Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon w/ LDS Discussions – 08

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:02 Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. We are super excited for you to be joining us in the middle of this really important series on Mormon Church truth claims with Mike from LDS Discussions). The main topic for today in our series is going to be anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. This is a topic that's near and dear to my heart for reasons we'll go into in just a second. But I just want to state at the outset again, remind everyone what the series about. The series is about informed consent. It's basically people make really important decisions in their lives in terms of their relationship with the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin 0:49 And we just believe that everyone deserves to really understand the evidence and the truth about the church so that they can make their own informed decisions. We're not here to take people's faith away. We're not here to tear down the church. We're not here to attack the church Church. We just want people to make informed decisions because we believe in truth and we love truth. And our partner in this series is, of course, Mike. Hey Mike. So glad you could join us.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15 Yeah, it's good to be back and I think this will be a good one because we're going to, I think, touch upon stuff people might have heard and go into some stuff that you might not have and I think give more of a well rounded kind of look at how anachronisms impact the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 1:28 Absolutely. And for those who don't know, Mike is the founder and the main author on a really important website called LDS discussions. You can find him@ LDSdiscussions.com he also has a TikTok channel. I'm sure you do Instagram as well, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45 Yeah, just basically mostly like Twitter and Instagram and just, you know, we don't. It's not nearly as active, but I think hopefully just trying to get, you know, just some of these kind of info out in a way, hopefully that's a little bit more accessible to people, especially when you're just starting to have questions. Sometimes it's nice to have some areas where you can go to. My goal is to have it where you don't feel like you're being kind of ambushed with this stuff. And I know that's hard. So I'm sure it's. It's not maybe feeling that way for some people, but that that's the goal is to try to do it in a way. I think that maybe you'll be more helpful in and gentle even though it still is really difficult to go through all of this.

John Dehlin 2:24 Yeah, beautiful. All right, well, we've covered a ton so far about Joseph Smith, about the Book of Mormon, and today this is kind of one of the most common and important concerns about the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. We all know that the Church has kind of really been explicit about the Book of Mormon. They've called it the keystone of our religion. And by saying that, it means it's like referring to an architectural structure like an arch. If the keystone falls, then the arch falls, and that's the Church's framing, not ours. We've also heard, like President Gordon B. Hinckley say, either the Book of Mormon is everything it claims to be, or it's the biggest fraud perpetrated on the earth.

Why Book of Mormon Historicity Matters

John Dehlin 3:09 Now, there are progressive and liberal Mormons that feel like you can still value scripture, Bible or Book of Mormon, even if it's not historical or literal. So we'll give room for that here. But it is important to sort of address the fact that this is the way the Mormon Church leaders have framed it for a long time. And that's why we think this is an important subject. So, Mike, what is an anachronism? That's a $5 word. Can you set it up and give us the explanation for it?

What Is an Anachronism?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:43 Yeah, just basically, for anyone who hasn't really come across this yet, the idea of an anachronism is just something whether it's an item, an idea, a historical data point that is out of time or place. And so this picture here is basically supposed to be soldiers, like in World War II, with a cell phone, drinking Diet Coke. They've got Harry Potter. It's just pointing out that if you were to see this picture and someone said this was something From World War II, you could immediately know it's not historical depiction because of the fact that they have multiple items here that we know did not come around until much later.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 4:17 And so basically, this is the same kind of idea we would use for the Book of Mormon, which is to say, when you look at the text of the Book of Mormon, does it have clues on its pages that tell us that it is being written from the perspective of someone much later who would know about ideas and items that the Book of Mormon people would not have had access to?

John Dehlin 4:38 Yeah. So as you believing or questioning Mormons or reading the Book of Mormon, you need to ask yourself, was it written anciently or was it written by a 19th century semi educated farm boy? And that's a question that church leaders ask. And it's Fair. And the point that I wanted to just add this is kind of my own slide. You've all heard me reference kind of this idea that if you found a photo of Abraham Lincoln where he's holding, you know, an iPhone, you know, where. Where it says that he's sharing his selfie on Facebook, you would know that it's not an authentic photo.

John Dehlin 5:21 The point that I think is really important is we're going to be talking about literally dozens and dozens and dozens of really blatant anachronisms today in the Book of Mormon. But. But the point I wanted to drive home with this Abraham Lincoln photo is just that it only takes one anachronism to render a document ahistorical or inauthentic. It just takes one. So please remember that if everything else about the document is 100% authentic regarding Abraham and Lincoln, but it's got one iPhone in it, it's inauthentic. And so keep that in mind. If people don't like that framing, we'd love to understand more.

The Big List of Physical and Material Anachronisms

John Dehlin 6:04 All right, so let's go ahead and begin, Mike, with sort of the big list, which is the list of the most commonly known, most blatant examples of anachronisms in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:17 Yeah. And so basically, this is going to be something that, if you've researched this issue before, you're going to see these kinds of lists. And so one of the things that we wanted to do with today is to kind of COVID some of these and then cover some of the areas that maybe haven't been touched on in some of, like, the CS letter and all that. But the point is that when you look at this and we're going to cover the apologetics at the end of the episode, so, you know, don't think we're not going to mention kind of the response Apologetics would give. But, you know, there are a lot of.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:46 Especially when you talk about physical things that are in the Book of Mormon that were believed to have been here in the 19th century when it was composed. And so you're going to see them throughout the Book of Mormon, such as steel swords, the brass plates, the golden plates, basically smelting, the ability to do metalworking, which we know was. There's no evidence of that in the Americas. And because it requires so many people, requires so many materials, it requires the blast furnaces, all of these things have not been found. And so it requires mines.

John Dehlin 7:18 It requires mines that there would be evidence of the extraction of these heavy metals.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 7:24 And then you can find in the soil, you can find tracings of the metal working that haven't been done. And so all of that stuff is just not here. And then, you know, we get into the animals. You've got, you know, the horses, which is obviously the big one. You've got, you know, chariots and elephant sheep. The wheat and barley is another area where it gets really muddy when you start talking about that. But again, when we. And we'll get to this near the end, these are things that we can test through for animals. You can look at, like their DNA. You can look at fossils.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 7:55 For wheat and barley, you can actually look at pollen. Pollen leaves a lot of traces to where it came from when it was planted. And then when you get into stuff like, you know, the highways and the cement and the fortifications, those get a little more generic. And even in this particular list, they're gonna say, yeah, those happened. But again, in those instances, you're gonna notice that those are things that are gonna be very common to most civilizations, you know, throughout the world that you're going to see.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:18 And then on, on the right side, for those who are watching, you've got some of the stuff that we'll get into a little more, which is just to say, you know, the Book of Mormon has a reformed Egyptian script, which is an. I don't know if I would call it anachronistic as much as there's just no evidence that ever happened.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:32 Greek names that are in the Book of Mormon, when they have no access to Greek, you know, and then you get into some of the stuff like talking about the different kinds of money that they would have used.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:43 The Book of Mormon creates a monetary system very briefly. So all of these things together are problematic. And one of the things that I've talked about in these overviews is to say, and from an apologetic standpoint, they'll take each of these one by one and they'll try to explain how it could work. Or in some instances, there are instances where even Farre will say, yeah, there's no evidence for this. And they'll call it kind of like indeterminate, because, you know, we don't know. But what I would say is when you take these things in totality and you start looking at them all together, it paints a picture that tells us that this, the Book of Mormon's text, is pointing to a 19th century origin because of the fact that includes so many things that were thought of in the 19th century that just simply were not there in the ancient Americas.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:26 And while we can always use the Apologetic of the evidence is just around the corner. The fact is we have a lot of underlying things that we're going to get into that tell us that the material these ideas are coming from is anachronistic. And that is where I think it gets kind of like that second level below with anachronisms, where it's not just the items, it's the ideas, it's the source material. And when you add all those things together, it's really telling us strongly that whatever you want to say about whether or not the Book of Mormon maybe had an ancient core at some point, as we have it today, it is a 19th century text.

John Dehlin 9:59 Yeah. And just to really put a fine point on it, you know, for those of you who are just brand new to this topic, just to take the example of horses, if you look at Joseph Smith's day In the early 1800s, horses are everywhere. Horses are used to farm and to travel and pull, pull carriages. And it's the main form of transportation. Even Native Americans by the 1800s had gotten. Horses were riding around on them. So Joseph would have just assumed that horses had been in the Americas for as long as people had lived on the Americas and even before.

John Dehlin 10:39 But what Joseph wasn't remembering is that prior to the Conquistadors coming over in the 141500s, 1600s, to colonize and conquer the Americas, horses were never here. So the Aztecs, the Mayas, Mayans, the Incas, they had no cows, they had no horses, they had no sheep, none of this livestock. And they didn't have a lot of the European foods like wheat and barley and other things that would have been brought over by the, you know, by the colonists, by the pilgrims and by those who traveled. And so Joseph is just basically saying, well, what are the animals and food that I see all around me? It must be that they've always been here.

John Dehlin 11:30 And that's why when you see horses allegedly being ridden and used between 600 BC in the Americas and 400 AD in the Americas, that is equivalent to Abraham Lincoln having an iPad. And it's not. Or an iPhone. And it's not just horses. It's again, like you said, steel swords, brass plates, iron, silk, cows, horses, donkeys, goats, elephants, sheep. And. And if you don't want to believe us, and we, we literally don't want you to believe us, what I. One of the most, one of the things I'm most proud of in my entire history of Mormon stories was that we reached out to Michael Koh, Dr.

John Dehlin 12:18 Michael Coe. He is, he was the late Dr. Michael Coe. He passed away. I believe he was the world's expert on Mesoamerican archeology and anthropology at Yale University. There literally is no one in the world who knows more about the Native American peoples during the Book of Mormon times in Central America than Michael Coe. And so what we did is we just brought him on a Mormon Stories podcast, and we literally went through this list of.

John Dehlin 12:51 And we would say, you know, were there still swords? He'd say, no. Is there evidence of brass plates? No. Golden plates? No. Smelting? No. Iron? No. Silk? No. Steel? No. And he validates every one of these points. So please don't take our word for it. Go to the Show Notes. Click on the interview with Dr. Michael Koh. It's absolutely one of the top three most important Mormon stories interviews of all time. And. And, Mike, I really like that you caught, when you listened to this interview, what, for me, was also one of the most profound learnings from the episode, because Michael Coe doesn't just tell us about the things that are in the Book of Mormon that shouldn't be there.

John Dehlin 13:38 He also talks to us about the things that existed during, you know, Mesoamerican ancient times, things that we know were in Mesoamerica at the time that don't show up in the Book of Mormon. Do you want to talk about that really, really quickly?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:55 Yeah. And so just to kind of extend onto that, you know, I highly recommend those interviews if you haven't listened to them, because for me, that was when I first started doing the deep dive. Just hearing some of the historical stuff helped me to try to kind of figure out some of these issues. And so Dr. Ko was really good because of the fact that not only was he one of the top experts in the world on the Mayan civilization, but he had had a lot of interactions with the kind of historians and archaeologists and all that from the Mormon Church. And because of that, it got him not just being able to use his own expertise, but to use kind of his interactions with that to understand kind of the Book of Mormon as well and what the problems would be.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 14:35 And so he is someone who can give a lot of insight on that, because he also not only has the. The expertise, but kind of the understanding of what the beliefs are within Mormonism to try to explain those better than if he was just talking without understanding what the Book of Mormon was in any way. And so one of the things he pointed out that I think was really cool was when you talk about anachronisms, and we're obviously going to spend most of this episode on that. But in a lot of ways there's kind of like this, almost like a reverse anachronism, which are things you should see in the Book of Mormon that are not there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:05 And so with the case of kind of like the Mayans, which is where a lot of people would put the Book of Mormon time, you know, place now because of the fact that we have so much evidence it didn't happen like in North America. He talks about how they had no coinage system, so they would trade in cacao beans as their source of currency, which is something that I think is pretty well established. Yet in the Book of Mormon, there's no mention of cacao beans whatsoever. While there are 28 references to grains, there's reference, a few references to a monetary system. And so the fact that the Book of Mormon is mentioning all of these things around the people in the book, yet not mentioning the things that would be around them historically is kind of like, you know, again, like a reverse anachronism.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:46 Things that should be there that are not. And then beyond, you know, talking about, like the agriculture we have, you know, you kind of look at, we talk about the horses and the elephants that are not in the ancient Americas. Like to John's point earlier, not only were the horses that were in America much earlier, like there were horses in America way earlier than the Book of Mormon times that they have fossils of, but not during the Book of Mormon time. And you'd also need them to be domesticated. But the Book of Mormon does not mention animals that are indigenous to the Americas, like wild turkeys.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:16 So again, wild turkeys have been here the whole time and they've been, you know, very populous in our, you know, the area the Book of Mormon should have taken place. And yet there's no mention of them in the Book of Mormon, which would be really difficult to believe unless you're looking at it through the lens of taking a clean slate and saying, where do all the clues point us to? And in this case, if you understand it's a 19th century text, then you might understand why there'd be no turkeys, because why would you know, Joseph Smith, if we're going to assume he's the author? Why would he think about turkeys?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:46 Because they wouldn't really fit into the story. But they are very important to the Mayan civilization. And that's where you start to not only have anachronisms, but, but you look at what should be there, and both of those are telling us this is a 19th century text, or at least a text that was not written at the time that it, you know, declares that it took place.

John Dehlin 17:03 Exactly. Yeah. And so that's the big list. Just go to the Michael Coe interview and that's what you need to get confirmation about that. And then later you mentioned at the very end, we're going to sort of address Fair Mormon's apologetic response to this big list of anachronisms. I don't want to lead with their response because I don't think it's a credible response.

John Dehlin 17:32 So we'll give you that Michael Koh interview and then you all just listen to it and decide for yourselves and we'll address some of those concerns at the end. So that's the big list. And by the way, we should probably mention right here that, you know, it isn't just modern critics. You know, in the past 10 or 20 years, you know, this, these concerns didn't start with the CES letter.

John Dehlin 17:58 You know, Mormon think brought up these issues before and the 1960s, 70s and 80s and 90s within Mormonism, whether it's, you know, Dialogue Journal dialogue or Sunstone, you know, scholars were talking about these anachronisms and Book of Mormon historicity from, you know, Mormon scholars, post Mormon scholars from the 1960s through the 1980s and 90s. So this is old territory. But it even is more significant than that at some point, I believe, Mike, we're going to cover BH Roberts as its own episode. Is that right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:34 He's in other episodes. He's not in like his own episode. But we do talk about him just because of the fact that we have some of the, you know, areas where BH Roberts started to see problems and was trying to address them. So, you know, he will be mentioned in other episodes for sure.

John Dehlin 18:46 Yeah. And I'll just for those of you who want additional validation about anachronisms, I'll be, you know, sharing in the show notes these episodes with Shannon Caldwell Montez. She talks about the secret Mormon meetings of 1922, where to kind of say it briefly, church historian B.H. roberts, who was a general authority for the church, a very important leader in the church, learns about this book called View of the Hebrews, starts applying modern scientific methods to the Book of Mormon and comes up with this huge list of anachronisms and problems in the Book of Mormon that he determines are potentially deadly for the Mormon Church. He shares them with the top leaders and kind of puts these, the entire Mormon church leadership on notice as early as 1922, first presidency, quorum of the 12, all the quorum of the 70.

Church Leaders Awareness of Anachronistic Problems

John Dehlin 19:44 They have at least like a three day meeting where all the church leaders are notified that the Book of Mormon has major anachronistic problems. This goes way back and I just wanted to introduce the name BH Roberts and introduce those Shannon Caldwell Montez episodes in there because they are also some of the most important episodes in the Mormon Stories Library that cover this issue of Anachronisms. True, true, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:10 Yeah, I mean, in. Her episodes are great because not only can you listen to the episodes or watch them, you know, she's reading, working off of her thesis paper. So I mean, she's done a ton of research into this. So it's not just. Again, it's not. Sometimes people will try to say, well, you know, Shannon Colomontes is just somebody who had an axe to grind. It's like, no, she put a lot of research into it and she backs up what she's saying. And so the fact is BH Roberts did put these documents together and everyone can read them. And while we can draw different conclusions as to what they mean, you know, as John said, these things are there, these anachronisms are real, and you can't just basically brush them to the side and say they're not important because they are important.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:48 When the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and the church today makes very tangible truth claims. And now, you know, our knowledge throughout the last 200 years is almost parabolic. You know, I mean, we, we've learned so much more in the last, say 30 or 40 years compared to maybe the first hundred years of the Book of Mormon. And because we've gained so much knowledge, whether it's archeology, DNA, linguistics, migrations, biblical scholarship is a huge one, all of those things were unknown to Joseph Smith, but they are telling us so much more about the truth claims of the Church. And that's why we're doing these episodes to try to say, here's what I found, here's where I'm drawing the conclusions, here's what the apologists are saying.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 21:27 Because we're trying to give as well rounded a picture as you can give while also not allowing for, you know, people to push some of these things aside with, you know, apologetics that don't fit with the truth claims that are being presented.

John Dehlin 21:42 Yep. Okay, so that's, that's, that's kind of the classic anachronisms that we chose not to delve into deeply today. But we felt like it was really important to start with those introductions and it honestly, it got so bad with B.H. roberts that there's good evidence that B.H. roberts lost his testimony of Book of Mormon historicity at the end of his life. And there's a whole episode with Shannon Caldwell Montez called did BH Roberts lose his testimony of Book of Mormon authenticity or historicity? So check out all that to dive deeply. Now, Mike, what I really love is the rest of today's episode is going to be so many other really important anachronisms that we don't really think about, but that are also just as significant. And again, it only takes one. So I think we start with kind of the Old Testament time frame.

Moving Beyond Physical Anachronisms

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:37 And so, yeah, yeah, this is good because this is, again, one of the things I want to do with this episode is to go beyond kind of the more common physical things. And so this is where we're going to look at some areas where there are parts of the Book of Mormon that should not be there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:51 And so while we don't always think of them as anachronistic, they absolutely are. And as John said, once you have one of these, you know, the text couldn't have been written when it claims to be. And that is again, when you have truth claims that tell us this is an ancient historical record and you've got anachronism after anachronism that tells us it could not have been written when it claims to be that, that's it as far as that goes. But again, learning where the anachronisms come from not only tell us how you can date the text, but it also gives us a lot of indications as to who wrote it and what they were, what the worldview was they were coming from.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:24 And that's why these, the rest of the presentation, I think, will be so important, because it's going to tell us a lot, not just about the Book of Mormon as far as its credibility as being a historical record, but maybe about the milieu of the person who wrote it. And obviously, as we've done in these previous overviews, it's, you know, I believe it was Joseph Smith. And I'm going to explain as we go through this, why these anachronisms are so important to note today.

Deutero-Isaiah and the Brass Plates

John Dehlin 23:47 Okay, so let's start with one. So we're going to do some Old Testament stuff before we do New Testament stuff, before we do 19th century stuff. And we're going to start with the Old Testament. We're going to start with the big one called Deutero Isaiah. And I, I know we're going to dive deep into this. But, but, but for those who don't even understand, there's going to be people who listen that don't even understand Lehi and the brass plates to then understand why Deutero Isaiah is a problem. So back up a tiny bit and give kind of the Lehigh context for the brass plates that then inform the Deutero Isaiah discussion.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:22 Yeah. So we're, and we're going to cover this a lot in this little area in the Old Testament. But basically, you know, the idea is that Lehi is going to leave with a set of brass plates, and the brass plates is going to have like the five books of Moses and other records with it. And this is kind of like this

John Dehlin 24:35 is at the very beginning of the Book of Mormon, like in the book, first couple chapters of the Book of Mormon. Lehi's the prophet. Okay, keep going.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:41 Yeah. So he's going to leave with these brass plates and they're going to claim in the Book of Mormon to be referencing these brass plates throughout. And so the idea is that when you see all of those long, long rehearsals of Isaiah, especially in the replacement text, the 116 pages which we talked

John Dehlin 25:01 about in second Nephi mostly. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:03 And so you're going to have like word for word almost with some small changes to Isaiah that's going to go in the Book of Mormon. And the idea is that they're reading off the brass plates that were taken with before they left and that the brass plates were available in that time. And, and so because of that, and,

John Dehlin 25:20 and I'll just say this is really important. I mean, the Book of Mormon by Chapter 3 has Nephi finding this drunken man named Laban and he chops off his head to get these brass plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:32 Y.

John Dehlin 25:33 Because according to a modern worldview, these, these Nephites needed scriptures to be able to study, to stay righteous. Right. So that's what the brass plates were. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:45 Yeah. And so you're bringing the brass plates so you don't forget where you came from so you can give that history. And I think there's histories of genealogy, all of these things they're bringing with them so that they don't forget who they are and where they came from.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:56 And so because of that, Isaiah is obviously in the Bible is a very important book to a lot of people. And obviously it's referenced a ton. People look for prophecies of Jesus and they're all these things. And so the Book of Mormon is going to quote from it extensively. And the problem is that scholars can now, because of being able to do more textual analysis, can look at Isaiah and they can actually pull different sections of Isaiah where they believe they are written by different authors. And the problem with that is that the Book of Mormon is going to take Isaiah as if it's one book written by one guy, written in one time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:33 And because scholars can point and say, no, there's actually three authors of Isaiah. There's a Deutero Isaiah and a Trito, or a Trito, I've heard it say both ways, Isaiah. And the problem is that Joseph Smith would not have known at that time that Isaiah was written by different authors. But scholars today, because we are so much more advanced in textual analysis and they have a lot more original material to work from, original scrolls to look at. They can look at chapters 40 through 55 and say that they're written by a second Isaiah, who was effectively producing Pseudepigrapha, which we've mentioned in previous episodes, which is writing in the name of a prophet to give your own writings credibility.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:13 And again, we're going to do a whole episode on this once we get into biblical scholarship. But the idea is that Lehi leaves with these plates.

John Dehlin 27:20 And just to be clear, timeline wise, Lehi is allegedly, according to the church, leaving Jerusalem around 600 BC. So Joseph Smith would have thought, well, Isaiah would have been written long before 600 B.C. so when he brought the brass plates he got from Laban, it would have just contained all of the Book of Isaiah. Because all of the book of Isaiah would have predated 600 BC.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:43 Exactly.

John Dehlin 27:44 And what you're saying is that now we know that a bunch of Isaiah was written before 600 BC, but that some of Isaiah was written after Lehi would have left Jerusalem.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:54 Yes.

John Dehlin 27:55 And yet that part written after Lehi would have left Jerusalem is still somehow appearing in the Book of Mormon as if Lehi would have carried it with him. But he couldn't have.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:05 Yes.

John Dehlin 28:05 Because it wasn't written yet. Because it wasn't. It wasn't written yet. And by the way, the Mormon Church acknowledges all of this. Mormon scholars acknowledge the Deutero Isaiah problem. Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:15 I would say, you know, again, like David B's interviews on Mormon stories, he talks about a lot. And I know he's. He's written two blog posts about it. And Dan McClellan, who is a translation supervisor for the church, he's conceded that there's multiple Isaiah authors.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:31 I don't. I mean, of course there are scholars who are going to argue that it was all written by one Isaiah, but I'm just saying the overwhelming majority of scholars will tell you it was written by multiple. And the problem is in the Book of Mormon, they include a lot of material from these chapters between 40 and 55 of Isaiah. And what makes it worse is that Isaiah 52 is not only quoted in the book, but it's revisited multiple times throughout the book so that when they reference sermons and stuff, they keep referencing these deutero Isaiah chapters. And so these chapters would not have been available to Lehi when he left.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:01 And so to have them being brought in from the brass plates is anachronistic because they wouldn't have had access to him. So that tells you that whoever's writing the Book of Mormon is not aware of the fact that there are multiple Isaiahs. And that is, again, it's a huge problem, and we'll do a whole episode on it. But it's worth noting here that any use of those chapters of Isaiah and those themes are used throughout the Book of Mormon should not be there. And the fact that they are there tells us it was not written when it claims to be.

John Dehlin 29:31 All right, so that's a really big one.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:33 Yeah. And then kind of going what we went into earlier when we talk about reverse anachronisms, this is some of the problems with the Book of Mormon is that they leave. And remember, they're Jewish, right? They're not Christians when they leave, and yet all of a sudden they get to America and they're immediately Christian. And so it makes you wonder why a book that is purportedly ancient and coming from a background of people who are Jewish would basically completely abandon all of their customs and immediately convert to a version of Christianity which won't exist for, you know, like, probably a thousand years, because, remember, Christianity evolves after Jesus dies.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:15 So, you know, they are doing things in the ancient Americas that in the 19th century would make total sense, but in the timeline of the Book of Mormon, it makes no sense that when they get to America, they don't mention Passover, they don't mention circumcision, they don't mention observing the Sabbath, religious rites such as burnt offerings. All those things just disappear and replace with a Christianity that just wouldn't have existed at that time, because at that time, no one knew who Jesus was. I mean, there is absolutely no way to say that they could have known who Jesus was in the Book of Mormon before anyone in the old world knew about Jesus. And yet the Book of Mormon reads like something that would be 100% familiar to someone in the 19th century.

John Dehlin 30:55 Yeah. And if you think about Joseph Smith writing this book as a late teen, early 20s, he probably didn't know a lot about Judaism, so he wouldn't have been able to write in an informed way about Judaism. And so if he's the author, that's exactly what you would expect. He knew Protestant Christianity, he didn't know ancient Judaism well. And of course, the Book of Mormon kind of reflects that. I think you're probably going to get to this later. But it's also, you would expect that if Native Americans were practicing Judaism from 600 BC to 400 AD, including knowing Hebrew, including reading scriptures written in Hebrew, because that's what the brass plates would have been written in.

John Dehlin 31:44 And, you know, there would be evidence all over the place that, number one, they had a written language. And there's no evidence of Hebrew language that's ever been found from the tip of North America to the southern tip of South America. No evidence of any knowledge of Hebrew or, like you said, ancient Jewish customs. And there would have been evidence of that, and there's just not.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:09 Yeah, I mean, like I said, you could come up with all sorts of examples, but it's just the idea that you would leave your homeland and take these records with you to preserve the beliefs you have and then get to a new place and abandon them. It just doesn't make sense. And, you know, the idea that maybe I've heard some people say, well, you know, they're abridging these plates, and so they abridged the plates and they say these things aren't important because they're no longer Jewish when they're being abridged. And it's like, I guess. But then that. But then, like, at that point again, you're just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:37 You're getting into this area where it just feels so detached from history. Like, even if you want to say they are Christians when it's being a bridge and so they don't need to talk about it, it just doesn't make sense because that would still have been a huge part of their life. It would be, you know, like, you know, to put it more into terms of, like, you know, people maybe who are watching this, if you grew up Mormon and you then all of a sudden released your journals to your kid and you left the church when you were 30 or 40, and then the first 40 years of your life, you never mention your time in the church.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:06 It would be a huge chunk of your life that you would just completely whitewash from it. And it's one of those things where it doesn't pass the sniff test. And as you said, the fact that it's being written from Someone with a 19th century Christian Methodist background of beliefs, they wouldn't know those things. They wouldn't be thinking in the back of their head about them, because they didn't live that. And so it makes more sense to say the author isn't writing them in, not because he's trying to whitewash him from the history, but just because he doesn't even think about it, because that's never been part of his life.

John Dehlin 33:36 Yeah. Yep. And I'll just say one last thing about languages. Only the, only the Mayans, as I understand it, had a written language. The Incas didn't have a written language. And, you know, North. The Aztecs didn't have a written language, and none of the North American Native Americans had a written language. My understanding about the advancement of languages in, you know, in linguistics is that once a civilization, you know, writing is a major, major advancement and accomplishment. That, that is the beginning of the marker of, of major jump in civilization. And I don't think we have any evidence of any civilization ever developing writing and then losing it.

John Dehlin 34:21 And so it just makes no sense that none of the North American tribes, that they all, their ancestors were all studying brass plates, writing gold plates, studying their scriptures, knowing reading, writing, and speaking language, and then all of a sudden, two thirds of all Native Americans or more, just completely forget how to write and read any language at all.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 34:42 Yeah, that's a big thing. Yeah, you're getting the problems quick. And that. Yeah, okay, that's, that's the problem. And, you know, we, we talked in our episode about gold plates, about how they are anachronistic, and we talked about the peerage plates. And so those are the pictures on the right. So if you watch that episode, you'll recognize those. And, you know, one of the things that we talk about in that episode is the gold plates that Joseph Smith is going to translate and how you would need about 6,000 plates based on how many words are on these peerage plates. But we did not talk about the brass plates that are in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:14 And the brass plates are absolutely 100% anachronistic for a number of reasons. And so that kind of makes it even worse for it to have the gold plates that Joseph Smith claims to translate off of. But now we've got a chance to talk about the brass plates and why those are anachronistic to the Book of Mormon along with Joseph Smith's claimed plates that he's translating off of for what we have today.

John Dehlin 35:34 So you're going to address the question of, would Laban in Jerusalem have had brass plates 600 years before Jesus? Is that what you're about to answer? Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:45 Yeah.

John Dehlin 35:45 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:46 And so what we want to look at is kind of piggybacking off of our conversation about the Peerage tablets, because that is the most commonly cited apologetic response to say, yeah, here's evidence of ancient records on metal. And we talked about how there's only 200 words on the three plates. And so what I want to talk about here is what we are told is on the plates of brass that are in the Book of Mormon. And so this is from a 1998 Ensign article. And they say, although the information is sparse concerning the origin of the plates of brass, the Book of Mormon is quite detailed on what the plates contained.

Contents and Problems with the Plates of Brass

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:19 According to Nephi, the plates of brass contain the books of Moses and the Mosaic Law, tying the Nephites to their Old World kinsmen, and both cultural practice and belief. They contained, in addition, a listing of Lehi's Fathers back through Joseph of Old, linking the Lehigh Colony genealogically with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, thereby perpetuating the patriarch patriarchal covenant, the promises made to the Fathers in a new hemisphere. Finally, these plates contained a more extensive account of Old Testament peoples and events than the Bible, although only a few precious remnants of this account are found in the Book of Mormon. So what they're telling you is they contain the five books of Moses and then a whole bunch of other stuff.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:59 And that's. And that's kind of the takeaway here is to say these plates in the Book of Mormon contain a whole lot of stuff in a whole lot of words of record. And that's why this is such an important thing to note before we go on.

John Dehlin 37:13 Yep, totally. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:15 And so if we go to the next one, it's okay. Yeah, there you go. And so we've talked about this in previous episodes. There are a number of reasons why this is anachronistic, but one of which is that the five Books of Moses or the Pentateuch was not written as we have it today, until the 6th century or 5th century BCE, which means that when Lehi left in 587 BCE, these five books outside of Deuteronomy were likely not even composed at this point in the way we have them. And so the point is, even if Lehi did leave with some records containing these stories, they would not resemble the text that we have in the five Books of Moses that is used by Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:56 And so even if you want to argue there's some version of these stories that's still being worked out through these communities, it wouldn't look like it looks in the Book of Mormon. And the fact that it does look exactly like it appears in the King James Bible tells us that's a huge problem. And then complicating that even further is the idea of a codex, which is basically to say a number of records bound together into a book form was not something that was even practiced until the 4th century BCE or 4th century CE.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:23 So basically, the idea that you would have books like, in this case, brass plates that are bound together in One book is 100% anachronistic. And at this point, the only way these records were kept were on separate scrolls. And as David Bachboy pointed out, you know, when you get to a book in the Bible where it's like first and second, it's not because they were like, you know, separate books. It's because they had to go on two different scrolls because it was long enough. And so you've got two right away.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:50 The fact that the first five books of Moses wouldn't have been completed in their in this form before Lehi left, and the fact that they're using a codex system of keeping these books bound together, both of those are anachronistic to the story of the brass plates.

John Dehlin 39:04 Okay. And then there's the issue of the language of the brass plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:09 And this is kind of what you'd mentioned earlier. And so then we've got this issue where we are told the brass plates were written in Egyptian. And that's a problem because the scholars for biblical scholarship are in, I think it's of unanimous, just about unanimous consensus that they were originally written in Hebrew.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:26 And they can tell that because as they've been translated over the years, they can still see clues that tell you that the original language was Hebrew. And so just the Britannica kind of entry just says they were originally written almost entirely in Hebrew with a few short elements in Aramaic. And so the problem with that for the Book of Mormon is that if you want to believe the Book of Mormon's narrative to be true, we would need the first five books of Moses to have been compiled before Lehi left in 587 BCE, which, again, as we said, is against the consensus of when these books were composed in the form we have them today.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:57 Then on top of that, you then need these books to be translated into Egyptian, which goes against all of the evidence because we're told they started in Hebrew and then after that translation, we need them to be engraved on plates of brass, which tells us. Which the history tells us there's absolutely no evidence for. There's no way that there'd be this length of a record on metal plates. And then finally, after you translate a book, a set of books that was originally written into Hebrew into Egyptian on brass plates, we would need the five books to be compiled into a codex, which was not utilized until about 1,000 years after Lehi left.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:30 And so in the brass plates, we have four separate problems that tell us, as an anachronism, which is just the compilation of books that weren't composed in that form yet. The Egyptian language translation, the length of brass plates that would contain this record and the codex form. So now we've got four problems that. And this is, as John said, this is the beginning of the Book of Mormon. And you've already got something that is just littered with problems that tell us in no way did this happen historically.

John Dehlin 40:56 Remind us you've already addressed this. But remind us what a codex is again in this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:00 So a codex is just this idea that you're going to take multiple books and put them together into one volume.

John Dehlin 41:05 Like a triple. Like a triple combination or a quad.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:08 Yeah, it would just be like that. Or, you know, even looking at something like, you know, when you have. Well, the Bible would be one. And I know there's a bunch of literary ones, like when you have a collection of poems or something and you put it together, a collection of Shakespeare plays and you put it together with a binding. It's just basically the idea that you can bind a bunch of material into a book with a binding, as opposed to being on scrolls or, you know, on loose papers.

John Dehlin 41:29 Yeah, yeah. And just to, just to reiterate, even if we've got the Pirge tablets that did exist around, you know, a little bit after, you know, Lehi supposedly left Jerusalem, they were. They're Phoenician, they're not Hebrew. Right, yeah. And is there any record of Hebrew plates existing, you know, around 600 BC or even soon thereafter?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:56 Well, not, and certainly not like that. I mean, the thing is they have. You'll find evidences of metal that has engravings, but usually it's pictures or it's a few words or it's like, you know, a phrase. It's not records. There's no, there's no record of having metal plates that tell you like a journal entry.

John Dehlin 42:13 It's Book of Genesis plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:14 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 42:15 It's Nothing like Exodus plates, Book of Leviticus plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:18 Yeah, nothing like that.

John Dehlin 42:19 Never.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:20 Nothing. So why we all on scrolls?

John Dehlin 42:22 Wouldn't we, if Jews were keeping records on metal plates in a codex.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:28 Yeah, we wouldn't.

John Dehlin 42:29 We have them.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:30 Yeah. And that's the thing, like, we would know. And that's why you get into trouble, because we do have scrolls that we found throughout the years. Right. But never metal plates. And again, it just. It compounds not just the origin of the gold plate story for Joseph Smith, but this is the beginning of the Book of Mormon that's built off of something that is entirely anachronistic.

John Dehlin 42:49 Yeah. And then there's a problem of math, which we've covered in past episodes, but we gotta cover it again.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:54 So this is kind of running off of the same idea that we talked about in the gold plates episode. But the. Again, we mentioned all the things that were claimed to be on the brass plates. So it goes beyond the five books of Moses. But just focusing on that, the five books of Moses contain 156,916 words. And again, that's not even getting into the material they talk about. That would go beyond that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:18 And remember, in the old world and in the Book of Mormon, there's no mention of reformed Egyptian being there, which means these engravings would likely be in demotic Egyptian, which would be something that would be a language that would have been possible back then. And Egyptologist Dr. Robert Rittner explained that demotic Egyptian is a phonetic language, which means the amount of brass plates needed to engrave the five books of Moses would be incredibly large. And so when we refer back to the Peersi tablets that Fairmormon cites as one of the greatest evidences, they have three plates that hold about 200 words. If the Five Books of Moses contains over 156,000 words, that would tell us that just for the Five Books of Moses, you would need 800 metal plates just to cover that part before you get into all the genealogy, all the extended Bible stories.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:05 And again, just think about how heavy and impractical and impossible it would be to cut off someone's head and steal a 800 plate book. It would be impossible. And again, I'm not trying to make fun of it. I'm just saying it's so far out there that to picture it just become silly to picture 800 gold plates stacked up and then you're gonna, you know, kill someone and just walk away with them. It's just. It's impossible, you know? And let me ask you, in your

John Dehlin 44:33 math, I Think I'm missing something because you're talking about the Pentateuch or the first five books, but we know that Isaiah would have been in there, too. Why aren't you adding Isaiah to that? And whatever books are between the Pentateuch and Isaiah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:46 That's what I'm saying. So I put it at the top, like, I'm not even getting into the other material that would be in there. Yeah, it's just basically to show that that alone is impossible. And then you're going to add the genealogy, you're going to add Isaiah, all these extended, you know, they talk about, there's extended stories about what's in the Bible, all of those things. So maybe that doubles it. And. But I mean, you're not going to carry on her metal plates around. It just isn't going to happen.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:06 Not to mention the fact that you're not going to have 800 metal plates in a codex form. It would be silly. It would just be. It would be absolutely pointless. And that's why they use scrolls. And so the brass plates in the Book of Mormon is a massive red flag that tells us whoever's writing it is not thinking these things through. Because if you think these things through, you're going to realize this is just not a believable story. And it's why a scholar today could read it and say, yeah, there's no evidence of brass plates happening. And furthermore, even if you want to believe there was codex a thousand years before codex form was used for books, the math issue is just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:40 We've mentioned math a few times. Math is a really problematic thing because it's a lot easier to kind of tell these stories off the top of your head than it is to sit there and really think about the implications of what you're implying that these stories would have. And so Joseph Smith is orally dictating the Book of Mormon and he can tell the story about the brass plates and talk about all the things that are on there, because he's going to keep referencing back to it, but at no point, I don't think, is he thinking, how many brass plates is that going to be? And it's just, like I said, the math is just a really big problem for that.

John Dehlin 46:09 Yeah. As a Marvel fan, I like to make the joke or the reference to Thor's hammer, how Thor's hammer was so heavy only Thor could lift it. Whether it's the brass plates or what becomes the gold plates, if, you know, if it actually, if the word, number of words engraved in the brass plates reflected the text that we have today, it would be heavier than anyone could have carried back then. And there would be evidence. Yep. Of these plates still existing. And no plates have ever been uncovered anywhere in all of North, Central or South America.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:49 And that's not a good point. Like just imagine if they're, you know, just say, you know, for example, maybe it's a thousand plates being generous that the rest of the material make it a thousand plates. You're not going to have 1000 plate book of brass records that would not be mentioned anywhere else in old records. You know, that that would be such a big deal that it would be mentioned somewhere else. And yet it's not. And it's the same problem we run into, like you said, with the gold plates in the Book of Mormon. It's just sometimes we think of the gold plate story, we don't think about the brass plate story because that's so anachronistic. And it's going to have ramifications for the entire Book of Mormon because they're constantly referencing back to them to give us material.

John Dehlin 47:22 And people should think about this because again, if for a thousand years Native Americans were engraving in plates with language, even if the Nephites get snuffed out, all the civilizations that remained that then would have grown into the Native Americans in North, Central and South America that we know today, there would have been some of them that would have continued that practice. Unless you believe the mound builder myth, which is that dark people can't do sophisticated things. And that's a whole nother episode we have on the mound builder myth.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:55 Yeah.

John Dehlin 47:56 And the final thing is then of course a believer is going to say, well, God can just make the plates disappear. And all I can say is you can say that about all of this. However, that sounds a lot more like Joseph Smith's treasure digging folklore of disappearing treasure in the earth than any reality that we see in the physical realm for the history of human civilization.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:21 Yeah, I mean, that's really at the end of the day, if you want to go that way, you can, but you can't do that and then ever say anyone else's claims are false because you then all of a sudden, every claim by me, every religious leader, every politician, every, you know, well known documented person who's making up these hoaxes, you can't prove them wrong. And so that just gets into this area of like you're going, you know, for me, it's like faith is the belief in what you can't see it, but it's not the belief in spite of what you can. And so I think this idea that we could say, well, you just got to have faith, even though the evidence is telling us it's wrong. And I think that just goes into a different area. And that's certainly not an area we're trying to even touch in these episodes.

John Dehlin 49:00 Especially, again, when we know Joseph Smith started with this idea of buried treasure that disappears all of a sudden. That gives a very plausible and direct and relevant explanation for the idea that buried treasure can disappear. If you're gonna like. If you're going to say that God's doing that and that there's no tie to Joseph Smith misleading people that he could find buried treasure that disappears, then keep believing what you're going to believe. The final thing I would say is that we always have to remember, and you've been really good about reminding us of this, that like Terell Givens and other Mormon scholars just like to go on and on and on about how sophisticated the Book of Mormon is and how a farm boy couldn't have written it.

John Dehlin 49:51 And even general authorities like Quentin Cook will try and extend that narrative in their apologetics, in general conference talks, or in their firesides. But this whole discussion of plates and anachronisms that just we've covered so far, really smack that idea of a really sophisticated book in the face. Because if it was such a sophisticated book, it wouldn't be mentioning all these plates and all these languages with deutero Isaiah that never existed in the first place. It's a rookie.

John Dehlin 50:22 These are rookie mistakes. Not a sign of an advanced, sophisticated book. And we haven't even gotten into the New Testament yet. Not to mention the 19th century anachronisms, which is next. We have New Testament anachronisms. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:36 And so this is another area where you can look at it and go, these are things that should not be in the Book of Mormon. And so for us, you know, it starts with the King James Bible. And we're gonna have another episode on this as well that kind of just goes into more detail of why the King James Bible being in the Book of Mormon is so problematic. But it really is the first and easiest way to know it's not an ancient text. The King James Bible is not translated until 1611, and Joseph Smith was believed to have a 1769 version of that translation, which means that the Book of Mormon could not have been written before that time.

King James Bible Language in the Book of Mormon

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:06 Now, again, I've mentioned this before, and I know John Hamer mentioned it in his episodes with you, but if you want to believe there's an ancient core and that the King James Bible kind of surrounds that. You would then have to really cite where that ancient core is, because as we're showing here, it's really not there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:22 And that gets more complicated by the witnesses to the translation that tell us this is a word for word translation, and that the rock and a hat will not give Joseph Smith new words until they're written down exactly as they were engraved on ancient plates. And, and that just. It's completely anachronistic because we are bringing in stuff that wasn't translated until 1611, and we're told that these are plates written anciently that cannot change in Joseph's hat until they're written. Exactly right. And so no matter what apologetic you want to use, at the end of the day, the Book of Mormon could not have been written before 1611. And that ignores all of the other things we've covered previously about surrounding influences and all that. There's just no way around it.

John Dehlin 52:04 Yeah, and that's why this series is so important, because you have to. You have to go back and watch the tight versus Loose translation episode to really understand why it makes no sense. And I would even take it one level of abstraction higher. It makes no sense that the Book of Mormon is written in King James English at all. If they're going to translate it, why didn't God translate it into modern vernacular? In other words, 19th century English, or even 20th or 21st century English? Why would he? If Joseph had a stone that he's reading from word for word, why would God choose King James English? Just King James English is its own anachronism. Forgetting the fact that Joseph is literally copying directly from a Bible that's sitting on his lap. Probably.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:54 Yeah. And I think that's just it. I mean, I think the reason it's in King James English is because Joseph Smith is using that as his foundational text and the easiest. And it's also the way that is in his worldview, viewed as the way to speak in a scriptural kind of vernacular. And so for Joseph Smith, it just makes sense. But to your point, like, it doesn't make sense that a book for the latter days is written in a language that is so completely unique to a very specific point in time, and it dates it, and the fact that it's also bringing with it errors

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:23 that we're going to go into in the King James Bible episode, it just shows that the foundational text for the Book of Mormon is the King James Bible, and it shouldn't be. If it's an ancient text, it should not need the King James Bible. If it's an ancient text.

John Dehlin 53:35 Yeah. Amen. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:38 Yeah. And so this is just from fair Mormon. We're just kind of doing some of the brief apologetics to the idea that the King James Bible is kind of anachronistic. And so from Fairmormon they say, when considering the data, Royal Skousen proposes that instead of Joseph or Oliver looking at a Bible, God was simply able to provide the page of text from the King James Bible to Joseph's mind. And then Joseph was free to alter the text as he pleased. In those cases where the Book of Mormon simply alludes to or echoes King James language, perhaps the Lord allowed these portions of the text to be revealed in such a way that they would be more comprehensible, comfortable to his 19th century northeastern frontier audience.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:15 This theology of translation may feel foreign and a bit strange to some Latter Day Saints, but it seems to fit well with the Lord's own words about the nature of revelation. To Joseph Smith, the Lord speaks to his servants after the manner of their language that they may come to understanding. Latter Day Saints should take comfort, in fact, in fact, that the Lord accommodates his perfection to our own weaknesses and uses our own imperfect language and nature for the building up of Zion on earth.

John Dehlin 54:41 I'm just not, I'm not buying that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:43 Yeah, and I know we've, we've covered, you know, this quote is going to be one that we were going to kind of COVID a bit because it's just, it's very misleading from fair and I think it just, it really is.

John Dehlin 54:52 Why is it misleading? Why is it misleading? Yes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:54 Well, we'll go to the next slide because I kind of have it on there and so it just doesn't work. And so, you know, again, it goes without saying, of course God is going to speak to us in our own language. If God was speaking in Egyptian to Joseph Smith, it would have no value to him or to anyone else because of course no one would know what he's saying. So that's a given, right, that he's going to speak in English. If he's going to reveal these words, it's going to be in a language we can write down and communicate to others. But why it's misleading is that Fair Mormon is using D&C1,24 and saying that the reason God speaks to us in our own language is to make the Book Mormon more readable.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:27 But DNC124 is speaking only about the commandments that God is giving to Joseph, he does not talk about the Book of Mormon translation until verse 29. And he says, after having received the records of the Nephites, yea, even my servant Joseph Smith Jr.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:42 Might have power to translate through the mercy of God, by the power of God, the Book of Mormon. And so their response that we should be happy that God is allowing Joseph Smith to receive it in that language is using a verse about commandments to deflect from the fact that we're told in verse 29 that he translated the Book of Mormon through the gift and power of God. It's kind of like a bit of a deflection. And again, even with Royal Skousen's apologetic, if you want to use that and say that God is projecting the King James Bible into Joseph Smith's head and Joseph can do with it what he wants, it still tells us that the Book of Mormon is a 19th century production even then, because it still couldn't have been written in ancient times in the form we have it today.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 56:23 So no matter how we want to do this, at the end of the day, the core of the Book of Mormon is a 19th century text.

John Dehlin 56:29 Yeah. And that's a big problem. And again, that surrounding influences episode we do where we talk about the late war and the Book of Napoleon as examples of King James English being written into modern fictional works during Joseph Smith's time is a much more plausible explanation for why King James English is appearing in a modern fictional book.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 56:56 Yep, exactly.

John Dehlin 56:56 Because that's what. That's how many authors they read the Bible all the time. They thought about religious language as being in King James English religious discourse. And so they would write fiction using that, you know, extending that King James English. And so check out it's late War and War Napoleon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:16 What are the two first book in Napoleon. Late War.

John Dehlin 57:18 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:19 And those have a lot of language that's just very similar. And it just shows that they're all pulling from that same worldview.

John Dehlin 57:23 And that's, in my opinion, that stuff's covered in Jeremy Rundles CES letter. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:28 Yes.

John Dehlin 57:28 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:28 Yeah.

John Dehlin 57:28 Okay. Well, we'll add a link to that as well. Okay, what else?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:32 And so, you know, our next episode, like I said, is going to be on the King James Bible in the Book of Mormon. But, you know, we've mentioned this before and we have to mention again, because any New Testament material in the Book of Mormon is anachronistic, because we should not Lehigh leaves with the brass plates. There would obviously be no New No New Testament material whatsoever on those plates. And so we're going to cover this in the next episode. We're going to cover a little bit of it here, which is to say that the two biggest examples, and they'll each have their own episode, is the Sermon on the Mount and the long ending of Mark, both of which are going to appear in the Book of Mormon almost verbatim.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:06 And so those two things will tell us right away that the Book of Mormon has to be written after it claims to be written, because they are going to have material in the case of the Sermon on the Mount that a lot of scholars don't believe was ever a standalone sermon in the case of the long ending of Mark, that's a late addition by a scribe. And so those two are huge issues that go beyond all of the 19th century Christology that is being brought into what's an ancient record. That would have all happened at least before, like all of the references to Jesus before Jesus comes is just entirely anachronistic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:42 And it comes from somebody who knows the end of the book at the beginning, because it just. Those people would have no idea who Jesus was when they left Jerusalem.

John Dehlin 58:50 Yeah, yeah. And by the way, I just had this thought. So you just read that apologetic explanation from Skousen that the Lord speaks to people in their time, in their way, in their language. Well, if Jesus was going to appear to the Nephites after his death and preach a sermon to them, is he going to preach the identical sermon that he preached to the Jews who were living in the ancient world? Or is he going to go, oh, wait, new audience. I'm speaking to Native Americans, by the way, that have been baptizing in my name and worshiping me and conferring the holy priesthood for 600, 1000 years already.

John Dehlin 59:38 You think Jesus would come up with some new material that was written for the alleged Nephites and Lamanites, but instead, it's literally like copy and paste Sermon of the Mount from the King James Bible that Joseph had sitting on his lap where why wouldn't there be a whole new Jesus sermon that was tailored and customized to Nephites and Lamanites? Wouldn't that make more sense?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:05 Yeah. And to give a little tease to our episode, which will come up in a little bit on the Sermon on the Mount, what's even more important than that is just that you can tell Joseph Smith is aware when he's bringing the material in, that there are instances that would have no meaning to the Book of Mormon people. And he makes those superficial changes, but then he leaves other things in, not understanding what he's leaving in. And so that's why the Sermon on the Mount is so important, because you could tell that he's thinking in his head.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:30 This won't make sense. He changes it. Then other things he doesn't understand what he's copying in. And because he's copying in, things would have no meaning to the Book of Mormon people. It tells us that it's being written from the perspective of someone who kind of understands some of it, but not all of it, and certainly not being written at the time it would be said. So, yeah, that's a huge problem that we'll definitely be diving into in that episode without question.

John Dehlin 1:00:52 Yeah. I don't think. I honestly don't think that we've had an episode yet that's made so many references back to previous episodes that we've recorded together. Like, I feel like this Anachronisms episode is like a place where so many things converge. They do. Where it's one thing to have these 15 episodes we've already recorded, but they're converging in a way in this episode that's kind of blowing my mind a little bit.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:21 Yeah. And that's why we talked about the start, like, try to watch these, if you can, in order, because they're going to merge and they're going to build upon each other. And that's why I think it's so important to do it that way, because of the fact that once you start seeing it, then you pick it up earlier in future episodes. And that's why I think Apologetics is so much focused on looking at one issue at a time, whereas I'm trying in this kind of format to look at them and just layer and layer and layer and layer and try to keep referencing back to say, and this is why we covered this. And this is why we covered this, because it's important now and it's really

John Dehlin 1:01:51 coming together for me in this episode.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:52 Yeah. And that's why I use that puzzle reference, because these are things where you're going to start to see the pieces start to fall together in a way that's natural and not forced. And so, with that said, so we talk about the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, we talk about those two examples. And if we go to the next slide, this is one another one from Brent Metcalfe, who did such amazing work on kind of looking at some of these issues, especially with the replacement pages of the 116 lost pages. And so the Use of Christ and Messiah in the Book of Mormon is an area where it shows that the author doesn't quite understand the words he's using.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:29 And this is another area where you kind of talk about how, well, Joseph was an uneducated farm boy and I think he was a gifted storyteller, but he leaves a lot of these errors in there, and this is one. And so I'm going to just kind of read this. It's a little bit wordy, but it's necessary to kind of explain it. So from Brett Metcalfe, he says the Book of Mormon's use of the term Christ is a perplexing feature of the book. Biblical scholars concur that the Aramaic. I don't know if I'm saying this right. Meshiha, which is the Messiah, and its Greek translation Christos, which is Christ, both mean anointed.

The Term Christ as a New Testament Anachronism

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:03 They further agree that Christ became a proper name along with Jesus only after non Semites who did not have a Hebrew conception of the title were converted and an essentially Judaic Christianity began to be Hellenized. In contrast, the Book of Mormon Hebrews do not use the term Christ and Messiah synonymously. Rather, they employ the term Christ most frequently as a type of Messianic surname. Christ as a proper name poses linguistic problems that challenged early defenders of the Book of Mormon. Oliver Cowdery chided a critic who raised the issue as being ignorant, presumptuous, and incompetent. To handle the matter he has undertaken. Cowdery argued that the words Jesus and Christ are radically neither English nor Greek, for both have Hebrew roots.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:46 This remains the apologetic's chief line of defense. Yet the Book of Mormon does not accommodate this apologetic, since it insists at many points on a clear distinction between Messiah and Christ. The Book of Mormon ostensibly defines Messiah as Savior or Redeemer. Christ coupled with the term Jesus becomes the Messiah's name. Because of this semantic distinction, Nephi can prophesy that Jews at the end of the time shall believe in Christ and worship the Father in His name and look not forward anymore for another Messiah. And he can also proclaim the Messiah cometh and his name shall be Jesus Christ. Christ is even juxtaposed with other proper names such as Nephi and Moses.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:04:24 And so this is one of those things. And I know that was a wordy entry, but maybe we should just go right to the next slide just to kind of illustrate why this is a problem. You know, again, we talked about this before, but the Book of Mormon is going to name Christ 600 years before Jesus's arrival, which is anachronistic on the surface because of the fact that no one in the old world knows of Jesus. So this is being written with a 19th century worldview. And as we talked about earlier, it's even anachronistic in the Book of Mormon, because the middle of the Book of Mormon doesn't know Christ's name or about his arrival. And then it's written into the beginning and the replacement text. So those are all kind of layers of problems.

John Dehlin 1:05:01 And I just want to, like, really emphasize this. Okay. Let's just say even though all the DNA evidence and all the archeological evidence says that Native Americans weren't descendants of Jews.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:13 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:05:14 Let's just say that some of them were. They're still like offshoots of the actual original Jews. Right. And so you just have to ask yourself if none of the Jews up until Christ's birth knew that the Messiah was going to be Jesus Christ of Nazareth, if none of them were able to know that. And we're talking about, you know, Elijah a lot. You know, we're talking about David, Solomon, you know, Malachi. Like, these are the Old Testament prophets. None of them Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, none of them Moses, none of them knew that it was gonna be Jesus of Nazareth or Mary or any of that. And yet somehow the Native American offshoots are gonna be able to be given that information and to practice Christianity. How does that make any sense to the Jews who were the actual Jews? It just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:12 Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

John Dehlin 1:06:13 Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Okay, keep going.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:15 No, and just to say, you know, it shows that the Book of Mormon's author does not understand the linguistics between Messiah and Christ. And that leads to such a clear problem. And so in Second Nephi, we have this where it says, for according to the words of the prophets, the Messiah cometh in 600 years from the time that my father left Jerusalem. And according to the words of the prophets, and also the word of the angel of God, his name shall be Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And so, because Messiah and Christ have the same meaning but a different translation, what Joseph Smith has done here is like the modern equivalent of saying something like this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:45 And we will know that the sign of a good life is to be next to a dog, which is the English word, I have been told by an angel that the dog will be known as para, which is the Spanish translation of dog. And so I'm not trying to be flippant. I'm just saying he's using these two words like they should be different, but they're the same. But he doesn't understand that. And we're going to see this issue in a number of places as we go, because there are times when Joseph Smith just doesn't understand the words he's using. And so he uses them as if they're different.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:11 And because of that, it's going to create problems down the road, which of course, he obviously wouldn't. Wouldn't have lived to see. But this is a huge problem. It's like in the temple where he claims to see Elias and Elijah, even though they're the same person with a Hebrew versus a Greek translation, he doesn't know that, so he claims to see them both separately. And this is the same problem here because he doesn't understand that these words are the same thing.

John Dehlin 1:07:32 Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:32 From a different translation.

John Dehlin 1:07:34 Okay, all right, you've got a final note on the Christ Messiah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:38 Yeah, so just a final note on this. You know, he. You hear Oliver Cowder earlier say that the person who brought this up had, you know, no understanding. And then, you know, we talk about how Messiah and Christ are the same word with different translations, with Christ being a Greek, you know, Greek word. And Joseph Smith in the 1843 times and season says, there was no Greek or Latin upon the plates from which I, through the grace of God, translated the Book of Mormon. Let the language of that book speak for itself. And so I would just say if there's no Greek upon the plates, then there should be no Christ upon the plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:08 And I realize the apologetic response is going to be whatever word they used for Christ just got, or, you know, was in reformed Egyptian, Joseph brought back to Christ. I'm just saying Christ is a Greek word. So for him to say there's no Greek on the plate, it just tells you that something is off there. And the last note, just like the Elias Elijah problem, is that in the Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith does the same problem with the. With the term Pharaoh. And so on facsimile three, he notates this person as Pharaoh as if it's a personal name. And so Dr. Robert Ridner made the note and said in facsimile three, Smith also misunderstands Pharaoh as a personal name rather than a title meaning king. So he reads King king for a goddess's name that he claims to have understood on the papyrus.

John Dehlin 1:08:48 So basically, he didn't get the gender. He didn't get the gender. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:52 Yeah, the gender and all that. Now, obviously it's a problem, but even then, using Pharaoh as If it's a name, you know, so he calls it King Pharaoh, but Pharaoh means king. So it's like saying King King. And it's just those are the little fingerprints that tell us that Joseph Smith is writing this book without understanding some of what he's doing. And obviously in his time, a lot of people probably didn't know that a lot of this stuff is going to come in the years after. But now we can look back and say, oh, absolutely, this is not an ancient text, because the people then would not have Greek at all in there anyways, and they certainly wouldn't be misunderstanding a Greek word in a Hebrew word. It just wouldn't happen.

John Dehlin 1:09:27 And again, it's also not a sophisticated text. It's a rookie text by modern standards, you know, okay, yeah, writing it in 1829, when you're late teens, early 20s or whatever, okay, that's impressive for someone with Joseph Smith's education to do at that time period. But, but to kind of go beyond that and say that this is this ultra sophisticated book. He's making really rookie unsophisticated mistakes by any modern understanding. And you can't just go, oh, well, he did good for his time and for his age and for his education level. No, this is a magic stone telling Joseph, through divine power, word for word, what he's supposed to write down. So he's making God look dumb, basically.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:15 Well, I mean, it's just, it's. Well, it's one of those things where again, it's like the, the complexity issue. And we'll cover this. We're going to have an episode, I think, in two, two or three episodes, which is just how I believed he composed it. And when you look at it, it's all about how you set the equation. So the church sets the equation basically to tell members there's no way this could happen naturally. No way. And once you have that equation set, the only data you fit into it is data that will at least make the equation seem realistic. And what I'm saying, what we're saying here in these episodes is when you start with a clean slate and you do not start with the predetermined conclusion that it's too complex for someone to create, you can show how he did it, you can show where he's pulling from.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:52 And once you can start to see where he's pulling the info from and the mistakes he's making as he does it. And in that episode that we're going to do on this, there is the parable of the olive tree for those who are not familiar is like, you know, it's dumb, because I don't know if I'd call it a smoking gun as far as saying the Book of Mormon isn't what it claims to be. It's one of the most important elements to understanding how Joseph Smith is weaving material from the Bible into a story that's purportedly from the ancient Americas. And so when we get to that episode, as long as you don't start with the equation that it's too complex for someone to do on their own, and you just start from the standpoint of I'm going to take all the pieces apart and see where they go, then all of a sudden you can see, oh, yeah, absolutely.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:11:31 He was not only capable of doing it, but no one else but him could have done it. And then at that point, the equation no longer is forced as it's too complex. It's just, this is where the evidence leads. And so that is, I think, why the church works so hard to say no one else could have done it, because you have to not think about it as you're reading. And you can't think about these little errors because these errors will tell you that, yeah, absolutely, a human did this because otherwise, to your point, God is giving him mistakes through the stone, and that does not make sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:00 And so you get to these different difficult decisions as to how it could have happened, when in reality, the easiest answer is just looking at the evidence and saying, this is how Joseph Smith could have done it, and this is why we know he did it.

Baptism and Other New Testament Anachronisms

John Dehlin 1:12:11 All right? And we haven't even left. You know, we've only just covered Old Testament and New Testament. We haven't even talked about 19th century influences. And if it's okay for me to set this up, you know, we covered this really well in. In our. Our episode. What was the episode? Oh, first question. That episode about the olive tree metaphor. Which. Which episode is that going to be in again?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:37 Just going to be in our episode that kind of summarizes how I think the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 1:12:41 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:41 How.

John Dehlin 1:12:42 How the Book of Mormon was created. Yeah, okay, we won't. We can't put a link to that now because it hasn't been recorded yet.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:46 I think. I think it's two away. I think. I think we have King James Bible, and then I think that's the next one.

John Dehlin 1:12:50 Okay, so. So check that out. All right, so we've covered the base anachronisms, and we've covered Old Testament and New Testament. The one thing that now we need to kind of really get in our mindset about is if you just look at the Book of Mormon from, you know, what's the chances that it was written by ancient Native Americans in, you know, somewhere in Mesoamerica, based on what the actual text says.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:13:19 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:13:19 Versus, you know, what are the chances that a, you know, in upstate New York, a, you know, let's just say young, 20, something, you know, Christian rural person wrote it? You know, is there, is there more evidence for the former or the latter? The way that you would sort of gather evidence for one versus the other would be to say, does a lot of 19th century relics or influences appear there that shouldn't be there? And that is why I think this is such an important point of today's episode. And you're going to start covering them. And again, we're just going to be referencing now the list that we started with, which is basically all the food, all the livestock, all the ideas.

John Dehlin 1:14:13 Bows and arrows and swords and shields and thrones and palaces and, and horses and cows and brass and steel swords, barley. That was everything that Joseph Smith was swimming in. Whether it's from him reading the Bible, whether it's from his understanding of history, whether it's from him just looking around in upstate New York and the livestock and the food that he was eating, the livestock that was being raised in the farms around him, like, that's all there in spades. And we don't need to dig. We don't need to dig into that again, but we have to start there, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:51 Yeah. And so one of the things, you know, we talk about all these items, right? And so one of the things I mentioned in the beginning is that for me, the items are really important and there are obviously so many of them and we have a lot of documentation. They didn't happen. But where I like to look at it then is to say beyond the physical, beyond the swords and the plates, which, you know, illustrated earlier, why the brass plates and the gold plates are both entirely anachronistic. The ideas that are swimming around Joseph Smith's milieu are going to work their way into the Book of Mormon, but they shouldn't, because those are a lot of ideas that are not going to develop until in some cases, hundreds of years after Jesus lives.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:28 And then on top of that, you know, the idea of Christianity is evolving, you know, still, I guess, to a certain extent, obviously today. I mean, Mormonism has changed over the last 200 years to some degree. And so those are ideas where, when you see them put back in the Ancient text, you can tell that whoever wrote the text is not working from the time frame that they claim to be in. And so when you see these 19th century Christology, Christian ideas, or even ideas that are written hundreds of years after Jesus died, it's a really good indication and a big red flag that these are not being written at 600, you know, 587 BC. It just wouldn't work that way.

John Dehlin 1:16:04 All right, so now we go beyond Those well known 19th century anachronisms to other really important ones.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:13 Yeah, and so this one is just, you know, we've talked about this a little bit before, I think, in some of the earlier episodes, but we have, you know, people being baptized in the name of Christ over 150 years before Jesus would be baptized. And so Mosiah 18:13 says, and when he had said these words, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him. Then it goes, I baptize thee, having authority from the Almighty God as a testimony that you have entered into a covenant to serve him until you are dead as to the mortal body. And may the Spirit of the Lord be poured out upon you.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:42 And may he grant unto you eternal life through the redemption of Christ, whom he has prepared from the foundation of the world. And then getting more to the point, in Second Nephi, which is part of the replacement text, it says, and now if the Lamb of God, he being holy, should have, need to be baptized by water to fulfill all righteousness, oh, then how much more need we need have we being unholy to be baptized, yea, even by water? And also the voice of the Son came unto me saying, he that is baptized in my name, to him will the Father give the Holy Ghost like unto me, wherefore follow me and do the things which ye have seen me do. And so what's wrong with that?

John Dehlin 1:17:19 What's wrong with that verse?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:21 Yeah, I mean, so these are ideas that are things that in the 19th century go, oh, yeah, of course we baptized the name of Jesus Christ. But at this point in history, there's no record anywhere that Jesus as a name is just even thought of. And so when Lehi leaves Jerusalem, there's no references to Jesus. There's no references to being baptized in the name of Christ. All of this is a modern, or at least for Book of Mormon times, it's modern because this is not going to happen until Jesus, and that's going to happen long after Lehi leaves. And so, you know, again, this is just a very big problem to have practices, you know, and as we mentioned at the start, they're not doing the Jewish practices, but they're doing practices that are going to come much later.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:59 And that tells you that they're working from a source material or a foundational, you know, theology that is going to, you know, develop long after this is supposed to have taken place.

John Dehlin 1:18:11 Yeah, that is so, I mean, if you talk about the. The claim that the Book of Mormon is a sophisticated text, if you're Joseph Smith and you're trying to write what's going on with Lehi and Nephi, you're literally baptizing in the name of Jesus with the gift of the Holy ghost descending like 10 or 20 years after they leave Jerusalem. So we're talking like 550 B.C. they're basically performing not just Christian acts that wouldn't have taken place 500 A.D. or 100 A.D. or 500 A.D. or 1000 A.D. they probably wouldn't have even taken place 1500 A.D. this sort of baptizing in the name of Jesus language with the spirit of the Lord descending, that's Protestant stuff. That's stuff that probably wouldn't appear in anyone's vernacular until the 16, 17, 1800s. Correct?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:15 Yeah. I'm not 100% sure on how Protestants evolve baptism specifically, but I do know just from, like, listening to people talk about, like, like I was saying earlier, Christology develops, has developed constantly through, you know, since Jesus died. And so not, like I said, not only is he using, you know, these, these concepts that wouldn't have been there anyways because there's no knowledge of Jesus, but he's using versions of him that would be familiar to him, surrounding him. So that's where you start to pick up on, like, you know, when we talk, we'll talk more in some of the episodes about how he composed it, how a lot of this language is going to mirror some of the Methodist revivals around him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:50 You're going to have these surrounding ideas to Joseph that are just going to work their way into the Book of Mormon, but they had no place to be there. And so from a scholarly perspective to your point, you can look at that and go, not only were there no baptisms, then not only would they have not known of Jesus, but they're using a form of it that develops later. And that's when it just gets more. And you can pinpoint more and more when the book was written, who was written. And that is why we've done all these episodes to try to pinpoint the fact that I've said multiple times, not only could Joseph Smith have written it, but no one else could have but him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:20:19 Because this all points to his worldview. It all points to his time and place, more so than anything else. And so these are problems that are just so detrimental to the truth claims of being an ancient historical text because we know they couldn't have happened when they're claimed to have happened.

John Dehlin 1:20:35 And I'm repeating myself here, but it fits in the segment. Why would God? You know, so like Lehi and Nephi are Jews, they're practicing Jews. They, it's 600 years before Jesus is even born. They, they leave Jerusalem, get on a boat, sail to America, and then all of a sudden God says, hey, here's the name of Jesus and start baptizing, become Christians, start baptizing in the name of Jesus and confer the gift of the Holy Ghost or whatever. But he wouldn't bother to do that with the original Jews.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:11 Yeah, it makes no sense back in

John Dehlin 1:21:12 the original Old World. Why is he privileging the descendants of Lehi with full Christianity when he wouldn't do that with his actual chosen people? Okay, sorry.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:24 Yeah, it's just, it's out of place. And you know, one thing I want to note here is that when Joseph Smith writes this in a Nephi, he's also rewriting Isaiah 48 to make it about baptism, which is a problem because he is reinterpreting it to fit the Book of Mormon. But this is also part of the Deutero Isaiah, which would not have been available to him in the first place. And so these are why these problems compound on each other. And so first Nephi20 says, Hearken, and hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah or out of the waters of baptism, who swear by the name of the Lord and make mention the God of Israel, yet they swear not in truth nor in righteousness.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:22:00 And if you look at Isaiah, it's pretty much the exact same thing, but it says, hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which swear by the name of the Lord. And so if you'll notice in Isaiah there's no mention of baptism because they weren't doing it then. And so biblical scholars believe that this is not in Isaiah, no reference to baptism. It's about the Jews coming forth out of a fountain that is going to spread in all directions. So just picture, you know, a big fountain of water, and then when it hits the ground, it's going to branch off into different areas.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:22:29 That's the imagery being presented here. Yet Joseph Smith is going to try to, you know, actualize this to the Book of Mormon in a way that was never intended. And we see this over and over again because he is trying to find areas of the Old Testament to link back to the Book of Mormon. And we're also going to see this in the New Testament where the Gospel writers do the same thing and they make really bad interpretations because they're needing to fit into the current narrative that they're teaching. But in this case, Joseph Smith is doing it incorrectly and out of place and out of time.

John Dehlin 1:22:59 Yeah. Okay. So here Joseph is referencing concept. Joseph Smith, through the Book of Mormon, is referring to concepts that would come through Deutero Isaiah that we've already established. Lehi wouldn't have been able to bring. Did I summarize that right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:17 Yeah. So he's bringing material that was in Deuteronomy Isaiah, which would not have been available. And then he's also misinterpreting Isaiah in the process. I mean, it's just. It's kind of like a twofer. You've got multiple problems here that are just compounding to make this anachronism even worse. It's really hard to get out of it when you've just got so many errors that are coming on top of each other. And, you know, again, it's just. It's a really hard idea to kind of unscrew and say, no, this could actually work if you just look at it the right way.

John Dehlin 1:23:42 Yeah, okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:44 And so this is where you start to get some of the apologetic responses to the anachronism of baptisms in the Book of Mormon. And so apologists that I've read have tend to point to the. I think you say a mikveh and it's a Jewish font. I don't know how I'm probably saying this wrong. But for the Tevilla, which is a ritual cleansing by immersion, and they use this as a proof of pre Christian baptism. And I think in a lot of ways they're kind of getting this wrong because it's not the same practice and the apologists know this. And so in a lot of ways, the mikveh is going to be almost what evolves into the Christian practice of baptism, because the Christians are coming out of Judaism, so it makes sense that you'd have that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:23 But this practice is if you were already born in the covenant, you don't have to do it. And so There's a write up and I linked to it on the overview project and it's a really good recap of why this is different. And so this practice is used as a cleansing way for people to go into their temple. And so the reasons you would have to have it done would be for men after they ejaculate, for women after their period's over, anyone who's had abnormal bodily discharges, weird skin conditions, unclean people, someone who's being consecrated the Aaronic priesthood for the priest who sends away the scapegoat for someone who's touched a corpse or a grave.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:02 And the point is, this is not baptism. And so for apologists to say, well, they were doing baptism then, and if you look at this, they'll show like this little Mikvah, it's like a little, they'll show like this fond, and they're like, oh, it's the same thing. It's like, no, no, the purposes are so different. This is about cleaning people so that they can go and do these rituals. It's not about converting people into believing in Jesus Christ. In no possible way is that true. And so when the apologists use this, whether intentionally or unintentionally, they're using a idea that they know would not match what the Book of Mormon is claiming. And so it's just not even a fair comparison to claim they're on the same level.

John Dehlin 1:25:39 Yeah, for me, we're going to talk about loan shifting later. For me, this is as bad as the taper. Maybe when they said horse they meant tapir kind of argument to try and say that they're talking about anything other than a Christian baptism, you know, with, with the Holy Spirit, you know, being poured out upon them. For them to try and shift and say that he's really talking about the, the Jewish ritual of a mikvah. It almost feels insulting to Jews, frankly.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:13 Well, yeah, because you're misusing their, their ritual to basically try to give yourself space for an error that Joseph Smith makes in the Book of Mormon. And that's why it's annoying, because it's, it's kind of like appropriating their ritual and saying, well, see, this was the forerunner. And I just, again, this would not be a problem for any other Christian religion because you're not trying to date baptism before it was dated. You know, the Book of Mormon creates problems that no other religion really has to deal with because they're cementing these ideas in as history when they're simply not. And in this case it creates A massive anachronism that you're trying to get out of by finding something else you can cling to, to say, well, this is similar, but it's just they're not similar.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:54 They're not the same thing. The purposes are different. And so they say this as if it's a matter of fact, but then when you look at what that actually is, you're like, no, this is not the same thing. Why are you using this to try to claim that Joseph Smith got it right when clearly they're not. They're not the same. And. And that leads us to our next slide because.

John Dehlin 1:27:09 Can I just ask one question?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:11 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:27:11 Will you be covering? Because one of the things that I was. One of the biggest lightning bolt moments to me was when I read in Grant Palmer's book an Insider's View of Mormon Origins, which I'll include in the show notes, along with my interviews with Grant Palmer, where he lists the parallels between Book of Mormon sermons like King Benjamin and, you know, Mosiah, their sermons, the substance of the content of those sermons as compared with Protestant sermons of the day that Joseph Smith would have been a recipient of during this sort of Second Great Awakening, burned over district kind of stuff. The kind of stuff that Alexander Campbell identified as being very much 19th century Protestant.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:00 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:28:01 Are we covering that today?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:02 We're going to cover that in the episode on how he could have composed it. It's going to be a part of just showing, like, where he's pulling from and how he's kind of weaving it together. So we'll definitely cover that in, I think, two weeks.

John Dehlin 1:28:12 Okay, well, I. That's cool. And I just want to say that is a major, major, major anachronism.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:19 Yeah, it would be. Just because those ideas are not there in ancient America.

John Dehlin 1:28:22 So we're not covered today. We'll cover it later. But if you go and read Protestant 19th century sermons that Joseph would have heard, they sound almost identical, not just in content, but in topics covered. Resolving the debates of the day. And are you gonna bring up Alexander Campbell's reflections after he read the Book of Mormon? Are you going to bring that up?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:44 We'll have that up. Just because. I like that quote. Just because it kind of illustrates, especially when you get into these things, how everything is. Is our ideas that were being talked about at the time that just happened to make their way into a text that's supposed to be, you know, ancient to the Americas. And it just shows that Joseph Smith is using this, his worldview, to answer these questions that people have in using the King James Bible and the style of speaking to give credibility to his words. And once you. Again, I know we'll talk more about the equation stuff later, but once you set that equation at a blank slate and you just say a clean slate, and you say, let's start without any predetermined conclusions, it is not that hard to illustrate why Joseph Smith could have written it or how he could have written it and where he's pulling from.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29:27 And once you can do that, then that equation that is too complex for anyone else to have done it just falls apart, because then all of a sudden, the variables that would go into that equation don't work. And that's why so often you'll hear leaders start with the conclusion, then work your way back. But I'm saying you start with a blank, clean slate, and then you work your way towards the conclusion, and you get a much different result because the evidence tells you a much different story than the kind of correlated material way that we've been told that it's just too complex and it's too unique.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29:55 It's just. It's really not. And that doesn't mean Joseph Smith wasn't brilliant. I think he was brilliant at pulling this stuff together and weaving it. It's just that he leaves his fingerprints in the process. And that's what tells us it's not an ancient, authentic text.

John Dehlin 1:30:07 All right, Very, very good. Okay, so now you're going to address another, what I feel is a disingenuous, apologetic response. Go ahead and address it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:30:21 Yes.

John Dehlin 1:30:22 The question is, could the Book of Mormon prophets have received revelation? Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:30:26 Yeah. And so this kind of goes along with the idea. You know, we talk about it's anachronistic to have done baptisms. It's also anachronistic for them to have known Jesus. Jesus name before anyone else. It's anachronistic to have treasure digging in there. But speaking more to the baptism question, you know, they'll say that John the Baptist was performing baptisms before Christ, which means that revelation from God could have occurred before Christ's arrival, which means the Book of Mormon people could have had it just the same. And it really misses the point because the Book of Mormon people are doing it hundreds of years early. And one of the things that we've mentioned, Dr.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:30:58 Bart Ehrman in other episodes, but he's one of the prominent New Testament scholars, and what he talks about is that John the Baptist was an apocalyptic preacher. He believed the end of the world was imminent. And so this is just I wanted to read this, this part for him because it fits really well with our earlier slide. And it says, here is why it is significant that Jesus was a follower of John the Baptist for understanding why Jesus himself was an Apocalyptist because of what John stood for. We get the clearest expression of John's views in our earliest account of his preaching. And Q. Here John is shown to be a proclaimer of imminent apocalyptic destruction.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:32 As he says in urging people to repent, the axe is already laid at the root of the tree. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire. That is important because John the Baptist was Jewish and he would have certainly been performing the cleansing ritual that we mentioned in the previous one of the Tevilla. Not sure I'm saying that. Right. To make sure that people were clean before the end times. And so it's actually, to me, citing John is actually more evidence that this was a practice used to clean people expecting the world to end than it is to claim that there were pre Christian baptisms going on, because there's no mention of these being done in the name of Jesus, before Jesus.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:09 And so to cite these things is just kind of going kind of. Again, it's starting with the conclusion, working backwards, and it just doesn't fit. If you start from the beginning and kind of work away towards what the

John Dehlin 1:32:19 evidence tells you and really, really quickly. You. You're referencing. Is that an essay called the Baptism of Jesus as an Apocalyptic Event? Or. Or is that a no?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:31 Yeah, that's an essay. I don't think. I think he. I mentioned it before. I think on his. He has a blog that he runs and so that's an essay on the blog. So he just kind of talks, you know, it's a specific entry just about whether or not Jesus and John were apocalyptic preachers and kind of why he believes they were. And I just thought it was interesting when reading that because it really does fit well with why he would be doing, you know, baptisms before Christ because he's not doing like the baptism as we think of it in Christian terms. He's doing it in terms of how Jewish people thought of it, which was a cleansing ritual to prepare you for the end times and because you don't want to be unclean when the world is ending.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:05 And so it actually fits more with that. And yet we're going to hear it used as if it's proof of the Book of Mormon. It's just, again, you're talking hundreds of years difference. And John the Baptist is not a Christian, so he's doing this at this point as someone who is Jewish as opposed to someone who's doing it years after Jesus would live. And then you'd be expecting more Christian baptisms.

John Dehlin 1:33:26 Got it. And I guess I'm going to just maybe really quickly just insert one more general apologetic argument or even kind of rational thought or appearingly rational thought that a believer might have, which is, hey, God is all powerful. If God wants to reveal Christianity to the Nephites, he can do it. If God wants to use King James English, he can do it. If God wants to, you know, advance civilization in ways, or repeat the same sermon that he gave, you know, that Jesus gave as the Sermon on the Mount, if he wants to repeat it, God is all powerful. God can do whatever he wants. And so whatever God chooses to give to the Nephites and the descendants of the Nephites, God can do it all.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:17 Yeah, I mean, and that's the argument.

John Dehlin 1:34:19 But again, like including Deutero Isaiah, God can know that there's this other Deutero Isaiah thing that was written after Lehi left Jerusalem, and God has the power to include that in whatever he tells Nehemiah, Nephi or Lehi or his successors. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:34 Yeah. I mean, and that would be the argument. I just, for me personally, it doesn't work because of the fact that at that point you've already abandoned all of the truth claims of the Book of Mormon already to effectively kind of move to another kind of area where you're safe from those claims. But it just doesn't fit with the evidence. And so if you want to take that claim, you can. It's just once you start doing that, you are now away from the tangible truth claims. And now you're kind of in an area that's, you know, I know it's kind of a phrase that might be offensive, but you're now in an area that's indistinguishable from fraud.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:04 Because now you're just, you're using the God in the gaps thing. Except it's not a gap, it's. It's evidence telling you it's not true. So if it was, and that's why I talked about faith earlier, it's not that we don't know, it's that we do know it doesn't match. And so because we know it doesn't match, they're now kind of retreating to this new stance. But, like, from an evidentiary standpoint, it just doesn't work.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:24 And once you do that, you can no longer say any other religion or any other person throughout history that's created a hoax is wrong, because we're now giving space that says, even against the evidence we're choosing to believe, which you can do. It just doesn't work for me because it puts you in a different realm from the claims of the Book of Mormon.

Joseph Smith's Early Theology in the Text

John Dehlin 1:35:41 All right, well, this takes us to a whole section that I think is super, super, super important. Joseph Smith's early theology appearing in the Book of Mormon, his beliefs at the time he wrote the Book of Mormon appearing, but none of the important beliefs after. And if it's okay, Mike, I kind of want to set this one up.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:36:01 Yeah, that's fine.

John Dehlin 1:36:05 If you're a fair investigator trying to figure out if the Book of Mormon is an ancient text versus a 19th century text written by Joseph Smith. One of the things you would ask is you would just assume that Joseph. You would know that Joseph Smith's own personal theology evolved over time. So you would know that in 1829, before the church was started, that Joseph Smith would have been exposed to Methodists. He would have been exposed to the Methodists, maybe to the Presbyterians, to the Baptists. He would have been exposed to the Unitarian Universalists. He would have had a general Protestant worldview. And a lot of doctrinal innovations were to come, whether it's the word of wisdom, whether it's the law of chastity, whether it's three degrees of glory, whether it's temple work, baptisms for the dead, sealing eternal marriage, polygamy.

John Dehlin 1:37:00 And then, of course, you know, the idea of theosis or men becoming gods. And so one surefire way is you could test whether the Book of Mormon was authentic. Ancient record versus fiction from Joseph Smith would be to see if it reveals and sort of like brings in new theology and new doctrine that had never before been known by 1829.

John Dehlin 1:37:30 Or on the other hand, if it just conveniently leaves off every subsequent later revelation that Joseph receives and doesn't include it, that would be a really telltale sign that the Book of Mormon represents a snapshot of Joseph's Christian theology and beliefs at the time it was created and doesn't include anything afterwards. And then when you add to that the fact that the Mormon Church has so often called the Book of Mormon, referring to the Book of Mormon as containing the. The fullness of the gospel. What now you're going to show us, Mike, is that that was very problematic to teach us that once we apply a critical lens to the theology in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:20 Yep. And so one of the things we look at is, like, in the Book of Mormon, it teaches there's only one God. And so this is something that is going to be later contradicted because he's going to learn Hebrew in the mid-1830s, and he's going to realize that the Bible speaks of a council of gods. That's going to change. But in the Book of Mormon, in Alma 11, they say, is there more than one God? And he answered, no. Now, these room said unto him, again, how knowest thou these things? And he said, an angel hath made them known unto me. So basically what they're saying is that an angel is confirming through prophet revelation that there's just one God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:53 And then later in Mormonism, Joseph Smith is going to teach there are multiple gods, that we can become gods. And that's going to be compounded by the Book of Mormon being unaware of a premortal existence, being unaware of multiple gods. And in this case, it's not even just that they don't mention it, they're actually speaking out against it. And so this is just showing us that the theology is going to change. And we're told the Book of Mormon is the fullness of the gospel, but it's different than the way the Mormon Church teaches it today. And so that contradiction, you can't get rid of it because it's in the Scriptures, but it's really problematic given that we're told this is supposed to restore what was lost in the Bible. And yet it's really just rehashing what the Bible said and then being corrected by Joseph Smith through later theological developments.

John Dehlin 1:39:37 And to put a fine point on it, in 1829, did Joseph believe there was a plurality of gods or just a single God?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:44 Yeah, I mean, just a single God. I mean, absolutely. So. And that's a problem. And it's. And that's reflected in his 1832 first vision, which we'll get into down the road, too. But it's just.

John Dehlin 1:39:52 Well, that's kind of this next slide, actually.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:55 Yeah. And so, you know, again, you know, to kind of show how this changes, the DNC 130, which is written in 1843, says the father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's. The Son also, but the Holy Ghost has a body not of. Not a body of flesh and bones, but as a personage of spirit. So he's saying, you know, God and Jesus are basically separate beings that are, you know, body of flesh. But then you look at Alma 11, again it says, now Zizom saith again, unto him is the Son of God, the very eternal Father. And Amulek said unto him, yea, he is the very eternal Father of heaven and of earth and of.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:29 And all things which in them are. He is the beginning and the end, the first and the last. So I mean, again, the Book of Mormon here is saying that they're the same and yet Joseph Smith by 1843 is saying, Absolutely not. You know, and so that change makes the Book of Mormon. I mean, if you want to look at it that way, it makes it anachronistic to the Mormon Church today because the Book of Mormon is telling us something that is out of place with what's being taught today. I don't know if anachronism is maybe the right word, but it just shows the evolution makes the Book Mormon out of date.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:56 And it just doesn't make sense when this is supposed to be a direct translation off of plates that are not being corrupted by men. And yet here we are with Joseph Smith making massive changes that obviously are going to contradict his earlier productions in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 1:41:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that verse is really important. DNC132.22. First of all, it's 132 in the DNC because it's super late in Joseph's development. I'm guessing that DNC 132 was added well after Brigham Young was like in Utah. I'm guessing that wasn't in, in the DNC until like the 1860s or 70s anyway. But, but it's just making it very clear God has his own body and then Jesus has his own body. It's right there in DNC130, which contradicts Alma 11. And I'm also going to say that it's, it's not just Alma 11. Like we already know, and we've talked about this previously, that the book, the original Book of Mormon said that Mary was the mother of who.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:58 Yep. Mother of God.

John Dehlin 1:41:59 Mother of God. And then later the Mormon Church changed the Book of Mormon that was supposedly translated from a stone that was word for word translation. They change it in later editions. To say what, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:14 The mother of the Son of God.

John Dehlin 1:42:15 Mary was the mother of the Son of God to change. To adapt the Book of Mormon to reflect Joseph Smith's evolving theology about God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:25 Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a problem. And it just shows, you know, that, you know, in the Book of Mormon we're, you know, kind of going to the Next slide. We're told God is unchangeable, and yet God himself, at least the conceptualization of God changes. And so, you know, you know, we're told in Mormon 9, 9. For do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness, neither shadow of changing. Moroni 8, 18. For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being, but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:56 It just says, like, if that is true, why are so many of the Mormon Church's key doctrines going unmentioned in the Book of Mormon and then in some cases being mentioned, such as, you know, the kind of state of the godhood, only to evolve and change under Joseph Smith? And, you know, that just shows this list here, how many key items that you think of when you think of unique Mormon ideas that have nothing to do with the Book of Mormon, that are all late editions. And you got to say, why in the world is a book that is the fullness of the Gospel and the restoration of the Gospel missing all of these key items that just happened to come as Joseph Smith develops his theology and learns more and then all of a sudden comes up with these new concepts? It just. It really is.

John Dehlin 1:43:38 So for people, for people who are just listening and can't actually see this slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:42 Yeah, I'll read them off.

Unique Mormon Doctrines Absent from Ancient Context

John Dehlin 1:43:43 Well, okay. Yeah, so we have a slide called Unique Doctrines to Mormonism that are, I would say, crucial elements of the plan of salvation within Mormonism that are completely absent in any way from the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:59 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:44:00 Do you want to read those? Sure.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:01 Yeah. So, I mean, these are the things that are not mentioned in the Book of Mormon that today you could not see separate from Mormonism, which is a temple marriage being a requirement for exaltation, baptism for the dead, celestial marriage lasting for all time and eternity. That salvation is the highest kingdom requires going through the endowment ceremony. In the Book of Mormon, there is no mention of exaltation or an endowment ceremony, or three degrees of glory or three degrees of glory. But the idea of secret combinations requiring secret oaths are condemned, which, of course, a lot of people would argue was referring to the Masons, which is what is used in the temple ceremony, which is a problem. Multiple priesthoods or the Melchizedek priesthood.

John Dehlin 1:44:40 And let's just pause on that. There's no Melchizedek priesthood in the Book of Mormon at all.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:45 It's a problem. I mean, it's a huge problem.

John Dehlin 1:44:47 Huge.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:48 Yeah. And that the sacrament should include water. The word of wisdom that prophets are promoted to the office by the church leaders instead of God. The Garden of Eden being in Missouri, which you think would be a big deal because of the fact that they're living in the Americas.

John Dehlin 1:45:03 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:03 The idea of a presidency is anachronistic. And the Book of Mormon makes no mention of anything beyond the 12 disciples in there. So all of these things. And what's really interesting is when you look at all these points, or if you're listening, all of these points are going to come, for the most part, from another person's thought around Joseph Smith. And so, you know, we'll get into this as we go into these different topics, and maybe we'll do an episode that really highlights where Joseph Smith is pulling from all of these sources. But it just shows that the reason they're not in the Book of Mormon is because Joseph Smith hasn't learned them yet.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:35 And so just to go real quick, like, the temple ceremony is going to come from the Masons. Joseph didn't know the Masonic ceremony at the time of the Book of Mormon. The three degrees of heaven are going to come from Emanuel Swedenborg. And Joseph Smith is aware of him, but not at the time of the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 1:45:50 Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:50 Melchizedek priesthood is going to come from Sidney Rigdon, who is not there yet. The word of wisdom is going to come from the temperance movement. Joseph Smith's not into that yet. The Garden of Eden being in Missouri isn't going to happen until Joseph Smith gets to Missouri. And so all of these different ideas, I referenced it once as like, Joseph Smith creating a mixtape. You know, he's creating a mixtape of all these ideas he likes, repurposes them into Mormonism. But all of these things that are now so central to Mormon, to Mormonism in the Mormon Church are things that Joseph Smith is going to learn later and then actualize back into the church.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:46:22 And. But they're not in the Book of Mormon, which tells you that the Book of Mormon is not a fullness of the gospel. And it's also being written with Joseph Smith's worldview as of 1829 and not as of 1843. And that, again, helps you to date when it's. When it's composed from a perspective of scholars who are trying to look at all the clues he leaves as to how you can date it. And this is another area that you can do that with.

John Dehlin 1:46:43 Yeah, dude. And you leave off of there. Plural marriage, you know, so see, now

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:46:48 plural marriage is kind of mentioned in There.

John Dehlin 1:46:49 So in the Book of Mormon, it's forbidden.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:46:51 Yeah, it's forbidden, but it's mentioned and so that's why it's not in there. But yeah, and that's. And that's one of those things because that's ironically enough, of all the later innovations of Joseph Smith, polygamy is really the only one that can't be tied back to someone else's ideas. Like, you know, we were talking about earlier with the three tiers of heaven and the Melchizedek priesthood. That one does seem to be mostly Joseph Smith who puts it in the Book of Mormon and then is able to pull from that to justify it later. And obviously we'll get into that with a bunch of overviews. But yeah, so that is the one thing I didn't put in there because that's the one thing that the Book of Mormon does kind of leave open ended, even though it does condemn it.

John Dehlin 1:47:26 Yeah. But then when you add to the fact that the Doctrine and Covenants, the early Book of Commandments, Doctrine and Covenants, condemned polygamy and plural marriage.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:33 Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:47:34 You know, and we've got a whole episode with Sandra Tanner on DNC132 that is a must listen as well.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:40 Yeah, it is. And when we get to it, I think we'll do three overviews on polygamy just, just because it's so hard to cover it in one. So we'll have three separate overviews that really just, it'll really hammer down the timeline of the revelation, how it was composed, the timeline of polygamy, the ways he was teaching it privately. I mean, all of those things are going to give you again, a window into how he is able to, I think, speak so charismatically to people and also to weave the Bible into his own needs. And that really is what the Book of Mormon is. And it's what, you know, one of the cool things about learning this stuff, one of the really cool things about learning about the New Testament is how a lot of the contradictions in the Gospels aren't necessarily because they're screwing up.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:20 It's because they're trying to tell these stories to their communities, to make them valuable to the communities and to fulfill needs that they have. And so the different contradictions are because they're telling stories to different people and trying to give them purpose in their own lives. And the Book of Mormon in its own way is doing the same thing. The problem is that with the Book of Mormon we can show that it's not historical through these clues. But it's still cool to understand kind of how he did it. Like, I still find it fascinating to look at how Joseph did it, even if I know it's not historical.

John Dehlin 1:48:52 Yeah. One more, one more. I don't know if this really fits in anachronisms, but it's an issue that I think is really problematic, that I think deserves mentioning somewhere is the number of women mentioned in the Book of Mormon, women's names mentioned in the Book of Mormon versus men's names in the Book of Mormon. As I understand it, the Book of Mormon only names six women, and only three of them are actually native to the narrative, to the Book of Mormon. The other three women, I think, are biblical names. And then, of course, the Book of Mormon has hundreds of. Of male names. That feels actually fitting for Joseph Smith's day or for the biblical times.

John Dehlin 1:49:39 Because, of course, you know, this is prior to the feminist movement, prior to the idea that women could vote, women were humans, women could own property, women had rights. And so, of course, women are deeply neglected or almost invisible in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 1:49:59 And the fact that the Book of Mormon is just so, you know, this is God's one shot to give us perfect scripture. He's been directing the plates from the beginning. He's been handing them down. He's been speaking directly to his prophets. We can't blame it on the Catholic priests or the medieval monks to have corrupted the book. And God's gonna, like, mention three women in the Book of Mormon and. And only three women. And, like, one's a harlot, like, yeah. And the other one murmurs and then mentioned hundreds of men's names. Like, is that a problem? And for some people, that's a problem.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:50:37 I mean, it's tough because the Bible doesn't exactly give a lot of nods to women either. So I think from an apologetic standpoint, they would just say it was the Book of Mormon times were just as patriarchal as the Bible was, and because of that, they didn't write down the women. It wasn't Joseph Smith. I mean, that. That gets into more like, you know, I would say more just the. I would say from. Like, it's a problem because it basically erases women from this history.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:01 But I would say with regards to this, I wouldn't necessarily. I wouldn't push too hard on it, only because the Bible doesn't exactly give a huge amount of space to women. So you can't really. I wouldn't. I wouldn't say it's unique from the Bible in that regard, but it Definitely shows that it was written, you know, like you said, prior to the last 50 years for sure. But, you know, I don't know that it would necessarily from like a standpoint of trying to draw too much from it.

John Dehlin 1:51:25 I, I understand, I understand your point.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:27 Yeah, I just wanted to throw it

John Dehlin 1:51:29 in there because I don't know if we covered anywhere else.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:31 No, I don't think we do. I mean, it's one that I think maybe we'll cover it a little bit in that overview on how it was composed because I do go into the names a little bit, but it's more like it just kind of shows that women are an afterthought in the Book of Mormon. And again, it's a problem in the sense of we see that continue through the modern church today where women are very much, you know, I know it's good women to say it, they're second class citizens. You are, because you can't hold the priesthood, you can't make any decisions that aren't going to be supervised by a man. But as far as like using that to analyze the Book of Mormon, I don't think it would really provide too much.

Closing Arguments and the Loan-Shift Apologetic

John Dehlin 1:52:05 Okay, so to close, we started off this episode with a big old list of anachronisms, whether it's materials or technologies or livestock. And we promise you that we would kind of address common modern Mormon apologetic responses to these kind of archeological and anthropological anachronisms. So what do you want to say about this? You've got two, for those who are just listening, you've got two lists here. A list of allegedly anachronisms that would have been, you know, knowable in 1842 or the original set of anachronisms.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:45 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:52:46 And then we've got as of 2005, which ones have. Now, according to Fair Mormon or Whoever Farms or the Maxwell Institute, I guess, I guess this would be a list of anachronisms that Mormon apologists would claim have been overturned.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:03 Yeah. And so basically these are both from Fair Mormon. And so this is their way of saying that when you talk about anachronisms and you're actually finding confirmation of a lot more of them with every passing year, which means that the rest of them will eventually be found. And for those who are listening, a couple of the ones that Fair Mormon now claims are confirmed are like brass plates. And as we talked about earlier, if they want to confirm brass plates, they have to address all of the other issues that come from the math, from the codex issues, from the language issues. And so that is When I talk, talked at the beginning about how the thing about anachronisms is that there's a lot of markers that give you more specific information than just using generic terms such as brass plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:45 Because were there engravings on metal? Yes, but in the same way as the Book of Mormon, like not even remotely close. And when you talk about things like steel swords, they'll say, well, there's. They found metal swords, but they're not the same as they're described in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:00 And you get these other issues like cement and highways and fortifications, and those are all pulling from these kind of fragmentary discoveries and saying that they're similar enough. Now some of these are going to match because you're not. You know, the whole thing about, like picking, cherry picking, is that you would expect in a list of, I don't know how many this is, like, I would say 40 or 50. You'd expect to find some. You're going to find some because we're talking about ideas that are going to carry through civilizations. But just to point out that a lot of the ones, even a lot of the ones that fair Mormon kind of claims have happened, I would argue are highly problematic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:36 And the ones that they determine as indeterminate are really important as well, like reformed Egyptian. The fact that we found no Egyptian in the ancient Americas is a problem. It's not indeterminate. It's the fact that we do have history of some of these people and they're just showing us the opposite. And so they're saying it's indeterminate. I would argue, at best, it's unconfirmed because it just does not have any factual basis. And so a lot of these kinds of games where you're taking a ton of things, it makes it easy to kind of show a bunch of them been found without having to go really deep into why even some of those are problematic to claim as being found.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:55:13 And I know that's kind of confusing, but it's just, that's why these, these kind of long lists are frustrating for me because as we said earlier, you only need one anachronism to show it's not what it claims to be is with regards to the timing of it. And we have gone through a bunch of them that aren't even on this list because the list is more focused on physical items. And that's why I like focusing both on the physical and on the ideas and on the material, because it's not just one prong. There's all these different prongs that are pointing at this being a 19th century text and you only need one.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:55:44 And so fair Mormon is trying to find all of these kind of outer, easier ones, like fortifications, which are going to happen through a lot of civilizations, but it's not answering the big ones, such as brass plates with long records. Reformed Egyptian having buried, you know, millions of people dying or hundreds of thousands dying in battles. All of these things should be found, and they're just not being found because the Book of Mormon historically has no place in the Americas.

John Dehlin 1:56:10 Yeah, yeah. And I'm just going to say there's so many problems with this list. You know, they're, they're leaving off, you know, in this example that we're showing here on this slide, they're leaving off a bunch of important anachronisms. So for example, I don't see silk anywhere, I don't see honeybees anywhere. So they're leaving off a bunch of checkboxes that they know they should be including. Right. They're adding a bunch of dumb ones, you know, like large cities or highways. Anytime you have a civil, relatively advanced civilization, you're gonna have just basic elements of civilization.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:56:49 Right.

John Dehlin 1:56:50 So they're kind of adding extra superfluous boxes so that they can fill up boxes with green. That feels like almost straw men. But then they're also ignoring the preponderance of archaeologists and anthropologists like Michael Coe, who are the real unbiased experts on these topics. And they're checking boxes that have no business being checked. There's no way Michael Coe would check Steel Sword to have anything to do with North, Central or South America during this time period. There's no way he would check brass plates.

John Dehlin 1:57:28 You know, there's, there's no way he would check barley. Like he would reject a ton of these green boxes that they have checked. And that's disingenuous. And then the final thing is they're not admitting their bias, which is they're literally paid by BYU and by the church to make these arguments. So they're kind of like non credible sources, you know, in my mind. To begin with, really quickly, let's also talk about loan shifting because I don't think we have a. What is loan shifting? And you know, why is it dumb and why is it a problem? Because I don't think we've even talked about what loan shifting is and why people should look out for it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:58:08 I mean, loan shifting is basically this idea that you could have. Joseph Smith is kind of given like more of a visionary experience and so he sees an animal. It looks like a horse. So he puts horse in the Book of Mormon. And then you look as archaeologists or historian or like a BYU professor and you say okay, and the most common one is the tapir. They'll see a taper and they'll say, well, there were tapirs in ancient America. It looks kind of like a horse. So if we loan shift, we can make a tapir a horse and use that to say that Joseph Smith saw something that looks like a horse.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:58:38 He used the word horse because that's what he knew, even though it was really a tapir, which he didn't know that word at the time. And it's used a lot. It's just, it's one of those things where again we're told that this is a tight translation off of a rock and hat, word for word. And so we have all of these errors with regards to these animals and these, these items that were not there. Maybe the same thing with a steel sword. Well, they'll say, well, Joseph Smith looked like he was seeing a steel sword. That's what he knew in his head. But it was really some other ore, some other material that maybe wouldn't have been so durable or whatever the case might be, it just, it doesn't match.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:59:09 And the problem is that is a position you're only going to take once you're initial truth claim has been proven false. And then you retreat to the second level and say, okay, maybe he actually saw something like it but used a different word for it. And it's just again, we talked about this earlier when we talked about like once you start to give space there for like loan shifting, it just, it immediately takes away the truth claims of Mormonism with regard to the book Mormon being a historical text and kind of moves it to the second level where you could say Joseph Smith was a co author, he was trying to verbalize it in a way that made sense to him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:59:44 And it just, it doesn't really, it wouldn't stand up if you were to do a peer reviewed paper because they'd say, no, these are not the same things. But we're doing it because we need people who are reading the text and coming across these problems to feel like there's a solution, however implausible it might be, that could maybe explain it. And I just, I think it's just a, it's, it's a word game, I think that is used to try to make these problems go away.

John Dehlin 2:00:08 And for those who don't know the history, we literally have BYU professors, you know, writing documents for farms or for the Maxwell Institute or for Fair Mormon hypothesizing that when Joseph Smith Wright horse wrote down horse in his mind, what he meant is a tapir. And what we're showing here is kind of a comedic representation of a Native American warrior riding on top of a tapir. Like, it is such a ridiculous argument that it strains credulity.

John Dehlin 2:00:43 And a lot of these green checkboxes that Fairmormon and others will, you know, include on these checklists, they're redefining what the word barley means. They're redefining what the word sword means. And they're doing it all the way through. And the problem is, number one, they know they're doing it.

John Dehlin 2:01:03 But number two, there's no credible non Mormon archeologist or anthropologist that would acknowledge these things. But number three, again, and I'm repeating what not only you've said today, but what we said in previous episodes, but I'm trying to restate this in a way that new people to the discussion will understand, is that if the Seer Stone worked like the witnesses all told us it did, which is that Joseph would claim to see the Seer Stone, read what was on it, dictate it, the scribe would write down what the Seer Stone, what Joseph said from the Seer Stone, and then the Seer Stone could listen and hear and know that the scribe had finished writing what the words that Joseph had dictated before it continued.

John Dehlin 2:01:54 And we know from accounts that that's the power that the witnesses to the Book of Mormon ascribed to the Seer Stone. If we know the Seer Stone has that power, and if we know that Joseph Smith can produce names like, like Nephi, like Lehi, like Zarahemla, like Rami, Umtum, and then if we know that he can actually come up with names of objects and animals that we know never existed or that do not exist in present day or to any historical understanding, like Curlum, like Kumam, like the names of currencies and just proper names and cities that are used in the Book of Mormon. If Joseph Smith can come up with all of those names, then he could have come up with a name for a sword that was more accurate, or he could have come up with the name of wheat or barley or cow or cattle.

John Dehlin 2:02:49 That. That was more accurate. And so this whole loan shifting taper garbage is, is really disingenuous and insulting. And this. It's deceitful, I think.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:03:03 Well, it's just, it's great if it's grasping at Straws. And it's one of those things again, like, you know, I think it's also a bit of a distraction because you can say, oh, there was a hundred anachronisms, and we. We think we found 50 of them or something. Right. And you don't have to go to a believing audience and go one by one. I mean. And again, we don't. I didn't put slides on this stuff because, like I said to me, it's missing the point that we can look through the source material, we can look at the theological ideas and show this is not an ancient book.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:03:31 And that doesn't even get into all the problems with these individual items. But even like barley, one of the things that's really interesting about that kind of stuff is they leave a pollen trail. So you could tell, like, from a specific kind of barley where. When it came here and where it came from. And they've done a lot of. I forgot what the. There's a term for like, pollen cortez or something. And the ones that are sometimes cited don't really match, as if they came over, you know, when Lehi got here. So it just doesn't necessarily.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:01 It's much more complicated, and they want to make it more oversimplified. So they could say, we found all these things. And, like, the brass plates are a great example, because they say there's evidence of brass plates, but we've shown you their evidence for brass plates is actually, in my opinion, the most evidence you could ever have against the idea that the Book of Mormon would be written on golden plates or that the five books of Moses plus all the other records would be on brass plates, because it would be to the point where you couldn't lift it up. So if you want to cite that as confirmed, then you have to say, okay, if that's confirmed, if that's my evidence of records on brass plates, then what does that mean for the Book of Mormon?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:34 Because then all of a sudden you need a 6500 plate set between the sealed and unsealed, and you don't want to go down that road. So it's like, can you claim to find it as confirmed, yet not tell what the implications of that confirmation are? And that. And that, to me, is where I'm trying in these overviews to really kind of illustrate why the apologetics a lot of times create other problems elsewhere that of course, they don't mention. And that's why these things just don't fit together well, because once you dig into it, you could see that they just don't. They don't work in a way that the evidence leads you to. It only works if you start with the conclusion and work your way back.

John Dehlin 2:05:08 Yeah. And just to kind of summarize again what we've already said, but like, it only takes one anachronism to prove a document to be inauthentic. And we have deutero Isaiah, we have plates that don't make sense. We have reformed Egyptian, a language that makes no sense. We have, you know, livestock and food that doesn't make sense. We have Old Testament teachings that make no sense. We have New Testament teachings along with King James Bible stuff that make no sense all the way to 19th century Protestant sermons, Masonic stuff, Joseph's father's own dreams, Protestant sermons.

Absence of Expected Ancient World Evidence

John Dehlin 2:05:47 And then a complete lack of all the stuff that should be there, like jaguars, like cocoa beans, like turkeys and like Jewish rituals and, you know, and the like. And so again, if it only takes one, they're just. And it's missing all of Joseph's later theological developments. If this is the fullness of the Gospel, why is it missing the Melchizedek priesthood? Ceilings, temple marriage, temple work, baptism for the dead, three degrees of glory, celestial marriage. It's just, this is a massive smoking gun. And for apologists like Skousen or Terrell and Fiona Givens or Patrick Mason, for any modern Mormon apologist to claim that the Book of Mormon is just this incredibly sophisticated, intricate magic work of sophistication, it's not. And it's got thousands and thousands of anachronisms and unsophisticated problems with it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:06:52 So, anyway, yeah, and that's the thing. I think one of the things we talk about throughout these overviews is to say that it's a really good story that weaves in a lot of stuff and he does a really good job weaving theologies that are all around him. And so there is a lot where you can look at Joseph and say he is a very creative genius. And I know when you say that, a lot of apologists kind of smile because they go, of course you'd say that because you have no other explanation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:07:16 And we'll get to that in a few weeks as to how he could have done it. But the problem is being a creative genius still leaves you without the knowledge of biblical scholarship, the knowledge of not having, knowing what's in the ancient Americas. And those are the testable claims that the Book of Mormon makes that we can test against. And so once you find out that those tests show us that that's not true, then it's really hard to make the argument that the Book of Mormon can still stand up as historical and that Joseph Smith is receiving us directly from God because it just doesn't match up.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:07:44 And so whether or not Joseph Smith was smart or not, it still shows that he's leaving a lot of fingerprints. And that's really what the focus is in these overviews, is to say there's too many. There's just too many. There's. There's too many red flags to where you could sit there and go, well, maybe if we just look at it this way, it's like, no, because even if you, even if you, you know, turned onto a different street, that street still got him. Then you turn into another street, that street still got all sorts of problems. It's like no matter where you go, you're going to run into these issues.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:08:08 And so, you know, that kind of leads us to a good way to conclude it, which is to say, just in this overview, beyond that typical list that you see a lot that we talked about with horses and steel and chariots is just look at where the material is coming from. So you've got the King James Bible, which tells us it's not ancient because that was not written until 1611.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:08:28 Using Deutero Isaiah shows us that he's working off of a mindset that all of Isaiah was one authority, so it couldn't have been on the brass plates. The Christ the Messiah problem kind of tells us that the author of the Book of Mormon just didn't quite understand that there was a Greek translation of a Hebrew word in there. And as you mentioned earlier in this episode, this really does fall back on the tight versus loose translation methods, because these issues all require a loose translation to account for the errors in the text. But the problem is all of the witness accounts are telling us without any hesitation it's a tight translation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:09:03 And so it really comes down to either all of the witnesses were wrong and Joseph Smith was lying to them as to how he was translating it, or Joseph Smith was the author of the Book of Mormon, which is what all of these errors are pointing to.

John Dehlin 2:09:17 Yeah. And again, just to kind of bring it all together, when you add to it the episode on the DNA evidence, when you add to it Tower, Babel, Global Flood, Adam and Eve, when you add to it just, just all the different other problems, it, it just, it, it becomes significant. So, yeah, that's why, that's why the series. And you add to it Book of Abraham and you add to it kinder plates, Kinderhook plates. If you add to it the Joseph Smith translation and the problems there, it's. It's just, you can't. You go from thinking there's no smoking gun to thinking that you can only see smoking guns.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:09:58 Yeah, I mean, it's like I said, it's. I think I said it at one point early in our episodes, but it's like you can look for smoking guns and then you can look for like death by a thousand cuts. Because the problem is, you know, the best way I could say it is every time you turn your direction, you try to go somewhere else to get away from these problems, you're just going to find more. And that's really, like you said, you know, it goes beyond the Book of Mormon. We're just kind of getting towards the end of talking about the Book of Mormon and then we're getting into biblical scholarship and then we're going to get into the Book of Abraham.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:10:24 Every one of these things is not just telling us that these aren't ancient texts, but that the problems that are in the Book of Mormon, in the Book of Abraham, you know, in the Doctrine and Covenants, all these things are very common threads that have to be coming from, you know, a single source, which in this case is Joseph Smith. And so we can show where he's pulling from, we can show why he's evolving his beliefs. And that is not a good thing if you want to believe that the truth claims of Mormonism are true. This is a good thing if you're trying to figure out how it happened, which is why I find it to be really fascinating.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:10:57 But yeah, it's just everywhere you go, there's a problem. There's no real way to escape it unless you kind of, like I said, untether yourself from that evidence based reality. It only works if you just say, I don't care about the evidence and I choose to believe. And if that's the case, you can do that. It's just know that when you do that, you are now in a realm that kind of goes beyond faith. It's really going into a realm that's more, you know, faith that's not based on just what we know, but faith in spite of what we know. And I think that would be a space you would never grant to another religion.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:11:26 And that's kind of one of those things we've tried to pull into these episodes. Which is to say, if you saw all these problems of Scientology, would you say, I could totally understand why people still Believe in it. Or would you say, oh, my goodness, that's all you need to know is know that it's not true. And I think we all know what the answer is because we would not give that space to someone else because the evidence is just everywhere.

John Dehlin 2:11:44 Yeah. Yeah. Well, this has been an amazing episode. I know. It's going to be an instant classic on Mormon stories. And according to the timeline I have, we're only like eight episodes into this series. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:11:58 Long way to go.

John Dehlin 2:11:58 We've got Book of Mormon, King James version of the Bible in detail. We've got this awesome episode. I can't wait for how the Book of Mormon was composed. We've got several episodes. Speak about anachronistic. We've got several episodes we've already recorded, like Adam and Eve, the Global Flood, Tower of Babel. Then we're going to get into Sermon on the Mount, which I'm excited for. We've already recorded long ending of Mark Deutero, Isaiah. I can't wait for. And then we leave, you know, kind of Book of Mormon and we get into first vision and priesthood, restoration and word of wisdom and so many other cool things like kinderhood plates. Mike, you're just. You're a genius. You're brilliant and we love you and people are loving this series, so we can't thank you enough.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:12:41 Well, thank you so much. And like I said, it'll be fun to get back and we'll do the next one next week.

John Dehlin 2:12:45 All right, thanks, everyone. Thanks, Mike. You guys take care. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Please share these episodes far and wide. Please give us your feedback mormonstoriesmail.com feel free to comment on YouTube or on Facebook.

John Dehlin 2:13:03 We love your feedback. We're working hard to try and find a balance between not going too fast, where people that are newer to these topics can understand them and learn as we go, but not going too slow. For people that have been studying this stuff for a long time, we're trying to find that good balance. If you have feedback on that, just realize that we're. We're trying to have this relevant to everybody. Know that we do have time codes in the YouTube version. So you can actually go to the description of YouTube. And if you want to jump ahead, if you find that we've made a point and we're still describing it and you just want to jump to the next slide or the next point, you can go to the jump codes or the jump points in the time codes and jump to the next episodes.

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Closing Thanks and Support the Podcast

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