Invoking such a “catalyst” theory of revelation may empower the believer with a more accommodating model of Smith’s seership, even as it strikes the skeptic as evasive. Th e value of such a possibility, however, is that it brackets the questions of historicity and accuracy altogether and enables a new range of questions to emerge. Instead of evaluating Smith’s work by looking back through the lens of contemporary Egyptology, we may learn the workings of Smith’s prophetic imagination and his own unique cultural moment by entering more fully into his nineteenth-century context. By doing so, we move the question of seership and translation out of the domain of linguistic proficiency altogether.