Did Joseph Smith Have Sex With His Plural Wives?
Original Air Date: 2025-02-14
This video is an episode of the Mormon Stories Podcast featuring host Dr. John Dehlin and guests Nemo the Mormon and Julia (Analyzing Mormonism). It is part of the "LDS Discussions" series, which utilizes content originally compiled by a convert named Mike to objectively explore Mormon truth claims 1, 2. This specific episode, part one of a two-part series, focuses on the "CES Letter" written by Jeremy Runnells. The hosts aim to counter the narrative that the CES Letter has been "debunked" by apologists, arguing instead that it has withstood scrutiny and remains a primary reason people question the Church's claims 3, 4.
The discussion is framed by the "binary" nature of the Book of Mormon's truthfulness as established by LDS leaders like Ezra Taft Benson and Jeffrey R. Holland 5, 6. These leaders taught that the religion stands or falls entirely on the Book of Mormon—if it is not exactly what Joseph Smith claimed (an ancient record), it is a fraud 7, 8.
The video summarizes and analyzes the first five of eleven questions regarding the Book of Mormon found in the CES Letter:
Jeremy Runnells asks why errors specific to the 1769 edition of the King James Bible appear verbatim in the Book of Mormon, which was supposedly translated from ancient gold plates 9, 10. The hosts note that the 1769 edition is the version the Smith family owned 11. The apologetic response from "Fair Mormon" suggests that because these errors also appear in other editions (like the 1611 version), one cannot be certain which edition Joseph Smith "plagiarized" 12. The hosts critique this response, noting that admitting plagiarism validates the critic's point and that it makes no sense for God to reveal the specific translation errors of 17th-century Oxford scholars in an ancient text 13, 14.
The second question concerns why italicized words from the KJV Bible—words added by 17th-century translators to make the English text flow—appear verbatim in the Book of Mormon 15, 16. In the KJV, italics indicate words that are not in the original Hebrew or Greek source text 16. The hosts argue that it is highly improbable that an ancient Reformed Egyptian text would require the exact same added filler words as a 17th-century English translation 17. Apologists argue that Joseph might not have known what the italics meant or that their presence does not rule out a translation, but the hosts view this as clear evidence that Joseph Smith copied the Bible he had on hand rather than translating ancient plates 18, 19.
The third issue highlights a contradiction: The Book of Mormon quotes KJV passages that Joseph Smith later deemed incorrect and "fixed" in his Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible 20. If the Book of Mormon is the "most correct book," it should theoretically match the inspired JST version, not the "erroneous" KJV 21. The hosts display a comparison of the Sermon on the Mount, showing the Book of Mormon matches the KJV, not the JST 22, 23. Fair Mormon's response claims Joseph had "different purposes" for different translations, an explanation the hosts dismiss as illogical and implying God is an author of confusion 24, 25.
Additional Insight: Grant Palmer’s Parallel
Julia introduces research by historian Grant Palmer, showing twenty chronological plot parallels between the Book of Mormon story of Nephi and the biblical story of Moses 26. These include leaving luxury, killing a man, murmuring in the wilderness, and divine guidance via a Liahona/cloud 27. This suggests Joseph Smith may have "remixed" the Exodus story 28.
4. DNA Evidence and Native Americans
The fourth question addresses why DNA analysis shows Native Americans originated from Asia, contradicting the Book of Mormon’s narrative of Israelite descent 29. The hosts discuss how the Church changed the Book of Mormon introduction in 2006 from calling Lamanites the "principal ancestors" of Native Americans to "among the ancestors" 29, 30. Nemo presents a clip showing that while the English digital version has been updated, printed copies in other languages (like German in 2023) still contain the old "principal ancestors" claim 30, 31. The hosts argue this shift undermines the historical identity of the Lamanites, which was taught as fact by prophets for nearly two centuries 32.
5. Anachronisms (Horses, Steel, etc.)
The final point covers anachronisms—items mentioned in the Book of Mormon that did not exist in the Americas during that time period, such as horses, cattle, steel, wheat, and chariots 33. John Dehlin references his interview with Yale anthropologist Dr. Michael Coe, who confirmed these items were absent from the Americas during Book of Mormon times 34. The hosts critique a video by "Scripture Central" that claims horse bones were found in Mexico dating to that period 35. They argue this research is based on obscure, non-consensus science and relies on "possibilities" rather than evidence 36. Furthermore, they point out that older editions of the Book of Mormon contained footnotes identifying the Hill Cumorah as being in New York, not Mexico, making the geography of apologetic arguments inconsistent with early Church teachings 37, 38.
Conclusion
The hosts conclude that Jeremy Runnells has successfully argued all five points, with the score standing at "5-0" in favor of the CES Letter over the apologetic responses 39. They emphasize that because the Church set up a "sudden death" binary where the book is either perfect or a fraud, a single confirmed anachronism is enough to disprove the book's historicity 40. Part two will cover the remaining questions 41.
Condensed ~5 minute video overview of the full episode, AI-generated by NotebookLM.
Condensed podcast-style audio overview of the full episode, AI-generated by NotebookLM.
AI-generated slideshow powered by NotebookLM (multi-page PDF)
AI-generated infographic powered by NotebookLM (single-page PDF)
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast LDS LDS discussions edition. I'm your host uh Dr. John Delin. It's Monday, January 2nd, 2025 and today uh we are doing a new LDS discussions episode called uh the Book of Mormon uh as depicted in the CES letter. Um really quickly, let me just explain what the LDS discussion series is. Forgive us, those of you who know what it is, but one of the reasons why we're continuing to add to the LDS discussion series is because we're getting new uh viewers and listeners all the time. So, for those who don't know the background, several years ago, a really brilliant Mormon uh questioning Mormon named Mike, that's a pseudonym, started a website called LDS Discussions. He is a convert to the church. And after he converted to the church, married his Mormon wife, and had kids, he learned a bunch of stuff about Mormon church truth claims uh that he really wished he had been told before he joined the church. And so he put up this website called LDS discussions where he dug deep into 30 40 topics uh that that people who cared about the truth would want to learn about. And we're talking, you know, golden plates, uh, Book of Mormon Translation, Book of Abraham, uh, The Witnesses, all this stuff. Put it in a website called LDS discussions.com. And then we, uh, cut a deal with him to bring him on Mormon Stories and to do, I don't know, a 40 or 50 episode series. And so that's what we did. It's basically me and Mike and Nemo and Julia and sometimes some special guests exploring LDS church truth claims uh evidence-based and as objectively as we're able to be. It's it's definitely the most important one of the most important things Mormon stories has ever done. Um it's consistently listed as the most important influencer for people trying to figure out whether the Mormon church's truth claims are true or not. You can find it at uh LDS Discussions uh playlist on YouTube. You can also find it as its own podcast series on Spotify, on Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And um the website's up there as well, lds discussions.com. Mike himself is retired uh from podcasting for now. We won't tell you what he does as his day job now. It's top secret as far as our audience is concerned. But we are continuing to add to the library. And I'm super excited to have back with us today two of our participants in the LDS discussion series. We have Nemo uh the Mormon. Hey Nemo, welcome back. Hello. Hello. Good to be back. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thank you. And we have Julia or analyzing Mormonism as she's known on Tik Tok and Instagram. Hey Julia. Hi. And Julia, you prepared today's episode. Is that right? I did. I did have Nemo's help. So, but yeah, I I prepared the slides today. Yeah. Okay. See, you all did it together. All right. Well, let me just give a tiny bit of an introduction and then I'm going to hand it over to you, Julia. Sure. Um, so, uh, just to give you all a little bit of background. Jeremy has been attacked kind of, you know, as the Mormon church does, instead of really addressing the substance of critics's arguments, what it often does is it attacks um its uh its viewers, its critics, and it attacks their motives and it attacks uh you know, their character basically. And um you know, we're going to get into who Jeremy Reynolds is and what the CES letter is very briefly, but before we do, I'm just going to address the attack. So, you know, whether it's public square magazine, um you know, you can see this article, the true origins of the CES letter, where the headline is, "Was the CES letter an honest plea for answers rather than a sincere letter? Um it was a calculated deception to undermine faith." So again, they're going at Jeremy Reynolds motivations as as uh intending to deceive. Um you know, here's another article from Meridian Magazine, which is a well-known apologetic argument unveiling the truth, the real story behind the CES letter by Moren Proctor. I won't even get into what I know about Maren Proctor and um you know someone close to her uh passing away as a result of uh from what I understand the interactions between um you know Meen and uh that loved one. It's not a pretty story. Um and then you could even have uh the the website that that was released and shared for quite some time. It was known as cesletters.com where they were basically poaching or cyber squatting on the CESletter domain name. They grabbed cesletters.com and cesletters.org. Um uh and they were basically trying to cyber squad and to lure people to more apologetic uh sources but borrowing on the CES letter domain name and on the name. Here's the YouTube channel as it used to be. CES letters, you know, at YouTube. Um, and then you can see, um, you know, some of the types of videos that were released with BYU professor Steven Harper, and there they have Richard Bushman and Brian Hails and and sort of the normal Mormon apologetic casts of characters. Um, as we understand it, uh, a lawsuit was pursued for that sort of cyber squatting, specifically marketing around CES letter or CES letters. And, um, we're happy to know that, uh, now at least cesletters.com, it redirects to the official church of Jesus Christ.org org website which basically confirms that that the Mormon church was behind um you know this cyber squatting. But now cesletters.com redirects to the official uh church of Jesus Christrist.org website and then uh csletters.org redirects to studyandfaith.org which I'm going to guess is also an official it looks like it's an authorized experimental project out of BYU. Mhm. So, um, that's kind of the backstory. And what I basically said is until y'all, Mormon church, uh, Mormon apologists, until you stop attacking Jeremy, attacking Jeremy Reynolds, and until you stop attacking his character, um, you know, we're going to do our best to promote CES Letter, uh, on Mormon Stories podcast. So, that's the background of why I wanted to do this series. Uh now uh Nemo and Julia if y'all want to provide any quick reaction to my intro and then we could jump right into the slides. Nemo. Yeah, go ahead. Uh the first is if you notice that the thumbnails that they're using on study and faith are also quite familiar to uh viewers of this channel. Is that something that we could see on the slides? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you go back there you go. Don't they look a little bit Don't they look a little bit Mormon storiesesque? Okay. A little bit big person on one side. the lovely faded image in the background, the way Herado does it. Yeah. Um they're like, "Oh, if people are drawn to that, maybe we'll do ours similar and then we can get drawn that way." Uh but the main thing I would point out is the reason for a series like this is because this thing has entered the Mormon zeitgeist that somehow the CES letter has been debunked. There's this thing just churning around the zeitgeist. People going, "Oh yeah, CES letter has been debunked. Don't need to worry about that." uh and actually there are still important conversations that need to be had around the questions that the CES letter raises. So a series like this is important to kind of bring those back into the conversation because what we can't have is these very legitimate concerns that are raised in the book uh or in the letter then being just shorthanded away going oh no that's been dealt with because it hasn't. Yeah. And I would just I would just give the ending away at the beginning and say far from being debunked, I think the CES letter has withstood intense mountainous scrutiny and it stands stronger today than it ever has in terms of uh there not being credible. You know, we could maybe find one or two um out of, you know, hundreds of, you know, claims the CES letter makes. maybe one or two if Jeremy's sort of been willing to retract or or um back away from a little bit, but overall I think this CS letter has overwhelmingly stood the test of time and that's why it's constantly listed as um a main reason people uh changed their minds about the LDS church's truth claims. Julie, I want to give you a chance to respond as well and we'll hand the presentation over to you. Yeah, thanks. Um so I just agree with Nemo like this people say this has been debunked but it hasn't. One thing that I found interesting is that a lot of members of the church, they if it if a response exists, whether they've looked at it or not, they're like, "Oh, that's enough." Somebody has an answer for this. I don't need to check the answer. Like I think an individual, was it is his name Bennett who responded to the CES letter? Jim Bennett. Jim Bennett. So like my like I have family members for example, they're like, "Oh, Jim Bennett wrote a response. That's great. That means the CS letter is is bugged even though they don't read it." And I've had the same thing happen with like Hugh Nibbi responding to Fawn Brody where even my father was like, "Oh, Hugh Nibbi has a a pamphlet that he responded to her book, No Man Knows My History." No, ma'am, that's not history. Um were the two different um articles. But um I was like, "Oh, have you read Hugh Nibbli's pamphlet?" And he was like, "No, I haven't read it." But just that it exists is enough for me. And I just think that's really interesting. So here we're going to present these things. Yeah, there you go. It's a horrible It's a horrible pamphlet. He's very uh I don't know. I just don't like the way he handles Brody at all. But um anyway, so like this is these what we're going to share today are things that like for the honest seeker, I suppose, like not just somebody who's going to be like, "Oh, this exists. It's fine." I don't know how to explain that, but like we're trying here. We're trying to bring up these are legitimate questions and concerns that Jeremy Reynolds has in the CS letter and these are the reasons why. And this is why uh we're going to share some of his concerns and questions and then some of how Fair Mormon or other apologists have responded to those things. So that's how this is set up today. So what I heard you say, Julie, is that if if the Mormon church simply creates any response uh how no matter how bad it is, there's a lot of uh believing faithful Mormons that will just simply say, "Oh, it's already been debunked." because there's a response even if they haven't actually looked at read or thought about the response. Is that what you're saying? In in my experience, yes. Like even some of the things we'll look at, I'm like, I don't know how people are accepting this. I don't know. So, so that's my experience. Okay. The the brain is without getting too deep into it, the brain is an energy intense organ, right? And so if we can take shortcuts to just keep our position running the way it always has, then that's fine. So if your position that you want to keep is the church is true and I can remain active in it and all these sorts of things then the easiest thing for your brain to do is to see that there's a response to the thing that might threaten that and then just go okay well then there's a response that's fine doesn't need to go any deeper than that because that it can look at other things then it can you know be involved in other tasks right all right well let's jump into it Julia shall we so yeah so the first thing I want to show is just Jeremy Reynolds he this is the author of the CES letter and you've We've interviewed him before on Mormon Stories. I think if anyone is doubting his sincerity in his writing of the CS Letter, please go watch his episodes. He In fact, in fact, what I'm going to do, Julia, uh when we air this episode that we're recording right now, it's going to be after I rebroadcast the full um Jeremy Reynolds interview contiguously. So, if somebody's stumbling on this episode, they just need to go to the immediate previous one where you're going to see uh the entire Jeremy Reynolds interview and you can judge for yourself not only his sincerity and his story, but you can also we discuss in depth many of the issues in the CES letter. And again, we don't want you ever to believe us on Mormon stories or LDS discussions. We want you to look at the evidence and decide for yourself. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one thing that I really try hard to do is like in all the slides that I have, I have to have I want very specific footnotes. So if you guys have questions, just go straight to the footnotes or I'll put these in the show notes as well. So don't trust us. Go look for yourself. Okay. So yeah. So I wanted to quote there's a quote from Jeremy Reynolds from the CES letter. Nemo, do you want to read that? Sure. I believe that members and investigators deserve to have all the facts and information on the table to be able to make a fully informed and balanced decision as to whether or not they want to commit their hearts, minds, time, talents, income, and lives to Mormonism. Anything less is an obstruction to the free agency of the individual. Thank you. So, one of the reasons why I wanted this on here is in the temple, this is like kind of like almost word for word, one of the covenants that you make in the temple is that you you give your time, talents, all of your means, like your finances, I guess, and then like even your very lives if necessary to the church. And so, like, and what Jeremy's saying is if you're going to commit all these things to the church, it's they owe it to you to have everything on the table. And so, that's one of the things he's he's struggling with is that a lot of these things they didn't have on the table. And then that's what he's presenting in the CES letter. Got it. Okay. Yeah. And so this if we go to the next slide here, let me Okay. So the there are 16 sections of the CES letter including other concerns, the conclusion and sources and notes and an epilogue. So today's topic is the Book of Mormon. And I don't know how thoroughly we want because I I picture this being like a series like we go through each of the topics like the next one will be Book of Mormon translation and then the first vision, the Book of Abraham. And I don't know if we want to do I guess Nemo you said other concerns have really good like even the science section they have things worth talking about. Yep. So like I plan I I picture this being a few weeks of or a few weeks worth of a series. A few months we're going to do are are you saying we're potentially going to do all the sections of the CES letter in sequence? Well that's that's up if we if conclusion or sources and notes and epilog if those are also episodes. I'm not sure. So so roughly at least like 12 or at least 12, right? Yeah, that's what I'm picturing. Yeah. Okay, cool. And so this is we're going to try and cover the Book of Mormon in one episode. Yes, hopefully. Okay, cool. Yeah. Okay, so I wanted to share a few clips from the leaders first to kind of give a background about how important the Book of Mormon is and then what that means to the religion. And so this first one is Ezra Tap Benson, my cousin. Your cousin. Um, and so I can't John, if you'll share the screen. I don't know if I can. Nemo, you're looking weird at me. Why are you looking weird at me? Cuz I mean that that's news to me. I didn't know. Uh you Yeah. So my grandma is Karma Benson Parkinson and she is literally she was born and raised in you know Franklin Idaho and she she's cousins with Ezra Tapbenson and my you know great great great-grandfather is Ezra Tbenson who is like Ezra Tapbenson's father or grandfather. So I'm a Benson in my ancestry. Wow. Why? Why are you all related just that time? Cuz cuz we all came over from England, Nemo. That's why. Yeah. Okay. So, uh and I'll just say Ezab Benson uh was former secretary of agriculture under Dwight D. Eisenhower. He uh was a prophet since the 50s and 60s, an apostle in the Mormon church since the 50s and 60s and very controversial. But when he became prophet, it was all about flood the earth with the Book of Mormon. That's what I remember about him. That's probably what you're going to show right now is that clip, huh? Probably. Yeah. Okay. Should I play it? Yeah. If that's Okay, go for it. This was the prophet Joseph Smith's statement. He testified that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth and the keystone of our religion. A keystone is the central stone in an arch. It holds all the other stones in place and if removed, the arch crumbles. I mean, that's pretty pretty clear, right? Yeah. If the if if the art if it's the Book of Mormon is removed, the church crumbles is what I think he's basically saying. And I love that later on you get apologists will say things like, "We don't know where people get this binary idea that the Book of Mormon is either true or it's not." Or that if you can disprove the Book of Mormon, then the church falls apart. They were teaching it. They were literally teaching it. Well, also, um, he says it's the keystone of our religion, but there are at least hundreds, I think, of other religions who believe the Book of Mormon. So, it can't be the keystone of one if it's if so many have it. So, I don't and believe that it's true. So, that doesn't make sense to me either. Yeah, because why aren't the other offshoots of the Mormon church true, right? There has to be some other lynch pin or some other thing. Well, yeah, the lynch pin would would have to actually be so the actual cornerstone or the actual keystone would have to be priesthood authority because that's what makes this branch of the restorationist movement, the Latter Day Saint movement, correct? Is that Brigham Y Young was the one that was meant to be the next prophet and that's why Yeah. Well, that's the true keystone. Well, even Joseph getting the priesthood is is I'd go farther back than Brigham but why why this one's correct and not the others. Okay. To be that Brigham's priesthood line is the correct priesthood line. Right. Right. Yeah. It's such a bold claim to say it's the most correct book ever on earth given you know what we and we've covered on the Eldius discussion series so extensively all the problems with the Book of Mormon which we'll get into today. But it's such a ridiculously bold but that's what Joseph was. He was so bold. He would triple down whenever he was challenged. You know what I mean? And so I did a video recently where I looked at like translations of the Book of Mormon. And if you look at the church's list of different translations, it will say the Spanish edition was done. Here was the first translation and then it was revised on these dates. And it'll say that about all the other languages. But for English, it won't say revised. It says translated and then it says major editions. Even though we know there were massive revisions between the 1830 and the 1837 edition. Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I will say the the Tanner Sandra and Gerald Tanner have also talked about the changes in the Book of Mormon and there's been what do they say? There was a 4,811 or something like that. I can't remember. It was like some specific number. Big number. But yeah. All right. Well, let's go to the next video clip you have. This is one of my least favorite General Conference moments of all time. Go ahead and Okay. This is Jeffrey Holland, but I think you need to share the screen, John, and then I advance the slide. Thank you. Uh yeah, no, go ahead. Okay. Start there. If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a hereto for unknown text teameming with literary and symitic complexity without honestly attempting to account for the origin of those pages somehow, especially without accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that witness witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers. If that's the case, then such persons, elect or otherwise, have been deceived. And if they leave this church, they must do so by crawling over or under or around the Book of Mormon to make their exit. Sorry, was he talking about he was talking about the Chronicles of Narnia, right? I was thinking the same thing. Lord of the Rings of Jesus Christ and they're quite long and you know what I mean. Yeah. Say that. Go ahead, Julie. Oh, no. I was just going to say like he's talking about how the literary the literary aspects of it, the the complexities of it, all these things. They have to account for that. But not only that, the the good feelings that they have while they're reading it. So, like you were saying, Nema, I was thinking like, oh, I feel good or I felt good when I was reading Chronicles of Narnia or like Lord of the Rings. Like, why is that more important? Why is the feelings that we have when we read it more important than these other aspects of the Book of Mormon? Well, the church would say, if I'm trying to be objective, there's a difference between the spirit and your emotions. The Holy Ghost is profound spiritual inspiration versus the good feelings that fiction or non-fiction might generate. But no one's ever been able to actually explain to me how to know the difference. Of course, right. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just say this was a particularly disappointing presentation to me because I had a lunch with Jeffrey R. Holland, you know, a few months before he gave this presentation. It was my second lunch, I believe, with him, either first or second. But his point when we had lunch was that he really wanted liberals and progressives in the Mormon church. and he really wanted a big tent even if he couldn't believe everything that the church, you know, claimed that they still wanted a big tent. And then when he gave this talk after assuring me that he wanted people like me in the church, it just made me feel like he was just telling me whatever he needed to tell me, but that he didn't mean it. because if he meant it, he would never say something like this that just seems so tonedeaf and off-putting to to someone he claims he wants in the church. Now, maybe that's my assumptions, not actually how his brain works, but it was very disheartening this this talk he gave. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. All right. Yeah. Yeah, there's another talk from um Holland that I want to share too and I'm pretty sure Jeremy Reynolds shares it in the CES letter if I'm not mistaken or on his website I think. Um John, do you want to read this one? Sure. Elder Jeffrey Holland once Jeffrey R. Colin once stated, quote, "Everything in the church, everything rises, falls on the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, and by implication. The prophet Joseph Smith's account of how it came forth can be a little breathtaking. It sounds like a sudden death proposition to me. Either the Book of Mormon is what the prophet Joseph said it is, or this church and its founder are false, fraudulent, a deception from the first instance onward. Forgive me for the dramatization. That's what he That's what he sounds like. He spoke to me at our mission and he was yelling at us. Um yeah. So the so that it's very black and white if the Book of Mormon like it's a sudden death thing. It's either true or all these things like Joseph there's a he's a fraud. It's false. It's fraudulent. It's a deception from the very beginning. Like but we now know that it isn't what Joseph Smith said it was or it's certainly not what the church told us that it was in terms of how it was translated etc. It it okay the 2006 change to the Book of Mormon with the double day edition where they changed it from the principal ancestors to among the ancestors right that is changing what the Book of Mormon claims to be. It claims to be a record of some principal ancestors but now it claims to be a record of just some of the ancestors. That change alone should then enact the the the sort of the situation. Yeah. The binary that that Jeffrey Rholland laid out there. It's like, right, okay, it's now not what Joseph Smith claimed it to be. The church has admitted it's not what it claimed it to be in 2006. So, Jeffrey, do you really want us to then go on to the next part of that and say, right, then it's fraudulent from the first step onwards. Of course, he doesn't. Of course, the church don't want us to take that conclusion. And that's the danger with making these sorts of sudden death binaries. Right? And I'll just add that we've covered on Mormon stories for years that you know people inside the church now including people like uh Spencer Flumen, Richard Bushman, Tero Given have stopped calling the Book of Mormon a translation and have started calling it a revelation. Again changing what Joseph Smith himself claimed it was. Like the whole thing was Joseph had a sear stone or the yurram thumbum and he got gold plates and he translated from reformed Egyptian into English and that was his power. And now the church is pivoting saying well the plates weren't really in the room. He didn't really use the yuramum dum. He stuck a stone in a hat and you know he basically dictated uh you know a revelation and it's the same type of thing they're doing with the Book of Abraham. And uh so it's a great point you're making Nemo. The Book of Mormon isn't even now being described as being what Joseph Smith claimed it was. So Holland and and Ezra Tabenson and others are just painting themselves into a corner. Mhm. And this is why people leave when they discover these things because the church built these very fragile testimonies of it's either all or nothing. It's like right it's either exactly what it said it was or it's complete fraud. And so all people are left with when they discover these things is oh well then I guess it's a fraud. Yeah. And they're gone. Yeah. One, this reminds me of the recent episode that you just rebroadcasted with John Mcclelay where he says, "If the church had been honest from the beginning and talked about the the stone in the hat or things like that or polygamy, like he's like, I could have accepted that, but the fact that I feel like I've been deceived or lied to, that's what I can't accept." And I'm pretty sure Jeremy Reynolds feels the same way. Like if the church had just been honest from the very beginning about its origins and about all these the treasure digging, all these things, like those are that's easier to swallow than than the thought of, "Oh, you've been keeping this from me." Yeah. Absolutely. and uh and not Spencer Fluman but uh what's his name? No, no, no. He's been doing he's the current church historian or he's been doing a lot of fire sides. Keith, not Harper. Um Gerald Gerald Hverson is that Erikson. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So Keith Ericson came to the UK and he did a fireside and someone pointed out, you know, why is the church not talked about this stuff? And he said, "Oh, there's a great deal of difficulty the church has had in disseminating this information and it's only now with the information age that we're able to really kind of put this stuff out with the internet." And this person just came back and said, "Cuminity of Christ put all this out in the 60s." And it's true. Other other denominations of the Latter Day Saint Restorationist movement have dealt with these parts of their history much earlier than the Brigamite group have for sure. It's just worth mentioning. Yeah, that's that is worth mentioning. All right, what's next? Yeah, so this next slide, if you'll just you uh Oh, okay. Uh, yeah. So, Jeremy Reynolds lists 11 questions about the Book of Mormon. And so, we're going to go through each of those. So, the first one is, "What are 1769 King James Version Bible Errors doing in the Book of Mormon?" In his book, An Insiders View of Mormon Origins, Grant Palmer states, Joseph's use of the KJV includes the modern errors which which accumulate in the handwritten manuscripts in KJV over the centuries. And then he and then um Palmer lists examples. And so, you can see here. So 3rd Nephi 12 27 is similar to Matthew 5:27 by them of old time. And then 3rd Nephi 12:30 is similar to Matthew 5:30 should be cast into hell. So he's just listing off different errors that that are also present in the Book of Mormon that were also present in the Bible in this specific edition. Now Now Julia and Nemo, I don't know if y'all can help with this. like of someone who's viewing and listening right now who was raised Mormon, I don't even think they understand what you mean by errors because you're just showing text, but they wouldn't know why to consider these words errors. Do do you all just want to help us understand what's erroneous about these examples? Because obviously we don't have time to dig into it, but just to as a jumping off point for people who want to learn more, Nemo, were you gonna answer? Uh I can do um unless Julia has an answer but I think you're good. Essentially what this is is translations when they're done by you know 17th and 18th century clergymen in you know the UK uh when they are doing translations they look at manuscripts and then they will try and best portray in English the words of the manuscript they receive. Now if things in the manuscripts which the manuscripts were handwritten and preserved over time uh if things in those manuscripts turned out to have been later editions or things that were added in by you know copying etc then later translations will have spotted that and remove those and then try and get to a more pure meaning of the transcript that they working from. So the 1769 uh edition of the King James version of the Bible worked from manuscripts that had some of those things that had been included by scribes as they were being written over time. I believe that's that to my understanding that's what's going on. But I think it's really important to mention that even if they were errors or not, you know, if you'd want to be a King James version purist and say those weren't errors, that's fine. The question still is, why are very specific examples from text in the 1769 edition of the King James version of Bible verbatim in the Book of Mormon? That's still a question that needs to be asked and answered. And so, y'all tell me if I'm if I'm uh if I'm getting this right. So basically um basically we know that that Joseph Smith the Bible that he had was the 17 you know probably his family Bible was the 1769 King James version of the Bible and then we know that the Book of Mormon just has extensive uh passages just kind of copied into it. Yeah. And it's not just that it appears to be plagiarizing the King James version of the Bible. It's plagiarizing the 1769 version of the King James Bible, which is the version of the Bible that we know Joseph Smith and his family had. Is that is that correct, y'all? I believe so. There are photographs of the church released of the the Smith family Bible. I off the top of my head, I can't remember if it's the 1769, but I I think that's correct. Even if it's a slightly later printing, I believe it contains the 1769 language. So it may have been printed in 1812 or or whenever, but it has the 1769 update of the King James version of the Bible in it is my understanding. So I guess and I'm I'm assuming it doesn't have errors necessarily of previous or subsequent editions. So I guess viewers and listeners have to ask themselves why would the heirs of a particular version of the Bible that was one that Joseph probably had access to if the Book of Mormon was a translation from Egyptian uh you know reformed Egyptian through the thumb by the gift and power of God. Why are errors from a particular version of the Bible that Joseph Smith would have had access to appearing in the Book of Mormon? All right, I think we covered that. Well, yeah. just just to really quickly tighten that up is to ask why if God is giving Joseph Smith a language either through a revelation as some apologists are now saying it or through a translation. He's either taking the words of fourth and fifth century Native Americans and then using the exact words of Oxford clergymen to translate those for some reason or God's giving him the exact words of Oxford clergymen to uh to write about the appearance of Jesus Christ giving the sermon on the mount exactly the same words that were used by those clergymen to describe the sermon on the mount in the Bible. Yeah. One example that's not an error specifically I think but um my dad pointed out in in one of the books of with Paul written by Paul in the New Testament he says oh wretched man that I am and that's a direct quote also from from Nephi. So so why is I think also what you're asking is why is the 1600 BC text showing up in this whatever version of the Bible or even just post Christ even if Paul did say those things why are those both showing up exactly the same way in these different texts? You mean 600 BC, right? 600 BC. Yeah, 600 BC. Did I say the wrong thing? He might have said 1600, but Oh, sorry. 600 BC. That's when that's when Nephi would have been alive. Yeah. So Nephi when the very beginning. Yes. Yeah. And even if he said something in his language and that was then recorded in reformed Egyptian that translates into English as roughly a wretched man that I am or some sort of exclamation of woe, why would Joseph Smith or why would God give Joseph Smith the exact words that were translated from the Greek manuscript that reports the words of Paul? Why are those exactly the same? right? I think is the nub of the question because oh wretched man that I am is what those scholars decided the Greek would best translate into English as. So it's a distinctive phrase that came from those scholars. It just makes no sense that the King James I mean it doesn't make sense that the Book of Mormon is in King's English or whatever the version of English it is. What version of English is that Nemo? I think some describe it as Jackabetian English. Yeah. Just why would the Book of Mormon be in Jacabian English at all if it's trans if if it was written by Nephites and Lammonites? Why would it not have come out in the English of Joseph Smith's time? Yeah. Even Exactly. Because why would Joseph Smith translate it into biblical text or into the language that these people in Oxford were using. Yeah. Makes no sense. It's ridiculous on its face. All right, Julia, what's the next slide? Because you've got Fair Mormon's response. Yeah, the next slide's fair's response. Does do one of you guys want to read this one, Nemo? Yeah, sure. Uh, as a corrective to the CES letter, the errors reported in the King James Bible are not unique to the 1769 version. Five major editions of the King James version were published in 1611, 1629, 1638, 1762, and 1769. Many minor editions and revisions have been made since the 1769 edition. The 1769 text is the standard text of most King James Bibles today, including that published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Only the 1611 and 1769 editions can be found online. The errors are contained in both editions. Readers can read the 1611 edition online and see for themselves. The more modern 1769 KJV used in Last Day Saint scriptures can also be found online and checked. Given that the 1611 and 1769 editions contain the exact same translation errors, it's likely, though the author hasn't verified it yet, that the other major editions published between 1611 and 1769 contain the exact same errors, which in turn makes it more difficult for us to claim with certainty which edition of the King James version, if any, Joseph Smith plagiarized from. It's like, so we know he plagiarized from one, guys. We just don't know which one. All right. But how is that a response? Yeah. So, Nemo, can you can you summarize the argument Fair Mormon's making there? They're saying, "Look, the errors that Jeremy's talking about aren't just in the 1769 edition. They're in the 1611 and all the ones that came between that and the 1769." So, yeah, they appear in the Book of Mormon. We just don't know where he Take that, Jeremy. Yeah, previous versions of the Bible also had those errors. Take that, Jeremy. So it actually makes it more likely that that Joseph would have had his hands on a copy of the Bible to take it from. Right. This doesn't address the core of the claim. They're just saying actually Jeremy, you're wrong because the errors aren't exclusive to 1769. All right. Yeah. So like the next slide, I didn't know how like how cuz like if we just go to the next slide, John, you just threw it up on the screen. So to me, the fact that the errors exist in other editions of the Bible, it does not mean that Joseph Smith did not use the 1769 edition of the King James Bible. Like it's not answering that, it's not answering the question. Like if it were the case that they didn't exist in 1769 actually, and they were in all the others, and we know Joseph Smith had 1769, then it might have some sort of greeds. But the fact that it was just in all of them, I mean, maybe they're saying he didn't necessarily use his family Bible. He used her Bible. Yeah, they admit they they admit as much. They say we don't know which one he plagiarized from. I mean, I guess if he was doing most of his translation in quotes of the Book of Mormon at Isaac Hail's house, then he might have used a Bible that Isaac Hail had lying around. Well, then he was in the Whitmer's home. He was in different homes, too. Can you grab the um the Fair Mormon response again? Just like go if you throw that up on the screen, John. put it up on the screen because I think it's really important. We'll just say if any. So yeah, read the read the final quote again. Yeah. So they say um it makes it more difficult for us to claim with certainty which edition of the King James version, if any, Joseph Smith plagiarized from. Imagine being a person who has discovered for the first time the CES letter and you read this and you're like, "Oh, okay. The church has published a response. I'm going to go to Fair Mormons. I'm sure they're going to put Jeremy right." Imagine then reading the line, "Oh, we it is just it's more difficult for us to claim with certainty which edition of the King James version, if any, Joseph Smith plagiarized from." Okay, so Fair Mormon, now you're telling me that there's a possibility he plagiarized from it as well. So, all they're having to concede that possibility. So it just goes to show that that fair Mormon can often be the thing that is the final nail in the coffin for people because Jeremy asked the question and then they realize that fair Mormon is forced to kind of give no good answer and actually concede. I mean honestly it makes sense why Fair Mormon is drifting into irrelevance. Nobody really quotes them anymore. Nobody uh they're not being elevated by the church. It's now Jasmine Rapoli or what, however you pronounce her name and Book of Mormon Central and Scripture Central because I think Fair Mormon is, you know, shockingly falling into irrelevance because they're their answers are so bad. People are basically who people who are leaving the church are saying it's fair Mormon's bad responses that contributed to their leaving. I mean, that I hear that all the time. Well, I think I think the thing that really put Scott Gordon on notice that his his whole ship was sinking was that the this is the show videos went out and that anyone thought that was a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. So, cool. Sorry. Let's carry on. All right, Julia, what's number two? So, number one, uh what's number two? Yes. If you throw up on the screen. So, Jeremy asked this. The second question that he asks in in the Book of Mormon chapter is what are 17th century KJV italics doing in the Book of Mormon? When King James translators were translating the KJV Bible between 1604 and 1611, they would occasionally put in their own words into the text to make the English more readable. We know exactly what these words are because they're atalicized in the KJV Bible. What are these 17th century italic italicized words doing in the Book of Mormon? Word for word. What does this say about the Book of Mormon being an ancient record? Let's go and go to the next slide and illustrate. Yeah. Yeah. So, this So, sorry to be confusing for the viewers. Every Jeremy put everything in italics and so he and then he bolded the parts that were italics. So, so if I had done this not the way Jeremy did it, everything would be in regular font except for the bold. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, some of the languages are dark and those are the ones that are italicized. So, for example, so bold in this visual bold means italicized, right? But he italicized all of it. So, yeah. Sorry to be confusing. So Malachi 3:10 in the KJV it says, "And pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it." And there shall be room to receive it are all italicized. And then in 3 Nephi 24:10 it says, "And pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it." So you see the presence of the same italicized words in that text that shouldn't be there because those are the what the monks are the translators for the KGV in6004 and 1611. So he so Jeremy says monks how how long ago do you think the 1600s in the UK we had flushing laboratories never quite but okay so Jeremy says in the above example the KJV translators added seven italicized words to their English translation which are not found in the source Hebrew manuscripts why does the Book of Mormon which is supposed to be to have been completed by Moroni over400 years prior contain the exact identical seven italicized words of 17th century translators and this is just one example of many. So yeah, so this is I'm not understanding one thing. Are are we saying that the same words italicized in the King James version of the Bible are also italicized in the Book of Mormon? I don't know if he atalicized them, but they you can check. So I don't know if he atalicized them specifically in the Bible or in excuse me the Book of Mormon. I don't know why they would be because he's saying these are he's just saying the italicized help me understand the words that are italicized in the Book of Mormon or in the Bible should or shouldn't be appearing in the Book of Mormon should not be. So the people the Bible translators so men in6004 were like oh I don't there doesn't make sense because it feels like it's sort of skipping around. So I'm just going to add words of my I'm going to pull out of my own head some words to fill in the blanks. And so, for example, Malachi 3:10, they said, "Oh, there shall be room to receive it." So, they're adding in these texts just to make it flow easier, just to make it make more sense to them. And those words that they came up with in 1604 or 1611 are appearing in the Book of Mormon where they should not be. So, Nemo, I don't know if you know, I can Yeah. So, I've just checked. They're not italicized. I think to to explain this, Hebrew as a language has a different structure to English. The same as other languages have different structures to English, right? they'll put verbs in different orders. The sentence order will change, all that sort of stuff. Some languages will emit connective words that English will use. Um, so what you end up with if you're translating from Hebrew to English is you need to add words into a sentence to make it flow in English where it wouldn't flow or where it would have already flowed in Hebrew because of the nature of the structure of the language. Similarly, if you were to look at reformed Egyptian as a language, though we know nothing about it, you would also say that that in theory would not be written in the same way as English. So, you would need to add words. But those words that are added are distinctive decisions by the translators of the King James version of the Bible in Oxford, in Cambridge, in Westminster. So again the question is why are there specific choices being reflected in this specific translation choices from a different language by Joseph Smith? Because before and after other words could have been chosen and likely have been chosen. Correct. Well so where where the word enough was italicized there shall not be enough room to s receive it. You could have put in there there would not be sufficient room to receive it. There should not be. So yeah, where it says be room, you could say there shall not be space enough to receive it. You could write instead rather than be room. It's just that B, it's just that Oxford scholars that his specific choice of words, right? So yeah, too much of a Yeah. Yeah. Too much of a coincidence that God would always side on the word choice of Oxford and Cambridge scholars filling in their own Yeah. you know, somewhat not arbitrary, but their own particular word choice. to receive it could have been to obtain it to uh you know possess it possess it or whatever. There's loads of different ways you could have phrased it. They chose a specific one and God always seems to like you said air on the side of what did they do in Oxford and Cambridge and West and Westminster in the 17th century. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Okay. So fair's response they list out four different um I guess answers to this. So they say number one, Joseph did not know about the italics. Number two, the presence of italics from the KGV are not plagiarism. Three, the presence of italics do not mean that Joseph Smith did not translate. And four, the presence of italics do not take away from the Book of Mormon being the most correct book. Why are you laughing? I just I love the first one. I was like, Joseph Smith didn't know about the italics. I'm like, yeah, cuz if he did, he might have tried to change the words so that this argument would be made against him. That's probably what's going on here. Well, I have a slide because I think that's interesting. Oh, I guess there's more. Um, well, I'm going to skip ahead just for one second. So, um, so I don't know if we can talk about this for a second because I I don't know if Joseph Smith did know about them. So, in the Adam Clark commentary, so some critics have purported that Joseph Smith used the Adam Clark commentary, and John, you have episodes on this um, pretty recently, I think, too. Um, so during his Bible translation, not the Book of Mormon, but the Bible one. The commentary was written in eight parts between 1810 and 1826. In his 1832 account of the first vision, Joseph Smith claims that he was searching the scriptures from the age of 12 to 15. In speaking of added phrases in italics, Clark states, "The words seem essentially necessary to a proper understanding of the text, and if not admitted on the above authority, they must be supplied in italics as in our common translation." So, I think at least at some point, Joseph Smith knew that the italics were not were, how do I say that? they they weren't um on the original the original text. Yeah. Yeah. And so I just think that's interesting. I don't know. Like to me it seems to point that if Joseph Smith was studying the Bible from the ages of 12 to 15, he would be aware of this fact, but maybe he wasn't because like you said, Nemo, maybe he would have tried harder to change those words to make it seem like he was more authentic of a translator. But I don't know. That's just something I found. Um there's another So just let's go back to Fair Mormon's original response. uh the the one before the royal scousin slide. Oh, the one before. Um is is there anything else we want to say just about this this fair Mormon argument? So basically the point one that Joseph Smith did not know about the italics. That's a dead point because that doesn't excuse him from plagiarizing, right? I don't know why they would say that. And in fact, it it probably explains why he did something so dumb that if he Yeah. Like you said, Nemo, if he had known about the italics issue, he probably would have uh changed them or obscured them. Is that right? Yeah. Because what would make it seem more authentic is if you've got the sermon on the mount, what Joseph Smith seemed to think, and I I I can't speak for him, but what this seems to point to is that Joseph Smith thinks that the King James Bible Bible is the word of God in the way that some King James version only people believe it now. And so that having the King James version Bible in the Book of Mormon would make the Book of Mormon more authentic because the revealed word of God is in his scripture too. And that's what's going to make everyone think that his script is authentic because it contains the Sermon on the Mount as found in the version of the Bible that everyone's reading because that's the revealed word of God. Whereas in actual fact, what would make it seem more authentic is if you have the sermon in the mount there, sure, but then you have it in slightly different language because it's being reported on by slightly different people in a different hemisphere of the world. And so then you, oh yeah, Christ visited and he did what he always does. He gives a sermon on the mount. He teaches the things that he would have taught, but the people reporting on it report on it in a different way, in a slightly different language because they're different people. That would have made it more authentic. Yeah. Okay. What about the argument just just as clear of each very quickly? So what about the argument that the presence of italics from the King James version are not plagiarism? What are they saying? It could just be coincidence. Um I don't they go through in in more in depth I think if I remember when I was reading this but like it doesn't make sense to me either cuz like but they are present. So how are you saying it's not plagiarism because things can be just be coincidence? It it doesn't mean he stole it. It just means God could have provided it. In other words, Joseph did it. God did it, not Joseph. Maybe you could make that argument that God gave Joseph Smith the exact words of 17th century Oxford clergymen. You can make that argument if you want, but that's the argument you're going to have to make. Otherwise, Joseph Smith took the work of those clergymen, including the italics that they chose because they chose them. They thought they were most appropriate and he used them himself. And that is plagiarism. Using someone else's work as your own is textbook plagiarism. This we Oh, go ahead, Julie. I was going to say if he did that, the number three doesn't make sense either. The presence of italics does not mean that Joseph Smith did not translate. But if he's using like a weird logic seminar in college, you know what I mean? They're just basically going through formal logic exercise. Why, Julia? Why is that weird? Well, because like if it if the if the Oxford um scholars from 1604611 are present in the Book of Mormon or present Yeah. then how does that not mean he didn't translate? Like h how did he translate? Because like you said, Nemo, these would be in a different language. They would they wouldn't they were different people. They're different perspectives. Why are we getting those exact words? To me, that means he did not translate. Yeah. But but even if you say, okay, it didn't mean that Jose didn't translate the the the follow on sentences. It just means that the translation that was revealed to him by God is in the exact same language as the men in Oxford chose. And I keep saying the men in Oxford even though it was Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster because Oxford where Malachi was translated. Um, so it is in this case the Oxford clergymen Rainald and Co. All right. The last one is the Oh, were you going to say something, Julie? Oh, I'm just confused by everything like because the sear stone because the the text from the Book of Mormon um as far as like David Whitmer or others Emma um they said that that appeared on the stone word for word and so like he's not really it's not really a translation anyway because he's not looking at the text. He's not like trying to work out in his mind the words that would be appropriate from reformed Egyptians to English. So it's God's word. It's God's inspired word appearing on a rock that Joseph's reading and then literally Martin Harris will read back what he wrote and Joseph will say, "Yep, you got it." And then they'll move on. Like it doesn't leave room for error. Yeah. And that's confusing to me because if it's word for word because Joseph said, "I if they spelled it wrong, if they wrote it down wrong, the words would not change until they fixed that." And so like it's a literal or word for word translation on this. This is where I need to tell the participants of the LDS discussion series what I've said every time. We've covered so much of this in depth in past episodes. So, the best way to consume LDS discussions is to go back to the very beginning and watch them in sequence. We're what 50 or 60 episodes now? We're in the late 50s or early 60s, I think. But I don't think I've met anybody that regrets starting from the beginning and just listening in sequence because we do cover all these topics more in depth today. We're just doing the CES letter slant. Yeah. And one one thing I could do to make it easier if you don't want to watch all the 50 or 60 of them is I can go through and put the specific episodes that pertain to what we're talking about today in the show notes. Yeah. Okay. So, and if you want more details about this that we've just been talking about, I'm going to self-plug. I don't do it very often, but I have just released a video about why the church has to keep using the King James version of the Bible, even though UKORF recently in conference has been quoting from other versions. That's actually quite problematic. He shouldn't be doing it because what we've established here is that God has given Joseph Smith, however you want to view the translations working, he's given Joseph Smith the language of those translators in England in the 17th century. That's the words that he chose to reveal on the stone to Joseph Smith that then had to be written down exactly. So God's clearly giving some pre some preference to the King James version which to point four if you bring the slide up. The problem with that is when it says the presence of italics does not take away from the book of Bman being the most correct book. If any of those italicized choices have later been discovered to be based on a manuscript that was, you know, had been messed with or a manuscript that had had additions that need to be removed and and isn't as true as it could have been, then actually yes, the presence of those italics could very well take away from the book of Morton being the most correct book. If the presence of any of those italics with later translations and further under understanding of Hebrew and and biblical scholarship shows that those italics shouldn't have been added or they should have been phrased differently. Yeah. All right. Well, let's go to their next response uh regarding Royal Scousan. Do you want to tell us who Royal Scousin is, Julia or Nemo? So, Royal to my knowledge, Royal Scousan is a Bible schol or excuse me, a Book of Mormon scholar and he's done the most extensive research on the changes of the Book of Mormon. I read a lot of his stuff when I was an active member of the church. Um, I really admired him. He's he's he's like compared the texts and seen I don't know. I just really like him. I've seen a lot of his speeches. Um, so he's a he like he really gets into the original printers. He gets into the nitty-gritty. Well, yeah. And and he's analyzed just Yeah. all the details from the from the original transcription to the printer's copy to all the subsequent versions. And anyway, so what does what does Fair Mormon say about that? So they say Royal Scousan has determined that of all the differences in the Bible quotations in the Book of Mormon, 23% involve italics. Of all the italics contained in the KJV, 38% are changed in some way in the Book of Mormon. Scousin sees these facts as evidence that Joseph did not know the meaning of the italics since a much larger amount of changes do not involve italics. though other scholars read the same percentages as significant as evidence that Joseph did know the meaning of the italics. So this to me just was interesting because they're like, "Oh, it could mean that he didn't or it could mean that he did." And so it doesn't really answer the question to me. Well, yeah, because if he did or didn't, like if he if he didn't, then he's just making changes and some include the italics and some don't. If he did, he would have made far more changes to the italics if he knew what they meant. Like we said, he would have changed a lot more of them to try and cover the idea that he was just copying these men from Oxford. Um, what about the 23% and the 28 and the 38% uh percentages? They're basically saying those are low percentages. So, you know, your case isn't very compelling, I guess. But, but they also they also say scholars see this, oh, he's 38 of them have changed in some way and 23% are used in general. Like, this means he does he did know about that. So like but also he's um one thought that came to me Nemo as you were speaking is his audience are people who have studied the Bible. So like one one thing that he wants to do is he wants to to I don't know if the right word is convince or to help he wants to stay on the same kind of playing field as them. So so if his Book of Mormon reflects more of the Bible the way that it is they might believe it more rather than so like maybe it's in his best interest to not change everything. That's just a thought that occurred to me is that maybe he's trying to like help. That's what I was kind of saying about him believing the King James version of Bible to be the revealed word of God. Like the the more his Book of Mormon looks like the King James version of the Bible, the more convincing it is to the content. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But all right. Well, let's go ahead and go to the next uh argument from the CES. So far, I don't know if I'm right, but it seems like Jeremy to Fair Mormon or crit, you know, critics of Jeremy Zero. That's my count so far. What do you What do you all think? Do you all agree with that? Well, I mean, I agree with that because I just don't like their answers. I don't think they stand up like and Jeremy Bridge receipts. He's showing the evidence. So, you got to refute the evidence, right? Yeah. And it's not just Go. Oh, sorry. I was going to say it's not just Jeremy. Like I quoted Grant Palmer, like there's other scholars too that are not just Jeremy that have studied more like Grant Palmer is a historian. Like there's other people that or even Scousin to some degree seems to be like suggesting that there are that he did use change the italics or use italics or things like that. So it's not just Jeremy. There's a bunch of other people that have addressed these issues. And what were you going to say? I was going to say Jeremy has a habit of what I call toploading his his chapters in the CS letter. Like his strongest arguments go up top. So, I think as we go through these, we're going to see more room for like, okay, I can see where FEM might be coming from or this or that, but he certainly starts with his his strongest points, and these are some strong points, and I think they definitely merit a good amount of discussion. All right, let's go to the third. Okay, so his third his third question is, why does the Book of Mormon follow the King James version of the Bible, not the J the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible? And so the Book of Mormon, he says, "The Book of Mormon includes mistransated Bible passages that were later changed in Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible. These Book of Mormon verses should match the inspired Joseph Smith translation version instead of the incorrect King James version that Joseph Smith later fixed." And for those who Oh, go ahead, Julie. Oh, no. You You can go. Yeah. So for those who just and and again we have LDS discussions episodes specifically not just on the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible but also noting that the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible uh weirdly reflects recommendations of changes made in that Adam Clark commentary that we know Joseph Smith likely had access to that you Julia discussed earlier in the episode. So basically, as I understand it, that the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible has been debunked as itself being likely uh too close to plagiarism in modern times. But even if we were to grant that the Joseph Smith translation were authentic, in other words, that Joseph Smith took aside the Bible and corrected it and fixed all the inaccuracies and translation errors, at least in the New Testament, then you know, which he did after the Book of Mormon was published, then if Joseph Smith corrected the Bible to the the the correct words and if God directed both the translation of the Book of Mormon and Joseph's correction of the Bible, then we would expect the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible to be word for word the same as the way that the Bible, the Book of Mormon reflects the Bible. Did I get that right, Nemo, or did I did I uh munch that up? Well, I think you state it in your own words to get the the concise version is yeah, if Joseph Smith saw a problem in the King James version of the Bible and saw the need to change it using the Joseph Smith translation, which he often did, then why are the parts of the King James version that appear in the Book of Mormon reflecting the King James version and not the corrections that Joseph Smith made? I.e., if there's a passage from the King James version of the Bible in the Book of Mormon that's been corrected by Joseph Smith, why was it not corrected at the time at which he put it in the Book of Mormon? Right. Yeah. Love it. And then Julio, Jeremy brings receipts. Is that right? Well, this might be one I can't remember if Nemo you brought this one to my attention or or if uh Jeremy talks about this specific one. He might on the mount, isn't it? Uh okay. And basically if viewers want to we haven't we haven't called out the differences and similarities here but if viewers and listeners want to pause on this they can read the differences between the third Nephi version of the sermon on the mount in chapter 13 versus the Matthew 6 version of the sermon on the mount in the King James version versus the Matthew 6 version of the Joseph Smith translation and see that They're substantively different. Is that right? Well, as as they're looking at them, if they just listen to my voice as they look, I'll talk them through it real quick. The middle column is what was written by those translators in Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster. That's the King James version of the Bible is the middle column. Joseph Smith put word for word that middle column into the Book of Mormon. So, he put the words of the King James version of the Bible into the Book of Mormon and printed the Book of Mormon in 1830. Then later on, Joseph Smith goes, "Ah, the King James version of the Bible needs some correcting." One of the areas of the King James version of the Bible that needs correcting happens to be that middle column, Matthew 6:25-27. So, on the right, we see what he then corrected it to. So, he's changed it. But the question is, if Joseph Smith was getting divine inspiration from God that allows him to correct what was wrong with the Bible, why did he not correct it before he put it into the Book of Mormon? That seems like a slam dunk to me. It It feels pretty conclusive. I'm I'm I'm never one to, you know, make outlandish claims, but it feels fairly solid. I've said it enough times now out loud. It feels quite concrete. Yeah. And I've had people tell me that that in and of itself caused them to to lose their faith in the divinity of the Book of Mormon. What's uh what's Fair Mormon's response, Julia? convoluted, I'm sure. Um, so yeah, uh, John, do you want to actually read this one? Yeah. Fair Mormon argues against this being a point of concern by stating, quote, "Joseph had different purposes in mind in his different translations." This is not unique or unusual in scripture, even the Bible. Hence, neither the Book of Mormon nor the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible can be discounted because of seeming discrepancies with each other or with the King James version of the Bible. Just right off, what they seem to be saying is is God wants people to have one understanding when they, you know, of Jesus's sermon on the mount when they read the the King James version of the Bible or the Book of Mormon. But then when they when they read the Joseph Smith translation, God wants them to have a different understanding when they read the Joseph Smith translation. Is that the argument there? Nemo, you're muted. I think I was laughing too hard. I had to mute myself. I think the argument seems to be Joseph Smith had different purposes in mind for the different translations, but they don't. Maybe they go on to say what those were, but my initial thought is right, okay, what were they? Because what purpose could his translation the Bible have other than his self-stated purpose which is to correct the things in it which aren't correct? And I didn't even allow I didn't I haven't even read the second paragraph yet because it's such a dumb argument just logically right. Yeah. It's like God God is not an author of confusion. He's not going to want to have different versions of the same text depending on people's unique situations. Almost like he God's thinking when people read the Bible or the Book of Mormon, they're going to have a certain set of needs. But I can predict that when they read the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, all of the people that read that version are going to have be having different needs. And so I'm going to reward it for the needs of those people. It's just ridiculous. Julia, you went on a mission, right? You said I did. Yeah. Yeah. John, you served a mission. Either of you do the object lesson lesson with the two nails and the piece of paper. I don't remember. So, so the Bible is the first nail. Oh, yeah. And the piece of paper is God's doctrine. And with the first nail, the doctrine can be turned and twisted and all those different ways. You put the second nail in and God's doctrine becomes clear. The Book of Mormon is there to clarify God's doctrine as found in the Bible. So when parts of the doctrine of the Bible are found in the Book of Mormon and then are corrected, how is the Book of Mormon helping clarify the Bible? The Book of Mormon isn't. It's the Joseph Smith translation that later then clarifies it. So it's having to clarify both the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Well, Pharaoh would say that that the Joseph Smith translation is just a third nail that makes it even more solid. Yeah, but why wasn't that just added in at the point at which God was revealing word for word? Cuz three nails is better than two, Nemo. That's a very American attitude of you, John. Bigger is better. Okay. More, more is more, more, more. Anyway, I'll read really quickly Fair Mormon's uh explanation. Joseph Smith had different purposes in mind. And by the way, it's not Joseph Smith, it's God, right? Is it Joseph Smith? Is this translated by Joseph Smith or by the gift of power of God? If it's the gift of power of God, it's not Joseph Smith making the changes. It's God. Am I wrong? Yeah. You wouldn't say the Book of Mormon was published to bring about Joseph Smith's purpose. You would say it's published to bring about God's purpose, right? Yeah. So, I think that discounts Fair Mormon's response at at the top. But anyway, Joseph Smith had different purposes in mind when And by the way, who is Fair Mormon to tell us what Joseph Smith's purposes are or aren't? How do they know? Right? Did Joseph Smith ever write down why he, you know, used certain words in the Book of Mormon? Have you not seen the letter, John, that says, "Dear, have you not seen the letter in Joseph Smith's own hand that says, "Dear Scott Gordon, uh, I, my purpose in writing this is," Yeah. Anyway, Joseph Smith had different purposes in mind when bringing forth the Book of Mormon. and the Jose Smith translation. His purpose of bringing forth the Book of Mormon was to witness the reality that Jesus is the Christ, the eternal God, manifesting himself on all nations. Departing from the King James version, i.e. the translation familiar to those who would become the Book of Mormon's first readers would have been a stumbling block in achieving the purpose. Why are you laughing, Julia? Wait, didn't we just talk about this where they said like Joseph's audience was Isn't that kind of what they're saying? I I to change it would be a stumbling block to those to those first readers to the Book of Mormon because they're all like Methodists or or Presbyterian or people who are really invested in the Bible. Like anyway, just think that was really funny that they're anyway. I think he's told the Book of Mormon was written for our day. Yeah. Right. Not the dudes 200 years ago, but for our day 1829. But I mean they're making the point that I made, right? That the King James version is familiar to the people at the time and that would make it seem more authentic. That's the literal point they're making is well if he'd not put the exact words of the King James Bible in it would have seemed less authentic to people not understanding fair Mormon as we've explained that actually if you understand the Bible it would have been more authentic to have it be different. Yeah. All right. I'll just go and finish. Uh uh departing from the King James version i.e. a translation familiar to those who would become the Book of Mormon's first readers would have been a stumbling block in achieving its purpose. On the other hand, Joseph's later purpose, according to Scott Gordon, in bringing forth the Joseph Smith translation, is largely understood to have been one of redaction or inspired commentary or plagiarism of the Adam Clark commentary, better said, um to resolve confusion regarding biblical interpretation. Hence the different wording and in some cases even content. All right. Well, what grade do y'all give uh Fair Mormons justification? Oh, like I I don't give it a grade. I'm not grading it. I'm not wasting my time grading it. It's just I'm not normally this annoyed by Fair Mormon. I'm usually quite calm about this stuff, but this is just so poor on their part to try and say that, oh, well, it the Joseph Smith translation was the bit that was meant to, you know, correct poor understanding of biblical doctrine when I was certainly taught, as I explained with that object lesson, and you will have taught people, the Book of Mormon was the thing. We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. We believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. That's the article of faith. But it seems then the Book of Mormon was also not translated correctly because parts of it that draw from the King James version had to be corrected by Joseph Smith later. Oh yeah. So at worst this means that the Book of Mormon wasn't translated correctly because the words No, it means that God has different translations for different purposes at different times. Nemo, that's what it means. Is that the same way that God approved selections volumes of the Book of Mormon uh so that some people didn't have to learn about the racist parts of the Book of Mormon in their native language? Exactly. Or the or the modalist/trinitarian version of God. Yeah. God didn't want to go full, you know, to go full God and Jesus are separate beings when the Book of Mormon was originally released because that would have been too hard on the Protestants of the day. He needed that milk of a trinitarian/modalist. Yeah. God Jesus in 1830, but then by 1835 or 1838, you know, the Protestants had progressed enough such that they were ready for the meat of the Book of Mormon being changed to say that God and Jesus were separate beings, right? Because if you're going to bring about a radical restorationist doctrine and claim to restore Christ to church, you've got to do it in baby. It's that peace bill. It's got to be before me, you know, not before me. Yeah. Well, I mean, regardless of the fact that this is all taking place amongst massive religious revival and everyone is up for finding out a new church and finding out a new way to be, you you can't take them too far from their Methodist roots. That's why you got to have King Benjamin giving a Methodist sermon halfway through the book just so it's familiar. Is that about right? Not to mention, sorry. Baptizing, not to mention Nephites baptizing in the name of Jesus before Jesus had been born. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We've also got that just for and it's all for familiarity. It's not anacronistic. It's for familiarity for the reader. Yeah. And this is kind of going well I just want to add kind of going on the same strain Nemo that little pamphlet you held up by Hugh Nibi. Um he in there he says if Joseph Smith were to I think in some respect he says if Joseph were to stand up in general commerce today everything would be familiar to him. Like nothing has changed since his day. But I'm pretty sure like if the church was the way that it is now back in 1830, I don't think that people would have joined the church or to some degree because it's it's too different because like you said, baby steps from 1830 to 2025. Like I think that's it's too different to me like because they keep changing things. But yeah, anyway, I can I can find that reference later. Okay, so that's good. So one of you got a couple other slides. Yeah. So one thing that I wanted to add is just to remind the viewers of how the Book of Mormon came to be. And so this is a 2016 seminar for new mission presidents given by Russell Nelson. So the current president of the church and he says he just reminds us David Whmer wrote Joseph Smith would put the sear stone into a hat and put his face in the hat drawing it closely on his face to exclude the light and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear and on that appeared the writing one character at a time would appear and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowry who was his principal scribe and when it was written down and repeated to brother Joseph to see if it was correct then it would disappear and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God and not by the p any power of man that was from David Whitmer. And so like fair Mormons were saying that Joseph Smith had different purposes in mind for the translation. That doesn't make any sense to me or how do I make sense of that? Because the Book of Mormon is is he's saying it's a word for word. It's exactly it wouldn't change until they got it right. I don't I don't see how Joseph is getting into the how is Joseph getting into the text if that's how the translation happened. Cuz God chose to give him incorrect passages from the King James version of the Bible to put into the Book of Mormon that he knew Joseph would then later go on and correct. That's the narrative you have to believe. And and people will say, "Oh, why are you going to David Whitmer? Why are you going to, you know, a message to all believers in Christ? I think that's the pamphlet that's from, right? Um why why are you doing that when there's other accounts, etc." Ultimately, it doesn't matter what we choose to do. That is what the current prophet of the Mormon church has taught. Right? And and we know that according to Ezra Tapbenson, a living prophet is more important than a dead prophet. Um and he is the current living prophet of the church. So he that's what he's teaching. That should be enough for any member to go, "Yeah, that's how it happened." Yeah. Okay. The man who speaks for God backs David Whitmer on this is, I guess, is what I'm getting out there. So, argue with him if you want, but yeah. And Nemo, if you wonder why I cut to you, it's cuz I caught you eating a snack. So, can you show us what you're eating? Is it a Jimmy Dodger? Is it Yeah, sure. Snack time with Nemo. We'll now take a short break. Uh, it is Texas barbecue flavored. And just to be clear, are are we officially endorsed by Pringles or is that We are not. That that is just what I choose to eat. I mean, we do these recordings at dinner time for like all 60 episodes of this have always been recorded when I should be eating, which is why we have the infamous Dorito gate. Uh, and we now have my Pringles Pringles Gate. Yeah. Okay, Julia, thank you for that break, Nemo. Okay. So, Julia, what these other slides are kind of under.3. Are they still following the King James point or are they uh kind of the Joseph translation point or are they other points? There there just other points. So, okay. Go and read them off. Yeah. Yeah. So, to me, I really I'm a big fan of Grant Grant Palmer in his book, An Insiders View of Mormon Origins. I think everyone should read it. But in there, he talks about So, this is just my other Bible problems. And in there, I don't know if we want to go through all these things. I think they're fascinating. He talks about the similarities. So he says he lists Grant Palmer lists 20 similarities in chronological order between Nephi and Moses. And so I'll just kind of go through them briefly, which I think is fascinating because if Joseph Smith had a Bible in front of him, which it seems like he did because he's getting the exact words from the the italicized words or the exact phrases used. I think he absolutely had a book a book a Bible in front of him. Oh, and we know he was familiar with it, right? He studied it anyway. Yes. And I and I do know that Emma I will say that Emma did say that he didn't have any book or script with him. she wouldn't have been able to keep that from him. But I don't know if she would have discounted or been like, "Oh, the Bible doesn't count because like if Joseph I don't know. To me that makes more sense. It makes sense to have a Bible in the room for inspiration for like just comparing just to have it in there." And it wouldn't it wouldn't have caused me concern if I was Emma in that moment. But anyway, but I do understand that people say that he didn't have a book with him. But so going back to the list, Graham Palmer with Nephi and Moses in the exact chronological order. They both know the Egyptian language. They live in luxury and they leave it behind because their lives are threatened. They each justifiably kill a man before becoming a prophet. They both receive through a vision a warning to escape into the wilderness. God promises them that they will lead their people to the promised land. They camp at the Red Sea. They are provided divine means to lead them a a pillar of cloud or a Leahona. At the Red Sea, the people lose their faith and begin to murmur. While camped at the Red Sea, God arranges to have an appoint uh appointed slain. Opponent slain. Yeah. Pharaoh's horsemen and then Laban. Um the names of the place are Shure or Shaer which are very similar. They move several times before camping in the most fertile parts. Both groups of people Israelites and Nephites murmur about hunger. Directions from a cloud or Leona provide food, mana or wild beasts. Accusations erupt against the leader for bringing them into the wilderness. They yearn to return home. They travel many days. Key people die. You have Ishmael dies or Miriam dies which leads to more complaining. Moses and Nephi are accused of being a prince or ruler over them. The leader's lives are threatened. God speaks to his people. Starvation is avoided. Despite many miracles, the people are unrepentant because of transgressions of the people. The people wander in the wilderness. Moses and Nephi ascend the mount to speak to God. The people rebel by dancing and singing and they forget the Lord. God is displeased, threatens destruction. They eventually repent and reach the promised land. So like to me, that's pretty compelling. Basically, when when Joseph Smith was trying to come up with a core narrative to begin the Book of Mormon, especially after the 116 pages have been lost, it's almost like he just swapped out some of the names and locations, but basically just did a a remix of of the story of Moses in the Exodus, Mormon Book of Exodus. Yeah. Interesting. That's a that's actually quite compelling. He wouldn't have needed a copy of the Bible. This is kind of what I was getting at before. He wouldn't have needed a copy of the Bible in the room with him to do that because he's if you know the story, which I think most people that even aren't that familiar with the Bible know a lot about the story of Moses. It's one of the stories. So, he wouldn't he he would to know that sort of archetypal story or that sort of story of a people wandering in the wilderness. Yeah. Wouldn't have even needed the book in the room with them. So, yeah. I So, there's a final quote that if I can read that. So this is grand palmer. He says it is remarkable that many of the Nephite ideas and events occur at the same point in the chronology and at the same at it similar places as in the Israelite wilderness experience. These 20 shared motifs suggest dependency on the Bible Exodus story. So I just think that's I just really like that whole list. It's very compelling to me. And like you said, Nemo, he doesn't even have to have the Bible in the room. If he's been studying it from 12 to 15, like he would have just known the story. And like even after seeing the ten commandments like several times growing up I could probably say these things too. Anyway, but yeah, I just think that's a really interesting thing to me. Now the CES letter doesn't mention that Grant Palmer's argument, right? No, it doesn't. I just added that because it's it was fascinating to me. Julia, maybe you need to write your own CES letter. CES letter 2. But also another thing that I'll add another thing that I'll add that Grant Palmer talks about is is the story of Lazarus and then King Lemoni. He says there's exact language that is only used with Lazarus that is also used exactly with King Lemon. So to me, it shows a dependency for those two stories on the same text. So anyway, but Grant Palmer, his book is amazing. Everyone should go read it. Okay, maybe we'll do an LDS discussion series on his book. Yeah, his book is so good. I've still not read it. I'd be up for that. Oh yeah, you should read it. Okay, so I think it's 300 Jerby and CES letter. Uh, no valid critiques so far against three of Jose of of Jeremy's main points uh against the Book of Mormon. So it's three Jeremy winning. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So the next one number four is why does the DNA of the Native Americans not support the Book of Mormon? And then DNA analysis has concluded that Native American Indians do not originate from the Middle East or from Israelite but rather from Asia or from Israelites but rather Asia. Why did the church change the following section of the introduction page in the 2006 edition of the Book of Mormon shortly after the DNA results were released? So, the original text was the Lammonites uh the Lammonites and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians. That was later changed in 2006 to say the Lammonites and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians. And do is it our understanding that the title page of the Book of Mormon was translated by the Yuram Dum and the the Sears stone by the gift of power of God. That wasn't just something added. So like a publication matter, right? So there's two different things. There's the title page and the introduction. The introduction is not a literal translation purported literal translation and the title page is. So this is not um something that was would have been in the gold plates. Okay. So yeah. And then the book that Nemo changed it and they changed it pretty soon after uh the DNA evidence came out and Nemo tell us what you're showing us. So this is a book by my friend Simon Sutherton which is called Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans DNA and the Mormon Church. This book got him excommunicated. uh and it's a book that essentially lays out the argument through the DNA that the the Native Americans are not uh genetically related to folks from the Middle East. And just to give credit where credit is due, it was actually Thomas Murphy, uh, an anthropologist in the state of Washington that first came out with these DNA findings while I was working at Microsoft actually. And he was threatened with excommunication, literally for just revealing the science as an academic. And then, uh, word was spread that his pending excommunication was going to happen. the news media showed up at the chapel where he was going to be excommunicated and then the church called off the disciplinary council because I think they didn't want to bring news media attention to the fact that the Book of Mormon had been debunked by DNA evidence. So not not just thank you to Simon Sutherton whose book was heavily influential to me when I was questioning these things but also to to Dr. Thomas Murphy. We've had both Thomas Murphy and Simon on Mormon stories multiple times. So we can include links to those as well. And yeah, for sure. All right, Julia, what does the Gospel Topics essay say? Yeah. So, I didn't have a fair Mormon response because there isn't one. And the Gospel Topics essay uh admits to this. Um John, do you want to read this one? Gospel Topics essay, Book of Mormon and DNA Studies. So, the church published this essay. Quote, "The evidence assembled to date suggests that the majority of Native Americans carry largely Asian DNA. Scientists theorized that in an era that predated Book of Mormon accounts, a relatively small group of people migrated from Northeast Asia to the Americas by way of a land bridge that connected Siberia to Alaska. I'll say, otherwise known as the Bearing Strait. These people, scientists say, spread rapidly to fill North and South America and were likely the primary ancestors of modern American Indians. So there we have the Mormon church in 20 I don't know 15ish acknowledging the DNA problem. So Jeremy wins point number four. And when you say the church I think is it Ugo Perez I think is the Italian geneticist that the church works with. I think he a lot into that essay. But if the church removes his name and then publishes it on their website and in their LDS tools app it's the church giving their their emperor. Yeah. My my point is they get these Pergo. Yeah. Ugo Pereago, I think. Yeah. They get they get him to write this for them and then they publish it. It's not written by the First Presidency. It's put out. It's official by the church. But my point is they kind of hide behind these authors who you have to kind of dig and and find who they are. But he's a and they hide the essays themselves because most bishops that I've interviewed, most former bishops, actually I should say current or former bishops that I've interviewed on Mormon stories did not know about the gospel topics essays while they were serving as bishops. And that includes people who just this year or last year were serving as bishops. So the church has done a masterful job of making these essays available but keeping their availability a complete secret from even their their bishops and state presidents which is pretty masterful if you ask me. Um Julia, did you want to talk about this Desert News article that came out in 2007? Actually Nemo, do do you mind reading that because I think it kind of segus into your clip that we're going to show. Cool. So uh the headline is debate renewed with change in Book of Mormon introduction. The change was made in the second edition published by Double Day, a hardcover book that eliminates the footnotes Latterday Saints see in their church published books. The Double Day edition is designed to be reader friendly for non-Latterday saints who are encountering the book for the first time. Last year's change takes into account details of Book of Mormon demography which are not known. According to church spokesman Mark Tuttle, the change will be included in the next edition of the Book of Mormon printed by the church. Thank you. And that was published in November 8th of 2007 when this Desert News article was published. So what did that just say? What did that tell us? Nemo, can you summarize? So the church has said, "Yes, we've made a change to the introduction of the Book of Mormon uh or the title page. We've made a change to that that statement about who the ances who the progeny of the Native Americans are um or the the Lamonites are rather. We've made a change to that because we do not know things about Book of Mormon demography which they used to claim to know but now they're saying we don't know because you know the evidence has changed which is fair enough. Prophet seers of revelators for 200 years knew exactly who the Lamemonites were. They were all the all the Native Americans in Central and North America and the Pacific Islanders and they were called Lamemonites for two centuries basically. They were running They were running around calling New Zealanders Heggoth's people. They were, you know what I mean? Who's a character from the Book of Mormon? Yeah. Who says? So, all of a sudden, we develop amnesia about, you know, who the Lammonites were. Okay. What's this video about? So, Nemo, this is yours. I think this is kind of what you called a newer research, which I think is very interesting from your channel. Yep. Yeah. So, let's just play this one. If you'll put it up on the screen, John. Yeah. There we go. So, do you remember when I told you that the Mormon church changed the introduction of the Book of Mormon in 2006 so that the phrase they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians now reads they are among the ancestors of the American Indians when it comes to the Lamemonites. Many have postulated that this was done in response to DNA evidence that made the original position untenable. But I've recently learned that they haven't made this change consistently in every language. It all started when a German individual reached out to say the copy of the Book of Mormon they were given by the missionaries printed in 2023 contained the phrase Jesus help for Indiana English the word helped for would be best translated as principal or main ancestors and it's the same for the German copy of the Book of Mormon that's in PDF form on the church's website that one was printed in June 2011 5 years after the narrative changed so the claim that the Lamemonites were the principal ancestors of the Native Americans which the church abandoned in 2006 in English remains in multiple places in German 17 years later in 2023 prints which are being given to people 19 years after the narrative was first altered in English. But here's it gets really odd. On the church's website in the online gospel library, the phrasing has been changed to a phrase which translates as among the ancestors. So why would the church have the new narrative on one part of the website but continues to supply in print and PDF form the old narrative? And perhaps more significantly, is this a one-off or could this be the case in other languages? Let me know in the comments. Okay. Did you Yeah. What was Sorry. I thought that was really interesting. Yeah. I mean, I had other people reach out to me and say that in some other languages, I couldn't recall them off the top of my head. It's the same. They haven't changed it. And it's bizarre to me that the church wouldn't change this consistently. It's not like they don't have the means to do it. It's And it's not like, oh, that was an old copy of the book. Like I said, that book was printed in 2023. Like, it came off the printing press in 2023, 17 years after the change was made in English. Like, that's just wild. What could possibly cause the church to take 17 years to change it when we know they can change it in German because they've changed it in the Gospel Library app? Maybe people in Germany aren't complaining about that being an issue. Like I wonder why they didn't change that because they have the funding for it. They have they have the means to change it like you said, but why not change it? Do they not view it as an important thing? because I would argue it's a very significant claim claiming the you know the ancestral relationship between laymanites and native Americans. It's a huge part of the claim of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Like who you think those people are matters. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how I thought that was just interesting that that's what's going on there. So, in English, we had that change in 2006, but other people are still I guess what I'm saying is other people, the person that reached out is a potential convert to the church, and they're being given a copy of a book that teaches a narrative about that ancestral relationship that the church doesn't support anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll just add, you know, a couple things. We've we've covered the mounduilder myth on various episodes of Mormon Stories podcast and on LDS discussion series, but what we know is that this idea that number one, we know, you know, I would say, you know, potentially for me the most fatal uh, you know, argument against the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon is simply the narrative that God cursed the wicked Lammonites with dark skin because it suggests that when God doesn't like someone or when God doesn't like something that they're doing, he curses them with dark skin because dark is bad, dark is worse. Dark is should be associated with with uh being evil or wicked or naughty or perverse or adulterous or polygamous or whatever it is. And that's not only super racist and disgusting and wrong. Um, and by the way, it also says in the Book of Mormon that God turned the Lammonites in dark so that the Lamemonites wouldn't be attractive to the Nephites who are white. That suggests that dark-kinned people are less attractive to white-kinned people. And even though racist racism exists, that doesn't mean that white people don't find dark people sexually attractive, even if they are racist against them. So because we know that plenty of slave master, white slave owners, you know, in colonial America had sex with their African slaves, including Thomas Jefferson. So anyway, that narrative of um you know, God cursing wicked people with dark skin is not only super racist, it's not original. So, we know that that decades before, even centuries before Joseph Smith writes that narrative into the Book of Mormon, that that that there was a myth that existed in colonial America that all these, you know, mounds and artifacts, um, you know, that were so impressive and tools and pottery and art, they were actually so impressive, says the mound builder. myth that these dark Native Americans that we found when you know the pilgrims or the explorers came to America, there's no way these dark loathsome Native Americans could have ever created any art or architecture that was worthwhile. So clearly there must have been a white uh you know ancestors to these dark loathsome Native Americans who created these mounds and these civilizations and these buildings and this art because only white people can make art and architecture and sophisticated civilizations. Dark people can't do it. You know, not only, you know, that that perception, that myth, that mound builder myth has been found by Gerald and Sandra Tanner to be in at least 10 different books that were written in the 1820s or before that Joseph Smith would have had access to, including View of the Hebrews, which was a book written by um I think the the the pastor of Oliver Ean Smith, the pastor of Oliver Calry. Um, so, uh, it's just an awful narrative and it's an unoriginal narrative and again, it's another pre-existing narrative that Joseph Smith would have likely just, you know, remixed and in imported into um the the Book of Mormon. So, I just had to to kind of mention that because I think that's but but it's also worse because then for as we mentioned for 200 years Mormon prophets and revelators would tell Native Americans uh lat Latin Americans and Pacific Islanders that they were the descendants of these wicked evil dark-kinned laymanites, which isn't just racist and and incorrect. It's also telling it's erasing entire civilizations of people. It's erasing their actual ancestry which would have been asatic in origin. It's erasing their ancestry and telling them that they're the descendants of these fictitious evil, you know, characters that are as real as hobbits or elves or dwarfs that Joseph Smith wrote into the Book of Mormon. Sorry, I had to go on that diet track. No, that's good. And I just wanted to add to not just the Tanners, but um Dan Bogle has a book called Indian Origins in the Book of Mormon, which also is really good, and he makes a lot of the um same similarities of the the mound builders and things like that that were prevalent in Joseph Smith's time in the 1800s. So, just there's also a book called The Mound Builder Myth that touches on this as well. Yeah. So, yeah. And just so y'all aren't worried, uh, Nemo and Julia, we're going to cover through five in today's episode, and we're going to we're going to split off this um this particular presentation into two parts. Sure. And we're going to cover 6 through 11 in in the next episode. So, y'all sounds great. Be worried about time if that's okay. Sure. Yeah. Nemo and Julie, anything else you want to make about point number four? Well, now we're cutting it in half. Let me uh I've got another three-hour saliloquy that we can now that we have time. Uh no, I think I think that explains it pretty well, John. To be honest, I I think there's not much more to be said here. The DNA evidence is pretty robust, I think. Um and the church, you know, has had to shift as they often do. Um, and the reason there's no fair Mormon response for it is because the responses to this kind of thing are so niche that they revolve generally around things like, "Oh, well, we don't know exactly what DNA we're looking for, and there's like DNA uh sort of dissolution through time." There's other arguments about there's this idea bottlenecking, there's bottlenecking, there's genetic drift. There's the weird idea that there was actually like a civilization of people already on the American continent and that these uh people just joined in. Like the Nephi just turned up and joined in and assimilated and so their DNA got lost. I mean that's just completely ignoring what the Book of Mormon teaches about it being a land preserved for them. Yeah. But you know we can just selectively ignore what the Book of Mormon teaches when we're trying to defend something, can't we? That's and also the Book of Mormon says that the the land to the north and to the central and the south were filled with people. It doesn't mean some little small pblo in Latin America. The the Book of Mora makes it it clear. It's it's North, Central, and South America. And by the way, the Hill Kamura that Joseph Smith found the plates in that that Moroni allegedly buried the plates in is in upstate New York, not some teeny little Mesoamerican hill. Yeah. Well, unless you come up with the two hill camora theory, which is ridiculous and goes against what the footnotes of the Book of Mormon used to say up until the early 1900s. Like it was in the footnotes of the Book of Mormon that the land like the great water was Lake Ontario and like this is the hill where just Yeah. We're about to talk about that. Do you want to just go ahead and talk about that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so we just jump to the slides about question five. Let's do it. Yeah. So, so Jeremy, the fifth question that he asked about the Book of Mormon is why are there anacronisms in the Book of Mormon? And horses, he says horses, cattle, oxmen, sheep, swine, goats, elephants, wheels, chariots, wheat, silk, steel, and iron did not exist in pre-Colombia America during the Book of Mormon times. Why are these things mentioned in the Book of Mormon as being made available in the Americas between 2,200 BC to 421 AD? Because of the Book of Ether. So that is why he's dating that so far back. He says unofficial apologists claim victories in some of these items, but closer inspection reveals significant problems. It has been documented that apologists have man has have manipulated wording so that steel is not steel. Sheep become never domesticated big horn sheep, horses become tapers, etc. And if it's okay, if it's okay, Julie, I'm just gonna say for sure one of the top five most important episodes I've ever done on Mormon Stories is with the Yale Mesoamerican anthropologist, Dr. Michael Co. And I did two rounds of interviews with him. He's the world expert like Robert Riddner was the world expert in in you know um Egyptology. Michael Co was the world's expert in Central America, Meso America during the time of uh the Book of Mormon. And you know I go through this list with him in my interview and we need to basically just re-release um that Michael Co interview on YouTube because so many people haven't heard it. But I basically say during the time frame of the Book of Mormon, Dr. Michael Co, were there horses in the Americas? And he'd say, "No." And then I'd say, "Were there cattle?" And he'd say, "No." "Were there oxen?" "No." "Sheep?" "No." "Swine, no." "Gats?" "No." "Ephants?" "No." "Wheals?" "No." "Hi, no." He would say, "We okay, there might have been toys with wheels, but no wheels big enough to actually fit onto carts." Were there chariots? No. Wheat? No. Silk? No. Steel? No. Iron? No. and he basically just completely validates this list. And then you know what you'll then see is fair Mormon apologists or uh farms apologists or Maxwell Institute apologists try and just harvest from uh you know scholarship possible exceptions but overall just all the all the food all the animals all the technologies that Joseph Smith had access to in the 1820s 20s somehow miraculously appear um in the Book of Mormon as if they were around in 600 BC or a th000 BC or 2,000 BC in ways that are ridiculous. But also, Michael Co points out that there's all sorts of food and animals and technologies that Native Americans did have, right? uh like tomatoes, like corn, like chocolate, like tapers, uh like uh uh you know, jaguars. There are all sorts of animals and food and technologies that should be in the Book of Mormon that are not in the Book of Mormon. And for all those reasons, even the Mormon church today in 2025, even Richard Bushman, even Terrell Given, they're all acknowledging that the Book of Mormon is a 19th century document. It is not an ancient document. It's just not. Yeah. I I think that's a really interesting half of the argument is the the things that should be in the Book of Mormon that aren't. I think that's that's often overlooked, I think. So yeah, for sure. And on the next slide, John, I just have uh other episodes that that cover these anacronisms as well. You have historian Shannon Caldwell Montes who talks about these in anacronisms. And these are just a couple of her episodes. I think she's been on more times than just these two. And basically her point was that the church historian BH Roberts, you know, who was into science, right? He discovered all this stuff in the 19 1900s, 1910s, and became so alarmed that he held a secret Mormon meeting in 1922, called all literally all the First Presidency, the Quorum of the 12, and all the general authorities together in Salt Lake City and named off all these problems with the linguistics of the Book of Mormon, with the geography of the Book of Mormon, with the archaeology of the Book of Mormon, and put them all on notice. as early as 1922 that there were significant reasons to doubt the historicity of the Book of Mormon. And that's just proven. Check out uh Shannon Caldwell Montes's Secret Mormon meetings of 1922 along with uh the rise and fall of LDS church historian and general authority BH Roberts. And there's even an episode called Did Did BH Roberts lose his testimony and the historicity of the Book of Mormon? Those are essential Mormon stories episodes. Go ahead, Julia. Yeah. No, that's great. Um, so actually this next slide is about what Nemo was saying is how some of the footnotes have specifically pointed to very um specific locations. Nemo, do you want to read this one? Yeah, sure. Um, for Ether 152, it states, "There had been slain two millions of mighty men and their wives and their children on the hill." The footnote reads, "Including wives and children, the numbers very probably must have been from 10 to 15 millions." For ether 158, for the waters of Ripley Anankham, the footnote reads, "Supposed to be Lake Ontario, supposed to be Lake Ontario." These footnotes were in the both the 1879 and the 1911 Chicago editions of the Book of Mormon. Other footnotes of the 1879 edition are Mormon 229, where the land northward is North America and the land southward is South America. So this like hemispheric model that people have started coming up with to try and get more archaeological hits to say like, oh well there were concrete buildings because we found some in a place where until the early 1900s the Book of Mormon just wasn't placed at all. The narrow neck of land was never, you know, Panama. The narrow neck of land was somewhere in North America between a couple of big lakes until we realized that you needed to try and expand or the church realized they needed to try and expand the places in which they could get archaeological hits to try and bolster the history of the Book of Mormon in some way because the place they were looking particularly the Hilora is a clean hill. We'll get to that. That's also discussed. Yeah. So am I reading this correctly, Julian Nemo? That basically prophets, Mormon prophet seers and revelators in the 19th century basically said when they say Hilloras in Joseph Smith's Hill Kamura in upstate New York, that's what we mean. That's what the Book of Mormon means. When it says Hilamora, that when it talks about the waters of Ripley, they mean Lake Ontario. That's what the Book of Mormon text itself said as approved by 19th century Mormon prophets, Zers, and Revelators. That that um and that also that when they talked about the land northward in the Book of Mormon, they meant North America and southward was South America. The prophet, Sears, and Revelators approved these interpretations of the lands and ge geographical features in the Book of Mormon. Is that right? Oh, you're muted. Oh, sorry. I was probably eating. Men who speak for God did indeed say that. Yes. Okay. And I will add like in the journal of discourses, you have Parley P. Pratt, you have Orson Pratt, I think there's a bunch of other people, even the prophets Brigham Y Young and everybody, they they even specifically point to very specific locations like these footnotes. So they so these are prophets who speak to God and they're saying that of where the specific locations of the Book of Mormon took place and then those have changed because they can't they don't hold up. Yeah. Not just to be pedantic. Not just to God, Julia, for God. Yes. Like there's a big big claim. Okay. I wanted to add to So Nemo, when we were talking about these slides, you said you wanted to add these parts in here even though this topic is anacronisms. Can you help me link again um why I bring these footnotes in for the topic of anacronisms? Um because it's the way in which they've had to try and expand the the place in which this occurred to try and get hits. So like the cement or the sheep or the sheep and the whatever they're like ah right now we've got you know alpacas or whatever you know that we can now look at whe they were domesticated or that's just it might not be a good example off top of my head but you know like tape tapers as something that could be a replace for horses tape don't didn't exist in North America at all. So you've got to go to South America to find them anyway. So even though they're a really bad apologetic, the only way you can even start to try and fix that anacronism is to expand the geography of the Book of Mormon, which is what these footnotes show us. Yeah. Can I just can I just also note that the biggest for me the biggest anacronism in the Book of Mormon is is, you know, the is Christianity and the King James Bible. Like why in the world, as we've already noted, centuries before Jesus was even born and his name was even known to Jews, are they quoting Jesus, talking about Mary, talking about Jesus's birth, his baptism, and why are there Protestant, literally 19th century Protestant sermons being spoken out of the mouths of Book of Mormon prophets before Jesus was even born. You know, Jews didn't have that. The Jews in the in the Holy Land didn't have Jesus's name. They didn't have Jesus's baptism confirmation. They didn't they didn't have Protestant sermons in in the Holy Land prior to Jesus's birth. So, that's ridiculous, right? Yeah. And I I'll add too, and I don't have the specific um sources, but I can get those. But I'm pretty sure a change that was made during Joseph Smith's lifetime was I think in the book of Jacob where they say that they say Christ's name and then I think he realizes that oh that's that can't be correct. So he changes it I think to the Messiah or something some other thing that's not his name which also again the Book of Mormon translation was was an exact text that the text didn't change or didn't Yeah. It didn't change until it was written down correctly. So things like that don't make sense. So like you said Christianity was existing way before it should have name was known. There's a whole episode people that that's worth looking at where we discuss it with Mike. The fact that they at one point know well yeah they know exactly when Christ is going to be born and then all of a sudden they just don't anymore, right? Because of the way the Book of Mormon was written starting at Mosiah and uh moving through and then coming back around at the beginning because of the lost pages. Yeah. Also, tell me if I'm wrong and again we're repeating things we've mentioned on Mormon stories before. The idea of books uh in and of itself is anacronistic because 600 BC books didn't exist. There were no such thing as books. There were no such thing as bindings and there were no such thing as plates that were assembled into books and then into a larger book and then you know compiled with rings you know holes in the plates and rings binding the plates. That's a technology that didn't exist until the printing press. It was scrolls. So, just this idea of book uh uh the golden plates compiled into a book, the Book of Mormon itself um as a technology, books didn't exist 600 BC. Am I wrong? No. And you you your interview with David Bakavoy, I think you ask him those specific questions and he answers you. He's a Bible historian, Bible scholar, historian. Um, so th so to know more about that, I would recommend going to see his I think you guys re re-released them, right? So those should be pretty pretty recent, but I'll put those in the show notes, too. At the at best there were scrolls and even the scrolls weren't compiled into books. It was just a scroll and a scroll and then a bunch of scrolls in a thing. But the fact that it's called the Book of Mormon and then it was compiled into plates as if there were different books within the larger book, all anacronistic. Also thought that just came to me. The holy text of of Judaism, the Torah is still a scroll today traditionally, right? The Torah will be written out that you know these these decorative versions that you'll read from at bar mitzvah and such are big scrolls. If these are ancient Jews, why did they not bring that tradition of keeping their holy writings on scrolls with them? Why have they trans? Why were there plates that brass plates that they had to go get from Laban in Jerusalem when all of these holy texts in Jerusalem at that time would have been on scrolls. And again, there were no brass plates. There were no brass plates 600 BC. You know, the Bible wasn't wasn't read or consumed or shared that way 600 BC. And then we're not even mentioning, of course, dudero Isaiah, which is parts of Isaiah that were written after Lehi and his family would have left Jerusalem that somehow magically appear in the Book of Mormon. That's also anacronistic. And we've we've got LDS discussion episodes that cover Judah or Isaiah as well. So, there's just a gazillion anacronisms in in the Book of Mormon. Um, what what's the next slide, Julia? Okay. So, this is a this is a um one of the videos released by Scripture Central. This is Jasmine. I can't don't know her last name. Rapley Rap. Yeah. I apologize to her. I don't I don't know how to say it. So, this is So, I the title of this clip that I've titled it is how apologists handle anacronisms. So, I want to just play the clip and then I want to talk about like how what things she does as a workaround um for for making this. Okay. These and this the topic is specifically horses. All right. So, bad apologetics incoming. For a long time, critics of the Book of Mormon have pointed out that a major flaw is how the Book of Mormon mentions horses. Even though horses were extinct in Book of Mormon Times and didn't get reintroduced into the Americas until Columbus. Well, some brand new research published this week in the Texas Journal of Science challenges that assumption because a team of researchers in Mexico discovered horse bones that date to Book of Mormon times. These horse remains were excavated from a site near Sedra San Louis Bossi in Mexico. And to figure out when these horse bones dated to, the researchers obtained radiocarbon dates at each archaeological layer or strata from charcoal and other organic material close to the horse. And now you've got to see just how perfectly these dates line up with the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon mentions horses only a handful of times. And we have radiocarbon dates that may attest to horses in all of these periods. Two of the radiocarbon dates found near the horse remains came from the mid-second millennium BC, which is about when the Gerodites mentioned horses in Ether chapter 9. Another dates to the sixth or fifth century BC which is close to Nephi's arrival in the promised land when he mentions horses and also to Enuses when he mentions many horses. The final mention of horses in the Book of Mormon comes from the Gadantin siege during the 1st century AD in Third Nephi. And two radiocarbon dates supports the presence of horses during this period as well. Now the type of horse they found is also important because it shows that these bones wouldn't have been Spanish horses that somehow got inserted into earlier archaeological layers. All horse samples that were found after the ice age but before Columbus in the site belong to North American horse species that are now extinct. Ekus mexicanus and ecus convers. The horses the Spanish brought over are the ekus kabayus. Evidence is always tentative but this possibly pushes the extinction of the North American horse way later than many scientists have assumed. And this is consistent with a growing body of evidence that suggests that at least some pockets of horses may have survived for several millennia after the last ice age which parallels well with what we see in the Book of Mormon. To learn more, check out the newest article published by Book of Mormon Central, Noi649, and follow along for more Book of Mormon evidence. Wow. Slam dunk. Slam dunk. Can I immediately take exception to the way that she uses the word assumed? The way that later than many scientists assumed. No, later than many scientists posited or theorized or based off the evidence put forward. Right? Then second point, just real quick, that happened in Mexico. So who cares? because that's not where the Book of Mormon took place according to Joseph Smith and all his contemporaries and according to all the leaders of the church before the early 1900s. Yeah. So, who cares? You can find horsebones in Mexico all day long all you want because again, unless we allow the church to widen the goalpost by changing the geography of where the Book of Mormon happened, if we're going to believe Joseph Smith and all his contemporaries, then horsebones in Mexico don't do anything for the history of the Book of Mormon anyway. True. Um, so John, if you put up the next put up the slide, I kind of highlight some of the words that I found problematic. So, she claims a team of researchers in Mexico discovered horse bones that date to Book of Mormon times. And also, when I was looking this up, I read the abstract of the paper that she talks about, and I still I'm not an archaeologist or a geologist. It doesn't really make sense to me. And like she was listing, she had that picture of the the different layers of the soil and things like that. Um, but when I look these up, the people who do most of these anacronistic research for the Book of Mormon are Mormon. And so to me that that's automatically um you have this one individual uh I can't remember his name, but he says that he starts with the conclusion that the Book of Mormon is true or the Book of Abraham and he moves from there. And so I find it problematic if you're basing your research on just Mormon scholars because they sometimes will go into it with a preconceived idea that the Book of Mormon is true. So I already don't like that. I believe that's Kerry Mulestein who said that. Okay. Yes. I remember starting with an M. I just couldn't remember who it was. Kerry Mulestein which I is and very interesting. So anyway, so she also goes on to say she says and to figure out when the horsebones dated to the to the researchers obtained radiocarbon dates at each archaeological layer or strata from um charcoal and other organic material close to the horse bones. So I just thought I don't know how I don't know how this works because I'm I'm a studying historian. I'm not studying to be um an archaeologist or geologist, but they're they're taking these examples from this study from the material close to the horse bones, not the horsebones itself. I don't know why they couldn't do that. I don't know enough about this. Um but I just thought that was good to point out. And then she goes on to say, she goes on to say, two of the radiocarbon dates found near the horse remains came from the mid second millennium BC. So again, it's near the horse remains. It's not the horse remains itself. Evidence. And she says, "Evidence is always tentative, but this possibly pushes the exist extinction of the North American horse way later than many scientists have assumed." And you said you found problems with the word assumed, but then she's using words like tentatively, possibly. Whenever I see her videos and I look in her comments, there's a lot of people that are pointing out her over her seemingly overuse of the words possibly or tenative or things that kind of like she hedges a lot. Yeah. Like they like kneecap her argument. Um anyway, so I just I just wanted to point this out because this is how a lot of apologists handle these anacronisms. They like kind of fudge around it or like oh it's possible that this is like there's possible that this is cement or that this is a that you know just they use different language. It's possible that I can fly but I can't and I've got no evidence to say I can. Yeah. The only other the only last thing I'll just add is she's quoting some obscure Texas Journal of something or other and citing some obscure random journal article um in no way overturns the consensus of you know the scientific consensus of an entire body um you know that spans multiple decades if if not half a century. It is generally known that there there probably were horses prior to like 10,000 BC and that after the Ice Age, horses did not exist uh in North Central or South America. And it wasn't until the Spanish came and reintroduced horses that then Native Americans were able to get their hands on uh horses. And then of course by the time Joseph Smith comes around, Native Americans are riding horses. So, of course, he would have had um Lamemonites and Nephites riding horses in the Book of Mormon because he wouldn't have really known or realized that they didn't have access to them during the time of the Book of Mormon. But just because Jasmine can sample um one one probably low you know low impact factor uh less credible article that is trying to sort of half-heartedly prove the possibility of something that does not overturn sort of decades if not half a century of scientific consensus around this Right. No. Yeah. And it doesn't matter anyway cuz it happened in Mexico. I think I do really think it's that simple. You know, Joseph Smith made specific claims about where it all happened. So, horsebones in Mexico aren't going to help with that. You're saying horsebones in Mexico don't give North American Native Americans uh horses. Exactly. During the time of Yeah. You know, the Book of Mormon. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Yeah. All right. America's big. America's big is what I learned as a little Brit coming to America earlier this year. Big old place. Yeah. Yeah, it is. All right, Julia. So, this is the first half of the CES letter. Uh, you know, addresses the Book of Mormon. I would say we've covered five points so far and Jeremy is a solid five to nothing. Is Is that fair, Nemo and Julia? Would you say that that it's 50 CES letter versus critics? Um I would like is even the things that they can like even some of the anacronisms that maybe they can um answer for that doesn't just because you can answer for one doesn't mean you can answer for the rest of the 20 of them or however many there are like and like you said Nemo some of these and again we we're kind of the conversation of anacronisms will carry over into the second part like with the next question about archaeology and there's no evidence for it. So these will carry on and so like even some of the things they can answer for they can only answer for it in Mexico or they can only answer for it in North America. They can't it doesn't it doesn't work with all of it together. So, like there's still problems in it. So, I to me it doesn't look like um Fair Mormon or these apologists have any good responses to to Jeremy Reynolds. And and there is a possibility, you know, that Joseph Smith got something right by accident, right? He may have talked about uh you know, concrete buildings and then they find concrete buildings and he's like, "Huh, okay. That doesn't mean he's right about all the other anacronisms." But what it does for members of the church is it gives them a reason to then go oh well then if you if we found something for that maybe given enough time we will find things for other things as well. And that's difficult when it's faced with the scientific conclusion currently or the scientific position currently that horses were not in North America pre Christopher Columbus. And I'll just add it only takes I'll only add it only takes one anacronism to prove something is is invalid. If you had a perfectly authentic, you know, photo of Abraham Lincoln that got his hair right and his nose right and his clothes right and his horse right and the building behind him right, but he's holding, you know, an iPod, it only takes one in anacronism to show uh an entire, you know, historical artifact as as being inauthentic. And so again, you don't need uh you know any any more than one anacronism to show that the Book of Mormon isn't um a historical document. Yeah. Like AI could produce a very convincing image, right? AI imagery is a big thing at the moment. But all it takes is for everyone in the everyone in the image to have polyacty and all have six fingers and you go, "Okay, maybe that's not an authentic picture after all." Right. That's all it takes. Yeah. All right. Any final uh points we want to make today before we sign off and then uh invite people to join us next time. Good second half, Julia. I I don't think so. Like that just again this binary of the Book of Mormon is either it's it's either all true or it's not. And this rest of it is a is a fraud or a sham or however he worded it. Like that's this B. So we didn't just find one fatal problem to the Book of Mormon. We found five and we've got six more to go. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, yeah. for Jeremy's research. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you take seriously those claims of people like like Jeffrey R. Holland and and Benson Benson and to an extent Gordon B. Hinckley where he talks about, you know, it's either the greatest work on the heavens or it's a fraud, right? Yeah. These binaries, if you take them seriously, I think this this stuff this work by Jeremy kind of only points one way at the moment. Yeah. All right. Well, Julia, thanks for your research and Nemo, thanks for your help and for both of your commentary. I'm looking forward to next episode. Yeah, that'll be fun. I I really like some of the stuff that he that he presents in the next few questions. So, all right. All right, y'all. Check out Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel. Nemo's doing great work. Support Nemo. And check out Analyzing Mormonism uh Tik Tok and uh and Instagram because Julie, you do great work as well. Thanks. All right, and thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast LDS discussions edition. Remember, the LDS discussion series is best consumed sequentially. So, start with episode one and uh everything we do after that will make a lot more sense. Plus, it's a really great way to look at the evidence um you know that that attaches to or addresses more mature truth claims. And we try to be as dispassionate and as objective as we possibly can, although we do fail to be perfectly objective and dispassionate at times. You can uh view the entire LDS discussion series either on Spotify because Spotify allows for video. So just go to the Mormon stories feed or the LDS discussions feed and all the videos there. You can check out the YouTube uh playlist for LDS discussions and the whole series is there. It's also integrated into the Mormon stories podcast YouTube stream or you can listen to all this on Apple podcast or on Spotify audio or wherever you get your episodes. Please uh always thanks to Mike of LDS discussions for his great work. LDS discussions.com website is still available um as well. And just know that we're going to be doing more uh episodes in the coming weeks and months to keep the LDS discussions um uh project alive and to continue um addressing these issues so that you, our viewers and listeners can decide for yourself based on the evidence. uh you know what to make of the Mormon Church's truth claims. The final thing I'll say is thank you Jeremy Reynolds for the CES letter. If you don't want to watch 100 plus hours of LDS discussions, all you have to do is download the CES letter at cesletter.org. It's a PDF. It's like 70 80 pages long. And in one day, many people are able to determine for themselves whether or not the Mormon church the Mormon church's truth claims stand up to scrutiny. So, love you, Jeremy. Check out the CES letter at cesletter.org. Download it, buy it, you can buy a copy of it. You could, even if you buy a copy of it, Jeremy may even sign that copy when he ships them out. As I understand it, he still ships out uh copies of the CES letter book by hand. I could be mistaken about that, but I believe he does. I'm in touch with Jeremy. He's a great guy. Check out CES Letter. Find out for yourself if um if Jeremy is sincere and if it's valid. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast. We could only do this episodes with your donations. So please uh thank you if you're a donor to Mormon Stories podcast. We couldn't do it without you. If you're not a donor and you want to see LDS discussion series continue, just go to mormontories.org, click on the donate button, become a monthly donor, and we'll continue this series. We do pay Julia, we do pay Demo. Um so we require your donations to be able to keep this alive. Uh we pay me as well. Um, so become a monthly donor if you're not. And then even if you don't donate or if you do, subscribing to this channel, liking this episode, sharing it, commenting on it, uh, giving us a positive review at either Spotify or at Apple Podcasts, um, or wherever this podcast is found. Positive reviews always are are super uh, helpful as well. So, thanks for joining us today. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Uh thanks everyone.