Joseph Smith’s Surrounding Influences in the Book of Mormon w/ LDS Discussions – 07

Introduction and Series Overview

John Dehlin 0:06 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John de Lynn. We are knee deep or waist deep in this amazing series we've been doing on Mormon Stories podcast. Looping in our dear friend Mike from the LDSDiscussions.com website where, where we are exploring Mormon truth claims. And for those who are just finding this episode disjointed from the others, we've talked about golden plates, we've talked about Book of Mormon translation, we've talked about Joseph Smith's treasure digging, we've talked about 116 lost pages.

John Dehlin 0:44 Wherever you are in the process, we'll be talking about, we'll be talking about the Noah's flood, the Tower of Babel, Adam and Eve. Like all of these things are really important issues that have really important implications for the Mormon Church's truth claims. And today, the topic that we're going to be covering is Joseph Smith's surrounding influences in the Book of Mormon. Or another way to say that is, you know, what information or experiences or news stories or literature, was Joseph Smith exposed to that? If Joseph Smith was the actual author of the Book of Mormon, if it wasn't a translation of ancient records as we cover in the translation episode, if it wasn't that, then where did Joseph Smith get the material that created the Book of Mormon?

John Dehlin 1:34 Well, that's what today's episode is about. You can go to the essay@ LDSDiscussions.com influences for an exhaustive, lengthy discussion of today's episode. But, but for kind of edited, abridged, if we can use that term, audio and video version of that essay, we bring on Mike. Hey, Mike, thanks for joining us.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:01 Hey, everybody.

John Dehlin 2:03 This is going to be good. So where should we begin so we

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:07 can kind of jump in? So this is our seventh episode, I think. So the first six kind of take you from treasure digging to the gold plates to the translation to the lost 116 pages and DNA. This is where we're going to start to, you know, look at the text itself. We've been doing that a little bit more the last few episodes and kind of like John said, this is what we're looking at when we talk about Joseph Smith being able to write the Book of Mormon. We're trying to figure out what sources he was using that were in his mill use. So we talk about, you know, the Bible, the King James Bible.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:36 We've mentioned that a few times and that's important. But now we're going to look at some of the things that were happening around him at the time he was writing the Book of Mormon or shortly before it, that end up in the Book of Mormon. And this really is not by any stretch a full look at what of all of the events that would be in there, we could go on for hours about this. These are the ones I feel are the most important to show us that not only could the Book of Mormon not have been written before the 1820s, but that nobody but Joseph Smith could have been the one to write it.

John Dehlin 3:05 I love it. All right, so let's go to the first slide.

Internal Clues About Book of Mormon Origins

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:09 Yeah. And so, you know, we kind of have talked about this in our previous overviews, and, you know, you know, the Book of Mormon gives us a lot of clues that tell us it was composed in the 19th century. And Joseph Smith leaves a lot of fingerprints on the text that tell us this. And the King James Bible is the easiest way to know that the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text because of the fact that the King James Bible is a translation that would not have been done until about 1611.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:33 We believe Joseph Smith used a 1769 King James Bible. So the Book of Mormon could not have been written before that in the form we have it today. But like I said, the bigger problem is the fact that beyond the Bible, we have a lot of events and a lot of ideas that are really unique to Joseph Smith's time and place that find their way into the Book of Mormon that we are told is an ancient historical text. And that, again, is a really good indicator that this is not an ancient text. And we began with treasure digging because of the way it influences the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 4:05 But it wasn't just that area, that kind of folk magic worldview that ends up in what is claimed to be an ancient text being translated from God.

John Dehlin 4:14 Yeah. And. And I just want to say, just really quickly, that when we talk about the King James version of the Bible showing up in the Book of Mormon, for people who haven't studied historical criticism or biblical criticism or how documents get analyzed and authenticated, this is a. It's basically a branch of scholarship. It's almost a form of textual science.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 4:41 Right.

John Dehlin 4:41 Where scholars study. If you've got these documents that are either verifiably authentic or you've got some documents that you're trying to decide if they are authentic, you can study the text of manuscripts or documents, and they give you clues tell you whether or not those documents are authentic.

John Dehlin 5:07 Again, we're going to all think, well, this is holy Scripture, and so you can't do that. With the Book of Mormon. But what we're trying to do is just apply logic and reasoning and science and scholarship for those who are genuinely interested in the question of whether or not the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be. And so, so a classic technique is like, you know, I've talked about a document that had Abraham Lincoln using an iPhone. You would know that if there was a document where Abraham Lincoln writes about using his iPhone, you would know that it was an inauthentic document, because you would know that that's anachronistic.

John Dehlin 5:46 And then the iPhone, you know, isn't even created until over, you know, 100 years later. It makes no sense that, that the King James Bible is appearing in what's supposed to be an ancient record written by Mesoamericans between 600 BC and 400 AD. The King James Bible wasn't, wasn't put together until centuries later. And that should be, it should be a smoking gun in and of itself. And I hate to go through that much explanation of what you said so succinctly, but for someone just as a new Mormon just coming to this with fresh eyes, not knowing anything about historical criticism or biblical scholarship, we may have gone a tiny bit too fast.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:32 Yeah, no, and it's true. And like, you know, we talk about anachronisms, which we're going to get into. And I think on our next episode of the one after that, and this is a little different because these aren't anachronisms, but these are things that should not be in a ancient text, if it's ancient, because of the fact that they're just a lot of them are events that are happening around Joseph. And so they're hard to prove as anachronisms because they're more influences and ideas. But so we're going to go into that and kind of show why they're popping up and where they're coming from. And so if we go to the next slide, this is one we've, we've hammered on a bit, and we've got, you know, a full overview episode that's going to come on a few weeks.

King James Bible Language in the Book of Mormon

Mike (LDS Discussions) 7:09 But the King James Bible in the Book of Mormon tells us it could not be an ancient text until after 6, because the King James Bible wasn't written until 1611, and likely Joseph's version was the 1769. And then we're also going to have a series of episodes after we kind of get through these early Book of Mormon ones that are going to go over the assumptions that Joseph Smith makes about the literalness of biblical stories such as Adam and Eve, Tower of Babel, Global Flood, which we know today are not historical stories. And because Joseph Smith is bringing mythical stories from Genesis into the Book of Mormon as literal stories, we can show that the Book of Mormon is not a historical record because it's relying on a text based is not historical.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 7:47 And beyond those stories from Genesis, we have him bringing material into the Book of Mormon that would not be accessible to the Book of Mormon people. And in some cases, he's bringing in material that wasn't original to the text itself of the Bible. Those are clues that tell us that Joseph Smith is working from a foundational text that was written long after the Book of Mormon times without realizing that parts of them, parts of that record in the King James Bible is not original and authentic to the text.

John Dehlin 8:16 Yeah. And I'm already coming up for me as our tight and loose translation of the Mormon episode. We know that he's reading a stone that's telling him word for word. And. And so why is it telling him King James Bible English? Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:32 Yeah. And one thing is, like, from an apologetic standpoint, they'll say, well, the King James English is the way that people spoke in a scriptural way. So a lot of people in Joseph's time were using that to sound more scriptural. I mean, it's the same reason that in, you know, church on Sunday, you know, you hear thee and thou and all that. And I get that. But the problem is it's not so much the King James language, because again, if you believe they spoke in Hebrew or Egyptian, it would be meaningless to us. Right. Like at Joseph Smith's time, they'd have no idea how to.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:00 How to even read it. So I get that you could make the argument that God would translate it into King James English because that would be understandable to Joseph. And it was the way people read text when they were trying to privilege it and present it as something sacred. Right. The problem is it goes beyond the English. It's. He's bringing to believe this. God is bringing through the stone material that was not original to the Bible that Joseph Smith thought was. They're bringing translation errors, they're bringing in stories that are not historical, presenting them as historical in the Americas. And all of those things add up to tell us that these fingerprints are all over these pages, these clues are everywhere.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:36 And they're all telling us that either God is giving Joseph Smith fake information in order to promote faith, or Joseph Smith is the author and he's using ideas that are around him to create this book, which we know Joseph was a good storyteller from treasure digging. And so the idea that he could not weave a story just does not make sense given what we know about how he was able to charm people into looking for buried treasure and paying him to do so. There's a lot of ways we can show how Joseph did this. And so the King James Bible is the foundational text, but like you said, it's riddled with problems that make their way into another text that's claiming to be ancient.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:12 And so when you bring in errors from another text, it immediately tells you that. John Hamer did a couple episodes with you on how the Book of Mormon was composed. And his whole thing was, if you want to make an argument that there's this ancient core and Joseph Smith's writing all around that core with his own worldview, you could take that position, but you still have to show where that is. And there's no ancient core that anyone can point to with any evidence whatsoever. And in fact, a lot of evidence against it. And so that's the problem with the King James Bible is the ancient core of the Book of Mormon really is the King James Bible, except he's pulling in parts that are historically either not happening or not authentic to the text.

John Dehlin 10:47 All right, let's continue.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:49 Yeah, so if we continue on.

John Dehlin 10:51 So the next King James Bible is the first.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:53 Yes, we did that one in this next one.

The Mound Builder Myth and Native Americans

John Dehlin 10:54 This, to me, builder myth, this is

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:56 the most important one of all to me. And it's one that most members have no idea what you're talking about. I've brought this up to a number of people throughout the last few years. And every time, I shouldn't say every time, but most of the time when they're either new into looking into this stuff or they haven't looked into it, they have no idea what you're talking about. But the mound builder myth is this idea that originated when the European settlers came to America. And so they see all of these mounds that are built up around all of the earth that they're basically settling into.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:23 And then they see the Native Americans, who they believe to be this wild, savage, dark skinned race. And they are effectively trying to understand how does this civilization that is dark skinned, that doesn't seem as sophisticated as them possibly build up these mounds and these civilizations. And so they begin to create this myth that the mounds were belong to this lost superior race of white people just like themselves. And in the mounds were the buried remains of the Native Americans but since it was just bones, you know, the white settlers created this myth that these were the remains of these lost civilizations and these fortifications and that this ancient white superior race was eradicated by this dark savage Indians.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:05 And if this sounds familiar, it's because the mound builder myth larger mirrors what the Book of Mormon is trying to create an origin story for. I mean, this is the Book of Mormon story being put into the text from a myth that is all around Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin 12:19 Yeah. And I was just talking to my dad about this like five minutes ago. But, but you know, if you are raised in Utah or Texas in the 1970s and 80s and you read the Book of Mormon, you're like, oh wow, this is cool. This is new information. Dark skinned and light skinned Native Americans. And it just seems amazing and fantastic until you realize that there were probably 10, if not 20 books written, let's just say between 1810 and 1830, including View of the Hebrews that Oliver Cowdery had access to, that perpetuate this idea of a light skinned and a dark skinned group of Native Americans. Even Thomas Jefferson going back into the 1700s was, you know, you could find evidence of this myth.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:07 Yep.

John Dehlin 13:08 And so, and, and so when we talk about surrounding influences to Joseph Smith being written into the Book of Mormon, you would expect the mound builder myth to be written into the Book of Mormon. Yeah, but that, that makes it suspicious, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:24 It does. Well, yeah, and it makes it suspicious. And it's one of the things that's kind of funny is you hear people when they leave the church and I, I have felt this to a certain extent when you lose faith and you discover all this stuff and all of a sudden you go, this doesn't add up. And then all of a sudden you go back and you start reading through some of this stuff again and when you read it with that different set of eyes, and you read it with a set of eyes, that's more critical. You go, how in the world did I think this made sense?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:50 But when Joseph Smith would have produced this in the 1820s, this actually would have resonated with a lot of people because it's answering one of the biggest questions on the minds of people, which is where do these Native Americans come from? And it's confirming the myths that were being perpetuated at the time. So in a lot of ways, the Book of Mormon serves as a confirmation from the Voice of God to the people of the 1820s and 30s, you know, that this is how the Native Americans got here. And not only that, but it's our job to convert them back to Christ. And so you'd expect, like you said, not only would you expect it to be incorporated in the Book of Mormon, but this is why early people probably gravitated to the Book of Mormon and said this makes sense because it fits into that worldview a lot more than it fits into ours.

John Dehlin 14:31 And we've talked about this in previous episodes, but I'll just touch on it super briefly. I think Thomas Ferguson would be a good source for this as well. No, Thomas Murphy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 14:38 Thomas Murphy.

John Dehlin 14:39 But just, you know, when you're, when you're frontier Europeans basically displacing and killing and even committing genocide on the Native Americans that are there, you have to dehumanize them. You have to, just like with slavery, you have to believe that they're an inferior race or, or how else can you justify killing them and taking their land and stealing their possessions? And so then if you've dehumanized them, but that you, then you come across ruins and artifacts or even structures or mounds or artistic artifacts that show actually an advanced civilization. You don't square that with these savages that you're dehumanizing. And this is where the idea of a light race versus a dark race comes up.

John Dehlin 15:26 Where. Which makes the whole mound builder myth not only a clear influence to the Lamanite Nephite narrative in the Book of Mormon, it also adds this super dark, super racist narrative to the Book of Mormon that's so insulting to the natives because it has built into it the idea that the dark skinned people can't do technically innovative or advanced stuff, only light skin, light skinned people can. And then the dark, dark, dark Native Americans are savages and brutes and deserve to be killed. And God wants them killed. And God makes them dark because they're, they're, he wants them to be loathsome and ugly to the white skinned. It, it's a really dark narrative that, that we will cover in other episodes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:14 Yeah, well, and that's just it. I mean, it's, it's. We'll get to it throughout this one too. But yeah, the fact is you're creating a narrative to, to basically steal the identity of these people, to put your identity onto them so that you can give yourself the justification to steal the land by saying, effectively, this land used to belong to our white ancestors. You stole it, we're taking it back. And that's a pretty horrific thing. And it's one of those things that I never even knew about until I started studying this stuff, which makes me Feel bad because, you know, this, that myth goes beyond Mormonism.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:45 I mean, it just goes beyond, or it goes to how we, you know, kind of came into the, the country and, and, and took land and, and created identities to do it, which is, you know, something that I, I wish I'd known earlier just because it's, it's a pretty horrible thing. It's something we should, should all know so we can learn from it.

John Dehlin 17:01 But the most important point for today is that this was the, this was the understanding that Joseph was swimming in.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:09 Yep.

John Dehlin 17:09 And so of course, it makes it into the Book of Mormon, but it's not original to the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:14 Yes.

John Dehlin 17:14 You can almost say it's an idea that was plagiarized into the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:18 Exactly. And that's why it's so important. And so, like I said, you know, basically they come in, these mounds are buried all over the place. And so the, the whole narrative of the Book of Mormon is going to, is going to mirror this. And so if you go to the next slide, this is a poem that is written by William Colin Bryant. It's called the Prairies. I think it was written in 1831 or 32. But he had nothing to do with Mormonism. And the poem goes. Let the mighty mounds that overlook the rivers or that rise in the dim forest crowded with old oaks answer a race that has long passed.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:48 Built them a disciplined and populous race in a forgotten language and old tunes from instruments of unremembered form gave the soft winds of voice the red man came, the roaming hunter tribes warlike and fierce. And the mound builders vanished from the earth. All is gone. All save the piles of earth that hold their bones, the platforms where they worshiped unknown gods, the barriers which they builded from the soil to keep the foe at bay. Till over the walls the wild beleaguers broke one by one the strongholds of the plain plain with. Were forced and heaped with corpses. The brown vultures of the wood flocked to those vast uncovered. I can't never say.

John Dehlin 18:24 Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:25 And sat unscared and silent at their feast, happily some solitary fugitive lurking in the Martian forest Till the sense of desolation and fear became bitter than death. Yielded himself to die.

John Dehlin 18:37 And what does this have to do with the mound builder myth?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:40 Well, this is a description of the mound builder myth, which is to say that they were this, this disciplined and populous race. And then the red man came. They basically killed everybody. And then, you know, now we got all those piles of earth holding their bones.

John Dehlin 18:53 Okay. Okay, sorry. A race that long has passed away.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:57 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 18:58 Referencing a race that existed prior to the Red.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:01 Yes.

John Dehlin 19:02 Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:03 And what's, what's really funny about this one is, and I don't think this is necessarily intentional, but at the very end it talks about there's one, one fugitive who escaped from this ancient race who just lurked by himself until he died. And it's just sounds a little bit like what you see in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 19:15 So.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:16 And obviously this is not someone connected with Mormonism or else they wouldn't say, worshiped unknown gods. I mean, so, you know, I know some people say it was written, I think it was written two, three years after the Book of Mormon, but this guy had nothing to do with Mormonism. And you could tell that from the text. But that is just to say how embedded this myth was in the culture that Joseph Smith lived in. And the fact is, this story could be, or this poem could be a poem someone wrote about the Book of Mormon and you would never know the difference because it literally tracks perfectly with the Book of Mormon story.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:47 And so it just shows how important the mound builder myth is to the Book of Mormon and why. I think sometimes when I talk to people who don't know about it, you want to explain to them like, you have no idea how big of a deal this is because it mirrors it so well. And it also explains a lot of the things because people will say, well, how could Joseph Smith have just come up with these ideas on its own? It's like, because he's pulling from things that are familiar to him and then expanding on them, just like we see him do when he expands on Genesis in the Joseph Smith translation. He is really good at taking ideas and expanding on them. And we can see that here.

John Dehlin 20:19 And I don't know if you referenced this, but I'm pretty sure Gerald and Sandra Tanner have found somewhere between like 10 and 20 books or references to the light skinned, dark skinned mound builder myth stuff in books in the 10 to 20 years leading up to the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:36 No, I didn't reference that. So it's actually a great data point because again, it shows that this is like. Because people will say, I've mentioned this to people and they'll say, well, do you have evidence that Joseph Smith was talking about it or had a book or whatever? And I'm like, no, I don't. But this is not like something that's in an obscure book. This is something that's a predominant idea. And to your point, the fact that the Tanners found a bunch of books that led up to the Book of Mormon. It tells you that this is not, this is not some crackpot theory that like is, you know, we're, we're cherry picking to say that Mormonism, you know, isn't true.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 21:05 This is a predominant idea that was so embedded. And we're going to have some quotes going coming up that just tell you like this is not again, some small thing. This is a very big and widespread idea.

John Dehlin 21:15 And you know what? I, I'm actually gonna call it just a 10 second audible. There's actually a book called the Mound Builder Myth, Fake History and the Hunt for a Lost White Race by Jason Colavito. And I'm going to include a link to this in the show notes because that book provides a lot of the history that I'm, that I'm talking about.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 21:39 And Dan Vogel's got a lot in his early books. And so I mean it's, it's so widely known and documented that we can show that Joseph Smith would have been familiar and living within this world. So I mean it's to, to argue that Joseph Smith wouldn't have known this and just, it just happened to be in the Book of Mormon. It's just, it's without any, I don't know, it's just, it's beyond, you know, any reasonable logic to me just because of how established this, this theory has, is by the time Joseph Smith writes the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 22:08 All right, let's go to the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:10 So the next slide on the left is just a picture of one of the mounds. And so this one, I believe is still one you can go and visit. And on the right is a picture. If you, if you're, if you're watching this, you can see all of those dots in the yellow. Those are all the mounds that were documented. So you could see a lot of, in Ohio and the Midwest and then you got some that are up in like upper western New York. And so it's just to say that this is a really fascinating thing to people because there's all these mounds everywhere.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:35 It's not just one or two mounds that you're looking at and creating a story. It really does point to this big race that would have created all these mounds across the lands. And remember at this time there, all of these European settlers who are trying to explore this land and go further out and all that, and that's why they're coming across all these mounds and saying where in the world did these come from? And this is just kind of illustrating what they were seeing and why they thought they were fortifications from this ancient superior race that were building these really nicely kind of constructed mounds.

John Dehlin 23:04 And I'm pretty sure John Hamer does an episode where he talks a lot about.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:08 He does, yeah, he does.

John Dehlin 23:10 Here on Mormon stories.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:11 Yeah, he does a good job with that. And so him and Dan Vogel both talked about a lot, and it's really helpful just to. To understand where they come from. And like I said in previous episodes, a lot of what I've done is pulling from the work of other people. And so in that case, I am pulling from some of the work of John Hamer for sure. Dan Vogel for sure. Because they both have such good insight into this. And, you know, it needs to be shared because it needs to be understood.

John Dehlin 23:34 That's your genius, Mike, is integration.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:37 I don't know about that. But, you know, it's like I joked in one of the earlier episodes, and

John Dehlin 23:40 I think, Mike, you're an inspired syncretist.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:42 I was going to say, like, I feel like my. My overview is a bricklage overview too. So, you know, it's like when people talk about Joseph Smith bricklage, I'm like, that's kind of what I did too, because I'm pulling from all these surrounding sources around me, and then I'm trying to put it together in a way that makes sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:58 Yeah. I guess the difference is I'm just doing it myself and not claiming any divine power. But yeah, it's so William Henry Harrison. And if you've ever. If you're a fan of the Simpsons who died in 30 days and was president, he has this quote about the mound builder. So remember, this is the guy who was president.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:11 If a man visited the Ohio River, Ohio River Valley prior to the to white settlement, his eyes might have rested on some stupendous mound or lengthened line of ramparts which proved that the country had once been possessed by numerous and laborious people. But he would have seen also indubitable evidences that centuries had passed away since these remains had been occupied by those for whose use they had been reared. He would not fail to arrive at the conclusion that their departure must have been a matter of necessity, for no people at any state of civilization would have willingly abandoned such a country. We learn first from the extensive country covered by the remains that they were a numerous people.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:49 Secondly, that they were congregated in considerable cities, confirmed the fact that they had a national religion in the celebration of which all that was pompous, gorgeous and imposing. That a semi barbarous nation could devise was brought into occasional display that there were a numerous priesthood and altars, often smoking with hecatombs of victims. This much do these ancient remains furnish us as to the condition and character of the people who erected them. We refer again to the works they have left us to gain what knowledge we can of the cause and manner of their leaving the Ohio Valley. For the reasons formerly stated, I assume the fact that they were compelled to fly from a more numerous or more gallant people.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:28 No doubt the contest was long and bloody and that the country so long their residence was not abandoned to the rivals until their numbers were much too reduced to continue the contest. Taking into consideration all their circumstances, I have come to the conclusion that these people were assailed both from the northern and from southern frontier, made to recede from both directions, and that their last effort at resistance was made on the banks of the Ohio. And again, this is, this is the mound builder myth. This is the Book of Mormon talking about this numerous people being taken from another race to the point where they just were eradicated. And you know, that they had religion, that they had priesthood. All of this stuff is directly in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 26:06 Now it's possible that William Henry Harrison read the Book of Mormon and then wrote this out. I'm joking.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:12 Yeah, I mean that's. And that would probably be the argument, right, that the Book of Mormon was spreading so fast that it was, that it was actually affecting the culture. But yeah, I mean, this is just, it is so, you know, detailed in all of these details end up in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 26:28 When William Henry Harrison wrote this, these

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:30 paragraphs, I have to look that up because I'm trying to think he was president.

John Dehlin 26:34 It looks like he was president in 1841. So.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:40 So I mean, it could have. I don't lie because I present for 30 days. I'm not sure exactly when he said this, but. But yeah, I mean that, that's the thing where you have these, these quotes from these people who are respected and influential and it's matching. It's kind of like we had the quote from Benjamin Franklin on Treasure Digging in our first episode. And it's like, you know, we want to, of course, try to, I don't know, dismiss what they're saying about these things because we want to privilege the Book of Mormon. But at the same time these statements just match up so perfectly.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:14 And so to try to, in my opinion, to try to say that these two things aren't connected, I think it's Just not fair. And again, you know, I know you were joking and I'm trying to look up the quote. It looks like it might be 1838, but we may have to look and clarify that for the next time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:32 These are just really important quotes because it's illustrating in such a, I think a really definitive way that the Book of Mormon is coming from a culture that absolutely believes that these stories were what led to the Native Americans.

John Dehlin 27:47 I mean, all you need is the is view of the Hebrews, which came out before the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:51 Yeah.

John Dehlin 27:51 Which has the mound builder myth and dark and light skinned. But. But again, the tenors refer to at least 10 others. So we don't need to, we don't really dig into that. This is just one example of many.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:02 It is. And again, this, even I can't tell. It looks like the document, I'm pulling it from the documents from 1838. So he probably said it before that at some point. But even still, it just shows that in those 1820s and 30s and 40s that this is what people are teaching each other. And it matches the Book of Mormon perfectly.

John Dehlin 28:17 Okay, makes sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:20 And you know, again, I keep harping on this, but the reason that the Mount Builder bith is so important is because it was such a widely idea, widely believed idea in his time. But it's problematic because it begins mirroring the story of the Book of Mormon. And we've talked about this before and when we get into the biblical stuff, this is gonna be really important because if you put a myth into a book as literal history and then it turns out to not be true historically, everything that comes from it is going to be false. And so in this case, we're using, Joseph Smith is using what is effectively a myth, writing it directly into the Book of Mormon to tell the history of the Native Americans.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:56 And now that we know that from DNA and from migrations that people arrived here 25,000 years ago and there was not some ancient white race that was eradicated, we have the ability to read the Mayan script. There's no mention of anything to do with the Book of Mormon or a white race that overtook that was overtaken through wars.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:12 We can tell that this myth is being used by white settlers to impose their beliefs on the identity of the Indians and as a way to both dehumanize them and as a justification because they are using the story to not only say that these people are savages, but that we are justified to take the land back because our ancestors, this ancient white race actually should have been the correct owners of the land. And so they're taking away these people's identities, which is horrible, but then they're using that as a justification in their minds to take it back, which is even worse.

John Dehlin 29:43 Yeah. And so just like if the Book of. If the Book of Mormon is based on the Tower of Babel, the Global Flood, Adam and Eve, we've already showed, or we will show that. That those events didn't happen.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:56 Yeah.

John Dehlin 29:57 If. If the mound builder myth is a myth and it. There's no basis in history reality to it. Again, it's another. It's another sandy foundation for the book. I was going to say fraudulent, but I don't want to be offensive, so

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:11 I'll say, yeah, no, I mean, it's a problem. Yeah. I mean, if you build your foundation on something that's not true, you're not going to get historical things from it.

John Dehlin 30:19 Build his house up on the rock.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:20 Yeah, and that's just it. And so one quote on the mound builder myth for now is from archaeologist Bradley Leper, and he said to the Ohio Dispatch. This is just from two years ago, prior to the Revolutionary War. The fact that the mounds had been built by American Indians was so well established that it required neither explanation nor defense. By the time Andrew Jackson became president in 1829, however, that idea had become an inconvenient truth. In his efforts to remove American Indian tribes from their lands in the eastern United States, Jackson claimed that the mountains had been built by an unknown people who were exterminated by the existing savage tribes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:54 Therefore, the United States government was perfectly justified in removing those tribes from the lands that they had stolen from the supposedly more civilized lost race of mound builders. And so, again, this is just saying that this was something that when people first got here, they knew that this was not some sort of ancient white race because they were the first ones here. They knew they were part of what the Native Americans were doing. And then all of a sudden, there seems to be this movement around Joseph Smith's time. Look at the 1829.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:21 That's when the Book of Mormon's written. And all of a sudden there's this national push to say that this was the savage race that eradicated the white people and that this is the justification for taking the land back. And the Book of Mormon kind of makes that point that because they are this savage race that they are going to deal with being, you know, killed and punished and all that. And so it all fits together.

John Dehlin 31:43 Okay, Yeah, I think we've made this point so Mount Builder myth is a problem, and it was. Joseph was swimming in that myth. All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:55 Yeah, hang on one second. Get those dogs real quick. I'm so sorry.

John Dehlin 32:00 It's not a problem at all. All right, so. So in addition to the mound builder myth, the next thing that we have, that we've covered in many episodes that Shannon Caldwell Montez specifically helped us understand is the book View of the Hebrews. It's a book that was written by. I'm stalling a bit for Mike, but it's a book that was written. Thank you.

View of the Hebrews as a Possible Source

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:25 Oh, my goodness.

John Dehlin 32:27 Who I. I believe was all Oliver Cowdery's minister, you know, in Oliver Cowdery's hometown.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:36 Yep.

John Dehlin 32:37 And. And it's a. It's something that we're going to talk about.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:40 Influence.

John Dehlin 32:41 P.H. roberts as well. So don't. Don't worry about your dog.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:43 No, that's fine. I don't. They're. They see someone outside, but anyways, so this is one of the areas where I split with a lot of critics, and the reason is because we see with the view of the Hebrews a lot of the same similar themes that we're going to see in the Book of Mormon. And because of that, it's going to lead a lot of critics to say that Joseph Smith plagiarized the Book of Mormon. And I think that's one of those things that's kind of like gotten to the point where it's such a large part of the CES letters, what people take away from it, you know, and the fact that Ethan Smith and all them are going to be accessible to Oliver Cowdery, it kind of leads to this idea that Joseph Smith gets this text, Oliver Cowdery comes in and meets up with Joseph Smith, and all of a sudden, they're translating so much faster, they're dictating so much faster, and you go, isn't that convenient?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:31 Right. And for me, I look at this the other way around, and I say that the view of the Hebrews is going to come from the same place as the Mountain Builder myth, which means the view of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon are both working off the same worldview. So of course they're going to have similarities because they're both working off of the same beliefs from this. Of this time frame. And so it doesn't mean that the view of the Hebrews is not important because it gives us a really good window into the beliefs of that worldview. But to me, it's more that Joseph Smith is pulling from the Mound Builder myth than it is that he's pulling from View of the Hebrews, even though it's really important that they're both pulling from the same mindset.

John Dehlin 34:07 And for just a really quick primer for those who don't know anything about the View of the Hebrews, have no idea what we're talking about, who are joining us kind of live. Oliver Cowdery's minister, I believe Ethan Smith I think was his name before the Book of Mormon was ever created. Before Oliver Cowdery serves as Joseph Smith's scribe. He comes up with a book called the View of the Hebrews that basically many have found some parallels to the Book of Mormon, but it's got some dark skinned and some light skinned people, and in the end, the dark skinned people kill off the light skinned people.

John Dehlin 34:44 Now, if you actually go and we did a whole episode with RFM about this, if you actually go and read View of the Hebrews and then read the Book of Mormon, it's hard to claim that one was plagiarized, that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from view of the Hebrews. And that becomes an argument or an accusation that apologists like, because if you read the two, they seem so foreign that even though they share some similarities, and it makes it really easy for an apologist to say that critics are stretching. And so again, to restate what you just said, you feel it's much more prudent and wise to say that both the Book of Mormon and Hebrews share a common milieu of cultural understanding that influences them both.

John Dehlin 35:34 But to claim that the Book of Mormon is a plagiarism from view of the Hebrews is an overstretch that leaves you vulnerable to apologists discrediting you.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:44 Yeah, and that's the thing, like, and it's one of those things that when I first started doing the deep dive into all this, when you read the similarities, you're like, holy crap, he totally plagiarized this. I mean, when you read the similarities, it's so good, so close. But then when you start to look at the two texts like you said, they're not really, there's no real good way to say plagiarized unless you were to say he read the View of the Hebrews and liked some of the ideas and brought them in. But as I was saying, that's not plagiarism. Well, it's not plagiarism. And those ideas are both coming from, from a secondary source, which is the mound builder myth.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:16 And this, this idea that they Must be the Lost Tribes and all that. And so anyways, that's just my way of saying I, you know, a lot of people will say, oh, he plagiarized from, from you, the Hebrews. I'm like, I don't think that he did. I think they were both coming from a similar source. Kind of like, you know, when you see two movies come out at the same time that are in the same genre, like Armageddon and Deep Impact or Ants and A Bug's Life, they. You're like, well, are they plagiarizing the dance take from A Bug's Life? It's like, no, they probably just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:42 There's this, this. This trend of, of bugs with kids, and they both make a Bugs movie and Deep Impact and Armageddon. And so I think that's really important to note. That being said, it's also a really good look at the surrounding influences because of the fact that the mound builder myth is so influential. It's like you said, leading to these other books such as View of the Hebrews, and that's really important.

John Dehlin 37:03 All right, and so the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:06 Yeah. Before we get out of the View of the Hebrews, I do want to cover this a little bit. Oh, no, go. You go to the next slide. Just to mention, you had done some episodes with Shannon Caldwell Montez about BH Roberts and his study, his deep dive into the Book of Mormon. And I really would recommend people who are interested to listen to those or watch them later because it goes into a lot more detail on the view of the Hebrews, but also and how B.H. roberts, who was a general authority of the church, and he was considered one of their best, you know, kind of like scholars, and he took it upon himself to do this deep dive.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:37 I think he was asked a question through a letter and he started doing it. And all of a sudden, by the end, it sure seemed like he lost faith in the Book of Mormon being a historical book. But he had put together this writings that he presented to the church's leadership. And in that he said, did Ethan Smith's view of the Hebrew furnish structural material for Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon? It has been pointed out in these pages that there are many things in the former book that may well have suggested many major things in the other. Not a few things, merely one or two or half dozen, but many.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:08 And it is this fact of many things of similarity and the cumulative force of them that makes it. That makes them so serious, a menace to Joseph Smith's story of the Book of Mormon's origin. And I think that's really important to note again, that at this point I don't know that BH Roberts was ever claiming plagiarism. But just to say that they are pulling so many similarities that even though there are a lot of differences, and again, I do not believe there was plagiarism here, it just shows that they're cut. These ideas are so similar that they have to come from a similar source. It's kind of like when they do textual criticism of the Gospels and they say that Matthew and Luke are taking from Mark because you can see that they are both reading Mark as a source text and pulling similar ideas and that that's why they have the likelihood of a Q source, which is to say that there's these sayings of Jesus because Matthew and Luke are pulling these, these ideas and these quotes together that are so similar.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:02 And there's no historical indication that they're writing off, working off each other's stuff. So there has to be a similar source that they're getting ideas from. And it's the same thing here where the Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews are both pulling from the mound builder myth. And they might not have everything in lockstep. There's differences, but there's so many similarities and it's because they're coming from the same worldview.

John Dehlin 39:20 Yeah. And to just tease out this, the, the words so serious, a menace. Not only is that a. A Mormon general authority, and at the time he was, I believe, the church's historian. Yeah. Not only is a major general authority who's very prominent calling the parallels a serious menace, we have this Shannon Caldwell episode of the Secret Mormon meetings of 1922, which is separate from the episode of Did Roberts lose his testimony of the Book of Mormon? And in the Secret Mormon meetings of 1922 episode, which are well chronicled, B.H. roberts calls like this three day meeting with the First Presidency Quorum of the 12th and all the 70s and spends multiple days laying out all the problems with the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 40:08 And this was a, it's a key episode. It's a key moment in Mormon history. And for me it was this key light bulb, aha moment where I realized that the Brethren, if you add to that the New York Times publishing front page problems with the Book of Abraham translation and the facsimiles and stuff in like 1912, you realize that the Brethren have known about the, the historical problems with both the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon. They've known for over a century.

John Dehlin 40:40 And which then. Which then presents the problem of how we've been misled for so long when the Brethren knew better. But that's another podcast episode.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:49 Yeah, and that's a good one people should listen to because it's important. And our next slide actually kind of is from Shannon Colomontes thesis. And so she says, related to the second document was a third called a parallel. It was created by B.H. roberts in 1927 as a way to summarize a portion of the second paper as he wrestled with whether or not to present his second study to church officials. It was 18 type pages showing the uncanny similarities between the Book of Mormon and a view of the Hebrews. A few of the mentioned similarities include the migration of a group of Jewish people from Jerusalem to the uninhabited American continent by boat, a single common Hebrew linguistic and ancestral origin for all Native Americans, a division of those people into civilized and uncivilized groups, inspired prophets teaching a monotheistic religion, wars between the two groups resulting in the total annihilation of the civilized portion in a buried book telling their history written in a form of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:40 And so again, I don't think that Joseph plagiarized, but I'm just saying that these are ideas that are being talked about to the point where they're in two prominent books, view of the Hebrews, Book of Mormon. They're coming from a shared milieu that is creating this origin story for the Native Americans as a way to take the land back in their minds. And so there's a chance Joseph Smith read it and maybe wanted to incorporate some of those ideas. We don't know. But there's no. I mean, I don't think there's any way he directly plagiarized the book, but it does show that these ideas are being spread throughout America at this time because people are trying to figure out the origin story for the Native Americans.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:18 And more importantly, because of the fact there's a lot of religious fervor in the area, they need to fit the origin story of the Native Americans into 19th century Christianity. And so that's why you see the Book of Mormon try to weave that thread, to try to make the Native Americans origin story fit into 19th century Christology. And why you see so much of that in the Book of Mormon because you're trying to write their origin story in a way that works with your own worldview.

John Dehlin 42:44 And as long as you don't have modern archeology, modern anthropology, modern linguistics, linguistics, modern genetics, you have no way to disprove these sorts of theories.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:57 Right.

John Dehlin 42:57 So you use the Bible as your view of the world, which includes a literal flood and a Tower of Babel and an Adam and eve and a 6,000 year Earth. And then you kind of just look around you and make. Make something up.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:11 Yeah, and that's just it. I mean, you're trying to fit it. You have, you believe you have a history book in the Bible and you're trying to find a way to make this unknown story fit into that. And this is how it happens.

John Dehlin 43:20 And this list, I mean viewers and listeners, pause this episode and reread this because Mike's reading of it doesn't really communicate each of these. The parallels between the civil, you know, between the two books. This is BH Roberts saying these are devastating parallels. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:41 This is not Jeremy Runnels or A Letter from My Wife or, you know, RFM or John Dehlin. This is B.H. roberts writing this in 1927. And so when you have critics go, how dare somebody look at the similarities B.H. roberts did in 1927. So if you want to attack Jeremy Reynolds, you should attack BH Roberts too, if you're an apologist. And at the same time, you know, I think again, I'll reiterate, I don't think that there was plagiarism. I know that's where I split from some people. But at the same time, the parallels are still there, regardless of that. And you still do have to try to figure out what that means.

John Dehlin 44:13 And also Mormons, ask yourself why you've never really heard of BH Roberts and this analysis.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:19 Yeah, I mean, there's a reason this isn't going to be in your. Well, no, I mean, that's the thing. There's a reason this isn't going to be in your ensign magazines or in

John Dehlin 44:25 your general conference talks or Sunday school curriculum. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:27 Yep. And so this was kept from you

John Dehlin 44:30 because it was so problematic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:32 Yeah, I mean, it's well known. And so the next one is the first book of Napoleon. This is another one that people will cite as a source of plagiarism. And again, I don't believe that this is. But again, it gives a worldview into how books were being written at the same time as the Book of Mormon. And so just to read a sample from the first book of Napoleon. And behold, it came to pass in these latter days that an evil spirit arose on the face of the earth and greatly troubled the sons of men. And this spirit seized upon and spread amongst the people who dwell in the land of gall.

The Late War and Other Textual Parallels

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:58 Now, in this people, the fear of the Lord had not been for many generations, and they had become a corrupt and perverse people. And their chief priests and the nobles of the land and the learned man thereof had become wicked in the imaginations of their hearts and in the practices of their lives. It's just, you know, again, it just shows the writing style and stuff kind of matches.

John Dehlin 45:15 And again, if we're going too fast, there's going to be people new to this that don't have anything what the first Book of Napoleon is, this book that would have been written around Joseph Smith's day, Joseph Smith would have had access to that sounds like the text could have literally been pulled from the Book of Mormon. What Mike just read sounds like the Book of Mormon. But instead it was a style. It's basically a bunch of people growing up reading King James Bible, learning King James English, and then they'll write fiction that sounds like King James English from the Bible. And these books predate Joseph Smith. And if they don't share content or word, you know, phrases or phraseology, which they do.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:03 Yep.

John Dehlin 46:04 They definitely show or. Or provide, you know, an explanation for the style that Joseph Smith would have used to write the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:16 Yeah, and I think that's a great way to look at it. And. Yeah, that's just it. Like, so for me, the value of these books, especially the first Book of Napoleon and the next one we'll go over, is that it shows that people in his time and place were writing in a style that mirrors the way Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, which is to say this kind of King James formal English, and that there's a lot of phrases being used in both, because it's a common use of phrasing that was being used in that time to sound more authoritative, sacred, scriptural. And so the fact that they end up in the Book of Mormon tells you that Joseph Smith is aware of how people are presenting stories, presenting sermons, presenting all of these things.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:54 And so these influences are influencing him as he's writing the text, to put it in a way that would be both familiar to the people of his time and would seem to be in the writing style that would be received by people as more scriptural, as opposed to if he was writing kind of in his day to day talk.

John Dehlin 47:11 Yeah. So this next excerpt comes from not the first Book of Napoleon, but comes from a book called the Late War. And as you read it, I would just ask viewers and listeners, as you're listening to this text, could it have been included in the Book of Mormon? You know, without some good adjectives or nouns. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:27 This is. This is another book that was written before the Book of Mormon. It was accessible to Joseph Smith. I believe they found it. They found that it was in his hometown library. Again, I don't think he plagiarized. And I'm just trying to read this because, as John said, this is to show that, yes, people then were writing in this style. So when you see in the Book of Mormon, to think, oh, my goodness, this is so unique and out of the box. It really is not. And so we're going to read this one paragraph, and it says, and it came to pass in the 1815th year of the Christian era, in the first month of the year and on the eighth day of the month being on the Sabbath day, which, as it is written in the scriptures, thou shall remember and keep holy that the mighty army of the king, which had moved out of the strong ships of Britain, came in their strength to make conquest on the territory of Columbia and which lieth to the south.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:12 And again, we could go on. There's obviously, if you've read the CS letter, you've seen a lot more where they show similar phrasing. It uses a lot of the King James phrases that Joseph uses. I believe they have phrases in there like works of curious worksmanship, stuff like that. So, I mean, it just shows that people were talking in these stories in that kind of style and language. And the fact that it's in the Book of Mormon, it shows you that it's also a product of the same time, in my opinion.

John Dehlin 48:37 Include a link to the CES letter in the show notes as well. All right, so that explains some of the writing style in the Book of Mormon. Next. We've already had an episode on treasure digging. We kind of covered this briefly. But it turns out that the act of folk magic treasure digging that Joseph Smith and his dad were involved with, along with a lot of the witnesses of the book of Mormon, five to 10 years before the Book of Mormon was ever written, that folk magic treasure dicking ends up as a practice in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:16 Yep. And the one thing real quick about the late wars, if you guys do read the CES letter and you should read, you know, the fair Mormon response to the, to the comparisons between the late war and the Book of Mormon that Jeremy put to you. I don't know if he put it together. I think someone else didn't. He has it in there. And when you Read the Fair Mormon response. You'll notice that they keep saying how much you have to go through to put those together, how much you have to cut out of the late war. And I agree with that. That's why I don't think he plagiarized.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:41 But I think also what Fairmormon's response leaves out is the fact that there is a very similar writing style that we see that kind of shows you that it would be possible to do in that time. With that said, we talked about treasure digging, and so we covered this in the first episode. But just to show that we have multiple references to treasure digging in the Book of Mormon, which would tell you that either Joseph Smith is putting his own personal experience into the Book of Mormon, or that in ancient America, they were using the exact same style of treasure digging that Joseph Smith did in the 1820s.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:12 And that's a problem when you start to see all of these things start to pile up, because then all of a sudden it's really hard to dismiss all of them. And so we'll just read a couple from Helaman. It says it, and behold, the time cometh that he curses, curse if your riches, that they become slippery, that you cannot hold them in, in the days of your poverty, you cannot retain them. Behold, we lay a tool here, and on the morrow it is gone. And behold, our swords are taken from us in the day we have sought them for battle. Yea, we have hit up our treasures and they have slipped away from us because of the curse of the land.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:44 Oh, that we had repented in the day, and that the word of the Lord came upon unto us. For behold, the land is cursed, and all the things that become slippery and we cannot hold them. And then in the Book of Mormon, and these Gadian robbers who were among the lame Lamanites, did infest the land insomuch that the inhabitants there began to hide up their treasures in the earth and they became slippery because the Lord had cursed the land that they could not hold them nor retain them again, I mean, that's Joseph Smith's treasure digging accounts perfectly.

John Dehlin 51:12 And I, and, and, and I, I don't have this for sure in my mind, but I'm guessing that the Bible, New Testament, Old Testament do not mention slippery treasures that get pulled away by a spirit when you try and dig for them. That's literally, you know, 18th century folk magic, treasure digging, pirate Spanish conquistador lore that ends up, because Joseph Smith practiced it, ends up getting written into the Book of Mormon. Just, it's such A clear fingerprint as you.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:46 And that's just it. Like, so, you know, all these things again, they just pile up. And so this one is literally. And again, I know people hate black and white comparisons, but it's like you either have to believe that in the ancient Americas that people were doing the same treasure digging practices as the 19th century, or that Joseph Smith is writing his own experiences into the Book of Mormon as kind of a co author, which then, as we've talked about in the tight versus loose translation, creates a lot of problems with the method of translation. But you can't really have it both ways because there's no other, as John said, there's no, like, biblical accounts of like, people laying down their swords and having them be sucked into the earth.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:21 And just as Joseph Smith would have claimed during a failed treasure dig. And so the fact that they're in the Book of Mormon tells you that Joseph Smith is using his own worldview to tell these stories.

John Dehlin 52:31 Yeah, and Mike, I wanna, as you, as you jump into these slides, I, for those who are new, I want to just give a little bit of context.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:38 Yeah, no, it's fine.

John Dehlin 52:39 If that's okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:40 Of course.

Treasure Digging, Seers, and Folk Magic

John Dehlin 52:41 So now, now we're jumping to this idea of a seer. And you know, Mormons are really familiar with the term seer because prophets, seer and revelator, that's every first presidency member and member of the Quorum of the twelve. Well, it turns out that the term seer is like scryer or peeper or glass looker. It is a term that is, that comes out of folk magic lore.

John Dehlin 53:08 You know, that's where it comes from. So to have that term seer showing up in the Book of Mormon and then to have a seer according to the Book of Mormon now elevated above that of a prophet is particularly suspect because we know that the author of the Book of Mormon was known as a seer. So in other words, we risk Joseph Smith, you know, writing into the Book of Mormon, him elevating himself above Moses and Jacob and, you know, Isaiah and David and Daniel and Abraham and everyone else. And we know that that's not beyond Joseph Smith. So tell us why the term seer in the Book of Mormon is problematic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:51 Yeah, and so we'll just read Mosiah 8. It's like five verses. And so it says, now Ammon said unto him, I can assuredly tell thee, O king, of a man that can translate the records, for he has wherewith that he can look and translate all records that are of ancient date. And it is a gift from God. And the things are called interpreters, and no man can look in them except he be commanded, lest he should look, for that he ought not, and he should perish. And whoever and whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer, which again, that's. That's how Joseph Smith defined himself. And then it says, and behold. I'm sorry.

John Dehlin 54:24 No, that's good. You may as well put Scryer Peeper in there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:28 Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. He's basically describing my student what's really funny about this, and. And I'll finish these verses, but keep in mind, when he's writing this, this is right around the time that Oliver Cowdery is starting. So Joseph Smith is picking up in Mosiah, as we talked about in the translation episode, 116 pages and part of Mosai was written. And so this is being written basically right at the beginning of his time with Oliver Cowdery. It's almost like Joseph is telling Oliver, through this dictation, his own power and his own authority. And I think that's really important because of the fact that it almost shows in a lot of ways, Joseph.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:57 Joseph's insecurity in that he needs to keep basically revealing himself through the text as being the person that has the power to do this. Whereas it doesn't necessarily make sense that you'd have to have that reassuredness, you know, otherwise, in my opinion, anyways, it just feels like he's trying to tell everyone that he's more powerful than a prophet because he's doing it in a way that's different than a prophet by, as John said, calling himself a seer, because that's what people viewed him as, treasure diggers. And so now he's carrying it over and trying to say, well, actually, what I could do as a seer, as a treasure digger is more powerful than a prophet.

John Dehlin 55:30 So, yeah, it's like, don't look down on me for being a seer.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:33 Exactly.

John Dehlin 55:34 Is actually better than being a seer.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:35 Yeah, that's just it. And so it's almost like someone's like, well, let me read the rest. So it says, and behold, the king of the people who are in the land of Zarahemla is the man that is commanded to do these things and who has this high gift from God. And the king said that a seer is greater than a prophet. And Ammon said that a seer is a revelator and a prophet also in a gift which is greater can no man have, except he should possess the power of God, which no man can. Yet a many may have great power given him from God, but a seer can know of things which are past and also of things which are to come.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 56:04 And by them all shall all things be revealed. Or rather shall secret things be made manifest and hidden things shall come to light, and things which are not known shall be made known to them. And also things shall be made known by them which otherwise could not be known. And so this is literally Joseph Smith. It's almost like to your point, he knows he's got a treasure digging background and he's almost like answering that question in the Book of Mormon and saying, no, no, no. People call me a seer. And that's actually better because not only can I reveal things like a prophet, but I can see things that prophets can't see. And again, it just, it shows Joseph Smith writing his own autobiographical story into the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 56:41 And without the Mormon Church kind of educating us that Joseph was a scryer and a peeper and a glass looker. When we hear Cyr, we just think, cool, he can see the future and he's got these biblical magic powers and he's like a prophet. It gets tainted when you understand the treasure digging history of Joseph Smith and even that he was convicted in a court of law of breaking the law, that it was more disreputable.

John Dehlin 57:10 So when the church, if you add to that the church hiding the history from us, that becomes a problem. But then also the seer thing breaks down a bit because modern day First Presidency members and apostles take on the title prophet, seer and revelator. And we know, because they only published it recently, that they have Joseph Smith's peep stones in their vaults, in their museums. That begs the question, if, if being a seer is so important, why isn't Russell M. Nelson or Down H. Oaks or whoever, why aren't they looking into their peep stones and telling us the future or providing new revelation? And they're not. And so I think the, the seer language is problematic in both directions for the church.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:01 I mean, it is. And it's just one of those things where it's like we can see Joseph Smith, in my opinion, writing his story into the Book of Mormon as a way to give himself credibility for people who read it. Because all of a sudden you read it, you're like, wow, they're describing Joseph Smith. But in a lot of ways it's almost like, you know, I mentioned this in some of the earlier episodes we've done. But there are times when Joseph Smith stories where when you look at them from a non believing point of view, you're like, it's almost like cartoonish how much he's trying to do it. And so, yeah, it's a problem. And that carries into this next section. And I don't know if you want to cover this one for, for listeners or if you want me to do it, but it's, it kind of goes along the same.

John Dehlin 58:37 I can read it. You want me to read it?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:38 No, no, just, just how? You know, as a kind of an intro to how he writes himself.

John Dehlin 58:43 Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's plausible to believe that the Book of Mormon would prophesy of Joseph Smith if Joseph Smith was the guy who translated it. But if you're going to step back and look critically and logically about whether a document is a credible historical document, if, if the document was supposedly written 2000 years ago, but it's praising 2000 years later the guy who happened to write it for anyone who wasn't a believing Mormon, they're going to say that's suspect, right? They're going to say that's, that's a clear fingerprint that the modern current author is simply just trying to make himself look valuable or important by almost pseudepigrapha, by writing into past prophets a prophecy that Joseph Smith was going to be a rad dude. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 59:42 Yeah. I mean, yeah, he's writing himself in. And so critics and believers talk about how the Book of Mormon prophesies of Joseph Smith because from a believing standpoint, you're like, wow, this is amazing. From a critical standpoint, you're like, but the guy who wrote it is the one that's writing the self serving thing. And so from Second Nephi it says, and let's prophesy Joseph saying, behold, that seer will the Lord bless, and they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded. For this promise which I have obtained of the Lord of the fruit of my loins shall be fulfilled. Behold, I am sure of the fulfilling of this promise.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:14 And his name shall be called after me, and it shall be after the name of his Father, and, and he shall be like unto me. For the thing which the Lord hath shall bring forth by his hand, by the power of the Lord shall bring my people unto salvation. And again, you know, it's also worth noting that this is actually being in the replacement text for the lost 116 pages. So it's kind of funny how he uses a similar revelation to DNC10, where he talks about how anyone who seeks to destroy him shall be confounded. And yet, you know, people like, you know, for example, me, who's talking about Joseph's works today, I have not been confounded whatsoever.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:47 I mean, it's just one of those things where he's. He's kind of borrowing from that DNC 10 thought that God will confound anyone who seeks to undermine his work. And yet that never happens either. And so it's just kind of, I think, illustrating some of the insecurity that Joseph had, especially with the replacement text of the 116 pages. And so he's writing himself in there to the point where it's unmistakable that it's Joseph Smith, because he's talking about how he's gonna be Joseph, son of Joseph. And. And then, like I said, pulling in DNC 10. So it really works to show not just that it's an influence into the Book of Mormon, but this also kind of lines up with the fact that it happens during the replacement text of the 116 pages.

John Dehlin 1:01:25 Yeah. Hindsight is 20 20, and if you're. You're writing back into the past, a prophecy about the future, when you know, the present, it's a lot less impressive. And in fact, it's a sign of fraud for anyone who's being, you know, logical and scholarly.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:44 Yeah, I mean, like I said, the phrase I always use, I don't know, maybe it's not the best one. I always say if you start with a blank slate, this stuff becomes obvious. If you start, if you can let you know, they always say, like, don't let go of the iron rod. And I'm like, just let go of the rod. I wrote a blog post on it, like, early on when I started the website, and it's basically saying, just let go for a day, a week. And a friend of mine, I think, I'm pretty sure it's the guy who wrote the four Kellen, who wrote the four annotated essays on our site, pretty sure he was one that said it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:10 And he said, you know, we always talk about Abrahamic tests, right? So they'll say, like, you know, Abraham was commanded to kill Isaac until the Abrahamic test came and said, you fulfilled it. You know, and the church all the time refers to polygamy as an Abrahamic test, except for the fact that they made them go through with it, which kind of is a problem. But, you know, in a lot of ways, reading this stuff that I wrote, or that anyone else puts together. You know, if you truly believe that this church is true and you truly believe these truth claims hold up, let go of the rod for a week or a month and study this stuff and read this stuff and listen to these episodes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:41 And if this church is really what it claims to be, you should have that Abrahamic test fulfilled upon you, where you have that answer that comes to you, whether it's an angelic visit or a direct voice from God telling you, I'm glad you took this risk to read all this stuff. But, yeah, it's true. Get back to church. And no one ever tells you to do that. They always tell you to do the Abrahamic test when it serves them, whether it's, you know, entering into polygamy or whether it's killing your firstborn son. Yet for something like this, where it would be a good way to confirm whether or not this stuff is true, they'll never, ever, ever tell you to let go of the rod and do the research on your own. And I know it's a bit of a tangent, but I think it's one, hopefully, that helps people out there.

The Charles Anthon Visit and Fulfilled Prophecy

John Dehlin 1:03:21 Yeah. And another. Another point you made in a past episode. Episode that I want to bring in here, and I think this is the tight. This is in the Tight versus Loose Translation episode is you notice that whenever Joseph, like a magician, whenever Joseph can't completely control the environment, his powers disappear.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:41 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:03:41 But when he can control the environment, he's got all these powers. And what's a. What's a more powerful way to control the environment than pretending like you're a past prophet and in the future, that is the present that not only, you know, happens, but makes you look really good.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:04:00 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:04:00 And if. If Joseph, you know, if the Book of Mormon prophesying of Joseph, son of Joseph, wasn't enough for you. We also have the Book of Mormon prophesying about Martin Harris's visit to Charles Anthony. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:04:16 Yeah. And so we actually, we have a few slides on this one. So this one will cover a little bit more than some of these other ones. But. So this is one of the first things I came across when I was doing LDS discussions.com it was one of the first blog posts because I had no idea how the story was kind of backfitted into fitting the Book of Mormon. And so I've mentioned this on previous podcasts that we've done with the series. The accounts are very different between what Martin Harris says happened and what Charles Anthon says happened. And even within Charles Anthem's two accounts, they're different.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:04:44 So Charles Anthon does not have a perfectly, you know, consistent account either. And that's important to note because I, I don't want to pretend that his is perfect either because there are some areas where it might seem like Anthon might have been a little bit duped as far as kind of maybe believing that he saw some different kinds of languages.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:01 I don't believe he claimed to translate them because he couldn't have. He didn't know Egyptian. But we cover that more on the website. But you know, just to point that out, that they both, both Harris and Anthon have problematic or inconsistent accounts, I guess I would say.

John Dehlin 1:05:17 And sorry, just to give a tiny bit of backup, we're going to have a whole episode on the Charles Anthon thing, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:23 I don't know if I have a whole episode, but it pops up in a few of these just because it's kind of important.

John Dehlin 1:05:27 But tell me if I've got the story right, that Joseph knows. He's told everybody he's got golden plates, but he's not showing them to anybody. So he wants some way to validate that he has plates short of showing anyone the plates. So he manufactures these characters that he claims are ancient reformed Egyptian written on paper derived from the plates. And then he sends Martin Harris to a well known scholar named Charles Anthon who can at least validate that these are legitimate ancient characters, but also knowing, again, controlling the environment, knowing that Anthon couldn't actually read the characters because Joseph Smith has manufactured a fake language

John Dehlin 1:06:13 which is reformed Egyptian, which doesn't exist and it's built upon a language, Egyptian, which had not yet been translated because the Rosetta Stone translation had not yet become pervasive enough. So again, even in this instance, Joseph is controlling the environment, but trying to use scholarship to validate what he's doing. Is that right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:37 Yeah. So basically, yeah, because he sends them to Anthon. And the only reason I mentioned there's inconsistencies is Anthony, I think in the second one is a lot more negative than in the first. And I think in the first one I think he admits to giving him a piece of paper and then tearing it up. And I think in the second he says he, he figured it out earlier. I think I'd have to read it. It's been a while, but.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:58 But the point is, when Joseph Smith writes this account in the official history, Martin Harris has already been excommunicated from the church. He's gone. And so the 1838 account is written completely from Joseph Smith's point of view, because he doesn't need Martin Harris to tell him anything or to correct anything, because he's gone.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:12 But the other thing is that Joseph Smith actually does write this into his 1832 history, so Martin Harris would still be part of the church. And in his 1832 history, it says, because of his faith, the Lord appeared unto Martin Harris in a vision and showed him his marvelous work, which he was about to do. He immediately came to Susquehanna and said that the Lord had shown him that he must go to New York City with some characters. So he proceeded to copy some of them. And he took his journey to the eastern cities and to the learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And the learned said, I cannot.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:40 But if he would bring the plates, they would read it. But the Lord had forbid it. And he returned to me and gave them to me to translate. And I said, I cannot, for I am not learned. But the Lord is.

John Dehlin 1:07:50 Wait.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:50 Oh yeah. But the Lord has prepared spectacles for to read the Book of Mormon. Therefore I commenced translating the characters. And thus the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled, which is written in the 29th chapter concerning the book. And so Joseph smith, in his 1832 account, was writing the story again, he's not writing it with Martin. And Martin Harris wouldn't have seen this because nobody. This is the same history that had the first vision. And so he's writing this down. And this, this does mirror the Book of Mormon story, but it also misses a few of the points that are going to come in the 1838 account. And that's important too, to see how obviously we're talking about influence to say, so this is an influence in the Book of Mormon, and it will also show how he retrofits the story to make it even grander later.

John Dehlin 1:08:27 Yeah, and just a key point that's going on here, Joseph's not only trying to get a well known scholar to validate his Book of Mormon translation process without showing plates, he's trying to write himself into Isaiah's prophecy because he knows the Bible. And so if he can have Isaiah, he could have Isaiah validating Joseph Smith. Then it's Isaiah plus the Book of Mormon prophets, plus Charles Anthon, and he's got multiple witnesses all saying Joseph's awesome. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:58 And that's just it. I mean, this is where. And you know, if you, if you listen to, there's a podcast that John Hamer did with infants on Thrones on the Christmas Story, and I think it's like two hours long, but John Hamer notes, all these times where the New Testament Gospel authors are basically skimming through the Old Testament trying to find ways to fulfill prophecy when they're writing the Gospels. And in a lot of them, they're writing them in ways that just certainly do not match. And Isaiah is a big one. They'll say that Isaiah prophesies of Jesus. When you read them in context, you're like, no, he's not talking about Jesus.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:26 But from the perspective of the New Testament Gospel writers, they're trying to find ways to link Jesus to the divinity of the Old Testament. And in that same way, Joseph Smith now is trying to find ways in the Old Testament or in the Bible as a whole, to fulfill a prophecy with the Book of Mormon, because it is so much more powerful to those who are reading it if you can make them think that you're actually fulfilling something, even if the reading of it is completely wrong.

John Dehlin 1:09:49 Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:50 And so anyways, we just read the 1832 account. And so now compare that to second Nephi, which is written obviously after the Amphithe visit. And so Joseph Smith writes into the Book of Mormon, but behold, it shall come to pass that the Lord God shall say unto him to whom he shall deliver the book, take these words which are not sealed and deliver them to another, that he may show them unto the learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And the learned shall say, bring hither the Book, and I will read them. And now, because of the glory of the world and to get gained, they will say this, and not for the glory of God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:18 And the man shall say, I cannot bring the book, for it is sealed. Then the learned say. Then shall the learned say, I cannot read it. Wherefore it shall come to pass that the Lord God will deliver again the book and the words thereof to him that is not learned. And the man that is not learned shall say, I am not learned. And so, basically, after the visit, Joseph Smith appears to be taking a lot of the accounts that Martin Harris tells him happened in writing it directly into the book, because, remember, this is the replacement text of the 116 pages. So this is long after Martin Harris would claim to go see Charles Anthon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:49 And yet it winds up in Second Nephi, which we know is written after the visit happened. And it matches a lot of the 1832 account that Joseph Smith writes of the visit perfectly, which tells you that he is basically retrofitting a prophecy directly into the Book of Mormon, unless you want to believe that it could literally happen that way, where, you know, Martin Harrison visited Charles Anthony and have it happen just as the text was written, you know, almost word for word in some areas. It just. This is an area where we can show that Joseph Smith is absolutely writing in real time, things that are happening around him to give the book more credibility.

John Dehlin 1:11:24 Yeah. And this reminds me of the angel with the flaming sword thing, because you've only got a certain number of verses and chapters and books in Scripture. There's so many things God could have prophesied about. He could have prophesied about the Civil War and saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. He could have prophesied about germ theory and helped, you know, prevent disease or, you know, infant mortality. He could have, you know, said, slavery's bad. Stop it. Stop the slavery. Women's suffrage, LGBTQ rights. Like, of all the things he could have written about, he's going to be writing about, like, Joseph and Charles Anthon and Martin Harris and, you know, back hundreds of years ago with Native. Thousands of years. Well, a thousand years ago with Native Americans. Like, none of this makes sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:12 Yeah. And like, you know, not to. We'll get into, like, the. The way that revelations are written into the Book of Mormon in a future episode. But, yeah, all the revelations, all the prophecies that are in the Book of Mormon, they die in 1829. So they. They talk about Columbus coming, they talk about the Revolutionary War, but nowhere in there do you see anything about the Civil War or boiling water, maybe. Boiling water, World War II, the Vietnam War. And that's just it. So everything gets super vague after basically, the Book of Mormons prophesied of being fulfilled. Everything gets extremely vague. And so you have no idea.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:45 And. And so we talk about today Book of Mormon prophecies being fulfilled. And when you look at them, you're like, no, the prophecies in the Book of Mormon are super vague. It's always the wars and rumors of wars kind of thing. And.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:56 And so the fact that this is in there so specifically allows you, as a scholar, or allows me as some idiot who has a background in research, to look at that and go, okay, this is too specific to be a biblical revelation or a prophecy, because we can see from the actual Bible, the prophecies are usually pretty vague, except for the times when scholars can show that they're written after the fact, like in the Book of Daniel. And that's what you're seeing here.

John Dehlin 1:13:18 It's also unimportant, Relatively unimportant. Like, the Book of Mormon was written for our day. Does anybody care about the Anthon visit. And by the way, there was controversy and we're going to get to this right now. Anthon's version was different than Martin Harris's version. So like was it even an important account in, in terms of really establishing testimony? Maybe it was back then, I doubt it is now. Anyway, I guess that takes us to the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:13:42 Yeah, and to be fair, I think it would be valuable at the time because you're trying to find these, these little things you can teach people and say it fulfilled Isaiah 29. But the problem is Joseph Smith is misinterpreting Isaiah in order to fit it around his, you know, claimed fulfilled prophecy. Because in Isaiah 29 Joseph Smith is referring to this idea of a sealed book as the literal gold plates, right as the unsealed portion and in the actual Isaiah 29. And again, I know this is according to biblical scholars, but this is another area, especially when people try to reinterpret these. Everyone I think the with a pretty strong consensus believes that Isaiah is only referring to spiritual blindness and not speaking to a physical book.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:22 And so we talk about this in on the website and we have links to our more longer article that's only about the anthem visit. And so that's linked from, from this influences page. But Dialogue magazine had a really good article written by David Wright and he explains just how Joseph Smith is completely mistaking the prophecy in Isaiah 29 to make it fit the Book of Mormon. And because of that, that's another fingerprint that Joseph Smith loses, leaves, sorry leaves with the text that we know it wasn't from God because he's messing up the interpretation of the prophecy. And in doing so it's very self serving to himself and to the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:04 And that gives you a really good clue as to the motivation as to why the verse was misinterpreted. And we covered this in a previous episode. But for those who are watching this, there's an image on the bottom of this slide and if you look you can see how in a separate color pen and in between the lines it's written and added in. I informed him that the part of I can't read this because it's small, but basically it's the line that says I cannot read a sealed book. And that is the whole part that is supposed to fulfill Isaiah 29, so it says, informed him that part of the plates were sealed and that he was I was forbidden to bring them.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:41 And Anthon replied I cannot read a sealed book. And that's being added into the 1838 history. And again, that's after Martin Harris is gone. So Martin Harris can't be there to say, you know, you added this part to your history and it's not true. And so Joseph Smith is adding this in and you can tell from the pen that it's an add on. And again, you can make the argument that Joseph Smith just forgot this part when to add it back in.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:01 And again, if you want to do that, you can, but it just seems to me like he's reading it and then saying, oh, I got to add that back in because that makes it a much better story, just as you see with some of the other changes.

John Dehlin 1:16:12 Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's really suspect. And, and of course we know David Wright was excommunicated. And nowadays if you're excommunicated in the past three decades, it means you were speaking the truth. I mean, literally, whether it's, you know, the September Six or Jeremy Runnels or Bill Rio or Michael Quinn or whoever, Maxine Hanks, the modern Mormon Church excommunicates you when you're saying something that's true. That's, that's uncomfortable.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:47 Yeah. And that's just it.

John Dehlin 1:16:49 Yeah. Okay, so, so the Anthon visit is a problem appearing in the Book of Mormon. And then of course we have the last 116 pages, which we have an entire episode on. But tell us, but put a kind of connect the dots, why the 116 pages account appearing in the Book of Mormon is a problem.

The Lost 116 Pages and Masonic Influences

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:12 And this one is one that might not be a huge one. But again, we had the whole episode, so we're not going to rehash all of that. But basically the Book of Mormon dictation begins in mosiah after the 116 pages were lost by Martin Harris. And a lot of scholars believe that there was a small portion of Mosiah that was included in the original translation but wasn't lost, because it would appear that Martin Harris probably took the parts that led up right to the beginning of Mosiah because it wasn't completed. And as such, Joseph smith, according to DNC10, is going to pick it up from that spot.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:42 So DNC10 says, therefore you shall translate the engravings which are on the plates of Nephi down even till you come to the reign of King Benjamin or until you come to that which you have translated, which you have retained. So it's basically saying until that little part that you've retained, you're going to go to there. And so we don't know exactly which chapter of Mosiah was left off. But Dan Vogel pointed this out, and it's a really, really good observation, which is in Mosiah 4 we have this verse from King Benjamin where he says, and I would that you should remember that whosoever among of you, among you borroweth of his neighbor, should return the thing that he borroweth according as he doth agree, or else thou shalt commit sin, and perhaps thou shalt cause thy neighbor to commit sin also.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:18:22 And that seems like a pretty direct reference that Joseph Smith is writing into the text basically as a way to kind of slam Martin Harris for losing it. Because in that mindset, not only did Martin Harris sin by losing the manuscript, but he actually, according to Joseph Smith, caused him to sin. And so this would be another area where Joseph Smith is writing an event that happened around him directly into the text, as if it happened in ancient times. And it also makes sense that it might happen right after Joseph starts picking back up the translation as well, because it'd be fresh on his mind as to why he has to go through and kind of refix these problems.

John Dehlin 1:18:58 Yeah, yeah. Again, it's just, it would be, you know, if he had produced this 116 pages sort of prophecy before the pages got lost. You know, I don't know, it's just the, the level of specificity. Just why did, why didn't he have a prophecy in the Book of Mormon that said, and by the way, Joseph, you'll be called, you know, a future seer, will be called upon to practice polygamy and his wife won't like it, and he'll have about 40 wives.

John Dehlin 1:19:37 And then one of his first presidency members will write a new, you know, will write a newspaper article about it. And you know what, there's so many moments of Joseph Smith's history that there could have been a prophecy about that could have like, saved Joseph's life or helped the church in other fundamental ways or, you know, Zion. Zion, the new Jerusalem, will be established in Missouri, but then it'll be moved or it will be no longer matter. Like. Yeah, it's just, again, like you said, all the specific prophecies are for events that occur prior to the scribes writing down what's in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:20:19 Yeah, there's. There's nothing. There's no prophecy afterwards. And that, again, it's just, it's a fingerprint that tells you that the person writing the Book of Mormon has the hindsight before him, but not the foresight after. And, you know, you would Expect one of the things they talk about often with, with biblical scholarship is just the more specific the prophecy is in the Bible, the more likely it was that it was a late edition or that it's being written after the fact under the assumed name. And the Book of Daniel is where a lot of people cite it because every time it's super specific, they can literally date that text to being written later than it was purported to be written because of the fact that it's specific.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:20:53 And you know, from a secular point of view, that's because there's no revelation from God that is giving people foresight. Because if there was, again, you would expect to see that even in the modern church, we don't see anything specific from the prophets. And so that tells you that they're not getting that kind of answer in there. And so when you do see in the Book of Mormon things being written that are happening around Joseph Smith during the production of the Book of Mormon, that's an issue where you could say, of course, the author of the Book of Mormon is adding this in because he's experiencing it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:22 And so he's putting it in there as a way to bolster the credibility of it because he's now able to take something that's happening, put it into an ancient context, so that when people read it, they'll go, wow, I can't believe they got this. But in reality it's just because like in these cases are being written in the replacement text. It's really easy to slip it in at the end of the Book of Mormon because now you're trying to find ways to bolster it as a religious text. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:21:46 And yeah. All right, so the next element of Joseph's surroundings or environment that makes it into the Book of Mormon is anti Masonic fears. And on the next slide after the one you're going to show, you give a little bit of history. But most people will have no idea why you're talking about the Masons during Joseph Smith's time. The only connection they know about between Masons and Joseph Smith is that the Joseph Smith's participation in the Masonic Lodge influenced what became the Mormon Temple Endowment ceremony. But there were, there's actually other significant Masonic influences to Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon. So whatever background you want to give to that, you know, what would you like to say about that as we jump into the Book of Mormon?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:22:37 You know, we could just jump into this one because this is one where, you know, we're going to see the second slide, probably fills in a little Bit more than the first one. But basically, when Joseph Smith is writing the Book of Mormon, literally a few years before the production of the Book of Mormon starts, they are going to have these disappearance of William Morgan. So he disappears because he's about to expose all of the secret rituals of Freemasonry. And everyone believed that he had fallen victim to Masonic vengeance. And Dan Vogel outlines this. He describes it really well.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:07 And these feelings are everywhere. It bleeds into the electoral process. And so because of that, everyone's kind of afraid of the Masons. And this is a big deal where it should not be in an ancient text when it is mirroring what is happening around him so well. But the thing is, everybody knows of the secret rituals of the. Of the Masons. And there's a lot of use in his time frame of them having secret combinations. And so they talk about the Book of Mormon having this use of secret combinations. And Dan Vogel notes in a paper he had written, he says the Book of Mormon thus combines the following favorite anti Masonic elements in its description of the decline and fall of the Jaredite and Nephite nations, the ascendancy of secret combinations, the rejection of religious leadership, the loss of social and political equality, and the fragmentation of a centralized government.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:57 And a lot of those fears also mirrored the time when Joseph Smith is writing this book because Andrew Jackson is a Mason and it harms him in Joseph Smith's area because of all of these fears about. The fear is that if a Mason takes control of the government, it's no longer going to be the same. It's going to be controlled by the Masons. And, you know, I always laugh because before I got into this stuff, I grew up a huge Simpsons fan. And if you've ever seen the Stonecutters episode.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:25 Yeah, yeah, but that's the belief. The belief was that this was like the secret organization with secret combinations, with secret handshakes, which, you know, we know they had. And the belief was they controlled a lot of stuff. And so if they became able to be the president, that they'd have basically control of the country. And Dan Vogel noted about the trial about William Morgan that they believe a lot of the jurors were basically bought off or part of the Masons, all of these things. And so all of these different elements of this 1826 trial cause a lot of fear, unease. And because of that, the Book of Mormon in a lot of ways couldn't have been written before 1826 because of that, like if Joseph Smith had written this book in 1823, when he claimed the gold plate story, it wouldn't have this in there because that whole experience is just not going to be around him in the milieu. And yet, because it's a few years later, it's right there.

John Dehlin 1:25:14 And I'll include a link to the Simpsons episode called Homer the Great in the show notes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:20 That's one of the early classics. And so this is basically the best way to outline how much people recognize the Masonic feelings. And so Dan Vogel outlines how much the fear of Masons influenced the Book of Mormon. And Martin Harris actually declares publicly that the Book of Mormon is the anti Masonic Bible and that all those who do not believe it will be damned. And then the Ohio Star, which is a local newspaper, 1831, wrote that the Book of Mormon is anti Masonic and it is a singular truth that every one of its followers, so far as we are to ascertain, are anti Masons. And so this is again, we're getting obviously Martin Harris, who's a true believer, and we're getting the Ohio Star, which is a newspaper just reporting that this book captures the anti Masonic feelings so well.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:08 And the fact that it's written into what is supposed to be an ancient text is a really good clue that Joseph Smith is having this influence of these news stories all around him. You know, and it's kind of like you think of COVID right now, and it would be like if you wrote a book that was purportedly ancient. And there were all these stories that kind of mirrored all the stuff that's happened over the last two years with COVID whether it's the lockdowns or the fear or the people, you know, whatever it is. And so it's kind of a similar thing where all of a sudden we have this Masonic stuff that's appearing in the Book of Mormon through secret combinations.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:38 And to the point where the Ohio Star newspaper notices it, that Martin Harris is telling people directly that this is the anti Masonic Bible. I mean, there's no confusion here that Masonry plays a role in the Book of Mormon. And it couldn't because Masonry is not ancient. It started, I believe, in the 1500s. So it does not go back to Solomon's Temple or anything like that, as people claim. And it just would have. It's an anachronistic to have Masonic fears in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 1:27:04 Yeah. And just to give credit where credit is due. And I don't know if Grant Palmer deserves any of this credit, but Grant Palmer's book, an insider's view of Mormon origins. He's a Legend, by the way. And he's, you know, just like Sandra and Gerald Tanner were legends before him and still. Sandra's still alive.

John Dehlin 1:27:23 But it was in Grant Palmer's book, An Insiders View of Mormon Origins, where I first had someone piece together, you know, what. What he viewed were the core sources of inspiration for the Book of Mormon. And it was through Grant Palmer that I first learned this connection between the secret combinations talk in the Book of Mormon and the William Morgan Masonic affair. And I'm guessing dialogue articles talked about this before Grant Palmer ever wrote about it. But I just want to give Grant Palmer a shout out and his amazing book, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, because to this day, it remains a really important influence in a classic. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:03 Yeah, yeah. No, his interviews are good too, and.

John Dehlin 1:28:06 Oh, Mormon stories interviews.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:07 Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, just trying to cover some of the apologetics in this section is a little tricky just because I'm, you know, a lot of it comes down like the tight versus loose translation stuff. But in regarding the secret combinations, there is an article that I linked to on this overview, and they're basically, the premise is that the use of the term secret combinations wasn't only regarding the Masons and Joseph Smith's time. And so in the Interpreter, which is.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:34 I don't know if it's a website or a newsletter or whatever, but it's. It's edited by Daniel Peterson, who I believe wrote the book, like how people deceive with the Book of Mormon or whatever. And so he talks about word games in the Book of Mormon. And for people who have read some of Daniel Peterson stuff, he does a lot of word games himself.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:51 But anyways, Gregory Smith writes in there defending Daniel Peterson's prediction that we would eventually find references to secret combinations beyond just Masonry. They provide a few examples that come from court records, legal documents, and legislative materials that show the phrase secret combinations was not exclusively used for Masons as proof that it was not the influence on Joseph Smith that Dan Vogel and others had proclaimed. And, you know, the point I would make here is finding a few outliers doesn't prove your case that it was not predominantly used to talk about Masonry in Joseph Smith's time. And so if you're looking at all,

John Dehlin 1:29:22 that's just super poor logic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29:25 Yeah, I mean, it's just bad. It's like, you know, if you could find, and I don't know what the numbers would be, let's say you could find 100 references to secret combinations that tied to Masonry, and then you could find four that might go to other things. It doesn't prove that the 100 would not have been the predominant view of Joseph Smith's time. And so it's a bad way of doing cherry picking. But I wanted to mention it because I have seen this apologetic use where they'll say, you know, we found these obscure trial records that tell us that secret combinations didn't refer to Masonry.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29:52 But those same people would tell you that the obscure trial record that said that Joseph Smith was found guilty of treasure digging in 1826 is irrelevant. You know what I mean? And so that's the kind of thing. And so I'm not saying that this didn't happen. I'm just saying that if you want to claim that, then you have to put it against a number of times where Anti Masonry is used with secret combinations. Combined with the fact that we have Martin Harris and the Ohio Star both saying without any hesitation that the Book of Mormon is anti Masonic. Why are the people in contemporary times able to pick up on that if it was not really explicit in the text itself?

John Dehlin 1:30:25 It feels gross to me. This is going to sound really rude, but it feels gross to me to include a link to an article from the interpreter. But to be fair, I'm going to include it. So I'm going to include a link

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:30:39 to the article and you can find it on the. Yeah, and you can find on the overview page too. I link to it, but I mean, like I said, feel free to read it. Like I said, it feels like you're searching for anything to just dismiss this claim. And it just again, it goes against the fact that Martin Harris and the newspaper at the time are both saying it's anti Masonic. The fact that secret combinations is used over and over again to talk about Masons and makes its way into the Book of Mormon, finding a few outliers doesn't prove your case. It just proves that there is, you know, something out there. You know that. Because secret combinations I get is a. Is mostly for Masonry, but of course it could be used for other things. That's just how it works when you've got a lot of documents to sift through.

John Dehlin 1:31:17 Yeah. All right, the next one is, you know, Joseph Smith. This is well known. But for those who are new to this, Joseph Smith's dad, Joseph Smith senior, has a dream that is written down that ends up appearing almost identically in the Book of Mormon. So talk about that.

Joseph Smith Sr.'s Vision and Family Influences

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:35 Yeah. And so basically, Joseph Smith's father claims a vision in 1811 about the tree of Life and it is remarkably similar to Lehi's dream in the Book of Mormon. So this is kind of a graphic from Mist and Sunday, but it just kind of goes through the. The highlights of it. So you got. I was traveling in an open, desolate field, and then in the Book of Mormon, it's I beheld a large and spacious field. The road was so broad and barren, and the Book of Mormon is. Leadeth them away into broad roads. Then as I came to a narrow path, Book of Mormon is I also beheld a straight and narrow path.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:05 I beheld a beautiful stream of water. I beheld a river of water. I could see a rope running along the bank of it. And then the Book of Mormons I beheld a rod of iron and it extended along the bank of the river and.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:16 And then his dad in which stood a tree such as I had never seen before. It was exceedingly handsome. In the Book of Mormon it says and I looked and beheld a tree, and the beauty thereof was far beyond yay. Exceeding all of all beauty, his dad said, bore a kind of fruit in shape much like a chestnut burr and as white as snow, or if possible, wider. Book of Mormon says I beheld that the fruit thereof was white to exceed all the whiteness that I had ever seen.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:42 His dad said, I drew near and began to eat of it, and I found it delicious beyond description. Book of Mormon I did go forth and partake of the fruit thereof, and I beheld that it was most sweet above all that I'd ever before tasted. If you go to the next one, there's just a few more.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:55 And then it just says, as I was eating, I said in my heart, I cannot eat this alone. I must bring my wife and children that they may partake with me. Book of Mormon says I began to be desirous that my family should partake of it also, for I knew it was desirable above all other fruit. His dad said, I beheld a spacious building standing opposite the valley which we were in, and it appeared to reach the very heavens. Book of Mormon says, and beheld on the other side of the river of water a great and spacious building, and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:23 His dad they were. They were all filled with people who were very finely dressed. Book of Mormon it was all filled with people, and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine. His dad they pointed the finger of scorn at us, treated us with all manner of disrespect and contempt. Book of Mormon they were in the attitude of Mocking and pointing their fingers. His dad, what was the meaning of the spacious building which I saw? He replied, it is Babylon. It is Babylon and it must fall. And then Book of Mormon said, and the large and spacious building which thy father saw is vain imaginations and the pride of the children of men. So just so many perfect similarities between irrefutable.

John Dehlin 1:33:56 Irrefutable. And then. And again, Joseph Smith Senior, you. You're having the date of that dream being 1811.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:04 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:34:04 Which is 19 years before the Book of Mormon is published.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:07 Yeah. And you know, one of the things that's interesting about this one is that this is, as Dan Vogel points out, a part of contention between Joseph Smith Senior and his. His mother Lucy, because they have this difference in religion. Because this vision is what tells Joseph Smith Sr. That he doesn't want to join a church. And so this vision obviously is known in their family, and it's known by Joseph to the point where he's trying to find a way to get his parents to, you know, stop arguing about religion and to find, you know, some togetherness there. And this is really important because we can see it weaves its way into the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:42 And if you believe that his parents are true believers, which I do, and I think I know Dan Vogel does, he talks about this. But this would give Joseph Smith credibility to his parents to try to find a way to make this work, to get to solve their religious arguments by putting it into a scripture in the voice of God.

John Dehlin 1:35:01 And I mean, originally I was thinking, well, that would be a sign to Joseph's parents that the Book of Mormon was a fraud, because Joseph is just reproducing his dad's dream and putting it into the Book of Mormon. So the dad would say, hey, wait, that's my dream. Why is it in the Book of Mormon? But I think what I hear you saying is it's a way to validate Joseph's dad and say, hey, God showed me that your dream is actually divinely inspired.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:24 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:35:24 Let me correct it a little bit.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:26 Right? Yep.

John Dehlin 1:35:26 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:27 Because all of a sudden it's like Joseph Smith Sr. Believes this dream was like a vision. Right. Because he lived in that folk magic world that he believed in visions. And all of a sudden his vision ends up in the Book of Mormon as, you know, Lehi's dream, which is kind of like a vision. That's a, that's a way of God confirming through Joseph Smith to his dad that that dream was valid. And what's really cool is that what's going to happen is Joseph Smith is actually going to correct his dad through the Book of Mormon as a way to kind of correct him so that it takes away some of the differences between him and his wife.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:59 And so Dan Vogel pointed this out, but Joseph Smith is going to then make a change to this dream after it's written. And so remember, you know, the Lehi's dream is written, and then what's going to happen in Nephi chapter 15, he's actually going to correct the vision of Lehi in verses 26 through 29. So it says, and they said unto me, what meaneth the river of water which our father saw? And I said unto them that the water which my father saw was filthiness. And so much was his mind swallowed up in other things that he beheld not the filthiness of the water. And I said unto them that it was an awful gulf which separated the wicked from the tree of life and also unto the saints of God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:36:35 And I said unto them that it was a representation of that awful hell which the angel said unto me was prepared for the wicked. And so that's really important because Joseph Smith Sr. Because of this dream, becomes like a universalist who believes everyone's going to be saved and that he doesn't have to join a church. And Joseph Smith, after having Lehigh's dream in the Book of Mormon, then goes back and corrects it and says, oh, no, there's going to be a hell. And there is going to be. You know, he didn't understand that the water was mud. And so this, in a lot of ways, Joseph is now using the voice of God to correct his dad's dream, to get him just to come away from that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:06 That mindset that, you know, he will be saved no matter what he does, which then kind of takes away some of the stress between him and Lucy on the subject of religion, which, again, these are all influences in the Book of Mormon and fingerprints that are coming from him in a contemporary standpoint, being put in the ancient text.

John Dehlin 1:37:24 I know this is going to sound totally unrelated, but it reminds me of the. The spectacles incident where Joseph is bringing someone along, shows him into the mound, says, hey, do you see the plates down there? And then the guy adds to the vision and says, wait, I see the plates, but now I see the spectacles too. It's like this. I see your vision. And let me raise some details on your vision.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:45 It is, you know, it's like he's putting the vision in, which I'm sure makes his dad think, oh, my Goodness, God is speaking through my son to me to validate my vision. And then as soon as that happens and Joseph pulls the rug out, he's like, actually, we gotta. You've got some things you gotta fix here. But it's still. It's a really cool thing that Dan Vogel points out, because it is a really cool way to look at how it fits into not just the Book of Mormon, but how that fits into his personal life and how he's trying to synthesize his parents on religion by using his dad's vision in the text and then correcting it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:13 Because if he were to correct it to his dad without this text, his dad would say, what do you know? But since he's doing it in the voice of God, his dad's gonna be more receptive to it, and it looks like it works. So that's a pretty. Pretty big thing.

John Dehlin 1:38:24 And this isn't even mentioning the fact that. How convenient is it that that in the Book of Mormon, Lehi is a visionary and a prophet, and then his son Nephi is the stronger and the better.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:36 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:38:36 And the superior visionary and prophet.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:39 Yeah, there's a lot of.

John Dehlin 1:38:40 There's that. That. That's the same structure. Okay. Joseph Senior is a bit of an old, you know, geezer of a prophet, but then the younger, stronger, smarter prophet is the son.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:50 Yeah, there's a lot of autobiographical little fingerprints in there. I should have done some stuff on that because I don't think I have it on the overview, but.

John Dehlin 1:38:58 Because Nephi has older brothers.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:59 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:39:00 Joseph Smith has older brothers.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:02 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:39:03 Yeah, it's definitely a lot of parallels there in terms of.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:06 Yeah, there's a lot.

John Dehlin 1:39:07 I'm surprised that's not here, but I'm not, you know, not.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:11 I think. I think I may have touched on a little more when I talk about how he composed it. But, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of autobio, biographical elements that pop in there, too, which. Which kind of help us to know, you know, who the author of the Book of Mormon was and.

John Dehlin 1:39:21 Yeah, okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:22 Yeah. And so, you know, one of the apologetics here is to say that when Lucy Max Smith retells what. What the father's dream was, it's not happening until 1845, which means she's now writing down what Joseph Smith SR's dream was 34 years later and after the Book of Mormon was produced. And so the argument would be that Lucy Mack Smith's recounting would be altered and influenced by the Book of Mormon. And one of the things that I've heard other people talk about, I think Dan Vogel talked about, and I think. I think it might have been John Hamer or someone else. And they just say it just seems unlikely that she would copy the Book of Mormon story and not change the part about the water to match it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:01 And that, you know, that you've got the rope, which makes more sense from the standpoint of how Joseph Smith Sr. Would have lived, and not an iron rod. And so you just have these elements that you would think if she was trying to match the Book of Mormon, she would change. But instead, she leaves a lot of details that don't quite match. And so if you want to dismiss the story because. Oh, yeah, as a final note, if we're going to get into the standpoint of dismissing stories because they're not written down until years later, you're going to have a lot of problems quickly when we get like, First Vision and priesthood restoration, because those aren't written down.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:30 The First Vision is not written down as we're told in Church for 18 years. And so, again, you have to be able to look at it and go, there's probably some elements of the story because it was 34 years, that Lucy Mack Smith might be doing differently, but there's just no indication that she's looking at the Book of Mormon while she's writing it, because the change in phrasing is there. And if she was trying to alter it so it didn't look like it, then she would have changed it more. And if she's trying to match the Book of Mormon, it'd be closer. And so I just think, because there are a lot of differences that seem to match more with what Joseph Smith Sr.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:01 Would have. Would have lived through, like the rope and not correcting the part about the water, that we can't just throw it away because of the fact that it was written down later.

John Dehlin 1:41:09 Yeah, those are just, those are dumb apologetics that are inconsistent and that. And if you follow that methodology and apply it just to the book, to the first Vision alone. Yeah, it's, it's, it's. They're just not acting in good faith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:24 Yeah. And, you know, and the thing is, there's probably, like I said, there's probably some truth. I mean, you're writing it down 34 years later, you're going to have some differences. I'm just saying, like, you know, it wouldn't if she was trying to match the Book of Mormon, because she was. That's what she. She knew you'd see more changes than she made. And so there's enough there to tell us that, at least at a base level, the overall premise of the dream is okay, even if some of the wording might be a little different. And so even beyond the fact that the phrases match the story, I think is what's more important is seeing how the story just perfectly lines up.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:53 And obviously the Smith family knew of the vision well enough for Joseph Smith to write it into the Book of Mormon. So it's not like it was a dream that was mentioned once and never mentioned again.

John Dehlin 1:42:02 Yeah. So really quickly, we're about to come up with some concluding slides, and I'm just going to say some of the things that I'm surprised you didn't mention. Include the Protestant sermons. So when Grant Palmer lists what he feels are clear influences in the Book of Mormon, in an insider's view of Mormon origins, he'll show some Protestant sermons of the day.

Protestant Sermons and Book of Mormon Theology

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:31 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:42:32 And then. And then show, like, King Benjamin's sermon or Mosiah's sermon or whatever. And so there's Protestant sermons, but there's also just Protestant theology. When you, when you later see Campbell, Alexander Campbell's analysis of the Book of Mormon after he reads it, and he was a Protestant scholar of his day, he's like, wow, how convenient. Joseph Smith is resolving every controversy that is currently vexing Protestant Christianity, including infant baptism, baptism by immersion, gift of the Holy Ghost. And he goes through and he lists, like, all these Protestant Christian controversies that somehow the Book of Mormon is addressing. And by the way, the prophets in the Book of Mormon, prophets that are addressing the Protestant controversies are allegedly giving these speeches before Jesus was even born, which is just egregiously anachronistic on every level. And I'm wondering why those. Maybe. Do we cover that in another episode or.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:39 Yeah, so the, the sermons. I was going to cover more in the episode on how I think the Book of Mormon was composed.

John Dehlin 1:43:45 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:46 And. But yeah, I mean, that's a good point. And, you know, like, I was going to put in there stuff about, like, how people perceive the Native Americans works its way in there. I know it's similar to the mound builder myth, 19th century Christology I was going to put in there, but a lot of that we've covered a little bit, and I want to cover that more in the future. And so I was trying to kind of trim it a little bit so we didn't kind of overlap too much.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:05 We're definitely going to hit that. I think the. How the Book of Mormon is composed, I think is like Three episodes from now. And I think that'll cover that because that's really important because a lot of people will say, how could Joseph Smith had written those sermons? It's really important to understand that as you said, there are a lot of details out there of sermons that are very similar that end up in a ancient text.

John Dehlin 1:44:25 Yeah. And then there's just the whole Isaiah, just Isaiah, chapter after chapter of Isaiah that's literally just copied him from Joseph's King James version of the Bible in the Book of Mormon. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:38 Yeah. And like all those things. And that's the thing, we could do this for six hours because there's so many more than this. I mean, even just looking at like, you know, the American Revolution, the different wars and how people have done some detailed work on how the different battle techniques of those wars tend to be a little bit in the Book of Mormon as far as how the battles go. You know, how a lot of the Native Americans tend to match the description of the Iroquois that live near Joseph Smith. I mean, there's a lot of that stuff. I didn't get into those as much on the overview, but yeah, there's. We could go for so long because there's just so many little details that just happen to make their way into an ancient text that you could look and go, how are there so many that just pile up here without us knowing?

John Dehlin 1:45:15 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:15 This is not a direct translation and

John Dehlin 1:45:18 I only mention them because they're, they're massively important and it's okay that we'll cover them later. But I just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:25 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:45:25 While in this episode trying to get a sense for it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:28 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:45:29 You gotta add Protestant theology. 19th century Protestant theology. Yeah. Christology. And you gotta add, you know, Isaiah from the King James version of the Bible and then freaking Sermon on the Mount, New Testament stuff that comes in the third Nephi. To add everything you've talked about, plus kind of those three or four things.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:49 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:45:49 You really get a sense for how the Book of Mormon was put together, which you cover. Which we'll be covering soon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:55 Yeah, it's going to be good, I think, once we get to that point. Okay. And so just to kind of do a conclusion for what we did today, it's just, you know, again, I've talked about this before, but I always talk about fingerprints because there's all these parts of the pages of the Book of Mormon where you can see Joseph's fingerprints being left on it, on the text. And it tells us not just that it's a 19th century text, but no one besides, Joseph could have written it because, because we have the fact that the anti Masonic stuff didn't really start until 1826 that tells you basically that couldn't have been written before then.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:46:22 The Charles Anthon visit being in there. You know, I didn't mention this earlier, but Joseph Smith writes in there, the fulfillment of the prophecy that three witnesses will verify the Book of Mormon is in the Book of Mormon. Those things are all happening around him. And so no one could have written it besides Joseph because a lot of these things are happening to him at the exact time he's writing it.

John Dehlin 1:46:41 Yeah, yeah. That is such an important and important summary. Again, we're often told this book is too miraculous. There's a way that one farm boy couldn't have written it. And in reality, like you said, I'm being repetitive, but there's no way that anyone but Joseph wrote this book. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:47:02 When you look at the, the, the Scribes manuscript, what's it called? The, the, the stuff that came out by Oliver Cowdery's own hand, that's in the Joseph Smith Papers project and you see all the run ons and the grammatical errors and the spelling errors and the poor English, that just brings the Book of Mormon down to a much less impressive level. And I'm quoting John Hamer here who once said to me, and then in Mormon Stories episodes that one of the biggest problems with the assumption is that the Book of Mormon is an impressive book. And to John Hamer, who loves Mormonism and loves even early Joseph Smith church history and is a 70 for Community of Christ, his view is like Mark Twain, that the Book of Mormon is just not a very impressive book.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:52 Yeah, and that's just, I mean again, if you start with the equation that no one could do it, you're going to have a hard time, you know, finding a different answer. But if you start with a blank slate that just says, well, what do that? What does the text tell us? What do all these clues tell us? There's no other way you can go. And I realize from a believer standpoint that's gonna be offensive because it's like, well, how dare you say there's no other way to look at this. But I'm just saying all of these things are pointing to it. And so then you have to create a new universe for where Joseph Smith could have created the Book of Mormon but still have it be inspired.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:18 And if you want to do that, you can do that. But I'm just saying you can't do that while also acknowledging that These things, which are tangible, that we can see through different documentary. Documentary sources. You have to be able to do that and also be able to synthesize it with this. With this evidence. Or else you're creating. You're pushing your. You're pushing your ideas outside of the realm of the evidence. And at that point, it just becomes indistinguishable from the same kind of fraud you would see with any other religious leader or politician, organization. Whatever you want to say.

Addressing Believing Member Perspectives

John Dehlin 1:48:47 Yeah. And we've got two more slides we're going to cover, but I'm also just going to address a thought that's going to come up in the minds of believing Mormons, which is. But wait, I. I've had these amazing spiritual experiences, these amazing emotional experiences that confirmed to me that the Book of Mormon is true. The book is just too powerful. And again, I like to use the. The Rush 2112 album. You know, my favorite album of all time is Rush 21:12.

John Dehlin 1:49:15 But whenever I've played it for anyone, they think it sounds like shrieking noise. Unless they're Rush fans. What's the difference? It's that my. My siblings told me that Rush's 2112 album was amazing when I was, you know, little. And then I listened to it a thousand times over multiple decades, having multiple memories. And if you do that over enough time, you're going to fall in love with anything, whether it's Shakespeare or Dr. Seuss or Mary Poppins or the wizard of Oz or the Book of Mormon. If you're told from age 0 that this is the most sacred book, Mommy and Daddy are proud of you for reading it.

John Dehlin 1:49:55 You're gathering around, you know, your living room with your family. You're reading it daily. It's interwoven into your lives. You're reading it in seminary with all the other teens in high school. You're praying about it, trying to figure out who you are. As you're reading this book, you're having all these emotional experiences. You're going to end up thinking it's the most sacred book ever. Yeah. Until you give it to a Muslim or a Jew, and they're going to read it and say, what is this mindless, boring drivel that. That really appears more like Bible fan fiction than anything that's actually interesting. And again, that's why Mark.

John Dehlin 1:50:29 Mark Twain called it chloroform in print, because he didn't have the conditioning from childhood and from birth to make him feel like it was a sacred, special book.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:50:39 Yeah. I mean, it's just it's one of those things where it's all about setting up the equation. If you set up the equation, and that's reinforced throughout your life, that this cannot have been done, you're gonna constantly think that it's the same way. Like, when my kid believed in Santa, he kept saying. He'd say things like, I don't believe Santa's real. And I go, why not? And he'd go, well, how could he get these things from. From stores that have stickers on him? Or how does he know get to everyone's house? And I go, what do you think? You know? I go, well, I believe he's real.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:06 And I'd be like, why do you believe he's real? It's like. Well, it feels, you know, I feel like. Like he is, you know, and. And. And I know people get really offended at the comparison of church to Santa, but it's just until I kind of finally told my kid, like, yes, Santa's not real. He held onto that hope because we had raised them to believe he was. And so it was hard to get to that point. And I think with Mormonism, it's just. It's so much more embedded on us, obviously, than Santa. And I'm not trying to make light of it by. By using that example.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:29 It's just until you're willing to. To. To even out that equation or to just put the equation aside and start with a blank slate, you'll never be able to do it because your. Your mind is basically forcing you into that paradigm of it has to be true. Because I believe it is. And. And it's really painful, and it's really uncomfortable. It's really difficult. And I totally get that, and I totally feel that because I've been through it. But, yeah, this stuff is really hard to deal with sometimes. But that's what I'm trying to put it out there as straightforward as I can, doing it in a chronological order and trying to be, as, you know, I'm trying not to be obnoxious about it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:00 I'm trying to be, you know, not sugarcoat it, but also not. Not be. But difficult. So I'm hoping if you're a believer and you're watching this, you can at least understand where I'm coming from and look at the sources I provide and obviously do with it whatever you want to do.

John Dehlin 1:52:13 Yeah, and we don't need you to stop believing in Mormonism. We don't need you to lose your faith. We don't even need you to recontextualize Your spiritual experiences with the Book of Mormon. Right. This, this series is for people that want to know if the Mormon Church is what it claims to be based on the evidence.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:31 Right.

John Dehlin 1:52:31 And you can review this episode with the 50 others that we have done or are going to do, and we just want you to decide for yourself. And if you decide that the Book of Mormon is authentic in a historical document and that this is the one and only true church on the face of the earth, more power to you. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:49 And, you know, obviously, we'll wrap up with. We have two quotes to wrap up with. And the one thing I'll say, why

John Dehlin 1:52:53 are we going back to the mound builders? What's up with that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:55 Because I find it to be so important that I wanted to. I wanted to finish with it so that people could understand just how important. Important it is. So this is New York's governor in 1811, and he said, there's every reason to believe that previous to the occupancy of this country by the progenitors of this present nation of Indians, it was inhabited by a race of men much more populous and much further advanced in civilization. The numerous remains of ancient fortifications which are found in this country demonstrates a population far exceeding that of the Indians when this country was first settled. And again, I just want to say, does that sound familiar where you've got this advanced race that was much more populous?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:28 Better. And this is from the New York's governor in 1811, just to show again that this is not some crackpot theory. And then the last one is going back to an archaeologist. He wrote this two years ago because I think he's getting fed up with people who keep insisting that this is not a myth. And so he said, it seems I can no longer give a public program about Ohio's ancient American Indian mounds without somebody in the audience asking me about giants or the lost tribes of Israel or even aliens. I try to address these questions politely and explain that there is no hard evidence that any of these things had anything to do with Ohio's mounds.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:58 Occasionally, if the person asking the question is a true believer, they'll accuse me of lying and hiding the evidence that would prove me wrong. Some people actually believe that the Ohio history connection, along with the Smithsonian, has skeletons of giant humans in our collections that we keep hidden from the public. And so.

John Dehlin 1:54:13 Sounds like freaking Rod Meldrum in the.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:15 It does.

John Dehlin 1:54:16 And the heartland theory of the Book of Mormon. People like, he's literally describing them because

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:21 people are going to Ohio and saying, we have proof that the Book of Mormon happened here. And he's trying to say there's no evidence for it. And so kind of the reason I bring it up again is just to put a bow on this, which is to say these things are difficult. These things are hard, and they're really uncomfortable to go through. But what I'm saying is, like, what, what Bradley Leppard basically is saying is no one's hiding evidence from people. We're not hiding stuff from you guys. We're not misrepresenting stuff. We're trying to put it out there. And I know your instincts. It's going to be to say you're lying, you're hiding, you're cherry picking.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:49 I'm just saying, you know, we're trying our best to put out this done or put this out in the most straightforward way we can and to give enough information that hopefully you can get a feel for some of these topics as we go. But we are trying to do our best. And so if your reaction is to say that we're making things up or we're hiding things, I just hope you'll kind of understand that it's not just me. It's archaeologists and other people who are also spending their whole. This guy is spending his whole life in this field, and he's just trying to say, like, this is what we have to work with.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:55:17 This is what it is. And, and I think that's really important to note because we have to be willing to work with the evidence that we have.

John Dehlin 1:55:24 I love it. All right, well, the essay is. It's. It can be found at LDS discussions.com influences that's the amazing essay for this episode. And Mike, this series. I'm just getting raving reviews from people you, you know, we all respect, you know, Michael Quinn, we all respect Dan Vogel, Mike, you know, Richard Bushman, you know, Fawn Brody, Gerald and Sandra Tanner. We respect all of them. But what you're doing is synthesizing this information, consolidating it, making it accessible, and integrating it in a way that I don't know anyone's ever done before, and then communicating it visually and verbally in a succinct way. It's. It's a huge. I've been around a long time. It's a huge gift to our people. Thank you enough, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:56:22 Well, thank you so much and for everybody watching, I hope you guys are getting some out of it and we'll. We'll see you guys next week.

Closing Remarks and Support the Podcast

John Dehlin 1:56:28 All right? All right. Well, thank you so much, Mike, and thanks to everyone again for joining Us today on Mormon Stories podcast. And for this series, we, we hope you love it. We want to thank all our donors who make this possible.

John Dehlin 1:56:45 They donate to Mormon Stories podcast to the Open Stories Foundation. I mention this every episode, but we lose 10 to 20 donors a month and they fall in financial hard times or they lose interest or they want to support something else. And that means that our revenue declines every month if we don't seek for people to become donors and replace the donors that are leaving. And so if you find value in this content, if you want to see it continue, if you want to see us finish this series, if you want to support this content to be available for not just this generation, but future generations, we really, really need your support.

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John Dehlin 1:58:43 You can comment on these episodes in Facebook during the live streams or on YouTube or leave comments afterwards. Or you can comment on the blog at Mormonstories. We read your comments. We, we consider them, we love your ideas. And if you disagree, if you have better evidence, if you have better arguments, we want to hear them. So share it with us as well. Thank you so much for your support. Thanks for all you do.

John Dehlin 1:59:08 Most importantly, be kind to each other, love each other and be good to each other. Never let religion or secularism come between friends or family if you can. Because at the end of the day. We just need to enjoy this life that we know we have, because this is the only life we know we have for sure. Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you again soon on Mormon Stories. And join us for more LDS discussions episodes in the weeks and months ahead.

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