Code:
Originally Posted by **zerinus**
I am interested, and here is what I have read so far:
During the translation process, the witnesses were able to observe, in an open setting, the following:
•Joseph Smith
placing the interpreters (either the Urim and Thummim or the seer stone) in a hat and placing his face into the hat;
•Joseph
dictating for long periods of time without reference to any books, papers, manuscripts, or even
the plates themselves;
•Joseph spelling out unfamiliar Book of Mormon names;
•after each dictated sequence, the scribe reading back to Joseph what was written so that Joseph could check the correctness of the manuscript;
•Joseph starting a dictation session without prompting from the scribe about where the previous session had ended.
The translation process that these witnesses observed was an open one—that is, others in the room could observe the dictation from Joseph Smith to the scribe. But early on in the translation, from late 1827 to early 1828, it appears that Joseph used a different process while translating. During this early period, Joseph would first copy some of the characters directly from the plates onto sheets of paper, from which sheets he would then translate his transcribed characters into English by means of the Urim and Thummim. During such a process, the plates were uncovered while Joseph translated (or at least while he copied the characters from the plates to paper); and since no one was permitted to see the plates until later,
Joseph took precautions to prevent anyone from seeing him working directly with the plates. Martin Harris, in a couple of early statements, said that
a blanket or curtain separated Joseph from him at the time he (Martin) obtained a sample transcript and translation to take to Professor Anthon in New York City.
In place of this early procedure, Joseph Smith soon turned to a method of translation that
depended directly on the interpreters alone, so that the plates did not have to be viewed, and thus the translation could be
done openly. All witnesses that refer either to the translation of the lost 116 pages or to our own current Book of Mormon (Emma Smith, Martin Harris, and members of the Whitmer family)
openly observed this translation process—one without a curtain or blanket separating Joseph from his scribe. In fact, according to Emma,
the plates were wrapped up and not directly used.
The article so far is priding itself on the fact this was an “open process” but I fail to understand how this process is “open” when Smith took “precautions” so that people would not see the plates at all. I am getting conflicting information so far as to just how much he read out of a hat, the last LDS article downplayed the hat, this LDS article makes it sound as if that is how the great majority of “translating” took place.
Ill try to read and comment on the rest later on.
