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Anti-Mormon Jerald Tanner Almost Eats His Hat

My thanks to John Tvedtnes for supplying this information...

Transcribed by Kerry A. Shirts

Cartoon by Kerry A. Shirts

A question about the BoM translation process (using Bible passages) that Kerry got and passed on to me reminded me of something that would be of interest. Last year, Jerald Tanner came up with a new idea on how Joseph was able to use the Bible in composing the Book of Mormon. The theory is that he cut a slit in the hat and then looked through the slit at the text of the Bible held on his lap or in an open table drawer. Jerald, in fact, demonstrated this method to a visitor, who didn't realize he had a Bible on his lap. As Matt Roper and I thought about this, we saw several problems with this theory:

1. The table probably didn't have a drawer in it. In those days, only the very wealthy could afford tables with built-in drawers.

2. Witnesses who were there reported that Joseph didn't have a Bible or any other material with him.

3. The cloth that is often depicted as separating Joseph and Oliver was, according to witnesses, actually placed to separate that part of the room being used for translation from the rest. So there was no cloth to conceal a Bible from the scribe or any Whitmer or Smith family members who happened to be in that part of the room.

4. Using the slit-in-the-hat trick still doesn't how, if Joseph used the Bible as extensively as the Tanners (or Wesley Walters) think he did, he managed to keep paging back and forth between different books in the Old and New Testaments to pull out brief phrases.

5. Finally, we figure that if the slit in the hat was too small, the stone he placed in the hat would have covered it. And if it was too large, the stone would have fallen through. Jerald, of course, performed his test without a stone inside the hat.

Believe it or not, Matt actually got an old hat to try it out and cut a slit in it. We tried to get Lou Midgley to donate one of his umpteen hats, but he just wouldn't give in to the pressure. I went out and bought an egg-shaped polished stone to match the description given by witnesses. Well, the rest is history.

Jerald Tanner demonstrating his method of using a seer stone as described in article.