Nahom – The Strongest Evidence for the Book of Mormon?

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast LDS discussions edition. I'm your host John Delin. Today we're going to be answering the question, could Joseph Smith have written or dictated a well-worded letter? And just as a preview, for a long long time there's always this choice that that many believers andor apologists andor critics have to navigate. Was Joseph just this dumb, uneducated farm boy that basically couldn't even read or write or spell or speak? And so he was so dumb that he could never have produced something as amazing as the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham. Of course, we've covered that a lot in the LDS discussion series. But then the flip side of that is, was Joseph actually quite intelligent, quite articulate? Maybe he wasn't the best writer, but did he have an amazing memory? Was he actually verbally very eloquent? And then with the right scribe, could he actually generate really thoughtful, articulate, even elegant and um sophisticated pros? And where you are on that spectrum is going probably going to influence where you come down on whether or not Joseph Smith could have been the author of things like the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham. Now, that's my summary of what we're going to be talking about today. I'm going to rely on our co-host today to maybe frame it a little bit better. But what I will say is for those who don't know, today's episode is part of a multi-ep episode series called LDS discussions where we do our best to objectively look at LDS church truth claims as panelists using evidence and data trying to take too much emotion or passion or even bias out of this. So if this series is best consumed in sequence, I'm thinking we're somewhere in the 60s. And so if you want the best experience with the LDS discussion series, and I should say this may be the most important thing in the 2100 episodes Mormon Stories podcast has done. This LDS discussion series, I'm told by many, is probably the most important thing we've ever done. So if you want to enjoy it fully, what you want to do is pause this episode, go back to the very beginning. You can go to the LDS discussions playlist on YouTube and just start from the beginning uh on the Mormon Stories podcast uh YouTube channel or you can enjoy this on Spotify in the Mormon Stories podcast YouTube feed uh Spotify feed or we've actually created Spotify playlists and or Apple uh podcast playlists that are fully dedicated to LDS discussions under the LDS discussions brand, but this series is best uh consumed in sequence. Um, and uh I think there's probably nothing better on the internet if you want to do deep dives into figuring out for yourself whether or not uh LDS church truth claims hold up. And the truth is, we as panelists don't care where you end up. We if you want to be an active faithful believer in the church, we're super fans of that. If you decide that that you want to be a nuanced liberal nonliteral believer in the church, we're great with that. If you feel like you need to leave the church because that's healthiest for you or your family, we're cool with that, too. We just want to give you the information, the tools, and the analysis to decide. So, without any further ado, I'm bringing back uh uh two amazing uh co-hosts for today. We have uh attorney Colby Reddish back with us. Hey, Colby. >> Hey, John. Thanks for having me again. >> And I'll just say people loved our our analysis of Nahome, your analysis of Nahome. So, great job with that. >> Thank you. >> Um and then we also have Julia. Hey Julia, welcome back. >> Hi. Julia, you were an important part of today's research and uh the slide deck, etc. So, we love having you on. >> Thanks. >> I will say one thing. We we planned a lot of you the only criticism you had of my work with Colby was where is Nemo? Because traditionally we've done every LDS discussions episode with Nemo. We listen to your feedback. Last time we didn't intentionally exclude Nemo um but it just didn't work out. schedule-wise. Unfortunately, we we had Nemo scheduled for today, but some sort of thing happened uh that was outside of all of our controls. So, just know we love Nemo. He is always welcome on LDS discussions, but because of some scheduling thing, uh it it ended up not working out last minute. But Nemo, we love you and we we want to have you back anytime. But don't criticize us for not having Nemo on. We did our best and it just uh for some reason didn't work out today, but it's not because we didn't try. So, um Colby and Julia, how do y'all want to either introduce yourselves and or correct or add to the framing that I uh started with today? Colobby, let's have you go first. >> Yeah. So I think one of the things I've really appreciated about the LDS discussion series as a listener and then you know joining just for the last episode on Nahome is you really do try and take a look at these data points and help people see maybe things that they didn't they hadn't heard before and this episode is very much in that same vein as you you talked about the the question we're looking at today is could Joseph Smith write or dictate a well-worded letter and the reason we're focused on that quote in particular is because it's one that's been used by the arch for a very long time in manuals in um presentations in general conference by leaders to in my view basically create this gap between Joseph Smith's capabilities as a writer/dictator or the Book of Mormon's final text. And the reason that they are often doing that, I'm not suggesting there's anything untoward about them doing that, but the reason they're often doing that is to create this gap between Joseph Smith's capabilities and the Book of Mormon. And then the argument basically then goes implicitly because Joseph Smith wasn't capable of writing the Book of Mormon, God must have had a hand in it or there must be something divine in it. And like you said, if people still believe that, whether on the basis of evidence or they accept that simply as a faithbased claim, I have really no qualms about that. Um, really this is looking at evidence that may may cause people to have additional information and consider like, oh, maybe Joseph Smith was capable of of writing at a greater level than we had previously thought. And the one kudos I'd also give to the church that kind of made this research um, us available to do this research is in the Joseph Smith papers project, the church for the a long time has had a very bad track record with transparency. But I will say with the Joseph Smith papers, I've been super impressed at their transparency and we're looking at some of Joseph Smith's earliest letters today that have been accessible through the Joseph Smith papers project. So without that without that um resource, we really wouldn't have the ability to look closely at this in depth. >> Love it. Perfect. Julia, what else do you want to add either to introduction to who you are or kind of a framing for today? >> Um no, I really like everything that Kobe said. I really like cuz like I loved your last episode on Nahm and so people to me have come up to me and said I believe the Book of Mormon is true because of Nahm or things of that nature and so people have said I believe the Book of Mormon is true because Joseph Smith couldn't write or dictate a well-worded letter and so like you can believe the church is true like you were saying John we don't really care where people fall just maybe don't use Nahm or the fact that he could or couldn't write a well-worded letter as as the reason why you believe so like believe it believe it if you want just don't use this isn't a good use of evidence for that. So, >> in your in your in your review of the evidence. Yeah. >> Yeah. But but today we'll lay out lay out how we've processed it >> and we'll let we'll let viewers and listeners that's the whole purpose of LDS discussions really >> to let to let people decide for themselves. And I'll just tell the audience I have not reviewed these slides yet. So, I'm going to be reacting. My role today is kind of to react with as fresh eyes as possible and I'll I'll try and be an advocate for a skeptic or for a believer and ask questions as someone kind of reviewing this for the first time. >> Yeah. And to folks who don't believe that like that John doesn't serve that function, I would just point there were a few arguments I made during the Nahome episode, John, where you pushed back on some of the points that I made and said, I think that one's strong, but I think this one's maybe not as strong. And so, yeah, absolutely welcome that. And yeah, this is just an additional data point to look at and then people can use that to inform whatever conclusion they want to reach. I think the the quote that we've talked about a few times, if we can just go to it directly, the quote that we've talked about that people are probably familiar with if they grew up in the church, but we'll give some additional detail on for those who are, you know, part of the Nevermortman audience comes directly from Emma Smith's final testimony. Julia, do you want to kind of introduce this and maybe read that quote? >> Yeah. So, I just want to point out this is October 1st of 1879. So, this is Joseph passed away in 1844. I'm bad at the math, but this is decades later after Joseph Smith has passed away. So, it's also been decad >> 35 years 35 years after >> 30. Thank you. So, it has been 35 years since she has received a letter from Joseph Smith at all. But this is her son and her final testimony as far as I understand. Joseph Smith the third. Joseph Smith II third I guess because you have senior. >> So Joseph Smith the third is interviewing his mother and he's asking her a bunch of questions and we'll talk about some of the questions outside of this one. >> Um do you want me to just go ahead and read? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So Joseph Smith is asking his mom, could not father have dictated the Book of Mormon to you Oliver Cowry and the others who wrote for him after having first written it or having first read it out of some book? And then Emma says Joseph Smith. And then he inserts, "And for the first time she used his name direct, having usually used the words your father or my husband." And then she continues, "Could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon. And though I was an active participant in the senses that in the scenes that transpired and was present during the translation of the plates and had or and had cognizance of things as they transpired, it is marvelous to me, a marvel and a wonder as much so as to anyone else. >> Yeah. And so that phrase that she uses that Joseph Smith could neither dictate or write a well-worded letter has been used by the church for a long time. And I know we're going to explain that. But before we do, the one piece of framing I wanted to talk about here is I wanted to talk about now that we have access to some of Joseph Smith's earlier letters, and again, we'll get there here in just a moment. There is no reason to take Emma Smith's word for Joseph Smith's writing capabilities, because we can look at Joseph Smith's writing writing capabilities because of these additional resources today. And so that is framing I wanted to get out the gate is there really is no reason for apologists to continue to point to Emma's word for Joseph Smith's writing capabilities when you yourself can go to the Joseph Smith papers project and determine Joseph Smith's writing capabilities today. >> Yes. Can can I also just I don't want to bismerch Emma's character in any way, but there are two other things that also put a bit of a question in my mind as to how reliable Emma is in terms of truth claims. One is that we all know now that she denied Joseph ever practicing polygamy. And there's overwhelming evidence that she knew that Joseph Smith was practicing polygamy and at some points even condoned it or was okay with it. Correct. >> So the fact that years later she would say it never happened is deeply problematic. But then the other thing that's deeply problematic for me is that >> we know that at some point she allowed it and you know cuz that's like why would she be allowing it anyway? So Julia Colby, is that unfair of me? Again, I think she in many ways she was likely a victim. I think in many ways she showed character and integrity and you know, all sorts of cool values. When it comes to truth claims, I do have some questions about Emma's credibility. >> That's completely fair. And in fact, we're going to go in a little bit more detail on that specific example in the slides a little bit later. The other thing that I'd point out is that though the church has used this one line from Emma Smith's final testimony for generations to basically build people's faith in the Book of Mormon, it's worth noting that also in Emma Smith's final testimony, she talks about the now today kind of common knowledge rock in the hat narrative that was like she talks about how that was part of the translation process in her final testimony. So this idea that some apologists have offered that like just nobody knew about this. the brethren didn't know about the Rock in the Hat narrative. That's demonstrably untrue because the church has selectively quoted from Emma's final testimony for generations. And and Julia did a great job of pulling manuals and stuff that will show that here in just a minute. Um I think the next slide we had basically shows how this or I'm sorry, Julia, did you have anything you wanted to say there before I move on to this next one? Okay. >> No, you're good. >> Well, Julia, you've done a lot of analysis of polygamy. Did I get that right about Emma and polygamy? >> Yes. So she was present I I want to say the Lawrence sisters. It could have been the other sisters. Partrides. Okay. I know she was present during those two ceilings. So yes, you you are correct in that. >> Okay. Okay. >> Yeah. And I I just included this because as we're prepping these um episodes, you know, every once in a while I'm always surprised by how just timelines up and moments of synchronicity. One of my favorite things to do is look at people's like text thread conversations with their TBM family members or their believing family members on the ex Mormon Reddit. And this one just lined up perfectly with the point we're trying to illustrate of how this uh quote from Emma Smith's final testimony has been used basically how the the typical believing Mormon member is going to understand that in its context. And you can see it right here in this text conversation that I pulled from the ex Mormon Reddit. So they're texting with a believing family member of theirs. I think it was a cousin. And the cousin says, "So, does this make the Book of Mormon false for you?" And the the responder says, "Yes." And then the believing family member asks, "Okay, what is the Book of Mormon then?" And the person says back, "A book." Their response is, "I don't super care about." But here's the believing family member, I think, demonstrating exactly what most people understand about this quote from Emma. They say, "It's hard for it to just be a book if they say, uh, but if it was written by someone who was illiterate." And this I think really cleanly shows this example of this Joseph Smith of the gaps or Book of Mormon of the gaps that I've seen apologists use this quote to do for a very long time to basically say Joseph Smith was basically so illiterate there's no possibility he could have written a a a book like the Book of Mormon based largely on this quote from Emma >> and I was thinking and where in the world would they get the idea that he was illiterate and I think you've got some clips right. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Do you want those clips? Uh, Julia. >> Yeah. Let me say something really fast. So, I have four clips here and three of them are from Tad Archollister. And from my understanding, I think he did pass away at the beginning of October. >> Yep. >> So, is that last month? Yeah, >> last month. So, I really admired him. I read his book, A Case for the Book of Mormon. Um, I really liked his research, stepping back away from the church. I look at things a little differently, but this seems to have been Kolister's almost pet. like he he's the one that's perpetuating this or he's one of the main ones who is perpetuating this this um uh Emma's testimony that Joseph Smith could neither write nor dictate a well-worded letter. So, a lot of these clips are him and then one of them is Neil L. Neil A. Maxwell and two of them were given in general conference but this one is given this is a BYU speech um given in 2016 >> and Julie I just I just wanted to say first of all it very well could have been Tad Caler's assignment >> you know by the brethren to be a Book of Mormon Joseph Smith apologist in his waning years. I I believe he's an attorney by trade. Is that right? >> I thought he was. And then the only other thing I want to say is put Tad Callister aside. I'm 56. This stuff I I I have been I have been hearing this stuff since I was a child. >> So Tad would just Tad Callister would just represent the latest um iterations of the church trying to always uh devalue Joseph Smith's intelligence or education as a defense of the Book of Mormon. In my in my experience, it's it's in no way recent. That's all. Okay. >> All right. And Maxwell, of course, died a long time ago. So, >> right, >> he'll be a good example of that. All right. Go ahead, Julia. >> So, this is about nine years ago. >> The argument that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon is simply counter to the realities of life. It is one thing to have creative ideas. It is quite another to put them into a complex but coherent and harmonious hole inundated with majestic doctrinal truths. All done in a single draft in less than 90 days. Joseph Smith's wife Emma, the person who knew him better than any other, confirms this conclusion. Joseph Smith as a young man can neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictate a book like the Book of Mormon. >> There it is. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Okay. That's one of them. >> That That's pretty bold. Okay. You want to play a second? >> Yeah. Let me go. Let me just >> Can I say one thing about that before we move on to the second one, which is >> um >> when we were talking about this argument of like Joseph Smith of the gaps or the Book of Mormon of the gaps, right? >> You can see it in the way Tad started that that um clip by saying like that's contrary to the realities of life because one of the things you and I talked about in our Nahome episode, John, is basically like entertain two hypotheses and think about them critically for just a moment, right? He's saying that it's more likely that an angel came to Joseph Smith with gold plates, helped him translate ancient records. That's not contrary to the realities of life. But a guy writing a letter and maybe his wife, you know, misrepresenting his writing capabilities or misremembering his writing capabilities is less likely. That's quite frankly patently absurd to me to engage in that level of ignoring the obvious AAMS razor conclusion. >> And I I just also have to add the 90 days argument is that we we've already addressed that here on LDS discussions. And that's why it would be really helpful for y'all to go back and and start watching from the beginning. But Joseph had seven years to write the Book of Mormon. >> He could have had as many as 10. like he >> he was he was studying the Bible from 12 to 15. He started telling stories in 1823. Like there's so much so many problems with that limited timeline that the church >> and and and as soon as he loses theund whatever pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript all of a sudden miraculously he has to like stop for a whole winter and and spring. What's he doing during that time? Right? like >> you know he he's likely coming up with new new text that he then needs to dictate. So >> yeah and just in line with you know what we're the the whole mission of LDS discussions is just thinking about these things that you kind of accepted as a believing member of the church without ever stopping to pause and think about them. That's the only reason I note kind of his use of the rhetoric here is that is implicitly what he's saying. And as like to our fully believing Mormon earers, that wouldn't have triggered any response in in any of the three of us, right? We would have heard that and said like, "Yeah, that seems really reasonable." And I'm just kind of framing it that way to show people like these are the two alternatives. And he's saying that guy wrote a letter is less likely or I'm sorry, guy wrote a book is less likely than resurrected angel brings gold plates. >> Stone and a hat. >> White white Native American prophet Christian before Jesus was born. Like anyway, I think we made our point. Okay. Neil A. Maxwell. Okay. >> This is from 1983. This is in general conference. We have no hesitancy, however, in stipulating that Joseph was by the standards of the world not learned. Isaiah foresought. Joseph did not have the skilled formal tutoring young Saul had at the feet of Galiel. Emma Smith reportedly said that Joseph at the time of the translation of the Book of Mormon could not compose a well-worded letter, quote, let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon, which was marvelous to me, a marvel and a wonder as much so as to anyone else. >> All right. He was one of my favorites when I, you know, when I was really orthodox, active believing for sure. Neil A. Maxwell. All right. Do we want to do a third? >> Uh, yeah. There's a couple more. Yeah, if that's >> Okay. All right. Let's do the next one. >> 2017. This is in general conference. >> Okay. >> To suggest that Joseph Smith at age 23 possessed the skills necessary to write this monumental work in a single draft in approximately 65 working days is simply counter to the realities of life. President Russell M. Nelson, an experienced and skilled writer, shared that he had over 40 rewrites of a recent general conference talk. Are we now to believe that Joseph Smith on his own dictated the entire Book of Mormon in a single draft with mainly minor grammatical changes made thereafter? Joseph's wife, Emma, confirmed the impossibility of such an undertaking. Joseph Smith as a young man could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictate a book like the Book of Mormon. >> Oh my goodness, Colby, help us here. Well, man, one of the things that really stands out to me is as much as we do know about the Book of Mormon translation process from the people who were involved, the scribes like Emma, um I think it's worth noting that Joseph Smith in 1831, he's asked at a conference uh by Hyram to talk to people about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. And he will only ever give one answer, which is that it came forth by the gift and power of God or was translated by the gift and power of God, something to that effect. And I think I think he is playing very fast and loose. He being Tad, I mean, is playing very fast and loose with what we actually know and what we do not know. We don't know, as Julia talked about, how Joseph Smith's um history of storytelling may have played into any outlines he had in his head, any um any notes or anything he may have used to draft the Book of Mormon or work on the Book of Mormon. And I say that purely because I think one of the biggest revelations that came out of um work on the Adam Clark Bible uh Adam Clark Bible commentary being used both in the Joseph Smith translation and in the translation of the Book of Mormon potentially that was research that you and I talked about with Herardo a few months ago, John from Kobby Townsend. One of the things that's very significant about to about both of those pieces of evidence to me is that none of the people involved in either of those translation projects talked about using any other resource. And all I'm saying is I'm not saying that Joseph Smith definitely had notes or anything that he was working from. I think it's it's entirely possible he just had a very good memory, was a very good storyteller, had a lot of time to work on these narratives, and then offered it as an oral dictation. Because that's the other thing he's ignoring is it wasn't written. The Book of Mormon wasn't written. It was an oral dictation. Um, but the the thing I want to say is when you understand that there were all these people, many of them the same scribes involved in these projects that felt no need to note Joseph Smith's use of additional sources, including the Adam Clark Bible commentary that we know he used just as a matter of textual dependency. It starts to open your mind to say like, how much do we really know about the details of the translation process? And the reality is not very much. And so I think he's playing very fast and loose with the way he's representing what we actually do and do not know about Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Mormon. >> Yeah. Go ahead, Julia. >> Oh, I just also want to point out before I forget, and he techar makes this point in the next clip, too, where um we the Book of Mormon has gone through multiple editions. what what we have now, what the church members have now is like a cleaned up version with like with the um the correct spelling. We have footnotes. We have like the verses. What you see the the original manuscript is very choppy. It's very the wording is kind of um he stumbles upon that or it's hard to read. But then also Joseph Smith himself made a bunch of changes throughout his life and the church I think has sometimes continued to make some changes. Sandra Channer and her husband did a bunch of research on this and I think they came to like between three and 5,000 changes and not just grammar. So like to for Tad to to just come off as oh Joseph immediately produced this amazing work is incorrect. So I just wanted to point that out too. and Julia and Kobe. Uh, we should refer viewers and listeners that want a plausible theory for how Joseph might have dictated the Book of Mormon to the work of William Davis. >> We've covered him on Mormon Stories and elsewhere. Um but but basically just think of it the idea of a technique that that Protestant preachers would use to have kind of an outline fresh in their mind and then to be able to speak for hours at a time based on a framework or an outline of bullet points that they're able to either keep in their mind or reference on a sheet of paper. So, um, Julia, Julia, you're a little bit more in touch with how to describe William Davis's research than me, right? >> Uh, so I think that's called laying down heads, and he does a really good job in his visions in a sear stone book, and he, of course, his episode with you, he talks about that. And I think even in the Book of Mormon text itself, I think Joseph references Yeah. Right. where like the laying down of heads. >> I think it's in King Benjamin, it talks about how he laid down heads or something to >> Yeah. Just to add an additional data point, John, you know, you mentioned that I'm an attorney. So, I used to I used to practice more in court. And I would I would do, you know, a full day trial off of like one page of notes because when you understand when you've been living like a case or you've been living this narrative, right, we're looking at >> for like seven or 10 years, for example. >> Yeah. then you you're able to talk extemporaneously about stuff um for a really long time. It's just the way you you're able to do that when you just mle stuff over >> for a long time. >> It's just I'm I'm reading um Tad Mallister's words. He says simply countered to the realities of life. Like again, Colby, I'm being repetitive, but like the realities of life are that again, angels deliver plates with gold and translate Joseph with stone and hat. He's talking about realities of life. It's just it's almost insulting that he's using this language. So, I just I just had to repeat that. Okay, Julia, that's where if people want to believe these things based on faith, I think like Julian said, like we said at the opening of this episode, people should just be honest about what they're accepting based on faith and what the evidence shows. And like you're saying, it's ridiculous to say that it's more in line with the realities of life that an ancient resurrected angel brought golden plates to Joseph Smith. That's not to say people can't believe it, but to act like that's more likely to have happened is patently ridiculous. It really is. >> And and I have to remind people that if you if you study who the church uses to be public historians historically over the past 10 or 20 or 30 years, the answer is attorneys. There's a reason why the church doesn't choose actual historians to be their spokespeople. Whether it's Marlon Jensen, whether it's Richard Turley, whether it's Steven Snow or Tad Callister, what do they all have in common? What they don't have in common is a history degree, a graduate degree. What they do all have in common is their attorneys. Colobby, I don't mean to be insulting, but do you have any theories on why the church would choose attorneys as public spokespeople for history rather than trained historians with graduate degrees? >> Well, number one, what you're telling me is I should have stayed in the church. I could have been a contender. Number two, I mean, lawyers do lawyers do deal with history because you do have to understand how to do in-depth research and look at legislative history. go back to constitutional days if you're going to do that um that level of research and do that type of work. So, I can understand why lawyers often find themselves in those positions. But the other obvious answer is lawyers are really good at taking facts and making spinning them into a credible narrative. And I don't necessarily mean that that's always untoward. I'm an attorney and I've done that myself with cases. I obviously think it's justified. Uh, but you'd never find me making an argument that it's more likely that an angel with gold plates came to somebody. So, >> a white Christian Native American angel, right? Yeah. >> I've never made that one yet. So, >> okay. All right. We're belaboring the point, but I think these points are important because I'm I am kind of grossed out already by Tad Mallister's rhetoric, you know. >> Okay. Go ahead, Julia. >> Okay. This is um a fair Mormon conference in 2020. >> Is there any evidence Joseph was a good writer at age 23 and thus could be the author of the Book of Mormon? No. To the contrary, Emma noted, Joseph Smith as a young man can neither write nor dictate a coherent and wellworded letter, let alone dictate a book like the Book of Mormon. That is staggering when you think about it. to claim that Joseph Smith, who cannot write a coherent letter, wrote the Book of Mormon in a single dictation draft in approximately 65 working days with only minor changes most grammatical. When I finished a book I recently wrote entitled, A Case for the Book of Mormon, my secretary unexpectedly asked me, "Do you know how many drafts you had?" I replied, "No." to which she responded 72. I thought, "Wow, it took me two concentrated years of writing and many previous years of thinking and collecting ideas to write a book less than half the length of the Book of Mormon and far less meaningful and 72 drafts to do so." >> Like, does he know how disingenuous he's being? Does he really believe these arguments? >> He does. And let me tell you why. Because he's an attorney. We've talked about this, right? >> If he's telling you there's no evidence and his pure thing he points to is Emma saying what Joseph Smith's capabilities are. So in court in the rules of evidence, there's this and people are generally familiar with this if they've seen episodes of Law and Order, right? There's this idea in the rules of evidence known as hearsay, which is I can't go into court and testify about something I didn't personally witness. And the way he's using Emma's testimony rather than actually going to the actual evidence that we're going to talk about today, these actual letters, that is in effect hearsay. He's telling you that it's more reasonable for you to rely on Emma's statement about Joseph Smith's capabilities than go and finding those letters and determining that capability for yourself. Which is the entire reason in court we don't allow hearsay is we want the best evidence to be presented. and he knows I don't know exactly when these letters were published at the Jose Smith papers. Maybe we can look that up while we're going through the slides, but I would imagine they would have been published in 2020 when he was giving that presentation. If not, he would have had access to them as a general authority well before they were available to the public. So, yeah, I I do think, and I'm I'm not saying anything more than this, I do think he's being disingenuous here because his training as an attorney is going to tell him that that's not evidence that would be admissible in court. And yet, he's telling you that the all powerful creator of the universe expects you to rely on evidence we wouldn't even allow in our secular courts. Again, that's kind of patently ridiculous. I don't mean to be insulting, but it kind of is that God's evidence wouldn't pass admissibility in court, for which we determine much less serious matters. That's that's a problem. >> So, one thing I also want to point out is in each four of those clips, they the speaker added words to Emma's testimony that she did not say. And so, I wonder if that's where you're coming from, uh, Colby, is that he's saying Joseph Smith as a young man or Neil Maxwell said, um, at the time of the Book of Mormon, like Joseph Smith couldn't write or dictate. I think they're adding that in there because they know later he could. There's papers that have been published by the church about how beautiful his letters are like and even I think the church sometimes quotes his letters. So like I think they're they have to add that little part in because they know that's if you look at it and examine afterwards it's false. >> So I think that's I think he knows. >> Remind me Julia, what part are they adding? What what's the texture saying that they're adding >> as a young man? So Emma just says Joseph Smith could neither write nor dictate. She doesn't she doesn't give she doesn't give a timeline. And then that last question he he kept reiterating like in 1823 like no Emma didn't say anything about 1823, >> right? >> Okay. >> Okay. So I think the next I I think so clearly Tad Mallister and you know over over the general conference pulpit and in oration we've got general authorities um making these claims. I think the next segment is where the church publishes this stuff in manuals. Is that right? >> Yes. And so I don't I don't think it's necessary to to read all this because I just don't want to be repetitive and just continue. Emma, >> just tell us what the manuals are. >> Perfect. So this is the Book of Mormon Seminary Student Manual. And this these are all published by the church itself. So this is published in 2024. And then they they they quote this idea again. Joseph Smith can neither write nor dictate. And then this is another manual foundations of the restoration um class participation manual. This was published by the church in 2019. Again reiterating this same quote. I'm sure they mentioned the rock in the hat, right? >> Oh, sure. For sure. Although I think the new ones, the Come follow me, they do mention that. Um, so Latter Day Saint history 1815 to 1846, the teachers manual. This is published in 2018. They ask certain questions like what does Emma's testimony like make you think about it with the as far as the Book of Mormon being translated by the power of God. So they're like they're kind of leading the witness, I guess, is a way to say that like, oh, of course, this is a translation from God. And then the Doctrine Covenants, >> they're basically begging. They're basically begging the question. The way they ask the question leads you to the conclusion that they want. >> Right. Right. I think the church always does that in their manuals. Um, and then another manual is the Doctrine Covenant student manual and they teach this at BYU the religion study 324 325. This is published by the church in 2017. Again, the same quote. And then rel revelations in context. I think this is a companion one for the Doctrine of Covenants. And the church published this in 2016. And then again, he could neither write nor dictate. And she said, you know, they're adding this part, too, where they said she recalled that at the time of their marriage, Joseph can neither write nor dictate. She doesn't really give a timeline. Their church is just adding that in there, >> right? >> And then the Book of Mormon student manual, Religion 2122, um, published by the church in 2009. They reiterate the same thing. Like he they say he polished his skills over time or over the years. So like they're acknowledging that yes, his later letters are good. the ones before were not good. And so the next part is just going to into historical >> Okay. Wait. So can I can I just summarize one quick thing? >> So for those who uh aren't aware, the church has this committee called the correlation committee. And the correlation committee's job is to make sure that like what what is desired to be communicated accurately and effectively gets communicated effectively and accurately in general conference talks. They literally review general authority and even apostle talks but also across manuals and also in all public communications. So there's an entire department that, you know, enforces and uh encourages and reviews and edits all of these types of communications intentionally. And so what this is a really good example of is how effectively the correlation committee is taking an idea and perpetuating it everywhere. Am I wrong, Colobby and Julia? >> That's exactly right. Yep. >> Yeah. So, there's no way to claim that the church, you know, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. It's in public talks ad nauseium and it's in curriculum manuals ad nauseium. there is a intentional concerted effort to take this quote uh take this idea and disseminate it very very broadly in the church. Mhm. And once, and I love that Julia pulled all these manual quotes together. Once when I was really bothered about the fact that Emma talks about the Rock in the Hat narrative in this same testimony, and that that quote is never used, although it is used now today, that the church has changed its position on that. But that quote was was not used for well over a hundred years. While this other portion that they like from Emma Smith's final testimony, they do the same thing with David Whitmer's an address to all believers in Christ. I once searched just that phrase like couldn't neither write nor dictate a well-worded letter on lds.org or whatever it is now church.org and it pulls up like literally thousands of conference talks manual quotes. So not just in recent years John has the correlation committee done this is like a longstanding foundational quote to increasing the impressiveness of the Book of Mormon that the church has relied on literally for generations. And the irony there, and I know Julia is about to go there with the historical context, is if when we were showing the quote originally, this was published because Emma and Joseph Smith III were part of the reorganized Church of Christ. And so they were they were always kind of in this weird position, right, where they need to build up Joseph Smith's legitimacy, but also in some ways denigrate Joseph Smith's legitimacy, at least the Joseph Smith that the church teaches about today, because of the narrative involving polygamy. So it is kind of this interesting context that it this quote comes to us through. >> Yeah. And I will say that there were plenty of other man plenty of other manuals and talks that I didn't pull. These were just like this church is still perpetuating this idea today. So like yeah, if I had put everything on there, this would have been a lot longer of a Yeah. >> presentation. >> I remember hearing this quote in seminary and Sunday school. >> Yes. >> I'm 56 and I grew up on all this garbage. Yeah. >> Right. Right. >> Yeah. So, with the historical context, Colobe, um, you're reminding me I I was mostly focused on on what was happening at the beginning. I wasn't really thinking about why Joseph Smith the third was asking her these questions. So, I'm glad you said that. Um, so with the next part, putting into historical context, if we can throw up that next slide. So, Joseph Smith and Emma Hail eloped on January 18th of 1827. Joseph obtained the golden plates on September 22nd of 1827. This is just 8 months after they got married. Mhm. >> Joseph Smith finished translating the golden plates in June of 1829 with Emma acting as scribe for some of it. And then I I'll also point out in that same month in June of 1828, Emma lost a child and Joseph was constantly by her side. So my question is, did Joseph Smith write Emma any letters before the Book of Mormon was published? If she had kept all of his later letters, why would she not have kept any of his earlier letters? And so like um to me, the church has published the Joseph Smith papers website. They have all of his letters published to my knowledge. I don't know I don't know why they would have held some back. Um if anything they could have redacted them but we don't have we just don't have any from from this point forward. So we don't so everyone adding those parts in. Oh be like before the publication of the Book of Mormon to my knowledge he didn't write any or to what we have evidence for he didn't write any letters before the Book of Mormon was published. >> Yeah. So with the next slide. So, like I said, the Joseph Smith papers website has public has made public most if not all of Joseph Smith's letters. In 1829, he wrote one, we have one of them. 1830, we have two of them. 1831, there's again two of them. 1832, there's four. And then also, I didn't even count the other ones because there's just so much letters. There's so many in that database. Like, I couldn't even keep track. But there is a chunk. They they section it off. They say, "Oh, these are the ones between him and Emma." And some of them are beautiful letters. So, so that's why everybody had to add in that part of him in his early before the Book of Mormon like as a young man. >> Can I just also give another shout out to the church for transparency on the Joseph Smith papers because I I do spend a lot of time just perusing documents on there and it is really impressive the work that has gone into creating this database. uh allowing it to be searchable, how you can um reference the text when the handwriting is hard to read. The historical notes and source notes that they have are fantastic. I really uh just because the church has had such a problematic approach to telling its history in the past, I really do like to give them the praise for creating this resource and making all these documents available. And if if it's okay, I'll add that they could have they could have made these documents available 50 100 years ago and they didn't. And so I also want to credit Fawn Brody, the author who published Joseph's biography in the in the mid 1940s. and then Sandra Tanner and Gerald Tanner and um and then of course Dialogue, a journal of Mormon Thought and Sunstone and the Mormon History Association and all the courageous historians that the church either excommunicated or marginalized or punished or um you know whatever who eventually because of the gift of the internet seemed to probably force the church's hand to start coming clean with its documents. I I think there's a graveyard of metaphorical historians and literal graveyard of historians who paid prices to force the church's hand to start to to want to create the Joseph Smith papers project almost by force. Is that unfair? Is that unfair? >> That's absolutely accurate. And one additional shout out I would give is I kind of jokingly think that the church did so much work on the Joseph Smith papers project because they were tired of all believing historians having to site to Dan Vogle's early Mormon documents series to site to most of these documents. That's the reality. They were citing to this all the time. And so I think they were tired of people citing to Dan's work kind of jokingly in my mind. I think that but >> so that's signature books we also need to give a huge shout out to >> because without signature books Dan Vogle even Dich Quinn >> the church may not have felt motivated to come clean as late as they did with the Joseph Smith papers project. >> Yeah. So shout out to Dan there. In fact it was in Dan's early Mormon document series that I first started reading these letters that kind of got me percolating on kind of the theme for today's episode. And I think he has five five volumes of the early Mormon documents if I'm not mistaken. >> Yeah, five. Sometimes >> sometimes Dan listens to LDS discussion. So we love you Dan. >> Great work. You're a legend. >> Okay. >> So So my summary of this slide is just that no one can no one today can back up the claim that Joseph Smith could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-boarded letter before the Book of Mormon was published. The only person that we can rely on here is Emma Smith or I guess whoever else is I guess she's the one making this claim. as we are about to see she was not fully honest in her final testimony which you have discussed as well John so we just don't have we just don't have any of his letters before the Book of Mormon was published >> but what we do have as people are can see and as we're going to go through the Book of Mormon's dictation translation is finished in 1829 we have one letter from that year and two letters from within a year of the Book of Mormon being the translation being finished and the Book of Mormon being published so to say those aren't more or less contemporaneous to me is again, maybe I'm overusing this phrase, but patently ridiculous. The idea that Joseph Smith would go from being essentially illiterate in 1827 to writing the letters that people are going to see a little bit later in today's episode less than a year. >> No, that's silly. Yeah, >> I I actually I have people saying that all the time to me though because they'll make this argument on my channel on my handle and people will say, "Oh, well, once you write once you dictate a book like the Book of Mormon, of course your writing is going to improve. Of course you're going to have references." So like, yeah, like you're going from illiterate to being able to >> wait. If if he read if he read on a stone the entire text of the Book of Mormon as it appeared and he was able to dictate it with enough eloquence or, you know, vocabulary or pronunciation such that Martin Harris and Emma and Oliver could write down what he was saying. It's it's a fact that he could dictate a well-worded book unless unless believers don't think the Book of Mormon is well-worded because literally the Book of Mormon is a dictation from Joseph Smith, right? Verbally. >> What? >> He could read he could read well enough and dictate well enough to produce the Book of Mormon. >> Well, and what that what that Yes, I agree with that, John. And what this helps show is the problem that often apologists run into of not making their arguments consistent because a big theory today about Book of Mormon translation is that it was like there was something of Joseph in the translation, right? That's how they explain away problems like the long ending of Mark and other problematic uh King James version passages being in the Book of Mormon is that Joseph was more a um collaborator in the process and bringing his own assumptions and things to the process. And that's why it reflects so many of Joseph Smith's um so many of the texts of Joseph Smith's time. The problem is that that doesn't line up with what any of the witnesses involved in the dictation process, the translation process say. They do like you're talking about operate more from this model of the stone was dictate or the stone was allowing Joseph Smith to dictate. And so that's kind of the other irony of this use of Emma Smith's final testimony is it's really only consistent with the older strain of apologetics about the B book of Mormon, not this newer strain of apologetics about the Book of Mormon where Joseph Smith engaged in brickage and doing all of these things. Because if he's doing that, then why would you ever cite to Emma Smith's uh testimony here, right? That would contradict the point they're trying to make. And and y'all will have to forgive me because I'm just processing this real time, but I just want to summarize it. We know that it's Emma's testimony that Joseph read from the stone in the hat to dictate the Book of Mormon. >> That's Emma's testimony. And that's what the church now accepts as the accepted narrative for how Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon. So according to Emma and Martin Harris and the church itself, Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon by reading it word for word from the stone in the hat. So that automatically discredits half of Emma's claim that he could neither dictate he could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter unless you assume that the Book of Mormon is neither coherent nor well-worded. But I think that most >> or that the stone is the magic involved basically that the stone is telling Joseph exactly what to say. But nobody in 2025 can deny >> exactly. Yes. >> A believer cannot deny in 2025 that a stone in the hat was used and that the stone in the hat was used by Joseph to dictate. >> Can I read Can I read John just for framing? Can I read exactly what Emma said about the stone in the hat? Because I think >> yeah, you paraphrased it completely accurately, but I want people to have access to it. So she's asked by her son, "What of the truth of Mormonism?" and she says, "I know Mormonism to be the truth and believe the church to have been established by divine direction. I have complete faith in it. In writing for your father, I frequently wrote day by day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in the hat with the sear stone in it and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us." So that's exactly what Emma said about >> I mean that is enough to discredit Emma's quote right there because she's admitting that he dictated the entire Book of Mormon that he had the skills to read the stone read the words and verbalize them in a way that they could be written down and there Zarahhemla uh Ramy like lots of big words Joseph could clearly dictate. So Emma's contradicting Emma undermines Emma. I I think pretty clearly before we even continue this presentation. Am I wrong? >> I I don't think you're wrong. I mean I I think I mean the way I look at it is this. Like that testimony from Emma is is it's offered with a purpose. Like it contradicts the polygamy narrative. It vindicates Joseph Smith because they need to do that because at the time they were reorganites and that's what they were trying to do. So I don't think you're wrong to say we should look at it very skeptically the entire whole of it. >> Yeah. I think it just I think it's undermined just at face value based on what we know. All right. I made the point. Keep going. >> Yeah. So, so, uh, you made this point earlier, John, but so Emma and one of the questions that she's asked by Joseph Smith III was about the revelation on polygamy. And he says, "Did Joseph Smith have anything like it? What of spiritual wifery?" And Emma says, "There was no revelation on either polygamy or spiritual wives. There were some rumors of something of that sort of which I asked my husband. He assured me that all there was of all there was of it that in a chat about plural wives he had said, "Well, such a system might possibly be if everybody agreed to it and would behave as they should, but they would not. And besides, it was contrary to the will of heaven." And then she continues, "No such thing as polygamy or spiritual wifery was taught publicly or privately before my husband's death that I have now or have ever had knowledge of." >> Isn't that first line so interesting? She says there was no revelation on either polygamy or spiritual wise. So if you're a believing member today, you have DNC 132 in your scriptures that is a revelation written specifically to Emma. And I agree with you, John. Earlier you said, "We're not trying to cast dispersions on Emma." I agree. I I don't because when we use the word like lie to me, lie conotes intention that someone is intentionally deceiving and they're trying to be misleading. I I think really all I'm willing to say here about Emma is that we don't know what her intention was, what she's trying to protect, what she's trying to do. But what we do know is that what she says here is demonstrabably untrue because that revelation is in believing Mormon scriptures today. And there's been good research to show that the important components of DNC 132 were included in the Nauvoo Expositor that directly led to Joseph Smith's death in 1844. So that's a huge problem for what she says here. So whether you think she had the intention to lie or mislead to me is not important. I'm just looking at this more like I would as an attorney. Like you said, our objective is in LDS discussions. Look at it and just determine does the evidence show that this is true or not true? And the evidence here shows regardless of what Emma's intention was that what she says here is not true. Demonstrabably not true. >> She's not she's not a reliable narrative when it comes to truth claims or things that could be could cast doubt on the validity of the church's founding narrative. Exactly. >> Yeah. What's the next slide, Julia? >> So, this is the church, one of the church's um gospel topics essays. And the essay is called plural marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo. And does somebody want to read this? >> I'll do it. >> Uh Emma, and this is the LDS church in 2025 approved text. >> It's been through correlation. The history department has approved this. General authorities have approved this. You really, you really can't be a believer in the modern LDS church and disbelieve the words I'm about to read. Emma approved, at least for a time, of four of Joseph Smith's plural marriages in Nauvoo, and she accepted all four of those wives into her household. She may have approved of other marriages as well, but Emma likely did not know about all of Joseph's ceilings. She vacasillated in her view of plural marriage at some points supporting it and at other times denouncing it and clearly at the end of her life denouncing it and denying that it ever happened. >> Yeah, >> that's me. That last part was me. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So, yeah, this is just saying that, you know, just showing that what Emma had said here about not having lived polygamy, we know that for whatever reason why she's saying it, this isn't she's not a reliable narrative. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Okay, so these were added in by Nemo. So he So he's writing, "Emma is claiming that Joseph could not have written the Book of Mormon because he could neither write nor dictate a well-worded letter." >> I think you deserve a Jammy Dodger for that, Julia. >> Absolutely. >> Maybe I can channel my British. Um, so the question is not are Joseph Smith's letters actually more coherent or well-worded than Emma is giving him credit for, but actually were Joseph Smith's letters written or dictated so poorly written and incoherent so as to present a barrier to the possibility that he could have written or dictated the Book of Mormon himself. And so what one thing that we are going to do is just look at the earliest the first earliest three letters, the one written in 1829 and the two in 1830. And then Kobe, you had this one up. Did you >> Can I just make a point? Can I just make a point? >> Of course. >> I We are going to make the case we're about to make, but we really don't have to >> because right >> the the claim isn't that Joseph the the the position of the believer has nothing to do with whether Joseph Smith was a good writer. the the claim of the believer is is only could Joseph Smith have dictated the text of the Book of Mormon >> and and the believer already h already believes that Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon by reading it from the Stone of the Hat. So, even though we're going to prove that he also was a good enough writer to have written the Book of Mormon, we've already proved the case that he uh could have dictated the Book of Mormon because that's what the church believes in 2025 and that's what informed believers believe in 2025. So, the rest of the ca we've already we've already kind of demonstrated, but we'll go ahead and also show that in addition to dictating, he also uh could have written the Book of Mormon. Sorry, I just had to make that point. >> Oh, I I love it because you're pointing out something about the way I like to do attorney work, John, which is I don't like to hang my hat on one argument when I can hang it on multiple different ways that say I win. Um, so the reason I included this slide is we're going to look at one letter that I think was written by Joseph. Um, the one taller cowy was written by Joseph completely alone. The two letters that we're going to look at in 1830 were written with or dictated in conjunction with John Whitmer. And I'm only noting that to say basically to save off someone who says, oh, these later letters that you're going to look at, well, what if John Whitmer was involved? Well, here's the problem for that as far as comparison to the Book of Mormon is one of the things that came out of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon when they understand more about these individuals handwriting is there are more people that were added to the list of scribes based on handwriting analysis than the church had ever taught previously. Growing up, we would have heard of Oliver Cry, Emma Smith, and Martin Harris, right? Those would have been the three really that we were all familiar with. But you can see right here that not only is there the handwriting of Joseph Smith at several points in this original manuscript. So I pulled this right from the Joseph Smith papers project. You can also see the same person that's involved in the writing and dictation of these two letters in 1830, John Whitmer, as well as some other unidentified scribe that they still don't know who it is. This goes back to my earlier point of really was a lot more going on with the Book of Mormon's dictation process than we were ever taught. And the manuscript itself shows this. And the manuscript evidence can't be overlooked because this is literally the original manuscript. Like we don't have the entirety of it, but what we do have shows that it's more complicated already than we were taught growing up. >> Oh, so I think only 20% was saved. So there so that's a that's a very small amount that we don't even there could be others. I this is speculating, but there could be other scribes that we don't know about. So, just to be clear, are we saying that the Book of Mormon manuscript represents a team effort of at least six or seven different people? >> Well, yeah, you can see there it's Oliver Calary, John Whitmer, another unidentified scribe, Joseph Smith, Emma Smith, Martin Harris, Samuel Smith, Christian Whitmer, and Ruben Hail. That's >> so like to make it sound like it's just all going through Joseph >> is like ridiculously uh not true. >> Yeah. And people can reach whatever conclusion about that they want. I'm really just showing this to show if any believer is going to look at those later letters and say, "Oh, the reason those sound so much more impressive isn't Joseph's writing capability. It's John Whitmer." Well, the problem they're going to have is John Whitmer was also involved in the Book of Mormon's dictation. So yeah, >> we know that Joseph Smith constantly used scribes his entire life. He was more comfortable as an orator than he was as a writer. And so it in my view, we're operating, we're comparing like with like. If John Whitmer was involved with these letters, or I'm sorry, if John Mur was involved with the dictation of the Book of Mormon, it's fair game for us to look at these letters and say, "Oh, that's just a non-factor if he was involved with these letters because he was also involved with the Book of Mormon," which is what we're comparing to. Well, my question is people keep pushing back on me saying like, "Oh, it just got better because of the people he was dictating to." Like they're I guess they're implying that those people are adding in their own words. So like, but no no um scribe has ever claimed to my knowledge that they inserted words themselves into any of these texts. >> Yeah. In fact, they've said the opposite. >> They've said the opposite. Right. Dave David Whitmer's an address to all believers in Christ makes really clear that the the all of the witnesses that I'm aware of only talk about the Book of Mormon translation in the context of tight translation. This idea that it was a loose translation or conceptual translation and the scribes were more involved other than just taking down Joseph Smith's words is not evidenced by any of the scribes I'm aware of. >> Right. Right. Okay. So, the next slides are going into the letters themselves. And so, I think there's value in reading them in full. They're a little bit sometime some of them are a little bit long. Um but I can start with the first one and then maybe we can each just read a letter. >> Great. >> Okay. So this is and this is so you did point out um on the the letter that we have this could be a transcript or something but this one is the handwriting of Frederick G. Williams. So I don't know some of them have his writing Joseph Smith's handwriting in them also which I think is the next letter. But this was written in in October 22nd of 1829. And so I put the text in here exactly as it shows on the Joseph Smith papers because I think it also reflects the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon a little bit. So I just left it in there um in its pure form I guess. So respected sir, I would inform you that I arrived at home on Sunday morning the 4th after having a prosperous journey and found all well. The people the people are all friendly to us except a few who are in opposition to everything unless it is something that is exactly like themselves. and two of our most formidable persecutors are now under censure and are cited at a to a trial in the church for crimes which if true are worse than all the gold book business. We do not rejoice in the affliction of our enemies, but we should be glad to have truth prevail. There begins to be a great call for our books in this country. The minds of the people are very much excited when they found that there is a copyright obtained and that there is really books about to be printed. I have bought a horse of Mr. Josiah stole and wants someone to come after it as soon as convenient. Mr. Stole has a prospect of getting5 or $600. He does not know certain that he can get it, but he is going to try. And if he can get the money, he wants to pay it in immediately for books. We want to hear from you and know how you prosper in the good work. Give our best respects to father and mother and all of our brothers and sisters. To Mr. Martin Harris and all the company concerned, tell them that our prayers are put up daily for them, that they may be prospered in every good word and work, and that they may be preserved from sin here and from the consequences of sin hereafter. And now, dear brother, be faithful in the discharge of every duty, looking for the reward of the righteous. And now, may God of his infinite mercy keep and preserve us spotless until his coming and receive us all to rest with him in eternal repose through the atonement of Christ our Lord. Amen. >> Wow. I'm I mean, yeah, just it's the first time I'm reacting to that. I'm like, yeah, that dude could write the text of the Book of Mormon for sure. >> It's got the same uh it's got the same tendency towards huge run-on sentences. I will point out that's something that everybody remarks about when they start reading the Book of Mormon including >> words like censure >> and um for formidable and prosecutors affliction I mean copyright convenient those you know you know part of an IQ test I I have a psychology degree And uh part of uh getting a psychology PhD is is doing IQ tests. And part of one of the 10 subtests of an IQ test is vocabulary. And did y'all know that if you had to pick one IQ subtest as the best proxy for IQ, it's vocabulary? >> I did not. >> I didn't know it either. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. I'm going to have to increase my vocabulary. Thanks, John. >> No, I mean, it's just discharge, consequence, atonement. He's a smart dude. He's not a dummy. >> If you'll go to the last slide, I mean, this last the last little phrase here. And now, may God of his infinite mercy keep and preserve us spotless until his coming and receive us all to rest with him in eternal repost through the eternity of Christ our Lord. Amen. >> Are you kidding me? Well, I suppose >> if you represented that as a Book of Mormon quote, I think most even believing members would think that probably does come from the Book of Mormon because it sounds identical to the Book of Mormon. >> And it's also very similar to the Doctrine of Covenants, which I don't think anybody disputes comes through Joseph Smith. Right. >> Right. >> Anyway, I'm I'm struck by that having listened to it for the first time. So, that was effective for me. >> Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, the next one the next one is >> I actually if we can go to the ones with the scriptures highlighted I think this will they'll be better that way. >> Okay. So, just kind of skip down. >> Yeah. Just right. >> Yeah. So, now we're going to go through the um letters from 1830. So, there's one in August and there's one in December. And Julia originally had the text of all of them and we were going to read them. We still have the text of all of them and we're going to read them. But let me explain for people who are reading along with us or watching on their screen. What I've done is I've looked at the August 1830 letter and the December 18330 letter and I've tried to extract direct quotes or paraphrase from the King James version of the Bible, the version that we know was available to Joseph Smith and was used by Joseph Smith throughout his lifetime. It really can't be understated that Joseph Smith was coming up in an area and at a time of the second great awakening in American history. The Bible was everywhere. It was used in public schools. It is what he would have been taught to read on very likely. And the reason I'm doing this is not just to show could Joseph Smith read or dictate a well-worded letter or writer dictate a well-worded letter, but also to show his his fluency in the Bible at the time basically contemporaneous with the Book of Mormon's publication. >> So, just before you get started, this is just you. You you are not basing this research off of anyone else. Correct. Right here. No, I I did as I had done one of the analyses and posted it on Reddit, I did have someone tell me that in uh the Journal of Mormon History that Nicholas J. Frederick had done similar work looking at biblical intertextuality and Joseph Smith's two letters to the Kohsville saints. So, both of these are written almost like Pauline epistles to the church organized in Kohville. And so, that's who they're addressed to. That's why they're going to sound very similar to some of Paul's letters and in fact borrowed many phrases from Paul's letters. But no, I'm not basing this on that research. I actually haven't actually read the paper. It was after I had basically looked at the same type of thing um that someone pointed out to me, oh, someone else has looked at this. So, I'll read that paper here soon. But no, this is all my original uh information. So, I will what I'll do is I'll go ahead and read the text of these two letters as we move through them. But John, if John or Julia, if you want to pause, you can see that what I've got is basically the original letter in the right hand side and then on the left hand side highlighting the words in the King James and the King James verse that are basically either strong parallels or direct quotes. So, as those stand out to you, as you want to pause me as I read through, please just go ahead and do that. Does that sound like a plan? >> Yes. I will just encourage anyone who's just listening to to please like look at this visually what I I was surprised looking at these because I hadn't seen these yet um but except this morning. So, so these really excited me like I got my undergraduate in English and just uh I don't know just like I would encourage you guys to look at this just because he highlights it so well and so you can see directly how much it it plays into these letters. >> And what this is showing is just how much of a command Joseph Smith had of biblical verse >> and how fluid he was at incorporating biblical verse into his common speech. >> Yes. and not just incorporating the biblical verse into his common speech, but working biblical quotes together to make them into a new narrative. That's the other thing that I really want people to see. Um, I'll I'll highlight this again when I get to the second sentence here, or actually the third sentence on this letter. So, I'll go ahead and start reading. >> Oh, and I'll just say I'm I'm going to reiterate one thing. This is the same year the Book of Mormon is published. So, we're not talking about 5 years later, 10 years later, 20 years later. the very same year the Book of Mormon is published. This is the the caliber at which Joseph Smith was not only able to dictate but author text, right? >> Yep. And he's writing this letter or dictating it with John Whitmer. So with that one caveat that we already talked about. So here's how it starts. >> Dearly beloved in the Lord, we are under necessity to disappoint you this time for reasons which I shall mention hereafter. But trusting that your meeting may not be an unprofitable one, may you all realize the necessity of getting together often to pray and supplicate at the throne of grace that the spirit of the Lord may always rest upon you. So I'll just pause automatically at the end of each sentence and I'll just note. So the quotes here were dearly beloved in the Lord is the way Paul starts many of his epistles. It's a phrase that's all over his epistles. I've got the quote here from Philippians 4:1 where he uses that same phrase twice. And then supplicate at the throne of grace comes from the letter of Hebrews, which you know, biblical scholars can talk about whether that's actually written by Paul, but regardless, it was in the King James version, and Joseph Smith would have definitely thought it was written by Paul. So, we see he's borrowed already two phrases just in this first introductory sentence. Any thoughts from you on that before I move on to the second sentence? >> I love it. >> I I read the Book of Mormon so much as a member. I think I have a count of 50 times. And even just even not having the Book of Mormon next to it, this is still so much of the same language like we're trusting that your meeting may not be unprofitable, like to supplicate. I don't know, just like it just sounds so similar to it as well. >> And that the spirit of the Lord may always rest upon you. I only looked at King James parallels, but that's literally from a sacrament prayer that hadn't, as far as I remember, either hadn't yet been dictated or had just been dictated. So uh continuing he says remember that without asking we can receive nothing. Therefore ask in faith and you shall receive such blessings as God sees fit to bestow upon you. So the two phrases there he borrows a phrase from James where he talks about ye ask you have not because you ask not. And he backs that up like these two quotes are incorporated together into kind of a new idea saying that whatever you ask in faith you shall receive from Matthew 21. And so again, to John's point, this just helps show not only was Joseph Smith highly conversant in the Bible, but he had this knack for mixing quotes together to make a new a new genesis of his own that combines these ideas together in a way that the Bible itself doesn't. >> That's amazing. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Our third sentence on this first uh part of the letter then continues and says, "Pray not with covetous hearts that you may consume it upon your lusts, but pray earnestly for the best gifts. Fight the good fight of faith that you may gain the crown which is laid up for those that endure faithful to the end of their probation." So this sentence alone has a quote from Psalms, from James, from Timothy, from second Timothy, and then from Matthew. So, in this one single sentence, that one I just read to you, and people can look at exactly where the the quotes are broken down, we've got five different from all from different books, all from different chapters, five different quotes from the New Testament or from the New and Old Testament that Joseph Smith incorporates directly into this letter. >> Yeah. But let's not also lose sight of just how sophisticated and scripture sounding these words are. Pray not with the covetous hearts that you may consume it upon your lusts, but pray earnestly for the best gifts. Fight the good fight. I mean, and for those that endure faithful until the end of their probation. Like this is Book of Mormon language. This is Doctrine of Covenants language. And this is a well-worded letter by any standard. And he's not just dictating from something he's reading that someone else wrote. He's generating or authorating authoring this text. And if we combine it with the fact that we know he didn't get a a a lengthy personal education, if we were to say, well, where did he learn vocabulary? Where did he gain his fluidity with text? Well, we know he had access to a King James Bible. And so it he's fluid in the exact source text that we would expect him to be fluid in. That also then explains why so much of the Book of Mormon ends up appear apparently taken from or inspired from or even plagiarized from the book from the Holy Bible. Like it all comes together here. But most importantly, it destroys Emma's claim or Tad Mallister's claim that he couldn't dictate or author a well-worded letter. It's just it's already obvious to me. >> Just keep go ahead. >> I just want I just want to remind the audience too that uh the research of William Davis, he proposes that Joseph Smith could have gone to as many as 10 years of formal schooling. In fact, in his 1826 trial as a 20-year-old, he he also claims that he's in school. And also in his first account of the first vision, he says, "From 12 to 15, I was like constantly studying the scriptures." And so like this is just this just kind of backs those both up that he was an educated man. >> Yeah, that's a great note. And and I think the thing that's really interesting about looking at these letters, it's kind of the meta point that I want to return to, which is not to say that I don't appreciate those comments about his education, but in my view, that's kind of a red herring because we have the letters right here. So regardless of how educated formally Joseph Smith may have been, we have the letters. So >> I only say that because so many apologists use those red herrings to distract people from like what we do have access to and what we can analyze. And that's why I really think these important these letters are such an important brick in the wall of understanding. Again, regardless of whatever conclusion someone reaches about Joseph Smith's calling as a prophet or the Book of Mormon, how valuable or meaningful it's been to their life, the bottom line is I think like John said, this letter demonstrates over above and beyond that Emma Smith testimony that we opened with is absolutely false, demonstrabably so. I have a PhD and I could not write as good of a letter as eloquent of a letter as this, especially without multiple drafts, right? So, whatever. >> Okay. Shall we continue with this one? Okay. >> I'll go ahead and read it and then I'll just kind of share where the quotes came from going forward. So therefore, hold fast that which you have received so liberally from the hand of God, so that when the time of refreshing shall come, you may not have labored in vain, but that you may rest from all your labors and have fullness of joy in the kingdom of God. The quotes in that paragraph or in that sentence, I'm sorry, come from the book of Revelation, the book of Acts, the book of Philippians, Revelation again, and the book of Psalms. Any thoughts on that sentence before we move on to the second one? Okay. He then says, "Dearly beloved brethren, we are not ignorant of your tribulation, knowing that you are placed among ravening wolves. Therefore, we have the more earnest desire to come to see you, but our friends from the west have not yet come, and we can get no horse and wagon, and we are not able to come a foot so far. Therefore, we cannot come this Saturday. But we look for our friends from the west every day, and with safety, we can promise to come next Saturday if the Lord will. Therefore, our desire is that you shed assemble yourselves together next Saturday." The quotes in that passage come from Philippians, 2 Corinthians, and Matthew. And the thing that's very interesting to me is if you just change the nouns, this sounds very similar to passages in the Book of Mormon where there are letters going back and forth coordinating travel plans. It sounds very, very similar to some of the passages of the Book of Mormon to me. >> Keep going. >> Yeah. I in fact, not only is this not only does this meet the bar, I'm kind of repeating myself, but not only does this meet the bar of like good enough, he's extremely eloquent as a writer. So, so for them to claim that he he could barely string some sentences together, he was a gifted orator, full stop. Mhm. It's a far cry from the text message we read, right? The way most believing Mormons understand this, but he was illiterate. That's literally what that text message said. This this person was I would say like I don't know the average literacy rate in the that 18:30 time frame, but I would say this shows a higher level of education or at least intelligence than most people would have had in the United States at that time. I >> this is eloquent pros by any standard. This is eloquent pros. >> I also think I I know we kind of talked about this already, but um I have a so a lot of times the church will say that Joseph didn't have more than a third grade education >> and people people keep saying on my channel that oh this is just improvement. This is after the Book of Mormons published. He's just got better. So, but the thing is if he's just reading from a rock and a hat, just the exact words that were written, like if you were to give my daughter who's in third grade, like some Shakespeare book or even just the Book of Mormon, that doesn't mean that her her ability to write is going to increase just because she read off this book, which is, I think, what they're trying to say is that he just got better after it was published. But I don't see how that can happen. And I just wondered if like you guys had like a different response to that, like, oh, he just got better. Well, >> no. If you've ever taught a kid to read or write, they don't make monumental progress in a year. It it takes it takes years and years to develop these skills. That's my response. I've taught four kids to read along with Margie and to write. And there's a reason why it's K through 12, right? because it takes we all know what a fifth a fifth grader with five years of writing experience or reading experience or sixth or seventh grader. We know what a seventh grade reading level is and an eighth grade reading and writing level is. This is not an elementary or a middle school level writing. It just isn't. >> Well, and to your point, so let's compare Joseph Smith's August 1830 letters from a revelation that he dictates in 1844, 14 years later. they're going to sound more or less identical. That to me blows a hole in that argument, Julia, because if we see very little progression from 1830 to 1844, why in the world would we see like a completely sloped uh basically um exponential increase in his writing capability between 1827 and 1830? That makes no sense. >> Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, we don't because they're the same. They don't change. >> Exactly. He continues and says, "So that all things will be in order when we come. Be careful that the enemy of all righteousness will not get ad the advantage over you in getting the news abroad. Were it not for the prayers of you few, the Almighty would have thundered down his wrath upon the inhabitants of that place. But be not faint, the day of your deliverance is not far distant, for the judgments of the Lord are already abroad in the earth, and the cold hand of death will soon pass through your neighborhood and sweep away some of your most bitter enemies. For you need not suppose that God will be mocked at, and his commandments be trampled under the feet in such a manner as your enemies do, without visiting visiting them in his wrath when they are fully ripe. And behold, the angel cries, "Thrust in your sickle, for the harvest is fully ripe, and the earth will soon be reaped." The quotes from that passage come from Acts, Psalms, Luke, Isaiah, Exodus, Galatians, and Revelation. Man, what what's coming to my mind is reading Joseph Smith's letters from 1829 and 1830 almost almost start to prove that he was the author of the Book of Mormon, not disprove that he was the author of the Book of Mormon. Like they they they they stand as evidence that he was the author, not that he couldn't have been the author. that that the argument is actually the opposite of what Tad Callister and Emma Smith are are proposing. >> I would completely agree. And the the the data point I point people to beyond just the quotes that we're talking about here is look at the books that become Joseph Smith's fascination. The ones that we've quoted from a lot are last times type rhetoric from Isaiah and Revelation. What does the Book of Mormon quote from more than anything else? last time's rhetoric from Isaiah and Revelation. >> That's not an accident. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> This is the last passage. He says, "That is the wicked must soon be destroyed from off the face of the earth, for the Lord hath spoken it. And who can stay the hand of the Lord? Or who is there that can measure arms with the Almighty? For at his commands, the heavens and the earth must pass away. For the day is fast hastening on, when the restoration of all things shall be fulfilled, which all the holy prophets have prophesied of, even unto the gathering in of the house of Israel. Then shall come to pass that the lion shall down shall lie down with the lamb, etc. Quotes from this page come from Genesis, Isaiah, Job, Matthew, Acts, Isaiah, and Isaiah. >> Yeah. He then says, and this is the end of this first August letter, but brethren, be not discouraged when we tell you of perilous times, for they must shortly come, for the sword, famine, and pestilence are approaching. For there shall be great destructions upon the face of this land. For you need not suppose that one jot or tit of the prophecies of all the holy prophets shall fail, and there are many that remain to be fulfilled yet. And the Lord hath said that a short work will he make of it, and the righteous shall be saved, if it be as by fire. May the grace of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost be and abide with you from henceforth and forever. Amen. I just want to note the that last quote comes directly from second Corinthians. And it's interesting that it's a trinitarian, not a the typical Mormon conception of the Godhead. It says, "May the may the grace of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." That to me looks very trinitarian. Anyways, the passages quoted here are 2 Timothy, Jeremiah, Matthew, Romans, Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, and 2 Corinthians. I think if you'll move to the next slide, Julia, I've got my overall summary, and then we can talk about this. >> So, these are the conclusions from pulling this data together. This letter, this August 18:30 letter is a total of 16 sentences over just two substantive paragraphs. In those 16 sentences, there are 37 scriptural phrases or illusions from 19 different books of the Bible. Philippians, 1 and 2 Tim Timothy, Hebrews, James, Psalms, Matthew, Revelation, Acts, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Luke, Isaiah, Exodus, Galatians, Genesis, Job, Jeremiah, and Romans. I know I'm kind of beating a dead horse, but I'm we're really showing here 19 books of the 66 books of the Bible are quoted in this one letter. That's 16 six sentences. I'm sorry, 16 sentences. There are three of the sentences that have five references or quotes worked in together. And there is one sentence that has seven references in that one sentence together. All together. What this means altogether is that there are direct quotations from the King James Bible. They comprise about 35% of the letters text if we're looking at word count. And then paraphrases and illusions are another 40% of the letters text. That means 75% approximately by word count of this letter is either direct quotations from the King James Bible or paraphrases or illusions. The things basically that I had highlighted. And then the rest of those I would say cuz like looking back on this the letter where he's like oh um things about selling a horse or like they're traveling and things like that where you didn't have any highlights. That's probably what makes it the other is just like circumstances of what they're going through and he's writing to the saints in Kohl'sville like hey we'll be there tomorrow or we'll expect you this day like he's not preaching. So >> right >> this is so you're saying you're being you're beating a dead horse but like I haven't heard this before. I haven't seen his letters compared to the New Testament. This is all fascinating to me. So, like I love these slides, these conclusion slides that you have. >> Thanks. >> It It's a onetwo punch because it's not only what an obvious command he has of the Bible and of the ability to integrate various biblical texts and concepts fluidly into whatever he wants to communicate now. But it also it it just proves the opposite of what the Ted Callister and Neil A. Maxwell and Mormon apologists want us to believe. Joseph Smith's early letters butress the assertion that he was the author of the Book of Mormon. They don't defy it. They strengthen it significantly based on what I've seen today. >> I agree. And it gets better because we've got one more letter to go through. >> Let's do it. >> So, I'll do the same thing. I'll read and then share where the quotes come from on each page. Dearly beloved in the Lord, according to your prayers, the Lord hath called, chosen, ordained, and sanctified, and sent unto you another servant, an apostle, separated unto his gospel through Jesus Christ our redeemer, to whom be all honor and praise henceforth and forever, even our beloved brother Orson Pratt, the bearer of these lines, whom I recommend unto you as a faithful servant in the Lord through Jesus Christ our redeemer. Amen. And then he, so that was kind of like the introduction of who's bringing the letter. And then the letter itself begins to the church in Kohsville. Having many things to write to you, but being assured that you are not ignorant of all that I can write to you. Finally, I would inform you that Zion is prospering here. There are many there are many serious inquiries in this place who are seeking the Lord. So the quotes in this on this slide come from Romans, 1 Corinthians, Romans again, Timothy, Peter, and Amos. >> Yeah. >> Whoa. It continues and he says, "It gave us much joy to hear from you, to hear that God is softening the hearts of the children of men in that place, it being the seat of Satan. But blessed be the name of God. It also hath become the abode of our Savior. And may you all be faithful and wait for the time of the Lord, for his appearing is nigh at hand, but the time and the season, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For ye yourselves perfectly know, the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, "Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them as a travail upon a woman, but they shall not escape." >> The quotes on this page come from Psalms, Revelation, Job, and Revelation, and James and and First Thessal Thessalonians. And then the the very interesting thing to me about this letter is Joseph quotes basically wholesale from 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse after verse after verse. So the beginning at the phrase, but the time and the season, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. That begins basically this huge quote block he's going to have from 1 Thessalonians chapter >> wild. >> Dang. It's just it goes from verse one, two, and three right in those same order. >> And it in fact continues if you'll go to the next slide. >> But ye, brethren, are not in darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night, and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us be of that day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and law, for a helmet, the so the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed unto wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore comfort one another even as ye also do. For perilous times are at hand. For behold, the dethronement and deposition of the kings in the eastern continent, the whirlwinds in the West India islands, it has destroyed a number of vessels, uprooted buildings, and strown them in the air. The fields of spices have been destroyed, and the inhabitants have barely escaped with their lives, and many have been buried under the ruins. So, the whole first half of this passage quotes directly from 1 Thessalonians 5 4 6 7 8 9 and 11. It's just one after the other direct word for word quotes with no citation in the original letter and no break basically in this quoting from 1 Thessalonians uh chapter 5. And then it continues with quotes in Timothy, Daniel, and Jeremiah. >> Dang. That >> so that that shows an incredible memory, right? >> Yeah. >> Memory or he was working from a King James version, >> right? Either either either situation or both could have been possible because we did he have a Bible? >> Do we have reports that when he was uh producing the Book of Mormon text there was a Bible accessible to him? >> Oliver Cadrey bought him one I think in 1829. We we know for sure. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Wow. >> Yeah. So it continues and he says, "In Colombia, South America, they are at war and peace is taken from the earth in part and it will soon be in whole. Yay, destructions are at our doors and they soon will be in the houses of the wicked and they that know not God. Yay, lift up your hearts and rejoice, for your redemption drawth nigh. We are the most favored people that ever have been from the foundation of the world. If we remain faithful in keeping the commandments of our God, yay, even Enoch, the seventh from Adam, beheld our day, and rejoiced, and the prophets from that day forth have prophesied of the second coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and rejoiced at the day of the rest of the saints. Yay. And the apostle of our Savior did also rejoice in his appeared in a cloud with the host of heaven to dwell with man on the earth a thousand years. So, we've got several quotes from Revelation, 2 Thessalonians, Luke, Jude, and Daniel. And again, I just want to draw people's attention to look at how much last times rhetoric we have here. It's it's something that's repeat through all Joseph Smith's theological work in my view. >> Yeah, >> man. The headline of this episode could also be Joseph Smith's early writings prove he wrote the Book of Mormon. >> True. Very true. Should we keep going? >> Yeah. Therefore, we have reason to rejoice. Behold, the prophecies of the Book of Mormon are fulfilling as fast as time can bring about. I underlined this instead of uh highlighting it because this isn't a parallel, but what I want to note is there are some softer apologists that are moving away from the idea that the Book of Mormon was any form of literal translation. And I think the new apologetic is basically like, well, the Book of Mormon can still be scripture even if it didn't really occur. And I want to point out that at least to Joseph Smith, he believed that the Book of Mormon was a literal thing that contained literal prophecies that were occurring. And this isn't the only time in his life that he pointed to current events or contemporary events and said, "This is fulfillment of Book of Mormon prophecy." So, I just wanted to highlight that as we're going through this letter. Do you guys have any thoughts on that? and then I can continue. >> Um my one thought was it might not mean anything but um people have pointed out scholars have pointed out that Joseph didn't quote from the Book of Mormon. He paraphrase them. I think he only if he did quote it was very minimal. Mostly he just based his quotes and talks off of the Bible. >> Right? >> So I just think that's interesting also that he's he sees it as real. He sees it as historical and he's saying that these prophecies without quoting it at all. He's saying the prophecies will be fulfilled. >> Right? So he continues and says the spirit of the living God is upon me. Therefore, who will say that I shall not prophesy? The time is soon at hand that we shall have to flee whethersoever the Lord will for safety. Fear not those who are making you an offender for a word, but be faithful in witnessing unto a crooked and a perverse generation, that thy that the day of the coming of our Lord and Savior is at hand. Yay, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his path, who will shrink because of offenses, for offenses must come. But woe to them by whom they come. For the rock must fall on them and grind them to powder. For the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. We have quotes here from Isaiah 29, Philippians 2, Philippians 4, Isaiah again, Matthew and Romans. And then it continues, and this is the end. And woe will be unto them if they do not repent and be baptized in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for the remission of their sins. and come in at the straight gate and be numbered with the house of Israel. For God's will, for God will not always be mocked and not pour out his wrath upon those that blaspheme his holy name. For the sword, famines and destruction will soon overtake them in their wild career. For God will avenge and pour out his files of wrath and save his elect. And all those who obey his commandments are his elect. and he will soon gather them from the four winds of heaven, from one quarter of the earth to the other, to a place whethersoever he will. Therefore, in your patience possess ye your souls. Amen. The quotes there come from Acts, Matthew, Galatians, Jeremiah, Revelation again, Matthew and Luke. You want to go to >> Does this end up does this end up in the Doctrine and Covenants as Revelation? >> That's such a Oh, no. This letter does not. But that's a great question because one of the things that actually on the Joseph Smith uh papers website when you look at these letters they actually have footnotes where they point to language from the letters that then make it into later revelations and doctrine of covenants. So I only provided the quotes that are to the King James version. So if anything I'm understating the number of direct parallels. >> Well then you're not even bringing in the Book of Mormon yet. So like you have the Doctrine Covenants the Book of Mormon that are not being talked about that that would all have these little highlights too. Exactly. >> Yeah. >> And I think if you'll go forward, I'll do the summary slide here. So looking at the second letter from December, the letter is a total of 30 sentences over six paragraphs. In those 30 sentences, there are 43 scriptural phrases and illusions from 21 different books. Romans, Corinthians, Timothy, Peter, Amos, Psalms, Revelation, Job, Thessalonians, James, Daniel, Jeremiah, Luke, Jude, Isaiah, Philippians, Matthew, Acts, and Galatians. There is one sentence in this letter that has 10 scriptural references worked into it in the single sentence. And Joseph quotes almost verbatim from eight backto-back verses like we talked about from 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. This letter has a higher percentage of direct quotations because of that that block that he quotes from first Thessalonians, but it comprises when you're looking at word count approximately 40 to 50% of the letter's total text while the paraphrases then form another 30% of the letters text. >> That's 80%. >> 80%. So the first one was 75% and the second one is 80%. So the bottom line is here, you really can't have these letters without having the King James version of the Bible. you'd be left with basically nothing. >> Dang. >> It's wild. >> Nice work. Nice work. >> Yeah, that was that was great. Then you have these >> Oh, sure. >> Oh, go ahead, Julia. >> Oh, no. I was just going to move forward. Keep going. >> Go ahead. >> Oh, I was just going to move forward with the >> Let let me let me say why I'm including this. So, this is from years later. This is from April 1st, 1842. Um, this is a very interesting editorial called Try the Spirits that was published in the Times and Seasons, which was the church's newspaper or one of the church's newspapers during the Nauvoo time period. This editorial note, I'm not going to read this editorial, uh, although it is very interesting fodder for a future LDS discussions episode because this is where Joseph Smith talks about denigrating other people's supposed revelations on the basis that they came from angels with the wrong color hair. And no, I'm not making that up. That is literally in the Times and Seasons. It's interesting, too. This editorial, at least a phrase from this editorial, was cited in general conference not that long ago. It was maybe like 2 years ago. I'd have to look up exactly who quoted it, but this editorial note that talks about this editorial in this April 1st, 1842 Times and Seasons edition comes directly from the scholars at the Joseph Smith Papers Project. This first paragraph on this page gives an introduction so that people know a little bit about this editorial and its context. The next paragraph is what's very interesting in looking at what we've been looking at today. If you'll go back, I do want to read that first paragraph just to introduce it. So, this editorial note again comes directly from the folks at the Joseph Smith Papers Project. John, do you want to read this first paragraph and then I'll read the second one? The fir the 1st of April 1842 issue of the times and seasons included a lengthy article called or titled try the spirits. The title was derived from 1 John 4:1 which reads quote beloved believe not every spirit but try the spirits whether they are of God because many false prophets are gone out into the world close quote. The article was prompted by recent occurrences of apostasy among Latter-day Saints. It specifically referenced as cautionary examples the experiences of an unnamed boy in Kirtland, Ohio, Isaac Russell, Gladen Bishop, and Oliver only. The latter two were excommunicated for apostasy only the previous month. Um, the editorial emphasized the importance of discerning between true and false spirits and warned readers not to be misled by false prophets. In addition to giving Latter-day Saint examples, the article referenced several biblical figures and episodes as well as more recent historical figures known throughout the Western world such as Joanna Southcott, Jamaima Wilkinson, and Edward Irving. Okay, so that kind of sets the stage and people are going to recognize as I read this next paragraph exactly why this ties into our last episode. So I want to acknowledge this is from 1842, but this comes directly from the folks at the Joseph Smith Papers project. The they're trying to they're trying to support the idea that Joseph Smith likely authored this article. But listen to the way they describe Joseph Smith's capabilities here. They say Joseph Smith likely authored the article which was signed editor despite the numerous scriptural references and quotations. It does not appear that the author consulted the Bible when drafting the editorial. Many of the quotations conflate multiple verses or provide slightly inaccurate chapter orverse citations. In this aspect, the editorial mirrors Joseph Smith's usage of scriptural references in his public sermons with frequent impromptu illusions that were not checked or written beforehand. My point is, what do we see in those letters? Exactly what they describe here. So to your comment, Julia, how do I respond to that argument? Why do the folks at Joseph Smith Papers describe this writing from Joseph Smith in 1842? exactly to mirror what we just went through with these 1830 letters. >> Wow. >> It's also curious that they're they're specifying public sermons but neglecting >> the book of >> that that that it also reflects his usage of scripture references in his own writings in 1833 that they themselves published and made available to us. Like why? It's almost like they're saying public sermons to say he spoke like this, but he would never write like this. >> Am I wrong? >> Nope. You're not wrong. And I I really think that one phrase right there. It does not appear that the author consulted the Bible when drafting the editorial. Many of the quotations conflate multiple verses. What did we just talk about? 10 citations to different verses in one sentence in that December letter or provide slightly inaccurate chapter or verse citations. The letters don't have that, but they do slightly change the wording or the order of some wording. They're obviously drawn from those biblical passages because there's too many words in common with them to not be significant. But I just think this this is such an interesting commentary by the folks at the Joseph Smith Papers Project. It's almost like like kudos to them for honesty, but like you said, John, also like finish the thought like finish the thought of what you're saying, which is Joseph Smith was very capable of writing and dictating the text of the Book of Mormon. >> I think if I can add, I think even Emmens said Joseph Smith had neither book nor script and he could not have concealed it from me. Correct. And I think she's referring to like the view of the Hebrews or or um the manuscript found. >> Yes. Um, but like this the church is saying, "Oh, well, he didn't really need a Bible in the room with him." Like he didn't need a Bible to write these because he just uses the language anyway. Like to me, they're saying he knows the Bible well enough that he doesn't really need a Bible. So like I think we know that he did have one because of the errors and things like that that enter into the Book of Mormon, >> but like he didn't need one because he knows it that well. >> Yep. And that he knows it well enough, but we'll sometimes slightly get things wrong. And what do we see in the Book of Mormon? Exactly that. Right. >> Right. Yeah. So, what I I really like that Colby compared the text from the to the New Testament. I didn't think about doing that. I thought about comparing it to the Book of Mormon itself. And so, these next slides are just me like grabbing a few words from the letters, comparing it to the Book of Mormon. This is not as thorough as what Kobe did, but here you have the where he says there begins to be a great call for our books. And then in the Book of Mormon in Alma, it says that we thus we see a great call of diligence. It's just similar phrasing. And then in the letter in the 1829 letter, he talks about the consequences of sin. And this is a the same line from the Book of Mormon is used, the consequence of sin. >> Just very very New Testament language. And then in the Kohville letter, I'm sure you pointed this one out too, but it's the consume it upon your lusts. You see it in James, but also in the Book of Mormon, it's they talk about consuming it upon your lust. So you see that in Joseph Smith's letters, the Book of Mormon, and the New Testament. Mhm. >> And then again, there's another one with the labored in vain. Um, I'm sure I'm sure you highlighted that one as well. I just can't remember the reference. So, it appears in the in the letter as well as the Book of Mormon. And then this idea of ravening wolves and this one in the heading of the Book of Mormon, it says, you know, compared to Matthew 7. So, you have again a letter, the Book of Mormon, and the New the Bible. And then Enemy of All righteousness. This is another one that you highlighted. I can't remember the reference. It shows up exactly the same way in the Book of Mormon. >> And then this one here, an offender for the word, it also shows up in the Book of Mormon as well as Isaiah 29. So, so to me, like one of the things this is showing is that the New Testament is the base text for his for his letters, but it's also a base text for the Book of Mormon. And then if we keep going, oh, I guess there's this is the exact same phrase and I'm sure you pointed this out too of Matthew 18 um with a Kohville letter um and then other passages more particular account. So, but there's a Grant Palmer wrote a book called An Insiders View of Mormon Origins and Eva, you guys haven't read it, please read it. It's a it's fascinating. He talks about how how you have to you can't you can't divorce or separate the Bible from the Book of Mormon. And he says these and other phrases indicate that an ancient source was not used for this sermon speaking of 3 Nephi 12 nor for any nor for the many other biblical quotations throughout the Book of Mormon. >> So he's saying this is dependent upon >> upon the Bible. >> Can I build on that um quote for a second from Grant? So this uh notion these and other phrases indic and I know he's speaking specifically of third Nephi. Um but he says these and other phrases indicate that an ancient source was not used for this sermon. If I can just point people to additional work I've done to make this same point. Um, I did an episode on Mormonism Live where we compared the Book of Mormon's Isaiah chapters to the Great Isaiah scroll, which is the basically backdates our knowledge of what Isaiah looked like a thousand years when we discovered the Great Isaiah scroll in 1947. And as a spoiler of the conclusion of that episode, there isn't a single instance where the Book of Mormon's changes to the King James version of Isaiah chapters that are captured in the Book of Mormon are vindicated by the earliest manuscript we have of Isaiah. In fact, you see exactly the opposite. You see verses that are missing in the great Isaiah scroll version from a thousand years before the Maseretic text version that basically the Book of Mormon should not have them if you understand the way that time works and yet they're included in the Book of Mormon. All to say, if people want more information on how the Book of Mormon cannot have come from an ancient source, that's an additional uh some additional research I had done in the last couple of weeks that helps make that point. >> That's great. and we'll put that in the show notes, too. So, there's another quote from Grant Palmer in the same book. He said, "The textual evidence shows that the Bible was a primary source for the miracles, quotations, stories, names, and prophecies in the Book of Mormon." All of which provided a basis for Joseph Smith's interpreting, and I can't say this word, tragizing, which is um translation. Um so, also he points out stories. He points out Moses and how they follows par exactly point for point with Nephi. And he talks about the story of Lazarus, how there are specific phrases that only appear in the story of Lazarus and they only appear in the story of King Lemon. And so he's like again, you have to have the Bible. If you don't have the Bible, you don't have the Book of Mormon. >> Well, even when you look at someone like Paul, right, Paul was this persecutor of the righteous that then gets converted through his Damascus road experience. Probably the best character in the entire Book of Mormon is Alma the Younger, the one with any actual complexity to him. And there's clear parallel there like he was persecuting he had almost exactly the same experience was confronted while traveling or whatever it was had a visionary experience is knocked out and then becomes like the prophet of the day you know same thing with um >> supposedly in the in the New Testament narrative we've got John the beloved continuing on to live and in the Book of Mormon that's increased not from one disciple to asking to live and Terry forever but to three right Yeah. >> Yeah. That's those are really good additions. So, um, in his book, Roughing It, I think Mark Twain, he's he is kind of mean or he's very direct or whatever, but he does really the word. Yes. >> Yeah. He he does a very good job of summarizing what he's seeing in the Book of Mormon. He's contemporaneous to Joseph Smith. So, in his book roughing it, which is published in 1872, he gave this his views of the Book of Mormon. He says the book seems to be merely a is this prosy detail of imaginary history with the Old Testament for a model followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James translation of the scriptures and the result is a mongrel half modern glitness and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained. The former natural bur go but grotesque by the contrast whenever he found his speech growing too modern which was about every sentence or two. He ladled it he ladled and a few such scriptural phrases as exceedingly sore and it came to pass etc and made things satisfactory again and it came to pass was his pet. If he had left that out his Bible would have been only a pamphlet. And then he also says oh sorry I'll just add >> Go ahead. >> The Mormon Bible is is rather stupid and tiresome to read but there is nothing vicious in its teachings. Its code of morals is unobject unobjectionable. It is smooched from the New Testament with and no credit given. >> Wow. You know, I I did hear go to the previous slide. I did I did hear growing up that that Mark Twain quote. Well, not only that the Book of Mormon is chloroform in print, meaning that it puts you to sleep, >> but also that if you took out all the end, it came to pass is that it would be just a pamphlet. That's stuff I heard growing up. >> What I didn't hear, >> you know, I I've I've been reading a biography on Mike Mark Twain recently. >> Uh it's an amazing biography. And whatever you want to say about Mark Twain, he was one of the most literate, wellrespected writers and thinkers of the 19th century. And you know, not only not only uh did he grow up in the time of uh you know, Joseph Smith Mormonism, but he lived in Missouri, right? And uh um and so his observations around the Book of Mormon likely being in effect what I'm going to summarize here, he's basically saying the Book of Mormon is Bible fanfiction. And we've joked about that. um many many times over the past several years. We've even quoted um Alexander Campbell as sort of suggesting that. But this contemporary analysis of the phrasiology in the Book of Mormon by a contemporary wellrespected um you know author and literary critic is profound and something that I think we should all take a deeper look at because who who who would be a more respectable analyst of the the Book of Mormon and its pros as compared to the Bible and and how it would all be viewed in the 19th century than Mark Twain. This is important analysis is what I'm saying. >> Yeah. Yeah. We've just spent two hours talking about this and breaking down the New Testament language in Joseph Smith's writing, whereas whereas he forever ago just said, "Oh, yeah. This is just King James. He's >> obvious. It's obvious what this is. He it's almost it's almost ridiculous in his mind. >> Yeah. >> And yet it very clearly seems to to match with your analysis today. And Colby, I'm guessing you didn't have this quote from Mark Twain in mind when you were pulling together your analysis, right? >> No, I wasn't. Um I didn't have this in mind when I was pulling this together. I will say though, I love that quote from Twain calling the Book of Mormon chloroform in print. And I anytime it comes up, I always have to mention Christopher Hitchens kind of barbed at Twain and said he accused him of hitting too soft to target considering that the Book of Mormon includes the Book of Ether. And I always think that's >> Wow, Julia, that that that's great stuff. Uh oh, I guess you have more quotes, too. >> Yeah, I just can I just end on this Richard Bushman. There's just two quotes from Bushman that I really want to share. This one was from Mormonism Alive. It'll go pretty fast. So, I'm just going to share this one that I pulled from their channel. >> I think right now the Book of Mormon is a puzzle for us. Even people who believe it hardly in in every detail, it's a puzzle. And to begin with, we've got the puzzle of translation. Translating the book without the plates even in sight. They're wrapped up in a cloth on the table. Um, so it's it's not something that comes right off the pages, the characters on the plates. So we don't know how that works. And then there is the fact that u you know there's phrasing everywhere long phrases that if you Google them uh you'll find them in in 19th century writings the the theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century theology and you know it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew Bible as an Old Testament that is it has Christ in it the way Protestants saw Christ everywhere in the Old Testament. That's why we now call it Hebrew Bible because the Jews never saw it quite that way. So these are all problems we we have to deal with. Um did you guys have any thoughts on that? >> Keep going. Keep going. Let's do all these slides. >> Yeah. So this is this this slide is just written. I just typed out what he had said. So there's paraphrasing everywhere, long phrases that if you Google them, you'll find them. But I want to draw attention to this because I I mean I have a lot of respect for Richard Bushman, but I kind of have to call him on this. He says, "To begin with we have the puzzle of translation, translating the book without the plates even in sight and wrapped up in a cloth on the table." So I agree with him that that makes absolutely no sense. So it's not something that comes right off the pages, the characters on the plates. That's not what the witnesses and the people who served as scribes say. They say exactly the opposite. The only information I'm aware of from any Book of Mormon scribe when they talk about the experiences like the quote we shared from Emma where the stone communicates to Joseph and Joseph is giving them literally word for word what needs to be recorded. So it's just not >> he's defying the witnesses. He's defying the witnesses. >> What he really means behind the scenes, I would suggest is what the witnesses say doesn't match up with what the text shows. And so because of that, we don't really know how this works. But that's not really true. We know what the witnesses said and we know that that's demonstrabably not true according to the text. But if you're determined to reach the same conclusion, yeah, you might say that we don't know how that works. But that's because you're assuming that it does work and not just trying to go to the more simple explanation of could Joseph Smith have written the Book of Mormon, which I think this episode shows pretty thoroughly. Yes, he absolutely had the capacity to dictate a text like the Book of Mormon. And Bushman's admitting if you Google phrases, you will find Book of Mormon phrases. You'll find them in 19th century writings. The theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century theology. And he says it it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew Bible as an Old Testament. He's saying Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith and his colleagues wrote the Book of Mormon. That is literally what he's saying. Mhm. >> Yeah. >> And and for those who don't know who Richard Bushman is, he is the LDS church's uh best faithful Joseph Smith scholar, former patriarch, former state president. You don't get any more faithful or wellrespected of a historian or a scholar than book than Richard Bushman. And he's giving it away right here. The Book of Mormon is a 19th century document. It's not an ancient document. >> And if I can give a specific example to to just bolster exactly what you said, John, one example that we went through in those Isaiah chapters episode I mentioned just a minute ago is that there's one uh one quote that the Book of Mormon has from Isaiah where Joseph Smith changes the words of the King James version and he adds this phrase. the the Isaiah says that these folks come out of the waters of Judah and Joseph Smith changes that to read in the Book of Mormon version to read out of the waters of Judah or out of the waters of baptism. Baptism was not a concept that the Jews would have recognized at 600 BC when supposedly these brass plates are containing these writings of Isaiah. So that's a specific example of what Richard Bushman is talking about. There are specific examples behind all of these things. And the original, by the way, in that specific example, the original meaning like the great Isaiah scroll version from 125 BC actually says out of the loins of Judah. So the hilarious thing about that specific example is that this mistransation then gets built into the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith taking it literally then says, "Out of the waters of Judah, out of the waters of baptism," which again was not a conception that would have meant anything to these pre-Christian ancient Jews. >> That's a good example. >> Yeah, I love this last slide, too. >> So, this is >> from Reddit. From Reddit. Yeah. >> This is a Reddit conversation and it's titled Richard Bushman AMA 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time. So it's like they're asking him questions and he's on here and he's he's he's responding to >> these are his words on Reddit. >> His words. So um just the part in blue is the main part where he says the Book of Mormon has a lot of 19th century Protestant material in it both in terms of theology and of wording. I am looking for an explanation of how and why it is there. >> And that's 10 years ago. So that's 2015. Mhm. >> But you know that's that's 10 years after he published Roughstone Rolling. That's at the end of a lifetime like a 80 80y year lifetime of studying Joseph Smith or 60 years or 50 years, however you want to start that clock. >> Can we pull that back up? Because the same way we started this episode, which is this is the way this quote has been used for generations, Richard Bushman says the exact same thing in different words. I don't think it is enough to say Joseph Smith absorbed it from his environment. it is too complex and too far beyond his cultural range. I don't see evidence of that when we look at these letters. These letters had quotes from uh passages that are quoted in the in the Book of Mormon themselves. So, I just I don't understand why anyone would have a basis to say that that it was too complex to Joseph Smith to absorb into his environment in these 1830 or I'm sorry, in the Book of Mormon when we see it very clearly in his letters the same year the Book of Mormon was published. So when people say, "Oh, the Book of Mormon was too complex. He couldn't have written it." Is the New Testament complex? Is the Bible complex? That's that's your answer is that he's just basing off of those that complexity where you're like the stories that you just pointed out with like Lazarus or or or or Elma getting knocked out like just things like that where it's like he's just taking these stories from the New Testament. >> And the last two sentences right now, this is Richard Bushman. Right now, it seems possible that that the Joseph that Joseph Smith gave us exactly what he got by his inspiration, but somehow, those are my words, that what was given him went beyond what the Nephi prophets wrote on the plate. So, we're supposed to believe that Joseph didn't add anything at all. He just gave us what was dictated, but that somehow God or angels interjected 19th century Protestant Christianity and 19th century anacronisms into the text. Um, so that then in in Bushman's final sentence, the text was augmented in some way, but not by Joseph. So why would God can somebody please explain to me why God would bother having ancient prophets create gold plates, inscribe their history in the gold plates, protect and preserve the gold plates, bury them, have Joseph then uncover them, protect them, fight off fighters, and hide them from from evil treasure diggers to then sit in the translation room but not use the plates at all. But then when Joseph is somehow using his artifacts of treasure digging, a stone in a hat, he's going to somehow be reading from the plates when they're not in the room. But that's not enough. God's going to augment whatever Joseph telepathically transports with the stone in the hat from the plates that aren't in the room but were preserved to be used. God's gonna also add 19th century Protestant ideas and 19th century anacronisms into his translation to then come up with what we have the and Tad Callister is going to say that this is the most plausible explanation that we have for for how the world works. It this is just ridiculous upon ridiculous. Am I wrong? you. No, you're completely right. I also love that I always seem to draw out caf caffeinated John a little bit. No, you're exactly right. Is if you'll pull back up that quote from Bushman, like, let me explain why he has to make the argument he's making that you just pointed out is so absurd. It's because he can't say that Joseph Smith was knowingly modifying what was on the plates because the witnesses and the scribes say the exact opposite that he was just receiving these things like a direct line to heaven through the stone. So he knows about that data point. So he can't say that Joseph Smith was knowingly monkeying with was supposedly was an ancient record, right? So it has to be this weird theory and they do this with the book of Abraham too where for some reason it's convincing to people that Joseph Smith can be absolutely mistaken about what he was actually doing but yet you should take the re the revelation that comes out the end of the process. Joseph Smith was absolutely mistaken about what he was doing according to their own argument at face value like it came from God like the tablets written on Mount Si. That is, let me put it this way. When I first started going through my faith crisis, I had a dream where I died and I had an interview with Jesus in a police interrogation room. So that tells you what kind of person I am. Um, he was also dressed in a very corporate way, so I know it was Mormon Jesus. Um, today I look at this experience as just purely a dream, my sub subconscious working through issues. But my first question because I'm right in the middle of my faith crisis or like on the tail end of it. My very first question in the dream was okay so was Mormonism true? And in the dream Jesus says to me it was true and I said really like Helen Mark Kimble the King James version stuff in the Book of Mormon. I started to raise all these reasons that I just could no longer find the church's truth claims held water anymore. And he said to me in the dream, it's not true in the way you were taught it was true. And then it became this kind of like general thing about, you know, reaching for higher things and aspirations. And I understand there are still a lot of people who find arguments like that convincing. The thing that I took out of that experience is I will refuse to feel bad before God, Jesus, or anyone for using the best tools I have available to me to determine what facts are. And the best tools I have available to me tell me that it is ridiculous to believe these claims when I have such clear contrary evidence of where the Book of Mormon may have come from. And so the feeling that I've taken from that experience today is just I'm going to refuse to feel bad for failing a trick question exam. If continuing to believe in the Book of Mormon requires me to accept patently ridiculous arguments like the one we're just going through, I just refuse to believe, I guess, that God would want me to use an epistemology that if I applied it in any other arena of my life would leave me vulnerable to frauds and charlatans to the most important questions that determine my eternal salvation. I just I guess I believe more about God's inherent good nature than believing that that's what I would be asked to do. >> Do you have a summation, Julia? >> No, I think that was really good. Like I just this people can continue to believe the Book of Mormon. I have no problems with that. It's just that they can't use this argument as a reason that they believe that the Book of Mormon is true. >> Yeah, Colobby, that was beautiful. Julie, I agree. And I'll if it's okay I'll just give my summation too. Can we go back to the telegraph slide that we skipped because I think it's a great way to end. >> Not not only do I think that we've proved conclusively that Joseph's early letters um you know not not only don't uh don't line up with the claim that he couldn't dictate or write a well-worded letter. Not only have we demonstrated that he absolutely could dictate and or write a well-worded letter, I think what we've demonstrated today is that Joseph Smith's early writings prove that he is likely the most likely author of the Book of Mormon. But I also don't want to lose sight of what else we've demonstrated today. We've demonstrated today that Mormon church leaders had had the evidence that Joseph um was a very skilled uh dictator and or writer of pros as early as 1830 and 1831. And in spite of having that evidence and either holding the evidence or publishing it with the Joseph Smith papers project, they have still continued to intentionally advance the narrative that Joseph was an ignorant, uninformed, rube school boy pebbrained country bumpkin who never could have written anything even close to the eloquence of the Book of Mormon. Also not admitting that there are like eight or nine other collaborators or co-conspirators that clearly worked with Joseph Smith to produce the text. And I uh want to finish with this slide that that you uh you guys also included in this deck because you know historians will say it the closer the closer the sources are to the actual happening the more we should pay attention to them and the more we should believe them. So let's not even let's not even go to Mark Twain who would have written you know his analysis of the Book of Mormon even though he was a contemporary of Joseph Smith even though he lived in you know Missouri and was very familiar with the writings and the literature and the pros of the of the of you know the 19th century Midwest. Let's go to an analysis of the Book of Mormon that was done uh within a year of it being published. This is the Telegraph, the Payneesville Telegraph, published in March 12th, 1831. And it reads, quote, "The book, meaning the Book of Mormon, is chiefly garbled from the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha, having contributed its share. names and phrases have been altered and in many instances copied upwards. A quartto Bible now in this village was What does that mean? Quartto Bible. Do Do of you know what that would mean? >> I don't. >> All right. You guys look that up while I finish the sentence. A Quartto Bible now in this village was borrowed. Oh, okay. Okay. So they're basically saying that there's a a Bible that that that was available in Palmyra. So it's saying a Cordo Bible now in this village was borrowed and nearly worn out and defaced by their dirtily handling. In other words, clearly they had a copy of the Bible as a source and they were consulting it in the authoring of the Book of Mormon. Um, some seven or eight of them spent many months in copying Calry being principal scribe, >> which that some eight seven or eight of them. Um, Kobe, you listed nine of them, right, including Joseph that were involved. Like that's that's wild to me. >> Yeah. >> And I'll say to the Bible point, so Corto Bible was just like an addition of the Bible like a like a publisher and as at least that's what I'm seeing as I look it up. The funny thing about the like the King James version errors being in the Book of Mormon is apologists now have to make basically the same argument that well when it came to the the Book of Mormon recapitulating the King James version, Joseph Smith just either the reason those errors are in there is because Joseph Smith saw that it was whatever Isaiah 27 and decided to go pull his Isaiah 27 off the shelf and instead of reading the stone because the stone hurt his eyes, he copied the version. That's why the errors are in there. It's just hilarious how time has vindicated this quote you wanted to end with, John, to me because apologists are making these same arguments. They're then just on the back end telling you and here's why that doesn't matter. And people can decide whatever they want to believe. Like we've said a number of different times, but I it's very important to me that people are honest about the things they believe based on faith and the things they believe based on evidence. And to me, it's very clear. You cannot continue to believe in a literal historical uh Book of Mormon translation according to the evidence. If one accepts that proposition, they're going to do it based on faith. >> Yeah. And again, just to reiterate, it's also clear that the Mormon Church is intentionally, knowingly misleading, and deceiving its believing members with obviously false, deceptive, and erroneous arguments to buttress uh, you know, the Book of Mormon's validity by trying to demean Joseph Smith's talents. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Wow, what an amazing episode, y'all. Thank you. >> This was fun. I really like your analysis, Colobe. >> Thanks. Thank you for all the stuff you added as well. >> Yeah, >> Colby. It's almost bl it's almost LDS discussions blasphemy to say that anybody could add anything of even comparable worth to what Mike added to the LDS discussions cannon. But I think you're bringing it. >> Ah, thank you. >> For sure. I do tend to look at some of these claims and just go, does the evidence really support that? Because there's an interesting metaanalysis here of why in the world are so many adults that can go read Joseph Smith's letters for their for themselves today, relying on someone's secondhand account of Joseph Smith's writing capabilities. Go read it yourself. Maybe you disagree with our analysis. That's fine, but at least you read it for yourself and then you're making up your own mind instead of accepting Emma's obviously motivated testimony that we've already talked about. the problems with taking that at face value. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And Julie, we couldn't have done this without you. So, thank you so much. >> Yeah, of course. This is great. >> All right. And do we have do we have other LDS discussions episodes to come that are in the works? >> Yes, there's plenty. >> What What are some What are a couple of the ones coming up? >> Well, John, one that you commissioned me to do is the the history of the ceilings or the the way that I'm viewing it is is how the ceilings came about and the changes that were made throughout throughout the church's history. Like I had no idea about some of the things that they've started and stopped. >> So >> that's awesome. And Colby, >> I've tenatively got the next episode idea I have is called Gospel Topics Essays Lie about the Book of Mormon. And we'll look at some very specific apologetics that the church has made and several of those essays that actually lie, I would say demonstrabably lie about what the Book of Mormon actually says. >> All right. Well, Kobe and also uh we we just want to end as we began. We love Nemo. We want to have Nemo back. We we we were scheduled to have Nemo with us and then for some reason he wasn't able to join. But love and great gratitude goes to Nemo. Please don't complain that Nemo wasn't on the episode. Um but we'll have Nemo back to LDS discussions whenever he's available. But uh Colobby, you're awesome. Julia, you're awesome. Thanks for your great work today. And uh thanks everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Again, the LDS discussion series is best consumed in sequence from the beginning. There's over 60 episodes. You can find it in its own feed in Spotify under LDS discussions, its own feed in Apple podcast under LDS discussions, or you can find it integrated into the Mormon Stories podcast feed on Spotify or on YouTube. And maybe the best way to consume it is through the uh playlist on the Mormon Stories podcast YouTube channel where you can watch these episodes in succession. It's best to view these instead of just listen. 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