You have convinced me that I should take delusion as a possibility more seriously.

A huge weakness of the delusion argument is, I think, the three and (especially) eight witnesses. Joseph might deceive himself about seeing angels, and dictating the Book of Mormon (though the latter seems a stretch).

But, how did he deceive himself into having physical plates, which he handed to eight people, who handled and examined them?

I think we’re stuck with either Joseph having real plates, or somehow actively deceiving others that he had real plates.

Maybe Joseph’s relationship with treasure digging was a lot like can be compared to James E. Talmage’s with astrology. Talmage was initially a believer as a boy but after some failed experiments, scrapped it for a more scientific worldview. Talmage went onto to challenge treasure seers of his day who were wasting effort in Koyle dream mine.

I think you make some very good points. If we take Alva’s quote at face value, it is not really clear to me what Joseph thought about the nature of deception, whether it was of the self-deception (delusional) kind or whether it was of he was deceived by supernatural, trickster spirits, or whether he was deceived by other treasure seers who asserted their methods (and explanations for failure) were legit. I think it would be hard for Joseph, himself, to pinpoint where the process broke down.
That reminds of an account where Joseph had momentary doubts about the translation process when the text indicated that Jerusalem had walls. Joseph had to ask his scribe if that was true. When it was confirmed Joseph had a sigh of relief and remarked that he had thought he had been deceived.

I’m sure I don’t know the source material as well as you, and I agree that apologists should stay neutral on the issue, but I’m not sure that you have given delusion–as you put it–enough consideration. Deluded people can be very convincing. Finding a feather is impressive, but perhaps not as unlikely as it may seem. Another problem is that people can retrofit results to match predictions, such as in cold reading.

I won’t press the case further, but I do want to raise an interesting passage in Bushman’s RSR (pg 51).

—-quote—-
Alva Hale…said Joseph Jr. told him that the “gift of seeing with a stone” was “a gift from God” but that “‘peeping’ was all d–d nonsense”; he had been deceived in his treasure-seeking, but he did not intend to deceive anyone else.
—-end quote—-

I have not read the source for that statement, so I don’t know how much of that is Bushman’s interpretation of Alva. However, if Joseph admitted that he had been deceived, that would seem in line with the delusion (again, your term) model.

A first point to keep in mind is that this is not how the passage originally read. In the 1833 Book of Commandments, we read:

…I have caused him that he should enter into a covenant with me, that he should not show them except I command him, and has no power over them except I grant it unto him; and he has a gift to translate the book, and I have commanded him that he shall pretend to no other gift, for I will grant him no other gift.

The “gift of translating” is merely an instance of the gift God granted to Joseph, or the “gift of seeing.” I believe God grsnted Joseph the more general gift of seeing because God provided Joseph the Nephite Interpreters. The very manner in which those Interpreters were found substantiated the method through which Joseph found them (through his seer stones) was also of God. Furthermore, after an initial translation period, Joseph reverted back to his seer stones to translate. My point is that we can not read that passage that the only spiritual gift was that of translation (although later texts identified that the principle use), because the very transmission of this revelation showed that Joseph could see other things besides Book of Mormon text.

Another revelation showed that Joseph’s God recognized that Oliver Cowdery had the gift of working Aaron’s rod. That was a gift Joseph had enjoyed earlier as well.

A third point is that in the 19th century the word pretend had a semantic wider range than it does now.

Here are some research notes I made about 6 months ago:

I have been thinking about various statements in early church documents that use the word pretend. For example counsel was given to Joseph in D&C 5:4 “And you have a gift to translate the plates; and this is the first gift that I bestowed upon you; and I have commanded that you should pretend to no other gift until my purpose is fulfilled in this; for I will grant unto you no other gift until it is finished.”

D&C 32:5 instructs the early missionaries: “And they shall give aheed to that which is written, and pretend to noother revelation; and they shall pray always that I may c unfold the same to their understanding.”

It makes me wonder whether the two D&C usages rely on an obsolete definition of “pretend” as seen in Websters 1828 Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary (see below). In the older use, what was pretended was not necessarily false. The advantage of using the term in one of those ways is that the instruction changes from not claiming [falsely] to have a gift or revelation to not claiming [though true] to have a gift or revelation. This has implications on why Joseph may not have shared with David Whitmer the visit of John the Baptist on their trip to Fayette, instead referring to the experience as a revelation. In other words, even if he saw the priesthood restoration as a “gift” the revelation advised him not to pretend ( i.e. claim to have authority) until after God’s purposes (later clarified to be the Book of Mormon translation process) were fulfilled. In my mind the clarifying text only pertains to the advertising of the receptions of gifts and not the actual reception of the gifts. Under this argument, God’s purposes would have been sufficiently fulfilled such that the reception of the priesthood would not serve as a distraction to the translation process (which was well underway in May 1829, but was still a big concern in March when Martin and Rogers were pressuring Joseph to put on a show), but noising it about might bring about disruptive persecution.

What do you guys, think? Is my reasoning too convoluted?

For Webster’s see: http://1828.mshaffer.com/d/search/word,pretend . I will copy some of the definitions:
5. To claim.
PRETEND’, v.t. [L. proetendo; proe, before, and tendo, to tend, to reach or stretch.]

Chiefs shall be grudg’d the part which they pretend.

[In this we generally use pretend to.]
6. To intend; to design. [Not used.]
PRETEND’, v.t. To put in a claim, truly or falsely; to hold out the appearance of being, possessing or performing. A man may pretend to be a physician, and pretend to perform great cures. Bad men often pretend to be patriots.

The OED is more complicated to understand but it gives examples from literature to illustrate each facet of the word use. here are some snippets:

1. trans. To put forward as an assertion or statement; to allege, assert, contend, claim, declare; esp. to allege or declare falsely or with intent to deceive.

1804 Med. Jrnl. 12537 [This] induced practitioners to suppose, or to pretend, that the small-pox sometimes degenerates into the chicken-pox.

2. a. trans. To offer, present, or put forward for consideration, acceptance, action, etc.; to bring (a charge or action at law). Obs.
b. trans. To allege or put forward (a thing) as a reason or excuse; to use as a pretext. Obs.
c. intr. With to: to make claims on behalf of; to support the claims of. Obs.

3. a. trans. To lay claim to or profess to have (a quality, state, etc.). Now only: to lay false claim to, affect, feign, or put on (a quality, state, etc.).

b. intr. With to (also till): to lay claim to, profess to have, or affect (a quality, ability, etc.)..
1734 tr. C. Rollin Anc. Hist. (1827) V. 223 Each party pretended to the victory. 1769 Junius Lett. (1820) xvi. 70 The ministry have not yet pretended to such a tyranny over our minds. 1816 J. AUSTEN EmmaI. 75, I only name possibilities. I do not pretend to Emma’s genius for foretelling and guessing. 1852 S. J. B. HALE Northwoodv. 47 Yankee farmers are the most slovenly people on earth that pretend to civilization.

4. a. trans. To profess or claim to have (an authority, power, right, title, etc.). Obs.

1701 Disc. of Species, Order & Govt. of Christian Churches 127 The Church of Scotland..did renounce all degress of Subjection to the Church of England, or Geneva either; and when Episcopal, it was no less Independent, nor did the Church of England pretend any Jurisdiction over it. 1784 W. COWPER Let.11 Dec. (1981) II. 309 Its right being at least so far a good one, that no word in the language could pretend a better.

b. trans. With infinitive as object: to claim the right (to do something). Also occas. with clause as object. Obs.
1761 D. HUME Hist. Eng. I. ix. 204 As both the archbishops pretended to sit on his right hand, this question of precedency begat a controversy between them.
c. trans. To lay claim to or claim ownership or possession of (a thing); to assert (a thing) as a right. Obs.
1755 N. MAGENS Ess. InsurancesII. 165 Seamen taken and made Slaves shall not pretend any thing for their Ransom, either of the Master, Owners or Freighters.
d. intr. To lay claim to a right to or share of something. Obs.
1777 J.-F. MARMONTEL IncasII. 261 Be extremely cautious how you mention to him either your favours, or his promises; be cautious how you pretend to a share of the gold accumulating for him.
5. a. trans. (refl. ). With infinitive, noun, adjective, or phrase as complement: to represent oneself as ; to claim or profess to be . Obs.
1828 Times 26 Sept. 4/1 [They] gave been for some time in the daily habit of obtaining goods from the shopkeepers and merchants, pretending themselves messengers from Mr. O’Connell.
b. intr. With ellipsis of reflexive pronoun or infinitive. Obs. rare.

12. a. intr. To aspire; to have pretensions. Chiefly with to. Obs.
1705 Boston News-let.12 Nov. 2/1 It may be some will not count it remarkable, that there should be Bad people among the Quakers..who do not pretend unto their Spirit of discerning.

b. trans. With infinitive as object. To aspire, presume; to venture; to try, attempt. Now rare.

1722 D. DEFOE Jrnl. Plague Year 142 The People offered to fire at them if they pretended to go forward. 1855 A. BAIN Senses & Intellect I. ii. 184 How many ultimate nerve fibres are contained in each unit nerve, we cannot pretend to guess. 1869 R. BROWNING Ring & Bk. IV. X. 77 Dost thou dare pretend to punish me, For not descrying sunshine at midnight?

“And you have a gift to translate the plates; and this is the first gift that I bestowed upon you, and I have commanded that you should pretend to no other gift until my purpose is fulfilled in this, for I will grant unto you no other gift until it is finished”.

This suggests the possibility that at some point young Joseph had mistakenly supposed and claimed that he had a spirital/magical gift for treasure funding. Then at some later time, he realized (or was told) that he did not, and gave up making such claims.
By that time, however, he had both friends pointing to these earlier claims as evidence of spiritual gifts (not necessarily the case) and enemies pointing to them as evidence of deliberate fraud (also not necessarily the case).

You are right that I wanted to focus on the two strongest models that account for Joseph’s activities. I did mention the “crazy” model and I would include delusion within that.

There are accounts of Joseph Smith that force us to choose (at least for that account) whether Joseph was lying or truly seeing and delusion is a distant third option, more of a non-option really. I think Vogel and I agree on that much in the feather account and on whether Joseph recovered plates he saw in vision.

Vogel supplements his pious fraud theory so that Joseph could have been delusional in some account reconstructions.

But if one picks and chooses on account-by-account basis which model holds sway, the coherency of any one model rapidly drops.

I suppose that I could also allow incursions of the sincerely deluded model to my prophet-in-training model, but I am partial to not being pegged down by naturalist assumptions, hence I favor our apologetics being agnostic on the issues like bleeding ghosts and slippery treasure.

Relying solely on the delusion model is going to cause problems for believers: if Joseph was deluded as a treasure seer, how can we be confident he had his act together as a prophet?

So when I evaluate a model I have to ask what it does a good and bad job explaining and what are the consequences of accepting it. The delusion model does a bad job of explaining Joseph’s successes and a great job explaining failures. One of the consequences of it is that it undermines the prophet’s truth claims and their is no seamless transition like the prophet-in-training models presents.

As strange as the image may seem, there is a very basic way to approach the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. Imagine an individual who puts a stone in a hat, and then his face, so there is no possible way of looking at any outside source material. Then, hour after hour, he dictates the contents of the Book of Mormon, with all its intricacies and spiritual content. This he does with at least one witness (the scribe) always there, and often more. It is reported that after breaks he never had to refer to where he had left off. What “religious genius” could do this? Mohammad? Swedenborg? Luther? Sadartha Ghatama? It brings to mind the monkey at the typewriter for an infinite period coming up with “Hamlet”.

It’s not as clean as the “scholarly” image of Joseph and Oliver, dressed in fine linen shirts, sitting at a table with Joseph’s hand on the open plates, acting as a traditional translator. But it is an image that absolutely leaves one saying “this really can’t be done.” Well, it was done, and, as Conan-Doyle’s Mr. Holmes would say “when all other possibilities have been exhausted, that which remains, no matter how unlikely, is the truth.”

To me, despite the scholarly work by Vogel and others that have made us take a second look at our assumptions concerning the Book of Mormon, I think the explanation given that it came forth by the gift and power of God, is the best.