Appearance
Book of Mormon Translation
The CES Letter opens this section with a quote from Richard Bushman — a faithful Latter-day Saint historian — who acknowledged that standard chapel artwork misrepresents the translation process. From there, the argument escalates fast: the Church hid the real method, the real method is ridiculous (a "magic device or Ouija Board"), and the gold plates weren't even used.[1]
"Unlike the story I've been taught in Sunday School, Priesthood, General Conferences, Seminary, EFY, Ensigns, Church history tour, Missionary Training Center, and BYU... Joseph Smith used a rock in a hat for translating the Book of Mormon."[2]
Every institution you trusted is listed in sequence so the betrayal hits harder. By the time you reach the "Ouija Board" comparison two sentences later, you're not evaluating evidence. You're reacting to a breach of trust.
What happens when you follow the CES Letter's own facts to their logical conclusion?
Betrayal first, evidence never
The CES Letter's translation section is structured as an emotional arc, not an investigation. Establish you were lied to. Mock the real method. Skip the implications entirely.
The ridicule move:
"In other words, Joseph used the same magic device or 'Ouija Board' that he used during his treasure hunting days."[3]
Calling a seer stone an "Ouija Board" is like calling the Ark of the Covenant a storage chest. God has a long biblical track record of using physical objects as instruments of revelation — the Urim and Thummim in Exodus 28:30, Moses's rod, the brass serpent.[4] The Nephite interpreters fit that pattern exactly.
But notice what the CES Letter doesn't do with the hat. It never asks what the method rules out. If Joseph's face was in a hat, he could not see notes, manuscripts, or source texts. No curtain separated him from his scribes. Translation occurred openly with multiple witnesses present. Every plagiarism theory requires Joseph to have consulted source material during dictation. The seer stone method eliminates that possibility.
The CES Letter treats the hat as a punchline. It's actually the crime scene that clears the defendant.
"Hidden" information that was published for decades
The CES Letter's strongest rhetorical move uses two BYU religion professors — McConkie and Ostler — who themselves rejected the seer stone account:
"How could it have been expected of me and any other member to know about and to embrace the rock in the hat translation when even these two faithful full-time professors of religion at BYU rejected it?"[5]
Two professors being wrong is not the same as institutional concealment. Here is what the publication record shows.
The Church published seer stone information in its own outlets across decades: Improvement Era (1939), The Friend children's magazine (1974), Deseret Book (1976), Ensign (1977). Most significantly, Elder Russell M. Nelson described the stone-in-hat method in the Ensign in 1993 — quoting David Whitmer's eyewitness account — adapted from a talk he gave to over 100 mission presidents.[6]
That was twenty years before the CES Letter. Seven years before McConkie and Ostler rejected it.
Was the information under-emphasized in correlated Sunday School curriculum? Yes. That's a fair criticism. But "under-emphasized" and "deliberately hidden" are different claims, and the CES Letter conflates them.
The interpreters came first, the seer stone came second
The CES Letter presents "Urim and Thummim" and "seer stone" as competing narratives — one official and false, one suppressed and true. The record shows something simpler.
Joseph used the Nephite interpreters first — for the lost 116 pages. He then shifted to the seer stone for the rest of the dictation. The term "Urim and Thummim" was first applied by W.W. Phelps in January 1833, and by 1835 Joseph himself used it for both instruments.[7] This wasn't a cover-up. It was vocabulary evolving the way vocabulary does.
Orson Pratt reported Joseph's explanation: the Lord gave him the interpreters "when he was inexperienced in the Spirit of inspiration. But now he had advanced so far that he understood the operations of that Spirit and did not need the assistance of that instrument."[8] External aids giving way to internal capacity. That's a pattern scripture recognizes.
Every embarrassing detail collapses the fraud theory
Every detail the CES Letter finds embarrassing is the same detail that collapses naturalistic explanations for the Book of Mormon.
Face in a hat. No notes. No manuscript. Multiple witnesses present. No curtain. Emma: "He had neither manuscript nor book to read from. If he had had anything of the kind he could not have concealed it from me."[9]
Royal Skousen's decades-long study of the Original Manuscript confirms dictation, not copying — errors are phonetic mishearings ("Coriantummer" for "Coriantumr"), not transcription mistakes. Joseph received approximately 25-35 English words at a time and spelled out difficult proper names letter by letter.[10]
The result: 269,510 words in roughly 60 working days. No outlines. No drafts. No substantive revisions. Complex internal geography, hundreds of proper names, Hebraisms invisible to English readers, and Isaiah variants later confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls.[11]
Bottom line: The seer stone was published in Church outlets for decades before the CES Letter called it hidden. And the very process the CES Letter mocks — face in a hat, no notes, no manuscript — is what makes every plagiarism and fraud theory physically impossible. The hat isn't the embarrassment. It's the evidence.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon Translation," pp. 28-31. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon Translation," p. 29. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon Translation," p. 29. ↩︎
Cornelis Van Dam, The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997). Van Dam concluded the biblical Urim and Thummim functioned through "an appearance of light" and enabled complex prophetic communication. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon Translation," p. 31. ↩︎
Russell M. Nelson, "A Treasured Testament," Ensign, July 1993. Adapted from a talk given to over 100 mission presidents. Nelson quoted David Whitmer's full stone-in-hat description. ↩︎
W.W. Phelps first connected Joseph's instruments to the biblical term "Urim and Thummim" in January 1833. By 1835, Joseph himself most often used the term for both instruments. ↩︎
Orson Pratt, in a discourse dated 18 July 1874, reported Joseph Smith's explanation for the shift from interpreters to seer stone. ↩︎
Emma Smith, interview by Joseph Smith III, February 1879. Published in Saints' Herald 26 (October 1, 1879): 289-290. ↩︎
Royal Skousen, "How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7, no. 1 (1998): 22-31. https://scripturecentral.org/archive/periodicals/journal-article/how-joseph-smith-translated-book-mormon-evidence-original-manuscript ↩︎
"Why Is the Timing of the Book of Mormon's Translation So Marvelous?" Scripture Central. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-is-the-timing-of-the-book-of-mormons-translation-so-marvelous ↩︎