A Swing and a Miss from Jonathan Neville

 

Jonathan Neville has attempted to respond to my reviews of his two books. Until now, it has mainly consisted of libel — an odd mistake considering Neville allegedly practiced law. Yesterday, however, he made a mistake that characterizes the mistakes replete through A Man That Can Translate and Infinite Goodness: misrepresentation. Responding to this seems like a waste of time on my part, but this can be shown as representative of the overall quality of Neville’s responses.

In my review of A Man That Can Translate, I respond to a variety of claims that Neville makes. I show how the term Urim and Thummim could be used to describe multiple instruments of translation, for instance. This includes the Nephite interpreters and Joseph Smith’s seer stone.

At one point, Neville claims that Brigham Young had the Nephite interpreters. This is based on a statement made in 1853 by Heber C. Kimball that Brigham had everything he needed to lead the Saints, including the Urim and Thummim. Neville’s interpretation is fundamentally flawed in part because no apostle ever claimed to have the Nephite interpreters following Joseph’s return of them, and partly because Neville has a false dichotomy set up where the term can only apply to one instrument (the seer stone or interpreters).

To that end, I quote Orson Pratt, who used the term Urim and Thummim to describe the Nephite interpreters precisely because the term can be used for multiple instruments and it shows that Neville’s analysis was incorrect to state Brigham Young had the Nephite interpreters.[1]

 Neville believes I stepped on a “landmine.” He writes that I and other “SITH sayers” believe that “Joseph used the term Urim and Thummim to refer to the brown stone they claim Joseph put in the hat, upon which words appeared that Joseph read out loud to his scribes.” This is only partly true, since I believe and demonstrate in my review that multiple early Latter-day Saints used the term to refer to both instruments of translation. But only mentioning one item here suits Neville’s needs; hence the misrepresentation.

Neville goes on to claim that this statement:

specifically excludes the brown stone from any connection with the translation of the Book of Mormon because, instead of being in the possession of Brigham Young as the brown stone was, the actual Urim and Thummim that Joseph used to translate the Book of Mormon “will again come forth” sometime in the future to be used to bring to light ancient records.

This, again, is a false statement regarding the statement in question by Orson Pratt. Here, Neville assumes that only one instrument was used in translation, and therefore all statements about the translation either contradict each other or some statements are false. In the sermon I cite, Orson Pratt uses the term Urim and Thummim to refer to the Nephite interpreters; that does not mean that there are no other divine instruments of translation that Joseph could have used as well.

Neville also fails to take the citation carefully selected from my paper in its proper context. I was not using this statement to discuss Joseph’s seer stone. I was using it precisely because it talks about the Nephite interpreters. Rather than defend his claim that Brigham Young had them in his possession or admit his error, Neville sinks to misrepresentation and cherry-picking.

The Nephite interpreters were used to translate the Book of Mormon. So was the seer stone. There is nothing in this statement, once you understand how this term, that is a silver bullet against the seer stone.

In fact, Neville has yet to show any contemporary of Joseph to explicitly say that the seer stone was never used. Instead, he relies on his own assumptions to further assume that they must be saying that implicitly. He cracked the code to interpret them, so he must therefore be believed. This is quite ironic, given his railing against those who pass assumptions off as facts in A Man That Can Translate, which even in that book he demonstrated his own willingness to pass assumptions as facts when it suited his needs.

Neville again takes a dig at the seer stone by stating that the seer stone is just one of many “ordinary rocks, such as the brown one the Church has displayed.” This false premise is telling. Instead of admitting that the seer stone is used for divine purposes, Neville attempts to remove any divine qualities from it altogether. Any admission that it was prepared by the Lord would be antithetical to his false worldview. I demonstrate in my review that Church leaders and Joseph's contemporaries claim the stone was found by revelation, and the seer stone was far from an “ordinary rock.”

Of course, one point should be noted — Orson Pratt used the term Urim and Thummim to describe multiple instruments, and even hinted that Joseph’s seer stone could be a Urim and Thummim. But it is too inconvenient to consider for Jonathan Neville.

I am not interested in an endless back-and-forth response to Neville when he has nothing substantial to say in his so-called “peer-review” of my papers (something that his two books desperately needed). This is a demonstrative sample of many of the false claims and misrepresentations that Neville relies upon in his responses to show why I have no interest. Until Neville actually is able to form a coherent response that is free of libel, misrepresentation, and cites historical materials faithfully to defend his analysis, there is nothing more for me to say.

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[1] See Spencer Kraus, "An Unfortunate Approach to Joseph Smith's Translation of Ancient Scripture," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 52 (2022): 3–6 for reference to all needed citations.