Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to part two of my interview with Jim Bennett, author of A Faithful Reply to the CES Letter. This. This interview is kind of subtitled believing after the CES letter. We just did two and a half good hours with Jim Bennett. It's December 28th. I'm John Dehlin, and we just spent, again, two and a half hours talking to Jim about God, about Jesus, about his. About Jim's background and, and about prophets and about faith and the role of the church. It was the type of conversation I've missed. It's the type of tussle that I would do with Dan Witherspoon and others. But I think it was a constructive, healthy, vibrant dialogue where I think we came to a lot of common ground. I think it was a healthy, constructive conversation. I'm happy with it, and I'm really thrilled to have you back for part two. So, Jim Bennett, welcome to part two of our interview.

Jim Bennett [00:00:52] Thank you, sir. Glad to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:53] Yeah. So now it's time to turn to Joseph Smith and scripture and all that stuff. And this is stuff we could, you know, you. You obviously, you already did 12 hours of bill Real. I've promised to you and to my listeners, not that you required it, but this isn't about debating.

Joseph Smith and Claims of Restoration

Jim Bennett [00:01:11] Right.

John Dehlin [00:01:12] This is about finding common ground and coming to understand how you believe, knowing all the problems. That's what this is about. So let's. Let's dig in. How does that sound?

Jim Bennett [00:01:23] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:01:24] All right. Okay. So let's begin. And what I'll do is I'll lay out the correlated kind of orthodox understanding of a bunch of different issues, and then you can talk about, you know, how you see things. Is that okay? But I'll set up kind of what I was taught or what I think the general understandings are and. Or what I think the problems are. And you can sort of say, yes, I. Yes, I agree to problems, you know, C, D, and E. I disagree with problems A, B, and R. But then more most importantly, you can say, here's how I believe. Okay, regardless. Okay, so we start with Joseph Smith. Kind of the, the narrative that I think we were all led to believe with Joseph Smith was this general idea of an apostasy, that Christ set up his church on the earth and that the church fell almost immediately into apostasy. And so, you know, God's church wasn't on the earth for a couple millennia, and he needed, you know, Joseph Smith to kind of bring back his one true church. And you even mentioned the idea of a true and living church.

Jim Bennett [00:02:36] Right.

John Dehlin [00:02:36] And I think this is where it begins for people, you know, to get really hung up. It's like, really, there's billions of people on the planet and there's thousands of Christian churches, not, not to mention all the other non Christian denominations, but there's only one true church, and it's the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with only like 5 or 6 million active members. And Joseph Smith had to be called as God's 12 prophet, and only the Mormon prophet, like, is God's spokesman on the earth. Like, here's where it starts to get really problematic. But it begins with this teaching of the apostasy. How much of that do you sort of like, say, I acknowledge is a problem or I disagree with, or I agree with. Maybe let's start there with how do you see the apostasy and the restoration? How do you frame it and Joseph Smith's role in it?

Jim Bennett [00:03:27] Okay, well, When you talk about one true church, you have to define what that means, because I think some people look at that, and I think maybe even a majority of people look at that and say, well, this is the one true church. And so everybody else outside of this church is lost or inadequate or inact

John Dehlin [00:03:51] or not true or no authority. Right. Well, illegitimate. So I'll just say, like, according to orthodox Mormonism, a non Mormon baptism doesn't count in heaven. It's in terms of getting people in. And a non Mormon Christian marriage doesn't, Doesn't. The ceiling doesn't persist. And that's not to get off on those rabbit trails. It's just to say those churches aren't true in the sense of like, I could have a fake driver's license or a real one.

Jim Bennett [00:04:22] Right.

John Dehlin [00:04:23] A real one's issued by the state, but a fake one doesn't count. It's not legitimate. And in orthodox Mormonism, non Mormon baptisms, non Mormon marriages, non Mormon churches are illegitimate in the same way that a fraudulent driver's license would not be viewed as legitimate by the state.

Jim Bennett [00:04:43] Right. And I think that's accurate and that would be really brutal and awful if we don't go down the line.

John Dehlin [00:04:51] So you're saying you do believe that, you do believe those things.

Jim Bennett [00:04:55] I do believe them in the context of making sure that we, we recognize that we are providing those things, the real driver's license, the real baptism for every person who has ever lived. Because if you stop without understanding the universalist implications of the temple, then you have a real problem with the idea that only the 5.6 million people you've talked about are the people who are going to get into heaven. I do not believe that.

John Dehlin [00:05:25] Yeah, and the church doesn't either.

Jim Bennett [00:05:26] And the church doesn't either. But the thing is, when we talk about the one true church, we don't ever talk about the fact that we believe that every human being that has ever lived will have the same chance to accept the authority of that one true church at some point in their eternal existence. So I don't see that as problematic in the same way that a lot of others do, because I think, think it's essential that we take the long view.

John Dehlin [00:05:55] The only problem is, and I believe that Mormonism has a very powerful universalistic strain.

Jim Bennett [00:06:03] Right.

John Dehlin [00:06:05] And it's something that we don't want to admit publicly. It's something that we don't want to emphasize or acknowledge.

Jim Bennett [00:06:14] It's like we talked about grace in the last section.

John Dehlin [00:06:17] But it is true that we're saying your marriage does. Doesn't count in heaven, your baptism doesn't count in heaven, your church is not legitimate. And that's also true. That is true. And yes, there's a way for everyone to get back to heaven.

Jim Bennett [00:06:32] No, but it's not just there's a way. It's that your marriage. We will provide you with the kind of legitimate marriage. Right, but, but, but, but there's a,

John Dehlin [00:06:42] there is a, there is an arrogant kind of insulting part of that for some that's saying we're superior and that you're not legitimate. That part. You can't, I mean, if you're being honest, you can't shy away from that.

Jim Bennett [00:06:57] I can understand why people would take it that way at the same time, and I can understand why members of the church would frame it that way. I am less and less comfortable framing it that way because I don't see anything exclusionary in the core doctrines of what the church actually teaches. I see in terms of heaven, in terms of the afterlife, in terms of

John Dehlin [00:07:22] what it leads to. What it leads to is our beliefs are better than yours. We're more happy than you. We're more righteous than you. We've got the truth. You don't. And you see this in testimony meetings. It's like, I feel so bad for all the people that don't have the gospel because when someone dies, they don't have the same beliefs and they don't have a living prophet to tell them what's true. And there is all sorts of arrogance that can flow out of the, the, the implications of we're true and you're Not. That has nothing to do with the.

Jim Bennett [00:07:53] See, I don't. I wouldn't say to someone that we're true and you're not.

John Dehlin [00:07:56] But, but I'm talking about Mormon culture. I guess you can see that, right?

Jim Bennett [00:08:00] Sure, of course I can. I can see that in Mormon culture, and I've experienced that in Mormon culture.

John Dehlin [00:08:04] Yeah, but for you, that's not. Well, part of your view.

Jim Bennett [00:08:10] You're saying, well, again, what, what do we mean when we say. When we say we are the only true church. And as I said in the last thing, we're misquoting the Lord when we say that? Because the only place that we have, this is the only true anything. It's always described as the only true and living church. And I see that living authority and power as not a mark of superiority so much as an added responsibility. I've sometimes described to people that I believe everybody gets saved and it's the Mormons who do the paperwork. We have a responsibility as the living church, as the authorized living authority to go out and make this world better and to prepare the world for the second coming. It does not mean that people who do not accept the gospel in this life or the people who do not have these opportunities that your marriage, if you were not married in the temple because you were not a member of this church, you are not going to be with your spouse in the eternities. I believe that everybody is going to be with their spouse.

John Dehlin [00:09:16] You made that point. But.

Jim Bennett [00:09:17] Right.

John Dehlin [00:09:17] It does mean that the Mormon Church is better than the Catholic Church. It's better than the Lutheran Church. It's better than the Muslim church. It's better than the Orthodox, you know, the Jewish religion, because they're all incomplete and don't have the authority. That's. It's just.

Jim Bennett [00:09:32] But there's a.

John Dehlin [00:09:34] There's a culture of superiority that it imbues, that it engenders.

Jim Bennett [00:09:37] I think people accept it as a culture of superiority. I reject it personally.

John Dehlin [00:09:42] Okay.

Jim Bennett [00:09:43] Also, the other thing about that is that, and this came up in the CES letter a lot when he talked about all the different churches, very few people in the 21st century think of themselves as part of a sort of centralized, hierarchical church. You know, to compare our church to Judaism, for instance, which is wildly decentralized, there's no one center of Judaism, one prophet of Judaism. Islam is fragmented all over the place. Christianity, I mean, Catholicism is close in terms of the kind of hierarchical structures that they have there. But people don't experience. I don't think they experience God in that way outside of our church. And they don't look for God in that way outside of our church. So I think the comparisons often fall short because Jana Reese again wrote a great article when she talked about people. We go around as missionaries acting like everybody's asking which is the one true church. That's not even a question that people are asking anymore. It's a question that Joseph Smith asked 150 some odd years ago, 200 years ago, but it's not a question that's being asked today. People are, you know, why do I need a church? What does church do for me? And I think that's one of the challenges that we have as a church is that we are sending missionaries out with a message that a lot of people just don't see any relevance to. It's not did the church which church is true? It's how do I find God, how do I connect to God? And I think the church's value is that we offer ways to do that. I find the Book of Mormon, that's the strength of the Book of Mormon is not so much. I can sit here and talk about the apologetic sort of arguments over historicity and everything else, but that's not why the Book of Mormon has value to me. The Book of Mormon has value to me because it connects me to God. And so we need to go out and say, here's a way for you to connect to God and to say, okay. But the whole issue of which is the one true church can certainly be framed in a way that says we are the superior church, we are the best church, this, that and the other legitimate. We're the legitimate church, but that continues to fall flat with a world that isn't looking for a one true church. And I think the strength of our message does not come in that exclusivity. I think we need to tailor the message in a way that we are a church that gives you the power to connect personally directly to God, and here's how you can do it. And I think that message is what will resonate. And I think we're moving closer to that message than we have. But no, I recognize that people can hear this idea of the one true church and say, who do you think you are? It's that old joke that St. Peter's walking new people through heaven and there's a building over there. Shh, be quiet. They're the Mormons. They think they're the only ones here, you know, And I think that we do a disservice to our doctrine to our theology when we focus on that kind of exclusivity, because at its core, we say we are going to save everybody. If it takes a gazillion years for everybody to go through the temple and do it for every person that's ever lived, everybody is going to get saved.

John Dehlin [00:13:27] So, so I, I mean, I, I love the, the humble premise of, like, we're just the bureaucrats, we just do the paperwork.

Jim Bennett [00:13:36] Right?

John Dehlin [00:13:36] I, I think that's an elegant way to look at it. Instead of we're superior, we're like the bureaucrats to do all the paperwork. I do think that this is a legacy Joseph Smith gave us. I think this was like how he differentiated himself from everybody else eventually is by claiming the authority that this didn't come in until 35 or 38 or whatever, right? So, I mean, this is a legacy that comes from Section 1 of the Doctrine and Covenants. And so it's. I'm sure that's tough, tough to grab grapple with. When I became a progressive Mormon, the way I dealt with it was just to believe two things that all this stuff about temple ordinances having to be performed for the dead, I'm just like, somehow that there's good that comes out of that, but there's more to it. And this idea that God can't get everyone to heaven without some dude going in the water on behalf of somebody else, there's like, maybe we've got that a little bit wrong, but. But there's good that comes from it. But I lost faith at some point, even as a progressive Mormon, at this requirement that an ordinance be performed for everyone who's ever lived. And then, and I'm not sure if you have flexibility there, but I'm curious about that. But then the other thing I did is I just, I adopted this many, many Paths of Mount Fuji thing, which is just like, you can get to God from Catholicism, you can get to God from Judaism, you get to God through Buddhism, you can even get to God through atheism. And we're just, we're one of many paths and we can help people, but people can get there without us. Those were just a couple ways that I made sense of things.

Jim Bennett [00:15:10] No, and, and I absolutely. I have long thought, you know, the ordinances that we do, the rituals that we perform. Ordinance, incidentally, the way we use the word ordinance in the church is different from the way anybody else uses it. An ordinance outside of the church is a law. It's not a ritual. We're talking about rituals. And these rituals. I think are for the benefit of the membership more than they are necessarily for the benefit of the efficacy of what happens afterwards. I don't want to say they have no efficacy, I don't know. But the benefit that I see personally, particularly in the temple, is the connection that it makes us part of a greater human family, you know, turns the hearts of the children to the fathers, to use the scriptural phrase. But there is value in that, in seeing that kind of a connection over the generations. How much. How bureaucratic or legalistic the Lord is going to be, you know, what's he going to do about the sealing ceremony? I was in where the guy, the sealer, decided that every Hispanic name needed to have Inzio added to it. We had some guy named Rodriguez, and he said Rodriguez Inzio. And I ended up bursting out laughing across the altar, which was probably not appropriate. But how much of that matters, how much of that legalism matters to me, I can't imagine that it's much, if any. I think the value is we are being taught something by turning ourselves to our ancestors that way and connecting the human family that way. And we are being taught that the kind of exclusivity that you're talking about is not something that we should be trumpeting because we are being taught we are sealing the entire human family as one family. And I don't know the legal ramifications of that beyond what I know it does to me to be able to more fully connect with the people who've gone before.

John Dehlin [00:17:09] Yeah. And I. And I love that. And I think this is a theme we'll come back to over and over again in our time together when we kind of form our orthodox beliefs as Mormons. We have. There's so much specificity, so much certainty and so much confidence. It's like black and white. And this is what the afterlife is like, and this is what the ordinances do. It. It's kind of like to become a progressive Mormon and stay in the church. There's a heavy dose of, like, I'm not so sure anymore how that all works, but Heavenly Father's gonna work it out. Right.

Jim Bennett [00:17:41] But there isn't anybody that's.

John Dehlin [00:17:43] That.

Jim Bennett [00:17:43] That. That is. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. About. But. But I mean, this is where I would push back, is that I don't think that makes you a progressive Mormon to say, gee, I don't know how the legal ramifications of this are going to function. All I know is that connecting myself to my ancestors this way is good for me and good for my family.

John Dehlin [00:18:03] I had someone define the other day true meaning. Does it, does it improve my life? And I, I think you're resonating with that idea that something's true if it makes your life happier and healthier and better. Right. That's a, that's a sign of the truthfulness of something.

Jim Bennett [00:18:20] Yeah, yeah. I, I think there's more to that though. I, I mean, I, I think that just because something makes you feel good, that doesn't necessarily make.

John Dehlin [00:18:26] I didn't say feel good.

Jim Bennett [00:18:27] No, but I said improve your life. Improves your life. All right, I'll have to, I'll have to.

John Dehlin [00:18:32] I'm not. Okay, so Joseph Smith.

Treasure Hunting and the Seer Stone

Jim Bennett [00:18:37] So I'm not going to be with

John Dehlin [00:18:38] the first vision because I don't think that's where it all begins. I really don't.

Jim Bennett [00:18:44] You think the first vision is sort of a retroactive?

John Dehlin [00:18:47] Not totally. Not totally. Let me, let me, let me sort of. I've gone back and tried to study the history and what I think it starts with is folk magic. I think that I, you know, the way I read the history is that Joseph Smith Sr. Was not a successful farmer. Their family became destitute. They were also. Superstition was very prevalent at the time. And this, this treasure digging stuff that kind of really emerges around 2020, you know, 2018. 20, 1823, Joseph gets involved with it and he starts to garner the reputation as being someone who has special power, someone who can see things in the ground that other people can't see.

Jim Bennett [00:19:35] Right.

John Dehlin [00:19:36] He can find treasure, even though he's never really able to find treasure. His early superpower is to, is for people to come off believing he has special powers when he actually never produces the result of having the special powers. In other words, he gets paid to take people on these silver mining expeditions, never finds treasure. But somehow people walk away still believing he has, or some walk away believing that he has that special power. And so that's where the seer stone, that, you know, that's where the seer stone comes in. That's where the hat comes in. And that's where Joseph's lore of having special powers comes in. And then once that jig was up, so to speak, by 1827, he's got to find a new career because he's going to be thrown into jail if he keeps doing this over and over again. And so he pivots to the Book of Mormon and the church. I'm not saying there's no divinity there. You can still believe all this and still believe there's divinity. But I'm just saying for me, that all comes before the first vision. And so how do you see it?

Jim Bennett [00:20:50] Well.

John Dehlin [00:20:50] And do you agree with any of that?

Jim Bennett [00:20:53] In part.

John Dehlin [00:20:53] What parts do you agree with?

Jim Bennett [00:20:56] I think the treasure seeking, particularly with Josiah Stowell, is pretty well documented. But to say that it was the sole focus of his life and everything that he did up to that point and that he was.

John Dehlin [00:21:09] That. I didn't say.

Jim Bennett [00:21:11] Well, but the Book of Mormon is sort of a career change for him because the treasure, treasure seeking wasn't working out.

John Dehlin [00:21:16] Well, let me, let me make my case. Because if you look at the story of the Book of Mormon. Right, right. If you look at treasure digging, there are spirits that guard treasure underground. So there's treasure underground, guarded by spirits. Right. That Joseph used a hat and a stone to find with his special powers. That's treasure digging. And then you just look at the Moroni story. There's treasure buried in a hill guarded by an angel that Joseph uses his stone and his hat and special powers to find.

Jim Bennett [00:21:49] Well, I don't know anything about Joseph talking about using the stone to find the Book of Mormon. I mean, he uses the stone to translate the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:21:56] No, no. All of the treasure digging was the stone was. I don't know about the hat, but the stone was the way he didn't have powers without the stone in those first 10 years. He, the stone was. He learned it from Sally Chase and then the stone was. Was how he found stuff. And people, people were so excited about his special powers and it was a stone. Anyway, the point is that structure of treasure buried underground that's guarded by a spirit that Joseph finds using his special powers, which I'm going to say involve the stone. Can't you see a parallel in structure between that and the fundamental Book of Mormon narrative?

Jim Bennett [00:22:39] I can to some degree. I think that what's remarkable is that if indeed the Book of Mormon is just sort of this naturalistic extension of Joseph Smith's treasure digging prior to 1827, the Moroni. Doesn't make any sense then. The whole Christianity of it doesn't make any sense.

John Dehlin [00:23:00] Well, no, he also believed in Jesus. He also believed in the Bible. Yeah, but he believed in the Bible for sure, in Jesus.

Jim Bennett [00:23:07] I think when you start to paint Joseph smith prior to 1827, you can paint him any way you want to some degree because his life isn't documented nearly as well as people contend that it is. I mean, all we really know about his treasure digging comes from his experience with Josiah Stowell. Which later in his life, Joseph Smith completely dismissed and said, oh, this guy wanted to go find a silver mine. And we told him to stop digging after a few months. And so much for my reputation as a money digger. And I think Joseph was probably playing down the fact that he was more involved in this than he wanted to admit later in his life because he recognized that it appeared disreputable. And we have fairly recently discovered the court proceedings of Joseph being tried as a disreputable person. And it's Josiah Stowell who rescues him, who comes in and says, no, no, no, Joseph was great and I'm happy with what he did for me. And it was all dismissed. I'm not willing to say I would frame it personally to say that whatever Joseph's experience with folk magic was, it would likely made him more susceptible to be open to the kind of revelation that he later claimed to have with regard to the Book of Mormon. But I don't think the Book of Mormon, particularly the product of the Book of Mormon, is reflective of the kind of treasure digging obsession that I. I guess I'm still putting words in your

John Dehlin [00:24:52] mouth, but I should amend what I said because I think it's, it's. There's equal parts. I'm going to amend what I said. There's equal parts sincere belief in God, sincere belief in Jesus, and I love bordering on obsession with the Bible. Right. And the stuff I said and belief.

Jim Bennett [00:25:15] So, so like treasure digging.

John Dehlin [00:25:17] Munch those two together in equal parts. Sure.

Jim Bennett [00:25:20] But I think it's always interesting to me when people look at things and they say, well, Joseph Smith just got this revelation because he needed it. I was taught in primary, for instance, that the reason why the word of wisdom exists is because Emma was tired of scrubbing out tobacco stains on the floor of the school of the Prophets. And I remember as a kid thinking, well, that's convenient. What gets a revelation? And my primary teacher saying, yeah, that's how revelation works. You get an answer when you ask a question. And so I don't have any problem with the idea that Joseph Smith's experience with folk magic and treasure digging sort of prepared him for the idea of a berry golden record. You can look at that and say, oh, well, that's clearly just a product of this. Whereas I take it from the other end and say that prepared him for the possibility.

John Dehlin [00:26:21] That's kind of Bushman's position too.

Jim Bennett [00:26:22] Okay, well, if I'm standing with Bushman, I think I'm on solid ground. But, you know, I don't Have a problem with the fact that Joseph Smith was superstitious and a treasure digger. I don't have a problem with that.

John Dehlin [00:26:38] But when. What do you make. And by the way, I love. I think this is an elegant approach. I'm not challenging or criticizing you for it, but I do want to ask one thing. Like when Joseph takes someone to a precipice and says, here it is, here's the treasure. It's right here, everybody. And then they dig and they dig and they dig. And then at the last minute he's like, oh, you didn't do that thing, right? God took the treasure away or the spirit took the treasure away. It's gone. Like, there's kind of three options. One is he's fooling people. In lying. I guess there's two options. One is that he's lying and fooling people, or two is that he really believes that there's treasure there and that an angel is taking it away. And then I guess within that, there actually is treasure and an angel guarding it, and that is being taken away. Or he was wrong. Right. But I mean, I think, like, it's hard to believe that he. It doesn't. It challenges credibility if he really believed there were spirits withdrawing treasure. And do you allow for the possibility that he was just trying to make a scratch out a living and that he was deceiving people? And if so, knowing that it was illegal, knowing that what he was doing was illegal and he was actually put in, like, convicted of engaging in illegal behavior. He didn't. I mean, he. He was doing illegal behavior and he was. He was assessed at some point by a judge for engaging in illegal behavior. Is there any. Is there any room for him being deceptive in that process for you, or is that just beyond Joseph's possibility to be deceiving people?

Jim Bennett [00:28:35] No, I don't think it's beyond anybody's possibility to deceive anybody. I. I think that Joseph is intentionally. Well, I have to look at the records that you're talking about because the only court proceeding where he was accused of anything illegal was a hearing that was dismissed without any charges being brought where Josiah Stowell came in and saved his bacon. And the idea that we have a whole bunch of records of Joseph leading people to precipices and saying, the angel's taken the treasure away. I'd have to. I'm not familiar with specific records that describe that in detail. Are there specific records that describe that in detail?

John Dehlin [00:29:19] I mean, before he was working, the reason why he went to Josiah stole The reason why Josiah Stoll reached out

Jim Bennett [00:29:26] to him is he had a reputation.

John Dehlin [00:29:27] Because he had a reputation. And he learned it from Sally Chase, who was a nearby neighbor. She had a stone.

Jim Bennett [00:29:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:35] He saw her doing the well.

Jim Bennett [00:29:36] He dug the well, and he thought

John Dehlin [00:29:38] he got his own stone because he, you know, like the people surround, it's like, oh, Sally has a stone. And then he's like, oh, well, I need a stone. And then he gets a stone, and then he starts doing it around his neighborhood. Then he gets the reputation, and then he goes to Pennsylvania. So, yeah, I think. Well, and then. Then there's also plenty of. Plenty of accounts of people in Palmyra saying that's what Joseph Senior and Junior were known for. Yeah, but how else did Josiah Stowell hear about Joseph Smith?

Jim Bennett [00:30:06] Right, right. But the Palmyra accounts come from the hurlbut affidavits way after the fact, not

John Dehlin [00:30:15] way after a couple years, after five years, after five years, after 10 years, after.

Jim Bennett [00:30:20] They talk about how notorious Joseph Smith was for unspeakable acts, and then they never talk about what the unspeakable acts are. I mean, I don't view those affidavits particularly charitably.

John Dehlin [00:30:31] Well, historians now will like credible, faithful Mormon historians. Now. I hear them saying, yes, there's problems with the hurlbut affidavits, but there's a lot of valid stuff in there, too. And we've been too quick as apologists to dismiss them summarily. Yeah, that there's. That there's maybe 50. 50. Right. But certainly not 9010. There's fire where there's smoke, you know,

Jim Bennett [00:30:59] but the thing is, there's smoke without specificity in the hurlbut affidavits.

John Dehlin [00:31:03] That too. That too.

Jim Bennett [00:31:05] That's one of the problems with the hurlbut affidavits is not that they're unreliable and all these people are lying. It's that they just tell us Joseph Smith was the worst of worst people. He was terrible. He was awful. He was the worst. Okay, what did he do? Give me an account of something that you saw him do that was bad. And they don't have any of that. I mean, you have. What's the dude's name? Because Jeremy talks about him in the CES letter. He's the guy who accuses Joseph Smith of stealing everything from Captain Kidd. But he talks about this huge cave that Joseph Smith had where he was translated the Book of Mormon, outside a cave with all these guards, but nobody was able to go in there, and nobody really cared because it was really boring and uninteresting. And I look at that and I go, this, this doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know how to make sense of a lot of this historical record because the specific accusations against Joseph Smith rely on a whole lot of hindsight and not a lot of first person accounts of what was happening at the time in the 1820s. Regardless, I'm not.

John Dehlin [00:32:11] That's fine, that's fine.

Jim Bennett [00:32:12] I don't want to skirt your issue because to get to the point, is it possible Joseph Smith could have deceived people? Yes.

John Dehlin [00:32:21] Intentionally?

Jim Bennett [00:32:21] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:32:22] Like with Josiah Stowell and the silver mine expedition, he's saying, oh, I'm sorry, the spirit took away the treasure. Either he believes that or he's lying. It's gotta be one or the other, right?

Jim Bennett [00:32:34] Well.

John Dehlin [00:32:35] And we don't wanna call Joseph a liar, right?

Jim Bennett [00:32:38] I'm not calling Joseph a liar because I don't know the specific. The thing is, you have to give me a specific. Did he lie on this occasion? Joseph talks about, when he recounts, when

John Dehlin [00:32:48] he told them, I see a treasure, start digging and then he says, oh, the angel, the spirit took the treasure away. That is pretty much indisputable.

Jim Bennett [00:32:58] But we don't have him documented saying that.

John Dehlin [00:33:01] We've just got a bunch of witnesses, including his father in law.

Jim Bennett [00:33:04] No, we have witnesses that he was involved in treasure digging. But the idea that he was lying about this, that and the other in a specific.

John Dehlin [00:33:11] No, the fact that he led people to a spot, said dig here and that after they dug a while, he said the spirit withdrew the treasure. I don't know any credible historian that, that does not acknowledge that that happened, then that's fine.

Jim Bennett [00:33:26] I'm, I'm so, so given that, given that my, I mean my, my personal feeling is that I, the, the more I examine the life of Joseph Smith, the more I believe that Joseph Smith believed in Joseph Smith. You look at the Book of Abraham, for instance. There's no question that Joseph Smith believed that ancient funerary texts that had nothing to do with the Book of Abraham were written by the hand of Abraham. And he said so was he lying? I don't think he was lying. I think he believed that. So my interpretation of that kind of an event would be that Joseph Smith had full confidence in himself and in his ability and believed that the spirit must have moved it. Because if it wasn't there, then what other explanation could there be? Because obviously I have this gift and all that kind of thing. So I don't believe that the life of Joseph Smith demonstrates a propensity for deliberate deception. So I can't speak. Is it possible that Joseph Smith was deceiving people? Yes, of course it's possible. I don't think it's likely based on my understanding of Joseph's later life. Is it possible that he was deceiving people when he was young and that he grew out of it and they got better at it, or, you know, this all goes into reading Joseph Smith's mind and judging his motives when he.

John Dehlin [00:35:03] When he. When he hides or denies polygamy from Emma or from other people and we'll come to polygamy later. But like.

Jim Bennett [00:35:12] But problematic deception. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:35:17] So he can deceive people.

Jim Bennett [00:35:19] Of course, but.

John Dehlin [00:35:20] But knowingly and intentionally.

Jim Bennett [00:35:21] Of course, but who can't? Is my point.

John Dehlin [00:35:24] Okay.

Jim Bennett [00:35:25] My point is, is. Is that if you're framing this as saying, okay, anybody who has ever intentionally deceived anybody is disqualified from serving as a prophet.

John Dehlin [00:35:37] Okay, okay. No, I'm not saying that.

Jim Bennett [00:35:39] No.

John Dehlin [00:35:39] But so you. So I hear you settling on he can. In your mind, Joseph Smith, it is possible that with the, with the silver digging aimed with polygamy, he intentionally, knowingly deceived people.

Jim Bennett [00:35:54] How could it not have. Well, how could it not be possible?

John Dehlin [00:35:57] And he can still be a prophet.

Jim Bennett [00:35:59] Well, but. But see, the way that's even framed to me is just kind of bizarre because do we believe that there is anybody that is not capable of intentionally deceiving people? Have you ever in your life intentionally deceived anybody?

John Dehlin [00:36:12] I have.

Jim Bennett [00:36:13] I have, too.

John Dehlin [00:36:13] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:36:15] I don't know anybody who hasn't. That's part of the mortal experience. Now, is there some kind of deception that Joseph Smith could have engaged in that would have been disqualifying beyond anything that a prophet should be able to do? I mean, that's kind of a theoretical discussion, but I don't want to begin talking about Joseph Smith by trying to pretend that he. I don't believe. And maybe this is heretical, but I don't believe of anybody who's ever served in the highest offices of this church that any of them are necessarily better people than I am. That's not that I am the greatest person that's ever lived. It's that they are people. I think they are good people. I know a lot of good people. I remember being in a gospel doctrine class and we were talking about the priesthood ban, actually, and somebody said, well, the thing you have to understand is that these men are operating on a spiritual plane. So far beyond what we can even barely understand. And I raised my hand, I said, I believe there are 15 men and women in this room who are righteous enough and spiritually in tune enough to serve in the highest offices of this church. There's no question in my mind. It's not about that these are better people than we are. It's that they are people who are called to a certain responsibility and we

John Dehlin [00:37:38] have to speak someone. And, you know, they have talents. They have talents.

Jim Bennett [00:37:42] And one of the wonderful things about this church is stake presidents are released and then they become nursery leaders. Leaders. The next Sunday, with the exception of people who are called to lifetime callings, all of us serve in all these different capacities. So as you sit here and ask me, is it possible that Joseph Smith lied on occasion? Yeah, of course. Of course it's possible. Joseph Smith lied on occasion. And Joseph Smith, being part of the mortal experience, lied on occasion. I don't think him lying about treasure digging when he was a teenager disqualifies him to holding high and holy office.

John Dehlin [00:38:17] Yeah, and I appreciate your candor. This is great. And I don't want to. I'm not going to argue with you or even beat you up or claim like I scored a point. I just appreciate the candor and I appreciate that you're providing a faithful perspective, because I think people are going to value that.

Jim Bennett [00:38:31] Well, I hope so. But I think that's important because I think it's important that people. So many problems with the church go away once you can say, well, yeah, he made a mistake. Oh, he really screwed that up big time.

Joseph Smith's Pivot from Treasure Digging

John Dehlin [00:38:46] Okay, so the, the place where. And this is the reason why I, the reason why I brought this up is because it gets complicated, in my view, when he pivots from the treasure digging to the Book of Mormon, only because, okay, there's. There's one possibility, and I'm going to be covering old ground that we just covered. But let's just say with the treasure digging, there's two options. One is that he really believed there was a spirit withdrawing a treasure, you know, that it was in the ground. That's hard to believe, but it's possible. And then the other option that you just acknowledged is that he was knowingly, intentionally deceiving people. And you get that because there are points where he, like, apologizes to Isaac Hale, according to Isaac Hale, where he cries and he says, I'm so sorry I did this. I was, you know, I was deceiving people. According to Isaac Hale, I was engaging in dishonorable behavior. And I've cleaned that up and I'm going to stop. And that gives you the impression that Joseph believed he was doing something unsavory. That's my interpretation. If you read Isaac Hale, Emma's father's affidavit, he really. That's what he says Joseph said, weeping something to that effect. And to me, that combined with the fact that we know he lied to Emma in the church membership later about polygamy, I'm just agreeing with you that there's a decent probability that he was lying about treasure digging. And the reason you don't have to agree with that, but that's how I see it. And so the reason why it becomes problematic for the Book of Mormon is twofold is because, number one, we. There are so many problems with the Book of Mormon as being seen as a credible historical document, from the DNA to the problems of geography, to the, all the anachronisms and to, to just it representing, you know, 19th century Western America and Joseph's worldview, resolving all the Protestant disputes at the time, not to mention having Christianity before Jesus was even born in America. Like, there's so many egregiously problematic, fraught problems with the Book of Mormon as a historical document that when you combine that with the fact that he basically used the same instruments of fraud that he used in the treasure, some people will say instruments of fraud that he used the treasure digging. He just took that very same peep stone and didn't even really look at the plates when he produced the document. That in some people's mind, that taints the book of all those things together, taints the Book of Mormon as the document we were told it was. Now, I know you're going to go immediately, or I imagine you're going to immediately go to, but does it make you a better person? Do I feel good when I read. Do I feel good when I read it? Does it make me want to be a better person? Does it make me believe in Christ? And I'm going to say that's all separate from the problematic nature of, of its historical credibility and the fact that it arises from the same instruments of likely fraud that Joseph used in the treasure digging. Now that's a lot. But now it is a lot. Can you just.

Jim Bennett [00:42:01] That wasn't where I was going to go because I, I actually think the case for a historical Book of Mormon is much stronger than the critics are willing to allow. And I think we'll get there because I don't want to start.

John Dehlin [00:42:12] Yeah, we can go there next Well,

Jim Bennett [00:42:13] I want to start where you started because you started by saying, well, okay, so either he believed in his own folk magic ability, which is unlikely, and I don't understand why that's unlikely. Do you think that Joseph Smith believed in his own prophetic calling, or do you think that he was knowingly perpetrating a fraud from the beginning?

John Dehlin [00:42:39] It's impossible to know people's motives, but people like you know, who, who can you respect more than Dan Vogel, and even Dan Vogel admits the pious part of the pious fraud, meaning that Joseph is a believer. I think anybody that believes Joseph didn't believe in God at all, or Jesus at all, or the Bible at all, that's a real stretch. And I, I have, I have engaged in, not on the same level as Joseph Smith, but I personally have engaged in egregious self justification. I have done things to hurt my wife, for example, and my kids, where at the time I felt justified. So why wouldn't, why wouldn't Joseph Smith be capable of believing that in a very sincere way that what he was doing had a divine, had divine support? So, yes, I, I think it's probably more likely than not that he believed he was doing God's will or even doing authentic things, you know, because, because

Jim Bennett [00:43:42] I think that is the more likely explanation.

John Dehlin [00:43:44] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:43:45] That doesn't necessarily make him incapable of deception.

John Dehlin [00:43:49] Right.

Jim Bennett [00:43:49] Or any of that. But, but I think you take Joseph Smith's life, sum total of his life, and one of the reasons why so many people have been stymied by him is it seems very clear that he was a believer. He believed in himself, he believed in his calling, he believed in the Book of Mormon, he believed in the Restoration. Was he wrong? Well, that's certainly a possibility, but I think that is the more likely explanation, even from an early age, is that Joseph believed in all of this, this stuff. And Joseph believed in things where he was wrong. But I think his sincerity is relevant, not because it makes something true that isn't otherwise true, but I think it helps to explain further on as we see Joseph Smith's legacy and we see the remarkable things that he was able to accomplish in such a short life. I think it demonstrates that the fact that he believed that they were divinely motivated, I think compels us to take it more seriously than we would otherwise. If they were convincing evidence of deliberate deception, I don't think we would be even having this conversation because I think everything Joseph Smith did would have collapsed the same way everything James Strang did has collapsed. When you have people who are perpetrating deliberate deceptions. They don't stand the test of time. The way that the Book of Mormon has stood the test of time. The way that even though the church is vastly different from the church Joseph smith established in 1830, his legacy has survived. And if there were clear evidence of deliberate deception, I just don't think that would be the case.

Comparing Latter-day Saints to Other Religions

John Dehlin [00:45:37] So what then with that logic, what do you make of the Islam or what do you make of Catholicism or, you know, these other strains.

Jim Bennett [00:45:47] Right.

John Dehlin [00:45:47] That were led by charismatic leaders that claimed, you know, visitations from God, that claimed some divine mandate, but whose founding narratives are not supported by the LDS church kind of gospel, you know?

Jim Bennett [00:46:03] Well, you. You actually look at the state, and those are the churches.

John Dehlin [00:46:06] Islam's bigger. Islam's bigger than Mormonism.

Jim Bennett [00:46:08] Yes, much bigger.

John Dehlin [00:46:09] Catholicism is bigger than Mormonism. So huge, massive things can come from things that Mormonism or even Scientology is super rich and influential. Yeah, but super rich and influential and sustaining organizations can come from non authentic or non true foundations.

Jim Bennett [00:46:29] Oh, that's true. I mean, I'm not saying that that closes the door on the possibility. I'm saying it makes it more like. I mean, you look at Islam, I think that Muhammad was absolutely a believer.

John Dehlin [00:46:43] And okay, he was a believer in his stuff.

Jim Bennett [00:46:46] In his stuff. I don't think. I mean, it seems unlikely to me that he thought he was perfect.

John Dehlin [00:46:51] If he didn't believe in what he was teaching, it would have had a harder time growing.

Jim Bennett [00:46:55] Right. And I think even in the case of Scientology, you can read stories of L. Ron Hubbard trying to rid himself of his own body thetan with his auditing machine.

John Dehlin [00:47:04] That's interesting.

Jim Bennett [00:47:04] I mean, he believed in his own stuff too, you know.

John Dehlin [00:47:09] Okay, I see, I see.

Jim Bennett [00:47:11] So, so, so, but, but. So, so it doesn't slam the door on the fact that Joseph Smith was a fraud. What it does is, I think makes it more likely that he was a believer rather than he was a deliberate receiver.

John Dehlin [00:47:24] Got it, Got it. Okay. So. So with the Book of Mormon, then I went through kind of all the many, many, many problems I see with the Book of Mormon being a historical document. It just. I think we've been set up because the way it's been framed is a farm yokel could never have come up with such a brilliant book. And so it must be true. You know what I mean? But the truth is Joseph was super brilliant by anyone's estimation. Maybe he wasn't. Didn't have good grammar, didn't have good spelling, didn't have good handwriting. But we all know he was brilliant. We've all seen the original manuscripts of the Book of Mormon, which is fraught with spelling and punctuation and grammatical errors that were only improved and fixed by editors.

Jim Bennett [00:48:09] Right.

John Dehlin [00:48:09] A lot of hard work.

Jim Bennett [00:48:10] There was no punctuation in the first draft. E.B. grandin is the one who punctured.

John Dehlin [00:48:13] Yeah. So, I mean, Joseph's a lot better than we've been sometimes sold to believe. The Book of Mormon was a. In its first draft was a lot less polished than it is now. And you know, and it is. If once you understand the, the Mound Builders myth, once you understand the legends, the folklore, legends about Native Americans, that gives rise to the view of the Hebrews, that gives rise to the Book of Napoleon, that gets. Gives rise to the Bible. Right? And Jeremy talks about all this stuff, right. If you, if you understand the Bible, if you understand Protestant Christianity, if you understand the masonry in the 1800s, if you understand, you know, Joseph Smith and the, the Mound Builders lore, it's. It's not so much that the Book of Mormon is this miracle that you can never explain. It's almost like the Book of Mormon is exactly the book that you would expect to be produced in the 1800s, and including horses and pigs and wheat and, you know, all the things that shouldn't be there and all the Protestant debates of Joseph Smith's time, they're all baked in like it's exactly the book that you would expect someone like Joseph Smith to produce. Now, I know that that's heresy, but I really believe an objective look at if you understand the 1820s and the, the cultural milieu that Joseph is swimming in, the Book of Mormon is a product of that time. It doesn't have chocolate, it doesn't have jaguars, it doesn't have turkeys, it doesn't have all the things that we know Native. And that's what Michael Coh. My interview with Michael Coe. All that stuff is what should have been in the Book of Mormon and it wasn't right. And so do you, do you concede any of that? The 19th century nature of the Book of Mormon? How much of the 19th century influence do you allow in the Book of Mormon and how do you make sense of all that?

Jim Bennett [00:50:23] I'm trying to find the right way to approach this because I don't concede a whole lot of that, because if you read Bushman, for instance, if you read Rough Stone Rolling, he talks about the fact that the Book of Mormon actually is not the kind of Native American explanation that you would have expected to be produced. There was a book called the Book of Pukey or Pukei. I'm not sure how it's pronounced. I've only read it, but it was a parody of the Book of Mormon that has wigwams and teepees and the Book of Mormon doesn't have any of that. The Book of Mormon doesn't have the kind of Native American stereotypes that you would have expected in terms of an explanation for the Indians, which is how Joseph Smith sold it. You read it and Bushman says, but you get ancient American Christianity on every page. It refuses to argue its own thesis. So I would push back very strongly on the idea that the Book of Mormon represents exactly what you would imagine or expect to find in somebody's speculation about the Native Americans from the 19th century.

John Dehlin [00:51:27] What about a lot? Not exactly, but what about a lot?

Jim Bennett [00:51:29] No, I think if you were to get anybody else in the 19th century to write a history of the Indians who had populated the continent, it wouldn't look anything like the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:51:42] Okay, so what about the light skinned, dark skin thing? Because I've read a book on the mound builder myth, right, that, that precedes Joseph Smith by a couple hundred years. And pretty much everyone around Joseph Smith at the time who was into this stuff believed that these amazing relics that we were finding were, couldn't have been created by these savage dark people that were all committing genocide upon, right? So there must have been a light skinned race that preceded them that they killed off and they must have created. So that founding Nephite, Lamanite, light skinned, dark skinned thing in my reading is a super racist cultural justification for genocide that existed during Thomas Jefferson's era and is the core narrative of the Book of Mormon.

Jim Bennett [00:52:38] Well, I don't think racism is the core narrative.

John Dehlin [00:52:40] No, the Nephite and the Lamanite.

Jim Bennett [00:52:41] Well, I know Nephite and Lamanite. What's remarkable about the Book of Mormon with regard to race, particularly in the Nephites and the Lamanites, is that the lessons that we have extracted from it, the text itself argues very differently. For you know who's the most righteous prophet of Mormon is a dark skinned prophet, Samuel the Lamanite.

John Dehlin [00:53:01] That's skirting the issue that it starts out with the bad people getting given dark skin as a curse. Like don't jump to. You can't people apologists do this? They jump to Samuel the Lamanite and say, look, oh, at the end of the Book of Mormon there are a few Lamanites that are good, but that,

Jim Bennett [00:53:18] no, it's not just a few. By the end of the Book of Mormon, Lamanite is no longer a racial designation by the end of the Book of Mormon people.

John Dehlin [00:53:25] But don't jump to that. I'm saying address the structural.

Jim Bennett [00:53:28] Well, the reason I'm jumping to that is because. Is because the narrative that the Book of Mormon is a simplistic white supremacist doctrine.

Book of Mormon Origins and 19th Century Context

John Dehlin [00:53:38] I'm not making that argument. I'm arguing that it's a night, it's a 19th century structure that gets absorbed. It's in Joseph's milieu, it's in the view of the Hebrews, it's Thomas Jefferson knew it, Benjamin Franklin knew it, everyone who was studying this stuff knew it. And it's like adopted into the Book of Mormon. Well, forget the good things it says about dark people later.

Jim Bennett [00:54:03] Right, well, well, it's the, it's the

John Dehlin [00:54:05] 19th century thing that I want you to explain. Well, that's racist. And there's no historical evidence forever there being light skinned Native Americans.

Jim Bennett [00:54:14] Right, right, right. There's no.

John Dehlin [00:54:17] And the DNA doesn't justify that.

Jim Bennett [00:54:19] The DNA, we can get to DNA too. But I want to back up a little bit and take a more 30,000 view approach to this because this actually preoccupied my father in the last years of his life. On 10th April 2016, my father, who was suffering from pancreatic cancer at the time, gave a fireside. I've written an article about this for the Interpreter foundation and I transcribed my father's fireside on my blog and titled it Somebody Wrote It. And he says he gave this fireside. The next day he suffered a stroke and he was dead three weeks later. And so this was kind of his final message and it has this sort of fraught implications to me. But his book that he wrote also was focused on this is he says, all right, the Book of Mormon exists. That means somebody wrote it. You have to explain who wrote it. It can't be waved away. And it's not enough to say, to point out the anachronisms and say God didn't write it. You have to come up with an alternative explanation. This is how Joseph wrote it. And the alternative explanations, including from Dan Vogel and from a number of other people who try to say this is how the Book of Mormon was produced. None of them are persuasive to me. And the multiplicity of them weakens the argument for each one of them individually. I mean, one of my biggest problems with the CES letter is that you have Jeremy Runnels comes in and says, well, the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from the view of the Hebrews. Well, the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from the first Book of Napoleon. No, the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from the late War of 1812. Oh no, the Book of Mormon was lifted from all of these place names in all of these areas outside of Joseph Smith's homeland. And no, the Book of Mormon he stole Captain Kidd and Moroni from. And you come up with this process where Joseph Smith is sifting through all of these source materials and picking a three word phrase here and a two word phrase there and putting it all together. I mean, the view of the Hebrews, whenever anybody brings up the view of the Hebrews, because the God makers brought up the view of the Hebrews when I was 18 years old and I had no access to the view of the Hebrews. And I was really shaken. And I imagine that the view of the Hebrews looked exactly like the Book of Mormon. And I thought, like an idiot and a chump. I read the view of the Hebrews all the way through. It's not very long. It's 40,000 words. And I read it when I was responding to the CES letter. The view of the Hebrews bears no resemblance to the Book of Mormon at all beyond the idea that Native Americans were Israelites. I mean, none of the arguments for the fact that the Native Americans or Israelites are in the Book of Mormon and the view of the Hebrews structurally is such a different book. It's an essay, it's not a narrative. There's no story, there's no characters, there's no people in it. There's no Nephi or any of that kind of stuff. So I look at that and so you back up and you say, okay, the other thing that's so moral, by

John Dehlin [00:57:23] the way, if there's no resemblance, why did BH Roberts come up with a list of like 150 parallels between the

Jim Bennett [00:57:30] Book of Mormon and the hundreds? Jeremy lists all the parallels in the CES letter.

John Dehlin [00:57:36] And I'm just saying, BH Roberts, your guy, right?

Jim Bennett [00:57:40] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:57:40] Hunter thought it was a big problem.

Jim Bennett [00:57:43] BH Roberts, if you read that, I really. You can debate where BH Roberts was with his own personal faith. Because the way I look at it is that he produced this and he talks about it as being a sort of devil's advocate brief. And in saying these are the best arguments, they're going to come after us with them. And he even says these do not represent any conclusions of mine. This is, this is what I think our critics are going to say. The parallels, at least the ones that are listed in the CES letter. I have not gone and seen any other parallels that B.H. roberts may have produced elsewhere, but there are something like 40 may include things like references to yellow parchment that could be like references to gold plates. And, you know, the View of the Hebrews talks about a scrap of paper yellowed with age, that had a verse of Deuteronomy on it, but the Native Americans had forgotten how to read, so they discarded it. But this is, you know, and there's nothing. And that doesn't bear any resemblance to the Book of Mormon. The parallels, I mean, you can go through my reply, but one of the things that I was very frustrated with, as I said, I said, you made me read View of the Hebrews. Nobody should have to read View of the Hebrews.

John Dehlin [00:58:58] It's not a great read.

Jim Bennett [00:58:58] It's not a great read. But it's clear to me very often that the people who bring up View of the Hebrews as a source for the Book of Mormon likely have not read View of the Hebrews either. I'd be willing to bet money Jeremy Runnels has not read View of the Hebrews. All of these arguments and the idea that, that Joseph Smith piecemealed the Book of Mormon into what the Book of Mormon is now, it demonstrates the weakness of each individual argument. When I was getting my MBA at byu, I was taught how to calculate the net present value of an asset. And my professor says there are five ways to do that. You know what that means, don't you? No. And he says it means that none of them are any good. He says, because if there were one reliable way to calculate the net present value of an asset, you wouldn't need four other ways. You'd have some very specific kind of. This is how you do it. In the End of Story, if there were one clear explanation for the Book of Mormon's existence, we would have it and it would be over. But the fact is we keep looking for other explanations because the ones we have are inadequate. Now, that doesn't mean that Joseph Smith's explanation of divine intervention and all that kind of thing is the true one. But it does mean to me that Joseph Smith's explanation is one that we need to take seriously, because I haven't seen an explanation. The other thing that I find extraordinarily remarkable about the Book of Mormon, as somebody who has personally, having written a number of things of any length is that the whole thing was written in first draft. You sit there and you look at the transcript and Joseph Bushman talks about it's written piecemeal. Joseph's dictating it to Oliver, and it's written and it's published essentially as a first draft. It's submitted to EB Grandin without punctuation. EB Grandin sits up and punctuates it. And it's later edited, but the edits are for terrible spelling and weird grammar. And a journeying is turned into journeying and that sort of thing. But the handful of edits that are significant that Jeremy raises, for instance, like the Son of God versus God, the Eternal Father, those are few and far between. And the reality is the Book of Mormon as it exists was written in first draft. I don't know of anybody on the face of the earth who has ever done that, who has written 265,000 word manuscript without any significant edits. What that would suggest is he's reading it from somewhere else. So somebody else. My father's book he talks about. There are three explanations for where the Book of Mormon came from. One is that is Joseph Smith's explanation. The second is that Joseph Smith wrote it. The third is that a third party wrote it and that Joseph Smith stole it from this third party. And he goes through each of those and says each has different problems. And they do. They all have very significant problems. But the reason why I would come back to what you had said earlier though, is the Book of Mormon's value to me isn't necessarily because I have been convinced of its historicity by these kinds of arguments. Its value is in its power to connect people to God. And there are people who have the experience of reading the Book of Mormon and finding value in it while not believing it to be a historical document. And I certainly believe there's room for people in the church who hold that view. And there are increasing number of people in the church that hold that view. But I see the Book of Mormon as a tangible miracle that speaks to the truth of the restoration. I do believe it is a historical document. But what that means, again, we have to. Does that mean that Joseph Smith as translator had no influence on its content? Because that's nonsense. I think we would absolutely see any kind of translator. A translator's responsibility is to clothe words in language and words they understand. So the fact that the Book of Mormon is written in Joseph Smith's vocabulary makes perfect sense to me. But. But I don't. I mean, I don't understand the process by which that happened.

John Dehlin [01:03:33] So how do you make sense of. I'll just say a couple things like Joseph Smith Sr's dream about a tree and, you know, becoming Lehi's dream. Or the. The. The dark skin, light skin narrative of cursing. The. The wheat, the sea, the steel swords, the helmets, the shields, the chariots. Let's not get in the weeds of any specific one, but there's all sorts of things. The. The parts of Isaiah, the.

Jim Bennett [01:04:05] Dude, you know, the deutero Isaiah.

John Dehlin [01:04:07] Deutero Isaiah. The parts of Isaiah that were written after Lehi would have left Jerusalem. So they shouldn't be in there because they were written after Lehi left with the brass plates. So, like there. You have to admit there's all sorts of things in the Book of Mormon that shouldn't be there, right?

Jim Bennett [01:04:25] Yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:04:27] How do you make sense of that?

Jim Bennett [01:04:28] I do it the way my father did. My father. This is the most interesting part of his book where he's not summarizing the Book of Mormon. He's talking about his experience at the Hughes organization. When Clifford Irving, the novelist who wrote the autobiography of Howard Hughes, wrote his fake autobiography of Howard Hughes, he had access to a document written by another Hughes guy and put everything, larded it up with things that people expected to be in this autobiography. And so it was initially seen as genuine because there are things. How could he possibly have known this? But there was also a whole bunch of stuff in there that. That he made up. And as time has gone on, the autobiography looks increasingly ridiculous if you look at what they called the Mormon will. So when Howard Hughes died, there was a will that showed up at church headquarters in downtown Salt Lake, and it gave 1/14 of the Hughes estate to a service station owner named Melvin Dumar. They made a movie out of it called Melvin and Howard, for which Mary Steenbergen won the best supporting actress Oscar. And this will was considered by several to be genuine. But there were things in there that were. In one place they talk about the Spruce Goose, which was Howard Hughes's during World War II. He'd written a. He built a flying boat that only flew once. It was the largest aircraft ever built and was built entirely out of pine, not spruce. And the press called it the Spruce Goose. And Hughes hated that title. And yet that's the title that appears in the will. The will also names Noah Dietrich as Hughes executor, which would make sense to somebody who didn't know Hughes personally, because they would expect that to be the case because he'd been Hughes right hand man for years, but they'd had a halt falling out right before Hughes died and there's no way that he would be the executor. So Dad's point was, would be more anachronisms as time goes on. And the remarkable thing about the Book of Mormon is that there are anachronisms in the Book of Mormon but there are fewer of them than there were when the book was first published. That the Book of Mormon is less ridiculous as an ancient record than it was when the idea that people bury gold plates in stone boxes was considered absurd. And they find the Darius plates and that are buried in a box that looked very much like the box Joseph Smith described. You know, the idea of Native Americans living in large cities and not being savages. They hadn't discovered the ancient Mayan ruins that are now prevalent and that we now recognize at the time that Joseph Smith, as you look at this, the ledger starts to shrink over time rather than expand. That's not the way forgeries are supposed to work. So taken as a whole, there's no question that there are anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. What's remarkable is that there are fewer of them over time. And my reaction to them is that you look at the Book of Mormon and you say, look. We look at, for instance, lidar. Technology has completely revolutionized our understanding of where you served your mission. They've done all kinds of lidar and they found these huge cities that they didn't think existed before. And there is so much more to discover about ancient America that to definitively say that we have enough scientific evidence to say this couldn't possibly have happened and there's no way, I think is really kind of arrogant and silly. And there are so many remarkable parallels in the Book of Mormon to things that Joseph Smith very much could not have known about. But the problem is when you start going down that road and you start to argue about that is that you start to build your faith on something that doesn't really matter to anybody. Right. Even if you got Dan Peterson in here to talk to you about Nahum, which I think is a remarkable parallel, the idea that they find a burial site that is exactly where Joseph Smith says it's going to be in the Book of Mormon. You know, we could sit and argue back and forth, but there isn't anybody whose faith rests on archeological evidence, even if there's enough of it to persuade them. You know, Greg Prince in the documentary filmed a segment and he says whenever he talks to anybody about the Book of Mormon. He asks them three questions. He says, the first question is, did you read it all the way through? And usually they say, no. Second question, what do you remember about what you read? Well, there were a lot of wars. Third question, what was your experience like as you read the book? Well, let me tell you, he says, and that's when things light up. And he says, something happens to people when they read that book that wasn't in that book. So that's one of the reasons why I have confidence that experience does not necessarily mean, you know, that a warm, wonderful feeling that you have when you read the Book of Mormon that may be similar to the warm, wonderful feeling you had when you watched the Muppet movie is proof that this is a historical document. What that means is it's proof that this book has the power to connect you to God, to plug you in. And it's enough for me to take the arguments for historicity far more seriously than I would take otherwise. And it's enough for me to have patience with the anachronisms that I do not yet understand that cannot be explained away. And I do not deny that there are anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. I find it remarkable that there are fewer anachronisms now than there were in 1830.

The Translation Process and the Gold Plates

John Dehlin [01:10:36] If Joseph can. Okay, so we have the account of Joseph, of whoever hired one of Joseph's colleagues, saying that Joseph would look into the stone. He would see writing, he would read it, Right. Then the writing would vanish.

Jim Bennett [01:10:52] It's David Whitmer.

John Dehlin [01:10:53] And then it would reappear. That's David Whitmer.

Jim Bennett [01:10:55] So.

John Dehlin [01:10:56] And then we have examples in the Book of Mormon of words like kurilam or kumam or kumu mom or whatever.

Jim Bennett [01:11:02] Yeah, the.

John Dehlin [01:11:03] The currency where. Where he's coming up with words that have no meaning in the English vernacular, the English language at the time. If you take those two things together, then you shouldn't have anachronisms, because he couldn't. He shouldn't be calling it steel if it wasn't steel. He shouldn't be calling it wheat if it wasn't wheat. God can give him an accurate name that. That wouldn't be misleading. If it really is a taper, the words, letters, tapir will show up there. Not horse. Right, right. And so how does David Whitmer's account of the words appearing in the stone, added to that, the kur alam and the kumam, where he can clearly generate words that no one's heard of, how does that Leave room for anachronisms.

Jim Bennett [01:11:58] I think that premise is exactly backward because I think that when a translator is doing anything, he's doing whatever he can to use language that his audience is going to recognize. And I think that would even include God, because I don't think that saying, for instance, that he could have called

John Dehlin [01:12:22] a curl on a giraffe or.

Jim Bennett [01:12:23] Well, we don't know what a cure lamb was. I mean, what's clear on cure lambs and Q moms is that there doesn't seem to be any kind of an antecedent that we would understand. I mean, what was this creature? We don't know. Maybe you know, or maybe Joseph wouldn't have known.

John Dehlin [01:12:40] You're saying there wasn't a creature similar enough to where that word, another animal

Jim Bennett [01:12:47] could have been used? I can't begin to fathom what a cure.

John Dehlin [01:12:51] Lamar Cumon so what did horse mean, if we know? I don't know. I don't know. There were horses.

Jim Bennett [01:12:57] I don't know. I don't particularly care. And that seems like a dodge, and it probably is. I think there was some creature that was close enough to a horse. I think it could have been a tapir, but I think it could have been a horse. I don't care. I mean, it doesn't disqualify the Book of Mormon for me. It doesn't make me say, oh, well, then throw this whole thing out. All the rest of this doesn't make any sense. The fact that there seems to be miraculous explanations for all this. Oh, well, then the Book of Mormon must be nonsense, right? I think there is the possibility that there were still horses on the American continent that we do not yet recognize. There's some, I mean, apologists have sort of tried to sift through that and find some. There's some sparse evidence that that may have been the case. It may have been something that functions similarly to a horse. I don't know if that's a tapir. I don't know. I don't have any idea. I do know, for instance, that when the British settled America and they look at what the Native Americans call maize, they labeled that corn, when that isn't anything like seed corn that was used in Great Britain prior to that. People tend to apply words that are similar in, in structure and I, I, I, I to me that that is getting bogged down in something that. Okay, that isn't of any real interest.

John Dehlin [01:14:26] Okay, so you, so how is it essential for you that actual golden plates were delivered to Joseph Smith by Moroni, like I know, I know. Believing Mormons that say, well, maybe Joseph created brass plates, but, but, but somehow he's still channeled, like he did with the book of Abraham. He still challenged, channeled actual events. But maybe he created tin plates because clearly if they were really gold, they would have been way heavier than then Joseph Smith could have, you know, carried and ran with.

Jim Bennett [01:15:04] Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:15:05] So maybe he created tin plates so that people would believe that. That they were actual records, but he still, in his mind, believed he was channeling. You know, there are ways that people kind of do some gymnastics to not require that there's gold plates in your mind. Does there have to be actual golden plates delivered by an angel for the narrative to stand?

Jim Bennett [01:15:32] I believe there were actual gold plates delivered by an angel. So when I say whether or not there have to be, I'm sort of dealing in a hypothetical because I'm beginning with the premise that I. That I am a believer, that there were actual physical gold plates.

John Dehlin [01:15:47] Is it a tiny bit suspicious to you that he had to cover them and not let anyone see them? Is that a little bit suspicious? Like if I were to perpetuate a fraud and I were to claim to have something miraculous and at the time, golden plates delivered by an angel written by Native Americans talking about Jesus before Jesus was even born.

Jim Bennett [01:16:08] That's not just at the time. Still now somebody shows up with those. That's impressive.

John Dehlin [01:16:13] So if I were to tell you I had that, but you can't see them. I have to cover them with the plate. I have to cover them with a sheet. And then when I actually do the translation, the plates aren't even in the room. Like, isn't that start. Then you add to that the peep stone and the treasure digging. And then you add to that what you're going to acknowledge later, which is that Joseph really wasn't translating a papyru with, you know, knowing Egyptian.

Jim Bennett [01:16:37] Right.

John Dehlin [01:16:38] That the actual papyru had nothing to do. And then you added that to Kinderhook plates. Like, all. Any one thing you might.

Jim Bennett [01:16:44] Any.

John Dehlin [01:16:45] Any one thing you might be able to sort of dismiss when you add all of that together. Can you see how people would go, now, wait a minute, that's too much.

Jim Bennett [01:16:56] Well, of course. I mean, Joseph could see that. I mean, Joseph said that. I mean, that's the title of Fawn Brody's book. You know, I wouldn't. No man knows my history. I wouldn't have believed my history if I hadn't lived it. I mean, of course I can see people looking at that and going, oh yeah, that's absolutely ridiculous. So sure. But I still believe there were gold plates. And I think again, the testimony of the witnesses of the gold plates are not nearly as easily dismissed as they often are dismissed.

John Dehlin [01:17:30] So the common narrative is that they were yokels. Like Martin Harris went on to believe, James Strang, he went on to. That these guys were like superstitious dudes that believed weird things before and after Joseph Smith. And Joseph Smith was just one in a series of a lot of weird superstitious beliefs. Most of them were treasure diggers. Most of them believed in the superstition, folk magic, magic stones, spirits guarding treasure in the ground. And especially in David Whitmer and Martin Harris's cases and Joseph Smith Sr. And all the Whitmers. Like the argument is these were super. These were not majestic. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, like statesmen. These were yokels that were semi literate who were superstitious and they believed weird things before and after and, and Joseph Smith and the Mormon stuff. And they lost their faith and, you know, they left the church at some point. All of them did. So, like, are you sure they're super credible dudes? Right.

Jim Bennett [01:18:36] Well.

John Dehlin [01:18:37] Or is that our narrative that we've fitted afterwards?

Jim Bennett [01:18:39] No, well, I mean, super credible. I mean, you're talking about them, you know, as Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.

John Dehlin [01:18:46] You know, we think they're better than those guys do.

Jim Bennett [01:18:50] And again, maybe my experience is. Is not analogous or is not consistent with everybody else's, but that. That's never been my impression of any of these guys. But the fact that all of them left the church, to me is remarkably compelling because all of them had very persuasive incentive to throw Joseph Smith under the bus, particularly David Whitmer, who never came back. Both Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery came back. But David Whitmer had every incentive to expose Joseph Smith as a fraud and went out of his way to his deathbed insisting that he had seen the gold plates and that the Book of Mormon was true. You know, it's remarkable to follow the experience of these men after they leave the church because Martin Harris. Yeah, he kept joining all these different churches after he left and they kept kicking him out because all he wanted to do was talk about the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:19:46] No, but he also believed that James Strang's production of Scripture from Angels and Plates were also. He did. Were also truthful.

Jim Bennett [01:19:55] No, no. I mean, you've got the one quote in the CES letter where Jeremy quotes a debate that took place after Martin Harris was dead, where a guy, long after the fact, said that Martin Harris said that a Shaker book was just as good as the Book of Mormon. I don't put a whole lot of weight into that. I think you have so many firsthand contemporaneous accounts of the witnesses saying they saw what they saw. And then you have a handful of people who say, well, I heard Martin Harris say he only saw them with his spiritual eyes. And I heard all these guys. I think the weight of the witness's testimony does not come from the fact that they have these amazing credentials, but it comes from the fact that their witnesses were consistent over a long period of time, during periods of time when they had every incentive to. To repudiate what they were saying and they refused to do it.

Witnesses and the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [01:21:06] But are you saying Martin Harris didn't believe that James Strang produced scripture?

Jim Bennett [01:21:12] I don't know the specifics on the Martin Harris, the specifics on the Strangite scripture, but I'd have to go back and look at that specifically. I think it's possible. Certainly. Sure. I don't think there's.

John Dehlin [01:21:27] Or that David Whitmer said there was no Melchizedek priesthood. Like David Whitmer himself says, Joseph is making up this Melchizedek priesthood thing that was never a part of the early church. And we don't have a date for the Melchizedek priesthood. Like, there are all sorts of reasons to question that, because there's no date for the Melchizedek priesthood. And one of, you know, we want to have it where it's like, oh, the three witnesses. But then if David Whitmer says no Melchizedek priesthood that was made up and added later. Well, we conveniently. Can you see that we're doing a little bit of picking and choosing there?

Jim Bennett [01:22:00] Yeah, well, except for. I think it's David Whitmer that's doing the picking and choosing, which I think is really kind of telling, because by the time David Whitmer is saying, no, Joseph Smith never restored the Melchizedek priesthood, and I never heard anything about Peter, James and John and this, that, and the other, David Whitmer is insisting that Joseph Smith is a fallen prophet and is doing everything he can to discredit Joseph Smith, particularly over the issue of polygamy, which David Whitmer was completely horrified by and is the reason why he never came back. So you have that kind of a situation. So why isn't David Whitmer doing the one thing that would expose Joseph Smith as a complete and total Fraud and saying, yeah, yeah, Joseph Smith was completely a fallen prophet and he's making this up, but he can't bring himself to repudiate the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:22:49] But there's two things. One is if he was complicit in some sort of deception, then he would be condemning himself. But the other. The other possibility is the one you afforded Joseph Smith, which is he genuinely believed that Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon through divine means, but that Joseph fell away. Like, what? If you can say that maybe Joseph Smith really did believe he was helping people find buried treasure, then maybe David Whitmer really believed Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon. But. But at some point he fell away.

Jim Bennett [01:23:23] Well, this is where the gold plate.

John Dehlin [01:23:24] True.

Jim Bennett [01:23:25] Well, no, but this is where the gold plates become very. Because the difference between Joseph Smith saying, oh, I can see buried treasure. Oh, it's not. There is David Whitmer saying, I saw a physical object and I looked at this actual pile of plates. That was a real thing. That was physical. It's a different kind of testimony. I mean, for Joseph Smith to say, well, I believe that God is speaking to my soul and telling me where. Where buried treasure is, you can dismiss that as him being wrong. But for David Whitmer to say, I actually saw the physical gold plates, that's a much harder thing to just sort of say, well, he. He thought he saw gold plates. I mean, this is.

John Dehlin [01:24:09] But this is where. This is why the treasure digging becomes important. Because if you have a magical worldview where you can believe that you see treasure buried underground. Well, and that's what these men. These men. That's who these men were. They believed in treasure digging before they believed. So if you can believe that you. If you live in a world where you believe that you can see treasure underground, that isn't really there. It's not that big of a stretch to. To believe that these were also men that could believe they saw an angel with plates in their mind's eye, in their second sight, which is. Which was a. Which was a real belief at the time. And it caused all that, all these problems. In 1838, when. When people started asking, did you really see this physically? There were a lot of people that said, I saw it spiritually. I saw it in my mind's eye. And that all flows. That's why the magical worldview. That's why Michael Quinn wrote the book.

Jim Bennett [01:25:08] Right?

John Dehlin [01:25:09] The magical worldview. And that's why when Beech Roberts or whoever, you know, if you read Shannon Caldwell Montez's thesis, I don't know if you've read it.

Jim Bennett [01:25:19] I have not.

John Dehlin [01:25:20] There's a member of a First Presidency or an apostle or someone important that interviews David Whitmer towards the end of David Whitmer's life. And he really. He's an attorney, and he really grills David Whitmer on Did you really see physical plates? He himself, in the 1900s, comes away disappointed at David Whitmer's inability to satisfy the. The. The material. The materialness of his experience. And that is consistent with the apostasy that happens in 1838. And it's consistent with the magic worldview and the belief of second sight. That's not all hooey that you. There's something. There's something to that.

Jim Bennett [01:26:04] I didn't say that's all hooey, but I think the idea of the magical worldview and the idea of second sight and those kinds of things, particularly with regard to D. Michael Quinn, I think are templates that have been created after the fact to explain circumstances that fit some of the testimony and very much don't fit some of the other testimony. The thesis you described, I don't remember the name of the person, but Jeremy does quote that in the. The CES letter that the guy who came away disappointed that it wasn't material enough. I did go back and read that when I was responding to it, and David Whitmer the next day insisted that, no, it was an actual physical experience. I think it's Martin Harris that said, do you see this bedpost? And bangs on the bedpost. He says, that's how real it was. I mean, there are so many firsthand accounts by these men where they insist that it's absolutely a physical experience. And David Whitmer gets very angry right before he dies that he publishes a letter to all believers in Christ where he reaffirms the physical nature of seeing these plates. You have to come back and figure out some kind of way of explaining that and saying, well, they didn't really see them. And it was very common for people to say that they saw things that they didn't really see. I'm not convinced of that. I mean, I don't know if that makes me a terribly obstinate. I love it, but I'm not convinced that. That. That people can say, you know, I'm looking. I'm looking at your shoes. But I. I'm looking at shoes over there, too. There are no shoes over there. You know, I'm not looking at shoes over there. I don't know how I can Convince myself that I'm looking at shoes. I don't think the witnesses, testimonies can be dismissed that easily because the vast majority of them firsthand do not lend themselves to the idea that they're just claiming to have seen a vision and second sight and all this. And one of the things that I got very frustrated with in reading the CES letter is that Jeremy Runnels quotes the same article like five times. And each time acts as if it's a different person saying, you know, quoting him a different time. It's one document that he quotes five times that is a document from a hostile source that insists that David Whitmer told him that he only saw it with his second sight or his mind's eye or whatever else. I mean, we're getting into the weeds here because I don't know that I'm qualified to. I'm not citing specific documents only to say from a broader picture, I really don't think it's as easy to wave away the witnesses as just silly yokels. Super. I mean, Dan Vogel offered the idea that they were all hypnotized, which strikes me as really kind of bizarre and strange. And I don't think that's something that would endure, you know, 40, 50 years after the fact. So I really feel, and I think I really believe that the Book of Mormon and all of the things surrounding the Book of Mormon are the strongest evidences for the restoration of the gospel. I think that was intended. I think that's what the Book of Mormon's purpose is. I think if I were to leave the church, I would have to sort of find my way around the Book of Mormon. Jeffrey Holland talked about that. Anybody who leaves the church, they have to go out and around or under the document. But the Book of Mormon to me is a stumbling block in the sense that if I could be convinced of a persuasive secular explanation for that book's existence, then that would be a very severe blow to my faith. I have yet to encounter anything that comes close to that.

The Book of Abraham and the Papyri

John Dehlin [01:30:12] For me, how does. So I think everyone who's credible, a scholar, a believer, acknowledges that the Book of Abraham, the papyra that. That Joseph Smith, you know, claimed was written by the hand of Abraham.

Jim Bennett [01:30:33] Right.

John Dehlin [01:30:34] In fact, doesn't have the word Abraham was not written by Abraham, was not written during the time of Abraham, and has no, no Abraham word anywhere on it. And so the best that apologists can do now is. Is the. Is the theory that. That the catalyst theory that God put these papyrus in Joseph Smith's hands to inspire him to channel the words of Abraham when he misunderstood that, that these were actually Abraham's writings. Why doesn't that add further condemnation to the legitimacy of the Book of Mormon and, and the whole enterprise? When, when we have an instance where if I had done that, if I had said to you, hey, I'm. I've got this papyru, and it's, it's. Abraham wrote it, and I. Here's all this great scripture. If I had done that, you'd say, john, you're a joke. Egyptologists say that the word Abraham is even on the papyrus. You would write me off as illegitimate and is a fraud. You would. Everyone would. But if Joseph Smith does it, then we're going to create some elaborate explanation that, you know, the, the catalyst theory. Why doesn't that add extra condemnation to the whole enterprise? You know, just that. Just that alone. Because again, it's not just one thing. It's these 10 things all piling up, right?

Jim Bennett [01:32:07] Well, it's the order of the pile. You know, in the, in the CES letter, in his first letter, he had a graphic that talked about, okay, you have the Book of Abraham, which is a fraud. You have the Kinderhook plates, which are a fraud. And you have.

John Dehlin [01:32:24] What's the Joe Smith translation?

Jim Bennett [01:32:27] I don't think he mentions the Joe Smith.

John Dehlin [01:32:28] Okay, yeah, you're right. That came out after.

Jim Bennett [01:32:29] That, came out afterwards. But. But he says, you have these three frauds. So why would you buy a car from someone who'd already sold you three clunkers? Yeah, and my response to that was, well, you bought the first car, that fourth car, which is the Book of Mormon. That's the one that came first. The Book of Mormon stands as a testament to Joseph Smith's power as a translator, as a revelator, as a prophet. And so the only reason I give the Book of Abraham any credence at all and pay any attention to it is because the Book of Mormon came first. And I wrestled with this because even when I was on with Bill Real, Bill Real kind of ambushed me because I hadn't heard about Brian Hauglit's his statement where he rejected his apologetic writings from before and insists that the Book of Abraham, the papyrus, bears no resemblance and all of that. And he just sort of ambushed in that conversation. And I wasn't really prepared to respond to it. And I have since gone back and looked at it, and I've gone back and read what I wrote in my reply, and I actually was very heartened to find that what I'd written in my reply I still sort of believed or pretty much still believe. And in that. And this is the Jim Bennett catalyst theory. This is not the way I see it. Is that. Well, I'll back up just a little bit. We have Doctrine and covenant. Section 7 describes the fate of John the Beloved, which Joseph Smith insists John the Beloved wrote on an ancient papyrus somewhere in a cave. Somewhere in a cave or something on the Isle of Patmos. And Joseph Smith never claimed to physically have the papyrus, but insisted he was receiving a revelation that was a translation of that. That doesn't disturb anybody. I mean, it distur who think he's a fraud anyway. But people don't look at that and go, oh well, he must have been a fraud. They recognize that that kind of revelation is consistent with the kind of revelation Joseph claimed to have. The book of Moses comes from his translation of the Bible. He never claims to have had a physical anything from Moses, but insists this is something Moses himself wrote. So the idea that Joseph Smith can receive revelation is a translation. And part of the problem too is that Joseph would use the word translation. Jeremy got very upset about this in the CES letter. But the word translation, the way Joseph used it was not necessarily the way that we use it now. I mean, it was sometimes and sometimes it wasn't. When you talk about translated beings, for instance, you're not talking about translation in the way that anybody in the world would understand what translation means. But translation wasn't necessarily just rendering something from one language into English. It was receiving these sorts of revelations that you wouldn't have been able to receive otherwise. And that's what we have in the Book of Moses in the seventh section of the Doctrine and Covenants, I think, and I bring all of my own Egyptological training to this conclusion, which is to say none. I have none. But if you look at these ancient funerary texts and you look at the facsimiles and all of these things, and you assume that as we recognize that these papyrus came thousands of years, or at least 1,000, maybe 2,000 years after Abraham, I think you can make a case that a thousand years is a very long time for symbols that may have meant something else a thousand years earlier to be repurposed multiple times over the period of millennia to the point where there was something ancient that had been repurposed by other people. And Joseph the Seer can dig out the original from underneath it. And I think there's the possibility that that could have been one of the things that was happening there. I mean, you look at the English language, if you try to read Chaucer from less than 1,000 years ago, it's illegible, it doesn't make any sense. The English language as it exists now has gone through so many changes that you're dealing with symbols that have gone through changes. And I say this without any understanding of any of these symbols, but I look at that and say, okay, if this is what the Lord needs to do to catalyze Joseph Smith into receiving this revelation, I can accept that within the context of Joseph Smith's track record with the Book of Mormon, if we did not have the Book of Mormon, I would dismiss the Book of Abraham out of hand for all the reasons you describe. But the fact that we have the Book of Mormon demonstrates to me that Joseph Smith's claims to revelation need to be taken seriously. Now, I don't know, I don't have any idea what the relationship between what Abraham may have written thousands upon thousands of years ago to what Joseph Smith produced as the Book of Abraham, if there is any kind of relationship or what any of that is. I do know that I adore the Book of Abraham in terms of its content, in terms of it's from the Book of Abraham that we have the doctrinal foundation for the idea of a preexistence, for the idea of being co eternal with God that are at the center of my personal faith. So I love the Book of Abraham in terms of what it teaches. I cannot claim to say that it has any relationship to that papyrus. I have my own wild Jim Bennett theory that symbols are repurposed over time, but I have no Egyptological standing of that. I told this to Bill Riehl. The Book of Abraham is the most difficult to defend, I think, because of all the reasons you describe. But the reason I'm willing to defend it and the reason I'm willing to give Joseph the benefit of the doubt is because of the Book of Mormon, which I think is much, much easier to defend in terms of defending it as indeed the kind of keystone to our religion that Joseph Smith claimed that it was.

John Dehlin [01:39:48] And the fact that Joseph told people the papyrus was written by the hand of Abraham and the fact that he claimed that he was translating and the fact that he even wrote out the Alphabet and the grammar and you could see from the Kirtland Egyptian papers or the, you know, book of whatever Egyptian papers, right, that, that he's, you know, clearly appearing to go through the process of trying to match symbols to Sentences.

Jim Bennett [01:40:17] Right.

John Dehlin [01:40:19] What do you make of the fact that your theory means that Joseph didn't even understand what he was doing and thus misrepresented what the documents were and what he was doing with the documents? Does that just go to Prophets are fallible?

Jim Bennett [01:40:36] It doesn't just go to prophets are fallible because it says a number of things. It says, well, first of all, it says, yes, prophets are fallible. But it also says that Joseph Smith had enough confidence in his own prophetic calling that he thought that that was an appropriate exercise. That he thought that going through these symbols and trying to sort of crack the code of what he'd received by revelation through scholarship demonstrated that Joseph took his own prophetic calling very seriously. I think it speaks against deliberate deception.

John Dehlin [01:41:17] Right.

Jim Bennett [01:41:17] I mean, I don't know if you want to get into that, but what about competence? Well, competence, I think it's clear that Joseph.

John Dehlin [01:41:23] Credibility. Right.

Jim Bennett [01:41:25] Well, those are two different things.

John Dehlin [01:41:27] Does it make it better if he thought he was really translating words written by Abraham when we know it wasn't? Is that better or worse? Does that say, well, he's. It's. Then it's like the fake silver mine, like.

Jim Bennett [01:41:43] Right.

John Dehlin [01:41:45] Even though he's deluded, but he's not credible. You know what I mean?

Jim Bennett [01:41:49] Well, credibility and competence are two different things because the credibility of his abilities as a prophet versus his competence, his abilities as an Egyptological translator are two very different things. I don't think that Joseph Smith is a credible Egyptologist. I don't think he scholarly understood symbols and ancient hieroglyphics in a way that anybody with Egyptological scholarship would. Joseph Smith claimed that the translation took place by the power of God. He did not claim. Okay, I've cracked Egyptian. He translated the Book of.

John Dehlin [01:42:33] He claimed it was papyrus written by the hand of man.

Jim Bennett [01:42:35] He did claim, and I think he fully believed that, but I think he was wrong. Yeah. Or if you go back to the. My weird little theory that there is some kind of ancient antecedent to the papyrus that, that we don't have access to. And I mean, that's very convenient and I don't expect anybody else to agree with me on that. But I look at it, it's very interesting because writing my reply to Jeremy got me into the whole idea of what translation is and how translation works. And Jeremy begins the CES letter complaining about King James errors that are in the Book of Mormon. And I get the sense from Jeremy, I haven't discussed this with him, but I get the sense that he's Expecting that language translates sort of one for one in each word, cleanly and simply. And it doesn't ever. That's not how translation works. You know, it's the reason why you can't take a novel and stick it into Google Translate. You know, you translate it into Russian and then you translate it back into English and then it doesn't make any sense anymore. It's because translation requires context and it requires word choices and requires framing, all these kinds of things. And so, you know, I think that Joseph Smith naively sort of believed in an idea of translation one to one, that didn't exist when the kind of translation he was receiving, the revelation he was receiving was something different. I think it shows naivete on Joseph's part. I don't think it shows deliberate deception, and I think it argues against deliberate deception. Because if he knew it was all a fake and a fraud, then why on earth is he letting everybody sift through it? Why doesn't he burn the. Burn the originals?

John Dehlin [01:44:36] What about credibility? Why doesn't it speak to credibility? Again, if I, If I were to, if I were to claim what he claimed, you wouldn't go, wow, John's still a prophet. Even though, even though he got the document wrong and the translation wrong, he's still a prophet. You wouldn't, you wouldn't offer me that generosity.

Jim Bennett [01:44:58] I would if you had produced the Book of Mormon first. I don't know. I don't think Joseph's credibility as a

John Dehlin [01:45:07] prophet, so, so people who read L. Ron Hubbard's whatever text he produced, people who read the Bhagavad Gita, people who read the Quran.

Jim Bennett [01:45:18] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:45:18] They will just say, this document is so miraculous, it's changed my life. There's some document written in the 1960s that nobody knows where it came from. I forget it's some New Age Urantia, something like that. I don't know, some New Agey document that appears in the 1960s. I've met people that. This guy who have said, that document's so amazing, we don't know where it came from. It must be divine. There's even like this Christopher Nomelka guy who's.

Jim Bennett [01:45:43] Oh, yeah, with, with, you know, sued my father.

John Dehlin [01:45:46] And I'm just saying, okay, well, I've met. I've met people that just, like, what? I don't care where it came from. It's so miraculous that it's got to be true. How is your reliance on the Book of Mormon any different from the gazillions of people over time that have viewed their scripture as inspired and so special. How is yours any different than that?

Personal Faith Journeys and Epistemology

Jim Bennett [01:46:11] I don't know. One of the things that I. I have come to as I've gone on my own personal faith journey is that I don't feel any responsibility to debunk somebody else's faith in order for mine to be genuine. I mean, all I can tell you is my own experience and how I have encountered God through the Book of Mormon. And the encounter that I have had with God through the Book of Mormon is not reliant on the credibility of ancient American archaeology or anything else like that. And even the Book of Abraham, the divine wisdom that I have culled from the Book of Abraham does not rest on Joseph's competence as an Egyptologist. So when people come and Jeremy talks about this in the CES letter quite a bit, what do I say to somebody who prays and is told that the Catholic Church is the right church? My answer is I tell them, good for you for getting an answer to your prayers. I can't look into your heart. I don't have to say, oh, you didn't really get an answer to your prayer. Your spiritual experience is invalid, incidentally. It's a little disingenuous, though, to say that, because that, again, is not how a lot of other people frame this. I mean, you don't talk to a lot of Muslims who talk about praying to know if the Quran is true. That's not to say they don't have spiritual experience with the Quran or this and that and the other, but they just sort of frame that experience. That's very sort of Mormon way to frame that experience. We put it in the context of Moroni's promise and assume that the Quran came with its own Moroni's promise too. And it doesn't. But you do have people who say, this is so beautiful, it must have come from God. And I feel God when I read it. And I'm connected to God. And I absolutely firmly believe that God does not only communicate with people within this church. I believe that he uses the Koran, and I think he's even capable of using the writings of L. Ron Hubbard. I don't know. I find Scientology really fascinating and really scary at the same time, but that's a whole other thing. But the point is, what do I say to those people is I say, this is my experience, and if that's of any value to you, then great. And if it's not of any value to you and you have had your own experience with the divine, you know, God bless you and keep you.

John Dehlin [01:48:56] I love that. Really quickly we should touch on first vision. Let me just quickly summarize the thing I want to target. There are a couple problems with the first vision. One is that, like, we've been able to identify at least 16 other people that had similar visions before Joseph Smith or during the time of Joseph Smith. Greg Prince has even made the point that it was almost uncommon for people not to claim some sort of experience with the divine right. So we're led to believe that Joseph's first vision was some unique, singular kind of thing.

The First Vision Accounts and Variations

Jim Bennett [01:49:29] Bushman makes the case that one of the reasons why we didn't hear about the first vision is for exactly those reasons. It was just so common was. It was so common that Joseph was afraid that he would just be lumped

John Dehlin [01:49:40] in one of many. Ok, so that's one. The second thing is there's no evidence that he told anybody of it happening for, you know, the 12 years before it actually, you know, so, like, why didn't he tell anyone? Why wasn't it told as the founding narrative of the church? And then it's fine that I don't even want to get in the weeds of like, every time we tell a story, it's different, or even that a story can slightly change over time. What's problematic is the fact that in, in my mind that it, as it changes, it changes with his own theology. And the main thing that I'm going to highlight is when, when he produces the 1832 version that Joseph Fielding Smith hid because he was so afraid of and fearful of that document, when he releases that version, it's when he still believed, like on the lectures of faith, that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost were one. The Book of Mormon even has a trinitarian view that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are one. And so when he tells the story of the first vision in 1832, it's that version of God where it's just the Lord appeared to me. Because in 1832 he didn't believe in God the Father, God the son as being two separate beings. But by 1838, which is the version that we all look to now, his theology had evolved. And so when he recounts it in 1838, he's adjusting the story to fit his evolving theology. That's. It shouldn't change that way, especially when it's figures as, as foundational, as essential as deity themselves. Like you would it. You should get the main characters right, some would argue, and it shouldn't change with your theology that that's that's kind of two. Two big, two really important changes that are kind of too big of bridges to cross. And then when you add to that the fact that he didn't tell anyone, there's no record of it for so long, it didn't emerge till 1832, and, and that like so many other people were having starts to challenge the validity of the claim.

Jim Bennett [01:52:08] There's a lot there. I'm not quite sure where to start. I think it's a little silly to claim that he didn't tell anyone because we don't know. Joseph Smith didn't start writing Anything down until 1827 is probably the earliest.

John Dehlin [01:52:28] But you'd think his mom or dad or brothers would say, yeah, he told us this when it happened, but he didn't.

Jim Bennett [01:52:34] Well, we don't have any record that he didn't. You can't. Well, you can't prove a negative. But. But Joseph smith, in his 1838 account, insists that he did. He went. Well, he insists that he told his mother that he was well enough off and that Presbyterianism is not true, but insisted that he started telling people and then got persecuted and, and stopped. Greg Prince thinks that's nonsense. But the fact of the matter is the idea that we can definitively say he didn't tell anybody only means that we don't have any written record of

John Dehlin [01:53:06] it, which is no evidence of it.

Jim Bennett [01:53:08] Well, but it's a very different thing. We don't have any written record of anything that Joseph Smith did between 1820 and 1827. So we don't know. And people point to the Palmyra reflector of 1830, where they talk about a kid who claims to have seen God a number of times and say that's a reverence of the first vision. And you have the 20th section of the Doctrine and Covenants where he talks about receiving a manifestation that showed the forgiveness of his father sins, which is consistent with the 1832 account. But the idea that we definitively say Joseph Smith didn't tell anybody about this at all until 1832, it just means that we don't have written records of it. And I don't think we should expect written records of it at a time when Joseph was not keeping written records of anything. Joseph Smith in 1820 was essentially illiterate, you know, so the idea that we should expect him to have written this down or anybody to have taken him seriously, particularly since this experience was so commonplace as you describe. You know, Greg Prince points out that he wouldn't have been persecuted for it, because everybody was having these experiences in the woods. They were going out and they were seeing Jesus here, there, and everywhere and all over the place. So the idea that it would have attracted any attention that might go to the credibility of the 1838 account, where he insists that he was being persecuted for it. But I don't think that making the claim Joseph didn't say anything to anybody is a claim that can be sustained. Now, the idea that his theology is evolving is an interesting one, but it's remarkable to me now to go back and you look at one of the interesting doctrinal things that you find in the Book of Mormon. For instance, when Jesus appears to the Nephites, there is a voice that speaks to them prior to the appearance. That's the voice of the Father. And the Father speaks, introduces his Son, and then Jesus appears. You have that same experience on the mount of transfiguration in the Bible. And in the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, it retranslates the scripture that says no man has seen God at any time, as saying, no man hath seen God at any time except he hath borne record of the Son. And I see I again would work backwards in that the Book of Mormon, in terms of its plain reading is far more trinitarian than anything you'll find in the New Testament. I mean, you have Jesus announcing he is the Father and the Son to the Nephites. You have Abinadi's big treatise about the very eternal Father will come to visit, and he is the Father and the Son because of the flesh. I mean, you read these, and on its face, those are more trinitarian than things that you're going to find in the New Testament. You do have the changes in Nephi, where Joseph Smith talks about changes. Behold Jesus Christ, the Eternal Father. He becomes the Son of the Eternal Father. But those are no less trinitarian. To call Jesus the Son is no less trinitarian than to call him the Father. And I think that it wasn't until later in his. Later in his ministry, I guess you want to describe it, that Joseph Smith recognized the significance of differentiating the Father and the Son as different physical beings. I don't think it mattered to him so much that they were two separate physical beings. And if, as is the case in the other instances, the Father comes only to announce the Son and then disappears, and Joseph Smith's interview is with Jesus, then the fact that he records this and he saw the Lord and talked to the Lord, all of our pictures of the first Vision show the Father and the Son standing there, and the Father's just kind of a dope, standing by the sidelines while Jesus does all the talking. I think it makes sense that the Father announced the Son and then was done. And so Joseph describes the appearance of the Father only when he recognizes theologically that that's significant, that they were two physically separate beings. Because I don't think he recognized that as being significant early. I don't think that Joseph evolved from a non trinitarian from a trinitarian to a non trinitarian so much as he recognized the implications of it as he got older and as he more fully understood it. So there are many things that have troubled me in the course of looking at difficult issues in the church, but the different accounts of the first vision just isn't one of them. It's never really posed a problem to me. And I really found it remarkable that the fact that they are different versions demonstrates that this is Joseph recalling an actual event. Because when you have a con man that shows up and just sort of, you know, he's got his story and he's sticking to it, you don't see differentiation. You don't see, oh, yeah, it's. No, no, no, no. This is exactly what happened. And this is my story from the beginning. And you read Richard Bushman, and it's really remarkable to see how missionary efforts. You say, well, you know, this should have been the founding story. Bushman talks about the fact that the early missionaries didn't talk about Joseph Smith at all. You know, they went and talked about. They were arguing from Bible texts about the great restoration and this, that and the other. And Joseph Smith's biography, let alone the first vision, just didn't come into play at all. Joseph Smith was sort of the source for all of this, but what was important was the doctrine, and that's how they did missionary work. And the idea that we now go out and we teach the first vision in the first discussion, that's a kind of a modern way of framing it. It's probably a better way of doing it. But, you know, it's always remarkable to me that a church that is based on the principle of continuing revelation gets really up in arms when things change, when things are different. You know, we do missionary work very differently now than Joseph Smith did. Well, what are we doing wrong? We should be doing it the way he did it. And it's like, no, the restoration continues. We are gaining further light and knowledge. And so it doesn't bother me at all that that's not something people talked about back then because they just didn't think it was that significant in terms of the message that they were called to deliver. They felt it was significant. They believed that the millennium was like next week. You know, these were millennialists who were coming and saying, you need to join this church because Jesus is going to be here on Thursday. You know, I mean, it was a very different approach. And so I look at that and think the first vision, the way the first vision is described hasn't troubled me and is not likely to trouble me because I don't think. I don't think it's inconsistent with my expectations of what Joseph ought to have been doing or what we ought to have been teaching.

John Dehlin [02:00:49] Excellent. Thank you for that. We're jumping back a bit. I just on to one thing that's covered in the CES letter, the kindergarten plates. I get a sense you don't think much of that as an issue.

The Kinderhook Plates

Jim Bennett [02:01:03] Well, the kindergarten.

John Dehlin [02:01:03] Just give a quick. A quick response.

Jim Bennett [02:01:05] Sure. Kinderhook plates really were the one thing that threw me for a huge loop.

John Dehlin [02:01:09] Tell the audience. Just give them the 32nd version.

Jim Bennett [02:01:12] So 32nd version is that these plates were found in Kinderhook, Illinois. That's why they're called the Kinderhook plates. They were these very. They aren't very big. They're about that big. They were bell shaped. I think there were six of them. And they were brought to Joseph Smith. And in the history of the church, there's a paragraph in Joseph Smith's voice, first person, Joseph Smith, where he says, I inspected these plates and found them to be the history of the person they were found with, because they were found with a skeleton, I think, and he is a descendant of Ham who. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And anyway, I can't wait to translate them. And then the plates sort of disappear from the historical record.

John Dehlin [02:01:59] But they're published in a. Like, pictures of them are published.

Jim Bennett [02:02:02] I think. I think they were even this on display.

John Dehlin [02:02:05] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [02:02:06] In the. In the mansion house in Nauvoo.

John Dehlin [02:02:09] But I think that people would say the concern is that he kind of declared them to, you know, like he declares he finds some bones and he says, that's Self, the white, you know, laymanite.

Jim Bennett [02:02:18] Right.

John Dehlin [02:02:18] He finds the plates and it's like, oh, those are, you know, authentic.

Jim Bennett [02:02:22] Right, right.

John Dehlin [02:02:22] So he's got a problem with identifying things as authentic that aren't authentic. And the kinder plates would be another example of him basically getting something wrong. Right.

Jim Bennett [02:02:36] Well, okay.

John Dehlin [02:02:36] Identifying something incorrectly.

Jim Bennett [02:02:38] Okay. Yes.

John Dehlin [02:02:39] And no, like the Book of Abraham.

Jim Bennett [02:02:41] Well, the reason why I think the Kinderhook plates aren't a big deal is because I think that they have been brought to our attention by an editorial glitch in how the history of the church was produced. Joseph Smith never said any of that. Joseph Smith, we don't have any, you know, firsthand account of him saying anything. What we have is he may have said that. He may have said that. I think he said.

John Dehlin [02:03:07] I think he probably did say that.

Jim Bennett [02:03:08] Well, William Clayton, yeah. Wrote in his journal, we got these plates and Joseph Smith, Joseph says that he thinks they're from this descendant of Ham and he's going to translate them there. I don't know who wrote the paper, but somebody went through and found, examined the Kinderhook plates and on one of them there's sort of a boat shaped figure that looks identical to something in the Kirtland Egyptian papers. And the translation of that figure is a guy who's a descendant of Ham, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's very clearly that there's a relationship between that and that. And what happened, I think is Joseph looked at the Kinderhook plates and saw that figure and said, oh, this has got to be a descendant of Ham, because I just saw this figure. And this will be fun. I'm going to translate these. And then Joseph gets into it. And I don't know at what point Joseph realizes that. I don't know if he realizes it's fake. I don't know if he loses interests. Who cares? He never produces a translation of the Kinderhook plates. And I actually look at that. I look at that to a large degree as really odd behavior for a fake translator to engage in. Because if Joseph knows that all he can do is make up crap that bears no resemblance to anything on any plates or any papyrus for him to even entertain the idea of, ooh, I want to translate these too. That's a sucker who's opening himself up to be exposed. I think that demonstrates that Joseph Smith believed that ancient documents could be translated from ancient plates. I think it once again demonstrates Joseph's sincerity rather than his fraudulence. And I think that the fact that we don't have a translation of the Kinderhook plates demonstrates that it went as far as a single viewing and a single comment that William Clayton writes in his journal. And that gets blown into this massive fraud. Especially since William Clayton's journal, as was the case in the way the history of the church was written, it was rewritten as if Joseph Smith had written it. You know, I have done this and I have done this, whereas William Clayton wrote Joseph said this, and Joseph is going to produce a translation. I don't see anything even deceptive or sinister about that.

John Dehlin [02:05:43] But yeah, so I'm not framing it as deceptive or sinister as much as it's yet another example of him claiming to have these special powers where he can identify things or, you know, and then he turns out to be wrong.

Jim Bennett [02:06:02] But he's not. But, but the thing about the Kinderhook plates because.

John Dehlin [02:06:06] Because what you didn't say is that dudes manufactured them.

Jim Bennett [02:06:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:10] They're frauds to fool Joseph. And it looks like they probably did fool Joseph.

Jim Bennett [02:06:16] Well, again, they probably did or the

John Dehlin [02:06:20] church wouldn't have displayed. Put them on display.

Jim Bennett [02:06:23] Right.

John Dehlin [02:06:23] And they wouldn't have put pictures of them in the, you know, newspaper or whatever they did. And William McClellan probably wouldn't have written all this down. They probably fooled Joseph. And so it's another example of people thinking Joseph has these special powers when really he doesn't quite know what he's doing.

Jim Bennett [02:06:44] Well, it's another example of that if that's how you frame it. But that's not how Joseph framed it. If we take it at face value and we say Joseph saw a character that was consistent with another character and he used. There's nothing supernatural about that experience. That's Joseph going, oh, all this Egyptological study I'm doing is about to pay off. Because I can take this. He's never claiming to have received a revelation about the Kinderhook plates. He's not even claiming that. He's not claiming they're legitimate. He's saying, hey, that's exciting. I think I can translate these because that looks like this, which is, I think, an entirely human response. I think it's actually kind of charming that Joseph. And again, speaks to his sincerity. Because if Joseph produces frauds from plates that don't exist, the one thing he's going to do is run as far away from real plates as he possibly can. And the fact that he's not doing that and he's willing to give the Kinderhook plates the benefit of a doubt. I think Speaks actually enhances his credibility. To me, if Joseph had made a statement where he was affirming supernaturally that he had a translation of these Kinderhook plates, that would be problematic. Joseph never makes anything anywhere close to that. And when I read the God Makers, I didn't have any of that. Context at all. It was Gilbert Scharfs who taught me off the ledge because my father had never heard of the Kinderhook plates when I raised that with him. So. But I don't think. Allowing for Joseph, there isn't even anything in that story that opens the door for the possibility that Joseph was lying or being deceptive.

John Dehlin [02:08:45] I'm saying wrong. Like I, I'm not necessarily claiming intentional deception.

Jim Bennett [02:08:53] No.

John Dehlin [02:08:53] But just non credible. Like if you, if you, if you just string it together. It's like you start out with the treasure digging, which I think we would all agree there wasn't buried treasure guarded by spirits. I think we would all agree to that.

Jim Bennett [02:09:09] I would agree to that.

John Dehlin [02:09:11] So we start with that and he's using the peep stone. Then he goes to the Book of Mormon which he covers up, doesn't show and you know, doesn't have in the room when he's translating it and the anachronisms. Then you go to the Joseph Smith translation which now has been tied to the Adam Clark commentary. Lots of parallels there. Then you go to the Book of Abraham, which now we know isn't. It isn't. Wasn't written by Abraham at all. And doesn't you know was. It was a false translation. Then you add the Kinderic plates. You know, some people have accused the cesletter of being a gibb. Gall. What's the word? Gib. Galash or something where you're just throwing all sorts of things to try and swamp and overwhelm people. I think that's a disingenuous argument. I think it is super credible to say how many times does Joseph Smith have to get something wrong before you're willing to go, maybe there's a pattern here. I mean that's, that's what it. I think for, for people that have genuine sincere concerns. I think there's enough instances where Joseph Smith gets it wrong to where you, you kind of go, I see a pattern. I see a pattern. It doesn't have to. And don't, don't do the straw man of like intentional deception. A straw Just, just the claim of he's getting enough wrong to where at some point it starts to throw into question his credibility.

Jim Bennett [02:10:32] Well, you can certainly see that pattern if that's the pattern you're wanting to apply to it. You can see patterns if you're wanting. I don't.

John Dehlin [02:10:39] Because that implies that like we're all wanting to drink beer and I've never drank beer.

Jim Bennett [02:10:43] No, that's not what.

John Dehlin [02:10:43] I'm not trying to Cheat on my wife.

Jim Bennett [02:10:45] That's. That's not what I want to believe.

John Dehlin [02:10:46] Like Tanner Gilliland of Zelf in the Shelf once said, my. My conscience dragged me kicking and screaming away from my orthodox belief. Right. I don't want to believe. I don't want to disbelieve. But. But you get enough dots, you start to see a line.

Jim Bennett [02:11:03] Let, Let. Let me. Let me refrain, because that's not what I intended. That's not what I meant. I mean, I don't think you wanted to disbelieve. And so I look at those same events, and I do not see a pattern of Joseph getting anything wrong. I mean, I do not see. I think the Book of Mormon is so remarkably not wrong and so remarkably a testimony of his divine power as a revelator and as a prophet that I apply that filter to the Book of Abraham, to the Kinderhook plates, and to the rest of it. And so once I get to the Book of Abraham, you look at it and you say, well, it's not a translation of the papyrus. And I look at it and say, but it's not a wrong revelation because it's consistent with the kind of doctrinal majesty that I have found in the Book of Mormon. And the Book of Mormon stands as a testament to Joseph Smith's power as a revelator. So I don't look at the Book of Abraham as something that he got wrong. Now, he said, well, but he got the Egyptian translation wrong. He was wrong about the Egyptian translation. I'm not concerned about Joseph Smith as an Egyptian translator. I'm concerned about him as a prophet.

John Dehlin [02:12:24] No, but as a man who is doing what he says he's doing. So it's not. Again, that's. That's kind of a false bar to say he's not Robert Rittner. He never said he was Robert Rittner.

Jim Bennett [02:12:34] Right, right.

John Dehlin [02:12:35] Of course, he's not an Egyptologist. But he says this document was written by Abraham. And he says, I'm translating it from Egyptian into English. It's. It's not. Was he an Egyptologist? It was.

Jim Bennett [02:12:48] No.

John Dehlin [02:12:48] Is he doing what he says he's doing?

Jim Bennett [02:12:50] But his claim, his claim to translate the Book of Abraham was a claim that he translated by the gift and power of God. He was not claiming to have the scholarly credentials or ability to translate it. He believed that that translation would line up with a sort of scholarly translation, and he was wrong about that. But you have to look at what Joseph Smith, what claims that he's making are the Ones that we ought to be concerned about. Because I'm not concerned about Joseph Smith's claims. I mean, I think we're talking in circles to some degree.

Closing Reflections on Belief and the CES Letter

John Dehlin [02:13:34] No, I get it. But I'm just summarizing. We're about to close, I promise.

Jim Bennett [02:13:38] Okay, that's fine. But I just look at that and I can see how people get there. I want to 100% validate.

John Dehlin [02:13:50] It's suspicious, right?

Jim Bennett [02:13:52] Well, yes, of course. Again, of course. And Joseph even said it was suspicious, right?

John Dehlin [02:13:57] Right.

Jim Bennett [02:13:57] Yeah, he did. You know, so one of the great things about the restoration, and I think one of the things that we've gotten right as a church is that everybody, everybody has to have their own encounter with the divine to make sense of any of this. Because there isn't anything that Jim Bennett can say to anybody who believes or even doesn't believe or anything that's going to convince you in a scholarly kind of way to ground your life on a life of consecration to a church and to ideals that are rooted in what Joseph Smith did. Unless you have that kind of personal connection to God that tells you that's something you ought to do. And so, you know, when you're a missionary, you're backed up against a wall and somebody's throwing stuff at you, you bear your testimony to them. And that scene is a cop out to some degree. And. And it is, to some degree, but it's also. Look, this is the only reason why I'm here, guy. The reason I came across the world to knock on your door is because I've had this spiritual experience and this encounter with God, and I'm trying to share that with you. Well, I reject that because Joseph Smith is a fraud and the book of Abraham's nonsense and whatever else, then more power to you, and I hope you live a wonderful and happy and marvelous life. That's kind of where I am at this point.

John Dehlin [02:15:37] Okay, so that takes me to how I want to conclude this part two, which is. It's kind of the epistemology conversation kind of ending as we began. But I just want to, I want to really have you address this. What, what I hear you saying. If I had to summarize everything you're saying from the first two parts, and I don't want to be too reductive or to overly simplify what you're saying, but kind of, if I had to summarize, what I hear you saying is if someone can produce a text or a book that makes you feel super powerful things, right? That makes you feel super Inspired and emotions and just like overwhelmed with like really powerful positive emotion, then, then that basically can make all sorts of other things permissible or okay or potentially valid if someone can create a text that produces such emotion. And that goes back to the Muppet conversation, but I want to just address it just very directly to conclude the fact that so many different leaders have created, you know, Jim Jones inspired people to kill themselves. David Koresh inspired people to sit in a building that burned down to the ground and to have all their spouses and children die to give their own wives to David Koresh. You know, like the history of mankind is. Is full replete with men, largely men that were able to create a text or sermons that inspired people that made them feel the emotion, that then had them either believe and. Or do all sorts of things that were irreconcilable with each other. And so, and Jeremy does have a section on this, and I just want to conclude with this. Are feelings reliable bases or evidence upon which to base, you know, on the one hand, conclusions about the tangible world, but also an entire worldview when we have so many different clusters of people, many clusters way larger than. Than Mormons, basing totally irreconcilable, deeply held beliefs based on their feelings? Do you know what I'm saying? In the end, you're saying the Book of Mormon made me feel super good, and so everything else kind of has to be kind of true. So are feelings reliable to build your whole life around? Are they reliable?

Jim Bennett [02:18:28] They are not, which is why I haven't built my whole life around them, because I don't think I would frame my experience in that way at all. Okay. I mean. I mean, I don't think I read the Book of Mormon and had this marvelously emotional experience. I mean, I didn't really read the Book of Mormon until I was a missionary. I had read it. I think I'd read it all the way through, but sort of slogged through it like you're supposed to. And I can't recall any sort of transcendent moment of this kind of emotional rapture that you seem to be describing. So. So I'm going to give you warmed over Joseph McConkie again. He used to say that God never produces a mindless revelation. He said, the Doctrine and Covenants talks about, I will let you know within your mind and in your heart that yes, marvelous feelings are part of spiritual experiences. But Joseph Smith described the idea that the Holy Ghost. No man receives the Holy Ghost unless he receives revelations. The Holy Ghost is a Revelator. And I kind of wrestled with that because you stand up. Somebody stands up at the end of a really boring sacrament meeting and says, we've had a great spirit here today. And my reaction is, no, we haven't. This was boring. I want to go home. But there have been moments in meetings where I felt this kind of spirit. And it's not even. It's not necessarily even an emotional experience for me. I'm not necessarily even that emotional a person. I didn't. When I was in a bishopric, I was always kind of frustrated by the fact that I was the only one of the bishopric that seemed incapable of crying. You know, the bishop would, oh, we've called this new scout master. He's going to be wonderful. And I'd just be sitting there. Yeah, yeah, it'll be great. That'd be really good.

John Dehlin [02:20:30] Hopefully.

Jim Bennett [02:20:31] Hopefully I didn't experience it that way. And my own personal faith has been shaped and molded by personal suffering. That sounds really, really pretentious, but it's found when I have reached for God and tried to find answers and I've tried to sort of frame them in the way I want them. I can remember when I was in the mtc, I went to the bathroom because that was the only place I could be alone without a companion. And when I'm going to kneel down here in this stall and I'm going to get my Moroni's promise answer to the Book of Mormon, and I knelt down and you promised me this and let her rip, and nothing. And I was just furious and frustrated and didn't know what to do. I was looking to sort of frame God and put him in those kinds of boxes. And I think we're taught in the church that we have to put God in a box, in the church box or in this Moroni's promise. These are magic words that if you say them magically, somehow you do all this. But I put two defining moments. I've talked about both of them sort of in passing. But when my daughter got hurt and I realized just how shallow my faith was, that my faith was sort of rooted in, well, I'm going to do all these good things because then God will be nice to me and I'll have a nice life. How transactional my faith was up until that point. And I poured out my soul and I was like, you know, why is this happening? How do I deal with this? And I encountered something larger than myself in a way that I can't to call it like the feeling of a muppet Movie or whatever else. It wasn't even that. It was just so wonderful and ecstatic. It was just. It was just the knowledge that I was known, the knowledge that my suffering and the suffering of my daughter and the suffering of my family was known and was validated and was real. And there really was a God, there really is a Christ. That was the kind of pure knowledge that flowed into me. And then in 2015, when I. I was. I very much. I want to say I wanted to leave the church, but I felt like I had to leave the church over that policy. I thought, the church is so wrong on this. I've got to leave. How can I stay? And I felt that same sense of being known, that same connection to God and a very clear, I'm going to say feeling. So I guess I'm validating what you're saying, but it was more than a feeling. It was in the mind. It's an understanding, a very clear understanding that this is where God wants me, this is where I am to stay. These are my people. It is my responsibility to suffer with them, to mourn with them, and to make mistakes with them, and to endure the mistakes that we as a people are going to continue to make. You know, we will correct this mistake, but there will be more mistakes down the road. This is where God wants me, and there is a God, and this is where he wants me. So that's kind of where my testimony is. So if you start to frame that and say, well, if somebody else produces a marvelous text that makes me feel good. I mean, if there is a truer church. My uncle always used to say, if there's a truer church, I'll join it with you. And I'm looking for truth wherever it is. And I recognize that there is truth outside this church as well as in this church, but I recognize God's hand is in this church. I have seen it personally. I have felt it. That's where my testimony is. So when I'm backed up against a wall, I'm not going to talk to you about ancient American archeology or Egyptology or Kinderhook plates or any of that. I don't, at this point, I don't care. And it's kind of flippant to say, and I can have empathy and compassion for those who do. And I do. I mean, that's one of the reasons I wrote my CES letter reply. One of the reasons I wrote it is, guys, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is so much here There is a majesty here. There is power here, There is love. There is divine love and grace in this church. And if you leave it over the Kinderhook plates, I just. That makes me very sad. Makes me very sad that you didn't get a chance to get to the good stuff because you bumped into this stupid stuff. And as part of that, as part of that, I don't want to make any claims of exclusivity. I have talked to people of faith outside of this church that have brought me to tears, who have had majestic, wonderful, powerful experiences with God and have never set foot in any of our churches. And that's not my responsibility to take that away from them or to cast any. I don't understand that. You know, like you, I was brought up. This is the true church. And so, you know, I'd say up to Maybe even. Maybe five years ago, 10 years ago, I would have said, well, maybe. Clearly they're not really having an experience with the divine. Somehow my own faith was dependent on discrediting their faith, and I don't feel that at all anymore. I feel exactly the opposite. I think we encourage faith wherever we find it. And if you want to go be a Catholic and find God that way, and you have found God that way, I am going to cheer you on every step of the way. And I think that's wonderful and marvelous. And if you're going to find God, and I don't want you to be deluded by a Jim Jones or somebody else that's going to damage you, because I recognize that claim. You rightly state that people who experience these really destructive experiences are saying the same kinds of things that I am. And so I recognize the danger in putting your faith or your loyalty to an organization or a person or anything else that can damage you. And that happens in religious circles far too often. But I can only speak for myself at this point in my life, and I can only say that I have found God in this church. And I feel like I can bless the lives of others within this church, and I am confident that others can as well. And that's pretty much as far as I go.

John Dehlin [02:28:17] I love it. I'm going to venture to say that this interview is going to help more people stay in the church than. Than many efforts that others make, because I think you are one of the best spokesmen I've ever seen for a continued commitment to the. To the church. So. Well, bless you, Jim Bennett.

Jim Bennett [02:28:42] No, that's very kind of you, and

John Dehlin [02:28:43] I'm not done with you. I want to. I want to bring you back for one more interview.

Jim Bennett [02:28:46] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:28:46] Where we talk about, you know, we talk about polygamy. We could talk about blacks in the priesthood. We can talk about the LGBT stuff. We can talk about women. We can talk about, you know, people leaving the church, the young people, and kind of just anything else about, like, maybe what the church can do. Not that they're paying attention, but they are paying attention ideas for what the church can do to kind of make things better.

Jim Bennett [02:29:09] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:29:09] So will you come back for one more?

Jim Bennett [02:29:10] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:29:11] Okay. But. But I just. I can't tell you how grateful I am for your being willing to have this dialogue with me, and I can't tell you how impressed I am with your thoughtfulness and your integrity and your generosity and all that.

Jim Bennett [02:29:33] Well, you're very kind. I'm gonna. I will say that I very much enjoy having this conversation with you, and I really resent the people who say that you are the devil and you are this wicked, terrible, awful person. I really feel. I feel like you have been fair with me, and I feel like this has been a great experience, and I don't think we agree on a number of things, and I don't have any problem with that. And I think that people who talk to you and that you're willing to. Are willing to engage with you, I think are going to have a good experience, and I would hope more people would do that, so.

John Dehlin [02:30:19] All right. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate a lot. If people want to learn more about what you've written, if they want to check out a faithful reply to the CES letter, how do they obtain it?

Where to Find Jim Bennett's CES Letter Reply

Jim Bennett [02:30:33] I work for a website called canonizer.com that is currently hosting my latest version of my CES letter reply. I would invite everybody to come visit it. It's a site where we try to find consensus out of controversy. It's still kind of in beta mode at this moment, but. But that's where they can find the CES letter reply, and that's where they can engage me. I written a number of things on the blog there, so. So, yeah, come visit or send me an emailizer. Canon. So send me an email at jim@canonizer.com c a n o n I z e r.com and I. I'm gonna get beat up on that for giving that out.

John Dehlin [02:31:16] But is there a web page, though?

Jim Bennett [02:31:18] Yeah. Canonizer.com but is there for.

John Dehlin [02:31:20] For your actual document?

Jim Bennett [02:31:21] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:31:22] Or is it just at the homepage?

Jim Bennett [02:31:24] I don't know. Actually know if there's a link on the homepage if you Google.

John Dehlin [02:31:27] Okay.

Jim Bennett [02:31:28] Jim Bennett, CES Letter reply.

John Dehlin [02:31:30] It's there. I found it.

Jim Bennett [02:31:31] Yeah, it's not hard to find.

John Dehlin [02:31:32] Yeah. And I just want to give a shout out. We didn't even mention this, but CES letter can be found@cesletter.org Jeremy, you're a dear friend of mine. You're also a hero to me and super courageous, and I love that. I love Jeremy and I love you, Jim, And I love just people that are willing to be generous and have grace, but to be thoughtful and. And to try and work all this through. And I think we're. I think we contributed something positive today. And Jeremy, thank you. And Jim Bennett, thank you.

Jim Bennett [02:32:06] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:32:06] All right, thanks, everybody. And we'll see you guys for part three soon on Mormon Stories Podcast. You're awesome. Support us at mormonstories. Org. Become monthly donors if you can. And your thing's free, right? Nobody has to pay for it, right?

Jim Bennett [02:32:19] It's free.

John Dehlin [02:32:20] Yeah. All right, take care, everybody. See you soon. Thanks again, Jim.

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