immersion in this culture and their use of physical objects in this way, and the villagers of Palmyra and Manchester, New York, where the Smiths lived, sought out Joseph to find lost objects before he moved to Pennsylvania in late 1827.

And:

In later years, as Joseph told his remarkable story, he emphasized his visions and other spiritual experiences. Some of his former associates focused on his early use of seer stones in an effort to destroy his reputation in a world that increasingly rejected such practices. In their proselyting efforts, Joseph and other early members chose not to focus on the influence of folk culture, as many prospective converts were experiencing a transformation in how they understood religion in the Age of Reason. In what became canonized revelations, however, Joseph continued to teach that seer stones and other seeric devices, as well as the ability to work with them, were important and sacred gifts from God.

And:

In fact, historical evidence shows that in addition to the two seer stones known as ?interpreters,? Joseph Smith used at least one other seer stone in translating the Book of Mormon, often placing it into a hat in order to block out light. According to Joseph?s contemporaries, he did this in order to better view the words on the stone.

By 1833, Joseph Smith and his associates began using the biblical term ?Urim and Thummim? to refer to any stones used to receive divine revelations, including both the Nephite interpreters and the single seer stone. This imprecise terminology has complicated attempts to reconstruct the exact method by which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. In addition to using the interpreters, according to Martin Harris, Joseph also used one of his seer stones for convenience during the Book of Mormon translation. Other sources corroborate Joseph?s changing translation instruments.

JI Summer Book Club: Rough Stone Rolling, Part 12: Chapter 29 & Epilogue

This is the twelfth and final installment of the first annual JI Summer Book Club. This year we are reading Richard Bushman?s landmark biography of Mormonism?s founder, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). JI bloggers have covered small chunks of the book in successive weeks through the summer, with new posts appearing Monday mornings. We invite anyone and everyone interested to read along and to use the comment sections on each post to share your own reflections and questions. There are discussion questions below.

Installments:

• Part 1: Prologue, Chapters 1-2
• Part 2: Chapters 3-4
• Part 3: Chapters 5-6
• Part 4: Chapters 7-9
• Part 5: Chapters 10-12
• Part 6: Chapters 13-15
• Part 7: Chapters 16-18
• Part 8: Chapters 19-21
• Part 9: Chapters 22-24
• Part 10: Chapters 25-26
• Part 11: Chapters 27-28
• Next Week: Response from Richard Bushman

This fall Journals, Volume 3, of the Joseph Smith Papers will be released. This is the last of Joseph Smith?s journals and covers the end of his life. It will be noted for its generous use of the Nauvoo Council of Fifty record books, a document of near mythological character (though soon to be banalized by availability). In the case of the Council of Fifty, the record may be the only significant new document to expand on Bushman?s overall project to become available since publication. J3 also includes the most frank disclosures about the Nauvoo Temple liturgy to be published by the LDS Church in more than a century.  I thought about this as I read through the final chapters of Bushman?s biography of Joseph Smith. It is the two associated ideas: theocracy and temple cosmology that saturate Smith?s final six months.

Bushman?s cool narration of 1844 flushes out the players and issues that culminate in the bloody death of Joseph Smith alongside his brother. We see the storm rise over the parched landscape, the lightning strike, and then the fields burn. It is hard to imagine any other conclusion to these months.  Bushman carefully corrects the narrative of its most hyperbolic hagiographic conceits while appearing to simply narrate the events as they happen.

Continue Reading

Mormon Studies Roundup August 2015 (New! Improved! Monthly!)

At a recent meeting of the JI permabloggers which coincided with the MHA meeting in early June, we decided to move our Mormon Studies roundup from weekly to monthly. The feature will now appear on the first Sunday of the month. However, the roundup then promptly took a holiday in July, so apologies for the unintentionally long stretch from the last MS roundup to this one. After such a fast, we are back with a veritable feast of Mormon history-related news and events.

Continue Reading