We can read Saints, volume 1, two ways.
1. Read (or listen to) the narrative and just accept it the editors' spin on Church history.
3. Read the citations (references) and learn the actual history.
This wouldn't be a problem if the editors had decided to accurately present the historical events from the perspective of the people involved; i.e., if they had presented an accurate historical narrative. Instead, they chose to promote modern ideas about Cumorah and the translation of the Book of Mormon.
Consequently, passive readers ("lazy learners") will simply assume the narrative accurately reflects the original sources and will not bother to read the references.
People listening to an audio version of Saints will never hear the references.
For non-English speakers it's a bigger problem. Few of the references have been translated into other languages. I've checked the foreign-language editions of Saints and they cite English-only references, particularly the Joseph Smith Papers and Rough Stone Rolling, which (so far as I know) has never been translated into another language.
A good example is in Chapter 3. Look at the sentence in Saints, and then look at the reference in the footnote. You'll see the two are quite different.
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Saints, volume 1, Chapter 3 |
Reference: Lucy Mack Smith |
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Joseph’s gift
for using the stone impressed family members, who saw it as a sign of divine
favor. 4 |
4. A short time
before the house was completed, a man by the name of Josiah Stoal came from
Chenango County, New York, to get Joseph to assist him in digging for a
silver mine. He came for Joseph from having heard, that he was in possession
of certain means, by which he could discern things, that could not be seen by
the natural eye. Joseph endeavered to divert him from his vain project; but
he was inflexible, and offered high wages to such as would dig for him; and
was still very anxious to have Joseph work for him; consequently, he returned
with the old gentleman; besides several others that who were picked up in the
neighborhood, and commenced digging. After laboring about a month without
success, Joseph prevailed on his employer to cease his operations. It was from this circumstance, namely, working by the
month at digging for a silver mine, that the very prevalent story arose, of
his having been a money digger. |
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Note 3 in the previous paragraph cites Rough Stone Rolling instead of any original sources.
Rough Stone Rolling is an awesome book, but it is written in a style that portrays the author's opinions and inferences as fact. You can see my line-by-line analysis of the section on the seer stones here:
https://www.mobom.org/rsr-review
Here are images of the pages I'm referring to.
