[Page 151]A review of William L. Davis, Visions in a Seer Stone: Joseph Smith and the Making of the Book of Mormon. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2020, 264 pp. paperback $29.95, hardcover $90, e-book $22.99, ISBN: 1469655675, 9781469655673.

 

Abstract: Within the genre of Book of Mormon studies, William L. Davis’s Visions in a Seer Stone presents readers with an innovative message that reports how Joseph Smith was able to produce the words of the Book of Mormon without supernatural assistance. Using oral performance skills that Smith ostensibly gained prior to 1829, his three-month “prodigious flow of verbal art and narrative creation” (7) became the Book of Mormon. Davis’s theory describes a two-part literary pattern in the Book of Mormon where summary outlines (called “heads) in the text are consistently expanded in subsequent sections of the narrative. Termed “laying down heads,” Davis insists that such literary devices are anachronistic to Book of Mormon era and constitute strong evidence that Joseph Smith contributed heavily, if not solely, to the publication. The primary weaknesses of the theory involve the type and quantity of assumptions routinely accepted throughout the book. The assumptions include beliefs that the historical record does not support or even contradicts (e.g. Smith’s 1829 superior intelligence, advanced composition abilities, and exceptional memorization proficiency) and those that describe Smith using oral performance skills beyond those previously demonstrated as humanly possible (e.g. the ability to dictate thousands of first-draft phrases that are also refined final-draft sentences). Visions in a Seer Stone will be most useful to individuals who, like the author, are willing to accept these assumptions. To more skeptical readers, the theory [Page 152]presented regarding the origin of the Book of Mormon will be classified as incomplete or inadequate.

 

table {border: 1px solid #dddddd; width: 100%; margin: auto;} table td{border: 1px solid #dddddd; padding: 5px !important; text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;} tr.bottom td {vertical-align: bottom;} p.wp-caption-text{text-align: center !important;} p.wp-caption-text:before {content: '' !important;}

From the first moment in 1830 when Joseph Smith held the newly-printed Book of Mormon in his hands declaring that it came by “the gift and power of God,”1 secularists have rejected all claims of divine assistance. Instead, they have searched for alternate explanations that employ natural forces and human abilities to generate all 269,320 words of the text.2 Over the ensuing century, two theories dominated the explanatory landscape (see Figure 1). Starting in 1833, a conspiracy involving the Spaulding manuscript prevailed until the document was rediscovered in 1884.

 

Since then, the most popular hypothesis has been that Joseph Smith’s intellect was sufficient to verbally compose all the verses, although details of how he did it have never been proposed.3 If asked, “What skills would be needed to dictate a book like the Book of Mo...