Tight vs Loose Translation of the Book of Mormon w/ LDS Discussions – 06

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your hosts or co hosts for today, John Dehlin. And today we are continuing what is becoming a barn burner, an epic historic series with Mike, the creator of the website LDS discussions, wherein we are going to be covering hopefully 50 to 60 specific topics, all relating to Mormon Church truth claims in a thoughtful, respectful, and accurate way. And joining me today is, of course, Mike from LDS Discussions). And we've got Nemo back, so. Hey, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 0:47 Hey, everybody.

John Dehlin 0:48 Thanks for joining us. And hey, Nemo.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 0:50 Hi, guys. How are we? Hey.

John Dehlin 0:53 All right, Mike, do you want to tell us kind of where we've been and what we're doing today?

Nemo 0:59 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 0:59 So we basically, like I said in the first episode, so now we're what, five in so or six in whatever we are. And we've been trying to build off that puzzle. And it's like I said, when you take the puzzle apart and you put it back together, you start with treasure digging and then you work your way off of that. So we got treasure digging. Then we went to the gold plates, the Book of Mormon translation, 116 pages, DNA. And now we're starting to get into the Book of Mormon texts a lot more. And this is where you're going to start to see a lot of the stuff we talked about in those first episodes are going to make a lot more sense, because it's going to show how those first episodes are going to impact directly into the Book of Mormon texts.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34 And this is why, from a secular, scholarly perspective, when you look at this text critically, you can see that it's a 19th century composition. And in this particular episode we're going to do today, it's going to talk about a lot of. It's going to be about the apologetics with the translation method. So in a lot of ways, this will branch off of the translation episode to look at the translation method Joseph Smith would have used and why that matters. And the one last thing I'll say before we move on is to give a shout out to John Larsen. He had done a podcast on this, I want to say, about nine years ago on the tight versus loose translation theories.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:13 And it was another one of those podcasts for me when I was trying to listen to as much as I could early on when I was trying to figure all this stuff out. And it was another one of those aha moments, because it really lets you into why apologetics don't work if you don't apply them equally to all sides of the issue. And we've talked about this in every episode. If you want to apply apologetics to one side, you have to balance it on the other. You cannot be inconsistent, because then every time you apply the apologetics in one area, you're going to create problems elsewhere.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:40 And so a big shout out to John Larsen because of his work on this episode. That led to me wanting to put it into the Overview project.

John Dehlin 2:47 I love it. Okay, so we'll include in our show notes, but both that episode with John Larsen and the previous episode about Book of Mormon translation. But to, to your point, listeners, viewers, if you haven't checked out our previous five episodes, this stuff builds in. In. In many ways. So consider pausing, going, and watching those and then coming back. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:11 Yeah, I mean, I. I think you'll get more out of it if you go in order. Yeah, I know that eventually, at some point, when we're 30, 40 episodes in, you're gonna be like, this is a lot of stuff. But this is why, again, it's a lot of material. And the overview project, I know it is a lot of material, and some of them can get pretty long, but you need to give that length in order to give the context that is needed. Because one of the things you'll see, like when you read the CES letter and you talk to people about it, is they'll say, well, he's being misleading because he's not including this, this, and this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:41 And then you go in, you say, okay, but the apologetic response is also not giving you the context. And that's why the CES letter, a lot of the main points are perfectly valid, but it's easy for apologists to poke holes in them because of the fact that Jeremy intentionally kept it short because he was just looking for answers to the big picture. And so what the overview project is really designed to do is to say, when you get beneath those initial claims in the CES letter, it doesn't get better for the church, it gets worse. And so, you know, we were talking about this before, but I'll get responses all the time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 4:12 And they'll say, you're just rehashing the same topics of the CES letter. And I'll say, no, because I'm adding a lot more topics, and more importantly, we're fleshing them out more. Whereas in the CES letter, he's really just introducing them because he's looking for answers to these questions. Whereas now I'm trying to take that and say, if you go deeper, what does the evidence tell you and what do the apologetics do for you? Do they actually solve it or do they leave it unanswered? And so these episodes will build in that same manner where all of a sudden you might get 12 episodes into the series and go, holy crap.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 4:40 I remember he mentioned something in this third episode. And now I understand why I mentioned it, because it's still going to factor in down the road. And we're going to mention a few of those today that are going to impact our next handful of episodes the same way.

John Dehlin 4:51 And if I can make a joke, to some degree, we're all just rehashing what Gerald lysandra Tanner did 40 years ago. So shout out and hats off to the Tanners. But a second thing I want to say is there's nothing wrong with repetition. There's a gazillion people that have never heard of the CES letter, even if you were. And then Jeremy doesn't mind if we reuse his stuff. And then again, we. What we're doing is a comprehensive synthesis that provides more detail and more context. But, you know, just. Just the more the better is my motto.

Nemo 5:26 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:26 And, you know, the thing is, like, you know, we've talked about in previous episodes, we have to go through it all, but for me, this was how it made sense in the CES letter. I think why it's so effective is you can sit down and you can read it in one night. It's like 100 pages, right? And so you can read it, you could go through it in one night, and then you could get a really good overview of what the problems are.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:45 And then for me, when I did that, I made that mistake that a lot of people make. Whereas you info dump on your loved ones, which is a really bad idea for anyone out there. If you read the CS letter, you read ldsdiscussions.com, you know, we'll. We'll do an episode on this way down the road. But the one piece of advice I would give anyone who does that is to be patient with yourself, to not go to your loved ones and info dump everything you've learned until you are able to do it in a way that. That is not emotional and is more fleshed out than just like throwing out all the pejorative terms you might think of, like when you read about some of the things that you've first discovered.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:20 And so, you know, the point to what you're saying, John, about repetition is, you know, it's not so much that we're trying to be repetitious, to just hammer it into your Heads. It's more like we're trying to cover these topics in a way that's going to build upon each other and give you the full picture. So when you finish, and again using that puzzle analogy, when you take a step back after we do these, you're going to look back and, and you're gonna see the pieces fit. You're gonna see the whole picture together. Now, you may choose to do different things with it than someone else might, but at least you're gonna have a more honest picture than the one that the church presents on the box when you convert or when you're born into the church.

John Dehlin 6:49 I love it. Well, let's get started and I'll just say we're gonna include a link to an episode or two from Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast about how to speak to believing family and friends after a faith crisis, because those are good resources. But let's jump in. Tight versus loose. Where should we start?

Tight vs. Loose Translation Explained

Mike (LDS Discussions) 7:07 So we'll just start this again is going to be, this is going to be a little more free flowing of a conversation than our first few episodes just because this isn't as account heavy. So if we start into the slides, really what we need to do is to first define what a tight or loose translation would be for the Book of Mormon. And this is actually, I think they removed. I tried looking last night, I could not find it. But this was the entirety of Fair Mormon's response to Was the Book of Mormon translated in a tight or loose translation? And so what they said was this is all from Fair Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 7:37 Was Joseph Smith provided with the exact wording of every sentence in the Book of Mormon? Was he simply given impressions which then dictated within the context of his own understanding? Was it some combination of the two methods? Joseph's wife Emma related her own experience.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 7:50 When my husband was translating the Book of Mormon, I wrote a part of it as he dictated each sentence word for word. And when he came to proper names he could not pronounce or long words, he spelled them out. And while I was writing them, if I made a mistake in spelling, he, he would stop me and correct my spelling, although it was impossible for him to see how I was writing them down at the time when he stopped for any purpose, when he stopped it for any purpose at any time, he would, when he commenced again, begin where he left off without any hesitation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:18 And one time while he was translating, he stopped suddenly, pale as a sheet, and said, emma, did Jerusalem have walls around it? When I answered yes, he replied, oh, I was afraid I had been deceived. He had such a limited knowledge of history at the time that. That he did not even know that Jerusalem was surrounded by walls. Scholars have examined and debated the issue of a tight versus loose translation method for many years. Although it is an interesting intellectual exercise, the exact process by which words and sentences were formed has no bearing upon the fact that the book was dictated by the gift and power of God.

John Dehlin 8:49 All right, so to summarize, what does that tell us?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:52 Well, you know, it's funny because I don't know what you guys think, but for me, the fact is fair Mormon is being very. At least with this entry, this was literally I'm going to copy the entire thing when I did the overview. So this is literally everything. It's not. Usually their entries are a lot longer, and I think it's their way of saying we're not getting into it. And I think that the use of Emma's quote matches a tight translation without any question.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:15 And I think we've covered this in previous episodes and we're going to cover it a little bit more today. But all of the early witnesses tell us that it was a tight translation. And I would also argue not to go off on too much of a tangent, but Emma's quote is, I think, also being given as a way to promote faith. Emma's trying to pump Joseph up as much as she can. I'm not saying she's lying, but I'm also saying that the idea that Joseph Smith did not know there were walls around Jerusalem, but that Emma would almost feels to me like someone that might be kind of trying to get someone else to believe, like, that would be a really good trick to use if you were trying to convince people that you were channeling the words of God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:55 And as we know, in this comment from Emma, she's saying that literally the seer stone would know or would tell Joseph, hey, Emma wrote this wrong. And we know that the seer stone, peep stone could not help find the 116 pages. It couldn't locate any lost objects. So, again, these are the things that, for me, tell me there's some suspect parts of this quote. And it also, again, implies, without any question, this is a super tight translation.

John Dehlin 10:21 Yeah. And it's. It's very. It's. It's. It's also confirmed. Isn't it confirmed, like you said with Martin Harris, even. Even Emma's dad to some degree. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:31 Yeah. We're going to go through the quotes really quick again just because I want to make sure it's as clear as day. But yeah, I mean, there is no. You know, it's kind of one of those things where it's like, if you're going to make a claim that it's a loose translation, you need something, but you certainly can't have evidence telling you it didn't happen. And in this case, the evidence is overwhelming, saying there's no way that happened, which is more problematic than it just being kind of ambiguous.

John Dehlin 10:52 Anything you want to add, Nemo?

Nemo 10:54 Just to say, it's really interesting that they end that quote with a unqualified statement. They say, well, either way, it has no bearing on the fact that it was translated by the gift and power of God. Okay, and what's your evidence for that? By what are you qualifying that in saying that it has no bearing? Actually, I think it's quite important the mechanics of how it happened. It's quite important as to determining for individuals in their own faith, did this happen by the gift of power of God?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:18 Yep, I agree. And the one thing I'll add to that too is, you know, we talked in the previous episodes about how the history that's being written by Joseph Smith and those around him, they are doing everything they can to take the treasure digging and the folk magic out, right? So they interject the term urim and Thummim, which they literally will add to old revelations to make it sound more biblical. So they're retrofitting this term back into early revelations. They're retrofitting it back into the Book of Mormon translation. And so when people say that Joseph, they'll say, all Joseph Smith said was a translated by the gift and power of God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:50 And my response would be, well, of course he did. Because he can't say how he translated because they're working to get rid of the folk magic. They don't want to publicly. Like, Joseph Smith is not going to get in front of a group of potential converts and say, I translated it using a peep slash seer stone that I put in my hat that I used to look for treasure digging with. So to say that's his only public statement is like saying, you know, that it's kind of like the. When you get to polygamy, when he denies it publicly, it's like, well, of course he's not going to say that he used a peep slash shearstone because he knows that's folk magic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:19 And he knows that once you get outside of that circle that's already believing it's going to. He's going to get killed for it. And so I just think that that's a little disingenuous to say, well, this is all Joseph said, so it's all we can go with. But we're going to ignore all of the evidence from the people that were in the process who are telling us the exactly how he did it.

John Dehlin 12:35 Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:38 Yeah. And so, like I said, that's all fair Mormon sink. So, for the purposes of this overview, to define how I would define a tight translation, or how I did in the overview, is to say, as outlined by Fairmormon's use of Emma Smith's quote, a tight translation is where Joseph Smith is directly translating the Book of Mormon via the Seer Peepstone in the hat. Word for word, the translation of the plates would appear on Joseph's stone, and Joseph would dictate them to a scribe.

John Dehlin 13:03 And.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:04 And this method of translation is a very literal one. It does not afford Joseph Smith the ability to change or alter the words, because as we will hear from the quotes in a second, the stone will not change and give him further words until the words that are on the stone are written exactly as they are. So Joseph has no authority as kind of a co author in this situation.

John Dehlin 13:22 The stone has superpowers, too. I love that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:25 I mean, and again, it's like, I don't want to be, like, facetious here, but in this account, the stone is effectively an active participant because it will not change in. Until everything's written correctly.

John Dehlin 13:35 Which means that the stone interacts. It's like Alexa or Siri. It's listening to you. It's constantly listening to Joseph and the scribe, and it's waiting until the right exchanges happen before it continues.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:47 Yeah, but until he hears the scribe repeat it back correctly, it does not move. And that's as tight as it gets. I mean, the stone is literally an active participant and will not change until everything is done exactly as the stone portrays it.

John Dehlin 13:59 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 14:01 Okay, so if we go on, we'll just. Again, to define a loose translation. This method would give Joseph Smith an inspiration through revelation, which is really, this is how the Church is kind of going. But it allows Joseph Smith the freedom to dictate the text of the Book of Mormon through his own milieu, putting the text of the Book of Mormon into his own words, into his own worldview, and into his own understanding. So, effectively in this approach, Joseph is given the general lessons and concepts through revelation, but then it's left to him to weave them, weave those ideas into a story that would be understood and accepted in his Time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 14:35 And some have argued this would be a revelation of pure intelligence, where Joseph is just literally flooded with the story to the point where it's almost like automatic writing. So there's just like. I don't know, there's a meme and it's. I think it's Pink Floyd where like, there's like the. It's like black light going into someone's skull and then it comes out as colors or something like that. And I wish I'd put it in because I forgot, but it, it basically, it's like they're channeling this info into Joseph Smith directly from the plates, through the stone, or just through revelation. And then Joseph now has to describe it back to the scribe in his own words and can make changes as he sees fit. As basically a co author to the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 15:15 Yeah. And I guess implicit in this setup or framing is that it kind of needs to be one or the other, because I can already hear apologists say, well, maybe it's both. Maybe sometimes it's tight and sometimes it's loose. But I mean, I think for the sake of this argument, we're saying only one or the other makes sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:34 Yeah. And again, it's like one of those things where it's like, if you want to say it's both, you have to have some textual or documented evidence to explain why it would be both. And I think the problem is that they never would have claimed this until we started coming across these problems. That forces an apologetic response to say, here's a problem. How do I solve it? And so if you want to claim it's both, you're going to have a lot of issues. And we have a slide down the road here that's going to make it clear that not only would you then be implying that he would be changing these methods as he saw fit, but there's like literally one verse where it needs to be both tight and loose for a single verse.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:11 So then you'd have to say that he's able to change it literally within a sentence. And that is going to get really problematic if you want to take that approach.

John Dehlin 16:18 I can't wait to Nemo.

Nemo 16:21 Well, it's just like, it's like the hemispheric model versus the heartland model. Right. The hemispheric model is a reaction to people discovering lack of DNA evidence, lack of archaeological evidence, things like that. So like, okay, right, so how do we fix it?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:36 Yeah. And that's the whole thing with apologetics. Right. Because they're born out of necessity.

John Dehlin 16:40 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:41 And no one. No one came in, you know, in the 1840s or 50s and was like, you know what? I'm actually thinking that Joseph Smith was just kind of a co author. But today, in 2020, you can hear some of the most prominent Mormon scholars who will use. They use different words like bricolage. Like I said, I've mentioned it before.

John Dehlin 16:59 Inspired syncretist.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:01 Yeah. I mean, and so you've got Richard Bushman, Michael Ash, Terrell Givens. They're all saying. I mean, Jim Bennett, I think he said that too, on your podcast, where he's like, yeah, he's obviously putting in some of his own ideas into the Book of Mormon because he feels like he's inspired to do so. But those are things you would not if, again, we talked about this, I think, on the DNA episode. But it's like if you went back in a time machine and told Joseph Smith and hey, you know what? I've been reading the Book of Mormon, and a lot of the apologists, a lot of the people in the church that are historians are telling us that you're a co author.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:29 There's no way, like, there's no way. He would have been like, oh, yeah, I totally was a co author. He would have been like, no, this was like an ancient record, because that's what he taught. And so to say we're redefining Joseph Smith's words, the accounts, in order to fix a problem that is really stuck because of the fact that there's so many accounts that are telling us how it was done.

Nemo 17:48 I mean, redefining is the key word. And the fact that we're even having to start this podcast by defining what translation is, is. Is a. Is just. Yeah, is a symptom of the problem with apologetics that you have to redefine so much in order to make these things work.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:05 That's just it. And what's funny is sometimes people will say, well, you're. You're taking it out of context. I'm like, I'm not taking it out of context. I'm taking it at face value. And again, would you ever take another religion's apologetics and then say, well, they said that on the plate was an apple and a banana, but then the church now is saying that because apples and bananas didn't exist in that area, it was actually a couch cushion, that that's okay. And you'd be like, no, because you don't. You're not invested in that other religion. That's probably a bad example. But you get what I'm saying, like, they're literally redefining these.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:37 These super important early accounts, contemporary accounts. And so you'll have, for example, you guys did some podcasts about a polygamy podcast that Kate Holbrooke, who's a historian for the church, did. And in that podcast, Hank Smith and Kate Holbrooke are talking about how if you're a historian, you always go for the most contemporaneous sources. In this case, we have some really good sources that were at the scene of the translation. And now today, we're like, you know what, guys? We're going to ignore those because those actually create more problems than we need to solve. And. And that's where it just gets to be kind of, like, absurd because of the fact that we can see these accounts.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:13 It's not like these accounts are. Are dismissed. I mean, they're. They're pretty solid, and they all back each other up. And I think the more times you get accounts that back each other up, you have to take them seriously.

John Dehlin 19:24 Yeah, Super. Super valid. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking of the. I'm thinking of the need to redefine the word virgin in D&C132, because so many of them, so many of the plural wives, the DNC says they need to be virgins, but so many of the poor wives weren't, that it's to

Nemo 19:40 bear the souls of men. But bearing the souls of men apparently means having no children whatsoever.

John Dehlin 19:45 Right. And that's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:46 And that's. And that's just it. It's like, we'll get into it a little later, but there's. I don't know if you guys have ever seen the Brother Jake videos on YouTube.

John Dehlin 19:52 Yeah, he's great.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:53 So he does a good one on this because his whole thing is like, we don't mean translation, we mean translation. And so it's just like the different tone of voice, but it's. It's one of those things where, when you hear it and when you. When you watch his videos or when we go through this, you're like, there's no way you can have it both ways. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too, because of the fact that this. The. One of the problems with Mormonism is it made so many definitive, definitive truth claims that are testable in the physical world.

John Dehlin 20:16 In the physical world. Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:18 And so when you test them in the physical world, when you make claims about parts of the world, the history of the world, what's going to happen? All these things, and they don't come they don't happen. Then all of a sudden, you can't say, well, we didn't mean that. We actually meant these different words. It's like, no, no, no. You have it written down, and you have the people that were there saying it. You just can't back away from and just go, no, no, no. We're gonna call it inspiration now because it just doesn't fit.

John Dehlin 20:37 Especially when a key reason people converted in those early years was because they believed that Joseph Smith had these special powers. And even in the. By the way, you're probably gonna mention this, but in the Doctrine and Covenants, at least the first version of it, Joseph Smith is called prophet. As a prophet, seer, revelator, and translator. And it says that in the Doctrine and Covenants, if my memory is correct.

Nemo 20:58 Just a quick point, just to do as I'm told by my church leaders and give Brother Joseph a quick break here. I think it's important to recognize that a lot of the kind of testable, physical claims that Joseph Smith made were based around a lack of understanding in his worldview at the time and of those around him. You know, he's looking at Egyptian as a language that's untranslatable at that time. Rosetta Stone hasn't been found yet. Right. You're looking at the mound builders, myths that surround him. We don't know where these mounds have come from. We don't know what's going on. So I think a lot of this is born out of his desire to explain the world around him. And it's. At that time, he didn't think people would be able to prove it wrong.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 21:34 Yeah, I mean, that's. That's totally what it is, too. And it's funny, because when I've brought that up to people in the past, they'll say, well, Joseph Smith was also a very boastful person, and he wanted to seem like the smartest guy in the room. So in that case, he was speaking as a man. Like when you talk about, like, Zelf, the white laminate, Right. So you'll go, how is it that Joseph Smith was able to know what a pile of bones was, even though we know that historically speaking, that makes no sense. And they'll say, well, he was just being kind of boastful as a man because he felt like he needed to tell members answers when they didn't have them.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:03 But you look at that and you go, if that's the case, how do you distinguish when he's speaking as a man about that versus when he's saying the quotes we've used in previous episodes about how the Americas were populated directly from the Book of Mormon people and no one else.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:17 That's the problem. Like, you can't have it both ways. You can't say every time when he's wrong, oh, it's, you know, I know this is a very cliche conversation about speaking as a man, but that to your point, everything is born out of the 19th century worldview and to, you know, with like, Egyptian. I don't think he realized it would be cracked. And so all of a sudden that's why the Book of Abraham comes back to bite him. But as he's writing it, I'm sure he's thinking, I can say what I need to say here and push my theology because there's no one else who can tell me I'm wrong because no one can translate it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:44 And so when you get into the tight versus loose translation, you have similar things where all of a sudden it's like, this is what they said happened and it's because they believed that nobody was going to be able to fit, you know, to prove otherwise. And now you can, because we have so much more information. And instead of the church saying, yeah, there's some messiness here, we really don't know what the answer is, they come up with all these convoluted reasons. And every time you go down the path of those convoluted reasons, it just opens up new problems. And that's why this overview project is 39 topics.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:14 Because every time you go to one thing, it opens up these other problems. And then you got to cover that and cover that and cover that. And at the end of it, you're just like. You look back and you're like, this is not the church I was described by the missionaries.

John Dehlin 23:25 Yeah, and we should. And right before we go to the next slide, I'll just say if you go to any discussion of a high demand religion, including Luna Lindsey Corbden's incredible book called Recovering Agency, redefining commonly used terms is a classic technique of high demand religion. So it, it, it. Whether or not you believe in Mormonism, we want people to have understand the rules of undue influence. And so just always be aware if somebody is redefining commonly used terms, there's a good chance they're gaslighting you. And that's just reality.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:03 Yeah.

John Dehlin 24:04 All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:05 Okay, so these next three slides we'll go through really quickly because I just want to read you. We read these in the translation episode, but These are the three witnesses. I gave effectively a translation statement. And so this is Emma Smith. And she said, when my husband was translating the Book of Mormon, I wrote a part of it. As he dictated each sentence word for word. And when he came to proper names he could not pronounce, or long words, he spelled them out. And while I was writing them, if I made a mistake in spelling, he would stop and correct my spelling, although it was impossible for him to see how I was writing them down at the time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:35 So that's one. So let's just go. Let's just read all three at once. So the next one is David, David Whitmer. And so we read this, the last one, but says David Whitmer said Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat and put his hat in the face, or put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light. And in the darkness, the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear and. And under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:05 And when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear and another character with the interpretation would appear. So that's David Whitmer, and then the last one's Martin Harris. And he's going to give this, I believe he gives us, to Edward Stevenson, who is a member of the first council of 70. And he says that Joseph wrote that portion of the translation of the Book of Mormon which he was favored to write direct from the mouth of the prophet Joseph Smith. He said that the prophet possessed a seer stone by which he was enabled to translate as well as from the Urim and Thummim.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:38 And for convenience, he then used the seer stone. Martin explained the translation as follows. By the aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the prophet and written by Martin. And when he finished, he would say written. And if correctly written, that sentence would disappear, another appear in its place. But if not written correctly, it remained until corrected so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely in the language then used. So those are three accounts, and every single one of them is giving you the tightest possible translation method. That is. That could be done.

John Dehlin 26:08 Okay.

Nemo 26:08 That hasn't aged well.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:10 No, I mean, it's just there's. You cannot read those three quotes and tell me that a Loose translation is even possible, unless you then want to say that Joseph Smith was lying to Emma, Martin and David about what he was seeing. Because the one thing I'll point out is Martin Harris is describing his experience as Joseph scribe for the 116 pages portion. David Whitmer is giving an account of what Oliver Cowdery would have experienced. And so the fact is that they're both giving you the same basic translation process, which tells you that Joseph Smith was, one, using a consistent method the whole way through, which would be the rock and a hat, and two, that if Joseph Smith was doing a loose translation, then he was definitely telling the scribes that he was getting it a different way.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:54 So either Joseph Smith was lying to the people who were the scribes for the Book of Mormon, or he was doing a tight translation. You can't have it both ways without giving special pleading.

John Dehlin 27:04 Yeah. And by special pleading, you mean excuses.

Nemo 27:08 Yeah. Like, it's super interesting to me that, like, DNC is essentially Joseph Smith having to have an answer to every time he's challenged. Right. Because the charismatic leader and founder of an organization like this is someone that has all the answers. And that is something I find really interesting is reflected in current apologetics, is that there's always a need to have an answer. It's been that way since the start of the religion. There's always a need to be able to answer something. We can't just say we don't know, because Joseph never did. He always had an answer.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:37 He did. I really think if the church was not as, like, businesslike and I mean, I'm not trying to be pejorative, I'm just saying, like, it's structured so steadily now. I think if it was not as steadily structured and you really had more infighting, I think the leaders of the church would probably be forced to make more stands on things because of the fact that they would have to kind of control that. Whereas with Joseph Smith, like, to your point, every time his authority was questioned, he had to get revelations to answer those questions so that people would say, I, oh, right, he is the one person to do it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:06 And in this case, I think this is just. Again, this is, you know, however you can. You can look at this a lot of ways, but if you want to even pretend that Joseph Smith is doing a loose translation here, you have to explain why all of the accounts are telling us the exact opposite.

John Dehlin 28:21 Yeah. And that's what the next slide kind of summarizes, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:25 Yeah. And so basically. Yeah. So we're just basically saying that, you know, not only is Joseph claiming to have to read the exact words, but the exact spelling as well. There's just no wiggle room here. And the fact is, when you have three different people who are all who were acting as scribes for Joseph at a certain point, I guess David Whitmer wasn't, but he was getting that info from Oliver Cowdery. So you have three accounts of scribes for Joseph giving you the same exact method. To then claim there was some secondary method that was never mentioned, I think is very deceptive. And as Nemo pointed out earlier, it just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:57 It comes out of necessity because now there's a problem and now you have to address it. Even though you're working from evidence that tells you it was done one way, but now you're forced to at least try to find an opening to make plausibility for another.

John Dehlin 29:11 And also, it's not like this is hurlbut or like Isaac Hale. These are witnesses that are key to the credibility of the Restoration. The three witnesses or Joseph's own wife.

Nemo 29:24 Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:25 Yeah. And you just. Like I said, it's just. To me, it's like you can read it for yourself. I don't even know why anybody would argue it. And yet here we are doing an episode on it because of the fact that it's so important. Because if it's a tight translation, it's just going to open up a lot of problems, which, you know, we'll get into. But, yeah, it's so. So they want to have it both ways and you just can't.

John Dehlin 29:42 And we'll say this again, but. But Richard Bushman agrees with this. Like the Joseph Smith Papers project. Patrick Mason. Pick any scholar who isn't dishonest. They're gonna all agree with. With what we just conveyed.

Nemo 29:56 Yeah, I think it's important that it was. That it was a tight translation because it would have actually helped Joseph out a lot in the case of the 616 last pages, if he'd been able to claim a loose translation. Right. Because then he could have just retranslated it and any errors he could have put down to loose translation. Oh, you know, I used a different verb this time, or I used a different sentence structure this time. You know, that would have been in his interest. But I think it was so important to the foundational claims of the Church, the tight translation, that that is the dominant narrative for that reason.

John Dehlin 30:27 Yeah. Because it's less of an impressive act if, if, if Joseph and his thoughts and opinions and modern stuff are all kind of intermingled. I'm thinking of the people at the time who are receiving the book. They're just going to be a lot less impressed.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:41 Yeah.

John Dehlin 30:42 If it's, if it's Joseph mixed in versus if it's the word of God, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:47 Well, yeah. And just think about it this way. Like we talk about pseudepigrapha, right? And so we had talked about this in a previous episode. Richard Bushman says the book of Abraham and the book of Moses are pseudepigrapha, where Joseph was writing in the name of a well known prophet to basically give his works in his theology credibility to his, to his, basically his followers. And the Book of Mormon is pseudepigraph as well because we can show that he's using King James Bible foundational texts. And we're going to go through a lot of that in, in the upcoming group of episodes. But the point is to what you're saying, writing it and saying this is being directly handed down directly from God gives it such a higher amount of charisma and credibility than to say I saw a vision and I put it down into a narrative prose.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:33 Like the difference in how people would receive it as far as credibility goes is just night and day. And that's again why I think when you hear the apologists will say all Joseph Smith said was it was translated by the gift and power of God. I want to say, of course he did, because he's not going. You're not going to. Joseph Smith is smart enough not to give the account of the translation that Emma Martin and David do. Because if he's doing that to potential converts, I'm pretty sure a lot of them are going to say you're making it up because of the fact that you can all of a sudden understand that he's basically got his face in a hat reading off words.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:04 It becomes a lot less. You know, you're not even using the gold plates. The story starts to get a lot muddier and a lot less, I would say clean the moment you do that. And so of course he's going to say just gift and power of God and then just leave it at that.

John Dehlin 32:17 Yeah, makes sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:19 And so basically just to kind of go through why it matters. And we've kind of gone through this a little bit. But you know, I keep saying this in these episodes, but I really want people to view these, these topics in totality. So I don't want you to want watch our video on the DNA or the 116 pages and then just kind of keep that separate, because these all connect together. They all have common threads, they all have patterns. And it's important to understand those because once you start to look for them, you'll start to see why. These problems kind of go throughout the foundational events and scriptures of Mormonism.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:50 And apologists like to kind of pluck one out, try to answer it, put it back, pluck another problem out, give it an entirely different answer. And so, as we've said already, if you apply an apologetic to one part of the church's truth claims, you have to then apply it to all the other ones too. So you can't, you know, say there's a loose translation in one area and say there's a tight in another. And as we've already said a number of times, you know, this whole apologetic line of a loose translation only comes about once the problems with the Book of Mormon are credible enough that apologists can no longer just say, well, you're just spewing anti Mormon lies. And so now you have to give plausibility to how it could still work as a believer, knowing that these problems are real.

John Dehlin 33:29 Got it. Okay, next slide.

King James Bible Parallels in the Book of Mormon

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:32 Okay, so the next one we're going to go through is we've talked about this briefly. We'll do a full overview on this in a couple episodes. But the King James Bible is the foundational text of the Book of Mormon. The language sections of it, the wording, the phrasing, all of that appears in every page of the Book of Mormon. And so if the King James Bible was not written until 1611, the fact that you're going to have it throughout the entire Book of Mormon tells you right off the bat that either that it can't be a tight translation unless God is now translating the golden plates using a 1611, or in Joseph's case, a 1769 King James Bible, and including the errors, the italics, and some of the stuff in the Bible that we now know was either like late additions to the Bible that weren't original to the text.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 34:20 And so if you want to believe it's a tight translation, that means God is putting errors directly into the Book of Mormon, which is again, very problematic. And you need a loose translation to be able to say Joseph Smith was trying to use the language that he knew was familiar to his area, and in doing so, he was pulling in Bible verses and pages and chapters. Otherwise, you're going to have a lot of problems.

John Dehlin 34:41 Another way that I would kind of rephrase this is to say that the fact that the King James version of the Bible and coincidentally the version of the King James Bible that Joseph Smith likely or confirmedly had in his possession. The fact that that appears gives evidence that it's either a loose translation or a work of fiction. Right?

Nemo 35:07 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:08 I mean, it has to be.

John Dehlin 35:09 Yeah. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:13 Yeah, that's just. That's it.

Nemo 35:15 One of the arguments they put out there is about, you know, you look at the CES letter and Jeremy Reynolds quite rightly points out the italics. And those italics are what are very kindly given to us by the King James Bible translators to show what words they've added to make things make sense. I mean, if you're happy for me to give my quick example about translation, because I think it speaks to this, you know, fair Mormon said in one of their this is the show videos, they use the example of the German phrase ich muichdisch bessierenge, I would like to go for a walk or I need to go for a walk.

Nemo 35:51 And they're saying, oh, well, a four word sentence, I would like to go for a walk, then in English is like eight words. So you need to add the words and those are the ones that would be in italics. So don't have a fuss.

Nemo 36:01 But firstly, there's loads of different ways to say it, right? Ich wer laufengen. Ich habel lustaruf laufen su gien ich habe bokder auf zwasieren su g. Which is interesting because that means I have a goat on it to go for a walk.

Nemo 36:16 But there's loads of different ways to translate it, essentially. And the last two examples are seven words each, so sometimes you only need to add the one word. And overall it's a complete straw man. I wanted to highlight this strawman argument because you hear it a lot. They get focused on the italics because that's the point of contention. And then they misrepresent. The reason those italics are a point of contention. The reason those italics are a point of contention is because those are translation choices made by men in the 17th century. They are, you know, the difference between saying, ich vil laufen gehen und ich habel lustaruf laufen sigehen, I want to go for a walk and I have the desire to go for a walk is those two sentences.

Nemo 36:57 So those are just differences in the way you would phrase something. And those italics speak to the 17th century men that did that. Why are they appearing in a book that was written 2,200 years before Christ to about 600 years after Christ. Why are they there if it is a direct, tight translation of a historical document? That is the actual issue that people are speaking of, not that they're adding words to translate, because that is what you would need to do to translate between one language and another. You, even if you're God.

John Dehlin 37:27 Not to mention that Nemo just flexed all over us with his knowledge and abilities, with his German knowledge and abilities.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:33 That sounded really cool.

John Dehlin 37:36 Nice work, Nemo.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:37 Yeah, that was good. No, and so, yeah, to Nemo's point, that's the whole point. Like, a lot of times when you talk about the King James thing, you know, apologists will kind of, kind of try to drill down to the point where they're talking about this one little thing, and you're like, no, no, no. The whole overarching problem is that you're making a choice to use a translation of ancient texts that was written long after the Book of Mormon times. And not only that, but I think every Bible scholar today would argue the King James Bible is by far not the best translation. I know, like John Hamer actually says, it's a really bad one, and no one really uses it unless you're a church founded in it, like the Mormon churches.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:16 So there are a lot of issues because as Nemo said, yes, we're going to hear the apologetic later about how God speaks to his prophets in the manner of their own words and voice. But at the same time, you're still making a choice in giving a version of the Bible that is riddled with errors, including stuff that was added on by later scribes. So then you're saying, well, then God is going to take what is a late addition to the Bible that wasn't original and passing it through to Joseph Smith, which, again, I know God's ways are not our ways, but why would God be using something that's inauthentic to the text and giving it to Joseph Smith into a book that's supposed to basically correct the problems with the Bible, you're just continuing the problems that you're not fixing anything, Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:58 And so the next slide kind of illustrates this. And so if you look at third Nephi 14 6, it says, give not that which is holy unto the dogs. Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you. Then you look at Matthew 7, 6. So this is where Joseph Smith is pulling from. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs. Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you. So there's some really small changes here, but for the most part, Joseph Smith's pulling directly in.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:30 But now Joseph Smith is going to translate this again when he does the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible. And it says, and the mysteries of the kingdom ye shall keep within yourselves, for it is not meet to give that which is holy unto the dogs. Neither cast ye your pearls unto swine, lest they trample them under their feet. For the world cannot receive that which ye yourselves are not able to bear. Wherefore ye shall not give your pearls unto them, lest they turn again and rend you. And so what we're seeing here is Joseph Smith is taking the King James Bible, he's putting it directly into the Book of Mormon, which is a problem because this is New Testament material which would not have been available to the

John Dehlin 40:03 Book of Mormon people, to the Native Americans, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:06 Yes. And then he's going to go and translate it again. And when you translate it again, it's different. So you go, well, if Joseph Smith is getting the pure translation from God, why is he getting the King James Version, which has errors? And then why, when Joseph Smith translates it separately, is he translating it into a different text again? And this is where you get into problems, because as Joseph Smith goes on through his time as the prophet of the church, he's going to change his ideas, he's going to change his methods. And this leaves fingerprints, as I mentioned in a previous episode, he's leaving his fingerprints all over the text that if God is the one revealing all of this through revelation, why are we seeing inconsistencies?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:40 You shouldn't have New Testament text in the Book of Mormon regardless. But then to have the errors come in and then to have it be something completely different when he retranslates, translates it after, creates another problem that the tight versus loose translation plays into.

John Dehlin 40:53 Tell me if I'm summarizing it. So, like, first and foremost, Native Americans shouldn't be knowing what's in the Bible during, you know, during, you know, between 0 and 100 A.D. there's just no evidence that Native Americans had knowledge of Jesus or the Bible. So that's a problem. The second problem is why is the Bible showing up in the Book of Mormon at all? The third is why in King James English, if Joseph's going to translate whatever reformed Egyptian into English, why King James English? And then even more problematic, why the errors and the italicizing? Why is that making it through? And then even worse, why does he later do an inspired translation that actually differs from the allegedly, you know, tightly translated version that appears here in 3rd Nephi. Did I get all the problems? There's probably more.

Nemo 41:53 Well, no, no, there's one more. I mean, you have to ask, why did God inspire Adam Clark to write a book that Joseph Smith would then read from and use for the Joseph Smith translation? Because we know, give it directly to Joseph.

John Dehlin 42:03 Because this little insertion that Joseph puts here, you know, that's shown at the bottom of the slide, likely comes from the Adam Clark commentary that we know Joseph had access to. So, I mean, it just stinks. I don't mean to use a pejorative. It just. It seems to be very clearly borrowed from and or plagiarized from a source that doesn't make any sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:29 Well, and not only that, but again, like, you know, you'll hear the apologetics. They'll say, well, the Book of Mormon prophets were getting the same messages from the angels and from God that the New Testament writers were. But again, this goes into the whole problem of when you. When you look at New Testament scholarship, these King James. Well, the Gospels in general, they're being told orally for decades before they're written down, right? So they're not gonna be written down. I think Matthew is, what, 60 to 70 years after Jesus. So these are not gonna be like, the direct thing that was happening at the time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:59 And so the Book of Mormon, you would think, would not have the exact same wording of something that's not written until 60 years after Jesus in a part of the world that they don't have access to. So, yeah, I mean, the New Testament material being in the Book of Mormon is anachronistic from start to finish. And it gets even worse because of the fact that we can pinpoint the exact version they're using. And as we'll get into in some of the biblical scholarship sections that Joseph Smith is pulling material in that wasn't authentic to the text. And so why, if it's a tight translation, would God want to bring in text that was inaccurate into the Book of Mormon intentionally?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:33 If that. If that's how God is choosing to translate? And I think those are problems that apologetics get really messy with, because then they'll say, like I said earlier, well, they were just getting the same revelations that were being given to the gospel writers. But you got to ask why the errors are there? Because the errors they blame as the translation, errors of man. And yet in the Book of Mormon, it's direct from God. So why are they there? Again, it's confusing, but it's important.

John Dehlin 43:59 Yeah. If I'm trying to act as an impartial judge already, to me, this one slide completely shoots down any possibility that it's a tight translation. And it's just like one slide. So we've got a long more way to go.

Nemo 44:14 This speaks to another apologetic argument towards the veracity of the Book of Mormon, that it contains multiple authors, voices. Right. It's written in different ways for different people. But you can very easily now start to explain where some of those voices are. You've got the direct quotations from Isaiah. That's one voice. You've got Joseph Smith's own voice, if he were the one that were creating the. The text. You've got the voice of the biblical scholars that translated the King James version of the Bible here in Oxford. Right. You've got flexing again.

John Dehlin 44:42 Nemo flexes again. Yeah, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

Nemo 44:45 You've got those three voices. So there. It's started to be explained already.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:49 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 44:51 All right, Beautiful.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:53 All right, so that kind of covers the King James Bible. So the next one that requires a loose translation would be all of the anachronisms. And so if the Book of Mormon is an ancient record, there should be no anachronisms in the text. And yet we have all sorts of examples throughout the book, excluding, you know, we just talked about. So you got elephants and cattle, sheep, goats, pig, honeybees, horses, chariots, steel swords, metalworking, silk, wheat, New Testament material, 19th century Christology. All of that stuff would require a loose translation because the Book of Mormon people wouldn't have had access to it. So this would have to be a situation where Joseph Smith is getting maybe a visionary state, where he's then saying, okay, I am picturing something that looks like a horse, or I'm picturing something that looks like a sword.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:33 And I'm familiar with steel swords. So he's putting it in there. And this would make him a co author. And this is the argument that I was kind of referencing with the Brother Jake video, which he talks about this, about loan shifting. And so this is kind of the whole argument of like, well, horses weren't horses, they were tapirs, but tapirs look like horses, or at least they're close to it. So Joseph Smith might have seen a tapir in a vision, said, I don't know what that is, but it looks close enough to a horse. Said horse. And just the one quote from an apologist from Brant Gardner, he says, what we probably have in this case is Joseph substituting a known animal for an animal which was also a big cat.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:07 In other words, the underlying text would have been jaguar, but the translation would be lion. And so it's trying to show that we can basically, you know, translation doesn't mean translation. Horse doesn't mean horse. And this would require a loose translation where Joseph is getting the ideas in his head, because otherwise, if the real term being used with the Nephites was, you know, cumon, it would show that. But instead we get all of these. These items, and not just items, but ideas that are completely anachronistic to Book of Mormon times. I think Nemo was just showing us something. Was that a taper?

Nemo 46:42 This is Daniel. This is Daniel. He's named after Daniel Peterson. He is my mascot.

John Dehlin 46:46 Is he British?

Nemo 46:47 Is he British tapir? Yeah, of course.

John Dehlin 46:49 Why not? Are tapers native to the uk?

Nemo 46:54 They are now.

John Dehlin 46:56 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this. This slide, again, is so important just to, you know, it's problematic because we could. Number one, we could allow for loan shifting if every witness didn't tell us that it was a tight translation. But then, secondly, we could allow for loan shifting, except for the Book of Mormon names, animals like Curro, lums and Kumamoms and whatever, and types of currency and people's specific names. Like the fact that original unique names appear precludes the possibility that Joseph couldn't have just used a different name. All the cities. Why did all the cities, all the characters. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nemo 47:37 Why did God go, oh, well, for some of these things, I'm gonna give you really familiar names just to help you out, but for others, I'm gonna give you aunties and sheblums and.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:45 Yeah, and that's just it. It's like in the fact that ramyuptum, rami, umtum. Right, Yep. It's inconsistent. Like, it's inconsistent because you want to say, well, we'll get to it a little bit later. But you want to say, well, look at all these specific terms that are in the Book of Mormon. Well, okay, but then why are there all the anachronisms? And so then you want to jump between. You want to say, well, it was a loose translation for those, but then it was a tight translation for the other.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:06 Joseph had an envision, but he had no idea what it was. So, you know, God then gave it to him on the stone. But then it's like, but then why wouldn't you do that for the other ones? I mean, how cool would it be to be able to point out more animals that were in the ancient Americas that maybe we would have, you know, evidence for, as opposed to pulling stuff that we now that was available in Joseph's worldview but not available back then. And again, that's to Nemo's point. He probably never thought, when he's doing this, they're going to be able to test this in 100 years because he can only work with, you know, like, it'd be less.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:34 It'd be like watching the Jetsons, you know, 50 years ago or whenever it was on Insane. That's what it's gonna be like, you know, in our day, Joseph Smith can't picture the future. Just like when I was a kid, I couldn't. I wouldn't have known what cell phones were gonna be like, you know? And so he can only do what is what his worldview allows him to. And that, unfortunately for him, creates a lot of problems down the road that he won't be able to deal with because he's obviously, you know, long past, but the problems don't go away.

John Dehlin 48:57 Plus, what in the world would make us think that he could ever, like, see into the future? Why would we even expect that? Sorry, sorry. That was bad. That was bad. I was just thinking these titles should say. Instead of just saying require Loose, they probably should say Require loose or fiction, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:16 Well, yeah, I mean, I guess just for the sake of argument, it's like we're trying to look at what apologetic would be required. But yeah, I mean, obviously to me, Loose to me implies that Joseph Smith is making it up because of the fact that the moment you have to change your translation method to something that is directly against the accounts tells you that you're expanding beyond even. Like I said, I don't believe he. Obviously, I don't believe he tightly translates just because of all the errors in there and the problems with gold plates that we've already gone over. But once you go outside of the box that the church puts itself in with the accounts, then all of a sudden you're like, okay, now we're indistinguishable from fraud.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:51 Because once you say that, he doesn't have to do it, by the way, he told everyone he was doing it because you need to change it to make it work at that point again. And I keep saying this throughout these episodes, but then you can literally make any religion true, right? Because you cannot. You can't say Scientology is wrong because of evidence. If you're willing to throw out the evidence here because you need to preserve

John Dehlin 50:09 Joseph Smith and redefine any word that is inconvenient because it goes against the

Nemo 50:13 entire meaning of the word translation. What points do the plates serve at this point? If he's not taking text that was on the plates and turning into the text that was in the Book of Mormon, if it's all coming from inspiration and looseness, those plates that were dragged around for 25 years by Moroni and his folk, you know, no need for it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:32 Yeah. And that's just it. It's like the story just crumbles once you start to look at how it actually went down. And then not only does the story of the gold plates crumble, but then once you start looking at the Book of Mormon text, you start to see all these clues that Joseph leaves to tell you how he did it. And that's when these apologetics try to answer him. But again, everyone says the Book of Mormon is so internally consistent and there is a lot of consistencies, but a lot of the consistency comes from the fact that he's writing through. Through a linear time. When

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:58 you start to look at the writing styles and this stuff, like with the anachronisms, you can see there's a lot of inconsistencies, because in some areas he'll put a new term, some areas he uses an anachronistic term, and then all of a sudden you're like, well, you know, you would think it would be all new terms or all anachronisms, and that's where you just get into this muddied water.

John Dehlin 51:14 Yeah. And all I'm saying is using the word loose implies that there was actually translation going on.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:20 Yeah, I mean, I'm just. I mean, again, I guess in some way I'm kind of going into their narrative. But. Yeah, it's fine.

John Dehlin 51:25 It's fine.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:26 No, I know what you mean. So, yeah. And so with the Book of Mormon, you have literal biblical stories brought into the Book of Mormon as true history. And this is a problem because I would say even most religious scholars will admit, like Adam and Eve is a mythical ideological story that is trying to be put at the start of the Pentateuch or the five Books of Moses, effectively as an origin story. And so we can show, and we're going to have overviews on these big stories. But like, with Adam and Eve, you can show, not just with science but with the Bible itself, that it's a late addition to the writings of the Bible because the early prophets are unaware.

Adam, Eve, Tower of Babel, and Anachronisms

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:02 And so the Tower of Babel is obviously one that we can show through linguistics that There were multiple languages before it that went uninterrupted in the Global Flood, where you could see all sorts of life that's uninterrupted and obviously there's no disruption into DNA and all that. And so all of those stories being mythical, you would think in a direct, tight translation would be able to pick up the fact that they could say, like, you know, they wouldn't even mention them. Probably they wouldn't even mention them because they didn't happen. And yet they're brought in as these very literal stories that are much more known to the Book of Mormon people than they are to the ancient biblical prophets.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:38 And so it tells you that the prophets in the Book of Mormon are operating with a 19th century biblical worldview. And that is a problem, especially when you talk about Adam and Eve not being known to the early Bible prophets and then being written in. In the Tower of Babel is really problematic because that directly ties to the Jaredite stories. To the Jaredite story. So you can't even. Like, one of the apologetic responses will be to say that the Tower of Babel, the Global Flood and Adam and Eve were stories that were told in those communities. So when Lehi left, they would have brought those stories with them.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:10 Of course. Right. But the Jaredite story is directly tied to the Tower of Babel being literal because they're actually being spared the confounding languages. So you cannot have it for their story. It's way too literal to be able to say, well, the Jaredites just believe that the story happened and so they carried it through.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:26 And that's what I'm saying. Like, with a tight translation, you just. You wouldn't have these stories that we now know were late additions to the Bible and ideological myths.

John Dehlin 53:35 Yeah, yeah. It makes no sense. It's a great point. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:38 Yeah. Nemo, do you have anything on that one?

Nemo 53:41 No, I think you got it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:43 Sadly, a lot of these are pretty straightforward. And then, by the way, we're going

John Dehlin 53:47 to have two episodes of Mormon stories over the next few weeks on. On the Tower of Babel. So. So look for that in the show notes, references to those episodes, if you.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:59 Yeah, and we're going to have one as well. So, I mean, it's really important for. For the Scriptures of Mormonism, obviously, for a number of reasons. And we'll go into a lot more detail there. And then this one is one that we all talk about. It's. There have been over 100,000 changes to the Book of Mormon. Obviously, most of them are grammatical and spelling and all that. But there are significant changes that were made to the initial edition. And so under a tight translation, it would be impossible to change these words because we're told that the stone would not change unless it was written exactly right.

Textual Changes and Joseph Smith's Alterations

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:28 So you can't even blame a scribe error. Like you could. You can't even say, like, Joseph read it right, Oliver Cowdery wrote it wrong. And so because he wrote it wrong, they're going back and correcting it, because under the accounts we have, if Oliver wrote it wrong, the stone would know and the stone would not change. And so Joseph would know because the new words would not appear. So you cannot in any way have changes to the Book of Mormon if you believe in a tight translation because God is giving it to him so specifically and so perfectly.

John Dehlin 54:56 Not if you believe in tight translation, if you believe in the witnesses.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:00 Right, right.

John Dehlin 55:02 Well, both really.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:02 I mean, if you believe what the witnesses are telling you, which is, I mean, one of the arguments you'll hear, and this is big with the Book of Abraham, is they'll say the scribes were the ones that created the Egyptian Alphabet and they were trying to retrofit the characters Joseph Smith was translating to get Joseph off the hook for incorrect translations. And so you kind of. You'll have apologists who will go, well, Joseph Smith knows better than the scribes do, but the scribes are not going to give an account of what Joseph was doing unless it's coming directly from what Joseph was telling them. Like, they're not going to make up the trans Translation method.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:35 And they're certainly not gonna have three different people making up a translation method that just happens to match, you know, independently of each other. And so again, it's just. It's one of those problems where. To your point, John? Yeah, I mean, it has to be like a tight translation, slash what the account with all of the witnesses are saying. There's no way around it. I just. I don't know what else to say.

John Dehlin 55:53 Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 55:54 Do you talk about the significance of these particular changes in the next slide or.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:58 I think it's the same slide. You could. Yes.

Nemo 56:00 I mean, in terms of the significance of the timing of these changes. So these changes here about the mother of the Son of God and the mother of God.

John Dehlin 56:11 Should we read them first?

Nemo 56:12 Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin 56:13 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 56:14 Hey, Nemo, can you read them? You've got such a good voice.

John Dehlin 56:16 Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 56:16 Okay, so the first one is 1st Nephi 11:18 from the 1830 edition. And he said unto me, behold the virgin which thou seest is the mother of God after the manner of the flesh. And then the second one is the same chapter, verse and book, but it's the 1838 edition onwards.

Nemo 56:36 And he said unto me, behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God after the manner of the flesh. So there is a change there it is further clarifying. You could say that Christ is the Son of God, not just God. Right, yeah. What's interesting about that? Sorry, it's the 1837 edition. Sorry, not the 1838. And that's significant because the 1830 edition then comes to the 1832 First Vision account in which Joseph doesn't specify seeing more than one personage. And then when he goes to change that account in 1838 to more than one personage the year before, the second edition of the Book of Mormon comes out, and all of a sudden you've got a non single individual or non kind of trinitarian view of the Bible. You've got these separate personages. So these particular changes are very significant in Joseph's evolving kind of view of deity.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:30 Yep.

John Dehlin 57:31 So over time, Joseph started feeling like God and Jesus were separate.

Nemo 57:35 Separate, yeah. And so he changed the Book of Mormon accordingly.

John Dehlin 57:38 So he changed the Book of Mormon accordingly with his changing theology.

Nemo 57:41 Yes.

John Dehlin 57:42 Which then begs the question of, again, fights against the tight translation.

Nemo 57:46 Why did God give him a poor theology to begin with? And why did then his account of the first vision also change to match the changes of the Book of Mormon? Did he get a word from God about the Book of Mormon to change and go, oh, I better change my account of the first vision to match then? Probably not.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:02 That's just it. Like, again, I didn't have a slide on that. But Nemo, it's a great point, because if you have a tight translation, why is the original Book of Mormon implying the trinitarian modalist viewpoint instead of having the separation of the Godhead? Because again, if this is God translating reformed Egyptian onto a rock into Joseph Smith, and I would also argue, even under a loose translation, if Joseph Smith is receiving this through a visionary standpoint, he would still know that God and Jesus are separate beings either way. But yeah, I mean, to your point, like, if you want to believe this is a tight translation, why in the world is God leaving out what would be one of the most important theological advancements of that time frame out of that translation?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:42 It makes no sense. And the problem with the first Vision to what you were saying is it's not just that he changes his accounts, it's that when he changes his accounts, it tracks in a linear timeline with the changes that he's teaching outside of it. And so the first vision changes to argue that Joseph was just kind of expanding on his actual visionary experience ignores the fact that he was teaching a trinitarian modalist viewpoint early on and then was slowly switching.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 59:09 And we see that in the translation here, where all of a sudden they have to go back and correct what should be a word for word translation that they were not allowed to change.

John Dehlin 59:16 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 59:17 And the second one on here is just. It's just an error with. In the original book, it said King Benjamin had a gift from God and they meant King Mosiah. King Benjamin had died, and yet they put it in there. And again, you can make the argument that maybe the printer somehow screwed that up, but that's a really hard argument to make because of the fact that

John Dehlin 59:37 the stone should have stopped him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 59:38 Yeah, there's something like Oliver Cowdery writing it down wrong would have stopped it because the stone wouldn't have moved on. And so then you would have to say, well, whoever is setting the manuscript before printing must have screwed it up. But that is unlikely just because of the fact that when you're setting a manuscript, you're not going to be going far back into the text to mix up names. But either way, it just shows that there are some errors in the Book of Mormon that were significant beyond just grammatical changes.

John Dehlin 1:00:05 All right, that's important.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:07 And then this one is one that will again do another podcast, and it might be our next one. But it's the surrounding influences around the Book of Mormon that just happened to make their way into the text. And so Joseph Smith references treasure digging and multiple points throughout the Book of Mormon. Or I should say the author of the Book of Mormon mentions treasure digging terms like slippery treasure. And, you know, that is something that, you know, you would either have to believe that the people in the ancient Americas were doing treasure digging in the exact same way that Joseph Smith was and unsuccessfully finding stuff, or.

Treasure Digging, Charles Anthon, and the 116 Pages

John Dehlin 1:00:38 And that's with. With spirits guarding treasure that's buried and then they go to dig it up and it gets carried away. And I don't think there's any biblical accounts of slippery treasure. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:49 I don't think so. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. Yeah, I mean, that feels like a very uniquely 19th century.

John Dehlin 1:00:57 18th and 19th century.

Nemo 1:00:58 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:59 And so the fact that he uses these terms in the Book of Mormon would tell you that he's writing it in his own familiar terms. And so because he comes from that, that worldview and that, that background, of course it's going to make its way when he's trying to explain, you know, how things can slip away from you. And, you know, there are other ones besides what we're commenting on here, but. So Charles, the Charles Anthon visit by Martin Harris, we talked about that in some previous episodes, but when that happens, it works its way directly into the Book of Mormon. And so in the Book of Mormon, it feels like you're getting a fulfillment of prophecy, because it's almost like the Book of Mormon is prophesying of Martin Harris visiting Charles Anthon, except for the fact that when it's written into the Book of Mormon, it's already happened in real life.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:40 And so that would tell you that it would have to be a loose translation, because if it was a tight translation, it wouldn't be. I mean, I guess in theory it could be a tight translation that is that specific and. Right. But as we'll see as we go through these overviews, the Book of Mormon prophecies die off the moment that you hit the 1829 range. There's no prophecies after that that are specific.

John Dehlin 1:02:02 That's suspect. And we'll talk about this again. But the fact that Charles Anthon, his account of what happened between him and Martin Harris is literally the opposite of what Martin Harris claims and what the Book of Mormon claims. Who do you go with? The guy who actually gives a firsthand account of what happened from his own point of view.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:24 That's just it.

John Dehlin 1:02:25 Or what Martin Harris, who is motivated to have an account that would please Joseph and an account written in the scripture that would make Joseph in the Book of Mormon look better. Or do you go with that one? Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:37 Yeah. Charles Anthon's accounts do change, too. So, I mean, that's why it gets a little messy. But again, the fact that you can see the visitors being written directly into the Book of Mormon as it's happening on the outside tells you that Joseph Smith is using it as a way to backdate a prophecy into an ancient writing so that he can claim it's fulfilled by the production he is now going to use to convert people. And it's a really effective tool, I would argue, because I've heard that when I joined as a believer, I heard that as a fulfilled prophecy of the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:09 And you don't think at the time like, well, of course it's in the Book of Mormon because it was literally happening at that time as he's writing it, but, you know, I didn't know that at the time. And so when you. Once you start to pick up these pieces, you know, again, as I mentioned, fingerprints, those are fingerprints he's leaving on the text that you don't really pick up unless you're kind of digging into this a little bit more and kind of seeing kind of how it's being composed and when it's being composed.

John Dehlin 1:03:30 Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:32 And the last one here is just Joseph Smith having his father's dream as Lehi's dream, which is going to have a ton of similarities we'll cover. But, you know, again, that's. That's a dream that his father's going to have in the, you know, the 1820s or whatever. 18. I think it's 1820s, early 1820s. So that's going to be something that could not have been an ancient time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:53 He's going to write in a lot of the stuff about the translation of the Book of Mormon, like, who's going to translate it? And, you know, he writes himself into there, you know, Joseph, son of Joseph, a choice seer, all that stuff. And so he's writing in a lot of the. A lot of the things that are happening to him personally directly into the text. Which tells you not only. And I've mentioned this before, but not only could the Book of Mormon not have been written before, you know, the 1820s, but it's going to be. Couldn't be written by anyone but Joseph.

John Dehlin 1:04:18 Right? Yeah. All right, what about the last 116 pages?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:04:24 So we covered this in our previous episode, but, you know, again, if Joe and actually Nemo covered this really well at the beginning, but if Joseph Smith was using a tight translation, there would have been no issue at all with Joseph Smith retranslating the pages because the stone was so specific and so strict that it actually would. Worked out quite well because you would actually, when you read the accounts of the tight translation, it actually would be perfect.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:04:47 If God truly planned for Joseph to lose the pages, the tight translation would have been the perfect plan because then God could have been like in his revelation, Joseph, this is why I was so strict with the stone, because I didn't want you to make any changes because I knew you were going to have to redo it. But instead we have the other end of it, which is what Nemo said, which is now we have to require a loose translation so that Joseph could basically replace the text without having to make everything line up 100% equal. And then this is why he says he's changing to the small plates because he needs a loose translation or else people would say, just do it again.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:23 And we covered this a lot in the last episode, but this was one of those chances for Joseph to prove himself a prophet. And he couldn't do it because he knew that it wasn't a tight translation, that he could not replicate it 100%.

John Dehlin 1:05:36 Yeah, yeah. And then apologists are going to say, well, God, you know, God didn't have him retranslate the 116 pages because that would have taken away the need for faith. And then I would say, well, then why did he have to provide the plates and show them to anybody at all? Right, right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:53 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:05:53 And plus we covered this, and plus, if he had reproduced identical transcripts, people could have just said he had a copy somewhere. Like, it just. None of that makes sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:05 Yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of problems. And I think Nemo said at the beginning, it's like these apologetics only come because of the fact that there's these problems that now have to be solved. These would not be issues. Nobody would be arguing the loose translation stuff if these problems were not all over the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:21 And so we're kind of flipping here. So now what we need to look at is what requires a tight translation. And this is one where all the time you hear people say, there's chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, there's hebraisms, it's in the Book of Mormon translation essay from the Church. And they're just saying this is evidence that Joseph Smith was translating the word of God. And so it's true. Because if you want to claim chiasmus as a proof of the Book of Mormon being ancient, you have to have a tight translation. Because if it's a loose translation, then you're inadvertently admitting that Joseph Smith was capable of writing Hebraisms into the text like the late war did at the same time.

What Each Theory Requires to Be Consistent

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:56 And so this is why, when I talk about how you have to be consistent, if you want to say Joseph was doing a loose translation when he was pulling all the King James material in the Isaiah chapters, all that other stuff, and then you get to the part where there's a chiasmus and you say, oh, nope, here's where he was doing it tight. And that's why it's in there. You can't have it both ways. So either Joseph Smith was capable of being a co author and therefore is capable of bringing Hebraisms in from ancient texts, like, you know, the late war did or, you know, mimicking ancient texts.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:24 Or you have to say it was a tight translation. That's why the chiasmus is there. And we don't know how to solve all of the other problems that we've already covered in this episode. It's just. You can't. You got to be consistent.

John Dehlin 1:07:35 Right. And. And again, apologists want to always have it both ways.

Nemo 1:07:38 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:07:40 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:40 So that. And so then the next one is when we talk about. We talked about this earlier, but when you look at the names of all of the plants and animals and all of the money that are unique to the Book of Mormon, that has to come from a tight translation, because if you're using a loose translation, then it's just basically showing that Joseph Smith is trying to make up some words to make the Book of Mormon seem unique. And so we've got the kurlam and kumam, we've got all of the plants, we got metal. And the money is important because the money is mentioned, I think, like, one time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:09 And then it's referenced in the Sermon on the Mount, which. The Sermon at the Temple, which is the Sermon on the Mount. And then it never is mentioned again. But he does introduce the C9 and all this money stuff into the text. And then you also have the words. We covered this in our other episode, Liahona Deseret, which have no ancient or modern connection.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:28 And they're both used prominently, obviously, in church materials. And so if you have a loose translation, the only way these appear in the text is if Joseph Smith is just making words up as he goes to try to make it sound more ancient.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:39 And, you know, as we talked about earlier, like, the apologetic response is to say that Joseph Smith was given the specific names during the visionary or revelatory process. But if you want to do that, you then have to say, well, then why was Joseph Smith not given the correct names for what. What was accounted as horses, elephants, steel, and all that? And so, you know, it's. Again, it's just about consistency, because here you'd have to have a tight translation to have all of these specific names. But if you want to claim that, then you got to figure out the other side as well.

John Dehlin 1:09:09 Nemo, anything you want to add there?

Nemo 1:09:12 Yeah, I'm being encouraged to jump in. I think. I think the. It links to the Hebrewisms quite well in that if you can't etymologically track any of these words back to the kind of Hebrew origins of the peoples of the Book of Mormon, you know, language doesn't Just appear. Right. We don't know a lot about this supposed reformed Egyptian and why it was reformed Egyptian and not Hebrew. And we've covered that. But languages don't just appear out of nowhere. They develop over time, over hundreds and thousands of years. So etymologically speaking, you would be expecting these words to have Hebrew origin and that would work for a loose translation because, you know, Joseph would have just taken them from Hebrew script or from Hebrew text or whatever.

Nemo 1:10:00 Right. Biblical sounding things. Instead he's had to make some words up or, you know, these words have come out of nowhere and so where else would they have come from but a tight translation? Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:12 Yeah, that's a problem.

John Dehlin 1:10:14 Yep. And I, I look forward to that. Those episodes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:19 Yeah, I think they'll be, I think they'll be really helpful because again, we're, we're, we're, we're kind of laying down the foundation here for the next few episodes on some of this stuff. And I think when we get to those episodes, if you've watched this one one, it'll, it'll make a lot more sense, especially when you're trying to figure out how it fits into the bigger picture.

John Dehlin 1:10:31 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:32 Okay, so this next one, this is the one I kind of hinted at earlier. And so here's a single verse in ether and it says, and they also had horses and asses, and there were elephants and curlems and kumams, all of which were useful to man, unto man, and more especially the elephants and the kurloms and the kumams. And so if you want to argue a tight translation or you want to argue a loose translation, this verse is, has anachronisms at the beginning and then the very specific ones at the end. And so you'd have to have an apologetic standpoint because we know there were

John Dehlin 1:11:02 no horses in Mesoamerica or any of America during the Book of Mormon time period, nor elephants. Yeah, if there were horses or elephants or anything like it, it was like during the pleistocene era, like 18,000, you know, BCE. And this is, this is acknowledged by like every. Archaeologists and anthropologists everywhere. And we can refer people to the Michael Ko Episodes of Mormon Stories podcast where Yale, there's two of them actually, where Yale anthropologist, archeologist will confirm these things. And so on the one hand you've got the anachronistic animals and on the other hand he's coming up with whole cloth made up names. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:11:48 Yeah, I mean, like, and again, you know, I don't want to mean be facetious here, but it would Almost be like, he's got his face in the hat, and he's like, I see a horse. Okay, and horses. He's like, okay, and donkey and asses. And then he sees what looks like an elephant, and all of a sudden he sees something that would look, like, so boring to him, like a dragon or a unicorn. And he's like, what the crap is that? And then all of a sudden he has to go to the rock, and then the rock's like, it's a curlem. And he's like, oh, it's a curlem and a kumam.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:14 And I'm not trying to be facetious. I'm just saying, like, from an apologetic standpoint, you have to have Joseph Smith literally switching mid sentence to go to a different translation method. And again, this goes against all of the accounts we have. But more importantly, it just, like, it makes no logical sense that you would have mid sentence a flip from anachronistic animals to animals no one's ever heard of throughout the history of mankind. It just shows how when you try to have it both ways with these translation methods, you. In this one verse, you got to go both ways. And that's just really difficult for me to get behind in any, like, intellectually consistent or logical way.

Nemo 1:12:51 But then you've got Joseph's worldview and this idea that we've spoken about before of him not thinking anyone's gonna be able to prove him wrong through archaeological evidence or whatever. Yeah. In his mind, well, we know what elephants are. We know what horses are. We know what asses are. They all existed. But there were also these animals called curelums and cumons that people don't know what they are. And they're this fantastical thing, whatever they might be, and they don't exist in the archaeological record anywhere. No one can identify what those things are. But the. The only sort of putting my apologist hat on way to explain it is that there are these animals that existed that no one knows anything about.

Nemo 1:13:24 And that is what they were called modernly as well as anciently. But no one can find them anywhere. No one knows what they are. No one knows what they did or what class, phylum, genus, whatever they were. No one knows any of that stuff. That's the only sort of apologetic argument I can think of.

John Dehlin 1:13:40 Or that God is making it confusing intentionally so that we are required to have faith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:13:48 Yeah, of course, that's always one argument. Yeah, it's just, like I said, it's just one of those things where it's like to what Nemo said. I think a lot of the times in his head, I don't think he's ever thinking like this is going to be fact checked someday. Because back then they couldn't hop on Google. And it's one of those things. And again, I want to go off tangent, but people will say, what will my ancestors think if I were to read ldsdiscussions.com or watch Mormon stories? And because of that I learned that the truth claims of the Mormon Church are demonstrably false by the evidence, what would my ancestors who walked across the plains and some of them died, got injured, whatever, what would they think?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:22 They'd be so ashamed if I gave up on the church after everything they gave. And my argument always is, I think if your ancestors are good people, they would be like, I am so glad that you have the information we did not have and that you could look up the information we could never have access to to learn that this stuff is not what we thought it was. And we're so glad that you are able to now use your critical thinking, use that brain that God gave you and use the evidence that you have access to to find this out. And so, you know, I just, I always hate that argument of like, well, you know, it would make.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:54 What would it say about your ancestors? Because to me, I think your ancestors would be proud of you for being able to jump outside of the box, look at the evidence that they didn't have, and make better decisions than they could have because they didn't have it. And this is just again, non stop examples that we do in these episodes to show that there's all of these problems that they would have had no idea existed because as Nemo said at the time, Joseph Smith was well aware that nobody was going to be able to fact check what he was doing, especially from a textual standpoint.

John Dehlin 1:15:19 Yeah.

Nemo 1:15:19 It reminds me of a thought terminating cliche I hear regularly. We see through a glass darkly.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:25 Yeah.

Nemo 1:15:25 And the people in the 18, 30s, 40s, 50s did see through a glass darkly. You know, there's no denying that they had far less information at their fingertips than we do now. We have so much information. And so that phrase we see through a glass darkly does not apply to modern members of the church because there is no reason for our glass to be dark. We have access to so much information. And so all it is at this point is a thought terminating cliche designed to stop people looking into things.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:52 Yeah, 100%.

John Dehlin 1:15:53 Yeah, that's right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:54 And so now it's kind of circle Back to the beginning. This is a different Fair Mormon page. And I didn't see this when I did the overview. So I don't know if they added this because like I said, that first page I didn't see. This is the page now and it says this is part of it. So I think. I think this is the bulk of it, but I think there might be a little bit extra. But it says some readers of the Book of Mormon have become concerned with issues that might, in their view, preclude the view that the translation of the Book of Mormon was given word for word directly by God, such as the presence of language from the King James Bible in the text.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:24 Such a view that the translation was a tight one. It was expressed by early witnesses to the translation. But Joseph's own view of Revelation appears to be more nuanced and allow for some flexibility in this regard. We read in DC124, behold, I am God and have spoken it. These commandments are of me and were given unto my servant in their weakness after the manner of their language that they might come to understanding. Thus Joseph's model of revelation is one in which God could use things such as the King James language as the means to the end of establishing his everlasting covenant and calling his children to repentance.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:58 This theology of translation may feel strange to some Latter Day Saints that might only accept the view that a translation provided by God can only be a formally equivalent word for word rendering of the Reformed Egyptian into English. God, using this instance as an example, recognized the divine potential of Joseph Smith and chose to respect his agency. He worked in cooperation with Joseph instead of merely subjecting his mind to the revelation to get his message out to his children. And this is just a mess.

John Dehlin 1:17:26 Why are Nemo and I both shaking our heads?

Nemo 1:17:30 I can say perfectly in a sentence, you want to talk about taking things out of context. This is a massive taking something out of context. That verse is talking about the commandments given in Doctrine and Covenants. It's not talking about the Book of Mormon. So that does not answer why the Book of Mormon has King James language and is in the language of Joseph Smith, etc. Etc. Because he's talking about the revelations given for the Book of Commandments as it was then. Yeah, it's just such a straw man.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:55 Yeah. I mean, it's so dishonest. And so when I read that, the first thing I did, because I thought the same thing, I'm like, I don't think they were talking about the Book of Mormon in that verse. So if you go to the next slide, that was my first thought, too. It's like they're intentionally taking that verse and basically redefining what God is specifically saying. He's giving the commandments to Joseph in the language Joseph understands. In other words, God is saying, I'm giving my commandments to Joseph in English so that he'll understand what I'm trying to get him to do. He is not in any way talking about the translation of the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:18:29 And so to claim that Joseph's view is nuanced is deceptive because they're using an example that has nothing to do with the translation. To say that Joseph's own view is nuanced when Joseph in no way is giving any indication of any nuance or any exit ramp to a loose translation. And I just, you know, again, to say that God respected Joseph agency and allowed him to operate as a co author of the Book of Mormon also undercuts their claim that Joseph was incapable of writing the Book of Mormon, because they're basically saying Joseph Smith was capable, so God let him do it. Right? And so they're misusing the DNC verse.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:04 And then they're also kind of inadvertently admitting that Joseph Smith was capable of being a co author in writing the Book of Mormon. I think those are two really important things that are noted. And seeing you guys both shake your head may feel better, because I thought the same thing. I'm like, this is just bad.

Nemo 1:19:17 Apologies, Mike. In my anger and frustration almost, I stole your thunder there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:23 No, no, no. Actually, I'm glad you did, because I think the fact that you caught that,

John Dehlin 1:19:27 it makes Mike feel validated.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:29 It does. It makes me feel better. Because when I had to think about it for a second, I had to double check to make sure I wasn't thinking about it wrong. So when I saw that, I'm like, I don't think he's talking about the translation of the Book of Mormon. So for both of you to shake your head right away because you picked up on that, it just shows that when you read Apologetics. So if you're a believing member and you read that page on fair, you'll probably kind of nod your head and go, cool. Because you're not going to think about, like, do I need to fact check what they're doing?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:50 But from a critical standpoint, you know, they want you to critically look at everything I would write or that you would do on a podcast, that John would do on a podcast or CS letter. And yet they put up Something here which is just so blatantly out of context and just misused. And, you know, and if you call them out on it, then of course they would say, well, some critics think, you know, it's just. No, this is misleading. This is straight up misleading. And it's just horrible to see them do it in a way that, you know, believing members are going to read and think is true.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:20:21 And, you know, it's one of the reasons that you see, people say, a lot of people say that the CES letter really puts stuff on their shelf, but that Fair Mormon or Apologetics broke it, because you go to Fair Mormon and then they have to admit a lot of it's real. And then the secondary part is when you go to Fair Mormon and you think, okay, they have answers. I'm okay right now. So you put on the shelf, like, I have some answers. But then when you find out Fair Mormon's lying or being misleading, your shelf comes crashing down. Because then not only do you know that the problems are there, but you know that the apologists in the church are willing to deceive you to keep you from looking deeper.

John Dehlin 1:20:54 And these are apologists at the church fund. These are people that are on the payroll of the church. They're on the payroll at BYU, or there's shadow donors that support the 501s, or, you know, there's always dark money under the table, money that we don't even know about. So for people that think that Fair Mormon isn't supported officially by the Mormon Church, that's just the church wanting an arm's length, plausible deniability. But it's not. It's not credible. It's. It's not honest, you know?

Nemo 1:21:27 Yeah, we just look at where. The way they said on the last side in their answer, where they said that in their view, phrases like that really wind me up because it basically, it. It's saying, well, in their opinion, or it's very dismissive of the legitimacy of the issues that people are bringing to light. It's just saying, oh, well, this is just what these people think. It's like, no, no, these are the facts, and I want you to address them, please.

John Dehlin 1:21:52 Yeah. Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:54 Yeah. It's just. It's one of those things where it's like the whole. When you frame it. And again, I know we're framing these. These episodes as, here's what critics say, here's what apologists say. I get that, but it's like the way that they use those words, like in the DNA episode, we did it's the same thing where it's like, whenever it's about science, they use these really. These words that aren't outright, like, fighting words, but they're words that try to basically kind of kick you a little bit to make the reader know that you shouldn't trust these studies. And it's like by doing so, you're trying to poison the well just enough.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:22:22 And so in this case, it's like, in some readers, in their view, have a problem with the Book of Mormon's translation. Almost like saying, like, if you're reading this page and you are a believing member and you have a problem with the Book of Mormon translation, that problem is you, not the Book of Mormon. And it's just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:22:36 It's the way that I think sometimes when you bring up problems in church and you're shut down, it's because nobody, like, you know, I always think of, like, apologetics as, like, the last stand, like, Nemo, this might be a little foreign to you, but for football in America, not. Not what you call it, not that soccer stuff you call football over there.

Apologetics, Conclusions, and Final Thoughts

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:22:56 It's like you've got this guy with the ball, and apologists are like the last line to tackle you before you get in the end zone. And then you kind of graduate from Mormonism, you know, and so it's just like, it just feels like they're doing anything they can to keep you from crossing that line, to looking beyond the correlated material or what they want to give you. And to your point, by labeling it, like, in their view, it's almost like telling you as a reader, if you have a problem with this, you got to look at yourself first, because they're now putting you directly in the line with critics, which, as a reader, if you're a believer, you're going to read that and go, oh, crap.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:28 Yeah. People who have that view are, you know, halfway out of the church or whatever. And I think that's intentional. Maybe it's not. It just feels like it's intentional.

Nemo 1:23:35 It's a little bit of a scare tactic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:37 It is.

John Dehlin 1:23:38 Yeah. And I've. I've been on record for many, many years, just with the only authority of having personally corresponded with tens of thousands of Mormons who went through a faith crisis over the past 20 years. So many people have left the church because the apologetics, because of Fair Mormon, because. Because of the Maxwell Institute, because of farms, because of Hugh Nibley, because of Saints unscripted, you know, Midnight Mormons. Their apologetics have been so insulting, so disingenuous, or The Gospel Topics essays themselves have been so disingenuous, so dishonest, or just insulting to people's intelligence that it was just like this red flag that the church was. Was fraudulent and hiding something.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:27 Well. And it's like, you know, I hate using analogies for all this stuff, but it's like, you know, it's when you have, like, a spouse and you're kind of suspicious your spouse is either cheating on you or they're hiding money issues, whatever the case might be, and you find a clue or two that you think they are, and then they tell you, like, a lie, and they're like, no, you know, that that hotel receipt was not because I was with another woman. It's because I actually had lunch with a business partner. And you go in the back of your head, you're like, okay, I'm okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:53 But then when you find the next one, then all of a sudden you're like, okay. Now I know that they're willing to deceive me in order to keep me in. And I feel like with apologetics, that's the thing, because, like, when I. Like I've mentioned this before, but when I read the CVS letter and then I. Info dumped on my wife, and again, I can't tell people enough, that is the worst way to do it, and I regret doing it that way. But she asked me to read the Fair Mormon response. When I read the Fair Mormon response, I actually had a bunch of moments where I'm like, you know what?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:20 They're making really good points and the CS letter is wrong. And I. That was kind of not enough to get me to believe again, because there were still enough that they admitted to. So I was like, I don't believe it's true, but I can see why a believer can read the CS letter and then read Fair Mormon's response and stay involved. Because the apologetics were really effective in some areas when I read it, but it was when I read through it a second time, and then I read Jeremy's response to them, and then you start seeing what they're not telling you, and that's when all of a sudden you go, they're willing to deceive.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:50 They're willing to cut out quotes. They're willing to misuse footnotes to tell you something that is not honest. And that's when all of a sudden you go from, you know, thinking that they're trying to. And I don't. Not saying they're intentionally lying. I think sometimes they just. They're competitive. They feel like they need to keep you in. But regardless, the tactics being used are just as bad as everything they accused critics of doing. And once you realize that and you start to see how they're using quotes and footnotes and all that, that's when it opens you up to being willing to go further out. And as you go further out, you realize it doesn't get better for church history, it gets worse.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:23 And I'm a couple years into this now and I'm still learning stuff where you're like, I had no idea that existed. And it's because the further out you go, you start coming across new trails to go down. And like I said, I'm rambling of it, but it's just, it's. The fact is, they try to stop you from going down those paths, and once you finally give yourself permission to do it, it just. It starts to fall apart fast.

John Dehlin 1:26:45 Do you want to add anything to that, Nemo?

Nemo 1:26:47 Yeah, just that it seems the ends justify the means from their church leaders as well as apologists, and that they're taking their lead from men that will lie if they believe that it will promote enough faith to keep people in. You know, they take their lead from people like Ballard who say, we've never tried to hide anything from anybody. They'll take their lead from Russell M. Nelson, who will tell a story about a plane crash that didn't happen because it promotes faith. They'll take the lead from Jeffrey R. Holland, who will say that we've created X number of stakes, that growth is the biggest problem we have. And then you actually find out that over that time period, no new stakes were created or they.

John Dehlin 1:27:24 Mitt Romney, you know, never would have performed a blood oath in the temple. Right?

Nemo 1:27:28 Yeah, yeah. All that sort of stuff. Right. They're taking their lead from these men. I believe it was Down H. Oaks that said to them, to church apologists at a dinner or a lunch that was paid for by the church. He said not having an answer to these questions lets people leave. Having an answer, even if it's not a good one, will help people stay. That's the gist of what he said to them. So Fair's job is to provide an answer. They don't really. It's not their prerogative for that answer to be consistent, logical or helpful or multiple.

John Dehlin 1:28:01 How about multiple contradictory answers?

Nemo 1:28:04 Yeah, you want to take the whack a mole analogy that Renlund used, right. When he was saying that, you know, people that dig into church history are just playing spiritual. Whack a mole actually Apologists generally are the ones that are playing whack a mole, because whenever a new issue pops up with no regard for where the last one popped up, they'll just deal with that one and then the next one and then the next one.

John Dehlin 1:28:24 And I'll just say, to reiterate something that we've mentioned a few times here, for me personally, when I came upon something like Book of Mormon translation, I would realize that it was problematic. And I would always think, well, but, you know, maybe in this case the apologist. Apologist arguments are credible, or there's something that I don't understand.

John Dehlin 1:28:50 But then when you add to it the fact that the Book of Abraham translation has now been shown to be a complete fraud, and there's no Egyptologist alive who's credible or objective that would disagree with that reference to the Robert Rittner episode on Mormon Stories podcast. And then when you add to that the anachronisms that Michael Coe or others would testify to, and then when you add to that the Kinderhook plates and the fact that Joseph declared plates that we now know were made to fool Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith actually tried to translate them, believing that they were authentic. And then you add to that the problems with the first vision story, and you add to that the hundred, you know, and you start lining up and the treasure digging and then the polyandry and the people, you know, and the racism, like, it's not just any of these isolated issues, it's adding them all up where it's just like, how. How many different problems do we need to see before we realize that, you know, there's a big problem? Bigger problem.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29:52 Yeah. And that's the whole problem with the type versus loose. Right. Like into your point from a second ago, one thing I didn't add in here, which I was going to, and I kind of was thinking maybe be kind of trickier for this episode is we are told in the Book of Mormon that God changed the skin of the Lamanites dark so they would be unenticing to the white and delightsome Nephites. Right. And so do you believe it's a tight translation and God's telling that directly, or do you believe it's a loose translation and Joseph Smith is putting a racist worldview into the Book of Mormon and that again, creates more issues.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:30:20 Because if you want to believe it's a loose translation, then you got to wonder, to fair Mormon's point, that God trusted Joseph, well then God still owns the racism in the Book of Mormon. Those things are all interconnected to these problems. It's not like I keep saying this over and over, but these problems, apologists want to take them in isolation because it's a little easier if you do that to just apply what, throw the spaghetti at the wall, see what sticks. And then you got another problem. Look at a different wall, you throw more spaghetti, see what sticks. But you have to be reconcile these things with each other.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:30:51 And it just shows that that's why the tight versus loose. When I listen to the John Larsen's podcast, like eight or. Well, I listened to a few years ago, he did eight or nine years ago. It just illustrates, and we kind of COVID that here. You can't have it both ways. And if you can't have it both ways, the Book of Mormon cannot survive because you have to have it both ways. And it just shows that the further you go into these, these, these topics that we're doing, they just compound upon each other. They're not all isolated. They're just go. They're stacking on each other.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:17 And at some point, the weight of all of these things being stacked, boom, boom, boom. It just falls. You can't. From an apologetic standpoint, you can only carry that so far before people will look at it and go, oh, wait, you used one apologetic here, but now you're trying to say that it's a completely different thing. And if you do that, then we got to go back to this first problem. Now you've unsolved that one.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:38 It's a mess. And it just, it just keeps going. And I did 39 topics and I had like five or six more I still want to do. Because every time you start to look at these things, you see a new problem that really is rooted in these same issues, and it just never ends. And so to claim that you can make it work both ways. And this final slide kind of just illustrates what we've said. These are key issues. These are not small complaints. These are not nitpicking. It's not the. A lot of time apologists will say, what is the phrase, swatting at gnats and swallowing camels or whatever it is.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:10 And these are big issues. And so if you want to claim a loose translation, then all of a sudden you have to also admit Joseph Smith was capable of writing or dictating the Book of Mormon. And if you want to claim a tight translation, then you got to answer why all of these errors are in there that are very unique to Joseph Smith's time. And so the whole point of this episode is to Say from an apologetic standpoint, you have to choose a lane, stay in it, and then you have to acknowledge what the implications are based on, what lane you decide to go with.

John Dehlin 1:32:39 Or you're dishonest and misleading people.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:41 Yeah. Or you're playing games.

Nemo 1:32:43 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:43 Or you're playing games. And if you want to play games, obviously they're going to do that. And like I said earlier, I think some people, I've met some people online who are a couple apologists that people know the name of and they've messaged me. And you can tell that there is a competitive edge to them. Like they want to win. They want to, they want to win that argument as opposed to just being honest. And I'm not saying that they're horrible people. I'm just saying that sometimes we all have our own. We all have motivations. Some people might have motivations to rise in the ranks of the church.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:14 Some might want to get book deals. Some might want to get a job doing firesides for the church. Some might just want to be able to say, I am beating people down online that are criticizing the church. But the point is, whatever your motivation is, if you're apologetic responses are inconsistent or misleading, then they deserve to be called out and members deserve to know what the evidence says, whether it's good or bad. And the thing I'll we'll end with, because I think this is something that's super important, is if the Mormon Church is true, if the truth claims of the Mormon Church are true, if the truth claims of the Book of Mormon are true, no one that believes has anything to fear.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:49 In reading what I wrote or watching these episodes, listening to Nemo's podcast. If it's true, you have nothing to fear. If it's not true, you deserve to know. The only person that has any reason to fear the LDS discussions overview or Nemo or John is the church. Because if their truth claims can hold, withstand scrutiny, then literally it'll speak for itself. And if they can't, then that's their problem. It's not my problem. It's not Nemo's problem. It's not your problem.

Nemo 1:34:16 Yeah, if we have. What's the quote? I'm going to butcher it. But yeah, if we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be hard.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:25 Yeah, that's the one.

Nemo 1:34:26 Yeah, I think.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:27 Yeah. I mean, it's just. It is what it is. And the funny thing is those quotes used to be used, what, like 30, 40 years ago, they would use Those quotes. And then all of a sudden the Internet comes out and the Tanners get more, more traction. And all of a sudden they switch from telling members, hey, if we have the truth, no worries to guys don't trust outside sources. Like you mentioned, the Renlun, they had that Renlunds devotional to the youth, and they're calling people who leave the church snake oil salesmen, spiritually bankrupt, you know, weekend hacks, all these things because they're trying to poison the well, because now they know.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:59 And again, I don't want to go on a rant here. I know we're trying to avoid those, but it's just like when you talk about apologetics, and in this case, the tight versus loose is so heavy in apologetics. It just, it really illustrates how they are willing to use whatever method they need to use for these individual problems. And then when you, when you. You can never get them take that step back and say, if you want to take that approach here, what about here? Because they will not talk to people like us in a public setting. And so it's just frustrating because you point it out to believers, and a lot of believers are being in this tug of war.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:29 And it shouldn't be that. It just shouldn't be like that. It should be like, here's what we have. The church should be like, you know, you know, to end with like a car claim. You know, if you went to a car dealership and you went to the dealer and the salesperson said, I got this great car, and you're like, can I take it for a test drive? He's like, no, just look at the outside. How does it make you feel? You'd never buy that car. And that's what the church is. It's like, they always tell you, like, don't focus on the evidence, focus on your feelings.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:52 And at some point, if you don't have the truth, then you can't keep telling people to be afraid of it. That's what kind of bothers me because it's always shifting the blame onto the members who actually are willing to go out and research these things, as opposed to looking inward and saying, why have we been giving such an inaccurate depiction of our history for this long? And if the answer as to why is because, you know, people won't join, if that's the case, you have to have a reckoning with that, because you cannot keep doing this and then being upset when people like me, who is, you know, a nobody, can put this together for a lot of people, because the problem the reason I can put it together is because it's out there and they know about it. And I will shut up now.

John Dehlin 1:36:32 And it's worse than just providing inaccurate information. It's providing inaccurate information when you know better and then excommunicating anybody that tells the truth about the problems.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:36:44 Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Closing Remarks and Support Information

John Dehlin 1:36:47 All right. Well, that's why I think this LDS discussion series and your work, Mike, is so important. I asked Brooklyn Today to create a playlist so that you could go onto YouTube and just watch them in succession and binge watch them. So that's going to be awesome. We're also creating time codes in YouTube so that if you want to jump to different parts of this episode, you'll be able to do that while you're in YouTube. And, Mike, I can't thank you enough for all your research and your passion and your willingness to spend time with us, to teach us.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:25 And thank you so much, Nemo. It's always so much fun to talk to you and glad you could come on today.

John Dehlin 1:37:30 And Nemo, tell everybody really quickly what your channel is all about.

Nemo 1:37:34 Nemo the Mormon is about fact checking the church. I've got a particular bee in my bonnet at the moment about the leaders being dishonest. There's a particular focus on that. Current living leaders. We're not digging into the past. We're looking at the men that your family and you, if you're a believing member, sit and listen to twice a year, and if not more, and you look to them for guidance. And they claim to speak directly for God. So big claim. They need to be able to back that up. So I look into it, and it's Nemo the Mormon on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube.

John Dehlin 1:38:01 And we'll provide a link to your YouTube channel in our show notes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:05 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:38:05 All right. Thanks, gentlemen.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:07 Thank you so much.

John Dehlin 1:38:08 Yeah. And thanks to all our listeners and viewers who support us today and every day on Mormon Stories podcast. We could not do this with your without your support. So if you value this program, if you value this series with Mike about LDS discussions, we need your support to keep it going. If you go to MormonStories.org, click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor. 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford. We're transparent in our finances.

John Dehlin 1:38:37 It's tax deductible in the US and every dollar that we raise goes to supporting our costs, our facilities, our staff, our labor, and everything. Every month, we lose donors that either lose interest or. Or decide to switch their support to something else or they fall on financial hard times. And if we don't replace the donors that we have each month, then over time we have to start cutting services and eventually cut back. So if you value this content, if you want to see it continue, if you want to help other people and join our supporters, please become a monthly donor today and we'll keep doing this.

John Dehlin 1:39:18 Also, please do support Nemo and his great work and all the great content creators out there. And of course there's other ways to support us. Giving us a positive review on Apple Podcast app, we need that desperately positive review on Spotify, we need that positive review on the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page and then subscribing to us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. And then if you just share these resources with people you know and love, who you think could use it, that's helpful. And then providing us feedback if we've got something wrong, if you think you've got other ideas or topics or evidence that will make our approach better, if you just want to give us feedback on tone or approach, how we can make these more consumable or more valuable to those who might need it.

John Dehlin 1:40:09 If you want to propose your own ideas for an episode, force Mike to write a few more essays. I'm sure he will. If there's good reason to do so, you can email us@mormonstoriesmail.com you can comment either on Facebook or on YouTube in the comments.

John Dehlin 1:40:27 And Mike's such a good chap, as Nemo would say he is. He's reading every comment and even responding. So lots of ways you can support us and help, please do. But most importantly, be kind to each other. Be good to each other. And if you want, please stay tuned soon for both another episode of our LDS discussion series, but also for other episodes of Mormon Stories Podcast. You guys are awesome. Thanks everybody. Take care and we'll see you all again really soon.

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