In support of their case for the use of the Urim
and Thummim in Genesis, Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon cite a man named Lorenzo
Brown (1823–1902) supposedly quoting Joseph Smith talking about revising the
Bible. (“A Recovered Resource,” 278–79.) They call Brown’s statement
“remarkable,” but it is actually very problematic, and its uncertain provenance
renders it unusable. Despite the fact that the year 1880 is written on the
report of the statement, Wayment says that it is “a journal reference” of a
contemporary of Joseph Smith (“Joseph Smith’s Use of Bible Commentaries,” 7;
“Making of a Bible Revision,” 21). Instead, the statement is found in a
five-page document called “Sayings of Joseph by Those Who Heard Him at Different
Times,” perhaps produced around the beginning of the twentieth century. The
document contains an unnamed compiler’s collection of statements attributed to
Joseph Smith, as reported by several earlier informants. The document does not
say when it was produced, how the compiler obtained the statements, what the
criteria were for inclusion, or whether he or she compiled them from memory.
There is no indication that the compiler was a witness to the informants
writing or uttering the quotes. We know that the document is not the original,
because a note on it identifies it as a copy. These are Joseph Smith’s
purported words according to the Lorenzo Brown statement:
After I got through translating the Book of Mormon, I took up the Bible
to read with the Urim and Thummim. I read the first chapter of Genesis and I
saw the things as they were done. I turned over the next and the next and the
whole passed before me like a grand panorama and so on chapter after chapter
until I read the whole of it. I saw it all! … (This was spoken at the House of
<Benj> Brown N.Y. 1832 Sidney Rigdon being along. Related by Lorenzo
Brown 1880). (“Sayings of Joseph by Those who heard him at different times,”
page [2], Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
Salt Lake City.)
Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon copied the words of the statement from a
secondary source.
Brown was nine years old in 1832 when Joseph Smith supposedly said these
words, and Brown supposedly related the story 48 years later. In his
autobiography Brown first mentions meeting Joseph Smith in 1837, and Brown did
not join the Church until 1838. (“Lorenzo Brown Diary and Autobiography,” page
[2], L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young
University.) Perhaps Brown remembered the date wrong and a conversation with
Joseph Smith took place in 1837, when the Prophet visited his family and Brown
was fourteen. If Brown remembered the wrong date in 1880, that gives us even
more reason to doubt the reliability of the quoted words.
No sources from Joseph Smith or any of his scribes mention the use of
seer stones or the Urim and Thummim during the Bible revision. In a recent
collection of over 160 early statements regarding Joseph Smith’s use of those
devices, Brown’s statement is the only one that mentions them in the context of
the Bible revision. (See Michael Hubbard MacKay and Nicholas J.
Frederick, Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones [Provo,
UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2016], 181–232.)
Another problem with Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon’s use of the Brown quote
is that it does not say what they want it to say. The quote never says that it
has only to do with Genesis. The Prophet picked up the Bible, started with its
first chapter, turned to the next and the next, and the whole passed before him
and so on, chapter after chapter, until he read the whole of it. Wayment’s
interpretation of this as referring only to Genesis does not come from the text
but is imposed on it in support of the idea of a revelatory Genesis revision
followed by an academic revision that drew ideas from Adam Clarke. In addition,
Brown’s comment is incompatible with the evidence on the manuscripts. Kent P.
Jackson, "Some
Notes on Joseph Smith and Adam Clarke," footnote 33)