I make it no secret that I disagree with the theology of LDS. It sounds very much like something you would get if you took a plain vanilla mainstream evangelical church then stuck some Asimov sci-fi fantasy in the middle of it and the church then without blinking embraced the whole as holy writ. That’s not all the oddness, but to me it’s the most striking.
Trouble is, the MSM seems to dislike all religion equally (except humanistic faiths which disdain the supernatural). Whether it’s a planet close to God, or Moses on a mountain cloaked in smoke, the answer the MSM has is always, always nyet.
How dare you denigrate a Grand Master of Science Fiction by implying that he could have written the phantasmagoric entrancements of Joseph Smith.
The LDS story begins with the claim that a Pre-Columbian American culture was actually the lost Tribe of Israel, visited by Jesus and given the Book of Mormon on Golden Tablets that remained buried for millennia in upper New York State, only to be found after an Archangel, never mentioned in the Bible, named Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith to reveal the hiding place.
It is a shame that the Golden Tablets were promptly lost only after Smith had enough time to memorize them and dictate the contents to his disciples. Luckily, his followers were able to make notarized statements that they had seen the tablets before they were lost again.
In actuality it is clear you should have attributed the sci-fi fantasy to L. Ron Hubbard.
Luckily, his followers were able to make notarized statements that they had seen the tablets before they were lost again.
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Actually, they only claimed to see them with their ‘spiritual’ eyes, and a few hefted a box, covered with a sheet that Smith claimed to contain the plates.
They never actually saw anything.
I’m sure Asimov is far less boring. But he tried to be in advance of his time. Coming up with a realistic scenario of extraterrestrial planetary inhabitation in the early 1800s is no mean trick. Of course if God puts you there then you don’t need to bother with space rockets.
Hubbard came around too late to explain the LDS.
"Now the way he translated was he put the urim and thummim into his hat and Darkned his Eyes than he would take a sentance and it would apper in Brite Roman Letters. Then he would tell the writer and he would write it. Then that would go away the next sentance would Come and so on. But if it was not Spelt rite it would not go away till it was rite, so we see it was marvelous. Thus was the hol [whole] translated."---Joseph Knight's journal.
"In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us."
(History of the RLDS Church, 8 vols.(Independence, Missouri: Herald House,1951),"Last Testimony of Sister Emma [Smith Bidamon]," 3:356.
"I, as well as all of my father's family, Smith's wife, Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris, were present during the translation. . . . He [Joseph Smith] did not use the plates in translation."
---(David Whitmer,as published in the "Kansas City Journal," June 5, 1881,and reprinted in the RLDS "Journal of History", vol. 8, (1910), pp. 299-300.
In an 1885 interview, Zenas H. Gurley, then the editor of the RLDS Saints Herald, asked Whitmer if Joseph had used his "Peep stone" to do the translation. Whitmer replied:
"... he used a stone called a "Seers stone," the "Interpreters" having been taken away from him because of transgression. The "Interpreters" were taken from Joseph after he allowed Martin Harris to carry away the 116 pages of Ms [manuscript] of the Book of Mormon as a punishment, but he was allowed to go on and translate by use of a "Seers stone" which he had, and which he placed in a hat into which he buried his face, stating to me and others that the original character appeared upon parchment and under it the translation in English."
"Martin Harris related an incident that occurred during the time that he wrote that portion of the translation of the Book of Mormon which he was favored to write direct from the mouth of the Prophet Joseph Smith. He said that the Prophet possessed a seer stone, by which he was enabled to translate as well as from the Urim and Thummim, and for convenience he then used the seer stone, Martin explained the translation as follows: By aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the Prophet and written by Martin and when finished he would say 'Written,' and if correctly written that sentence would disappear and another appear in its place, but if not written correctly it remained until corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely in the language then used."
(Edward Stevenson, "One of the Three Witnesses,"reprinted from Deseret News, 30 Nov. 1881in Millennial Star, 44 (6 Feb. 1882): 86-87.)
In 1879, Michael Morse, Emma Smith's brother-in-law, stated:"When Joseph was translating the Book of Mormon [I] had occasion more than once to go into his immediate presence, and saw him engaged at his work of translation. The mode of procedure consisted in Joseph's placing the Seer Stone in the crown of a hat, then putting his face into the hat, so as to entirely cover his face, resting his elbows upon his knees, and then dictating word after word, while the scribes Emma, John Whitmer, O. Cowdery, or some other wrote it down."
(W.W. Blair interview with Michael Morse,Saints Herald, vol. 26, no. 12June 15, 1879, pp. 190-91.)
Joseph Smith's brother William also testified to the "face in the hat" version:"The manner in which this was done was by looking into the Urim and Thummim, which was placed in a hat to exclude the light, (the plates lying near by covered up), and reading off the translation, which appeared in the stone by the power of God"("A New Witness for Christ in America,"Francis W. Kirkham, 2:417.)
"The manner in which he pretended to read and interpret was the same manner as when he looked for the money-diggers, with the stone in his hat, while the book of plates were at the same time hid in the woods."---Isaac Hale (Emma Smith's father's) affidavit, 1834.