More SITH stories and the end of M2C

More and more Latter-day Saints are discovering that the historical evidence corroborates and supports what Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery claimed about the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon.

We empathize with the scholars who have long promoted their theories that Joseph and Oliver misled everyone. Their M2C (Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs) theory is based on the premise that they were wrong about the New York Cumorah. Their SITH (stone-in-the-hat) theory is based on the premise that Joseph didn't really translate the engravings on the plates by means of the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates, as he said, but instead read words out loud as they appeared on a seer stone (aka the "peep stone") that he put into a hat, as described in the 1834 anti-Mormon book Mormonism Unvailed. See, e.g., https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/p/the-sith-problem-1829-2024.html,

M2C. Oliver explained it is a fact that the hill Cumorah/Ramah in New York is the same hill where Joseph found the plates. He had good reasons to make that declaration, which Joseph endorsed multiple times. Once we understand that Joseph translated two separate sets of plates, we can see how the historical evidence validates what Joseph and Oliver taught. 

I did another interview about the two sets of plates on Mormon Book Reviews, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bCVFCOVdfg

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SITH. Royal Skousen's claim that Joseph and Oliver deliberately misled everyone about the translation has been embraced by several prominent LDS scholars and organizations. For example, recently the Interpreter published two articles in their ongoing effort to promote SITH. They were written by Jeff Lindsay, who is a great guy but whose SITH filters, along with the SITH filters of the editorial board of the Interpreter, prevent them from seeing that the evidence they cite for SITH is actually evidence that Joseph and Oliver told the truth about the translation of the Book of Mormon.

I discussed the articles here:

https://interpreterpeerreviews.blogspot.com/2026/02/jeff-lindsays-moses-parallels.html

In a separate post, I introduced the topic:

https://interpreterpeerreviews.blogspot.com/2026/02/explanation-of-post-on-jeff-lindsays.html

Thursday, February 12, 2026

Explanation of post on Jeff Lindsay's Moses article

 

To understand Jeff's argument in the articles discussed in my previous two posts, it helps to understand his underlying framework.  

Jeff is an acolyte of Royal Skousen and Skousen's argument that Joseph and Oliver were misleading everyone when they repeatedly wrote that the Book of Mormon was translated by means of the Nephite interpreters which came with the plates. Instead Jeff and Royal believe David Whitmer's claims that Joseph only read off exact words from Joseph's old scrying stone in a hat (SITH = stone-in-the-hat) - with Royal's further claim that much of that was for some reason in Early Modern English (EME). This was the claim made in the 1834 anti-Mormon book Mormonism Unvailed, presented there as an alternative to the Urim and Thummim explanation that Joseph and Oliver gave.

Jeff, Royal, and other modern LDS scholars who promote SITH have adopted the Mormonism Unvailed "peep stone" narrative based on their belief that Joseph and Oliver were not telling the truth about the translation.

I have discussed the many problems with these views elsewhere.  The only alternate theory Jeff considers is that Joseph was the sole author of both the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses with only the KJV as an external source.  Any similarity between the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses not exactly as found in the KJV is then ascribed to them both being from a common ancient source such as the brass plates. 

The immediate obvious problem is that this assumes that in the year between the translation of the two books Joseph forgot everything in the Book of Mormon and never read it either.  This appears ridiculous on its face, even if one believes Joseph only saw the text once on the scrying stone.

The larger problem is that Jeff ignores a much better alternate hypothesis.  This is that Joseph told the truth that he actually translated the "engravings on the plates" (D&C 10) to produce the Book of Mormon "after the manner of [his] language" (D&C 1:24) and thus both works reflected Joseph's own vocabulary and phrasing.  In the tables in the posts I showed that most of Jeff's "parallels" actually reflect language that either actually is in the KJV, is seen in parts of the Book of Mormon unrelated to the Book of Moses story, used by Joseph in D&C revelations or is found in contemporary sources accessible to Joseph such as the writings of Jonathan Edwards.  

Now it is possible that the Book of Moses was on the brass plates and known to the Book of Mormon authors.  As I pointed out, Moroni alluded to that.

A few of Jeff (and Noel Reynold's) parallels may suggest that this is the case.  

However, Jeff obscures this possibility by way overstating his argument and ignoring a better alternate explanation of Joseph as active translator.  While I appreciate Jeff's apologetic motive, it is no service to that cause to build an argument on runaway parallelomania and ignoring better explanations because they challenge his biases.

And, as usual, readers of the Interpreter will never learn about this alternative explanation that supports and corroborates what Joseph and Oliver claimed because the editorial position of the Interpreter uniformly promotes SITH.