Book of Abraham, Part 3: A Look at the Text Itself w/ LDS Discussions – 32

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition. I am your host, John Dehlin. It is December 8, 2022 and we are here for another LDS discussions episode. This is, I believe, if I'm counting right, episode number 32 in a, I don't know, 50 plus segment series analyzing Mormon Church trans truth claims. The topic for today is a very exciting and important one. We're in part three of our coverage of Book of Abraham. Today we're going to be looking at the actual text of the Book of Abraham. For those of you who are just joining this series in the middle, my friend Mike has put together an amazing website called LDS discussions.com where he thoughtfully and carefully and in an evidence based way tries to dispassionately analyze Mormon Church truth claims. And we have been doing a very popular and successful series of his essays. And again, the essay that we're going to be covering today can be found at ldsdiscussions.com abraham text. But to just remind everyone, you can always watch or listen to these LDS discussions episodes integrated into the Mormon stories YouTube feedback or the Mormon Stories podcast feeds on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts. If you're watching us through YouTube, we would ask you to please subscribe to our YouTube channel. We're pushing hard to try and get a hundred thousand subscribers and you're taking the time to subscribe not only notifies you when the next amazing LDS Discussions episode comes online, but it also helps with the algorithms. It helps get these videos out to people that need them and it helps us. So please, please take a moment to subscribe to our YouTube channel. While you're at it, subscribe to Nemo, the Mormon YouTube channel as well. Just because Nemo's with us today. And of course, if you want to watch these videos in sequence on YouTube, there's a playlist, a YouTube playlist, and on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts, there's the entire LDS discussion series included as its own podcast. And even in Spotify they allow us to upload the video in addition to the audio. So. So we're trying to provide you and or your family and friends with as many ways as possible to consume this really important content. So joining us today, as always, is the amazing Mike. Hey Mike.

Mike 2:30 Hey everybody. How's it going?

John Dehlin 2:32 Almost. Merry Christmas.

Mike 2:34 Yeah, we're getting there. It's crazy how fast this year has gone.

John Dehlin 2:36 Yeah. Are you excited for today's episode?

Mike 2:39 I am. This will be one that I think will be interesting for people that follow a lot of Mormon history podcasts just because we always focus so much on the translation and the papyrus and all that. And this one's going to focus more on, like, putting that aside and saying, even if we didn't have any of that, what does the book Abraham text tell us about its authenticity? And so I'm excited about it. And I also, for anyone who listens to it and says, why did you have to do this? I just want to throw out that this is David Bacavoi's fault. He did a series with you, and for those who don't know, we'll mention him a lot this episode. Dr. Bachavoy is a biblical scholar. Um, he used to teach within ces, and he understands kind of the biblical scholarship behind these texts better than most people do because he was in the church and this was his field of study. He's got a doctorate. Um, and when he did his episodes with you, he mentioned this very idea of you can look at the book of Abraham by its text and get a better idea of its authenticity without even looking at the translation. Um, and so that sent me down that rabbit hole. And so this episode is his fault. But I think it's a really interesting one and will be a good one for those who haven't, you know, dove into the book Abraham too much already.

John Dehlin 3:52 I love it. All right. And of course, we're really super excited to have Nemo from Nemo, the Mormon YouTube channel all the way from the UK joining us as well, representing officially the British Museum. Is that right, Nemo?

Nemo 4:07 Yeah, sure. Let's go with that.

John Dehlin 4:09 Ish. And of course, I'm just gonna. I want to enshrine in the LDS discussions episode, the fact that you just did a really important episode on Mormon stories and on LDS discussions and on your own channel about a really important interaction you have with Elder Oaks. And I'm just throwing that out there. Check it out, everybody.

Nemo 4:26 I'm a professional agitator.

John Dehlin 4:27 What's that?

Nemo 4:29 I said I'm a professional agitator.

John Dehlin 4:31 Yeah. How's the response. How's the response been to that episode Nemo?

Nemo 4:35 The response has been really positive. A lot of people reaching out, really grateful that I've put that in place. And. And you've not seen the last of it yet either, so there's more to come.

John Dehlin 4:44 All right, that's just a teaser. Go check out on any of these podcasts we've mentioned, just type in Nemo and you'll find Nemo's interaction with Dallin H. Oaks. Okay, so before we actually Jump into the content for today. I have to give a shout out to a couple important people you've already mentioned. One, Dr. David Bakavoy in the show notes will have a link to my Mormon stories episodes with Dr. David Bachavoy. They are definitely top 50 classic Mormon stories episodes where. Where David Bachoy talks about ancient scripture and historicity and truth claims. And then of course, we always are going to acknowledge Dr. Robert Ritter. The Mormon Stories episodes, like 13 hours long, where a legit Egyptologist, may he rest in peace, discusses the Book of Abraham, the Papyrus, Joseph Smith and Mormonism in a very detailed and intensive way. And, and of course, Robert Rittner passed recently, and so we always want to give him a shout out and, and honor him for his great work. And Nemo, you've got a book you wanna. You wanna also maybe mention really quick.

Key Resources and Format for This Episode

Nemo 5:55 Yeah. So this is the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri, a complete edition by Robert K. Rittner, available through Signature Books, I believe. But it is a great exclamation of what exactly is on the papyrus. Should you be unclear? Because the Book of Abraham, did you believe it was something else? So that's worth checking out. Really well researched and it just supports Robert Rittner.

John Dehlin 6:17 I think that's Signature Book. So shout out to Signature Books as well. We'll include a link to that in the show notes. And I think my Mormon Stories interview with Robert Rittner covers a lot of the detail in that book. All right, well, welcome again, Nemo. And Mike, let's turn it over to you. We've got. We've got some slides and some videos to go through today.

Mike 6:34 Yeah, so today we actually have a lot of videos which hopefully will be a nice break from hearing us speak. And it'll also allow viewers to kind of understand both what some of the critics, like Dr. Rittner would say about these problems and also what the apologists say. So we have clips from both that I think hopefully will give a little more context to looking at the text without trying to focus as much on how it came to be, which, which is what we're going to try to do in this episode as opposed to the first two.

John Dehlin 7:00 I love it. All right, let's jump in.

Speaker D 7:03 Yeah.

Mike 7:03 And so, you know, if you are following along and you're caught up the last two episodes, we looked at the Book of Abraham, looking at it through the lens of how Joseph Smith translated it and what he told us it was. So we looked at what Joseph Smith claimed the papyrus fragments said, and we looked at what they actually do say. And then we kind of looked in episode two about how the church attempts to kind of reconcile the. The problem that they agree with, which is that the papyrus fragments and facsimiles have absolutely nothing to do with Abraham and that they date to about a thousand years after Abraham would have lived if Abraham was a real figure. And so today we're going to look at the text of the book Abraham, kind of how we evaluated the Book of Mormon, because the Book of Mormon obviously doesn't have a source text that we can kind of compare it to. And we want to see if we can date the Book of Abraham as an ancient text or modern, you know, kind of an ancient scripture, modern text, just by looking at the text alone. And, you know, kind of, as I said earlier, most of us, especially as you're first getting into Mormon truth claims, you're going to come across the Book of Abraham because it is a massive problem. But most of that, most of what you're going to see, like say in the CES letter or letter from my wife, you're going to come across the translation problem, because, let's be honest, that's a smoking gun to show Joseph Smith couldn't translate Egyptian. But the question is, can you tell if the Book of Abraham is what it claims to be just by looking at the actual text? And that's what we're going to do today.

John Dehlin 8:26 I love it. So if I could just summarize in my, you know, kind of like simplified way for someone who struggles to understand all this stuff, regardless of whether Joseph Smith translated the papyrus. Right. We can just understand from the text that he produces sometimes, you know, whether what he produced is accurate or valid or not based on the textual clues in the actual document itself. Is that right?

Mike 8:52 Yeah, I mean, it's just like, you know, with the Book Abraham, I don't know how many episodes we did. I think there were six or seven episodes. We looked at like anachronisms and we looked at kind of the, the use of the King James Bible and all of those things tell us the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text because of the fact that there's so much 19th century material, there's 19th century ideas, and of course the King James Bible, which wasn't written until, I think, 1711, 1611. Either way, it's obviously way longer than the Book of Mormon times. And so when you have all of these fingerprints on the text that tell you this is coming from a modern lens, a modern perspective, then, you know, it's not an ancient text. And with the Book of Abraham today, we're going to do the exact same thing and look at the text and see what clues Joseph Smith is leaving on the text that can tell us, yes, this is ancient, or no, it's not. And obviously we're going to focus on the apologetics we didn't cover in the last episode. Um, because if you've read the Book of Abraham essay on the. The church's website, they do offer these suggestions of evidences that show it's got an ancient core. And we'll address those as we go as well, because obviously that is where we're going to kind of, as you said, like, even if you didn't have the source material, can we tell if this is ancient or modern?

John Dehlin 10:03 Got it. Nemo, anything you want to add so far?

Nemo 10:05 No, I think. Let's jump right in.

Biblical Scholarship Problems in the Book of Abraham

John Dehlin 10:07 All right, let's jump right in. So, biblical scholarship in the Book of Abraham.

Speaker D 10:11 Yeah.

Mike 10:11 And so this is going to be an area where, if you've followed us from the beginning, we've done episodes talking about biblical scholarship in the Book of Mormon, and all of that is going to tie into this episode. We covered this extensively back in that section of episodes. But one of the problems we see with the Book of Abraham is similar to the Book of Mormon, which is that it relies extensively on the King James Bible, which means that any problem you have with the King James Bible is going to end up being a problem for the Book of Abraham. And so as a quick example, the Book of Abraham, chapters 2, 4, and 5 are basically retelling Genesis chapters 1, 2, 11, and 12 from the king James Bible. And as we talked about in those episodes before, and we'll talk about today, that creates a problem right off the bat for the credibility of the Book of Abraham being an ancient text. And we covered this in our episodes about, like, the story of Adam and Eve, the global flood. Genesis was not written until at the very earliest, 1000 BCE, and so most scholars today would argue that it was compiled sometime between the 6th and the 5th century BCE, which is obviously extremely notable with Abraham. So at the Book of Mormon, they leave, I want to say, in what, 541 or something like that, B.C. but the book of Abraham is going to go way earlier than that because Abraham is much older than the Book of Mormon. And so that compounds this problem. And so we can look at the Bible and we could look at the Book of Abraham and see that it's including many stories and elements and ideas that were simply not written or even created until long after Abraham would have lived. And so even if we want to set aside the argument as to whether or not Abraham is a historical character, we could see that the Book of Abraham is a 19th or at least a modern work, likely a 19th century work, based on the materials it pulls from. And so without even dealing with the translation issues that Joseph Smith creates by, you know, translating the facsimiles and the Egyptian characters, we could tell right off the bat that this cannot be from Abraham's time based on the text that it's using as a foundation.

John Dehlin 12:09 Okay, so if I'm understanding this right, Abraham according to the text, Abraham would be writing about things, it's by his own hand. He would be writing about events allegedly that were happening while he was alive. But we know, we know that the actual biblical text that recounts events related to Abraham would have been written long, long after Abraham would have been alive, if he even lived at all. That's one thing that I think I just heard. And the other is that because, you know, there are problems with just the existence of Adam and Eve and the existence of a global flood and the existence of a Tower of Babel, which we've already, you know, those sorts of things. To the extent to which the Book of Abraham imports those events as historical events, you know, from the Old Testament into the Book of Abraham, it's just importing all the historical problems that the Old Testament already starts with. Did I get that summary? Right?

Mike 13:05 Yeah. And Abraham would have been, I believe, about 1800 BCE would have been when he would have lived if he was a historical figure. And so if he's 1800 BCE and Hebrew is not a written language until, I believe, 1300 BCE or so, and this material in the Bible is not compiled until centuries after that, then how in the world is Abraham using material that's not going to be compiled for over a thousand years after he would have lived, as if it's his autobiographical story? And so that really is the problem. And we will go over this a little bit in our episode that kind of recaps Joseph Smith's different translations. But to think about it, you know, we have the Old Testament Joseph Smith's going to revise as the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, and he's going to put the Creation, the early Genesis story, into the Book of Moses. Right.

Speaker E 13:52 And.

Mike 13:52 And so Moses is going to receive a lot of this via revelation from God. Well, Moses lived after Abraham. So how is Abraham now getting the information that's given to Moses via revelation, like if these records were passed down, wouldn't Moses have it? And those are the wrinkles you start to see because of the kind of like almost like when you're watching a TV show and they have like these continuity errors. And so, long story short, Hebrew was not a written language that Abraham would have lived. So how is Abraham pulling in text that originated in Hebrew as if he lived them? And that's just basically in a very quick way to say that Abraham could never have written this.

John Dehlin 14:27 Okay, so we're looking for 19th century clues. Go ahead, Nemo.

Nemo 14:31 The important part of that is that in the, in the header of the book of Abraham, it says, written by his own hand upon papyrus. So there's no wiggle room to say that it wasn't really him or it was someone else later down the line. This was the man Abraham, if he existed, writing this down.

Speaker F 14:47 According.

John Dehlin 14:47 According to Joseph Smith himself.

Nemo 14:48 According to Joseph Smith himself, yeah. And.

Mike 14:50 And he told other people in the church that at the time. So I think there's one from, I want to say, W.W. phelps, where he mentioned something, he says, this was written by Abraham's own hand. You know, it's not part of the book Abraham. But he's telling other people, like when he's teaching these ideas from the book Abraham that was written by Abraham. So, like this idea that maybe it wasn't really written by him, but Joseph Smith just misunderstood it. It's everywhere. And so. And so to Nemo's point, yeah, so Joseph is saying Abraham wrote this down by his own hand upon papyrus in its material. That's not even going to be compiled for over a thousand years after he would have lived.

John Dehlin 15:19 And we already know the papyrus dates to long after Abraham would have lived. So there's no way he would have written on the papyrus in his own hand because the papyrus dated to like a thousand years later. Is that right?

Mike 15:29 Yeah, yeah. And that's just it. So, you know, if you look at it from that standpoint, there's no way Abraham could have written it. And if you look at it from the standpoint of just say, for example, the papyrus had all burned up in the. In the Chicago fire, we didn't have the source material, which we do, or at least we have some of it. Even if you don't even have that, you can look at the text and say, there's no way in the world Abraham wrote this because it wasn't even created until a thousand years later. So how could he have written it, you know, in that. In the King James Bible style. There's no way.

Nemo 15:54 Got it.

John Dehlin 15:55 Okay, this is good. I think we have a good foundation. Let's jump to the Global Flood and the Book of Abraham.

Global Flood and Documentary Hypothesis Issues

Mike 16:00 Yep. And so, you know, we discussed this in our episode on the Global Flood, but the Book of Abraham is founded on a literal historical flood, which we know just didn't happen. And so from the Book of Abraham, it says the land of Egypt being first discovered by a woman who was the daughter of Ham and the daughter of Egypt, which in Chaldean signifies Egypt, which signifies that which is forbidden. When this woman discovered the land, it was underwater, who afterwards settled her sons in it. And thus from Ham sprang that race which preserved the curse in the land. So that's Abraham 1:23 to 24. And so just to say, as we said in the Book of Mormon and the Global Flood episode, if there's no Global flood, the entire premise of the Book Abraham is immediately false because of the fact that they're finding it underwater after the flood, which is why they mentioned that it sprang, you know, from Ham. And just as the church could see that the papyri has nothing to do with Abraham and that the papyri date is almost 200 or 2000 years after Abraham would have lived, or I think a thousand years between 1 and 2000. I believe this is a clear example where we could say that the Book of Abraham is not historical, because the entire introduction to the idea of Egypt is not historical and is also based on kind of a more modern retelling of this Global Flood, which is a story that was basically inserted when they redacted Genesis, you know, again, between 800 and 1200 years after Abraham would have lived. And as a side note, Egypt does not mean that which is forbidden, which is another issue with the text where you could say that that's not correct.

John Dehlin 17:26 And I'll just say we'll include a link in the show notes both to our Global Flood episode. And I did an episode with Simon Southerton in his science versus more mature Truth claims about the Global Flood, where we actually bring on scientists to talk about the Global Flood. And yeah, there's. There was never a Global flood, Nemo. Unless you talk to Rod Meldrum, and Rod Meldrum would say there was, because the water receded into the core of the earth and became kind of crystallized ice as the earth core. Nemo, do you want to add anything about the Global Flood?

Nemo 17:58 I always. I always struggle because I put my apologist hat on, and I'm instantly looking at that text and thinking, Right. Okay. How can I justify this? How can I justify this? Like, for example, the River Nile floods, and part of Egypt is at the Nile Delta, so that land could be described as underwater. Right. So there's all those sorts of things that, you know, that people are going to go for with this to try and make it make sense. But in reality, as we're going to see through the ensuing slides, you can pick at each of those little things and you can try and make each of them work, but the overwhelming weight of it all is that it's not historical.

John Dehlin 18:30 Yeah. Okay, so that's big problem. Let's just say big problem number one. The next one is the Book of Abraham and the documentary hypothesis. That sounds sophisticated.

Mike 18:42 Yeah. And so this we talked about in our episodes about biblical scholarship in the Book of Mormon. But Genesis as we have it today was compiled from multiple sources that were woven together by a redactor into a single Book of Genesis. We talked about this before because it's clear if you look at the differing creation stories as well as the two flood stories, they have contradictions within them. And those come from the fact that they have two different or two, depending on who you ask, there could be between, I believe, two and four or five different sources that are pulled into Genesis. And so this leads to contradictions because they're pulling these different sources together. But these sources contradict each other, and they don't smooth all of those out, as you can see just by reading Genesis and looking at the differences. And this is a problem for the Book of Abraham because of the fact that Joseph Smith is pulling and relying so heavily on the King James Bible and grabbing from Genesis material into the Book of Abraham, not understanding that the book is using two separate sources to have contradictions with each other. And so using the text of Genesis as a writing of Abraham himself is anachronistic because Abraham, as we talked about, already would have lived around 2000, I believe, 1800 BCE, as I think the more know somewhere in that range. But they're pulling from two separate sources that both are created long after Abraham would have lived, which complicates this whole problem. And so as I mentioned earlier, Joseph Smith is calling these the books of Moses in the Book of Mormon. And yet we're told that Abraham, who would have lived 700 years earlier than Moses, is going to have access to this material which has not been yet written, which even the Book of Mormon states. And that's why you have these continuity errors. And if you want to say Abraham is a true historical figure. And I would say most scholars would argue that if he was a historical figure, he was nothing like he's written in the Bible because of the fact that the stories weren't written down for so long after. He would have lived about a thousand years before Genesis was compiled, maybe even longer. And this becomes even more problematic because of the Book of Abraham stating that these records have come into my hands. So Abraham is making it explicit that he's working from these records that are, like, literally coming into his hand that are. That are not gonna be written for over a thousand years later.

John Dehlin 20:52 All right, Nemo.

Nemo 20:54 Well, I think there's a couple of points here to make. Mormons are used to such a tight chain of custody when it comes to ancient scriptures. So, for example, there. A lot of people view the Book of Mormon as passed down. Passed down, passed down, passed down, compiled at the end. Boom. Book of Mormon.

Speaker G 21:09 Right.

Nemo 21:09 The Bible is a lot less neat than that. And I think a lot of members almost hold the view that the Bible is just some solidly revealed book of scripture that just came into being one time, you know, and there's not a lot of focus, certainly in things like Seminary Institute, as far as I'm aware, on the actual origins of the Bible. And we tend to put it to one side because we have that whole scripture about. We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. And so it actually serves the apologists and those who want to defend the church to not refocus on how the Bible came to be. Because the muddier you can leave that, the more you can just play into, oh, well, it's probably not translated correctly or, oh, well, you know, we can ignore that. So all that is to say that when we're looking at. We're talking about source materials here, we're talking about how did the Book of Genesis actually come to be. We know what source materials the modern Book of Genesis we have now came from. And that's what Mike is talking about, that those are way after this man who supposedly wrote us down, Abraham would have lived. So that's. That's the problem. So that we have to remember that the Bible is made from source texts, and it's not got the tight chain of custody the Book of Mormon claims to have.

John Dehlin 22:19 Love it. And if you really want to understand this, that's why we started by talking about David Bacavoi's episode. We're also going to show some clips from that in a second. But to really dig into this, the episode with David Bacavoi will help quite a bit.

Mike 22:33 Yeah. And the documentary hypothesis is very confusing the first time you listen to, like, even Dr. Vacavoy talk about it or any other scholar, because you have differences in opinion as to how many sources there were. So some will say there's complete sources, like there's the J source, the E source, there's the priestly source, there's another source that I can't remember off the top of my head. And so there are. Most scholars agree to at least two sources, and then some have arguments as to whether or not there's a third full source or fragments. The point is that really, no scholar at this point disagrees with the very simple fact that the books, the early books of the Bible in Genesis especially, are coming from multiple sources that are being, you know, basically pieced together.

Speaker E 23:15 And.

Mike 23:16 And anyone who disagrees with that would then have to address why there are so many contradictions in the two flood stories, in the two creation stories, because those tell you immediately that there are two sources with differing kind of themes and needs. That's why, like, the priestly source is, you know, focused on, you know, the priesthood and all that stuff. And so that kind of leads into the clips from. From Dr. Vacavoy because they are a little confusing. So as you listen to him talk about this, it's kind of important just to understand that from a scholarly perspective, it's not really even in question now. If there's multiple sources, it's more or less trying to figure out exactly how thorough all, like, three or four or five sources are.

Nemo 23:55 And if you go back and listen to the episode we did on the Book of Mormon from this sort of angle, you'll see that when the Parable of the Vineyard has a very clear delineation in it where Joseph Smith was drawing from two sources. So it's not just the people that put the Bible together that have got this problem. Joseph Smith himself, when he was compiling the Book of Mormon, when he was creating the Book of Mormon, drew from two sources. And those contradictions make that evident.

Speaker G 24:20 Yep.

Nemo 24:21 So go check that out. Yeah.

Mike 24:22 And that. And that was one of my favorite things. And that was from. I think Bill Real was the one that first, at least, or Anthony Miller and Bill Real, I think, were the two that introduced that to me. And that's in that episode that we did about, you know, how it was a Book of Mormon composed. And it's a great. Nemo's making a great point because Joseph Smith is doing the same thing. Because he's taking. Now, Joseph Smith is doing it in a way that leaves his fingerprints on it. So you could see where these two sources he's pulling from. You can kind of understand how halfway through, he forgets where he's pulling from and pulls from a different area. But this is also something you would expect to see when men are creating these texts because they're trying to bring all of these different sources and ideas together into one book. And it's really hard to do that without having some contradictions and some wrinkles. And so that's why it's confusing. But it's really important to understanding the book Abraham.

John Dehlin 25:10 All right, well, let's jump to the Mormon Stories clip that comes in two parts where Dr. Bakavoy helps to explain the documentary hypothesis. Anything you want to say to set this up, or should we just roll it?

Mike 25:23 No, just, you know, again, this is. If you're confused by this, because it is a little bit confusing when you talk about, you know, the way that these sources are pieced together. I would just say listen to it through and then go back. I mean, between the two clips, it's like three or four minutes, but it. We'll go over it at the end. But it makes a lot of sense, and it's really important, obviously, to the book of Abraham.

Dr. Bachavoy Explains the Documentary Hypothesis

John Dehlin 25:41 All right, let's roll it. Let's roll. Clip one of David. Dr. David Bachavoy explaining the documentary hypothesis problem on Mormon Stories podcast.

Speaker E 25:52 Beginning with Genesis chapter 11, where Abraham is introduced in a lengthy genealogical list, we then jump to the narrative portion, and that's. I'm looking at it. It's in verses 28. So basically 28 through the end of the chapter, verse 32, I'll read that Haran died before his father Tara in the land of his Nativity in Ur of the Chaldees. And Abram and Nahor took them wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife Milka, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milka and the father of Iska. But Sarai was barren, and she had no child. And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter's and daughter in law, and his son Abram's wife. And they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan. And they came unto Haran and dwelt there. And the days of Terah were 205 years and Terah died in Haran.

John Dehlin 26:53 Okay, so far, that just sounds like traditional Old Testament stories that are hard to understand.

Mike 27:00 Yeah, and that's why, you know, it's just, It's. It's important to do the first clip because when you play the second clip, it's going to make a lot more sense because they tie together.

John Dehlin 27:07 Okay, so we just roll the next clip.

Mike 27:09 Yeah, just go right in the next one.

John Dehlin 27:11 All right.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 27:12 Because what I just read to you in that introduction, going back to our previous discussion, that all stems from the priestly document. Notice what happens here. Abraham's father takes him out of the land of Ur, and it already identifies and says Abraham's father is going to take him into the land of Canaan. Then if we ignore the chapter division and just move from Genesis chapter 11 right into 12, then we read, now the Lord said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee. It's repetition and it's inconsistent because in the priestly narrative, which stems before this, in chapter 11 that we just read, Abraham leaves the land of the Chaldeans. He leaves Ur with his dad, who's very much alive, and they're leaving and they're going on a journey to Canaan. Then this next story it tells, God speaks to him and says, hey, get out of the land of Ur and leave your dad behind. See, there's. There's inconsistency there. But it makes sense when we recognize that the second narrative in Genesis 12:1, 2 is from an entirely different historical document, edited and compiled together in the book of Genesis as Genesis 11 and Genesis chapter 12. Genesis 11 stems from the priestly narrative. And this first part of 12 where we have Yahweh mentioned is J or the J source.

Video Clip 1 28:40 Right.

Video Clip 1 28:41 Now, if we jump then to the actual book of Abraham that Joseph Smith produces in Kirtland, Ohio, watch what happens. It not only is the story all presented in first person as if Abraham himself is now telling the account.

Video Clip 1 28:59 Unlike Moses.

Video Clip 1 29:00 Yeah, unlike what we see in Book

Video Clip 1 29:02 of Moses is not first person. Right?

Video Clip 1 29:04 Yeah.

Video Clip 1 29:05 We have chapter two of Abram. Now, the Lord God caused the famine to wax sore in the land of Ur in so much that Haran my brother died, and Tara my father yet lived in the land of Ur of the Chaldees. And it came to pass that I, Abram Ham, took Sarai to wife, and Nahor, my brother, took Milka to wife, and was the who was the daughter of Haran. All of that information right there is a reflection of the priestly Source in Genesis 11. It's a revision of that. But then, now here's the J material, verse 3. Now the Lord had said unto me, abraham, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, and unto a land that I will show thee, thee. So notice how those are two different historical documents that contradict one another that have been brought together in the Book of Abraham as if it is one single harmonious narrative put into the words of Abraham. And that is an illustration of how source criticism presents direct challenges to the claims, traditional claims and assumptions regarding the book of Abraham. How could this come from Abraham when we know that these are two separate historical sources written years, many centuries after he would have supposedly lived? And that's just one illustration of many, including the end of the Book of Abraham, which is going to again present a retelling of the opening chapters of Genesis with the priestly creation story and then the J creation story as if it's one harmonious text, all presented as if it's divine revelation from Abraham.

John Dehlin 30:41 All right, well, that, you know, some are going to find that to be kind of technical and scholarly. So, Mike and Emo, you guys want to take a stab at explaining to us what we just heard?

Mike 30:51 Yeah, I think it's just saying that basically Joseph Smith is unaware that Genesis is two different sources. And so he's now going to take this redacted text out of Genesis that contains two sources and put it into Abraham as if Abraham is the creator of both sources. And I think it shows that Joseph Smith is using material that wouldn't be written until, I think, 1200 years after Abraham would have lived, as if it's Abraham's own words, even though they were originally written by two different people. It's very technical and that's why it could be a little confusing. But it just shows Abraham could not have written this because he is writing something that we know was written by two different sources, and he's writing it as if he was the writer of both. It's one of those things where it's just kind of like an impossibility to have had happen in 1800 BCE when it's not going to be compiled for another 1200 years.

John Dehlin 31:42 Okay, Nemo, you want to add anything?

Nemo 31:44 Joseph Smith took two secondhand sources, tried to make them into one first hand looking source, and created a contradiction that proves what he did.

Mike 31:54 That's a better way of saying what I was trying to say. Nemo is way better at being efficient than I am.

John Dehlin 31:59 Nemo drops the mic. Do you want to drop the mic, Nemo? Okay. All right, well, let's jump to the next slide, which is the first verse of the Book of Abraham contains an anachronism. So this is the third. This is the third sort of problem that we're listing today, is that right?

Speaker D 32:16 Yeah.

Mike 32:17 And this is just, you know, it feels a lot like this episode is going to mirror our series on the Book of Mormon. You talk about anachronisms and the documentary hypothesis and some other stuff we're going to get into. And for the Book of Abraham, it suffers from all of those problems that the Book of Mormon does or even the Bible, as we'll get into. But the fact is, these things tell us these problems tell us when a text was written or when it wasn't written. And so as we talked about earlier, one anachronism tells you that a text is not what it claims to be with regards to time and place. And so.

John Dehlin 32:46 And for those. We're going to give an example for those who don't remember.

Mike 32:50 No, no, go ahead.

Speaker E 32:51 You could.

Mike 32:51 Go ahead.

John Dehlin 32:51 Yeah, so like, if you. If someone says, oh, I found a document written by Abraham Lincoln in 1860 when he was president, and it mentions an iPhone, you know that it's not an. You know that it's not an authentic document written by. By, you know, Abraham Lincoln because iPhones didn't exist, is that an okay example of anachronism?

Mike 33:12 Yeah, I mean, basically, with the Book of Mormon, we have all of the ones we talked about, but, you know, from a biblical scholarship standpoint, that's like we're talking about deutero Isaiah. So the Book of Mormon has deutero Isaiah, which isn't going to be written until after Lehi leaves, and yet it's in the Book of Mormon on the brass plates as if it was written beforehand. And that one thing tells you that any material that stems from that is not coming from the time that the source claims it to be coming from. And so obviously, the more obvious example, to your point, would be like, if, yeah, if there's a book about the Civil War and how Abraham Lincoln was using radio to. To, you know, go back and forth with the generals or something like that, you'd say, well, that didn't happen. It's the same thing here. It's just. It's harder because we have such an emotional attachment to it, to kind of acknowledge that this should not be in there.

John Dehlin 33:56 All right, should we should we read what the anachronism is? Yeah, all right, let's do it.

Anachronisms and Borrowing from Genesis

Mike 34:03 And so this is, you know, as we talked about, Joseph Smith is borrowing so heavily from Genesis, which is not going to be written until Abraham's time. So really any use of Genesis or the King James Bible in the book of Abraham is already in an anachronism. But this is the very first, first verse of the book of Abraham. It says, in the land of the Chaldeans, at the residence of my fathers, I, Abraham, saw that it was needful for me to obtain another place of residence. And this is, you know, one of those things we're talking about. You know, the book is written in the first person, just like the Book of Mormon, not like the book of Moses. I mess it up, which leaves no space for this to be a writing that was done after Abraham would have lived. As Nemo had pointed out earlier, when you say it's written by his hand upon papa pyramid and now you have it written in the first person, you're not leaving space that this could have been written in Abraham's name, you know, 1200 years later when they were compiling Genesis. And so it really doesn't allow for the reliance on the King James Bible. But more importantly, the book Abraham begins with an anachronism that dates the timing of this text to well after Abraham's life because they use the land of the Chaldeans. The term Chaldeans is pulled from Genesis, chapter 11, verse 28, which states, and Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity in Ur of the Chaldees. As we talked about before, Genesis was not compiled until at the very earliest 1000 BCE because Hebrew was not a written language until this time. And scholars can tell that Genesis was originally compiled and written in Hebrew. And this is another quote from an interview that Dr. Bachavoy did with Radio Free Mormon. He says Chaldea was a Semitic speaking country that existed between the late 10th and early 9th and mid-70s, six centuries B.C. after which this country and its people were absorbed and simply assimilated into Babylonia. And the description that we find, they're both in the book of Abraham and in the book of Genesis. Ur of the Chaldees designates Ur with southern Mesopotamia and the time in which the Semitic speaking Chaldeans controlled the city state, that city state and the Chaldeans controlled Mesopotamia and specifically Ur. And this is interesting, but the dates are 626 through 539 BCE. And this means that the texts from the Bible that refer to this area as Chaldean, ultimately derive from that time period. So what that tells us is that this part of the text, the very first verse of the Book of Abraham, has to date between 626 and 539 BCE. Yet historically, if it is an actual credible document, would have had to been, you know, well over a thousand years earlier.

John Dehlin 36:30 All right, Nemo, what do you want to add?

Nemo 36:33 Well, it's. It's just like finding a document that calls India part of the British Empire, where, you know, then it has to be from a certain time because otherwise it would just be India or it'd be whatever else it was called. Yeah, it's. It dates it.

Mike 36:47 Yeah, it's the very first verse of the book. Abraham tells us the very first verse tells you this is not what it claims to be because it's using a designation that would not come to be for over a thousand years. And so right off the bat, you already know this is not what it claims to be.

John Dehlin 37:02 Got it. Okay. All right, let's go to the 1834 patriarchal blessing ending up in the second verse.

Mike 37:11 Can you go back one slide? Oh, oh, there we go.

John Dehlin 37:15 Even. Fair. Even Fair admits this is a problem for the Book of Abraham.

Mike 37:19 Yeah, and this is just as we said, you know, when you have a dating issue like this that comes into play, it creates a huge problem that, you know, it's like you said, it's technical. It's a little bit more confusing than looking at, say, the papyrus translation. But the first verse tells you this is not what it claims to be. And so Stephen Smoot had written an article for Fair Mormon and he talks about this. He says, unlike the vague and contradictory details provided in Genesis, the Book of Abraham appears to ground Abraham's Ur in Syria. The added geographical Olashem Olusum. We'll talk about that later. And cultural details, Egyptian presence at Abraham's homeland in the Book of Abraham make a northern location for Ur essentially inescapable. At the same time, however, problems persist for the Book of Abraham. For one thing, its text mentioning of the Chaldeans, as with Genesis, is, according to our presently available evidence, probably anachronistic. Perhaps future findings will overturn this. But as things stand at the moment, this remains a problem for the book. Abraham's historicity, although not a fatal one. Latter Day Saints approaching the historicity of the Book of Abraham and should therefore be cautious and nuanced in how they evaluate the text historical claims. And just to know, Dr. Bachavoy Thea Bachoy talked about this and there's no probably about it. You know the word. He's using the word probably here to give a little bit of wiggle room, but there simply is none. When you look at the use of Chaldeans in a text that needs to be created around 2000 BCE there's no probably. This is an anachronism. And you know, you can argue if it's a fatal one or not from, you know, a faith promoting standpoint, but from the standpoint of is this text coming from the time of Abraham? No, it's not. Because of the fact that the very first verse tells us that.

John Dehlin 38:59 Yeah, if this is only probably anachronistic, I would love to see what fair Mormon considers definitely anachronistic.

Mike 39:09 Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Nemo 39:10 Yeah.

John Dehlin 39:11 Okay. So fair, basically, to summarize, fair Mormon, which is the Mormon Church's apologetic non profit admits the anachronistic problem of Chaldeans

Mike 39:26 or Chaldeans or of the Chaldeans in the first verse. Yeah, I mean, so that's the thing, like this is one of those issues where the only way that you can address it, and this is what fair Mormon does, is to say perhaps something down the road. It's always, you always hear that apologetic where it's like, well, we don't know everything, so we can't know anything. And that drives me insane because of course we, we base our lives, we base decisions all the time, not just about church, based on what we do know. And so this idea that we have to throw all that away to preserve an error in the Book of Abraham is to me, nonsense. But yeah, they're basically saying unless something overturns is an anachronism. And so for them to have to concede that I think is important to confirm what David Bachelor was saying, which is that this first verse dates the Book of Abraham specifically to the time when the Bible was being, when Genesis was being compiled. Which tells you that there's absolutely no chance that this is authentic to Abraham's time.

Speaker H 40:16 Yeah.

John Dehlin 40:18 Okay. All right, let's go on now to the next slide, which is an 1834 patriarchal blessing ending up in the second verse of what chapter one of book of Abraham.

Mike 40:30 This is the very second verse. We have the first verse that we just read. And now we're, now we're just into the second verse, which is, you know, obviously kind of crazy. And now the second verse is going to tell us that again, this is being pulled from a modern source. This very, the second verse is going to take language from a patriarchal blessing that was given by Joseph Smith Sr. And compiled by Oliver Cowdery. And so I'm going to read you from the Book of Abraham. First it says, this is verse two. And finding there were greater happiness and peace and rest for me, I sought for the blessings of the Fathers and the right whereunto I should be ordained to administer the same heaven, having been myself, a follower of righteousness, desiring also to be one who possess great knowledge, and to be a great follower of righteousness and to possess a greater knowledge there, and to be a father of many nations, a prince of peace, and desiring to receive instructions and to commit keep the commandments of God, I became a rightful heir, a high priest holding the right belonging to the Fathers. And so now this is from a patriarchal blessing that would be given a year earlier. We diligently sought for the right of the Fathers and the authority of the holy priesthood and the power to administer the same. For we desire to be followers of righteousness and possessors, or of greater possessors or greater knowledge. After this, we receive the high and holy priesthood. And so you see all of these similar phrasings. Basically, you're seeking for the rights of the Fathers, the blessings of the Fathers, and you want to be followers of righteousness, desiring a greater knowledge. You see that in both the book Abraham and the patriarchal blessing. And so again, this is being compiled by Oliver Cowdery a year earlier. And so again, even fair Mormon concedes in their article about this. They say at the outset we'll assume that there is an authorial relationship between the two, since the language does appear to be similar. Fairmormon does go on to say that it's unlikely that Joseph had access to this blessing, but I would just say the language speaks for itself.

John Dehlin 42:23 Okay. And I guess somebody, if they're trying to think up reasons, they could say, well, God just revealed the same sort of text to Joseph Smith or, or to the patriarchal blessing that he revealed to Abraham way back in the day. I mean, that's the. But I guess, Mike, you always refer to special pleading as a problem, as a sign of a. Of a likely problem. Is that right?

Mike 42:45 Yeah, I'm, I mean, yeah, you could, like, again, it's, you know, I'm not trying to be facetious here, but once you start doing that, you are indistinguishable, distinguishable from, from fraud to say, well, it's, yeah, it's a coincidence that Joseph is pulling into a text that was supposed to be written, you know, what, 3,800 years earlier or 3,500 years earlier from Abraham, a language that his dad wrote down in a book that Joseph's, you know, secondhand man just happened to compile a year earlier. I mean, you could say that's a coincidence, but I think, you know, once you start doing that, you're just. You're in a whole different reality that really, this kind of episode just has no place for. Because at that point, you obviously. And I don't mean to sound kind of like I'm not being fair to that standpoint, but at that point, you don't care about the evidence because you're just going to move it to a place that still can work for you. And that's okay if you want to do it. I just. I. There's no way you would apply that same. You would give that same room to anything else. And so as we talk about that, that it's engaging in a special pleading that I think really stretches, you know, any possible amount of, you know, charity and common sense we could have.

John Dehlin 43:50 Okay. Nemo, anything you want to add?

Nemo 43:52 No, that pretty much sums it up. If you have to go to that place, then, you know, we've got bigger problems.

Speaker G 43:56 Okay.

Mike 43:57 Yeah.

Hebrew Influences and Modern Sources in the Text

John Dehlin 43:58 All right, well, let's go ahead and jump to the next issue with the text of the Book of Abraham, which is the use of Hebrew learned from Joshua Sexius. Is that how you pronounce it?

Mike 44:09 I wish it was. I think it's Sati. Sexy. Sounds cooler, but I think it's Joshua Satius.

Speaker H 44:13 Sorry.

Mike 44:13 Yeah. And this is a really cool one because this is. We talked about in our first episode how most scholars now date the Book of Abraham in two distinct time frames. And Brian Hoglet, who worked on the Joseph Smith paper project for the Book of Abraham, and he's recently come out kind of against the apologetics that kind of come from that, he says. I agree with Dan Vogel's assessment that only Abraham 1, chapter 1 through 2, chapter 18, were produced in 1835, and that Abraham 2, chapter 19 through 521 reproduced in Nauvoo. And this is really important because this is going to show us kind of how we can show, looking at the text, that they're written in two separate time frames, because Joseph Smith in 1836, which is between these two productions, began taking lessons on Hebrew from Joshua satius. And so Dr. Matthew Gray, who's a professor at BYU, he says the book Abraham translation began in 1835. But as far as we can Tell he only finished the first two chapters in that early period. Then, as he studied Hebrew, he gleaned insights into additional Abraham material. It was then, in early 1842, having studied Hebrew, that he revisited the Abraham translation and picked up where he left off. It is the later Abraham Materials, Abraham 3, 4, and 5. And in the facsimile explanations, all of which were finalized in Nauvoo, that we begin to see Joseph as a translator, incorporating the material he had learned in his Hebrew class into his final publication of the Book of Abraham. And so, to put this another way, Joseph Smith begins the first two chapters of the book Abraham in 1835. He's then going to take Hebrew lessons in 1836, and then he's going to complete the book Abraham in 1842. And the reason this is important is because the 1835 chapters and material does not include any of the Hebrew translations that he's going to learn in these lessons, but in the 1842 production, it's going to be littered with it. And so that tells us, you know, when these materials are produced. And that's why when you hear, like apologists for the church, like John, John Gee constantly wants everything to have been done in 1835. And I think Harry Milstein also kind of has that approach. But they need everything in 1835 because they want the. The gale, the Egyptian Alphabet and grammar to be basically a retrofitting of the Book Abraham text. And we'll get into that actually more in the Kinderhook episode on the Kinderhook plates. But the text itself is telling us these are being written in two separate time frames. And that also gives us clues as to basically who's writing the text. Because again, if you're going to go Catalyst theory, why do you have material that in 1842 that's not in 1835? Because it's what Abraham's taught now, what Joseph knows. And so these are all fingerprints as to who's the author behind these texts.

John Dehlin 46:59 Maybe I'm misunderstanding things, but it just would occur to me very simply that what Joseph Smith's learning, you know, between, let's just say 1835 and 1840, whatever, should not impact the text of his translation of Egyptian papyrus into English. If he's translating Egyptian, you know, papyrus into English using the gift and power of God through the gift of, you know, power as a translator. Yeah, whatever he's studying, if he's studying math, if he's studying sociology, if he's studying linguistics, it shouldn't matter. The Translation should be a translation. What do you think, Nemo?

Nemo 47:40 I. I think you're quite right. I think we can't start allowing for Joseph Smith's kind of external influences, his secular influences, to come into what essentially should be God revealing words to him.

John Dehlin 47:51 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well said, Nimon. Okay. All right. So tell us why the use of Hebrew matters in the Book of Abraham.

Mike 47:59 Yeah. And so, you know, this, as we've been talking about, this is going to tell us that the Book of Abraham is written by a modern source. Obviously, I believe that to be Joseph Smith, just because who else would write for it? And can you pull up that slide?

John Dehlin 48:13 Absolutely.

Mike 48:14 Read off my phone, too.

Speaker G 48:14 Sorry.

Mike 48:15 There we go. Just because, like as you both just said, Abraham's writings and Abraham's autobiography should not be impacted by Joseph Smith's use of Hebrew that matches Joshua Satius exact transliterations, especially given that Abraham would have lived before Hebrew was a written language. And so to continue the interview, Laura Hales was interviewing Dr. Gray, and she says these all included sexiest sati. Sorry, satius transliterations. And Dr. Gray says they did. Yeah. So when Joseph used these Hebrew words, he spelled them in ways that he was taught by his Hebrew instructor back in Kirtland with that distinct. I'm not sure if I'm saying it's Sephardic spelling. And so that tells us that the Book Abraham material completed in 1842, contains Hebrew language that Joseph Smith learned after the initial materials were in 1835. But he's using it with the exact transliteration that Joshua Satius had used and taught, which means it's a form of Hebrew that, you know, again, might not go all the way back to when it was first a written language. And so it's kind of like, you know, we talk about. We know the papyrus and the translation is wrong in that sense. But this further tells us that the Book of Abraham had to have been written by Joseph Smith, because we can pinpoint now a patriarchal Blessing written in 1834, and now we can pinpoint Hebrew transliterations that Joseph learned from a very specific teacher that he had access to in 1836 when the text was being produced. So now we have all of these fingerprints that are telling us absolutely this is coming from the 19th century and is in no way an ancient source.

John Dehlin 49:45 And maybe I'm misunderstanding it again, but I just Googled when did the Hebrew language emerge? 10th century BCE which means that even if Abraham had written, you know, this stuff on a papyrus, he's doing it at A time when the Hebrew language hadn't yet been invented. Am I, am I getting that wrong, Mike?

Mike 50:07 No, that. And that's the problem. I mean, you know, that's what I think Dr. Bacheloy was saying it. There is no Hebrew written language record of it until about 1000 BCE. And I want to say that there's some evidence that there's. That they believe that it was spoken earlier. I think typically language, I mean, I know this is true. Languages are spoken before they're written. But the point is there is no way that something in 1800 BCE in Hebrew is going to survive 800 years and be written down, because obviously we can talk about how a story that's orally dictated changes over a few decades, like we talked about with the New Testament. And so that's why this just becomes a massive problem when you're trying to make this an autobiographical text, when this is not even a language for another 800 years, which I don't think Joseph Smith would have known in the 19th century and kind of makes the assumption that it could have been.

John Dehlin 50:54 Yeah. And just for those who are incredulous and Nemo, I want to bring you in here. I'll just take you to Google, the fountain of all wisdom. You know, you type into Google, when did Hebrew language emerge 10th century BCE and then you type in, you know, when would Abraham have lived? It would have been between 1852 and 1872 BCE. So this is like a major oversight. Nemo, what would you add?

Nemo 51:23 Well, I mean, there's two points. First, at that point, if you're going to try and defend that again, I like to put my apologist hat on. You're going to have to get into the realms of people like methuselah living for 900 years. Right, that's, that's, that's a solution to this. Just say Abraham lived for 800 years. You know, apparently everyone else and their dog was living for centuries back then. So that's maybe an answer. But the other thing is this was. This sort of thing was good enough to put Ted Kaczynski away. The Unabomber. Right. They found him in part because of the way he spoke in his letters. His brother recognized it, and then they were able to use that to determine who the likely author of these letters were. So sorry, this isn't just some nonsense where. Oh, well, Joseph Smith wrote this way. So that. Why does it matter? Well, it matters because it's been used forensically to deal with matters of law. It's a well established way of working out who wrote something.

John Dehlin 52:12 Why do you have to pick on an American serial killer? Why don't you do Jack the Ripper or something like that? Nemo.

Nemo 52:17 Oh, because they never caught Jack the Ripper.

John Dehlin 52:18 Oh, okay. Got it.

Nemo 52:20 We do it better.

John Dehlin 52:21 Okay. Yeah, yeah. So again, Hebrew didn't exist yet when Abraham was writing this. And why is stuff Joseph Smith's learning. Why is stuff that Joseph Smith is learning all of a sudden appearing in this text when the link. When the language hadn't even been invented yet, as per Abraham's life? Okay, I think we covered that pretty thoroughly.

Mike 52:41 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. It's important, though, because obviously, if you're, you know, if you're going to make the claim that someone's, you know, alive in a real historical figure, writing in an autobiographical sense in a certain language that wasn't even exist, it's just.

John Dehlin 52:53 Yeah.

Mike 52:53 Like, this is. We talk about this with the Book Mormon. It's like there's problem on top of problem on top of problem. Yeah, yeah. And so.

John Dehlin 52:59 And I guess. And I guess the final point is that Laura Hales, one of the. You know, I think she passed away recently, actually. Is that right?

Mike 53:07 I think she might have. Yeah.

John Dehlin 53:08 So I want to speak respectfully of her, but Laurel Hales, who, you know, is one of the most prominent Mormon apologists of the past 20 years, 30 years, she's acknowledging in her conversations with Dr. Gray that the church acknowledges everything we're saying. Okay, let's go ahead and jump to the next slide, which is Joseph's evolution on the Godhead in the Book of Abraham.

Joseph Smith's Evolving Theology of the Godhead

Mike 53:31 Yeah, and this is a cool one, just because, as I've said throughout these episodes, you know, to try to tie back in, we talked about in our first Vision episode how Joseph Smith is evolving his view of the Godhead. Well, this actually factors into the Book of Abraham. And so Dr. Gray says. Then finally, I think the most profound impact that his Hebrew studies had on the translation of Abraham was in the Abrahamic creation account in Abraham chapters four and five. Joseph knew before studying Hebrew that the book Abraham would contain creation material. In early 1842, when he revisited or at least finalized the Abrahamic creation account, it seems that he drew heavily upon the King James version of Genesis 1 and 2. Then at key moments, he altered the KJV wording and added insights he received in his Hebrew class, such as the plurality of gods as a reflection of his translation of the Hebrew word Elohim. And this is something that's really important because we talked about in the first vision episode, how in 1832, Joseph believed it was just one God. And then all of a sudden, I think up until about 1835, 36, he was always teaching, you know, that he was just visited by one. One being. Right. Well, now he's learning through his Hebrew lessons that Elohim means a plurality of gods. And Dr. Bachvoy talks about this a lot in his episodes with you that, you know, there is this. This, like, council of the gods in Genesis. And so all of a sudden, Joseph's learning this through his teaching, and it's going to be reflected in the book of Abraham. And so just as Joseph Smith changes his first vision account in 1838, you can also see in the book of Abraham because, you know, the first part of the book of Abraham does not have any of this idea of the plurality of gods, but the second part, written in 1842, does have the plurality of gods. And so that is a huge thing that ties in not just to the book Abraham, but to the first vision and to all of these things that Joseph Smith is teaching. And then one final paragraph from Dr. Gray says that's category number one in his use of Hebrew, his use of Hebrew vocabulary, such as the Hebrew word for heavens. I'm not even gonna try to say that. Which is shamayham. I'm not even sure. Or the Hebrew word for the expanse of the firmament, or the Hebrew word for stars, which is cocoa beam. I think these are words that Joseph borrowed from his Hebrew studies and used to explain the Egyptian images. And so all of the stuff that comes from the plurality of gods and then from explaining these facsimiles is going to come from him learning Hebrew, which also, to me, kind of harms this idea of a catalyst theory. Because the catalyst theory is being impacted greatly by Joseph Smith's, you know, as Russell M. Nelson would say in general conference, worldly studies.

John Dehlin 56:01 Yeah. And again, the catalyst theory is the idea that Joseph. That the papyrus were given to Joseph Smith to inspire him to channel this scripture as direct revelation from God. Nemo, why don't you weigh in here?

Nemo 56:14 Yeah. The idea that, yo, it's. It's like what I said. I keep going back to Danish jokes, but it's like what I said to what I say about apologists in that when I asked down eight jokes for an answer, I asked him, because he claims to speak to God, if what I get back from him is the words of an apologist, which is what I got back, then that's not acceptable in the Same way that if what we get out of a supposed inspired translation, a direct translation from God to Joseph Smith, if what we get out of that is Joseph Smith's education from some secular man who teaches Hebrew, again, that's not acceptable because that man wasn't put in a position to reveal those things in the same way that Scott Gordon and Fair aren't in the LDS structure, the people that should be providing the words from God.

John Dehlin 56:58 Yeah.

Speaker D 56:58 Yep.

John Dehlin 56:58 Well said, Nemo. Nemo does a great job of summarizing, doesn't he, Mike?

Mike 57:02 He does. He's quick, he's efficient, and he just cuts right to it, which is something I wish I could do better. So.

John Dehlin 57:07 All right.

Mike 57:08 He's got a skill.

John Dehlin 57:09 Mike, we're fired, basically.

Mike 57:11 Yeah, pretty much. Nemo, you could take over at this point.

John Dehlin 57:15 All right. Okay. So. Yeah, all right, so. So the Joseph's evolution on the Godhead is definitely a problem. That's also a problem with the Book of Mormon, as we discussed earlier, because the Book of Mormon, of course, reflects Joseph Smith's view of the Godhead at the time. Time he wrote it. And of course, his first. Of course, his first vision accounts change also with his changing account of the Godhead. So this.

Mike 57:43 Yeah, just remember Joseph. Oh, sorry.

John Dehlin 57:46 It fits the.

Mike 57:47 Well, you got to say, Joseph takes these lessons in 1836, and I think he changes the Book of Mormon in 1837 or 38 to make those changes we talked about back in that episode to do Mother of the Son of God, you know, because at that point, he is changing his. His idea of the Godhead. So these lessons from Joshua, Sasha impact the Book of Abraham. But as I've said, in these episodes, these problems are all tied together. So first vision, Book of Mormon all kind of have issues that stem from the same thing. And as Nemo said, it's like, well, is Joshua Satius the prophet, or is Joseph Smith the prophet? Because he's basically taking these ideas and incorporating them and retrofitting them back into the church's scriptures, which seems like a problem. And we talked about this a ton in those. Those earlier episodes because of the fact that he's changing revelations, he's changing scriptures in order to fit his more modern evolution of theology. And we see it here as well.

John Dehlin 58:37 And I think, you know, modern Mormon apologist Terrell Givens would call this, you know, bricolage, or they would say, Joseph was an inspired syncretist. Let's maybe address that at the end of today's episode. Let's go ahead and jump to the Urim and Thummim in the Book of Abraham. What's wrong with that?

Mike 58:53 Yeah, and so this is one, you know, we've talked about in previous episodes because the Urim and Thummim is a term that's retrofitted to, to basically take away the folk magic of the Peep Seer stone that Joseph uses to translate the Book of Mormon. And so chapter three of the Book of Mormon begins by stating that and I, Abraham, had the Urim and Thummim which the Lord my God had given unto me in Ur of the Chaldees. And so as we mentioned already, Ur, the Chaldees is already anachronistic. But the use of Urim and Thummim is attempting to make Abraham a seer in the way Joseph Smith claimed to be through his treasure digging days, as well as how he translated the Book of Mormon. So I don't think this is an accident that he's trying to put this in, in here to give more credibility to what he's doing and also to allow the Urim and Thummim to be a method in which you can receive revelation. But the problem is that the Urim and Thummim is a device in the Bible that is not used to see visions or revelations. It's a way to get a yes or no response to a question. And so to use the Urim and Thummim from the Bible that was never used in this way, nor could it ever be in the Book. Abraham is an incorrect and it's anachronistic because the Urim and Thummim does not appear in the Bible until Exodus, which is written much later and believed to have taken place in the 13th century BCE. So the Urim and Thummim is not created or invented yet. So from an apologetic standpoint, you could say, well, Urim and Thummim could be different, you know, obviously a different material device. But it just shows that he's using these terms that would not be conceptualized for a long time and not used in that way until Joseph Smith's time.

John Dehlin 1:00:22 And again, if it's one thing, you know, if it's one problem, you can start to say, well, maybe, you know, something is an error. Okay, two, I mean, we're up to five or six and they're all major ones. Nemo, what do you want to add?

Nemo 1:00:33 Well, you could give him, you could give him that. I guess there always has to be something that comes along that is the earliest mention of something. Right. So you could Give him that. Actually, if everything else fit, you could say, oh, wow, okay. Before that, we'd only ever heard about the Urim and Thummim in Exodus, which the events of which took place in the 13th century. Maybe they were around before and we'd never. There was no record of them before. And now there is, because the book of Abraham shows that they're there. But the problem is the reason they're in there is because Joseph Smith, seeking to justify his position as a seer, he's seeking to essentially create scriptural precedent for the way he then went about translating ancient records. And the way he describes using the Urim and Thummim is not what the Urim and Thummim ever were. So that's. That means that it is very unlikely that they're there in any sort of genuine way.

Mike 1:01:23 Yeah, and that's just it. So it's almost like in the Book of Abraham it's being written as if to bolster Joseph Smith's own use of a peepshear stone to translate records, just as Abraham is supposed to be doing to receive revelation. And it just basically is, in my opinion, it's a way for Joseph Smith to both retrofit the troem and Thummim deeper into the the scriptures and deeper into the biblical history. But it's also a way to bolster his own credibility. It's very self serving and it's very transparent when you're looking at it from the outside looking in. But obviously as a believer, you're just going to say, oh my goodness, isn't it amazing that Abraham received revelation the same way that Joseph Smith did? But like you said, from Nemo's perspective, it's like, yeah, it's really amazing because of the fact that they're both doing something that we could show, at least in Joseph's time, you know, didn't work because Joseph claimed to see treasure doing the same method that obviously he never found.

The Curse of Ham and Racism in the Text

John Dehlin 1:02:13 All right, okay, well, if that weren't enough, we've got the lovely Curse of Ham in the Book of Abraham, which I'm going to guess is super racist because I think it's based on the curse of Cain, which we've already covered in our race and Mormonism episodes. But take it away, Mike.

Mike 1:02:33 Yeah, so we won't beat the, this horse too much in this episode because we did cover this a lot in the Race and the priesthood. We did two episodes. But the Curse of Ham was used by many in Joseph Smith's day to defend and rationalize slavery. And basically this idea that dark skin was a curse and that God had cursed them. And then people then would say, well, then because of that, we're allowed to hold them as slaves. And so Joseph Smith kind of uses this idea in the book of Moses, which is written in the 19th century worldview, which is to say that black skin is a curse. And so the curse of Ham, basically,

John Dehlin 1:03:07 that Cain was cursed with black skin and that Ham was a descendant of Cain so that the black curse could survive the flood. Is that right? And continue on there. Or there's Egyptus. I mean, it's something like that, right?

Mike 1:03:21 I think they're different. Like, I think the curse of Cain and the curse of Ham are kind of different kind of theories. And there's a good sunstone history podcast on this where Christopher C. Smith talks about the two of them. And Joseph Smith kind of just blends the two together, or at least he kind of kind of jumps between the two.

John Dehlin 1:03:37 I mean, for Joseph. For Joseph.

Mike 1:03:38 Oh, for Joseph, yeah. Curse of Cain is the black skin. That's in the book of Moses. He writes into the Bible that black skin is a curse. And then the curse of Ham is to say, because the people of Egypt descend from Ham after the global flood, they cannot hold the priesthood because their skin's dark, which is because they know that people in Egypt have darker skin. So it's kind of like trying to address why people in Egypt have dark skin, just as we addressed why the people in Native American, you know, the Native Americans had dark skin. So the Book of Mormon says, well, it's because their ancestors were wicked and cursed. Well, now for Egypt, they're kind of doing the same thing, and they're tying it into this, the curse of black skin. Because in Egypt, their skin's not quite the same as obviously as Native Americans.

John Dehlin 1:04:17 Yeah. Did you already read this slide?

Mike 1:04:20 No. Okay, but we'll go through it quick because.

John Dehlin 1:04:22 Okay.

Mike 1:04:23 You know, we've talked about a lot. It's just to say, you know, that the curse of Ham is a modern idea. It's a modern interpretation of these biblical ideas. And Joseph Smith is putting it into the Book of Abraham, which is supposedly written in 1800 BCE. And so, you know, basically it's. It's chapter one, verse 24, and they talk about, you know, from Ham sprang that race which preserved the curse in the land. And then verse 27 says, Now Pharaoh, being of that lineage by which he could not hold, have the right of priesthood. And so those are modern concepts of, you know, dark skin. Being a curse. Curse of Ham, Curse of Cain. That's being written into a text, obviously, what, almost 4,000 years earlier.

John Dehlin 1:05:03 Yeah. So I'm counting at least four problems. Number one, you know, that God is running around cursing people. That's just not a God I'm super interested in, you know, worshiping. The second that God curses people with dark skin, that's obviously a horrendous and a racist teaching. Number three, that. That Joseph's blending two separate sort of events or curses into a single one, which is actually consistent for the type of, you know, activities that Joseph Smith. Interpretations. Joseph Smith would make. But then the fourth is that, you know, this curse of Cain is not actually in the Bible. And so Mormonism is unique as a Christian sect in that it writes explicit curse of Cain interpreted racism into its sacred books when it's not actually in the Bible. So the Book of Abraham, Book of Moses, are writing this curse of cane garbage into holy scripture and attributing it to God and Jesus. And then, of course, the Book of Mormon has Lamanite dark skin as a curse to make Native Americans dark and loathsome to their white counterparts. Nemo, rescue Joseph Smith. We need your help here. Oh, you're muted. Nemo, unmute yourself.

Nemo 1:06:18 Sorry, I can't rescue Joseph Smith. You can't rescue someone that seems just determined at every turn to make their life difficult.

Speaker G 1:06:26 He.

Nemo 1:06:29 It's a great point about the rest of Christianity because they must just look at us like, what are you doing? We already have enough bad PR problems with, you know, with the Crusades and all that sort of stuff. Why are you making it worse? Why are you trying to codify racism? It makes no sense.

John Dehlin 1:06:46 And when we talk about anachronisms, you know, Joseph Smith. There was slavery going on, and we've talked about this in previous episodes. There was slavery going on in the early 19th century, 19th century. Frontier Americans or whoever, Southern Americans needed a justification. Curse of Cain emerges as a way to justify the subjugation of black people who came from Africa. And so, of course, it's swimming in Joseph's mind. So of course he's going to be writing in. It's a clear tell. Just like in poker, someone has a tell. The fact that this is a issue that Joseph Smith would have been swimming in, and all of a sudden he writes it into Scripture. Mike, it's kind of a tell, isn't it? It's kind of tell of when this is all written.

Mike 1:07:27 No, it is. I mean, that's the problem. We talk about that with The Book of Mormon episodes. Like there are so many ideas that are uniquely 19th century that make it into these ancient texts. And it, anyone who's reading this without the predetermined conclusion that this is like from God is going to look at this and go, why are there 19th century ideas in these writings that are supposedly written thousands of years earlier? And the Book of Abraham is going to take something that is a very modern idea of the curse of Ham. I mean we're talking 4,000 years earlier. It just, it makes no sense. They didn't have the same concepts of race and of, of all of that that we do today, you know, and, and even a thousand years ago. So 4,000 years ago it just like, like Nemo said, you can't rescue Joseph Smith on this because he's, every time he's incorporating these, these ideas that are, are hot topic issues of his day, it leaves a giant fingerprint that says this was written in the 19th century.

John Dehlin 1:08:17 Yeah.

Nemo 1:08:18 And it's, you even go back to like, you look at the, the church's position on slaves and on slavery and it flip flops depending on where they're living at the time and who the people are around them. You know, they're in a, they're in a, a more pro slave, a slavery area. All of a sudden the church will start to push towards slavery. They're in a anti savory, anti slavery area. All of a sudden they'll start to become more liberal.

John Dehlin 1:08:37 So, and as I understand it, it's, it's factual that Brigham Young received slaves as tithing. Is that right?

Mike 1:08:43 He did at least once.

John Dehlin 1:08:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so man, this is, this is, the Book of Abraham is not looking great and we're not even talking Egyptian right now. Okay, so let's, let, let's go to the slide that says apologetic hits quote, hits close quote in the Book of Abraham, human sacrifice. What I'm guessing you're going to say here is that there's some things that Mormon apologists have interpreted as being tells of ancient, you know, of hints of ancient writings that they've sort of interpreted from the text of the Book of Abraham. Is that right?

Mike 1:09:22 Yeah. And so basically we're going to go through what the essay gives us their best evidences. And this is one of those things that drives me a bit insane because the church in their essay will constantly say, we don't really rely on worldly evidence, we don't really rely on secular facts. But then they try to then give them to you anyways. And I I just find the whole process, like we talked about in the last episode with the apologetics on the translation, it's just as. We'll go through these. These are very bad arguments that are being stated as if they're, you know, more. And so this first one is one. And this is a really important one because this is from Carrie Muhlstein's kind of writings. And he said, the church's essay says the book of Abraham speaks disapprovingly of human sacrifice offered on an altar in Chaldea. Some victims were placed on the altar as sacrifices because they rejected the idols worshiped by their leaders. Recent scholarship has found instances of such punishment dating to Abraham's time. People who challenged the standing religious order either than Egypt or in the regions over which it had influence, such as Canaan, could and did suffer execution for their offenses. And so this is an argument from Kerry Mohlstein. And as we talked about earlier in our last episode, you know, he. He admits to starting out with the assumption is true and then basically fitting any evidence into it. And in this case, he's basically going to use his own. The essay is going to use his scholarship to say that this is some sort of a consensus argument that there really was human sacrifice in the way that the book of Abraham portrays it in Abraham's time.

John Dehlin 1:10:50 I'm hearing audible gasps from Nemo. So Nemo is.

Nemo 1:10:54 There's a blatant conflation of terms there. He starts by saying, oh, human sacrifice is legit because some people were executed for crimes. That's not human sacrifice. No, that's execution. That's capital punishment. Like every time someone's given a lethal injection on death row, is that a human sacrifice? No, it's. It's capital punishment. Two different things.

Speaker G 1:11:18 Yeah.

Nemo 1:11:18 Yep.

Mike 1:11:18 And I'm glad you said that, because our next. Our next slide is gonna be Dr. Robert Rittner addressing this very point and channeling his inner Nemo.

Robert Rittner on Human Sacrifice and Facsimiles

Nemo 1:11:26 I'd love to be on the same side as Robert Rittner.

John Dehlin 1:11:29 Yeah, well, you do represent the British Museum, after all.

Mike 1:11:32 Exactly.

John Dehlin 1:11:33 I. I was gonna say, I do remember this exchange with Dr. With the late and great Dr. Robert Rittner.

Mike 1:11:39 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:11:39 So let's go ahead. And I'm glad we get to include him in this episode.

Mike 1:11:43 Me too.

Speaker H 1:11:46 Kerry wrote his dissertation on this very topic, and he was very careful to describe these as political executions rather than human sacrifices. So he walked a careful line that passed muster with Egyptologists. He did not prove that there was human sacrifice. He, in fact, just pointed these out. As being human, as being political execution. You have examples of a text which John Gee also references in this podcast of a sila of King Neferhotep of the Middle Kingdom, in which boundaries are being set up for a temple precinct. And it is said that anyone who trespasses, any bureaucrat or priest who trespasses into this estate and would attempt to take away some of its assets would be burnt. Now, that is a statement of what would happen for committing a crime. If you invade the temple precinct and plunder its resources, you will be burned. It's a death penalty for committing a crime. This is not for failing to worship the gods or failing to respect a deity or a ritual. It's if you commit a crime, there will be capital punishment. That is not sacrifice. And yet this is the kind of example they want to choose. This is like saying, if you kill someone and we hang you for it, it's a human sacrifice. If that's the way you want to understand it, fine. Any execution could be taken in a religious way and given a connotation, we execute people. Now, is that human sacrifice? For some you would say yes. But it's a question of is this how the Egyptians are understanding it? And the answer is certainly not. They're putting to death for criminal purposes. There is also a recently excavated area in the Delta, the northern part of Egypt, during the time of political turmoil where a large number of bodies have turned up that are again, probably the result of warfare. It's been argued to be massacre, slaughter of captives, but that's in warfare. Is that human sacrifice? I don't think so. During the course of war, people are killed. Yes, you can say that's to the benefit of a deity or the country, but that is not what is typically understood as human sacrifice. It's military activity. So all of the examples that they like to point to that are so called recent ones are in fact either criminal punishment or military activity. It's not a question of human sacrifice on an altar. There's no altar that's been found at this site in the Delta. There's no altar that is found in Mir Gissa. There is no altar found adjacent to the Neferhotep stele. So all of that is smoke and mirrors and confusion of terms and attempting to juggle anything in order to make it all make sense. But the bigger question is, so what if the Egyptians practiced human sacrifice? Would the Egyptians have practiced human sacrifice in North Syria where they didn't have any physical control? Would they have looked like that on that illustration which we know is doctored and therefore cannot be an illustration of it. So it's not a question of finding one little thing that might work. You have to make all the pieces fit. And that is the continual problem with the apologists is they find one small aspect of which, if you squint your eyes and look slightly to the left, you can say, well, it sort of looks like this, but then it doesn't fit the entire picture because you're asked to ignore all of that, and you can't ignore all of it. If the story is true, then all parts of it have to be true, not just one aspect of one picture or two lines in the text and fail to do is present a complete picture. If you don't show all your work and explain all the details, then you cannot have a defense. And they never do that. And the reason is they don't have the facts. And no amount of apologetics until the end of the universe will produce facts that never were and don't exist.

John Dehlin 1:16:41 He's such a legend. Nemo, what's it like to have Robert Rittner quoting you? He basically quoted you, I am not

Nemo 1:16:47 worthy to stand in that man's shoes. I think something he did say, though, that was really interesting, was what is commonly understood. And that is an area that apologists will twist and bend to their heart's content. They will take what everyone else understands and what Joseph Smith would have understood at the time, human sacrifice to mean, and they'll change it. They'll change it to mean something else. Well, actually, what does this really mean? And they'll take you down that little rabbit hole away from the main issue into the definition and the minutiae of the definition of words. And that's the problem, Mike.

Mike 1:17:27 No, I just, you know, we talked in our last episode about how Kerry Mohlstein and John Gee and the church, they use their academic credentials to push them, as if what they are telling members about the theology of the book, Book Abraham and the history of the Mormon Church is somehow backed by their scholarship. And what Dr. Rittner laid out so well is that Kerry Muhlstein did do research showing these executions in Egypt. But in his dissertation, he never mentions any tie to Abraham. He never mentions that it's a religious thing. He's trying to write this article to show I have found these instances where people were executed. And then he turns around, he takes that and turns it into the church and says, oh, by the way, this proves Book Abraham. And when they're completely separate, and it's a Word game that's being used here, as Nemo said earlier, to. To say execution equals, you know, sacrifice. Trying to sacrifice Abraham, no possible way. And so this is an area where I, and I know a lot of people get upset if we say that the people are lying, because that has like a loaded kind of intention to it. But I really feel like this is an area where apologists know what they're doing. They know the games are playing and they are willing to do it. And the church is willing to push it to their members in order to maintain, maintain faith in something that has been proven incorrect by every field of study. As we're showing in these episodes, it really just is insulting to the intelligence of the members to not present them with the information and say, here's what really is going on. Do with it what you want. We still find value in it. We hope you do too.

Nemo 1:18:58 But then the apologists are doing essentially what Joseph Smith did with Urim and Thummim. Joseph Smith had a position that he had to try and defend. His position was I translated the Book of Mormon with the Urim and Thummim. And so what he did was he created a document where the Urim and Thummim featured. And he was using that as justification then for his position. The apologists do the same thing. Kerry Muhlstein creates a dissertation which includes events that he then uses to justify the position of the Book of Abraham in saying that there was human sacrifice. It's the same pattern again.

Mike 1:19:31 Yep, that's a good point.

John Dehlin 1:19:33 Yeah. And I think we also need to just highlight what's going on here. When you see a true Egyptian scholar just kind of look at this, everything he says just drips of the ridiculousness of this entire conversation from a scholarly, academic perspective. But what the church has done since Unibley is hire these PhD level Egyptologists who are told, you don't necessarily have to provide good answers. You just need to provide answers. And because you have a PhD in Egyptology and because you speak gobbledygook, that the average Mormon won't be able to understand or have the time or the training to be able to understand, they're just going to see, oh, Kerry Mohlstein, Ph.D. egyptologist, mouth is moving, words are coming out. He's faithful, he knows Egyptian. Therefore, I don't need to worry about, you know, this Book of Abraham problem because Kerry Mustein says that he found a hit and I can kind of not worry about this anymore. And that is the. That I don't want to Call it a game, but that's the. I don't want to call it a con, but that's the. I mean, that's, that's what's going on here. How's that.

Nemo 1:20:47 I mean, that's what members have been taught to do. Members are taught, taught to defer their critical thinking to an outer source. And so the church is creating and setting up these sources and telling people, implying to people that you can just defer your critical thinking to them because they're smart men and they've worked it out.

Mike 1:21:02 Yep. And that's just it, because then you'll go to the church and you'll say, I'm having a problem with the Book of Abraham. They'll say, have you read Karin Osteen's work? And they'll say, because he's an Egyptologist, he studied all of this so you don't have to worry about it. And here's what he came up with. And the problem is, like in this particular instance, and Dr. Ridner called it out exactly for what it is he's using. I'm going to call it word games. Because he knows by saying execution, that does not mean religious sacrifice. But he's going to present it to the scholarly community as execution, which is what it was. But then he's going to turn around, take that same scholarship and put it in the church's essay to say, recent scholarship has shown that during Abraham's time, they were doing these kind of sacrifice. And that's not at all what we're seeing. And so they're trying to, you know, they're, they're trying to have it both ways by, by telling the members, these people, like you said, John, these people have degrees, and they know way more about this than you ever will, and they have faith in it. So why don't you? And it's just, it's a. It's a really disingenuous approach. And I, I just. This is. These are the things that drive me nuts, because it's, it's all the more painful for believing members once you finally cut through all of this nonsense and realize not only has the Church been misrepresenting what the book Abraham is, but the people the church is sending out in 2022 are misrepresenting it. And the church knows that on some level they are using their scholarship to push, you know, bad historicity of, of these topics.

John Dehlin 1:22:22 Yeah. And we always have to keep going back to calling attention to that Molstein quote where he admits secretly in a secret meeting, basically, in a private meeting that, that they begin with the assumption that the church is true and then cherry pick and gather evidence to. To. To prove their, you know, their original assumption. And, you know, it's just like cigarettes come with a big warning label saying, warning, you know, cigarette smoking can cause cancer. Every little, literally every word that comes out of John Gee or Kerry Mohlstein's mouth regarding the Book of Abraham should have a big warning saying, warning. These dudes are using scholarship to justify beliefs. Counter. Counter to the prevailing consensus of the science that they pretend to represent.

Nemo 1:23:10 Yeah. What he said was, I start out with an assumption that the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon and anything else that we get from the restored gospel is true. Therefore, any evidence I find, I will try and fit into that paradigm.

John Dehlin 1:23:21 Yeah. And that's just not science. That's not.

Nemo 1:23:23 And that's a Deseret news article. I'll get that to you.

Mike 1:23:26 You know what?

John Dehlin 1:23:27 Yeah, we've played that. We played.

Mike 1:23:28 I've got the. I've got the video in two slides. So we'll see that in this. Okay. Yeah, I want to throw. We did in the last episode, but I want to put in here again, just because I think it's such an important quote to understanding as we look through these apologetic hits that the essay produces, kind of the approach that the people behind the essay are putting into it as, you know, as they're coming up with them.

Apologetic Responses and Outside Sources

John Dehlin 1:23:47 All right, well, let's jump to the next slide, which is another source for the idea of the sacrifice of Abraham.

Nemo 1:23:53 Yeah.

Mike 1:23:53 And this one is one that kind of blew my mind because one of the things that's interesting about, you know, recent kind of scholarship into the Book of Mormon is that the link between the Adam Clark Bible commentary and the Book of Mormon, or I'm sorry, and the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible was found, which shows that Joseph Smith was leaning heavily upon Adam Clark's Bible commentary when he was making revisions to the Bible. And that was being done about 1831, which is like three, like four years before the Book of Abraham. And this is a really interesting thing from the Adam Clark Bible commentary. It says, be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. This was an ancient mode of punishment among the Chaldeans. And if we may credit the tradition that Abram was cast into such a fire by this idolatrous people because he would not worship their idols. I mean, does that sound familiar? And so the essay is going to try to make it sound like, oh, yeah, there's this recent Scene showing that this was done. Well, where do you think Joseph Smith might have learned this? Because we now know from recent scholarship that Joseph Smith leaned heavily on the Adam Clark Bible commentary. So now four years later, we're going to have this idea that Abraham was cast into the fire, you know, for not worshiping their idols. And we find out it's in a commentary that Joseph Smith used heavily a few years earlier. And so when the church says this idea was unknown to Joseph Smith, and to be fair, when the essay was written, this, this link wasn't really well known. But right there you have exactly where the idea would have come into Joseph Smith's head, because Adam Clark is telling him this was an ancient traditional belief about Abraham.

John Dehlin 1:25:28 So not only do we have Joseph Smith again getting it wrong with the book of Abraham based on true Egyptian scholars, we know the source and we know the Adam Clark commentary and we know that Joseph Smith had access to, to that book because he used it in his Joseph Smith translation of the Bible. Nemo, what do you want to add?

Nemo 1:25:48 Nothing to add really, other than the Adam Clark commentary is the single biggest, like, nail in the coffin to a lot of what Joseph Smith did.

John Dehlin 1:25:57 And I will, I will include my, my interview with Haley. Right. Isn't that her name? The BYU student that is the one who came up along with her professor, kind of the source for Joseph Smith's translation. All right, well, this is actually the next clip we're going to show is actually a conference that I attended. It was this conference at Utah State University where all these faithful progressive Mormon scholars realize that they have a pickle, where Joseph Smith is called a translator. Given the power of translation in the Doctrine and Covenants, he tells everyone he has the power to translate, gift and power to translate, and yet they can't find an accurate translation in any of the scriptural texts that he allegedly translated. And so what they have to do is figure out new meanings for the word translation. But in that conference, Richard Bushman, I believe, makes the quote that you're about to read. Is that right?

Mike 1:26:57 Yeah. And so this is just, you know, I know we're kind of in the middle of the or just kind of starting the apologetics, but I wanted to cover this because this is where Richard Bushman, who is one of the prominent historians of the Mormon Church, obviously wrote rough stone rolling. He's going to concede that what Joseph Smith is doing with the Book of Moses, with the Book of Abraham is creating Pseudepigrapha. And that is basically in a really simplified way it's writing in someone else's name to give credibility to it. So it's like if I wanted to write something today about American history and I know nobody would read it, I'd say this is the last writing of George Washington that I found to present an idea about the founding of America that I wanted to get pushed to the public but that they wouldn't read if it was in my name. So Pseudepigrapha is doing the same thing in Joseph Smith in this case is going to use Moses for the book of Moses and Abraham for the Book of Abraham because it gives it a much more scriptural foundation that people will more readily believe as opposed to Joseph Smith saying, hey, I just received this revelation about Abraham's life. And I think it's really important because this is the conclusion that I think most scholars are coming to today where they say Joseph was a co author. In a lot of ways it's kind of confirming Richard Bushman here saying that Joseph Smith is engaging in pseudepigrapha.

Richard Bushman and Kerry Mohlstein on Book of Abraham

John Dehlin 1:28:14 All right, let's roll the clip. This is again, this is Richard Bushman, Harvard graduate, Columbia professor of history, very well respected, also Mormon Church Stake president and patriarch, author of Rough Stone Rolling that the church sold at Deseret Books. Admitting that, I mean I, I almost like to think of pseudepigrapha as as plagiarism or fraud just injected back into a historical figure that's already died, basically claiming it's it. You know, it's not plagiarism, but it's basically writing. Like you said Mike, claiming something is the writing of a well respected historical figure when it's really just your own fan fiction that you write today. Let's hear Richard Bushman kind of acknowledge that in the case of Joseph Smith in the Book of Abraham,

Speaker D 1:29:03 from a

Speaker F 1:29:04 modern scholarly perspective, Moses along with a later translation, the Book of Abraham looks less like a translation of the Bible than a major variant of a second major translation project in the 19th century. The recovery and analysis of Pseudepigrapha. These scripture like texts, now numbering in the hundreds, were taken seriously during the first centuries of the Christian era when they jostled for inclusion in the Christian and Jewish canons. They were want to be scriptures didn't quite make the great but still hung around in various forms. These are writings that had a biblical ring, echoed and echoed biblical themes, but for reasons both theological and political, did not make it into the canon. The Bible as we know it. They were called Pseudepigrapha because They often pretended to be authored by a biblical figure and spoke in that prophet's voice. Though the actual author of the writing was unknown. They had names like the Apocryphon of Seth, the Inquiry of Abraham, the Testament of Job, the Apocryphon of Ezekiel. Joseph Smith's book Books of Moses and Abraham and the writings of Enoch in the Book of Moses bear a resemblance to this large corpus of scriptures in that they came in the form of writings in another person's name. Joseph was producing Pseudepigrapha in the very time when scholars were taking these writings seriously again.

John Dehlin 1:31:00 Yeah.

Speaker F 1:31:01 Interest in pseudepigrapha had faded in the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era, after the canon settled in and revived in the Renaissance as part of the turn to antiquity for wisdom and science. Over the course of the 19th century, translation and study of Pseudepigrapha became a marked major scholarly endeavored.

John Dehlin 1:31:27 And I just, I'm just going to say, like, first of all, the sign on that table says New Perspectives on Joseph Smith in Translation. I mean, that's just. That speaks volumes that they're having an academic conference with that title. But I'm just, I'm sitting there at that table. I remember seeing Rosalind Welch and Jenna Reese and Terrell Givens and Sam Brown, and I think that was Jared Hickman. Really smart people that are smarter than me, super well respected. And I'm. I'm hearing Richard Bushman basically say that Joseph Smith was making stuff up and just attribute it to Abraham. He's basically admitting this. And they just like, look like they're sleeping. And I look around and I'm like, you know, news flash, world. Richard. Dr. Richard Bushman just called the Book of Abraham Pseudepigrapha, and everybody was basically asleep. I remember when it came out on Reddit and everybody was talking about it. But I guess because pseudepigrapha is a fancy word and because all these academics are sort of cloaking everything they're saying in this. In this fancy academic language, none of it's ever going to penetrate Mormon consciousness.

Nemo 1:32:39 Yeah, but I. I mean, I have a. I hear something slightly different when I hear him saying that. What I hear him saying is that it is. His contention is that the Book of Abraham is a genuine ancient text or the writings thereof, but they weren't written by Abraham. It's an authentic text, but it wasn't written by Abraham. But because the author is unknown, therefore, Joseph Smith called it the Book of Abraham and said Abraham was the author, because that's who it was about. That's what I'm hearing, is his justification and his comparison to other texts. But that doesn't work because Joseph Smith said at the beginning that it was written by the hand of Abraham upon Papa Pyrus while he was in the land of Egypt. So that then is Joseph Smith not telling the truth or making things up, as you said, if that isn't actually true, if that's just him creating false attribution to Abraham.

John Dehlin 1:33:25 Yeah, I guess. Nemo, first of all, thank you for that clarification. I know I'm technically getting it wrong there, but as we've shown, there's so many anachronisms and 19th century artifacts that it's gotta be Joseph Smith that's writing this revelation, not some unnamed mysterious historical figure. And to the point, Richard Bushman has to know this, right? If we know it, Richard Bushman knows it. Am I wrong?

Nemo 1:33:56 Of course, yeah, yeah, no, and so like I said, we know it. And that's the next step is then to go, okay, well then is it a genuine nature text? And that's what we're doing now. But I think that's where he's trying to push the argument, I guess. But like you said, he then knows that that doesn't have legs because all you then have to do is look at all the other anachronisms, all the other problems. It falls apart anyway. And so even if it wasn't written by Abraham, it's just not an ancient text.

John Dehlin 1:34:20 And disappointingly, this is just transparently motivated reasoning. It's literally Richard Bushman doing what Kerry Molstein tells us he does. It's basically saying, well, this book has to be true. It can't be that Joseph just got it wrong. It can't be that he said it was a translation, but it's not a translation. So we're have to redefine the word translation. But also, clearly Abraham couldn't have written it, so some other mysterious character must have written it. That's all motivated reasoning, and it's just shoddy poor scholarship. And Richard Bushman is more of a man, smarter a man, better a scholar than I'll ever be. But I just can't help but see this as very disappointing. Mike, am I being too harsh? People don't like it when I'm harsh because Richard Bushman is so loved and he's so brilliant. Right.

Mike 1:35:09 Well, I mean, I think it really falls under the same quote that we're going to hear in the next slide. But I think Richard Bushman to what Nemo is saying, is he saying, these are clearly not written by Abraham, but I also believe they're inspired. And so he. I mean, I can't put words into his mouth, but I think Nemo is right in that he would probably say something along the lines of, this is an ancient core that God is giving to Joseph through revelation that's being attributed to Abraham even though Abraham didn't write it. And to your point, John, I just. I don't think anyone would give that kind of space to anyone else. And so to give that space to Joseph Smith, because it is so uncomfortable to come to the conclusion the other way and say, if he's making up the Book of Abraham and the Book of Abraham has the same problems as the Book of Mormon, then I don't think he's a prophet of God. I mean, obviously, that's the road you go down. Once you start to realize that this isn't what it claims to be, you either have to say, well, Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet and oh, my goodness, I've been believing in a church that's not true by its own truth claims, or you have to say, how do I make this okay? And I think that. That Richard Bushman, in a way, is doing what he probably thinks is the best way for him to reconcile in his head how Joseph Smith could get it wrong but also get it right, which obviously the three of us are not doing, because we're not going to engage in that kind of special pleading to bridge the gap between Joseph Smith getting it wrong. And how do we make it plausible?

John Dehlin 1:36:29 Yeah. To put it another way, if John Dehlin or Nemo or Mike of LDS discussions were to claim to have produced scripture based on translation of an ancient text, and it was problematic for all the same reasons. There's no way Richard Bushman and Kerry Mohstein would be making these arguments to rescue us from. From the. And I literally an identical scenario. They would never be making these arguments. And that's. That's special pleading, right?

Nemo 1:36:57 Yeah.

Mike 1:36:57 And I've told the story before, I think, in some of these episodes, but I ran into this with some believing members. We're talking about politics, and it's not important who it was or what it was. It was the same thing where they were saying they can date when this particular politician was making these claims, and now they can date earlier when they were making different claims. We now know they were lying. And I was like, you're right, that's true. And the next thing I want to say is now apply that to your own church, because if you do that, you'll realize within about five seconds that everything falls apart. But the difference is they're willing to engage in special pleading for Mormonism because they've been raised in it. They would never agree to it for that particular politician because they didn't like them. And so it really does come down to how much do you really need this to be true. And that's going to tell you how much you're willing to kind of bend the rules of reality to make it work. And I think Richard Bushman is well intentioned by all accounts. He's a really nice guy, but, yeah, I mean, he's, he's, he's putting a spin on this that he would not put on literally anyone else who's making a claim that is so easily falsified as Joseph Smith Nemo.

John Dehlin 1:37:59 Should we get you in here? Anything you want to add?

Nemo 1:38:01 I mean, Richard Bushman wouldn't come to my defense, you know, like, he just wouldn't dive in. This is the problem you have, like, with all these, the meetings of, you know, B H Roberts and all that sort of stuff, where even when one of their own, even when someone that they all respect and someone that they would like in other ways step up to defend when he is challenging their fundamental beliefs, they, they can't get past the need for the, the a priori position that Book of Mormon is true, Gospel is true. Yeah, that, like. So I'm just. What I'm saying about B H Roberts is even take us out of the equation if it's someone like him, we know that even when he came to the other church leaders, his contemporaries, his peers and said, here's the problems, they couldn't, they couldn't special plead on his behalf. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:38:50 All right.

Mike 1:38:50 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:38:51 And that takes us to, that takes us to the quote that we've been referencing now several times that we referenced in a previous episode, the Kerry Mohlstein admission. Do you want to talk about this? Set it up.

Mike 1:39:04 So we, we showed this in the last episode and since we're kind of getting into all these apologetic hits now, I just wanted to play this again for anyone who missed it or if you kind of forgot kind of what he's saying. Because you need to think about this quote as we talk about these apologetic hits. Because when you listen to this quote, think about what we talk about with human sacrifice and how Kerry Mohlstein is basically jamming whatever evidence he can find in his kind of academic background into the conclusion the Theological conclusion that the church is true. And I think, as John said, this clip should be. Should be posted at the beginning of every article he writes for church magazines or, you know, I think he wrote a book for Deseret books called like, so let's talk about the Book of Abraham. Because most members are not going to understand that Karen Mohlstein is using his academics to push theology, which is not how scholarship should ever be done. And yet he's going to admit this in a conference, a fair Mormon conference.

John Dehlin 1:39:55 Yeah. And my point is this shouldn't be included in everything Kerry Mohlstein says. But Richard Bushman says that, you know, Rosalind Welch, you know, Spencer Fluman, and, And, you know, of course, they. They may say different things at different times, but I just think this is. This applies to the whole lot of faithful, progressive Mormon scholars. So let's. Even the ones we love. So let's go ahead and play it.

Mike 1:40:21 And so I start out with an assumption that the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon and anything else,

Speaker H 1:40:28 excuse me, that we get from the restored gospel is true.

Mike 1:40:34 Therefore, any evidence I find, I will try.

John Dehlin 1:40:40 Sorry, there's a little bit of caching there.

Nemo 1:40:43 Try and fit into that paradigm. I don't feel that I need to defend that paradigm.

Mike 1:40:47 I feel that I want to understand the evidence that I find within that paradigm, because to me, it's a given that it's true.

Speaker G 1:40:55 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:40:55 And that's just not how science and scholarship works.

Nemo 1:40:58 Seems legit.

Speaker G 1:40:59 Yeah.

Mike 1:41:01 Yeah. I mean, it's just it. Yeah, We. We covered it last episode. It's just so. And, and the truth is, what he's saying here is actually a really good thing because it is giving people that are listening to him that knowledge at the beginning. But that's the point is the essay doesn't start out with this quote. The, the church's book Abraham essay should start out with the. You know, and obviously we assume that the Mormon Church, when they put out an essay, is going to write it with the assumption is true. But when they start to cite research and they start to start to cite Egyptologists, they need to say Egyptologists that start with the conclusion the Book of Abraham is true. Trust us on this. As opposed to, you know, all of the other Egyptologists that'll tell you this is absolute nonsense. And so it's just. It's such a disingenuous approach to take when you're using your academic background to push theology.

John Dehlin 1:41:46 Yeah. All right. I think we. I think we successfully made the point.

Mike 1:41:50 Yeah, I think so.

Ol Shem, Elkanah, and Apologetic Arguments

John Dehlin 1:41:53 Let's go on to more apologetic hits for the Book of Abraham. This is one of RFM's favorite, I think, Old Hashem.

Mike 1:42:02 Yeah, this is. This is one you hear all the time to. To say the Book of Abraham has an ancient core, and we know that because they describe Olishem. So from the Church's essay, they say the Book of Abraham contains other details that are consistent with modern discoveries about the ancient world. The book speaks of the plain of Olishim, a name not mentioned in the Bible. An ancient inscription, not discovered and translated until the 20th century, mentions a town called Ulisum, located in northwestern Syria. And so this is often cited by John Gee, who is an Egyptologist who works for the Church, as a bullseye for the Book of Abraham. But it is not only problematic, but it's impossible for it to be a true connection between the Book of Abraham and the ancient world, because as we talked about in our earlier slides, Joseph Smith puts Abraham in a southern location, but the Ulusum referenced as ancient proof is in northwestern Syria. So right off the bat, the location is going to tell us that these two are not connected. That should end the argument right there. But the language is a bigger problem. And this is something again from Dr. David Bockvoy, because he says the word ultimate ulisum is Acadian. And this presents very basic problems for the. This connection that Church apologists would absolutely be aware of when they're presenting it as a bullseye. And what Dr. Bachavoy says is that the transliteration of Ulisum from the original cuneiform tablets would read as Ulysses. There's no sh sound in there. There's no sh. And furthermore, there's no o sign in Akkadian, making it impossible that Olishem would be represented by the Akkadian word ultimately. And so basically, the location tells you it's not. It would be like, you know, if someone said, I found this ancient text and they foretold us of a place called non knock something, and someone says, oh, that sounds like New York City. And then all of a sudden, you realize that the ancient text puts, you know, is located in Florida. And you're like, well, that doesn't work because you're over a thousand miles away. And this is an instance where the location's bad and the Ulisim word in no way could. Could work to oem. It just. It doesn't work.

John Dehlin 1:44:04 Okay, should we go to the next slide? Or Nemo? Do you want to weigh. Weigh in here?

Speaker G 1:44:08 Really?

Nemo 1:44:08 I. No, that's Fine.

John Dehlin 1:44:10 Okay. Yeah. So let's hear. So this next slide is talking about even John G. Knowing that the old connection is weak at best.

Speaker G 1:44:18 Should we just.

Mike 1:44:19 Yeah. And so just to intro it, you know, this is like the entire premise of including OEM to ULISOM is from John Gee. This was confirmed by Brian Hoglid in his interview with RFM that this is something that John Gee pushed to be in the essay. And so when you dig into John Gee's own statements about this connection, he's way more tentative than the essay would like to tell you. And so John Gee at one point says, at present, given the many uncertainties, we can regard this identification of Ulisum being the actual Olishim as promising but not proven, which obviously is a way of saying it's not what it is, but, you know, it's out there. But this clip that we're going to show you is from another interview that he gave in response to some recent scholarship by Brian Hoglit and Dr. Rittner about the Book of Abraham. And so he did. They kind of got this out. I think this is Book of Mormon central. And they got this out pretty quick after all of the Dr. Rittner interviews and the Brian Hoglet that all kind of happened around the same time in 2020. And so they kind of rushed this interview out to try to answer some of this. And so this is the clip of Dr. Or of John G. Talking about the Ulicim connection. I just want you to listen to kind of how he parses this.

John Dehlin 1:45:25 All right, let's roll the tape.

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 1:45:27 And there's been, if you look at this place in the scholarly literature among the cuneiform specialists, there's a lot written

Video Clip 2 1:45:37 on it,

Video Clip 2 1:45:42 But this is an actual place name. And they debate about exactly where are you going to find it? And archaeologists debate. And so one of them said, yeah, I think I've discovered. And another one says, no, I don't think you did. And these are both archaeologists on the same dick. They're teammates, but they don't agree on that interpretation.

Video Clip 2 1:46:12 They literally don't even agree on where they're digging, on the name of it.

Video Clip 2 1:46:15 The name of it. Well, that's because they haven't found the name. They know the site. They're digging. And one of them says, I think it's this place. And the other says, no, I think it's this place that's mentioned in the literature. But if they do find the place and you've actually got an archaeological site, what does this tell you about the Book of Abraham. So while I was cautiously optimistic when this first came out, and although I don't think that they've. I think it's unlikely that that's the correct location. The mere fact that you got a location and learning about that particular location let me see certain things about the text of the Book of Abraham that I hadn't seen before.

John Dehlin 1:47:27 Okay, so, Mike, what do you want us to glean from that?

Mike 1:47:31 Okay, this one. This one blows my mind because he's basically saying, I don't think they're digging in the right place. We don't actually have a place. But the idea that there might be a place gives me more insight into the Book of Abraham. It's the most ridiculous argument, especially when you then turn around and look at how the Book of Abraham essay makes it sound like this is a hit. And John, Gee, when he's pressed about, is basically saying, I don't think they're digging in the right place. We don't even have a place. Nobody can agree on where it might be. But the fact that we might have a place is. Is. It makes me think it's like. That's, like the most. It'd be like if you're a believer in unicorns and you read about some people looking for unicorns out in Washington, the Seattle area, and then it turns out that they were just full of crap, and then your response is, look, they're not looking in the right place for the unicorns. But the fact that there are people talking about there might be unicorns out there gives me more faith in unicorns. And I realize how facetious that sounds, but that is the approach he's taking, which is to say, I'm calling this evidence in the essay, but now I'm gonna say it's not really in the right place. They don't even know where they're looking. But just the fact that they're looking gives me more. It's so disingenuous. And so I guess for me, the takeaway is, look at that. Listen to that clip compared to how the essay frames it as such a more solid ground. And then ask yourself, why is the essay making it sound so solid when. When they're pressing an interview, they can't really give you anything that even comes close to that Same kind of surety that the essay does.

John Dehlin 1:48:59 Anything you want to add Nemo?

Nemo 1:49:01 Just that his tie, even his tie is dishonest. If you look at his tie, it has got the same symbols on that they use the church uses in the now you know Videos to represent present the writing on the Book of Mormon. Even though we have the characters document, even though we supposedly know what the symbols on the Book of Mormon look like, the Church has now got to the point where they're trying to hide that because the, the Tanners just pulled that apart. So they've invented this new little set of scratchy looking symbols and that's what's all over his tie. So I'm sorry, that kind of distracted me, if I'm honest.

Mike 1:49:33 That's a great catch because that was one we talked about in one of the episodes of show when talking about the characters document that the Church knows how ridiculous Joseph Smith's reformed Egyptian characters are. That when they produced the video in 2019, I think two different videos. Yeah, they changed the, they changed the characters that they actually had to fake ones to make it look more realistic. Which again tells you the Church knows that these cannot pass the smell test with like literally anybody. And so when they present these videos now on, on YouTube that are produced by the Church, not by some apologists, they change it. So that's actually a really good catch. I know it's not quite book Abraham, but. Yeah, that's a good catch there.

Nemo 1:50:09 Sorry, it's just that's how he's wearing.

Mike 1:50:11 Yeah, I would never, never notice that. So that's a good catch.

John Dehlin 1:50:16 All right, let's, let's go to the next slide where we're going to hear Dr. Robert Rittner addressing the olesham problem a little bit.

Mike 1:50:24 Yeah. And this is an interesting one because just to set this up, you know, John Gan and other apologists, like, as I said, they keep clinging to this Ulisum were to try and find something but to make Ol Shem possible and then therefore give an ancient connection. But as we talked about, it doesn't work for the language, it doesn't work for the location. But additionally, Ol Shem is mentioned in Abraham 1:10 and it says even the thank offering of a child did the priest of Pharaoh offer upon the altar which stood by the hill called Potiphar's Hill at the head of the plane at Ol Shem. And so not only is Ol Shem a made up word, but its inclusion in the Book of Abraham connects it with Potter's first Potiphar's Hill, which is a massive anachronism. And as we've been talking about throughout this episode, scholars date the writing of the pentateuch to the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, but they note that it could not have possibly been written before the 10th century BC as we talked about, because Hebrew was not a language then. Potiphar's Hill is another example of why scholars can date this material to those centuries. And from that point, I'll let Dr. Rittner explain why that is.

John Dehlin 1:51:24 All right, let's roll the tape.

▶ Video Clip 3

Video Clip 3 1:51:25 Of course, you've got to understand that according to the basic fundamentalist worldview that Joseph Smith had, it was Moses who wrote Genesis and therefore Abraham coming after Moses would be able to reference it chronologically. It's only when studies have developed to the point that they have now that we can see that that doesn't really make sense on a regular timeline.

Video Clip 3 1:51:48 Yeah, well, the same argument is applicable to the book of Exodus and for phrases and terms that are in the book of Abraham. Specifically the name Potiphar, which comes out of the book of Exodus and is in the Joseph story, you have in Book of Abraham a reference to the so called Hill of Potiphar. Potiphar is an Egyptian name that is only occurring in later period, post New Kingdom.

Video Clip 3 1:52:20 What year is that? Post New Kingdom?

Video Clip 3 1:52:24 Eight hundreds, Six hundreds, Somewhere in there, Seven hundreds. In other words, what I'm telling you now is that scholars have to date the book of Exodus. It had to have been composed no earlier than 700 BC because it has anachronisms in there that couldn't have existed. No Egyptian would have been named Potiphar before what we call the Libyan period in Egypt, which is one of my periods of specialization, the Berber period in Egyptian, Potiphar is PA di Pah Ra, the one whom Paris has given. And that has a grammatical scroll construction that wasn't possible and wasn't used as a personal name until around 700 BC. And so it's a distinctly Egyptian name, it's in a distinctly Egyptian place, and it's grammatically only possible at this time period, like the script, which means there is not a chance, same level of absolutely wrong, that the book of Exodus can date from a patriarch who lived at the time it claims.

John Dehlin 1:53:56 Okay, yeah. It's always not great to have Dr. Robert Ritter on the opposing side. Nemo. Anything you want to say about that?

Nemo 1:54:04 It's just, it's pretty unequivocal, isn't it, that like when you get the etymology of a word and you understand how a name came to be and you can point out that that name could not have come to be before a certain time because of the way the language worked, like that's irrefutable at that point. I don't know how you argue against that.

Mike 1:54:23 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:54:24 And this is like literally his expertise, right?

Mike 1:54:27 Yeah. I mean, just, you know, it's funny because they have all that. We talked earlier about how you have all this influence from Joseph Smith's Hebrew lessons in 1836, and maybe if they had had Egyptian lessons when he wrote this, he would not have put Potiphar in there because he would have realized it was an anachronism, but he wasn't aware of it, and so he did. And so it just shows that Joseph Smith's ability to create Scripture is limited by Joseph Smith, not by God, not by Abraham. It's limited to what Joseph knows and what he doesn't know. And that's why, as we talk about the Book of Mormon and now with the Book of Abraham, you have all of these errors that stem not just from 19th century incorrect worldviews, but from biblical scholarship. He didn't know, but that we know today. And it is what it is. And Robert Rittner, I think, explains why there is zero chance that this could have been material from Abraham's time. There's no possible way. And this is just one problem of many. It's not like it's just the only thing that we're dealing with here.

John Dehlin 1:55:20 I always have to say that these responses to Mormon apologists, they're necessary and they're always my least favorite part parts, because we're responding to really, really dumb arguments. But let's do it anyway. Let's now talk about Elkanah as another apologetic quote hit in the Book of.

Mike 1:55:38 Yeah, so this one's from the Church's essay, and it says Joseph Smith's explanations of the facsimiles of the Book of Abraham contain additional earmarks of the ancient world. Facsimile 1 and Abraham 117 mention the idolatrous God Elkanah. This deity is not mentioned in the Bible, yet modern scholars have identified it as being being among the gods worshiped by ancient, ancient Mesopotamians. And this is some stuff I took from on the LDS discussions website, our annotated essay. This one was done by a guy named Kellan, who's way smarter than I am. And, you know, he mentions that this detail runs into the same problem that you see with Olishim and Ulisum. These modern scholars, all of whom happen to be employed by the LDS Church and all of whom seem to be named or referencing Daniel C. Peterson, make the unfounded assumption that Elkanah is a reference to the Canaanite God El, or possibly the use of the generic word El to signify any of a number ancient Near Eastern gods. And so Elkanah is simply not a recognized name from anywhere in antiquity and is only mentioned in the Book of Abraham. A very quick Google search will confirm this. If you. If you Google Elkanah, it's all Mormon links because it's just not anywhere else. And so the Church's essay seeks to give the impression that scholars outside of the Church have found Elkanah to be an ancient evidence, which it's just not there. Which, again, a quick search will tell you. And this claim is disingenuous and it's made on very shaky ground because if they want to tell the whole story, they might also point out that Yahweh Jehovah made his first appearance as a pagan God in the pantheon of the same L. And so they're trying to say there's this generic L that can reference any number of gods, and therefore it has an ancient core, which is really deceiving, especially if you understand what L could also mean.

Speaker D 1:57:22 It.

Mike 1:57:22 It's just, you know, I don't know what more to say.

John Dehlin 1:57:25 Okay, Nemo.

Nemo 1:57:28 Not much more to say, to be honest.

John Dehlin 1:57:30 Okay. Your audio's gone a little bit soft, Nemo.

Nemo 1:57:32 I'm not sure. Sorry. Not too much to say. Get closer to the mic.

John Dehlin 1:57:35 Okay. Okay. So should we go to the next slide?

Mike 1:57:38 Yeah, so let's go. This one is kind of piggybacking off the last one. And so this is from John G. Again, and he's writing about the historicity of Elkanah. He declares the following. The odds of winning the Powerball lottery by buying a single ticket are merely 1 in 292 million. The odds of winning the Powerball lottery two weeks in a row are 1 in 8.52 times 1016. The odds of winning three weeks in a row are 1 in 2.49 times 1025. Though only a crude calculation of the odds, it gives some idea how difficult it would be for Joseph Smith to simply guess correctly about the four idolatrous gods in the Book of Abraham. And just, you know, again, it's like just a quick read tells us that Elkanah, just like oem, is a name created by Joseph Smith for the Book of Abraham with no use validity outside of Mormon scholars. The name Elkanah is in the Bible, which is simply Elkanah from the book Abraham with the first A swapped out for an E. And then furthermore, what. What John G. Neglects to tell his readers in the article is that John, is that Joseph Smith. What Joseph Smith actually Translated as Elkanah actually means. And I can't even read this, but Kibbeth. Yeah, there you go. Thank you, Nemo in Egyptian. And so what John Gee and Daniel Peterson have done by manufacturing these ancient connections might be comforting to members who want to find a reason to believe. And when you apply these kind of Powerball statistics, which is just the world's. The whole Joseph Smith world's greatest guesser thing is one of the most ridiculous articles. And they wrote that in the Interpreter, and there was a long thread on the Mormon Discussed Mormonism board before the board kind of fell apart and they had to redo it. And it was just reading it. It just shows the, the lengths that. And I know John doesn't like to use the word game. I'm going to say the word. The games they play to try to make it seem impossible when we're ignoring all of the Mrs. And we're trying to say, oh, well, there might be this one hit. And so to give this idea that, like, Joseph Smith guessing the gods when he translated them wrong in the first place is. It's like one of those, like, it's like a chef's kiss thing for apologetics. It's just still how kind of ridiculous it gets.

Nemo 1:59:42 And it just doesn't work. It just doesn't work because they're making the assumption they're manufacturing a scenario in which correctly guessing the name of an ancient Egyptian God is exactly statistically equivalent to winning the lottery. And there's no reason to believe that's the case. A person of their own mind may be able to create correctly a guess at an ancient Egyptian God with better odds than winning the lottery, maybe with worse odds, but they've not given any justification for why someone's ability to correctly guess the name of an Egyptian God is somehow equivalent to winning the Powerball lottery. It makes no sense.

Mike 2:00:19 And it's not even correct because obviously, as we just said, the. The actual translation off the papyrus is not what he. What he said it was. So it's just, it's amazing. It's one of those things, right? You read it and you're in. I remember reading that article in the Interpreter was called Joseph Smith, the World's Greatest Guesser. And you're reading it and you're like, I think that article actually piggybacked a lot off of your Michael Co Interview. And they talked about a lot of the things that Joseph Smith guessed correctly from the Book of Mormon about Mesopotamian, Mesoamerican culture. And I just remember people just Just kind of going through. They were using the Bayesian theory and stuff, and I don't want to get on tangents. Obviously we want to keep going here, but it just shows the lengths that we go to in order to manufacture hits for Joseph Smith while ignoring the mountains of misses that are just to the side of you. And I, I just. Sometimes you. You just want to scream because, as John said, I. Sometimes I hate doing these sections because, like, doing this one slide makes me want to scream because it's so ridiculous. But I want to present it so that people who are listening can understand that I'm trying to give the best arguments that the Church makes and that their apologists make so you can make that decision. Obviously, I'm presenting it from the standpoint of what I think the answer is at face value. But, yeah, I just. I think this is a nonsensical argument.

John Dehlin 2:01:34 And just to summarize if I'm understanding it right, we've just disproven three or more, you know, quote hits. That fair Mormon guy and Muhlstein are claiming we've disproven them all, and yet what they do is try and string them up as three consecutive, completely improbable, you know, lottery like improbabilities. Trying to say that it's beyond miraculous that Joseph Smith was able to be such a prophetic sage, when in reality it's three complete hits. Sorry, it's three complete misses instead of three miraculous hits. Is that right?

Nemo 2:02:19 Yeah.

Mike 2:02:19 I mean, look, let's just take a step back. Let's just say Joseph Smith really guessed the name of the four idolatrous gods in the Book of Abraham correctly. Let's just. Let's just make that assumption. Do you think the only place you could read about that is an article by John Gittel about Powerball? That would be the beginning. Every General Conference would start with just. So just before we start this weekend's proceedings, I want to read these four idolatrous gods and Joseph Smith getting it right. It would end with booyah, and then they would start, because that would be a proof that Joseph Smith could translate. The fact that you're seeing it in this really obscure article tells you that nobody really accepts that as truth outside of John G. And if the Church believed it was. Was a solid evidence, they'd be telling that to everybody to say, see, Joseph Smith could get it right. And so they don't. And that's why I get so frustrated with some of this stuff, because again, if Joseph Smith translated the papyri right it would be hung behind Russell Nelson at every General Conference. And every once in a while, he'd just slam the table and point back if, you know, he'd say, oh, those people who left the church in doubt, Bam. Look at that. But instead we're being told, oh, I forgot what the word. Well, Nemo I can't even pronounce anyways, but Nemo said the name.

Nemo 2:03:22 And then all of a sudden.

Mike 2:03:24 Yeah. And then we're like, oh, no, it's Elkanah. It's like, no, no, it's not. And so it just. It's angering to me because I know a lot of people who are in the church who will read that and find comfort in it, even though it's absolute nonsense. And I guess that's where. Where it drives me nuts, because a lot of the people writing this know better. I would say most of them know better, or all of them, but most of them certainly do.

John Dehlin 2:03:45 One thing have we had to. One thing we have yet to hear is Elder Holland make a, you know, argument at General Conference that to leave the Mormon Church, you have to crawl under, over, or around the Book of Abraham. We haven't heard that. We haven't heard that talk yet.

Mike 2:03:59 No, you'll never hear that. You know, and we could. We could do a whole episode on that. That quote about crawling around the book, you know, up. Was it up and over in the Book Abraham, the Book of Mormon. I mean, we did that in the. The six episodes. I mean, it's not hard to look at the Book Abraham and show you why it's not what it claims to be. It's actually ridiculously easy because Joseph Smith leaves very distinguishable fingerprints on him in the Book Abraham. To your point, you don't hear anyone in the church talk about the Book Abraham outside of saying, we don't worry about the translation because it's wrong. We just look at the.

Speaker H 2:04:29 The.

Mike 2:04:29 The gifts it gives us spiritually. And at that point, as we've said, you're indistinguishable from fraud. And in Warren Jeffs or David Koresh or anybody else who says, how do you feel when I tell you these things? They're now just on the exact same level, playing the same level that Joseph Smith is. And the church would never grant that because they're invoking special pleading for themselves while telling everyone else, no, we're going to rely on your claims. And that's really the difference.

Speaker F 2:04:51 Yeah.

Nemo 2:04:52 It makes me wonder whether it'll ever be removed from the standard works, to be honest.

Mike 2:04:55 I can't, though, because it's got the pre existence and we talked about this in the last episode, but the moment you remove it, you're basically acknowledging that Joseph Smith got it wrong. And then at that point it's like, well, why. Like, why would you trust the Book of Mormon if you know the book Abraham is made up? Why would you know? And so at that point, you can't. It's like, you know it's wrong and, you know, it's like the most easy smoking gun to look at and say Joseph Smith couldn't do what he claimed he could do. But the second you pull that thread, you're done. And so I. They're in the. They're in the most, you know, between a rock and a hard place in the worst way with this. And, you know, it. It's because Joseph Smith, I think, on some level, got a little bit too arrogant. We could read the quotes he did. We would tell people, you know, he'd read the say this gibberish line and say, oh, in Egyptian, it means this and this and this, and it's just complete gibberish. Like, the guy, I think, to some degree, got a little too confident at the end of his life because I think at the beginning he never would have made such easily falsifiable claims. And at the end, he was doing it and. Yeah, yeah, it's just, you know, we could keep going. It's just. This stuff just drives me insane.

John Dehlin 2:06:00 We're starting to get ranty. But. But I blame it. Yeah, I blame it on Joseph Smith. Okay, but.

Nemo 2:06:05 But to. Just to shore up that point so it doesn't sound completely ranty. Joseph Smith, near the end of his life, got to the point where he said, even disciples of Jesus Christ left him, but none of the members of the church have left me yet. So, like, he was at the point of comparing himself to Jesus. So, like, it is. Yeah, you know, it's ranty, but it's also true. Joseph Smith's ego was at that point. Yeah, yeah.

Mike 2:06:23 I mean, we. With the poly. The polygamy episodes are a great example of showing Joseph Smith's confidence in his own ability to get people to believe that what he was saying was from God and the Book of Abraham is around that same time frame. So it just shows how Joseph Smith, you know, in his later life is doing things in a much more, I would argue, almost casual way than he did earlier, which is why you don't have accounts of him just putting his head in a hat. I know there's there's one account of that, him using the seer stone with the Book of Abraham, but most people, I think, just say they sat next to him as he translated the. You know, I think there's that one quote from Willard Chase, maybe, or someone, and it's. It's a negative quote. And that's another one we could do in a future episode, because the church in the essay presents it as, like, this awesome quote, but the actual letter is talking about what a scandal, you know, a scoundrel Joseph Smith is.

John Dehlin 2:07:06 So, yeah, that was something that. That a viewer commented on on YouTube that I just never thought of. If Joseph Smith was able to just pull out his seer stone in the hat, you know, and read reformed Egyptian, which is a language that didn't exist, and to translate word for word, character for character, the Book of Mormon from the stone in the hat, why was he doing the grammar? Why was he trying to decipher Egyptian when he would have started with the power to just use that from the beginning? That's a problem. I didn't even think to ask in the previous episodes.

Mike 2:07:42 Yeah, I mean, you know, I think the problem for Joseph Smith is with the Book of Mormon, he never showed the plates anymore. With the Book of Abraham, they could all see the scroll. And so I think at that point, it'll be really difficult for him to say, I'm gonna just put my head in the hat, because everyone can look at the source material. And I think that's the scenario was just didn't allow for Joseph to do it that way. That's just, you know, a quick guess, but.

Nemo 2:08:03 And that's what I put out there right near the beginning when I was pointing problems with the Book of Abraham. In some of my early Facebook posts that started all my channel off and everything was that, you know, this idea, the Catholic theory and all that sort of stuff, the idea that God put it straight into his brain and then he spoke it out. The problem with that is the grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian language. That is the core issues that Joseph fundamentally believed he was doing a traditional translation of that text. And that's evidenced more than it is in the case of the Book of Mormon, where it is very much divine, sent to him through the rock in the hat, and then he speaks it. This is a. You. You can't play around with the definition of the word translation here, because Joseph Smith's actions and the materials he produced shows that he believed it was truly a traditional translation.

John Dehlin 2:08:48 Absolutely. All right, let's go to the next Slide Apologetic hits. Joseph Smith knew. This is apologetic claim. The Joseph Smith knew non biblical Abraham stories.

Nemo 2:08:58 Yes.

Mike 2:08:58 And so it's from the essay. It says the book of Abraham is consistent with various details found in non biblical stories about Abraham that circulated in the ancient world around the time the papyri were likely created. In the Book of Abraham, God teaches Abraham about the sun, the moon and the stars. And we covered this in our annotated Gospel topics essay. These non biblical stories about Abraham were in materials that Joseph Smith had access to to. And so we mentioned this earlier in the episode, but the story of Abraham's attempted sacrifice was in the Adam Clark Bible Commentary, which we know Joseph Smith used a few years before the, you know, because of the revision of the Bible. And this is right around their footnote 46, and it says the following. Some of these extra biblical elements were available to Joseph Smith through the books of Jasher and Josephus. Joseph Smith was aware of these books, but it is unknown whether he utilized them. And so they're presenting in the actual essay this idea that Joseph Smith knew all got all these details right that he couldn't possibly have known. And then the footnote says, well, Joseph Smith actually knew of these books, but we don't know if he used them. It's just, it's one of those things where you kind of laugh because of course, if he, if he was aware of me, was using him in the material, we could show that from the Adam Clark Bible commentary. It's not, you know, it's just to put it in a footnote, it just seems crazy to me.

John Dehlin 2:10:12 Yeah, Nemo.

Nemo 2:10:15 I'm just looking through my Apocrypha, seeing if I can find any mention, but I can't find anything at the moment. I've got an old copy of the Apocrypha here.

Mike 2:10:22 Oh, nice.

Nemo 2:10:23 Can't find anything.

Sources Joseph Smith Had Access To

John Dehlin 2:10:25 All right, all right. Well, let's go to the next slide, which is sources that Joseph Smith had access to that influenced the Book of Abraham. That's a great question. Where do you get the content then?

Mike 2:10:36 Yeah, and this is another thing from our annotated essay that was done by Kellen. And it says two sources that Joseph appears to have borrowed from are Thomas Dick's Philosophy of a Future State from 1830 and Thomas Taylor's the Six Books of Proclus on the Theology of Plato. That was from 1816. We now know that Joseph owned both of these books. And that's from a note on the Nauvoo Library and Literary Institute that was in BYU Studies. And these are sources that go beyond the more commonly cited Jasher and Josephus and the Adam Clark commentary. And they have a lot of connections that Joseph could have drawn from, and certainly some seems to have done so. Klaus Hansen, who is an LDS scholar, observed that there are many striking similarities between concepts in the Book of Abraham in Dick's book, including including the idea that the universe is made of indestructible matter that gets reorganized in new ways, that the universe is filled with living entities called intelligences, that these intelligences are eternal beings that are always progressing towards perfection, that all of the stars revolve around a central point, which is the throne of God, and that time is reckoned based according to the distance from that point. And so all of those are in the Book of Abraham. They're all in a book that we know Joseph Smith owned. And those are the kinds of things the Church is going to cite, as if Joseph Smith couldn't have known that those were kind of talked about in ancient times. Yet we have books showing exactly that.

John Dehlin 2:11:59 Nemo.

Nemo 2:12:00 It's. It's incredible that for so long I thought that. That Joseph Smith, the astronomy part of the Book of Abraham was one of the strongest things for me. And it's one of the things that a lot of people would latch onto. And then you realize it was just in contemporary literature. I don't think I would wonder whether there's anything Joseph Smith ever wrote down that wasn't just containing contemporary literature around him. View of the Hebrews, the late War, this stuff, Adam Clark's commentary on the Bible. Genuinely, I'm not sure anymore whether there is anything that Joseph Smith wrote that wasn't also just contained within contemporary literature.

Mike 2:12:37 Yeah, I wanted to do an episode, and I have on the website, one of the first things I ever did was just a summary. And it's not great. But in the summary, one of the sections was called Joseph Smith's Mixtape Theory. And it's just this idea that every single unique element of Mormonism comes from somewhere else that Joseph Smith was aware of. And so to Nemo's point, he listed all those. And then you've got the three Tears of Heaven come from Emanuel Swedenborg. You've got the Masonic ceremony being the temple ceremony. And so all of these things that Joseph Smith is introducing all have foundations that Joseph Smith is aware of. And it's just amazing how he repurposes all of this. And then we have apologists saying, how could he have known this was an ancient idea? And it's like, no it's right around where he. It's all around his. His time and place. And yet when you point that out, you know, people don't. Won't accept that. They won't accept that Joseph Smith could have pulled it from contemporary sources. Yet they're all there for us to. To see with our own eyes.

John Dehlin 2:13:35 All right, well, yeah, this is just. This isn't just one smoking gun. This is like 20, 50 smoking guns. It's a real problem because we're dealing with Mormon scripture here. So are we done with this slide?

Mike 2:13:50 Yeah, we could go to the next one. So this one is, you know, again, I know, I know John doesn't like using the word games. This. This is me saying the games apologists play. And this is kind of referencing back to earlier about the sacrifice of Abraham. So in the church's essay, they say a later Egyptian text discovered in the 20th century tells how the Pharaoh tried to sacrifice Abraham, only to be foiled when Abraham was delivered by an angel. Later, according to this text, Abraham taught members of the Pharaoh's court. I think it's. Or taught them through astronomy. All these details are found in the Book of Abraham. So they're saying, look, we've got this Egyptian text that was discovered after the book Abraham was written with a bunch of details that are in the Book of Abraham. How could Joseph have known? And this is again from our annotated essay that Kellen had done. He says this is a misdirection because as the Egyptian text, this Egyptian text they're citing is a document from apocryphal Coptic texts which date to almost 400 years after Jesus Christ. So it actually supports the idea that the Book of Abraham is borrowing from later apocryphal sources, which again, the church admits in footnote 46 by saying Joseph was aware of those sources. And so they're trying to tell you there's this Egyptian text that kind of confirms some what's in the book Abraham that Joseph couldn't have known. But what they don't tell you is that that text is an apocryphal text from 400 years after Jesus, not from Abraham's time.

Speaker E 2:15:08 Time.

Mike 2:15:09 It just shows that these traditions that we mentioned from the Adam Clark Bible commentary about Abraham being sacrificed and obviously, you know, surviving were out there in different, different ways. And so one final kind of nagging problem is that the Book of Abraham marks repeated references to the word Pharaoh, a title that was not adopted until over 1,000 years after Abraham's time. And as we talked about, and I think our first episode, you know, Joseph Smith also uses Pharaoh as a personal name, unaware that it was actually a title. And so it'd be like calling Abraham Lincoln President Lincoln, thinking that his first name was actually President. And it's just all these little things, you know, when you try to make these claims that Joseph couldn't have known. And I think Dr. Rittner made this point one of our earlier clips. It's like you try to make this one little data point work, unaware of all the problems you're creating around it, with other areas of apologetics, and we see that in every episode we do that. You try to do this game where you're trying to cherry pick something but not aware that it's creating problems around it. And this is another example of that.

John Dehlin 2:16:10 Yeah, I remember Dr. Rittner addressing that Pharaoh point in. In his. My interview with him. Nemo, what would you like to add?

Nemo 2:16:16 Just the Pharaoh point. The Pharaoh point is, is what gets me every time, is that it just shows such a basic misunderstanding of Ancient Egypt.

Speaker G 2:16:26 Yeah.

Nemo 2:16:26 By Joseph Smith.

Speaker F 2:16:28 Yeah.

Mike 2:16:29 And again, if it was the Catalyst Theory and it was Revelation, then God apparently doesn't know that Pharaoh is a title either. And that's why when you use these apologetics, all of a sudden you're opening up these other issues. And this is another area where that Pharaoh might seem like a small nitpick. It's not, because it really shows why the Catalyst Theory can't work, because then you have to believe that the Mormon version of God is unaware of this problem. And then obviously, if you're doing a translation, it's wrong. And so you can't go anywhere with that to make it work. So you just try to expand the universe of what we're looking for it. And you can't do that either, because that's entirely special pleading, because now you're trying to get to a point where you're. You're creating a scenario that can't be falsifiable because, you know, obviously everything else that Joseph produced is being shown to not be what it claims to. And yeah, the Pharaoh things is. Is a big issue because it illustrates the problems with all of the different theories apologists make regarding the. The production of the book Abraham.

Problems with Joseph's Cosmology and Astronomy

John Dehlin 2:17:22 All right, well, let's go to the next slide, which is, as Dr. David Bachoy explains, the problems with Joseph's cosmology. What does that word mean, Mike?

Mike 2:17:31 So this is just kind of like the book Abraham has this whole thing about astronomy and the cosmos and all of this other stuff. And so Radio Free Mormon did a three part interview with Dr. Boy, and the third part is all about, like, the astronomy and the cosmology. And David Bockvoy has a lot of experience and expertise in the way the ancient world views kind of viewed astronomy versus how we view it today and how we viewed it in different periods throughout history. And so this is a really cool audio clip from this interview because he's explaining why the book of Abraham actually contradicts itself between the different chapters. And then more importantly, it doesn't reflect the reality of what we know about cosmology today. And so, you know, the point is, if Abraham was receiving this via revelation, why is God not giving him the understanding that would hold up through the test of time? And it's the same issue we have, like with the translation of the papyri fragments, where it's just, it's, it's contradictory, it's not holding up, and it doesn't match what we know today. And that's a good way to lead into the clip.

John Dehlin 2:18:29 All right, let's roll.

Speaker D 2:18:30 The clip is that the cosmology that is presented in Genesis chapter one is the ancient one that we find commonly articulated throughout the near east, the world of Abraham, if you will, where we have a flat earth and that the sun, the moon, the stars are kind of, it's in suspended animation above the earth on the firmament. And the idea of a geocentric model where the Earth is the center, where things revolve around the earth, which the apologists want to present as the model being presented in Abraham Chapter three, there are major problems with that. Number one, you have a different cosmological account being presented in Abraham chapter four, which is derivative of Genesis chapter one. That's a problem for their argument and that they've never considered. But number two, it's a Hellenistic model. And so why in the world would God through the Urim and Thummim, reveal to Abraham a later model that the apologists argue is not reflective of contemporary astronomy, but it's based upon what ancients would understand when that model derives from the Hellenistic time period and does not appear in the Hebrew Bible? That makes no sense. From my perspective, if God is going to reveal something through the Urim and Thummim, he would do it in one of two ways. Either he would use the perspective that Abraham already held, which is going to be much more reflective of the cosmology that appears in Genesis chapter one, or the Book of Abraham chapter four, and then use that to teach spiritual truths, which is kind of the way that Kerry Milstein would go, or he's going to go with the model that it is actually a true reflection of the universe that Abraham was going to receive that reflects what we know to be true through contemporary scientific analysis. The idea why in the world would he ever then, through Urim and Thummim and by placing his hands upon Abraham's eyes, reveal to him an ancient model that derives many centuries after Abraham's lifetime, but is actually not a reflection of historical reality. So what I'm trying to say here, and I hope I've articulated it well, is that there are, from my perspective, two very significant problems with that. The main apologetic reading of Abraham, chapter three, number one, you have a different cosmology presented in Abraham chapter four that reflects Genesis one. And number two, it's a later Hellenistic model that Abraham wouldn't have known and that I can see no reason that God would have revealed since it's not an actual reflection of reality.

John Dehlin 2:21:24 All right. Yeah, so. So the wrong cosmology is offered. Nemo, anything you want to say about that?

Nemo 2:21:29 I can sum that up. Yeah, if you'd like.

John Dehlin 2:21:31 Please.

Nemo 2:21:32 Basically, you've got a good argument to say that God sometimes would reveal to people something that reflects their own understanding in an ancient world where they didn't really understand the, you know, the way the universe actually works, that we all revolve around the sun. That's fine. And they would say that God would use that to reveal truths. The problem is the model that God revealed to him isn't one that was contemporary to Abraham's time period. And so there's no reason for him to have revealed that over the true model of the universe, which also wasn't revealed to him.

Speaker G 2:22:04 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 2:22:05 Problem?

Mike 2:22:06 Yeah, it makes no sense. And David Akroyd does such a good job of illustrating that because it, you know, it's like if you have like a, like a linear time frame and Abraham's here, you'd expect God to either give you this one or the real modern one, but instead it's in the middle, which wouldn't make sense to Abraham, and it doesn't reflect what we know today. So it just shows that. Yeah, it just shows how out of place the cosmology is in the book of Abraham compared to what we know today and compared to what we know about what they believed anciently.

John Dehlin 2:22:37 Yeah, and in some sense, the fact that it makes no sense makes perfect sense because that's the entire book of Abraham analysis, right?

Mike 2:22:47 Well, yeah, I mean, it just shows that Joseph Smith's pulling from all these sources to write this book, and he doesn't have the knowledge we have in 2022. And so he's writing it, probably not thinking that they're going to understand that it's out of place, because again, they probably didn't even know they were going to crack Egyptians. So it just shows that Joseph Smith is pulling from sources that don't hold up. We see that over and over again throughout the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham. Abraham, just to be clear.

John Dehlin 2:23:13 Yeah, no, go ahead.

Nemo 2:23:15 I was gonna say what we're not saying is. And Joseph should have known better, because that would be to cry what the apologists love to call presentism, judging him by our standards in what he ought to have known.

John Dehlin 2:23:23 Right.

Nemo 2:23:24 Not true. But it is to say that there's clearly no God with omnipotence ruling the show because that God with omnipotence would know what we do know now and would have been able to give him the correct information from the off.

Mike 2:23:36 Yep.

John Dehlin 2:23:38 Yeah. You know, I'm going to make a criticism of this whole cosmology thing that's totally out of left field. But my biggest problem with this whole cosmology thing in the Book of Abraham is like, and I've made this point before, you've got precious, precious real estate here. There's a limited, fixed number of scriptural chapters and books and verses and words that you're going to give, you know, your children as God to govern humanity and to govern the church and to govern individual lives. And instead of talking about germ theory and preventing mass death and disease, instead of talking about LGBT rights to avoid the disaster of LGBT suicides that we have now, instead of, you know, talking about slavery and saying, hey, hey, Mormons, and hey, you know, people in the United States, don't do that slavery thing. Instead of any of the possible revelations that could have been given, God's going to give a failed cosmology. And that's how he's going to fill up the bullet, you know, fill up the billboard. He's going to fill up with a broken, false cosmology. I just. Come on, God, you're going to give a scripture, give us something useful. Not something, not only not useful, but actually erroneous.

Nemo 2:24:57 It's like the same as. As of all the times someone put something up on Reddit recently. It's like a list of all the times since the Garden of Eden, God has sent an angel with a flaming sword to do anything. And the only thing on the list is getting Joseph Smith to marry people.

John Dehlin 2:25:12 Not. Not genocide.

Nemo 2:25:13 Of all the things.

John Dehlin 2:25:14 Not genocide. It's. It's Joseph. You gotta marry this 14 year old.

Nemo 2:25:18 Yeah, yeah. Of all the things.

John Dehlin 2:25:19 Yeah.

Nemo 2:25:20 That God could decide to do.

John Dehlin 2:25:21 All right, and let's. So let's finish up this conversation about cosmology.

Mike 2:25:27 Yeah. This is another one from our annotated essay, and it just says, you know, many of the astronomical concepts and phrases in the Book of Abraham text and facsimile translations appear to come directly from Thomas Taylor's book. Taylor calls the planet's governors and uses the terms fixed stars and planets and Grand Key. Both works refer to the sun as a planet receiving its light and power from a higher sphere, rather than generating its own light through. Through nuclear fusion. LDS scholar R. Grant Athay, a research astronomer and director of the University of Colorado Observatory, observed at the time that the Book of Abraham was translated, the energy source of the sun was unknown, and the concept of one star influencing another was also a common concept of the time. Athay explains that Taylor also describes the same kind of progression of time among the universal bodies as Abraham. Chapter 3, verses 16 through 19. Some people of Joseph Smith's day also believed in the progressive orders of orbs and the intelligences that inhabited them. And so it's just, you know, our current understanding of astronomy and astrophysics tells us that the Book of Abraham's astronomical descriptions are wildly inaccurate and they do not match the beliefs of Abraham's own time. Kind of like David Bachboy said. Why is it that they are uncannily similar to the theories that were popular in Joseph Smith's day in the 19th century?

John Dehlin 2:26:43 Yeah. So again, if I'm understanding this right, not only is Joseph Smith getting it wrong again, we know the source from which he's getting his erroneous information.

Mike 2:26:55 It certainly seems like, I mean, we can't know for sure it's the exact source, but we could show that in his time frame, there is a source he's aware of that they owned in the library that used the same terms and that he is using 19th century beliefs in an ancient text. That obviously does not pan out to be true because they didn't know in the 19th century what we know today.

John Dehlin 2:27:14 Nemo.

Nemo 2:27:15 Nothing to add to that.

Speaker G 2:27:16 Okay.

John Dehlin 2:27:17 Yeah, we're kind of like, we've got 50 nails in this coffin, but we've got one more. We've got Sha Shane. Ha.

Mike 2:27:26 Yeah, it's so funny too, because I always used to read this as shine ha when I was, when I was you know, more active in the church just because. For some reason, that's just how it always popped to me. And I always thought it was interesting that, like, Shine hanging was like the sun, like, you know, shining sun. Ha. Like an Egyptian ending. But regardless, one of the more recent apologetics that have been referenced by many of them as a bullseye for the Book of Abraham is the use of Shaneha from Abraham 3. 13. It says, and he said unto me, this is Shaneha, which is the sun. And he said unto me, kolob, which is star. And he said unto me, olea, which is the moon. And then. And he said unto me, cocoa beam, which signifies stars, or all the great lights which were in the firmament of heaven. And. And the problem, again, is that this is another example of parallel mania, which is where apologists try to find anything that could possibly connect the Book of Abraham to being an ancient source, but it's just not there. And so we're going to play the clip from Dr. Rittner. But the problem is shneha is not a single word as the Book of Abraham. Sorry, it shouldn't say Book of Mormon, but it's actually two words. And so it's shen and ne. And when you put them together, it means the circle of eternity in Egyptian. And I'll let Dr. Rittner explain why that is a problem for kind of connecting it to the Book of Abraham.

John Dehlin 2:28:37 All right, let's roll the tape.

Speaker H 2:28:39 And he said unto me, this is Shinnecha, which is the sun. Now, there are discussions by John Gee, who has referred to this today in. Well, I heard it today in his recent podcast from last week, saying that this is a hit as an example of an Egyptian term which represents the ecliptic of the sun that is referred to in certain specific time periods. And it's a technical Egyptian term. And I discovered that shineha even has its own webpage on Wikipedia saying basically the same thing. And I assume it was an apologist who represents. Now, the problem with that is that there is a collection of Egyptian words that could come out sounding like shine. It would actually be shen nehe, which would mean if you put them together, the circuit of eternity. And that would seem to be a real hit. Shen nehech versus she ne ha. Now, the problem with that is, does this term actually exist? So, okay, we've thrown some sounds together, and if you throw enough sounds together, you could get accidental sounds that sounds like something Egyptian. So the question is not, as the apologists supposed it, if we make this sound, could it sound like something cobbled together in Egyptian. The question is, does such an Egyptian term even exist? Where is the proof? They don't go there, because they don't. And so I asked one of my colleagues to search in the Thesaurus Linguaegypti or otherwise known as the tla, which our reference work that includes all of the published Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions. So he did a global search for the number of times that the words shin, circuit, and ne are put next to each other. Then he did a search to see the number of times that they are closer than 10 words apart. The number of hits he got was zero. What I am saying is there is not a single case of where shin nehe occurs as a combination. Not one. There's not even a case where shin is 10 words next to. So the combination of shen nehe to represent the sun or anything else is a total fabrication. It's an accidental coincidence of sounds, but is unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. And so the work being done to say, look, look, what we can come up with is where you take something and you want to find an answer for it. It's not where you actually go to the evidence and then create an answer saying, ah, the evidence shows you this, because the evidence shows just the opposite. And that's the way apologists work. It's the way they always.

John Dehlin 2:32:14 I'm sure he was going to say, that's the way they always work.

Nemo 2:32:18 Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:32:20 Zero is kind of an overwhelming finding, right?

Speaker H 2:32:24 Yeah.

Mike 2:32:24 You know, I mean, I'm not saying that John Gee had access to the same database that Robert Rittner does, but the fact is you're trying to manufacture this hit by saying that these, you know, two words together could mean. And I put circle, I meant circuit of eternity. And what Robert Rittner is saying is you need those two words to be together somewhere to say that it would also be in this ancient text. Otherwise, it's an unfounded parallel that you're trying to create. And obviously it's. There's no evidence. There's nothing in any possible way, when you have zero references in their entire database that would show that this is a common way to refer to it, Nemo.

Nemo 2:33:00 I think it comes back to what we were saying earlier about that sort of idiolectic argument of looking at what language was being used by certain peoples. And then if that language is, you know, is not existent in the language of those peoples, then. But it is in the book of Abraham, then the book of Abraham can't be from that time. And it's this same thing that I think. I think looking for it being 10 words close as well is really important because not only were they not putting those two words together, circuit of eternity, they weren't putting that together as a word. In the same way as in German, you would have compound nouns and you'd put together long words like untalungskeith. Like you just take words and string them together. They weren't doing that in Egypt. They weren't just taking words and putting them together like that. In this instance, not only that, but conceptually, those two words never went together. That concept wasn't even being discussed because they were never within 10 words of each other. So it's not only did the word not exist in the ancient Egyptian language and therefore isn't a hit, but also conceptually, it wasn't a concept within the ancient Egyptian psyche. It wasn't something they were thinking of.

John Dehlin 2:34:09 Yeah, absolutely, Mike. I guess this takes us to the final. I mean, you know what we say at the beginning of each of these episodes. We're trying to be fair, we're trying to be neutral, we're trying to be objective. It is hard to maintain a temperament of non hostility or of non frustration and of just calm, peaceful objectivity, given how just overwhelmingly ridiculous defenses for the Book of Abraham, you know, seem to be to me.

Evaluating Apologetic Defenses of the Text

Nemo 2:34:52 You guys just need to be more British.

Mike 2:34:54 Yeah.

Nemo 2:34:55 Just look at it like it's all right and then you're fine.

Mike 2:34:58 Yeah, no, I mean, you know, it's. It's true. It's hard. You know, I think when we did the earlier episodes, it was a little easier for me not to, like, feel annoyed by it. And then when you get to, like, something like this.

John Dehlin 2:35:09 Wait, except for polygamy.

Mike 2:35:11 Well, yeah, polygamy wasn't. I don't consider that one. The earlier episodes and polygamy is the same thing because it's like you're making these apologetics that don't fit in any historical way. And so to do so. And to use, like. Like I said, to use credentials to do so with the Book of Abraham is where I get frustrated because they know better. And so if you're going to use. If you're going to tell people to stay in a church that requires so much of us and not give them the full information, and then not only not give them the full information, but to distort their own academic background in order to keep them in the church, I feel like that is where you cross a line that goes beyond, like, good intentioned apologetics to manipulating members into believing something that is not true. And I don't know if I'm, if people feel like that's too unkind or not, but I, that's how I feel. Because if you're asking someone just who's having problems with the Book of Abraham that there are these ancient hits and you're using your, your credentials to keep them in the church where they're going to continue to, you know, obviously pay tithing, wear underwear with Masonic symbols, be obedient to leaders, a lot of time you have the, the constant hovering threats of your eternal salvation with your family, all of those things. And you're doing so with scholarship that you cannot even put in a peer reviewed journal. I feel like that is when you know yourself that your stuff doesn't hold up. And so presenting that to a member with questions I feel like is a very bad thing to do.

John Dehlin 2:36:37 And I know this is personal for you, Mike, because you converted to Mormonism without all the information and you might have made a few different decisions if you had been given all the information.

Speaker H 2:36:46 Yeah.

Mike 2:36:47 And I think that before you get baptized, if you're an 8 year old, I mean we could get into that in our future episode about know what an 8 year old can and can't do. But yeah, as a convert, if someone had said, here's the Book of Abraham, here's the source material, here's what Egyptologists say, we still feel there's value in it, I'd be like kind of doing the side eye, like guys, this is not at all what he said it was. He claimed to do it through God. I mean, so yeah, I mean it's personal because of that, because I was only given the sanitized version of their history which they obviously knew was not true. Whether you talk about the translation, they didn't talk about polygamy. Obviously when I converted they didn't mention that whatsoever. So I did not know much about that. But you know, the ban on members with black skin, a lot of those things were given answers that just don't hold up. And so I do feel like I was misled not by the missionaries because they were doing what they were supposed to do, but by the people that were instructing the missionaries on what to say. And you know, like I said, we've said in previous episodes, if somebody wants to look at, to watch this episode and say, yeah, Joseph Smith absolutely created the book Abraham, but I still get a good feeling from it and therefore I'm going to stay more Power to you. But I hope that people just would be willing to say that in church and say, look, the Book of Abraham, Joseph clearly wrote it, but I still find value in it. But they never will do that. They'll keep telling members, the people like us who are talking about it are the people who have been deceived by worldly secular knowledge. And I just, I feel like that is such a. It's a tactic used by high demand religions who can't back up their own truth claims. And we're seeing that over and over again by the top leaders of the church. And I guess that's just how I kind of finished that little rant about. About why this stuff bothers me.

John Dehlin 2:38:23 All right, Nemo, we're about to hit the concluding slides. So final comments?

Nemo 2:38:27 Oh, no, nothing. I just, I wish I could rant more.

Mike 2:38:32 I'm glad you're so good at being succinct. I'm glad you can't because it's a great counterbalance. And I try not to. To rant. I try not to be visibly annoyed with this stuff. And usually I'm not. It's just sometimes when you're reading these, these, like I said it in our first episode on the book Abraham, it's like I'm. We're. We spent like probably about seven hours talking about it. And at the end of the day, Joseph Smith made claims as what the papyrus said. It doesn't say that that should be the end of it. And yet we're spending all this time, because the church has created all these new universes of reality to try to make sense of why Joseph Smith got it wrong. And I just, I feel like on some level I'm annoyed that we have to do that, even though we do, because obviously if you don't address it, then, then from an apologetic standpoint, they'll see, see, they'll say, see. They don't have answers to it. And you do. It's just, it's just frustrating. It just feels like a game where you're just trying to, you know, constantly catch the, the latest response that, you know, doesn't match up with the others. I don't know.

Nemo 2:39:28 Well, so here is my, my succinct final thought. I just. A lot of these men are smarter than I will ever be. A lot of these men are very intelligent men. As John was saying earlier, these are really intelligent people. So why do they say such stupid things? I don't get it. And that is what is frustrating, because nominally you're dealing with intelligent. Well, Educated men. And then they come out with stuff that is so nonsensical, it causes you to take a step back and go, well, hang on, did he really just say that? That is why. That is what is frustrating about it to me.

Mike 2:40:01 Yeah, I agree.

John Dehlin 2:40:02 Yeah. All right, well, I think we have thoroughly addressed the truth claims in the Book of Abraham. And if you need more, go to Robert Ritter's 13 hour response. But Mike, let's take it home with the conclusion.

Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

Mike 2:40:19 Yeah. And just to say, you know, and if you want to dive in more, if you don't feel like you've gotten quite enough, Robert Rittner's 13 Hours is amazing to listen to. The David Bockvoy interviews with John and with RFM are great. And Dan Vogel has a whole video series. I mean, you could go into this for 50 hours of podcasts and you'll continually learn stuff. It's just not going to make it better. It's just going to continually tell you this is not ancient. But anyways, as a conclusion, you know, whether you want to look at this through the translation method or the, you know, the papyri fragments, or you want to look at the text of the Book of Abraham, it's demonstrably a 19th century text. A critical look at the text confirms the problems that we see from the translation that this is not an ancient text that would reflect an autobiographical story of Abraham. And we talked about this earlier a little bit, but the church cannot disavow the Book of Abraham because obviously that would, would probably give too big of a message that they know Joseph Smith was making stuff up, but they'd be better off just ending the apologetics that go against the field of Egyptian studies and biblical scholarship and just basically, you know, say to just look at the words and if it makes you feel good, stay there. Because until the Egyptologists of the Mormon Church are willing to submit these arguments to peer reviewed journals, you know that they know that they do not hold up. I mean, the moment that they release these, these essays with all of these different possibilities and they've refused to submit them to a peer reviewed journal on Egyptology, you can be sure that they know deep down their crap arguments. I mean, just to put it bluntly, and Joseph Smith claimed the book Abraham was written by Abraham with his own hand upon papyrus. He got it wrong. This is a testable truth claim that Joseph Smith made and he got it wrong. And that's why to me, the book Abraham is a smoking gun against his claims to being a prophet of God.

John Dehlin 2:42:03 Yeah, I've actually heard Richard, I think it was Greg Prince who's quoted as saying, if you want to understand, you know, how the Book of Mormon was translated or the problems of the Book of Mormon, you just need to look at the Book of Abraham. Like, the Book of Abraham is. Is a smoking gun in and of itself, but it, it completely then logically undermines the Book of Mormon as, As a translation as well, that you don't. You don't get to sort of say, well, maybe, okay, maybe Joseph got one of the four, you know, scriptures that he translated wrong, but the other three are good. This, to me, this infects and implicates the Book of Mormon as a false translation as well. Nemo, anything you want to kind of

Nemo 2:42:49 throw on it implicates his other translation work, particularly as, you know, it was so clearly a translation. It was. There's no excuses to be made for this. So as we'll get onto the Kinderhook plates. Yeah, that doesn't make it better either.

Mike 2:43:07 Yeah, no.

John Dehlin 2:43:09 All right, so I think we've come to the end. Yeah. Do you want any final statements, Nemo or Mike? And do we want to tell listeners, viewers what's coming up?

Nemo 2:43:20 Just.

Mike 2:43:20 Next episode will be the Kinderhook Plates, which is not. You would think of it as not being associated with the Book of Abraham, but it actually has a lot of direct ties. And so I think that episode is going to be really fun because it's not going to be necessarily about the fact that Joseph got the little bit of translation he did wrong, because we know that it's going to be about the implications for the leaders from that point on, as well as it has very direct implications to the Book of Abraham that I think also put a hole in some of these apologetic arguments. So I'm actually really excited to do that one, and I know Nemo is going to do, which I'm also excited about, because any episode with Nemo is a good episode. So I'm looking forward to it.

John Dehlin 2:43:55 Wait, I thought you'd like to pick on Nemo and here you are complimenting him. That feels weird.

Mike 2:44:00 I bashed Nemo in private when, When. When it's not going to be recorded. And then when we're in public, I. I give him lots of praises, and I feel like that's a good, good strategy so that I can't get caught, you know, bashing him in public. So.

John Dehlin 2:44:12 So ne. Are you going to bash or praise Mike publicly? That's the question.

Nemo 2:44:16 Oh, Mike's brilliant.

John Dehlin 2:44:18 Yeah, that's Weird Sucks. This is all good. This is all good.

Mike 2:44:21 Nemo might be the worst. Nemo might be the worst thing to ever.

John Dehlin 2:44:24 The worst thing.

Mike 2:44:25 I thought. I thought I was muted.

John Dehlin 2:44:27 He called you a thing, Nemo.

Mike 2:44:29 I was muted.

John Dehlin 2:44:30 He called you a thing, Nemo.

Nemo 2:44:32 I've been called worse believing members of the church now.

Mike 2:44:36 Nemo. Nemo is great and we're so lucky to have him on these episodes. And I do give him a hard time. But, but, but to be fair, I told him at one point, I'm like, I'm not really trying to give you a hard time. I just was joking around. And he said, that's a British thing. And he enjoyed it. So I'm like, well, if that's the case, I'll keep doing it. So. But no, it's been so much fun doing these episodes with you and the Kinderhook Plates one I really think will be a fun one. And I think we're going to present it in a way that a lot of people that listen won't have heard it before. So I think it'll give some new info, at least some new insights to people.

John Dehlin 2:45:07 All right, and beyond. And even beyond Kinderhook Plates, we've got, you know, a few dozen, few dozen episodes to go. Right?

Mike 2:45:14 We got a while to go, so. So if you're. If you're still with us, I'm shocked. And, and thank you. And like I said, looking forward to it. And again, again, huge thanks to Nemo. I do give him a hard time, but he's obviously just so much fun and he's just so gifted at putting this stuff in a more concise way than I could ever do. So. So thank you, Nemo. And. And we'll. We'll be seeing you guys next week.

John Dehlin 2:45:35 Nemo. How did I get Mike to. To praise me? So.

Nemo 2:45:39 So, yeah, we'll have to work on that.

John Dehlin 2:45:41 Yeah, we'll have to work on that. Not today. We'll do it another time. All right, well, thanks, Mike. You're also brilliant and you're. You're scary brilliant and you're providing such an incredible service. I'm going to just remind everyone, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. We really need those subscribe subscriptions. We want to reach 100,000 mark. Please also subscribe to Nemo's Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel. And of course, you can always check out LDSDiscussions.com for the essays that support all of this. Check us out on Spotify, check us out on Apple Podcast on YouTube. We've got a playlist. And thanks to everyone who supports Mormon Stories in the Open Stories Foundation. You make all of this possible. And yeah, be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we will see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everyone.

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