Spencer Kraus challenges Neville’s translation theories

At the end of 2020 I became acquainted with Spencer Kraus and his excellent blog. (I’ve mentioned both of them before—see here, here, and here.) I’m grateful that he has joined the ranks of Latter-day Saints who are pushing back against Jonathan Neville’s devisive and unorthodox beliefs.

This week, Kraus published a review of three of Neville’s assertions, namely:

1. That Joseph Smith was always separated from his scribes by a curtain, with Oliver Cowdery being the exception to this practice.
2. That Joseph only used a seer stone as a “demonstration” of the translation process.
3. That Oliver Cowdery wrote his series of letters in 1834 to show that Joseph Smith did not use a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon.

In response to Neville’s claims, Kraus ably shows that:

1. The eyewitness evidence indicates that Joseph and his scribes were separated from other people in the same room by a curtain, and that Joseph was only veiled from his scribes when he used the Urim and Thummim, not when he used his seer stone.
2. Neville’s “demonostration hypothesis” fails because the source Neville relies on—David Whitmer—explictly said that, at that the event, Joseph was using the Urim and Thummim, not a seer stone.
3. Rather than rejecting Joseph’s use of a seer stone, Oliver Cowdery’s 1834 letters are best interpreted as “reclaiming the narrative” from the anti-Mormon book, Mormonism Unvailed, by using the term “Urim and Thummim” as a term for all translation instruments.

Throughout his blog post, Kraus identifies how Neville “misquotes and misuses historical sources to attempt to paint a history that exists only in his imagination.” Just one example of this is how Neville has claimed that Oliver Cowdery “had [Joseph’s] little seer stone, the brown seer stone we see pictures of, in his pocket when he rejoined the Church.” Kraus hasn’t found a single source for this claim; he therefore concludes that “this detail comes directly from Neville’s imagination.”

I warmly recommend Kraus’s recent review to all readers of this blog.

—Peter Pan
 

Jonathan Neville abuses Oliver Cowdery once again

There are times when I question Jonathan Neville’s ability to read and understand even the most unambiguous historical texts.

Here’s the latest example, from his May 18, 2021, blog post, “Bottom line on M2C.” Critics of the Heartland hoax (including this humble blog) point out that Oliver Cowdery never claimed the location of the hill Cumorah was revealed by God when he wrote, in 1834, “When one reflects on the fact, that here, between these hills, the entire power and national strength of both the Jaredites and Nephites were destroyed.” Neville counters:

Some say Oliver Cowdery never claimed revelation when he wrote Letter VII. But he also never claimed revelation when he described the visit of John the Baptist, the translation of the Book of Mormon, or other events. He simply reported what happened. Having visited the repository of Nephite records in the Hill Cumorah, how could Oliver not say it was a fact that the Cumorah of Mormon 6:6 was the same hill in New York where Joseph found the plates? The factual nature of Oliver’s report, coming as it did to refute claims the Book of Mormon was fiction, makes it more, not less, credible.

The sentence I’ve formatted in boldface is simply staggering. Here Neville has asserted that Oliver Cowdery’s passing remark about “the fact” of the New York Cumorah being the last battleground of the Book of Mormon people must be taken as revealed by God because—and I quote—Oliver “also never claimed revelation when he described the visit of John the Baptist, the translation of the Book of Mormon, or other events.”

How Neville could make such a claim is simply beyond all comprehension. Perhaps we should just leave it to Oliver Cowdery to demonstrate how accurate Neville is:

Neville: “[Oliver Cowdery] never claimed revelation when he described the visit of John the Baptist.”

Oliver Cowdery (Letter I; cf. Joseph Smith—History 1:71 fn.):

Can any thinking individual honestly claim that the voice of Jesus Christ speaking from the heavens and the appearance of an angel from God was not a “revelation”?

Neville: “[Oliver Cowdery] never claimed revelation when he described…the translation of the Book of Mormon.”

Oliver Cowdery (Letter I; cf. Joseph Smith—History 1:71 fn.):

Can any thinking individual honestly claim that “a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven” was not a “revelation”?

Neville: “[Oliver Cowdery] never claimed revelation when he described…other events.”

Oliver Cowdery (Joseph Smith, Journal, 3 April 1836; cf. D&C 110:1–4):

Can any thinking individual honestly claim that Oliver Cowdery “never claimed revelation when he described…other events,“ when here is an account written by Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in which they testified that they both saw and heard the Lord Jesus Christ?


How can Jonathan Neville be so far off the mark? These are basic, fundamental historical accounts that Neville himself has quoted numerous times on his own blogs!

More to the point, how can Neville compare any of these three supernal accounts from Oliver Cowdery to his passing mention of a supposed “fact” in Letter VII?

It simply boggles the mind that Jonathan Neville can be so careless in his statements, so irresponsible in his treatment of the historical record.

Even worse, it boggles the mind that any thinking Latter-day Saint would take what he claims seriously.

—Peter Pan