The Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Mormon
Original Air Date: 2022-07-21
This detailed summary covers the episode of the Mormon Stories Podcast featuring Mike from LDS Discussions. The discussion centers on a textual analysis of the Sermon on the Mount as it appears in the Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 12–14) compared to the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible (Matthew 5–7).
The hosts argue that the Book of Mormon text relies heavily on the KJV Bible, including its translation errors and late additions, which serves as evidence against the book’s claim of ancient historical origins.
The Core Argument: Reliance on the King James Bible
The central thesis presented is that Joseph Smith used the KJV Bible as a foundational text when dictating the Book of Mormon, rather than translating an ancient record.
Joseph Smith’s "Fingerprints" on the Text
The episode highlights specific textual clues—described as "forensic evidence" or "fingerprints"—that suggest Joseph Smith was attempting to edit the Bible text to fit an American setting but failed to do so consistently 5, 6.
The Synoptic Problem and Apologetics
The discussion touches on the "Synoptic Problem"—the relationship between Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Critique of Apologetic ResponsesThe hosts critique common defenses offered by groups like Book of Mormon Central:
Conclusion
The episode concludes that the Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Mormon acts as a "forensic crime scene" 20. It demonstrates that the text was not translated from ancient plates but was derived from the 1769 edition of the King James Bible that Joseph Smith owned. The text includes 19th-century English, translation errors, and specific anachronisms that locate its creation in the 1800s, not ancient history 21.
Analogy to Solidify Understanding:Imagine a student is accused of plagiarizing a Wikipedia article for their history paper. The student claims they wrote it from scratch based on their own original research. However, the teacher notices that the student’s paper includes a typo that only exists in that specific Wikipedia article, and they even accidentally pasted the phrase "citation needed" at the end of a paragraph.
In this scenario, Joseph Smith is the student. The "typo" is the Roman law of the "mile," and the "citation needed" is the late addition of the doxology. Even though the student changed a few words (like swapping "dollars" for "pounds"), the presence of those specific errors proves the source was the existing article (the KJV Bible), not original research (ancient gold plates).
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hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Mormon stories podcast I am one of your hosts for today John delin we are knee-deep or waist deep in an amazing series on Mormon stories podcast called LDS discussions uh with Mike from a website by the same name ldsdiscussions.com hey Mike hey everybody thanks so much for joining us today it's so this Series has just taken cut storm let's take a storm yeah like you know I feel like I feel like a broken record but I just I hope it's helpful for people that are kind of in that point where they're trying to kind of understand these issues maybe in a little bit more detail than like say the Cs letter and in a way maybe that incorporates both you know the critical approach and the apologetic approach and like you know we've talked about in previous episodes it's obviously not going to cover everything but it gives an overview I think and within each episode they build on each other to hopefully um give a more broader context to all of these um topics so as we get further along it's going to make a lot more sense and if we just kind of covered them without going through this process of trying to do it in kind of a chronological manner yeah yep by my count we're 14 episodes in uh really quickly the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive I want to State our intentions our intentions are not to harm the Mormon Church they're not to or the LDS church they're not to take people out of the LDS church they're not to destroy faith in the LDS church the the overwhelming uh mission of this series and a Mormon stories is what we call informed consent we just believe that everyone who is either investigating the LDS church or as a member of it deserves to understand the truth claims and uh then to make informed decisions so that's our intention I would also just really briefly say we're getting some mixed feedback we love your feedback many of you are saying that they like the panel they like Gerardo they like Jen they like Nemo they like me um being a part of the discussion many people like a more um extensive discussion and many people do want us to not go too fast test and to have points in the conversation where we summarize so we're getting a lot of that feedback and we're getting some feedback that's like John please don't summarize just let Mike just do his thing and stay as quiet as possible and we don't need a lot of contributions and all I'm going to say is we're listening to both and we're going to try our best to find a balance between the two but we also encourage you to use the speed feature on your podcast app or on YouTube where you speed things up if you want to go faster or you slow things down if you want to slow things down and on YouTube we're putting jump points in or time codes where once we've covered one of the slides where you know it's easy for you to jump either through the forward Arrow or through clicking to jump to the next point and the next point in the next point if you're feeling like we're going too slow and of course you can always rewind if you feel like we're going too fast all right so today the topic is Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Mormon and we have talked about we have we have alluded to this or even talking about it more extensively in past episodes I'm pretty sure we covered this at least in the anachronisms episode is that right Mike yeah I think we covered this in the anachronisms episode and I think we also covered it in the episode on the King James Bible and the Book of Mormon just because this is a really important kind of illustration to show how Joseph Smith is pulling material in and then kind of making changes to work within the Book of Mormon and it's a really good indicator um from like a critical perspective as to how we did it and so a lot of times we always say like how could Joseph Smith have done it and these are the these are the kind of the incidents within the Book of Mormon that you can look at and go this is an example where you can kind of see where he's starting with and how he makes changes and how it fits in the Book of Mormon and that allows us again from like a critical perspective when you're not starting with the conclusion to say this is how he's creating material and you know as David we would say actualizing it to the Book of Mormons to try to make sense for them but it also leaves his fingerprints all over the text to tell us that he is going to ultimately be the author of The Book of Mormon okay and yet you feel like this this Sermon on the Mount in the King James you know King James version sermon of the mount in the Book of Mormon is so important that it kind of merits its own drill down and so that's what today is going to be yeah and real quick if you don't mind our last episode's on the Tower of Babel and we had uh talked about the jaredite stones and how they end up being a nephite the Nephi interpreters and you had mentioned that you weren't sure if that was like an official position and I tried to look since that episode to see and I have found a lot of references indicating they are I don't know if it's like an official Church position but I just want to read I didn't make a slide on this but I just haven't noted um from a Deseret News article where they were going through these stories and so um just real quick and it'll happen but for regarding the Nephi interpreters which um would be um from the Tower of Babel which is important because if the Tower of Babel is not historical these Nephi interpreters are not historical which means Joseph Smith claimed to find physical items that did not exist but the desert news says last week we Revisited the brother of Jared's experience when the Lord touched 16 stones to light the barges for the group's Oceanic Voyage the Lord told him to write a record and to seal it up with two stones possibly two of the 16 so future Generations could interpret the text and then they basically say they don't know kind of the chain of command um but effectively they say that um they eventually go to mosiah and then it says mosiah 2 eventually pass the interpreters to other Nephi prophets and it seems they were included in the stone box with the more with the Book of Mormon plate so uh just to say that from uh the church's teachings yeah this has been taught that this is how the chain of custody goes from these uh special interpreters that were touched by God all the way down to Joseph Smith getting them and that's why uh when we talked about that in the last episode it was so important because if the Tower of Babel is not a historical event which I think most Scholars that all Scholars are non-secular and even a lot of secular Scholars I flip that um all yeah yeah all secular Scholars and even a lot of of religious Scholars will agree it's a it's a it's a mythological ideological myth um then that says that when Joseph Smith claims to have gotten physical objects they weren't really there so I just want to clarify that because that was one thing we had kind of open-ended from our last episode so now we can jump into The Sermon on the Mount all right let's do it uh let's talk about the King James version of The Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Mormon um here we go yeah and so we've you know again we've done this in multiple overviews to talk about why the New Testament material is so problematic um for the Book of Mormon and The Sermon on the Mount is one of those episodes within that that gives us a really good view as how Joseph Smith was pulling that material in and it's an area again we've talked about this in some of our previous overviews on biblical scholarship but biblical scholarship provides a lot of um I would argue insurmountable challenges to the book of Mormon's truth claims of being ancient and authentic as a record of the people of the Americas and as I mentioned too we're doing the intro this is an area where Joseph Smith is going to leave his fingerprints on the text by making very superficial changes um when he realizes they're problematic um from the text of the Gospel of Matthew but then he leaves in other material that he doesn't understand also has no meaning to the people of America but he just doesn't realize it and so by leaving it in it tells us the source text he was working from and it allows us to understand why he's making some changes but leaving others in yeah it's almost I I was thinking about an analogy of like forensics yeah sexual analysis sort of approach allows you to pick up textual clues that helps you understand where where the book comes from yeah and and textual analysis just it's almost like Clues and fingerprints and if you really really care about authenticity and origins of a text this this approach is is super it's almost scientific like I think it's important to understand that this is a scientific process it's not just kind of artsy it's not just shoot from there people like David bakavoy or Bart ehrmann they're very serious thinkers and they take a sign or Brett Metcalf they take a scientific approach to textual authenticity well yeah and not only that but you got to remember like I am just some random dude who likes doing research um when you talk about Dr Paul irman Dr J bockavoy um Brett Metcalf damn Vogel they are going through this stuff in such a meticulous way not just reading the text but looking for um the original like when you talk about the bible stuff like they know the original language a lot of it was written in and because of that they can show um different translations and how they got to be where they are and all of those little Clues are things Joseph Smith didn't have access to and so it's very scientific in the sense that now we can apply all of that information we now know about Biblical history the the text all of that into the Book of Mormon and we can assess where Joseph Smith was pulling from and so to your point yeah it is like going through a crime scene and every time you see these fingerprints Joseph Smith leaves on the text you can now go this is where it came from this is how it got here and this is why it's right or it's wrong and we can look at that at face value and and that is why I think a lot of times when people hear critic they think someone's just trying to tear down the Book of Mormon it's not that they're trying to tear it on the Book of Mormon they're trying to say what if we take it at face value as we would with any other religious text what does that tell us about who composed it and how they did it and these are the areas of biblical scholarship that are so damning for the Book of Mormon because of the fact that Joseph Smith did not have access to the composition of these books that we now have in 2022 and so he took them as literal history when we now know that even back then a lot of people didn't take them that way and they cert most certainly do not now beautiful and Gerardo I forgot to introduce you and your super important part today and our team so Gerardo uh thanks for joining us we're so happy to have you the viewers and listeners love your contributions and is there anything you want to say I I've just been listening and this is uh great conversation I'm super excited to dive in um The Book of Mormon is really important for a lot of people I think it's one of the reasons that keeps a lot of people inside the church you know like um so really understanding uh how it came to be and all this Joseph Smith uh fingerprints in it and stuff that we can learn about it are really important you know for people to make decisions about their lives yeah all right well let's go to the next uh next slide and so um this is going to be a um write up part of a write-up from Dr Bart Ehrman and this is important to understanding kind of the history behind the sermon on the mountain so um for those who are not familiar there is this idea of the synoptic gospels and so those are um Luke are Mark Matthew and Luke and because they're synoptic because they kind of work together and so I'll just read Dr barter mix he explains it better but Scholars since the 19th century have worked out the relationship between the synoptic gospels uh with one with one another Matthew Mark and Luke are called synoptic because they tell many of the same stories often in the same sequence and and sometimes in exactly the same words synoptic means seen together you can see these gospels together by laying them side by side and noting their abundant similarities and differences but the only way they could have such extensive similarities especially the verbatim agreements is if they were copying one another or are copying a common source um it has long been known that Mark was the earliest gospel and that Matthew and Luke used it as a source for many of their stories but Matthew and Luke have a number of traditions about Jesus in common that are not found in Mark for example The Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes almost all not entirely all of these Traditions are sayings of Jesus and so scholars in the 19th century uh Germany who worked out a solution to the synoptic problem which is the problem of explaining why the synoptics have so such precise similarities among them yet differences suggested that since it appears that Matthew did not get these sayings from Luke um or math uh from Luke Matthew didn't get it from Luke sorry Matthew didn't get it from from Luke or Luke didn't get it from Matthew uh they hypothesized that there was a source at one point um that is now lost that they called the saying source and the German word for source is I think it's quell um and so the hypothetical document is called the the Q source for short and all that's saying is effectively that Matthew and Luke both have their gospels that borrow heavily from Mark but then they also have these other stories that are so similar that it would be really hard to believe that they were coming up with them on their own because they're just too similar and so the belief is that there was a saying Source or the Q source that they were both incorporated into their gospels once they Incorporated them into their gospels there was no need to keep cop copying the saying Source because it had no real value now that it was interwoven into this narrative and so the belief of Scholars is that's why it's now lost not because it's bad but because it had no real functional use because remember it was not easy to copy and carry all these Scrolls in all of these writings and so this is a really easy way of just kind of explaining why Matthew and Luke both are going to have their version of You Know The Sermon on the Mount or the sermon on the planes but they're going to be very similar also have some differences and this is also going to play into Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon because he's going to pull directly from Matthew and not from Luke and and I know we're going to be getting to this but if I'm summarizing or anticipating what I think your argument is or this argument is is that we as we talk about the TR the pure word of God going through you know Book of Mormon prophets to Joseph Smith to the Book of Mormon through a pure translation we would expect the most Pure Source yes um to flow through why are we adding these layers if we know that that Matthew and Mark and Luke all probably pull from a more current more Pure Source why wouldn't The Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith be pulling from that or even the pure word of God versus what what appears to be clearly pulling from secondary and tertiary sources is that kind of where this is shaping up yeah I mean like and again it's it's because of the fact that we are being told that the Book of Mormon plates are being written by the people of America and so to have New Testament material is a problem because you are then and we'll get to this obviously as we go but you're effectively claiming and apologists do claim this that Jesus is in some way like a politician giving a stump speech throughout the country and you're going to give the same speech to everyone except in this case um we are going to have instances where it just makes no sense you know again it would be like going you know to um you know California and giving them a speech and then going to Florida and talking about the problems of San Diego and in ways that people in Florida wouldn't understand and so this idea that Jesus is just giving this same blanket speech over and over again is highly problematic and and so by looking at the way that The Sermon on the Mount is going to come into Matthew it really leaves a lot of problems because as we'll get into it was never given as a standalone sermon and so to be in the Book of Mormon it's just it's out of place in almost every way but also I think what's really interesting is that I mean I I pulled out I pulled up um Luke's sermon on the plane and while it sounds a little similar to Matthew um there's striking differences you know um so yeah I can see why uh Scholars think that you're both taken from from uh from one single or now lost Source but it's interesting that what we're gonna end up having in the Book of Mormon is just Matthew and not is yes exactly pretty much like a copy of the Matthew sermon of the mount nothing really that indicates that he was looking or whoever was writing it's almost like Jesus went to America and gave the Matthew Sermon on the Mount and but forgot Luke yeah that's just it I mean and that's just it and that's why um we we try to cover this in the previous episodes in different ways but when you can pull the exact part that Joseph Smith is borrowing from it opens up a lot of doors into how to explain how he did it and so in this case to your point he is looking directly at Matthew and so then you have to believe that you know I mean like it the difference between Matthew and Luke aren't addressed it all it just those are the little Clues that are telling you this is not um going to be a composition done by the ancient Americans because the fact they have difference between Matthew and Luke would tell you there should be more differences between Matthew and the Book of Mormon and we just don't see it okay so yeah let's go to the next slide yeah and so this is another way to look at why they believe that there's this Q Source that's being used which would be kind of a secondary um Source that's being used to effectively kind of like weave a narrative of Jesus's teachings and so Dr Ehrman explains that the Q Source again known as the sayings gospel is believed to include many sayings from Jesus during his lifetime which were then woven into Matthew and Luke in the voice of Jesus and um scholars believe that Matthew and Luke had a separate source which would be this Q Source because while they have the same material it's not used in the same way and so um bartirman says the Beatitudes in the Lord's Prayer for example are in different sections of Luke but are joined together as part of The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and so um this is not a universally held view of course and there are people that kind of dispute the idea of a separate source that would just be a bunch of Jesus's sayings but it is a view that has a lot of consensus among secular Scholars who study the textual similarity similarities between the synoptic gospels and so while we don't have an extant Q Source um scholars believe that basically like I said earlier once they Incorporated it there'd be no reason to continually copy those things because a picture a a sheet of sayings that you've said on your podcast John and then someone writes a two-page article and they they weave those all into the article like why would you keep copying those things separately because they'd have no they have a lot more value in a narrative setting than they do just on some separate thing that's basically just like copying down stuff that they believe Jesus said and so um it's just kind of to give a background into why um they believe Matthew and Luke are similar but different and it's not the Q Source itself isn't entirely important to the Book of Mormon but it's important to give that context before we get into The Sermon on the Mount okay all right that's uh that's fascinating and so this is um done by the website thoughts on things and stuff which is Jonathan streeter's website and what he did was he tracked all of the changes between the King James Bible translation of The Sermon on the Mount and the Book of Mormon sermon at the temple and I'm going to go through this really quick it's just basically you look at Matthew 5 against um third Nephi 12. um 31 of the original uh words of Matthew 5 are deleted and 33 were added to the text uh to create the um chapter 12 and basically I mean 66 were copied verbatim uh Matthew 6 verses 35 13 um 90 uh percent of the words were copied verbatim Matthew 7 verses uh 35 14 94 of verbatim so overall just 16 of those three chapters uh were deleted 19 were added which means that 81 of basically the sermon of the temple is copied verbatim from the King James Bible Gospel of Matthew okay and so um what do we derive from this slide I think this is just a way to show that Joseph Smith when he's bringing this into the Book of Mormon is just taking The Sermon on the Mount from Matthew as his foundational text and then he's just making changes as he saw fit but the fact that 81 of it goes completely unchanged tells you that without any question he's pulling from the King James Bible and not from some ancient uh record of the ancient Americans because that is too high of a number to believe even if like and you got to remember um I think I mentioned this in here but remember that Matthew is not going to be written I believe until about 50 years after Jesus dies and the manuscript we have available to us today is probably later than that so think about how much a speech or a sermon would change with oral retellings over 50 years and then imagine that 50 years 50 years and so we've got about a 50-year window after Jesus dies before this is going to be written down I believe Matthew was written by 85. just sorry just to drive at home you know we've all played that game of telephone where you sit in a circle and someone starts with a sentence or a phrase and then they whisper in the air and whisper in the air and it goes around a circle and then you look at how much it's changed just within the same five minutes going around the room imagine a story that's told for 50 years how much it changes sorry I just had to just grab that point home well you have I mean again you know I know people hate that example because they feel like it's overly simplistic but take a group of adults take adults you don't have to do kids take 10 adults and line them up and give them just one just one paragraph and see what it ends up at the end of ten this is multiple three chapters of text over 50 years and so not only are they going to mess it up unintentionally but they are going to change it based on the needs of their community and so we've talked about this in previous episodes but this is going to have so many differences from the way Jesus may have given it you know um so the idea that it would be the same as being written down in the ancient Americas is just without any uh basis in in logic because if it was also written down on the gold plates there is absolutely zero chance eighty percent of it is going to match the King James Bible because that the set of plates should have been an abridgement of contemporaneous Records not um an abridgement of 50 year old King James language and and that's why we've tried to hammer this home because when you start with the King James Bible as your foundational text you have already abandoned the idea that this is an ancient text now if you want to say there's an ancient core you have to show that and this is telling you again that we look at the Book of Mormon the crowning event is Jesus coming and 81 of it is directly word for word from the King James Bible it there's just no way this gives you any indication outside of it being a 19th century text yeah and just one more high level thought I had which is that we only have to look to the Mormon Church the LDS church and the articles of faith we know that that the LDS churches on record is saying that the Bible has translation problems right so that begs the you know for me that that makes me want to ask the question why are we using the King James version of the Bible at all this is God's chance to communicate the pure words of Jesus to Joseph Smith through inspired prophets which The Book of Mormon prophets would be verse and I was just in the UK I was just in Oxford where the King James version of the Bible was produced and and for me that just adds extra teeth to this idea why are we using the King James version Bible at all when we when Mormonism itself teaches that it's a flawed and a corrupt book it just yeah so anyway we've made that point yeah no and it's true and and this kind of actually leads into this point really well which is you know scholars believe that the Sermon on the Mount was almost certainly originally written in Greek um some argue there might have been some earlier records in Aramaic because that's the language Jesus spoke but the New Testament as we have it the manuscripts we have are Greek and so the Sermon on the Mount is written in the King James Bible has been through two language translations because Jesus spoke in Aramaic during his lifetime and then the King James uh Bible was translated from Greek manuscripts so we have a book of Mormon that's supposed to be as you just said a record that avoids all of these problems with material getting corrupted or lost during translations and yet Joseph Smith here is taking the lane of taking what would be like the crowning event in the Book of Mormon and taking a version that's been through two different translations um and the final point to that is we talked about this in an earlier episode but Joseph Smith made a big point and Oliver cowdre also believes that if I know Joseph said there was absolutely no Greek on the gold plates and if you want to make that claim then you have to argue why is a sermon that was derived out of a Greek translation finding its way into the Book of Mormon if there's no Greek on the plate you can't have it both ways yes so many layers from Aramaic to Greek to King James English yeah so many opportunities for corruption why and that's just it like and the whole point is this is supposed to be a sermon that is being given in the ancient Americas which would be done in its in a pure I'm not saying pureedemic language but pure language to this to these people who could write it down contemporaneously and you would you would gain so much knowledge right but instead in this crowning event you're kicking the can to the King James Bible and I'm not trying to be facetious I'm just saying like this is a huge event in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith effectively as um I believe David Whitmer or Martin Harris said for convenience is going to um well I guess convenience was a Seer Stone but I would say for convenience is just going to rip Riff Off The Bible and by riffing off of the Bible not ripping off riffing off the Bible um is going to pull in all of those same issues that he is claiming to fix by bringing the Book of Mormon forth and it just it makes no sense okay wow yeah that's perfect and I go ahead I think as you as we consider all this stuff as people are considering all all this issues um it's important to keep that number in mind right like 80 is that is that what you said my yeah yeah of the sermon of the mount War forward ends up being in the Book of Mormon yeah right yeah yeah from and from Matthew and not Luke yeah that's just a problem okay and so this is what I was talking about at the beginning remember there's 81 is the same but there are changes and so um when the writer of The Book of Mormon comes across Matthew 5 26 and he saw the phrase thou Hast paid the uttermost far thing he immediately knows that that's an English currency and would have absolutely no meaning or purpose to those living in ancient Americas and so Joseph I mean I'm obviously the belief Joseph Smith wrote so then Joseph Smith changes to until thou has paid the uttermost C9 in 35 12 26 and C9 is the nephite coinage that is mentioned in Alma which is just two books prior and then is never mentioned again after this chapter and so that tells you that I'm not I'm not sure if Joseph Smith and Elmo is thinking ahead to The Sermon on the Mount and is trying to figure out a way to basically fix the currency issue or if it just happened to be that he had the currency issue in there and then all of a sudden it was like oh that's perfect but it's mentioned just two books previously mentioned here and then just basically thrown out for the rest of the Book of Mormon and that tells you the currency is not something um that is this complex part of the Book of Mormon that you often hear they'll say oh there's this complex currency system it's like well not really because it's never mentioned outside of basically two parts of you know two books of the Book of Mormon um but but the the bigger flaw to that is that The Sermon on the Mount um Jesus refers to the Roman law of going a mile in um chapter 5 verse 41 and it says and whoever shall compel thee to go a mile go with him Twain this is a reference to a Roman practice where Roman soldiers could grab any Jewish citizen they chose and force that person to carry luggage or other items for a standard mile um that kind of impress oppressive invasive act would naturally inspire a hunger for Revenge that's from a Bible reference dictionary that would have absolutely no meaning whatsoever to the people of ancient America but Joseph Smith had no idea that that line is a Roman law he just you know he wouldn't know why would he why would he know that but because he doesn't know that he puts that in the Book of Mormon and all of a sudden you now have a fingerprint that shows Joseph Smith is willing to make changes when he realizes it's a problem but when he doesn't know it's a problem God's not telling him the Rocks The Seer Stones not telling him no one's telling him you can't leave this in here because this has no meaning and it again shows you that the King James Bible is the foundational text and it's not a set of gold plates yeah for me I I told Gerardo before the show for me this is a this is a real Smoking Gun the fact that he was conscious enough to not use Farthing and instead use C9 but then he leaves myelin which is a British unit of distance measurement like yeah why isn't there some nephite equivalent to a kilometer or a mile it just is a clear oversight and it shows that he was semi-conscious but not conscious enough yeah that's just it for me this is this this slide right here is a Smoking Gun upon a thousand other smoking guns for me now I'm not saying that listeners and viewers need to see it that way I'm just saying for me I'm like wow why isn't there a goober law instead of a mile you know what I mean it's true yeah a fluber jab instead of a mile right and not only that but imagine if Joseph Smith had made that change all of a sudden it would go okay he was aware of something that people were not aware of at that time but as we've seen and it's a pattern throughout everything we've done which is Joseph Smith only is aware of what everybody else was aware of in his lifetime and so this is an issue where he would not have known this as a specific Roman law so he puts it in there and it's just it you know it's very clear at this point that he's willing to change things that he's aware of but when he's not aware of it he's powerless to make those changes and before I forget I want to give another shout out to Brett Metcalf because this was something that he had mentioned I think on an episode with you that I listened to early on when I was trying to figure all this out it was another one of those moments where you're like holy crap that's a big deal and so you know I love um Brett metcalf's work with all this because he explains it in a way I think that really just drills down to the fact that this is the crowning event of the Book of Mormon and yet we can see where Joseph Smith is pulling the text from and we can see his fingerprints all over these changes yeah beautiful okay um next slide is entitled leaving the Aramaic word raqqa in the Book of Mormon yep and so this is along those same lines so in Matthew 5 22 it says but I say unto you that whoever whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment and he will sell whosoever shall say to his brother raqqa shall be in danger of the council but whoever shall say thou fool shall be in danger of Hellfire and the Book of Mormon in 35 12 22 says basically the same thing it just says you know but I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of his judgment and whoever shall say to his brother raqqa shall be in danger of the council and whoever shall say thou fool shall be in danger of Hellfire and this is really important because Joseph Smith makes a small change right so in Matthew it says whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger Joseph Smith changes that to whoever whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger so he takes out without a cause but he leaves the word raqqa in there which is an Aramaic word that means full or empty-headed which means that Joseph Smith made a change to this verse bringing it into the Book of Mormon but did not realize that raqqa was not a name but an Aramaic word that stood for basically a fool and so it tells you again that Joseph Smith is actively changing this verse but is unable to understand that the word raqqa would have absolutely no meaning to the Book of Mormon people again it would be like a visitor to the USA using the word lure to describe a fool which is full in Norwegian instead of just saying fool because if I went to you know if a Norwegian came and looked at me and they said you lure I'd be like thinking like a fishing lure whatever that's what the Book of Mormon is effectively doing it's using a word that has no meaning and in that same verse Joseph Smith makes other changes so you can't even make the argument that Joseph Smith wasn't even like actively engaging in this text he's actively engaging in this verse and yet leaves that Aramaic word right in there um is that I'll go ahead I have a question Mike do would Lehigh have a would Lehigh docked uh RMA I don't think so I think um I mean I think I believe he would be would he be it because that was like the whole thing with when Lehigh leaves it's Hebrew and then obviously there's Egyptian but the uh earliest forms of the pentateuch would be in Hebrew obviously this would be written in Greek because Greek Aramaic because of you know being New Testament but yeah there's no reason to think in any way that they would have access to any Aramaic nor is there any indication anywhere in the text that they are kind of using that so I would say no no chance okay cool why would why would Lehigh have spoken or written in Hebrew but Jesus would have spoken in Aramaic I'm confused about that well the old the Old Testament had the same spoken language as Jesus I am not positive on that I just I mean I believe that Hebrew man you know you'd have to have someone like David bakavoy in that just because I don't know the relationship I know that they you know they had the Hebrew text at that time but I think they spoke in Aramaic but again I'm not I'm not super positive on the relationship it was the spoken language but yeah it was the written I'm not sure I think that's how it was I'm sure our viewers and listeners will let us know yeah I'm not like I said that one I'm not totally positive on but regardless Aramaic would have no place within the Book of Mormon time frame just because we have one no mention of it and two I don't believe Aramaic was it was a factor in Old Testament writings when Lehigh left but if I'm wrong please correct me on that one what's the word raqqa used erroneously in Matthew I don't think so because I think they're saying in Matthew um you're you're saying to your brother that he's a fool you know so shall say to his brother Rocco which is like saying whoever shall say to his brother you empty-headed fool shall be in danger of the council I think that's what I mean I think it's used correctly it's just that is not a name it's like a an insult and so I think Joseph Smith is thinking that's a name like your brother's Rocca or maybe a rock is another word for brother but instead he's bringing in a word that you know effectively is just not um going again it would be like like I said it would be like saying lure which is a Norwegian word for full it it would have no meaning to the ancient Americans because they wouldn't speak that language and they would just be like what do you talk who's Rocco what are you talking about you know I mean it just wouldn't even matter yeah okay all right so that's quite his late editions from The Sermon on the Mount yeah and so this is again we've talked about this in previous episodes but Joseph Smith uses late editions in the Bible that come into the Book of Mormon and that again tells you that he's working off the King James Bible and not off of gold plates and so in The Sermon on the Mount the Lord's Prayer is in Matthew chapter 6 as it is in third Nephi 13. the ending of The Lord's Prayer is considered a doxology that was not present in the earliest manuscripts of Matthew and so specifically Matthew 6 13 which is the same as Nephi a third Nephi 3 13 13 says for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen and Scholars consider this a late edition as it's not the earliest manuscripts of Matthew and the addition is considered a doxology which is um what they can what they call a Hymn of him or form of words containing a description of praise to God and so um we talked about this in the um long-ending of Mark but this is another area where you'll have some Bible uh translations that will actually make a note to say that that's a late edition it was not on the earliest manuscripts but because it's in the King James Bible it goes into the Book of Mormon and this is another area just as I mentioned at the start of this episode where Joseph Smith does not know about this biblical scholarship stuff for obvious reasons and it comes back to bite him yeah make sense yeah anything you want to add to that hurt no I mean it's I think it's pretty straightforward like uh it's kind of like the long ending of Mark right yeah um it's not there on the earliest manuscripts but somehow it ends up in the Book of Mormon yeah and and the fact is that this seems it's such a small thing right it's just one phrase off of the the verse but that one phrase tells you that Joseph Smith is using something that is not original or contemporaneous and because of that we can now go back and say well the King James Bible had it that's what Joseph Smith is using and that's why it's there but that little that little verse is an anachronism in the Book of Mormon that we can now show exactly where it's coming from and why it's there and that's how you know this is not an ancient text because of all of these little issues that might seem small but they're markers that are telling us this is not ancient because he's pulling from a source that happened you know hundreds of years later potentially just like long-ending a mark they think it was probably 200 years after Mark was composed well this is going to be a similar situation and that little that little verse is an anachroness and that that's screaming to us not only is it not an ancient text but we know where he's pulling from yeah yeah makes sense okay next slide is apologetic responses to The Sermon on the Mount yeah and so most of this is going to be from an article from Book of Mormon Central just because they had done an article that tried to kind of explain this and so what they're trying to what they say is yet there are several elements present in the third Nephi text that distinguish it from the version of Matthew these differences are significant and set it apart as distinct and Powerful Testament of its own for instance in this setting Jesus declared that the law had been fulfilled instead of pointing towards a future fulfillment he also taught that as a glorified being he was perfect like the father and thus omitted thy kingdom come in the Lord's Prayer he also specifically spoke of the nephite C9 instead of the Jewish Farthing and we talked about this already but these differences fit exactly into what we were saying earlier which is that Joseph Smith used a Sermon on the Mount as a source text and changed it to fit the needs of the Book of Mormon Jesus declared the law was fulfilled in the Book of Mormon because he had already been crucified Jesus um yeah that's just it like of course you're reading that and you're like oh you know right yeah I mean it's Justified he's there he's gonna like yeah he's gonna be smart enough to kind of change the words yeah I mean that's the whole like this is why this is like such a horrible argument and it's it's just I mean this is this is a terrible argument from Book of Mormon Central because they know full well why these changes would need to be made these are not uh a good example from Book of Mormon Central B Joseph Smith made this change of um the Roman law because he knew that was a Roman law no one did at the time or that he got rid of the Aramaic word raqqa they are giving you three examples that a a 12 year old who is trying to redo that would know because obviously the idea is that Jesus would be um perfected because he was resurrected and then obviously Jesus sorry Joseph Smith is going to change the word Farthing to C9 because Farthing in ancient America would have no no point and so these three examples are terrible examples and yet they're going to present them to try to get readers to glaze over and say oh my goodness how did Joseph know it's like how would he not know I mean these are these are the most basic changes but what they're actually doing is proving the point we're making is that Joseph is willing and able to make basic changes but completely misses the other ones wait mile because it says is this is this a copy based of uh Book of Mormon Central the the first paragraph is the second tour because they say he also specif at the end of the paragraph he also specifically spoke of the Nephites instead of the Jewish Farthing yeah you're right it's not Jewish but it's not Jewish English and the party is a former monetary unit in coin of the UK yeah so they must have had a typo there when they were putting that together because I did copy and paste from them on that I did actually I didn't even catch that they had the typo there but yeah I'm sure in their head there I don't I don't think it's just a typo it makes it look more impressive because Joseph wouldn't have known about Jewish uh coins but he would obviously know about UK coins you know yeah yeah no I mean and the thing is it makes you know from a King James Bible perspective it makes some sense to have it say Farthing because you're trying to make it make sense to the people um that are reading it but the Book of Mormon again is going to it's not so much that they're changing it to C9 it says he's making that change but leaving others in and I think for me it's that's the most important part because I obviously um I think to your point apologists would just say well he changed Jesus isn't going to say Farthing there he's going to say C9 because Farthing will make no sense and I agree with that but then you have to take it a step further and say well why didn't he change the other things that would make sense because Jose yeah so I agree with you yeah I totally agree with you on that one what I'm saying is like there when they're calling the coin the Farthing coin they're calling it a Jewish coin which is not true right yeah I'm guessing that's a type one Book of Mormon centrals but they're making it sound more impressive oh yeah Jewish because yeah because how would Joseph know about Jewish coinage but right right like he obviously knew that it was a New England a coin that would be found in New York or something like that yeah and so I think um you know in that regard it's one of those things where I think you try to um kind of gloss over the fact that this is a a manual uh the King James Bible has gone through you know the New Testament has gone through probably two translations right from Arab you know being said in Aramaic to written down in Greek to to translate in English and if you start to say these things to a believing member of the church and then you say but it's also brought directly in the Book of Mormon it raises eyebrows so I think you're right they're trying to make it I think seem more they're trying to make it seem like it's more um credible by just kind of jumping over the fact that there's multiple translations here that are making their way into a a text that says there was no Greek on the plates yeah yeah did um is there more were you gonna is there more you want to say about this slide Mike no I'm good on this one yeah I'm just gonna say that it's also deceptive of fair Mormon or Book of Mormon Central to call a hit um Joseph's using of C9 instead of farthing but to intentionally I assume neglect to mention that he that he blew it with mile you know the the sort of um unit unit of distance British unit of distance well yeah and you know they would know better and if they're honest they're not just gonna put forward the the hits from their perspective they're gonna acknowledge the glaring misses right well I mean yeah if you're being if you're trying to be on like and that's you know again we talk about this in all these episodes we're trying our best to present the apologetic response and that's why we're doing this here um to at least explain what they consider to be hits and so this is what they consider to be hits on this part and when you actually look at what they consider to be hits this is something again if you had given me this part of Matthew and said write this as if it's being said later on I would do that too because even I who am not nearly I mean I'm not nearly as familiar with the Bible as Joseph Smith was I could I could have done that because you could understand that from the perspective that Joseph Smith is bringing us into the Book of Mormon Jesus is already dead and resurrected well then that's going to change those things but the problem is in we've talked about this in previous episodes and I think any scholar would admit one anachronism tells you it's not from the time frame these are anachronisms by leaving in Roman laws that have no meaning to the ancient Americans or leaving an Aramaic words or bringing in late editions those are all problems that don't go away even if you want to claim Joseph Smith made a hit by realizing that ancient America wouldn't know what Farthing is and so that's why I think these are deceptive because they're trying to present this as if holy cow how could Joseph have known but when you actually read the texture like how could he not how could anyone not know it's it's so he's making the most obvious superficial changes and that is that's just it's bad it's you know in Book of Mormon Central I obviously am not a huge fan of because I think they do a lot of this kind of stretching uh more so than than like I would obviously way prefer Richard Bushman or Terry Gibbons but these are the types of things that they'll do and say how could he have known and it's just it's so dishonest and from a believing perspective you you read this and you go oh wow that's okay cool I now know it but at some point you'll probably come across something that says oh yeah they were they were full of crap when they told you that and more importantly The Book of Mormon central people almost certainly know better because they are reading the critical stuff to answer them and so they're likely coming across us and then cherry picking a few things and ignoring all of the really core problems they're looking at superficial things and I I don't mean to rant on this I'm just saying this particular example is just so egregiously bad because they know full well that those three changes anyone would notice whoever was writing it and to cite that as some sort of proof that this is ancient is just ridiculous okay yeah sorry I don't mean to rant on that it's just that is a horrible apologetics and so so this is entitled Jesus gave this sermon the same sermon all over the world yeah and so this is from this is a book of Mormon Central and I've seen this from other people too but they say the teachings of The Sermon on the Mount were an important set of teachings which are likely older than the gospel of Matthew itself it is therefore not surprising that they are presented in various writings and settings a similar but selectively shorter body of teachings is found in Luke 6 17-49 which is often referred to as the sermon on the plane the exact relationship between these two texts is debated but they arguably represent two occasions in which Jesus propounded similar teachings but a smaller set to the crowd out on a field and so the thing is it's absolutely true that the Sermon on the Mount is old in the gospel of Matthew because we talked about the Gospel Matthew wasn't composed until about 60 or sorry 85 A.D which is about you know 50 plus years after Jesus um dies and so um the idea that this is older is that that's correct but the problem is that the Book of Mormon is using the text directly out of the King James Bible and so we talked about this in previous episodes when you look at apologetics they'll say well what about this this and this and you go but that doesn't answer the problem the problem is still no matter what Jesus might have taught Joseph Smith is still pulling directly out of the King James Bible so even if Jesus went and gave sermons all over the area that were the similar and that's possible it doesn't matter when what we have is coming directly out of the King James Bible and more specifically Matthew right right that's a good point because they if you know like in a short period of time Jesus was giving similar but not exact word for word sermons even you know even if we take Book of Mormon centrals uh idea you know that Luke and Matthews were two separate sermons why would Jesus give almost word for word in America the Matthew sermon exactly I mean and that's just it so like they're gonna go well look Jesus gave a really different shorter sermon in in um Luke so obviously Jesus was giving similar talks around the world well but then you'd have a difference from Matthew like that's the problem the problem is it's so similar to it's so laser focused on Matthew and so they're they're they're making an argument that I think again would sound good to a Believer because you're not giving the underlying context that the problem isn't necessarily the similarity it's that Joseph Smith is pulling directly from the King James Bible which is not written for 50 years after Jesus would have died and it's being translated from Greek and it's specifically for Matthew and they're leaving in things that you know that would make no sense it's all of these things it's not they're trying to kind of deflect by giving you these like well maybe it's this or maybe he gave this but at the end of the day that's they're ignoring the underlying problem intentionally which is that no matter what you want to say here Joseph Smith is still pulling from the King James Bible and bringing in heirs late editions all those problems none of that that goes away no matter how many times Jesus gave the sermon got it anything else from the slide no you know the other thing I'll mention real quick and um it's just I don't think I mentioned this um early on but a lot of Scholars don't believe that this was ever a standalone sermon and so when we mentioned the Q source and we talked about how that was a sayings document they don't believe this was ever a sermon that Jesus would have given at one time they believe this is that group of sayings that we discussed earlier and that the writers of Matthew and Luke remember they're not actually Matthew and Luke they're Anonymous writers are basically trying to weave in these sayings um in order to effectively give a better meaning to the um their communities and so not only does the Book of Mormon Central argument not really help with saying Jesus probably gave these same teachings it's that's you know in the Book of Mormon it's the same order as Matthew same wording as Matthew same problems as Matthew so the the problems just get deeper and deeper once you get below the surface and that's why I think here they're trying to tell you you know don't don't look under the hood don't worry about that everything's fine because it gets a lot lot worse when you start getting deeper it does not get better okay does that take us to the next slide why yeah no no it's good why The Sermon on the Mount is in the Book of Mormon yeah and so the book Pokemon essential that gives apologetic okay this is another yeah yes there's one more from them and um actually there's a couple more from two more from them but they're um saying that there's three reasons why the Sermon on the Mount appears in the Book of Mormon um so the first one is that they say the likelihood that the teachings upon which The Sermon on the Mount is based and which are older than the Matthew text we're taught in diverse places to different audiences the second one is the giving of the sermon was modified to be appropriate for the particular audience the textual differences between the examples available are appropriate for each audience specifically the sermon at the temple in third Nephi has such modifications as would be expected for a post-resurrection version of the sermon and the third one is the sermon may have served as a set of Temple teachings information that he would have wanted all worthy and prepared disciples to learn and so we've already covered those first two points so the first one um you know is to say yes it is older than the Matthew text because Matthew wasn't written for about 50 years later uh the second point is to say that yes Joseph Smith made some changes that would be appropriate but he also left others in which tells us that Joseph was actively engaging with the Matthew text and not from an ancient text um so if we go to the next slide let's tackle that third one real quick because they're saying that the Sermon on the Mount was a temple prep sermon basically and so this is a quote from Book of Mormon Central they say some Scholars have noted the parallels between The Sermon on the Mount and the Ancient Temple um George strecker for example refers to the Beatitudes as the conditions that must be fulfilled in order to gain entrance to the holy of holies um Hans Dieter bets compared the Beatitudes of the sermon with the initiation rituals of ancient mystery religions and just to point out that the writers of bookamore essential here are just looking for ways to tie the serious problems that the Book of Mormon has bringing the King James translation um to give it a deeper meaning but it there's no there there um if you read the Beatitudes for yourself um and then compare it if you've been through the temple compare the Beatitudes to what you experience in the temple and I'm telling you right now is parallelomania at its worst there it's just it's bad and um they conclude with this quote from John Welch which says when Jesus addressed the Nephites of Bountiful he spoke in terms they would understand the change in setting for Palestine to Bountiful accounts for several differences between The Sermon on the Mount and the sermon at the temple and again we've covered that already we don't need to keep hammering this but they're trying to find all of these things where it's like you know squirrel here squirrel there there is again I I don't want to go into Temple stuff but just read the Beatitudes and if you've gone through the temple compare it to your temple prep in your temple experience and it's just not there and so I feel like this is one of those things where you just throw a lot of fancy sounding things out or you try to give a deeper meaning and you hope people don't look because it's just not there and this is why when you get into apologetics you run into really bad answers sometimes because instead of just saying we don't know why Joseph Smith copied the king James and they're trying to cover it up with these really bad Band-Aids and they just don't work I mean that that feels so ridiculous to me if you think about it what is the modern Mormon temple ceremony it's a riff off of the Masonic Lodge ceremony that Joseph himself participated in that we know has origins of let's just say post 1500 but there's no credible evidence that the Mormon temples ceremony or the Masonic Lodge ceremony better said has any ancient Origins right and so to to try and pass it off like Jesus is basically and then when you think about how we wouldn't be talking you know the apologists if it were true that Jesus were giving a temple prep class he wouldn't be giving one based on the temple ceremony in 2022 he would be giving it based on the temple ceremony of 1844 right right and that's just that the throat slitting and the disemboweling and the Pele ale and just all the the Five Points of Fellowship all these super Masonic just barbaric violent um acts that uh that don't have ancient origin so to project back into Jesus's time a temple prep class yeah that's makes no sense the the and by the way like Jews weren't going through the temple as kind of a common ritual that all Jews went through the only Jews that were going into the temple were like priests right am I right I don't know for sure they didn't even have common it wasn't like this oh no and there was I think there's just one Temple I mean you carry your little pouch of temple close and you you get your little Jewish temple recommend and you like go through the temple now as like an adult Jew and then do all these violent Masonic like that didn't that wasn't even a thing no so it feels ridiculous it's in like I said read the Beatitudes and then think about how it connects to the temple it's just it's not there and so for Book of Mormon Central to put that in there it's just it's it's bad and again like obtain Mercy blessed are the hunger and thirst after Justice for they shall have their fail like what does that have to do nothing I mean it's just it's that's why it's like not Gerardo but but the early versions of the Mormon Temple ceremony called for justice against the people of Missouri like we're talking violent death Oaths of Retribution against the enemies of the church so if anything the original Mormon temple ceremony was anti-christian in the sense of instead of being about peace and forgiveness it was about violence and and retributive Justice does that make sense I mean it uh even if you even if you kind of get the Blood Oath stuff out there it's just you still have like there's just there's no connection it's just it's not there blessed are you when when they shall revile you and persecute you and speak all that is evil against you and truly for my sake be glad and rejoice for your reward is very great in heaven like that doesn't sound anything no it's just like it's a they call for God to bring Justice and bloodshed in Missouri yeah it's just the people that kill the prophet I mean it has nothing to do with the endowment summary has nothing to do with polygamy it has nothing to do with ceilings has nothing to do with Adam God all those things that were part of the early Temple like none of that's there and it's just to just throw it out there like let me put it this way if the Beatitudes really had a connection to the temple they would Book of Mormon Central would have put that in there they would have said here's the beatitude here's where it connects but they don't do it because they're it's not there and so it's such a dishonest way to try to tell people don't worry about this problem we've got it's all been figured out when they can't even back up their own work they're throwing is these claims out there these what ifs out there but they're not actually putting the underlying text to say here's the connection they're just saying there if there might be it's just it's just bad and again I'm not a fan of Pokemon Central I think that their work is is a lot like this whereas they are willing to just throw out the worst um the worst parallels and say oh my goodness what a hit when you look at like that's not there but this one's just particularly bad yeah and and you know we've already talked about in our anachronisms episode you know how they stretch these attempts to to say maybe instead of horse what Joseph meant was taper you know that that maybe when they said steel sword what they meant was some type of like Stone like I've heard what yeah and to even quote from Jack Welch Jack Welch is so problematic he is the he is the scholar most known for allegedly finding um chiasmus in the Book of Mormon which literally can be found in Dr Seuss books and uh is no evidence of antiquity and that's Jack Welch and they're they're using his quote scholarship he's an attorney he's not a scholar in any in any meaningful uh credible way um yeah so but that's what modern Mormon apologetics really are yeah I mean it's just like I said and Jack Welch I feel bad for him that he got roped in because I'm sure he did not want to be in that article from Book of Mormon Central but yeah it's just they're trying to find these connections that aren't there and again if the connections were really there they would explain why they're there instead they're just saying well it could be this it could be that and the truth is you know as we've said before if there was truly a connection they'd be a general conference every six months saying holy crap did can you believe Joseph Smith guess this hahaha but instead they're just like don't don't even don't look at it you know because there's there's no answers here I mean we've tried to illustrate that and um which is a good time to bring us to the conclusion so all right um yeah and just to summarize you know the Book of Mormon includes almost the exact same sermon 81 that was not written down until about 50 years after it would have even been spoken in a language that had gone through two different translations from Jesus's original teachings before being copied Into the Book of Mormon and then you know further than that The Book of Mormons use of The Sermon on the Mount from the King James Bible suffers from the timing of when these accounts are recorded because the Book of Mormon tells us that Jesus visited the Americas in about 34 A.D um and gives a simran at the temple that year um but again the problem is that The Sermon on the Mount from Matthew is not going to be written down until about 85 A.D and so that's that Gap I'm talking about so um it's being written 50 years later in Greek and yet we are to believe that somehow through those two translations it gets back to the exact same um wording that Jesus used in ancient America is 50 years earlier and that's just a problem and as we said earlier um you know beyond the 50-year fact it's being in a language um that has all sorts of changes in current Bible revisions such as telling people that that doxology in Matthew was a late edition and so this is an anachronism because it wasn't written when um they claim it was said in the Americas it's got translation errors it's got the the late editions and then it's going to have the Aramaic word raqqa the Roman law going a mile they have no meaning to the Americas and so all of those things together tell us without any question that Joseph Smith is pulling these from the King James Bible as his foundational text and then making very arbitrary changes to suit The Book of Mormon the best he can but in doing so makes a lot of Errors By leaving other material in um that he is unaware is problematic and so all of those things again through all of these different topics just keep telling us without question that when you put these puzzle pieces together Joseph Smith is the author because we know where he's pulling from and we know the changes he's making and and that is something that we can now look at with a 200 year hindsight but it's inescapable for the church because those truth claims in the Book of Mormon are cemented the moment Joseph Smith puts it into the text in 1829 and the church has basically put the entire reputation of the Book of Mormon and the fact that Joseph Smith is dictating it through the power of God and now 200 years later we can to see that those truth claims are simply not holding up yeah two things I want to to I want to just add installation and Gerardo I want to get get you in as well like like I just want any believer or or apologist scholar to explain why Farthing was changed to C9 but why mile was left in assuming the tight translation which which is you can't wiggle out of the tight translation you just can't no you can't and so how do you explain given the tight translation mild being left in but Farthing being swapped for C9 that's number one number two is inspired by Michael Coe for me it's not just all these glaring fingerprints and the fact that King Matthew from the King James Bible appearing in the Book of Mormon literally makes no sense no sense but I also just want to add what we learned from Michael Coe which is what about what is not there that should be there why if this is God's glorious chance to get the pure words of Jesus to the Native Americans right and all the you know again we've talked about this in past episodes the the Mormon Church likes to claim that the scriptures are written for us in our day so Jesus is going to speak to Native Americans in a special way in a pure Way for their particular needs and for their day this is the chance for Jesus to really connect with with Native Americans in ways that he wouldn't connect with anyone else on the globe and it's the chance for Jesus to communicate his pure gospel right his pure gospel unadulterated by the Catholic church and protestantism and all the different translations from language to language to language to language this is this one shot and there's literally nothing cool or meaningfully new there let alone none of the Nauvoo innovations that we would if that if if ceilings and and work for the dead and you know Temple marriage and the the the the the um endowment ceremony and three degrees of glory and men becoming gods and polygamy if that's all like the real juice and the real value-add of of Mormonism Jesus could have included some of that in his speech to the to the Native Americans and there's nothing new or cool or meaningful it's just clumsily reworked Matthew King James version Matthew like that's disappointing Gerardo you get the final word here um I remember when I was uh on my mission you know and I think one of the things that we were encouraged to teach people the most or promote the most was how amazing it was that the Book of Mormon contained a record of Jesus coming to America and I remember always going through third Nephi and reading through the chapters where Jesus came to America and being so underwhelmed by how um dry those chapters are uh how there was not much more added other than what was already on the Bible I mean maybe there was a couple accounts of Jesus praying with the people and stuff like that but it was nothing amazing I mean I was expecting for a record that was kept and preserved for hundreds of years that was written in the moment that was written in and inspired by God and the way it was written and then translated by the gift and power of God to have it perfectly how God wanted us to have it and then just reading how Jesus spoke was so boring at times in the Book of Mormon uh I remember thinking it was a little disappointing and then well now learning how we can see Joseph Smith's fingerprints and in the Book of Mormon and specifically on this part you know like we've talked about that explains why I was so underwhelmed um and so yeah um I think this was a great episode uh great information thank you Mike uh for bringing this on yeah thanks Gerardo we're so glad you joined us Mike thank you as well and we've got many many episodes to come according to the document I'm looking at this is uh we'll appear as Episode 14. by the way Mike I was gonna make the joke or the observation that we recorded these episodes out of order yeah because of different schedule needs yeah people wanted to do use our recording of this as an opportunity to exercise textual analysis yeah you could actually analyze each episode yep and probably arrive at the the sequence which we recorded them which are which is different than the sequence that we released them would that be a fun exercise for people it would I mean I hope you don't I hope no one actually is bored enough to do it but yeah I mean that's the whole and that's the whole thing is that because we're out of order a bit there are going to be Clues where we'll maybe reference something that's from an episode you know that we recorded but it hasn't been aired yeah exactly and those are the clues that people are now using like you know Brett Metcalf did that to get the translation or the Book of Mormon and we could do that now to see where he's pulling from like with The Sermon on the Mount and that's why when you mentioned earlier it's a scientific process it is a process where you're using a lot of critical thinking using scientific analysis using all of these different things and it's not just someone slamming the Book of Mormon saying he ripped it off it's saying this is why we can show where he's pulling from and the changes he's making and once you do that then all of a sudden your Source text is not gold plates it's the King James Bible and that is why Scholars outside of the church can look at it without any hesitation and say yeah this is not an ancient text because everything about it is screaming 19th century and the only way you're not going to come to that conclusion is if you're working from an equation that says it cannot be a 19th century text that's the only way you can get there because if you start with a blank slate and you say I'm not going to give you the the answer to the equation it's going to lead you to the 19th century it's never going to lead you to an ancient text it just can't because it's not there and a free steak dinner with me Gerardo and Mike for anyone who conducts that analysis and is able to accurately tell us the actual recording order of these episodes yeah if you could do that that would be kind of amazing because I think it would be it would be easy I think on some I'm sure there's some would be harder but yeah if you could pull that off more power to you that'd be pretty impressive or at least come close right yeah come close at least so uh just to let people know a couple final things we do plan on putting all of these episodes together in a standalone podcast so look for that podcast we'll just call it LDS discussions I don't think we've even told you this Mike we will be putting all these episodes in its own Standalone audio okay yes and on YouTube we've created a playlist called LDS discussions under the Mormon stories podcast Channel where if you just want to watch these videos in sequence you can do so in the playlist and you don't have to Wade through uh the entire Mormon stories Library so those are some things we're doing cool you're going to look into providing the video through Spotify as well it turns out that spadio Now is offering video so we're gonna we're gonna look for ways to make it really easy for people to assume this series um in sequence without all the Mormon story stuff muddled in between very cool and then and then one last thing uh we still have the long ending of Mark to go which we've already recorded Deuter Isaiah which we've already recorded and then we're going to get into First Vision priesthood restoration word of wisdom so many other cool um episodes in the uh in the future yep right yeah we got one more episode in biblical scholarship and then we get into history which I think will be you know more fun for people that are really into Mormonism but I feel like these are important because it's going to give you a lot of underlying info on the Book of Mormon and um in some of our previous ones it also impacts book of Moses book Abraham Doctrine and Covenants so um I think there are areas that aren't touched by a lot of other people that's why we wanted to do them but we're almost out of the the black hole of scriptures and into the history which I think will be a lot of fun to kind of transition to and to give more clues we're going to be releasing these episodes once a week over the next few months uh in 2022 there may be a couple weeks where we don't have episodes but then by summer uh but by Fall by late summer early fall we'll get back into recording these uninterrupted but but viewers and listeners you'll see these for the next few weeks if there's a week or two where we don't have an episode don't fret yeah um we'll we'll get back to recording these all right Mike we really appreciate all all that you've done especially given you know um stuff that just happens in our personal lives so Mike we we really appreciate you we can't thank you enough thanks so much thanks Gerardo all right are you the best come back okay thank you thank you all right everyone all right take care everybody uh be kind to each other be good to each other um please support us uh at mormonsstories.org if you can if you if you value this content uh we we've been losing donors we lose donors every month we've lost some big donors recently because of some uh Financial hard times that people have fallen upon so if you value this series or other series like at the Simon sutherton series The John Larson series The Margie Thrive series we would love you to make up um The Lost donations with your own 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