Readers of this blog know that I think Joseph actually translated the characters on the plates. After all, he said he did, as we can all read in Joseph Smith-History.
Some modern LDS scholars, including Royal Skousen but many others, reject what Joseph (and Oliver) taught in favor of the theory articulated in Mormonism Unvailed that instead of using the plates, Joseph merely read words that appeared on the stone-in-the-hat (SITH), the stone being one that he found while digging a well years earlier.
Last fall I posted comments about Royal Skousen's declaration, based on his "Early Modern English" theory, that
"Joseph Smith’s claim that he used the Urim and Thummim is only partially true; and Oliver Cowdery’s statements that Joseph used the original instrument while he, Oliver, was the scribe appear to be intentionally misleading."
https://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2024/11/thank-you-royal-skousen.html
I've been surprised at how many people seem to have embraced Skousen's "Early Modern English" theory. Maybe some of them did not realize the inevitable implications of that theory, which Skousen finally announced in the quotation above.
But apparently many of Skousen's followers agree with his conclusion about the credibility and reliability of Joseph and Oliver as well.
That is predictable because many of those same people also reject what Joseph and Oliver said about the Hill Cumorah.
I had been skeptical of Skousen's theory because of the logical and factual fallacies he employed to develop and promote it. In my view, it makes more sense, and is more consistent with the historical record, to conclude that Joseph and Oliver told the truth when they said Joseph translated the plates.
But people will believe whatever they want to believe.
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I bring this up because William Davis recently published an article in Dialogue, which is also on academia.edu:
I like having multiple working hypotheses to consider. Although I don't agree with all of Davis' assumptions and inferences, I highly recommend his paper because he carefully and precisely explains some of the flaws that led to Skousen's conclusion that Joseph and Oliver misled everyone.
Davis' first paragraph sets the stage:
The question of whether or not Joseph Smith participated in the translation of the Book of Mormon as an actual translator, or merely as a transcriber, remains a point of debate in Mormon studies. Did Joseph receive spiritual impressions and visionary experiences by means of a translation device (seer stone, interpreters, and/or Urim and Thummim) and then articulate them into English by tapping into his own mental storehouse of English vocabulary, phraseology, and conceptualizations (the theory of “loose control”)? Or did Joseph simply read the words of a preexisting translation that appeared to him on the surface of the translation device, without any significant contributions of his own (the theory of “tight control”)? As Richard Bushman aptly observes, “Latter-day Saints themselves cannot agree on how the writings engraved on the gold surfaces relate to Joseph Smith’s oral dictation to his secretaries.”1
Davis addressed several specific claims made by Skousen (and his co-author, Stan Carmack). He pointed out that much of what Skousen claims was "Early Modern English" was actually readily available in Joseph Smith's own time, place and culture.
Which is basically my point when I discuss the influence of Jonathan Edwards.(See https://www.mobom.org/jonathan-edwards and my book Infinite Goodness.)
At one point, Davis mentioned the "ceremony" controversy:
When we expand the scope of analysis to include the possibility of scribal flaws and the pressures of a rapid dictation process, in which Joseph sought unsuccessfully to find the precise language to express an idea in the moment of performance, then such factors can further account for additional idiosyncratic or allegedly archaic usages, such as using “ceremony” instead of the more specific description of a council of peace, parley, or peace ceremony (Mosiah 19:24).
I discussed the "ceremony" issue here, showing that Jonathan Edwards used the term the same way it is used in the Book of Mormon:
https://scripturecentralpeerreviews.blogspot.com/2025/07/ceremony-in-mosiah-1924.html
To me, this evidence supports and corroborates what Joseph said from the beginning when he claimed he translated the plates.
It also corroborates what Moroni told him the first time they met:
He said this history was written and deposited not far from that place, and that it was our brother’s privilege, if obedient to the commandments of the Lord, to obtain and translate the same by the means of the Urim and Thummim, which were deposited for that purpose with the record.
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1834-1836/69
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Davis also made an important point that corroborates my findings regarding the influence of Jonathan Edwards. Pay particular attention to footnote 42, which addresses a common claim by SITH sayers and others that Joseph was illiterate and/or uninterested in books and reading.
Joseph Smith’s New England and New York dialects, coupled with the language of the KJV and the registers of contemporary revivalism and religious discourse, have provided obvious locations of investigative research to identify possible sources of the archaic biblical-style language in the Book of Mormon. Meanwhile, another prominent resource remains neglected: the popular reading material of the day.
When we look into the family libraries of early nineteenth-century farmers and artisans, we find that they owned and read the works of a number of influential authors from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Yet, with regard to Joseph, the availability of such materials and their popularity in working-class homes rarely receives attention, presumably due to his alleged illiteracy and purported lack of interest in reading.42 In the early American republic, however, regular reading—silent and aloud, by individuals, families, or groups in various gathering places (from literary and debate societies to local inns and taverns)—was a common and popular pastime.
42. Lucy Smith famously said that Joseph “seemed much less inclined to the perusal of books than any of the rest of our children,” which commentators often use to assert Joseph’s lack of interest in reading. See Lavina Fielding Anderson, ed., Lucy’s Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith’s Family Memoir (Signature Books, 2001), 344. [Note: here I would have cited the Joseph Smith Papers instead, including both versions of her statement.] Lucy’s comment does not, however, state that Joseph did not like to read. She simply makes a comparison of Joseph’s reading habits in relation to his siblings. Thus, without knowing how much the other Smith children were inclined to read, the comment remains an observation without a reference point. (comment and emphasis added)
To Davis' point I add that if (as I propose) Joseph was reading books at the T. C. Strong bookstore, Lucy would not have known about that unless Joseph told her.
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Hopefully, Davis' conclusion may encourage Skousen and his followers to reconsider Skousen's claim that Joseph and Oliver deliberately misled everyone about the translation.
While this essay does not provide a comprehensive survey of every textual phenomenon that Skousen and Carmack employ to assert their theory of “tight control,” the information presented here nevertheless offers more than sufficient evidence to demonstrate that Joseph Smith’s participation in the translation work was far more involved than a simple process of transmitting a preexisting, pretranslated work to his scribes.