Talk:Seer stone (Latter Day Saints)

message: Rockford1963 removed (and I reverted as POV) the phrase indicating that Smith translated the Book of Mormon with the same chocolate colored stone that he had earlier used to hunt for buried treasure.  It seems obvious to me that this piece of information would be important to the uninitiated reader.--John Foxe (talk) 15:35, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Smith's use of the treasure-hunting stone to translate the Book of Mormon 

message: The LDS church is now releasing pictures of the stone.  It may be worth mention and, provided the copyright status could allow said, maybe an inclusion of a picture.--Surv1v4l1st (Talk|Contribs)  22:35, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pictures ... 

message: The LDS Church has now published pictures of Joseph Smith's seer stone. I think the picture should be published here, but I'm not sure how the wiki commons picture rules work. 
Here's a link to a news article referencing the stone: http://www.ksl.com/?sid=35795036&nid=1016&title=lds-church-releases-more-documents-from-joseph-smith-church-founding
Don
don.ferguson1@gmail.com  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pepper VanDam (talk • contribs) 23:20, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seer Stone Pictures 

message: I'd like to do a revision of this article.  I have recently finished a revision of Urim and Thummim (Latter Day Saints) and am actively working to creating List of references to seer stones in the Latter Day Saint movement history.  This article as been relatively stable for a number of years.  There has been quite a bit of research in the last couple of years with the Joseph Smith Papers, several scholarly articles and books. Specifically, I'd like to do the following:
:* Make clear the distinction between Urim and Thummim and Seer Stone.  The term 'Urim and Thummim' has meant different things at different times to different people within and without the church.  That could be sorted out here.  Among todays Latter Day Saints, Urim and Thummim is a broad category of revelatory devices, of which the Seer Stone was one of them.
:* I can't find ANY scholarly source that states the interpreters of Mosiah were Seer Stones.  This appears to be OR. Smith's description of the interpreters changed throughout his life.  The earliest references to them say they looked like spectacles, and functioned differently than Seer Stones.  The interpreters or spectacles became Urim and Thummim, lenses replaced with stones, and then the stones connected to a breastplate.  This is the scholarly consensus, but it is not unanimous, and that should also be mentioned.
:* This article focuses almost entirely on Joseph Smith's seer stone, but many other latter day saints had them and used them up until the late 1800s.  Not much scholarly work on that has been done until fairly recently.
:* This should be a sub-article of a greater article on "Cunning Folk Religion and the Latter Day Saint Movement" (a.k.a., Folk Magic and Mormonism).  I'm pretty surprised there isn't an article already about this, as it has been covered in a rich variety of literature.  I wouldn't mind starting a collaboration to write that article. Epachamo (talk) 00:12, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Revision of this article

message: There are a number of issues with this article. The most glaring is the uncritical assertion of the rock and the hat narrative as being authoritatively how the translation was done, when it is traditionally an apocryphal narrative from critics of the LDS church, most notably Doctor P. Hurlbut (an excommunicated member who aimed to "destroy Mormonism" by accumulating affidavits and publishing them in E. Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled") and David Whitmer, another apostate. Whitmer's own numerous late accounts are self-contradictory and he was never a witness to the translation process, only the plates. This narrative has only recently revived as historical by progressive historians, and is vehemently argued against by conservative church historians (such as Joseph Fielding Smith). I agree with a lot of what Epachamo has written above. In my view the entire article needs to be rewritten or qualified. Here is an example of the traditional (or historically conservative) point of view on the BoM translation: https://bookofmormonevidence.org/scriptural-evidence-interpreters-not-a-stone-in-a-hat/
No LDS scripture strictly talks about "seer stones" and the translation process, only the Urim and Thummim are mentioned, and the power of God. I think an "this article has multiple issues" tag is at least warranted, detailing the above from User:Epachamo as well as what I have mentioned. KingAntenor (talk) 04:33, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: You might be correct, but Wikipedia goes by the mainstream scholarly assessment. I am not aware of any mainstream scholar who thinks the Nephite interpreters were used. Richard Bushman, Michael Hubbard KacKay, Nicholas Frederick, The Joseph Smith Papers project, gospel topics essay, are all believers, not critics and are among a chorus of many others are unanimous in the seer stone being used in translation. If you can find a reliable source that says otherwise then its viewpoint should be represented. As an aside, David Whitmer himself did not think of himself as an apostate, he led his own "mormon" church till his death, and fully believed in the Book of Mormon. It wasn't just him however, it was virtually every other witness to include his wife Emma, the other Whitmers, Martin Harris, Hales, etc. The story of the anachronistic "Urim and Thummim" doesn't show up until years later, after Cowdery and Smith were brought to trial for practicing folk magic. Early LDS scriptures that mention "Urim and Thummim" did not use that term in the original, and it was added in after that point. Epachamo (talk) 05:11, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Issues 

message: The article would be greatly improved if it began not by telling readers who had used seer stones, but instead by explaining what they are.
In fact, it is exceptionally bad writing for any Wikipedia article to avoid ever defining its subject.
Unfortunately that is exactly what this article is missing: a definition of its subject.
As a result, readers learn many interesting facts about seer stones except for what they are. 2601:200:C000:1A0:813D:6802:379E:94B1 (talk) 21:24, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I gave it a shot at providing a definition. Let me know if it explains it better. Epachamo (talk) 10:52, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  The article would be greatly improved if