Bushman points out that the First Vision was not an unusual thing for the time and, while controversial, was certainly not out of place in the “burnt over district.” But you cannot say the same thing for this extraordinary idea about translating. Translation in Joseph Smith’s day, as it is in ours, was considered a learned exercise, something for the Charles Anthons of the world. Nothing in his background could prepare him for being a seer and translator, aside from a few unhelpful hints in the Bible and perhaps some folk magic (though there is no case of it being used to translate that I know of). Smith’s best source of his role as a translator came to him as he was translating, since the Book of Mormon itself treats the topic extensively, most notably with King Mosiah. Here the assumption by Vogel, Metcalfe, etc. falls down, I think, because their argument that Joseph absorbed, fermented, and then regurgitated controversies and preoccupations of his milieu had no precedent for seership or translating. Visions, yes. Treasure-digging, yes. Charismatic, apocalyptic prophets, check. Controversial sexual and family practices, check. Mound-building Indians, yes. (Though not, it is very important to clarify, the kind of vast and highly developed civilizations depicted in the Book of Mormon; that was considered ridiculous and in fact invited quite a bit of ridicule by Joseph’s peers).

Also intriguing to me along these lines was Bushman, following Terryl Givens in By the Hand of Mormon, points out the changing role of the Book of Mormon in the Church. For the period of Joseph’s life and a significant period thereafter, the actual content of the Book of Mormon wasn’t as important as its function as a sign of his prophetic calling. As Givens writes,

…Even for the book’s adherents, it has not always been deemed imperative to read it before having an opinion of it. Its strength as a pillar in Joseph’s claim to be a prophet, just like its status as a blasphemous imposition, depends upon one’s acceptance or rejection of the story of its miraculous coming forth, more than on an analysis of its theological coherence. (p.86)

I think this was particularly important during Joseph’s lifetime. I don’t think it was until much later that people paid serious attention to its doctrinal teachings. But to say this isn’t to denigrate its teachings, just to observe that the Book of Mormon, for most of our history as a Church, as been more important as a sign and symbol of Joseph’s prophetic role rather than as a source of doctrinal expositions. Of course it has those, but their significance has only emerged recently. What role will the Book of Mormon play in the Church in the future?

Dan Ellsworth: I saw in Rough Stone Rolling (and in By The Hand of Mormon) a justification for some active involvement on Joseph’s part in the translation process of the Book of Mormon. I had been persuaded to this view of the translation (Blake Ostler calls it the “Expansion Theory“) before in my own readings of the BoM, but in these books I found a better explanation of how translation, as Joseph understood it, looked more like divining the mind of the author than simply finding words equivalent to those in another text. This model of translation does not necessarily preclude Joseph divining concepts relevant to his day, and, in fact, I have often wondered how the BoM would have been received by many early converts had it contained inspired stories on topics completely irrelevant to Joseph’s time and place. If you accept as I do the BoM’s claims to be an inspired, more-or-less historical record, then it stands to reason that for the book to have a substantial effect on people 1400 years later, either the authors or the translator would need to be inspired in bringing the narrative into some relevance to Joseph’s environment.

Jeff Bennion: I’m open to Ostler’s argument, and have no a priori objection to the idea that some modern preoccupations of Joseph’s may have made their way into the text. The text itself allows for it (“and now, if there be errors, they are the errors of men”) but most of the specific examples he has backed off from as FARMS and other scholars have shown many of his examples as also being plausibly ancient. I heard (and all reading this please take this as uncorroborated gossip) that Hugh Nibley’s forthcoming, much-delayed book One Eternal Round argues that Joseph Smith used what Nibley calls “prophetic expansion” (which seems to be to similar to Ostler’s “Expansion Theory”) to “translate” the Book of Abraham entirely from the hypocephalus (Facscimile No. 2). This action is, however, more of an ancient activity than something we do in modern times. In modern times (including Joseph’s time) authorship was something we were much more careful about than they were anciently. And anciently we have many cases of “prophetic expansion” from Nephi & Jacob’s midrash on Isaiah, to other minor prophets’ use of Isaiah in the Old Testament itself.