Eyewitness accounts describe Joseph Smith dictating the surviving Book of Mormon text to scribes over about three months in 1829, often looking into a seer stone in a hat while the plates were not in view. About 28 percent of the original manuscript and nearly all of the printer’s manuscript survive. The Church’s Book of Mormon Translation essay summarizes the dictation accounts and original-manuscript survival; the Joseph Smith Papers introduction to the printer’s manuscript describes that manuscript’s preservation.
The dispute
What supplied the English words? The accounts below differ over whether Smith received specific wording, expressed revealed meaning in his own language, expanded prepared narratives orally, or produced words through processes experienced as coming from beyond conscious authorship. These explanations can overlap. Witnesses reported what they observed and what Smith told them, often years later; scholars disagree about how far those reports bear on his internal experience. One included position argues that the stone-in-a-hat sessions were demonstrations rather than the translation itself. Some positions concern documentary reconstruction without selecting one of the mechanisms listed here.
A sustained scholarly alternative grounded in oral composition, prepared outlines, and nineteenth-century preaching.
Tight control
Specific English words are supplied to Smith and read to scribes. Arguments from Early Modern English grammar belong here; this model need not make every scribal detail error-free.
Skousen argues that manuscript spellings, corrections, and dictation patterns support a process in which Smith received specific words and read them to scribes. His tight-control model allows human copying errors; it does not require that every scribe’s spelling or punctuation was revealed.
Carmack argues that the earliest text contains grammatical patterns characteristic of Early Modern English that cannot be explained simply by imitation of the King James Bible or Smith’s ordinary dialect. He takes those patterns as evidence that the English wording was revealed to Smith rather than composed in Smith’s own language.
the grammar presents extensive evidence of its Early Modern English character, independent in many cases from the King James Bible.
Loose control
Revelation supplies meaning or understanding, which Smith expresses in his own English. Proponents differ about the role of the instruments and how the wording becomes available to him.
Gardner proposes that revelation supplied an understanding of the plate text, which Smith rendered into English through his own vocabulary and cultural resources. He suggests that Smith’s mind could project that wording onto the stone, reconciling witnesses’ descriptions of reading words with a translation shaped by Smith’s language.
Roberts argues that divine assistance made the meaning of the record available to Smith, who expressed it in the language he could command. This account permits human grammar and phrasing within an inspired translation and does not require every English word to have been supplied independently of Smith.
Neville proposes that Smith translated the plates through the Nephite interpreters, using his own vocabulary under revelatory guidance. His Demonstration Hypothesis treats the observed stone-in-a-hat sessions as demonstrations of translation rather than the actual translation, with later witnesses conflating the two.
he translated the plates using his own lexicon while guided by revelation
Oral composition
Smith expands prepared story outlines into extended narratives during dictation, using techniques comparable to nineteenth-century preaching and storytelling. Preparation need not mean reading notes during dictation.
literature · religious studies · Independent Scholar
Davis proposes that Smith developed story outlines over several years and expanded them into sustained narratives during dictation, drawing on contemporary techniques of semi-extemporaneous preaching. His account combines preparation and improvisation without requiring Smith to read a manuscript during dictation, and considers how Smith could seek spiritual confirmation of the narratives he composed.
Smith reviewed each of the story outlines prior to dictation, and then dictated the stories without the use of notes or manuscripts.
Automatic or nonconscious composition
Words or narratives emerge through mental processes beyond ordinary conscious planning and can be experienced as coming from another source. This is a proposed production mechanism, not a clinical diagnosis or a verdict on inspiration.
religious studies · Distinguished Professor Emerita and Research Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
Taves explores how Smith could produce a complex revelatory text through mental processes that made aspects of his own activity seem to come from an external other. Her comparative account examines nonconscious processes together with collaborators’ interpretations, rather than treating the witnesses’ attribution of the words as a complete explanation of their production.
Dunn proposes that Smith’s fluent dictation resembles automatic writing, comparing other lengthy texts produced with little conscious planning. He suggests that memory outside awareness could account for biblical language and distinguishes an account of the psychological process from a judgment about whether the text is inspired.
Smith composed the narrative deliberately and presented it as an ancient record; proponents differ on how far he understood the work as inspired or religiously sincere.
Vogel argues that Smith consciously composed the Book of Mormon and presented it as an ancient record while pursuing sincere religious purposes. He links the seer stone used in dictation to Smith’s earlier treasure seeking and reads the narrative alongside Smith’s life as evidence of his developing religious ideas.
Metcalfe argues that the Book of Mormon’s wording should be examined alongside Smith’s other scriptural productions rather than beginning with its ancient self-description as an established conclusion. His comparisons of King James Bible passages and Smith’s later Bible revisions place the English text within an evolving process of scriptural composition, without specifying a dictation mechanism.
history · Professor of Church History and Doctrine, Brigham Young University
In their joint historical work, Dirkmaat and MacKay suggest that Smith’s procedures varied, including the use of one stone or two and dictation with the plates out of view. They place the witness accounts in their historical settings without treating them as a direct record of Smith’s consciousness.
Hardy weighs evidence for both tight and loose control, including witness reports, English-language features, and biblical quotations. He concludes that neither account resolves all the difficulties and that the absence of the original-language text and direct access to Smith’s experience limits a definitive choice.
Welch reconstructs the 1829 translation calendar and estimates roughly sixty available working days after accounting for other activities and interruptions. He treats the speed and continuity of dictation as significant features of the production record, while this study does not select a specific mechanism for supplying the English words.
history · religious studies · Associate Professor of Church History and Doctrine, Brigham Young University
In their joint historical work, MacKay and Dirkmaat reconstruct dictation using seer stones, including accounts of a stone in a hat while the plates were covered or stored away. They distinguish what witnesses observed from Smith’s unobservable mental experience and decline to choose a cognitive mechanism from those reports alone.