Scott Woodward:
Welcome to Church History Matters Come, Follow Me Edition, where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025. We have a lot to talk about today, so let’s get into it.

Casey Griffiths:
Hello, Maclane.

Maclane Heward:
Hey, Casey. How are you?

Casey Griffiths:
Good. I’m doing good. And welcome to the podcast Maclane Heward. For our long-time listeners, this might seem a little jarring because it’s Scott and Casey. We’re like Butch and Sundance, but I should explain why you’re here, Maclane. Let me do that really quick. So Scott is on an exchange this week. He’s on Follow Him with Hank and John, and the timing just made it so that we couldn’t get him to record, and we didn’t want to duplicate material anyway. And so I’ve invited our friend Maclane Heward to join us, and he’s going to be my co-host on the podcast today. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background so the people know where you’re coming from?

Maclane Heward:
Yeah. So I actually grew up in Orem, and my dad worked at, at BYU when I was a little kid as a, an electrician and have been around BYU quite a bit of my life. And just recently, a year ago, got hired here in the Religion Department. So in some ways, I feel like I’m coming home. Did a, a master’s degree in religious education, did a PhD in North American Religious History, and my wife and I live in Cedar Hills, and we’ve got five kids and, and one on the way, actually, which is exciting. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
Well, good. Well, let’s dive into it. We’ve got a huge block to cover today. And let me just set you up a little bit. Joseph Smith—History is basically broken down into three parts in the Come, Follow Me curriculum. One covers the First Vision, that’s about verses 1-26. And then the second part, which is what we’re covering today, is going to cover phase one of Book of Mormon translation. And then the third part won’t come up until we get to Doctrine and Covenants 12 through 17. The third part kind of covers the second phase of Book of Mormon translation, the Oliver Cowdery section of them. What we’re talking about today is the introduction to the Book of Mormon, where Joseph Smith has the angel appear to him, and where he gets the plates, and the early phases of translation where he’s working with Martin Harris. And Martin Harris is coming to accept, believe, know that Joseph Smith is the, is the real deal. And so that’s kind of what we’re going to be dealing with. And it’s a big block with a lot to discuss. Just to remind everybody, the, the format that we use here is to, one, contextualize everything. Which we did a little bit with Joseph Smith—History when we talked about this, but to also, two, dive into the content.

Casey Griffiths:
There’s a ton of content here to discuss controversies. Maclane, are there any controversies in this passage?

Maclane Heward:
Plenty. Loss of 116 pages, the scholars that Harris brings the transcripts of the Book of Mormon to. There’s, there’s plenty to deal with here for sure.

Casey Griffiths:
There’s also Joseph Smith as a money digger, accounts of how and when Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith. And we’re going to kind of try to intermingle the controversies with the content. And then we get to our last c, which is consequences, which we’ll kind of do here at the end. So let me do the context, and then Maclane, I’ll have you kind of jump in on the content a little bit. This passage covers the, the period after the First Vision, up to when Joseph Smith has his second experience with the divine being, and then into early phases of translation. So when our scene opens, I guess we’d say, it’s been about three and a half years since the First Vision. And Joseph Smith has not been a terrible person, but I’ll mention in some of his passages, he, he mentions this, “I was left to all kinds of temptations.” This is verse 28, “And mingling with all kinds of society, I frequently fell into many foolish errors and displayed the weakness of youth and the foibles of human nature, which I’m sorry to say, led me into diverse temptations, offensive in the sight of God.” But then he adds, “In making this confession, no one supposed me guilty of any great or malignant sins.

Casey Griffiths:
“A disposition to commit such was never in my nature.” So the prophet himself is contextualizing saying, Hey, I wasn’t the best kid, but I didn’t do anything super bad. And this kind of makes him wonder if he’s still worthy of the calling. He, he gets the First Vision experience, and then he, he’s waiting for something to happen. He’s told in the First Vision that God has a work for him to do, but there’s kind of this lull for three and a half years. So Joseph Smith is kneeling down to pray in his room when he, he said the room was filled with light and the angel Moroni appeared to him. The angel Moroni instructs him that it’s time for his work to commence, tells him about a record found in a hill nearby and quotes a whole bunch of prophecies to Joseph Smith. We’re going to go through some of those. In Joseph Smith—History, we should mention here, he seems to be doing the shorter version. He mentions five Old Testament verses, but a few years later when Oliver Cowdery, one of Joseph’s close friends, writes his account of this, and we assume Oliver was talking to Joseph Smith. He mentions a number of additional verses, mostly from the Old Testament, but from a few other interesting places.

Casey Griffiths:
So is that fair for context, Maclane?

Maclane Heward:
Yeah, I think absolutely. And, you know… It, it does leave me wondering if this is just a, a Moroni flex, where he’s just like, Let me tell you how many scriptures I’ve memorized in my life, you know?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, Moroni, Moroni was the scripture chase champion…

Maclane Heward:
Totally.

Casey Griffiths:
In high school. And…

Maclane Heward:
Yeah. I’ve always thought that was incredibly admirable. That, I mean, he just quotes. And… I mean, you divide this up into three different visits, and it’s the whole of the night. So that tells you a little bit about how much he’s quoting and talking and discussing.

Casey Griffiths:
We should basically point out here, too, that it’s not like it was totally quiet during the time that we’re leading up to this. Joseph Smith, we, we read part of it, but he does, like, catalog what, what he thinks he was worried about. And he says, “I was guilty of levity. I sometimes associated with jovial company, not consistent with the character that ought to be maintained by one who was called as God as I have been. But this will not seem very strange to anyone who recollects my youth and is acquainted with my native cheery temperament.” So with regards to that, any interesting things you want to bring up, Maclane, that happened between the First Vision and, and when Moroni appears?

Maclane Heward:
Yeah, I think a little bit later we’ll get into things like money digging and things. But one of the things I thought was really interesting is that there’s this part in New York state law that anyone who was involved in or, or suggested that they had the skill of discovering lost goods could be considered a disorderly person, which, I mean, obviously, we’ll talk about a little bit more when it comes to money digging. But I think that that kind of is an interesting contextualization as well. Some people have suggested that Joseph is drinking alcohol or that there’s some alcohol consumption, which in his time period would have been very normal. One of the other things that I found to be very interesting is just after the First Vision, he does know that he’s got a work to do, but the specifics behind that work are not clear. And so without direction, there seems to be more difficulty in staying fixed in your purpose. That song we sing, “be fixed in your purpose for Satan is nigh you.” I think that we see that.

Casey Griffiths:
And this is normal stuff, right? He’s 14 when he has the First Vision. He’s 17 when Moroni appears to him. And I think if most of us were to point at, like, the most directionless time in our life or when we may have acted with the least amount of judgment and circumspection, it probably would be around those ages. I mean, for me, it probably went beyond those ages to be honest with you. But what I read here is that Joseph Smith was a normal kid. And we should point out those sources that say that, like, he drank. The statistics on this kin thing in the early American Republic are shocking. And we should point out there was no Word of Wisdom at the time. There are several sources that indicate that the Smiths actually brewed beer and alcohol and things like that. So this is part of the environment that he lives in. It doesn’t make him a really bad kid or a shiftless workabout or anything like that. He’s describing what sounds to me like a normal childhood. But clearly, I don’t want to push that too hard because there were things that were abnormal about his teenage years. First Vision isn’t normal.

Casey Griffiths:
What happens with Moroni isn’t normal. Some of the stuff that have to do with seer stones isn’t normal.

Maclane Heward:
And you also get people that will say very clearly that he does not get drunk, right. He may drink, but he does not get drunk, which is helpful to understand as we kind of put him in his historical context.

Casey Griffiths:
And another thing I want to point out here, too, is there’s not a lot of sources about this time in Joseph Smith’s life. Probably our most important source is Joseph’s mother, Lucy Mack Smith. She writes a, a book. After Joseph’s death, she dictates it to Martha Coray. And that’s where stuff like the story of the leg operation is first listed. Lucy does say that, like, Joseph suffers some persecution because of the First Vision, because of what happens when he talks to the minister in town. For instance, Lucy Mack Smith wrote this. She said, “At the age of 14, an incident occurred which alarmed us much, as we knew no cause for the same. Besides, as Joseph was a remarkably quiet, well-disposed child, we did not suspect anyone had aught against him.” Then here’s what she described. She said, “Joseph was out one evening on an errand and as he was crossing the door yard on his return, a gun was fired across his path with the evident intention of shooting him. Joseph sprang to the door, much frightened. Upon ascertaining that he had received no injury, he went immediately in search of the assassin, but could find no trace of him that evening.

Casey Griffiths:
“And the next morning, we found his tracks under a wagon where he lay when he fired. Furthermore, that the balls that were discharged from his gun were lodged in the head and neck of a cow that was standing opposite the wagon in a dark corner.” So a possible threat or an attempt on Joseph’s life. An even more poignant account comes from a man named Thomas Taylor, who was a, a resident of Manchester, New York, right where Joseph Smith lives. He was interviewed in 1881, and he said that, quote, “Rascals at one time took Joseph Smith and ducked him in the pond that you see over there just because he preached what he believed and for nothing else.” Thomas Taylor added, “If Jesus Christ had been there, they would have done the same to him.” And so a little bit of persecution that happens because of the First Vision. But Joseph Smith doesn’t mention that. He seems to be trying to mention, You know what? I, I was a normal kid, which means I did dumb things. He doesn’t talk about this, but his mom appears to have been disturbed. And that sort of makes sense that, you know, a mom is concerned about this stuff.

Maclane Heward:
Yeah, having kids that age, you know, you think, Well, this is a time period where identity is part of the pursuit. Like, what is your identity? And then to have persecution be part of that as well, it just adds a lot of pressure. You know, it reminds me of this line where he says that from a very early age, it seems that there was persecutions heaped upon him, and that perhaps it was because he would be an annoyer and disturber of Satan’s kingdom kind of a, kind of idea. We have no other evidence or reason for that kind of persecution. Speaking of context, that doesn’t seem to be something that is often happening, people getting shot randomly anyway. So I, I think that’s interesting. I mean obviously, it’s a more violent time than perhaps we live in today, but to that extent, I, I would think that that would be very unusual.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and other than mentioning that he talks to a minister and tells them the story of the First Vision, we don’t know to what extent he would have shared the First Vision during this time. In fact, some scholars theorize the reason why he doesn’t talk very much about the First Vision until later in his life is this tremendously negative response that he gets. And I want to be clear that neither his mom nor Thomas Taylor tie the First Vision into these events that happen. But it’s not much of a stretch to say that if he had told the minister, and the minister said it was all the devil, that in a small community like where they’re living, it might be easy for people to start to whisper or say things about Joseph, specifically, that he’s claiming that he’s seen visions and stuff like that. And that could be the result, though they don’t make those ties in the sources.

Maclane Heward:
The thing that’s interesting about it is that you do have other contemporaries that are discussing having visions of God. And I think that there’s an interesting element here, particularly that when it comes to Moroni, that, yeah, God says that he has a work to do, but then he’s given a very specific work. Others relate visionary experiences, but there’s not this prophetic calling like comes with Joseph. And so in that way, I, I think perhaps there’s some people that are suggesting they’ve received visions, but not to the direct and clear work to do as Joseph receives.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and we should point out that the environment Joseph Smith lives in is intensely religious. People are really serious about religion, and anything that seems to deviate from what they see as the norm is going to cause problems. And speaking of that, another aspect of Joseph’s young life that we might need to address here is that when he says he’s “associated with jovial company, not consistent with the character, which ought to have maintained by one who was called of God as I’ve been,” it might be a reference to his affiliation with treasure seeking during his teenage years. Like you brought this up that there’s a New York law that talks about this. One of the things that has been sort of rediscovered in last generation or so by Church historians, is this idea of folk magic that was part of Joseph Smith’s environment, which seems strange to us today, but appears to have been a common cultural practice in the early American Republic, especially this part of the United States, kind of on the frontier in upstate New York and New England.

Maclane Heward:
I think that people would say that, like, things like divining rods are a little bit closer to our historical memory, but things like seer stones seem to be very far from our historical memory. I’ll mention this to students and, and they’ll say, Oh, yeah, my uncle or my, you know, I have this friend, or. It’s not often, but you do hear students like, Oh, yeah, this divining rods or other things. Yeah, I’ve seen this, of trying to find wells.

Casey Griffiths:
And there is this sometimes affiliation of folk magic with, like, evil or occult practices. But I want to emphasize that these come from, you know, traditions of Europeans. I mentioned in my class, like, have you ever noticed that there are seer stones in Lord of the Rings, for instance, that Tolkien is drawing from Northern European folklore and myth, and seer stones are part of that, too. We should also mention, too, that these folk magic practices weren’t seen as being opposed to Christianity. They were seen as evidence of God’s power within the world. Like in the Bible, it’s really common for physical objects to be a way for God to express power, like Aaron’s rod, or the serpent that the Israelites looked to, or the Ark of the Covenant. Were all seen as objects that mediated with divine power. And in Joseph Smith’s era, often seer stones or divining rods were used for tasks like locating water sources or seeking treasure. And the documentary record indicates that during his teenage years, Joseph occasionally used a stone that he had found, and he would use it to assist local families in finding lost objects or searching for buried treasure.

Casey Griffiths:
In fact, there’s a, a nice little Church History Topics essay you can find in Gospel Library under the Church History Topics page that discusses this use of seer stones.

Maclane Heward:
Yeah. And do we have similar experiences in our day where God has to use people in their cultural context? There’s no other way around it. And we often imbue physical objects with spiritual power, and they don’t seem weird to us because they’ve become normalized. And this is that experience for Joseph.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. Like nobody thinks that it’s weird to imbue bread and water with spiritual power, which we do every Sunday. But you can go back to the early years of Christianity, and Romans are, like, accusing Christians of cannibalism because Christians talk about eating, you know, partaking of the flesh and blood of their Savior. Again, they’re using physical objects to mediate with divine power. But people that aren’t familiar with that cultural background see it as really strange. Sort of the same way with Joseph Smith and the environment he grew up in. And so, I mean, Joseph Smith and his father, both attest to the use of a seer stone. What Joseph may have felt guilty about was that this seer stone that he uses, which, according to some accounts, Joseph found, while he was digging a well on the property of Willard Chase, another Palmyra resident, who we have record of using seer stones. Also Wilford Woodrow, later on, recorded that Joseph Smith told him that he had obtained the stone by digging under the pretense of excavating for a well. So Joseph gets hired to work on their farm, and he finds the stone while he’s there. I just think, like you said, Maclane, this is the Lord kind of using the cultural context that Joseph Smith exists in as a way of helping him understand greater power and higher things.

Casey Griffiths:
And by the way, this seer stone that we’ve been mentioning here is currently in possession of the Church. They published pictures of it with the Joseph Smith Papers project. I think there’s a picture of it in the, in the seer stone essay we’ve been talking about a little bit here. Later on in Doctrine and Covenants 1, the Lord is going to say, “I speak unto my servants in their weakness after the manner of their language, that they might come to an understanding,” which has reference to cultural things, too.

Maclane Heward:
I think that that’s a moment of mercy, for one. But I also think that, you know, recently, Elder Christoffersen has said, in a similar vein, We need diversity in the Church. And then he went on to say, We don’t need diversity for diversity’s sake, but we need diversity because diversity helps us to understand what about the gospel of Jesus Christ is cultural baggage that we need to separate from. And, you know, things like this cause us to question There’s so many of these things in every time period that can allow us to really think and ponder, like, what is central? Well, one of the central aspects of this process is that God needs to teach his children, and he does that through prophets, and he needs to bring forth the Book of Mormon. So how is he going to make that happen? He’s bound by cultural constructs, but also perhaps propelled by them in some ways, too, to create a prophet of a young man who looks in stones and finds lost items.

Casey Griffiths:
And we should note, too, that when, when Joseph Smith says… Like the setup for Moroni to appear is Joseph says, I was praying to know my standing before God. The seer stone is probably part of that. He was using the seer stone. Sometimes for personal gain, and may have felt guilty about using a spiritual gift for personal profit. And a lot of the context of the Moroni story, specifically parts when Moroni tells him things like, You can’t obtain the plates for the intent of gaining fame or wealth, directly tie in to that. So this is an important part of the context. It’s also one of the controversies that we said we want to deal with. And it sets us up for this night, the 21st of September, where he says he was praying to know. In fact, let’s go to verse 29. He writes, “In consequence of these things, I often felt condemned for my weakness and imperfections. When on the evening of the above-mentioned 21st of September, after I retired to my bed for the night, I betook myself to prayer and supplication to Almighty God for forgiveness of all my sins and follies, and also a manifestation to me that I might know of my state and standing before him, for I had full confidence in obtaining a divine manifestation as I previously had one.”

Casey Griffiths:
So he himself is saying, I was wondering how I was doing, if I was doing okay. I had confidence that God would answer me, but I didn’t quite know what the answer was going to be.

Maclane Heward:
Yeah, which I think is the fact that he, he forgives him so readily is also interesting. You know, Elder Renlund, just last conference, he said, “The Savior yearns to forgive our sins, help us access his power and transform us.” I think that this is something that you learn from both the First Vision and Moroni’s vision, is that heavenly messengers and Christ himself yearn to forgive us. That’s a pretty powerful phrase and, and concept, too.

Casey Griffiths:
You know what I’ve always loved here, too, is him saying, I prayed to know my standing before God. I just don’t know if we do that often enough. There was an elder on my mission. He was a convert to the Church. He converted when he was a little… He had a marijuana leaf tattooed on his arm. And he came to me one time and said, You know what? I was reading Joseph Smith’s history and I prayed to know my standing before God. And here I am, like lifelong member of the Church. And I never thought to do that. I was just like, Yeah, I’m, I’m fine with God. But this guy sort of had picked up on what Joseph Smith had, which is occasionally it’s okay to check in with God and say, Hey, how am I doing? What’s my standing and, and what do you need me to do? That’s a good demonstration of a soft heart.

Maclane Heward:
It also seems like there, there doesn’t seem to be too many questions that God seems more motivated to answer. And I think that Elder Renlund is trying to get that across. And I think that Elder Kearon has done that, you know, as well in similar fashion, that he is in relentless pursuit of us. And this is how we’re reclaimed by him. And Joseph is manifesting this idea that God wants to teach his children. That teaching can be motivated through a desire for repentance, but then can be expanded upon, which is exactly what we see Joseph. And others have said that, you know, God is able to teach better. The cleaner we are, the more receptive we can be. And so here you get this manifestation that starts with cleansing of sin and then continues with teaching, just like the First Vision.

Casey Griffiths:
Well, let’s keep rolling along here, so. While I was in the act of calling upon God,” Joseph writes, “a light appeared in my room, which continued to increase until my room was lighter than at noonday. Then immediately, a personage appeared at my bedside, standing in the air for his feet did not touch the floor.” As you go through this passage, you’ll note that he, he goes out of his way to describe Moroni, what Moroni looks like, what Moroni is wearing, that Moroni exudes a light. And this is the beginning of this second theophany, which we have way more specific information about. Joseph Smith’s accounts of the First Vision vary in their length of what the Father and the Son said to him. But when it comes to Moroni, Joseph is really specific. And there’s another person, Oliver Cowdery, who’s very specific here, too. And so just to augment your study of Joseph Smith—History, which is Joseph Smith’s 1838 history, his official public history. Let me dip into some of the other histories he wrote. Like his earliest history is 1832. And this is how he describes Moroni. He says, “When I was 17 years of age, I called again upon the Lord, and he showed unto me a heavenly vision, for behold, an angel of the Lord came and stood before me.

Casey Griffiths:
“It was by night, and he called me by name, and he said that the Lord had forgiven me my sins.” So a call to action, it’s also accompanied by a forgiveness of sins, which is what Joseph is worried about. So that’s a Joseph Smith’s 1832 history. In, in 1835, a series of letters from Oliver Cowdery to W. W. Phelps are published in the Latter-day Saints Messenger and Advocate. And these letters are incredibly detailed. Oliver Cowdery was somewhat of a wordsmith, and he adds in a lot of stuff that kind of augments and helps us understand Moroni’s visit a little bit more. So we’re going to be dipping into that well, too. For instance, Oliver writes, “Our brother’s mind was unusually wrought up on the subject which had for so long agitated his mind. His heart was drawn out in fervent prayer, and his whole soul was so lost to everything of a temporal nature that Earth, to him, lost its claims, and all he desired was to be prepared in heart to communicate with some kind of messenger who could communicate to him the desired information of his acceptance with God.” And then Oliver adds, “The stature of this personage was a little above the common size of men in this age.

Casey Griffiths:
His garment was perfectly white, and he had the appearance of being without seam.”

Maclane Heward:
Casey, do you, do we know if Moroni is a resurrected being or a disembodied being?

Casey Griffiths:
Joseph depicts him as a resurrected person. And I would point out that there’s deep symbolism in that. Moroni kind of turned into a symbol for the Church. For instance, you know, when we build a temple, and I know we don’t do this as much now, we’ve kind of moved away from it a little bit, but we often put a statue of an angel on top, and we informally refer to the angel as Moroni. Now, again, that might be a little informal. The angels on tops of temples are supposed to reference the angel in Revelation 14, which is all the angels of the Restoration. But Moroni is kind of proof that the resurrection extends beyond Jesus Christ to everybody. In fact, I mean, when M. Russell Ballard was still around, he went on a radio show and he actually introduced it by saying, you know, What if I told you somebody had come back from the dead, and the host was like, You mean Jesus? And M. Russell Ballard kind of phrased it saying, What if somebody else besides Jesus had come back from the dead? And then he mentioned Moroni. So Moroni is resurrected. He’s come back to life. He’s in a resurrected, perfect body, and he’s probably not the only one.

Casey Griffiths:
Like later revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants, I’m looking at Section 133, verse 54, mentions that the righteous who lived before Christ were with Christ in his resurrection. That’s the phrase that’s used there. And Moroni could be an example of this kind of army, vanguard, of physical resurrected beings that assist in the work of preparing the Earth for the millennial reign of Christ. He’s not the only one. Like in a couple of weeks, we’ll talk about Peter and James, who are resurrected beings also, and Moses, and Elias, and Elijah, who show up in the Kirtland Temple. Like we believe that resurrected beings have assisted in the Restoration, of course, assisting Jesus Christ, the, the first fruits of the resurrection.

Maclane Heward:
Which is, once again, jumping back into context, that’s not a real popular idea in Joseph Smith’s America, that revelations and ministering of angels, to be blunt, it seems rather Catholic to a Protestant population who doesn’t really like Catholicism, and at certain times will suggest that we’re acting more like Catholicism than Protestant America is comfortable with.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, I think that sets us up for a little opposition. I mean, you, you can see it in that minister that talks to Joseph and says, All these revelations cease with the Apostles. And Joseph Smith is arguing, No, it didn’t. And these Apostles are actually involved in, in the work that I’m doing, which, again, isn’t a great way to win a lot of people to your side, I would guess. Okay, so we, we’ve covered the appearance of Moroni. Let’s talk a little bit about Moroni’s message. Maclane, do you want to pick it up around verse 33 and walk us through what Moroni had to say to Joseph Smith?

Maclane Heward:
Yes. Yep. “He called me by name and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni, that God had a work for me to do, and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people.” Wow. Truer words were never spoken. Right, I mean, I was, I was just listening to a podcast just the other day where some individuals were speaking disparagingly of Joseph Smith. And this phrase comes to mind as you think about it. It really is incredible. I mean, it doesn’t take but one Google search to recognize that his name is had for good and evil among all nations.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, this is interesting because it’s sort of like a demonstrable prophecy. We’re almost 200 years removed from these events. In fact, no, we’re 200 years removed. The 200th anniversary of Moroni’s appearance was last year in 2023, and this has happened. Like all you have to do is Google Joseph Smith’s name, and you can see that Moroni’s prophecy comes true. Mostly, it seems like for evil, but also some people recognizing the good. I note, when I was a missionary, I found a book called The American Religion, written by a guy named Harold Bloom, who was a professor of Humanities at Yale University, not a Latter-day Saint. In fact, I don’t think Harold Bloom was Christian, to be honest with you. I think he was sort of a nominal Jew, if what I read is right. But The American Religion asked the question of, what has America contributed to the religious world? And his answer essentially was, Mormonism, Latter-day Saints, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So he writes a lot about Joseph Smith, but there’s one quote that’s been picked up on and quoted by a few leaders of the Church. Bloom wrote, “I do not find it possible to doubt that Joseph Smith was an authentic prophet.

Casey Griffiths:
Where in all of American history can we find his match? The Prophet Joseph has proved again that economic and social forces do not determine destiny. In proportion to his importance and his complexity, he remains the least studied personage of an undiminished vitality in our entire national saga.” So there’s a little good among all the evil that’s written about Joseph Smith, but yeah, that’s a prophecy that I think is demonstrable that we can prove happened.

Maclane Heward:
Yeah, let me share one more. So I’ve been thinking a little bit about our paradigms and our perspectives and, and our assumptions and how that influences the way that we see things. I was recently reading an article by Steven Harper about money digging, and he sets up this article in a really, really fascinating way where, in essence, he says the fact that Joseph is a money digger is indisputable, but then he actually uses two different people to exemplify different reactions to this reality. And they’re of the same family. One’s a niece and one’s a nephew of President McKay, David O. Mckay. And one is named Fawn Brodie, and the other one is Thomas McKay. And Fawn Brodie, in essence, takes this view that if he was a money digger, then he could not have been a prophet because God would never use a money digger to eventually be a prophet. And her brother, Thomas McKay takes the opposite approach and says, Well, first of all, he’s not a prophet when he is engaged in money digging, and neither of them convince the other. The reality for both of them is the same, that Joseph was a money digger. They just take very different approaches.

Maclane Heward:
Here you have somebody, I mean, Fawn Brodie wrote, No Man Knows My History, that becomes kind of a beginning of a second wave of anti-Mormonism. And her brother stays, seems to stay faithful to this prophetic vision of Joseph. So good and evil, sometimes in the same house.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. A lot of it is kind of what you bring to it yourself, right? I mean, not even like considering objectively the evidence. It’s like what you’ve been told and what you feel about it a lot of times determines how you interpret the evidence to say Joseph Smith was good or evil.

Maclane Heward:
Let me read this next verse. “He said there was a book deposited written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang. He also said that the fullness of the everlasting gospel was contained in it as delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants.” What a message of hope and a message that God continues to speak and that speaks to all of his children, not just to one.

Casey Griffiths:
And, I mean, the language here is important, too, because Joseph Smith isn’t speaking in generalities. Sometimes people that try to explain Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon talk about it kind of as a spiritual revelation. But in, in his history, he’s talking about it in concrete terms, right. Here’s a book. Here’s what it’s going to look like in the next verse, very specific language, he said, “Also that there were two stones and silver bows. These stones fastened to a breastplate constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim, deposited with the plates, and the possession and use of these stones were what constituted seers in ancient or former times.” So again, we’ve got to emphasize that even though people sometimes want to spiritualize this and say, Well, Joseph Smith received this by inspiration, he’s not talking in those terms, in his own language. He’s talking about physical objects. He’s talking about tangible plates. And so is his family. Like let me run through a couple of things really fast here. This description in Joseph Smith—History is probably the most famous one of the Nephite interpreters, but other people in his family describe them, too. For instance, the second person to handle them after Joseph Smith is Lucy Mack Smith.

Casey Griffiths:
Joseph Smith handed her the Nephite interpreters while they were wrapped in a silk handkerchief. And she gave this description. She said they “consisted of two smooth, three-cornered diamonds set in glass and in silver bows.” And William Smith, Joseph Smith’s little brother, in a late interview, we’re talking 1890, said that “a silver bow ran over one stone and under the other, around over that one, and under the first in the shape of a horizontal figure eight, much like a pair of spectacles.” So they’re talking about physical objects. Lucy Mack describes a breastplate that came with it. She said the breastplate was “concave on one side, convex on the other, and extended from the neck downwards as far as the center of the stomach of a man of extraordinary size.” And William Smith is the one that says the interpreters could attach the breastplate by a rod connected on the outer edge of the right shoulder. So very, very specific things that they’re talking about here. And it might be a disservice if we try and spiritualize translation too much without noting that at least Joseph Smith’s family were talking about very tangible, physical objects here. And again, that mix between what was mechanical and what was spiritual is something we’re going to talk about when we get into the nitty-gritty of translation in a few episodes.

Casey Griffiths:
But let’s just note here that Joseph Smith is saying, No, this was a physical collection of objects given to me.

Maclane Heward:
Even today, still, we have, you know… He’s still spoken for good and evil, and people are still trying to come up with theories to describe how he’s able to do what he does without being prophet. And those theories tend to increase in complexity when, when they have to grapple with the materiality of these objects. Could Joseph have made up this book? Well, there’s… People argue on both sides. But then if he made up the book, if he, if he had it pre-written in his mind, what do we do with the plates? And the fact that people are lifting them, hefting them, rubbing the corners of the pages and having… And listening to them hit each other as if they were pieces of metal. Like how do we deal with and grapple with that? It’s one thing to say, Joseph must have just made this up, or he read it in a different book, or he amassed it through a couple of different sources. But then what about these material objects that so many testified of?

Casey Griffiths:
So that’s a barrier to deal with. Moroni introduces the plates, the objects with the plates. And now we get to, I know what you’ve been yearning to talk about, which is, which is Moroni talking about prophecy, where he’s, he’s mentioning Old Testament prophecy that’s going to be fulfilled. And we should note, part of the next part of Joseph Smith—History is duplicated in the Doctrine and Covenants. It’s Section 2. And so the Come, Follow Me block this week is covering Joseph Smith—History, but also Section 2. But Section 2 is in Joseph Smith—History, so you don’t have to read it twice if you don’t want to, though you should. So “after telling me these things, he commenced quoting the prophecies of the Old Testament.” He quoted the third chapter of Malachi. Joseph quotes those sections that talk about being burned to stubble, but then he gets to what arguably is the most haunting passage in the entire Hebrew Bible, Malachi 4, 5, and 6, which Moroni quotes to Joseph Smith, but in a very, very different way than it reads in the King James Bible. Do you want to walk us through that, Maclane?

Maclane Heward:
You know, sometimes I’ll, I’ll do this with students, and I’ll actually start in verse 3 that leaves you with the real focus on that haunting element of the passage, where it’s very clearly said, “If it were not so, the whole Earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.” So thinking about, we’re talking about something that if this doesn’t happen, the whole purpose of the Earth is utterly wasted. And so what is that ‘it’? It’s clearly worth our discovery. And then going back to verse 1 and 2, help us to understand what we’re talking about here. You really have a couple of different groups of people that are dealt with, and so we’ll walk through this slowly. “Behold, I will reveal unto you,” so this seems to be the Lord revealing unto Joseph in this context. “I will reveal to you the priesthood by the hand of Elijah, the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” Here, Elijah, clearly this Old Testament prophet has the capacity to seal on earth and seal in heaven. He’s going to come back, which has been prophesied of, clearly, I mean we’re quoting Malachi. And then verse 2, “And he,” Elijah, “shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers.”

Maclane Heward:
Now, in this verse, we’ve got three different groups of people. We’ve got the children. We’ve got the fathers, and we’ve got their fathers, which sometimes it’s easy to kind of combine those two groups into one, but they really are different. We learn in Section 27, as well as in the Old Testament, Exodus 32, that the promises made to the fathers, the fathers often reference Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the promises specifically referenced here seem to be the Abrahamic covenant and eternal families, families that continue onward, which really helps us understand that Elijah, the power, the priesthood power that Elijah brings back to the earth, will plant in the hearts of the children these powerful covenants that bind us to God, that are really central to us being restored to him. Those promises will naturally turn our hearts to our fathers, which we totally see this. We see this in a very practical way as people come to understand that God is ready and desirous to bring about the Restoration of all of his children, no matter the time period, no matter the place, and the temple ordinances that are done on behalf of those that have died without the opportunity.

Maclane Heward:
This really is a place where those promises of opportunity for eternal life allow us or motivate us to turn in our mind to our fathers, our ancestors, to do their work in behalf of them in the temples.

Casey Griffiths:
This idea of roots and branches is beautiful symbolism that goes back to, you know… Well, this is of the beginning of temple consciousness, isn’t it? This verse, which, by the way, I want to point out, is the only verse I know of that shows up in all four of the standard works. It’s in Malachi, the Bible, it’s in the Book of Mormon because the Savior quotes it, it’s in D&C 2, and it’s in Joseph Smith—History, sort of lays the groundwork for this idea of connected generations and what’s going to connect them, the sealing power and the work that goes on in temples.

Maclane Heward:
Along those same lines, I mean, just think about it. This clearly is a, a quote from from Malachi and from Moroni. But we don’t have any other passage of scripture that is included in the Doctrine and Covenants from Moroni’s quotation. We know that this is repeated at least four times to Joseph, and it becomes in chronological order, the first revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants, there really is this element of emphasis here. And I think that this becomes, in some ways, a foundation, a foundational text for the Restoration. The thing that I think is interesting about it is when does Joseph understand that it’s a foundational text to the Restoration?

Casey Griffiths:
It’s actually not in Joseph Smith’s lifetime that this is placed in the Doctrine and Covenants. It’s placed by Orson Pratt in 1876 because it’s so different from the original passage in Malachi and in the Book of Mormon that he felt it must have been different. I do want to point out, too, though. Can I push back against you a little bit on one thing?

Maclane Heward:
Yeah, please.

Casey Griffiths:
There is another passage that is quoted by Moroni that shows up in the Doctrine and Covenants again. Down in verse 40, Joseph just mentions he quoted the 11th chapter of Isaiah saying it was about to be fulfilled. Isaiah 11, and this might not be the part that Joseph is referencing because he just says the 11th chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah 11 speaks of a “stem of Jesse” or a leader whom “the Spirit of the Lord shall rest, who shall also possess the spirit of wisdom, understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.” That’s Isaiah 11:2. Joseph Smith gets a revelation in March 1838, which is around the time he may have been writing this history also that’s now Section 113 of the Doctrine and Covenants. The revelation, the Lord identifies the rod that comes out of the stem of Jesse as a servant in the hands of Christ, who is partly a descendant of Jesse as well as of Ephraim, or of the house of Joseph on whom there is laid much power, which we, we take to assume that it’s about Joseph Smith. So it’s interesting that while Joseph Smith is writing this, he gets a revelation, Section 113, which actually steers him towards saying that this Isaiah prophecy is about him and his role to set things up in the latter days, which is kind of cool.

Maclane Heward:
That’s really cool. Now, let me ask this question. Does it lend itself to the thought that these passages, these two passages become significant foundational texts to the Restoration?

Casey Griffiths:
Well, I mean, definitely Malachi 4, 5, and 6, right? Boy, that language is used over and over and over and over again whenever we talk about the temple. We talk about things like the spirit of Elijah, we talk about the return of Elijah. Last little while, we’ve really talked about this a lot because of the return of the Kirtland Temple to Church stewardship. I would say that Isaiah 11, lesser so. And I wonder, you know, the timing in 1838 as Joseph Smith is going through some serious trials. He’s been forced to leave Kirtland. He’s going to Missouri. It’s kind of an out of the frying pan and into the fire sort of situation. And the Lord may have needed to buoy him up. But it’s an interesting connection that Joseph Smith receives a revelation in 1838, that something that he was told in 1823, like a full 15 years earlier was about him. And it comes right at a time when the prophet kind of needs a little affirmation that he is God’s servant, that he’s been called by God to do these great and marvelous works.

Maclane Heward:
You think about this, this revelation comes initially and it’s written down and remembered, but then God brings it back up in ways that are unique and different than the interpretation originally. I think that that’s also a really interesting element of this narrative is Joseph clearly sees the Book of Mormon and this work to do as important, but I would, I would suggest that it increases in importance over time and the clarity of the purpose of those revelations increase. Right, like I don’t think that in 1823, Joseph thinks of Section 2, how Moroni is quoting Malachi. I don’t think he thinks of it and thinks, Oh, this is going to become essential to what the Church is going to become. But then you have a revelation about Alvin, and you have revelations about baptism for the dead, and so many other revelations that then looking back, we can say, Oh, that’s interesting how these further revelations add clarity to this piece that comes so early.

Casey Griffiths:
I mean, to a certain extent, that’s scripture study, right? I mean, there’s a reason why you don’t just read the scriptures once when you’re a young person, and that’s it, you’re done. It seems like for Joseph Smith and for us, when you go back to the scriptures again and again, the meaning changes. Not that the words themselves magically change, but that we change and we find new meanings, and the Spirit hits us in a little different ways. Like when I read through the Book of Mormon, as a person in my life situation right now, it hits differently than it did when I was, say, a 19-year-old missionary. And Joseph Smith is just kind of saying the same thing. Let’s keep moving here. And I want to just point out what we’re getting here isn’t everything that Moroni quoted to Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith references Isaiah 11, the third chapter of Acts. He mentions the second chapter of Joel, which Joel 28 to 32 has this marvelous prophecy, “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions, and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days, I will pour out my spirit,” which again is this incredible prophecy that in the last days, there’s not going to be an end to revelation.

Casey Griffiths:
In fact, that’s when the revelation will really flow. Those are the ones Joseph Smith mentions. But I, I told you, Maclane, that Oliver Cowdery writes this letter. So I’m just going to list these off really fast, and you can kind ofwrite them down and go and look at them for yourself. But here’s other passages that Oliver Cowdery said Moroni quoted to Joseph Smith. All right, here we go. Oliver Cowdery said that Moroni also quoted Deuteronomy 32:23-24, verse 43, Psalms 100:1-2, Psalm 107:1-7, Psalm 144:11-12, 144:13, 146:10, Isaiah 1:23-26, Isaiah 2:1-4, Isaiah 4:5-6. Isaiah 11:15-16, Isaiah 29:11, 13-14. We’ll note that’s the marvelous work passage. Isaiah 43:16, Jeremiah 16:16, which I remember because it’s scripture mastery. It’s about hunters and fishers going out and finding people. And that’s what you’ll find with a lot of these scriptures as you go through and read them. They’re talking about gathering. For instance, Jeremiah 30:18-21 and 31:1, 8-9, 27-28, 32-33. This is all passages in Jeremiah, a prophecy about the latter day gathering of Israel. And Jeremiah 50:4-5, and 1 Corinthians 1:27-29. So it’s a, it’s a whole sermon, right? He doesn’t just quote three or four different passages. According to Oliver Cowdery, they spent the whole night going through all this stuff.

Casey Griffiths:
And I want to point out one. This is Jeremiah 31, which seems to be the passage that Moroni quotes the most, according to Oliver Cowdery. Chapter 31 of Jeremiah, verses 31 through 33, reads as follows, “Behold the days come, sayeth the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenants that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband to them, sayeth the Lord, but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. And after those days, sayeth the Lord, I will put my law in the inward parts and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” So all about like a new covenant that’s going to happen. That’s the Old Testament passages that he’s citing, talking about this latter day gathering, this new covenant, all the stuff that we’re still sort of excited talking about today.

Maclane Heward:
The first thing that came to my mind as you were reading that passage was Joseph’s concept of Zion, which is another topic for another day. But it’s interesting that, that this is also a concept that comes early in the Restoration but is dramatically clarified over time in Joseph’s mind. Another thing I think is worth maybe mentioning here is the difference between Oliver and Joseph, and just the fact that Oliver demonstrates his focus on words and details, and Joseph seems to get high-level generalizations about what’s happening.

Casey Griffiths:
Joseph is the big picture guy. Oliver Cowdery is kind of the, the details guy, and they work well together with that focus. We’ve been mentioning Moroni gives him this vision. He ends, this is picking it up in verse 42 with a warning. He said, I was, I, “I should not show them the plates to any person, neither the breast plates with the Urim and Thummim, only to those whom I should be commanded to show them. If I did, I should be destroyed.” So that sets us up for a lot of translation, which is people saying, I want to see the plates, and Joseph Smith saying, I can’t show them to anybody. Moroni gives him this warning. And then the way he describes it, he says, “After this communication, I saw the light in the room begin to gather immediately around the person who had been speaking to me, and it continued to do so until the room was again left dark, except just around him, when instantly I saw, as it were, a conduit open right up into heaven, and he ascended till he entirely disappeared, and the room was left as it had been before this heavenly light made its appearance.”

Casey Griffiths:
But that’s not the end of Moroni’s visit. Weirdly enough, he says Moroni appears again. Verse 45, “related the very same things which he’d done at his first visit without the least variation, which having done, he informed me of great judgments which were coming upon the earth.” So Moroni appears again, shares the same message, adds a little bit to it. Like this is good pedagogy, repeat again and again and again, and then add a little bit more, making sure they understand what’s already been given. And then verses 46 and 47 say he appears again. Then he realizes “almost immediately after the heavenly messenger had ascended from me for the third time, the cock crowed, and I found the day was approaching so that our interviews must have occupied the whole of the night.” So repeat it again and again. And then the next part of the story, tell us a little bit about what happens with Joseph Smith’s father.

Maclane Heward:
So yeah Joseph goes. He’s clearly exhausted, which we get elements of this later in historical documents talking about just the, the drain that visitations and heavenly manifestations cause physically. But he’s working and he’s not doing very well, and he is told to go back home where he is crossing the fence and, and falls and collapses because he’s so exhausted and who should appear, but Moroni again. And interestingly, Lucy Mack Smith indicates that one of the things that Moroni says this time is, Why did you not tell your father? Almost in a accusatory way. And Joseph says, I was worried that he wouldn’t believe me. And then he’s supported and told to go back and tell his father, which he does, and his father immediately believes him, which is not, I don’t think, too much of a surprise, considering Joseph Smith, Sr. is a seeker and also somebody that receives revelations, dreams. God seems to teach him in, in the form of a dream. And so this is not outside of his mindset or his view of how the Lord could address Joseph and direct him.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, I mean, Joseph talks about going out to work and passing out and the angel appearing to him and telling him to go tell his father. And I love Joseph Smith, Sr. Just look at this short passage in verse 50. “I returned to my father in the field and rehearsed the whole matter to him. He replied to me that it was of God and told me to go and do as commanded by the messenger.” You know, I’m a father. If my son came to me and related that an angel had appeared to him three times during the night and repeated the same message and that I just passed out and seen the angel again in the field, I would have been like, Hey, maybe you should go lie down for a little while. Joseph’s father is, No, this is of God. You should do what the angel asked you to do. Like he’s a man of faith, even if he’s not necessarily religiously affiliated during this time.

Maclane Heward:
And later on, Joseph describes his father as weeping. “He wept and told me it was a vision from God and to attend to it.” I mean, that tells you a little bit of the softness of Joseph Smith, Sr.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And I mean, we’ve talked a little bit about Joseph’s family, but this just kind of underlines that point that this is a family endeavor, that all the Smiths are going to be enlisted in helping out with this. So that takes us to the next part of the narrative, which is where Joseph Smith actually to the Hill Cumorah. This is the way he describes it. “Convenient to the village of Manchester, Ontario County, New York, stands a hill of considerable size, the most elevated of any in the neighborhood. On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates deposited in a stone box.” And we did kind of gloss over this, but he says that the angel also showed him the precise location where the stone and the box would be. He says, “I obtained a lever, I fixed under the edge of the stone with a little exertion, I raised it up.” And this what he describes appearing in there, he said, “I beheld the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the brass plate, as stated by the messenger, the box in which they lay was formed by laying stones together in some kind of cement.

Casey Griffiths:
“In the bottom of the box were laid two stones, crossways of the box, and on these stones lay the plates and other things with them.” Now, this is where I think that part about Joseph Smith’s seer stone and treasure seeking may have come into play. He says, “I made an attempt to take them out, but was forbidden by the messenger, and was again informed the time for bringing them forth had not yet arrived. Neither would until four years from that time.” Now, in other histories, Joseph Smith makes it clear that this isn’t as mild a rebuke as it sounds in his 1838 history. So for instance, in his 1832 history, he said, “I immediately went to the place and found where the plates were deposited as the angel of the Lord had commanded me, and straightway made three attempts to get them.” He writes that he wondered if he was seeing a dream or maybe a vision, that this wasn’t really happening. He said,” I cried unto the Lord in agony of soul, why can I not obtain them? Then the angel appeared unto me again and said to me, You have not kept the commandments of the Lord, which I gave unto you.

Casey Griffiths:
Therefore, you cannot now obtain them, for the time is not yet fulfilled. Therefore, thou was left unto temptation, that thou mightest be made acquainted with the power of the adversary. Therefore, repent and call on the Lord, and thou shalt be forgiven in his own due time, and thou shalt obtain them.” In an 1835 retelling, he says, “The powers of darkness strove hard against me. I called on God. The angel told me that the reason why I could not obtain the plates was because I was under transgression.” So it seems like that’s coming into play here, too.

Maclane Heward:
Are there any indications of what that particular transgression would be at that time in 1823?

Casey Griffiths:
I mean, there’s other passages that basically say, You cannot obtain them for the purpose of getting gain. And I mean, he’s 17. And part of the context here, too, is his family was building a house. That’s something that happens just a few months after this incident. His brother Alvin dies, and that hurts the family economically. But even before then, the family is sort of struggling to clear their land, to build a house, to take care of themselves. And it seems like that might have been the reason that, you know, a 17-year-old kid finds gold plates You know, he may have been seeking for riches or for notoriety, and the angel’s kind of warning against them.

Maclane Heward:
So the Smiths are already… They’ve purchased this land on loan, and they’ve got to make some, some pretty significant payments. But then they make a decision to, and Alvin really pushes this forward, to build a better, nicer house. And so that accentuates the financial difficulty. And then Alvin dies, and this becomes a really difficult moment. You know, just the next year when he shows up to the hill. He has a moment, according to Lucy Mack Smith, where he puts the plates down. He is able to lift them up and he puts them down. In that process, he thinks to himself, maybe there’s something else in this box that could be financially beneficial. So he goes back to cover up the box, and then when he turns to collect the plates again, they’re gone, and Moroni appears and rebukes him, and he’s able to lift up the lid of the box to see that the plates are safe in the box, and he tries to touch them again or grab them again, and he’s blown off the plates. In Lucy’s account, it says that when he came to, he is saddened and returns home knowing that perhaps the family is going to be anticipating him bringing the plates home.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. Like I said, none of this is really malicious or demonstrates that Joseph Smith is evil, but I think the angel is kind of setting the tone here. Joseph Smith’s mother later sums this up. This is her summary statement. She says, “The angel showed him by contrast the difference between good and evil and the consequences which would follow both obedience and disobedience to the commandments of God.” Then she explains, “in such a striking and forceful manner that the impression was always bright in his recollection until the very end of his days.” She says, “In giving a relation of the circumstance not long prior to his death, he remarked that ever afterwards he was willing to keep the commandments of God.” So kind of got smacked down, I guess, here to get his head in the right place, and it works.

Maclane Heward:
Let me share this with, with you about the conversation he has with his father. You know, in 1824, they’re anticipating him bring the plates home. And when he gets there without them, he says to his father, I could not get them. And then his father said, Did you see them? Yes, replied Joseph, I saw them, but could not take them. And then his father says, I would have taken them if I had been in your place, and then Joseph says simply, Why you do not know what you say, I could not get them, for the angel of the Lord would not let me. You know, there’s this element of, like, Dad, have you ever been zap-fried by an angel? Like, it doesn’t feel good. And it, it really adds meaning to the previous passages of warning that Moroni constantly gives to Joseph, and that he will later when he actually obtains the plates. It’s like, If you let this go from your hands, you will be cut off. And I can imagine Joseph thinking in his mind eternal ramifications, but also physical ramifications of disobedience.

Casey Griffiths:
And a lot of this, you know, sets up that conflict over people saying, I want to see the plates, and Joseph saying, I made a promise that I wouldn’t show anybody the plates. I’ve learned not to mess with Moroni, per se. All right, we’re going to cover the next couple of verses where Joseph Smith himself sort of quickly summarizes a lot of history. For instance, verse 54, he said, “Accordingly, as I’d been commanded, I went at the end of each year, and each time I found the same messenger there and received instruction and intelligence from him at each of our interviews, respecting what the Lord was going to do and how and in what manner his kingdom was to be conducted in the last days.” Now, these four years, we’ve got fragments of here or there, and it can be very tempting to speculate. There’s only a couple sources that we have here that we really trust. For instance, in a later history, this is 1842, during this period of training, he had many visits. This is his wording, “from the angels of God unfolding the majesty and glory of the events that should transpire in the last days.” Now, what angels?

Casey Griffiths:
Well, there’s this statement from John Taylor, which admittedly is coming to us third-hand. But John Taylor gave a discourse where he said the following, “Joseph Smith in the first place was set apart by the Almighty, according to the councils of God in the eternal worlds, to introduce the principles of life. The principles which he had placed him in communication with the Lord and with the ancient apostles and prophets, such men for instance, as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, Adam, Seth, Enoch, and Jesus and the Father, and the Apostles that lived on this continent, as well as those who lived on the Asiatic continent. He seemed to be as familiar with these people as we are with one another. Why? Because he had to introduce a dispensation, which is called the dispensation of the fullness of times, and it was known as such by the ancient servants of God.” So John Taylor, who was a close associate to Joseph Smith, makes it sound like not only Moroni appeared once a year and instructed Joseph Smith, but Moroni brought along guest teachers. Joseph, do you want to hear from one of the Twelve Apostles from Jerusalem or one of the Twelve Disciples?

Casey Griffiths:
Or I have a special guest teacher tonight. It’s Enoch. This is all possibilities. The primary sources, for instance, Joseph’s mother, just say, “Joseph continued to receive instructions from the Lord and we to get the children together every evening for the purpose of listening while he imparted the same to the family. I presume we presented an aspect as singular as any family that ever lived on the of the Earth, all seated in a circle, father, mother, sons, and daughters, and giving the most profound attention to a boy, 18 years of age, who’d never read the Bible through his life.” So Joseph does family home evening, I guess you’d say. He has these remarkable experiences where he’s learned and taught, and then he goes home and shares it with his family.

Maclane Heward:
That’s really cool. And Alvin seems to be one of the greatest supporters of Joseph during these early time periods. And from my understanding, when he does pass away, it seems to cause a ripple in this regular occurrence of family home evenings. He’s the one that says, Let’s get our jobs done quickly tomorrow, and then you can share with us all the information about these visitations that you have.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and we should know that Alvin’s passing is only a couple of months after Moroni appears. But Lucy Mack Smith’s account of Alvin’s passing seems to indicate that he was very supportive. Like the way she relates it is that on his deathbed, Alvin calls Joseph in and tells him to be a good boy and do all in his power so that he can obtain the record. Again, a, a supportive family that helps him. And in the next couple of verses, verse 55 and 56, that’s where Joseph mentions that Alvin passes away and that that caused a great affliction to his family. Not, not just losing a brother, which would be tough, but that Alvin was a provider. Alvin was in his 20s. He was working. He was helping build a home for the family. And Alvin’s death came maybe the most challenging time that it could have while they’re building this house and they’re struggling financially. So a little poignancy there, too.

Maclane Heward:
That motivates Joseph to then need to go out and get hired by Josiah Stowell to dig for money.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And a little excerpt here where Joseph notes that, yes, a man named Josiah Stowell, who lived in Chenango County, state of New York, had heard something of a silver mine. This is where the money digger accusations come away. This is one of the controversies that we’re dealing with. So again, after Alvin’s passing, the way Lucy Mack Smith remembers this was that Josiah Stowell approached Joseph. Lucy writes, “he came for Joseph on account of him having heard that he possessed certain keys by which he could discern things invisible to the natural eye.” And Lucy also says “Joseph endeavored to divert him from this vain project, but he was inflexible and offered high wages to such as would dig for him and was very anxious to have Joseph work for him. Consequently, he returned with the old gentleman besides several others who were picked up in the neighborhood and who commenced digging.” And so this is where Joseph Smith goes down to the New York-Pennsylvania border, works at a month digging a silver mine, and this is where the stories of him being a money digger come into play. This is a controversy that still follows Joseph Smith today.

Casey Griffiths:
I still hear people online, Reddit and other places, still bring up the fact, Oh, this guy was a money digger. Joseph Smith was very open about this. In fact, in 1838, there was a Q&A in the Elders’ Journal. The question was, Was not Joe Smith a money digger? Joseph replied, Yes, but it was never a very profitable job for him. He only got $14 a month for it.

Maclane Heward:
Which to me, I think that’s the perfect way to solve this problem, right, which is to say, Yes, absolutely. It wasn’t very profitable.

Casey Griffiths:
I mean, Joseph’s mentioning this in his history for a couple other reasons, too. Verse 57, “While I was thus employed, I was put to board with a Mr. Isaac Hale of that place, and it was where I first saw my wife, his daughter, Emma Hale.” And so that’s part of the, I guess, utility of one of the blessings that comes from pursuing this mine with Josiah Stowell, is he meets Emma. The other thing that maybe we can make a negative into a positive here is that Josiah Stowell becomes a convert, a believer in Joseph Smith’s ability. So interestingly, they never find the mine that they’re talking about. But Josiah Stowell becomes absolutely convinced that Joseph is the real deal. In fact, the night that Joseph brings the, the plates back to his family’s house, because at first he gets the plates, then a couple of days later, he brings them to the house. He hands them through the window and hands them to Josiah Stowell. Actually, Stowell was the first person that took the plates out of Josiah Smith’s hands the morning he brought them in. And Josiah Stowell also later testifies as a witness on behalf of Joseph Smith at a trial held in the summer of 1830.

Casey Griffiths:
In his testimony, Stowell describes the plate’s dimensions and acknowledged that he held the record while it was wrapped in a linen cloth and only saw a corner of the plates. And he later offers to purchase $500 or $600 of copies when the Book of Mormon is printed. So I mean, Joseph’s sincerity appears to have at least converted Stowell. As part of this wild goose chase down to Pennsylvania, he does also meet Emma Smith, his wife, in verse 57 and 58, he talks about this.

Maclane Heward:
It also makes great inroads to what will become the Coleville branch with the Knights, and both of those families become very, very important. In fact, it is the Knights’ wagon that Joseph takes to the Hill Cumorah to obtain the plates on that initial September night, 1827. It’s the Knights’ wagon that he takes.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, the Knights, this family that he meets while he’s working in Pennsylvania because he stays there for a couple of months. I guess they give up on the mine after about a month, and then Joseph goes out as a hired hand, makes these friends like the Knights, becomes good friends with Josiah Stowell, and falls in love with Emma Hale, which we got to deal with another controversy here. Emma and Joseph eloped without Isaac Hale’s approval, and it may have been because of Joseph Smith’s background, but this is how Isaac Hale describes the situation. He says, “The young Smith made several visits at my house and at length asked my consent to marry my daughter, Emma. This I refused and gave him my reasons for so doing, some of them which were that he was a stranger and followed a business that I could not approve.” I’m assuming this means Joseph Smith’s prophetic role. “He then left the place. Not long after this, he returned. And while I was absent from home, carried off my daughter in the state of New York, where they were married without my approbation or consent.” So kind of a young, rebellious love story.

Casey Griffiths:
Joseph and Emma abscond. But this brings up another persistent rumor that follows Joseph Smith, which is that he, like, kidnapped Emma or something like that. In fact, the, the same Elders’ Journal where Joseph talks about money digging, one of the other questions was, Did not Joe Smith steal his wife? Joseph Smith’s answer, Ask her. She was of age. She can answer for herself. Sounds like Joseph Smith isn’t afraid of allowing Emma to tell her side of the story. And in an 1879 interview, Emma does tell her side of the story. This is what she says, “I had no intention of marrying when I left home, but during my visit at Mr. Stowell’s, your father visited me there. My folks were bitterly opposed to him and being importuned by your father,” meaning Joseph Smith, aided by Mr. Stowell, “who urged me to marry him, and preferring to marry him to any other man I knew, I consented. We went to Squire Zechariah Tarble’s, and were married.”

Maclane Heward:
Yeah, that seems to be… The way that it’s described in this account seems to have this element of just spur-of-the-moment decision. I mean, who knows? Maybe that, maybe that’s exactly what happened. The other thing that I think is really interesting here is that most scholars indicate that it’s not until the turn of the 1800s that people can really choose independent of any other force who they marry. Economically, it was incredibly difficult to establish your own unit after marriage prior to the 1800s, but things had, had progressed to the point that they were able to more easily establish their own unit. And so it allowed for individuals to choose their spouse for themselves rather than choosing a spouse that would then be incorporated into a larger kinship group or economic unit. And you see this right here. I mean, you see it with Joseph and with Emma.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And I mean, that’s another story, I guess, controversy from Joseph Smith’s young life. But put in context, it’s quite understandable. And again, Emma is not a shrinking flower or anything like that. She’s, she’s very able. She’s older than Joseph by one year, we should point out, too. And it seems like, you know, she made this decision of her own free will and choice that she, she wanted to marry Joseph. And so she does, even though it sets up conflict with her family. Though I should note, they do do most of the translation on the Hale Farm, because after all this is over, they go back and they live with the Hales. So they, they made up to some degree. In fact, this is where we get to the beginning of the translation process. Verse 59, “At length the time arrived for obtaining the plates, the Urim and Thummim and the breastplate on the 22nd day of September, 1,827, having gone as usual at the end of another year to the place where they were deposited, the same heavenly messenger delivered them up to me with this charge, that I should be responsible for them, that if I should let them go carelessly or through any neglect of mine, I should be cut off, but that if I would use all my endeavors to preserve them until he, the messenger, should call for them, they should be protected.”

Casey Griffiths:
And you noted Mclane, when he goes to the hill, he takes the wagon that belongs to a person he met in Pennsylvania, Joseph Knight, Sr. The Knights are going to be close friends of Joseph Smith. We’ll talk a little bit about Joseph, Sr. when we get to the revelation for him in the Doctrine and Covenants, which is Section 12. Emma also comes along with him to the hill. We don’t always mention that, but Emma shows up and, and comes with him to the hill, and she waits at the bottom of the hill while Joseph goes up and gets them. Later, when Joseph comes down off the hill, he tells Emma to get out of there as fast as she can, and he hides the plates in the woods. And this is when some of the stories come in where his mother’s so nervous about the plates, he says, Don’t worry, I have a way of knowing if the plates are safe. Hands her the Nephite interpreters wrapped in a silk handkerchief and explains that he could use this. This plays into the next verse where he says, I found out the reason why I’d received such strict charges to keep them safe.

Casey Griffiths:
He mentions “every stratege”m that could be invented was resorted to for that purpose. The persecution became more bitter and severe than before, and multitudes were on the alert continually to get them from me, if possible. Now, Joseph also says, “The most strenuous exertions were used to get them from me.” That is a big understatement. A lot of stuff happens, and really, they can only spend about three months in Palmyra before they have to leave and go to Emma’s hometown of Harmony, Pennsylvania, because Joseph can’t get any translating done. People are constantly trying to steal the plates.

Maclane Heward:
You even get Willard Chase, who actually hires people to come and use divining rods. And his sister, Sally, has the capacity to see, just like Joseph, which we’ve talked so much about. This is another example of how common the use of seer stones would have been and how acceptable it was. And they’re using things like that to try and locate the plates. And Joseph has to really be creative in how to keep the plate safe.

Casey Griffiths:
It’s kind of a crazy aspect of the story, but we introduced Joseph’s seer stones. Just as a way of showing kind of the normality of seer stones. Willard Chase, who’s the guy, apparently on Willard Chase’s farm is where Joseph Smith found his seer stone. Lucy Mack Smith mentions that Willard Chase hired a conjurer to travel 60 miles to divine the place where the record was deposited by magic art. And Lucy also says, Joseph kept the Urim and Thummim constantly about his person, and he could, by this means, ascertain at any moment if the plates were in danger. Now, the most dramatic event here is when Joseph goes to retrieve the plates after he’s hidden them from taking them down off the hill. According to Joseph Smith’s own account, mixed in a little bit with Lucy Mack Smith, once the plates were in his possession, he wraps them in a linen cloth, and then he leaves the main road and cuts through the woods on his way home. On the way, he was confronted by a man who struck him with the stock of a rifle. Joseph managed to knock the man down and run away at top speed.

Casey Griffiths:
About half a mile later, he was accosted by a second man, and again, Joseph managed to knock down the assailant and escape. But before he arrived at the Smith home, he was confronted by a third attacker. In the struggle to get away, Joseph actually dislocates his thumb. And according to Lucy Mack Smith, when he finally arrived at the house, he was, in her words, altogether speechless from fright and exhaustion. So there are quite a few number of incidents where they try to get the plates away from them. And everybody in Joseph’s family talks about this. Like it was a crazy time, the three months from September to December when they leave to go to Harmony, everybody constantly trying to get the plates from them.

Maclane Heward:
You have a bunch of different stories where they’ve narrowly escaped being obtained by devious means. You know, you get Don Carlos, his little brother, they rush out of the cabin and making a, a bunch of noise. And this mob that had gathered to try and get the plates are scared away, thinking that there’s more than just Hyrum and his siblings in the house. There’s just time after time after time, these plates are kept safe by Joseph’s capacity to be creative and the Lord’s assistance along the way.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and the plates are protected. All right, so those are the adventures with the plates. Joseph mentions in verse 61 that they leave Palmyra, Manchester, his hometown, and they go to Pennsylvania, which is where Emma is from. And this is where the narrative kind of shifts to introduce one of the most interesting characters in the entire Restoration, but especially with regards to the translation of the Book of Mormon, and that’s Martin Harris. So Maclane, walk us through Martin and his part of the story here.

Maclane Heward:
Well, let’s start off by reading starting in verse 61, and I think that this will come up naturally. We’ll, we’ll learn a little bit more about Martin. “The excitement, however, still continued, and rumor with her thousand tongues was all the time employed in circulating falsehoods about my father’s family and about myself. If I were to relate a thousandth part of them, it would fill up volumes. The persecution, however, became so intolerable that I was under the necessity of leaving Manchester and going with my wife to Susquehanna County in the state of Pennsylvania. While preparing to start, being very poor and the persecution so heavy upon us that there was no probability that we would ever be otherwise, in the midst of our afflictions, we found a friend in a gentleman by the name of Martin Harris, who came to us and gave me $50 to assist us on our journey. Mr. Harris was a resident of Palmyra Township, Wayne County in the state of New York, and a farmer of respectability.” I think it’s important here to note just briefly what this financial contribution would have meant. So $50 is, that’s a good amount of money. If I were to give you, Casey, $50, I think we would be friends.

Casey Griffiths:
Especially back in, you know, 1828.

Maclane Heward:
Yes. And there’s some that have suggested that that would have been equivalent to… In fact, there’s one particular article by a scholar named Richard Bennett who said that the equivalency of $50 in that day, that was worth $2,500 in 2010. So, I mean, if I gave you $50, we’d be friends. If I give you $2,500, you’d want to know what the friendship would include, right? I mean there’s something, something to that. But this really helps to contextualize what’s going to happen with Martin, right? I mean you think about giving $50 to a friend who says they’re a prophet who’s found gold plates but won’t show you those gold plates. You give $50 to him. Then imagine Martin going home and talking to his wife and saying, Hey, dear, how was your day? You know, I met my friend, Joseph, the prophet. He’s got gold plates, but he can’t show me them. And I gave him $2,500. That’s a challenge in any marriage, I would say, and it clearly is in, in Martin’s But you see that Martin already has this sense of he’s trusting Joseph, and he knows a little bit about him and his character, and he’s willing to, to make a few risks to see this thing through.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And like I said, Martin Harris sometimes gets a bad rap because he’s only associated with the Lost Manuscript episode, which we’re going to talk about in-depth next time. But boy, he makes some major sacrifices. Like if I gave a guy $2,500 who said he was translating an ancient record, I think my wife would get annoyed with me, too. And we always depict Martin as this skeptic, but he had a little bit of a right to be skeptical. Joseph’s story is pretty fantastic. And secondly, he’s the, he’s the guy who’s financing this operation. So he wants to know kind of, you know, what he’s investing in. And that does warrant a little bit of investigation, which I think just makes Martin wise.

Maclane Heward:
Which you know, you think about, if I were to tell my wife that this prophet had golden plates, I know her instant reaction would be like, Well, why doesn’t he sell a little bit to finance what he needs? You know, that just is a natural thought. It’s logical.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, it is. And, I mean, again, I’m not trying to sympathize with Lucy Harris, who, honestly, we don’t know that much about, and what we do know isn’t super positive. We know that Lucy Mack Smith did not like her. But yeah, I can see that she would have been a little skeptical. And so would Martin have been, too. And that’s kind of where the narrative takes us next, is that Martin feels like he has an obligation to sort of figure out if Joseph is the real deal or not.

Maclane Heward:
Even transferring the plates down to Pennsylvania proves to be difficult as they’re stopped a number of different times and their things are searched. So let’s read, let’s look at verse 62. “By this timely aid was I enabled to reach the place of my destination in Pennsylvania. And immediately after my arrival there, I commenced copying the characters off the plates. I copied a considerable number of them, and by means of the Urim and Thummim, I translated some of them, which I did between the time I arrived at the house of my wife’s father in the month of December and February following.” So he immediately jumps into this engagement with the text.

Casey Griffiths:
And this is important for our timeline here, right? He gets the plates in September of 1827, but everything is crazy. People are trying to steal the plates. He notes that translation really sort of starts, an early translation where he’s copying characters, and he says he’s translating some of the characters using the Urim and Thummim between December and February. So we’re getting fixed in our mind a translation timeline here.

Maclane Heward:
It also helps us to understand. You know, he gets… We’ll talk more about the 116 pages and things, but there’s a, we, we often reduce the time period of translation to a few months in the spring of 1829. But what we don’t do is take a closer look at some of the wrestlings that Joseph is engaged with when he initially gets the plates and has time to really think about. You know, he’s copying characters. He’s really thinking deeply about this, and we often, speaking of down upon people, we sometimes jump to Oliver Cowdery and his attempt at translating, and we sometimes say, Well, why? He just lacked faith. But the reality is Joseph has to wrestle with this, too. It doesn’t just immediately start to flow like we sometimes think about it when the revelation that we now have as the Book of Mormon really starts to come.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And, and I mean, we emphasize that short time period for a good reason. I mean, the entire Book of Mormon, as we know it, is produced in about three months of translation. But you’re right, in order to understand Oliver Cowdery and his backstory, we kind of have to point out that Joseph Smith had several months to sort of acquaint himself with the instruments and the plates and figure out how things worked. And that is where we’re at here. And it seems like Emma Smith is an early scribe, but Martin is the one that’s going to sort of be associated with, like, the full first phase of translation of the Book of Mormon. But before we get to that, he does feel like he needs to sort of test the waters a little bit.

Maclane Heward:
With that in mind, one thing just to add, you know, they, they place the plates in a barrel of beans. They have sticks in case they’re stopped and getting in trouble and they’re stopped twice. Each of these times they’re stopped, those that are searching are disappointed at finding nothing, which part of me wonders, like, how would you not dump the barrel of beans out? But hey, I’m, I’m clearly not doing the searching.

Casey Griffiths:
You don’t want to ruin a person’s beans. That was their livelihood back then. That was how you fed your family.

Maclane Heward:
Now let’s jump to verse 63 that’s going to help us to really understand some of Martin’s hesitancy and his desire to really have some assurances that are natural. “Sometime in this month of February, the aforementioned Mr. Martin Harris came to our place, got the characters which I had drawn off the plates and started with them to the city of New York. For what took place relative to him and the characters, I refer to his own account of the circumstances as he related them to me after his return, which was as follows. I went to the city of New York and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof, to Professor Charles Anthon, a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. I then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac and Arabic. And he said they were true characters. He gave me a certificate certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were true characters and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct.

Maclane Heward:
“I took the certificate and put it into my pocket and was just leaving the house when Mr. Anthony called me back and asked me how the young man found out that there were gold plates in the place where he found them, I answered that an angel of God had revealed it unto him. He then said to me, ‘Let me see the certificate.’ I accordingly took it out of my pocket and gave it to him when he took it and tore it to pieces, saying that there was no such thing now as ministering of angels, and that if I would bring the plates to him, he would translate them. I informed him that part of the plates were sealed, and that I was forbidden to bring them, he replied, ‘I cannot read a sealed book.’ I left him and went to Dr. Mitchell, who sanctioned that Professor Anthon had said, respecting both the characters and the translation.” This becomes a, a really fascinating moment in the historical timeline and in the fulfillment of the coming forth in the Book of Mormon. It’s this moment that really solidifies Martin Harris’s support of the publishing of the Book of Mormon, which we know he sells his farm.

Maclane Heward:
He sells his farm to finance this because he comes back seemingly reassured in what he experiences on this trip.

Casey Griffiths:
And we should note, what we’re getting here in Joseph Smith—History is sort of the Reader’s Digest version. It simplifies what happened. A couple of recent scholarly efforts have expanded this story a little bit to where there’s not just one person that Martin takes the record to. Apparently, Martin took the record to three people.

Maclane Heward:
Yeah, and those three people are Charles Anthon, which we, we saw as a prominent character in what we just read, Samuel Mitchell, which also also shows up a little bit in the account, and then another man named Luther Bradish, who… And these three individuals are really where Martin Harris starts. And he actually starts with Luther Bradish. And Bradish is actually a native of the Palmyra area. He’s got family that extends in the past to this time and place. And the Harrises and the Bradishes seem to have a relationship long-term. Their fathers seem to work together. And Bradish, he was a lawyer. He was a intellect. He was a statesman. He had a lot of opportunities to go overseas and to represent presidents and things in many different capacities. And so it’s natural that Martin would go to Bradish first and really ask for his direction and his opinions on these, these works. We don’t really have a lot of information about what Bradish says. It does seem that he seems to focus Martin on others, Mitchell and Anthon, but Bradish really has an opportunity to speak from a personal experience place, a place of personal experience as he’s lived in Egypt.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. You got to imagine that Bradish is a big deal in this time period, you know. He’s done a lot of things, and he’s lived in Egypt, which would make him, you know, somebody that if Martin Harris has personal connections to it, immediately say, Well, I want to show these characters to somebody that’s been to Egypt and see if they can back up what Joseph Smith is saying.

Maclane Heward:
Interestingly enough, in one of the articles that I read, Lucy is actually quoted to have said that “it was agreed that Martin Harris should follow him as soon as Joseph should have sufficient time to translate the Egyptian alphabet, which Mr. Harris was to take to the east and through the country in every direction to all who were professed linguists to give them an opportunity of showing their talents.” So there’s this element of, we’re going to go and see what these linguists have to say. But on a similar note, there seems to be an element of collaboration, but also direction, too. So listen to this. “Because of his faith and his righteous deed, the Lord appeared unto Martin in a vision and showed unto him his marvelous work, which he was about to do, and he immediately came to Sesquehanna and said the Lord had shown him that he must go to New York with some of the characters, so he proceeded to copy some of them, and he took his journey to the Eastern cities.” So this not only seems to be something that Martin wants to do, to help solidify his convictions, but also as a direction from heaven to go and to talk to these individuals and get their collaboration on these, these sources.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And like I said, Luther Bradish is just the first one. It’s likely that Luther Bradish, refers Martin Harris to Samuel Mitchell, who’s in New York City. And it seems like that’s the next place that Martin Harris goes as he travels down to New York City. Again, this is all coming from a source named Pomeroy Tucker, who’s a prominent Palmyra citizen, who said that Martin sought out the interpretation and bibliographical scrutiny of such scholars as Luther Bradish, Dr. Samuel Mitchell, and Professor Anthon. Let’s talk a little bit about Samuel Mitchell.

Maclane Heward:
Yeah. So Samuel Mitchell is on the end of, towards the end of his life, actually, he’s at 64 years old, but he is very well respected, very well-respected intellect, and he’s also very well connected. So he’s eating dinner with presidents and rubbing shoulders with presidents He eats dinner with James Madison, and he supports Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson refers to him as the Congressional Dictionary at one point.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. It seems like a lot of people have interesting names for Samuel Mitchell. Like one person calls him the Nestor of American science. Nestor meaning the character from the Iliad. Another person calls him a stalking library, which I think is closer to a walking library the way we’d use it. And another person calls him the Delphic Oracle of New York. This guy was smart. He was held in high esteem. But we don’t know very much about his visit with Martin either.

Maclane Heward:
No, we don’t, though there seems to be some elements that he supports Mitchell’s assessment of the documents.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and it seems like Mitchell is the guy who refers Martin to Charles Anthon, then. And Anthon is the one that’s mentioned in Joseph Smith—History, as the main person Martin interacts with. Anthon is a superb scholar. He knows Greek, Latin, German, and French. However, we need to add there’s very little indication that he knew much about Egyptian. And again, the writing on the plates are referred to as Egyptian, reformed Egyptian. It doesn’t seem like Anthon knew Egyptian, Hebrew, or any other Middle Eastern language. And that’s a wrinkle to the story, too.

Maclane Heward:
But his hubris seems to really carry him through this conversation.

Casey Griffiths:
According to the side we’re hearing from Joseph Smith and Martin Harris, Anthon comes across as pretty arrogant.

Maclane Heward:
He’s a young scholar, so trying to, to make a name for himself. And then later on in 1844, he seems to deny some of the things that we hold in our accounts and some of Martin’s initial concepts.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, there’s letters that Anthon writes in 1834 and one written in 1841, where Anthon disputes Martin’s account of their meeting. So that’s one of the controversies here, too. In the 1834 letter, Anthon says that Martin intended selling his farm and giving the amount to those who wish to publish the plates. While in the 1841 letter, Anthon kind of contradicts himself, again, saying, Martin left his office determined not to sell his farm, or embark in speculation in the printing of the golden book. So Anthon’s contradiction is undercut a little bit by the fact that he contradicts himself. In 1834, he says that Martin was intent on selling his farm, and in the 1841 letter, he kind of makes it sound like, no, I convinced him not to do that. So Anthon’s side of the conversation is up for dispute. I guess Martin’s is, too. But the one fact we can’t get away from is that Martin does come back convinced that Joseph is really working with real plates, that this is authentic Egyptian, or reformed Egyptian, or some sort of ancient writing.

Maclane Heward:
There’s another source in 1844 that says, “Of one thing, however, I am sure,” this is according to a newspaper that records this about Mitchell, “that I never professed to be acquainted with the vast number of languages of which the Mormons speak.” Kind of an interesting way of saying it.

Casey Griffiths:
So he’s trying to, he’s trying to downplay his expertise.

Maclane Heward:
And that partly comes as a result of the missionaries connecting his narrative, the story that Martin tells about him, with the biblical prophecies of, of Isaiah and things.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, which I guess that’s understandable that Anthon doesn’t want to be the guy in Isaiah that gets rebuked. That makes sense. But Martin Harris is accurate, a remarkable fulfillment of prophecy, that according to Martin Harris, Charles Anthony almost says the exact words that are found in the Isaiah prophecy.

Maclane Heward:
Which really, that kind of takes us through these verses in terms of what we’ve got in the block this time.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. So let’s, let’s go over the consequences. Tons of consequences here, and they’re not difficult to spell out. Joseph Smith truly starts his prophetic ministry. The First Vision is kind of the very first call to action, but it really commences with Moroni giving him that call. At the same time, Joseph Smith acknowledges his own humanity, his, his fallibility, the problems that he has, his complexity of his cultural background and sets us up with the main characters of the story, Joseph Smith, Emma Smith, Martin Harris. What other consequences would you say come out of this part of Joseph Smith—History?

Maclane Heward:
I think that this sets the stage for a larger theological development to come with things like Section 2 and the gathering of Israel and other passages from Moroni, this really begs for more, not for the end of visitations, the end of communications, but really the tip of the iceberg in terms of what God is going to be about in working with Joseph to bring about the Restoration of the Church. Now, obviously, Joseph, I don’t think at this time recognizes that he’s going to restore a Church or bring about a Church, but there clearly seems to be in hindsight, some things that would allude to that fact. One of the things that happens with Alvin and the death of Alvin is that it leads to a desperate Smith family in terms of finances that push Joseph Smith in towards money digging, that push him towards, inclined towards gaining financial benefits from any and all sources, which also leads, it seems, to Moroni constantly warning Joseph, You cannot do this for financial gain. This… That cannot be part of this, this task, this work that you will be about.

Casey Griffiths:
And that’s another important thread to note why Martin Harris gets involved, right. I think this is setting us up for what we’re going to talk about next time, which is the loss of the manuscript of the Book of Mormon, the earliest manuscript, because Joseph Smith and his family don’t have the money to pay for the translation process. They have to rely on the kindness of others. And that includes Martin Harris. And that is a large part of why I think Joseph Smith is willing to give Martin Harris the manuscript, even though to say he has a bad feeling about it is probably underselling the point. At the same time, too, that incident, which, like I said, we’ll talk about next time, does illustrate that the Lord has bigger and broader plans, that he’s already anticipated some challenges. But we’re getting a taste here that it’s not going to be easy to bring forth a new book of scripture. It’s going to be challenging.

Maclane Heward:
And you, you understand that, for me, it’s easy to see why Joseph trusts Martin. Martin has connections with big names in the East. If there’s going to be household names in that time period, in that place, Bradish might be one of them. You know, Mitchell might be one of them. And so, to, to trust Martin as a businessman, he’s clearly wealthy, and as somebody that can help facilitate connections to greater things to come, that seems to be a natural fit.

Casey Griffiths:
Well, and, I mean, in the larger message of the Restoration, some of the stuff we might have talked about earlier, this idea of angels and miracles and everybody from past dispensations coming together to create this marvelous work. This is setting the scene here. There’s still a lot of bumps in the road to come, but what is done here and the way that the plates make it into Joseph’s hand is really, really remarkable and is going to set us up for this divine set of manifestations that result in the Book of Mormon. So that’s the big consequence, is. We start down the road that eventually results in a new book of scripture, the Book of Mormon being published. Well, thanks, Maclane. That was a lot to cover, but you did it aptly and well. Like, you’re a pro, and I appreciate you subbing in for Scott here with us. It’s good to have you with us.

Maclane Heward:
Well, definitely. I don’t feel equal to the substitution, but that was really, really fun. These topics are, are important and powerful to talk about.

Casey Griffiths:
And we’ll continue next week. We’ll pick up again with the story of the lost manuscript of the Book of Mormon. We’ll see everybody then.

Scott Woodward:
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Church History Matters. Our new episodes drop every Tuesday, so please join us next week as we continue to dig into the context, content, controversies, and consequences of the revelations of the Doctrine and Covenants. If you’re enjoying or gaining value from Church History Matters, we would love it if you could pay it forward by telling your friends about it or by taking a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Daniel Sorenson, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and Church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations people like you. Let me say that again. All of our content is free because people like you donate to make it possible. So if you’re in a position where you’re both willing and able to make a one-time or ongoing donation, be assured that your contribution will help us here at Scripture Central to produce and disseminate more quality content, to combat false and faith-eroding material out there in the digital marketplace of ideas. I try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast. Please remember that all of you is expressed in this every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.