Richard Bushman, Mormon Historian, Concedes to CES Letter Truths on CES Letters Podcast

Richard Bushman concedes to many points Jeremy Runnells brought up in the CES Letter in a discussion on the CES Letters podcast. CES Letters has no affiliation with the CES Letter, but is the latest attempt to debunk it. Richard Bushman is asked a series of questions stemming from the CES Letter, and responds to them in a faithful way. He agrees with many points and expresses his respect for Jeremy Runnells, the author. He gives some context for listeners to help navigate the difficult parts of church history in relation to Joseph Smith and the translation of the Book of Mormon. He also mentions the Book of Abraham and the Kinderhook Plates.

CES Letter[s]

The CES Letters website and podcast, new in 2024, are seemingly trying to combat the negative aspects of the CES Letter and hope to reach people looking for the actual CES Letter by choosing the nearly identical name and domain name CES Letters. They want to fool people into reading their site rather than the original, and even the web browser detects them as a potential phishing website, attempting to impersonate a legitimate site with a popup notice and the message “Did you mean cesletter.org? Attackers sometimes mimic sites by making hard-to-see changes to the web address.”

cesletters.org labeled as phishing site by browser. Did you mean cesletter.org? Attackers sometimes mimic sites  by making hard-to-see changes to the web address.
cesletters.org is labeled as a phishing site by browser. “Did you mean cesletter.org? Attackers sometimes mimic sites by making hard-to-see changes to the web address.”

The podcast has Mormon apologist and historian guests to discuss points of the CES Letter in a faithful light. While the site seems to be aiming at tricking readers into thinking they are the CES Letter, they are at least respectful of Jeremy Runnells. Much better than the slander other “apologist” sites have published about him at least.

Note: Since writing this the podcast and website have changed their name to “Study & Faith” and the branding has mostly been updated to reflect the change. The site also indicates itself as an “authorized experiential learning project” of BYU. So as this is getting to be more officially endorsed the branding is being updated away from the phishing-like cesletters.org and to studyandfaith.org. Also, notice that cesletters.com redirects to the official church website page for youth callings, could this be new and part of the marketing strategy too?

Richard Bushman

In an episode, the CES Letters podcast has Richard Lyman Bushman as a guest and discusses Translation. Bushman is an expert on Joseph Smith and Mormon history. He gives his faithful answers to questions from the CES Letter. Surprisingly in many instances, he concedes to Jeremy Runnells inquiries as true and states that these things somehow don’t bother him. He admits all the issues brought up by the CES Letter are in fact true, but he works to soften some of them or explain them away with some historical context, some mental gymnastics, and even some outright dismissals.

Bushman solves many issues by simply saying the things that bother many many people about church history now that the church is finally being more open and honest about are not things that bother him. They don’t bother him, so he doesn’t see an issue, but he does concede that some people do have issues with things like the seer stone rock in his hat translation process. People do have issues with the church changing the narrative from the beginning, and Bushman admits that the Smiths changed scripture replacing seer stone with the more biblically acceptable term Urim and Thummim once the saints grew uncomfortable with the idea of seer stones. When the church is caught in lies to change their narrative, he simply says, it wasn’t a real lie.

Some people may have concerns that the history was changed or that the narrative was changed a little bit. How would you help those people recognize the history and what is actually true and how to determine what is changed of the narrative or what is the actual truth of it? “It was changed. The Smiths immediately began trying to bury the fact. Joseph Smith played down his treasure seeking background as just a little episode which Josiah Stowell, just dismissed as something; Lucy Mack did the same. And what's significant is from the Book of Commandments to the Doctrine and Covenants, they changed one of the revelations to insert the word Urim and Thummim. See that's acceptable, desirable, versus seer stone. The church was trying to cover up, in that case, Joseph Smith's involvement with treasure seeking.” - Richard Bushman, LDS Historian | Interview on CES Letters (Study & Faith) Podcast | wasmormon.org
Some people may have concerns that the history was changed or that the narrative was changed a little bit. How would you help those people recognize the history and what is actually true and how to determine what is changed of the narrative or what is the actual truth of it? “It was changed. The Smiths immediately began trying to bury the fact. Joseph Smith played down his treasure seeking background as just a little episode which Josiah Stowell, just dismissed as something; Lucy Mack did the same. And what’s significant is from the Book of Commandments to the Doctrine and Covenants, they changed one of the revelations to insert the word Urim and Thummim. See that’s acceptable, desirable, versus seer stone. The church was trying to cover up, in that case, Joseph Smith’s involvement with treasure seeking.” – Richard Bushman, LDS Historian | Interview on CES Letters (Study & Faith) Podcast
The whole [seer stone translation] scene is made to appear ludicrous. The CES letter says these are crazy things, and you're saying they're not as ludicrous as they may seem. Why is that? “This is an old Mormon embarrassment, that the seer stone was something that had to be obscured, because it was degrading to think of Joseph Smith as a treasure seeker. That, I think, is a mistaken historical outlook... In 1834, E. D. Howe published a book in which he trotted out all the evidence he could find from the neighbors that the Smiths were practicing money digging. And this was to discredit them. And I think that's the first time that the smiths began to feel like this is something to be embarrassed about. And they began to change the story... And so ever since then, we've been embarrassed by something, and for the Smiths, it was part of everyday life.
It wasn't embarrassing at all. In fact, it probably played a large part
in their ability to accept the gold plates as legitimate.” - Richard Bushman, LDS Historian | Interview on CES Letters (Study & Faith) Podcast | wasmormon.org
The whole [seer stone translation] scene is made to appear ludicrous. The CES letter says these are crazy things, and you’re saying they’re not as ludicrous as they may seem. Why is that? “This is an old Mormon embarrassment, that the seer stone was something that had to be obscured, because it was degrading to think of Joseph Smith as a treasure seeker. That, I think, is a mistaken historical outlook… In 1834, E. D. Howe published a book in which he trotted out all the evidence he could find from the neighbors that the Smiths were practicing money digging. And this was to discredit them. And I think that’s the first time that the smiths began to feel like this is something to be embarrassed about. And they began to change the story… And so ever since then, we’ve been embarrassed by something, and for the Smiths, it was part of everyday life. It wasn’t embarrassing at all. In fact, it probably played a large part in their ability to accept the gold plates as legitimate.” – Richard Bushman, LDS Historian | Interview on CES Letters (Study & Faith) Podcast
I think that may make some people nervous, that the church is trying to cover up the truth.
How would you help them through something that might cause dissonance like that? “You just have to accept the fact that they didn't want to be made to look silly. Who wants to be made to look silly? So, if Joseph's associated with the wrong class of people, you do your best to make him look better. It wasn't a real lie. It was just subordinating, or retelling the story. Who doesn't retell the stories of their lives to make them look better?” - Richard Bushman, LDS Historian | Interview on CES Letters (Study & Faith) Podcast | wasmormon.org
I think that may make some people nervous, that the church is trying to cover up the truth. How would you help them through something that might cause dissonance like that? “You just have to accept the fact that they didn’t want to be made to look silly. Who wants to be made to look silly? So, if Joseph’s associated with the wrong class of people, you do your best to make him look better. It wasn’t a real lie. It was just subordinating, or retelling the story. Who doesn’t retell the stories of their lives to make them look better?” – Richard Bushman, LDS Historian | Interview on CES Letters (Study & Faith) Podcast
What was the purpose of the plates if they lay covered on the table while the translation commenced and proceeded? “We don't really have an answer, but they are important... their presence is significant. The problem is we don't know the technology of revealed translation. It's like the Book of Abraham manuscripts. That scholarship seems to show that what was on the scrolls we actually have is not what's in the Book of Abraham. And so the scrolls are like the plates. They're present, but they are not really containing the message. So there's some kind of stimulus or provocation or something that starts the revelatory process... I think it's an error for
us to try to figure out how that really works. It's a couple
of centuries ahead of us in engineering knowledge.” - Richard Bushman, LDS Historian | Interview on CES Letters (Study & Faith) Podcast | wasmormon.org
What was the purpose of the plates if they lay covered on the table while the translation commenced and proceeded? “We don’t really have an answer, but they are important… their presence is significant. The problem is we don’t know the technology of revealed translation. It’s like the Book of Abraham manuscripts. That scholarship seems to show that what was on the scrolls we actually have is not what’s in the Book of Abraham. And so the scrolls are like the plates. They’re present, but they are not really containing the message. So there’s some kind of stimulus or provocation or something that starts the revelatory process… I think it’s an error for us to try to figure out how that really works. It’s a couple of centuries ahead of us in engineering knowledge.” – Richard Bushman, LDS Historian | Interview on CES Letters (Study & Faith) Podcast
The CES letter says, "How could it have been expected of me and any other member to know about and to embrace the rock in the hat translation when even two faithful full-time professors of religion at BYU rejected it as a fictitious lie meant to undermine Joseph Smith and the truth claims of the restoration." How can it be expected of people when they do feel that they were taught something opposite of what the truth seems to be? “What he says is true. But, to complain that people taught him the truth, taught him error, when they believed it is the truth, what else should they teach him? They believed it was true, so they did their best to tell, teach him that. As it turned out, they were wrong.
So as a mature person, you just have to be willing to change your views on things as new information comes along.” - Richard Bushman, LDS Historian | Interview on CES Letters (Study & Faith) Podcast | wasmormon.org
The CES letter says, “How could it have been expected of me and any other member to know about and to embrace the rock in the hat translation when even two faithful full-time professors of religion at BYU rejected it as a fictitious lie meant to undermine Joseph Smith and the truth claims of the restoration.” How can it be expected of people when they do feel that they were taught something opposite of what the truth seems to be? “What he says is true. But, to complain that people taught him the truth, taught him error, when they believed it is the truth, what else should they teach him? They believed it was true, so they did their best to tell, teach him that. As it turned out, they were wrong. So as a mature person, you just have to be willing to change your views on things as new information comes along.” – Richard Bushman, LDS Historian | Interview on CES Letters (Study & Faith) Podcast

The episode refers to a letter Bushman addressed to “Truth Seekers” posted on the cesletters website. Here is the letter:

To Truth Seekers,

There is good reason for the CES authors to review translation in their critique of Joseph Smith and Latter-day Saint culture. For the past quarter century or so, Church members have had to deal with a startling new understanding of how the Book of Mormon was translated. People of my generation grew up thinking Joseph Smith looked through the Urim and Thummim, saw an English translation of the Nephite text, and dictated the words to a scribe who wrote them down. More recently historians, to the surprise and shock of many, have drawn attention to historical sources that describe Joseph Smith looking through a seerstone that he put in a hat to keep out the light. He dictated the words which he saw in the stone while the records lay covered on the table. It is not hard to see why some are puzzled by all this.

For a while as stories of the seerstone began to circulate, critics complained that Church leaders were concealing the seerstone version of translation while perpetuating the old story of the Urim and Thummim. The critics were outraged at this blatant deception when evidence of the seerstone was right there in the records. Later when the Church acknowledged the truth of the seerstone and the covered plates, the objection changed. The critics expressed their puzzlement as to the purpose of the plates. Why all the trouble to record the history, preserve the plates, and dig them up if they were covered by a cloth during translation while the prophet stared into the stone.

The CES author of the translation entry also described the seerstone as faintly absurd. “Joseph used the same magic device or ‘Ouija Board’ that he used during his treasure hunting days. He put a rock – called a ‘peep stone’ – in his hat and put his face in the hat to tell his customers the location of buried treasure on their property.” The whole scene is made to appear ludicrous.

The CES author goes on to complain about his treatment after the Church opened up about the seerstone. After “learning this disturbing new information and feeling betrayed, I have been attacked and gaslighted by revisionist Mormon apologist that it’s my fault and the fault of anyone else for not knowing this.” It is true, as the apologists say, that translation by way of a seerstone was described by B. H. Roberts at the beginning of the nineteenth century—the seerstone story was in print for any who would dig it up–but it is also true that few Latter-day Saints were aware of it. The author could have grown up the Church and never heard of the seerstone. The Urim and Thummim version of translation prevailed everywhere, including among Church leaders. That means the author was not at fault for not knowing about the “rock,” as he calls it, but on the other hand neither were Church leaders remiss for not disclosing the information. In denying the peepstone version of translation, they were conveying what they themselves believed. Nearly everyone had to make the transition to the seerstone, including the authorities.

So where do we stand on the question of translation right now (2024)? The seerstone story prevails among LDS historians, General Authorities, and increasingly the rank and file membership. The strange combination of the magical and the spiritual in translating with a stone is gradually being absorbed. Church members read about it in the Joseph Smith Papers and the Church-published history, Saints. There is a picture of the seerstone in the Church History Museum.

But this apparent concensus is not entirely stable. The CES author cites a letter from two BYU religion professors objecting to the David Whitmer account of the seerstone. The letter was written in 2000 when the seerstone was still in contention, and they soon were to be swamped by Church historians acknowledging use of the stone. More recently, however, objections to the stone account have been raised in a serious book by two well informed Latter-day Saint writers, a historian and a lawyer. They have written a lengthy treatise against what they call STITH, the Stone in the Hat theory. They find flaws in David Whitmer’s story of the stone and all the other less definitive accounts of translation by this method. The authors point out that by an overwhelming majority, the sources on the subject speak of translation by way of the Urim and Thummim, not through a seerstone–to which the others reply that the seerstone also was sometime referred to as a Urim and Thummim. This is not a struggle between believing historians and critics but among believers differing among themselves. It is debate over how to evaluate the sources, not how to defend a faithful position against attack.

Right now it seems that Church members will have to stand to the side while new sources are brought to light and the conversation proceeds. Meanwhile, we are left with perplexing questions. What was the purpose of the plates if they lay covered on the table while the translation proceeded? Was the long-lasting and demanding effort to create and preserve them without purpose? I don’t see this as an issue that undermines testimony, but we are trying to clear up a somewhat confusing picture of translation.

I doubt that the plates will ever come to be basically irrelevant to translation. The fact is that they were preserved for centuries; Joseph Smith valued them highly, guarding and concealing them for nearly two years; his close friends regarded them with respect bordering on awe. We must think of them as vital, but the actual part they played, how they facilitated translation, the connection between the characters and Joseph Smith’s mind, at this point remains obscure.

While all these questions are being addressed, I am impressed with the startling fact that Joseph Smith undertook to translate at all. Where did he get it into his head that he, a poorly educated young man with no instruction even in Latin, could undertake to translate an unknown combination of Egyptian and Hebrew characters. He would have known of ministers and lawyers who studied classical languages in college and of course of the learned scholars who translated the King James version in 1611. Perhaps he would have heard of the French genius Champollion who was working on an Egyptian dictionary in these years, but why would Joseph Smith, humble as he was, present himself as a translator as the first act of his budding prophethood? Why would he continue to translate throughout his life, offering the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham as successors to the Book of Mormon? Apparently, he loved

translating. Think of him sitting there day after day, words spilling from his lips while his assistant tried to get it all down. What in Joseph Smith’s background prepared him for that arduous task or even to present himself in the guise of translator?

The topic of translation is ridden with puzzles. Why did the possibility ever occur to Joseph Smith? How was it done? Why did he persist in translating to the end of his life? None of the other prophetic figures emerging from American religious culture in the nineteenth century presented themselves as translators. Why him? The CES article raises important questions about translation, but there is much else to contemplate.

Here is the full transcript of the episode:

Easton: Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, good day. Welcome to the CES Letters Podcast. My name is Easton, and I don’t know if I’ve been more excited for an episode than I am for this episode. Today we have the incredible Richard Lyman Bushman. Richard Lyman Bushman is a Governor Morris Professor Emeritus, wow, that is a mouthful, of history at Columbia University and the author of many books, most popularly Joseph Smith’s Rough Stone Rolling. He’s also authored Mormonism, a very short introduction, which was published by Oxford, as well as he just recently published a new book called Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates, which I’m currently reading and I love a ton.

He has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies. The Charles Warren Center, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington Library, the Shelby Column Davis Center, and the American Antiquarian Society. He co founded and is chairman of the board of the Center for Latter day Saint Arts, as well as he’s a faithful Latter day Saint who currently lives in New York, and he’s just been a joy to work with.

Today’s episode, we’re going to be talking all about the Book of Mormon translation with him. As always, make sure to share this with your friends, and make sure to continue your study by reading his article. Without further ado, I present to you, Book of Mormon Translation with Richard Bushman.

Alright, Richard, how are you doing? Very well. Very good, I’m glad. Number one, thank you. This is our second episode together. I hope Many of our listeners have been able to listen to the other one about testimony and spiritual witness, and this one, I, of the two, am most excited for because I still personally have questions about this topic.

This will be very good. We’ll be talking about translation. This has been one of probably the biggest questions about Joseph Smith since the beginning of The church, really, since the translation process started. So I’m excited for us to talk about that. Before we jump into that, though, I want to just ask a little icebreaker question.

What’s something about you that not very many people know?

Richard Bushman: A small, unembarrassing detail. I had, got a job after I came back from my mission as a pin dropper.

Easton: What is a pin dropper?

Richard Bushman: I got a job in the tabernacle. Essentially, I was a custodian, clean, mopping the floors under the booths and so on. But whenever a tour would come in, they wanted to demonstrate the acoustics.

So they had someone, and I was one of the team, who would go up, and we had a fairly large pin. And we would drop that pin On the wooden counter there. And it would echo all the way back. Wow. And then we would say, Can you hear me whisper? Can you hear me now? Those were the very words we were instructed to say.

Easton: That’s funny.

Richard Bushman: It was Not many people have jobs as pin droppers.

Easton: That’s very interesting. Remind me, where did you serve your mission?

Richard Bushman: New England. New England.

Easton: New England. Very cool. Just that whole area in Boston, and

Richard Bushman: Yes. Ran from Connecticut up through Newfoundland. Oh, wow. We had all the maritime provinces.

Easton: Wow. Canada. Very good. That is one of, in my opinion, one of the prettiest parts of America. I love New England. Gorgeous. Very cool. One of my dreams is to one day live in Boston. I want to get my Ph. D. in Boston. That’s very cool. Yeah.

Richard, as we get started, we’re going to be talking all about the Book of Mormon translation, and I think that there’s some important context to give before we dive into the actual topic of what does the translation process look like. I want to just run through some of the dates, and who is involved. Joseph Smith has his first vision in 1820. He eventually receives the golden plates in 1827. Is that right? After he receives the plates, he receives those in September of 1827, when does he begin the actual translation process, and who does he start the translation process with?

Richard Bushman: There’s a little bit of dispute. The sources differ a little bit on it. The 1838 version of his history said he did a little bit of translating shortly after he got the plates. It would be in the fall of 1827. And he took this, Martin Harris took that translation as well as the characters from the plates to Charles Anthon.

The other sources say Joseph Smith was buffaloed by the problem of how to translate. And it wasn’t until the winter, after Martin Harris came back that he really began translating in earnest. So there’s a little disjuncture there, which hasn’t been explained. But the fact is, that time when he sat down and the translation just flowed from him, and he sat there day after day, that begins in the winter of 1828.

Easton: Okay. And so the translation process starts. How long does that translation process take? When is he finally finished translating the Book of Mormon?

Richard Bushman: He finally finishes in the summer of 1828. So he did it in spurts with Martin Harris up through June of 1827, then a hiatus, then through the fall and winter, probably doing some translation with Emma. Oliver Cowdery arrives in the spring of 1829, and then they finish it up by June of 1829.

Easton: Very good. And then the Book of Mormon was finally published in 1830, is that correct?

Richard Bushman: Finally published in 1830.

Easton: Okay. Very good. I just think those are important details as we begin this process.

Yeah. I’m going to jump over to the CES letter. This section of the CES letter, the Book of Mormon translation, actually starts with a quote from you. Very famous. But one of the things that, that the author of the CES letter is really trying to focus on, is you ask the question, what in the world are the plates for?

Why do we need them on the table if they are just wrapped into a cloth while he looked into a seer stone? What does the translation process actually look like? Is he reading the plates and looking at them as we’ve seen much artwork show? Is he looking into a hat with the seer stones? Is he looking into the breastplate with the spectacles, the Urim and Thummim?

What does it look like?

Richard Bushman: There was one picture that showed him like a conventional translator sitting there with his finger on the plates and then writing it down. That’s totally inaccurate. He was either looking at the seer stone or looking through the Urim and Thummim stones, the crystals, one way or the other, and dictating.

Easton: So he probably did both, I guess is what you’re saying?

Richard Bushman: The best guess we could come up with, I think, is that he looked through the crystals using the Urim and Thummim while he was with Martin Harris up through June of 1828. Then when he began again, David Whitmer and Emma Smith say that he began to use the seer stone that he himself had discovered.

Easton: Okay, very good. This seer stone that he uses for the translation process. Where did he get the seer stone? Where did he find?

Richard Bushman: There is evidence of a variety of seer stones. One he found while he was digging a well. And there are others he may have found here and there. I’ve never been sure if we really have nailed down how many there were and what they looked like.

But he found it. It wasn’t given him by God, an angel didn’t come. He found it and he recognized its properties as they applied to him. And he began to find lost objects with that seer stone.

Easton: Are these just normal rocks that he then dedicates to be a seer stone? Or are these specifically, according to the historical record, are these like actually special spiritual rocks that he is then able to see things with?

Richard Bushman: There is no way really to know. But we do have one seer stone remaining. And it’s, so far as anyone can tell, just a rock. There were some fears that if an unauthorized seer looked into the stone, they would see things that would be disastrous for them. Sure. And that’s just a story. My own feeling is, it’s his powers using the stone. The stone, who knows the technology of these things, it’s just no, really no point in speculating about it. But the key thing is he received this by revelation, by the Spirit of God, as he tells us.

Easton: Throughout the CES letter, the author talks about how he was raised. Kind of thinking what you’ve said, how he had the plates right here, he’d write it down right here, or he just read directly from the plates to whoever the scribe was at any given time. He then shares how he felt so betrayed by the time he realized, oh, he probably was looking into a seer stone and a hat. He says he talks about how he felt as if he was gaslit and how he feels he was lied to throughout his entire life. How it caused all of this cognitive dissonance for him because it was so different than what he was taught. He then explains how he felt hurt because so many scholars are like this has always been here you could have studied it. But he then cites some BYU articles written by prominent professors as they share how it wasn’t the seer stone. How they believed it was just the Urim and Thummim. So there’s all of this contradictory research out there. And the author feels so betrayed and hurt because he’s like, how could I have known these things?

Richard Bushman: That’s very important because a lot of people feel they were lied to and feel betrayed. So far as I can recover the story, it was known that he had a seer stone. B. H. Roberts spoke about it, John Widtsoe spoke about it in the 20s. I was aware of a seer stone, partly because, I poke around in these things. So the knowledge was there, but it was not widely told, it wasn’t in manuals, it wasn’t part of the story of the gold plates that was told in Sunday school. It was just the standard view was some simplified version of the Seerstone, of the Urim and Thummim, and the translation coming. Where I think the error is in this person’s view of things is the feeling he was betrayed.

That implies that the general authorities all knew the truth, and then they hid it in from other people. They didn’t all know the truth. They were taught the same thing that your friend was. It was just standard belief. And the other things, partly because Mormons were a little embarrassed by them, the seer stone didn’t seem quite right for a prophet of God, were just kept in the background.

So it was just a standard view of of how the translation worked. And the whole church had to be educated, including the general authorities. About how these various things worked. And so we all went through this fairly painful process from the early 1990s on to the present where these things come into the open. And it’s been hard on a lot of people. But I think the error is this feeling of betrayal.

Easton: It’s our own decision to be offended towards something sometimes. Obviously there can be offense to be taken in some of these things because there probably were some people who weren’t the most kind or loving to him as he did grapple with some of these questions and concerns.

Richard Bushman: But only because they thought he was truly wrong. They weren’t hiding anything from him. They thought he was wrong, They have a basis for this belief.

Easton: It’s important to recognize the intent behind many of this stuff. As we go through the response that you wrote, you say the CES author of the translation entry also described the seer stone as faintly absurd.

“Joseph used the same magic device or Ouija board that he used during his treasure hunting days. He put a rock called a peep stone in his hat and put his face in the hat to tell his customers the location of buried treasure on their property.”

The whole scene is made to appear ludicrous. How would you, or why is it not ludicrous? The CES letter author says these are crazy things, and you’re saying they’re not as ludicrous as they may seem. Why is that?

Richard Bushman: This is an old Mormon embarrassment, that the seer stone was something that had to be obscured, because it was degrading to think of Joseph Smith as a treasure seeker.

That, I think, is a mistaken historical outlook. The folk magic, which we’re talking about here, was prevalent all through the Western world. I’m talking about Europe and England now. Right up to the middle of the 18th century. About then, as the Enlightenment comes on, what was commonplace belief in seer stones there’s a member of parliament who uses a seer stone in the 1600s that was just part of, the edges of Christian belief.

Then, as science began to increase in authority and influence that became considered below grade, crude, raw. But it remained in the farm, lower class levels of society, especially all over England, but especially in New England and Pennsylvania, in the United States. So the Whitmers were into folk magic, as many Germans were.

And what we think is shameful was just part of the of sort of working class culture, and the Smiths absorbed it. What happens is in 1834, E. D. Howe, a journalist from Painesville, nearby to Kirtland, published a book in which he trotted out all the evidence he could find from the neighbors that the Smiths were practicing money digging.

And this was to discredit them. And I think that’s the first time that the smiths began to feel like this is a, this is something to be embarrassed about. And they began to change the story. Instead of talking about seer stones or spectacles, they used the word Urim and Thummim. And because that was a biblical term, it gave some dignity to the searching.

And so ever since then, we’ve been embarrassed by something, and for the Smiths, it was part of everyday life. It wasn’t embarrassing at all. In fact, it probably played a large part in their ability to accept the gold plates as legitimate.

Easton: There’s a lot of presentism in that of recognizing we’re in the 21st century so it’s going to seem a little bit different than it would have been the 19th century.

As part of that, though, I think that some people may have concerns that the history was changed or that the narrative was changed a little bit. How would you help those people recognize the history and what is actually true and how to determine what is changed of the narrative or what is the actual truth of it?

Richard Bushman: It was changed. The Smiths immediately began trying to bury the fact. Joseph Smith played down his treasure seeking background as just a little episode which Josiah Stowell, just dismissed as something. Lucy Mack did the same. And what’s, I think, significant is they changed the, from the Book of Commandments to the Doctrine and Covenants, they changed one of the revelations to insert the word Urim and Thummim. See that’s acceptable, desirable, versus seer stone. The church was trying to cover up, in that case, Joseph Smith’s involvement with treasure seeking.

Easton: I think that may make some people nervous, that the church is trying to cover up the truth. How would you help them through something that might cause dissonance like that?

Richard Bushman: You just have to accept the fact that they didn’t want to be made to look silly. Who wants to be made to look silly? So, if Joseph’s put in, associated with the wrong class of people, you do your best to make him look better. It wasn’t a real lie, it was just subordinating, or retelling the story. And who doesn’t retell the stories of their lives to make them look better?

Easton: Especially after the fact. When you’ve been able to process how things have gone down. You do want to make yourself look a little better. Sure.

In your letter you ask the question, so where do we stand on the question of translation right now in 2024? The Seerstone story prevails among, this is you talking in your letter, the Seerstone story prevails among Latter day Saint historians, general authorities, and increasingly the rank and file membership.

Though this isn’t the case all around. There might be a little bit of what you call not. an entirely stable consensus among them. What are some of the other theories when it comes to what the translation process looks like?

Richard Bushman: Actually there are a number of them. There’s a lot of speculation.

The one that is most relevant to the seer stone is by a man named Jonathan Neville, and Jim, and his co author Jim Lucas, who say that over and over again, when the story is told, the word Urim and Thummim is used, which for them means the breastplate and the crystals in the frames. So we have to accept that.

And the sources that talk about the seer stone, Emma Smith and David Whitmer, have reason to be doubted. And they have some explanations of how that could get started. They’re very much in the minority at this point, but their scholarship has enough merit to it that it at least has to be considered. I myself think it’s quite possible the seer stone was used, and I’m not at all embarrassed by it.

Easton: It’s not something to be embarrassed by if that’s what happened. It’s just history. I’d like to go into, you ask some important questions. And you even say, meanwhile we are left with perplexing questions. And I don’t think, as you explain in your letter, we don’t have the answers to all of these. You say that we, as church members might need to stand to the side while new sources are being brought to light, and the conversation proceeds. But I’d love just your perspective on some of these.

What was the purpose of the plates if they lay covered on the table while the translation commenced and proceeded?

Richard Bushman: It’s hard to answer. We don’t really have an answer. But they are important. They’re not just left under the bed. They sit on the table wrapped. So their presence is significant. And the problem is we don’t know the technology of translation, revealed translation here. So just how it works, but it’s like the book of Abraham manuscripts. That scholarship seems to show that what was on the scrolls we actually have is not what’s in the book of Abraham. And so the scrolls are like the plates. They’re present, but they are not really containing the message. So there’s some kind of stimulus or provocation or something that starts the revelatory process.

On the other hand, you take the the Kinderhook plates, these little brass like tablets that had writing on them, and Joseph Smith looks at them for a while, maybe tries to translate them, and then gives up on it. They don’t perform that function. They don’t work. So there’s some difference in what will start this process going and what not.

But I think it’s an error for us to try to figure out how that really works. It’s a couple of centuries ahead of us in engineering knowledge.

Easton: A question people often ask is, was it a word for word translation? Was it just the message translated? Or was it just direct revelation. And from what I’ve read, it doesn’t matter as much what the exact answer is to that.

Richard Bushman: No. It used to be that if you had any kind of language that seemed to be 19th century, not ancient Nephite language, that was a stroke against the authenticity of the translation. That’s no longer true. There are faithful church members who say it has to have 19th century language in it in order for it to be intelligible, and it might have been quite broadly reshaped in order to make it valuable in the 19th century.

So at this point, this is not an argument between believers and non believers, it’s among believers who are trying, struggling to find the evidence and to dope out somehow. how it all happened. I personally don’t think there’s a lot at stake. It’s a it’s an interesting curiosity and worth looking at.

But it doesn’t really affect the truth of the Book of Mormon.

Easton: As we talk about the golden plates and how they were there and wrapped with a cloth, there are people who did see them. We have the three and the eight witnesses and Joseph Smith and a number of other random people. But, there are many people who didn’t see them who, people are concerned that they should have, such as Emma Smith. Why do you believe some were able to see it and some were not able to, especially somebody so close who helped with the translation process, like Emma Smith?

Richard Bushman: Yeah. Why would Emma Smith not see them and David Whitmer’s mother supposedly did see them? Of course, that’s a modern feminist question, and rightly it’s hard to know but how those witnesses were but she did feel the plates. Granted, seeing is a little different than feeling, but she wasn’t cut off from the plates. She probably knew as much about them as anyone did. She was closer to them, maybe only Oliver and Martin Harris had a greater connection with them. And all sorts of people, touched them, put them in boxes, they, there was something there. I think that we have to agree. Even Dan Vogel, who is a critical of this whole story, believes Joseph had something. He thinks Joseph made, fabricated the plates himself. But there was something there. There are so many testimonies of their existence. So it’s not like they’re buried under the dirty laundry in the back room and never seen. They’re present, they’re a very strong presence all through the while, all the while the translation went on.

Easton: Very interesting. It the hard thing in talking about this is there’s so much that we don’t know, right? We only have so much historical data that talks about some of these things. How have you been able to recognize that there’s things we just don’t know and some things we might not know, but then also feel satisfied with what we do know. How have you been able to balance those two concerns?

Richard Bushman: When you find equally qualified scholars and equally believing scholars looking at the evidence and disagreeing on it, that’s a pretty good sign that we’re not going to find a final answer until there’s more evidence that comes into place. So I’m willing to wait and watch.

Easton: Here in your letter you talk about how Joseph Smith, it seems that he loved translating, that is something that he did enjoy doing. You think of him sitting there day after day, words spilling from his lips while his assistant tried to get it all down. What in Joseph Smith’s background prepared him for that arduous task or even to present himself in the guise of translator? You know him better than most. Could you answer that question?

Richard Bushman: No, that’s the point. There is no precedent for a translator prophet. And here’s this young kid, no aspirations for religious leadership, and his first great act is to translate a 584 page book. Where in the world does that come from? I think it was inconceivable to him for years and years. It took a long time for him to realize this was actually his job to do.

Easton: It’s quite impressive. One that only a prophet could do.

Richard Bushman: Yeah. And then he takes on the role of translator. Then he works on the Bible for a while and then the book of Abraham. It’s hard, searching through all of human history to find a prophet who presented himself as a translator.

Easton: Another question I do want to ask about the Book of Mormon translation comes directly from the CES letter, and this might not be a “We dive into the history,” but this might just be, I want your feeling on this towards Jeremy Runnells, the author of the CES letter. So he writes, “how could it have been expected of me and any other member to know about and to embrace the rock in the hat translation when even two faithful full time professors of religion at BYU rejected it as a fictitious lie meant to undermine Joseph Smith and the truth claims of the restoration.”

How can it be expected of people when they do feel that they were taught something opposite of what the truth seems to be?

Richard Bushman: And what he says is true. But, to complain that people taught him the truth, taught him error, when they believed it is the truth, what else should they teach him? They believed it was true, so they did their best to tell, teach him that. As it turned out, they were wrong. So as a mature person, you just have to be willing to change your views on things as new information comes along.

Easton: This is a personal experience I had just a couple of weeks ago. I had been, I recently made a discovery in my personal studies, it was actually from a BYU Studies article from a number of years ago. And I was like, oh, I never thought about this topic in this way. It confused me. It was a little bit of dissonance, but I decided, I’m not going to teach this specific subject, this topic, until I know more about it. And then the following Sunday, I had accidentally taught it again. I t was just a very one sentence liner in my testimony, and I was like, nobody else noticed. I know they didn’t, but I had this little, I don’t know this for sure anymore. And so I think it’s important that we give a little bit of grace and mercy to people because our knowledge is still growing. Many of these things only happened less than 200 years ago, but we still don’t have full knowledge of everything, so let’s keep going. I want to just ask a couple of very simple questions now about Joseph Smith and just your studies of him through all of your research.

What does it mean and what are the differences? Joseph Smith was a seer, he was a revelator, he was a translator, he was a prophet. What do all of those mean to you and how are they different from one another? Does that make sense?

Richard Bushman: It’s a big question. I in the vein of what you’re saying people ask me, how do you feel about Joseph Smith? He was really one of the greatest revelators of all of human history. There are just so many dimensions that he worked on. To begin with, the Book of Mormon.

A thousand year history of an ancient civilization brings that forth. And then he organizes a church, but then he’s told to organize a whole society. He’s built a city, created a Zion. And then before you know it, he’s got a new priesthood that draws on ancient Hebrew rites of priesthood that goes quite different than what other people had.

And then the temple comes along, then baptism for the dead, and then the premortal existence suddenly is filled with stories that are really thrilling narrative of what life is about. And then this whole idea of God is so different from other people in his day. That he just is overabundant in his revelatory powers.

Easton: It’s impressive. Through your research of Joseph Smith, I’m sure you’ve learned a lot of different stuff from him. What would you say is some of the most important lessons that you personally have learned from him that you feel like you’ve been able to apply to your own life?

Richard Bushman: There are a lot of lessons in the scriptures which are, of course, of great importance. But in terms of his character, what really expresses, impresses me is his resolve. He lived a very difficult life, beginning with the loss of his firstborn son while he’s translating the Book of Mormon. Couldn’t God protect him a little bit? Did he have to go through that? And then all the poverty, never could really provide for his wife.

Finally got the mansion house, but he rented most of it out and had three other families living in his apartment. So he never lives high on the hog. And then, he’s beat up, taken out, tarred and feathered. You know what really hurt him most? That his own people were driven, and he knew he was responsible what he asked of them, and yet they were driven time after time.

So he suffered a lot. By the end of his life there are signs that he really was a melancholy person, that he would get depressed, much like Abraham Lincoln would do. In public, he’d be all jubilant and strong and funny. But then when he was alone, he would sink into a depression and talk about the grave, and wanting to be near his friends when he came out of the grave, and so he needed people around him.

So he had all of these troubles, and yet he never wavered on his call, building the city of Zion, gathering the saints from all over the world. Constantly taking on vast new ventures. Think of sending missionaries to Great Britain, and then having to absorb that huge wave of people who arrived in the 40s into Nauvoo and vicinity.

It just had immense, maybe it’s self confidence, maybe it’s inspiration, maybe it’s just character, but he just didn’t give up.

Easton: It’s impressive. Thank you. Recently, even within the last 50 years, we’ve learned so much more about Joseph Smith than we ever knew before. And a lot of it has been slowed to be brought into the main limelight of the church. Things such as the multiple accounts of the first vision. Some of them are much more recent than what many Latter day Saints think. Things such as the seer stone in the hat. In your studies of Joseph Smith, are there any other things that you feel like we, as a Latter day Saint people, should be putting more attention to that are some of the new discoveries that we’re not quite putting any attention to, or not enough?

Richard Bushman: It’s a very good question. There are mysteries that would be lovely to explain. We may never, because the problem always is lack of sources. The period from 1823 to 1827, before when he hears about Moroni and the plates, then he actually assumes the role as translator. That’s a mysterious period. And which I try to deal with a little bit in this Gold Plates book I just recently published.

But there’s that. Then the whole process of Revelation he loved it, he felt exalted by it. If we knew more of just how those words came to him, what is his state of mind? Those are deep, buried questions. in the center of his soul. And maybe there’s no way figuring it out. But it’s what we’re curious about. What we really want to know. How did he do it?

Easton: With Joseph Smith with any organization and group, there’s this process called the routinization of charisma. How we start with a charismatic leader, somebody like Joseph Smith, but then things start to become a little bit more routine, and things get less charismatic. There’s a little bit more correlation and I might even say boringness added into things sometimes. How can we honor the charisma of Joseph Smith and his charismatic and exciting and jovial nature that he had out in public and how he was receiving all these great revelations and seeing incredible things and prophesying? How can we honor that in a church today that is a little bit more correlated and under wraps?

Richard Bushman: I think Joseph Smith would be very pleased with the Church today because it accomplished something that very few charismatic leaders have been able to accomplish. That is, it’s routinized charisma. That is, it’s taken the view that God is leading the Church, that we have to be dependent upon revelation, and introduced it.

Not just in one sterling leader, one, brilliant figure like Joseph Smith, but into every level of church government. Wow. Starting with the president of the church, through all those councils, down to the stake presidents, and the bishops, and the deacon’s quorum president. We’re all taught that we are revelators, that we have to seek.

I think that’s a gorgeous result of Joseph Smith and dreams of going back to another leader are a little whimsical and not what he would want. He would be delighted with what has been accomplished.

Easton: I love that. That is a meaningful response to me personally as well. What, there’s a question that President Nelson gave a couple of years ago, and the question was, what would your life be like without the Book of Mormon? You’ve studied Joseph Smith, you’ve studied the Book of Mormon, and the coming of the Book of Mormon more than most. What does the Book of Mormon personally mean to you in your life today?

Richard Bushman: Eh, as a totality, wonder. How is this produced? As I’m reading it, I keep coming to passages that Joseph Smith could not have written that. It’s just beyond, beyond good sense to say that he wrote that book. So there’s that. But then there are parts that really thrill me. And I can’t give you them all, but I’ll give you the one that means the most to me personally.

And that is Alma 32, about planting the seed. There’s two patterns for getting a testimony. One is Joseph Smith’s vision. A lot of questions, anguish, pray, God appears. End of problem. Big experience. You’ll never forget it. Foundation for everything. The teachings in Alma 32, you plant a little seed, and you water it a little bit, and it grows, so you cultivate it and fertilize it, and it gets bigger and bigger, pretty soon it’s this great tree that you’ve, that’s grown up in your life. I think that is a beautiful pattern in an age that’s doubtful about life, all these things we’ve been discussing today. It’s, if it, I’m very pragmatic about the Gospel. If it really works, if it’s good, you can’t abandon it. It’d be foolish to abandon the Gospel. It’s brought so much good. You have to say it’s true. In the sense that it’s meant by the way, the truth, and the life of Christ. It’s the truth that redeems. That is the most powerful truth there is. And the Book of Mormon and Alma 32 present that to us as a possibility for how to find God.

Easton: Going with this Alma 32 thought process of you water the seed, what do you do to water your seed of faith in your day to day life?

Richard Bushman: I struggle a lot. I’m one who takes the sacrament prayer very seriously. That if you keep His commandments and remember Him always, His Spirit will always be with you.

I think the more we can think of Christ every minute, every day, the better off we’ll be. It’s not easy to do because you’re doing other things, but in all the interstices in the day, if your mind goes back to Christ, there is some power that’s triggered. comes from the great core of the universe that comes in the form of intelligence and light to each one of us.

And if we’re willing to strive, we can become much better people than we would otherwise.

Easton: Thank you. Just a couple more questions as we conclude. And they’re just about you personally. Has there been a moment in your life where you feel like, or let me rephrase that. Was there a moment in your life where you realized, Oh, this is the church I need to be a part of. This is truth. There’s truth here, and this is where I feel God. Was there a specific moment that you can look back on and think, Oh, wow.

Richard Bushman: It’d be sometime when I was four or five. In my later life, I had to overcome doubts. But it wasn’t one moment. I’m not a one moment guy. It’s this steady growth of sureness that it works everywhere you turn. Your life is better for it. It’s that’s the kind of thing that sustains me.

Easton: I love that. Our podcast, each article that we write is written to truth seekers. People who are genuinely trying to find the truth of life, and of eternal life, and of Jesus Christ, and of God, and of our Heavenly Parents, and whoever and whatever it may be. Seeking truth. What advice would you give to truth seekers?

Richard Bushman: Keep on. It’s a long life struggle. I think you have to be very humble and realize that when you think you find the truth you may not have the truth. That could be true for the gospel as well, but you have to keep on striving for it. And be content with partial or imperfect truths. You’re not going to be able to answer every question you have.

For me, the key word is not truth in the knowledge sense, but goodness. It’s the true way of life. What you want to do is be redeemed, to be the kind of person you really want to be, worthy to be loved. And when you’re seeking for truth, you want to also seek for personal growth, for redemption from your sins, for Godliness.

Easton: Thank you. Richard, as we conclude this podcast, this is the CES Letters, talking about the questions and concerns of the CES Letter, but of the Church, and of the Gospel, and of the Doctrine of Christ, and of everything. Do you have any final things you would like to tell to the people who are listening, whether it be about Book of Mormon translation, or just about the Gospel and the Church, or anything in general?

Richard Bushman: I have great admiration for the writer of the CES letter. It’s very extensive, huge amount of research a lot of strong reasoning and raises very important questions. Can we trust inspiration? That’s a huge question, a great benefit to us. So I don’t think we want to ostracize or deny, or denounce. People do that. I think they’re wrong. I think the answer to the letter is wrong. But it’s a noble effort and I think if we all have that same kind of inquiry, we’re maybe a tad more humble and a tad more willing to hear God’s voice. It could lead to great and beautiful truths.

Easton: Thank you. As we conclude, I just wanted to ask if you could conclude with your personal testimony or thoughts on the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ himself found within the Book of Mormon.

Richard Bushman: I feel like I’ve been bearing testimony for the last hour and I’m not sure I have anything more to say. Except that there are scriptures that lead us to believe that Christ is the key to all sorts of powers, some of them pure intelligence that can come in them, other personal redemption that we can become much more glorious and wonderful than we are. I don’t mean that in an egotitistical way, but the hope we all have to be better than we are. And I think Christ is the path and the key.

Easton: Thank you. Amen. Richard, thank you so much for your time today.

Richard Bushman: My pleasure. Thank you.

Easton: And thank you so much to all of our listeners. As always, we invite you to share this podcast with your friends, and make sure to continue your study by going to cesletters. Org. You can find an article that Richard wrote specifically about the Book of Mormon translation process, but you can also find dozens of other articles about a myriad of different topics, so make sure to continue your study there. Thank you so much, and we’ll talk to you next time.

There is a response episode from Mormon Stories which analyzes this episode and discusses each point. Highly recommended:


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