Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Co-host: Jenn Kamp · Guest: Mike (LDS Discussions)
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Welcome and Episode Overview
John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. We are so super excited today to be continuing our groundbreaking epic series with Mike from LDS discussions about Mormon Church truth claims. Hey, Mike, we're so glad to have you back.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:00:19] Hey, everybody. It's good to be back.
John Dehlin [00:00:21] I super loved our discussion last time about the golden plates. I think it was brilliant.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:00:27] You know, I think it's fun just because, like I said, it's like, for those who are listening now who haven't watched the first two or listen to them, you probably should go back and do it because these are going to try to build on each other. And in a way, I think it'll make more sense. And that's why, for me, I thought the gold plates 1 was a lot of fun because you hear the correlated story and then when you go through and dig into it, it's actually more. It's actually cooler to learn the real history because you can understand that whole worldview better and you can understand how Joseph Smith would have came up with it and done it. But at the same time, it's. It's not as cool in the sense of it's not what you were taught. But I think it's just. I mean it, to put it a different way, like, people will go, why do you talk about this stuff if you don't believe? And it's like, well, you know, I came from that paradigm, right? I was a convert and I'm still technically a member. But at the same time, I find it, like, truly fascinating when you're trying to. When you find, like, a new tidbit that fits into something really well. And so, like I said, I thought the last episode was fun just because it. It continues off treasure digging, and now it, like, springboards right into the next one, which is kind of the way that, like I said earlier, it's like these pieces fit together really well.
John Dehlin [00:01:28] Yeah.
Jenn Kamp [00:01:28] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:01:29] And just to be really clear to our listening audience, our overarching goal is informed consent. We believe that every Mormon and every Mormon investigator and every non Mormon who is curious about Mormonism or who is committed to Mormonism deserves to know the truth. We're not trying to tear people's faith down. We're not trying to destroy the church. We're not even trying to persuade people. We're not. We just want to provide the information. And so far, I believe that with our treasure digging episode and our golden plates episode, as sad as this is or as happy as I am about it, we've probably provided some of the most comprehensive treatments of contextualizing those two historical events better than anyone ever on the Internet or anywhere. Certainly better than the LDS gospel topics essays or the book Saints. And so we're all about informed consent. And then we want to be respectful in these episodes. We want believers to feel friendly listening to them, and then we want people to just make whatever decision is best for them. Is that right, Mike?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:02:25] Well, yeah. And like this overview project, when I was doing this stuff@ LDSDiscussions.com, like I said in the first episode, some of the really good Gospel topics essays we have on there were done by a guy named Kellen, who is amazing. And then I was doing some blog posts. I was trying to fill in some of the other topics that weren't done. I had kind of burned out on the whole thing. I did the Saints book, the chapter by chapter stuff. I was asked by a believing family member to do this. And so for me, the whole point in writing this was to do it in a way that I felt was the most honest to the evidence. So I tried to avoid like, I tried to avoid sources that were anti Joseph Smith that I felt weren't reliable. And I avoided topics that are pro Joseph Smith that I felt weren't reliable. And in a lot of instances, I would note them and say, this is why I don't consider this to be a big deal. We did that in the last one with the gold plates where you talk about that he say the angel was named Nephi or Moroni. And I was just pointing out like, in a lot of ways it doesn't matter. And I can understand where the apologetics are coming from on that one. And so it's really to be as comprehensive as I can without getting into the weeds of stuff that I don't think really matters. Sometimes we argue about stuff that I don't think matters. But and to do it in a way. And I wrote this in a way because it was for a believing family member. So it's written to be as gentle as I can. But I'm also not going to try to make excuses or sugarcoat it. So it's just like my family has a phrase, has nothing to do the church. It's just it is what it is. You know, sometimes when bad things happen or you find out things that are uncomfortable, it sucks. And it sucks when you're a believing member and you come across this stuff and you go, why was I never taught this on Sunday? Or in my case, why did the Missionaries tell me a translation story, which we're going to find out today, is not what happened.
John Dehlin [00:04:07] Why does South Park. Why does south park know church history better than the Mormon Church?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:04:11] Yeah, and that's just it. So it is what it is. It sucks. And I know a lot of people will say this makes me uncomfortable and I want no part of it. And I get that feeling because I was there for a long time, too. But to your point, this isn't about, like, me going door to door in Utah and saying, hey, I heard you're, you know, a member of the church. Let me tell you why you're wrong. It's, here's what the evidence says, and I can't. You know, John Larsen, who you've had on a long time ago, when I first started listening to podcasts, I came across his before, I think, even before yours. And he had already been long done with it, and he had done this episode, and I think he was talking about smoking guns. But at the end of the episode, he gave, like, this analogy where it's like, you're in this room, right? And so the room's got all these bricks, and I can walk in there, and I could say, john, look at this brick. This brick about the translation is completely not what you were taught. And you could take this flashlight and you could put the. Shine the light on, you could say, you know what, that one is cracked. But every other brick in this room is perfectly fine. And then I could say, no, no, John, look at this other brick. This one's a priesthood restoration. It's not what you were taught. And you move the flashlight over, but until you turn that, the light switch on for that whole room, every time you look at that one brick, you're gonna think the rest of the room is perfectly fine. And I always thought that analogy was great, because the point is, even though when we go through these topics, you're gonna see every single major foundational claim of the Mormon Church is not what we were taught it was on Sunday. Until you, as your own person, turn that light switch on, there's nothing I can do, and there's nothing I'm not going to try because I've learned, as everyone else does, you cannot convince anyone of these things until they're ready to do it. And so until you're ready to turn that light switch on, I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to have it so that when you're ready, these videos are here. LDSdiscussions.com is there, and you can Read it. But yeah, so it's not like I'm going door to door and saying, you're wrong, get out of the church. It's, hey, here's what the history says. When you're ready for it, it's ready for you. And that's really all it's about.
John Dehlin [00:06:01] I love it. And if this weren't exciting enough to have Mike here talking about Book of Mormon translation from LDS discussions, we have Jen.
Jenn Kamp [00:06:13] Jen.
Jenn Kamp [00:06:13] Hey, everybody.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:06:14] How are you?
Jenn Kamp [00:06:15] Good.
John Dehlin [00:06:16] Are you under the. Are you feeling a little under the weather today?
Jenn Kamp [00:06:18] I do. I have a little cold, so my voice is a little off. But I'm here. I'm excited to be here.
John Dehlin [00:06:23] We are so grateful you're here, Jen.
Jenn Kamp [00:06:25] Thanks.
John Dehlin [00:06:25] Thanks for being here with us. Jen's going to be our co host for today and we always love having you. Okay, well, so we've done treasure digging. Go back and watch that. If you haven't, then we did yesterday or, you know, a little while ago, the golden plates. Now we're doing Book of Mormon translation. Where do we begin, Mike?
Recap of Previous Episode on Translation
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:06:43] So we'll start with the slides and I guess you can go right to the second one, really. So just as a really quick overview of the last episode, which was on the. The whole recovery of the gold plates, we just looked at the. What the historical record says about Joseph Smith's getting the gold plates going to the hill, what years he went, and how it tracks so well with treasure digging. We kind of talked about how the gold plate story doesn't make sense given what we know, not just about treasure digging, but about Joseph Smith's story about being attacked three times on the way home by people with guns and being able to fight them off as he's running with 40 to 60 pound plates. And then the one that I thought was really important was looking at the apologetic response, which was to say there absolutely were ancient metal plates with engravings on it, and to look at the implications of the evidence they presented, which is the Pergy tablets, and how the Peer G tablets could only fit about 67 words per tablet, which creates massive problems for the Book of Mormon, given that it's 273,000 words. And it really tells you that when you cite that evidence and you don't give the context of what the Peer G tablets actually have on them, it's really misleading and it makes members think, oh, cool, that's already been answered. But then when you actually look behind it and you go, the math creates a problem that is just immense and really nonsensical. Once you look at how long the Book of Mormon is and you know, just really the fact that the first episode was on treasure digging, which goes right into the gold plates, and it really goes right into the Book of Mormon translation. So so far, every single thing we've gone through is a direct output of treasure digging.
John Dehlin [00:08:19] Yeah. And I, you know, if I had to just summarize two of my big aha moments from, from the golden Plates episode. You know, one is that, you know, we showed a lot of evidences as to why the golden plates story doesn't make sense, but we, you know, we often, as Mormons, neglected the most obvious reason. And this is a quote that I'm borrowing from something I read decades ago. Angels don't deliver golden plates to humans. That's just not how the world works. Do you know anyone ever who's received any physical object ever, ever from an angel? Now, I know that people have a believing worldview and, you know, obviously if, if someone wants to believe in that sort of thing, they're going to. But I, I just, it is worth noting that angels don't deliver golden plates that books are written about. That just never happens in addition to all the anachronistic stuff and archeological stuff and genetic stuff. But then the second point that I'm just going to be repeating is if the Pirge tablets are reliable and accurate, they make the golden plates heavier than Thor's hammer. And I still want somebody to create that theme of Joseph Smith as Thor with the golden plates as Thor's hammer. In other words, too heavy for any human to ever pick up.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:09:40] And the thing is, again, we don't need to beat a dead horse on this one. But it's like when you cite that as apologetic and fair, Mormon literally called it the best evidence for the Book of Mormon. It's on their list. And they throw that in there as if, see, we told you Joseph Smith knew what he was doing. It's like. But then at the same time, when you actually look at what they say, you go, no, he didn't. Because if he did, he would have had to have altered the gold plate story. Because again, when you say one third is unsealed, two thirds is sealed, and you have to have enough words to, I think total was like 6,500 plates between sealed and unsealed. All of a sudden you're like, well, then reformed Egyptian would have to be, you know, my goodness, again, you're talking like an entire book of the Book of Mormon on a couple of symbols. And that is, I Mean, like, if you just actually think about it. And as I said in the first episode, if you are a believing member and this makes you uncomfortable, the one piece of advice I would give is to say for a second, when you watch these episodes, when you read LDS discussions.com, you gotta let go of the rod and you gotta say, I'm gonna read this and I'm gonna pretend instead of Mormonism, we're talking about Scientology or Jehovah's Witnesses or David Koresh. And would you believe any other person that told you this story, given what we know about the world today and what we know about, you know, in this case, you know, writing on metal plates, would you believe it if somebody else told you and you were already not invested in that story?
John Dehlin [00:10:57] Absolutely. Okay, so let's go ahead, and we'll go to. We'll go to the next slide.
Official Church Portrayal of the Translation
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:11:06] So the next slide, again, if you are familiar with the Church, you're going to understand what this is. On the left, you've got Joseph Smith studying the gold plates wearing the spectacles with the breastplate. This would be the story that was told to me as an investigator when I joined the church, which is to say Joseph would have the gold plates open on a table, looking through what they would call the Urim and Thummim, which are the spectacles. And I will point out really quickly that in the last episode, I said there were no spectacles, and someone had actually messaged me about it, and they were very, very kind, and they sent me a really good link when, I mean, there's no spectacles. I meant historically, there's no spectacles because they're anachronistic. I mean, I do believe Joseph Smith would have had a prop set. And the link that he had sent me, which was really cool, it went over all the accounts. And one of the things about the spectacles that's also kind of funny, and we'll get into this a little bit in future episodes as well, is Joseph Smith believed that the people in this ancient time were like giants. And so the spectacles were really big. And his story was that they were big because the people then were big. And this person went through and. And they actually kind of did, like, an estimate. And these people would have to be, like, 11ft tall for the spectacles to fit their head as glasses. And so I do want to correct it. When I said there were no spectacles in the last episode, I meant historically, I don't believe they're real. I do believe he made a prop set and he had made the point that it's likely that some of the people around him actually saw the spectacles while they did not see the gold plates, you know, with their physical eyes. And so I just want to throw that out there because, you know, again, I want to try to be as. I want to go back and fix when I. When I misspeak. And in that case, I did misspeak, because I just meant historically, I don't believe they were real, just as I don't believe there were ancient gold plates. So anyways, with that out of the way.
John Dehlin [00:12:46] So there were prop plates and prop spectacles, most likely. Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:12:51] Yeah. But just because, as we talked about once, Samuel Lawrence forced him into that. Into that corner of saying, I see them, you got to provide them. And so some of the accounts I'd read were that they saw the spectacles under a cloth and they felt them. But he had sent some links where they. The descriptions are actually fairly accurate. If you take out Lucy, Max Smith's, who's is completely off, you know, off of the other ones. So it would make sense. And maybe he showed it to him and just said, you can't use them, but you can see that because that would pass physical inspection because they're just. You know, you could just put two little clear stones in a. In a wire frame, and that would not be hard to do. So, you know, again, just for sake of trying to be accountable on this stuff, I wanted to point that out, because I did. I think when I was talking, I was thinking historically. But, yeah, I do believe he would have made a prop set for that.
John Dehlin [00:13:34] Okay, all right, so let's. Let's go on to the next.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:13:38] Yeah, and so if we go to the next. So, yeah, this is basically, again, and on the right, you've got Joseph Smith with his head in the hat, which is what we now know from the accounts is what he did. And so this is, of course, kind of one of those things that, for me, was another moment when I started kind of doing the Deep dive where you're like, kind of like, what the crap is this? Because I did not watch the south park episode as a believing member because I was afraid to. And I was a fan of South Park. I love south park from basically the beginning. And so I would watch south park, but this episode I avoided. I did not watch this episode until about, I don't know, four years ago. And so this episode of south park that is pretty famous for members of the church is done in 2003. And so you could See Joseph Smith, Head in the Hat, Martin Harris writing. And on the right is a movie that the Church produced, put in all of their visitor centers two years later. So two years after south park effectively tells the world a fairly accurate. They do get some things wrong, but a fairly accurate description of the translation. The Mormon Church is putting out a video in all their visitor centers, and of course, it's available to all members outside of that. That is just absolutely not how the translation happened at any point in the process. And it just. When south park is being more honest than the Mormon Church about the history, that's a huge red flag. And then you have to ask yourself, why is the church, even after south park puts in a national stage, how it's done? Why are they still putting out a movie that is. I mean, you cannot blame the directors because the directors need to be approved by the First Presidency. I mean, those things are all approved through correlations. So why are they putting out a movie that is directly contradicting the accounts of everybody involved in the translation process? And so you could just see the side by side. It speaks for itself.
South Park and Public Awareness of Translation Claims
John Dehlin [00:15:20] Yeah. And I'm just going to say that I remember south park coming out and being so shocked when it came out. And the other thing we have to just make sure people know is that Russell M. Nelson in an Ensign article, was it in the 80s or early 90s, I forget. But he certainly released an Ensign article where he acknowledges the stone in the hat in the translation. But honestly, the church has had multiple seer stones in its vaults for decades. We know that in the 60s, according to Grant Palmer and Leonard Arrington and Michael Quinn and other historians, that the Church has known about the seer stone all along.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:15:56] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:15:57] And so you can't say they didn't know. And of course, south park puts. Even when south park puts the world on notice, two years later, the Church is still mis portraying to its members and to investigators what happened. And I think it's obvious why? Because it looks so silly. Like, of course. Well, it's two things. It looks silly, but it's totally not what we had all been taught.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:16:20] Yeah. And that's just it. I mean, if they had talked. Let me put it this way, you know, as an investigator, I took the discussions when I was in high school, and if somebody had told me that he used the same rock that he used to claim to see Buried Treasure and put his head in a hat and did it like this, I wouldn't have joined because, you know, as a high schooler, I was. I was very, I was very primed to believe. I had, you know, out of my family, I was probably the most, you know, spiritual religious person. And so it made the Book of Mormon seem very much like what I had grown up with, with Protestant beliefs. So it didn't seem far fetched. But when you add that and all of a sudden you'd go, wait a second, you're, you know, honestly, it's a lot like the reaction that they have in south park where they're like, you're telling me you know all this and you believe it. And it's like, because if someone had given me this, there's no way. Even as a high schooler who was kind of primed to join, I was taking the discussions. My now wife, then girlfriend was a believer, I mean, a member of the church. And she asked me to take them and I took them. And so of course, I did have motivation to want to believe. At the same time, this would be enough to where you'd go, wait, you're telling me he used a treasure digging rock, put his head in a hat and didn't even use the plates? That you know. And we'll get into all of that as we go. But yeah, there's a reason they don't show this. And one final thing I'll point out on this, and I don't want to again, we're going a long way before we even get started. But to your point about Russell Nelson putting out the Ensign article, when you talk about this stuff, you'll always get apologists and you'll get a lot of people like, you know, the Desnat kind of crowd online where they'll say, oh my goodness, look at the church hiding this. And then they'll send you like 5 or 6 links to articles from the last 50 years where they mention it. And if you want to play that game, then you got to balance that against the hundreds and thousands of articles and talks where they reference the gold plates on a table or they have the artwork of the gold plates on the table, or the movies. And I mean, I'm just saying, like, you cannot point to like the five times they mention it in these articles that are. Yeah, I mean, the enzyme is going out to the church as a whole, but that is not going to carry the weight that Emanuel taught every Sunday is. Or that general conference talks or that the video is going to every visitor centers do. You cannot then say, because if you're the church, that's what you want. You want to say, look, we put it out there and if you didn't see it, that's your fault. But again, you got to look at what they're doing 99% of the time and not go, oh, but they were honest 1% of the time. Because that's not how they would not pass the church's own definition of honesty in their gospel manual. Gospel principles manual. It goes directly against their own definition of honesty. And so to then say, well, we were honest with that Ensign article from Russell Nelson, fine, but it died there, you know, they didn't carry through it. You know, and if you really. And I'll stop ranting on this, but if you really want to make that argument, and then you're going to say, well, it was the fault of the director of the movie, it was the fault of the painter, it was the fault of the person doing the layout of the Ensign to put this other, you know, not honest portrayal in. Well, then you got to say, well, why didn't all of them read that Russell Nelson Ensign article from 30 years ago? So clearly that article is not getting out to everybody. So you cannot make that. It just doesn't work.
John Dehlin [00:19:22] Yeah, it's almost as if some lawyers at Kurt McConkey said we're going to be liable for fraud and misrepresenting things. So we got to put it out. We'll quietly put it out in an inside article so we have plausible deniability. But. But like we know now, Elder Stephen Snow said about the Gospel topics essays, we'll intentionally never talk about it, never promote it, and make sure no one else knows about it. We'll bury it in an unsigned article, and then we'll have plausible deniability.
Jenn Kamp [00:19:53] Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:19:54] When you look at the Saints book. So I did that. What was that, two and a half years ago or something when they came out, like in September or whatever, And I was doing the chapter by chapter thing, and I remember reading an interview with one of the church historians, and they said that they viewed the Saints book as inoculation. So in their mind, if you give people just enough, then when they come across it and there's worse details, they can ignore the worst details and say, oh, I've already heard about that. No big deal.
John Dehlin [00:20:18] I heard about the search down. Yeah.
Church Liability and Footnote Deception
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:20:19] So to your point earlier about, like, maybe there's a thing where they're feeling like they're be liable for fraud. I also think to a certain extent it's very strategic because if you put those things in there and I go to my bishop and I say, hey, I just heard Joseph Smith Use the same rock for treasure digging as he did to translate the Book of Mormon. The bishop might be able to go, oh, you know what? The Ensign two years ago had this article explaining it. We weren't hiding it. And so I think the Saints book and the way they do with the Gospel topics essays, they give you just enough to say, we were honest, we gave it to you. But again, you go beyond the surface. It's like there's an article, a blog post I did on LDSDiscussions.com it's called Follow the Footnotes. And it's just 10 examples from the gospel topics essays and saints. Just 10 of them. I mean, you could do more where the footnotes that they cite give you a completely different information than what they're presenting it as. So they'll give you this citation to say, like, oh, this is okay. Well, then when you read the footnote, you're like, that's not saying what you're saying it is. And we could do a whole episode on that someday. But it's just like the way they use footnotes, not all the time, but on some of these key issues, like the Book of Abraham, there's one where they say, I think it's one parish or something. They say. So it's quoted something like, I sat down by his side as he translated the Egyptian hieroglyphs or whatever like that. And then if you look at the citation, that same letter talks about how Joseph Smith was a liar. So that that quote of him translating isn't saying that he was really doing it. It's him saying, that's what he's saying he was doing, but he was a liar. And so, you know, to Jen's point, people get nervous because even when you send it to them from the church, they're like, I've never heard this before. And your mind is saying, danger, danger. Run, run, run. And especially if someone's giving it to you, like, you know, and again, I'll stop. But the missionaries came by after I started doing the deep dive, and they came by for the first time. I work from home. It's the first time they've ever stopped by in the middle of the day. And they're like, oh, we just saw. We just in the area. It's like, no, you weren't. I'm a ward project. But I said, I'll talk to you about anything, but you have to listen to what I'm saying. And so they would say, no, that's not the case. And I'm like, can I show it to you from the church's own website. And they're like, no, no, no, we're okay. And it's not their fault. It's just, you know, that's the whole thing. Even though it's from the church's website, they know that if I want to show it to them, it's not going to promote faith. And so even though it's from the church's website, they still view that as toxic. And that's why the Gospel topics essays, if you give yourself the permission to read them, and I highly recommend you do that, and then read our annotated essays@ LDSDiscussions.com it paints a picture that is not what you grew up with. And that alone should be enough to jar you enough to say, I'm going to give myself permission to look outside the box now. Look under the hood and see what else I can find. Because, you know, once you find out there's. There's cracks here in those bricks, flip that light switch on. If, if the bricks are fine, you have nothing to fear. If the bricks are cracked, you need to know that too.
John Dehlin [00:23:06] And there may be some people that are like, hey, I, I didn't tune in to hear Jen and Mike and John monologue about the church hiding information, but I just want to say this. Like with Watergate and Nixon, it's often said it wasn't the break in, it was the COVID up. You know what I mean? And so the way the church has handled its education and dissemination of information about the translation might be more condemning than the, the translation itself. And I think, I think that's the point we're trying to make. We're all saying we were misled, we're all saying we were deceived, and we're all saying that we know the church knew better. And I think that's, I think that's relevant. Super relevant. But having said that, should we take a look at the actual south park video now?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:23:55] Yeah. So this is just a video that is just looking at those last two pictures we showed. And it's using the south park clip and the, the Book of the, the Mormon Church's official movie, side by side. So just watch this and understand what I'm saying when I say that. You're getting two completely different pictures and south park was two years earlier.
John Dehlin [00:24:12] Okay, here we go.
▶ Video Clip 1Video Clip 1 [00:24:15] Have them somewhere dark so I can
Video Clip 1 [00:24:16] read the spiritual light.
Video Clip 1 [00:24:18] Really?
Video Clip 1 [00:24:19] Now, when I put the seer stones into the hat, the ancient letters light up and change to English, which I can then read to you.
Video Clip 1 [00:24:25] Wow.
Video Clip 1 [00:24:28] He's sticking his head in the head.
Video Clip 1 [00:24:30] Oh, okay. Write this down.
Video Clip 1 [00:24:33] And so it was that Christ appears.
Video Clip 1 [00:24:38] Appeared before the Nephites. All men must repent and be baptized in his name.
John Dehlin [00:24:50] Yeah. And so for those who are just joining us through audio, you've got, you've got the south park version where Joseph's head and a hat and he's dictating to Martin. That was 2003. And then in 2005, you've got the church depicting Joseph Smith staring at the plates, dictating.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:25:07] So it's not only that, but you've got Oliver Cowdery as the scribe across the table who could see the plate. So that's what it was talking to me as an investigator.
John Dehlin [00:25:13] Yeah, yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:25:15] And so if we go to the next slide, because again, I want to really hammer this home. When you, when people come to me and they say, oh, the church wasn't hiding, look at these five or six links, or actually, I think there's like a couple dozen if you want to get like BYU studies articles and stuff like that. But this is, this picture on the right is from last year's Enzyme before they changed it to the liahona. So in 2021, you've got a picture in a church, you know, church wide publication where you've got Joseph Smith using the plates, no head in a hat. And you've got. I don't know if that's. I guess that'd be Martin Harris behind the sheet. That's what Jen was saying. Where they, there are, there's that account where there's a sheet between them when he was working with Martin. So, you know, again, if you want to say that the church is being more honest today, then you got to say, well, why in these Gospel topics essays where they're kind of tucked away in the app, are they being a little more honest? But then in the church wide publications, they're still in the year 2021, putting artwork here that it just is not how the Book of Mormon is translated. Even if you want to believe that Joseph did this at the beginning, and I think there's a lot of reasons and we'll go through them later, but I think that he was using the Seer Stone the entire time. So this is at best, I would argue, is deceptive. And, you know, again, to use Richard Bushman's own quote, you know, the dominant narrative, dominant narrative in the church is not true. And this is why there's such a struggle now to try to kind of slowly admit that a lot of the things that were considered anti Mormon, lies are actually, you know, just real history.
John Dehlin [00:26:46] Yeah. And we'll go ahead and include in the. In the show notes the link to the Richard Bushman video where he admits that the church's historical narrative has not
Jenn Kamp [00:26:59] been, I know, like, accurate. I know Mike is trying to be so kind to, like, believing members still by saying, like, the church was being deceptive. But I. I feel like they lied. Like, they just outright lied. Like, if you know exactly how it was translated, if you know, like, you have the objects, do you have the history, like, it's all in your possession. All the truth is in your possession. And then you tell someone a different story. That's lying. That's not just being deceptive. Like, it's not telling, like, you know, a half truth or, like, you know, 95% truth. It's, to me, for me, it feels like they outright lied to me.
John Dehlin [00:27:49] And where did we learn about partial truth?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:52] Well, that's just from the church.
John Dehlin [00:27:53] Right. The church taught us about absolute honesty versus.
Jenn Kamp [00:27:57] Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:57] And again, if you look at the. I think it's called the Gospel Principles Manual. They have a definition. They have a chapter on honesty, and it actually says something like, telling only partial truths is not being honest. And so it's not being honest. The only pushback I would give is to say, I mean, John, you've been doing this way longer than, you know, any of me or Jen. I've talked to people who are like, I was 60 years old before I learned he put his head in a hat or a rock and a hat in the head, in the hat. And so I think there are some church leaders that have done a really good job throughout their career of just not diving into this stuff. I also think there are a lot of church leaders that know. So I think there are some historians, some church leaders who will lie for the Lord, as the phrase goes. And I think there are some that just don't want to get into it. And so for me, you know, it's not. I think there are people that do intentionally lie. I mean, we can show that, right? We could show instances where we know people know better and they're lying about this history. I think that the. Like, for example, you just did that series with Sandra Tanner about that Kate Holbrooke podcast about polygamy. And I remember Gerardo sent me that. And I'm listening to it in every single line. I'm like, she knows better. Kate Holbrooke knows better. But she's still putting on this plausible Using sources that fit and ignoring all the ones that don't. And so it's like, on one hand I would say she's lying. On the other hand, I'm sure in her head she's thinking, I'm not lying. I'm just trying to present the picture. I need to. Because in her mind, her job is to promote faith. And again, I can't get into her head. So that's why, just to Jen's point, I'm trying really hard because I don't want to try to put myself into their head. I'm just saying, like, from the standpoint, we do know some have lied. I also think that some are genuine believers who are trying to do what they think is the best thing they can to promote faith. In their minds, I don't think they're lying. I think in their minds they're saying, I'm just picking the parts that are going to be the most helpful to my cause. Just like if you're a car salesman, you have a used car, you don't lead off with the, with the dent on the side. You lead off with the fact that maybe it's got low mileage. And if someone comes back later and say, why don't you point out that den, they might say, you could have walked around and looked at it. I didn't lie to you, you know, and so, yeah, and I can see that.
Jenn Kamp [00:30:07] And I can see that with like a used car salesman, you know, but we're talking about. No, no, I know, you know, a billion dollar church that, you know, is supposed to be the mouthpiece for God and Jesus, you know, telling us, like, giving us a lie that they know is a lie. And so that, that's kind of where. And I don't, and I don't, I don't. Sorry, I'm like, now we're beating a dead horse. But I don't want to say, like, individual people. Like, I would never condemn or like, say, say anything about an individual person. My, my point of view comes more from, like, the church in, in whole, like the 12 and what they're portraying to the members as a whole, not, not individual, like byu, you know, professors or, or any individual person that has not, you know, had the opportunity to look into it. I would never, never feel any kind of, you know, anger for, for any individual person. So I just kind of wanted to set that well.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:31:16] And what frustrates me is when you see, and I know John's highlighted this before in episodes, but you'll have certain historians, you'll have some leaders. And behind closed doors at these firesides, they're way more open about the history. They're way more open to saying, yeah, this is not how it happened. And then when they're in front of the youth and they're in front of a youth face to face, they're like, this is what happened. You gotta believe. And that's where I get frustrated because it's like in that point, you know better. And I don't want to get into politics much, but that's one of the huge problems I have with like the whole election fraud thing from last year was there were a lot of people that, behind closed doors, you know, are smart enough to know better, but when they go out in front of the public and they want people to donate to their causes, they'll say whatever they need to say to get these people riled up. And I'm not equating election fraud with the book Mormon translation. I'm just saying there are people that know better. And that's what's frustrating because the people that know better are going to perpetuate what is a bad history. And it causes a lot of people pain when they find out it's not true. It can cause fractures with families and communities and friendships. And we know all that. And again, as Jen said, we probably are beating a dead horse here. It's just, that is where the line goes for me from, like, I can be somewhat sympathetic to the fact that they want to protect something they believe to they know better and yet they're doing it anyways.
John Dehlin [00:32:27] Let's just be, let's just be honest. What they should have done was said, we know about the stone in the hat. We know that it's awkward, but we know that we're misrepresenting how it really happened. We need to radically transform all curriculum, come out and acknowledge this, and then say, we're sorry it got misrepresented and we will now always represent it accurately going forward. That's the type of honesty that I learned from, ironically, the Mormon Church.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:33:00] Yes, right.
John Dehlin [00:33:03] That would have been the honest thing to do.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:33:05] Well, and look, if you can spend millions and millions of dollars completely revamping your website to remove every reference to the Mormon Church. If you can change your printed manuals to get the full name of the church, as Russell Nelson wants, then certainly you can also spend some money to make the changes to get the manuals more accurate and to get rid of some of these stories that we know just aren't realistic and in some cases are Just downright, you know, deceptive. So.
John Dehlin [00:33:30] And you can go in a general conference and you can tell all the members, go read the essay on the translation.
Jenn Kamp [00:33:36] Yeah, yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:33:36] I mean, that's what it comes down to is to say you don't have to. I mean, like, again, I look back at when I was a convert, and I think if they told me the real history, I wouldn't have joined. But that is the. That's the consequence of what their history is. So if someone is told the full history and they say, look, yeah, he was invest involved in treasure digging, but he got this. This rock and then he channeled the rock to the divine and was able to create this book, whether it was true history or inspired, you know, but he did it with this. With a head and a hat. And it seems weird, but we believe it. And if that person goes, you know what? That. That sounds good to me. Yeah, that's fine. But the problem is a lot of the times when people say that sounds like when believing members are go, I'm fine with the rock and the hat. Well, would you have been fine if you had gotten that with a clean slate? And I would argue heavily, I would argue like 90, 95% of people that would be told that story first would go, yeah, that's ridiculous. And they'd walk away. But when you have the, you know, you're so invested in it for so long, especially if you were born into the church, then all of a sudden, you know, you're told later and it's like, well, crap, what do I do? Because it's so painful to leave now.
John Dehlin [00:34:41] My marriage is based on it. My kids, you know, will lose respect for me. My job may be tied to it. Yeah, it's a lot harder when you're 40 or 50 to care about how weird the stone in the hat is.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:34:53] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:34:54] Than when you're 20 or 15.
Jenn Kamp [00:34:55] Right. And to be honest, you're kind of embarrassed.
Jenn Kamp [00:34:58] Right.
Jenn Kamp [00:34:59] Like, you're. You're kind of even, like, for. I feel for. Even like my parents, you know, that are in, you know, their late 70s, that if they spent seven, you know, almost 80 years, you know, in this church and like to. To find out things that they were never told, you know, and to find out all this new information, they're like, they kind of feel duped in a way, and they kind of feel like. And my. My parents are still believing, so. But they. They don't even want to hear it because they don't. They don't want to feel like they. Yeah, they don't want to feel like they've been, you know. Yeah, lied. They believed lies. I guess they don't. They don't want to even comprehend it. They don't want to even start, you know, And I feel for them. I feel. I do. I feel for them. I feel really sad in a lot of ways, actually.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:35:53] Yeah, it's.
Jenn Kamp [00:35:53] It's.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:35:54] Yeah, it's like the whole thing is a crushing experience. And the thing is, like, what really sucks is when you find out something and you feel like. I don't know how to phrase it because they say every member is a missionary. Right. And so you find out this stuff, and so you want to talk to the people that are, you know, around you that are in the church, and then everyone's like, nope, we're good. And then you're isolated. You have nowhere to go. You're trying to process the fact that you. You believed in this stuff and it's completely not what it was. And it's. It's a horrible feeling for you, then. It's a horrible feeling for the people you're dumping this info on. And. And all of it's avoidable. All of that is avoidable if they could be more upfront with. With the true history of the church.
John Dehlin [00:36:32] Yes, absolutely.
Jenn Kamp [00:36:33] Exactly.
How the Book of Mormon Was Actually Translated
John Dehlin [00:36:34] All right, well, let's. Now let's get to how the Book of Mormon was actually translated.
Jenn Kamp [00:36:38] Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:36:38] After that. Brief. Brief.
John Dehlin [00:36:42] Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:36:42] The next few quotes are. These are the. The quotes of how the translation went from the people who were with Joseph Smith at the time. So I'm just going to read these real quick. Just because this is. This is contemporary. This one's from 1887, but these are from people who were there. So David Whitmer said Joseph Smith would put the Seer stone into a hat and put his hat in the face, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light. And in the darkness, the spiritual light would shine, a piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who is his principal scribe. And when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disapp. Excuse me, disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus, the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God and not by any power of man. So that's David Whitmer. And, you know, this just shows that Joseph Smith is going to read the words to Oliver. And Oliver has to repeat the words to Joseph to see if it's correct. If it's not correct, the words stay on the stone just to show how like, divinely supernatural this is. If Oliver reads it wrong, the words don't change. So the stone actually hears what's being said as well. And then the stone's going to change words as it's written correctly. And this goes into, I think one of the accounts and I don't know if they're one of the ones here. I think it even says if it's not spelled correctly, it won't change. And so it just shows how tied the text is to the stone and how tight of a translation this would be. So I just want to make that note for you, man.
John Dehlin [00:38:13] I have never thought, I have never thought about the fact that not only is this magical stone able to read golden plates, reformed Egyptian and translate into English, but it's listening to what Joseph tells the scribe and then waiting and pausing. Like, that's a, that's a pretty high tech device right there.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:38:37] Yeah, I mean, it's like having a, you know, having an Amazon echo in the background or something. But yeah, it's like. So it's the tightest of translation. And so I guess you could make the argument that maybe Joseph Smith in his head would go, okay, you got it right. And then it's, you know, would channel it through. But, but that's either way, that's.
John Dehlin [00:38:53] I, you, if you talk about this later, we'll just skim by it later. But that's very condemning to the actual manuscript that we have, the original manuscript. Yeah, well, go ahead, you say it, Jen.
Jenn Kamp [00:39:06] Well, what's going through my mind right now is all the updates they've made in the Book of Mormon, like with wording and, and things like that. Just like little things here and there. If it, if they had to get it exactly right before it would change, then why, why is the church redoing it?
John Dehlin [00:39:25] The original dictation manuscript, as I understand it, is like. And then he went to here and then he went to there.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:39:32] Yeah, yeah, there's examples of that later.
John Dehlin [00:39:35] Okay, okay, okay, we'll get into that.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:39:36] Yeah, it's important.
John Dehlin [00:39:39] Yeah, but, but, but, but David Whitmer is not just some yokel. David Whitmer. I mean, he's one of the three witnesses. And we all want to rely on his testimony as one of the three witnesses, but.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:39:53] Right.
John Dehlin [00:39:53] And wasn't this happening in his house during some of the time? I mean, how did he become a Witness he. It. You know. So, anyway. All right, we're stealing your thunder, but this is a big deal. This is a really big deal. Why in the world have there been so many edits to the Book of Mormon? If one of the three witnesses says that the stone provided a tight word for word translation that's supposed to be good.
Jenn Kamp [00:40:17] Like, God wouldn't allow the words to change until they got it perfect. Yeah, like, that's pretty tight.
John Dehlin [00:40:23] Yeah. And why was Joseph Smith's vernacular and the King James version of blah, blah, blah, and deutero, Isaiah and horses. How did all that get through the stone's magical powers? Yeah, someone to tell me. Okay, we'll keep going. Sorry.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:40:38] No, no, you're good. So the next one's Emma Smith, and she was a scribe in the first 116 pages, so she was doing it, obviously. And she said, and again, this is a late account, but it's from someone who believes and said, I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him. He's sitting with his face buried in his hat with the stone in it and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us. So in this quote, she's giving basically the exact same thing that David Whitmer did, which is just to say head in the hat. There's no point where he's got the plates out. There's no part where he's even using the plates, and he is just dictating with his head in the hat, reading off of the rock. So this would be the same basic thing, just without as much elaboration as David Whitmer gave.
John Dehlin [00:41:18] And again, as we discussed yesterday or last episode, Emma was the. One of the special witnesses. She was like the special companion that accompanied Joseph to the hill, Cumorah, to get the plate. She was. And it was happening under her supervision all the time. So you got to trust. You got to trust Emma as a witness.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:41:38] I mean, yeah, there's, like. When Emma talks about polygamy, she's motivated to say he wasn't doing it. So that. And we'll get into that down the road with. With these episodes. But, yeah, I mean, there's no reason to doubt this because of the fact that she's not sitting with David Whitmer giving these. These accounts. So when these accounts match and they're giving independently, then there's reason to think the people involved are giving you a pretty consistent account here. There's no reason to doubt it.
John Dehlin [00:42:01] Okay, all right, well, let's. Let's continue.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:42:05] Yep. So the last One's gonna be Martin Harris again, he's involved in the being a scribe early on. And so Edward Stevenson had done an interview and recounts this account from Martin Harris where he says, by aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the prophet and written by Martin. And when finished, he would say written. And if correctly written, that sentence would disappear and another appear in its place. But if not written correctly, it remained until corrected so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the place precisely in the language then used, which is again confirming what David Whitmer said, which is to say that every single element of the text had to be tightly done right, or else it would not change on the stone. Which, you know, again, begs a lot of questions as far as use of the King James English. But the point is, he's not using the plates, he's using the stone. And that stone is almost interacting with them in the sense that it cannot change until the stone hears that it was written correctly or Joseph Smith somehow channels with it that it's correct. So this is a super duper tight translation with the rock and the hat. And remember, again, it's the same rock that he used for treasure digging that he's using here. This is not the spectacles.
John Dehlin [00:43:15] Yeah, really a problem.
Treasure Digging, Folk Magic, and the Seer Stone
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:43:17] And so now I want to read two quotes real quick. Now, these quotes might sound familiar if you listen to our first episode, because these are from the treasure digging episode. So these are given after the Book of Mormon was written. But again, these people would not be witnesses to the Book of Mormon. They would not know how Joseph Smith translated it. And so this is Joseph Capron. And Joseph Smith did a dig on his farm. So he would obviously be, you know, a good witness to how he did treasure digging. And he said the family of smiths held Joseph Jr. In high estimation on account of some supernatural power which he was supposed to possess. This power he pretended to have received through the medium of a stone of peculiar, peculiar quality. The stone is placed in the hat in such a manner to exclude all light except that which emanated from the stone itself. This light of the stone he pretended enable him to see anything he wished, which is basically the exact same thing that the Book of Mormon translation would tell you. And we could just go to the second one real quick.
John Dehlin [00:44:13] I'll just say, I remember once I was with Lindsay Hansen park traveling through England, and she just. She made the point that it's all about polygamy. Everything in the church can be understood if you look at it through the lens of polygamy. And I think there's, you know, there's a lot that can be understood if you look at the church through the lens of polygamy. But I think the point you're trying to make, and I think it's maybe even more true, is that so much of Mormon church history can be understood if you look at it through the lens of treasure digging and folk magic.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:44:46] Yeah, well, I mean. Yeah. So Lindsay Hansen Parker, I think is absolutely right. When you look at pretty much everything from polygamy on, polygamy really is central to it. I think the early part, though, treasure digging, everything comes from it. And you will get to a point like, you know, again, when I keep talking about this puzzle, we're going to get pieces that are going to keep going on, and eventually you're far enough away from treasure digging to where even though it still came out of it, it's not really directly connected to it. And then all of a sudden, when polygamy happens, then things like the temple ceremonies, all of that, those are attached directly to polygamy. So all of the things that we talk about, especially when it gets like Nauvoo, I think, is going to revolve around polygamy. But at this early stage, it's all about treasure digging.
John Dehlin [00:45:22] Yeah. Yeah. All right, makes sense. All right, let's go to the next slide.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:45:28] Yeah. So the next one is going to be just another quote from someone who was involved in treasure digging with Joseph. So he conducted a dig on Joshua Stafford's farm. This is from William Stafford. And he said, I first became acquainted with Joseph Senior and his family in the year 1820. They would say also that nearly all the hills in this part of New York were thrown up by human hands. And in them were large caves which Joseph Jr. Could see by placing a stone of singular appearance in his hat in such a manner as to exclude all light, at which time they pretended he could see all things within and under the earth that he could see within the above mentioned caves, large gold bars and silver plates that he could also discover the spirits in whose charge these treasures were clothed in ancient dress. And again, this not only matches the translation process, but it also matches the accounts he gives of the angel angelic visitations to get the gold plates. All of this, you can read these quotes and you could almost like change William Stafford to Martin Harris and just change caves to plates. I mean, these are the. He's using the exact same method. I just want to make clear when I mentioned in Our first episode that this all comes out of treasure digging. This is what I'm talking about. Because these quotes are identical to the translation process of the Book of Mormon. There's no, you know, people will say, oh, well, the treasure digging was a preparatory experience with Joseph Smith. Well, I mean, again, he's using the same process, so it's not like he's graduating and changing from this and then using a different process that maybe has similarities. He's using the exact same process. There's no change at all. He's even using the same stone. So you have to keep in mind Joseph Smith is using treasure digging techniques to get the gold plates. He's also using treasure digging techniques to claim to translate them.
John Dehlin [00:47:04] Yeah, that's important. All right, next slide.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:47:09] And so then now we're going to get to kind of the similarities, which we pretty much already covered, actually. But, you know, again, he's using the same techniques that he claimed to see buried treasure, and yet he never found the treasure. And then you've got the fact that he is going, they're going to go through all of this work. Right. And we talked about this in the last episode a bit, but the gold plates were engraved on metal. They were carried around all the way to New York and they were buried and they were protected just for Joseph Smith. And he's not going to use those plates in any meaningful way to translate the Book of Mormon. And I put here post 116 pages, because I think there's like one or two accounts that imply he used the plates before they lost 116 pages. But again, if you look at Martin Harris's quote and Emma Smith's quote, and they're both scribes early on, none of them mention that. So they're talking about the Seer Stone. But I am putting in there just to acknowledge the fact that there is some people who will say he used the plates before that. I don't really believe that, but, you know, it's possible. So you just. You think of all the work that went into creating these plates, protecting them, all of the work that went into Joseph Smith having to go for year after, according to the Church's narrative, to go year after year after year. And he doesn't even use them. And he had the stone the whole time. He had the stone in 1820. So in 1823, Moroni could have went to him and said, hey, that stone you've been using, we're just going to channel this book to you. But instead they go through this entire backstory. And then really, the backstory is just thrown in the dumpster at the end of it because he's just going to use the stone anyway. So, you know, I, you know. Well, the next slide will kind of, you know, really amplify what I'm trying to say here.
John Dehlin [00:48:43] Yeah. And I'll just. I'll just say that that is a. You know, we. I try and highlight smoking guns whenever I see them, and just. And I'm sure you're going to have slides on this later, but when I learned that the plates weren't even in the room when he was translating, that's just. Why chop off Laban's head? Why take the brass plates? Why even do all the smelting and the gold and the etching into the plates and the preservation and the protecting and the burying, and then Joseph uncovering and fighting people off only to then never use the gold plates? That's. I can't think of a bigger smoking gun that just defies all logic.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:49:27] Well, yeah. I mean, the only reason I wouldn't even call it. The only reason I wouldn't call it a smoking gun is because we don't have the plates to look at, to verify. You know what I mean? Like, because the book Abraham, I would say that's a smoking gun because we have the source material. DNA, I would say, is a smoking gun because we have the DNA studies, we could compare to what was claimed. But, yeah, I mean, this is just one of those ones where it's. Again, it's like you have to untether yourself from reality so far to make this work because of the fact that it layers on top of each other. I mean, again, it's not an isolated incident. It's treasure digging into the gold plates. And then to your point, the backstory of how the gold plates were created protected. It's like at some point then you got to go, what in the world is this backstory for? If it really has, like, you wouldn't even need to tell this story outside of the fact that you need to build up credibility for the source of the records. But then when the source of the records are shown to be not historical, then, you know, I mean, it's just every single episode we do on this overview project is going to build off the last. And it's like, how many times can you have these problems before you go? There's enough red flags here to where I got to take a step back, let go of the rod again. And I'm not saying that facetiously. I'm Just saying. They always say, hold on to the rod. If you let go for a second, you can always grab back on. But you got to let go for a second. And if it's true, nothing to worry about. If it's not true, you deserve to know.
Jenn Kamp [00:50:39] That's.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:50:39] That's really what it's all about.
John Dehlin [00:50:40] Yeah. And I'll just, I don't. I'll push back a tiny bit because, yes, we don't have the plates. To me, it's a smoking gun because we have multiple eyewitness firsthand accounts of credible people saying the plates weren't in the room.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:50:54] Yeah. And I would add to that if treasure digging doesn't work, and the fact that all the witnesses are giving you a treasure digging account of translation, to your point, that's a smoking gun. So until you can show me any evidence across the entire Americas ever of people locating buried treasure with a rock and a hat, then this entire thing is just going to be cut off at his knees. Because you cannot translate something with a method that we've. We can show time and time again. Doesn't work. Yeah, Especially to your point, when you're not using the, the records you're claiming to have.
John Dehlin [00:51:24] Yeah. Because Joseph claimed to recover the plates, but there's no evidence that he ever did.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:51:29] Right.
John Dehlin [00:51:30] No reliable evidence.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:51:31] And so this next slide is going to be a quote from Richard Bushman. So the quote is on the screen, so you can read it if you're, if you're on. But if you play the video, it's just audio. So play the video at the, the bottom there, and then you can read along with it. It's from a fair Mormon podcast that he had done about the gold plates and the translation.
Richard Bushman on the Seer Stone and Translation
John Dehlin [00:51:48] Okay, here we go. This is Richard Bushman.
▶ Video Clip 2Video Clip 2 [00:51:52] You mentioned the Seer Stone, and that's something that's also kind of unusual to church members today.
Video Clip 2 [00:51:57] I tended to have a mental picture
Video Clip 2 [00:51:59] of him translating with the gold plate sitting on the table, the scribe sitting across from him, and him concentrating and studying it after in his mind. And then we have these accounts where he's putting his face in a hat.
Video Clip 2 [00:52:10] Can you talk about the translation process?
Video Clip 2 [00:52:13] Well, I'll begin by saying that we still have pictures on our board, bulletin boards of Joseph Smith with gold plates in front of him. And that's become an irksome point, and I think something the church should pay attention to, because anyone who studies the history knows that is not what happened. There is no change. Church historian who says that is what happened, and yet it's being propagated by the church. And it feeds into the notion that the church is trying to cover up embarrassing episodes and is sort of prettifying its own history. So I think we ought to just stop that immediately. I'm not sure we need a lot of pictures in our chapels of Joseph Smith looking into his hat, but we certainly should tell our children that that's.
Video Clip 2 [00:52:58] Do you think that's really unusual? I mean, that's a strange.
Video Clip 2 [00:53:01] It's weird. It's a weird picture. It implies. It's like darkening a room when we show slides. It implies that there is an image appearing in that stone, and the light would make it more difficult to see that image. So that implies a translation. That's a. It's a reading. And so it gives us a little clue about the whole translation process. But it also raises the strange question, what in the world are the plates for? Why do we need them on the table? They're just wrapped up in a cloth while he looks into a seer stone.
John Dehlin [00:53:42] So can I. Do you mind if I just give a really quick reaction to that? I haven't heard that before. And, Jen, I don't know if you'll have other things you want to add, but just a couple things. Number one is freaking. Where were you, Richard Bushman? You know, where were you in the 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s and 2000s and, you know, in mid 2010s, Richard Bushman, you knew about the stone in the hat way back in the 60s and 70s. You authored the book Joseph Smith in the Beginnings of Early Mormonism. You knew that the church was misrepresenting the translation process in the ward buildings, in the stake buildings, in the ensign. You're speaking up now in 2015, 2000, you know, 2020. Now you're speaking up, saying, they need to change it. Where were you 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago when we were all being misled? Like, where was your integrity then? I don't mean to pick on Richard Bushman, but it's weird that he's saying that now when he's known all along, acting like, oh, now we need to do something about it. Like, why now? Why not 40 years ago? Where were you? The second thing is, he said we. He said, I don't know that we need to put these up. You know, the stone in the hat. Pictures of the stone in the hat up in ward buildings and state buildings. Why not? Why shouldn't we? Like, if we could do it with the plates and the. And the spectacle, if. Why wouldn't we just want an accurate. Why don't we own who we are? Why don't we own what happened? Why would Bushman be literally stating publicly that we should hide that? That we should. And then. And then. Sorry. And then finally he calls it irksome. I'm like, irksome. Is that what. Is that what it is? That. That the decades and centuries and millions of Mormons and non Mormons have been intentionally, explicitly, misled, knowingly. And we're just going to say, oh, it's a fleck of history. That's irksome. I'm a little bit fired up. Will you guys forgive me? Will you forgive me for being a little bit fired up?
Jenn Kamp [00:55:56] I forgive you.
Jenn Kamp [00:55:57] Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:55:58] I think for me, you know, again, it's one of those things where I think Richard Bushman is in that spot where a lot of people are, where it's like, you can write these books and you can kind of talk about it among the right crowd. But, you know, I mean, if Richard Bushman talks about that 40 years ago, he might be excommunicated now again.
John Dehlin [00:56:13] Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:56:14] He won't.
John Dehlin [00:56:14] He certainly won't. You know, he certainly won't be made a stake president. He certainly won't be made a patriarch.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:56:19] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:56:20] He certainly won't.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:56:20] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:56:21] Be asked to write the definitive biography on Joseph Smith. That Deseret book sells. I understand that he's managing his political capital with the church.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:56:29] Right.
John Dehlin [00:56:30] But there's the other side of that, which is do what is right. Let the consequence follow.
Jenn Kamp [00:56:34] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:56:35] When, you know, the church is knowingly misleading people. He knew. Didn't he have. Didn't a bunch of people have the obligation to speak up? I think I'm at least partially affected by the fact that when I learned this stuff, I felt like I had a duty to speak up about it because I knew that people were being misled. And so that's why I started Mormon stories in 2005. And what was the result? I was excommunicated. And now I've been smeared and marginalized and punished severely. So, yeah, it's hard. Yeah, I know it's hard. I know it's hard to speak up. And it's not really about Richard Bushman per se. It's just about a culture of fear and intimidation. It's really on the brethren. It's not on Richard Bushman.
Jenn Kamp [00:57:17] No.
John Dehlin [00:57:18] The church leaders, Boyd K. Packer, Ezra Tapp Benson, Markey Peterson, the whole decades of silencing and punishing historians and excommunicating truth tellers and Intimidating Fawn Brody and Juanita Brooks and Leonard Arrington and Michael Quinn. It's on the Brethren. It's not on Richard Bushman, but at the same time. Yeah. It's hard to speak up. And when you do, you get punished.
Jenn Kamp [00:57:44] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:57:45] And it's not just me. It's Dan Vogel, it's Brent Metcalf, it's Michael Quinn, it's Juanita Brooks, it's Fawn Brody. I stand on the shoulders of so many courageous historians.
Jenn Kamp [00:57:56] Sandra Tanner.
John Dehlin [00:57:57] Yeah. Gerald Tanner.
Jenn Kamp [00:57:58] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:57:59] That spoke up publicly and got punished for it.
Jenn Kamp [00:58:01] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:58:01] Why were. Why were some courageous and some weren't. And again, this isn't about Richard Bushman, but we've. So. Thank you, Jen. We've strayed. So. But, but. But I. I'm fine with it. So let's get back to this slide and what Richard Bushman was actually saying. What was. What was really powerful to you, Mike, about. About this slide?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:58:23] Well, I think, again, when he is in. In this case, in a Fair Mormon podcast, you can talk about more openly. And again, I'm kind of with Jen because for me, when I. When I first started going through this, being able to find Richard Bushman confirming a lot of the things that were say in the CES letter was helpful, because if you've got someone who's a faithful historian who's willing to come out and say, yeah, you know, a lot of the stuff in no Man Knows My History is actually true, it's really helpful when you're trying to dissect it yourself. But for this one, and you kind of. Kind of hit on a little bit. You know, it is funny how he says they don't think that they should put pictures up with his head in a hat in the, you know, ward bulletin boards. But it's like, if you really are proud of the Book of Mormon and you really do think it's a divine record of history, then you should be proud enough to put up the real translation on the wall and let that stand. And if it weirds people out, then they didn't have enough faith to. You know what I mean? And so, yeah, I agree with you. Like, are you proud of the Book of Mormon? Are you proud of how it was really translated, or are you not? Because clearly they are embarrassed by the translation because they, again, in the year 2021, are putting in the ensign a version of the translation that did not happen. And so I think if you want to make that argument that you're proud of the Book of Mormon, that you believe in it, that you should be willing to put front and center how it really came to be. And like you said, let the consequences follow it if people do come across it and then realize that it's not for them.
John Dehlin [00:59:41] Yeah. And we. And we're grateful. Yeah. You know, just to close this point, I lost my faith partly because of Richard Bushman. I read Joseph Smith and the beginnings of early Mormonism while I was reading Fawn Brody. No man knows my history. This is back in 2000, 2001. And it was one thing to read Fawn Brody, but you always have, like, that conditioned minimizing of an apostate where in your brain, you're like, well, okay, it's a disturbing book, but Fawn Brody's an apostate and she wrote it. But then when you read the same history by Richard Bushman, you're like, well, everything Fawn Brody said was true. So, yes, thank you, Richard Bushman. You've done an amazing job helping the truth, truthful history get out. You manage your political capital in a way to where you can make a big impact. When the brethren were ready. I revere and honor and respect you. I acknowledge the important role you've played as well. So I'm just, I'm torn. I'm ambivalent. And we beat a difference and, you
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:00:43] know, not to again, not to. We'll move on in a second. But it's like, you know, there's this thing and it's like this Fair Mormon podcast, the quoted is played. It's a good example where they'll tell you, like these historians, they can talk about this stuff. They can put in BYU studies, they can write in the different publications to put these more technical areas of history on. But the rule then is you kind of keep it in that circle. So when they say to people, like, if I come across something, I'm like, I was never told that. And then you'll have people reply and say, how'd you not know that it was in dialogue? It was in, you know, rough stone rolling, whatever. It's like, well, most people don't get to that point. You don't get to apologetics until you've already gotten to a point where you've been exposed to some. Some problems with the church. But, you know. Yeah, again, I'll stop ranting now.
John Dehlin [01:01:25] Yeah. And so the next slide, what, what you're going to show is that I guess maybe Bushman got in trouble for what he said in that Fair Mormon podcast. So you've got. You've got a slide of a retraction or of a clarification, it appears that
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:01:41] he took some heat for this quote when it happened. And so this was a few weeks later, and he was at a Book of Mormon archeological forum, and he said, what would we gain and lose if we abandoned the plates? What we would lose would be a powerful form of the evidence that the Lord gave to Joseph Smith and to us of the actuality of these experiences, and therefore the actuality of the transcendent sphere that would be gutting some of the most gritty and appealing parts of the Mormon story. And again, I just, I wanted to put this in here because when you put that first quote up, a lot of times apologetics will say, the apologists will say, you're not being fair. This is what he said later to clarify it. And I'm saying he's clarifying it, but he's also being very careful here because he's still not giving any reason. He's trying to give a reason why we should believe in the plates, but he's still not saying the plates were used. And he's really not answering the question from the Fair Mormon podcast. But I do want to include it for fairness, because he is trying to say that is why the plates are important, because without those plates, you literally are saying he translated the Book of Mormon purely by treasure digging. At least the plates give you that middle conduit that you can claim the records coming from. Without it, you know, it is 100%. I mean, it still is 100 treasure digging, but it's. Without even having that kind of distraction of the plates to kind of put the record into.
John Dehlin [01:02:53] Well, that's why I think last week's episode was so important, because. Because if the account of the golden plates were credible, then the plates would represent important, tangible evidence.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:03:06] But.
John Dehlin [01:03:06] But there's nothing, there's literally nothing credible about the account of the golden plates. And so then it's not tangible, credible evidence. You really don't lose anything if you lose the golden plates, because. Because there's. It's, it's, it's vaporware, as we said.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:03:23] But that's the thing, though, because the narrative. Right, but the narrative is killed. Like, that's the whole thing. So, like, yeah, you're really not. Historically, you're losing nothing. Because they're almost certainly not. They're not. It's not history. They're almost certainly not real ancient plates. I mean, they're not. But on the same time, the nar. Yeah, for. To Richard Bushman's point, the nar, the Church Narrative dies. I mean, you're killed. Like, you cannot. You could. You could go away and say the Book of Mormon's not historical. Like, they'll do that in a few decades. They'll say it's not historical, it's inspired. They have to do it. But they're doing that now.
John Dehlin [01:03:52] They're saying that now.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:03:53] They're starting slowly, starting it. And so they could do that, but the plates cannot go away or else you. Everything will fall apart immediately because then all of a sudden, all the witnesses are lying. I mean, it's. It's done well, spiritualized.
John Dehlin [01:04:04] They're seeing it with their spiritual eyes, not with their physical eyes.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:04:07] Maybe they'll get there someday.
Jenn Kamp [01:04:08] But.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:04:08] Yeah, so, I mean, yeah, to his point, you. You can't get rid of it without losing. I mean, oh, my goodness. Just looking back to my missionary discussions, they would be just completely. There's nothing left.
John Dehlin [01:04:17] So we also have to mention. We also have to mention Bill Real and Grant Palmer as two other people that were punished for talking the truth. Grant Palmer was really influential for me. And then the only other thing I'll say is the Bushman. Bushman has had a repeated record of making semi courageous, discreet public statements and then having to kind of backtrack. And not only did he do that with the plates, but when he made that private statement about the church's narrative being untrue and inaccurate, he said that in someone's basement at a private little fireside. Then we and a bunch of other people shared the recording, you know, thanked him for saying that. And then within a few weeks, he's retracting it and trying to. To minimize what he said, you know, what he said privately. And I wish he could just be courageous sometimes. So anyway, more courageous. But people hate it when I criticize Bushman. All right, let's go to the next slide.
The Character Sheet and the Charles Anthon Visit
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:05:16] So this is the sample of the characters that Joseph Smith claimed on the Book of Mormon. And I just want to point out that this particular sheet is likely a copy of the one that was brought to Charles Anthon by Martin Harris, because Martin Harris, Charles Anthon describes there being some, like, I think, zodiac symbols and calendar type things at the bottom which are not on here. So this is likely somebody else copying the characters if there's multiple copies of the character sheet. But this is what is claimed to be the reformed Egyptian language that are on the gold plates. And remember that Martin Harris is going to go to Charles Anthon to verify these, but nobody in America could verify Egyptian in any way. The Rosetta stone has not been cracked yet and it certainly isn't knowledge in the us so reformed Egyptian would. No one could translate this obviously outside of, you know, supernatural ways. And nobody could verify that these are real characters because there's no such thing as reformed Egyptian then. And there is no such thing currently, or at least no evidence of it. But just look at that sheet. Because when you look at the sheet that, that is what Joseph Smith copied. So that is what we are told is on the plates. And so that's important as we, as we go through these next few slides.
John Dehlin [01:06:25] You're basically saying these characters are sketchy. So it's another sketchy part of the story. The train.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:06:30] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:06:30] Is that right?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:06:30] Yeah.
Jenn Kamp [01:06:31] Where did you, where did you find that? That from.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:06:34] What's that?
Jenn Kamp [01:06:34] Where, where did you find that?
John Dehlin [01:06:36] The characters?
Jenn Kamp [01:06:37] Yeah, the picture of that.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:06:39] It's everywhere. I mean, like I think that you can find on the Joseph Smith Papers Project. I mean that that particular page is everywhere. And you know, like I said, the only, the only question is it's probably not the one that was brought to Mark to Charles Anthon, but it's probably a copy of that, but I think there's another copy as well. And then there's also a broadside that was published about the Book of Mormon that has some of these characters on it. So there's multiple areas where you can see these characters. So it's not just like a one off thing where somebody was just going off on their own and doing something for fun.
John Dehlin [01:07:07] And if we want to put in our show notes the episode with Robert Rittner, he was the world's greatest living Egyptologist. He's like reformed Egyptian doesn't exist. And these characters are gobbledygook. And that's important. That should matter.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:07:24] It does. Okay, and so the next slide, this is just really quickly because we are going to go over the Charles Anthon visit more in a future episode. I kind of did that more in a different part of the overview, but just to quickly go through it, the history of it. Joseph Smith sends Martin Harris to go to Charles Anthon because Martin Harris has to fund the Book of Mormon. And it sounds like this is a way for Martin Harris to get some surety that he's not being duped. And so no one in America could translate Egyptian. So there's no way Anthon could actually verify what it said. And the accounts that Charles Anthon does give, they do conflict. So Charles Anthon's story changes a little bit too. So that's important. To know, because apologists will hammer on that and there's some truth to it. So I'm just gonna point that out. And you know, a lot of that has to do with the whole account of, you know, saying I can't read a sealed book and all that, which is also gonna be important. We'll go through that in a minute. And then the account that's in the church's history is written after Martin Harris is out of the church and it's altered to fulfill a prophecy from Isaiah. And that's important too, because at that point I don't know that Martin Harris would say, you're making this up or not. I'm just saying that it's done after Martin Harris is gone, which makes it awful convenient for Joseph Smith to tell Martin Harris story in the way that fits the church's history in the most faith promoting way. And again, we'll cover all that in the next few slides as well. But I just wanted to, to point those out now for anyone who's wondering why we're not going into that in more depth.
John Dehlin [01:08:49] All right, makes sense.
Backdating Prophecy in Joseph Smith's History
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:08:51] And so this next slide is going to be. This is from the Joseph Smith paper. And this is the area where you're looking at the history of the. I'm sorry, of the, of the visit. And if you see in this red box, this is added writing where it says informed him that the part of the plates were sealed and that it was forbidden, I think, to take it or something like that. And that's where. And then you can see below it says cannot read a sealed book. And so I just want to point again that this text and this was added to the history afterwards. And this is really important because these lines are the ones that the church leaders will say fulfilled the prophecy in Isaiah of a sealed book coming forth, which has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon historically. It's a complete misuse of that prophecy. But regardless, it's still being altered and added into the history to fulfill a prophecy. This is like when you had RFM on the other day last week or whatever, and he was talking about backdating prophecy. And this is an area where we're backdating prophecy because they're writing into the history a prophecy being fulfilled from a story that clearly, you know, is being misused for the, for the Isaiah part anyways, but it's still being added in later. And we see that multiple times in the church where they'll go back into these old stories, add something to either reconcile with current theology or to, you know, fulfill a prophecy in this case. So, again, we'll get into this more in a future overview on Revelation. But it's just important to note that for people that were wondering why I'm not going into that visit too much, those are just some highlights.
John Dehlin [01:10:14] And for those who just don't know the history, I'll just say that for Joseph Smith, he felt it was really important to be validated by an external witness who is an expert. And so the Charles Anthon story forever has been told as an account to bolster and support the, the translation process. But now we know, like you said, that Charles Anthon said gave a very different account, saying that these characters were illegitimate versus Martin Harris's account where he said that it was legitimate, that that throws into question why this was ever used to bolster the Book of Mormon. And then, wow, that's a really powerful thing. You bring forward that all this was written later into, into the original documents. It's clearly rewritten history. It's, it's.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:11:04] Yeah, and that's the problem. You can't rely on it. Whatever you want to say might have happened and maybe some element of it happened, because again, Charles Anthon's story does change a little, too. And we will get into it more later. It's just to say that these are. The history is being written after Martin Harris is gone. So if I'm retelling your story, John, and I kick you out of this area, I can tell it however I want to make me look better, to make my interest the best they can. And I'm not saying Joseph Smith is absolutely lying. I'm just saying you can show they're adding it in. And in the timeline, he's doing it after Martin Harris is gone. So at that point, everything Joseph Smith is saying is through his perspective and not Martin's.
John Dehlin [01:11:38] It's just. It just feels like everything's sketchy. As soon as you pull out a microscope or pull out your inspectors, you know, whatever, and you look, scratch 1cm in, everything falls apart. Everything's sketchy anyway.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:11:53] It does. And that's the problem. And that's why, you know, again, when I said at the beginning of our the series, you got to look at this in totality because if you watch this one episode, you might be able to say, well, what about this? About that? But then you've got the last episode and the one before and those build. You can't just, you can't just do that. You have to look at it. And to your point, when you look at it all together, it's like every single area is not what we were taught. And how many times do you need that before you go the whole thing, you know, the foundation is not working. How is the rest of the place going to stand? So anyways, one thing with me, I
Jenn Kamp [01:12:25] think that that's why you hear a lot with members who have a faith crisis, is that, you know, we lived it for, you know, myself for 43 years and it all crashed and shattered in like three days. Because as soon as you start to look and. And then I would put it on a shelf and I'd be like, no, okay, I can whatever. And then I'll look at something El. It shatters. And then you put it, you know, in this backpack, I like to say backpack that I'm carrying. And then you look at something else and it shatters. And I. And you almost are like pleading with God that there's some part that you're going to find that is true. Like, you're almost like have this pleading in you and you just keep having to throw all these things in this backpack that you're now carrying around. And it all happens like within days. Like years and years and years of belief and what you thought was truth, like, it just shatters. That's why the word is used. It shatters, like all around you. And then you have to pick up each little piece and try and figure out what's truth in you. And it's hard. It's hard. And so that's. So that's why I love what. I love what Mike's doing here with like giving us each little piece a little at a time. Because, you know, you can just maybe offer or offer one truth and let someone sit with that for a little while. Because if you do it yourself, it happens fast. And it happens like, because it's everywhere. Yeah. It's like you can't not find it if you really, really look. And so anyways, that's just my little tidbit with that.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:14:20] No. And you know, the one thing. And again, I know we've begun off the rails a bit today, but it's like, so the whole thing when I was doing the what would have eventually become LDS discussions.com was I read the CES letter and I read it in a weekend where we were with my, my in laws and they were all talking about missions and byu, and it was that, that, you know, that moment where that rubber band snaps and you go, I gotta know one way or the other. I. And I went in the other room and the only thing I knew about at the time was polygamy and the ban on members of black skin. And so I searched for Joseph Smith polygamy. And I got to the CES letter pretty quick because of course it's up in the searches. And so you read it. And then I did the thing that everybody does, which I regret horribly, which is you info dump on your spouse and say, how did you not know this? Did you know this? Did you know that? And you're just repeating these things. You don't even understand what you're repeating because you've only read it once. And so she asked me to read the Fair Mormon reply, which I did. And I'm like, okay, Fair Mormon is making some good replies to some of this. Some of this I don't believe it means the church is true, but at least it means there's plausibility. And then I was reading the Fair Mormon reply, and I saw they kept referencing the CES replies to the Fair Mormon reply. So I was like, oh, there's more. So then I read the CES letters reply to the Fair Mormon reply to the CES letter, and I was like, holy crap, there's all these more problems. And then I read the Fair Mormon reply to the ce, and you go back and forth and all that, and eventually you have that moment, and it's like at the end of the Sixth Sense where Bruce Willis realizes he's dead and he's kind of like leaning up against the wall, I think, and all these flashes are going through his head of all these little signs in the movie that he was dead the whole time, right? And that's how I felt. Because all of a sudden you start thinking of all of these things you heard in church, and you go, how did I not see it? How did I not see that? All of these things were pointing me to the very obvious conclusion that this doesn't work. But until that happened, until Bruce Willis had that moment where he realized he was dead, he was just going around life thinking he was alive. And I realized it's a movie. And I hope I'm not spoiling the ending for anyone, but to Jen's point, that's why it shatters. Because you have that moment where all of a sudden you're like, oh, my goodness, think of all of the times that I had these moments or I had these experiences, these spiritual experiences, and I have to re. Reevaluate what they meant. And so that was that moment for me early on where it was like, it really felt too Like, I think Bruce Willis was trying to feel in the Sixth Sense, where you're like. Like having a hard time catching your breath because everything's flashing through your head so fast. And that's why the overview project really reflects that, but in slow motion, you know, because, of course, it's not like Jen said it is. It's a very long read. And these are going to be, of course, you know, a bunch of episodes that are long, too, but. Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, once you. You hit that point where you realize that it just goes fast in your head and all of those things you wish you had seen at the time become clear. But, of course, that's a painful process, too.
John Dehlin [01:17:06] Yeah. Okay, so it turns out that not only has some of this Charles Anthon stuff been, you know, been actually revised history, you've actually got an analysis of how the characters themselves are problematic. Is that right?
Speaker E [01:17:22] Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:17:22] And so I didn't create this, and I think this was an infographics. I'm not sure who created this at first, but effectively, if you look at the character sheet, which we showed you a few slides ago, and now you look below it, every single letter in the Alphabet and every number is in that character sheet, except above, it might be twisted, it might be turned, it might be curved, but below, they straightened it out and so you could see it. This is not one of those things where you have to stretch anything. I mean, they're right there. I mean, every single letter is there in some form. Every number is there in some form. And again, if you're writing in reformed Egyptian, I realize that there's every language you compare to, you're going to have similar characters. That's just how it goes. But you should not have it this close. And it just really shows. And if you really want to get deep into this, I highly Recommend Dan Vogel's YouTube series on this, because on the YouTube series, he goes through, and not only does he look at the letters and the numbers, but if you look on the character thing above, you see, like, all those dashes and stuff. Some of those are from some of the magical parchments that the Smith family had. So, I mean, not only is he pulling from the English language, but he's pulling from other stuff he has around him. And again, this speaks for itself. I don't have to tell you what it says. You can see it with your own eyes. There's no way to make this go away, because you cannot avoid the fact that every letter is in the character sheet that's from English.
John Dehlin [01:18:37] Wow. That's really powerful when you see it.
Jenn Kamp [01:18:40] Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:18:41] So the next slide makes this point, and this is something that the Tanners put in one of their newsletters. And so again, when you have every letter of the reformed Egyptian being English, you can create a font out of it. And so they created this little message.
John Dehlin [01:18:53] They're so awesome.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:18:54] Yeah. Joseph Smith claimed these characters are reformed Egyptian. Some critics, however, feel they are deformed English. I mean, and again, you know, this isn't. I'm not trying to make fun of this. I'm just trying to show, like, this is how much reformed Egyptian matches English that you can make a font out of it. This should not happen like this. Again, when you talk about probability, I mean, how many times can you have these. These things that just completely are out of, you know, out of probability, multiply them together and then say, okay, yeah, this all works. So. And again, I don't know if Charles Anthon would have been able to, because I don't know how long he had to sit there and play around with the characters. He might have only had a, you know, 20 minutes or something. But again, when someone sits down and looks at it, you could see. I mean, again, you can read this. This is not me manipulating anything. This is the Tanner's just curving the letters around. You know what I mean? Like, this is just it. It's. It's hard. It's hard to take it seriously. Once you see this, Once you see that, you're like, how am I supposed to take that? This is a serious translation.
John Dehlin [01:19:47] The Tanners are such legends, man.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:19:49] Yeah, that image right there was one. That's one of those, you know, you see an image and you're just like, wow, that. That hits. That hits good. Because it just puts. It's one thing to tell you that there's a problem with the letters. It's another one. They can just put that right in your face. It's almost like a punch in the face with.
John Dehlin [01:20:02] With that, you know, so for our. For our people that are just listening, it really is worth it to go to the YouTube or Facebook video and look at the image that we're talking about.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:14] Yeah, I would. You have to understand this. And so, you know, again, it speaks for itself. I don't really know what more to say about it outside of the fact that it's just another element of Joseph Smith's production of these plates that is, I mean, I would say, linguistically impossible because the characters have nothing to do with history, and then they have everything to do with English characters being just twisted around and modified. It would be like if I went to my, My, my kid and said, hey, could you make a secret language for me? In his head, he's going to be working off the language he knows and trying to change it enough so that it's different, you know, and. And that's what this is. I mean, there's. Yeah, you can look for it again. It's one thing if we're telling you something, it's another one. You can just see it. So, yeah, I highly recommend if you're not watching this, to go back and just look at this section on video, because it's important.
John Dehlin [01:20:56] Yeah.
Jenn Kamp [01:20:57] Okay.
John Dehlin [01:20:57] What's your next slide?
Fabrication of Egyptian Characters
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:58] So the next slide. And Nemo had mentioned this in the last episode, and this is something that I noticed when I was doing some critiques of the now, you know, videos from the Mormon ch have on YouTube. And I think I did these about two years ago, but in two separate videos. One is on the gold plates and I think the other is on seer stones. And we'll have a clip of that near the end of this podcast. But they actually have reformed Egyptian characters. And you can look on the left and on the right, those are characters that the church made to show what reformed Egyptian would look like. And I would just point out, how convenient is it that when the church has the characters document, which they have in their possession, and they obviously, no one really disputes that they're authentic to what Joseph Smith copied, why are they then making up characters that look more Egyptian? Why wouldn't they? It's kind of what we said earlier about Richard Bushman when you say, why can't you put up a picture on the word bulletin board of how Joseph Smith really translated it? Because you're embarrassed. And in this case, you can tell the church is embarrassed by the characters because they know full well what we know, which is they're basically just crudely modified English. So they actually went out of their way to create fake Egyptian characters to call reformed Egyptian, even though we have what they're supposed to look like. I mean, it's. This is where it goes to being very deceptive and, you know, you could even say lying because they could very easily scan those characters and put it on the. The video, but they don't. They instead create their own. And that tells you that they know they won't withstand visual inspection.
John Dehlin [01:22:25] Yeah, not only that, but the prophet seers and revelators could have used the seer stone that they have in their possession and translated more documents or produced more revelations, and they don't do that either.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:22:39] Yeah. And like I said, I mean, again, this is one of those things where you don't have to say a whole lot because the visual speaks for themselves. But I think it's important to know.
John Dehlin [01:22:45] So powerful. I. I've never seen this before. That's great.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:22:48] Yeah. And those now, you know, videos, again, if you go to ldsdiscussions.com I did two, I think maybe two or maybe even three. I was going to do all of them, but, you know, you just get burned out. But those are videos that are like three to five minutes long. And we'll have a clip at the end. And they're very cartoony. They're almost like saints where they're almost feels like they're speaking to a young audience. And they're just, they're, again, they skirt around some of this stuff, but they phrase it in a way that just doesn't tell you what really happened. And that's why I get frustrated because it's like they know, they know what they're doing and that's where I get really frustrated, because they know that they are, you know, only the faith promoting stuff. And that giving, again, going back to their own definition of honesty, only giving a partial truth to them is dishonest. And yet here we can show pretty clearly that they're intentionally leaving out the evidence they have to create new letters. Again, it speaks for itself.
John Dehlin [01:23:38] That's bad.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:23:39] And so this next slide is 1. This is a document from Oliver Cowdery. And if you look in the middle, you can see it says the Book of Mormon. And then there's two symbols underneath on the right, it says the interpreters of language, and there's two characters underneath. Now, there's some controversy here as to whether or not those are reformed Egyptian characters or if those are characters from the Book of Abraham papyrus. So I'm not positive, but the one point I want to make here is if you look, this goes back to our last episode a bit. The Book of Mormon would be two characters. Right. The interpreters of language would be two characters. Correct. So that means that each character under this translation that Oliver Cowdery claimed to have gotten, and he wouldn't have done it himself. So two characters gives you four words, and then two characters gives you four words, which again shows you how implausible the gold plates are. Because now if you're going to go by this or by the Peer she tablets, you would again need like 6,000 plates. And so I'm just pointing that out to say even if it's the translation of Egyptian, that's how they understood it. That still creates a problem when you talk about how there's only a small number of plates that have 273,000 words on it.
John Dehlin [01:24:44] Yeah. So this goes back to the situation that according to this document that the Church would have published in the Joseph Smith Papers project, if you take the word count of the Book of Mormon and these characters, it would make golden plates heavier than Thor's hammer. And there's just no way Joseph Smith could have. Well, there's no way that could have been produced, let alone Joseph Carriott under his arms fighting off three different men. It's just physically impossible.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:25:13] Yeah. I got a reply from our last episode and they said, and they weren't saying they believed it, they're just saying the apologetic answer to Joseph Smith being able to run multiple miles with a bad leg fighting off three people with guns is that God gave him the strength to run. And I've heard that before in the right. That is the apologetic. But what you're saying and what I'm saying is if you want to believe the Peersy Tablets are in evidence for the Book of Mormon, or if you want to believe that those, those two translations on the Oliver Cowdery document would make sense, not only would he need the strength from God to do it, but the stack of plates would have been like as tall as the trees he's running through.
Jenn Kamp [01:25:47] Yeah, that, that's what. When you were yesterday, I was kind of listening in, but I wasn't on. And in my mind, it wasn't even the weight of them. It was like.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:25:55] It was the height.
John Dehlin [01:25:56] Yeah.
Jenn Kamp [01:25:57] It was like every plate, if there's that many plates, even if they're like teeny, teeny, tiny, like little plates, like, he's running with like a six foot. I don't even want to do the math. Yeah, he's running with like a six foot, like, book on his back.
John Dehlin [01:26:13] And how deep.
Jenn Kamp [01:26:14] How deep in some people?
John Dehlin [01:26:15] And how deep was the hole that had to be dug?
Jenn Kamp [01:26:19] Get it out of the hole that, like, I don't know, it's just like, oh, I'm just sitting there, like, learning new things.
John Dehlin [01:26:28] Me too.
Jenn Kamp [01:26:29] I'm 52 every day. Thanks, Mike. But like, just learning new things again. And I'm just trying to like how, like, it's just. It can't.
John Dehlin [01:26:40] That's why Mike's so awesome. We've mentioned all these other people, but, Mike, you and LDS discussions have just Done an amazing job of helping bring, synthesize all the information such that it's all in one place, it's contextualized in a way that's easily understandable. And that's why your name deserves to be up there, Mike.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:27:00] I don't know about that. But yeah, I mean, it's funny too, because when I did the overview project, my goal was to do it in a shorter thing. And the overview projects, a lot of them are like 10,000 words, so they're longer. And I remember once I talked to Jonathan Streeter and he was making fun of me for how long they were, and I was like, yeah, you know, you're right. And that's a goal of mine, is to do a shorter condensed PDF of it. But, you know, like I said, it's about for me, this. Like, I spent a couple years going through it, and I really am fascinated by it. And then at some point you're like, I just want to know how this works, how it works together. And then all of a sudden it feels really. It's so dumb, but it's so satisfying when you can find something that fits two things together. And so when I started putting the overview together, that really is how my thought process was of how do I make sense of this topic in a way that ties it to the other thing, ties it to the previous topic, and sets it up for the next one, because they really are connected. And so, again, there are a few things I might put out there where in my head I thought of something, not necessarily uncovered new evidence, but just put it in a way that other people haven't. But like we've talked about before, it really is just taking the work that so many people have spent so much time doing. And, you know, for example, a really good example in our next episode's on 116 pages and your episode with Brent Metcalf, that was one of those episodes. I remember. Like I said, I run a small business, and so I work and I listen to podcasts a lot, or at least I was then. Especially I'm listening to that one and I'm working with some of the products we work with. And I just remember just being like, just like floored at how good that interview was about the 116 pages, because Brent Metcalfe had put together things that I don't think people had done before him. And so for me, I took a lot of his work and then I put it in a way that made sense to me. And so it's not really my work. It's taking his and just putting it in how it processed through my mind. So, yeah, I mean, like I said, I definitely don't take credit for that part of it, but I hope that the way it made sense to me helps other people make sense of it, because I know a lot of times, especially when you read, like, the CES letter, letter from my wife, go to Mormonthink, there's so much info, it's like info overload. And then all of a sudden it just kind of like fries your brain for a while. And so for me, I had my brain fried, and then I had to put it back together. And, you know, that's why I think, I hope it's effective in the sense of trying to explain why these problems are not isolated. That was the one thing for me was when you talk to people and every problem, they're like, oh, well, you could just do that for this. And then you go to the next problem, they say, you could do this for. For that. And you go, but if you do that for that, the last issue doesn't work because you can't apply it equally. And anyways, yeah, that's why, hopefully, that's why I hope the overview project helps, because I hope it just really nails down the fact that these issues have common threads and that they can't be just brushed away with differing apologetics.
John Dehlin [01:29:39] So it is. It's brilliant. You're doing it, and it's amazing. All right, you've got a slide. Next slide's on the last 116 pages. Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:29:47] And so our next episode is going to be all about this, so we don't have to go into it too deep. But of course, this is a part of the translation. And so this is, you know, before the 116 pages were lost, he had Emma and Martin Harris. And I believe there are some pages that might have been written by somebody else. I remember misremembering his name, so I think there might have been a third scribe, too, that there's an account of. But the point is, these 116 pages help us to show that he was not translating anything. And so this whole episode is called Book of Mormon translation, and it really should be called Book of Mormon Dictation, because translation would imply that there was a text he was working off of. And this shows that there was not, because he could not replicate these lost words. And so the point is that the 116 pages show that when he loses control of a situation, he loses control of the ability to do what he wanted to do. And so once those pages were lost, he could not replicate him. And then the final point is just to say, within the translation timeline, once 116 pages are lost. So the Book of Mormon as we have it today was done entirely with the rock and the hat with Oliver Cowdery. So even if you want to claim there might be like some day where he had the plates out, which again, would point to Emma's quote and Martin Harris's quote, that would pretty much tell you who's using the rock and a hat the whole time after that. There is absolutely no reason to think the Book of Mormon as we have it today, post 116 pages was entirely done with the treasure digging. Peep slash, seer, stone in a hat.
Jenn Kamp [01:31:18] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:31:19] Yeah. Again, the south park episode makes that so obvious that the 116 pages really is damning.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:31:28] It is. I mean, I would like, you know, I think I mentioned the first episode like, so the Overview Project's 39 topics, and the 116 pages, I think is one of the most important ones of all. Not because necessarily of the subject, but because I think a lot of times when we're looking at all the big issues, you look at the translation method, the treasure digging, polygamy, Book of Abraham, you focus on those because they're explosive issues. The 116 pages gives you the biggest window ever, in my opinion, on how Joseph Smith created the Book of Mormon. And so looking at just the event of losing the pages and not being able to replicate them, like south park tells you, is so important. But then looking at how he recreates them and the clues that he leaves in the recreated the pages is just like, it's invaluable to understanding all of this. So for anyone who's listening today, I can't tell you how much I'm really excited to do the 116 pages over it, because it just shows you the fingerprints he leaves, how he has to scramble to come up with a new way to do it. And then as a kind of a little bit of a tease, one thing I learned when I was doing the overview that I had never heard is the idea of a second set of plates was kind of added into the Book of Mormon really late. And that creates problems too. If you want to go through from the beginning, it shows that that's a late addition to the Book of Mormon, which makes sense because when he gets to the end of the Book of Mormon, he has to redo the beginning in his head. He's trying to figure out how to do it. And so it's just a small tease that is such a cool thing and I had never heard it before. And so I'm hoping that when you watch the next episode, that'll be something for at least a lot of you that'll be new to you as well.
King James Bible Text Appearing in the Book of Mormon
John Dehlin [01:32:56] All right, so let's go on to the King James Version. The King James Bible appearing in the Book of Mormon, which again is its own smoking gun. If this is a, a stone that is reading off of golden plates, we should have all asked ourselves how in the fetch did the King James Version appear in the Book of Mormon somehow. But let's take it away.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:33:19] And again, this is another one. We're going to do a full episode that's going to have this as well. And so we won't go too much into it. But you know, one of the things I want to point out is this is a foundational text for the Book of Mormon. There are very people that would just very few people that would disagree with that at this point. Because you just without the King James Bible, there's no Book of Mormon. That's a problem because the King James Bible wouldn't be translated until 1611, long
John Dehlin [01:33:41] after the Book of Mormon would have ended long after. And you know, why are Nephites communicating in King James English?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:33:49] Yeah, it's just. And so then the argument would be, well, they communicated and reformed Hebrew or whatever and God did the translation on the rock in the King James English. But the problem is, as we'll go through in that episode, is there's too many errors. And you know, it just at some point, if you want to believe it's the most correct book, if you want to believe it's word for word on the stone, why is God going to give him errors? You would think God would correct the translation. And I know the apologetic to that is you can't think the way God does. I'm just saying from a standpoint of looking at it without a pre invested conclusion. Yeah, it's so problematic the entire way through. And one of the quotes that a lot of apologists will bring up is to say that Emma Smith in her interview said Joseph didn't have any manuscript with him. It was just her and him on the table. And the one thing I wanted to point out to that real quick is just I think at the time that Spalding manuscript theory was very popular. And so I think when they're talking about a manuscript at that point they'd more than likely be referring to something like that. Like, did Joseph Smith have a manuscript he was plagiarizing off of? Because it would seem to me, because of the heavy use of the King James Bible in the long sections of Isaiah and all that, that they would not have found that to be a problem, that Joseph Smith had the Bible next to him. And then he, you know, some of the church historians have even said, like, their thought is Joseph would get to a point and say, oh, my goodness, this is a chapter of Isaiah. I'm just going to read off of here so that I can rest my eyes or whatever. And that makes more sense than to say that Emma's point here is to say he didn't have a Bible. I just want to point that out because the rumors of the Spalding manuscript are kind of following them. So Emma saying that is likely referring to that as opposed to saying the Bible itself.
John Dehlin [01:35:27] Okay.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:35:28] And yeah, if you guys want to jump in, I don't know if you guys had anything.
John Dehlin [01:35:31] No, that's fine.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:35:32] Okay. And then just to say, you know, again, you know, there's no way that Joseph Smith is going to memorize such long passages of Isaiah and all that. So either you got to believe that. That God put on the rock and a hat King James language with errors and all, or that Joseph Smith was going to reference the Bible as he saw fit. And, you know, as we mentioned already, the use of the King James Bible tells us that the Book of Mormon could not have been written before 1611. And so John Hammer made this point on an episode he did with you a long time ago. If you want to argue there's an ancient court of the Book of Mormon, you have to then show where that is, because what we have as the finished product, there's no chance that's written before. I mean, really, it couldn't have been written before, like 1826 or whatever, but just because of the events that are in there. But more to the point, because of that language, there is absolutely no way it's a historical record, unless you want to say that there's a historical core they worked around. But then at that point, you're going to have to show where that is, because that also is not. Certainly there's no evidence for that either. And we'll go through that more in the King James Bible overview.
John Dehlin [01:36:35] Okay. All right.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:36:37] And then, you know, the mechanics of dictating the Book of Mormon, again, to point out this is not a translation but a dictation. And we already kind of went over the fact that he probably only used the peepsheer stone, even with the original 116 pages, based on Emma and Martin's quotes. But it would have been the only translation method after the 116 pages. As we showed early, he dictated the words with his head completely in the hat. Gold plates were never in the room. If they were, it was rare. We were told, I think, that he buried them in the woods. And, you know, this is for someone of Joseph Smith who we know was telling a lot of stories. This is a way to do kind of like long form storytelling. And it actually, in a lot of ways, is easier for a lot of people to orally tell a story than it is to sit there and flesh it out on paper. And so in a lot of ways, the mechanics of the dictation really match what we know about Joseph Smith being able to tell stories. And so I think that's also important to note real quick too.
John Dehlin [01:37:35] And I think maybe we can refer people to the William Davis episode that, that I did because, because he, he's a PhD, I think, in English literature, and he talks about how he's. He's aggregated some pretty credible evidence to help maybe explain how long form storytelling. There's a good case to be made that, yeah, what Joseph would do is he would. He would lay out what were called the bones or kind of an outline for a story that. That's what evangelical preachers did during the time of Joseph Smith. And that, you know, if Joseph could have put into the hat, you know, a small little outline of five to eight little points of the story, he could stick his head in the hat and use those as kind of the, the, the main columns or the, you know, the main, main, high level points of a story that he already had in his brain. But that would be how he could narrate for long periods of time through storytelling. And again, I'm not doing it justice, but we'll put a link in the show notes to the William Davis episode that would reinforce that point.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:38:45] I'm glad you mentioned that because that's actually on the next slide.
John Dehlin [01:38:47] Oh, sorry.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:38:48] No, that's actually perfect. I'm glad you mentioned it. So we're gonna have an episode on how I believed he could have composed the Book of Mormon. I think it's probably like three or four episodes away or something like that.
John Dehlin [01:38:59] Oh, good. Yay.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:39:01] Yeah, yeah, so we're gonna have that. And I think that one will be. Will serve as a good way to kind of, kind of almost do an overview of this before we kind of branch out into some other areas. But, you know, the thing is, so Joseph Smith, when he's doing the Book of Mormon, he can dictate for a period of time. And we know he took breaks to do walks to skip, rocks to eat. And when he's doing that, he can gather his thoughts. So this would give him a chance, you know, to your point, you can have in your head like, three or four bullet points. And you tell, you dictate for an hour, and then you say, you know, let's take a break and get something to eat. And then at that point, you've gotten through the bullet points you had in your head, you kind of flesh out the next few bullet points. You know, they always talk about how Joseph Smith would pick up where he left off without even skipping a beat. But again, it's not as if this. This manuscript is under lock and key away from Joseph. So he could look at it during the break and, you know, look at where he left off and go, okay, here's where we're going to pick up. Or the next morning, he could walk over and look at where he left off just to make sure, you know. And so it gives him a chance to plan out the next sections. And as you pointed out, William Davis's interview with you was amazing. And his book is called Visions in a Seer Stone. And so if you've never read that, I would highly recommend that you can get it on Amazon, like a Kindle version even. And I think they have it on some of the. In the episode he does with you, I think he talks about. There's an actual publishing place that I think has a better deal for the actual book. But what he talks about is how in Joseph Smith's time, the preachers would do a thing called talking in heads. And heads are basically like bullet points. So you would go up, you'd have a few ideas, right? And then you would put those ideas on a piece of paper. And your paper. It's kind of like, I love concerts. And when you go to a concert, at the end of the show, you could see their set list, right? So the set list might have 20 songs on it, but it takes them two hours to do the concert. And it's kind of like that. So a preacher could go up on a stand and have, you know, 10 bullet points and talk for two hours. And William Davis outlines how that was not only common, but it was like kind of like the standard of how the revivalist preachers talked and how the Book of Mormon actually brings that language into it. The talking in Heads. And in some of the. Some of the chapters in some of the books of the Book of Mormon, they actually have written into it what they're going to say. And that is not. Those were actually written into the manuscript. So that was not like a later when the church was. The church did add a lot of subheadings, but in some of them, they're actually written to the Book of Mormon. And so those are more clues that Joseph Smith is orally dictating this text and he's working in his head off of bullet points in his head. Maybe they're in the hat, maybe they're not. But it's such a great interview to understand how somebody could orally dictate. And one of the things that William Davis actually pointed out is throughout his studies in this, at the end of it, he actually said, and we'll get to the math of the Book of Mormon in a few slides. But he actually said at the end, like, he's actually kind of surprised it took him as long as it did to dictate it, because when you're doing it this way, you can actually do a lot of material very quickly.
John Dehlin [01:41:51] Yeah, it's brilliant. It's an important discovery. Okay, Mike, so you've got some final thoughts about dictating the Book of Mormon now.
Authorship and Complexity of the Book of Mormon
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:41:59] Yeah. And like I said, we'll cover this more in its own episode, so we don't want to go too deep. But since this is a translation episode, I wanted to try to at least cover this, just because obviously, if you're watching it and you've never really encountered this, you're going to be going like, well, then how did he do it? And so the one point I want to make is that one of the things you'll see in a lot of the Church's videos or documents is they always create this equation that makes the idea that Joseph Smith could create the Book of Mormon as on his own, like just this most impossible task. And, you know, when the thing is, when you actually start to break it down, you look at what's in the Book of Mormon, how the translation timeline works, it's actually very explainable. And, you know, again, I keep hammering on this, but if you look at this the same way you would look at it, if you talked about, like, you know, Scientology in their materials or, you know, any other religious material, at some point, you're going to have the same criticisms you would have of theirs. You're going to start to see with the Book of Mormon because it is explainable, and he does Leave. He leaves fingerprints and clues all over the text that tells us not just how he could have composed it, but where he was pulling the information from. And that's really important, especially when we get into the overviews on the surrounding influences that are all around him that make their way into a book that's supposed to be ancient. And then just the final point is just to say, and I know other people have said this, but. But the thing is, it's not just that Joseph Smith could have written it, but nobody else besides him could have written it, because this book has his own life experiences in there. It has things that are personal to him that end up in an ancient text. Whether it's treasure digging, whether it's the Charles Anthon thing kind of pops in, the Masonic things. All of these things are surrounded by him, not to mention, his father's dream comes in. And again, we'll get to all of that. But my point is to say it's not that Joseph Smith couldn't have written it. Nobody else but him could have written it. And I think that that's something you have to keep in your mind as we go through these next few topics.
John Dehlin [01:43:48] Yeah, I've kind of. I've kind of liked to say before that, that. That in some ways, the Book of Mormon is exactly. You know, it's exactly the. The book that you would expect to come out of Joseph Smith's mind. And, you know, the early 1800s in upstate New York with view of the Hebrews and Oliver Cowdery and the King James Bible and the Protestant sermons and the Masonic Lodge stuff. We've covered this multiple times. Grant Palmer was the first to really awaken me to this. But I love that. I love that. I really love that quote. No one could have written the Book of Mormon but Joseph Smith. That's just it.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:44:28] That's just it. And it's like one of those things again. It's like once you take that step back and you kind of look at it more critically than looking at it from, like, a faithful perspective. It really is a time capsule of Joseph Smith's worldview. It's like if you took, like you said, the early 1800s and you somehow put it into a literary time capsule, that's what you'd expect to see, because everything in the Book of Mormon is coming from Joseph Smith's time and place, and some of it comes from his
John Dehlin [01:44:52] personal life, including Lehi's dream, being his father's dream, the rivalry with his brothers. His own personal narrative is all there.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:45:01] Yeah. And that gets into the whole problem where.
John Dehlin [01:45:04] And the treasure digging, don't forget the treasure digging.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:45:06] That's just the slippery things in there.
John Dehlin [01:45:07] The slippery treasure dig, treasure not being found.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:45:10] And he writes himself into the Book of Mormon as well. You know, Joseph's son of Joseph and all the prophets. It's one of those things where it's like, the more you dig into it, the more you start to see these fingerprints. You know, it'd be like if you're at the scene of a crime and you've got fingerprints over every single area, like, well, yeah, someone's been here.
John Dehlin [01:45:25] Including the DNA of the, you know, the murder or whatever.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:45:29] Yeah. And that's just it. So for me, it's like the Book of Mormon is so specific to that time, place and Joseph Smith that if you want to make the claim that Joseph Smith was translating it in the way that the scribes claimed he was, word for word, off of a stone, you've got serious issues. And then. And we'll get into this more later, but you know, you've got like, Michael Ash has a book about how Joseph Smith was a co author. You've got the Terrell Givens approach of bricolage, where Joseph Smith's pulling from surrounding material and putting it into his context. And if you want to do that, then all of a sudden those earlier accounts of the tight translation are suspect. And once those become, you know, I mean, and that's the problem, like, you start twisting yourself into a pretzel and there's no way out. Because the moment you say Joseph Smith's a co author, then what does that say about the witnesses who had a completely different perspective and they were the ones that were there? And that's where everything just starts to fall apart. And that's why when they make that, like Michael Ash, who seems like a really nice dude, I've had a few interactions with him and like I said, he's been super cool. But his argument is that Joseph Smith was kind of a co author. But the problem is once you do that, then, like, it completely undercuts the whole history of it being a tight translation off of the stone. And like I said, you just. You kind of get tongue tied because there's no way out of it. Once you enter into that area, you can't back out, but you're stuck there. And you're stuck there in a place that goes against all of the accounts we have from the time.
John Dehlin [01:46:53] Yeah, yeah, yep. And so when apologists try and argue for a nuanced view of Book of Mormon translation, they're not being honest.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:47:03] Well, it just doesn't work. Yeah, that's the thing. It's one of those things where apologetics and Mormonism come out of necessity. They don't come out of the fact that that's what the evidence leads you to. It comes out of we need to find a way to make this work. And the problem is when you find a way to make it work on one area, then all of a sudden these other areas that you still need to make work are now worse off because now they're further away from the evidence. And that's why I keep saying you can't apply apologetics in one place and then apply a different, completely different set of apologetics in another place, because now those are irreconcilable. And that's when we get to the tight versus loose translation. We're going to get into all this a lot more. But yeah, it's a mess. If you want to change the narrative to make it more plausible today, then you undercut what we had back then. And then at that point I'm like, what are you left with? Because now all of a sudden you've changed the entire Book of Mormon and so you don't have what you claim to have in the first place. Yeah, all right. Which is actually perfect.
John Dehlin [01:47:56] Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:47:58] So the Gospel topics essay really hammers on the fact that Joseph was incapable of producing the Book of Mormon. And they, they give this quote from Emma, which, you know, Joseph's wife Emma insisted that at the time of the translation, Joseph could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well worded letter, let alone dictate a book like the Book of Mormon. And again, this is just, it's a gross misrepresentation both of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. And again, he is dictating orally. He's not writing this down. And so, you know, Joseph Smith doesn't have to sit down and write out 273,000 words, so he doesn't have to worry about spelling, he doesn't have to worry about grammar, he's orally telling the story. But also, this is misrepresenting Joseph Smith's ability to tell stories. And we're going to get into that because it's really important to understand that Joseph Smith was a really good storyteller, as we can tell from the fact that he was able to get people to believe he could see buried treasure. And so if we go to the next slide, this is what you had mentioned early on, you know, The Book of Mormon, the Church wants to make it sound like it was this finished product when Joseph Smith wrote it, but it's nothing like it is today. And so here are just a few quotes from the original manuscript. So in Alma, it says, as I was going thither. As I was a going thither. So, you know, it's kind of got that, like, folksy language. After that, I had truvadru the space of many hours, and it's spelled wrong. When they had a riven to the provost land, to the promised land, the workmanship thereof was exceeding fine. Their Eurolings and their plunders, their idolatry and their whoredoms, you know, and so I'm not trying to make fun of it. I'm just trying to say the Book of Mormon as you read it today, and you're like, oh, my goodness, how could someone write a book this polished and it reads so well. It did not read that well. And so the point is, Joseph Smith is not what you read today is nothing like what Joseph Smith wrote outside of the content. And so if you read the original manuscript, what we have of it anyways, it's just like long run on sentences. There's no grammar. A lot of the grammars, as you can see here, it's just not good. And so again, you have to believe, if you believe the accounts that on Joseph Smith's Rock and a Hat it said, as I was agoin thither, because if he didn't, then the words wouldn't change. And that's where you get into problems when you look at the accounts we have versus the material we have.
John Dehlin [01:50:11] Yeah. And just again, to kind of summarize, if you think the Book of Mormon is this amazing document that no one couldn't have, could have ever written, you got to look at the original manuscript before it was edited. That takes it down five rungs just right there off the bat.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:50:33] And it does. And that's why I'm saying, like, the church makes this equation where they have the Book of Mormon up here. It's just this amazing thing that no one could have written. And then Joseph Smith down here is like this uneducated farm hick boy. And neither of those are true. And so when you start to kind of move it, all of a sudden you're like, oh, wait, you know, he could have done it. And that's why, you know, again, I feel like you can show and we'll do that in the upcoming episodes, how he's doing it, where he's pulling From. And all of a sudden it makes a lot of sense. It actually makes a lot more sense than it coming off of a rock and a hat when the rock and the hat has a bunch of stuff that needs to be edited for grammar and spelling and even some of the godhead issues. So, you know, like I said, it's just they're creating an equation that is just not true to the evidence.
Changes to the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's Education
John Dehlin [01:51:12] Yeah. Okay, what's, what's next?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:51:16] This next slide is just an image. We're not even going to try to read it because you can't really read it. But this is an image of the original Book of Mormon manuscript. And it's hard to tell, but like you can, if you, if you kind of look closely, there's no punctuation. It's just a long giant block of text. And so I just wanted to point out again that the Book of Mormon you read today is not how the Book of Mormon was originally dictated by Joseph Smith. And so when they talk about, I think what there's been like a hundred thousand changes, most of them are grammar and spelling and all of that. Most of them are. There are some really significant ones too. But the point is those 100,000 changes made the Book of Mormon go from a gigantic run on sentence to a very readable book. And so when you talk about what Joseph Smith created, this manuscript is what he created, not the one with all the changes. And you have to take that into account when you're trying to look at that equation of whether or not Joseph Smith could have written the book.
John Dehlin [01:52:04] And can I just ask, why is it that the magic seer Stone had the power, you know, to not only read reformed Egyptian, a language that doesn't exist, but it had the power to listen to what Joseph was saying and to pause and then change whenever Joseph was done. And whenever the scribe had, you know, had confirmed that he had written down what Joseph had said, it had the power to pay attention to all that. But God didn't put into it a spell checker or a grammar checker or punctuation. Like God needs to upgrade his seer stone to a V3 or a V4 to include a grammar checker. Like, why wasn't it smart enough to actually punctuate and use good grammar? Again, that makes zero sense.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:52:53] Yeah. And I don't want to jump ahead too much to the future stuff, but to that point, why does the Book of Mormon have to be changed to the Son of God when it's supposed to be directly off of a rock and a Hat I mean, like, if you believe in a tight translation, that is a very important change that's made to the Book of Mormon. And so, you know, and we'll get into. There's so many things that what you just said has so many implications that are going to go through. I mean, my goodness, so many of these overviews. Because you always have to ask yourself, like, why is this being written into, like, I'll give one more. Just because this one bothers me. When apologists say the curse of dark skin in the Book of Mormon was a reflection of the ancient Book of Mormon people being racist. And it's not actually that God cursed him with dark skin. And my thinking is if someone's writing an autobiography, or maybe not an autobiography, if someone's writing a story about something I created. So in this case, I'm God and I have these people who I'm kind of embarrassed about how racist they were. And then I'm gonna be able to translate their story to Joseph Smith. I'm gonna take that racism out because I'm like, I don't want any part of that or I'll change it to show that they were racist. But it wasn't really me. Yet the Book of Mormon makes pretty clear that the curse of dark skin is God cursing them with dark skin. So they would be unenticing to the, you know, wait and delight some Nephites. And so those are the areas where again, you have to put all those into that box of like, there are issues with the translation if you take it at face value, that can't be reconciled by apologetics. And then if you use the apologetics such as saying, well, it wasn't really that God was saying they were cursed with dark skinned, but it was the racist prophets of the time. Then all of a sudden you go, well, why is God translating other stuff into different things? But then he leaves the racism and you know what I mean? It just becomes messy the second you get into that, like, second line of thinking.
John Dehlin [01:54:37] Yeah, yeah, totally. All right, so the next slide is about how the church wants us to simultaneously think Joseph was. Was dumb and inspired.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:54:47] Yeah. And so, you know, just to point to that earlier quote where they say he couldn't have written a letter. So this is a letter that Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith wrote to Oliver Cowdery in October 1829, which is the year the Book of Mormon was dictated. He says, I would inform you that I arrived at home on Sunday morning the 4th, after having a prosperous journey and found all, well, the people are all friendly to us, except a few who are in opposition to everything unless it is something that is exactly like themselves. And two of our most formidable persecutors are now under censure and are cited to a trial in the church for crimes which, if true, are worse than all the gold book business. We do not rejoice in the affliction of our enemies, but we shall be glad to have truth prevail. There begins to be a great call for our books in this country. The minds of the people are very much excited when they find that there is a copyright obtained and that there is really book about to be printed. And so again, I realize this isn't going through material of the Book of Mormon, but that's a pretty well written letter to Oliver Cowdery in 1829. So he's not that dumb. He's able to put his thoughts together in a way that reads quite well. And this is a letter that he wrote to him. So I should have included the scan. They have a scan of the handwriting and you know, it looks fine. I mean, it's just, they try to make him look so uneducated un, Incapable of doing anything and just read that letter. It's pretty good.
John Dehlin [01:56:01] And I'm sure you're going to mention this, but not to mention that Lucy, his mom, validated that he could, he could tell stories that would keep people spellbound for hours. So if you can, if you know enough stories to be able to keep about, about Native Americans hanging around their local, you know, town historically, you know, way back in, in the day. So if, if you have the ability to keep people spellbound for hours, you can apply that to, you know, dictating those stories to a scribe.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:56:31] Yeah, absolutely.
John Dehlin [01:56:32] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What's, what's next?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:56:36] So the next one kind of just is again, kind of staying on this theme and they try to make Joseph Smith look too unlearned to produce the Book of Mormon. But he was around educators his whole life. He has educators in his family. And again, we're not saying, I'm not saying that he would have had like his brother went to Dartmouth and all that, and he was close to him. I'm not saying that Joseph had a Dartmouth education. I'm just saying he was around teachers, he was around people who were educated. And he was very well versed in the Bible, as we can see, not just from his use of it in the Book of Mormon, but his sermons he was giving. I mean, he knew the Bible, he spoke the Bible, and so he was very involved in the, you know, as we believe from his history to go to a lot of these revival meetings and listening to these, to the preachings. And so again, maybe he's not, you know, going to be, you know, getting a chemistry degree, but he's very well versed in what applies to the Book of Mormon, which is learning the King James Bible, learning the methods of giving sermons. And so we have a lot of evidence that he was very well versed in that. And so when, just as we outlined with treasure digging and what you just mentioned, he was a gifted storyteller and he used to all of these experiences to really bolster his ability to tell stories. And with treasure digging, we knew that people believed in him even after he failed to deliver on his promises, which tells you how convincing he was. That doesn't mean he can write a book, but it does mean he has that ability to tell people stories about at that point, treasure guardians being overpowered, what you have to do to make it work. And they believed him. And so when you practice that over years and years of treasure digging, that will then apply when you're telling a story that's supposed to be the history of, you know, the people who populated America.
John Dehlin [01:58:11] Yeah. And I was reading recently Fawn Brody's no Man Knows My History, and it made the point that, you know, imagine if your, your grandfather was an author, your mom was an author, you know, and then you're an author. Like that's three generations of authorship. That's a big deal. Well, guess what? Joseph's maternal grandfather wrote a book, his mom wrote a book and he wrote a book. That's, that's like your, your grandpa is a shoe. Shoemaker and then your dad's a shoemaker, and then you're a shoemaker across three generations. You can actually probably get pretty good at something. Right? Yeah. And, and, and we, we don't really realize that, that he was a third generation author. Right?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:58:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that matters.
John Dehlin [01:58:57] I think that matters.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:58:58] It does. I mean, and that's the thing. Like again, when, when you create that equation that he's these two. You know, I don't mean to say so, you know, but they say he's too dumb, he's too uneducated. And so I don't mean that to sound mean. I'm just saying that's the equation that, that's often said, you know, I get that all the time. Especially like again, on social media like Twitter, they'll reply and say, no one could ever do that. I know, nobody could Write that. And it's like, well, here's how I think he did it. And then they won't read it, because, again, that's the whole thing. Like, you'll get to that point where you're like, I want. You know, I've had people will say, tell me how Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon. And you get like, a little bit in. And as soon as you get below, because people have in their head, like, the caricature response you'll give them from the CS letter. And so they're waiting for you to say view of the Hebrews. And for me, I don't even believe that's in any way plagiarism or late war or Spalding manuscript. So as soon as you don't go there and you start getting below the surface, all of a sudden they're like, okay, I'm done. And it's. Because when you have that equation in your head and then someone can show you why that equation is not balanced correctly, it immediately starts ringing the bells that something might be off a bit. So, yeah, you know.
John Dehlin [01:59:58] Yeah. And another way to say it, what I just said is like, just imagine the logic of saying, well, the grandpa made shoes, and then the. The mom made shoes. But how in the world could the. Could the grandson ever make shoes? Well, maybe it's because he learned from the parent, the grandparent, like, as a third generation. Also, I just have to invoke John Hamer's point. Whenever I asked John Hamer, you know, brilliant Mormon historian, now member of community of Christ, whenever I asked him, you know, you know, is it possible that how could Joseph Smith write the Book of Mormon? It's such an amazing book. He would always say, you know, the well's been poisoned. Because John Hamer's response was, the Book of Mormon is not that amazing of a book. Yeah, it's just not that amazing of a book.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:00:46] It's not.
John Dehlin [02:00:47] The reason why we think it's an amazing book is because we've been told for generations, since we are literally infants, that it's an amazing book. And then we've had all these emotional experiences with mommy and daddy being proud of us and our friends and our leaders at church for decades and decades, we're having these spiritual experiences in association with the book. That's what makes us think the book is so amazing. But if you want to know how amazing the actual book is, well, who's an amazing author? Mark Twain. Mark Twain is an amazing author. And we know what he said about the Book of Mormon when he read it, he called it chloroform in print. And that's probably a more neutral, reliable testimony about how amazing the book is. A well known, established American author that's a little bit more of a credible witness for how amazing the book is than freaking Terrell Gibbons or. Or someone else. Were you gonna make a point, Jen?
Jenn Kamp [02:01:45] No.
John Dehlin [02:01:45] Okay.
Jenn Kamp [02:01:46] That was good.
Jenn Kamp [02:01:47] No.
John Dehlin [02:01:47] Okay.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:01:48] Well, I just want to say, first of all, John Hamer is one of those people I've never met and like, the impact he had on me and when I was trying to figure all this stuff out was so huge. So I love John Hamer because he would be on with you. He was on a lot with Infants on Thrones, but he. He would tell this. This history of Mormonism in a way that was like both very pointed and blunt, but very kind. And he would joke about things, but he didn't make fun of things. And I just loved it because it made me feel like. Like I felt like I was sitting at the table with him and he was like, to your point, when he talked about why the Book of Mormon wasn't amazing, he wasn't like, the Book of Mormon sucks. It's trash. He was like, no, it's not that amazing because if you look at it, you could see these, this, this and this. That tells you it wasn't written that well. And so again, I'm just giving a shout out to him because he. We've never met, but he's had an impact because of the work he's done and the way he's delivered it has been. And something I would love to try to do too, is just being able to talk about these things in a direct manner, but also be able to do it in a way, I think that is empathetic to the people who are listening. And so I'm glad you brought him up because in his episodes with you on the creation of the Book of Mormon and kind of the folk magic, I think he did like three or four smaller episodes with you a couple years ago. And those are great. You should definitely listen to those. If you haven't and you're watching this, you should definitely check those out because he did a great job and he did really cool visuals, way better than the slides I did. So you'll definitely enjoy those if you like this. And the other point was you had mentioned about. Part of the reason the Book of Mormon is so amazing is because from the time you're born, you're told it's amazing. And so it's like Someone had made an example and they said, if every year as a kid, you sat down and you read, was it Dracula by Mary. Oh, my gosh.
John Dehlin [02:03:28] Mary Shelley Frankenstein.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:03:30] Was Mary Shelley Frankenstein, Frankenstein. So every year you read Frankenstein and you read it with your family. And every night you read a chapter, and every Halloween you do a big Frankenstein celebration. And every holiday you sit around the table in the fire and you have treats and you read it. And then all of a sudden you get to be a teenager. Every time you think of Frankenstein, you're going to have all of those feelings, all of those great emotional feelings. And if someone came up to you and they said, hey, what book do you like? And they said, I like Frankenstein. He said, frankenstein sucks. You'd feel so angry because it wouldn't be about the book. It's about the, all of the experiences you had. And I don't want to. You know, I know people get really offended when you make that comparison, but to your point, it's the same thing. If you're raised to privilege something as being sacred to your family, it makes it really painful when you find out it's not what it claims to be, but it also is the reason, a part of the reason that you have those witnesses to it. And again, for me, when I started to kind of lose belief in the church, I did have to reevaluate why I felt the way I did. And it's, it's, it's, you know, you're still figuring that out now because, you know, in your head it's easy to go, oh, well, you know, it's not true. And it was just myself telling me that, you know, I, we get into that later. But yeah, I think part of the equation that the church does is they tell you from the time you're born how amazing it is. And so they're building that equation in your head, so when you hear something else, you immediately reject it. And again, that's just not how it works. If you want to be kind of intellectually honest with the evidence we have.
John Dehlin [02:04:57] Yeah, I love it. Okay, well, so now you want to talk about. And this, this is a really important slide because I was at Utah State University when they did an entire two day academic conference on what the, what the meaning of the word translation is, because the church, this is another example of a smoking gun. We all know that we were taught that the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham were translated. That's the word that we were taught. And that's what Joseph Smith claimed, that those books were translations. So why in the world would there be an academic two day conference with progressive, faithful Mormon historians talking about alternative meanings for the word translation? It's because, as we know from kind of cult literature, high demand religion literature, you sometimes have to create new meanings for words because sometimes the evidence doesn't bear out the truth claims in the history. So talk about why the Church would be incentivized to redefine the word translation and, or move to the word inspiration instead of translation.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:06:11] Well, so in this one, this one's actually a little bit. We haven't, we will get there. This one doesn't quite get there yet. But this is more just to say, you know, kind of reiterate the point I was making earlier, that this is a dictation, this is not a translation. Because if it was a translation, you wouldn't have a lot of the errors we were pointing out. And if you, if it was a true translation, you would have been able to retranslate the 116. I put a typo there, but the lost 116 pages. But this has the quote you mentioned earlier from Lucy Mack Smith where it talks about how good of a storyteller it was. So Lucy Mack Smith said he would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of traveling and their animals upon which they rode, their cities, their buildings with every particular, their mode of warfare, and also the religious, excuse me, worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly as if he had spent his whole life among them. And these are stories that Joseph Smith is telling to his family, you know, for hours on end around the fire, right at night. So if he can go for hours telling these stories with as much ease as if he had spent his life among them, how in the world can you then say he couldn't have written this down or dictated to someone to write down? Because basically she's describing the Book of Mormon translation years before he even had the plates. He's telling these stories before he even has the plates. And you're going to tell me if he could do that, then that he couldn't do it a couple years later. And I would argue this, she's giving away the game here, which is that Joseph Smith was fully capable of telling these stories with a lot of detail, a lot of different elements to the story. Those exact elements that the Church today tells you are too complex for someone to do. She's literally telling us that he did them before he even had the plates.
John Dehlin [02:07:44] Yeah. All right. Yeah. And we'll talk more about why. Why the Word translation doesn't work and why the church is moving to Revelation. Yeah, we'll talk more about.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:07:54] Definitely. And. And so this is just going into the whole idea next. So in the next slide, it's about how the timeline is impossible. And so they'll say no one could produce the Book of Mormon in the 90 days. And this is another area to give a shout out to John Hamer, because this is from the episode he did with you. But the Book of Mormon is 273,725 words long, and that includes all of the stuff that was brought in directly from the King James Bible. So obviously those areas would be able to be copied down faster because he wouldn't have to think about it. He could just read it off the Bible. And the church gives. We're giving a rough estimate of 85 days of producing the Book of Mormon. And that would give you about 3200 words every day that need to be written down. And John Hamer points out that the average dictation is about 1200 words per hour to be clean and legible. So if you have 3200 words a day, you need to do 1200 words per hour. That only means you have to actually spend about 2 hours and 40 minutes a day actually writing the Book of Mormon. So some days you might do more, some days you might do less. But the point is, it's not that incredible when you actually do the math. And that's why I keep saying math is a really big problem for these areas of Mormon history, because it sounds really good. If you just throw out there the 85 days, it's not as good when you actually think about the fact that this was something he was doing practically full time. And so 2 hours and 40 minutes of actual work, which gives him time in between to think about what he wants to say. It's not that remarkable. It's certainly something that any author could tell you that they could spend three hours a day writing.
John Dehlin [02:09:21] Especially if you spent eight years thinking about it.
Speaker E [02:09:26] It.
John Dehlin [02:09:26] Preparing for it, telling stories about it, and assembling the narrative and talking to everyone you know about it for hours on end, you know, in front of the fire and on your treasure digs at night. You know, he had years and years and years to. To pull the story together.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:09:42] Yeah, it's kind of like. So a lot of times, if you listen to comedians, and they're real famous comedians, and what they'll do is they'll work on a new set, and what they'll do is they'll take that new set to a club that they don't know they're. So the club doesn't know they're going there. Right. So you might have this really famous comedian goes to a club and he gives his new set. And because he wasn't announced to be there, he knows the reaction is gonna be more honest. And so he can then take his new comedy set. And he knows that joke worked, that joke failed, that joke landed. And then he keeps crafting it over and over. So Joseph Smith is doing the exact same thing. So he's telling these stories to his family over years with, before he even has the plates. And he knows that from their reaction, which ones are really grabbing him, which ones aren't. And so he's got years not only to develop the stories, but to find out what really grabs people and what doesn't. And then by the time he has to translate it in his head, he's got years of experience of knowing this parts of the story is going to work. These parts of the stories people didn't really, you know, my family wasn't really engaging with. And it's just like, you know, those same things that comedians do where you're trying to flesh out the story before you actually sit down and put it together. And here's Joseph Smith taking years to flesh it out by, you know, kind of testing it out. And then, boom, you know, he puts it together in a short period of time, but he's already worked out a lot of the pieces, like you said, over the previous years.
John Dehlin [02:10:53] Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. Okay, so.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:10:59] So now we can look at the math a little bit further, which we've kind of covered a little bit. A little bit. Excuse me. But once you realize he only needed a little bit less than three hours a day, the time the timeline becomes a lot less impressive. This again allows him to take breaks, gather his thoughts. He can continue where he left off because he can kind of think about right where he left off and just jump right back. And then another thing that we sometimes Forget is the 116 pages that were lost again served as a dress rehearsal because that gave Joseph Smith kind of a do over. So anything maybe he didn't like, he could fix. Maybe if he was doing a process that he figured a better way to do it, he could then switch with Oliver Cowdery. And so it really was like a dress rehearsal, for better or worse, after he lost it, it allowed him to go faster and more efficiently afterwards. And then also, again, a story that he fleshed out so when you recreate it, it allows you to go a little faster because you don't have to think as much. And just again, to point out that this equation only is impossible if you allow somebody to convince you that it is, because the math doesn't support the timeline being something that someone was incapable of doing. And so again, when you look at math like we did with the gold plates, it's a big problem as long as you're willing to take that kind of look under the hood and see what's under under the hood. Because if someone's telling you it's impossible, it might seem that way, but once you actually break down kind of the accounts and the evidence, it really is not right. And then the next apologetic from the essay is to say some grammatical constructions that are more characteristic of Near Eastern languages than English appear in the original manuscript, suggesting that the base language of the translation was not English. And again, this is just difficult because the foundational language, the King James Bible, and so of course the King James Bible is replicating ancient talk as well. And so I kind of get confused by this sometimes. And then the Hebraisms you can find in the Late War, which is a book that's also trying to write in King James English, you can find a chiasm and the Cat in the Hat. And when David Bachavoy, who's another, that's another great series of yours to watch, he pointed out the fact his line was it's easy to fake a chiasm and it's true. It's like, like these Hebraisms that they point out a lot of times come because of the fact that you're writing in the style of the Bible. And another thing too to point out, I think William Davis might have pointed this out, but when you talk about chiasms, the idea of a chiasm is you start with one point, you kind of work to work to the middle, and then you work your back to your ending, kind of reiterates the beginning. It's kind of like if you're doing a five paragraph essay in school. So you start with the topic, then you flesh it out, and then at the end you kind of reiterate the topic to kind of circle back to where you were. That's a very common technique when you're orally telling a story, because as you're telling it in your head, you're trying to keep track of where you are. So you tell the story, you get there, you get there, then you're kind of wrapping back to the Beginning. So, again, it's also a natural storytelling technique to do some of these things that the church will then kind of give as a, you know, something that was kind of out of Joseph's ability when again, we can show examples from his time frame and from the methods he's using to write it.
John Dehlin [02:13:56] Yeah, for me, chiasm ranks down there with tapers as one of the worst apologetics I've ever seen.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:14:03] Yeah, it's just again, and the other thing too is we'll get into it more. But this is where it gets tiring, when you have people say, well, there's chiasms.
Jenn Kamp [02:14:11] Right.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:14:11] Then you also have apologetics saying, well, Joseph's a co author. Well, if he's a co author, then he's capable of writing a chiasm. If he's not a co author, then you've got to explain the other errors. You know what I mean? That's why you can't have it both ways. And that's why the tight versus loose episode we do, which John Larsen had done many years ago. So there's gonna be some overlap, a lot of overlap from that, just because he did a great job. It's one of those areas that, again, we don't always think about, but when you actually lay out why you can't have both, then all of a sudden you're forced to either pick tight or loose, and either way you lose because both of them are completely irreconcilable with. With the evidence and with the accounts. And so, you know, and that's where chiasm's and Hebraism's fall. You can't have them. And then also say Joseph was a co author because then that tells you he's capable of doing it.
John Dehlin [02:14:53] Yeah, makes total sense.
Urim and Thummim Versus the Seer Stone in a Hat
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:14:56] So the next one is just. So this is a common one, which is to say when you talk about Joseph using the stone and a hat. The Gospel Topics essay states, many accounts in the Bible show that God transmitted revelations to his prophets in a variety of ways. Elijah learned that God spoke to him not through the wind or fire, earthquake, but through a still small voice. Paul and other early apostles sometimes communicated with angels and on occasion with the Lord Jesus Christ. And other times, revelation came in the forms of dreams or visions, such as the revelation to Peter to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, or through sacred objects like the urim and Thummim. And so this apologetic is one you hear all the time, which is say, the rock's not that weird. He did it in other ways. But What I want to do is here they're saying sacred objects like the Urim and Thummim, which is to say Joseph Smith used the Urim and Thummim. And I mentioned this in the previous ones. It's a retrofitted term. And let's take a closer look at what the Urim and Thummim, because he
John Dehlin [02:15:45] didn't use the Urim and Thummim, he used the treasured against taking seer stone. Like in the church knows that, right?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:15:51] They know that. And so to say the Urim and Thummim is inner, like they've conflated it with the seer stone on purpose to take out the folk magic. The problem is he didn't use the spectacles. It's deceptive because he didn't. And so they're conflating it to try to remove the treasure.
John Dehlin [02:16:04] They're trying to make it more biblical
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:16:06] and less folk magic, you know, and that's the problem. It's like not only are they kind of deceptively trying to pull a biblical term in, but they're pulling a biblical term in that if, if, if the people who are believers in the church would actually look at is an incapable.
Jenn Kamp [02:16:20] It's.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:16:20] It's not what they say it is. And so to me, that's, that's a problem again, when you're using a term to retrofit into a story to make it sound better and even the retrofitting is improper use. It's a problem, you know, and so let's go to the next slide because we can see a picture. So this is what people. Again, we don't have the Urim and thumb from the biblical times. And they probably, you know, we don't. I mean, I guess we'd have to believe if they're real or not. But, but the way they're described in the Bible is that there's two stones. And effectively it's almost like it's not a Magic 8 ball necessarily, but one stone means yes, one stone means no. So what that would mean is if I was one of the Judges or whatever was a high priest, and John came before me and I thought John had stolen my cookies, then I could say, did John steal my cookies? And one of them would light up if it was a no. The thumb one would light up if it was a yes. These are not in any way rocks that are going to give you translations or visions or see buried treasure. And so, so to compare the peeps, seer stone that Joseph Smith used to Translate the Book of Mormon and Seabury treasure with an object that was limited to yes and no is extremely deceptive. And. And so once you understand what the Urim and thumb are, it just. It doesn't work.
Jenn Kamp [02:17:31] I was just gonna say. Or how Jen likes to say they lied.
John Dehlin [02:17:36] Yeah, yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:17:38] You know, it's like, again, you know,
John Dehlin [02:17:42] get spicy. Sweet, you know, kind, loving, heartfelt person who just likes to drop those.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:17:49] Drop.
John Dehlin [02:17:49] Drop the mic.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:17:50] Yeah, I was going to say. That certainly cuts through what I was saying a little bit cleaner. But, yeah, it's. It's just. And the thing is, you're looking, you know, WWE Phelps introduces this, and he's looking for something to make it biblical. But they have to know if they've read the Bible, that these are not the same thing. You know, it'd be like, you know, if I. I'm trying to off top my head, but it's like, you know, calling a Snickers bar in orange. And it's like, well, they're both food. It's like they're not the same thing. And this is almost worse because obviously we're talking about magical, you know, supernatural abilities. But it's just. It's very deceptive. And it sounds so great if you're a believing member to think, oh, my goodness, it's just like the Urman thumb in the Bible. It's like. But it's not. They are not at all comparable. And that's powerful.
John Dehlin [02:18:30] Yeah, that's a really powerful visual. So thank you.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:18:35] Yeah, I think so. And so just to reiterate, so W.W. phelps first used in 1832. I think some people say 1833, but I thought I saw a quote from 1832. And originally.
John Dehlin [02:18:45] Wait, let me ask you, and I'm sorry if you've already said this, does the Book of Mormon use the term Urim and Thummim?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:18:51] I don't think so. And in the early Revelations. Don't use it either.
Jenn Kamp [02:18:55] I don't think so either. I don't think Urim and Thummim is in the Book of Mormon.
John Dehlin [02:18:59] I think Gerardo may have mentioned that in a comment yesterday.
Jenn Kamp [02:19:01] Yeah, that's who it was. That's where. Yeah, yeah. And then I went online and looked it up to see if I could see and I.
John Dehlin [02:19:07] You couldn't find it in the Book of Thumbs?
Jenn Kamp [02:19:09] No. So I think Herodor's right.
John Dehlin [02:19:10] Oh, that's interesting.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:19:10] Yeah, I don't think so, because the thing with the Urim and Thummim is like, I believe and we, we have a, we're going to do an overview down the road on the changes to the Doctrine and Covenants. But I'm pretty sure some of the early revelations are changed to add the Urim and Thummim word in there as well. So I think there's some revelations from like the, you know, 1829, and when they rewrite them, they add Urim and thummim into it.
Jenn Kamp [02:19:30] It.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:19:30] So I mean, this, it's completely retrofitted into the history. It is non existent until 1832.
John Dehlin [02:19:36] Wow. Okay. All right.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:19:39] And yeah, okay, I made that note there too. Yeah. So basically, and then, you know, we're told that Joseph had the spectacles and then they were taken away when they lost 116 pages. As we've already discussed multiple times, he uses the, the peep slash seer stone in the hat for the Book of Mormon as we have it today. And just to say again, the Urim and Thummim do not function like spectacles. You don't look through them, they don't translate, they don't give you visions. So to use this as if this is the same thing is again, it's being deceptive because you're trying to, you know, we talk about. So let's put a different way. We talk about pseudepigraphic writings, right? So like Richard Bushman would say that Joseph Smith was producing pseudepigrapha with the book of Abraham in the Book of Moses because he's writing in the name of Abraham and he's writing in the name of Moses to give his own theology credibility. Correct. Like that's. Richard Bushman admitted that in a video. We'll cover that later. So Richard Bushman will say Joseph Smith was producing pseudepigrapha in writing in the name of a prophet that was well known so that people would believe his theology and make it more credible. Using the Urim and Thummim is effectively pseudepigrapha in the sense that they're using a biblical term to give treasure digging a more credible vehicle to translate ancient records. So, you know, maybe that's looking at it in a way that people don't usually look at it. But the Urim and Thummim is the same thing, except instead of it being like the writing of an ancient prophet, it's the vehicle of supernatural communication. So the urim and Thummim are pseudepigrapha for the Book of Mormon. I don't know if that makes sense, but to me that's a really good way to look at it, you know, because you're using something that is potentially credible in the Bible to try to give treasure digging more credibility.
John Dehlin [02:21:16] Yeah. Again, just like, why go to all the trouble to create the plates and hide the plates and produce the plates if they're not going to be used? Why? You know, we already have the problem of somebody else coming up with the idea of the urimum Thummim or the spectacles. A guy who wasn't even inspired by God. That's how these even get introduced into the narrative. But again, why is God going to go through the trouble of burying the spectacles with the plates if then Joseph's going to just use the rock he almost had? Like, it's just another example of silliness that's kind of like a smoking gun when you really think about it.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:21:53] Yeah. It makes no sense.
John Dehlin [02:21:55] Again, when he's misusing them in ways that they were never historically used. Like, it's just all wrong. It's all wrong.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:22:02] That's just it, you know, and it's just there's so many of those instances where all of a sudden you're like, you see the. Just like. Again, I don't want to get on this tangent, but in the DNC132, the entire justification for polygamy is that Abraham was commanded of God. And then you're like, but in the Bible, God never commands Abraham to do it it. And then all of a sudden you're like, well, crap. If. If the entire justification of DNC 132 is on bad biblical history, you know, how do you then believe anything else that's written in that revelation? Because it's. It's completely written off. In the Urim and Thummim is the same thing. So the Urim and Thummim isn't what you say it is, but you say that's how you translate the Book of Mormon. Even though we know it was the rock and the hat that he used for treasure digging, those are foundational things that everything that is the fruit of the poisonous tree.
Speaker E [02:22:40] Right.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:22:40] Like, nothing that comes from that is going to be true if the baseline is false. And in this case the baseline is treasure digging, and we know that didn't work. So to then give special pleading to Joseph and say, well, in his case it worked, even though I would never believe it from someone else. I mean, you can take that stand, but like we've said in the previous episodes, if you want to take that stand, you at least have to own the fact that historically it doesn't work. You can't keep saying, oh, yeah, there's ways to make this work. And I believe when the evidence is overwhelming that it just did not work.
John Dehlin [02:23:09] It reminds me of the apologetics that they do with polygamy, that they don't want Joseph Smith to have had sex with any of his plural wives, especially the underaged ones or the polyandrous ones. So they're gonna say he didn't have sex with any of them, but then they've gotta deal with the Book of Mormon that says polygamy is evil unless you're gonna raise up a righteous seed. And that requires sex. So why is Joseph engaging in polygamy in a way that contradicts the actual only possible justification for just never.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:23:41] None of this ever.
John Dehlin [02:23:42] None of this ever ties. It never ties.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:23:45] Okay, it gets messy.
John Dehlin [02:23:46] So you've got the now you know, video, and I think this is awesome.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:23:50] We're gonna play. I kind of cut, like, just the parts about the seer stone, and a little bit's gonna overlap from some stuff we've already said. But I just want people to see, if you've never watched these videos, to see kind of how cartoony they're. And they're gonna show you how Joseph Smith is doing treasure digging. And I want you to watch it because he's not going to do it in the way we know he did it. And again, this is how they're trying to normalize using a peep seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon.
The Church's Official Video on Translation
John Dehlin [02:24:12] All right, so let's see the Mormon Church's now you know, video on translation.
Speaker F [02:24:18] Seer stones are, well, stones, rocks. They are just one example of many physical objects which God has used through his spokesman called prophets, to demonstrate his power and to bless or communicate with his children. Let's look at some examples you may remember from the Bible. God commanded Moses to place a serpent made of brass on a pole to heal the children of Israel. He told Moses, anyone who looketh upon it shall live. But the power to heal was not in the serpent or the pole. It was God's power. As another example, Moses used a rod, a large stick, to part the Red Sea. The Savior healed a woman who touched his garment. And Jesus even used mud when he healed a blind man. Through examples such as these, we can see how God sometimes uses objects that people are familiar with to communicate with and bless his children. The use of seer stones was also part of the common culture of 19th century Europe. It was believed that some People could use them to find lost objects or to see things not visible with the natural eye. This European cultural tradition was carried over to New England and became part of early American culture as well. In the early 19th century, during a time of religious fervor, Joseph Smith, a young man in upstate New York, believed in this practice. In his teenage years, Joseph sometimes used a seer stone to locate lost objects. Later, God called Joseph as his prophet and provided him with a Urim and Thummim to translate an ancient book of scripture, the Book of Mormon, another testament of Jesus Christ many centuries earlier. This ancient record was engraved on gold plates in a language called reformed Egyptian. Joseph used both the urim and thummim and a seer stone at different times during the translation process. Regarding the seer stone, witnesses to the translation process said Joseph placed the stone in a hat in an effort to block out extra light and focus his attention. They reported that as he looked at the stone, he could see the translation, which he would then dictate to his scribe. Miraculous.
John Dehlin [02:26:26] Wow. I've got a few questions.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:26:28] Yeah, I mean, the sad thing is you could do a whole episode just on this video. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it covers a lot of, I think, the reasons that you could kind of make the argument that the church is doing with this, what we were talking about with saints earlier, where it's about inoculation. So they tell you a lot of these things, but the details are so watered down. And I would argue in a lot of cases, misleading, intentionally misleading.
John Dehlin [02:26:47] And three questions, a couple questions I have is, number one, if, if you know, it is, if the seer stone is so powerful that again, it can not only translate a language that never has existed ever, when the plates aren't even in the room. So, I mean, it's literally translating from plates that aren't even in the room. But then it's also listening to the dialogue between Joseph and the scribe, like, that's a lot of power. Why couldn't have God made it it so that you could actually read it without needing to be put in a hat? You couldn't even have just added that feature along with the grammar checker that God forgot to add to the stone, like, why did God leave out these important features? But also I was just wondering, like, well, if seer stones are important and if God uses all these relics like, you know, Moses staff and Jesus is using mud, why aren't modern day prophets, seers and revelators using mud, you know, the seer stone, they've got it in their possession. They could still be using it, but they're not.
Jenn Kamp [02:27:50] They can't even pray to ask about Heavenly Mother. So we're way past Seer Stone now in this age.
John Dehlin [02:27:56] Or like, should have we got rid of slavery earlier? Or should we apologize about, you know, anything? Like, they. Yeah. Where's the prophesying? Seeing and revealing? And then the final thing is, if the Seer Stone's so cool, why wasn't the church proud of it and bragging about it for centuries instead of hiding it and lying about it and punishing people who talked about it?
Speaker F [02:28:18] Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:28:19] I mean, and like I said, it's. A lot of this is overlap with what we talked about. But, like, when they show him out in the field by the rock, by these boulders, with. With the Seer Stone, they don't show him put it in a hat. They don't show him stick his head in the hat. And then they also actually, I think go to the next slide because I think I have it on the next slide. So just because I want to make sure I don't kind of, like, double up on this. But. But they. When they're talking about these. Yeah. So I'll kind of jump for a second. But if you. Even if you ignore the fact that Moses is almost certainly not a historical figure. And again, I don't want to get too far off base here. We'll talk about that more in the future.
John Dehlin [02:28:53] There is that.
Jenn Kamp [02:28:54] Yeah.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:28:55] I mean, we've even got some. Some scholars that work for the church that will say Moses was not historical. I mean, we're at the point now where you cannot ignore that. And there's.
John Dehlin [02:29:04] Even Jews will say that. And they're. He's the founder of their religion. Right?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:29:08] Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. Like, you know, historically speaking, you can't take those stories. This is straight history. And the miracles of Jesus, again, you're not. They're not going to be written down for decades later. And so neither Moses or Jesus were ever recorded as using their powers for financial gain, failing to actually accomplish what they said they could do, and then being put through the legal system for fraudulent practices before then, claiming those exact same tactics were then able to be used to communicate with God. And again, that might come off as being kind of like fighting wars. I'm just saying, like, you can't make that comparison. We have no record of Moses going to parties and, like, trying to say with his staff, he could, like, you know, make the room do something. And I'm not trying to be facetious. I'm just saying the problem with this is that Joseph Smith used the stone to look for buried treasure, never found it, and charged people. So you can't make this comparison. And it sets up this equation that puts Joseph Smith on the same level as Moses and Jesus. We have so much evidence to say, even if you want to again contend that Moses and Jesus, or Moses, especially Jesus, I believe is historical. But those supernatural powers they had, they weren't using them to trick people and then claiming they worked, and that's a big problem. And that the church doesn't mention that. And then the video says that Joseph used the Seer Stone to locate lost objects. They didn't say to try to. They said to locate lost objects. He never found treasure. And so what the church would say is, well, there's a story or two where Joseph would find a cow that someone lost. And there are a lot of accounts, actually, I shouldn't say a lot. There are accounts of people that actually say Joseph Smith would find things a little too easy, almost as if he took some things around town, hid them, and then when people were looking for him, he looked for it. So, I mean, you know, if you want to make that argument, I guess that's probably where the church would go. But he did not locate lost buried treasure with it. He never did. And so to make that statement in the video makes it sound like he actually could do it and he could not. And so I just, I feel like that's really misleading. And. And then, of course, at the end, you know, they show him translating at the table. They don't show him put his head all the way in the hat. And to your point earlier about the light, and I guess we'll get into that in a few slides, but they are in rooms that are not full of electric. Electric lights everywhere. A lot of the times in those homes, you know, they don't have a lot of windows. I mean, you could be in any room without needing to block out light. And so, you know, to compare it get to. To, you know, we'll get to. In a second with, with we have one final video that we'll get to. But, yeah, I just, I think it's, It's. It's such a bad argument. That, again, comes out of desperation and necessity. It does not come out of the evidence leading you there. It becomes. Because you need to find a way to give plausibility. And so I guess that will lead us to our.
Brad Wilcox BYU Presentation on Translation
John Dehlin [02:31:43] That leads us to the amazing, the wonderful Brad Wilcox. It's so awesome to have Brad Wilcox coming back to Mormon Stories. Brad, welcome back back to Mormon Stories. It's so great to have you.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:31:55] Thank you, Brad.
Jenn Kamp [02:31:55] Let's.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:31:56] Let's hear what you have to say about the Book of Mormon translation.
John Dehlin [02:31:59] Okay, so this is Brad Wilcox. You know, it's in his study or in some church library or at byu. He's got some. For those who are just listening, he's got some. A gold plates replica, which is obviously way too few pages and way too short of a stack of plates. You know, he's got a gray hat in front of him. He's holding a seer stone in his right hand and an iPhone in his left hand. And we just love Brad Wilcox on Mormon Stories. So let's hear what Brad Wilcox has to say. And he's a professor. He's not only a professor of religion at byu, he's also the leader. He's in the young men's presidency of the church. And he is kind of spearheading the replacement to efy, which is called FSY for the strength of youth.
Jenn Kamp [02:32:49] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:32:50] All right, so take it away. Brad Wilcox.
Jenn Kamp [02:32:54] I'm Brad Wilcox, and I'm starting a new semester teaching Book of Mormon at byu. And I thought I'd share with you some of the. The visual aids that I use with my students. This is a replica of the seer stone or one of the seer stones that Joseph Smith had. This was the stone that he found in a well when digging a well when he was a young man. And then when he would look into the stone, he would be able to see things that other people could not see. And part of the translation of the Book of Mormon was done with the Urim and Thummim, but part of the translation was also done with a seer stone or several seer stones. Now, people often get confused because they hear that Joseph Smith put a seer stone inside of a hat and then would look into the hat to see the seer stone, and they think it sounds weird. But when I compare for my students the seer stone to a cell phone and I say, hey, a smooth surface on which words appear that can be read, then it makes more sense to them. I also say, hey, when you're out on a sunny day and you're trying to look at your cell phone, you wish it were darker. We often go like this to try to see the words better. Well, no wonder Joseph Smith put his cell phone or his seer stone in the hat so that he could block out light and he could see what was being written, what was given to him on the seer stone a little clearer. So maybe with these visuals in mind, then it will help you understand a little better, just like I hope it helps my students understand a little bit better about the translation process of the Book of Mormon.
John Dehlin [02:34:39] All right, so what's wrong with. What's wrong with Brad Wilcox's awesome explanation, Mike?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:34:47] Well, again, this is one of those things where you're creating this. This equation here that just doesn't make sense. So, first of all, yeah, if you're out at the beach on a sunny day, your phone is going to be a little bit harder to see. We all get that. But Joseph Smith is not translating the Book of Mormon outside. He's translating it inside of a house, which is going to have a lot of. You know, you could. You could dim the lights. I mean, they don't have electricity in these homes, right? So you just go to an area of the house that that's. That is darker. This is not hard to do. And so the idea that he's doing it, putting it in the hat because of that makes no sense. He's doing it because, as we talk about treasure digging, he is. You know, in my opinion, he is. He needs the. The rock, the stone to be the source of charisma, as Dan Vogel talks about. And so that is kind of like the magic trick. The hat inside or the rock inside the hat is what gets people to believe. And so Joseph needs that rock to be somewhere where the other people can't see it, because they can see that it doesn't work. So it's not about light. It's about the fact that he has to hide the actual stone from the people. And to compare it to an iPhone is just silly, because we know how a phone works. We know how a phone is built. It has a proven track record. So to compare it to Iraq that was used to claim to see buried treasure, it's just. It's a. It's a very dishonest comparison. And it's one again. And I'll keep hammering this throughout these episodes. You would never give that same space to another religion, to another politician, to another organization. You would never give that. But you would never say, well, maybe they were thinking it was like a phone. You'd just be like, no, he's making it up. I mean, I. I don't know what else to say there. And again, as we're saying, you know, with the lighting, it's just. It's a bad argument. And there's there's some videos with church historians that make the same argument that it's like a phone. But again, we know phones work and you don't need to block out light when you're inside of a home. Like, I have my phone with me right now that's going along with these slides just so I can keep track. And I don't need to dim it or I don't need to put anything around it because the room's not that bright. And so this idea that Joseph Smith needed to do that, it's about hiding the stone from the scribes so that they can't see that nothing's happening, because otherwise you could put the stone on a table and even just put your hands around and look down. You know, the fact that he's putting it into a deep top hat is a way to effectively keep it, you know, away from the scribes. And that's the same thing we saw in treasure digging. And then, you know, Brad Wilcox says that Joseph could see things others could not. It's the same thing in that now youw Know video. He could not, because he claimed to see things other people could not, but he could never locate them. And so to immediately declare it as truth, knowing that he never actually found anything, is really misleading. And like I said, just apply the same Brad Wilcox video to any other religion. And Brad Wilcox be like, oh, yeah, they made it up. But because it's something you're invested in, you have this, you know, the sunk cost. You have those feelings.
Jenn Kamp [02:37:26] You.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:37:26] You accept things that you wouldn't accept from other people.
John Dehlin [02:37:29] Yeah. What. And now that. Now that we're coming to a close, you know, of this episode, and I'm contemplating not only the great work you've done my, but. But what we're going to be doing throughout this series of like 50 plus potential videos, you know, what, what we're doing is just showing. It's kind of like that probability point we made last episode. There's just improbable thing after improbable thing after improbable thing. There's. There's a 10,000 of those. And then they have to all be multiplied together to arrive at the. The final probability that it's all plausible. And what, what apologists have for far too long been successfully able to do is to just deal with one issue and one issue and then one issue and then one issue and try and make up reasons why one issue, you know, could be, you know, feasible. But what they've never been required to do is respond to what you've done, which is to show how when you string all these improbabilities together, how it becomes ridiculous by allowing them to continue to address things in isolation individually, they're never where, I mean, you could say the book saints, but where have apologists ever been forced to explain all the improbabilities together in a narrative where it can all make sense in aggregate? Have they ever been required to do that? Does the book saints do that?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:38:59] Saints really doesn't do it because saints can move from chapter to chapter. So they, you know, I mean, saints isn't being called out. So saints can make. Make, you know, and saints really doesn't focus necessarily on apologetics because they do it in that kind of like fluffy narrative way. So when they talk about treasure digging and using like the stone and the hat. I'm trying to. It's been a while since I did that chapter by chapter, but I don't think they ever reference back to earlier stuff. So they don't really need to do it. And again, because they're writing it for a believing audience, they're not going to even feel like they need to do it. And you know, again, I think from an apologetics, like I've said before in some of the posts I've done, you know, I don't. If any historian from the church or any church leader, any general authority stake president wants to contact me, they can email me through the website. They can contact me and I will talk to any of them. The point is, I've never once I've had a couple of apologists that like, you know, actual people you'd recognize who have gotten a little bit of a back and forth with me. But usually we just go in circles because they'll stick to one point and I'm like, this can't work. And so I'm not saying I'm right and they're wrong. I mean, I believe I'm right because I'm trying to show them why what they're saying doesn't make sense. But what I'm saying is apologists and historians do not go out in public. You will not see Kate Holbrooke go out and do a podcast with you or with Radio Free Mormon or Bill Real. But she'll go on the Follow me podcast about DNC132, where she is free to say whatever she wants without pushback. And so, and again, I'm not trying to call them out. I'm just saying, like, I think the difference is, for me, if the church called me into the church office building. I could go in there and give this presentation and I would not be embarrassed to say any of it because it's based on sources. But you're not going to see them go out in public and take questions from people like me because they know the second you try to answer these things, you're going to be destroyed. Because you can't answer these things and promote faith without stretching the reality of apologetics. And you can't do that if someone knows how to respond to it.
Apologist Accountability and the Information Problem
John Dehlin [02:40:53] Yeah. So you know what, what they, what they benefit from is never being held accountable, never having to have their feet to the fire. And if apologists only show up at fair Mormon conferences and a faith friendly podcast sponsored by the church and at BYU and in these secret firesides, they, they protect themselves from ever having to be accountable for these contextual questions that span all the issues. And of course, that's why Richard Bushman will come on Mormon Stories. That's why Patrick Mason, you know, Terrell and Fiona Gibbons, that's why they stopped coming on Mormon Stories, because once they were required to explain all these problems in an overarching contextual sort of context and try to make it all make sense, they don't want to have to do that. And so they, they just stay to the private secret firesides and the, the byu, you know, special special conferences and academic conferences where the narrative, just like Joseph, they want to make sure that the environment can be carefully controlled.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:41:58] Right.
John Dehlin [02:41:59] And again, it's not, it's not Bushman and Givens and Mason. Yeah, it's, it's the First Presidency of the Quorum of the twelve. They don't take interviews from the media anymore. They don't meet with Larry, Larry, Larry, Larry King or Mike Wallace or the guy from the BBC, you know, so I don't know how to make them be accountable. As long as they can continue creating this Mormon bubble where Mormons only look to church approved sources, where they despise and discredit any critical voice, then all these faithful Mormons can continue to live in the bubble and these church leaders and apologists can speak to the members who are faithful only in the bubble, and no one's ever held accountable. It's kind of frustrating. Even this project, I just wonder, is this just an echo chamber where you and me and Jen and our listeners are all reinforcing the fact that we all know that things aren't like the church claims? But does this penetrate the bubble?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:43:04] Well, yeah, the thing is, you can't penetrate the bubble. Because as long as people want to stay in the bubble, they're not going to come out. And so you, you have that. I mean, my interest in politics has been way longer than my interest in, like, digging into this stuff. And I can tell you, you cannot change anyone's mind. And so all you can do is put these videos out. I can put the overview project out on aldoistic.com and basically tell people, look, if you want to get into it, here's where it is. You can reply and let me know where I'm wrong. Otherwise, let's not bother. Because, you know, to your point, you're always going to have most members be afraid of this stuff or at least be uncomfortable talking about it. But. But it's not that we're trying to get some widespread thing where you're attracting tens of thousands of people, but if you can help a few people this week, maybe in a couple weeks, there's someone who has a question and they find these episodes. It's about just being there when people can use it. Because when I was going through this, being able to find resources like Mormon stories, Mormon expressions, infants on Throne, CS letter, letter from my wife, all of those things helped me. And then I found some people that would help me and say, here's some podcasts about the history that you're looking for that are more gentle and that helped me. Or here's some about maybe some stories people had and I'm going long winded here. But just to say, to your point, you can't crack the echo chamber, but you can be there for when people do. Because, I mean, even after the last general conference, I saw a number of people on Twitter who are believing members who are like, I'm ready to start looking at some stuff because I'm really upset about the Heavenly Mother stuff. I mean, I'm not saying it's a lot. It's not going to be thousands of people that are just gonna publicly say, I'm leaving. It's about this steady stream of people who are willing to look. And as soon as they're willing to look, then it's like, here it is. Because like I said, you can't turn that light switch on for anyone. And so all you can do is be there for when they're ready to turn that switch on. And then once they're ready, you can give them all the info and they can do with it what they want.
Jenn Kamp [02:44:52] Yeah, that they just, they. They have to. I have found that you just kind of have to wait until they're Ready, like something within them first is ready for it. And then, like, for me, I still have never read the CES letter. It was, I started to, and it was, it was hard and so, like, letter for my wife. I read that some sections of it. I still didn't read that in entirety either, but it seemed like, softer. And I think these smaller podcasts, even though this one's a little bit longer of our smaller ones, but these smaller ones with LDS discussions will be good when just someone comes to you with, like, one thing, like maybe just one thing they'll look into a little bit. A little bit more, and that might help them to see that there are some things that maybe they haven't been told the truth about.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:45:53] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:45:54] That's the one thing that I'm grateful for, is just these YouTube algorithms or these TikTok algorithms or Instagram algorithms where.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:46:01] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:46:02] Where sometimes people stumble on these episodes and it. And they're curious enough or honest enough to click on it, and all of a sudden it can take them out of the bubble.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:46:13] Yeah. And that's. And like I said, it's into your earlier point about. Well, you know, like, I put on the. I think I put on the website a few times, but it's like, look, I, you know, because I don't go out. I'm not going to go out to. I don't go to my. I don't go to church. I'm a member, but I'm inactive, so I'm not going to go to church and tell people, oh, no, this Sunday school class is wrong. This Come Follow Me is wrong. I have no interest in doing that because it will amount to nothing. But I put on the website a few times. Like, if someone from the church is willing to talk to me, I'm more than happy to do that, and I will do it in a way that's respectful, just like we're doing here. I'm not going to tell them, oh, my goodness, you're so wrong. And here's why. It's like, I just want to ask questions and say, but if you're going to answer with that, then how do you explain this? And the one point I'll say is you had done a series with Jim Bennett, and Bill Real did a series with Jim Bennett. And I would argue that Jim Bennett, while I think his response to the CS letter is just full of issues, and I've been kind of working with Jeremy a little bit, and I got to get back to that soon about trying to come up with a reply to Go through some of those, because a lot of what he argues is checking just, it's incompatible with the other stuff. But him going on those series, I think also shows if you are a historian or you're a church leader, that when you go into these episodes or you go into a public interview or a public discussion with someone who knows how to respond, that the stuff you write on paper doesn't hold up. So, Jim Bennett, in your episodes, I remember I was watching and I was typing in a few questions about the book Abraham, because he was saying stuff that I knew wasn't right. And when you brought that up to him, he didn't have a reply because you can write whatever you want as a reply to the CES letter, but when you're talking to someone in person and they can push back in a public setting, you will look really foolish if you put stuff on paper that is factually not true. And so church leaders are never going to go into a public forum, even with someone as insignificant as me, because if I can push back on what they're saying and expose the fact that they either know that what they're saying isn't quite right or the fact that these leaders don't know the church history, either way it's going to end poorly. And so they've seen enough people that have experienced that. A good example is what you said with that interview with Jeffrey Holland, right, where he did the interview with the BBC. And once you see how badly it goes, when you are off the script, you're going to continue to shelter and just hope that the members of the church don't realize that you are avoiding taking any difficult questions.
John Dehlin [02:48:31] Totally. Totally. Well, you know, we'll just pray to the algorithm gods the, the gift of the holy algorithm Spirit that it will do its work and again, only for the people that want or need it, because there are people who are probably better off staying believers.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:48:45] So, and there might be. I mean, I think that, you know, and again, we, we don't need to go off too much. One thing that does drive me nuts about the church and, and, and I, I noticed this now, now that I'm not a believing member, is that they constantly, again, when I talk about equations, they create this equation for people that you can't be happy without it. You can't. One of the things I used to hear was, you cannot raise a good kid without the church. And that as a member, bothered me to death because I was a convert. So I thought, what are you trying to say about my parents? If you're saying you can't raise a good kid without the church. You know what I mean? And so part of that is to what you're saying is people, there are going to be people that do need some sort of a structure to their life, whether it's a church or something else. I get that. But I think a lot of people feel like they need the church because they've been told that their whole life. And so it's kind of like. Not to go into too many tangents here, but you have people who will say, I would never wear a tank top anyways because I hate my shoulders. It's like, well, you hate your shoulders because you're told your shoulders are ugly and causing sin. You know, that kind of stuff where it's like your whole life you're told you cannot survive without us. And so people see stuff like this and they're like, I can't do that because I will do horrible things without the church. And the only thing I would say to that is, if the only thing keeping you from cheating on your spouse or committing horrible crimes or treating people terribly is the church, you're not a very good person anyways. But yeah, I just. That's the only thing I would say is I hate that equation that the church creates, that learning this history is going to cause harm to you. And so when people come to me and they say, you know, they'll say, why are you trying to teach people the church isn't true? You're ruining people's lives. And I'm like, I'm not doing anything. I'm putting out there the history. If the church isn't true, that's not my fault. And if the church is true, then you have nothing to fear by reading my stuff. So I really do get frustrated when they make that equation that one, you can't be happy or you can't live a good life without the church, and then two, people who talk about the church are ruining lives when you could make the argument the other way, that by teaching people to live in this little box of rules and stuff, that's the only way to live that also keeps you from a lot of things. And so. So again, I don't want to. I'm already going long winded on this. But, yeah, that is one area where I do get frustrated with this idea that if these videos are viewed by somebody who is a believer, and then they go, oh, wow, you're right, this isn't true. And then they leave the church and they encounter issues that it's my fault when the truth is, if the church isn't true, that has nothing to do with me. I'm just presenting what I learned. And yeah, I mean, like I said, it's just one of those things that's a little frustrating for me because I know you're not saying it, but a lot of people do. And I know you hear it all the time. I mean, I wrote a. A thing on the website once because they called you and Jeremy Reynolds. Was it home records for hire? And I'm like, well, they're not home records for hire. They're just putting out there. I mean, for you, Mormon stories. And the thing that always that I loved about Mormon stories is I could go onto your website when I first started doing this a few years ago, and I could go, I want to learn about the second anointing. I could look up the Tom Phillips episode or I want to learn about biblical scholarship. And you could look at the Bart Ehrman episode or the David Bockwe episode. But it was never like, oh, my goodness, look at what John Dehlin's doing to me. It's like, no. John Dehlin's got a platform that he's bringing all of these people on, whether it's their personal story or history or scholarship. And so if that causes me to lose faith, that's not your fault. You know what I mean? And so, yeah, I'm going along with it. It's one of those triggers for me when people equate difficult church information with people ruining other lives, because that's just not what it is.
John Dehlin [02:52:12] Yeah, it's the information. It's on Joseph, it's on the Brigham Young. It's on the text of the Book of Mormon. It's on science, it's on the church leaders and how they've handled it all. It's not on me. Grant Palmer, Jeremy Bill Real rfm, Sandra Tanner, Gerald Tanner. Not on us, period.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:52:30] And to circle back this episode again, I'm a convert. So when I joined, the first discussion was the picture of Joseph with the plates on the table, reading them off to a scribe on the other side, right? So if the church came to me and the missionary said, joseph Smith used to be a treasure digger, and after he stopped doing the treasure digging, God came to him and allowed him to translate a book by putting the rock in the hat. And I said, guys, that's ridiculous. I'm out of here. I wouldn't be talking to you today because I would have never joined. So it's important you Know, the. The church makes the best critics because most of the best critics of the church were believers. And, you know, and that's why. I mean, the fact is, the reason that I'm here is because I went through it and then you find out it's not true. So if I tell someone else what I learned and they lose belief to blame me for it, it just isn't fair because I'm only trying to explain what I've learned. And, yeah, we've gone over it. It's one of those things where, as we do these overview projects and you get more of that pushback. I'm used to it, so it doesn't bother me like it used to, but it is one of those areas where I do hate to allow the church aside to have to hold that narrative of, don't listen to them. They're trying to ruin your life, because it's not. And then the last thing I'll say, and I promise the last thing I say on this, when Radio Free Mormon did the debate with the Midnight Mormons was that a few months ago, one of the questions they said to him was, if your podcast leads someone away from the church, it is your responsibility to give them something else. And I remember, I've been asked that a ton. They'll say, fine, let's say you're right. Let's say the church isn't what we thought it was, then you have to tell me what the correct church is. And I thought, no, because if I tell you the only, like, if you read the overview project and you come to me and say, you know what, you're right, the evidence is really clear. This church isn't true, what church do I join? And if I then tell you, oh, you should join the Catholic Church or you should join Jehovah's Witnesses, I'm just as bad as what I say the Mormon Church is, because I say the Mormon Church should not tell you there's only one way. So then if I tell you what you need to replace it with, then I'm doing exactly what I don't want them to do. And so it's not my responsibility to replace anyone's faith with something else. And all I can say is you should replace it with what you learn and what you experience that makes you fulfilled. That doesn't force you to have to believe in things that we know didn't happen.
John Dehlin [02:54:48] It's also illogical. Like, if I know that a car dealer is, you know, has lied to people and is selling you a lemon, and I Blow the whistle and let. Let consumers know that they're being defrauded by a car dealer with bad cars. It does not follow in any way that. Then it's my job to find everybody a new car.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:55:08] Exactly. That's the best way to look at it.
John Dehlin [02:55:10] It is just super dumb. All right, well, let's go ahead and go to the final slide and wrap
Conclusion and Preview of the 116 Pages Episode
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:55:14] this up, which is the conclusion so much. But, yeah, I mean, it's just like, again, we're going through this like, it's like it's a puzzle and we're going from. From topic to topic. And just like the treasure digging and the gold plates, you have to believe treasure digging is a real way to communicate with supernatural powers in order for the Book of Mormon translation to be plausible or to work. And, you know, we talked about this earlier, but you have to believe in the church's narrative that Mormon and Moroni engraved these plates of gold. He carried them around all of America. You know, some. You know, the argument now is that they came from Mesoamerica all the way up to New York, buried them in a hill with spectacles prepared by God to translate all to translate this ancient record also that Joseph Smith could bury them in the woods and then use the very same stone he claimed to see buried treasure with. And again, that sounds like, you know, you're putting, like, a really bad spin on it, but that is what it is. You can't. You have to wonder why you'd go through all that work. And as Richard Bushman said, well, maybe the plates were there just as a symbol for Joseph so that people believed him, but nobody saw the plates with their natural eyes. And we'll get to that more in the future overviews. But they went through all of this work and all of this time to protect these plates. Also, Joseph could throw them in the woods, bury them in the woods, and use a rock and head. It just. It doesn't work. And, you know, again, and this is a point we've been making, and I'll make for a lot of these, is when you hear these episodes and you look at these stories and you look at how convoluted these stories get. You know, would you give the same space if someone came to you and said it was Warren Jeffs, David Koresh, Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses, you just, you wouldn't, because you don't have a vested interest. So of course you'd be like, there's no way this is true. But with Mormonism, we're so trained to find ways to make it work, that we're willing to give that space. And I'm just saying the only way that you can be intellectually consistent, honest here is to take that step back and look at these stories and look at these sources just for a moment, just for a day, just for a week, whatever it is. And look at it from the mindset of would I believe the Mormon Church is true if I was not already a member and I heard this history instead of hearing the correlated narrative first?
John Dehlin [02:57:17] All right, well, Mike, today is brilliant. I think it's the best three hours, it might be the best three hours ever produced of providing an overarching, integral, integrative, integrating, you know, context, contextual narrative for, for the Book of Mormon translation process. So you have, have done such great work and I'm really happy with, with, with this discussion. And this is, I guess, part three of what we hope is a 40 or 50 part series that could be from LDS discussions. And so, Mike, you're amazing and Jen, you're also amazing.
Jenn Kamp [02:57:55] Thank you.
John Dehlin [02:57:56] Yeah, it's always great to have you.
Jenn Kamp [02:57:58] You're sweet.
John Dehlin [02:57:58] Yeah, thank you.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:58:00] Thank you, Jen, for being here. And you know, again, like, the next episode's going to be 116 pages. So for, for those of you that made it all the way to the end of this, I promise you the next one is going to be, I think the next one. And I'll tell you right now that the two off the top of my head that I think are the most important episodes we're going to do is the 116 pages and the transfiguration of Brigham Young. And the transfiguration of Brigham Young is going to be way down the road. But those are the two episodes I think are the least talked about of all these topics and they give the best window into understanding how these ideas get created, how the Book of Mormon is created. So, I mean, like I said, if you're enjoying these, I really hope, hope the next one I think will be, will be like just. I hope it's as good as it sounds like it'll be in my head at least.
John Dehlin [02:58:40] All right, Mike. Well, you're the best. We're loving this series and we can't thank you enough. Thank you.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [02:58:46] Thanks to both of you for being here.
John Dehlin [02:58:47] Our pleasure. And again, viewers and listeners, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you like this series, if you value it, please become a monthly donor. If you're not Already, go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor because your financial support is what makes all this possible. So thanks to Mike. Check out LDS discussions, check out our show notes and our time codes. If you want to be able to jump around, you can use the time codes in YouTube to do that. Of course, if you want to check out any of the references we mentioned on the episode, you can go to the show notes to do that. Huge thanks to Jen for doing that today, and to Jennifer and and Brooklyn and Gerardo and others that all are part of this wonderful team that make all this possible. Thanks Jen.
Jenn Kamp [02:59:31] Thank you.
John Dehlin [02:59:32] Thanks everybody. We'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
Description: Join John, Jenn and Mike from LDS Discussions as we break down the “translation” of the Book of Mormon. Did Joseph use the “spectacles” and breastplate found with the Gold Plates? Or his seer stone and a hat? Or the “Urim & Thummim”? Or nothing at all?
Does it even matter?
LDS Discussions Essay on Book of Mormon Translation
LDS Discussions is made possible by generous donors!
Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today:
- One-time or recurring donation through Donorbox
- Support us on Patreon
- Pick “Mormon Stories” as your charity on Amazon Smile or through the Amazon App
LDS Discussions Platforms:
- LDS Discussions Website
- LDS Discussions on Anchor
- LDS Discussions on Spotify
- LDS Discussions Playlist on YouTube
Contact LDS Discussions:
- Twitter: @ldsdicussions
- Facebook: @ldsdiscussion
- Insta: @ldsdiscussions
- Email: ldsdiscussions@gmail.com
Contact us:
MormonStories@gmail.com
PO Box 171085, Salt Lake City, UT 84117
Social Media:
Show Notes:
LDS Discussions
- Follow the Footnotes
- LDS Discussions First Vision Now You Know
- 1590: Lost 116 Pages w/ LDS Discussions – 04
- 1610: The King James Bible Problem in the Book of Mormon w/ LDS Discussions – 09
Mormon Stories
- Richard Bushman admits Mormon leaders misled members with a false narrative
- 1339-1341: Dr. Robert Ritner – An Expert Egyptologist Translates the Book of Abraham
- 493-494; 497-499b: Brent Metcalfe – Early Years, Mark Hofmann, the Salamander Letter, the Bombings, the Book of Abraham, and Life After Mormonism
- 1396: Visions in a Seer Stone: Joseph Smith and the Making of the Book of Mormon – William L. Davis
- 1082-1083: How the Book of Mormon was Created, by John Hamer
- 1013-1016: David Bokovoy – Bible Scholar, Former CES Employee
- 1377: Belief After the CES Letter – God, Jesus, Prophets, and the “One True Church” – Jim Bennett Pt. 1
Other Sources
One Response
This series is FANTASTIC. So much new information to chew on. Scholarly but understandable. Thank you Mike for the respectful way you present. It’s both engaging and relaxing. I say ‘relaxing’ because your presentations skip sarcasm and F bombs. Ocasional cuss words are no big deal but 20 ,30 F bombs in an episode grates on my nerves. Admittedly I am “old school” when it comes to the big, bad words. For me they are distracting. John, I get a kick out of hearing you laugh and I appreciate how you put ‘2 and 2’ together and further add to what Mike presents. Thank you Mormon Stories for continuing to put out so much content. Eating it up!