Thank you Jeff Lindsay

Recently Jeff Lindsay published a review in the Interpreter of a book that Jim Lucas and I wrote titled By Means of the Urim and Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration.

Jeff's a great guy. We met in person when we were both living in China. He has published blog posts for a long time, often with useful insights.

I appreciate his attention to the book. He apparently spent a lot of time writing his review, and even collaborated with others. He sent me his review shortly before it was published, but I was traveling and had other commitments so I didn't look at it until a few days ago.

I thank Jeff for doing the review because it brings into focus some of the key issues about the translation of the Book of Mormon. Because Jeff relied so heavily on the work of Royal Skousen, it's fair to sum up the entire review as a question of whether or not we agree with what Royal Skousen concluded:

"Joseph Smith’s claim that he used the Urim and Thummim is only partially true; and Oliver Cowdery’s statements that Joseph used the original instrument while he, Oliver, was the scribe appear to be intentionally misleading."

I disagree with Skousen. 

Jeff and the rest of the Interpreters agree with Skousen. 

And I'm fine with agreeing to disagree because I like "unity in diversity" and I think it's healthy for everyone to understand what others believe and why.

That's the pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding.

- I think that Jeff and I share the pursuit of charity; we each assume the other is acting in good faith.

- I'm less sure about the pursuit of understanding, though, because Jeff inserted his own spin in several places instead of accurately representing our reasoning. He seemed more intent on validating SITH than in understanding why we reject SITH.

- And I'm even less sure about the pursuit of clarity because Jeff muddied the waters throughout instead of making clear comparisons between our reasoning and his. He wasn't even clear about the facts, as he avoided quoting the most important sources that we discussed at length.

I hope that at some point, Jeff and the other Interpreters will join in the pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding so everyone interested can easily identify the facts, and then see how our respective assumptions, inferences and theories diverge. That's the FAITH model that apparently threatens so many LDS scholars who continue to resist the clarity of comparison.

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Because he spent so much time on it, I figured Jeff deserved careful consideration, so I did an interlinear "peer review" which you can read here. 

https://interpreterpeerreviews.blogspot.com/2024/12/review-of-jeff-lindsays-review-of-by.html

Full disclosure: I didn't even submit my review to the Interpreter because I knew they would never publish it, just like they didn't publish my rebuttal to the second review of another of my books on the same topic, A Man that Can Translate. For one thing, because my review is interlinear, it is too long (57 pages). For another, my review is too precise and detailed in showing where Jeff made errors of omission, logic, misrepresentation, etc.

Overall, I was not surprised that Jeff disagreed with our conclusions about the translation. That's to be expected. Jeff works with the Interpreter, and the stone-in-the-hat narrative (SITH) is a mandatory belief there (along with M2C, the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory).

What I was surprised about was the extent that Jeff followed the Dan Peterson school of apologetics that all the Interpreters follow: condescending rhetoric, obfuscation, "clever" quips, appeal to the authority of the citation cartel, misdirection, omission and censorship--basically the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture.

But despite all that, Jeff published a lively review that is encouraging in the sense that it is a step toward greater clarity, charity and understanding.

The question is, will he be willing to take another step and join with me in creating a clear, comprehensive comparison of our different perspectives?