CES Letter v. The Book of Mormon

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition. Yes, LDS Discussions is not dead, it's still breathing. It is August 20th, 2025, my birthday. I'm 56 years old. I have a relatively full head of hair. No, I don't color my hair and I'm living my best life. So I just have to tell you all, the 50s are not as bad as you may fear. They're pretty dang good. Anyway, happy birthday to me and we're excited for another episode of LDS Discussions. For those who don't know, LDS discussions is a series 60 plus episodes in the making where we try to look at more mature truth claims as neutrally and objectively and as evidence based as we possibly can. We sometimes be our biases seep through, but we do our best to let you learn about Mormon Church truth claims and their validity as part of a series. This series is best consumed in sequence, so you can go to the LDS discussions playlist on YouTube on the Mormon Stories podcast channel, or you can check out the LDS Discussions series on Spotify, which you can see on video now or also on Apple Podcasts on audio. There's lots of different ways to consume it, but it's best consumed in sequence. So if you have not seen any of the other LDS Discussions episodes, you'll probably be best to pause this, go to the very first episode and then watch it all the way through. Julia and or Brooklyn will include links to the playlist in the show notes so you can watch them in sequence. This project began as part of the MDS discussions.com website. Mike joined us for a good 60 episodes, then he retired. But we carry it on, both because we have more to cover, but also because every time we do one of these episodes it introduces a new micro generation into this series that I believe is probably one of the top three most important things Mormon Stories has ever done is the LDS Discussion series today is going to be part two in our series on the CES Letter versus The Book of Mormon. Just to give you a little bit of background, the CES Letter is a PDF and a book that a man named Jeremy Runnels created many years ago that dealt with his questions around Mormon Church truth claims that he sent to a CES director within the Mormon Church, a Church education system director. We won't rehash the whole story, but the CES Letter has done more to enlighten Mormons and never Mormons about Mormon Church truth claims than possibly any other single project. You can find it@cesletter.org the motivation to do a series on the CES letter is that the Mormon Church and its apologists have been attacking Jeremy Runnels and the CES Letter from the beginning, saying that it's not credible, it's not valid. Jeremy didn't have legitimate concerns. He wasn't sincere, it's dishonest, blah, blah, blah. And we're sick of ad hominem attacks on people who have sincere questions. And so we decided that we are going to do some LDS discussions episodes about the CES Letter. We rebroadcasted Jeremy Runnells full interview on Mormon Stories podcast in the past couple months. Go check that out. But this is part two in a series of Book of Mormon versus the CES Letter and Apologists for the Book of Mormon. Who's right. So go check out for sure part one before you check out part two. But today is going to be part two in that series on the CES Letter versus the Book of Mormon. And joining us as always, as a part of the LDS discussions panel in its new era is Nemo the Mormon. Hey, Nemo.

Nemo 3:49 Hello. Hello. How are we?

John Dehlin 3:50 Welcome back.

Nemo 3:52 Thank you.

John Dehlin 3:53 And we have Julia. Hey, Julia.

Julia 3:55 Hi.

John Dehlin 3:56 And Julia's been joining us. I don't know. Not as a mic replacement. Because you were on with Mike as well, right?

Julia 4:02 Yeah, for a little bit. Yeah.

John Dehlin 4:03 But you are. You are producing, authoring this episode and you're leading this episode. So this is Julia's show today.

Julia 4:11 Yeah. And that was a good introduction because, like, because we saw the first slides are about the pushback that has Jeremy's been getting. But I don't know if we need to cover that because we covered it in the first part.

John Dehlin 4:22 I think we can. Let's do it.

Julia 4:24 All right, sure.

John Dehlin 4:25 But, Julia, thanks for preparing today's episode. Animal, how are you doing?

Nemo 4:29 Doing very well.

John Dehlin 4:30 Any updates you want to give everybody or just life is awesome as usual?

Nemo 4:35 Well, yeah, life is awesome as usual. There's. Hopefully we found the cause for my stroke. If that's.

John Dehlin 4:43 Some of our audience won't know that you even had a stroke. Do you want to just give a quick.

Nemo 4:47 Yeah, sure. I had a stroke about two and a half months ago at the age of 28. It's bizarre. The cause was a clot that should have been filtered out by my lungs, but wasn't because there's a hole in my heart. So it went from one side of my heart to the wrong side of my heart, through the arteries to my brain, and I lost the ability to walk. But it's back and I'm recovering well and hopefully they're going to plug up that hole in my heart and we'll be fine.

Julia 5:14 Dang.

John Dehlin 5:15 Oh, hearts with you, Nemo, how can people support you? I know that you wouldn't mind some support. So if people want to support Nemo in this time, how do they do that?

Nemo 5:24 There's the donor box. If you just want to support me gratis. There's my Patreon. If you want to join me for some exclusive live Q and A's, there's YouTube channel membership for early access to videos. Whatever you want, just go over to my channel. You'll see all the links.

John Dehlin 5:37 So donorbox.org Nemo the Mormon, is that right?

Nemo 5:41 Yeah.

John Dehlin 5:42 And then Patreon is just patreon.com of the Mormon. Okay. All right, well, we're glad you're still with us and as sharp as ever. And our secular and non secular prayers are with you, Nemo.

Nemo 5:55 Thank you. Thanks.

John Dehlin 5:56 Thanks for joining us. All right, take it away, Julia.

Julia 6:00 Okay, so we are going to get started with the slides. This is part two, as we said. And this is just some of the, some of the, what do I call them, websites or articles that have been, that have been pushing back on Jeremy Reynolds, like you said, John, questioning like he never had a testimony, he wrote these things without any intent to send it to a CS director, just things like that. I don't know if we need to cover all these things, but those are just some articles. And then do we want to read this quote we shared this last time?

John Dehlin 6:27 I just kind of alluded to it, but it is so textbook Mormon apologist when you don't really have a good argument or response to facts and evidence and criticism to attack the messenger. And I've just hated and detested how, what, what Mormon Church apologists have chosen to do. And frankly, they're funded by the Mormon Church and wealthy Mormons. So it is the Mormon Church that's attacking Jeremy. But they're trying to claim he never had sincere questions to begin with. He just wanted to sin, that he just wanted to tear things down, you know, and you just have to go watch his Mormon Stories interview to know there was not a more caring, thoughtful, sincere person. And, and even though he may have shared his doubts and questions early on Reddit, where else could he have shared them? And even if he did crowdsource some of the later versions of the CES letter, there's nothing wrong with that. He literally was just trying to like, I think the biggest thing People feel when they go through a faith crisis is that they're alone and that they're crazy. And if the CES director never got back to Jeremy with his sincere questions and his letter, there's nothing wrong with him going to a Reddit subreddit and sharing his questions, getting support, getting feedback. I know that Jeremy has worked really hard to fix the errors in the CES letter, to make it as credible and as. And to manage the tone as possible. And it just seems like the apologists have wanted to say that because he went to Reddit, because he got feedback from Reddit, because he even crowdsourced, you know, parts of the CS letter based on feedback, that somehow that means he wasn't sincere, and somehow that means he only just had bad intentions. And I just want to say that's garbage, in my opinion. And Nemo and Julie, I'd love to hear if you have any additional thoughts on that.

Julia 8:34 I also think sincerity really doesn't have anything to do with the concerns, like his concerns about the Book of Mormon. It doesn't matter whether he's sincere or not. These are concerns that need to be answered about polygamy, about the translation process, the rock and a hat. Sincerity really is just a different thing that really doesn't have to do anything with historical. The historical aspects or the truth claims part of this. I don't. Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 8:56 I think we take for granted. We talk about ad hominem being a fallacy, but we stop and think about why it's a fallacy. It's because someone's motivations, intentions, their physical attributes, whatever it might be, doesn't have any bearing on the thing that they produce or the questions that they ask. The questions that he asks got nothing to do with those things. The validity of those questions, how compelling those questions are. They're not affected by who he is as a person.

John Dehlin 9:22 It's a distraction. Right? Yeah.

Julia 9:24 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 9:25 Okay.

Nemo 9:26 All right.

John Dehlin 9:26 I just had to say that. Thanks, Julie.

Julia 9:27 Yeah, that's good. Yeah. So I wanted to start with this quote, see if I can get my. With Jeremy Reynolds from the CES letter. Do you. One of you guys want to read that? John, do you want to read that or Nima?

John Dehlin 9:40 Sure, yeah, I'll read it. This is Jeremy. 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 to. 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 10:08 Yeah, I just really like that because it's just saying everyone deserves to have all the facts. And this is what we're trying to do here with this series on LDS discussions is to just kind of give the facts in a different way rather than the book. The book is. It's online, the PDF version. You can order it. It's not very long anyway, so that's just what we're doing today. It's just trying to give all the facts.

Nemo 10:26 Yeah.

John Dehlin 10:27 And this. The informed consent. That's if I had to say two words to describe the purpose of Mormon stories. It's informed consent.

Julia 10:34 Yeah, yeah. So with this. So there are 16 sections of the CES letter, including other concerns, the conclusion and sources and notes, and an epilogue. So today's topic, as we said, is the Book of Mormon. And before in the other part, it was. So Jeremy talked. He has 11 questions about the Book of Mormon. And the first part we talked about parts. We talked about questions one through five. And today we're going to do six through 11. So that's all we're going to cover today. So it shouldn't take us super long, but hopefully we can cover this is

John Dehlin 11:04 Mormon stories, but we'll do our best.

Julia 11:06 Right, Right.

John Dehlin 11:09 Okay. So we're doing six through 11.

Julia 11:11 Six through 11, yeah.

John Dehlin 11:12 Okay.

Julia 11:13 So we're just jumping right in. So again, if you haven't. If you haven't seen the first part, go back and watch it. So this first question is, why is there no archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon? Nemo, do you want to read his quote from the CES letter?

Lack of Archaeological Evidence for the Book of Mormon

Guest 3 11:25 Sure.

Nemo 11:25 There is absolutely no archaeological evidence to directly support the Book of Mormon or the Nephites and Lamanites, who were supposed to have numbered in the millions. This is one of the reasons why unofficial apologists have developed the limited geography model that it happened in Central or South America and claimed that the Hill Cumorah mentioned as the final battle of the Nephites is not in Palmyra, New York, but is elsewhere.

Julia 11:51 Thank you. I was also thinking of how they even the. You had Rod Meldrum on, and he has a limited geography up in. Near. Near New York, right near the. The Great Lakes region. And I was just thinking about that.

John Dehlin 12:08 But yeah. Oh, wait, do we. Do you have more on that? Do you have more on that topic?

Julia 12:15 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is just. We're going to just talk about the topic for a second.

John Dehlin 12:18 Okay.

Julia 12:18 So, yeah. So, so apologists on archeology. So some Mormon groups, such as Scripture Central, have Purported compelling evidence for archaeology in the Book of Mormon. As an example, this article that I've posted here opposes five evidences. One is metal plates. Another is an Alterate Nahum. Another is the cement in Mesoamerica, like the evidence of cement being created and then the seal of Mulek and barley in the US in 1800 or, excuse me, 800 BC. And so, like, I don't know if we want to go through each of these individually and talk about them and like, because I don't have like a lot of details for like debunking these five things, but we can talk about them because, like, some of these I don't find very compelling. Like, so, like the metal plates specifically. I know that Mike, on LDS discussions has discussed metal plates. I think he's gone through them. There's like the silver scrolls or the copper scrolls or things like that. And he goes through and he talks about why these are not good evidences, because they have so few characters or they're so small. And the. There's no evidence for these big thick plates like Joseph Smith says that the Book of Mormon came from. And so that, to me, I don't find metal plates compelling evidence. I don't know if you guys have commentary on that part.

John Dehlin 13:28 Go ahead, Nemo.

Nemo 13:28 Yeah, I find that metal plates aren't compelling because if you watch the episode that we did about the amount of text that would be left out of each plate, if you were just to physically recreate the Book of Mormon plates to the size and dimensions and to the approximation of the number of leaves that there would have been, you would have missed entire university dissertations worth of text, perhaps per plate. Like 10,000 words are missing. It's just not enough space. The information density of reformed Egyptian would have to be incredible in order for anything to work. And that's just not how language works. Even one is. Particularly because the Book of Mormon itself laments that reformed Egyptian is not a particularly efficient language. And they probably could have written with a better language. So, you know, there's that.

John Dehlin 14:20 I mean, it's just so sketchy. There's so much here. Like, first of all, John Turner. I'm interviewing John Turner about his biography of Joseph Smith. And he just, he's a never Mormon and he's a credible historian. And he's just like, why was Joseph hiding the place to begin with? Why did God allegedly say no one could see the plates? That makes no sense. You don't hide something unless it's not there. You know what I mean? Like, especially if you're going to eventually show people. He eventually claimed to show the three witnesses and the eight witnesses, and then a couple other people allegedly got a peek, like so. So just to begin with, you don't, you don't hide something like the plates if you really have them. That's sketchy and that's just obvious from the start. But the whole Lucy Harris thing where he wasn't able to retranslate the 116 pages, that adds to the sketchiness. The claim is that the reason why they had to hide gold plates was because if anyone saw them, they would die. But if that were true, then why were the witnesses, the three and the eight, able to see him? And why was Joseph able to see them? And then also when Joseph was running in the woods to try and keep bad guys from taking the plates, why didn't he just show them the plates? And then they would have died and then he would have never had to fight them off. Like, the story just on so many levels doesn't add up. And then again, you could say, well, the three witnesses and the eight witnesses, they saw the plates. Did they? Like, the overwhelming evidence is that they saw it with their, quote, spiritual eyes, that they saw the plates in a vision. The fact that Martin couldn't see them at first and then later they were able to get him to see them a second try shows that they weren't there. Because if they were there when, when they were first allegedly shown to, was it David Whitmer and, and Martin and Oliver Martin just would have seen them. He would have needed faith because they would have been freaking right before his eyes.

Julia 16:25 Right?

John Dehlin 16:26 So, so yes, it, there's just like 10,000 reasons why the, the existence of the plates is sketchy and not credible. But we're just all so drunk with the lore of, of the plates and the witnesses and the angel that it almost feels sacrilegious to just realize that there's every evidence that there were never gold plates to begin with. How about the fact that he didn't use gold plates in the translation, right? Like, isn't that enough? Like, why preserve and keep and guard and protect the plates? And then when it comes time to actually produce the Book of Mormon, he doesn't use the plates. And everybody in the room says there's no plates there.

Julia 17:09 Right there.

John Dehlin 17:10 And then the church lies and hides the fact that the plates aren't there. Why would they hide and lie that the plates were there when they weren't? If they weren't embarrassed and realized that that's a problem in the story that the plates actually weren't used in the translation. Am I ranting? I'm ranting.

Julia 17:26 Well, this is great because this is what we're covering. Next time, the next of the LDS discussions is the translation process.

John Dehlin 17:31 Okay.

Julia 17:32 Well, anyway, and we have covered on LDS discussions, the, the problem of the witnesses, the three and the eight and other witnesses. And so we gather up, like, between 13 and 15 sources where they say that it was all a spiritual experience, including the eight witnesses. And so, like, even if they say 200 times that it was an actual experience, if they say it 13 times that it's spiritual, Like, I don't see that as evidence that these are actual

John Dehlin 17:55 plates, which they did say that they saw it with their spiritual eyes.

Julia 17:59 Right. In a vision or power of the supernatural or things like that. Yeah. And so the other one on that list was, was an altar at Nahum. Do you guys want to, do you want to comment on that one?

Book of Mormon Anachronisms and Geography

Nemo 18:10 Yeah, it's, to me, the simple thing is it's nhum.

John Dehlin 18:14 Restate the argument real quick. Nemo.

Nemo 18:17 The idea is that there's this altar in roughly the right place for an event of the early Book of Mormon that contains, that has the letters NHM

John Dehlin 18:25 on it somewhere in Saudi Arabia. Is that right?

Nemo 18:27 Somewhere, somewhere like that. But they essentially say, well, that could say Nahum. But because of the way these texts are written, they miss the vowels. So it could say Nihim, it could say Nahom, it could say Naham, it could say whatever. It could say any of, possibly, I don't know, 20 combinations of vowels. So just from that point alone, it's, it's not a good argument. It's a possibility is all it is.

John Dehlin 18:56 Yeah. Like, coincidences happen all the time in life. And if you're looking, that's what confirmation bias is. It's when you're looking for something, you're probably going to find it. If you're looking for a parallel or a coincidence, there's a good chance you'll find it because you're looking for it. And I think that's called parallelomania in academia, where you just think if you can find enough coincidences, somehow you've proved your point. But there will always be coincidences if you're looking for them. And so I, I, I think Nahom is not even viable in and of itself, but even if it is, it's just a coincidence, and coincidences are bound to happen.

Julia 19:36 Yeah, right. Right.

John Dehlin 19:38 That's my, that's my opinion.

Nemo 19:39 I think I don't think much more needs to be said on that, to be honest.

John Dehlin 19:42 Yeah.

Julia 19:42 Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And then there's the next one where cement was found in ancient Mesoamerica. And people say that's an evidence, a source, the. An evidence for the Book of Mormon. Again, it's Mesoamerica. Mesoamerica. So even. So, like, that would cut out the. The North America theory. Right? The Heartland theory.

Nemo 20:01 Not the North America theory, the North America teaching.

Julia 20:04 Oh, you're right.

Nemo 20:05 That was absolutely what the Church taught.

Julia 20:08 Right. Because Joseph Smith said the Church says it happened here in the United States, and that would.

John Dehlin 20:13 Yeah. Hill Cumorah was Hill Cumorah. There wasn't two Hill Cumorahs. The fact that they have to produce a second Hill Cumorah should be deeply disturbing and problematic to people because Joseph did not mince words about what. Where Hill Cumorah was.

Nemo 20:27 We will get to that.

Julia 20:28 Yeah, yeah. So cement in Mesoamerica, it's not even the same location. So that doesn't even.

Nemo 20:32 It's the same as, like, tapirs. As ridiculous as the argument around tapirs is, they're also just not native to North America. So.

John Dehlin 20:40 Horses or tapers?

Nemo 20:41 Sorry, my apology. Horses.

Julia 20:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 20:47 Can I also just say really quickly, when Jim Bennett. I. I think we're getting the sense that. That, you know, there's this guy named Jim Bennett. He's the son of former Senator Bob Bennett, who wrote a response to the CES letter when he was still relatively faithful, that the Church at some point really loved and appreciated. I give the sense that Jim Bennett's changed a lot of the views that he had when he wrote the response to the CES letter. But one of his main arguments back when he was more believing in his position was that, you know, there used to. Let's just. I'll make it up these numbers, but let's just say that historically, they found 200 anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. You know, wheat and horses and steel and chariots and helmets and whatever. Cement and silk and barley and whatever. He would make the argument that, you know, it used to be, you know, 150 or 200 anachronisms, but now it's only 100. So that, you know, and so that means that they're, like, constantly shrinking and that at some point we'll have no anachronisms, and that will prove the Book of Mormons true. I don't think that's how anachronisms work. You just need one. One viable anachronism to prove that something's wrong. Again, if you had a photo with Abraham Lincoln and you know he's taking a selfie on an iPhone, you know it's false because there weren't photograph. Weren't weren't photographs back then and there certainly weren't iPhones and they weren't doing selfies. And it doesn't matter if there's no other anachronism but that one. It only takes one anachronism to prove something is inauthentic.

Nemo 22:24 Yeah, it's a strange kind of slippery slope argument of like it's this weird. Okay, well, if we give it long enough, then all these inactions will be found. So you should just default to the position that it's true and we will disprove the disconfirming evidence over time. So that's not how that works. That's. That's not how that game is played. Even if there are things that come to light where, okay, maybe Bali was around. Cool, fine. There's still all the others. And not all anachronisms are created equal. Not all anachronisms are. Well, we just haven't found it yet. Some of them are just very definitive. That could not have existed then. That was not there then. We know that. So yeah. And when those kind of anachronisms exist, then that's game over. Just like iPhones with Abraham Lincoln. It's not like, oh well, maybe we would uncover an iPhone if we kept looking long enough in some Civil War grave somewhere. It's not happening.

John Dehlin 23:27 Yeah. Yeah. And there's so many good Mormon stories episodes or more LDS discussions episodes where we cover so many of these anachronisms. Things like Deutero Isaiah, you know, things like Protestant Christianity. Just all the stuff about the Book of Mormon being clearly a 19th century document. The anti Masonic stuff again, the Old Testament, Isaiah, Lehi's dream that, you know, that's really Joseph Smith Sr's dream. So many anachronisms in the Book of Mormon and we can just even summarize that cement the seal of Mulek and barley. None of that makes up for all the anachronistic problems in the Book of Mormon. And that's why you really need to check out all of the LDS discussion series because we deal with so many of these in depth.

Julia 24:14 I also will put a plugin for Ganesh because we. He was on yesterday on Mormon stories and he goes through the Book of Mormon text and goes through Joseph Smith's life and he kind of plugs them. Yeah. So that John's holding up his book right now. Joseph Smith, the Architect of Mormonism, a topical biography. So what he does is he goes through the chapters of the book Mormon and the events in Joseph Smith's life and how they. How they kind of correlate or the slippery treasure and things like that and how. I really think that that, that kind of study is my favorite is because, like, you can disprove to me, you can find the anachronisms. It's just in the text of the Book of Mormon, like Deutero, Isaiah or the other things that kind of come into the book Mormon. So, yeah, that's. That's. Yeah, so buy his book. It's really good.

John Dehlin 24:50 And I'll put in a plug for Michael Ko. The most. One of the top five most important interviews I ever did on Mormon stories is with a Yale Mesoamerican archeologist named Michael Coe, who knew Mesoamerica during the Book of Mormon time period better than anybody knew Mormon archeological digs. And the. In the main players involved better than anybody knew the Book of Mormon in terms of anachronisms better than anybody knew. And he weighs in on the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. And apologists will try and attack Michael Coe, but they've got no standing. So that is the single best source, in my opinion, authoritative source for understanding Book of Mormon anachronisms. So. All right, yeah, I'm done ranting on this slide.

Julia 25:29 Yeah. So I just wanted to say with the Seal of Mulek, it's. The seal actually says this. The sun. The seal belonged to a man named Malkiyahu who is the son of a king. So it's there. It's kind of. It feels like a stretch to me to say this is. Mulek is the same person that was in the Book of Ether. Right. I can't remember. It's been a minute since I read the Book Mormon. And then also barley in the United States. Sure. They've been able to find barley in, I think, Phoenix, Arizona. The dates say 800 BC, but as far as I can tell, scholars say that there's not that it wasn't very much. They call it little barley, and it wasn't produced as much as maize or corn. And so, like in the Book of Mormon, it says that they had a lot of this and they had barley in abundance. And so this doesn't really match. So it's like. It's like a weak evidence, if you see it as evidence. But also like we were saying earlier, this. This could just be like. Like, these can just be some coincidences that Joseph Smith is, Is having. Like, do you guys have comments on this one? On this? The Barley or the seal of Mulek?

John Dehlin 26:26 I have a. I have a meta comment that I'll just ask you both. How would we know if those were actually five compelling archaeological evidences for the Book of Mormon? What would be the best test to determine, wow, those are five great evidences for the Book of Mormon? This is a hypothetical, but do you guys know the answer?

Nemo 26:44 As in, what is it about them that makes them great?

John Dehlin 26:47 I would say it's scientific consensus.

Nemo 26:50 Yeah. If you want it to be compelling, it would have to be pretty unassailable scientifically.

John Dehlin 26:56 Yeah, it would be. The scientific community goes, wow, we need to take another look at the Book of Mormon. Because, look, cement. And the Seal of Mulek and Barley and the altar at Nahom. They would, like, start studying the Book of Mormon and saying, wow, we need to start using it as a. As a guide for explorations in Mesoamerica. But of course, National Geographic has dispelled that and said, no, contrary to popular rumors, we don't use the Book of Mormon as a guide for archaeological digs because it's a joke. You what?

Nemo 27:25 I mean, was it the Met that released that statement about the Book of Mormon? Because people kept asking them, the Metropolitan Museum, probably. I know, we can.

John Dehlin 27:33 We can have Brooklyn provide the link.

Nemo 27:35 Whichever museum it was, pop it in. The show notes, the point is there's not attraction from them saying, okay, yeah, that thing we said about the Book of Mormon, turns out maybe we were wrong. New evidence has come to light.

Julia 27:47 Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 27:49 They don't have a vested interest in that. The people with a vested interest are scripture central. They're the people that will grasp at straws. They were the people that will try and find any reason to try and make the book true. When objective outsiders start going, oh, maybe we were wrong about this. That would be compelling.

John Dehlin 28:04 There's not one single credible non Mormon archaeologist or anthropologist that takes the Book of Mormon seriously. And even Terell Givens and Richard Bushman and Patrick Mason and all the faithful Mormon apologist scholars are saying the Book of Mormon is a 19th century text. They're all saying that now. All of them.

Julia 28:21 Yeah.

John Dehlin 28:23 All right.

Julia 28:24 Yeah. Okay, so there's a quote here from Joseph Fielding Smith from Doctrines of Salvation and Nemo. I think you tracked this one down where he's specifically saying that Hill Cumorah is in New York. Do you want to read this spot? Yep.

Cumorah Location and Prophetic Accuracy

Nemo 28:38 Early Brethren, locate Cumorah in western New York. It must be conceded that this description fits perfectly the land of Cumorah in New York as it has been known since the visitation of Moroni to the prophet Joseph Smith. For the hill is in the proximity of the great Lakes and also in the land of many rivers and fountains. Moreover, the prophet Joseph Smith himself is on record definitely declaring the present hill, called Cumorah to be the exact hill spoken of in the Book of Mormon. Further, the fact that all of his associates from the beginning down have spoken of it as the identical hill where Mormon and Moroni hid the records must carry some weight. It is difficult for a reasonable person to believe that such men as Oliver Cowdery, Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, David Whitmer, and many others could speak frequently of the spot where the prophet Joseph Smith obtained the place as the hill Cumorah and not be corrected by the Prophet if that were not. The fact that they did speak of this hill in the days of the Prophet in this definite manner is an established record of history.

Julia 29:46 Yeah. Do you have any comments on that one? So he's just saying this is in New York. That's the hill, Cumorah, that was talked about in the Book of Mormon. That's where he got the plates. It's all. It should all be taking place up here.

Nemo 29:57 There should be evidence that's Joseph Fielding Smith. I mean, fight him if you want, but I don't see how you can. And. And it's not. You can't even make the argue that he was a man who just didn't realize that this would cause a problem because he's the same man who hid the 1832 account of the first vision because he knew that would cause a problem. So if he's admitting this, even as aware as he is, he's clearly just holding a very clear, honest, faithful view that the heartland model, as you might call it, is the way it is, is the way these things are. Even though, as we'll go on to the next slide, we'll see that the Church has stopped specifically naming those places in the footnotes of the Book of Mormon like they used to. They did used to. And this is. This is just the. Has been the prevalent belief in the Church for so long. It was. It was assaulted by B H Roberts.

Guest 3 30:50 And.

Nemo 30:50 And there's a great episode on that that John's done. But, yeah, yeah, I'll just add that,

John Dehlin 30:57 that, you know, the way apologists will defend this these days is to say, well, you know, Mormon prophets, seers and revelators sometimes get it wrong. And that's fine. But how many times does that have to happen with polygamy, with, you know, with, what's it, Brigham Young's killing people, blood atonement, with Adam God theory, with the priesthood ban? Like, how many times are the members gonna allow an admission that Mormon church leaders got it wrong before they start asking, well, are they getting it right today? Why should we even follow them? So that's the, that's the typical apologetic argument now is to say, well, Brigham Young, he was racist, but he was also a prophet. He's a product of his time. Joseph Ealing Smith, yes, he was defensive for the church, and yes, he got this wrong, but he was still a prophet. You know what I mean? And that's fine if you want to believe they're prophets, fine. If you want to believe they're fallible prophets, also fine. But at some point it does start to beg the question, does this weaken the foundation of Mormonism if we really can't rely on them for really important questions? And then the only other thing I'll say is I'm not sure why anybody thinks the heartland model really rescues the Book of Mormon. I don't think the heartland model in any way rescues the Book of Mormon because it doesn't really address the substantive overwhelming number of anachronisms and problems and 19th century problems in the Book of Mormon. It almost explains better the heartland model explains better the anachronisms because really, what's Joseph Smith going to write into the Book of Mormon? What he sees around him in upstate New York frontier America. And so, yeah, the heartland model is going to better reflect what Joseph writes into the Book of Mormon, but it doesn't rescue the overwhelming 19th century artifacts. Am I wrong? How does the, how does, how does the heartland model that the Book of Mormon took place in North America rescue the Book of Mormon? Can anyone help me with that?

Nemo 33:06 It doesn't at all. And it's the reason that leaders have been moving away from it and it's, and it seems now fringe because it's people like Rod Meldrum who, who promote it, who also promotes some other interesting things. So the problem though, really here is that it cuts both ways. If, if they want to say, oh, well, we've, we've, we've disproved another anachronism, we found evidence for another anachronism. If we just keep holding on, eventually they'll all go right. That also cuts when you say, okay, Joseph was wrong about this Joseph was wrong when he said that the hill Cumorah was here. It was actually somewhere else. So if they get to do that, we get to say, okay, then what else would he been wrong about? And how many of those can we keep going through until it turns out he wasn't right about anything? That logic cuts both ways.

John Dehlin 33:53 Yeah.

Julia 33:53 Yeah. I also wanted to say there's a fine line, I feel like, between getting something wrong as a prophet and leading the church astray as a prophet. Because, like, even Nelson says that if he were to lead the people astray, God would remove him from his place. Like, he's recently said that. And so, like, what. What do you say? Like. Like, sure, I guess you could say, oh, the hill Cumorah. He got it wrong. It's not leading the church astray, but. But like the blacks in the priesthood or like the blood atonement or, like, what. Where's the line between leading astray and getting something wrong as a man?

Nemo 34:20 Like, I don't think there is one. I don't think there is any. Because the metric is, if the prophet leads the church astray, then the prophet will be taken away. All prophets have died. It's one of those funny things about being a human being. You tend to die at some point. And so because every prophet has died, the only way you could say is, like, okay, well, then maybe God took them away once they started to lead the church astray. That's the only metric by which you could work. And no one's going to admit that, because no one has any sufficient reason to think that Brigham Young died once he'd instituted the policy, and then God reverted it, because the other thing you would see is then a reversal of the thing that was. Got wrong in modern memory. Maybe you could say that God took Thomas S. Monson away because of the. The ban on children of LGBTQ parents. Right. And then Nelson rescued it and turned it back. Maybe you can make that argument if you wanted to argue that he led the church astray, but he. He also did the I'm a Mormon campaign, and that was a major victory for Satan. And God didn't take him away then. So I don't know.

John Dehlin 35:24 Can I give a hot take?

Nemo 35:25 Go on.

John Dehlin 35:26 So I'm reading again. Fun. Brody's no man knows my history. And I'm reading John Turner's biography, and I think this whole prophetic accuracy fallibility is almost a red herring for critics of the Church because, like, during Joseph Smith's lifetime, his prophecies were constantly wrong. His prophecy about The Civil War. Wrong. His prophecies about Kirtland blossoming? Wrong. His prophecies about Independence, Missouri being the gathering place? Wrong. His prophecies about Jesus coming back during the lifetime of the people who were there? Wrong. His prophecies about Zion's camp, about rescuing the Missourians from Missouri? Wrong. His, you know, his ultimate attempts to. To rescue the Saints in Missouri? Wrong. I mean, you could just go through so many of his re revelations and prophecies were wrong at the time he made them and people still followed him. So clearly religious people don't follow prophets because the prophets accurately prophesy. In fact, I think we have a lot of evidence even outside of Mormonism to show that really smart, savvy cult leaders or church leaders are able to turn a failed prophecy into an advantage for faith and faithfulness by blaming the failure on the weakness on of the members or on a victim mentality that then makes everybody double down their resolve to be more faithful. And yes, any religious movement will always lose some people, but if they just don't quit and keep going. What made people follow Joseph, I think more than anything was that he just never quit. And every time he was down and out and his prophecies failed and people died and they were run out of their city, Joseph would literally just get up off his knees, dust himself off, and say, I'm more of a prophet than ever follow me. And people are just inspired by his audacity and his confidence. But I don't think anybody really cares if prophecies from Mormon prophets don't come true. Believers, I think overall don't gaf they dgaf about whether Mormon prophets prophecies actually come true. It's more about do I like my community? Do I like the identity, Do I like do I like the resolutions about death? Will I see my family again? I think that's why Mormons believe. Is that a hot take?

Julia 37:53 That was a hot take.

Nemo 37:55 Bit long for a short, but yeah. Good.

John Dehlin 37:58 All right, that's my rant for this slide.

Julia 38:02 Okay, so another thing Nima pointed out was that some of the footnotes that we talked about in the last episode we did for LDS discussions, they point to specific North American places. So, like, for example, this one says ether in ether 15 8. It talks about the waters of Ripleyancum. And the footnote says that this is supposed to be Lake Ontario and some of the other places that like, another footnote says that it's north, northward is South North America, and the land southward is South America. So, like, trying to be Very specific on where this took place. Nemo, did you have anything else to say on that one?

Nemo 38:35 No, just that if Joseph was teaching it and the Book of Mormon was teaching it until a certain time, like, yeah, they're footnotes, but their footnotes in a document published by the church. People. People are always apologists, particularly always so desperate to separate things and say, oh, no. Well, these were just the footnotes. Yeah, but they were in the church's sacred book. Things don't just end up in the footnotes of the Book of Mormon without the consent of the senior leadership of the church. That just doesn't happen. So you can't then disconnect the leads of the church from. From their culpability when it comes to what is in the official church materials. Same as when M. Rosa Ballard says, we have no idea where the idea to ask people to be baptized on the first lesson came from. It's like, well, I have an idea where I came from, came to preach my gospel, which you, as a member of the Corinth 12, oversaw the production of. So it really came from you, Mr. Ballard. Really, it did. And that's just a really concise example of how they will try and separate themselves out from their own written materials. And somehow people buy that it then isn't a reflection on the leads of the church.

Julia 39:43 Yeah.

John Dehlin 39:44 I'll just say super quickly, in addition, that the fact that it's so obvious that everyone in the early church knew that the Book of Mormon happened primarily in North America, but in all of the Americas. It's so obvious that the fact that at some point during the BH Roberts era, in the early 20th century, apologists felt the need to relocate the Hill, Cumorah and the Book of Mormon to Mesoamerica should be deeply, deeply concerning and condemning for people who care about evidence and truth. Because it was. It's such a dramatic shift from what everybody knew as fact, including Joseph Smith. It just shows how problematic the Book of Mormon narrative is in terms of languages that. Why aren't there any Hebrew remnants of language in Native American language? Why do we not find the remnants of Christianity? Why is the geography just so problematic? The. The population numbers, the war numbers, they're all so deeply problematic that the Church would have to go to this incredible, bizarre length to. To. To create a second Camorra in a second, fully different location at the defiance of every single prophet, seer and revelator up until that point, including the author or the, quote, you know, translator, scribe of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith himself. It Just shows how problematic the Book of Mormon is from an archaeological and an anthropological standpoint.

Nemo 41:18 And, you know, the madness of it, John, is that they have shifted the goalposts in this massive way, and they're still missing. Yeah, they're shifting the goalposts and still not making a goal.

John Dehlin 41:30 I mean, at least that shows they're sincere, that they're trusting, trying to make it right. It's such an audacious move that it's like they must believe it on some level because it's. It's. Otherwise, it's just too ridiculous.

Nemo 41:42 But genuine historical documents don't require that kind of effort to make them work.

John Dehlin 41:49 He. And. And still not work at all.

Nemo 41:51 Still not work.

John Dehlin 41:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nemo 41:56 Anyway, we've. We've beat that dead horse.

John Dehlin 41:58 Yep.

Book of Mormon Names and Nearby Sources

Nemo 41:59 Next slide, please, Julia.

Julia 42:00 Okay, so there's a quote that Jeremy Reynolds reads or puts into the CES letter. So it's by John E. Clark, and he's the director of the BYU Archaeological Organization. He wrote in the Journal of Mormon Studies, he says, in accordance with these general observations about New York and Pennsylvania, we come to our principal object, the hill Cumorah. Archaeologically speaking, it is a clean hill. No artifacts, no walls, no trenches, no arrowheads. The area immediately surrounding the hill is similarly clean. Pre Columbia, people do not settle or build here. Did not settle or build here. This is not the place of Moroni's last stand. We must look elsewhere for that hill.

Nemo 42:42 Can I play the brick card for a minute? Because I can walk out of my house and trip over something as old as the things that happened in the Book of Mormon without really thinking about it too hard. I'm being a bit glib, but we are constantly in random fields in the UK because there's a bunch of guys in the UK that like to wander around with metal detectors and find stuff because they're all hoping they'll find the next Saxon hoard of gold. There's. There's people, okay? There's people going and finding these things all the time. In uk, these big finds are rarer, but we're still finding them. We're constantly finding evidence for the Roman invasion of Britain. We're finding mosaics, we're finding bath houses. You know, you can go to the city of Bath and wander around the remains of a Roman bathhouse from times similar to the Book of Mormon. It's particularly difficult for me, as someone who lives amongst this stuff, to see them say, oh, well, we just. We can't find anything. Why not, particularly? Things like arrowheads. Why not People are finding arrowheads all the time here.

John Dehlin 43:48 And the apologetic answer is always, well, things deteriorate over time and there's swamplands involved and it's Mesoamerica and there's lidar and they're discovering new things all the time, but it's always this sort of like, it's like a treasure dig. Did it come out of an discussions episode that all of Mormonism is effectively the equivalent of a treasure dig where the answer, where the treasure is just right around the corner, you know what I mean?

Julia 44:13 Yeah.

John Dehlin 44:14 The answer is always right around the corner. Oh, the spirit took it away, but it's right around the corner.

Nemo 44:19 You know, my favorite place to walk is, is a place where there is a 3,000 year old chalk carving in a hillside that has been there for 3,000 years. And I find it incredible that it still exists and that people have cared for it over all that time, but these religious symbols and artifacts still exist. There was a Neolithic burial mound next to it that you can go see this Stonehenge, this. There's all this stuff that's just around and exists in other parts of the world where we know these things have happened. And yet somehow mysteriously, nothing from the events of the Book of Mormon's ever been found in the places where Joseph Smith said it ought to be found. Mind you, not a single thing by men with motivated reasoning. Because I can imagine being the head of BYU archaeology is a really good reason to want to find something there.

Julia 45:06 Yeah.

John Dehlin 45:07 In fact. Oh, who's the, who is the lawyer turned archaeologist that spent decades trying to find basically Zarahemla in Mesoamerica?

Julia 45:19 Sorensen. I don't, I don't know. Lawyer turned archaeologist.

John Dehlin 45:23 Somebody Google it. But it's basically, there's a really good book, I've got it over there on my shelf of, of a, you know, of a man who basically gave his life to doing archaeological digs in Mesoamerica to, to try and find any remnant of Zarahemla or Nephi or Alma or Mosiah. And, and he found nothing. And in his final years in the 70s and 80s, he came back to his family, into the church and said, I tried, there's nothing. And even then the apologists try and say that he still believed the Book of Mormon was credible, but he didn't.

Nemo 46:05 I would, I would say he was looking in the wrong place. And if he'd paid more attention to Joseph Smith's teachings, he probably would have been looking in the correct place, because Mesoamerica is just not where this went down.

Julia 46:15 Right.

Nemo 46:16 And I understand why, with the prevailing sentiment, he would have then been looking in Mesoamerica, but that was always a doomed enterprise anyway. And then we have the archaeologically clean Hill Cumorah. And I think if a battle where millions of people died, millions died in the final stand. That's another thing that's in the footnotes of that slide before this one we've just read millions died at the Hill Cumorah. You would find something there had been slain to millions of mighty men and their wives and their children on the

John Dehlin 46:46 Hill Cumorah, Brooklyn found it. But also I found it. Thomas Stewart Ferguson was his name. And there's an article in Science magazine that tells the story. And the article is how a Mormon lawyer transformed archaeology in Mexico and ended up losing his faith. And it's. It's a phenomenal book that literally, we should do some Mormon Stories episodes about it. But I'll just share the Science article here really quickly. But I. The fact that none of us can come up with his name, you know, just sort of is a testament. I can't share this for some reason. The fact that none of us can even come up with his name is just a testament to how his story needs to be told. So maybe, Julia, we can have as a next Mormon Stories episode just the basic story of Thomas Stewart Ferguson. But here's the science. You know, science is a very high impact, a journal that. That is definitely science based and there's even a little video about it. But there's also a book that he wrote telling kind of the whole story. Actually, he didn't write it. Someone else wrote a biography about him, I think a guy by the name Larson. I'm really fuzzy on this history, but let's just put a note in that, Julia. Maybe that'll be one of our next LDS discussions episodes because it's. It's a crucial story. Yeah, sorry for that tangent.

Julia 48:15 No, that's good. Also, it's interesting that John E. Clark, in this quote, he talks about how we need to look elsewhere for the Hill because it's a clean Hill. He doesn't say, oh, we might need to rethink if the Book of Mormon is true. He doesn't say that because he's already starting with the Book of Mormon is true. And then he's going to go find the evidence.

Nemo 48:30 Kerry Muhle stealing it.

Julia 48:31 Yeah, exactly.

Nemo 48:32 Doing a Kerry.

Julia 48:33 Yeah. So number seven is why does the Book of Mormon geography reflect Joseph Smith's surroundings? And Jeremy says many Book of Mormon Names and places are strikingly similar to many local names and places to the region where Joseph Smith lived. And then so he. In the CS letter, he gives these different names, these place names. And he gives. He has this little map and I've just kind of made it kind of clear about like where some of these. So I've listed a place name and then the scripture beneath it, the Book of Mormon scripture.

John Dehlin 49:02 Let's read them for the listeners.

Julia 49:04 Sure. So like Morianton, this is an Alma 50 in 55 and 59. And then. So then he's got an arrow pointing to Moran. How do you say that?

John Dehlin 49:13 Moravian Town.

Julia 49:14 Moravian Town. How. That's a similar name. And then I don't know how to say this one. The Jacob. Jacob and third Nephi. There's a Jacobsburg over near where in Ohio. And then sir. Sure. Which is in ether 14. There's a Sherbrooke. And then Oneida, which is. There's an Oneida where Joseph is. And this is an Alma 32 Kishkumen and Helaman 1. How do you say this one? Kishkumenen. Yeah.

John Dehlin 49:44 And then Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania.

Julia 49:47 And then there's the Lehi, which is found in Mosiah 7 and 9. And then there's a Lehigh in Pennsylvania. And then Shiloh. And there's a Shiloh. And then he lists Alma. And then I see Alma on his map. But I can't. I couldn't find. I couldn't actually authenticate that. So, like, I don't know if somebody else could do that. I just couldn't find that. But so this is a modern map. Not. Not in Jeremy's Book of places that I have found that have similar place names to the Book of Mormon. And so you kind of see that they're kind of surrounding New York and kind of around. Because Joseph traveled all over these areas. Of course, you could argue that he didn't do that.

John Dehlin 50:21 And read some of those names. Julia.

Julia 50:23 Yeah. So Sherbrooke, Rama, Jordan, Oneida, Palmyra, Morientonville, Noah, Lake, Mantua. There's the Kish. The Kish, Jacobsburg, Shiloh, Helam Township, Lehi, Sodom. There's just a bunch of different places that are around here. And so, like, I've never really seen these place names or these things as evidence, but it is really interesting to me that there are so many similarities. And then people have argued with the, with the name Moroni or Mormon, how they're similar to some of the pirate lore of a camera captain kid. Yeah. So I Don't know if you guys have any commentary on this section that.

Nemo 51:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's important to note this isn't evidence that Joseph made it all up. Right. That's not what this is. This is, if we are willing to accept a framework in which Joseph made this up, here is some sources he may have drawn upon. That's. I think that's the simplest way to put this is, is to say that.

Julia 51:27 Yeah.

John Dehlin 51:27 In my, in my response, I have two responses. One is that this would be, if we want to be fair, this would be parallelism. In reverse, this would be parallelism of Jeremy trying to find matches and then because he's looking for them, he's finding them. So I, again, I don't think, as you just said, Nemo, I don't think this proves anything in terms of the Book of Mormons ultimate veracity or authenticity. And the second thing I want to say is, isn't this the most controversial part of the CES letter? That's the most criticized part. And as I understand it, if Jeremy ever does a new or final version of the CES letter, he's probably going to take this part out, if I'm understanding correctly. Because if I, if I'm remembering right, even Jeremy realizes this is probably the weakest or most problematic part of the CES letter. And I also think it's the most attacked part of the CES letter. So as we say, we're trying to be fair, objective on LDS discussions. I think we're all maybe agreeing that this is not, this is not a hit. Right?

Julia 52:32 Yeah. And then I wanted to say also, a lot of these same place names can. You can just find these exact same things in the Bible, like they're very similar to Bible place names. Although before, before Jeremy throws it out, I want to add one to the list. So in 1834, Joseph Smith marched to Zion's camp and discovered the grave of a Native American. He and the Brethren excavated the mound and Joseph Smith proclaimed that the man was a white Lamanite whose name was Zelph, who was a warrior or a chieftain under the great prophet Onondagus. And so I want to push on this name Onondagus for a second because right around where Joseph lived, there's the Onondaga people. And they are one of five original nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Their historical homelands are in and around present day Onondaga County, New York, New York, roughly 17 miles from Palmyre, New York. And so here I've got a map where it shows where The Onondaga people lived. And so like, to me, I just think this is interesting. Like, even here in Missouri, there's an Onondaga cave. And like, I just. That just like, I want to add that to his list, but at the same time, again, it's just a weak. That these are weak evidences. I don't know, just coincidences or things like that. But I just thought that one was fun.

Nemo 53:45 Yeah, they're just possible explanations for where these names may have come from, if you are willing to accept the paradigm that Joseph was making this up.

John Dehlin 53:53 Yeah, I think what's much more compelling, I think the fact that there's a Lemuel Durfee in Joseph Smith's immediate life who's like somehow related to the Smith family losing their home, their property, and his name's Lemuel. I think that's more of a problematic thing along with just something as basic as like Joseph Smith Sr's dream, almost verbatim appearing as Lehi's dream in the Book of Mormon. Those things are much more compelling than the map of surrounding similar sounding city names, in my opinion.

Julia 54:32 Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So the next one on Jeremy's list is. This is number eight. Why are there similar similarities between the Book of Mormon and the View of the Hebrews? John, do you want to read this? These little quotes?

View of the Hebrews as a Possible Influence

John Dehlin 54:44 Sure. There was a book published in 1823 Vermont entitled View of the Hebrews. Reverend Ethan Smith was the author of View of the Hebrews, and Ethan Smith was a pastor in Pulteney, Vermont when he wrote and published the book. Oliver Cowdery, also a Pulteney, Vermont resident, was a member of Ethan's congregation during this time and before he went to New York to join his distant cousin, Joseph Smith. As you know, Oliver Cowdery played an instrumental role in the production of the Book of Mormon.

Julia 55:21 Yeah. So, yeah, he's saying there's a lot of similarities in the Book of the Hebrews and there's a lot of, like, ties with that with Oliver and Ethan. And then we have.

John Dehlin 55:30 Do you want to comment on that? Nemo on view of the Hebrews?

Nemo 55:33 Yeah, for me, it's sort of in similar territory.

John Dehlin 55:37 Did we do an episode, do we do an LDS discussions episode on View of the Hebrews and similarities? I want to think we covered.

Julia 55:43 I know you did it with rfm, because I have clips from his interview that I'm showing here, but I don't. I don't know if LDS discussions, but if there is, we should put that in the show Notes.

John Dehlin 55:51 Does Someone want to give a quick summary of. Just a super quick summary of you, the Hebrews and why people think it's important.

Nemo 55:59 Go on, Jim.

Julia 55:59 Oh, yeah. Oh, no, I was going to say we're going to talk about this in slides too, but.

John Dehlin 56:02 Okay, okay.

Julia 56:03 Yeah.

Nemo 56:03 All I was going to say is for me, it's similar to the place names around him. Any of these sort of surrounding influences, questions around Joseph Smith, they require you to be willing to. To accept that he was developing this content himself and that it wasn't revealed to him by God. Because they are very easy to dismiss as coincidence or as other people receiving a portion of divine inspiration or any other sort of religious argument. To that extent. They're quite easy to dismiss in that way. They're not as strong as things like, why are the exact translation choices of men from Oxford appearing in a book revealed to Joseph Smith? That's a way bigger problem than. Okay, there was another book around that was similar at the time. Even if there are almost verbatim passages from it, there are more ways to explain that away. I think so for me, again, I think Jeremy does a good job of starting with his strongest arguments and then he moves towards what I would consider to be the weaker ones as he goes along.

Julia 57:03 Yeah.

John Dehlin 57:06 Okay.

Julia 57:07 So there's this quote from B.H. roberts. Nima, do you want to read this one?

John Dehlin 57:10 Sure.

Nemo 57:11 LDS general authority BH Roberts, who compiled all seven volumes of the history of the Church, stated, did Ethan Smith's view of the Hebrews furnish structural material for Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon? It has been pointed out in these pages that there are many things in the former book that might well have suggested many major things in the other. Not a few things, merely one or two or half a dozen, but many. And it is this fact of many things, of similarity and the cumulative forces of them that makes them so serious. A menace to Joseph Smith's history of the Book of Mormon's origin.

Julia 57:47 Thank you. So, yeah, he's saying there's not a few things, there's a lot of things. And he calls it a serious menace to Joseph Smith's story of the Book of Mormon's origin. And that I find very compelling.

John Dehlin 57:58 Like I, he was church historian, he was science minded, he was a member of the presidency of the quorum of the 70. He was a polygamist. He was all in. Yeah. Are you going to reference the secret Mormon meetings of 1922? Do we have a no go? Yeah. So, like, definitely one of the top five to ten Mormon stories episodes Slash series is the series I did with Shannon Caldwell Montez where she talked about B.H. roberts and the secret Mormon meetings of 1922 where basically beats Roberts, who's church historian, who's science minded, starts noting all the scientific problems with the Book of Mormon to the point where he calls a meeting of all the top church leaders to brief them over multiple days on all the problems he's finding with Book of Mormon historicity. And there's a companion episode to that about did BH Roberts lose his testimony in Book of Mormon authenticity? And I think there's compelling credible evidence that he did and it would make every sense that he did because again, he's calling the view of the Hebrews a potential menace to the Book of Mormon. And it's not in and of itself, but I think it is contextually. Go ahead and we'll talk more about that. Julia.

Julia 59:17 Yeah, so there's some, some clips from. So Radio Free Mormon was on Mormon Stories. This is episode 1404 and it's just called View of the Hebrews. And I have a couple of clips that I wanted to share from him where he talks about this and he talks about the comparisons and then he talks about plagiarism and different aspects.

Guest 3 59:36 So when you look at the metanarrative of both books, they're actually identical but there's, there's some differences and we want to talk about the differences as well. But that's the meta narrative and this is where we get to the forest and the trees.

Julia 59:54 Yeah. So I just wanted to like just point out really briefly because we haven't really talked about the context of the view of the Hebrews. This whole thing is like, oh, these are, the Native Americans are from, from ancient Israel. They are Christian. They like he has all these different things that like so I read the view of the Hebrews as a member of the church and I was comparing the two texts and they, there are very, there are a lot of spots that are very similar, like almost exact wording but, but overall I didn't see it as, as plagiarism because it's, they're very different books. But at the same time this RFM saying that the metanarrative of both books, the Book of Mormon and the view of the Hebrews are exactly the same. They have like the same purpose. And then, then if you zoom out from view of the Hebrews this is just the mindset of the people in the 1800s. They just all have. The Native Americans were descended from, from Israel and the lost tribes and things like that. And so, like, everyone had this, had these ideas. So it's not just Ethan Smith, it's not just Joseph Smith, it's a bunch of other people.

Nemo 1:00:48 If I may engage in some pedantry for a moment, which I'm pretty sure is why you bring me on this show, John rfm, saying that they are identical. And that made my ears prick up because I feel like that's a claim I wouldn't want to stand behind. And he's free to stand behind if he wants. But I would want to caveat that because I think, particularly when you're talking about a meta narrative, a meta narrative is an interpretation of the sequence of events within the book to divide a narrative and it would be possible to divine a narrative of one book that you could make, not the same as the narrative of another book, depending on which parts you focus on, which parts you think are important, etc. Right. So I, Yeah, I, I wouldn't want to say that if it were me. So I want. Want that on record. I'm not going to go down and say they're, they're identical even.

John Dehlin 1:01:36 I'm sure he would. I'm sure he would nuance that.

Nemo 1:01:39 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julia 1:01:41 Okay. So there's another clip that I wanted to play from the same interview, and he talks about plagiarism.

Guest 3 1:01:48 So what it tells me is that you don't actually have to copy every single element of a story in order to be guilty of plagiarism. Yeah, okay, that's one thing. And it's almost like if somebody gone to Joseph Smith and said this Book of Mormon, I mean, it's obviously lifted from view of the Hebrews. And his response, I imagine, would be, what are you talking about? If you're the Hebrews, that's the lost tribes of Israel. This is a family of Hebrews from Judah who came over here. There's no similarity.

John Dehlin 1:02:18 Yeah,

Julia 1:02:20 yeah. So I just wanted to point out with that one is that it doesn't have to pull everything in order for it to be considered plagiarism. So were there any other comments about view of the Hebrews or anything?

John Dehlin 1:02:30 Yeah, just so this is going to feel like it's in the weeds a little bit to people who are brand new to this discussion. So check out the RFM episode. But if I can, just for those who don't know what we're talking about and are feeling like we dove into the weeds first. It's just that this narrative in the Book of Mormon of, you know, of Native Americans having their Origin as Jews or as Israelites or part of the lost 10 tribes. And even the narrative that they came over to America, that a good tribe and a bad tribe emerged, that one, the bad tribe had darker skin and the lighter tribe, the more righteous good tribe had lighter skin and that ultimately the dark skinned baddies killed off the white light skinned goodies. The whole point is that that is not unique to Joseph Smith of the Book of Mormon. There were several other books and publications published within the ten years prior to the Book of Mormon. The, that had the same narrative. I believe it was the definitely Dan Vogels talked about this, but also the Tanners I think were the first to really help us understand this and this whole idea. And so the Book of Mormon is in no way unique. The Lamanite, Nephite narrative is in no way unique. In fact, it was the water that frontiers people in New England were swimming in in those days. And the Book of Mormon just steals this narrative, this overarching meta narrative and imports it into the Book of Mormon and runs with it as part of its Bible fan fiction. And what apologists do to try and muddy the waters is claim that what critics are claiming is just flat out plagiarism. Where basically Joseph copied View of the Hebrews word for word into the Book of Mormon. And that's an effective straw man because like you said, Julie, if you read View of the Hebrews, if you're paying attention, you'll notice the metanarrative parallels, but it won't read like text stolen and imported into the Book of Mormon. But that's a straw man. That's a red herring. Nobody is claiming the View of the Hebrews, that text from the View of the Hebrews was directly imported into the Book of Mormon. What people are claiming is that the overarching meta narrative of the Book of Mormon about Nephites and Lamanites and dark skin and light skin, that was the mound builder myth that was pervasive in the day that shows up in books before and after the Book of Mormon, including a book called View of the Hebrews that Oliver Cowdery had direct access to prior to him joining Joseph Smith as scribe.

Nemo 1:05:14 Yeah. And if you want to accuse Joseph Smith of the kind of plagiarism that comes with just taking giant chunks of a text and putting it straight into your own book, just look Bible instead, because that's where you'll find that.

John Dehlin 1:05:27 Exactly.

Julia 1:05:27 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:05:28 That's, that's the whole Isaiah, Old Testament, New Testament plagiarism.

Julia 1:05:33 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:05:34 And if you have plagiarism you got that too. Right.

Julia 1:05:37 So to pick off what you were saying, John, there's this quote from Grant Palmer from his insider's view of Mormon origins. So he says in that book, he says there's no direct connection between view of the Hebrews in the Book of Mormon. View of the Hebrews represents a body of 19th century thought and is not an early version of the Book of Mormon. But the parallels between the two books are instructive in understanding the environment in which the Book of Mormon emerged. Below are several of Robert's summaries from his extensive study of Ethan's book. So he says Israelites in Ancient America, which is also in view of the Hebrews, not only suggests but pleads on every page for Israelitish origins of the American Indians. It deals with the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of Israel, as the Book of Mormon does. It deals with the future gathering of Israel and the restoration of the ten tribes, as the Book of Mormon does. It emphasizes and uses much of the material from the prophecies of Isaiah, including whole chapters, as the Book of Mormon does. It makes special appeal to the Gentiles of the New World, even as the Book of Mormon does. And so he's just comparing the two texts and how there's all the parallels between the two of them.

John Dehlin 1:06:40 So, yeah, Grandpa's a legend.

Nemo 1:06:45 That line about how it represents the environment in which the Book of Mormon came forward. I think that's definitely the way to look at it.

Julia 1:06:53 Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin 1:06:54 And Julia, I'm still committed to LDS discussion series recapping Grant Palmer's main argument from An Insider's View of Mormon Origins when you're able to produce that. Because I think our viewers will love an introduction to Grant Palmer.

Julia 1:07:11 Yes. And that book is everyone, I think every, every ex Mormon, every Mormon historian should own his book. An Insider's View of Mormon Origins. It's one of the best. I keep referencing it like I really like it.

John Dehlin 1:07:20 It changed my life. So don't have it count on that. Unless, you know, unless Julia changes her mind. Count on that. LDS discussions listeners.

Julia 1:07:30 Perfect. Okay, so we're going on. So number nine, why are there similarities between the Book of Mormon and the late War? Nemo, do you want to read this slide?

The Late War and First Book of Napoleon as Influences

Nemo 1:07:38 Sure. The Late War between the United States and Great Britain. Sorry, can I just take a moment for nationalistic pride there? The Late War between the United States and Great Britain. This book was an 1819 textbook written for New York State schoolchildren. The book depicted the events of the War of 1812. And it was specifically written in a Jacobean English style to imitate the King James Bible. The phrase and it came to pass is used at least 84 times in the late war. According to one BYU article, the phrase and it came to pass is used approximately 1430 times in the Book of Mormon. And I would add myself, it's probably actually more numerous than the grains of sand upon a beach. I think it's impossible to count.

Julia 1:08:27 So I've read through the late war and I think that's pretty much. I don't know if there's a lot of strong evidence. And like you said, Nemo, he kind of saves the good one. He puts the good ones first and the weak ones in the back. I don't think there's a lot of strong evidence for, for Joseph Smith for the Book of Mormon in the late war. People do point out the, in the kingdom past because it's so much in the, the late war. And then it's also in the same type of English imitating the King James Bible. And I don't know if a lot of people will be interested in this, but I've seen a lot of places where they, people, especially the ex woman community, they purport a chiasmus where it's like the, like abcdd, cba, the repetition in the late war. But I've looked in like, even as a member of the church, I looked into that and it's not. There is no chiasm there. So it's just a lot of this. There's too much space. There's a lot of them that have been made up. So like, it's just not, it's just not. People should just stop saying that there's

John Dehlin 1:09:22 a chiasm there and just, just, just to give people a sense because I think we touched on it fine, but really quickly I'll just bring up a couple of the. I'll just read a few of the verses from the late war so that people can get a sense. So this would have been a book totally accessible to Joseph Smith that was even read in primary and secondary schools, is that right?

Julia 1:09:45 Yeah, yeah. For education. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:09:47 And again, it'll, it'll say things like the fourth day of the seventh month, which is the birthday of Colombian liberty and independence. And again, literally in the Book of Mormon, the fourth day of this seventh month, which is in the tenth year of the reign of Judges. Again, nobody's claiming it's a direct plagiarism, but you're going to hear very similar phraseology that again, can be found in the Bible. So you don't even need the late war to explain the phraseology in the Book of Mormon, but it definitely raises questions. So another example would be near Moravian Town. And it came to pass the army were under a chief warrior whom they called Tecumseh, smote their chief warrior Tecumseh and slew him. He fell to the earth. And then, you know, there's a parallel with Book of Morianton. And it came to pass the army was led by a man whose name was Tiankum. And they did pursue Tancum and slew him. He was dead and had gone the way of all the earth. So that's just a small sampling. And I'll just say again, this doesn't prove anything. I don't think any of us are claiming that this is a silver bullet. It's a parallelism, just like the geography that we talked about earlier. And there's a lot of ellipses in those quotes that that make it even a bit more deceptively similar, I would say. But even then I think it's at least interesting to see how it was common to write books in the style of Jacobean English that talked about war as a genre during the time the Book of Mormon was produced. And it sort of explains the Book of Mormon as an example of Bible fan fiction. Jacobian English as a genre. Does that even make sense? Nemo and Julia.

Nemo 1:11:43 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:11:44 Yeah, okay.

Julia 1:11:45 Yeah. So like we said earlier, he saves kind of these comparisons to the other texts to the end of this section of the CES letter. So number 10 is why are there similarities between the Book of Mormon and the first book of Napoleon? And he says, another fascinating book published in 19 in 1809, the first book of Napoleon. The following is a side by side comparison of the beginning of the Book of Mormon and the beginning portion of the first book of Napoleon. Note these are not direct paragraphs and this is what's in the CES letter. And do we want to read the paragraph?

John Dehlin 1:12:15 Sure.

Nemo 1:12:16 So the first and I'll read them side by side. So the first book of Napoleon says, condemn not the writing and account. The first book of Napoleon the Book of Mormon says condemn not the writing and account. The first book of Nephi. Nephi. First book of Napoleon. Upon the face of the earth it came to pass the land, their inheritances, their gold and silver. Book of Mormon says, upon the face of the earth it came to pass the land, his inheritance and his gold and his silver. The first book of Napoleon says the commandments of The Lord, the foolish imaginations of their hearts, small in stature, Jerusalem, because of the perverse wickedness of the people. The Book of Mormon says the foolish imaginations of his heart, large in stature, Jerusalem, because of the wickedness of the people. So that's just a series of little phrases that have come from the first book, Napoleon, and come from the opening of the Book of Mormon that are very, very similar. They don't make much sense read just as a list, but they are just a list of discrete phrases.

Julia 1:13:16 Right. And I'll just correct myself. So if you're seeing the screen, it says the photo or the phrase Note is a CS letter, page 24, but it's actually page 29. I'm not sure why I switched my 4 into a 9, but yeah. So this is just showing the similarities between the two. Again, I don't find the first book of deploying a very strong evidence because, like, it's very similar, very similar text. Like, and it came to pass where Nemo read some of these things, some of those phrases. And then so the Jacobian English, the. The different aspects that the worldview that Joe's is swimming in right now in the 1800s. Do we guys have any more comments on the Book of Napoleon?

John Dehlin 1:13:53 Similar thing, just that none of this proves. None of this is a silver bullet per se. But one of the biggest questions that everyone has is how did Joseph Smith produce the Book of Mormon? And all you have to do is read the original manuscript to see how poorly written the Book of Mormon was before it was edited and put into chapters and verses and all the grammar and spelling was fixed. That in and of itself, seeing the original manuscripts of the Book of Mormon as dictated just takes it down 80% in terms of its impressiveness. But if you want to understand how the Book of Mormon was created, the late war and the Book of Napoleon and view of the Hebrews and the mound builder myth and Lehi's dream and the Masonic influences. And this is all stuff Grant Palmer talks about in depth in his book, an insider's view. The, The Protestant sermons, the Protestant debates of the time, Joseph's own personal narrative, all of the. All of this stuff helps provide a context to explain what ends up as the Book of Mormon. If you really understand the cultural intellectual soup that Joseph Smith's brain was swimming in, that helps to explain why the Book of Mormon was almost inevitable. It wasn't. It's not that it was a miracle that just popped out of nowhere. It's literally that it's the baby birthed by the early 19th century, cultural, Christian, biblical frontier, Indian soup, that not just Joseph Smith but everyone around him was swimming in. All of these things help explain the birth of the Book of Mormon.

Nemo 1:15:46 Can I do one of my famous sum ups, John, please. I think that apologists often make an argument from incredulity about the Book of Mormon. How could it be possible that a farm boy wrote this thing? And all these questions by Jeremy do is just make it far less incredulous that it was possible he could have just done it himself.

John Dehlin 1:16:04 Yeah, and I love what I think is John Hamer said. Was it John Hamer? Who is it that said, basically it's not that it's a miracle that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon. It's that no one but Joseph Smith could have written the Book of Mormon. Have you guys heard that quote before?

Nemo 1:16:20 I've heard it. I don't know who said it.

John Dehlin 1:16:22 Yeah, I'm going to say John Hamer, but it very well could have been somebody else. But once you understand everything about Joseph Smith and his context, no one else could have written the Book of Mormon but Joseph Smith.

Julia 1:16:35 Yeah. Okay, so talking about going back to the first book of Napoleon, this is Fair Mormon's response. And what you'll see here on the screen, for those of you who are just listening, there is a bunch of pages that Fair Mormon has like put together side by side. And what they have is on some of the pages there's a little red dot. And the little red dot indicates similarities in the Book of Mormon text. And so what they're trying to say here is, see, like, look, there's not very many red dots. There's not very many things that are the same about the Book of Mormon. So we don't really have to worry about it. It's not, this isn't plagiarism. And I'll just hark back to what RFM said where he says, you don't need to, you don't need to plagiarize everything. You just need to have it be plagiarism at all. So like there are some similarities. Again, this is just the culture that we're swimming in that Joseph was swimming in. It's just very similar things. I don't know if we need to keep going on.

Nemo 1:17:25 Well, I think their point there is also that what they're saying is, well, look how much hard work the ellipsis are doing. Right. This isn't one discrete paragraph from the front of the Book of Mormon. This isn't one discrete paragraph. They're basically just acknowledging what Jeremy said when he said that these aren't one contiguous paragraph, but they are parts taken. And they're like, yeah, but look how spread out they are. And okay, who cares how spread out they are? They still exist within the book. They're still there. You're not refuting the fact that these phrases that are very similar to phrases in the Book of Mormon exist within the book. You're actually admitting it. You're just trying to say, but look, they're not all together.

Julia 1:18:00 Right?

Nemo 1:18:00 And who cares?

John Dehlin 1:18:02 Yeah, both sides are right. Ellipses can be used to deceive. So that's a fair point.

Nemo 1:18:07 But Jeremy was open about the fact that the ellipses were being used in that way.

John Dehlin 1:18:11 It's like he didn't use the ellipses and just put the words together as if there weren't an ellipses. The ellipses are there.

Nemo 1:18:17 These are not direct paragraphs.

John Dehlin 1:18:19 And the words are there.

Julia 1:18:20 Yeah, right.

John Dehlin 1:18:21 Yeah.

Julia 1:18:22 Yeah. Okay, so the next One is number 11.

Trinitarian Theology and Internal Inconsistencies

John Dehlin 1:18:25 This is the last one, right?

Julia 1:18:27 Last one.

John Dehlin 1:18:27 We're almost done.

Julia 1:18:28 Yeah. So why does the Book of Mormon reflect a trinitarian view? John, do you want to read this page?

John Dehlin 1:18:34 The Book of Mormon taught and still teaches a trinitarian view of the Godhead. Joseph Smith's early theology also held this view as part of the over 100,000 changes to the Book of Mormon. The There were major changes made to reflect Joseph's evolved view of the Godhead. And then it says below that modalism posits. So we can.

Nemo 1:18:59 The reason we've got modalism in there, there's always.

John Dehlin 1:19:02 We always forget what the difference is between trinitarianism and modalism is because I think the Book of Mormon, everyone who is really smart likes to say, technically, we shouldn't call the Book of Mormon trinitarianism. We should call it modalist. So let's go ahead and read now that little phrase at the bottom. Modalism posits that God is one person who manifests in different modes or forms. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, while the Trinity doctrine affirms that God is one being in three distinct Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that's fine. I appreciate the technical accuracy, but the point is this. We know for a fact that Joseph Smith's worldview in 1829 was that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are one. Whether it was modalistic or trinitarian, it doesn't matter. They were not separate souls, separate entities. That view that Joseph Smith gained, he gained later in the 1830s, to the point where he started preaching a new teaching, which is that God was once a man and that Jesus was an exalted child of God and that we all can become God someday. That's all new stuff that develops later. And so you'll see not only the Book of Mormon being changed to update Joseph's evolving theology, you also see the first vision changing from the 1832 version to the 1838 version, where all of a sudden it isn't the Lord that appears to Joseph as in the 1832 version. It becomes God and Jesus that appear in the 1838 version. And for me, this is as much of a smoking gun as anything else, because the Book of Mormon and the first vision story should not be changing as Joseph makes different conclusions about the theology of God. That makes no sense. If the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift of power of God, where Joseph's reading out of a seer stone the words that God is putting in the stone, which is what every account, first hand, eyewitness account says, then it should have been right the first time. Right.

Nemo 1:21:21 Particularly on matters as important as the theology and the nature of God. If the purpose of the Book of Mormon is to correct and make clear the Bible, then why is it not adding clarification to what is possibly one of the stickiest issues in early Christianity, which is the nature of God? Surely if the whole point of the Book of Mormon is that Christ's early church was corrupted, then you think it would make something pretty clear that it actually then went on to change. That's a bit bizarre, I think. You know how I said earlier that Jeremy goes from his strongest points to his weakest points? I think what he's done here is he's then ended with a knockout blow and gone, well, actually, I've got one more very strong point. I'm just going to pop it at the end here because I do find this very compelling argument. The difference between modalism and trinitarianism, I think is important, but like you said, it's more important that his theology changed. And I think it can be chalked to not deception by Jeremy, but just some plain old Mormon ignorance that we all had and still have in that Mormons don't know very much at all very often about Christian theology. They just go, okay, well the rest of Christianity believes in trinitarianism and we have a different version. And that's like, that's the shorthand that most Mormons know about the rest of Christianity. So Jeremy's just going, okay, right, cool. It was a. What we would view as a trinitarian view. Mormons don't know the theology of the rest of Christianity very well at all very often. So I don't think you could ever ascribe any malice to that. I think it's just a little bit of not knowing what exactly to call Joseph's early worldview, which requires some knowledge of theology.

Julia 1:22:55 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:22:55 And I'll also add, you can tell as much by the COVID up. Sometimes you can tell more by the COVID up than the actual scandal. And just like we discussed earlier, you know, regarding the multiple Camorras and all that, the fact that Joseph Fielding smith encounters the 1832 version of the first vision and then is so disturbed by it that he literally rips it out of the journal that it was written in and hides it for decades until Sandra Tanner comes and Gerald Tanner come along and shame him into taping it back into the journal he had ripped it out of. Shows how troubled Joseph Fielding Smith was about this problem. Right.

Nemo 1:23:46 And even Fair Mormon admit, if you look at fair's website on this issue, there is. We could have put it in. I forgot about it until just now. But they say that it was likely to have been viewed as something that could have been incredibly troubling to faith at the time. So even Fair admit that the view of the 1832 First Vision account was that it was troubling to people's faith. That's also telling. They're not even trying to deny the motive by which it was removed from the book. It was removed because they know it would. It would crack shelves, essentially.

Julia 1:24:19 Yeah. So this next, this next slide that I have is actually Brad Wilcox and I think this is from his alpine talk that became kind of helped blow up Mormon stories, I think. So I want to share this clip because I think Brad really, I don't know that he knows that he's doing this, but I think he summarizes this super well. And so I want to share this clip.

Nemo 1:24:37 Something I might believe. Do you think Joseph Smith was that different? If he were lying, then he would have said what everybody wanted to hear. He would have said, I saw God, and God and Jesus are one being, and God and Jesus are spirit. That's what people wanted to hear. That's what they would have believed. And yet he didn't say that.

Julia 1:25:01 Okay, so Nemo, you were laughing. Were you just laughing? Because

Nemo 1:25:05 it's, it's something else to get up there and just say, yeah, but he didn't Say that He did in 1832. He did. Brad definitely did. Wow.

Julia 1:25:16 Yeah. So in Joseph Smith's first account of the first vision, he reported that the Lord opened the heavens upon me, and I saw the Lord, and he spake unto me, saying, joseph, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee. There is no mention of any other being appearing in the grove that day. So if Joseph Smith were lying, he would have said what everyone wanted to hear. He would have said that God and Jesus are one, that they're the same being. So, like, Brad, is. Is Joseph Smith lying? Like, that's how. Anyway, like, I just thought that was a fun connection. And then in one. In some part, the. So I have a little bit of the trinitarian aspect. And this is a quote from Hank. I don't know how to say his last name. Hanegraaf Nemo. Do you want to read this quote from him from the Fair Mormon?

Nemo 1:26:04 And I think it's important to recognize that the Book of Mormon is internally inconsistent. Some places it's modalistic and militates against trinitarian theology. In other places, like second Nephi 31, it's consistent with the biblical doctrine of the Trinity.

Julia 1:26:20 Yeah. So they're admitting here that it is inconsistent. And like, even right today, there was a. There's a section in Alma where he says, where Alma is talking, Amy looks talking or somebody, one of the missionaries, and he says, is there one God? And he says, yes, there's only one God. And is this any God beside him? No, there's not. And so, like, I was always confused because I was like, but what about Jesus and God? Like, aren't they. He should have said no, but, like, so. But then you see the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, they've edited out Mary was the Mother of God. They've edited out these different passages to try to make it more consistent, but it's still inconsistent today.

Nemo 1:26:56 Yeah, they change it from the Mother of God to the Mother of the Son of God.

Julia 1:26:59 Yeah.

Guest 3 1:26:59 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:27:01 I think. Remind me if I'm right. In the last episode, I was doing like a tally of Jeremy, you know, Jeremy versus the Mormon Church and apologists. And if, you know, if we're done with the 11 now, I'm going to say 10 out of 11 hits for Jeremy. I'm not going to count the geography one, because I. I think that's an interesting thing that has some interesting points to it, but I don't. I think it. If we're going to be fair, it could count as parallelism or Parallelomania, just in the other direction. But if, if we're going to be consistent between episodes of kind of a, A score, a scorecard, I'm going to say Jeremy, 10, you know, Book of Mormon apologists, 0 or 1 or 0.5. What do y' all think?

Nemo 1:27:52 I think, I think they're right to be critical. If what people are using the geography argument for is to say, look, it's proof that Joseph Smith made it all up, then apologists are absolutely right to be critical of that point of view because that is just a bad point of view to take. That's not a good take. So I think, I think they should get a point. I don't think we should be reluctant to give them points when, when they do push back against bad logic.

John Dehlin 1:28:18 So 10 to 1. Are you saying 10 to 1, Nemo?

Nemo 1:28:20 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:28:21 Julia?

Julia 1:28:22 Yeah, well, I was thinking about some of the anachronisms. Yes, I agree with all, everything that you just said, Nemo and with some of the anachronisms like, oh, barley, there is barley. It's not very, it wasn't, it wasn't well produced. So it's very weak evidence cement that's in Mesoamerica. So that doesn't really count. Or there are other ones that could have counted. I don't know. Like, so, like I don't, I don't see that as evidence at all. But like, so some of the ones, sure, like there can be some hits for these, but I still don't see them as strong evidence because like you just need one anachronism in the book Mormon text to make it not real. So like, just because we can show that some of these are, that did exist in the ancient America, that doesn't make the book Mormon automatically true. But yeah, I accept the criticism on the geography.

Nemo 1:29:04 Can I also just make a quick caveat there that Jeremy is not responsible for the conclusions that people take from this. So if people are running around trying to say that what he wrote about the geography proves the Book of Mormon isn't true, that's on them. Because the way Jeremy has done this book is to ask questions, to ask thought provoking questions, to ask questions that seemingly have difficult or no answers, but to ask questions. So he's asking why do these things reflect this? The implication of the question is because it clearly shows that Joseph might have leaned on these things to come up with some of these names. But the fact that people would then extrapolate that and go, and therefore Joseph made it all up is on them, not on him. I would want to make clear.

Julia 1:29:48 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:29:49 So before we hit the final slide, which I think is a really good and important slide, I just want to say that if we're kind of doing an overall assessment of how meaningful and credible Jeremy Runnels concerns are and critiques are of Book of Mormon authenticity or credibility or historicity, per the CES letter, I think our assessment, really attempting to be fair and looking at the evidence is Jeremy's questions and concerns and criticisms of Book of Mormon authenticity as conveyed in the CES letter stand up. They stand the test of time. And there have been no credible attacks against his questions and concerns and criticisms of Book of Mormon historicity. And so attack his character, attack his intentions if you want to. That's just going to make us want to promote the CES letter more, because it's just a. It's a crappy way. What you really need to do is everyone just needs to acknowledge these problems, like Richard Bushman, like Patrick Mason, like Terrell Givens, like all the modern Mormon apologists are starting to do, and even the Church is doing. Wasn't there an essay recently that the Mormon Church just released, no longer claiming that the Book of Mormon is a translation, Am I right? Julia Nemo

Julia 1:31:16 essay.

John Dehlin 1:31:18 There's a brand new Gospel topics essay, if I'm remembering right, that literally calls the Book of Mormon now a revelation instead of a translation. And we've been expecting this ever since. Spencer Fluman gave this apologetic response as the leader of the Maxwell Institute, to my dear friends who went to him for support, and he said, stop thinking of the Book of Mormon as a translation. Start thinking of it as a revelation. In 2025, the church comes out with a Gospel topics essay, fulfilling that prophecy by me and others that the Church someday would stop calling the Book of Mormon a translation, start calling it a revelation, which does two things. It takes the heat off the Book of Mormon for all of its problems as a 19th century document, but it also vindicates all the criticisms that have been made showing that it's a 19th century document and not a translation of an ancient record.

Nemo 1:32:12 Yeah, it's a sort of tacit admission that it was indefensible as a truly historical record. I thought you were going to go to the church calling the Nauvoo Expositor a credible contemporary source for Joseph's polygamy. But I hope we get to get to that as we work our way through the CES letter, because that needs to be immortalized.

John Dehlin 1:32:31 Absolutely. Yeah. Stay tuned for a future episode.

Julia 1:32:35 Yeah. And the episode on the new essays would be a really good.

John Dehlin 1:32:39 Yeah, we should do that. We should do that too.

Julia 1:32:41 Yeah, that'd be really fun. Okay, so for this last slide I want to show it but I want to precursor why everything that we've been saying is that Joseph Smith's been swimming in this, this mindset of the Native Americans are ancient Israelites that like this treasure digging stuff that's in the Book of Mormon, the slippery treasure, the deutero, Isaiah, the different aspects. Grant Palmer points out a lot really, really good parallels between the Bible and the Book of Mormon that are found nowhere else. Like the story of Lazarus is the same as King Lamoni being raised from the dead Moses and Nephi being exactly paralleled in both texts. He claims that the Bible is a base text for the Book of Mormon. So you just have all these things in the background. This makes this last slide where the church, apologists for the church like to claim that it took Joseph Smith 65 to 75 days to translate the Book of Mormon. However, if you take a step back, much more time can be reasonably added. So In September of 1823, Joseph began telling stories from the Book of Mormon to his family. You find this in Lucy Mack Smith's history and she says that he claims that they should not tell these stories outside of their family. And so I find that really interesting. You have September 22nd of 1827, Joseph receives the plates. In December of 1827, Joseph and Emma moved to Harmony, Pennsylvania where Joseph begins translating. So even there's some time there. December through February of 1827, Joseph Smith copies a considerable number of characters from the plates. And then this is The February of 1828, Martin Harris takes the transcript to Charles Anthon. June 1828, Martin Harris loses 116 pages. The interpretations of the plates are taken, excuse me, the interpreters and the plates are taken. July through March, Joseph Smith takes a break from translating. And you can see this as a, as a time of reflection or trying to come up with, with more story is what I. Because like authors don't just write start to finish, they, they take breaks and they have to give their, their brains time to like come up with these stories. So April 5th of 1829, Oliver Cowdery begins to help Joseph with a translation. April Through June of 1829, Joseph and Oliver translate most of the book. June 11th of 1829, the title page is sent to be copyrighted and it came from the quote, the last leaf on the left hand side of the plate. And then June 11 through June 30 in 1829, Joseph and Oliver translate what is now the beginning of the Book of Mormon. Additionally, with his extensive study of the Bible Beginning roughly in 1818, this extends the timeline even further, as he reports in his first vision account in the 1832 version. So what this is saying is that Joseph Smith had years to compose the book of Mormon, 11 years from 1818 to 1829, to come up with these things of the Book of Mormon. Like, I don't think that he had from the. I don't think he from the beginning thought that he was going to write this book, but he has all this history that he. That had makes its way into the Book of Mormon and so to say 65 to 75. I disagree with. I think he had much more time than what the apologists say he did.

How Quickly Was the Book of Mormon Produced

Nemo 1:35:38 Agreed.

John Dehlin 1:35:40 And I think a really good Mormon stories episode or book that talks about this is William Davis's book. What's that?

Nemo 1:35:50 Visions in the Stair Stone.

John Dehlin 1:35:51 And Ganesh borrows a lot from William Davis's work as well, but it explains how basically Protestant ministers gave very lengthy sermons in the early 19th century.

Nemo 1:36:05 And is that the laying down heads concept?

John Dehlin 1:36:09 Go ahead, Nemo. Yeah.

Nemo 1:36:10 Is that the laying down heads concept where they will take a small thing and then expound upon it?

Guest 3 1:36:14 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:36:15 Like, almost like an outline, right?

Guest 3 1:36:17 Yeah.

Julia 1:36:17 And don't those words even make it into the Book of Mormon text? The laying down heads? Something like that?

John Dehlin 1:36:22 Yeah.

Julia 1:36:22 Yeah, I find that fascinating. William Davis is a genius. I love his research.

John Dehlin 1:36:27 Yeah. So I mean, once you watch William Davis's episode and read his book, that really starts to connect the dots with all the other things that we've covered on LDS discussions about how Joseph likely was able to produce the Book of Mormon. And yes, he had over a decade to prepare to produce the text.

Julia 1:36:51 Yeah. So that's the end of his section, the CES letter. The next one is the Book of Mormon translation process where he mostly discusses the rock in the hat and then the lack of the use of the gold plates during the translation process. And that's what we'll cover next time.

Nemo 1:37:04 Well, would you look at us coming in under two hours, huh?

Julia 1:37:07 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:37:07 Has that ever happened? An hour and 30ish, 35 minutes. Has that ever happened on LDS discussions?

Guest 3 1:37:13 I don't know.

John Dehlin 1:37:14 Did we break the land speed record?

Julia 1:37:16 Probably.

Nemo 1:37:18 All right, I'm waiting for dinner.

John Dehlin 1:37:20 What's that?

Nemo 1:37:21 I'm waiting to go have my dinner, I think.

John Dehlin 1:37:24 Well, where are your Jamie Dodgers? Nemo, you just your. Doritos and your Jamie Dodgers. You don't need dinner.

Nemo 1:37:30 That's true.

Closing Thoughts and Acknowledgments

John Dehlin 1:37:34 All right, well, Julia, first of all, thank you, Julia, for preparing today's episode and for all you do for Mormon Stories in the Yoruba Stories Foundation. I noticed you're doing a few shorts. You've got some shorts back.

Julia 1:37:46 Yeah, I'm trying to come back. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:37:48 So do you want to tell people your channels really quick?

Julia 1:37:50 Yeah. So I'm on all the platforms. I'm on YouTube, Patreon, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Analyzing Mormonism. I just. I've been trying to make content every day. It doesn't always happen, but I'm trying to get back because big life changes happen and so I just kind of stopped making it. But this is what I'm getting my master's degree in, and that should be like a new semester just started. And this is where my passion is in the history. So I want to keep doing this and making this content. And I hope it's okay if I point this out. But in a few weeks, Mormon Stories will be celebrating their 20th anniversary, and I think that's very exciting. September 4th. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:38:26 And Julie's trying to twist my arm to actually do something. And I tend to ignore anniversaries and

Nemo 1:38:31 birthdays, so I think something.

Julia 1:38:35 I think we should definitely do something. That's big. That's 20 years.

John Dehlin 1:38:39 That is a lot. Okay, well, we'll. We'll brainstorm.

Nemo 1:38:41 20 years, over 2,000 episodes.

Julia 1:38:43 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:38:45 Well, thanks for that, Julia. And thanks for all the good work you do. You've helped make so many important contributions to Mormon stories over the past several years. So thank you for that, Julia.

Julia 1:38:54 Thanks. Well, this is great. Everyone loves Mormon stories. Like I like, it just has so much value. So I appreciate that.

John Dehlin 1:39:01 Thanks for being a part of that, Nemo. Tell us any final things you want to about you and your channel. Remind everybody.

Nemo 1:39:07 I'm making weekly videos. I'm making fun videos, like ranking all the profits from best to worst. I'm trying to take some novel takes on contemporary Mormonism. Just. Yeah, I come here for the long form stuff, but if you want like 12 minute videos, place to Go is my channel for sure.

John Dehlin 1:39:28 And Nemo, I'm dying to know how you feel about this. Did you happen to notice the ex Mormon Reddit thread recently? Just like yesterday or the day before, the basic question asked was, who does the Mormon Church hate the most? Is it John De Lynn? Alyssa Grenfell? I think they had Nemo the Mormon and so they were all. Or like Bill Real and Radio Free Mormon. I think they were just kind of like everyone was opining about who the church hates most. And I'm wondering if you saw it and how you felt about that discussion.

Nemo 1:40:03 I didn't see it, but yeah, I don't know. I think we all pale into insignificance for Russell M. Nelson's hatred of Gordon B. Hinckley. So that's my hot take. Yeah. Okay. I'll go have a look at that thread, see how many of my flaws people have been able to point out.

John Dehlin 1:40:25 There were. There were a lot of fans, Nemo. So you do great work, basically, is what I'm trying to say.

Nemo 1:40:29 Okay.

John Dehlin 1:40:31 All right. All right. Well, thanks, Nemo. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks, Julia, for your great work. And thanks everyone again for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition. We could only do this with the donations of you, our donors. So if you donate to Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation, thank you. We couldn't do this without you. If you don't donate or support us and you'd like to, we're having an interesting dynamic in 2025. Our, our YouTube ad, our YouTube revenue has been cut in more than half just in the past four or five months. So we're, we're really dragging on YouTube revenue. Facebook revenue is pretty much dropped off, dropped off the face. We're still getting some YouTube and Spotify revenue, but overwhelmingly the way we stay alive is through donations. And so, you know, I'm not saying that we're going away tomorrow, but I am going to say that if that trends continue, trend continues, and revenue keeps declining, you know, that starts to eat into what services we're able to provide, like LDS discussions like the John Turner series. I'm grateful to announce that we, we raised all the money that we needed to support the John Turner series. So that's awesome. But if you value LDS discussions and you want to see continue, if you value Mormon Stories, you want to see it continue, and you're not right now a donor. All you got to do is go to mormonstories.org click on the donate button, Become a monthly donor, or an annual donor, or a weekly donor, or a semi monthly, whatever. Your donations are tax deductible in the US we're transparent in our finances and we work really hard to make sure that all the money we gather, we, we use towards the mission of Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation. So please become a donor if you're not already. Thanks to those of you who are. Big thanks to Brooklyn who behind the scenes is producing this episode along with Julia. And again, thanks to all of you. Thanks to Mike. Shout out to Mike and LDS discussions. Please check out ldsdiscussions.com for the text of the founding information for this series. Please check out this entire series if you haven't Even if you can't donate, there are so many ways you can help Mormon Stories and the Oba Stories Foundation. It's fine if you can't donate. We don't want you to feel sad about it. Don't feel guilty. Enjoy it. But please subscribe. That's free and takes only a couple seconds. Please subscribe on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok. Please like these episodes and please share them with friends and family. Get the word out. Commenting on them gives us feedback and it also helps with the algorithm. So those are all ways that you can literally help us, even if you don't give us a red cent. So please support us if you can. Thanks. We're going to be doing more LDS Discussions and Mormon Stories episodes in the days, weeks, months and years ahead, so stay tuned for more great stuff. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Check out the LDS Discussion series as a playlist on the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. You can enjoy that in sequence. There's also a dedicated podcast on Spotify that you can watch it on video or on audio or on Apple Podcast. You can listen to it. There's and then of course you can always enjoy LDS discussions integrated into the Mormon Stories podcast YouTube feed or the Spotify Mormon Stories feed. But this series is best consumed in sequence. And please share the existence of this series, the LDS Discussion Series with those you discover are trying to make sense of LDS Church truth claims. That's it everyone. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast and LDS Discussions. Take care everybody.

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