The CES Letter vs. the Book of Mormon

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition. I'm your host, Dr. John Dehlin. It's Monday, January 2, 2025, and today we are doing a new LDS Discussions episode called the Book of Mormon as depicted in the CES letter. Really quickly, let me just explain what the LDS discussion series is. Forgive us those of you who know what it is, but one of the reasons why we're continuing to add to the LDS discussion series is because we're getting new viewers and listeners all the time. So for those who don't know the background, several years ago, a really brilliant Mormon questioning Mormon named Mike, that's a pseudonym, started a website called LDS Discussions. He is a convert to the church, and after he converted to the church, married his Mormon wife and had kids, he learned a bunch of stuff about Mormon Church truth claims that he really wished he had been told before he joined the church. And so he put up this website called LDS discussions where he dug deep into 30, 40 topics that people who cared about the truth would want to learn about. And we're talking, you know, Golden Plates, Book of Mormon translation, Book of Abraham, the Witnesses, all this stuff. Put it in a website called LDSDiscussions.com and then we cut a deal with him to bring him on Mormon Stories and to do, I don't know, 40 or 50 episode series. And so that's what we did. It's basically me and Mike and Nemo and Julia and sometimes the special guests exploring LDS Church truth claims evidence based. And as objectively as we're able to be, it's definitely the most important, one of the most important things Mormon Stories has ever done. It's consistently listed as the most important influencer for people trying to figure out whether the Mormon Church's truth claims are true or not. You can find it at LDS discussions playlist on YouTube. You can also find it as its own podcast series on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And the website's up there as well. LDS discussions.com Mike himself is retired from podcasting for now. We won't tell you what he does as his day job. Now, it's top secret as far as our audience is concerned, but we are continuing to add to the library and, and I'm super excited to have back with us today two of our participants in the LDS discussion series. We have Nemo the Mormon. Hey, Nemo, welcome back.

Nemo 2:40 Hello. Hello. Good to be back.

John Dehlin 2:42 Thanks for joining us.

Nemo 2:43 Yeah, thank you.

John Dehlin 2:44 And we have Julia, or analyzing Mormonism as she's known on TikTok and Instagram. Hey, Julia.

Julia 2:49 Hi.

John Dehlin 2:51 And Julia, you prepared today's episode, is that right?

Julia 2:54 I, I did. I did have Nemo's help, so. But yeah, I, I prepared the slides today. Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:59 Okay, so y' all did it together. All right, well, let me just give a tiny bit of an introduction and then I'm gonna hand it over to you, Julia.

The CES Letter and Its Core Claims

Julia 3:06 Sure.

John Dehlin 3:07 So just to give you a little bit of background, Jeremy has been attacked kind of, you know, as the Mormon Church does. Instead of really addressing the substance of critics arguments, what it often does is it attacks its, its viewers, its critics, its. And it attacks their motives and it attacks, you know, their character, basically. And, you know, we're going to get into who Jeremy Runnels is and what the CBS letter is very briefly, but before we do, I'm just going to address the attacks. So, you know, whether it's Public Square magazine, you know, you can see this article, the true origins of the CES Letter, where the headline is, was the CES Letter an honest plea for answers rather than a sincere letter that it was a calculated deception to undermine faith. So again, they're going to Jeremy Runnells motivations as, as intending to deceive. You know, here's another article from Meridian magazine which is a well known apologetic argument unveiling the truth, the real story behind the CES letter by Maureen Proctor. I won't even get into what I know about Maureen Proctor and, you know, someone close to her passing away as a result of, from what I understand, the interactions between, you know, Maureen and that loved one. It's not a pretty story. And then you could even have the, the website that, that was released and shared for quite some time, it was known as cesletters.com where they were basically poaching or cyber squatting on the CES letter domain name. They grabbed cesletters.com and cesletters.org and they were basically trying to cyber squat and allure people to more apologetic sources, but borrowing on the CES letter domain name and on the name. Here's the YouTube channel as it used to be, CES Letters, you know, at YouTube. And then you can see, you know, some of the types of videos that were released with BYU professor Stephen Harper. And there they have Richard Bushman and Brian Hales and, and sort of the normal Mormon apologetic casts of characters. As we understand it, a lawsuit was pursued for that sort of cyber squatting, specifically marketing around CES Letter or CES Letters. And we're happy to know that now, at least CES letters.com it redirects to the official churchofjesuschrist.org website, which basically confirms that. That the Mormon Church was behind, you know, this cyber squatting. But now csletters.com redirects to the official Church of Jesus christ.org website. And then cs letters.org redirects to studyinfaith.org which I am going to guess is also an official. It looks like it's an authorized experimental project out of byu. So that's kind of the backstory. And what I basically said is, until y' all Mormon Church, Mormon apologists, until you stop attacking Jeremy. Attacking Jeremy Reynolds, and until you stop attacking his character, you know, we're going to do our best to promote CES Letter on Mormon Stories podcast. So that's the background of why I wanted to do this series. Now, Nemo and Julia, if y' all want to provide any quick reaction to my intro, and then we could jump right into the slides. Nemo.

Nemo 6:58 Yeah, go ahead. The first is, if you notice that the thumbnails that they're using on Study and Faith are also quite familiar to viewers of this channel.

John Dehlin 7:07 Is that something that we could see on the slides?

Nemo 7:10 Yeah, yeah. If you go back there you go, don't they look a little bit. Don't they look a little bit Mormon Stories esque.

John Dehlin 7:16 Okay.

Nemo 7:17 Big person on one side, the lovely faded image in the background, the way Gerardo does it.

John Dehlin 7:22 Yeah.

Nemo 7:23 They're like, oh, people are drawn to that. Maybe we'll do ours similar and then we can get drawn that way. But the main thing I would point out is the reason for a series like this is because this thing has entered the Mormon zeitgeist, that somehow the CES letter has been debunked. There's this thing just churning around the zeitgeist. People going, oh, yeah, CS Letter has been debunked. Don't need to worry about that. And actually, there are still important conversations that need to be had around the questions that the CES letter raises. So a series like this is important to kind of bring those back into the conversation, because what we can't have is these very legitimate concerns that are raised in the book or in the letter. Them being just shorthanded away going, oh, no, that's been dealt with, because it hasn't.

John Dehlin 8:06 Yeah. And I would just. I would just give the ending away at the beginning and say, far from being debunked, I think the CES letters withstood intense, mountainous scrutiny, and it stands stronger today than it ever has in terms of they're not being credible. You know, we could maybe find one or two out of, you know, hundreds of, you know, claims. The CES letter makes maybe one or two if Jeremy's sort of been willing to retract or back away from a little bit. But overall, I think the CES letter has overwhelmingly stood the test of time, and that's why it's constantly listed as a main reason people change their minds about the LDS Church's truth claims. Julie, I want to give you a chance to respond as well, and we'll hand the presentation over to you.

Julia 8:56 Yeah, thanks. Um, so I just agree with Nemo like this. People say this has been debunked, but it hasn't. One thing that I found interesting is that a lot of members of the church, they. If it. If a response exists, whether they've looked at it or not, they're like, oh, that's enough. Somebody has an answer for this. I don't need to check the answer. Like, I think an individual was. It is his name Bennett. Who responded to the CS letter?

John Dehlin 9:16 Jim Bennett.

Julia 9:17 Jim Bennett. So, like, my. Like, I have family members, for example. They're like, oh, Jim Bennett wrote a response. That's great. That means the CS letter is bugged even though they don't read it. And I've had the same thing happen with, like, Hugh Nibley responding to Fawn Brody, where even my father was like, oh, Hugh Nibley has a pamphlet that he responded to her book, no Man Knows My History. No, ma', am, that's not history. Were the two different articles. But I was like, oh, have you read Hugh Nibley's pamphlet? And he was like, no, I haven't read it, but just that it exists is enough for me. And I just think that's really interesting. So here we're going to present these things. Yeah, there you go. It's a horrible. It's a horrible pamphlet. He's very. I don't know, I just don't like the way he handles Brody at all. But anyway, so, like, this is. These. What we're going to share today are things that, like, for the honest seeker, I suppose, like, not just somebody who's going to be like, oh, this exists. It's fine. I don't know how to explain that. But, like, we're trying here, we're trying to bring up. These are legitimate questions and concerns that Jeremy Reynolds has in the CS letter, and these are the reasons why. And this is why we're going to share some of his concerns. And questions and then some of how fair Mormon or other apologists have responded to those things. So that's how this is set up today.

John Dehlin 10:26 So what I heard you say, Julie, is that if the Mormon Church simply creates any response, no matter how bad it is, there's a lot of believing, faithful Mormons that will just simply say, oh, it's already been debunked because there's a response, even if they haven't actually looked at, read, or thought about the response. Is that what you're saying?

Julia 10:48 In my experience, yes. Like, even some of the things we'll look at, I'm like, I don't know how people are accepting this. I don't know. So. So that's my experience.

John Dehlin 10:55 Okay.

Nemo 10:56 The. The brain, without getting too deep into it, the brain is an energy intense organ. Right. And so if we can take shortcuts to just keep our position running the way it always has, then that's fine. So if your position that you want to keep is the church is true and I can remain active in it and all these sorts of things, then the easiest thing for your brain to do is to see that there's a response to the thing that might threaten that and then just go, okay, well, then there's a response that's fine. Doesn't need to go any deeper than that because that you can look at other things, then it can be involved in other tasks.

Julia 11:28 Right.

John Dehlin 11:28 All right, well, let's jump into it, Julia, shall we?

Julia 11:32 Yeah. So the first thing I want to show is just Jeremy Reynolds. This is the author of the CES letter, and you've interviewed him before on Mormon Stories. I think if anyone is doubting his sincerity in his writing of the CS letter, please go watch his episodes.

John Dehlin 11:46 In fact, what I'm going to do, Julia, when we air this episode that we're recording right now, it's going to be after I rebroadcast the full Jeremy Runnels interview contiguously. So if somebody's stumbling on this episode, they just need to go to the immediate previous one where you're going to see the entire Jeremy Reynolds interview. And you can judge for yourself not only his sincerity and his story, but you can also, we discuss in depth many of the issues in the CES letter. And again, we don't want you ever to believe us on Mormon stories or LDS discussions. We want you to look at the evidence and decide for yourself. Right?

Julia 12:25 Yeah. Yeah. And that's one thing that I really try hard to do is, like, in all the slides that I have, I have to Have. I want very specific footnotes. So if you guys have questions, just go straight to the footnotes or I'll put these in the show notes as well. So don't trust us, Go look for yourself.

John Dehlin 12:37 Okay.

Julia 12:38 So, yeah, so I wanted to quote. There's a quote from Jeremy Reynolds from the CES letter. Nemo, do you want to read that?

Nemo 12:43 Sure. I believe that members and investigators deserve to have all the facts and information on the table to be able to make a fully informed and balanced decision as to whether or not they want to commit their hearts, minds, time, talents, income and lives to Mormonism. Anything less is an obstruction to the free agency of the individual.

Julia 13:03 Thank you. So one of the reasons why I wanted this on here is in the temple. This is like, kind of like almost word for word. One of the covenants that you make in the temple is that you give your time, talents, all of your means, like your finances, I guess, and then like even your very lives, if necessary, to the church. And so, like, what Jeremy's saying is, if you're going to commit all these things to the church, they owe it to you to have everything on the table. And so that's one of the things he's struggling with, is that a lot of these things they didn't have on the table. And then that's what he's presenting in the CES letter.

John Dehlin 13:32 Got it. Okay.

Julia 13:33 Yeah. And so this. If we go to the next slide. Here, let me. Okay. So the. There are 16 sections of the CES letter, including other concerns, the conclusion and sources and notes, and an epilogue. So today's topic is the Book of Mormon. And I don't know how thoroughly we want. Because I picture this being like a series. Like, we go through each of the topics. Like, the next one will be Book of Mormon translation and then the First Vision, the Book of Abraham. And I don't know if we want to do. I guess Nemo, you said other concerns have really good. Like, even the science section, they have things worth talking about.

Nemo 14:04 Yep.

Julia 14:04 So, like, I plan. I picture this being a few weeks or a few weeks worth of a series.

John Dehlin 14:10 A few months.

Julia 14:11 Few months.

John Dehlin 14:12 We're going to do. Are you saying we're potentially going to do all the sections of the CES letter in sequence?

Julia 14:19 Well, that's. That's up if we. If conclusion or sources and notes and epilogue, if those are also episodes. So I'm not sure. So. So roughly, at least like 12 or.

John Dehlin 14:27 Yeah, he's 12, right?

Julia 14:28 Yeah, that's what I'm picturing. Yeah.

John Dehlin 14:29 Okay. Cool. And so this is. We're going to try and cover the Book of Mormon in one episode.

Julia 14:33 Yes, hopefully.

John Dehlin 14:34 Okay, cool.

Julia 14:36 Yeah. Okay, so I wanted to share a few clips from the leaders first to kind of give a background about how important the Book of Mormon is and then what that means to the religion. And so this first one is Ezra Taft Benson, my cousin. Your cousin. And so I can't. John, if you'll share the screen. I don't know if I can.

The Book of Mormon as Keystone of the Faith

John Dehlin 14:51 You're looking weird to me. Why are you looking weird to me?

Nemo 14:53 Because, I mean, that. That's news to me. I didn't know.

John Dehlin 14:55 Yeah. So my grandma is Karma Benson Parkinson, and she is literally. She was born and raised in, you know, Franklin, Idaho, and she. She's cousins with Ezra Taft Benson. And my, you know, great, great, great, great grandfather is Ezra T. Benson, who is like Ezra Taft Benson's father or grandfather. So I'm a Benson in my ancestry. Wow.

Nemo 15:20 Why. Why are you all related?

John Dehlin 15:23 Just because we all came over from England, Nemo. That's why. Okay. And I'll just say Ezra Benson was former Secretary of Agriculture under Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was a prophet since the 50s and 60s, an apostle in the Mormon Church since the 50s and 60s, and very controversial. But when he became prophetic, it was all about flood the earth with the Book of Mormon. That's what I remember about him. That's probably what you're going to show right now, is that clip, huh?

Julia 15:57 Probably, yeah.

John Dehlin 15:58 Okay. Should I play it?

Julia 15:59 Yeah, if that's okay.

John Dehlin 16:00 Go for it. This was the prophet Joseph Smith's statement. He testified that the Book of Mormon

Nemo 16:12 was the most correct of any book

John Dehlin 16:13 on earth and the keystone of our religion. A keystone is the central stone in an arch. It holds all the other stones in

Nemo 16:28 place, and if removed, the arch crumbles.

John Dehlin 16:36 I mean, that's pretty. Pretty clear, right?

Julia 16:39 Yeah. If the Book of Mormon is removed, the church crumbles is what I think he is basically saying.

Nemo 16:45 And I love that later on you get. Apologists will say things like, we don't know where people get this binary idea that the Book of Mormon's either true or it's not, or that if you can disprove the Book of Mormon, then the church falls apart. They were teaching it. They were literally teaching it.

Julia 16:59 Well, also, he says it's the keystone of our religion, but there are at least hundreds, I think, of other religions who believe the Book of Mormon, so it can't be the keystone of one if it's. If so many have it so I don't and believe that it's true. So that doesn't make sense to me either.

John Dehlin 17:15 Yeah. Because why aren't the other offshoots of the Mormon Church true?

Julia 17:18 Right. There has to be some other linchpin or some other thing.

Nemo 17:21 Well, yeah, the linchpin would have to actually be. So the actual cornerstone or the actual keystone would have to be priesthood authority, because that's what makes this branch of the restorationist movement the Latter Day Saint movement. Correct. Is that Brigham Young was the one that was meant to be the next prophet, and that's why. Yeah, well, that's the true keystone.

Julia 17:41 Well, even Joseph getting the priesthood is. I'd go farther back than Brigham.

Nemo 17:45 Well, no, but why this one's correct and not the others. That Brigham's priesthood line is the correct priesthood line.

Julia 17:53 Right, right.

John Dehlin 17:54 It's such a bold claim to say it's the most correct book ever on earth, given, you know, what we. And we've covered on the LDS discussion series so extensively, all the problems with the Book of Mormon, which we'll get into today. But it's such a ridiculously bold. But that's what Joseph was. He was so bold, he would triple down whenever he was challenged. You know what I mean?

Nemo 18:16 And so I did a video recently where I looked at, like, translations of the Book of Mormon. And if you look at the church's list of different translations, it will say the Spanish edition was done here, was the first translation, and then it was revised on these dates. And it'll say that about all the other languages.

Guest 18:30 But.

Nemo 18:31 But for English, it won't say revised. It says translated. And then it says major editions, even though we know there were massive revisions between the 1830 and the 1837 edition.

Julia 18:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I will say the. The Tanner, Sandra and Gerald Tanner have also talked about the changes in the Book of Mormon, and there's been. What do they say? There was a 4811 or something like that. I can't remember. It was like some specific number.

Nemo 18:55 Big number, but yeah. All right.

General Conference Talks on the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin 18:58 Well, let's go to the next video clip you have. This is one of my least favorite General Conference moments of all time. Go ahead.

Julia 19:04 And this is Jeffrey R. Holland, but I think you need to share the screen, John, and then I advance the slide.

John Dehlin 19:11 No, go ahead. If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text teeming with literary and Semitic complexity without honestly attempting to account

Nemo 19:32 for the origin of those pages somehow,

John Dehlin 19:34 especially without accounting for Their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers. If that's the case, then such persons, elect or otherwise, have been deceived. And if they leave this church, they must do so by crawling over or under or around the Book of Mormon

Nemo 20:06 to make their exit. So was he talking about. He was talking about the Chronicles of Narnia. Right.

Julia 20:13 I was thinking the same thing.

Nemo 20:15 Testify of Jesus Christ. And they're quite long and. You know what I mean?

John Dehlin 20:20 Yeah, go ahead, Julie.

Julia 20:22 Oh, no, I was just gonna say, like, he's talking about how the literary. The literary aspects of it, the. The complexities of it, all these things. Yeah. They have to account for that. But not only that, the good feelings that they have while they're reading it. So, like you were saying, Nima? I was thinking, like, oh, I feel good, or I felt good when I was reading Chronicles of Narnia or like Lord of the Rings, like, why is that more important? Why is the feelings that we have when we read it more important than these other aspects of the Book of Mormon?

John Dehlin 20:45 Well, the church would say, if I'm trying to be objective, there's a difference between the spirit and your emotions. The Holy Ghost is profound spiritual inspiration versus the good feelings that fiction or nonfiction might generate. But no one's ever been able to actually explain to me how to know the difference. Of course.

Julia 21:02 Right. Yeah.

Nemo 21:03 Yeah.

John Dehlin 21:04 I'll just say this was a particularly disappointing presentation to me because I had a lunch with Jeffrey R. Holland, you know, a few months before he gave this presentation. It was my second lunch, I believe, with him, either first or second. But his point when we had lunch was that he really wanted liberals and progressives in the Mormon Church, and he really wanted a big tent, even if he couldn't believe everything that the church, you know, claimed that they still wanted a big tent. And then when he gave this talk after assuring me that he wanted people like me in the church, it just made me feel like he was just telling me whatever he needed to tell me, but that he didn't mean it. Because if he meant it, he would never say something like this. That just seems so tone deaf and off putting to someone he claims he wants in the church. Now, maybe that's my assumptions, not actually how his brain works, but it was very disheartening, this talk he gave.

Nemo 22:03 Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. All right.

Julia 22:07 Yeah. There's another talk from Holland that I want to share, too, and I'm pretty sure Jeremy Reynolds shares It in the CES letter, if I'm not mistaken, or on his website, I think. John, do you want to read this one?

John Dehlin 22:17 Sure. Elder Jeffrey Holland once, Jeffrey R. Holland once stated, quote, everything in the Church, everything rises, falls on the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and by implication, the prophet Joseph Smith's account of how it came forth can be a little breathtaking. It sounds like a sudden death proposition to me. Either the Book of Mormon is what the prophet Joseph said it is, or this church and its founder are false, fraudulent, a deception from the first instance onward. Forgive me for the dramatization.

Julia 23:00 That's what he sounds like. He spoke to me at our mission and he was yelling at us. Yeah. So that's very black and white. If the Book of Mormon, like, it's a sudden death thing, it's either true or all these things like Joseph, there's a, he's a fraud, it's false, it's fraudulent, it's a deception from the very beginning, like.

Nemo 23:16 But we now know that it isn't what Joseph Smith said it was or it's certainly not what the Church told us that it was. In terms of how it was translated, etc, it. Okay, the 2006 change to the Book of Mormon with the double day edition where they changed it from the principal ancestors to among the ancestors. Right. That is changing what the Book of Mormon claims to be. It claims to be a record of some principal ancestors, but now it's claimed to be a record of just some of the ancestors. That change alone should then enact the sort of the situation. Yeah. The binary that Jeffrey R. Holland laid out there. It's like, right, okay, it's now not what Joseph Smith claimed it to be. The Church has admitted it's not what it claimed it to be in 2006. So Jeffrey, do you really want us to then go on to the next part of that and say, right then it's fraudulent from the first step onwards? Of course he doesn't. Of course the Church don't want us to take that conclusion. And that's the danger with making these sorts of sudden death binaries.

Julia 24:13 Right.

John Dehlin 24:13 And I'll just add that we've covered our Mormon stories for years that, you know, people inside the church now, including people like Spencer Fluman, Richard Bushman, Terrell Givens, have stopped calling the Book of Mormon a translation and, and have started calling it a revelation. Again, changing what Joseph Smith himself claimed it was like the whole thing was Joseph had a seer stone or the Urim and Thummim and he got gold plates and he translated from reformed Egyptian into English. And that was his power. And now the church is pivoting, saying, well, the plates weren't really in the room. He didn't really use the Urimum Thummim. He stuck a stone in a hat. And, you know, he basically dictated, you know, a revelation. And it's the same type of thing they're doing with the Book of Abraham. And so it's a great point you're making. Nemo, the Book of Mormon, isn't even now being described as being what Joseph Smith claimed it was. So Holland and Ezra, Tab Benson and others are just painting themselves into a corner.

Nemo 25:21 And this is why people leave when they discover these things. Because the church built these very fragile testimonies of it's either all or nothing. It's like, right, it's either exactly what it said it was or it's complete fraud. And so all people are left with when they discover these things is, oh, well, it's a fraud.

John Dehlin 25:37 Yeah.

Nemo 25:37 And they're gone.

Julia 25:38 Yeah. This reminds me of the recent episode that you just rebroadcasted with John McClay where he says, if the church had been honest from the beginning and talked about the stone in the hat or things like that, or polygamy, like, he's like, I could have accepted that, but the fact that I feel like I've been deceived or lied to, that's what I can't accept. And I'm pretty sure Jeremy Reynolds feels the same way. Like if the church had just been honest from the very beginning about its origins and about all these, the treasure digging, all these things. Like those are. That's easier to swallow than. Than the thought of. Oh, you've been keeping this from me.

John Dehlin 26:06 Yeah, absolutely.

Nemo 26:08 And. And not Spencer Fluman, but what's his name? No, no, no. He's been doing. He's the current church historian or he's been doing a lot of firesides.

John Dehlin 26:19 Keith Harper. Keith, erm. Gerald. Gerald Halverson.

Nemo 26:25 Is that Erickson?

John Dehlin 26:27 Okay, yeah, yeah.

Nemo 26:27 So Keith Erickson came to the UK and he did a fireside and someone pointed out, you know, why is the church not talked about this stuff? And he said, oh, there's a great deal of difficulty the church has had in disseminating this information. And it's only now with the information age, that we're able to really kind of put this stuff out with the Internet. And this person just came back and said, community of Christ put all this out in the 60s. And it's true. Other Denominations of the Latter Day Saint restorationist movement have dealt with these parts of their history much earlier than the Brighamite group have, for sure. It's just worth mentioning.

Julia 27:00 Yeah, that is worth mentioning.

John Dehlin 27:03 All right, Julia, what's next?

King James Bible Errors Found in the Book of Mormon

Julia 27:06 Yeah, so this next slide, if you'll just.

John Dehlin 27:09 Oh, okay. Yeah.

Julia 27:11 So Jeremy Reynolds lists 11 questions about the Book of Mormon. And so we're going to go through each of those. So the first one is, what are 1769 King James Version Bible errors doing in the Book of Mormon? In his book An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, Grant Palmer states Joseph's use of the KJV includes the modern errors which accumulate in the handwritten manuscripts in KJV over the centuries. And then he. Then Palmer lists examples. And so you can see here, so third Nephi, chapter 12, verse 27 is similar to Matthew 5:27 by them of old time. And then third Nephi 12:30 is similar to Matthew 5:30 should be cast into hell. So he's just listing off different errors that, that are also present in the Book of Mormon that were also present in the Bible in this specific edition.

John Dehlin 27:58 Now, now, Julia and Nemo, I don't know if y' all can help with this. Like someone who's viewing and listening right now, who's raised Mormon, I don't even think they understand what you mean by errors because you're just showing text. But they wouldn't know why to consider these words errors. Do you all just want to help us understand what's erroneous about these examples? Because obviously we don't have time to dig into it. But just to as a jumping off point for people who want to learn more. Nemo, were you going to answer?

Nemo 28:30 I can do. Unless Julia has an answer, but no, you're good. Essentially what this is is translations, when they're done by, you know, 17th and 18th century clergymen in the UK, when they are doing translations, they look at manuscripts and then they will try and best portray in English the words of the manuscript they receive. Now, if things in the manuscripts, which the manuscripts were handwritten and preserved over time, if things in those manuscripts turned out to have been later editions or things that were added in by, you know, copying, etc. Then later translations will have spotted that and remove those and then try and get to a more pure meaning of the transcript that they are working from. So the 1769 edition of the King James version of the Bible works from manuscripts that had some of those things that had been included by scribes as they were being written. Over time, I believe that's that to my understanding, that's what's going on. But I think it's really important to mention that even if they were errors or not, you know, if you'd want to be a King James Version purist and say those weren't errors, that's fine. The question still is why are very specific examples from text in the 1769 edition of the King James Version of the Bible verbatim in the Book of Mormon. That's still a question that needs to be asked and answered.

John Dehlin 29:53 And so you'll tell me if I'm. If I'm. If I'm getting this right. So basically, basically we know that the Joseph Smith, the Bible that he had was the 17, you know, probably his family Bible was the 1769 King James version of the Bible. And then we know that the Book of Mormon just has extensive passages just kind of copied into it. And it's not just that it appears to be plagiarizing the King James Version of the Bible, it's plagiarizing the 1769 version of the King James Bible, which is the version of the Bible that we know Joseph Smith and his family had. Is that correct, y'?

Guest 30:42 All?

Julia 30:43 I believe so. There are photographs of the church release of the Smith family Bible. Off the top of my head, I can't remember if it's the 1769, but I think that's correct.

Nemo 30:51 Even if it's a slightly later printing, I believe it contains the 1769 language. So it may have been printed in 1812 or whenever, but it has the 1769 update of the King James Version of the Bible in it, is my understanding.

John Dehlin 31:05 So I guess, and I'm assuming it doesn't have errors necessarily of previous or subsequent editions. So I guess viewers and listeners have to ask themselves, why would the errors of a particular version of the Bible that was one that Joseph probably had access to. If the Book of Mormon was a translation from Egyptian, you know, reformed Egyptian, through the Urim and Thummim, by the gift and power of God, why are errors from a particular version of the Bible that Joseph Smith would have had access to appearing in the Book of Mormon? All right, I think we covered that well.

Nemo 31:41 Yeah. Just to really quickly tighten that up is to ask why, if God is giving Joseph Smith a language either through a revelation, as some apologists are now saying it, or through a translation, he's either taking the words of 4th and 5th century Native Americans and then using the exact words of Oxford clergymen to translate Those for some reason, or God's giving him the exact words of Oxford clergymen to write about the appearance of Jesus Christ giving the Sermon on the Mount. Exactly the same words that were used by those clergymen to describe the Sermon on the Mount in the Bible.

Julia 32:16 Yeah. One example. That's not an error specifically, I think, but my dad pointed out in one of the books written by Paul in the New Testament, he says, oh, wretched man that I am. And that's a direct quote also from. From Nephi. So. So why is. I think also what you're asking is why is the 1600 BC text showing up in this whatever version of the Bible or even just post Christ, even if Paul did say those things, why are those both showing up exactly the same way in these different texts?

John Dehlin 32:43 You mean 600 BC, right?

Julia 32:45 BC yeah, 600 BC did I say the wrong thing?

John Dehlin 32:47 You might have said 1600, but 6.

Julia 32:49 Oh, sorry, 600 B.C.

John Dehlin 32:51 that's when Nephi would have been alive.

Julia 32:53 Yeah. So Nephi, when? The very beginning. Yes. Yeah.

Nemo 32:55 And even if he said something in his language and that was then recorded in reformed Egyptian, that translates into English as roughly a wretched man that I am, or some sort of exclamation of whoa, why would Joseph Smith. Or why would God give Joseph Smith the exact words that were translated from the Greek manuscript that reports the words of Paul? Why are those exactly the same?

Julia 33:16 Right.

Nemo 33:16 I think is the nub of the question, because, oh, wretched man that I am is what those scholars decided the Greek would best translate into English as. So it's a distinctive phrase that came from those scholars.

John Dehlin 33:32 It just makes no sense that the King James. I mean, it doesn't make sense that the Book of Mormon is in King's English, whatever the version of English it is. What version of English is that? Nemo?

Nemo 33:41 I think some describe it as Jacobean English.

John Dehlin 33:44 Yeah, just. Why would the Book of Mormon be in Jacobean English at all if it's trans? If it was written by Nephites and Lamanites, why would it not have come

Nemo 33:55 out in the English of Joseph Smith's time?

John Dehlin 33:57 Yeah, exactly. Because why would Joseph Smith translate it into Biblical.

Nemo 34:04 Into the language that these people in Oxford were using? Yeah, right.

John Dehlin 34:07 Makes no sense. It's ridiculous on its face. All right, Julia, what's the next slide? Because you've got fair Mormon's response.

Julia 34:13 Yeah, the next slide is fair Mormon's response. Do one of you guys want to read this one? Nemo?

Nemo 34:18 Yeah, sure. As a corrective to the CES letter, the errors reported in the King James Bible are not unique to the 1769 version. Five major editions of the King James Version were published in 1611-1629-1638-1762, and 1769. Many minor additions and revisions have been made since the 1769 edition. The 1769 text is the standard text of most King James Bibles today, including that published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Only the 1611 and 1769 editions can be found online. The errors are contained in both editions. Readers can read the 1611 edition online and see for themselves. The more modern 1769 KJV used in latter Day Saint scriptures can also be found online and checked. Given that the 1611 and 1769 editions contain the exact same translation errors, it's likely, though the author hasn't verified it yet, that the other major editions published between 1611 and 1769 contain the exact same errors, which in turn makes it more difficult for us to claim with certainty which edition of the King James Version, if any, Joseph Smith plagiarized from. So we know he plagiarized from one. Guys, we just don't know which one. All right, but ultra like, was that a response?

John Dehlin 35:34 Yeah, Nemo, can you summarize the argument fair Mormon's making there?

Nemo 35:38 They're saying, look, the errors that Jeremy's talking about aren't just in the 1769 edition, they're in the 1611 and all the ones that came between that and the 1769. So, yeah, they appear in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 35:50 We just don't know where he take that, Jeremy. Yeah, previous versions of the Bible also had those errors. Take that, Jeremy.

Nemo 35:57 It actually just makes it more likely that that Joseph would have had his hands on a copy of the Bible to take it from.

Julia 36:03 Right.

Nemo 36:04 It doesn't address the core of the claim. They're just saying, actually, Jeremy, you're wrong because the errors aren't exclusive to 1769. All right, yeah.

Julia 36:13 So, like, the next slide, I didn't know how, like, how, because, like, if we just go to the next slide, John, you just throw it up on the screen. So to me, the fact that the errors exist in other editions of the Bible, it does not mean that Joseph Smith did not use the 1769 edition of the King James Bible. Like, it's not answering that. It's not answering the question.

Nemo 36:30 Like, if it were the case that they didn't exist in 1769 actually, and they were in all the others, and we know Joseph Smith had 1769, then it might have some sort of creeds, but the fact that it was just in all of them.

John Dehlin 36:42 I mean, maybe they're saying he didn't necessarily use his family Bible.

Nemo 36:47 Sure, he used a Bible. Yeah, they admit as much. They say we don't know which one he plagiarized from.

John Dehlin 36:55 I mean, I guess if he was doing most of his translation in quotes of the Book of Mormon at Isaac Hale's house, then he might have used a Bible that Isaac Hale had lying around.

Julia 37:08 Well then he was in the Whitmer's home. He was in different homes too.

Nemo 37:10 Can you grab the, the fair Mormon response again?

Julia 37:14 Just like, oh, if you'll throw that up on the screen, John, throw it

Nemo 37:17 up on the screen.

John Dehlin 37:17 Okay.

Nemo 37:17 Because I think it's really important.

Julia 37:19 We'll just say if anyone. So yeah, read the final quote again.

Nemo 37:22 Yeah. So they say it makes it more difficult for us to claim with certainty which edition of the King James Version, if any Joseph Smith plagiarized from. Imagine being a person who has discovered for the first time the CES letter and you read this and you're like, oh, okay, the church has published a response. I'm going to go to fair Mormons. I'm sure they're going to put Jeremy right. Imagine then reading the line, oh, it's more difficult for us to claim with certainty which edition of the King James Version, if any Joseph Smith plagiarized from. Okay, so fair Mormon. Now you're telling me that there's a possibility he plagiarized from it as well. So all that they're having to concede that possibility. So it just goes to show that fair Mormon can often be the thing that is the final nail in the coffin for people. Because Jeremy asked the question and then they realized that fair Mormon is forced to kind of give no good answer and actually concede.

John Dehlin 38:18 I mean, honestly, it makes sense why fair Mormon is drifting into irrelevance. Nobody really quotes them anymore. Nobody. They're not being elevated by the Church. It's now Jasmine Rapely or whatever you pronounce her name and Book of Mormon central and Scripture central because I think fair Mormon is, you know, shockingly falling into irrelevance because their, their answers are so bad that people are basically people who are leaving the church are saying it's fair Mormons bad responses that contributed to their leaving. I mean that I hear that all the time.

Nemo 38:51 Well, I think, I think the thing that really put Scott Gordon on notice that his, his whole ship was sinking was that the, this is the show videos went out and that Anyone thought that was a good idea. Yeah, yeah. So cool. Sorry, let's carry on.

Seventeenth Century KJV Italics in the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin 39:06 All right, Julia, what's number two? So that's number one. What's number two?

Julia 39:11 Yes, if you throw up on the screen. So Jeremy asked this. The second question that he asked in the Book of Mormon chapter is, what are 17th century KJV italics doing in the Book of Mormon? When King James translators were translating the KJV Bible between 1604 and 1611, they would occasionally put in their own words into the text to make the English more readable. We know exactly what these words are because they're italicized in the KJV Bible. What are these 17th century italicized words doing in the Book of Mormon? Word for word. What does this say about the Book of Mormon being an ancient record?

John Dehlin 39:45 Let's go and go to the next slide and illustrate.

Julia 39:47 Yeah, yeah. So this is. So Sorry to be confusing for the viewers. Every Jeremy put everything in italics, and so he. And then he boldened the parts that were italics. So if I had done this, not the way Jeremy did it, everything would be in regular font except for the bold. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin 40:02 Yeah.

Julia 40:02 So some of the languages are dark and those are the ones that are italicized.

John Dehlin 40:05 So, for example, so bold in this visual, bold means italicized.

Julia 40:09 Right. But he italicized all of it. So, yeah, sorry to be confusing. So Malachi 3:10, in the KJV, it says, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And there shall be room to receive it are all italicized. And then in third Nephi 2410, it says, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it. So you see the presence of the same italicized words in that text that shouldn't be there because those are the. What? The monks are the translators for the KGV in 1604 and 1611. So he. So Jeremy says, monks?

Nemo 40:40 How. How long ago do you think the 1600s in the UK we had flushing Laboratories.

Julia 40:50 Okay. So Jeremy says in the above example, the KJV translators added seven italicized words to their English translation which are not found in the source Hebrew manuscripts. Why does the Book of Mormon, which is supposed to have been completed by Moroni over 1400 years prior, contain the exact identical seven italicized words of 17th century translators? And this is just one example of many. So, yeah, so this is understanding one thing.

John Dehlin 41:15 Are we saying that the same words italicized in The King James version of the Bible are also italicized in the Book of Mormon.

Julia 41:24 I don't know if he italicized them, but the italicized. You can check. So I don't know if he italicized them specifically in the Bible or, excuse me, the Book of Mormon. I don't know why they would be. Because he's saying. These are.

John Dehlin 41:34 He's just saying the italicized. Help me understand. Words that are italicized in the Book of Mormon or in the Bible should or shouldn't be appearing in the Book of Mormon.

Julia 41:44 It should not be. So the people, the Bible translators to men in 1604 were like, oh, I don't. This doesn't make sense because it feels like it's sort of skipping around. So I'm just going to add words of my. I'm going to pull out of my own head some words to fill in the blanks. And so, for example, Malachi 3:10, they said, oh, there shall be room to receive it. So they're adding in these texts just to make it flow easier, just to make it make more sense to them. And those words that they came up with in 1604, 1611, are appearing in the Book of Mormon where they should not be. So, Neemo, I don't know if you know, I can.

Nemo 42:14 Yeah, so I've just checked. They're not italicized. I think, to explain this, Hebrew as a language has a different structure to English. The same as other languages have different structures to English. Right. They'll put verbs in different orders. The sentence order will change, all that sort of stuff. Some languages will omit connective words that English will use. So what you end up with if you're translating from Hebrew to English is you need to add words into a sentence to make it flow in English where it wouldn't flow or where it would have already flowed in Hebrew because of the nature of the structure of the language. Similarly, if you were to look at reformed Egyptian as a language, though we know nothing about it, you would also say that. That, in theory would not be written in the same way as English. So you would need to add words. But those words that are added are distinctive decisions by the translators of the King James Version of the Bible in Oxford, in Cambridge, in Westminster. So again, the question is, why are there specific choices being reflected in this specific translation? Choices from a different language by Joseph Smith?

John Dehlin 43:18 Because before and after other words could have been chosen and likely have been chosen, correct?

Nemo 43:25 Well, so where the word enough was italicized, there shall not be enough room to receive it. You could have put in. There would not be sufficient room to receive it. There should not be. So, yeah, sorry, where it says be room, you could say, there shall not be space enough to receive it. You could write instead rather than be read.

Julia 43:44 It's just that Oxford scholars that his specific choice of words. Right. So, yeah.

John Dehlin 43:48 So too much of a. Yeah, yeah. Too much of a coincidence that God would always side on the word choice of Oxford and Cambridge scholars filling in their own.

Nemo 44:01 Yeah.

John Dehlin 44:01 You know, somewhat. Not arbitrary, but their own particular word choice.

Nemo 44:06 Because to receive it could have been to obtain it, to, you know, possess it or whatever. There's loads of different ways you could have phrased it. They chose a specific one. And God always seems to, like you said, err on the side of what did they do in Oxford and Cambridge and west and Westminster in the 17th century.

John Dehlin 44:24 Got it. Okay.

Julia 44:25 Okay. So Ferrer's response. They list out four different, I guess, answers to this. So they say, number one, Joseph did not know about the italics. Number two, the presence of italics from the KGB are not plagiarism. Three, the presence of italics do not mean that Joseph Smith did not translate. And for the presence of italics, do not take away from the Book of Mormon being the most correct book.

John Dehlin 44:47 Why are you laughing?

Nemo 44:48 I love the first one. I was like, joseph Smith didn't know about the italics. I'm like, yeah, because if he did, he might have tried to change the words so that this argument would be made against him. That's probably what's going on here.

Julia 45:00 Well, I have a slide because I think that's interesting. Oh, I guess there's more. Well, I'm going to skip ahead just for one second. So. So I don't know if we can talk about this for a second because I don't know if Joseph Smith did know about them. So in the Adam Clark commentary. So some critics have purported that Joseph Smith used the Adam Clark commentary and John, you have episodes on this pretty recently, I think, too. So during his Bible translation, not the Book of Mormon, but the Bible one. The commentary was written in eight parts between 1810 and 1826. In his 1832 account of the first Vision, Joseph Smith claims that he was searching the Scriptures from the age of 12 to 15. In speaking of added phrases in italics, Clark states, the words seem essentially necessary to a proper understanding of the text, and if not admitted on the above authority, they must be supplied in italics as in our common translation. So I think at least at some point, Joseph Smith knew that the italics were not. Not. How do I say that? They weren't on their original text. Yeah, yeah. And so I just think that's interesting. I don't know. Like, to me, it seems to point that if Joseph Smith was studying the Bible from the ages of 12 to 15, he would be aware of this fact. But maybe he wasn't, because like you said, Nima, maybe he would have tried harder to change those words to make it seem like he was more authentic of a translator. But I don't know. That's just something I found. There's another.

John Dehlin 46:21 So just let's go back to Fairmormon's original response. The one before the royal Skousen slide.

Julia 46:28 Oh, the one before.

John Dehlin 46:30 Is there anything else we want to say just about this fair Mormon argument? So basically, the point one, that Joseph Smith did not know about the italics, that's a dead point because that doesn't excuse him from plagiarizing.

Julia 46:45 Right. I don't know why they would say that.

John Dehlin 46:46 And in fact, it probably explains why he did something so dumb that if he, like you said, Nemo, if he had known about the italics issue, he probably would have changed them or obscured them. Is that right? Yeah.

Nemo 47:00 Because what would make it seem more authentic is if you've got the Sermon on the Mount, what Joseph Smith seemed to think. I can't speak for him, but what this seems to point to is that Joseph Smith thinks that the King James Bible Bible is the word of God in the way that some King James Version only people believe it now. And so that having the King James Version Bible in the Book of Mormon would make the Book of Mormon more authentic because the revealed word of God is in his Scripture too. And that's what's going to make everyone think that his scripture is authentic, because it contains the Sermon on the Mount as found in the version of the Bible that everyone's reading, because that's the revealed word of God. Whereas in actual fact, what would make it seem more authentic is if you have the Sermon in the Mount there. Sure. But then you have it in slightly different language because it's being reported on by slightly different people in a different hemisphere of the world. And so then you. Oh yeah, Christ visited and he did what he always does. He gives Sermon on the Mount. He teaches the things that he would have taught, but the people reporting on it report on it in a different way in a slightly different language because they're different people. That would have made it more authentic.

John Dehlin 48:01 Yeah. Okay. What about the argument just, just as clear of Each very quickly. So what about the argument that the presence of italics from the King James version are not plagiarism? What are they saying? It could just be coincidence.

Julia 48:15 I don't. They go through it in more in depth, I think if I remember when I was reading this. But like it doesn't make sense to me either because like, but they are present. So how are you saying it's not plagiarism?

John Dehlin 48:25 Because things can be plagiarized, just be coincidence. It doesn't mean he stole it, it just means God could have provided it. In other words, Joseph did it, God did it, not Joseph.

Nemo 48:35 Maybe you could make that argument that God gave Joseph Smith the exact words of 17th century Oxford clergyman. You can make that argument if you want, but that's. You're going to have to make otherwise. Joseph Smith took the work of those clergymen, including the italics that they chose, because they chose them, they thought they were most appropriate and he used them himself. And that is plagiarism. Using someone else's work as your own is textbook plagiarism.

John Dehlin 48:59 Well, and if he did. Oh, go ahead, Julie.

Julia 49:01 I was going to say if he did that the number three doesn't make sense either. The presence of italics does not mean that Joseph Smith did not translate.

John Dehlin 49:07 But if he's using the weird logic seminar in college, you know what I mean, they're just basically going through formal logic exercise. Why Julia? Why is that weird?

Julia 49:19 Well, because like if, if the, if the Oxford scholars from 1604, 1611 are present in the Book of Mormon or President. Yeah. Then how does that not mean he didn't translate? Like how did he translate? Because like you said, Nemo, these would be in a different language. They would, they wouldn't. They were different people. They're different perspectives. Why are we getting those exact words? To me that means he did not translate.

Nemo 49:39 Yeah, but even if you say, okay, it didn't mean that Joseph didn't translate the follow on sentences, it just means that the translation that was revealed to him by God is in the exact same language as the men in Oxford chose. And I keep saying the men in Oxford even though it was Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster, because Oxford is where Malachi was translated. So it is in this case the Oxford Clergyman, Reynolds Company.

John Dehlin 50:02 All right, the last one is the. Are we going to say something, Julie?

Julia 50:05 Oh, I'm just confused by everything. Like, because the seer Stone, because the text from the book Mormon, as far as like David Widmer or others, Emma, they said that that appeared on the stone Word for word. And so, like, he's not really. It's not really a translation anyway because he's not looking at the text. He's not like, trying to work out in his mind the words that would be appropriate from reformed Egyptians to English.

John Dehlin 50:25 So already God's word. It's God's inspired word appearing on a rock that Joseph's reading. And then literally, Martin Harris will read back what he wrote and Joseph will say, yep, you got it. And then they'll move on. Like, it doesn't leave room for error.

Julia 50:40 Yeah. And that's confusing to me because if it's word for word, because Joseph said if they spelled it wrong, if they wrote it down wrong, the words would not change until they fixed that. And so, like, it's a literal or word for word translation on the stone.

John Dehlin 50:54 This is where I need to tell the participants of the LDS discussion series what I've said every time. We've covered so much of this in depth in past episodes. So the best way to consume LDS discussions is to go back to the very beginning and watch them in sequence. We're what, 50 or 60 episodes now?

Julia 51:15 We're in the late 50s or early

John Dehlin 51:17 60s, I think, but I don't think I've met anybody that regrets starting from the beginning and just listening in sequence. Because we do cover all these topics more in depth today. We're just doing the CES letter slanted.

Julia 51:28 Yeah. And one thing I could do to make it easier if you don't want to watch all the 50 or 60 of them, is I can go through and put the specific episodes that pertain to what we're talking about today in the show notes.

John Dehlin 51:38 Okay.

Nemo 51:39 And if you want more details about this that we've just been talking about, I'm going to self plug. I don't do it very often, but I have just released a video about why the Church has to keep using the King James version of the Bible, even though Uchtdorf, recently in conference, has been quoting from other versions. That's actually quite problematic. He shouldn't be doing it because what we've established here is that God has given Joseph Smith, however you want to view the translations working. He's given Joseph Smith the language of those translators in England in the 17th century. That's the words that he chose to reveal on the stone to Joseph Smith that then had to be written down. Exactly. So God's clearly giving some preference to the King James Version, which to point four, if you bring the slide up. The problem with that is when it says the presence of italics does not take away from the Book of Mormon being the most correct book. If any of those italicized choices have later been discovered to be based on a manuscript that had been messed with or a manuscript that had had additions that need to be removed and isn't as true as it could have been, then actually, yes, the presence of those italics could very well take away from the Book of Mormon being the most correct book if the presence of any of those italics with later translations of further understanding of Hebrew and biblical scholarship shows that those italics shouldn't have been added or they should have been phrased differently.

Julia 52:54 Yeah.

Royal Skousen and the Translation Process

John Dehlin 52:55 All right, well, let's go to their next response. Regarding Royal Skousen. Do you want to tell us who Royal Skousen is? Julia or Nemo?

Julia 53:03 So, to my knowledge, Royal Skousen is a Bible scholar, or, excuse me, Book of Mormon scholar, and he's done the most extensive research on the changes of the Book of Mormon. I read a lot of his stuff when I was an active member of the church. I really admired him. He's all. He's. He's like, compared the texts and seen. I don't know, I just really like him. I've seen a lot of his speeches. So he's a.

John Dehlin 53:22 He really gets into the original printers.

Julia 53:25 He gets into the nitty gritty.

John Dehlin 53:27 Yeah. And he's analyzed just. Yeah. All the details from the. From the original transcription to the printer's copy to all the subsequent versions. And anyway, so what is. What does fair Mormon say about that?

Julia 53:41 So they say. Royal Skousen has determined that of all the differences in the Bible quotations in the book of Mormon, 23% involve italics. Of all the italics contained in the KJV, 38% are changed in some way in the Book of Mormon. Skousen sees these facts as evidence that Joseph did not know the meaning of the italics. Since a much larger amount of changes do not involve italics, though other scholars read the same percentages as significant as evidence that Joseph did know the meaning of the italics. So this, to me just was interesting because they're like, oh, it could mean that he didn't, or it could mean that he did. And so it doesn't really answer the question to me.

Nemo 54:17 Well, yeah, because if he did or didn't. If he didn't, then he's just making changes and some include the italics and some don't. If he did, he would have made far more changes to the italics if he knew what they meant. Like we said, he would have changed a lot More of them to try and cover the idea that he was just copying these men from Oxford.

John Dehlin 54:36 What about the 23% and the 38% percentages? They're basically saying those are low percentages. So, you know, your case isn't very compelling, I guess.

Julia 54:49 But. But they also, they also say scholars see this. Oh, he's 38 of them have changed in some way and 23 are used in general. Like this means he does. He did know about that. So like. But also he's. One thought that came to me. Nemo, as you were speaking, is his audience are people who have studied the Bible. So like one, One thing that he wants to do is he wants to. To. I don't know if the right word is convince or to help. He wants to stay on the same kind of playing field as them. So. So if his Book of Mormon reflects more of the Bible the way that it is, they might believe it more rather than. So like, maybe it's in his best interest to not change everything. That's just a thought that occurred to me is that maybe he's trying to like, help.

Nemo 55:24 That's what I was kind of saying about him believing the King James Version of the Bible to be the revealed word of God. Like, the more his Book of Mormon looks like the King James version of the Bible, the more convincing it is to the context.

Julia 55:34 Yeah, yeah, exactly. But.

John Dehlin 55:37 All right, well, let's go ahead and go to the next argument from the ces. So far, I don't know if I'm right, but it seems like Jeremy to fair Mormon or, you know, critics of Jeremy. Zero. That's my count so far. What do you, what do you all think? Do you all agree with that?

Julia 55:54 Well, I mean, I agree with that because I just don't like their answers. I don't think they stand up like.

John Dehlin 56:00 And Jeremy brings receipts. He's showing the evidence. So you gotta refute the evidence. Right?

Julia 56:05 Yeah. And it's not just gone. Oh, sorry. I was gonna say it's not just Jeremy. Like I quoted Grant Palmer. Like there's other scholars too that are not just Jeremy that have studied more like Grant Palmer is a historian. Like there's other people that. Or even Skousen to some degree seems to be like suggesting that there are. That he. He did use change the italics or use italics or things like that. So it's not just Jeremy, there's a bunch of other people that have addressed these issues. What were you going to say?

Nemo 56:30 I was just going to say Jeremy has a habit of what I call Top loading. His. His chapters in the CES letter, like, his strongest arguments go up top. So I think as we go through these, we're going to see more room for like, okay, I can see where femor might be coming from or this or that. But he certainly starts with his. His strongest points. And these are some strong points, and I think they definitely merit a good amount of discussion.

Joseph Smith's Use of the King James Version

John Dehlin 56:50 All right, let's go to the third.

Julia 56:52 Okay, so his third question is why does the Book of Mormon follow the King James version of the Bible, not the j. The Joseph Smith translation of the Bible? And so the Book of Mormon. He says the Book of Mormon includes mistranslated Bible passages that were later changed in Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible. These Book of Mormon verses should match the inspired Joseph Smith translation version instead of the incorrect King James Version that Joseph Smith later fixed.

John Dehlin 57:17 And for those who. Oh, go ahead, Julie.

Julia 57:19 Oh, no, no, you can go.

John Dehlin 57:21 Yeah. So for those who just. And again, we have LDS discussions episodes specifically, not just on the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, but also noting that the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible weirdly reflects recommendations of changes made in that Adam Clark commentary that we know Joseph Smith likely had access to that you, Julia discussed earlier in the episode. So basically, as I understand it, the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible has been debunked as itself being likely too close to plagiarism in modern times. But even if we were to grant that the Joseph Smith translation were authentic, in other words, that Joseph Smith took aside the Bible and corrected it and fixed all the inaccuracies and translation errors, at least in the New Testament, then you know, which he did after the Book of Mormon was published, then if Joseph Smith corrected the Bible to the correct words, and if God directed both the translation of the Book of Mormon and Joseph's correction of the Bible, then we would expect the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible to be word for word the same as the way that the Bible, the Book of Mormon, reflects the Bible. Did I get that right, Nemo, or did I mung that up? Maybe stated in your own words?

Nemo 58:53 Job to get the concise version is. Yeah, if Joseph Smith saw a problem in the King James Version of the Bible and saw the need to change it using the Joseph Smith translation, which he often did, then why are the parts of the King James Version that appear in the Book of Mormon reflecting the King James Version and not the corrections that Joseph Smith made? I. E. If there's a passage from the King James version of the Bible in the Book of Mormon that's been corrected by Joseph Smith. Why was it not corrected at the time at which he put it in the Book of Mormon? Right?

John Dehlin 59:21 Yeah. Love it. And then, Julia, Jeremy brings receipts. Is that right?

Julia 59:25 Well, this might be one. I can't remember if Nemo, you brought this one to my attention, or if Jeremy talks about this specific one. He might.

Nemo 59:32 On the Mount, isn't it?

John Dehlin 59:35 Okay, basically, if viewers want to. We haven't called out the differences of similarities here, but if viewers and listeners want to pause on this, they can read the differences between the third Nephi version of the Sermon on the mount in chapter 13 versus the Matthew 6 version of the Sermon on the Mount in the King James version versus the Matthew 6 version of the Joseph Smith translation and see that they're substantively different. Is that right?

Nemo 1:00:08 Well, as they're looking at them, if they just listen to my voice as they look, I'll talk them through it real quick. The middle column is what was written by those translators in Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster. That's the King James version of the Bible is the middle column. Joseph Smith put word for word that middle column into the Book of Mormon. So he put the words of the King James Version of the Bible into the Book of Mormon and printed the Book of Mormon in 1830. Then later on, Joseph Smith goes, ah, the King James Version of the Bible needs some correcting. One of the areas of the King James Version of the Bible that needs correcting happens to be that middle column, Matthew 6, 25, 27. So on the right, we see what he then corrected it to. So he's changed it. But the question is, if Joseph Smith was getting divine inspiration from God that allows him to correct what was wrong with the Bible, why did he not correct it before he put it into the Book of Mormon?

John Dehlin 1:01:01 That seems like a slam dunk to me.

Nemo 1:01:05 It feels pretty conclusive. I'm never one to, you know, make outlandish claims, but it feels fairly solid. I've said it enough times now out loud. It feels quite concrete.

John Dehlin 1:01:17 Yeah. And I've had people tell me that in and of itself caused them to lose their faith in the divinity of the Book of Mormon. What's fair Mormon's response, Julia?

Nemo 1:01:30 Convoluted, I'm sure.

Julia 1:01:31 So, yeah. John, do you want to actually read this one?

John Dehlin 1:01:34 Yeah. Fairmormon argues against this being a point of concern by stating, quote, joseph had different purposes in mind in his different translations. This is not unique or unusual in Scripture, even the Bible. Hence neither the Book of Mormon nor The Joseph Smith translation of the Bible can be discounted because of seeming discrepancies with each other or with the King James version of the Bible just right off. What they seem to be saying is God wants people to have one understanding of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount when they read the King James version of the Bible or the Book of Mormon. But then when they read the Joseph Smith translation, God wants them to have a different understanding when they read the Joseph Smith translation. Is that the argument there, Nemo? You're muted.

Nemo 1:02:30 I think I was laughing too hard. I had to mute myself. I think the argument seems to be Joseph Smith had different purposes in mind for the different translations, but they don't. Maybe they go on to say what those were, but my initial thought is right, okay, what were they? Because what purpose could his translation, the Bible have other than his self stated purpose, which is to correct the things in it which aren't correct?

John Dehlin 1:02:54 And I didn't even allow. I didn't. I haven't even read the second paragraph yet because it's such a dumb argument. Just logically, right?

Julia 1:03:00 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:03:01 It's like God. God is not an author of confusion. He's not going to want to have different versions of the same text depending on people's unique situations. Almost like he, God's thinking when people read the Bible or the Book of Mormon, they're going to have a certain set of needs. But I can predict that when they read the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, all of the people that read that version are going to be having different needs. And so I'm going to reword it for the needs of those people. It's just ridiculous.

Nemo 1:03:34 Julia, you went on a mission, right?

Julia 1:03:36 I did, yeah.

Nemo 1:03:36 Yeah. John, you served a mission. Either of you do the object lesson with the two nails and the piece of paper?

Julia 1:03:42 I don't remember.

Nemo 1:03:43 So. So the Bible is the first nail.

Julia 1:03:45 Oh yeah.

Nemo 1:03:46 And the piece of paper is God's doctrine. And with the first nail, the doctrine can be turned and twisted in all those different ways. You put the second nail in and God's doctrine becomes clear. The Book of Mormon is there to clarify God's doctrine as found in the Bible. So when parts of the doctrine of the Bible are found in the Book of Mormon and then are corrected, how is the Book of Mormon helping clarify the Bible? The Book of Mormon isn't. It's the Joseph Smith translation that later then clarifies it. So it's having to clarify both the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 1:04:15 Well, fair would say that the Joseph Smith translation is just a third nail. That makes it even more solid.

Nemo 1:04:21 Yeah, but why wasn't that just added in at the point at which God was revealing word for word?

John Dehlin 1:04:25 Because three nails is better than two. Nemo.

Nemo 1:04:28 That's a very American attitude of you, John.

John Dehlin 1:04:32 Bigger is better, more. More is more. More, more. Anyway, I'll read really quickly Fairmormon's explanation. Joseph Smith had different purposes in mind. And by the way, it's not Joseph Smith, it's God, right? Is it Joseph Smith? Is this translated by Joseph Smith or by the gift of power of God? If it's the gift of power of God, it's not Joseph Smith making the changes, it's God. Am I wrong?

Julia 1:04:57 Yeah.

Nemo 1:04:57 You wouldn't say the Book of Mormon was published to bring about Joseph Smith's purpose. You would say it's published to bring about God's purpose, right? Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:05:03 So I think that discounts fair Mormon's response at the top. But anyway, Joseph Smith had different purposes in mind when. And by the way, who is fair Mormon to tell us what Joseph Smith's purposes are or aren't? How do they know? Right. Did Joseph Smith ever write down why he, you know, used certain words in the Book of Mormon?

Nemo 1:05:25 Have you not seen the letter, John that says. Have you not seen the letter in Joseph Smith's own hand that says, dear Scott Gordon, my purpose in writing this is.

John Dehlin 1:05:34 Yeah. Anyway, Joseph Smith had different purposes in mind when bringing forth the Book of Mormon and the Joseph Smith translation. His purpose of bringing forth the Book of Mormon was to witness the reality that Jesus is the Christ, the eternal God, manifesting himself in all nations, departing from the King James Version. That is the translation familiar to those who would become the Book of Mormon's first readers would have been a stumbling block in achieving. Why are you laughing, Julia?

Julia 1:06:01 Wait, didn't we just talk about this where they said, like Joseph's audience was. Isn't that kind of what they're saying to change it would be a stumbling block to those, to those first readers to the Book of Mormon because they're all like Methodists or Presbyterian or people who are really invested in the Bible. Like, anyway, just think that was really funny that they're.

John Dehlin 1:06:20 Anyone told the Book of Mormon was written for our day. Yeah, right. Not the dudes 200 years ago, but

Julia 1:06:25 for our day, 1829.

Nemo 1:06:28 They're making the point that I made, right? That the King James Version is familiar to the people, people at the time. And that would make it seem more authentic. That's the Literal point they're making is, well, if he'd not put the exact words of the King James Bible in it would have seemed less authentic to people not understanding fair Mormon, as we've explained that actually if you understand the Bible, it would have been more authentic to have it be different.

Julia 1:06:49 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:06:51 All right, I'll just go ahead and finish departing from the King James Version, I. E. The translation familiar to those who would become the Book of Mormon's first readers would would have been a stumbling block in achieving its purpose. On the other hand, Joseph's later purpose, according to Scott Gordon, in bringing forth the Joseph Smith translation is largely understood to have been one of redaction or inspired commentary or plagiarism of the Adam Clark commentary. Better said to resolve confusion regarding biblical interpretation. Hence the different wording and in some cases even content. All right, well, what grade do y' all give fair Mormons justification?

Nemo 1:07:37 I don't give it a grade. I'm not grading it. I'm not wasting my time grading it. It's just I'm not normally this annoyed by fair Mormon. I'm usually quite calm about this stuff. But this is just so poor on their part to try and say that, oh well, it. The Joseph Smith translation was the bit that was meant to, you know, correct poor understanding of biblical doctrine when I was certainly taught, as I explained with that object lesson, and you will have taught people the Book of Mormon was the thing. We believe the Bible to be the word of God. As far as it is translated correctly. We believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. That's the article of faith. But it seems then the Book of Mormon was also not translated correctly because parts of it that draw from the King James Version had to be corrected by Joseph Smith later. So at worst this means that the Book of Mormon wasn't translated correctly because the word no, it means that God

John Dehlin 1:08:29 has different translations for different purposes at different times. Nemo. That's what it means.

Nemo 1:08:35 Is that the same way that God approved selections volumes of the Book of Mormon so that some people didn't have to learn about the racist parts of the Book of Mormon in their native language?

John Dehlin 1:08:43 Exactly. Or the modalist trinitarian version of God?

Nemo 1:08:49 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:08:50 God didn't want to go full, you know, to go full. God and Jesus are separate beings when the Book of Mormon was originally released because that would have been too hard on the Protestants of the day. He needed that milk of a trinitarian modalist God, Jesus in 1830. But then by 1835 or 1838. You know, the Protestants had progressed enough such that they were ready for the meat of the Book of Mormon being changed to say that God and Jesus were separate beings. Right.

Nemo 1:09:29 Because if you're going to bring about a radical restorationist doctrine and claim to restore Christ to church, you've got to do it in, baby. Yeah. Well, I mean, regardless of the fact that this is all taking place amongst massive religious revival and everyone is up for finding out a new church of finding out a new way to be, you can't take them too far from their Methodist roots. That's why you've got to have King Benjamin giving a Methodist sermon halfway through the book, just so it's familiar. Is that about.

John Dehlin 1:10:00 Right, sorry, Baptizing. Not to mention Nephites baptizing in the name of Jesus before Jesus had been born.

Nemo 1:10:08 Yes. Yeah, yeah, we've also got that. And it's all for familiarity. It's not anachronistic. It's for familiarity for the reader. Yeah.

Julia 1:10:16 And. All right, this is kind of. Well, I just want to add, kind of going on the same strain Nemo, that little pamphlet you held up by Hugh Nibley in there, he says if Joseph Smith were to. I think in some respect, he says if Joseph were to stand up in general conference today, everything would be familiar to him. Like, nothing has changed since his day. But I'm pretty sure, like, if the church was the way that it is now back in 1830, I don't think that people would have joined the church or to some degree, because it's. It's too different. Because, like you said, baby steps from 1830 to 2025. Like, I think that's. It's too different to me, like, because they keep changing things. But yeah. Anyway, I can. I can find that reference later.

John Dehlin 1:10:56 Okay, so good.

Julia 1:10:58 So one.

John Dehlin 1:10:59 I got a couple other slides.

Julia 1:11:00 Yeah. So one thing that I wanted to add is just to remind the viewers of how the Book of Mormon came to be. And so this is a 2016 seminar for new mission presidents given by Russell Nelson. So the current president of the church, and he says he just reminds us, David Witmer wrote, Joseph Smith would put the Seer Stone into a hat and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely on his face to exclude the light. And in the darkness, the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear. Anonymous was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe. And when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus, the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God and not by the power, any power of man. That was from David Whitmer. And so, like fair Mormons were saying that Joseph had different purposes in mind for the translation. That doesn't make any sense to me or how do I make sense of that? Because the Book of Mormon is. He's saying it's a word for word. It's exactly. It wouldn't change until they got it right. I don't see how Joseph is getting into the. How is Joseph getting into the text if that's how the translation happened?

Nemo 1:12:12 Because God chose to give him incorrect passages from the King James version of the Bible to put into the Book of Mormon that he knew Joseph would then later go on and correct. That's the narrative you have to believe. And people will say, oh, why are you going to David Whitmer? Why are you going to A message to all believers in Christ? I think that's the pamphlet that's from. Right. Why are you doing that when there's other accounts, etc. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what we choose to do. That is what the current prophet of the Mormon Church has taught. Right. And we know that according to Ezra Taft Benson, a living prophet is more important than a dead prophet. And he is the current living prophet of the church, so that's what he's teaching. That should be enough for any member to go, yeah, that's how it happened.

Julia 1:12:55 Yeah,

John Dehlin 1:12:57 okay.

Nemo 1:12:58 The man who speaks for God backs David Whitmer on This is, I guess, is what I'm getting at there. So, yeah, so argue with him if you want, but yeah.

John Dehlin 1:13:05 And Nemo, if you wonder why I cut to you, it's because I caught you eating a snack. So can you show us what you're eating? Is it a Jimmy Dodger? Is it.

Nemo 1:13:12 Yeah, sure. Snack time with Nemo will now take a short break. It is Texas barbecue flavored Texas.

John Dehlin 1:13:20 And just to be clear, are. Are we officially endorsed by Pringles or

Nemo 1:13:24 is that we are not that. That is just what I choose to eat. I mean, we do these recordings at dinner time for, like, all 60 episodes of this have always been recorded when I should be eating. Which is why we have the infamous Dorito gate and we now have my Pringles.

John Dehlin 1:13:42 Pringles gate, yeah. Okay, Julia. Thank you for that break, Nemo. Okay, so, Julia, these Other slides are kind of under point 3. Are they still following the King James point, or are they kind of the Joseph translation point, or are they other points?

Julia 1:13:58 There are just other points.

John Dehlin 1:14:00 So go ahead and read them off. Yeah.

Julia 1:14:02 Yeah. So to me, I really. I'm a big fan of Grant Palmer in his book, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, I think everyone should read it. But in there, he talks about. So this is just my other Bible problems. And in there, I don't know if we want to go through all these things. I think they're fascinating. He talks about the similarities. So he says. He lists. Grant Palmer lists 20 similarities in chronological order between Nephi and Moses. And so I'll just kind of go through them briefly, which I think is fascinating, because if Joseph Smith had a Bible in front of him, which it seems like he did, because he's getting the exact words from the italicized words or the exact phrases used, I think he absolutely had a book, a book of a Bible in front of him.

Parallels Between Moses and Nephi

Nemo 1:14:38 We know he was familiar with it. Right? He studied it anyway.

Julia 1:14:40 Yes. And I do know that Emma. I will say that Emma did say that he didn't have any book or script with him. He wouldn't have been able to keep that from him. But I don't know if she would have discounted or been like, oh, the Bible doesn't count, because, like, if Joseph's. I don't know. To me, that makes more sense. It makes sense to have a Bible in the room for inspiration for, like, just comparing. Just to have it in there. And it wouldn't. It wouldn't have caused me concern if I was Emma in that moment. But anyway. But I do understand that people say that he didn't have a book with him. But going back to the list, Graham Palmer with Nephi and Moses in the exact chronological order. They both know the Egyptian language. They live in luxury, and they leave it behind because their lives are threatened. They each justifiably kill a man before becoming a prophet. They both receive through a vision, a warning to escape into the wilderness. God promises them that they will lead their people to the Promised Land. They camp at the Red Sea. They are provided divine means to lead them. A pillar of cloud or Liahona at the Red Sea. The people lose their faith and begin to murmur. While camped at the Red Sea, God arranges to have an appoint. Appointant Slain. Opponent slain. Yeah. Pharaoh's horsemen and then Laban. The names of the place are Shur or Shazer, which are very similar. They move Several times before camping in the most fertile parts. Both groups of people, Israelites and Nephites, murmur about hunger. Directions from a cloud. Liahona provide food, manna or wild beasts. Accusations erupt against the leader for bringing them into the wilderness. They yearn to return home. They travel many days. Key people die. You have Ishmael dies or Miriam dies, which leads to more complaining. Moses and Nephi are accused of being a prince or ruler over them. The leaders lives are threatened. God speaks to his people. Starvation is avoided despite many miracles. The people are unrepentant because of transgressions of the people. The people wander in the wilderness. Moses and Nephi ascend the mount to speak to God. The people rebel by dancing and singing and they forget. The Lord God is displeased, threatens destruction. They eventually repent and reach the promised land.

John Dehlin 1:16:32 So like, to me that's like pretty compelling, right? When Joseph Smith was trying to come up with a core narrative to begin the Book of Mormon, especially after the 116 pages had been lost, it's almost like he just swapped out some of the names and locations, but basically just did a remix of the story of Moses in the Exodus.

Nemo 1:16:59 Mormon Book of Exodus.

John Dehlin 1:17:00 Yeah. Interesting. That's actually quite compelling.

Nemo 1:17:03 He wouldn't have needed a copy of the Bible. This is kind of what I was getting up before. He wouldn't have needed a copy of the Bible in the room with him to do that because he's. If you know the story, which I think most people that even aren't that familiar with the Bible know a lot about the story of Moses. It's one of the big stories. So he wouldn't. He. He would. To know that sort of archetypal story or that sort of story of a people wandering in the wilderness. Yeah, wouldn't have even needed the book in the room with him.

John Dehlin 1:17:30 So.

Julia 1:17:30 Yeah. So there's a final quote, if I can read that. So this is Grand Palmer. He says it is remarkable that many of the Nephite ideas and events occur at the same point in the chronology and at the same. At similar places as in the Israelite wilderness experience. These 20 shared motifs suggest dependency on the Bible Exodus story. So I just think that's. I just really like that whole list. It's very compelling to me. And like you said, Nemo, he doesn't even have to have the Bible in the room if he's been studying it from 12 to 15. Like he would have just known the story and like, even after seeing the Ten Commandments, like several times Growing up, I could probably say these things too. Anyway, but. Yeah, I just think that's a really interesting thing to me.

John Dehlin 1:18:08 Now, the CES letter doesn't mention that Grant Palmer's argument, right?

Julia 1:18:11 No, it doesn't. I just added that because it was fascinating to me.

John Dehlin 1:18:14 Julia, maybe you need to write your own CES letter. CES letter, too.

Julia 1:18:19 But also, another thing that I'll add. Another thing that I'll add, the Grant Palmer talks about is the story of Lazarus and then King Lamoni. He says there's exact language that is only used with Lazarus that is also used exactly with King Lamoni. So to me, it shows a dependency for those two stories on the same text. So, anyway. But Grand Palmer, his book is amazing. Everyone should go read it.

John Dehlin 1:18:38 Okay. Maybe we'll do an LDS discussion series on his book.

Julia 1:18:42 Yeah, his book is so good.

Nemo 1:18:43 I've still not read it. I'd be up for that.

Julia 1:18:45 Oh, yeah, you should read it.

John Dehlin 1:18:47 Okay, so I think it's 3, 0, Jeremy and CES letter. No validation critiques so far against 3 of Joseph of Jeremy's main points against the Book of Mormon. So it's three, zero, Jeremy winning.

Julia 1:19:03 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:19:04 Okay.

Julia 1:19:05 Yeah. So the next one, number four is why does the DNA of the Native Americans not support the Book of Mormon? And then DNA analysis has concluded that Native American Indians do not originate from the Middle east or from Israelite, but rather from Asia. Or from Israelites, but rather Asia. Why did the church change the following section of the introduction page in the 2006 edition of the Book of Mormon shortly after the DNA results were released? So the original text was the Lamanites. The Lamanites. And they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians. That was later changed in 2006 to say the Lamanites. And they are among the ancestors of the American Indians.

DNA Evidence and Native American Origins

John Dehlin 1:19:40 And isn't it our understanding that the title page of the Book of Mormon was translated by the Urim and Thummim and the Seer Stone by the gift of power of God? That wasn't just something added. So that's like a publication matter. Right.

Julia 1:19:55 So there's two different things. There's the title page and the introduction. The introduction is not a literal translation. Purported literal translation. And the title page is. So this is not something that would have been in the gold plates.

John Dehlin 1:20:07 Okay.

Julia 1:20:08 So, yeah. And then the book that changed it,

John Dehlin 1:20:11 and they changed it pretty soon after the DNA evidence came out. And Nemo, tell us what you're showing us.

Nemo 1:20:18 So this is a book by my friend Simon Sotherton. Which is called Losing a Lost Native American's DNA and the Mormon Church. This book got him excommunicated. And it's a book that essentially lays out the argument through the DNA that the Native Americans are not genetically related to folks from the Middle East.

John Dehlin 1:20:38 And just to give credit where credit is due, it was actually Thomas Murphy, an anthropologist in the state of Washington, that first came out with these DNA findings while I was working at Microsoft, actually. And he was threatened with excommunication, literally, for just revealing the science as an academic. And then word was spread that his pending excommunication was going to happen. The news media showed up at the chapel where he was going to be excommunicated. And then the church called off the disciplinary council because I think they didn't want to bring news media attention to the fact that the Book of Mormon had been debunked by DNA evidence. So not just thank you to Simon Southerton, whose book was heavily influential to me when I was questioning these things, but also to Dr. Thomas Murphy. We've had both Thomas Murphy and Simon on Mormon stories multiple times, so we can include links to those as well.

Julia 1:21:35 And that's. Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin 1:21:37 All right, Julia, what does the Gospel Topics essay say?

Julia 1:21:41 Yeah, so I didn't have a fair Mormon response, because there isn't one. And the Gospel Topics essay admits to this. John, do you want to read this one?

John Dehlin 1:21:47 Gospel Topics Essay, Book of Mormon and DNA Studies. So the church published this essay. Quote, the evidence assembled to date suggests that the majority of Native Americans carry largely Asian DNA. Scientists theorize that in an era that predated Book of Mormon accounts, a relatively small group of people migrated from Northeast Asia to the Americas by way of a land bridge that connected Siberia to Alaska, I'll say, otherwise known as the Bering Strait. These people, scientists say, spread rapidly to fill north and South America and were likely the primary ancestors of modern American Indians. So there we have the Mormon church in 20, I don't know, 15ish. Acknowledging the DNA problem. So Jeremy wins point number four.

Nemo 1:22:40 And when you say the church, I think, is it Ugo Perez? I think, is the Italian geneticists that the Church works with. I think he got a lot into that essay.

John Dehlin 1:22:49 But if the church removes his name and then publishes it on their website and in their LDS Tools app, it's the church giving their imprimatur.

Nemo 1:22:59 My point is they get these Hugo Perego, I think. Yeah, they get him to write this for them and then they publish it. It's not written by the first Presidency, it's put out, it's official by the Church. But my point is they kind of hide behind these authors who you have to kind of dig and find who they are, but he's a church.

John Dehlin 1:23:18 And they hide the essays themselves because most bishops that I've interviewed, most former bishops, actually I should say current or former bishops that I've interviewed on Mormon stories, did not know about the Gospel topics essays while they were serving as bishops. And that includes people who just this year or last year were serving as bishops. So the Church has done a masterful job of making these essays available and, but keeping their availability a complete secret from even their, their bishops and stick presidents, which is pretty masterful if you ask me. Julia, did you want to talk about this Desert News article that came out in 2007?

Julia 1:23:56 Actually, Nemo, do you mind reading that? Because I think it kind of segues into your clip that we're going to show.

Nemo 1:24:00 Cool. So the headline is Debate Renewed with Change in Book of Mormon Introduction. The change was made in the second edition published by Doubleday, a hardcover book that eliminates the footnotes Latter Day Saints see in their church published books. The double day edition is designed to be reader friendly for non Latter Day Saints who are encountering the book for the first time. Last year's change takes into account details of Book of Mormon demography which are not known. According to church spokesman Mark Tuttle, the change will be included in the next edition of the Book of Mormon printed by the Church.

Julia 1:24:33 Thank you. And that was published in November 8th of 2007 when this deseret News article was published.

John Dehlin 1:24:37 So what did that just say? What did that tell us? Nemo, can you summarize?

Nemo 1:24:41 So the Church has said, yes, we've made a change to the introduction of the Book of Mormon or the title page. We've made a change to that statement about who the ancestors, who the progeny of the Native Americans are or the Lamanites are. Rather. We've made a change to that because we do not know things about Book of Mormon demography which they used to claim to know, but now they're saying we don't know because you know, the evidence has changed, which is fair.

John Dehlin 1:25:05 Prophets, sees or revelators for 200 years knew exactly who the Lamanites were. They were all the, all the Native Americans in Central, south and North America and the Pacific Islanders and they were called Lamanites for two centuries.

Nemo 1:25:22 Basically they were running around calling New Zealanders Hagoth's people. They were, you know what I mean?

John Dehlin 1:25:28 Who's a character from the Book of Mormon.

Nemo 1:25:30 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:25:30 Who says, all of a sudden we develop amnesia about, you know, who the Lamanites were. Okay, what's this video about?

Julia 1:25:37 So, Nemo, this is yours. I think this is kind of use called a newer research, which I think is very interesting. From your channel.

Nemo 1:25:43 Yep.

Julia 1:25:44 Yeah. So let's just play this one. If you'll put it up on the screen, John. Yeah, there we go.

The 2006 Book of Mormon Introduction Change

Nemo 1:25:49 So do you remember when I told you that the Mormon Church changed the introduction of the Book of Mormon in 2006 so that the phrase they are the principal ancestors of the Indians now reads, they are among the ancestors of the American Indians? When it comes to the Lamanites, many have postulated that this was done in response to DNA evidence that made the original position untenable. But I've recently learned that they haven't made this change consistently in every language. It all started when a German individual reached out to say, the copy of the Book of Mormon they were given by the missionaries printed in 2023 contained the phrase Diese sind die Hauptforfagen der Americanische Indiana auf English. The word Haupt Vorfagen would be best translated as principal or main ancest. And it's the same for the German copy of the Book of Mormon that's in PDF form on the Church's website. That one was printed in June 2011, five years after the narrative changed. So the claim that the Lamanites were the principal ancestors of the Native Americans, which the church abandoned in 2006 in English, remains in multiple places in German 17 years later in 2023. Prints which are being given to people 19 years after the narrative was first altered in English. But here's where it gets really odd. On the Church's website, in the online gospel library, the phrasing has been changed to a phrase which translates as among the ancestors. So why would the Church have the new narrative on one part of the website, but continues to supply in print and PDF form the old narrative? And perhaps more significantly, is this a one off, or could this be the case in other languages? Let me know in the comments.

John Dehlin 1:27:22 Okay.

Julia 1:27:24 Yeah, I think that was really interesting.

Nemo 1:27:30 Yeah, I mean, I had other people reach out to me and say that in some other languages. I couldn't recall them off the top of my head. It's the same. They haven't changed it. And it's bizarre to me that the Church wouldn't change this consistently. It's not like they don't have the means to do It. And it's not like, oh, that was an old copy of the book. They said that book was printed in 2023. Like, it came off the printing press in 2023, 17 years after the change was made in English. Like, that's just wild. What could possibly cause the church to take 17 years to change it when we know they can change it in German because they've changed it in the Gospel Library app.

Julia 1:28:12 Maybe people in Germany aren't complaining about that being an issue. Like, I wonder why they didn't change that. Because they have the funding for it. They have the means to change it, like you said. But why not change it?

Nemo 1:28:21 Do they not view it as an important thing? Because I would argue it's a very significant claim, claiming the, you know, the ancestral relationship between Lamanites and Native Americans. It's a huge part of the claim of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Like, who you think those people are matters.

Julia 1:28:38 Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how I thought that

Nemo 1:28:41 was just interesting that that's what's going on there. So in English, we had that change in 2006, but other people are still. I guess what I'm saying is other people. The person who reached out is a potential convert to the church, and they're being given a copy of a book that teaches a narrative about that ancestral relationship that the church doesn't support anymore.

John Dehlin 1:29:00 Yeah, and I'll just add a couple things. We've covered the mound builder myth on various episodes of Mormon Stories podcast and on LDS discussion series. But what we know is that this idea that, number one, we know, you know, I would say, you know, potentially for me, the most fatal, you know, argument against the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon is simply the narrative that God cursed the wicked Lamanites with dark skin. Because it suggests that when God doesn't like someone or when God doesn't like something that they're doing, he curses them with dark skin. Because dark is bad, dark is worse. Dark should be associated with being evil or wicked or naughty or perverse or adulterous or polygamous or whatever it is. And that's not only super racist and disgusting and wrong. And by the way, it also says in the Book of Mormon that God turn the Lamanites in dark so that the Lamanites wouldn't be attractive to the Nephites who are white. That suggests that dark skinned people are less attractive to white skinned people. And even though racism exists, that doesn't mean that white people don't find dark people sexually Attractive, even if they are racist against them. So because we know that plenty of slave master white slave owners in colonial America had sex with their African slaves, including Thomas Jefferson. So anyway, that narrative of God cursing wicked people with dark skin is not only super racist, it's not original. So we know that decades before, even centuries before, Joseph Smith writes that narrative into the Book of Mormon, that there was a myth that existed in colonial America that all these, you know, mounds and artifacts, you know, that were so impressive and tools and pottery and art, they were actually so impressive, says the mound builder myth, that these dark Native Americans that we found when, you know, the pilgrims or the explorers came to America, there's no way these dark, loathsome Native Americans could have ever created any art or architecture that was worthwhile. So clearly there must have been a white ancestors to these dark, loathsome Native Americans who created these mounds and these civilizations and these buildings and this art. Because only white people can make art and architecture and sophisticated civilizations. Dark people can't do it. You know, not only you know, that, that perception, that myth, that mound builder myth has been found by Gerald and Sandra Tanner to be in at least 10 different books that were written in the 1820s or before that Joseph Smith would have had access to, including View of the Hebrews, which was a book written by I think the pastor of Oliver Ethan Smith, the pastor of Oliver Cowdery. So it's just an awful narrative and it's an unoriginal narrative and again it's another pre existing narrative that Joseph Smith would have likely just remixed and imported into the, the Book of Mormon. So I just had to, to kind of mention that because I think that's. But, but it's also worse because then for as we mentioned for 200 years, Mormon prophets, seers and revelators would tell Native Americans, Latin Americans and Pacific Islanders that they were the descendants of these wicked, evil, dark skinned Lamanites, which isn't just racist and incorrect, it's also telling. It's erasing entire civilizations of people. It's erasing their actual ancestry, which would have been Asiatic in origin. It's erasing their ancestry and telling them that they're the descendants of these fictitious, evil, you know, characters that are as real as hobbits or elves or dwarfs that Joseph Smith wrote into the Book of Mormon. Sorry I had to go on that diatribe.

Julia 1:33:51 That's good. And I just wanted to add to not just the Tanners, but Dan Vogel has a book called Indian Origins in the Book of Mormon, which also is really good. And he makes a lot of the same similarities of the Mound Builders and things like that that were prevalent in Joseph Smith's time in the 1800s. So just that.

John Dehlin 1:34:06 There's also a book called the Mound Builders Myth that touches on this as well.

Julia 1:34:10 Yeah, so. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:34:11 And just so y' all aren't worried, Nemo and Julia, we're going to cover through five in today's episode and we're going to, we're going to split off this particular presentation into two parts and we're going to cover 6 through 11 in the next episode. So y' all sounds great. Be worried about time, if that's okay.

Julia 1:34:29 Sure, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:34:30 Nimong, Julie, anything else you want to make about point number four?

Nemo 1:34:33 Well, now we're cutting it in half. Let me. I've got another three hour soliloquy that we can. Now that we have time. No, I think that explains it pretty well, John, to be honest. I think there's not much more to be said here. The DNA evidence is pretty robust, I think. And the church, you know, has had to shift, as they often do. And the reason there's no fair Mormon response for it is because the responses to this kind of thing are so niche that they revolve generally around things like, oh well, we don't know exactly what DNA we're looking for. And there's like DNA sort of dissolution through time. There's other arguments about this idea bottlenecking.

John Dehlin 1:35:15 There's bottlenecking, there's genetic drift.

Nemo 1:35:17 There's the weird idea that there was actually like a civilization of people already on the American continent and that these people just joined in. Like the Nephites just turned up and joined in and assimilated and so their DNA got lost. I mean, that's just completely ignoring what the Book of Mormon teaches about it being a land preserved for them.

Julia 1:35:34 Yeah.

Nemo 1:35:34 You know, we can just selectively ignore what the Book of Mormon teaches when we're trying to defend something, can't we? That's.

John Dehlin 1:35:39 And also the Book of Mormon says that the land to the north and to the central and the south were filled with people. It doesn't mean some little small pueblo in Latin America. The Book of Mormon makes it clear. It's. It's North, Central and South America. And by the way, the Hill Cumorah that Joseph found the plates in, that, that Moroni allegedly buried the plates in is in upstate New York, not some teeny little Mesoamerican kill. Yeah, unless you come up with the two hill Cumorah theory, which is ridiculous

Nemo 1:36:13 and goes against footnotes of the Book of Mormon used to say up until the early 1900s, like it was in the footnotes of the Book of Mormon that the land, like the great water, was Lake Ontario and like, this is the hill where just.

Julia 1:36:24 Yeah, we're about to talk about that. Do you want to just go ahead and talk about the next slide? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So we just jumped to the slides about question five.

John Dehlin 1:36:32 Let's do it.

Julia 1:36:33 Yeah. So. So, Jeremy, the fifth question that he asked about the Book of Mormon is why are there anachronisms in the Book of Mormon and horses? He says horses, cattle, oxen, sheep, swine, goats, elephants, wheels, chariots, wheat, silk, steel and iron did not exist in pre Columbia America during the Book of Mormon times. Why are these things mentioned in the Book of Mormon as being made available in the Americas between 2,200 BC to 421 AD? Because the. The Book of Ether. So that is why he's dating that so far back. He says unofficial apologists claim victories in some of these items, but closer inspection reveals significant problems. It has been documented that apologists have made has. Have manipulated wording so that steel is not steel. Sheep become never domesticated. Bighorn sheep, horses become tapirs, etc.

Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin 1:37:22 If it's okay. If it's okay, Julie, I'm just gonna say for sure. One of the top five most important episodes I've ever done on Mormon Stories is with the YALE Mesoamerican anthropologist, Dr. Michael Koh. And I did two rounds of interviews with him. He's the world expert. Like Robert Rittner was the world expert in Egyptology. Michael Koh was the world's expert in Central America, Mesoamerica, during the time of the Book of Mormon. And you know, I go through this list with him in my interview, and we need to basically just re release that Michael coe interview on YouTube because so many people haven't heard it. But I basically say during the time frame of the book of Mormon, Dr. Michael Coe, were there horses in the Americas? And he'd say no. And then I'd say, were there cattle? And he'd say no. Were there oxen? No. Sheep? No. Swine? No. Goats? No. Elephants? No. Wheels? No. Chariots? No. He would say wheels, okay, there might have been toys with wheels, but no wheels big enough to actually fit onto carts. Were there chariots? No. Wheat? No. Silk? No. Steel? No. Iron? No. And he basically just completely validates this list. And then, you know, what you'll then see is fair Mormon apologists or farms apologists or Maxwell Institute apologists try and just harvest from scholarship possible exceptions, but overall, just all the food, all the animals, all the technologies that Joseph Smith had access to in the 1820s somehow miraculously appear in the Book of Mormon as if they were around in 600 B.C. or 1,000 B.C or 2,000 B.C. in ways that are ridiculous. But also Michael Koh points out that there's all sorts of food and animals and technologies that Native Americans did have, right? Like tomatoes, like corn, like chocolate, like tapirs, like, you know, jaguars. There are all sorts of animals and food and technologies that should be in the Book of Mormon that are not in the Book of Mormon. And for all those reasons, even the Mormon church today in 2025, even Richard Bushman, even Terell Givens, they're all acknowledging that the Book of Mormon is a 19th century document. It is not an ancient document. It's just not.

Nemo 1:40:15 Yeah, I think that's a really interesting half of the argument is the things that should be in the Book of Mormon that aren't. I think that's often overlooked, I think.

Julia 1:40:25 Yeah, for sure. And on the next slide, John, I just have other episodes that cover these anachronisms as well. You have historian Shannon Caldwell Montez, who talks about these anachronisms. And these are just a couple of her episodes. I think she's been on more times than just these two.

John Dehlin 1:40:38 And basically her point was that the church historian, B.H. roberts, who was into science, right, he discovered all this stuff in the 1900s, 1910s, and became so alarmed that he held a secret Mormon meeting in 1922 called all, literally all the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve, and all the general authorities together in Salt Lake City and named off all these problems with the linguistics of the Book of Mormon, with the geography of the Book of Mormon, with the archeology of the Book of Mormon, and put them all on notice as early as 1922 that there were significant reasons to doubt the historicity of the Book of Mormon. And that's just proven. Check out Shannon Caldwell Montez's Secret Mormon meanings of 1922, along with the rise and fall of LDS Church historian and general authority B.H. roberts. And there's even an episode called Did B.H. roberts Lose His Testimony in the Historicity of the Book of Mormon? Those are essential Mormon stories episodes. Go ahead, Julia.

Julia 1:41:45 Yeah, no, that's great. So actually, this next slide is about what Nemo was saying, is how some of the footnotes have specifically pointed to very specific locations. Nemo do you want to read this one?

Nemo 1:41:55 Yeah, sure. For Ether 15:2, it states, There had been slain two millions of mighty men and their wives and their children on the hill. Come on. The footnote reads, including wives and children, the numbers very probably must have been from 10 to 15 millions. For ether 15, 8. For the waters of Ripleyancum, the footnote reads, supposed to be Lake Ontario. Supposed to be Lake Ontario. These footnotes were in both the 1879 and the 1911 Chicago editions of the Book of Mormon. Other footnotes of the 1879 edition are Mormon 229. Where the land northward is North America and the land southward is South America. So this hemispheric model that people have started coming up with to try and get more archaeological hits to say, like, oh, well, there were concrete buildings, because we found some in a place where, until the early 1900s, the Book of Mormon just wasn't placed at all. The narrow neck of land was never, you know, Panama. The narrow neck of land was somewhere in North America between a couple of big lakes. Until we realized that you needed to try and expand, or the church realized they need to try and expand the places in which they could get archaeological hits to try and bolster the historicity of the Book of Mormon in some way. Because the place they were looking, particularly the hill Cumorah, is a clean hill. We'll get to that. That's also discussed.

Julia 1:43:17 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:43:18 So am I reading this correctly, Julia Nemo, that basically, prophets, Mormon prophet seers and revelators in the 19th century basically said, when they say Hill Cumorah, as in Joseph Smith's Hill Cumorah in upstate New York, that's what we mean. That's what the Book of Mormon means when it says Hill Cumorah. That when it talks about the waters of Ripleyancum, they mean Lake Ontario. That's what the Book of Mormon text itself said, as approved by 19th century Mormon prophets and revelators, and that also that when they talked about the. The land northward in the Book of Mormon, they met North America, and southward was South America. The prophet seers and revelators approved these interpretations of the lands and geographical features in the Book of Mormon. Is that right?

Julia 1:44:10 Oh, you're muted.

Nemo 1:44:11 Oh, sorry. I was probably eating. Men who speak for God did indeed say that. Yes.

John Dehlin 1:44:16 Okay.

Julia 1:44:17 All right. And I will add, like in the Journal of Discourses, you have Parley P. Pratt. You have Orson Pratt. I think there's a bunch of other people, even the prophets and Brigham Young and everybody. They even specifically point to very specific Locations like these footnotes. So these are prophets who speak to God and they're saying that of where the specific locations of the Book of Mormon took place. And then those have changed because they don't hold up.

Nemo 1:44:40 Yeah. Not just to be pedantic, not just to God, Julia. For God.

Julia 1:44:45 Yes.

Nemo 1:44:46 There's a big, big claim.

Julia 1:44:49 Oh, I wanted to add, too. So, Nima, when we were talking about these slides, you said you wanted to add these parts in here, even though this topic is anachronisms. Can you help me link again? Why bring these footnotes in for the topic of anachronisms?

Nemo 1:45:02 Because it's the way in which they've had to try and expand the place in which this occurred to try and get hits.

Julia 1:45:09 Oh, like the cement or the sheep or the tapirs.

Nemo 1:45:12 Sheep and the. Whatever they're like, ah, right now we've got, you know, alpacas or whatever, you know, that we can now look at whether they were domesticated or that's just. It might not be a good example of tough hair, but, you know, like tapirs. Tapirs as something that could be a replace for horses. Tapirs didn't exist in North America at all. So you've got to go to South America to find them anyway. So even though they're really bad apologetic, the only way you can even start to try and fix that anachronism is to expand the geography of the woman, which is what these footnotes show us.

John Dehlin 1:45:41 Yeah, can I just. Can I just also note that the biggest, for me, the biggest anachronism in the Book of Mormon is Christianity and the King James Bible. Why in the world, as we've already noted, centuries before Jesus was even born and his name was even known to Jews, Are they quoting Jesus talking about Mary, talking about Jesus's birth, his baptism? And why are there Protestant, literally 19th century Protestant sermons being spoken out of the mouths of Book of Mormon prophets before Jesus was even born? You know, Jews didn't have that. The Jews in the Holy Land didn't have Jesus's name. They didn't have Jesus's baptism confirmation. They didn't have Protestant sermons in the Holy Land prior to Jesus's birth. So that's ridiculous, right?

Julia 1:46:40 Yeah. And I'll add to. And I don't have the specific sources, but I can get those. But I'm pretty sure a change that was made during Joseph Smith's lifetime was, I think, in the Book of Jacob where they say that, they say Christ's name and then I think he realizes that, oh, that's that can't be correct. So he changes it, I think, to the Messiah or something, some other thing that's not his name. Which also, again, the Book of Mormon translation was an exact text that the text didn't change or didn't. Yeah, it didn't change until it was written down correctly. So things like that don't make sense. So like you said, Christianity was existing way before it should have, and the name was known.

Nemo 1:47:13 There's a whole episode, people, that's worth looking at where we discuss it with Mike, the fact that they at one point know. Well, yeah, they know exactly when Christ is going to be born. And then all of a sudden they just don't anymore.

Julia 1:47:25 Right.

Nemo 1:47:26 Because of the way the Book of Mormon was written, starting at Mosiah and moving through and then coming back around at the beginning because of the lost pages.

Julia 1:47:35 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:47:36 Also tell me if I'm wrong. And again, we're repeating things we've mentioned on Mormon stories before. The idea of books in and of itself is anachronistic because 600 BC books didn't exist. There were no such thing as books. There were no such thing as bindings, and there were no such thing as plates that were assembled into books and then into a larger book and then, you know, compiled with rings, you know, holes in the plates and rings binding the plates. That's a technology that didn't exist until the printing press. It was scrolls. So just this idea of book, the golden plates compiled into a book. The Book of Mormon itself as a technology, books didn't exist 600 BC. Am I wrong?

Julia 1:48:26 No. And your interview with David Bacavoi, I think you ask him those specific questions and he answers you. He's a Bible historian. Bible scholar, Historian. So to know more about that, I would recommend going to see his. I think you guys released them. Right. So those should be pretty recent, but I'll put those in the show notes, too.

John Dehlin 1:48:42 At best, there were scrolls, and even the scrolls weren't compiled into books. It was just a scroll and a scroll and then a bunch of scrolls in a thing. But the fact that it's called the Book of Mormon and then it was compiled into plates as if there were different books within the larger book. All anachronistic.

Nemo 1:48:58 Also thought that just came to me. The holy text of Judaism, the Torah, is still a scroll today, traditionally. Right. The Torah will be written out that, you know, these decorative versions that you'll read from at bar mitzvahs and such are big scrolls. If these are ancient Jews, why did they not bring that tradition of keeping their holy writings on scrolls with them. Why have they trans. Why were there plates, brass plates, that they had to go get from Laban in Jerusalem when all of these holy texts in Jerusalem at that time would have been on scrolls?

John Dehlin 1:49:32 And again, there were no brass plates. There were no brass plates. 600 B.C. you know, the Bible wasn't. Wasn't read or consumed or shared that way. 600 B.C. and then we're not even mentioning, of course, Deutero Isaiah, which is parts of Isaiah that were written after Lehi and his family would have left Jerusalem that somehow magically appear in the Book of Mormon. That's also anachronistic. And we've got LDS discussion episodes that cover Deutero Isaiah as well. So there's just a gazillion anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. What's the next slide? Julia?

How Apologists Respond to Anachronisms

Julia 1:50:08 Okay, so this is one of the videos released by Scripture Central. This is Jasmine. I can't. I don't know her last name. Rapley. Rapley. I apologize to her. I don't. I don't know how to say it. So this is so I. The title of this clip that I've titled it is How Apologists Handle Anachronisms. So I want to just play the clip and then I want to talk about, like, how. What things she does as a workaround for. For making this. Okay, these. And this is. The topic is specifically horses.

John Dehlin 1:50:34 All right, so bad apologetics incoming.

Guest 1:50:37 For a long time, critics of the Book of Mormon have pointed out that a major flaw is how the Book of Mormon mentions horses. And even the horses were extinct in Book of Mormon times and didn't get reintroduced into the Americas until Columbus. Well, some brand new research published this week in the Texas Journal of Science challenges that assumption because a team of researchers in Mexico discovered horse bones that date to Book of Mormon times. These horse remains were excavated from a site near Cedral San Luis Potosi in Mexico. And to figure out when these horse bones dated to, the researchers obtained radiocarbon dates at each archaeological layer, or stratagem from charcoal and other organic material close to the horse. And now you've got to see just how perfectly these dates line up with the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon mentions horses only a handful of times, and we have radiocarbon dates that may attest to horses in all of these periods. Two of the radiocarbon dates found near the horse remains came from the mid second millennium BC which is about when the Jaredites mentioned horses in either chapter. 9. Another dates to the 6th or 5th century BC, which is close to Nephi's arrival in the Promised Land when he mentions horses, and also to Enos's when he mentions many horses. Horses. The final mention of horses in the Book of Mormon comes from the Gadianton siege during the first century AD and third Nephi and two radiocarbon dates supports the presence of horses during this period as well. Now, the type of horse they found is also important because it shows that these bones wouldn't have been Spanish horses that somehow got inserted into earlier archaeological layers. All horse samples that were found after the Ice Age but before Columbus in the site belong to North American horse species that are now extinct. Ecus mexicanus and Equus conversidan. The horses the Spanish brought over are the Ecus caballus. Evidence is always tentative, but this possibly pushes the extinction of the North American horse way later than many scientists have assumed. And this is consistent with a growing body of evidence that suggests that at least some pockets of horses may have survived for several millennia after the last Ice Age, which parallels well with what we see in the Book of Mormon. To learn more, check out the newest article published by Book of Mormon Central NOI649 and follow along for more Book of Mormon evidence.

John Dehlin 1:52:25 Wow. Slam dunk. Slam dunk.

Nemo 1:52:28 Can I immediately take exception to the way that she uses the word assume? The way that later than many scientists assumed? No later than many scientists posited or theorized or based off the evidence put forward. Right, then, second point, just real quick, that happened in Mexico. So who cares? Because that's not where the Book of Mormon took place according to Joseph Smith and all his contemporaries and according to all the leaders of the Church before the early 1900s. So who cares? You can find horse bones in Mexico all day long all you want. Because again, unless we allow the Church to widen the goalpost by changing the geography of where the Book of Mormon happened, if we're going to believe Joseph Smith and all his contemporaries, then horsebones in Mexico don't do anything for the history of the Book of Mormon anyway.

Julia 1:53:14 True. So, John, if you put up the next. Put up the slide, I kind of highlight some of the words that I found problematic. So she claims a team of researchers in Mexico discovered horse bones that date to Book of Mormon times. Also, when I was looking this up, I read the abstract of the paper that she talks about, and I still, I'm not an archaeologist or a geologist. It doesn't really make sense to me. And like she was listing, she had that picture of the. The different layers of the soil and things like that. But when I look these up, the people who do most of these anachronistic research for the book Mormon are Mormon. And so to me that that's automatically, you have this one individual. I can't remember his name, but he says that he starts with the conclusion that the Book of Mormon is true or the Book of Abraham, and he moves from there. And so I find it problematic if you're basing your research on just Mormon scholars because they sometimes will go into it with a preconceived idea that the Book of Mormon is true. So I already don't like that.

Nemo 1:54:06 I believe that's Kerry Muhlstein who said that.

Julia 1:54:09 Okay, yes, I remember starting with an M. I just couldn't remember who it was, which is very interesting. So anyway, so she also goes on to say, she says, and to figure out when the horse bones dated to the two. The researchers obtain radiocarbon dates at each archaeological layer or strata from charcoal and other organic material close to the horse bones. I just thought, I don't know how, I don't know how this works because I'm a studying historian. I'm not studying to be an archaeologist or geologist. But they're taking these examples from this study from the material close to the horse. But it's not the horse bones itself. I don't know why they couldn't do that. I don't know enough about this, but I just thought it was good to point out. And then she goes on to say, she goes on to say two of the radiocarbon dates found near the horse remains came from the mid second millennium B.C. so again, it's near the horse remains. It's not the horse remains itself evidence. And she says evidence is always tentative, but this possibly pushes the extinction of the North American horse way later than many scientists have assumed. And you said you found problems with the word assumed, but then she was using words like tentatively, possibly. Whenever I see her videos and I look in her comments, there's a lot of people that are pointing out her over her seemingly overuse of the words possibly or tentative or things that kind

Nemo 1:55:19 of like, she hedges a lot.

Julia 1:55:21 Yeah. Like they like kneecap her argument. Anyway, so I just, I just wanted to point this out because this is how a lot of apologists handle these anachronisms. They like, kind of fudge around it or like, oh, it's possible that this is, like, there's possible that this is cement or that this is a, you know, just they use different language.

Nemo 1:55:38 It's possible that I can fly, but I can't. And I've got no evidence to say I can.

John Dehlin 1:55:45 Yeah, the only other, the only last thing I'll just add is she's quoting some obscure Texas journal of something or other and citing some obscure random journal article in no way overturns the consensus of, you know, the scientific consensus of an entire body, you know, that spans multiple decades, if not half a century. It is generally known that there probably were horses prior to like 10,000 BC and that after the Ice Age, horses did not exist in North, Central or South America. And it wasn't until the Spanish came and reintroduced horses that then Native Americans were able to get their hands on horses. And then of course, by the time Joseph Smith comes around, Native Americans are riding horses. So of course he would have had Lamanites and Nephites riding horses in the Book of Mormon because he wouldn't have really known or realized that they didn't have access to them during the time of the Book of Mormon. But just because Jasmine can sample one, one probably low, you know, low impact factor, less credible article that is trying to sort of half heartedly prove the possibility of something that does not overturn sort of decades, if not half a century of scientific consensus around this point.

Nemo 1:57:24 No.

Julia 1:57:24 Yeah.

Nemo 1:57:25 And it doesn't matter anyway because it happened in Mexico. I think. I do really think it's that simple. You know, Joseph Smith made specific claims about where it all happened. So horse bones in Mexico aren't going to help with that.

John Dehlin 1:57:38 You're saying horse bones in Mexico don't give North American, Native Americans horses.

Nemo 1:57:44 Exactly.

John Dehlin 1:57:45 During the time of, yeah, you know, the Book of Mormon. Yeah, good point.

Nemo 1:57:51 All right, America's big. America's big is what I learned as a little Brit coming to America earlier this year. Big old place.

Julia 1:57:58 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:57:58 Yeah, it is. All right, Julia, So this is the first half of the CES letter, you know, addresses the Book of Mormon. I would say we've covered five points so far and Jeremy is a solid five to nothing. Is. Is that fair, Nemo? And Julia, would you say that it's 5o CES letter versus critics?

Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

Julia 1:58:20 I would. Even the things that they can like, even some of the anachronisms that maybe they can answer for. That doesn't. Just because you can answer for one doesn't mean you can answer for the rest of the 20 of them or however many there are. And like you said, Nemo, some of these. And again, we're kind of the conversation of anachronisms. Will carry over into the second part, like, with the next question about archaeology. And there's no evidence for it, so these will carry on. And so, like, even some of the things they can't answer for, they can only answer for it in Mexico or they can only answer for it in North America. They can't. It doesn't. It doesn't work with all of it together. So, like, there's still problems in it. So to me, it doesn't look like Fairmormon or these apologists have any good responses to Jeremy Reynolds.

Nemo 1:58:56 And there is a possibility, you know, that Joseph Smith got something right by accident.

Julia 1:59:01 Right.

Nemo 1:59:01 He may have talked about, you know, concrete buildings, and then they find concrete buildings, and he's like, huh, okay, that doesn't mean he's right about all the other anachronisms. But what it does for members of the church is it gives them a reason to then go, oh, well, then if you. If we found something for that, maybe given enough time, we will find things for other things as well. And that's difficult when it's faced with the scientific conclusion currently, or the scientific position currently that horses were not in North America pre Christopher Columbus.

John Dehlin 1:59:32 And I'll just add it only takes. I'll only add, it only takes one anachronism to prove something is invalid. If you had a perfectly authentic photo of Abraham Lincoln that got his hair right, and his nose right, and his clothes right, and his horse right, and the building behind him, right? But he's holding, you know, an ipod. It only takes one anachronism to show an entire historical artifact as being inauthentic. And so, again, you don't need any more than one anachronism to show that the Book of Mormon isn't a historical document.

Nemo 2:00:16 AI can produce a very convincing image, right? AI imagery is a big thing at the moment, but all it takes is for everyone in the image to have polydactyly and all have six fingers and you go, okay, maybe that's not an authentication picture after all. Right. That's all it takes.

Julia 2:00:34 Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:00:34 All right. Any final points we want to make today before we sign off and then invite people to join us next time for the second half. Julia?

Julia 2:00:43 I don't think so. Like, the just. Again, this binary of the Book Mormon is either it's either all true or it's not. In this rest of it is a. As a fraud or a sham or however he worded it, like, that's this binary.

John Dehlin 2:00:54 So we didn't just find one fatal problem to the Book of Mormon, we found five, and we've got six more to go. Is that right?

Julia 2:01:02 Yeah. I mean, yeah, for Jeremy's research. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nemo 2:01:05 If you take seriously those claims of people like, like Jeffrey R. Holland and. And to an extent, Gordon B. Hinckley, where he talks about, you know, see the greatest work of the heavens or it's a fraud. Right.

Julia 2:01:19 Yeah.

Nemo 2:01:19 These binaries, if you take them seriously, I think this, this stuff, this work by Jeremy kind of only points one way at the moment.

Julia 2:01:26 Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:01:27 All right, well, Julia, thanks for your research and Nemo, thanks for your help and for both of your commentary. I'm looking forward to next episode.

Julia 2:01:33 Yeah, that'll be fun. I really like some of the stuff that he presents in the next few questions.

John Dehlin 2:01:39 All right, all right, y' all, check out Nemo, the Mormon YouTube channel. Nemo's doing great work. Support Nemo. And check out analyzing Mormonism, TikTok and Instagram, because, Julie, you do great work as well.

Julia 2:01:52 Thanks.

John Dehlin 2:01:54 All right, and thanks for joining us Today, our Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition. Remember, the LDS discussion series is best consumed sequentially. So start with episode one and everything we do after that will make a lot more sense. Plus, it's a really great way to look at the evidence, you know, that that attaches to or addresses Borman Church truth claims. And we try to be as dispassionate and as objective as we possibly can, although we do fail to be perfectly objective and dispassionate at times. You can view the entire LDS discussion series either on Spotify because Spotify allows for video, so just go to the Mormon Stories feed or the LDS Discussions feed and all the videos there. You can check out the YouTube playlist for LDS discussions and the whole series is there. It's also integrated into the Mormon Stories podcast YouTube stream. Or you can listen to all this on Apple Podcast or on Spotify Audio or wherever you get your episodes, please. Always thanks to Mike of LDS Discussions for his great work. LDS discussions.com website is still available as well. And just know that we're going to be doing more episodes in the coming weeks and months to keep the LDS Discussions project alive and to continue addressing these issues so that you, our viewers and listeners, can decide for yourself based on the evidence you know what to make of the Mormon Church of Truth Claims. The final thing I'll say is thank you, Jeremy runnels, for the CES letter. If you don't want to watch 100 plus hours of LDS discussions, all you have to do is download the CES letter@cesletter.org, it's a PDF. It's like 70, 80 pages long and in one day many people are able to determine for themselves whether or not the Mormon Church's truth claims stand up to scrutiny. So love you, Jeremy. Check out the CES letter at cesletter.org, download it, buy it. You can buy a copy of it. Even if you buy a copy of it. Jeremy may even sign that copy when he ships them out. As I understand it, he still ships out copies of the CES Letter book by hand. I could be mistaken about that, but I believe he does. I'm in touch with Jeremy. He's a great guy. Check out CES Letter. Find out for yourself if Jeremy is sincere and if it's valid thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast. We could only do this episodes with your donations, so please thank you. If you're a donor to Mormon Stories Podcast, we couldn't do it without you. If you're not a donor and you want to see LDS discussion series continue, just go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor and we'll continue this series. We do pay Julia. We do pay Nemo, so we require your donations to be able to keep this alive. We pay me as well, so become a monthly donor if you're not. And then even if you don't donate or if you do subscribing to this channel Liking this episode, sharing it, commenting on it, giving us a positive review at either Spotify or at Apple Podcasts or wherever this podcast is found. Positive reviews always are super helpful as well. So thanks for joining us today. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Thanks everyone. Talk to you guys soon.

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