Book of Mormon Translation

The Book of Mormon came to us through a series of miraculous events. It is the translation of an ancient record engraved on plates that was preserved for centuries and entrusted to Joseph Smith by an angel named Moroni. The translation was accomplished not using traditional methods, but by divine revelation. Joseph dictated the book to scribes at a breathtaking pace, completing almost the entire translation between April and June of 1829.

Joseph Smith did not share many details about the translation process, and few records describing the translation were created at the time. Much of what we know comes from later eyewitness accounts. This means we don’t have a complete understanding of how the miracle of the translation occurred or the extent to which Joseph’s methods changed over time.

We do know that the translation was divinely inspired. Joseph Smith declared that he translated the record “by the gift and power of God.” Those who observed the translation process likewise affirmed it was a miracle. Three witnesses—Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer—attested that an angel showed them the plates and testified that the translation was accomplished with God’s help.

We can gain our own testimony of the Book of Mormon’s truthfulness by reading it and praying for a witness from the Holy Spirit.

The Book of Mormon plates were inscribed in an unknown ancient language, and Joseph was a young man with limited education. He could not translate the text by conventional means. The Book of Mormon could only be translated with divine help. Joseph Smith didn’t share details about the translation process. He simply and repeatedly testified that he translated “by the gift and power of God.” The text of the Book of Mormon came by revelation.

The Book of Mormon itself reminds us that the Lord “speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.” Through a revelatory process, God helped His prophet produce a translation that testifies powerfully of Jesus Christ in English. Since that time, the Church has worked to ensure that the Book of Mormon’s witness of the Savior is available in many of the languages of the world.

Eyewitnesses to the translation described two different stone instruments that Joseph used to translate the Book of Mormon. They testified that as Joseph looked into these objects, the text of the Book of Mormon was revealed to him. One of these objects, which Book of Mormon writers called “interpreters,” was buried with the plates in a hill near Joseph’s home. Those who saw the interpreters described them as a pair of clear stones set in metal rims and bound together by a metal bow. Joseph sometimes called them “spectacles.” The angel Moroni explained that “the possession and use of these stones were what constituted seers in ancient or former times.”

Another object, which Joseph Smith discovered in the ground sometime before he retrieved the gold plates, was a small brown stone, which was commonly called a “seer stone.” During the centuries leading up to Joseph Smith’s time, many Christians believed objects such as seer stones could be used to find lost objects or to search for buried treasure. Joseph himself had used his stone for similar purposes. But as he grew to understand the work God called him to do, he also learned to use his seer stone to help him translate the plates.

According to eyewitness sources, Joseph sometimes used the interpreters or spectacles to translate. Other firsthand sources suggest he sometimes translated with a single seer stone. These objects could apparently be used interchangeably and worked in much the same way, and Joseph seems to have used them both at different times.

A few years after the publication of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith and his associates began to use the Old Testament term “Urim and Thummim” to describe the objects Joseph Smith used as he translated the Book of Mormon. In the Bible, Urim and Thummim were sacred objects, believed to be stones, that were used by Israelite priests to receive divine communications. The early Saints sometimes referred to both the interpreters buried with the plates and Joseph’s seer stone as Urim and Thummim.

Through the process of the translation, the Lord transformed young Joseph into a prophet and seer, fulfilling the Book of Mormon prophecy that He would “raise up” a seer in the last days to help accomplish His work.

Many early Church members were familiar with Joseph’s use of seer stones. But for much of the 20th century, published accounts of the translation relied on sources that focused mainly on the interpreters buried with the plates. Memory of the seer stones faded among many Latter-day Saints, and artists and narrators depicted the translation based on this partial understanding of early Church history.

In recent decades, the Church has worked to provide carefully researched and more complete historical accounts of Church history. This expanded understanding helps artists more accurately depict the miraculous story of the Book of Mormon’s translation, portraying the use of the seer stone as well as the interpreters.

Eyewitness accounts show that in some instances Joseph Smith looked at a seer stone in a hat to translate, but in other cases he looked through the interpreters at the plates.

The plates were tangible evidence that the Book of Mormon was an ancient record. Multiple witnesses saw the plates and testified of their reality. Members of Joseph Smith’s family and others held the plates or felt them under a cloth. Three witnesses were shown the plates by an angel and heard the voice of God testifying to the truth of the Book of Mormon. A separate group of eight witnesses testified in a formal statement that they had also seen the plates and had held and examined them. The presence of the plates and the accounts of those who saw or held them provide important testimony of the Book of Mormon record.

In addition to Joseph Smith, 11 men testified that they saw the Book of Mormon plates. Martin Harris, one of these witnesses, sometimes spoke of seeing the plates with “a spiritual eye.” This led critics to claim that he had seen the plates only “in vision or imagination.” But he was simply using scriptural language to describe a miraculous experience. He and the other witnesses clarified that their experience was more than a mere dream. Martin Harris declared, “As sure as you are standing there and see me, just as sure did I see the angel with the golden plates in his hand.” David Whitmer, another of the Three Witnesses, explained, “Of course we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view.” He then added, “But we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time.”

Each of the Three Witnesses bore repeated testimony of their experience in published statements, interviews, and private conversations. For example, Oliver stated: “God sent His holy angel to declare the truth of the translation of it to us, and therefore we know. Though the mob kill us, yet we must die declaring its truth.” Not all the accounts of the witnesses’ experiences are equally reliable as sources. Some are from interviews by people who were hostile to the witnesses’ testimony. Others were recorded many years after their experience with the plates. But though the reports of their statements vary in some details, they are generally consistent.

Even though each of the Three Witnesses parted ways with Joseph Smith and the Church, they continued to affirm their testimony throughout their lives. And Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris eventually returned to the Church. Each of the Eight Witnesses likewise stood by his testimony of the plates, though some eventually left the Church. The combined weight of their numerous statements is a powerful witness of the reliability of the statements they published in the Book of Mormon.

To learn more about other women and men who were witnesses of the Book of Mormon plates, see Church History Topics, “Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.”

The text of the Book of Mormon was dictated by Joseph Smith and written by his scribes. Before the book was published, Oliver Cowdery made a handwritten copy of the original manuscript to give to the typesetter at the printer’s office. This copy was called the printer’s manuscript. Both manuscripts were largely unpunctuated; the typesetter added almost all of the punctuation. During the processes of copying the manuscript and typesetting the book, small errors were introduced.

When a second edition of the Book of Mormon was needed, Joseph reviewed the printer’s manuscript and made minor punctuation, grammar, and spelling changes to standardize the text. For the third edition, Joseph Smith and his printer compared the text to the original manuscript and corrected many scribal errors that had been introduced when the text had been copied. Almost all of Joseph’s revisions were minor and do not alter the meaning of the text. However, Joseph made a few clarifying changes that were more substantial:

• The words “me thought I saw a dark and dreary wilderness” were changed to “methought I saw in my dream, a dark and dreary wilderness” in 1 Nephi 8:4. This clarifies that Lehi was describing a vision.

• The word “white” was changed to “pure” in 2 Nephi 30:6. When describing the change that would come upon the Lamanites when they repented, Joseph Smith edited the text to clarify that they would become “a pure and a delightsome people.”

• The words “come forth out of the waters of Judah” were changed to “come forth out of the waters of Judah, or out of the waters of baptism” in 1 Nephi 20:1. The additional words appear to have been added to help readers understand the meaning of the text.

• The words “the Son of” were added to 1 Nephi 11:18, 11:21, 11:32, and 13:40. These additions clarify instances in which references to “God” describe Jesus Christ.

• The title “Jesus Christ” was changed to “the Messiah” in 1 Nephi 12:18.

• The name “Benjamin” was changed to “Mosiah” in Mosiah 21:28 and Ether 4:1.

Some later versions of the Book of Mormon were based on an early edition published in England that did not contain some of Joseph Smith’s changes. However, all recent editions include them, along with a few other minor changes. These additional changes help bring the text into closer “conformity with the prepublication manuscripts and early editions edited by the Prophet Joseph Smith.”

Those who wish to review all changes made to the text can find transcriptions of the existing manuscripts and early editions of the Book of Mormon at josephsmithpapers.org.

Learning about how the Book of Mormon was translated can enrich our understanding of the early Restoration of the Church and the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith. But you can gain an enduring testimony of the Book of Mormon by reading the book itself, living by the principles it teaches, and praying for a spiritual confirmation that it is true.

President Russell M. Nelson has taught: “The great worth of the Book of Mormon lies not in its miraculous translation, wondrous as it was. … The great worth of the Book of Mormon is that it is another testament of Jesus Christ.”