This week on 3 Mormons, special guest Stephen Smoot talks with Ian and Kwaku about the Book of Mormon.
Stephen graduated from BYU with a degree in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Stephen is currently working on his Master’s degree in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations with a focus in Egyptology. As he studies, Stephen also works for Book of Mormon Central, a website for Book of Mormon scholarship (both contemporary and from the past). Check out the links below to follow Book of Mormon Central!
Ian, Kwaku and Stephen first address a question regarding the seer stones. Why was a stone used as an aid in translating the Book of Mormon? The topic is controversial for many reasons.
First, artwork has depicted Joseph Smith as translating the Book of Mormon without the use of stones. However, artwork isn’t always historically accurate.
Second, the idea of using seer stones is very strange to people today. The process of translation took place in an era that fully accepted and embraced the possibility of God using tools on the earth in order to accomplish His work. Using seer stones would not have been strange in the 1800s. Kwaku makes a joke that in the future, we’ll look back to the current era and wonder why we did things, including getting implants to look like Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian.
Stephen says that in the history of the world, there have been many occasions when prophets used instruments to accomplish God’s work. Moses used a staff, the Israelites used the arc of the covenant, and in the New Testament, Jesus performs miracles by spitting in clay to cure people.
Stephen reads a scripture in the Book of Mormon which talks about Gazelem. What is Gazelem, a servant or a stone?
Joseph Smith could certainly say that the work was accomplished by the gift and power of God. God has prepared means in order for people on the earth to accomplish His work.
Transcript:
Speaker 1:
We brought an expert on the book of Mormon, true scholar.
Steven Smoot:
Oh, boy.
Speaker 3:
There is nobody who knows more about the book of Mormon than Steven Smoot.
Speaker 1:
Like Hugh Nibley, Parley P. Pratt.
Steven Smoot:
Oh, gosh.
Speaker 3:
No.
Speaker 1:
No, we have Mr. Smoot with us today.
Speaker 3:
In fact, Steven wrote the book of Mormon.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Steven Smoot:
Shocking reveal.
Speaker 1:
Pseudonym is Mormon.
Steven Smoot:
Origins of Book of Mormon revealed on Three Mormons.
Speaker 3:
Moroni is on this show right now. You’re seeing an angel, folks.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, he’s at-
Where are you from?
Steven Smoot:
I’m from Salt Lake City, Utah originally. I went to BYU, where I did my undergraduate in Ancient Near Eastern Studies.
And then after that, I went up to Toronto, Canada where I’m currently doing my master’s degree in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations with a focus, or a concentration, in Egyptology.
Speaker 1:
Wait, why are you in Oram right now if you’re…
Steven Smoot:
Because I’m back here working at Book of Mormon Central in the meantime.
Speaker 1:
Ah, Book of Mormon Central.
Steven Smoot:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Got it. What is Book of Mormon Central?
Steven Smoot:
Well, said very briefly, Book of Mormon Central is your one-stop shop for Book of Mormon scholarship.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Steven Smoot:
So that includes both new scholarship that’s being produced today, and that includes scholarship that is being collected that’s been done in the past, and being collected and gathered into one big online archive and database that we’ve put together.
Speaker 1:
Okay, cool.
Steven Smoot:
Hence, Book of Mormon Central.
Speaker 1:
Central.
Speaker 3:
What? You know, gosh.
Steven Smoot:
See how that works?
Speaker 3:
Pulling from one of the articles on book of Mormon central, why was a stone used as an aid in translating the Book of Mormon? And I just want to preface this, I didn’t know that this was controversial about the Seer Stones in the Brownstone. To me, this is just a part of the translation process.
Speaker 1:
This is what you’ve learned.
Steven Smoot:
Yeah.
Speaker 3:
But also, I’m a convert. And I wasn’t raised LDS, so I didn’t get a different view.
Speaker 1:
In my shoes, growing up in the church, there’s lots of artwork of Joseph Smith, translating the Book of Mormon with the plates, and there’s people there looking at it and all this stuff. And so lots of people like myself grew up with this lens of artwork related to the gospel doctrine that was in my head.
And so when I found out that it wasn’t exactly how the artwork was depicting it, it also threw me for a loop.
Steven Smoot:
Yeah. And one thing we discussed in the article is the difference between artistic depictions of something, versus the accurate historical information. So artists, of course, aren’t necessarily sticklers for historical accuracy when they make their art.
Speaker 1:
Except for you, Anthony Sweat. We appreciate you.
Steven Smoot:
Yeah. Shout out to Anthony Sweat. We quoted in the article. He’s really great.
Speaker 3:
He’s truly…
Steven Smoot:
And we use his artwork a lot too, so check him out.
Speaker 3:
Thank you, Professor Sweat for passing me in DNC1. You really didn’t have to. I didn’t do that good of a job. But you, sir… He even let me take the exam after I missed it.
Speaker 1:
Is this an episode on the grace or something?
Speaker 3:
This is an episode on grace.
Steven Smoot:
Oh, crossover.
Speaker 3:
I know you’re watching. I thank you so much. You really did help me out.
Speaker 1:
Anyways.
Steven Smoot:
Yeah. So back to us stones yeah? You’re totally right, for a lot of people, the idea of Seer Stones is as unknown, or foreign, or even weird to them, right?
Speaker 1:
Well, people know about the Urim & Thummin.
Steven Smoot:
Right.
Speaker 1:
And they believe that they were these white stones, or something-
Steven Smoot:
Set in the bow. Right, yeah.
Speaker 1:
Set in the bow, and there’s a breast plate, and there’s all of these instruments to translate. Right?
Steven Smoot:
Yeah. One thing you just have to keep in mind is, these historical issues can become very murky, when you’re trying to break down the different sources and what they’re saying. Take for example, the issue of what do they call these instruments? We call them the Urim & Thummin, but the historical sources called them all sorts of things. And they sometimes refer to them interchangeably, right? They’ll use the same terms to refer to different sets of instruments.
So it takes a lot of work to break down what’s going on historically to make sense of what stones are being used, and when they were being used, and in what capacity they were being used. And that can be off putting for a lot of people who just don’t want to really jump into it that intensely.
Speaker 1:
I think some people might see it this way, you could be saying in 21st century verbiage, oh, he was using a smartphone. But if we were going to go into it, it’s like, oh, was it an iOS or was it an Android?
This idea of people not exactly using the correct term, I think people are a little bit too picky.
Steven Smoot:
Speaking of Seer Stones, I have my white Seer Stone here that I’m going to read some of the Book of Mormon off of.
Speaker 1:
This guy.
Steven Smoot:
It’s in Alma 37, is where we actually get this interesting reference to… Well, here, I’ll read the verse. This is verse 23.
And the Lord said, “I will prepare unto my servant, Gazelem a stone which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover unto them the works of their brethren. Ye, their secret works, their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations.”
So the first part of that verse, Gazelem, right?
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Steven Smoot:
There’s a big question, is this the servant or is it the stone?
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Steven Smoot:
Because the way it’s punctuated, it’s somewhat ambiguous.
Speaker 1:
Gazelem a Stone?
Steven Smoot:
Gazelem comma a stone comma which is my servant. Right? So it’s a little ambiguous.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it could be a presentation of a stone, or it could be, Gazelem, and then this is the description, a stone.
Steven Smoot:
A stone.
But what’s really significant, I think here, is this idea that whatever is going on with all this, the Lord is behind it. This is a divine, miraculous work that’s being accomplished. Right?
This isn’t just Joseph Smith doing his crazy folk magic stuff like a lot of people maybe assumed he was doing. No, this was, Joseph was being divinely prepared and tutored to use these instruments in a miraculous way.
And that’s why Joseph Smith could say, it was accomplished by the gift and power of God.
Speaker 3:
Yes.
Steven Smoot:
And it absolutely was.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
But at the time, 19th century, lots of people were using divining rods. People really believed in the connection with the almighty, connection with the heavens. And they would try and harness that energy. So back in the day, this wasn’t actually that weird.
Steven Smoot:
No.
Speaker 3:
No.
Speaker 1:
Nowadays, we think of using a Brownstone to translate Egyptian, that makes no sense to anyone. But at the time, it wasn’t. It was actually commonplace.
Speaker 3:
And you know what, a hundred years from now, people are going to be like, you put implants in your butt? Why would you do that? That’s strange. You go, well, we wanted to look like Kylie Jenner and Kim K.
Why? That’s weird.
Speaker 1:
We want to.
Speaker 3:
That’s so weird. And I know you’re laughing, but legit, put yourself a hundred years from now. You’re going to look back and think, that’s so strange.
Speaker 1:
I’m imagining them now, they’re just like, “Oh my gosh, Quaker, you honestly just take one thing and then relate it to another. And that’s so ad hoc. That it’s just so straw man.”
Speaker 3:
And they are right.
Speaker 1:
You are just so flamacious.
Speaker 3:
They’re right. It was a stupid comparison. But we have to be funny on the show. Go ahead.
Steven Smoot:
Yeah. You’re doing a great job, by the way.
Speaker 3:
Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 1:
You only get paid for funny.
Steven Smoot:
Yeah. Here’s the other thing, besides just Joseph Smith, we have other prophets in the Bible and other scripture that used instruments to accomplish God’s work.
Think of Moses using his staff when he was in the court of the Egyptian. Think of the Ark of the Covenant, which the Israelites literally hauled around with them from place to place where they kept the tablets of the 10 commandments and so forth.
Even think of in the New Testament, you have Jesus who performs miracles by spitting into clay and anointing people’s eyes with it. Right?
Speaker 1:
Even Harrison Ford, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, uses-
Steven Smoot:
He even uses, yeah.
Speaker 1:
He even uses The Ark of the Covenant, so don’t act like this isn’t secular.
Steven Smoot:
Yeah. That’s right. Right. Yeah.
So, yeah. Look, this basically the…
Speaker 3:
Using Indiana Jones to back up your religion, huh?
Steven Smoot:
Yeah. That’s the way to go. Absolutely. Yeah do a-
Speaker 3:
Steven Spielberg’s a closet Mormon. We all know it.
Steven Smoot:
Yeah.
No, but for people who believe in God, people who were part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, this shouldn’t be this crazy. The idea that God would prepare some kind of instruments. The Book of Mormon calls them means, that God would prepare means to accomplish his work. And from a perspective of faith, we can see this happening with Joseph Smith, utilizing these stones to translate the book.
Speaker 3:
One of the strangest things that I feel we, as Latter Day Saints, get attacked for and get distanced from the rest of the Christian community, is some of the more… Let’s just take the stones, right? To a lot of people they go, “That’s so weird. Stones being used to translate ancient records?”
Sir, you believe in a talking snake. We cannot rule out miracles and strange things in Christianity. And in theology, you can’t say, oh, that’s crazy. But this crazy-
Speaker 1:
Moses parting the sea.
Steven Smoot:
And not just a talking snake, but a talking donkey.
Speaker 3:
A talking donkey.
Steven Smoot:
That’s in the Bible.
Speaker 1:
A talking ass.
Steven Smoot:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
There’s plenty of you out there. Sorry.
Speaker 3:
And we’re canceled.
Steven Smoot:
I think the key scripture is Doctrine Covenant Section 88 verses 118, which says, “And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom. Yay, seek ye out of the best books, words of wisdom. Seek learning even by study and also by faith.”
So even when we have these commandments to study history and geography and languages and so forth, the component there is faith, by studying also by faith.
And so, yeah, we hope that people won’t base their testimony on this evidence, per se.
Speaker 1:
Of course.
Steven Smoot:
Ultimately it is the spirit that witnesses of the truth of the Book of Mormon and that’s what’s key.
Speaker 3:
So make sure you like and follow Book of Mormon Central on Facebook. Follow them on Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to them here on YouTube.
But I got a question.
Speaker 1:
Okay, just one more.
Speaker 3:
So in the old Genesis, hey, Noah gets on a boat. I can go find the boat that’s in the Bible, but I can’t go find-
Speaker 1:
You can’t? Wait, wait, you can?
Speaker 3:
I can find the boat.
Speaker 1:
Where’s the boat?
Steven Smoot:
Yeah?
Speaker 3:
Boat’s on the water. Noah had a boat. Therefore, Bible is true. I want to know where’s where’s Mormon’s boat?
Steven Smoot:
Mormon had a book, not a boat.
Speaker 3:
Did he have a… Oh.
Steven Smoot:
Yeah, key difference.
Speaker 1:
The boat of Mormon. That is a spinoff.
Speaker 3:
Hey, I can write a-
Speaker 1:
The Boat of Mormon.
Steven Smoot:
That’s going to be the next musical, right? The Boat of Mormon?
Speaker 1:
(singing).
Steven Smoot:
Yeah, it’d be pretty great.
Speaker 1:
And then Thomas the Train rolls in.
Steven Smoot:
Perfect.
Speaker 1:
And then, yeah, I just spit on-
Speaker 3:
(singing).
Steven Smoot:
Get the creators of South Park on the line right now.
Speaker 1:
Okay, Trey. What’s his name?
Steven Smoot:
Trey Parker.
Speaker 3:
Trey Parker, Matt Stone.
Steven Smoot:
Matt Stone.
Speaker 1:
Okay, we got to do a screenplay for you.
Steven Smoot:
We got to pitch for ya.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.