Try to answer these simple facts. Joe Smith was a false prophet and it is easy to prove. WAKE UP!!! REPENT!!

ADMIN: Please be aware that we are not interested in cut-and-paste exit narratives or other off topic material. Thanks.

One puzzle to me is Emma’s accounts about Joseph not being able to pronounce Sarah or thinking he had been deceived about there being walls around Jerusalem.

When my husband was translating the Book of Mormon, I wrote a part of it, as he dictated each sentence, word for word, and when he came to proper names he could not pronounce, or long words, he spelled them out, and while I was writing them, if I made any mistake in spelling, he would stop me and correct my spelling, although it was impossible for him to see how I was writing them down at the time. Even the word Sarah he could not pronounce at first, but had to spell it, and I would pronounce it for him. When he stopped for any purpose at any time he would, when he commenced again, begin where he left off without any hesitation, and one time while he was translating he stopped suddenly, pale as a sheet, and said, “Emma, did Jerusalem have walls around it?” When I answered “Yes;’ he replied “Oh! I was afraid I had been deceived:’ He had such a limited knowledge of history at that time that he did not even know that Jerusalem was surrounded by walls. OTH-38 Edmund C. Briggs, “A Visit to Nauvoo in 1856;’ Journal of History 9 (October 1916): 454. Briggs and Gurley interview of Emma Smith Bidamon at the Mansion House in Nauvoo on December 8, 1856.

The incidences she describes must have occurred while Joseph translated the first part of the 116 pages. If Emma was the scribe and not just in the room while it happened then her remarks in OTH-41 (cited above) suggest that Joseph did not have the curtain and the plates were on the table during that session. In her 1870 letter to Emma Pilgrim [OTH 39], she notes a change in revelatory aids from the “Urim and Thummim” to the small dark seer stone after the loss of the 116 pages. However she doesn’t really describe translation conditions for other scribes, other than naming them and mentioning she was in and out of the room through various stages. Emma doesn’t volunteer any information that would suggest that Joseph Smith could conceal any manuscript from her (which the use of a curtain would make possible). I get the sense her interviewers were mostly concerned with rebutting the Spalding Theory.

So it is hard to place when Emma worked as Joseph’s scribe without the curtain. It could be she helped even before Martin had Joseph make a transcript for him to take to Anthon. Reports are mixed on whether Joseph could dictate an english text before then. But I lean towards the idea he could, however he wouldn’t necessarily understand the relationship between characters and the text.

I suggest then that when Emma was a scribe, Joseph trusted her not look at the Nephite Interpreters he had disassembled and placed in a hat, and he could already dictate an english text without the plates opened up in front of him.

When producing copies of characters, I think Joseph needed to have the plates open in front of him. I believe he could see characters via revelation but it too hard to switch from a revelatory mode to a sketching mode. I am no artist but I need to constantly compare what I am drawing to what I am attempting to copy. One of my FAIR colleagues offers the possibility that all curtain accounts come from the single incident of Joseph preparing documents for Martin to present to scholars.

I think that the use of the curtain was more pervasive and was used through most of Joseph’s sessions with Martin as a scribe in the production of the 116 pages. Under this hypothesis, regardless of how Joseph is using the plates behind the curtain, the main reason seems to be that he doesn’t trust Martin Harris to not look at the Nephite Interpreters. This is something that Martin concedes was a temptation in the various accounts above. Joseph trusted Emma more so he did not use a curtain with her.

Of course, there is always the issue of non-scribes being shielded from the translation process. In this I get the sense that translation in Fayette was more open, but then again Harmony witnesses were relatively more hostile and Joseph had more incentive to be less transparent to them (to avoid mockery) and they in turn had incentive to express more skepticism about the existence of the plates and disappointment in not being able to see them.

I think Joseph may have not used the curtain at the end stages of the 116 page translation. There are some indications Joseph Smith switched from using the Nephite interpreters to his white seer stone before getting in trouble with the loss of the plates. The accounts of Martin secretly switching stones would fit best in such a scenario.

“The house of Senior Whitmer was a primitive and poorly designed structure, but it was deemed the most secure for the carrying out the sacred trust on account of the threats that had been made against Smith by his mercenary neighbors. In order to give privacy to the proceeding a blanket, which served as a portiere was stretched across the family living room to shelter the translators from the eyes of any who might call at the house while the work was in progress. This, Mr. Whitmer says, was the only use made of the blanket, and it was not for the purpose of concealing the plates or the translator from the eyes of the amanuensis. In fact, Smith was at no time concealed from his collaborators, and the translation was performed in the presence of not only the persons mentioned, but of the entire Whitmer household and several of Smith’s relatives besides.” (Chicago Tribune, 15 Dec 1885)

Early on Joseph worked directly from the plates and this required that they we secured from public view. Now that Dr. Skousen has affirmed the eye witness accounts of Emma, David and others (Joseph simply read the English), we understand that Joseph could access the plates from a distance just as he was accessing the English from a distance. Thus the curtain at that time was used not to shield the process from friends or scribes.

Most of the affirmative accounts can be traced to Susquehanna witnesses (especially to Martin Harris) and most of the Fayette witnesses deny the curtain.

First I think there are various ways to classify these accounts.

A) Do they come from hostile or friendly sources?

It is interesting to me that most of the affirmative accounts come from critics. They seem to be interested in pushing the Spalding theory where Joseph hid manuscripts behind the curtain. The accounts from Emma, David Whitmer, and Elizabeth Cowdery tend to emphasize translation stages that had no curtain as a reaction to that theory. Despite these various motives I tend to believe there is ample evidence for a curtain being used in an early stage or stages of the translation because of how early and pervasive those accounts are.