Question: Are there no mentions of the seer stone and/or its use with a hat on LDS.org?

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Question: Are there no mentions of the seer stone and/or its use with a hat on LDS.org?

There are a number of references to the seer stone on LDS.org, with more having been added since 2013

We found the following mentions of a seer stone being used to translate the Book of Mormon, with a few mentions of the hat, on lds.org:

  • September 1974 Friend: "To help him with the translation, Joseph found with the gold plates “a curious instrument which the ancients called Urim and Thummim, which consisted of two transparent stones set in a rim of a bow fastened to a breastplate.” Joseph also used an egg-shaped, brown rock for translating called a seer stone."
    —“A Peaceful Heart,” Friend, Sep 1974, 7 off-site
  • September 1977 Ensign: “Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light."
    —Richard Lloyd Anderson, "‘By the Gift and Power of God’," Ensign (Sep 1977), 79, emphasis added. off-site
  • January 1988 Ensign: "Once Martin found a rock closely resembling the seerstone Joseph sometimes used in place of the interpreters and substituted it without the Prophet’s knowledge. When the translation resumed, Joseph paused for a long time and then exclaimed, “Martin, what is the matter, all is as dark as Egypt.” Martin then confessed that he wished to “stop the mouths of fools” who told him that the Prophet memorized sentences and merely repeated them." —Kenneth W. Godfrey, "A New Prophet and a New Scripture: The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon," Ensign (Jan 1988).
  • July 1993 Ensign: "David Whitmer wrote: ' Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine.'"
    —Russell M. Nelson, “A Treasured Testament,” Ensign, Jul 1993, 61. (emphasis added) off-site
  • January 2013 Ensign: "Some of the Prophet Joseph’s earliest revelations came through the same means by which he translated the Book of Mormon from the gold plates. . . .He described the instrument as “spectacles” and referred to it using an Old Testament term, Urim and Thummim. . . . He also sometimes applied the term to other stones he possessed, called “seer stones” because they aided him in receiving revelations as a seer. The Prophet received some early revelations through the use of these seer stones." off-site
  • October 2015 Ensign: "In fact, historical evidence shows that in addition to the two seer stones known as “interpreters,” Joseph Smith used at least one other seer stone in translating the Book of Mormon, often placing it into a hat in order to block out light. According to Joseph’s contemporaries, he did this in order to better view the words on the stone." off-site

We found the following mentions that the Joseph Smith papyri does not contain the text of the Book of Abraham on lds.org:

  • March 1976 Ensign: A Book of Breathings text that closely matches the Joseph Smith version (and there are precious few of them) is the so-called Kerasher Book of Breathings. It too has a frontispiece, only in this case it is the same as our Facsimile No. 3, showing that it too is closely associated with our text."
    —Hugh Nibley, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, Mar. 1976, 34–36 off-site
  • July 1988 Ensign: Why doesn’t the translation of the Egyptian papyri found in 1967 match the text of the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price?
    —Michael D. Rhodes, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, July 1988, 51–53 off-site
  • The following is contained in the online archive of the Improvement Era:
  • August 1968 Improvement Era: The largest part of the papyri in the possession of the Church consists of fragments from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
    —Hugh Nibley, "A New Look at the Pearl of Great Price," Improvement Era (August 1968), 56–57.


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