Experiments Replicating the Experience and Rate of the Translation

In order to test the feasibility of these calculations of how fast Joseph and Oliver actually could have worked, my wife, Jeannie, and I decided to try it out ourselves. We picked two pages in Royal Skousen’s Yale edition of the Book of Mormon,59 since that version breaks the text lines into thought clauses that would have been about the length of each translational unit. At first, I played the role of Joseph and read the first line slowly and distinctly, while she, playing the role of Oliver, began immediately writing those words down. When she reached the end of that line, she read it back to me, and I confirmed that it was correct or pointed out mistakes. Then I paused, gazed again at the page, uncovered the next line, and read it aloud, which Jeannie likewise recorded and read back. And so we proceeded to the end of the page. All the while, we had a stopwatch running, and at the end, we counted up the number of words on the page and the time elapsed and divided the number of words by the number of minutes to get a rate of words per minute for our work on those two pages.

We found the experience intellectually awakening and spiritually engaging enough that we repeated this activity in my stake scripture class. We all divided up into fifteen groups of three people, with one person playing Joseph, another Oliver, and the third acting as the timekeeper. The experience was quite electrifying for most people in the class.

Altogether, our results showed empirically that a translation rate of right around 20 words per minute was quite possible. But we couldn’t imagine sustaining that rate hour after hour, day after day. Our hands got tired, and the one playing Joseph needed to catch his or her breath and clear his or her voice. We used ballpoint pens. We imagined Oliver dipping and using his quill pen. We wondered if they didn’t work a little slower, and thus might have worked an hour or two longer on each average day.

Although not strictly scientific, this exercise produced a flood of experiential insights. The stress of trying to achieve a maximum accuracy took a substantial toll on us. People playing the role of Joseph struggled to keep their minds focused on the line at hand as they waited for the person playing Oliver to finish. Their thoughts wandered back to foregoing lines or anticipated what might come next. We noticed more details in the text than ever before. We wondered what Joseph, Oliver, and Emma close by would have thought when hearing these things for the first time. How long did Joseph take after Oliver read back a line to him? Did the translation process work seamlessly and promptly, or were there long pauses to collect his thoughts? Those playing the role of Oliver had to be patient and pay very close attention (as Oliver had been counseled to do in Doctrine and Covenants 6:18–19).

In general, people in our trial wanted to stop to enjoy impressive gems that emerged amid blocks of ordinary narration, but the inexorable process did not allow them the time. Comments regarding the exercise included “My body was tense”; “the doctrine and prose was amazingly coherent. It is inconceivable to me that he was able to maintain coherence under those conditions”; “even Mormon’s long and complex sentences all made sense in the end”; “it gave us a greater appreciation for the line upon line precept”; “I had empathy for Joseph and Oliver who did this for hours each day”; and “it was a spiritual experience to get these words a bit at a time, coming spontaneously forth.” Several who participated in this experiment were eager to try it again with their families, for youth activities, or in other classes. With everyone taking turns with all three of these roles, it was an unforgettable hour.

Other people have written the entire Book of Mormon out by hand to provide personalized manuscripts for their children and grandchildren. One person, Hunter Desotel, has used text-to-speech software to vocalize the text which he simultaneously wrote down with a quill pen and ink, a couple of hours per day for 115 days between December 13, 2017, and May 27, 2018. These sustained undertakings produced great respect for the accuracy of Oliver as a scribe and for Joseph as an articulator.