How LDS Apologists like Jasmin Rappleye Handle the Book of Abraham – LDS Discussions

Introduction and Episode Overview

Kolby Reddish 1:30 Hello everyone and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition. I'm your host for today, Kolby Redish and I will be joined by our LDS Discussions team here in just a moment. But before we get started on today's conversation, I wanted to remind you about some unique features of the LDS discussion series here on Mormon Stories. The LDS discussion series is an attempt to analyze Mormon Church truth claims as objectively as we can and with as little bias as we can as we look at evidence. The series began with the legend named Mike, who started his website ldsdiscussions.com and has since retired and moved on to bigger and better things. We have dozens of previous episodes and this series is best consumed sequentially because it does build on itself. It is one of the most important things that John feels Mormon Stories Podcast and the Open Stories foundation have ever done. So if this work is important to you, please support it financially and email your feedback to mormonstoriesmail.com with that introduction, I will bring on our panel for today, starting with Julia Sanders and Nemo the Mormon. Thanks for joining me this morning, you two. Hi Julia. Tell us what we're going to be talking about today.

Background on the Book of Abraham

Julia 2:45 So today we are going to be talking about the Book of Abraham Apologetics. I know that we've covered the Book of Abraham in the past, but I know that there's uptick sometimes in what people talk about and so I've seen this circulating more. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to address it again.

Kolby Reddish 2:59 Yeah, I'm really excited to do today's episode because we are doing a response to a really popular apologist online, Jasmine Rapley. Obviously we're going to look at this as unbiased as we can, but it's worth noting that we're going to be responding to her work and a recent discussion she had with another content creator. One of the things I love about the Book of Abraham is I feel like in the middle of my faith crisis, figuring out what was going on with the Book of Abraham was like a real eureka moment for me. I even remember like when I was in the middle of my faith crisis, I was just studying so much material, like I'd be up until 2 o', clock, 3 o' clock at night, even when I had work the next day. And Cammie still reminds me of the time that I woke her up in the middle of the night at like 3:30. I've got like rudimentary Egyptian pulled up on the computer screen. I'm trying to like learn some stuff as a layperson and I'm sitting there explaining the whole issue to her from like 3:30 in the morning to 4:30 in the morning because I just, I felt like I was going crazy when it finally all clicked into place for me. The big resource that helped it all click into place for me is actually a book that we'll talk about throughout today's episode, written by Dan Vogel on Book of Abraham Apologetics. Yeah, so Dan Vogel's Book of Abraham Apologetics a response and critique or a review and critique. So shout out to Dan for his work on that book. I think it's does a great job of orienting people on what all of the documents are and then responding to some really common and I would say bad apologetic arguments. So that's the introduction for me. Any of the two of you have thoughts before we get going on today's slides?

Julia 4:34 I think that's great. I really just want to point people everything that we talk about today. Most of, well, I should say everything, but most everything I have gotten from Dan Vogel's book. And so if you want to learn more or see his take on everything, just get it. Just check out that book.

Kolby Reddish 4:48 And he also has his own YouTube series talking about a lot of the ideas in his book for people who want to, want to listen to like a 10 hour deep dive on Book of Abraham.

Julia 4:59 Yeah. And also Mormon story on Mormon stories. Egyptologist Robert Ridner has been interviewed as well. And if you want to go and check out his, we have I think one clip from him. He also has written this. Egyptologist Robert Ridner has also. Yeah, I was just about to hold up my copy. He has also written a book, it's called the Joseph Smith. The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri, A complete edition where he runs through very detailed of what the Book of Abraham actually is. So.

Kolby Reddish 5:23 Yeah, great.

Julia 5:25 Yes.

Kolby Reddish 5:26 Well, let's go ahead and get started.

Julia 5:28 So this, there was a video that recently came out where Jasmine Rapley, I don't I want to say correctly, but I'm not exactly sure if that's correct. She was onto this channel. She went on the channel hello Saints. And this one, the hello Saints is run by a man named Jeff McCullough. How do you say it?

Kolby Reddish 5:45 McCullough. Yeah.

Julia 5:47 And he's a Christian pastor and he's on his quest to learn about the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. So everything Mormonism. And one thing I do want to point out which I think is interesting and this is super off topic from what we're talking about, but maybe this is okay to talk about. But if you'll see his YouTube banner, there's like a bunch of images from the church and these. I know.

Nemo 6:08 Copyrighted material up there, huh?

Julia 6:10 Yes, I know from personal experience because I am lately the Mormon Stories graphic designer and these are all images that are copyrighted by the church. So it's just interesting to me how the church will say, oh, Mormon stories can't use this copyrighted material, but all these other people can. And he's got 83,000 followers. So it's, you know, Mormon stories is 300,000. He's almost close to 100,000. So like, I don't understand here what's going on, but.

Nemo 6:32 Well, I think it's interesting how closely aligned he seems to stay to the church in many ways. Ways like he gives off this image of being like an independent outside actor just trying to learn about the church, but he's allowed by the church to use their copyrighted material. He seems to have access to individuals within the church that not everyone would necessarily get access to in other interviews. And I, as far as I'm aware, don't believe he's ever interviewed someone like us, a commentator from outside the church, someone who is a former member of the church who's currently talking about it in a critical way. I don't think he's spent time with anyone like that. So how full of an image can he really gain of the church if he is essentially in lockstep with them in certain ways?

Julia 7:18 Right. Well, in the, in the lawsuit against Mormon stories, I believe they say, you know, we're not, we're not trying to silence you. We're not, we don't care about your opinion. We just care about our copyrighted material. So it seems interesting that they're picking on him because to me, it really does seem like they really do care about what he's saying. When you have Elder Oaks or President Oaks saying in his first, one of his first talks warning the members against podcasts. So anyway, I just thought that was interesting to point out. Anyway, so overall, her, this is her episode with him. This is, it's called an Evangelical and Latter Day Saint Expose each Other's Biggest Myths. This whole episode is only is 54 minutes. But I first heard of this, this whole thing from a Reddit post. And what this individual shared this accomplished bat 9069 they shared a 10 minute clip from this episode. And so all of the clips we're going to show today are just from those 10, that 10 minute segment. So. Yeah. Okay, so before we get started, for those of you who are just tuning in or who really don't know or need a reminder about the Book of Abraham backstory. So In July of 1835, antiquities dealer Michael Chandler sold Joseph Smith two papyrus rolls or scrolls along with several smaller, smaller fragments and four mummies. And he says that these two scrolls were the Book of Abraham and then the Book of Joseph in Egypt. And actually there's a, there's a book here right here that's a, it's called by his own Hand. And there is a full color spread of both of these papyrus. I'm going to show them right now just because I think it's super interesting because I had never seen them before. So you have, this is the Book of Abraham scroll right here, which I think is super neat. And it says. It is. Says that it is shown at 78% of actual size. And then you have the Book of Joseph, the Joseph in Egypt scroll right here on the screen. You can see there's, like, little different depictions. And this one is shown at 55% size. So anyway, I just thought that was really interesting to show that.

Michael Chandler and the Egyptian Papyri

Kolby Reddish 9:22 And who published that book?

Julia 9:24 It is Charles M. Larson. Yeah, that's a great question. I'm pretty sure it's a faithful take on it, but the spread was really cool. So if you want to see that.

Kolby Reddish 9:34 When you mentioned Michael Chandler, I always like to bring this up when we talk about Book of Abraham stuff. And it connects very well to our last episode when we talked about the church and how leaders of the church have worked with or bought into comment and frauds. And there's like, been a track record of that. One of my favorite things about the Michael Chandler story is that Michael Chandler issued a certificate to Joseph Smith about the papyrus and about his translations on July 6, 1835, where he said, this is to make known to all who may be desirous concerning the knowledge of Mr. Joseph Smith Jr. In deciphering the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic characters in my possession, which I have in many eminent cities shown to the most learned. And from the information that I could ever learn or meet with, I find that that of Mr. Joseph Smith Jr. To correspond in the most minute matters, signed Michael H. Chandler, traveling with and proprietor of the Egyptian mummies. And I always get a kick out of that because, as we talked about in that episode, Michael Chandler had no business giving any such certificate. He didn't. He wasn't able to translate or understand Egyptian because no one in the United States was able to do that at this time. And I think it's just so interesting to see how that affects Joseph Smith's epistemology, showing that he thought it was important to get the certificate from somebody talking about how legitimate his translation work was.

Nemo 11:00 But Kolby, it corresponded in the most minute matters. What do you mean?

Kolby Reddish 11:05 That's true. That's true.

Nemo 11:06 And again, we have Joseph Smith going to get. It is interesting that Joseph kind of relies upon secular authorities to try and validate his translation abilities. Like he goes and takes examples of characters from the Book of Mormon to a language expert to try and get it verified. Almost as though in some ways we're meant to have faith and just believe on the word of another, and we're meant to have faith in the miraculous. But also it is important for secular experts to have an opinion. It would seem. At least it was to Joseph Smith.

Kolby Reddish 11:38 Yeah, exactly.

Julia 11:39 I also want to, you know, it lists here that the mummies were. All these things were sold for $2,400. And with the inflation calendar, just a quick Google search, it's over $90,000 that Michael Chandler would have profited from. So that's a significant amount of money. So it was in his best interest that he sell these. Exactly.

Kolby Reddish 11:57 You can see why he had such a conflict of interest in telling Joseph how legitimate his work with Egyptian was when he stands to make the equivalent of $90,000.

Nemo 12:07 And what does it hurt Michael Chandler to be like, yeah, the guy, I saw him too. He's really good at translating this stuff, everyone, so come buy more of my stuff. Like, he loses nothing.

Julia 12:17 Yeah.

Book of Breathings and What Joseph Smith Claimed

Kolby Reddish 12:18 On this next bullet point, the thing I'm always struck by, so. So you have here, upon acquiring them, Smith stated that the two main roles contain the writings of the biblical patriarchs, Abraham and Joseph of Egypt. And those were those full spreads that you showed just a moment ago, Julia. The thing I'm always struck by is that for those who don't know Joseph Smith as part of his translation of both the Old and New Testaments, which started in 1830, continued until 1831, if I remember correctly, Julia.

Julia 12:46 I don't recall early 1830s.

Kolby Reddish 12:48 The bottom line is before 1835, when these events are happening as part of Joseph Smith's biblical translation, where he's, you know, reading the text of the Old and New Testaments and he's making changes to them, which just so happened to coincide with many of the changes suggested by Adam Clark, a contemporary biblical scholar. For what it's worth, one of the things I'm interested in is the fact that as part of that, there is a book of scripture in the pearl of great price, known as the Book of Moses, which was supposedly a recovered version of, you know, stories that relate to Genesis. And I think it. It even the vision happened even when Joseph Smith was in the middle of the Bible translation of Genesis. And so it's worth noting that of the biblical figures, significant biblical figures who are tied to Egypt, we've really got three. We've got Moses, Abraham, and Joseph, who was sold into Egypt. And Joseph had already produced scripture that basically speaks to Moses's experience. And then when he finds these scrolls or acquires these scrolls to the tune of $90,000 today, says, oh, what are the odds? I found a roll of papyrus from each of the other two people who are Significant in the Bible that I don't have scripture from already. I just think that's interesting.

Julia 14:06 I also want to note. Oh, sorry.

Nemo 14:08 Genesis 32, I believe, is where Joseph Smith writes himself into the Book of Genesis as a direct descendant of Joseph of Egypt.

Kolby Reddish 14:15 Right.

Nemo 14:16 Yeah. So he.

Julia 14:19 Yeah. I do want to point out that he also never translated or attempted to translate the Joseph. Well, I mean, other than saying that it was the scroll of Joseph in Egypt, he never translated that one. People also pick on the Kinderhook plates, which we talked about this last time, where Joseph didn't. People say that Joseph didn't really translate it because he didn't produce scripture from it. But if you think about the Book of Abraham taking him seven years, I think it was. He translated a chunk and then he waited some time and then translated more of it before we got to the end. And it's only four or five chapters, so it's not even a very big book. But it took him really long time to translate that. So, like, I don't think he had time to, I guess, translate the book of the Book of Joseph in Egypt or the Kinderheart plate. So anyway. But so modern Egyptologists, they point to these scrolls. The book of Abraham's scroll is actually the scroll of Horror or the Book of Breathings. And then the Book of the Dead is the other one, the Joseph in Egypt one. And it's actually. It belonged to a woman. I don't know if I can say her name to Shenman. Shenman. I don't know how to say that. And then the fragments are said to belong to. I'm going to butcher these names.

Nemo 15:24 Neferiunab. Nephew.

Julia 15:26 And then the other one belongs to Amenhotep. Amenhotep. Okay.

Kolby Reddish 15:30 Yeah. You two are on your own. I'm not gonna try and pronounce this.

Julia 15:34 Okay, so this is just a general overview of what we're talking about. We're just kind of honing in on the Book of Abraham scroll, which is the Book of Breathings.

Kolby Reddish 17:14 And if I could speak to that for just a second, just for people who are unaware. And you may have clips from Dr. Rittner talking, but the basic idea of a Book of Breathings is that the Egyptian language, as we kind of talked about in our information density episode, it started with hieroglyphic forms. And hieroglyphic forms were literally inscribed on temple walls as a form of like spells to preserve and have recognition for these individuals afterlife journey. That's what the Egyptian religion at the time believed. They then simplified that script or allowed it to be copied down onto papyrus. And so the whole idea of a Book of Breathings was basically a preparatory document that was prepared to prepare these people for the afterlife. And so it followed certain prescribed forms. And it's called the Book of Horror or the scroll of Horror because that was the name of the individual who had basically commissioned these papers to be drawn up. One of the, I think one of the, I guess darkly comedic parts of this whole ordeal to me that's kind of funny is to picture like this Egyptian priest whore that had probably worked and saved his entire life to commission these papers to be drawn up because it was so important to him for his beliefs about the afterlife and as kind of a miracle of history, right? They survive for thousands of years and they're found by Michael Chandler's relative brought over to America and whose lap do they happen to fall in is a guy who isn't going to respect that original story at all. He's going to use it either, as you know, we'll get to the competing apologetic theories here in just a minute, I guess, but he's going to use it to basically incorporate it into part of his religious narrative rather than allowing that original religious narrative to speak for itself.

Julia 19:00 You know, that reminds me of the Native Americans where it's sort of like they have their own. And then Dr. Murphy, you know, just published that book Nemo. Do you want to hold that one up? I don't have my copy on me. Where he's saying that a lot of these stories from these Native Americans were kind of hijacked by, by the Book of Mormon. And I just think that's super interesting that I've never thought about it that way. Where this man's religious beliefs, this man Whore, was kind of hijacked by the Mormon Church. So I don't know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that's kind of how I'm seeing it.

Kolby Reddish 19:26 No, that's exactly what I'm saying. And not only has the, not only do the Mormon Church claims do that to Whore or to the Native Americans, I would say it's even more foundational in like claiming like we are the true children of Israel. That very much is also stealing other people's history, I would say.

Nemo 19:44 But yeah, and then the, the sort of rewriting of Mesoamerican history with the expansion of where the events of the Book of Mormon would take place. And I say expansion deliberately because it was believed in Joseph Smith's time to have taken place in his backyard. But now they're looking at genuine cultures of, of other people that are complex and have their own religious narratives and co opting them.

Julia 20:07 Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 20:09 For their own means. You know, you get tours. I've heard of people going on tours in Central and South America, particularly Central America, and getting a bit of a nudge from a Mormon tour guide about what the official thing is. And then what we really believe, you know.

Julia 20:25 Well, that is happening today with the Hopewell Indians. The, the heart. The Heartwell, the heartland.

Kolby Reddish 20:30 Heartlanders.

Julia 20:32 Yeah. They're saying that the Hopewell Indians are the Lamanites from the Book of Mormon.

Kolby Reddish 20:37 And so you have the Hopewell feel about that.

Julia 20:40 Yeah.

Nemo 20:41 Just a final point on that. You have members of the church who were taught for years that they are Lamanites. Right. They're descendants of the Lamanites. People have taken this on board. And the church, there was a talk in this, just this general conference about leaving behind your own culture and accepting the culture of the church. So this is a broader theme within Mormonism that started, right, with Joseph Smith not respecting the true narrative because he didn't know it, of the Book of War and coming right through to the present day, where people are told to leave behind their traditions and their culture

Kolby Reddish 21:14 for the church and to maybe help any folks who are still active, believing members who might listen to this episode. I'm sure they've already switched it off, but if they were, I would suggest they think about it like this. Imagine there is a new religious group that, you know, springs up in Salt Lake City, and part of that group's religious narrative basically uses the pioneers, trek across the plains and settling Utah, but completely changes the story and like, makes them the bad guys of the story or co ops that story to tell their own religious narrative. That's what we're talking about. That's, that's the equivalent, I think, of what Joseph Smith did repeatedly.

Julia 21:54 Yeah, yeah. Okay. So if we're ready to move forward, the first clip that I have that, that I have labeled it, your motive will alter the outcome. And this is kind of when Jasmine's introducing this concept of the Book of Abraham.

Jasmin Rappleye's Apologetic Approach

Guest 2 22:09 If, if your motive is, I, I want to just build bridges with my Latter Day Saints, I want to understand it better, but I'm getting hung up on all of this textual history stuff. Well, I don't believe the truth claims necessarily of evangelicalism, Catholicism or Judaism or Islam. Yet I, I would still read their texts because I think, like, that's just an important exercise to do to help me understand better, you know, the origin story of it. Be darned. If the motive is like, how can you get into the Book of Abraham with all of this baggage? I mean, I think that's where a lot of this scholarship comes into play. If you really have sincere questions about the transmission, okay, Joseph Smith got this Egyptian papyri and he came up with this book. Latter Day Saints believe it's a revelation from God, distilling truths from the ancient world. Secular people might look at that and say, he got Egyptian papyri and just made it up. And we've got a mountain of textual history with the Joseph Smith papers that has really interesting things to say. But the dominant narrative is that former members of the church will say, well, Egyptologists have disproved the Book of Abraham. Or if you just look at the Kirtland Egyptian papers, it completely disproves the Book of Abraham. And anyone saying that has not done their homework. The issue I would suggest is so much more complex. If you're an actual historian looking at the documents carefully, and if you're an actual Egyptologist, you taking the claims of the Book of Abraham seriously in conjunction with the documents, a more complex picture emerges. I'm not going to say it's an open and shut case that like, this is the Book of Abraham is true or that it's false, but the reality is like, you just need to be so much more careful with the claims that we're making when it comes to the Book of Abraham.

Kolby Reddish 23:57 So let me pause for a second and just say, is Jasmine Rapley an Egyptologist or a historian?

Nemo 24:05 No, no.

Kolby Reddish 24:06 What is she? She's a content creator.

Julia 24:08 Well, did she study languages? I wasn't sure.

Kolby Reddish 24:11 I don't think so.

Nemo 24:14 She's certainly not an Egyptologist.

Julia 24:16 No, certainly not. And certainly not a historian.

Nemo 24:20 So she's saying that people like Robert Rittner haven't done their homework. Dan Vogel hasn't done his homework. And it's always, it's always with apologists, it's always more complex, it's always more difficult because in that complexity, they can find a little corner to hide in where. Okay, well, it can all still make sense. If we just fettle the parameters enough, we can find a little spot in the complexity of it all where we can still believe what we would like to continue to believe also.

Kolby Reddish 24:48 And that complexity. I'm sorry, Julie, go ahead.

Julia 24:50 Oh, no, no, you can. You can speak.

Kolby Reddish 24:52 I was just going to say in that complexity. I opened by telling you my story of waking up in the. Waking my wife up in the middle of the night and explaining how it all connected to her. One of the things I was really struck by when the Book of Abraham, all the stuff around the Book of Abraham clicked into place for me is apologists need to make this as comp. Seem as complicated as possible. And like Nemo said, they will point to a few things here and there, and we'll talk about that in just a second. But they need to make it as complex as possible. Because the very simple Occam's Razor answer is that there is no good reason to believe the claims made in the Book of Abraham. Like, meaning that it is a legitimate translation of an ancient record attributable to Abraham, that it reflects anything about an actual experience that Abraham would have had. Now they'll point to A few things here and there, like Uli Shem. I'm sure we'll get to that in a minute. And a few other, like, weird little things that if you kind of squint are kind of a half hit. The problem with that is that it is equivalent to like, if we're tasked with analyzing. We talked about Mark Hoffman last episode. If we're. And he was a famous forger and created fraudulent documents. Right. And kill one of the ways. And, and, and a murderer. Yes. Thank you, Julia. I don't want to overlook the murder. That is pretty serious. But one of the ways that he was able to be so successful in his forgeries is that he was able to use some really interesting scientific techniques to age paper and to age the ink through, like, electrolysis, if I remember correctly. And the way I see the Book of Abraham issue and this complexity that Jasmine is talking about is it is akin to like, if we're trying to determine whether a document is an original, like original, correct, authentic source document from ages and ages ago, and it has something that's an anachronism in it that we know. Let's say it has like a wrong signature. The example I've used before is like a fraudulent silver certificate, like an old bill. If it has the wrong signature of the Secretary of the treasury on it, it doesn't matter if the paper dates to the right time, it doesn't matter if the ink dates to the right time. One single piece of disconfirming evidence on certain questions is sufficient to go, I might not know how the forger used the right paper. I might not know how the forger got the ink to reflect the right time period, but I know it's not a legitimate authentic silver certificate. Now, those other questions on how are. How. How are they able to get these particular things right? Maybe interesting questions in and of themselves to. To entertain, but they're not necessary to determine what the thing is. And our purpose today is to determine what the thing is. And the bottom line is, yes, Jasmine, when you look at the Kirtland Egyptian papers and when you look at what actual Egyptologists, not you, say about the Book of Abraham, it isn't what it purports to be. And that is the very simple explanation, the Occam's Razor explanation. All of this complexity is just created by these apologists. Now, I want to say one last thing about the academics that she was talking about. She said, if you look at this scholarship, there are two primary scholars. And I am putting that in for me, pretty Strong air quotes that work on the Book of Abraham issues on behalf of the church. There is John Gee, who was mentored by Professor Robert Rittner, and I'm not sure, Julia, if you want to talk about that in just a second, how Robert Rittner felt about Professor Gee. But the other is Kerry Muhlstein, who literally says that he starts with the presupposition that the Book of Abraham and everything around it is legitimate ancient scripture. And then he takes any evidence that he needs to fit it into that paradigm. Like he tells you that he starts with the conclusion already fixed. That is not scholarship in my mind. Like, what these guys are doing might be interesting to Latter Day Saints, but unless you buy that presupposition that it's already true in the first place, which is precisely what we're trying to analyze today, I just struggle with even calling that scholarship.

Julia 28:55 Yeah.

Nemo 28:55 Well, so a couple of points there. You've really upset the minting errors crowd, Corby, the people that like to collect rare errors on coinage and notes by saying their stuff ain't real. But your point is, right. All it takes is one anachronism for an ancient text or a purported ancient text to fall apart. And then I forgot my second point. So hopefully it'll come back to me.

Julia 29:20 Well, so one of the things that Jasmine was saying in the video clip, she says, I think she says former members of the church will say this is a. This Egyptologist had disproved this to be the Book of Abraham. But I don't know exactly know what she means there, because we have even faithful scholars in this, in the slide deck who say that this, this is really not the book of. This Book of Breathings is not the Book of Abraham. So it must have come a different way.

Nemo 29:43 I've remembered. My point is that the church admits the Book of Abraham is not what it claims to be.

Julia 29:49 Yeah.

Nemo 29:49 That the papyri do not match up to the text. They don't give an explanation as to how we then ended up with the text. Of course they can't. But that is how simple it is. The church has had to say, I don't know who in the church, because there's no author on the gospel topic essay. But the church has officially published an essay which says, yep, can't have been written by the hand of Abraham. He lived at the wrong time for these papyri and other such things.

Julia 30:16 I also think if your motive is to figure out what is truth in this matter, I don't think you would come up with Four different theories as to how it can be true. I feel like you would just accept that it's not what it claims to be. And also additionally, in the book of, or in the Joseph Smith Papers, when on this topic they quote Robert. The church itself quotes Robert Ridner all the time, like extensively. If you check the footnotes in most of these, they're just constantly quoting him. And Kolby, you mentioned the relationship between John G. And Robert Ritter. I don't have any specific slides. All. I've just seen the old Mormon stories episodes with Robert Rittner on them, and I just know that he fundamentally disagrees with him. I don't know if you have more to say on that.

Kolby Reddish 30:54 No, that's basically what I was going to say is that he was one of his professors when he was in his PhD program in Egyptology. And my memory from John's. John and RFM's really long episode with Dr. Rittner is he expressed disappointment with the way that John Gee was using what he was trained to do. Basically that he's, he's doing apologetics, he's not doing actual scholarship. That's my memory of the way Professor Rittner, who it's, it's worth noting, passed shortly after that series aired, you know, years and years ago. So.

Julia 31:30 Yeah.

Nemo 31:32 Okay, got the next slide, Julia? Yeah, let's have it.

Julia 31:36 Okay, so this one I've titled the Book of Abraham Is not the Keystone of Our Religion.

Nemo 31:40 Can I just, can I just preface this for a sec? Because what this is, is essentially it's a really complex issue. And now this is the, the second half of that sword, which is. And it doesn't really matter.

Julia 31:51 Yeah, it's kind of dismissive. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Guest 2 31:54 When it comes to like a spiritual epistemology, the Book of Abraham is not the keystone of our religion. And I think so many people get hung up on that, especially ex Mormons or people who have left the faith. They almost see the Book of Abraham as the keystone of their deconstruction because they see it as something that's like an easy potshot to take. It's an easy low hanging fruit. Like, oh, Egyptologists have disproved the Book of Abraham, therefore everything else falls away.

Guest 32:15 Yeah, I think it's a reverse domino effect.

Kolby Reddish 32:16 Like, well, if the Book of Abraham

Guest 32:18 is proved false and that means Joseph wasn't a prophet.

Guest 2 32:20 That's right.

Kolby Reddish 32:20 Just comes undone.

Nemo 32:23 Well, there shouldn't be any low hanging fruit. Right. If this is all true, then there shouldn't be any low hanging fruit to take. And Go, yeah, no, that's not true. And also, it directly influences Joseph Smith's claims, His. His claims as a translator. Here is an example of him translating in a way that has been proven not to be true. So, yeah, it may not be the keystone of our religion, but it's absolutely a key claim of Joseph Smith's and a key example of scripture that he produced.

Julia 32:54 Yeah, there was a lot of people around him at the time. Even Oliver Cowdery was saying, like, if he produces this, this will back up the Book of Mormon. So, like, it's like another witness that Joseph Smith can translate.

Nemo 33:04 And you absolutely know that if this had been proven by Egyptologists when they had translated the ancient Egyptian language, the Rosetta Stone, actually say it were to confirm what Joseph Smith translated from all this, apologists would be having an absolute field day. They would be doubling down on that time and time again to say, hey, look, he was right about that. Yes, we don't have the originals of the Book of Mormon, but he was right about this. So surely that relationship has to go both ways if you're being logically consistent.

Kolby Reddish 33:31 Exactly. Yeah. For me, the way I look at issues like this is. And it's just so interesting to listen to apologists, I just feel like they have such a binary black and white thinking, which is so weird because they crow about complexity and nuance all of the time, but only like Nemo just said, when it benefits what they're trying to get you to believe. And the thing I'm struck by is just how, like, if your objective is simply to ask, do I have a good reason to believe that what Joseph Smith originally claimed about the Book of Abraham is true? The answer to that is no. Like, there is no explanation. There are apologetic workarounds they have found to say this isn't technically impossible. And we'll talk about those theories as Jasmine kind of does it. But I think there's an interesting, just methodological kind of meta comment here of them acting like proving that something isn't technically impossible. Therefore, checkmate, ex Mormons, we've shown that it's not disproven. I don't need to disprove it, Jasmine. I'm just asking the question, honestly, do I have a good reason? And when I say good reason, what I mean is it's not a line of fallacious reasoning and there's some evidence to support the conclusion, do I have a good reason to believe that the Book of Abraham is what Joseph Smith thought it was? And the very simple answer is, no, there isn't. A good reason to believe that.

Julia 34:53 Yeah,

Joseph Smith's Definition of Translation

Julia 36:27 Okay, so yeah, one thing I wanted to talk about is just what we've been talking about. Some of the Some of these we talked about this last time. So Joseph Smith translated the golden plates in 1828-1829. Joseph Smith translated the book of Abraham in 1835 and it was shown to be false or that these they didn't align is what I could say. In 1912 the New York Times published a story on that and then Joseph Smith translated a portion that's from William Clayton, a portion of the kinderhook plates in 1843 and it was exposed as a hoax in 1879. So like the track record for Joseph Smith's ability to translate is to me very low.

Nemo 36:59 If it's and on that third point, it took the church possibly a hundred years to finally accept that they were a hoax.

Julia 37:07 Yeah. Which we covered in our last episode.

Kolby Reddish 37:09 The other thing I'm struck by, Julia, just because I try and anticipate what, you know, someone who might be listening to us more hostilely might say, they would say, oh, Julia, you're. You're misrepresenting this because Joseph Smith didn't claim to translate the golden plates or translate the Book of Abraham. First of all, that's false. But what they would be talking about is there's been this recent move in the church to equivocate on the definition of translation and say Joseph Smith was never claiming to do a secular translation. And that is true. Joseph Smith was always claiming to translate by revelation. Right. Translate by the gift and power of God, as he said famously about the Book of Mormons golden plates. That doesn't fix the issue. It's so surprising to me that sometimes people act like just claiming, like, well, he wasn't claiming to do a secular translation. That doesn't fix the issue at all. In fact, to me, that makes the issue much worse because if Joseph Smith is claiming a revelatory translation experience and he can't adequately determine what he's receiving from God through revelation, like where that line begins and ends on what is and isn't true, or he basically receives from God a process that even he doesn't understand. I. I just don't understand why anyone would believe that when there's just such a simpler Occam's Razor explanation. It's just like he just got it wrong. Like he just wasn't doing what he claimed to be doing.

Julia 38:34 Yeah, I do think it's interesting because he goes to Char. Oh my gosh, I can't remember his name. Anthony. Yeah, Charles Anthon. And he who is a scholar, he's. He obviously doesn't know that how to translate the Egyptian language, because that hadn't been figured out yet. But. So I guess it's Martin Harris, you could argue, that goes to seek this scholarly schol or opinion. And so, like Joseph, they use it.

Kolby Reddish 38:56 Before you continue, can I pause you there and say it's also important to note for people who want to look into the Charles Anton episode, that, yes, Martin Harris was the one who went and did this, but Joseph Smith doesn't actually tell the story of how this all unfolded until Martin Harris has left the church and isn't there directly to correct the way Joseph Smith might change or modify that story to his benefit.

Julia 39:20 Sorry, that's true. Well, then. Well, then Charles Anthon came out later and he was like. And I can't remember which book it is. I can't remember. I can put it in the show notes. But he comes out and he was like, no, that's not how it went down. I said, this was not. I don't. It was a completely different story than what Martin Harris was telling him. But I was just pointing out that it's interesting that Joseph Smith seemed to seek scholarly opinion, but then, say. People can't really say, oh, he didn't really translate. It was just. It was just inspiration or revelation from God. Although sometimes he did use the word, you know, that it came from God. So, like, it's confusing. Yeah. I don't really like when apologists do that, like when they try to redefine translation.

Kolby Reddish 39:55 Yeah. When you try and redefine terms to avoid problems, that is fallacious thinking known as equivocation, you're using the vagueness of the language to try and escape problems. So that's all I wanted to point out.

Julia 40:07 Yeah. And then we'll talk about how Joseph really did think that he was translating the Book of Abraham rather than having it be received through revelation.

Kolby Reddish 40:14 Right.

Nemo 40:14 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 40:15 Yeah.

Julia 40:15 So this next clip is the Book of Abraham is not the core of the Restoration.

Nemo 40:20 So again, it's another. And it's not important.

Julia 40:22 Yeah.

Guest 2 40:23 The reality is that even if the Book of Abraham weren't true, it does not take away from the core truth claims of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is the keystone of our. The Restoration is what we say. And by that.

Julia 40:35 Oh, sorry, I was trying to get the.

Guest 2 40:38 Yeah. The reality is that even if the Book of Abraham weren't true, it does not take away from the core truth claims of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is the keystone of the Restoration is what we say. And by that we mean, like, the truthfulness of the Restoration really hangs on the Book of Mormon, not necessarily the Book of Abraham, though I still believe the Book of Abraham, like, holds up and is true. And so if you really want to undermine the Church, like, you really do have to focus the argument on the Book of Mormon itself, which I think holds up very well. And so, like, if you want to gain, like, a spiritual witness or a testimony that this is true, like, we. We focus on the Book of Mormon because that's the central core. Without the Book of Abraham, we lose a lot of our doctrine, but it doesn't lose the core of the Restoration.

Nemo 41:21 So.

Kolby Reddish 41:24 Yeah. So let's think about which doctrines they would lose in the Book of Abraham. Right. We have the. Basically the idea.

Nemo 41:31 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 41:31 Oh, we already have a slide. Yeah, perfect.

Nemo 41:33 Yeah, let's go through it.

Julia 41:36 Yeah. So Kolby, you can go. You can run through some of these.

Kolby Reddish 41:38 Like I reviewed these slides ahead of time several days ago and forgot exactly

Julia 41:41 where we were going.

Kolby Reddish 41:43 So, yes, this is from. We can see right here on the left hand side of the screen, the Book of Abraham translated from the papyrus by Joseph Smith.

Nemo 41:51 Sorry, what was that word?

Kolby Reddish 41:52 Translation.

Julia 41:53 Yes.

Kolby Reddish 41:54 Okay. A translation of some ancient records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus,

Julia 42:05 by his own hand, which will come into play later.

Kolby Reddish 42:08 I'd be remiss if I didn't mention and it wasn't an LDS discussions episode, but we are interested in doing an LDS discussions episode with Dr. John Londwall. It's worth noting that that type of narrative, Abraham sitting down and writing like a first person account, almost like a journal account. If you listen to the episode that John did on the main Mormon Stories channel or on the main Mormon stories feed with Dr. John Lundwell, he talks about the evolution of thought patterns and of narrative. And the bottom line is when we're talking about Abraham and how long ago that was, that type of writing itself would be an anachronism. So set aside all of these issues. You could literally just be done with Book of Abraham analysis on that fact alone. But let's talk doctrinally about what the Book of Abraham restores. So it has in it as doctrine that humans existed as intelligence and spirits before the world was created, which is a huge part of what Mormons believe and has shaped Mormon theology and cosmology. And worth noting isn't in the Book of Mormon at all. So this is one of the weird things to me about what Jasmine said is so many things that are like part of the foundation of people's Mormon experience today have absolutely no reflection in the Book of Mormon. In fact, I'm sure you guys know and I consider him a friend, Steve Pinecker, who's an evangelical that talks about Mormonism a lot. So he's never been a Mormon, but he says all of the time that there's nothing in the Book of Mormon that is like offensive to him or problematic for him as an evangelical because it is so aligned with 19th century Protestant Christian theology. It doesn't really reflect Mormonism today. It. Jasmine is right that it's used as Basically a testimony builder for Joseph Smith's ultimate claims as a. As a what guys? As a translator. And so that entire, you know, diatribe she went on to say, well, it doesn't affect Joseph Smith's ability to translate the Book of Mormon, I think, is also just false. Like, if someone comes to work for me, work with me in my professional capacity as an attorney, and I completely mess up one of, you know, handling a case for them, I think it's pretty reasonable if they don't want to work with me as a lawyer again, if I were to make, like, a serious mistake. And so if Jasmine doesn't understand how, you know, people who lose their testimony ultimately over the issues with the Book of Abraham, she doesn't understand how they connect the dots. That's the connection is why would I believe that Joseph Smith is able to translate the Book of Mormon when he claimed to translate at least a portion of the Kinderhook plates, claimed to translate the Book of Abraham. And that isn't what we see in reality, is that he was actually everything.

Nemo 44:51 I believe the way that Jeremy Reynolds phrased it was, why would I buy a third car from someone who already sold me two clunkers? I think that's his phrase pretty much exactly. But the second point on this side, there was a council in heaven where God presented his plan and chose Jesus over Satan. Massive, massive chunk of Mormon theology there. Well, and then even overstated.

Julia 45:12 Right. And I don't know exactly where this story comes from, but the native, the African American one, drop. All of that, I think, stems from this council in heaven where these people were, I think, or some of the

Nemo 45:24 justifications were that, like, these people were fence sitters in the council in Heaven. Like, you know, people that are less worthy that only just made it to get bodies, stuff like that. Right. It's been extrapolated upon.

Julia 45:35 Yeah, yeah.

Kolby Reddish 45:35 None of that is directly in the Book of Abraham. What you're saying is the underpinnings of this idea of a premortal existence is in the Book of Abraham. Although it is worth noting, while we're talking about the racial restrictions on the priesthood in the temple, that there is a specific mention to the curse of Ham and his lineage, which was cursed with respect to the priesthood in the Book of Abraham. So if you hear a certain Mormon apologist, I have one in mind. If you just look closely at what the Book of Abraham says, it directly has reference to a curse pertaining to the priesthood through the loins of Ham in the Book of Abraham. So if a Certain apologist were to tell you that there's no scriptural basis for the church's racial restrictions on the priesthood and temple. That's simply not true. It's right in the book of Abraham. Like it says it explicitly.

Julia 46:25 Yeah.

Nemo 46:26 And if we go to Joseph Fielding Smith's the Way to Perfection, if we can read that he talks about members of the church or black members of church being less valiant in the pre existence. People's behavior in the pre existence is absolutely everything to do or was believed to be to do for a long time with people's then mortal position. It was also used as an excuse for people with physical disabilities and other such things.

Julia 46:52 Yeah, right.

Kolby Reddish 46:54 And that same justification when we're talking about the racial restrictions on the priesthood and temple. This idea is what. When Larry Nelson, who was an active member wrote to the first Presidency questioning the church's racial restrictions on the priesthood and temple, they pointed to this exact doctrine to say, you understand that it has long been the doctrine of the Church that there are, you know, different, I want to say different values of people, although I know that's not the word that they use, but that there are different like qualities of spirits and that that dates all the way back to this premortal existence and this war in heaven idea.

Julia 47:31 Yeah. Now do we, do we read this list or do we stop on the second one?

Priesthood Restrictions and Book of Abraham Theology

Nemo 47:36 I mean we can go, okay, so

Julia 47:38 the, so the next, the third one is the humans are. That humans are independent agents and are being tested. The earth is. The earth and universe were created from pre existing matter. Not out of, not out of nothing.

Nemo 47:50 That's in the endowment ceremony. Just to be clear, that's in the highest, one of the highest ceremonies of the entire church. That concept is drawn from this scripture.

Julia 48:00 Yeah. And that there is a plurality of gods the time on God's planet or Kolob. I think this is the star nearest to his planet in relation to ours. So one day is a thousand years. I can't remember. I think it's a thousand years. And then this last I find really interesting is the priesthood. The power and authority of God is that is eternal and existed before the foundation of the earth. And before this I'll note that there is no, there are no historical records of this priesthood restoration from, from any of the angels until 1835 or until the mid-1830s. And scholars like D. Michael Quinn and others have pointed that out. Specifically Grant Palmer I think is another one who points that out. And so I just think that's really interesting.

Nemo 48:39 So it's not until the Book of Abraham was written that then the priesthood restoration becomes a thing.

Julia 48:44 The priesthood is not mentioned, at least not the two separate ones in the

Kolby Reddish 48:47 Book of Mormon and not just later scholars like. That's one of David Whitmer's primary complaints in his address to all believers in Christ is I was central to the foundation of this church and I never heard about these priesthood, you know, priesthood restorations until 1835. So he points that out as well.

Julia 49:08 Yeah, true. Thank you for I. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, this is another thing that I think is really interesting. This priesthood thing is really interesting to me. So a couple of years before receiving the Book of the Book of Abraham papyri, Joseph Smith dictated a revelation in September of 1832 that reads, which Abraham received the priesthood from Melchizedek, who received it through the lineage of his fathers, even until Noah. Dan Vogel postulates that thus one 19th century source of inspiration for the text of the Book of Mormon was Smith's own revelations.

Kolby Reddish 49:41 I think you said Book of Mormon, but you mean Book of Abraham.

Julia 49:43 Oh, sorry, Book of Abraham. Yes.

Kolby Reddish 49:45 Yep.

Julia 49:46 Yeah. Anyway, I just thought that was really interesting to point out. Okay, this, there's another clip from Jasmine. It's. I've titled it Getting Our Own Planet.

Kolby Reddish 49:54 Right.

Julia 49:55 We can just play that one if

Guest 2 49:56 you want to understand why Latter Day Saints believe that we're going to get our planet someday, which is a complete, like, misnomer and misconception people have, like. Well, that stems originally from the Book of Abraham and then gets distorted into weird things.

Julia 50:10 So, yeah, I don't, I don't know where, why she's bringing this up from.

Kolby Reddish 50:16 Is that even true? Is that where that comes from? I don't remember Book of Abraham having really anything to do with that. That comes more from like King Fallette Sermon and Doctrine and Covenants Revelations, if I remember correctly.

Julia 50:29 I think the plurality of gods I think is in the Book of Abraham. But I don't, I don't know about that. Yeah, but, but yeah, I have a slide here from Brigham Young. This is from the Journal of Discourses, Volume 17 on page 143. This was given July 19th of 1874. As for their labor and pursuits in eternity, I have not time to talk upon that subject. But we shall have plenty to do. We shall not be idle. We shall go on from one step to another, reaching forth into the eternities until we become like the gods and shall be able to frame for ourselves by the behest and command of the Almighty, all those who are counted, worthy to be exalted and to become gods. Even the sons of God will go forth and have earths and worlds like unto those who frame this and millions and millions of others. Yeah, so, like, I don't. Just this person saying it gets distorted and.

Kolby Reddish 51:28 Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it's true what Jasmine said generally, which is like the, the very simplistic, like Mormons believe they're going to get their own planet. I don't think that's. I don't think that's a fair characterization of what the doctrine, like the doctrine that I once believed. I guess that's the way I'd put it. However, it's not, not accurate in the sense that the whole idea is we're going to be joint heirs with Christ. We're going to receive all that the Father has, just like Christ does, because of, you know, obedience and because of the atonement. That's what the articles of faith teach at least. And that if we do that, that we do become gods, we become like God. I think it's so weird to me to see apologists in the church generally because there's a Gospel topics essay about this specific question. Also, it's so weird to see them pivot away from something that I thought was a really cool innovation of Joseph Smith, a really cool way to say, what do we think it means to become like God? When the Bible talks about becoming like God, this is what we think it means. It's just weird to me to see them, like, pivot away from that to become more palatable to, like, evangelical Christians who think that's heretical, than to just like, lean into what I thought was a really cool, unique doctrine.

Nemo 52:45 I mean, there is an entire episode to be had on the church's desire to be accepted by mainstream Christianity. And the way they threw their toys out the pram over the list of the chaplaincy list out of the Department of Defense is a prime example of that. But I do want to point to a church Q and A that was put out maybe 2012 or so, where the question was, do Latter Day Saints believe they'll get their own planet? And that last part is in quotes. And they say, no, this idea is not taught in Latter Day Saint scripture, nor is it a doctrine of the Church. This misunderstanding stems from speculative comments unreflective of scriptural doctrine. So just when we get to the next few slides and we look at who may or may not have taught this idea and where this idea may or may not have come from, those People, whoever they may be, however important in the Church they may be, are making speculative comments unreflective of scriptural doctrine. I think it's important to remember. Yeah. What have you got, Julia?

Julia 53:41 I have another one from Brigham Nemo. Do you want to read this one?

Nemo 53:43 Sure. Brigham Young from the Journal of Discourses said, then will they become gods. They will never cease to increase and to multiply worlds without end. When they receive their crowns, their dominions, they then will be prepared to frame earths like unto ours, and to people them in the same manner as we have been brought forth by our parents, by our Father and God.

Julia 54:07 Yeah. So prepare earths like unto this one.

Nemo 54:11 Speculative comments unreflective of scriptural doctrine.

Julia 54:14 Yeah, the prophet's saying that, but. Yeah, but it's unreflective.

Nemo 54:17 Unreflective.

Julia 54:18 And so this next one is a quote from President Kimball. So this is the president of the Church, and it's called the privilege of holding the priesthood.

Kolby Reddish 54:26 Brethren, 225,000 of you here tonight. I suppose 225,000 of you may become gods. There seems to be plenty of space out there in the universe, and the Lord has proved that he knows how to do it. I think he could make or have us help make probably worlds for all of us. For every one of us. 225,000. Just think of the possibilities, the potential. Every little boy that has just been born becomes an heir to this glorious, glorious program.

Julia 55:16 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 55:17 If you just specifically say every little boy.

Julia 55:19 Well, he's talking to the. He's talking to the priesthood. I'm pretty sure it's a priesthood session, so, yeah, there would be young. I don't remember how old. 12.

Kolby Reddish 55:28 12. But he did say every little boy who's just been born. I think that's just odd to me to only reference the. I mean, yes, it is a priesthood session, I guess, but.

Nemo 55:37 But also, it's men that become the gods. Women are ordained to become priestesses unto their husbands.

Julia 55:43 Well, the word is goddesses, too, but I don't.

Nemo 55:45 But they have. Yeah, but it's always unto their husbands.

Julia 55:49 Yeah. So the temple video is void of Heavenly Mother. So you have two men creating and populating the earth, which I always found interesting.

Kolby Reddish 55:57 It's very progressive.

Julia 55:59 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 56:00 Happy pride, everybody. Okay.

Julia 56:03 Okay, so this next one is from Gospel Fundamentals Booklet. This is an official church publication from 2002. Kolby, do you want to read this one?

Kolby Reddish 56:10 Sure. To live in the highest part of the celestial kingdom is called exaltation or eternal life. To be able to live in this Part of the celestial kingdom. People must have been married in the temple and must have kept the sacred promises they made in the temple. They will receive everything our Father in heaven has and will become like him. They will even be able to have spirit children and make new worlds for them to live on and do all the things our heavenly, or, I'm sorry, our Father in heaven has done. People who are not married in the temple may live in other parts of the celestial kingdom, but they will not be exalted like a singles table, I think in the celestial kingdom.

Nemo 56:46 Very strange that an official church manual is making speculative comments and reflective of scriptural doctrine, isn't it?

Julia 56:52 Yeah, it's very strange. Well, then you have this next one, President Nelson in 2018. This is his Christmas devotional.

Nemo 57:00 He is saying, in essence, if you

Julia 57:04 choose to follow my son, if your

Kolby Reddish 57:07 desire is really to become more like him, then in time you may live

Nemo 57:15 as we live and preside over worlds

Kolby Reddish 57:18 and kingdoms as we do.

Julia 57:22 Yeah.

Nemo 57:23 How speculative.

Julia 57:25 Yeah. And here's that.

Kolby Reddish 57:26 He would have said that after that FAQ went out, I would think. That is so weird.

Nemo 57:31 Yeah, that was after it. Six years after it came out.

Kolby Reddish 57:35 I know this is like a very minor thing, but I truly don't understand how the cognitive dissonance over stuff like this doesn't get to more people. Like you're being being told X and not X by the same institution, like within just a few years of each other. Like he literally just said it after the FAQ had gone out. That's wild. I've never heard that line in the. That Christmas devotional.

Julia 57:58 Yeah, yeah. So this is the fa. This is the. The Frequently Asked Questions that you referenced. It says Latter Day Saints believe that God's purpose is to exalt us to become like Him. But this teaching is often misrepresented by those who caricature the faith. And then it says, it says, do have they. Do they believe that they will get their own planet? No, they say it's not taught in Latter Day Saint scripture, nor is it a doctrine of the church, and then goes on to explain more like what you were saying. But yeah, so prophets are. Stay on the stand. We've had three prophets and a church manual and I'm sure there's more that are not teaching doctrine over the pulpits. Yeah.

Nemo 58:32 Anyway, and that. And then Jasmine just gets to sit there as not even an official voice for the church and say, those men are misrepresenting the faith. Essentially she's saying, yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, that's completely it's mischaracterized. It's whatever. She's trying to talk down something that is still being taught over the pulpit as of eight years ago.

Kolby Reddish 58:50 Yeah, yeah. And I think it just reflects kind of, again, a methodological comment I have, which is if your objective is really to just understand the truth, you don't have to hide your beliefs this much. Like you don't have to get so cagey about the exact details. If you'll pull up that FAQ one more time, Julia. There was a line at the end that struck me.

Julia 59:09 Sure.

Kolby Reddish 59:10 And I was talking about Jasmine. But the Church does it in this FAQ too. Right. It says the very last line under, do Latter Day Saints believe they will get their own planet? The Church does not and has never purported to fully understand. Notice the word that's doing all the lifting there. Fully understand the specific of Christ's statement that in my Father's house are many mansions. They're saying, if I'm trying to steel man this, it's saying we don't know all of the details of what it means to be joint heirs with Christ. If I'm linking the. The two answers that are on the screen together, which, you know, they're sequential, so I think I'm allowed to do that. I just think that's such an odd thing. Like it may be true, that bottom statement, that, yes, they have never purported to fully understand the specifics. Does that make the specifics we just looked at not exist? Because that's where it's like you can tell the truth technically, while giving a very misrepresent or giving a very misrepresentative picture of the entirety of what's going on. And this last statement and what Jasmine said are very much doing that. Yes, it would be true to say that the Church has never claimed to fully understand the specifics. Does that mean that the specifics they've claimed in the past don't matter? Because unless that's. That's what you're trying to say, then we're just still left here with the Church told me X and now is claiming not X and then claims X after that. That's just so crazy that more people don't notice this. To me, yeah. And this is not some minor thing. This is literally like the. The crowning event of the plan of salvation. And they don't know and can't get right what it means to actually have exaltation. That is just. I don't know. Why would you believe their claims about, like President Nelson is the Guy who claimed prophets always teach the truth. And yet Jasmine is saying that he's, you know, speculating and making these speculative comments while he is the prophet of the church. It's just wild.

Julia 1:01:15 Yeah.

Nemo 1:01:16 Madness.

Julia 1:01:18 Yeah. So I know we've already referenced this one, but I, I love sharing this quote from. This is from Kerry Muelstein at Fair Conference.

Apologetic Theories About the Papyri

Kolby Reddish 1:01:27 And so I start out with an

Nemo 1:01:29 assumption that the Book of Abraham and

Kolby Reddish 1:01:31 the Book of Mormon and anything else, excuse me, that we get from the restored gospel is true.

Nemo 1:01:39 Therefore, any evidence I find, I will try and fit into that paradigm. I don't feel that I need to defend that paradigm.

Kolby Reddish 1:01:48 I feel that I want to understand the evidence that I find within that paradigm because to me, it's a given that it's true. Then, then sincerely, why would anyone take his scholarship on the Book of Abraham seriously? I don't understand why you would. He literally just told you that he presumes it's true. He doesn't feel he has to defend that paradigm that it is true. And that's. That's actually fine. I actually appreciate that he is open about that in this quote. And he's saying that he's not engaged in actual scholarship, trying to determine whether it's true. But Latter Day Saints and apologists like Jasmine are saying, like, well, if you look at the scholarship, it's actually a lot more complicated. Not according to him. He already told you he presumes it's true. And then all of his scholarship on this topic, provided he hasn't changed his methodology. And I don't know he's ever said, hey, when I said that several years ago, I've changed my mind about that. I think that's a really silly way to do scholarship on the Book of Abraham. He's telling you that all that complexity is to make sense of his presupposition that is true, and then trying to reconcile that with the evidence that's actually come out. Again, this comes back to my comment about sometimes apologists act like if they somehow establish that it's not technically impossible that they've, you know, scored some hit or some victory for their side, and it's just, it's simply not true. If you care about determining whether we have a good reason to believe that Joseph's original claims hold up. Kerry's not interested in that question. He's already told you he knows the answer to that question.

Julia 1:03:22 Yeah, and I keep going back to this idea of these four theories, and here I have only listed three, because we're going to talk about this, the next one later. But there's, there's def. There's several different theories to try to make this Book of Abraham okay, to make it theologically sound or whatever. And so the first one is the missing scroll theory that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from a portion of the papyri that no longer exists. It was destroyed in the Chicago Fire. We don't have it. The Long scroll theory since the text excel, since the text itself points us to the facsimiles that are existing in the Book of Breathings. The scroll connected to the surviving fragments was originally much longer and modern reconstruction underestimate the original length. So we're just missing this longer portion. The catalyst theory Joseph Smith did not translate the Egyptian characters into the Book of Abraham text, but rather act as a catalyst, as a trigger to this revelation. So these are the three main ones and then we'll again talk about the other one. But just if you're to me with Kerry Meelstein saying that, and he's one of the scholars that Jasmine quotes often, if you're trying to seek the truth of something, the Occam's Razor would kind of make these go away because the simplest answer is that Joseph just wasn't translating. But in order to make it work, there's all these different theories.

Egyptologists Respond to Apologist Claims

Julia 1:06:13 Okay, so there's another one here from this is one I've titled Ex Mormons Misrepresenting the Facts.

Kolby Reddish 1:06:19 That's the prophet's Job.

Guest 2 1:06:20 But what most ex Mormons either misrepresent or don't acknowledge is that those are just fragments. The original papyri was a large scroll. We have documentary evidence that suggests that there was way more papyri than we currently have and that was lost in the Chicago Fire.

Julia 1:06:36 Yeah, so she says there's a lot of evidence that it's that we have a lot that's been lost in the Chicago Fire. So we're going to talk about John Key for a second. So what Jasmine is likely talking about is the research done by John G. And she references. I think she references him in the video, too. I know she references Muhlstein, but he wrote a paper titled Eyewitnesses, Hearsay and Physical Evidence of the Joseph Smith papyri, published in 2000. In this paper, John Gee proposes that the length of the scroll of Hoar was actually about 10ft in length. Guy believes that the one other text on the scroll following Book of following Horus Book of Breathings was the Book of Abraham. So Book of the Book of Breathings is five feet. He's saying there was five more feet. That you have the Book of Readings, but then you also have the Book of Abraham tacked onto the end of that is my understanding.

Nemo 1:07:27 Right.

Kolby Reddish 1:07:29 And then although that would be a problem because we have the papyrus, like the facsimiles are on one end and the other they kind of book end. It's which any Egyptologist, which John Gee is, would know, I would think. I'm assuming we're going to go there because you're smiling.

Julia 1:07:48 Yeah, actually. Yeah. Do you actually want to read this next slide from Robert?

Kolby Reddish 1:07:53 I'm happy to. So Robert Rittner in his Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri says. However, Egyptologist Robert Rittner responded to guy in his 2011 book, the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri, claiming that 320 centimeters or about 10ft is the average length of a blank papyrus scroll as manufactured in the Ptolemaic era, not the length of the known books of breathing copied on sections cut from such rolls. He explained that the book of breathings are of uniform pattern and as a result of this uniformity, the original size of the papyrus is not in doubt. With textual restorations and the now lost facsimile three, the papyrus will have measured about 150 centimeters to 155 centimeters or 59 to 61 inches long or about 5ft.

Julia 1:08:39 So yeah, he's saying these are uniform. They're all the same. They're all the same size and this is how much it is. So there's no reason to think that they're longer.

Kolby Reddish 1:08:48 Just the idea that they're going to have a normal Egyptian funerary text for a completely separate guy. And then on the back of it, like how many books have either of you picked up where you read? And the first part of it is War and Peace and the back half of it is someone's personal journal. Like this just isn't a thing that's done. Does Dr. Gee have any example of a single text where there's been a book of breathings and then a first person narrative stitched onto the back of it? Like how would that make any sense?

Julia 1:09:20 He does, he does say, I will say in that paper, he does say that there, there is evidence for them to there being and I don't know, I'm not an Egyptologist and I didn't look into these claims but he says that there is evidence that there are two different types of scrolls on attached to one, but this specific books of Book of breathings which dates to 100 to 300 BC. There's no way that I would have this two. This man's book from I guess he lived in Abraham lived in 2000. So like that makes no sense and I don't know that he ever proposes that type of evidence.

Kolby Reddish 1:09:56 Yeah, so again, he's trying to find not technically impossible and act like he's proven something. Yeah, yeah.

Julia 1:10:03 So the next part of that is Robert Rittner. So in 2000 Rittner noted that the most that is missing from the text is simply two columns worth of Egyptian hieratic text and possibly a small vignette. But other than that there would be nothing more that would inflate its length beyond its current size. It is both unprecedented and unreasonable to assume that an intrusive text about a completely different matter, a narrative history of Abraham and his descendants would have been inserted into a document whose beginning, middle and end is devoted specifically to the resurrection of an Egyptian priest.

Kolby Reddish 1:10:39 Yeah, Yep. I see facsimile 3 over there on the left hand side of the screen. And, you know, I'm so grateful that Dr. Ridner took these claims seriously and addressed this. And it's worth noting, my memory from his interview with John and RFM is that he said one of the reasons he had done this is because he felt responsible for training John Gee in Egyptology. And so most of the time, Egyptologists are busy doing actual Egyptology work, not debunking 19th century, you know, not debunking 19th century claimed revelations by religious figures. And so I guess I'm just struck by the fact that I really appreciate him doing this. But facsimile 3, like, disproves all of this anyways, because there are characters in that facsimile that Joseph Smith translates, and those translations don't bear any resemblance to, like, actual Egyptian. Like, I guess I'm just struck by the fact that, like, even though we have this great response from Dr. Rittner, the entire thing, this entire argument by John G. Is a red herring. Like, we have no good reason to believe that Joseph Smith could be translating Egyptian based on facsimile three alone.

Julia 1:11:55 Yeah, that's a great point. Okay, so there's another clip that I have here from Jasmine where she's saying documentary evidence that there's way more papyri.

Guest 2 1:12:08 The original papyri was a large scroll. We have documentary evidence that suggests that there was way more papyri than we currently have, and that was lost in the Chicago Fire.

Julia 1:12:17 Okay, I just want to. Yeah. Just to show.

Nemo 1:12:20 Okay. What evidence. Explain it, Jasmine, please.

Julia 1:12:24 Okay, so it is likely that Jasmine is referring to the same eight eyewitness accounts that Kerry Muelstein used in his 2016 paper titled Papyri and Presumptions to Support a Long Scroll Theory.

Kolby Reddish 1:12:36 And I'm going to pause you there and just say this is the same Kerry Muelstein that literally just told us that you listened to in your own voice. See how much of a circle this reasoning is. Right. She's citing to Carrie Meelstein and saying, well, there's this really legitimate scholarship over here that makes what the ex Mormons say about the Book of Abraham not true. And here's the guy that I'm going to cite to this idea that I'm going to cite to that comes from Kerry Meelstein, the guy who told you I start with the presupposition that all of this is true and all of my scholarship, by extension, is just trying to make sense from that starting point, which is what we're trying to analyze. Is there good reason to believe that Joseph Smith could do what he claimed to do in the Book of Abraham? Materials.

Julia 1:13:21 Yeah, that was great. Okay. So Meelstein's argument is in two parts. First, he hopes that these accounts refer to the long scrolls as the source of the Book of Abraham. Second, he contends that the sources sometimes refer to images or drawings that appear in vignettes that are no longer extant. Extant. So there's images we don't have. People said that longer. So those are kind of the two things that.

Nemo 1:13:43 To look for, he hopes. I mean, that's a great. That's a great way to engage in academia.

Julia 1:13:49 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 1:13:50 It's also worth noting, just because I didn't. That both John Gee and Kerry Mealstein work for BYU in. In some capacity. I can't remember which department exactly they work in, but I guess I'm just struck by the fact how often apologists like Jasmine will point to individuals like Dan Vogel or other ex Mormons, like all of us. Right. And say, well, it's just their bias. It's their bias that keeps them from seeing it the way we do. It's like, so your response to that problem is a guy who works for the institution that is funded exclusively by the church that furthers the church's religious mission, and that's fine.

Nemo 1:14:28 From which he could be fired for unorthodoxy.

Kolby Reddish 1:14:31 Correct.

Nemo 1:14:32 Yeah.

Julia 1:14:32 Yeah. But the bias of what Mjelsein was saying, I. Everything I fit into this view, that it's true, like, that's. That is what bias is.

Nemo 1:14:40 Open with his bias, at least.

Julia 1:14:41 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 1:14:42 Yes. Yes. I do believe he should be praised for that. Frankly, I do.

Julia 1:14:47 Yeah. Okay. So again, this is the. A lot of this is coming from Dan Vogel's book, and I encourage everyone to get it and read it. And if you want to know more about this topic. Okay, so now we're going to go through these sources that Carrie Mealsen has been speaking of and then that Dan Vogel has now has also presented on nima. Do you want to talk about this one?

Nemo 1:15:08 Sure.

Julia 1:15:09 Yeah.

Nemo 1:15:09 In 1897, the Deseret News published an article where Mormon missionary Foster W. Jones shared an interview he had with Henry Tressler. Tressler recalled events that happened in 1838, 59 years previous. Mr. Tressler says he and the prophet Joseph sat upon a log and broiled Meat together on a log fire. He also saw the roles of papyrus from which the pearl of great price was translated.

Kolby Reddish 1:15:37 Okay, isn't that interesting that when it's a 59 year recollection and it's favorable to Carrie Beelstein's argument or an apologetic argument, that that's completely fine, but when it's something critical of the church or they don't need to rely on, you know, sourcing is a problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's.

Julia 1:15:56 Anyways, very, very good point. Nemo, do you actually want to continue with this one?

Nemo 1:15:59 Yeah, yeah. Muelstein argues that while Tracer's biography does not appear to be trying to distinguish between the papyrus fragments and roles, he is specific that after having spoken with Joseph Smith about the antiquities, Tresor recounted that the roles or scrolls were the source of the Book of Abraham. Dan Fogel responded by saying, who knows what 86 year old tracer told Mormon missionary Foster W. Jones during the three hour long interview that Jones briefly summarised. For example, it is unclear if it was Tresor or Jones who connected the scrolls with the Mormon scripture. We do not know what Tressler says may have been seen or have been told about the Egyptian documents. Perhaps he saw facsimile three on the intact two foot horse scroll and made assumptions. He does not distinguish between the mounted fragments and the scrolls as the source of Abraham. Tressler must be more accurately described as a non witness.

Julia 1:16:52 Yeah, even reading that again, I don't really see why, why Mealstein would pull this quote to support him anyway.

Kolby Reddish 1:16:59 Yeah, no, it doesn't say.

Nemo 1:17:00 It's too vague.

Julia 1:17:02 It's too vague.

Kolby Reddish 1:17:02 Exactly.

Julia 1:17:03 Yeah. Okay, so there's another thing that I want to reference and Kolby, I think you brought this up as well. So the Book of Abraham. So before we continue, the Book of Abraham twice refers to the accompanying vignette depicting Abraham upon an altar and an idolatrous priest attempting to sacrifice him. So the first one is in Abraham 1:12. It reads that you may have a knowledge of this altar. I will refer you to the representation at the commencement of this record referring to the lion couch in facsimile 1. And second is in Abraham 1:14. That reads that you have an understanding of these gods. I have given you the fashion of them. And the figures at the beginning referring to the Canopic jars in facsimile 1. So the text refers specifically to these vignettes. So just pointing that out.

The Missing Scroll Theory Examined

Nemo 1:17:49 Very important because apologists will try to disconnect them.

Julia 1:17:53 Yeah. Kolby, do you want to read this one?

Kolby Reddish 1:17:56 I do. So this comes from William Appleby in 1841 and 1848. The writings are chiefly in the Egyptian language, with the exception of a little Hebrew, I believe. Oh, that's odd. They give a description of some of the scenes in ancient Egypt, of their worship, their idol, gods, etc. The writings are beautiful and plain, composed of red and black ink. There is a perceptible difference between the writings. Joseph appears to have been the best scribe. There are also representations of men, beasts, birds, foul and oxen attached to a kind of plow and a female guiding it. Also, the serpent. When he beguiled Eve, he. Oh, I'm just so struck by that that they see a snake and they automatically assume it has to be, you know, the Genesis account, because the Egyptians certainly didn't have their own religion that featured snakes. He appeared with two legs, erect in the form and appearance of a man, but his head in the form and representing the serpent which his. With his forked tongue extended.

Julia 1:18:59 So, yeah. So Muelstein argues that since the image on the fragment attributed to Joseph son of Jacob or Israel, the serpent's tongue is not extended, not extended. That this is a reference to a vignette or scroll that has been lost. So we have a picture. This is one of the pictures on the Joseph in Egypt. You can see the snake there with the two legs and there's no tongue extended.

Kolby Reddish 1:19:19 So, seriously, what his argument is, is it's more likely to believe that there's a missing, separate illustration of a snake with legs talking to a woman that was lost than that maybe William Appleby got that one particular detail wrong.

Nemo 1:19:36 Yes.

Julia 1:19:36 Okay, so when we consider that when Appleby was probably not looking at the papyrus when he was writing in his journal, his description of the extant documents was reasonably accurate. I think it was. Dan Vogel points out that while his journal was dated in 1841, Appleby didn't actually write it until 1848 from an earlier version, edited and supplemented by the text of the Book of Abraham published in the Times and seasons in 1842. So, yeah, this is one of Nielsen's arguments, is that this, because the snake's tongue is not out, he must be referring to something different. So this is a different one because

Nemo 1:20:13 he missed the tongue out of his description. It's an entirely different. Entirely different image. That's his argument.

Julia 1:20:20 Yeah. But Vogel pointed out that an earlier account from William Appleby that was published in the Christian observer in London, England on September 10th of 1841, he makes no reference to the snake with a Forked tongue. Dan Vogel suggests that given the lapse of time and the reference to a snake's forked tongue is just the detail of an imperfect memory that an imperfect memory might supply. And then I have this next section. Nima, do you want to read the second paragraph?

Nemo 1:20:45 Absolutely. Visited brother Joseph, received instruction concerning baptism for the dead. Read the revelation as given by the Lord last January. Viewed four mummies, males and three females brought from ancient Thebes in Egypt. Saw the role of papyrus. Thebes saw the role of papyrus and the writing thereon taken from the bosom of the male mummies, being some of the writings of ancient Abraham and of Joseph, who was sold into Egypt. The writing is in the Egyptian language and gives a description of some of the scenes in ancient Egypt, also of their worship, their gods. And the writing is beautiful and plain, being composed of red and black ink. You can perceive a wide difference between the writing as Joseph appears to have been the best scribe.

Julia 1:21:33 Yeah, so that's his account for this earlier account. And there's no reference to the snake. He just says he saw the role of papyrus and then he is the composed in red and blacking. Is specifically this the book of the dead from that woman that. I can't say her name. So that's how we know that that's the Joseph Joseph papyri.

Kolby Reddish 1:21:51 So, yeah, can we. Can we pause here? I want to read the. On the left hand side you have the original account. And the next paragraph is just very interesting to me. Four mummies from ancient Thebes exhibited in the city of Nauvoo, a village on the borders of Western civilization. Excellent craft and the role written by Abraham and Joseph in the Egyptian language. Double exclamation mark. Admitting that this is supremely bungling and absurd. Yet antiquarians, we think, will concede that there is more good taste in exhibiting the writings of Abraham and Joseph to confirm the faith of the Wavering than in the contrivance of the Romish priests who, to accomplish the same purpose, exhibit the bones and relics of ancient saints. So you can see the literality of someone who was there, who had conversations with Joseph Smith, who saw these papyrus with his own eyes. It's just so interesting to me. Like, look at what he's saying and even look at the way he's pitching it. We think that this is going to confirm the faith of the Wavering rather than. And when he's talking about Romish priests, he's talking about Catholicism, obviously, and rivalry Catholicism.

Nemo 1:22:57 Like here we have the blood of Jesus, or here we have the shroud or, you know, but then when you

Kolby Reddish 1:23:02 compare now what he's claiming to, what Jasmine's claiming is she's going to give you four different theories on why the book of Abraham isn't technically impossible, why it hasn't been completely disproven. You can just see the contrast between them. They were expecting that antiquarians would confirm that secular historians, that Egyptologists, even though that word didn't probably exist at that time, that they would confirm this so that it would confirm the faith of the wavering. Instead, we've seen the exact opposite. And that's not even a problem for apologists.

Nemo 1:23:33 Like, he looks at it as faith affirming, whereas Jasmine's saying, oh, it doesn't really matter. Even if it weren't true, that wouldn't wave in my faith because so, well, it was designed to bolster it according to the people that were there.

Julia 1:23:45 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 1:23:46 It reminds me so much of Joseph Smith's treasure digging methodology. Also. The treasure is always right around the corner. It's always on the next dig. It's always, we missed something on this time. That that next piece of evidence is going to confirm your faith. That's what you're just always told. It's always just one step away.

Julia 1:24:03 Yeah, yeah. So this next.

Nemo 1:24:07 People get tired of waiting.

Julia 1:24:09 Yeah. Okay, so this next account comes from Charlotte Haven. This is in 1843-1890. So shortly after visiting Nauvoo in 1843, Charlotte Haven wrote a letter to her mother describing her experience. This letter was published in the Overland Monthly in December of 1890. So there's a little bit of a gap, but it's still a letter dated 1843. Madam Smith's residence is her. Madam Smith's residence is a log house very near her son. So this is Joseph Smith's mother. She opened the door and received us cordially. She is a motherly kind of woman of about 60 years. She receives a little penance by exhibiting the mummies to strangers. I think it was 25 cents, which I think is roughly 8 to $9 today. When we asked to see them, she lit a candle and conducted us up a short, narrow stairway to a low, dark room under the roof. On one side were standing half a dozen mummies to which she introduced us King Oneidas and his royal household, one she did not know. She then took up what seemed to be a club wrapped in a dark cloth and said, this is the leg of Pharaoh's daughter, the one that saved Moses. And it continues repressing a Smile. I looked from the mummies to the old lady, but could detect nothing but earnestness and sincerity of her countenance. Then she turned to a long table, set her candlestick down, and opened a long roll of manuscript saying it was the writing of Abraham Isaac, written in Hebrew and Sanskrit. And she read seven minutes from it as if it were English. It sounded very much like passages from the Old Testament, and it might have been for anything we knew. But she said she read it through the inspiration of her son Joseph, in whom she seemed to have perfect confidence. Then, in the same way she interpreted, she interpreted to us hieroglyphics from another scroll. One was Mother Eve being tempted by this serpent, who. This serpent, I mean, was standing on the tip of his tail with which his two legs formed a tripod and had his head in Eve's ear. I said, but serpents don't have legs. They did before the fall. She asserted with confidence, with perfect confidence. The judge slipped a coin in her hand, which she received smilingly with a pleasant come again as we bade her goodbye. So I love that story. Okay, so because. Because Charlotte said that the images came from another. Another role, and that the serpent was standing on the tip of his tail with which his two legs formed a tripod, when in fact. When it in fact does not. Muelstein contends that Haven is describing scenes that are not on any of the exceptions extent papyrus. According to Dan Vogel, Haven evidently combined in her memory the image of the walking snake with a tripod looking baboon which is pictured here. These are all from the scroll from the Book of the Dead adorning the rising sun, which someone copied onto a folded sheet in July of 1835 from a badly damaged portion of the Te Men's Book of the Dead. So. So Charlotte's describing images that we don't have.

Nemo 1:27:16 Yeah, and we, I mean, we can't say for certain what Charlotte did or did not do with her memory. Right. But this is a very simple explanation if you're looking at it from Occam's razor. What's more simple, that she misremembered an image that is otherwise entirely accurate, or that this therefore means there is an entire missing papyri that somehow. Okay, so a missing papyri that would be in with a set of papyri that the church has admitted don't come from the time of Abraham anyway, but that would somehow magically contain the writings of Abraham that we need it to contain in order for it to be the book of Abraham. As Joseph Smith Described it. That missing command would somehow have to be thousands of years different in order for it to work.

Kolby Reddish 1:28:07 Yeah. And also, why would the snake and Eve be part of Abraham's narrative in any way? Like, that doesn't even make any sense. It's just this. This. To me, I'm struck by the fact that Muelstein's argument is basically that there's two different snake images. So they've invented or imagined this potential second snake image. And that's what he's using to make his argument. This is exactly like how the church has come up with two cumorahs. Like there's two hill cumorahs. Because the one that. That we know about isn't the right one. I don't know. To collapse this down with Occam's razor, it's just like. Or maybe. I don't know, maybe Dr. Muelstein, maybe the explanation you've already told us, you take off the table at the very beginning. The simplest one is just the way we should go. Instead of inventing two different papyri with snake. Snake images on it.

Julia 1:29:03 Yeah. But also. So his snake that's missing needs a third leg or a tail of some kind. Or maybe its tail is positioned differently and with his tongue out. So, yeah.

Nemo 1:29:13 Oh, no. Sorry to be sarcastic, but all it takes is for that snake's tail to be slightly longer in someone's mind's eye. And it's there.

Julia 1:29:25 Yeah. Okay. So if we're going to the next one. So this is from Benjamin Ashby. Nemo. Will you read this one?

Nemo 1:29:33 Sure. Benjamin Ashby wrote his autobiography sometime between 1897 and 1904. He would have been only 15 years old when he saw the papyri. He recalls one day with my mother, I visited his house when he was not in. But we spent an interesting time with his mother. She exhibited the mummies from which the Book of Abraham was taken, as well as the original papyrus on which it was written. Milstein argues it is not fully clear, but it appears that his reference to the original papyrus refers to the long roll as the source. Since he does not mention frames to the long roll as the source. Sorry. Since he does not mention frames or slides as a typical. As is typical when they were exhibited.

Kolby Reddish 1:30:20 So what he's talking about here is the scrap. Some of the scraps of papyrus that we do have were mounted onto, like, glass slides and framed to preserve them. And so I guess what he's trying to do is separate the role from the slides which are the. What we have today. Right. So he's trying to say the Book of Abraham is obviously not coming from what we have today. That's what he's trying to argue with, breaking this apart. Okay. Yeah.

Nemo 1:30:50 Even though the Book of Abraham itself states that it is connected to the things that we have today. To the vignettes.

Julia 1:30:56 Yes. Which is what we pointed out earlier. Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 1:30:58 It also. Forgive me for borrowing an argument from the apologists and cry presentism for a second, but I'm not exactly sure when the ones that we have were mounted. And so I guess I'm just struck by the fact that at some point they were on roles before they were mounted. How like so much of this he's just like so focused on taking these accounts at absolute face value. And I'm just struck by again, this methodological difference. When Joseph Smith writes that the Book of Abraham is translated from rolls of papyrus that Abraham wrote with his own hand, we can't take that literally. But he's going to take the most absolute minute details of these accounts absolutely literally simply because it's favorable to the argument that he's making. This is by a 15 year old

Nemo 1:31:53 kid 55 years later.

Kolby Reddish 1:31:56 This is confirmation bias in full effect. Like you can see the methodological difference in full effect just through that example. Like when it's Joseph Smith's claims and what he's supposedly revealing from God. We're not going to take that literally. But when it's useful to my argument, I'm going to take these letters from people who are seeing these scrolls exhibited in like if when we were looking at Charlotte Haven's account. It's almost like a supernatural otherworldly experience. They go up to the attic and they're seeing it all by candlelight that we can take to the bank and that we need to take absolutely literally. This is just again, I can't believe anyone takes care of seriously, frankly.

Julia 1:32:34 That is an excellent point. That was. That was really good. Okay, so for Benjamin Ashby, Dan Vogel concludes that Benjamin Ashby's statement is many decades later and is vague. Nothing in a statement can be reasonably constructed to mean as mule scene represents that Ashby seems to indicate that the long roll rather than the mounted fragments was the original source. Ashby is another non witness. Yeah, these just seem so weak so far. I mean I can, I can understand a little bit about the snake ones with, with Charlotte and was it like Appleby? Yeah, but like these other ones are just so. They're just. They are non witnesses.

Nemo 1:33:13 Look, see, he mentioned papyrus. That must mean that my interpretation then of which papyrus we used in the book of Abraham is true. Okay, I guess, Kerry, if you want to go that way.

Kolby Reddish 1:33:22 Well, the reality is all of those accounts we just read, Applebee's, Charlotte Havens, and the last one to me you can. They could be used to reach either conclusion. So I can understand why Muelstein's making the argument he is. It's because he needs to. He's already told you that. Right, in that clip that we said he needs to make five find some way for this to work. But they support Dan Vogel's interpretation just as equally. They're vague statements like it's as simple as that. Like, if it can go either way, why would we presume Carrie Muelstein's question begging? Yeah, I don't know.

Guest 1:33:58 Yeah.

Julia 1:34:00 Nemo, will you read this one?

Nemo 1:34:02 Yes, I will. Okay. Unnamed observer. Mr. So we're off to a good start. We visited the mother of the prophet, a respectable looking old lady who has four mummies from exhibition who she says were a king and queen and their son and daughter and gives the names of each. She produced a black looking scroll which she told us was papyrus found upon the breast of the king, part of which the prophet had unrolled and read. And she had passed the deciphered sheets on the leaves of a book which she showed us. The roll was as dark as the bones of the mummies and bore very much the same appearance. But the open sheets were exceedingly like thin parchment and of quite a light color. There were birds, fishes, and fantastic looking people interspersed amidst hieroglyphics. But the old lady explained the meaning of them all as Joseph had interpreted them to her.

Julia 1:35:00 Yeah, so he's saying here, there's birds, fishes, fantastic looking people interspread amidst hieroglyphics. And that's important. So Muelstein notes that the anonymous observer described birds, fishes and fantastic looking people, and that we have no depictions of fish. There are no fish on any of these papyrus, from which Muelstein infers that the Book of Abraham was on a long scroll, not mounted fragments. However, this source describes what was seen on the open sheets, not on the papyrus roll. And it is possible that the observer was mistaken since he was describing from memory he had seen. And this next one, these are just pictures that were on the, that are on the Book of the Dead. There, there's birds, you've got, you've got falcon, you've got these snake kind of creatures, you've got this lion type thing in the corner. You have these, these two oxen, and there is a cart with a woman pushing it or guiding it. And then you have this winged figure at the top. So any. These are fantastic looking creatures people, I guess. But there's no fish. So. So, so Yelstein is saying that.

Kolby Reddish 1:36:08 Checkmate.

Nemo 1:36:09 Checkmate. Atheists. It's, you know, when someone's making a verbal list like that, you know, they just throw fish in again. I don't see how you can then take that one small detail and extrapolate it to mean therefore. Therefore we must. It's like they said, it's an archaeologically clean hill. They said that about the hill Cumorah. Therefore we must look elsewhere for that. No. Or we accept that the hill that Joseph Smith believed it was is archaeologically clean and therefore the things that happen similarly, it's therefore we must look elsewhere for these fish. No, we. We accept the other evidences that the text speaks to itself of being from the place where the vignettes are found. And so there is no other scroll to look for. It just isn't what we thought it was.

Kolby Reddish 1:37:05 Yeah, but Carrie's already told you he doesn't. He's not going to accept that conclusion. Yeah.

Eyewitness Accounts of the Papyri

Julia 1:38:46 Okay, so this next witness account is from Jerusha Blanchard. Jerusha W. Blanchard was the granddaughter of Hiram Smith. She said she used to hide in the old cabinet that held the mummies in the early 1850s when she was about five years of age. In recounting her childhood, she described the mummies. There were three mummies, the old Egyptian king and the queen and their daughter. The bodies were wrapped in seven layers of linen, cut in thin strips. In the arms of the old king lay the roll of papyrus from which our prophet translated the Book of Abraham. Mielstein says that the account is firsthand regarding the papyrus and secondhand regarding the source of the Book of Abraham. Blanchard was only six years old in 1856 when Lucy. When Lucy Smith died and the mummies and papyri were sold to Abel Combs and her SEMA was given 66 years later. Her account provides no support for the missing papyrus theory.

Kolby Reddish 1:39:42 It's also interesting. Again, I made this methodological difference comment a few slides ago, but I'll make it again here. Jerusha says there are three mummies. One of the other witnesses says there was half a dozen. There have been different numbers in every single one of these accounts based on the number of mummies.

Nemo 1:39:59 So there's four in the last one.

Kolby Reddish 1:40:00 But Carrie doesn't care about that inconsistency. Right, because he can't use that one to effectively argue that there's a missing scroll. It's just this is what happens when you're like, dealing with late accounts of like a weird event like this. People are going to get the details wrong. That's what happens. That's why eyewitness accounts for me are never sufficient to believe at just at face value exactly that that's the way it happened, because people remember things wrong. I'm also struck by the fact that when she's five years of age, she's hiding in a cabinet that held the mummies. You couldn't have paid me enough money in the world, probably even today, to hide in a cabinet with actual mummies. Like the image of a five year old crawling into a cabinet with a bunch of mummies is kind of an odd one. To me, yeah.

Nemo 1:40:49 Ah, but presentism, Kolby, you understand through your modern context that those are dead bodies. She may not have known.

Kolby Reddish 1:40:58 She hadn't seen the cinematic classic featuring Brendan Fraser, the Mummy.

Julia 1:41:02 That's true. Yeah. That's it. That's the answer. Okay, so this next is Joseph Smith iii. Kolby, do you want to read this one?

Kolby Reddish 1:41:10 I do. So this is in a letter written 1898 and later published in the Saints Herald in 1899. Joseph Smith III wrote the papyrus from which the Book of Abraham was said to have been translated by Father. Already he's telling you that this isn't a first hand account. The book, the papyrus from which the Book of Abraham, which was said to have been translated by Father, was with other portions found in a roll with some Egyptian mummies pasted on either paper or linen and put into a flat drawers, some dozen or 16 in number. Part of the stock, one case of mummies and part or all of the cases of drawers found their way to Woods Museum, Chicago and apart to St. Louis, where we never learned. Where we never learned. I personally, in company with Elder Elijah Banta, my mother's maiden name is Banta. I wonder if I'm related of Sandwich, Illinois, saw the mummies and case of drawers in the museum in Chicago before the Great Fire in 1871, in which they undoubtedly perished with the rest of the accumulated relics and curiosities.

Julia 1:42:13 Yeah, so he says part or some of them, some of these cases found their way to the Woods Museum.

Kolby Reddish 1:42:21 This is obviously before the papyrus re emerged in that was, I think in 1976. So he's just saying that as far as he knew, they were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire.

Julia 1:42:34 Yeah, well, everyone thought that. Yeah. So Muelstein claims that Joseph Smith III considered the papyri that burned in the Great Chicago Fire to be the source of the Book of Abraham.

Kolby Reddish 1:42:43 I'm going to pause you. No, he doesn't, he doesn't say that. He literally does not say that. Like he's misrepresenting the source. And this is supposedly a PhD was said to have been translated by my father.

Julia 1:42:55 Was said. Yeah, that's great. Joseph Smith III does not specify that the long roll was the source of the Book of Abraham, but does indicate that it was the papyrus that we no longer have. Den explains that Joseph Smith III never mentions an intact scroll, going to any museum or seeing one in Chicago, but clearly states that the papyrus that produced the Book of Abraham was glued to paper or linen and kept in a small case of flat drawers. He assumed part or all the cases of drawers containing the source of Abraham found them, followed the mummies to the Chicago Museum, and were destroyed in the fire, as did everyone else. Joseph Smith III's statement does not support the Long scroll theory, but rather refutes it.

Nemo 1:43:38 I would also like to say, you know what else? Joseph Smith III did claim to be the rightful heir to the prophetic mantle of his father. That's another thing that he claimed. So, you know, he's being turned to as this reliable witness only when it suits people like Kerry Milstein because he thinks his statements support his theories in the Book of Abraham. But Kerry Milstein is never going to take anything Joseph Smith III says seriously about, say, matters of succession when the church split. Or how about the death of Joseph Smith or polygamy or anything like that. Right. So he's. He's not a trustworthy witness in many of those cases, but yet here, all of a sudden, Joseph Smith III's fair game.

Julia 1:44:19 Yeah. Yeah,

Nemo 1:44:24 I can't. I spotted that as well, Kolby. And I just cannot believe that Kerry says that Joseph Smith III claims something he just absolutely doesn't.

Kolby Reddish 1:44:32 Yeah.

Julia 1:44:33 Yes.

Kolby Reddish 1:44:33 And even if he. We know that Joseph Smith iii, like, based on his age, he would have had no basis to really understand what was going on. Like, this is the other thing, I guess, that I just look at slightly differently because of my experience as an attorney is, like, we have protections against hearsay testimony in court for this exact reason. Like, Joseph Smith III is just recounting a story that he's heard which may or may not be accurate, and his recounting of the recounting may or may not be accurate. And that's the reason that we have protection against hearsay in trials, to protect people's due process rights. And because the reasons that the rules we have in court have evolved the way they have. One of the gifts that your people, Nemo the British, gave us is the British common law. And we in the American system, we have tinkered and tailored with this system because these rules exist for a reason. Like, there's a method behind this madness. The rules of evidence exist because they have proven over literally hundreds of years to be good ways for us to figure out what is and isn't true. And we have protections against hearsay testimony as part of those rules of evidence for that exact reason, because otherwise people can do exactly what Kerry Muelstein did here, misrepresent what that person even actually said. And that person doesn't even have independent knowledge or personal knowledge of what they're Claiming in the first place. So you're getting a bad recapitulation of an original story that then is itself its own bad recapitulation of the bad recapitulation of an original story. It's amazing.

Guest 1:46:12 Yeah.

Julia 1:46:12 Yeah, that's great. Okay, so this one, I feel like this leads really well into these next ones, and I think these ones are my favorite because I feel like these ones are the ones that really, to me, show that there could have been a long scroll. But then Dan Vogel, of course, shows evidence that this is not the case. Kolby, will you actually read this slide?

Kolby Reddish 1:46:28 I will. So this comes from Hugh Nibley. Another source that John Gee has used to argue a long scroll or missing scroll theory in his 1992 Tragedy of Errors comes from Hugh Nibley, the nephew of Joseph F. Smith. I didn't actually know that. In the summer of 1968, Dialogue, a journal of Mormon thought an article by Nibley titled Phase One, or. I'm sorry, he published an article by Nibley titled Phase One. In it, he writes, we are told that the papyri were in beautiful condition when Joseph Smith got them and that one of them, when unrolled on the floor, extended through two rooms of the mansion house. Those we have today are mounted on paper showing maps of the Kirtland area. But that suggests that the mounting took place only after the Kirtland period, when all thought of returning to Kirtland was given up and the precious maps had become waste paper.

Julia 1:47:19 Yeah, so I've been to the.

Kolby Reddish 1:47:22 It's just a just so story. There's no real reason to believe that. Yeah, well, I'm not even talking about that part. I'm talking about that suggests that the mounting took place only after the Kirtland period. We don't. We don't know that.

Julia 1:47:34 Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. So there's several indications that this is not a direct source and he's saying. Which he isn't, and then just the idea of it being unrolled and going through two rooms. I feel like this is probably the best quote to use because the other ones aren't really talking about the length of it. This one is specifically discussing the length, so. However, what John G. Fails to point out is that earlier, Hugh Nibley leaves out this critical detail of it extending to the two rooms in the improvement era. Published in March of 1968, some four months before his Dialogue article, Nibley published an article titled A New look at the Pearl of Great Price. Hugh Nibley recalls a story that was shared with his with him by President Joseph F. Smith. So his uncle, who was. Oh, yeah. Who was the nephew of Joseph Smith Jr. Joseph F. Smith was born. So they're both related. So Joseph, you have Nibley and then Joseph F. Is related to Joseph Smith.

Nemo 1:48:27 Yeah, it's two instances of nepotism. A nephew of a nephew.

Julia 1:48:31 Yeah, literally nepotism. Okay. Joseph F. Smith was born in 1838 and would have only been five years old during this memory. So very much like Jerusha being so young. So he says. President Smith, as elder Nibley recalled with his remarkable memory, recalled with tears the familiar sight of Uncle Joseph kneeling on the floor of the front room with the Egyptian manuscripts spread all around, out all around him, weighed down by rocks and books. As with intense concentration, he would study a line of characters, jotting down an impression in a little notebook as he went. So this one, four months earlier, leaves off the length. What were you gonna say?

Nemo 1:49:13 It shows that he's taking serious attempts also to understand the writing on these scrolls and they're not just a catalyst.

Julia 1:49:21 That's a really good point too. Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 1:49:22 It also doesn't involve the scribes in any way. So it's not necessarily impossible that Joseph is looking at the papyra by himself. But I guess I just, again, I'm just struck by the fact that when these accounts have details that they want to use to their advantage, they matter when there are details that differ that don't support their argument, or maybe would suggest that the accounts are, you know, not completely accurate. Or maybe they're trying to. As it says here, like he was five years old during this memory. Like, how accurate can you really be expected to remember things as a five year old? Like.

Julia 1:50:05 But also he's a five year old remembering what his uncle told him about his uncle. Right. So there's. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kolby Reddish 1:50:15 Wow.

Julia 1:50:16 Yeah. Okay, so that one kind of closes out the. The long scroll theory. So these were the ones that were put forth. Oh, there's a longer one. And I think we've shown that that's not that there's really no reason to think that there should be a longer scroll.

Kolby Reddish 1:50:28 Would you mind? Julia, before we move to catalyst theory, can we go back to the.

Julia 1:50:33 Sure.

Kolby Reddish 1:50:33 The slide where you had the three theories laid out together.

Julia 1:50:37 Oh, sure, yeah. Of course. One second.

Kolby Reddish 1:50:41 I know I opened with this telling that story of waking my wife up at 3:30 in the morning, but one of the things I'm really struck by is all of these details. I really appreciate Dan's work on this. I appreciate you putting all these slides together. Obviously it's important to get into these level of details for people who are curious. But I want to just do a very high level response to the Missing scroll and the Long scroll theory. So we just looked at the Missing scroll and Long scroll theories in great detail. Right. And I really appreciate that we've gone through all these details. But for people who just want a very pointed, easy response to the Missing scroll and the Long scroll theories, I want to point out, and I already made this point, but that the Missing Scroll Theory is completely defeated by the Fact that facsimile 3 has Egyptian characters on it which Joseph completely mistranslates. He doesn't get anything. Right. There are characters with the names above each of those figures on facsimile 3 that are translated by Joseph Smith and they don't bear any resemblance to what Egyptologists would translate them today. So the Missing Scroll Theory may be interesting in and of itself, but if you're just wondering if there is some validity to the claim that Joseph Smith translated anything accurately when it comes to Egyptian, that fact defeats that and makes the Missing Scroll Theory a complete red herring. Interesting history if you want to learn about it. But if you're just interested in the question, could Joseph Smith actually Translate Egyptian? Facsimile 3 defeats this and makes the Missing Scroll Theory again a complete. Just aside, my rebuttal for the Long

Nemo 1:52:15 Scroll Theory is simply that Egyptologists know how long those scrolls typically are. They know how long a Book of Breathings is a standardized document. It is something that is done for many people who die. And so Egyptologists know what length those documents should be. And so they know when it's laid out, which I think we had it in a diagram earlier, we had on there how much would be missing or not missing. And to take us back to our information density, there is no amount of scroll that could be missing that would contain enough information to have the Book of Abraham within it. Which means we have to look to what's there and what's there isn't what Joseph Smith said it was.

Kolby Reddish 1:52:50 Yes. And to believe the Long Scroll Theory has any validity, you have to buy this original idea that you can have the Book of Abraham either amended onto the back, appended onto the back, or in the middle of the Book of Breathings, which itself I think is just kind of patently ridiculous. And that, I think is a defeater also of the Long Scroll Theory in addition to those details. Nemo. But you have to be willing to accept the idea that the Book of Abraham, a first person narrative that again, building on the ideas of Dr. John Lundwall, isn't a form of record keeping that existed in that time period in which Abraham existed would have been appended onto the back of this book of breathings that relates to an entirely different person's faith tradition, which is co opted by Joseph Smith's work.

Nemo 1:53:41 And just to jump the chart for a second, while we're here looking at the Catholic theory, again, it's really simply rebutted by the fact that if we look at that facsimile that's on screen right now, or we look at the hypercephalous, Joseph made clear attempts to provide labels to the figures that appear on those, on those images, to label those images, and he labels them all incorrectly. So therefore, because the text is connected to the facsimiles, Joseph Smith did translate in the meaning that we all would understand that word to mean those figures and those images incorrectly.

Kolby Reddish 1:54:20 So I agree. So let's go back to the details on the Catalyst.

Julia 1:54:25 Yeah, sure. I'll just say, you know, again, what we just covered with the long scroll theory, none of these eyewitness accounts that are put forth by, by John G. Or Kerry Meelstein hold up at all for us to suggest that there would have been a long scroll.

Kolby Reddish 1:54:38 Yeah, they're arguing that it's possible. And I would acknowledge that there's some discrepancies in those accounts. And so, yes, it's possible that there was a long scroll or there was a missing scroll. Possible isn't plausible, and it definitely isn't what is most likely. So if you're interested in thinking critically and reaching the conclusion that is most likely, they haven't offered any evidence that even gets close to that. I feel like even saying, oh, it may be technically possible is already conceding maybe a little bit too much based on looking at those accounts in detail. But it's also just worth noting the epistemological difference that doesn't do anything. Establishing that it's not technically impossible isn't evidence for it.

Julia 1:55:22 Yeah, that's true. Okay, so now we're going to the Catalyst theory, and that's one approach to take.

The Catalyst Theory and Its Problems

Guest 2 1:55:29 Another approach is the Catalyst theory that we believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, he received revelation from God, and so maybe this Egyptian papyri inspired a legitimate authentic revelation of an ancient text text, even if it didn't match what was on the papyri. And then you might have a secular perspective that says Joseph Smith just made this up.

Nemo 1:55:48 Could we, could we hear that One more time because I want to get that sentence right.

Guest 2 1:55:52 And that's one approach to take. Another approach is the Catalyst theory that we believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, he received revelation from God. And so maybe this Egyptian papyri inspired a legitimate authentic revelation of an ancient text, even if it didn't inspired a legitimate authority. And then you might have a secular perspective. Joseph Smith just made this up. Yeah.

Nemo 1:56:12 Inspired a legitimate authentic translation of an ancient text. And that's a contradiction in terms. It's entirely contradictory within itself.

Kolby Reddish 1:56:22 It's it that that theory is completely dead in the water. Joseph Smith translates, claims to translate in doctrine and covenants 7 a lost scroll attributable to John. Right. Like he has a vision of a papyrus that's supposedly in a cave. So if Joseph Smith was just going to have a catalyst type revelation, he knows how to describe having a catalyst type revelation. Jasmine. And so the real issue to me with the Catalyst theory, aside from the fact that it's entirely unfalsifiable and that it disagrees with everything Joseph Smith said he was doing, is that it allows for people to believe that Joseph Smith can be absolutely wrong. Or actually, I'm sorry, what it requires you to believe believe is that Joseph Smith can be absolutely mistaken about every single thing he thought about Egyptian, about the process he was engaged in by itself. Even though, like I said, he had described other catalyst type revelations. Book of Moses is another example. The translation of the, like the Joseph Smith translation would be another example. Right. There's no text that he's referring to that he needed as the catalyst. He knows how to describe when he's just having revelation. Jasmine. And the fact that he doesn't describe the book of Abraham that way would mean that you are accepting as scripture something that comes out of a process that Joseph Smith himself doesn't understand and in fact doesn't describe accurately in any detail like that someone who is willing to believe that theory. I'm sorry, that is something that you're not accepting because you're thinking critically like there is. There are so many problems with accepting the Catalyst theory to me that it's again, kind of a wonder that it's even taken seriously.

Nemo 1:58:09 And I think we need to really sit in the fact that there is now a, a penchant amongst apologists to selectively believe Joseph Smith, the prophet of the Restoration, to just selectively believe him when he says that that hill near his house where he found the gold plates is the scene of Moroni's last stand and all that stuff. No Actually, we don't believe him on that. He was probably wrong. Okay, so then why was he right about what he claimed the Book of Mormon to be? Why? Why is Joseph Smith right sometimes and wrong at other times? Why is he right about, you know, things like written by the hand of Abraham? Yeah, why is he right about that?

Kolby Reddish 1:58:50 In 1831, he sends missionaries to, you know, to the West. And by the West, I mean, like the Midwest, saying that he's sending missionaries to the Lamanites. Like, yeah, it doesn't matter what it is. Like, the modern apologetic moment is literally retreating from every single falsifiable thing that Joseph Smith ever said. He sends missionaries to the Lamanites or claims that he's sending missionaries to the Lamanites and that those people are like contemporary Native Americans to him. Well, when that's disproven by DNA, the Book of Mormon is still true. But he, like, everything Joseph Smith believed about the Book of Mormon, everything he believed about the Book of Abraham can be proven to be false. And yet they still believe.

Nemo 1:59:29 I think that is just wild. To me, if you were to sit Joseph Smith down with Jasmine Rapley and let them have a conversation, he would be like, what church or what religion are you defending here? Because it's not the one I started. It's not what I believed. Since in all sincerity, the version of the Gospel, the religion that Joseph Smith started, what he taught about who the Lamanites were, about what the Book of Abraham was, all those things about where all this took place, has just been abandoned almost wholesale by apologists because it's indefensible. And at that point, you ask the question, okay, why are they abandoning it is because they lack faith. Is it because they don't want the church to be true? Of course not. So why do you have to abandon the words of the man who started it all? In order to try and maintain. Because they're not stupid people. In order for them to try to be able to maintain a somewhat cohesive narrative about what the church is and about how these things can still be true, they've had to abandon everything that the founder said. Sit with that for a moment. If you're listening to this, just sit with that. That that is what they feel they have to do. Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 2:00:39 And contrary to Jasmine's claim of bias, all three of us were raised in the church, right? We had every bias to continue believing Joseph Smith to continue to believe like Jasmine does. This allegation of bias on especially ex Mormon critics is just wild to me. I had every Bias to believe and reach the exact opposite conclusion. I had to overcome that bias to see the situation differently. And yet apologists like Jasmine point to ex Mormons and say, like, well, they have so much bias against Joseph. I had bias in favor of Joseph. I literally served a mission because my best friend at his mission farewell said, it all comes down to whether or not you think Joseph Smith is a liar. Because in that phase of my life, I was questioning my testimony. And while I was questioning my testimony, you know what my brain couldn't allow me to do? Believe that Joseph Smith was a liar. I, like, had an emotional, really overpowering spiritual experience because of the bias and the feelings that I had been raised to believe about Joseph Smith from the time I was a little, little kid. And I'm sure both of you were in the same exact boat. So the fact that people leave this faith and come to reconsider their conclusions about Joseph Smith isn't an indication of bias. It's exactly the opposite. Like, we overcame the bias to reach the conclusions we did. Dan Bogle is the same way. He's an ex Mormon. He had every bias to continue believing in the system until it just didn't make sense to him anymore.

Nemo 2:02:08 But in the way that apologists do, bias doesn't mean what we all think it means. Bias just means that you have an opinion that I disagree with. That's kind of what bias means to them. Because I don't think Jasmine would recognize Kerry Muelstein's statement as bias. I mean, feel free if she wants to come in the comments and correct me on that. I don't think she'd be willing to admit openly that. Yeah, okay. Kerryn clearly has some bias here, so we shouldn't really. We can't view him as an unbiased actor in, In.

Julia 2:02:37 In.

Nemo 2:02:38 In this discussion. I don't think she would recognize that bias, but she can prove me wrong if she'd like.

Julia 2:02:47 Yeah. So going back to the catalyst theory, I think one of the simplest ways is to just look at the facsimiles that are attached to the text itself. And we've already talked about this, but it's worth saying again that, like, if it was a catalyst, then why is he specifically translating portions that are. That are on the scroll?

Kolby Reddish 2:03:05 Or why spend the equivalent of $90,000 of other people's money? If all he needed was to see the papyrus as a catalyst to generate this revelation, why spend the $90,000 of the saints money on the papacy?

Nemo 2:03:20 Because the members raised the money, didn't they?

Julia 2:03:22 Yes, well, hang on. I'm going to push back for one second, because in the Book of Mormon with the gold plates, Joseph Smith did not use the gold plates during the translation. It was. They were often not in the room or covered during. During his Rock in the Hat moment. So then people can ask, why did all these people go through all this effort to keep. And pass them down and pass them down and hide them in a hill for Joseph Smith to not use them? Because. For faith. Yeah. No, you. You go.

Nemo 2:03:47 I was gonna say, cynically speaking, and I'm gonna be open about the fact that I'm being cynical here. Cynically speaking, Joseph Smith needed a really strong example really early on in the book that he was going to build his religion around, even though he didn't quote from it much. But he needed a really strong example of something that otherwise people wouldn't want to do normally, like kill a defenseless man being commanded by God. Sometimes. And sometimes you have to do the things that the. The commandments would say not to do and that general morality would say not to do. Sometimes you have to do them when God says so. And that is the key to Joseph Smith's ability to act in the ways that he did throughout his time as leader of the church. He said it to Nancy Rigden, Sometimes whatever God commands is right, regardless of whatever. Whatever the rest of that phrase is. But essentially, it's like whatever God recommends is right. And so in one circumstance, he might say, thou shalt not kill. In another, thou shalt utterly destroy, I think is another quote from that letter. So it's very much that God needed them to go back and get the gold plates or just needed that narrative so that they could kill someone to take it, to show that some things are more important than other things. That's my cynical view there.

Kolby Reddish 2:05:02 But continue. Julie, I want to hear your take.

Julia 2:05:04 Well, I was just going to say that I think a lot of people have said to me that the reason the plates were so important, even though Jesuit didn't really use them, is because it helped bolster the faith of those around him. And so, like, maybe he just needed the scrolls to bolster their faith so that it could seem like he's doing this translation. Maybe I'm putting words into people's mouths, but that's what I was. Was told.

Nemo 2:05:22 I think that's really good. I think the question then becomes, why is God essentially allowing people to believe a falsehood? Because if God knows that it's a catalyst and that it's just there so that it's you know, something that inspires Joseph to receive the revelation. Why is he allowing others around Joseph to believe that he is literally translating it?

Kolby Reddish 2:05:43 Yeah, to that point, as we've talked about before, Doctrine and covenants, I think it's 124 has like detailed descriptions of how many shares a person would be entitled to buy in the Nauvoo house for certain amounts of money. So that's my bigger issue with the catalyst theory is like it presumes that God could not speak clearly to Joseph Smith in a way that he could say, as you just said, Nemo, you're just getting a revelation as a catalyst. Again, I already think that's a problem because Joseph Smith had at that point received revelations as catalysts, including about scrolls, and had recorded those without needing to have the scrolls in his possession as a. To build the faith or to catalyze that revelation. So I already think that's a huge problem. But the bigger problem is actually with the model of God. It's building a model of God. They can't communicate very clearly to his prophet about a process that people are going to be required to believe, to believe that this man is a true prophet. That model of God doesn't make any sense to me. When we then look at the specificity of revelations that benefit Joseph Smith or even revelations that are in the Book of Mormon, like we have prophecies in the Book of Mormon about Christopher Columbus coming, it's odd. It's so odd that the Book of Mormon has very specific prophecies about very specific people right up until the time that it was dictated. And then everything after that is very vague and nebulous. People might want to consider that in and of itself. But my point is just God is hyper specific. Except when it's a problem for Joseph Smith, then like, oh, God does the best he can with what he is. He was revealing to Joseph. He just didn't bother to explain to Joseph the process, the fact that this was a catalyst. I'm sorry, that's just ridiculous. I'm not going to believe that. Why would I believe that God can communicate to his prophet only when it hasn't been challenged by like actual secular authorities? Like I said, the modern, modern apologetic moment is retreating from every falsifiable thing Joseph Smith ever said. The problem is that Joseph Smith actually said a lot of falsifiable things.

Julia 2:07:56 Yeah.

Translation Claims and the Egyptian Alphabet

Julia 2:09:31 Yeah, so this next section. So I referenced earlier in this episode that or Jasmine seemed to say that former Mormons will say that this is not a translation of the Book of Abraham or it's not a true translation. It's not just former members who are saying that. And I have a quote here from Robin Scott Jensen. He is Associate Managing Historian and the Project Archivist for the Joseph Smith Papers and is a member of the Church History Department Educational Board. In his episode on LDS Perspectives, he stated it could be that Joseph Smith assumed that he was translating from the papyri when he was not in fact translating from the papyri.

Kolby Reddish 2:10:06 Okay, and then I'm going to add on to just. I know I'm just underscoring the point I just made and that God didn't bother to correct him. That's the real issue.

Julia 2:10:15 Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Kolby Reddish 2:10:17 Think about how many people cite the Book of Abraham as the reason they have lost Their testimony in Mormonism, I would say it is probably one of the biggest reasons that people leave for historical problems, for historicity problems even. Just if you look at it from that lens, why would God not correct Joseph Smith?

Nemo 2:10:36 Because the whole underpinning is that you have a testimony of. One of the questions I think is do you have a testimony of the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Right. And the restoration is essentially Joseph Smith bringing about gospel principles, etc. Things that are found in the Book of Abraham, for example, to Jasmine's earlier point that it doesn't really lose anything, it absolutely does. So all this is based on believing the words of Joseph Smith. This is having a testimony of his words. It's having faith in the claims that Joseph Smith made. And so I think what happens, one of the reasons the Book of Abraham is so big for people is because it's just a very clear example of where Joseph Smith claimed something, I. E. These figures mean this and it is irrefutable that they don't mean what he said. They meant that the. That the characters, that the facsimiles, those things aren't what Joseph Smith said they were. And if that thing isn't what Joseph Smith said it was, it creates that opening for doubt in the other things that Joseph Smith claimed. Yeah, yeah, I think that's. I think simply put, that's why it's such a big deal for people.

Julia 2:11:49 Yeah. So there's another quote that I have that I've pulled that's from Terrell Givens and that actually reflects a lot on our language density episode. Kolby, do you mind reading this slide?

Kolby Reddish 2:11:58 I do not. Givens says that prophetic. I'm sorry, says that profit misunderstanding and prophetic inspiration may coexist in the same person, even at the same moment. Givens even admits, as we talked about in our language density episode, a pre champilion belief that hieroglyphics carried multi layered esoteric meanings available only to prophets, priests and kings. Chief among the proponents of this metaphysical school of interpretation was 17th century Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, who produced three volumes of translations titled Oedipus Aegypticus, described by historian Frank Manuel as one of the most learned monstrosities of all time.

Julia 2:12:43 Yeah, so I. The first quote, the prophet misunderstanding and prophetic inspiration may coexist, which I think is super interesting.

Nemo 2:12:51 They may, sure. But we. Surely it's not too much to expect that there is some mechanism by which we can understand which is happening. Right. And why, if this is what frustrates Me about someone like Terrell Givens is he'll say, okay, yeah, no, Joseph Smith could have been wrong.

Guest 2:13:09 Cool.

Nemo 2:13:09 But we're then never allowed to follow the logical conclusion of what that statement brings about which, okay, Joseph Smith was wrong about the Book of Abraham, but he can still be an inspired prophet. Okay, but now can we at least focus on what it means if he was wrong about the Book of Abraham? No, no, no, no, no, no. We just have to accept that that's possible and then move on to the fact that he was prophetically inspired. Okay, fine, but we never get to address the problem. We at least get to admit that it could be possible that they get stuff wrong, but then never get to explore the. The ramifications of that.

Julia 2:13:46 Yeah, and I did like this. The pre champion belief that the hieroglyphics carried multiple layer isoteric meanings available only to prophets, priests and kings. And I that was really reflective of what was happening.

Kolby Reddish 2:13:58 Well, and can you, can I share my screen for a second?

Julia 2:14:02 Absolutely.

Kolby Reddish 2:14:04 So while we're talking about Terrell Givens and his opinion on this issue of prophets being able to be inspired and yet misunderstand at the same time, this is a series of slides from an episode I did with Radio Free Mormon on the Book of Abraham. I don't know, a year and a half ago probably. And these are just entries from Joseph smith's journal in 1835 when he's actually translating. And I just, I'm only providing this to show the reality of what Joseph Smith thought he was doing in his own journal. Okay, so 25th of November, spent the day in translating. 26th of November, we spent the day in transcribing Egyptian characters from the Papyrus. On the 12th of December, Friday, Saturday morning, the 11th 12th at home spent the forenoon in Reading. At about 12 o' clock, a number of young persons called to see the Rhett was see the records, Egyptian records. I requested my scribe to exhibit them. He did so. One of the young ladies who had been examining them was asked if they had the appearance of antiquity. I love that you were reading ahead, Julia. She observed with an air of contempt that they did not. On hearing this, I was surprised at the ignorance she displayed. And I observed to her that she was an anomaly in creation. For all the wise and learned that had ever examined them without hesitation pronounced them ancient. I further remarked that it was downright wickedness, ignorance, bigotry and superstition that caused her to make the and that I would put it on record and I have done so because it is a fair sample of the prevailing spirit of the times, showing that the victims of priestcraft and superstition would not believe the one should rise from the dead. And this is the next example I really want to show, because this to me is the complete defeater of the catalyst theory. October 1, 1835. This afternoon, labored on the Egyptian Alphabet. In company with brothers Oliver Cowdery and William W. Phelps, the system of astronomy was unfolded. So I'm going to pause for a second and talk about the Egyptian Alphabet that's referenced here. So if people want to look at Dan Vogel's book, he does a really great job of explaining these different documents. One of the documents that is very important to understand is a document known as the grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian language. And what it has is what I've got over here on. It's similar to what I have over here on the left hand side of the screen where you have Egyptian characters or characters from the papyrus with transcriptions or and then translations written on the right hand side of the screen, like the characters are in the margins and the translation is written over to the right hand side. I would definitely encourage people to go look at this Egyptian Alphabet. The bottom line is that the Egyptian Alphabet and grammar is a complete fantasy. We talked about this in our information density episode, but it's premised off this idea that Egyptian had five different degrees of meaning and that you moved through these degrees of meaning. All of that is nonsense. It has nothing to do with Egyptian. Okay? But as you see here on this entry, the system of astronomy was unfolded. Unfolded to me suggests revelation. So again we see that Joseph Smith understands that even if revelation is involved in this process, he can still be doing translation by revelation. I think apologists are being very clever in how they try and argue this, but to me it was always understood that he was doing a translation by revelation. And when we see that Joseph Smith says this system of astronomy was unfolded, you can see here that I've got. This is from the. The Egyptian Alphabet version A, which has the handwriting of Joseph Smith, Oliver Cattery and W. W. Phelps. That's what's over to the left. You can see these characters, right? You can see the same characters in a different manuscript version, the one that was kept by Oliver Cowdery, which is B of this Egyptian Alphabet. And you can see there you've got this little circle with the cross, you see that top character there, the jaw, O, A. And you can see written in there, earth. And then if you see the half circle Flo Isis is the way I see it. Or flow east moon and then you've got flow Isis sun. You can see that like he thinks he's revealing stuff that then is in facsimile 2 of the book of Abraham. So anyways, I just thought this would be a good thing to share really quickly to reiterate that this idea of the Catalyst theory, if you actually dig into these documents, it isn't going to save the issue. So while I really appreciate Terrell Givens approach to pastoral apologetics and being softer to those people that are doubting this idea that you can bifurcate Joseph Smith's ultimate product from what he believed he was actually doing. He believed he was actually translating, that he was actually revealing these things. And I don't think it is bias or being cynical to just look at what he thought he was doing and say does the evidence match what he says he was doing? And the simple answer to that is no. The Egyptians didn't call the earth jaw oa. That's just complete nonsense.

Julia 2:19:13 I want to go back to a minute because story, because I'd forgotten about that. I didn't read ahead, but I had. I was just familiar enough with that journal entry where this woman, he, she was like, he's like do you not think it's ancient looking or antiquity? And she's like no, it really doesn't. And then he gets mad at her about this. I just thought that story was so funny. So I just wanted to just say

Nemo 2:19:31 that and just say here it is in Mormon scripture available to you all to see in my quad. It's not just that Joseph wrote this in the Joseph Smith papers and went oh yeah, they call it Ja Oe. It's here in canonized idea scripture. This earth which is called by the Egyptians. Ja O. Eh. As he's giving his explanation of what facsimile number two says, I also just

Julia 2:19:54 want to say I love it. There's a facsimile, there's a part of that that's God men, where he has an erect penis in there. And then in some of the editions the church took it out, this little depiction and then they had to put it back in because it's not true to, to history. So I just thought that was really interesting. There's another clip from Jasmine. This one's about thin documentation.

Guest 2 2:20:18 Book of Mormon we have a lot more explicit documentation of how translation happened in the Book of Abraham. The documentation is much thinner. So we, we've kind of got to reconstruct and speculate what was going on. We don't have witnesses to the Book of Abraham translation in the same way that we had witnesses to the Book of Mormon. And so there is that. And like you said, the Book of Moses was completely revelatory. There was no original text there. There was no seer stone. From what we understand, it was just him going through the Bible and receiving revelation about what this text should be.

Nemo 2:20:49 So can I just point out how problematic it is for Jasmine to harp on about how much evidence we have for how the Book of Mormon was translated, given that apologists and the Church have tried to obfuscate how the Book of Mormon was actually translated for years, decades, and they're only just starting to get transparent about how it happened in the last couple of decades.

Kolby Reddish 2:21:07 Well, and the bottom line is we have 28% of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon's dictation. In my opinion, we will never be able to fully answer the question of what was going on with the Book of Mormon's translation process, because we had. I mean, even just in the original manuscript. I know I've made this point with the two of you before, but we learned through handwriting analysis of the original manuscript about scribes that we didn't even. Like, there are still unidentified handwriting samples in the original manuscript. So when Jasmine is saying, oh, we have much better records for the way the Book of Mormon was translated, that's just simply not true. I also just showed. I'm glad I did that, actually. I was worried that that was going to be a waste of time. But showing you those journal entries, we have really good evidence of what they were doing with the Book of Abraham translation from Joseph Smith's own journal, from multiple manuscripts of the Book of Abraham. As Joseph Smith is dictating it, the scribes are writing it down. They're writing the characters on the left hand side of the margin. Then we have the grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian language, which is a slightly different document. But to say we don't have very good evidence of what was going on with the Book of Abraham translation, that we have better evidence of what was going on with Books of of Mormon translation is just patently not true. Like, all you have to do is go look at the evidence. We have much better evidence for what was going on with the Book of Abraham translation, which is one of the huge problems for the Book of Abraham, by the way. Jasmine, you just like the fact that after the fact, we have a lot of testimonies from people about how the Book of Mormon was Translated, those are not the same thing. The best evidence of what Book of Mormon translation would look like is the original manuscript and comparing the original manuscript to the printer's manuscript. But the bottom line is we don't have it. We have 28% of it. And because of that, I have basically satisfied myself to say I don't think we'll ever fully understand where the Book of Mormon comes from. Do we need to fully understand where the Book of Mormon comes from to answer what it is not? No, we don't.

Nemo 2:23:02 And I think she plays around in the language there by saying we don't have witnesses in the same way. Right. So then she can kind of say, all right, well, because we have these specific types of witnesses of people that write out witness statement and testify to it, etc. But that sort of witness testimony is one, unreliable. And two, we've done entire episodes on the problems with those witness testimonies that people should go and listen to, including

Kolby Reddish 2:23:28 one of the ones I'll point to, because one of the people she probably has in mind is Emma Smith. Emma Smith says in her last testimony, again, it's like 50 years after the account, which apparently doesn't bother them when it's favorable to them, their argument. But Emma Smith says that Joseph Smith couldn't write or dictate a well worded letter. We did an entire episode looking at Joseph Smith's letters to prove that Emma Smith is either mistaken or lying. I don't know which. And I don't need to die on the hill. I'll accept mistaken that she was mistaken about Joseph Smith's writing capabilities. And why in the world would you accept Emma Smith's testimony of Joseph Smith's writing capabilities when we have his letters? Again, I hate to always just make these methodological points, but I think it's important to underscore the difference between the critical approach to these questions, which is really trying to get to what happened, the most likely answer to what happened, where apologetics is just an entirely different endeavor. I at least admire Professor Muelstein for being willing to admit that he's doing a different endeavor. Jasmine is acting like she's citing the work of scholars and academics and it's anything but.

Julia 2:24:34 Yeah. But I wanted to also say about the translation process of the gold plate. So. So just because you cite a document that says that you viewed an ancient source does not mean that the translation is also correct.

Guest 2 2:24:45 It's.

Julia 2:24:45 Those just are not the same thing. But also the translation process for the Book of Mormon, you have people saying that he looked at a stone and a hat, which of course Nemo, you said was kept hidden from us. And even in the church's videos that they're, they're making, they won't show this because they don't, I think because they don't like it. But also it's not even in the room, it's wrapped in a linen cloth. To me, if I, if I was a member of the church in this time period, I would trust more that he was really trying to translate the Book of Abraham where he's like, he's like consulting different things and he's got all these different things and it just looks more like a translation than the Book of Mormon or the gold plates where he's just looking at a stone in a hat.

Nemo 2:25:19 And so then we see what happens when Joseph does his absolute best to try and translate something and then we find out that it's completely not what he said it was. That should be troublesome or it should at least cause you to stop and

Kolby Reddish 2:25:29 think and to the point, Julia, that they hid the rock in the stone narrative or the, the stone in the hat narrative in Emma Smith's final testimony. Do you know what's in there? That Joseph Smith sat there for hours and hours dictating with his head in the hat, reading off of the stone in the hat. Yeah, it's just so crazy the way that like they pick and choose which parts of these people's testimony it's in the same document, like the same two page interview, and they'll pick and choose which parts they want to take at face value and which parts they're just never going to talk about.

Julia 2:26:02 Yeah, for sure. Okay, so this other one introduces to me, I, to me this was a new theory. Although reading Dan Vogel's book and looking at Robert Ridner's, this really isn't a new thing. It was just new. New to my understanding. So this one is called this. I've titled the slide not written by Abraham. This is another clip from Jasmine.

Dating the Papyri and Facsimile Translations

Nemo 2:26:20 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 2:26:20 All right, I'll read the Book of Abraham.

Julia 2:26:22 Thanks.

Guest 2 2:26:23 I think it's fascinating and fun. And the other thing to note about the Book of Abraham is sometimes people have misconceptions about like what it's supposed to be. Certainly like the earliest saints probably assume that like, oh, this is Abraham's writing and that this is, they were told from Abraham himself, you know, Bronze Age writing, it says, dates to the 3rd century ish BC in Ptolemaic Egypt. And so the context that we can surmise is persistent, potentially Like a Jewish community passing down traditions from Abraham around this time. And. And I think Latter Day Saints can accept that. Like, there's nothing inherently wrong about, like. Well, yeah, this isn't like Abraham's words as he spoke them in 2000 or 1200 BC whatever it might have been. This is. These are traditions that could have been passed down through transmission and editing and redacting, whatever that might be. And what we've got is some kind of text that's ancient in some 3rd century BC context that we believe contains revelation in the word of God.

Julia 2:27:18 Now, transmission, editing, and redacting. That's super interesting. Do you guys have any other thoughts

Nemo 2:27:25 before I. Oh, yeah, perfect. Yeah, it says it in the text.

Julia 2:27:29 Yeah, it says, translation of the Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus and found in the catacombs of Egypt. That's what it says. And then here I have just a few slides where these are prophets of the past or general authorities. President Seymour B. Young in the April 1914 conference. He says it's written by his own hand. You have George Albert Smith in October 1925 General Conference. He also says it's written by his own hand. You have Spencer W. Kimball in October of 1966 saying it was written by his own hand. This. It doesn't make sense to me that. It was just wild to me that to hear her say that, where it's like, this could have been a tradition handed down. So I've added this new theory to me. It's. To me, it's new. It's not really new because Dan Vogel has addressed this in his book and other scholarship has addressed this as well. But it's a. So the new theory is that it's a Jewish tradition or that it has an ancient core. The Book of Mormon or the Book of Mormon may still preserve authentic ancient traditions about. Excuse me. The Book of Abraham may still preserve authentic ancient traditions about Abraham, that there are parallels between the Book of Abraham and later ancient Jewish or Egyptian texts. And one thing I do want to say is I didn't. I didn't put these rebuttals in this episode. If you guys are interested in that. Why. How that's not true. Dan Vogel talks about this. He addresses these. These traditions that. That a lot of people will say, oh, well, this book lines up with a whole bunch of other traditions about Abraham. And Dan Vogel breaks them each down, or at least the most important ones, and he says these are not the case. In fact, some of them are completely the opposite of what the tradition Is. And so that's. If you guys are interested in that, look at Dan Vilgo's book. Or we can obviously do another episode talking just about that specific theory. It's just one I had never heard. I don't know if you guys have more thoughts on that one.

Kolby Reddish 2:29:13 No. I would love to do future episodes on the Book of Abraham. It is kind of absurd to me how simple the actual explanation is when it all clicks into place. But understanding it was Dan Vogel's book that allowed me to finally understand when apologists say this, this is why they're making this argument. And this is the. These are the documents that they're talking about. Because each of the arguments, each of the four we looked at today, are made because of desperate expediency. Like, they are all. They're. They're not evidenced. They are responses to the Book of Abraham. What they are is they're an invitation, a theory on why you shouldn't just follow Occam's razor, that's what they are, and reach the obvious conclusion, which is that if we just take Joseph Smith's claims at face value, what he thought he was doing, he wasn't doing it. It's as simple as that.

Nemo 2:30:02 Yeah.

Julia 2:30:02 Yeah. So I felt it would be good to end with Robert Ridner's kind of take on this whole thing. And this is from his Mormon Stories episode from earlier.

Kolby Reddish 2:30:10 And I think we've already established that you date these papyri to around 100 BCE.

Nemo 2:30:16 Is that right?

Kolby Reddish 2:30:17 Yes.

Julia 2:30:18 So it's pretty hard to even make

Kolby Reddish 2:30:22 the claim that Abraham.

Julia 2:30:24 That these papyri were written by the

Kolby Reddish 2:30:26 very hand of Abraham when. When they were actually written, somewhere between 1600 and 90. When they date to 16 to 1900 years after Abraham would have lived, if Abraham had ever lived there. That is so certainly true that even the apologists recognize that. And that's why they've had to say, well, okay, the original was written, but this is a. This is a copy.

Nemo 2:30:50 Okay.

Kolby Reddish 2:30:50 But there is. There is not a chance whatsoever that that text could. Though that length, that script it's written in did not even exist at the time of the Hyksos. They didn't even have those shapes of squiggles. So we can be 100% certain that it could not, under any circumstances, have been written at the time of whenever you want to make Abraham, assuming you want to make an Abraham at all, because the language.

Julia 2:31:29 Yeah, that's such a great episode.

Nemo 2:31:33 So I just have a couple more so clear. Yeah, it's just not possible the timelines do not. Do not add up. And the Church admits it. Well, the Church does, officially.

Kolby Reddish 2:31:46 The other thing I would point to is if we want to buy this, it's a copy of a copy of a copy theory. If we were actually looking for evidence that would support Jasmine's theory, the one that was in the clip that you played, we would expect to find at least one other copy. Just. Just one. One other fragment of Abraham being incorporated into a story. Now, I know they point to one very particular papyrus. I know John G. Has pointed to one very particular page papyrus that has Abraham's name on a lion couch scene. But if you look into the details of that papyrus, I think it's called the Leiden Papyrus. It isn't anything close to the book of Abraham. It isn't a hit for what they're talking about. It's using Abraham's name in a type of love spell along with other significant biblical figures and deities from other religions. It doesn't have anything to do with the book of Abraham. So again, I'm willing to say maybe on that last theory that we just talked about, Julia, but the time to actually put any type of credence in something is when there's evidence to support it. And the fact that it's possible means that we should then start looking to find any type of papyrus that would support that view. And there isn't any that has been pointed to beyond the one that doesn't support that view today.

Julia 2:32:59 Yeah, yeah. And so just in closing, I just wanted to throw up this facsimile one. And of course, we could have chosen the other facsimiles as well. This is one Rittner was over in that episode where he's. This is. These are Joseph Smith's translations. I don't know if we need to go through all of them. And then this is what the facsimile. This is what Joseph Smith thought the facsimile looked like because some of it was just damaged. And then this is a recreation of a reconstruction of facsimile 1, what it should have looked like.

Kolby Reddish 2:33:26 I do want to speak to just one of the facsimiles, if you'll go back for. I'm sorry, one of the translations. One of the figures. So number for the altar first sacrificed by the adulterous priests standing before the gods of Elkanah, Libna, Mamakra, Korash and Pharaoh. All of that is nonsense. There are no Egyptian deities with any of these names. So when apologists want to offer these theories that we've been talking about today. This is why I say all of this stuff is a red herring at a fundamental level. Joseph Smith had no idea what he was talking about when it comes to this Egyptian stuff. There is no idolatrous God of Koresh. The only one I've heard a potential hit for is Elkanah. And they try and link Elkanah with the. The God El, which weirdly then also evolves into the idea of Elohim. Like, it just is a very weird, weird thing that none of these got. Like there are those canopic jars underneath the, the tape, underneath the lion couch have specific names. None of those specific names are the names that Joseph Smith gives for them. Right. They're Anubis and Horus and the shapes of the animals.

Julia 2:34:39 Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then just this last one is just what the Egyptologists, or specifically Robert Rittner, he went through all those with John Dehlin in that episode where they talk about which one, what do these actually mean? So the spirit of horror, you have Anubis, you have. You have Horror himself, you have the lion couch, which is just a regular couch. And also he points out that they didn't actually sacrifice people. That's not something that he did like. So he's saying that number four is not. Would not be true at all. And then the Canopic jars at the bottom, and then the, the. The God of Sobek, the Saligator, the libation table, and then the, the circa.

Nemo 2:35:16 Yeah, yeah, To Kolby's. To Kolby's point. Just to make it really, really clear, no matter how you believe Joseph Smith to, like, created or received or whatever it might have been, the language that forms the Book of Abraham. What is in the Book of Abraham is facsimiles that contain known Egyptian symbols. Joseph Smith did not correctly name those symbols. And if God was revealing it to him, then he should have. If he was able to properly translate Egyptian, then he should have, but he didn't. Which means that what was on the papyrus in front of him that he was working from wasn't correctly identified by him. It is that simple.

Julia 2:36:04 Yeah. With the, with these, the presence of these facsimiles, I really. I'm trying hard to understand where the catalyst theory would play in, because it doesn't make any sense to me. I don't. I don't see how they make. I don't say how they make that work.

Kolby Reddish 2:36:19 They don't even try. You have to remember what apologetics is. Apologetics is trying to keep people who already believe from leaving the conclusion they've already reached. So they don't have to, they don't have to get into the details because the audience isn't really interested in those things until they land here where on the LDS discussion series we look at the details and we do try and give as objective as a view on these questions as we can. I will take us out of here in just a moment. Unless there's anything else.

Julia 2:36:51 No, I don't think so.

Kolby Reddish 2:36:52 Okay. Do both of you want to point people to where they can find and support you and the rest of your work? And then I will take us out of here.

Nemo 2:37:00 After you, Julia.

Julia 2:37:02 Sure. I'm Julia Sanders. I do. I run analyzing Mormonism on pretty much every platform. I just try to look at the churches, the historical documents from the church.

Nemo 2:37:10 And yeah, I run Nemo the Mormon. I'm mainly focused on the words of current church leaders, how honest they're being with us, and just how consistent the leadership of the church are with the teachings of Jesus Christ. That's what I do. You can find me at nemothermon on any social media platform you can imagine, apart from say it with me, MySpace. I'm not on MySpace

Kolby Reddish 2:37:37 and that's ironic because you can only find me on MySpace now. I am. I'm Kolby Reddish. If you are interested in kind of conversations where we talk about these methodological differences between believers and non believers, you can go to my YouTube channel called let's Disagree and other interesting conversations with me, the original Rando on the Internet. So I will close as we opened with a reminder about the purpose of the LDS discussions series. And thank you to JulianneMo for being part of today's episode. Episode this series is an attempt to discuss Mormon truth claims based on evidence and look at them as objectively as possible. It began with the work of Mike and his website, ldsdiscussions.com which still has a lot of great resources if people want to look at that. Since Mike has retired, of course, this series, many times throughout today's episode we referenced episodes we've done recently and we have forthcoming episodes that we're excited to share with you. This series because of that is best consumed sequentially. So please look for the rest of the playlist. If you just have stumbled onto today's episode. And this is one of the most important things according to John, that Mormon Stories has ever done, and I agree with him. So if this work is important to you, if you enjoy these deep dives onto looking at these things in greater detail and especially this kind of new approach where we're directly responding to an apologist. Let us know what you think of that. You can email John your feedback@mormonstories pod. I'm sorry moronstoriesmail.com and we'll look forward to catching you again soon on another episode of LDS Discussions Series on Mormon Stories podcast. With that everyone, please be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you again soon.

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