Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery—Translation and the “Spirit of Revelation”

No doubt that the promise my maternal grandfather made to me in my patriarchal blessing when I was 13—that I would have “a pure knowledge that Joseph Smith, that young boy, did actually stand in the presence of the Father and His Son Jesus Christ”—has greatly contributed to the love and esteem I have always felt for the Prophet of the Restoration. Other early influences contributing to my admiration for Joseph Smith that I can vividly remember from my teenage and young adult years included reading The History of Joseph Smith by His Mother and Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith and listening (on cassette tapes) to Truman Madsen’s August 1978 Education Week “Joseph Smith Lecture Series.” Brother Madsen begins Lecture 3, entitled “Joseph Smith and Spiritual Gifts,” by observing that “it is no surprise that [the Prophet] did, in fact, experience all the spiritual gifts,” referring to the gifts described in D&C 46 or possibly to all such gifts described in scripture, of which Brother Madsen states there are “at least thirty.”[1] My blog today, however, will focus only on “the first gift” —the “gift to translate the plates” (D&C 5:4)—the Lord said He had “bestowed” not only on the Prophet but also on Oliver Cowdery. The Lord also described this gift as “the spirit of revelation,” the same spirit by which God led Moses to bring “the children of Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground” (D&C 8:3). What can we learn from both Joseph’s and Oliver’s experiences with their gifts, to receive revelation, especially as it bears on the restoration of temple doctrine, covenants and ordinances? Or, more importantly to each of us, what can we learn about how we, each of us, can develop or receive the spirit of revelation, especially in our own efforts to act on President Nelson’s invitation to “understand,” “comprehend” and have our own “spiritual insights and awakenings” about the temple?[2]

Anthony Sweat, from  Scripture Central

Oliver Cowdery’s translation attempt. By now in our CFM study (if not long before) we are very familiar with the Lord’s explanation to Oliver Cowdery as to why he failed to translate: “Behold, you have not understood,” the Lord told him. “You have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. But behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right” (D&C 9:7-8).  

While teaching school in Palmyra and renting a room in the Smith’s frame home in Manchester, New York in the Fall of 1828, Oliver learned from residents in the area about Joseph Smith’s discovery of the gold plates. In his 1832 history, Joseph Smith recalled Oliver’s sharing with him how, “after he had gone to my father’s [Joseph Smith Sr.’s] to board, and after the family communicated to him concerning my having got the plates, that one night after he had retired to bed, he called upon the Lord to know if these things were so, and that the Lord had manifested to him that they were true.” The Prophet added “that Cowdery had seen the Lord and the plates in a vision and ‘was desiorous to come and write’” for him in Harmony, Pennsylvania, where Joseph was living with Emma. Oliver began transcribing for Joseph on April 7, 1829. Oliver later wrote to his friend David Whitmer, Joseph “envuired [inquired] of the Lord concerning [me].” The Lord told Joseph, Oliver reported, “secrets of [Oliver’s] life that he knew could not be known to any person but himself, in any other way than by revelation from the Almighty.”[3] While reassured by this gracious witness from the Lord that the translation work he was assisting with was from God, we can appreciate the surprise Oliver may have felt when the Lord told him “I grant unto you a gift if you desire of me, to translate even as my servant Joseph,” adding that “that there are records which contain much of my gospel, which have been kept back because of the wickedness of the people” and that Oliver could “assist in bringing [these] to light, with your gift.” Even more surprising, perhaps, was the Lord’s statement, “now behold I give unto you, and also unto my servant Joseph, the keys of this gift.”[4]

About this time, Oliver learned, as he transcribed Joseph’s dictated translation of Mosiah 8 from the Book of Mormon plates, how King Limhi inquired of Ammon if he knew anyone who could translate the 24 Jaredite gold plates his men had found when searching for the Land of Zarahemla, which were “filled with engravings.” Ammon responded that the king of the people of Zarahemla could. The king had “wherewith that he can look, and translate all records that are of ancient date; and it is a gift from God. And the things are called interpreters. . . . And whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer[,] . . . a revelator, and a prophet” (Mosiah 8:12-17). As eye-witness to a constant flow of revelation, Oliver “became exceedingly anxious to have the power to translate bestowed upon him.” The Lord responded again, reassuring Oliver that he could receive “a knowledge concerning the engravings of old Records” if he would “ask [in faith] with an honest heart” and heed the thoughts that would come to his “mind” and the feelings that would come to his “heart, by the Holy Ghost,” which He said, “is the spirit of revelation.” “Therefore this is thy gift apply unto it.”

In fact, the Lord not only told Oliver that he had the gift of revelation, but that he had “another gift which is the gift of working with the sprout Behold it hath told you things Behold there is no other power save God that can cause this thing of Nature to work in your hands for it is the work of God.” The editors of the Joseph Smith Papers explain that this “second gift was identified as ‘the gift of working with the sprout,’ or rod. Like many of his contemporaries, Cowdery probably used divining rods to find water or minerals, and though this gift may have been a ‘thing of Nature,’ the revelation confirmed it was also a gift from God.”[5] Scholars have suggested that “the Lord compared Oliver’s newly bestowed gift to translate to his previous skill at using a diving rod in order to equate translation with something he already understood. . . . . By using a combination of advice that would bring Cowdery closer to the Holy Ghost and connecting his previous experience using a divining rod, the revelation attempted to teach Cowdery to translate.”[6] Notwithstanding the Lord’s repeated efforts to teach Oliver about the principles of revelation associated with the spiritual gift to translate ancient records, Oliver Cowdery failed to do so. Apparently he did not venture beyond the principles to “inquire” (D&C 6:11), to “desire of me, to translate” (D&C 6:25, 27) and to “ask” (D&C 8:1, 10-11). Later that month, the Lord “informed Cowdery that he ‘could have translated’ if he had proceeded correctly [D&C 9:10]. He had apparently begun well but did not continue in the same manner, having ‘not understood’ the process: ‘You have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought, save it was to ask me.’”[7]

Stan Spencer suggests an alternative to the generally understood reading of D&C 9:7-9, as described by B.H. Roberts in a 1906 Improvement Era article. Like many of us (myself included), Elder Roberts infers that the word it in verses 8 and 9—“study it out in your mind” and “ask me if it be right”—refers to the characters on the plates or the translated words that appeared in the seer stone. Elder Roberts wrote: “[The words “study it out in your mind”] implies great mental effort, of working out the translation in the mind and securing the witness of the Spirit that the translation is correct,” as opposed to the idea “that the Urim and Thummin did everything, and the seer nothing; that the work of translating was merely a mechanical process of looking at a supplied interpretation, in English, and reading it off to an amanuensis [scribe or scrivener].”[8] Elder Roberts’s reference to the view that “the work of translating [may have been] merely a mechanical process of looking at a supplied interpretation, in English,” may relate to descriptions of the translation process given by, among others, David Whitmer and Joseph Knight. Notwithstanding Joseph Smith’s statement “that it was not intended to tell the world all the particulars of the coming forth of the book of Mormon, & also . . . that it was not expedient for him to relate these things &c.,”[9] in researching second-hand historical accounts scholars, including the editors to the JSP Documents volume, provide possible insights about what the translation process may have involved:

Joseph Knight Sr., a family friend, recalled that after Smith “put the urim and thummim into his hat and Darkned his Eyes,” a sentence “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.” Emma Smith reportedly told an interviewer that her husband spelled out difficult or unfamiliar words, including “proper names he could not pronounce.” She further stated, “While I was writing them, if I made any mistake in spelling, he would stop me and correct my spelling, although it was impossible for him to see how I was writing them down at the time. . . . When he stopped for any purpose at any time he would, when he commenced again, begin where he left off without any hesitation.” Decades after the translation work, David Whitmer, one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, wrote that on the “spiritual light” of the seer stone, “a piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One [reformed Egyptian] character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.”[10]

Spencer argues that when the Lord told Oliver that he had “not understood,” He was not saying that Oliver had misunderstood the technique of translating (if so, he would not have been able to “commence” translating, as the Lord said Oliver did in verse 5). Rather, he suggests that Oliver did not “study out” or receive a spiritual confirmation whether the Lord (at the time Oliver began the attempt) then intended to grant him “power . . . to translate” (verse 2) or the “privilege” to translate (verse 5). By this reading, verses 7-9 could be read as follows:

7. Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it [meaning the “privilege” to translate, mentioned in verse 5] unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. 8. But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it [whether you have been given the privilege to translate] in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right [that I “give it unto you” from verse 7, ie. the privilege or power to translate], and if is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. 9. But if it be not right [that I give it unto you], you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong; therefore, you cannot write that which is sacred save [the privilege] be given you from me.[11]

The gift to translate, or seership, consists of receiving, as the Lord describes it in D&C 3:12, divine “sight and power to translate.” Mormon and Alma described it as the divine power to “read the words which” “shine forth out of darkness” “unto light” in or by means of a divinely crafted seer stone (Mormon 8:16; see also Alma 36:23). Brigham Young “described it simply as ‘the gift of seeing.’”[12] Rather than mental exertion alone, Spencer suggests, the key to receiving and exercising this gift is faith. As the Lord explained to Oliver earlier, he would be able to translate “according to [his] faith” (D&C 8:11). The greatest impediment to faith is fear. In fact, the Lord told Oliver he failed because “you feared” (D&C 9:11). What might he have been afraid of? Spencer suggests that Oliver had recorded in his Book of Mormon transcription of Mosiah 8 Ammon’s warning that while a seer “has wherewith that he can look,” “no man can look in them except he be commanded, lest he should look for that he ought not and he should perish” (Mosiah 8:13). Considering this, Oliver may have had misgivings similar to Martin Harris, who explained that he “never dared to look into [the Interpreters] by placing them in the hat, because Moses said that ‘no man could see God and live,’ and we could see anything we wished by looking into them; and I could not keep the desire to see God out of my mind. And beside, we had a command to let no man look into them, except by the command of God, lest he should ‘look aught and perish.’”[13] It seems that Joseph’s earlier revelation to Oliver that he had a “gift” to translate was not enough. He needed to receive his own spiritual confirmation (his “bosom . . . burn[ing] within” him) that it was “right” for him to translate at that time and place, that it was the Lord’s will and not just his own desire. Such a confirmation would, indeed, have increased his faith to the degree needed to receive the gift of “sight,” or seership. In the end, a careful reading of Section 9 does not suggest that the revelatory process exclusively requires either “a great mental effort” or a “process,” perhaps viewed as “mechanical” but in reality requiring the exercise of a great deal of faith. It is more likely a combination of both.

Joseph Smith’s efforts to “study out” the Book of Mormon characters and receive a spiritual confirmation that he should and could translate. But what about Joseph Smith? we might ask. Did the Lord require of him the same effort, to “study out” the characters on the gold plates in order to be able to translate them, if that was what was required? Or to receive his own witness that he was to translate and not someone else, including the “learned,” to whom he initially looked for a “key” to translate the plates?[14] To the first question, President Joseph Fielding Smith answered: “Joseph Smith received the plates and the Urim and Thummim September 27, 1827.” But because of “persecution” and “poverty,” he did nothing toward translating the plates that year. “However, he was busy studying the characters and making himself familiar with them and the use of the Urim and Thummim.” Referring to Oliver’s failed attempt because he did not sufficiently “apply” to his gift, “studying out” the translation process in his own mind, President Smith notes that Joseph “had a great deal more to do than merely to sit down and with the use of the instrument prepared for that purpose translate the characters on the plates.” Such “knowledge and [spiritual] skill,” he suggests, came only after “consistent and determined study and practice.”[15]

Scholars provide insights into what Joseph may have done in the process of studying the characters on the plates and leaning how to use the Urim and Thummin in the translation process. In his history, the Prophet recounts that Martin Harris appeared at his door in February 1828 in Harmony, Pennsylvania and announced that “he had seen the Lord in a vision,” who told him “‘that he must go to New York City with some of the characters’”[16]. In their comprehensive history of the translation process, Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, who served as lead editors of the Documents volume of The Joseph Smith Papers Project, describe how, during the four-month period before Harris’s arrival “Joseph may have created rubbings [by placing a paper over the plates and rubbing a piece of charcoal over the inscribed characters] of dozens of the plates, then handed them over to Emma to trace or copy the characters onto another piece of paper,” since she was not permitted to look at the plates directly. Apparently this was a very elaborate process involving, as MacKay and Dirkmaat document, multiple scribes—not only Emma, but her brother Ruben Hale and Martin Harris. In other words, the degree to which Joseph “studied the characters” in the process of making “numerous copies” over this four-month period suggests much more than a casual perusal of the ancient text.[17]

David E. Sloan shares a further insight on the extent to which Joseph may have gone to “study out” the characters on the plates in order to be able to fulfill the mission Moroni gave him to translate them. Eight years after completing the translation of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith began to study and prepare to “translate” “some of the characters or hieroglyphics” found in scrolls of papyrus purchased from Michael Chandler in the summer of 1835, one of which, the Prophet declared, “contained the writings of Abraham.”[18] Among the documents that have survived from that period (1836-37) is Egyptian Ms. #4, entitled "Egyptian alphabet," appearing to be in Joseph Smith’s handwriting and consisting “of three columns. The first column contains a list of Egyptian characters organized according to form; the second contains a transliteration of the Egyptian characters into English; and the third contains a purported translation of the characters. For example, one of the characters is transliterated as ‘Aleph,’ and is accompanied by the interpretation ‘in the beginning with God His first born son.’” Hugh Nibley, Sloan noted, described Joseph’s effort to develop this Egyptian “alphabet” or “grammar” as follows:

“From this it would appear (1) that we have here a perfectly sane and rational approach to a problem, (2) that the approach is experimental and not authoritarian, and (3) that it was abandoned at an early stage.” [Nibley] also writes: “All the Grammar and Alphabet projects ... aborted dismally; none of them could ever have been used even as an imaginary basis for constructing the story of Abraham.”[19]

Joseph may have been referring to the types of “translation” efforts reflected in Egyptian Ms. #4 when he wrote in his 1835 journal, “the remainder of this month, I was continually engaged in translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham, and arranging a grammar of the Egyptian language, as practiced by the ancients.”[20]·In other words, even though his intellectual exertions may not have produced the actual text of the Book of Abraham as it exists in the Pearl of Great Price today, Joseph described these efforts as translation.

Similarly, Sloan argues, the documentary evidence of Joseph’s efforts to “study” the Book of Mormon characters suggest that he may have employed an approach similar to the one he used to approach the “translation” of the Book of Abraham. For example, Sloan cites Lucy Mack Smith’s recollection—

“[Joseph] was instructed ‘to take off a facsimile of the characters composing the alphabet which were called reformed egyptian Alphabetically and send them to all the learned men that he could find and ask them for the translation of the same.’” Like the Egyptian alphabet, this reformed Egyptian alphabet may have consisted of a list of the different characters, organized in columns, which Joseph Smith found on the plates. According to [Charles Anthon, the scholar to whom Martin Harris presented the Book of Mormon characters in order to certify as to their authenticity], the document presented to him actually “consisted of all kinds of crooked characters disposed in columns”; he also wrote that these characters "were arranged in perpendicular columns.”[21]

Sloan argues that when Martin Harris presented Anthon “the characters which had been translated [meaning an ultimately inaccurate “transliteration” of certain characters, similar to those produced with the Egyptian papyrus], with the translation thereof,” and “then showed him those which were not yet translated” (Joseph Smith-History I :64), he was fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah Nephi quoted in 2 Nephi 27:15 to “deliver” the “words,” that is the untranslated copied characters from the plates, and “show then unto the learned.”[22]

As important as the fulfillment of prophecy, however, is the pattern or lessons we can draw from Joseph Smith’s efforts. God wants to engage our agency, to ensure that we are invested in the development of our eternal souls toward our “divine destiny” of becoming like our Heavenly Parents of our own free will and choice. As we fully engage in the process of our own growth (physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually), including asking for and receiving divine direction and confirmation about our callings, livelihoods and even our day-to-day tasks, He is able to do His work, giving us that which we lack to accomplish the good we set out to do in our lives. So it was with the translation of the Book of Mormon. As Martin Harris observed, only after “the most learned men had exhausted their knowledge of letters in the vain effort to decipher the characters, and after all human means had failed to secure a translation, [was Smith] commissioned [indeed, empowered] to undertake the task.”[23]

Joseph Smith’s efforts to learn how to use the Interpreters or seer stones. The Prophet apparently used a similar iterative process to learn how to “see” the divinely-given translation both through the seer stones, which God had guided him to find after his First Vision and before Moroni’s first visit in 1823[24], and the “pair of Interpreters [the Book of Mormon term found in Mosiah 8:19, 20; Alma 37:21, 24 and Ether 4:5] or spectacles”[25], as he described them in a January 1833 article in the church newspaper The Evening and the Morning Star. Soon after publishing this article, the Prophet “apparently began applying the biblical term Urim and Thummim” not only to the interpreters or spectacles, but to the seer stones as well.

At first, scholars note, Joseph used the seer stones primarily to protect the plates. His mother said that he “kept the urim and thumim constantly about his person as he could by this means ascertain at any moment if the plates were in danger.”[26] One time, not long after he received the plates while away from his parents’ home in Palmyra digging a well to earn money, the family became concerned about the safety of the plates and sent Emma to find Joseph and warn him. Joseph “looked into [the Interpreters] before Emma got there [and] perceived her coming and came up out of the well and met her.”[27]

However, as he started copying and studying out the characters soon after moving to Harmony in late November or early December1827, MacKay and Dirkmaat surmise, it appears that he began “seeing” the translation of certain of them and “sent [Martin] Harris with a sample of what appeared in the seer stones,” perhaps wondering “whether what he saw in the spectacles was in fact the translation of the gold plates.”[28] Thus, although he may not have fully realized the singular role he was to play in the translation process at the time, Joseph seems to have started seeing at least some sort of translation of certain characters in the interpreters before he began translating in earnest in April 1829. What was it that got Joseph “over the hump,” so to speak, to understand and muster the necessary faith that he, rather than any other, would and could translate the plates? It was the realization, borne no doubt by the power of the Spirit, that before he would have the “privilege” and “power” to translate, the Lord’s prophesy in Isaiah 29 first needed to be fulfilled. As he would write in his 1829 preface to the first edition of the Book of Mormon manuscript, only “then,” after the prophesy had been fulfilled, would “the Lord God say [or manifest] unto him,” as it were, Joseph, “the learned shall not read them, for they have rejected them, and I am able to do mine own work; wherefore thou shalt read the words which I shall give unto thee.”[29] As soon as the Spirit witnessed to his soul that he was fulfilling prophecy, he received the faith needed to begin the translation in earnest.

Joseph’s spiritual experience with the words of Isaiah provides another powerful lesson for us. The “spirit of revelation” to help us understand temple ordinances, the words of which are scripture, often comes to us through our study of the scriptures, including the teachings of the prophets and apostles. Joseph’s “aha” moment with Isaiah’s prophecy seemed to turn the last key Joseph needed to unlock the “keys of [the] gift” to translate (D&C 6:28).

What can we learn from Oliver and Joseph’s translation efforts? President Nelson has repeatedly urged us to increase both our participation in and our intellectual engagement with the temple. As noted earlier, in his October 2021 General Conference message “The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation,” he couldn’t have been clearer when he said Jesus Christ “is the One who wants” “all temple patrons, no matter where they live” to [i] “understand with great clarity exactly what you are making covenants to do;” [ii] “experience fully His sacred ordinances;” [iii] “comprehend your privileges, promises, and responsibilities;” and [iv] “have spiritual insights and awakenings [about the temple] you’ve never had before.” In the previous Conference, he explained why studying temple ordinances and doctrine is so important. “Lazy learners and lax disciples will always struggle to muster even a particle of faith.”[30] “The Lord loves effort,” President Nelson has also taught.[31] As Joseph and Oliver’s journeys in developing the spirit of revelation so aptly demonstrate, not only does our ability to receive revelation depend upon our faith, which is engaged when we give our best effort, but more importantly faith enables us to access Christ’s power, which is the purpose and object of every gospel ordinance, including especially the crowning ordinances of the temple.

Ensign Blair, Liahona, May 2018

I am indebted to Sister April Park, who reminded me in her recent sacrament meeting talk about a story Elder Larry Wilson shared in his 2018 General Conference message on what mustering this level of faith and power can look like in our day:

During the Korean War, Ensign Frank Blair served on a troop transport ship stationed in Japan. The ship wasn’t large enough to have a formal chaplain, so the captain asked Brother Blair to be the ship’s informal chaplain, having observed that the young man was a person of faith and principle, highly respected by the whole crew.

Ensign Blair wrote: “Our ship was caught in a huge typhoon. The waves were about 45 feet [14 m] high. I was on watch … during which time one of our three engines stopped working and a crack in the centerline of the ship was reported. We had two remaining engines, one of which was only functioning at half power. We were in serious trouble.”

Ensign Blair finished his watch and was getting into bed when the captain knocked on his door. He asked, “Would you please pray for this ship?” Of course, Ensign Blair agreed to do so.

At that point, Ensign Blair could have simply prayed, “Heavenly Father, please bless our ship and keep us safe,” and then gone to bed. Instead, he prayed to know if there was something he could do to help ensure the safety of the ship. In response to Brother Blair’s prayer, the Holy Ghost prompted him to go to the bridge, speak with the captain, and learn more. He found that the captain was trying to determine how fast to run the ship’s remaining engines. Ensign Blair returned to his cabin to pray again.

He prayed, “What can I do to help address the problem with the engines?”

n response, the Holy Ghost whispered that he needed to walk around the ship and observe to gather more information. He again returned to the captain and asked for permission to walk around the deck. Then, with a lifeline tied around his waist, he went out into the storm.

Standing on the stern, he observed the giant propellers as they came out of the water when the ship crested a wave. Only one was working fully, and it was spinning very fast. After these observations, Ensign Blair once again prayed. The clear answer he received was that the remaining good engine was under too much strain and needed to be slowed down. So he returned to the captain and made that recommendation. The captain was surprised, telling him that the ship’s engineer had just suggested the opposite—that they increase the speed of the good engine in order to outrun the storm. Nevertheless, the captain chose to follow Ensign Blair’s suggestion and slowed the engine down. By dawn the ship was safely in calm waters.

Only two hours later, the good engine stopped working altogether. With half power in the remaining engine, the ship was able to limp into port.

The captain said to Ensign Blair, “If we had not slowed that engine when we did, we would have lost it in the middle of the storm.”

Without that engine, there would have been no way to steer. The ship would have overturned and been sunk. The captain thanked the young LDS officer and said he believed that following Ensign Blair’s spiritual impressions had saved the ship and its crew.[32]

How much faith did Ensign Blair demonstrate? Enough to not only repeatedly ask what he could do to save the ship, but faith to repeatedly go and do what the Spirit taught him to do. God wants to bless and help us, even to sanctify and “make us holy.” But He cannot and will not force that help upon us. As Joseph and Oliver learned by their own experience, when we sincerely try, engaging all of our might, mind and strength, He is able to do the rest, to do his “own work,” which is to bring about our exaltation with Him, our Heavenly Parents and loved ones. May we go to every day with “our work,” which, most importantly, is “to keep my commandments, yea, with all your might, mind and strength” (D&C 11:20).

[1] Russell M. Nelson, “The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation,” Liahona, November 2021, 95. [2] Truman G Madsen, Joseph Smith the Prophet, Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, Inc., 1989, 36. [3] Joseph Smith’s Revelations: A Doctrine and Covenants Study Companion from the Joseph Smith Papers, “Doctrine and Covenants 6: Revelation, April 1829–A,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/church-historians-press/jsp-revelations/dc-006-1829_04_01_000?lang=eng. [4] Ibid. Chapter V, Book of Commandments, verses 11-13 (see D&C 6:25-28)(emphasis added). [5] Joseph Smith’s Revelations, “Doctrine and Covenants 8: Revelation, April 1829–B,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/church-historians-press/jsp-revelations/dc-008-1829_04_01_010?lang=eng. The editors note that “according to Revelation Book 1, [Joseph Smith] dictated four revelations in April 1829 [D&C 6, 7, 8 and 9], all of them associated with translation. While these texts have a closely related historical context, the precise order of their dictation is unknown.” Mark Ashurst-Mcgee noted that “when the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants was published in 1835, ‘the gift of working with the rod’ was changed to ‘the gift of Aaron.’ If this emendation removed a possible point of controversy for incoming converts, it explained to earlier members that Oliver's rod was like Aaron's rod in the Bible.” “A Pathway to Prophethood: Joseph Smith Junior as Rodsman, Village Seer, and Judeo-Christian Prophet,” Master’s Thesis, Utah State University (2000), 8, https://www.academia.edu/67755344/A_Pathway_to_Prophethood_Joseph_Smith_Junior_as_Rodsman_Village_Seer_and_Judeo_Christian_Prophet?auto=download. Ashurst-Mcgee notes that Joseph Smith also had this spiritual gift. Ibid. 122-55. [6] Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, From Darkness Unto Light: Jospeh Smith’s Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon, Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University and Deseret Book, 2015, 122. [7] Joseph Smith’s Revelations, “Doctrine and Covenants 9: Revelation, April 1829–D,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/church-historians-press/jsp-revelations/dc-009-1829_04_01_020?lang=eng. [8] Stan Spencer, “The Faith to See: Burning in the Bosom and Translating the Book of Mormon in Doctrine and Covenants 9,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 18, 2016, 219-32, quoting B. H. Roberts, “Translation of the Book of Mormon,” Improvement Era, September 1906, 429–430. [9] JSP, Introduction to Documents, Volume 1: July 1828–June 1831, “Joseph Smith Documents Dating through June 1831,” https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/intro/introduction-to-documents-volume-1-july-1828-june-183. [10] Ibid. (footnotes omitted). By including the second-hand accounts by Knight, Emma Smith and Whitmer about the translation process, I do not intend to weigh in on the current scholarly debate about the nature of the process by which Joseph translated the plates, whether it was “mechanical” (what one scholar described as the “literal-visual model”) or “working out the translation in the mind” (so-called “conceptual model”). See Don Bradley, “Written by the Finger of God?: Claims and Controversies of Book of Mormon Translation,” Sunstone, October 17, 2011, https://sunstone.org/written-by-the-finger-of-god-claims-and-controversies-of-book-of-mormon-translation/. Mine is a larger point. No matter what the actual process (which we can never really know short of learning it from Joseph Smith or God Himself), the things we do know the Prophet actually did to ultimately receive the “gift and power” to translate are instructive in and of themselves as they inform our own efforts to receive the “mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,” which the Lord has promised to reveal to all faithful, seeking endowed members in His own time and way (D&C 107:19; see also D&C 6?7, 11; 8:11; 11:7; 42:61, 65; 43:13; 63:23; 71:1; 76:7; 84:19). [11] Spencer, 227. [12] Ibid. 223.See also Dean Jesse, “Joseph Knight’s Recollection of Early Mormon History,” Brigham Young University Studies 17/1 (1976), 35; Richard Van Wagoner & Steve Walker, “Joseph Smith: ‘The Gift of Seeing,’” Dialogue, vol.15, no.2 (Summer 1982), 49-63.[13] Spencer, 229. Mark Ashurst-McGee suggests another possible source of fear in using a seer stone—“Joseph did not accept all revelations that came through seer stones because not all revelations came from God. When early Mormon Hiram Page began receiving revelations through his black seer stone, Joseph Smith received a revelation stating that ‘those things which he hath written from that stone are not of me ... satan deceiveth him.’” In other words, in order to receive revelation from God, the seer needs to be living in harmony with the Spirit of God. As David Whitmer witnessed when Joseph was translating in his home, “at times when Brother Joseph would attempt to translate [the Book of Mormon from the golden plates] ... he found he was spiritually blind and could not translate. He told us that his mind dwelt too much on earthly things, and various causes would make him incapable of proceeding with the translation. When in this condition he would go out and pray, and when he became sufficiently humble before God, he could then proceed on with the translation.” McGee quotes from the journal of an early convert, Priddy Meeks, whose experience with the Prophet and Hyrum Smith intimated that using seer stones could be dangerous because they facilitated access to evil as well as good spirits: “It is not safe to depend on [a seer]stone in any case where evil spirits have the power to put false appearances before them while looking [there]in. . . . If evil influences will not interfere, the [revelation received] will be true. . . also the Patriarch, Hiram Smith . . . held the same idea, but stated that our faith was not strong enough to overcome the evil influences that might interfere, but seemed to think that time would come.” “President Brigham Young echoed these principles. He explained that ‘the gift of seeing was a natural gift, that there are thousands in the world who are natural born Seers.” While “most” users of seer stones, the Prophet explained to Brigham, “make an evil use ” of them,” “when the Lord selected Joseph Smith to be his vice-gerent and mouthpiece upon the earth in this dispensation,” giving him the gift of seership, “he saw that he would be faithful and honor his calling.” “Pathway to Prophethood,” 183-86.[14] After settling in Harmony near his in-laws, the Hales, Joseph “began to be anxious to git [the plates] translated” and “with hist wife Dreww of[f] the Caricters exactly like the ancient and [later] sent Martin Harris to see if he Could git them Translated.” Darkness Unto Light, 34, quoting Knight Sr., JSP History, 3. See also Darkness, 53; Michael Hubbard MacKay, “‘Git Them Translated’: Translating the Characters on the Gold Plates,” in Approaching Antiquity: Joseph Smith and the Ancient World, edited by Lincoln H. Blumell, Matthew J. Grey, and Andrew H. Hedges (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015), 83–116 (“Focusing on the first six months after Joseph Smith reportedly obtained the gold plates, records left by Joseph’s family and friends demonstrate that he took significant steps to find someone other than himself who was able and willing to translate the characters on the plates. He began by drawing numerous characters on paper, perhaps attempting to compile an alphabet or list of characters. As part of his efforts to produce this list or alphabet, he sent Martin Harris to New York City in search of a translator, which suggests that Joseph Smith may not have envisioned himself, at least initially, dictating the translation of the Book of Mormon simply by the power of God.”). [15] Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, vol III, compiled by Bruce R. McConkie. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1956, 215-16. [16] Darkness Unto Light, 39. See also Bushman, 63-64 (Harris’ “vision may have confirmed a plan already agreed on, for Lucy Smith said Joseph had previously arranged with Harris to come to Harmony and take the characters east to a linguist.”) [17] Darkness Unto Light, 35. In his 2015 article on the early translation process, MacKay summarizes this copying effort as follows: “The process for copying the characters is also unclear, though the surrounding documentation indicates that he made the initial copies himself because no one else could see the plates. After creating his copies, he worked with two or three scribes to make additional paper copies. Emma Smith reportedly worked, as one of these scribes, with Joseph Smith’s initial drafts to either duplicate or organize them on additional pieces of paper. During the same period, Reuben Hale, Emma’s brother, may have also helped. Sources describing these events, however, do not have a clear timeline, nor do they make definitive statements about the details of Reuben or Emma’s efforts to copy the characters. Apart from these earlier clues about Joseph making copies of the characters in December 1827 and possibly January of 1828, there is also record of Martin Harris assisting Joseph Smith in making additional copies in February 1828. Knowing that Joseph used scribes to make additional copies suggests that he was producing more than just a small sample of characters.” “‘Git Them Translated’” (footnotes omitted). [18] Church History Topics, “Book of Abraham Translation,” quoting Joseph Smith, “History, 1838–1856, volume B-1 [1 September 1834–2 November 1838],” 596. [19] David E. Sloan, "The Anthon Transcripts and the Translation of the Book of Mormon: Studying It Out in the Mind of Joseph Smith," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies: vol. 5 : no. 2 , 1996, 71, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol5/iss2/3. [20] Ibid., citing HC 2:238 (July 1835). [21] Ibid. 72, citing Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 86. MacKay draws a similar conclusion in his summary of the historical evidence: “According to Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph Smith told Martin Harris when he left Harmony, Pennsylvania, that he needed enough time to ‘transcribe’ an ‘alphabet’ of characters from the gold plates. Joseph Smith may have never created the document he envisioned and no extant document includes an identifiable alphabet of characters, but Lucy’s account seems to represent Joseph’s earlier idea of drawing characters from the gold plates. It also points toward Joseph’s failed attempts to work toward translating the plates in a secular, instead of miraculous, manner. However, though Joseph could not translate ancient characters and could not ask someone to translate the plates for him, there was a logical possibility revealed in his mother’s account that it could be possible for Joseph to begin translating the plates. This could be done by finding someone to translate each known character on the plates, assuming that this is what Lucy meant by creating an ‘alphabet.’” MacKay, “‘Git Them Translated.’” [22] Sloan, 77. [23] Ibid. 80, citing Iowa State Register. Des Moines (16 August 1870)( emphasis by Sloan).[24] JSP, Introduction to Documents, Volume 1: July 1828–June 1831, “Joseph Smith Documents Dating through June 1831,” https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/intro/introduction-to-documents-volume-1-july-1828-june-183. For a detailed description of the origin and subsequent location of these seer stones, one of which was “dark brown and shaped like a baby’s shoe” and is currently in the possession of the Church, and “one that was white and shaped like a large chicken egg,” see Darkness Unto Light, 67-68, 125, 136-37 n.26; “Pathway to Prophethood,” 198, 211 (“Sometime between 1817 and 1822 Joseph beheld his first stone in vision and then obtained it.”), 230-47, 248-83. Mark Ashurst-Mcgee  states that “both stones are currently in the possession of the LDS First Presidency.” Ibid. 248 note 318.

MacKay and Dirkmaat affirm that “Joseph’s seer stone was prepared by God,” citing Alma 37:23 (“And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem, a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light,” adding that in this passage “it is unclear whether Gazelem was the name of the servant or the stone prepared for the servant”) and Wilford Woodruff, who handled and described the brown stone as the “seer stone known as ‘Gazelem’, which was shown by the Lord to the Prophet Joseph Smith to be some thirty feet under ground, and which he obtained by digging under the pretense of excavating for a well.” The authors also note that William W. Phelps, a close friend of the Prophet, stated in his eulogy at Joseph’s funeral that “Joseph Smith . . . was Gazelem in the spirit world” meaning “The Prince of Light.” The JSP Documents editors, commenting on the use of these divinely prepared devices to aid Jospeh in exercising his gift of translation or revelation, note that the Prophet “and others apparently later referred to these seer stones as Urim and Thummim, thus making it difficult to determine in later accounts whether they were referring to the device found with the plates or a separate stone [or stones] that performed the same function. Oliver Cowdery, Smith’s principal scribe for most of the translation, explained, ‘Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated, with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, “Interpreters.”’ Joseph Smith’s wife Emma, who also served as a scribe for the translation, described his use of two distinct instruments: ‘Now the first that my husband translated, was translated by the use of the Urim, and Thummim, and that was the part that Martin Harris lost, after that he used a small stone, not exactly, black, but was rather a dark color.’” [25] Darkness Unto Light, 63. See also JSP, Introduction to Revelations and Translations: Volume 3, “Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon,” https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/intro/introduction-to-revelations-and-translations-volume-3?p=1&highlight=obtain%20and%20translate (“Smith himself described the instrument as ‘two transparent stones.’ Lucy Mack Smith, who remembered seeing the spectacles before her son’s move to Harmony, gave a description of the instrument that is similar to Harris’s: “2 smooth 3 cornered diamonds set in glass and the glass was set in silver bows conected with each other in the same way that old fashioned spectacles are made.”). See also “Pathway to Prophethood,” 283-309. [26] Darkness Unto Light, 14-15, 69. See also “Pathway to Prophethood,” 292. [27] Ibid. 69. See also “Pathway to Prophethood,” 321. [28] Ibid. 70. See also MacKay, “’Git them translated’” (“at least one part of the documents Harris took with him [to New York] included a translation of ‘some’ of the characters. Joseph Smith’s history also explained that Harris took “a considerable number” of untranslated characters with him to New York City.”). The exact timeline when Joseph may have begun and ended this “studying” phase of the translation process is unclear. In their account MacKay and Dirkmaat note that Joseph “settled in his home in Harmony [possibly with Emma’s parents] in Late November or early December 1827” but “soon moved onto [Emma’s brother, Jesse] Hales’ adjoining property in [January] 1828,” where “their separate living quarters . . . gave them enough autonomy to begin working on the plates,” which they characterize as “inspecting them and examining the characters inscribed on their pages.” Darkness Unto Light, 32-34. Martin arrived in February 1828 and helped copy some of the characters and then in later in February made the one-week trip back to Palmyra, then travelled to Utica, Albany and on to the East. Ibid. 39-40. Richard E. Bennett confirms that Joseph “began the work of early translating in late 1827” by transcribing “some of the characters from the plates as a sort of alphabet or reference guide.” Richard E. Bennett, “Martin Harris's 1828 Visit to Luther Bradish, Charles Anthon, and Samuel Mitchill,” in The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon: A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, edited by Dennis L. Largey, Andrew H. Hedges, John Hilton III, and Kerry Hull, Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015, 103–15. [29] Darkness Unto Light, 70. See also Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 65-66 (“Anthon’s certification meant less [to Joseph] than a discovery made sometime after Harris’s return. Someone realized that Harris and Anthon had inadvertently fulfilled” Isaiah’s 29:11-12 prophesy . . . a realization that “thrilled Joseph.”). [30] Russell M. Nelson, “Christ Is Risen; Faith in Him Will Move Mountains,” Liahona, May 2021. [31] Joy D. Jones, “An Especially Noble Calling,” Liahona, May 2020, 16. [32] Larry Y. Wilson, “Take the Holy Spirit as Your Guide,” Liahona, May 2018, 75. Image c Anthony Sweat, from  Scripture Central, https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/translation-requirements?searchId=16ed5b61f0e5b54990c8747bbbdc1c66fed07a4fe1911836647847d1f69e1225-en-v=57c0391.