CES Letters - BofM Translation by Harper, etc.

Some LDS scholars have created a website to address the CES Letter. 

https://www.cesletters.org/about

As we've come to expect, they promote SITH.

Their opening page features the absurd depiction of Joseph staring into his hat, which contradicts what Joseph and Oliver always said.

The text box uses the truncated excerpt from the Preface to the 1830 Book of Mormon that the SITH sayers typically use. (See the Gospel Topics Essays, the Joseph Smith Papers, etc.)

[See, e.g., https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2024/08/joseph-smith-papers-intro-to-vol-1.html]

If you go to their site, you'll see they don't quote what Joseph and Oliver said.

https://www.cesletters.org/book-of-mormon-translation

Here's the excerpt in context:

I would inform you that I translated, by the gift and power of God, and caused to be written, one hundred and sixteen pages, the which I took from the Book of Lehi, which was an account abridged from the plates of Lehi, by the hand of Mormon.

We see here that Joseph "took" the translation from the plates, not from a stone in the hat.

But these scholars will never point that out because it contradicts their SITH narrative. Nor will they inform readers that Joseph wrote the Preface to refute the SITH claim of Jonathan Hadley, which Hadley published in Palmyra in August 1829. Hadley's claim was widely circulated, as Joseph noted in the first line of the Preface.

To the Reader—

As many false reports have been circulated respecting the following work, and also many unlawful measures taken by evil designing persons to destroy me, and also the work, I would inform you that I translated, by the gift and power of God, and caused to be written, one hundred and sixteen pages, the which I took from the Book of Lehi, which was an account abridged from the plates of Lehi, by the hand of Mormon… thou shalt translate from the plates of Nephi, until ye come to that which ye have translated, which ye have retained…

For more detail, go to this article and the previous one it cites:

https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2023/10/update-on-jonathan-hadley-and-sith.html