Abstract: James Lucas had the opportunity to respond to the review of the book that he and Jonathan Neville wrote, By Means of the Urim & Thummim. He elected not to really respond to the issues I brought up but rather summarized his essential points. That doesn’t leave much to respond to. However, there is a continuing misunderstanding of how historians work that I feel must be underscored.
In an earlier volume of Interpreter, Jeff Lindsay and I provided independent reviews of By Means of the Urim & Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration, a book by James Lucas and Jonathan Neville.1 In response to that review, Lucas notes the following:
I appreciate the Interpreter’s editors’ willingness to allow me to: (1) succinctly summarize the book’s argument since readers would not be able to garner that from these reviews, and (2) lay out how going forward we might better construct a faithful narrative of the Book of Mormon’s production. (My [Page 108]co-author and I have posted a detailed commentary on the reviews elsewhere.)2
Clearly, the purpose of the piece provided as a response to the reviews in Interpreter is not to respond to the reviews, so I don’t have much to respond to in this rejoinder. I will simply state that my objections to the positions presented in By Means of the Urim & Thummim are not resolved (and not really addressed) by Lucas’s response.
I must highlight one aspect of his book summary. Lucas perpetuates the fundamental argument of the book, which is that the term “Urim and Thummim” must refer exclusively to the interpreters. I need to emphasize that “Urim and Thummim” is not a Book of Mormon term; it appears nowhere in the volume. It is borrowed from the Bible and was, after the translation of the Book of Mormon, applied to the instruments used in that translation. Further, the biblical Urim and Thummim had no known use as an instrument of translation.
Lucas and Neville are correct that “Urim and Thummim” could refer to the interpreters; no scholar denies this. The evidence demonstrates that the term was used much more broadly. There are historical statements where the label “Urim and Thummim” is clearly used to describe a seer stone. There are zero historical statements that suggest that it exclusively referred to the interpreters. Scholars who point this out are not calling Joseph or Oliver dishonest as Lucas and Neville assert.
Perhaps a few more modern parallels will help make the issue clear. “Levis” can refer to the product from the Levi Strauss brand. However, it is also commonly used to reference other kinds of denim jeans. “Kleenex” certainly can refer to a specific brand of tissue, but common usage often has “Kleenex” meaning brands of tissues offered by other vendors. “Xerox,” as a verb, has come to be synonymous with photocopying, regardless of who manufacturers the photocopy machine. “Coke” is a well-known brand, of course, yet in many southern states it is also a generic term for any carbonated drink.
“Urim and Thummim” had a similar range of usage. If I ask someone in the south if they had a Coke earlier in the day, and they say yes, does that necessarily mean they drank Coca-Cola? No. Could it? Yes. Basing a book on the idea that the response could only mean [Page 109]Coca-Cola would be folly. It is likewise folly to insist that “Urim and Thummim” must only refer to the interpreters.
I hope that the continued employment of this fallacy by Lucas and Neville results from their misunderstanding and not an intentional misrepresentation. Either way, the understanding of their readers is not enlarged.
Brant A. Gardner (M.A. State University of New York Albany) is the author of Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon and The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon, both published through Greg Kofford Books. He has contributed articles to Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl and Symbol and Meaning Beyond the Closed Community. He has presented papers at the FAIR conference as well as at Sunstone.
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1 Comment(s)
James Lucas, 03-17-2025 at 1:12 am
Brant – While the spectacle-like double-lens Jaredite/Nephite interpreter instrument was almost certainly different than the “Urim & Thummim” described in the Bible, in the context of the translation of the Book of Mormon the term is only used to refer to the Jaredite/Nephite interpreters. To start, the canonized account in the Pearl of Great Price ascribes the use of the term for the interpreters to Moroni (JS-H 1:35) and, even if one dismisses that scriptural account as dating from 1838 when the use of the term had become widespread, the use of the term for the interpreters began very early. Previously researchers pointed to an 1832 account from W. W. Phelps, but we have an even earlier report of its use in Boston by Orson Hyde and Samuel Smith. Most importantly, almost all contemporary accounts of the translation use the term only to refer to the interpreters, usually specifying that it was the instrument which came with the plates, which clearly distinguishes it from Joseph’s scrying stone. Even sources who are used to claim that Joseph used the scrying stone for the translation, such as Emma Smith and David Whitmer, used the term Urim & Thummim to refer only to the interpreters, and refer to the scrying stone as a separate object. See chapter 2(E) of “By Means of the Urim & Thummim.” Later broader uses of the term in the 1840s should not be used to obscure the fact that sources relating to the translation of the Book of Mormon only use the term to refer to the Jaredite/Nephite interpreters which came with the plates. Thus, when Joseph and Oliver used the term, they meant the interpreters only, and efforts to slip the scrying stone into those sources distort and belie the testimonies of these primary eyewitnesses.
I would also note the first footnote of the response article, which links to a more detailed rebuttal of your review.