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By Means of the Urim & Thummim

Restoring Translation to the Restoration

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By Means of the Urim & Thummim

By: James W. Lucas, Jonathan E. Neville
Narrated by: James W. Lucas
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About this listen

Joseph Smith claimed the Book of Mormon was his translation of writings on ancient plates made using an even more ancient translation device called the Urim and Thummim. By Means of the Urim and Thummim explores the many controversies surrounding this claim. Did Joseph actually use a magic rock he put in a hat rather than the ancient interpreter device? Did he write the Book himself rather than translating an ancient record? Was Joseph really a near illiterate country bumpkin, or was he plausible as an actively engaged translator? And if he was a real translator as he claimed, how would such a translation process have worked to produce the Book of Mormon as we have it, with its strange melange of 1820s American English and the Bible underlain by ancient concepts and linguistic forms in an incredibly complex narrative? By Means of the Urim and Thummim will be a must for anyone interested in the unique and unusual work that is the Book of Mormon.

©2023 James W. Lucas; Jonathan E. Neville (P)2024 James W. Lucas; Jonathan E. Neville

Critic Reviews

"Lucas and Neville’s By Means of the Urim and Thummim is a substantial contribution to the translation debates that have roiled Book of Mormon scholarship for the past twenty years. It is conservative in that it restores the preeminent role of the Urim and Thummmim in the translation process and virtually erases the seerstone from the story. It also proposes a translation theory of its own that preserves the importance of the Urim and Thummim and yet accounts for the presence of language from Joseph Smith’s world. All readers who take the translation debates seriously must reckon with this book."

Richard Lyman Bushman, author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University

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