Me, My Shelf, & I - Seer Stones w/ Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat | S1E8 (Full Interview) 

Very interesting and faith building. Thank you for this. I believe it is very important to understand all aspects of church history and the restored gospel. You historians make it so easy to learn about.

Thank you, Brother Dirkmaat!

Are we now really discussing which color rock in a hat Joseph Smith used when he "translated" the Book of Mormon?

I’ve never heard a satisfying answer to this question. Why would Joseph switch when he already had the Jaredite interpretors? Why would he need to switch? Also, are we assuming that Joseph used the brown stone just because Emma and David refer to a “singular” stone? Is that the only reason why we jump to the brown stone theory?

What about in the bible when the donkey spoke and a rod was turned into a snake God can do anything and He does it to test the persons faith and obedience

Brother Dirkmaat boasts about being a professional historian, but makes numerous factual errors and unfounded speculations in this interview. To name a few: 1) all persons close to the translation, including those used to argue for the scrying stone in the hat such as David Whitmer and Emma Smith, used the term Urim & Thummim to refer only to the Nephite interpreters which came with the plates. The scrying stone was always referred to as a separate object, not as the Urim & Thummim. 2) The Shaker's account is secondhand and hearsay, whereas Oliver gave many firsthand accounts stating that the Urim & Thummim were the interpreters which came with the plates. However, Brother Dirkmaat ignores those accounts because they don't fit has advocacy of the scrying stone in the hat theory. 3) In his effort to confuse the scrying stone with the Urim & Thummim, he refers to Wilford Woodruff's notes of a meeting with Joseph in 1842. However, Brigham Young's notes of the same meeting make clear that Joseph was referring to the scrying stone separately from the interpreters used for the Book of Mormon. 4) His argument that Jonathan Hadley met with Joseph is pure speculation. In fact Hadley himself made clear he was opposed to the Mormons from the beginning, and only met with Martin Harris. 5) His equation of the scrying stone with Gazelem makes no sense (how did it get to the bottom of a well in New York - maybe Brother Dirkmaat is a Heartlander?) and is just another example of his grasping at straws to bolster his theory while ignoring contradictory evidence. 6) He cites "Mormonism Unvailed" as mocking the early Saints, but does not note that that book is the first full exposition of his own stone-in-the-hat theory. 7) Joseph and Oliver made it clear in numerous written statements that the Urim & Thummim used to translate the Book of Mormon was the Nephite interpreters which came with the plates. No matter how much people from E. B. Howe (author of Mormonism Unvailed) through and including Brother Dirkmaat may deny Joseph and Oliver's testimonies, they were the primary witnesses to how the Book of Mormon was translated and told the truth about it coming from the plates and being translated by means of the interpreters which came with the plates, not by means of a folk magic treasure digging scrying stone in a hat.

I can’t understand why some individuals are obsessed with denying Joseph ever used seer stones to translate. The Book of Mormon is an absolute miracle and I’m grateful that Joseph had the ability to translate it regardless of how he did it.