Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Guest: Mike (LDS Discussions)
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introduction and Episode Overview
John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today, John Dehlin. It's August 18, 2022 and we are so super excited to have you back for our ongoing series on LDS truth claims under the kind of marketing or brand name of the LDS Discussions) Project with Mike. And so today the topic is Deutero Isaiah. It is definitely one of the most important issues faces Mormons and questioning Mormons and doubting Mormons when they're trying to evaluate the truth claims of the Mormon Church and most specifically of the Book of Mormon and its historicity. Before we dive into today's episode, first and foremost, I'm just going to acknowledge that we were trying to do an LDS discussions episode, a live stream of an LDS discussions episode every week. We had a couple week break or a hiatus, but we're so excited to be back in swing in this series. We want to welcome everyone who's joining us on the live streams either on Facebook or on YouTube. Just as a quick introduction, the genesis of all these episodes or of these series is a series of incredible essays that are available on LDSDiscussions.com so you can always check out the original essays there. Today the essay is ldsdiscussions.com deuteroisai and because we're relaunching or continuing this important series, we want to make sure everyone knows of a really important development based on demand, based on requests. What we did is we went ahead and we created sort of a podcast of just the LDS discussions episodes isolated from the Mormon Stories podcast feed. So obviously, you know, we've always been integrating these LDS discussions episodes into the Mormon Stories YouTube channel on the Facebook page whenever we can and in the Mormon Stories podcast feed. But what now you can also do is go to Anchor or Spotify and you'll have just the LDS discussions episodes numbered. So what you'll see is that the most recent episode as of this morning, it takes us through episode number 15, which is the long ending of Mark. But this will be episode 16 of Deutero Isaiah. And all the episodes in the future will, will be listed as their own episodes. And funly and interestingly, it's not just the audio on Spotify. Spotify is now supporting video as well. So with the support of Jen and Maven and others, you can actually watch these videos on YouTube if you want on Facebook, but you can also watch them on Spotify because Spotify now supports video. But what's most important about these developments is that if you want a single place where you can either consume all these episodes in sequence, or if you want a single place where you can share these episodes with friends or family or ward members or those who you think might want, you can just send them to the Spotify link or the anchor link or the itunes link, or you can also point them to the YouTube playlist. So if you go to the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel, click on playlists. There is a dedicated playlist for all the LDS discussions episodes going from start to finish, from. From episode number one all the way through the most recent episode, it was Jen that had the idea of. Of editing or updating the YouTube playlist. And we hope that that's a service that all of you find useful. And in the show notes, you. You'll find links to the anchor feed, the Spotify feed, and the YouTube playlist, again for your convenience. So without any further ado, Mike from LDS discussions, welcome back from your summer hiatus. Welcome back to Mormon Stories and to the LDS discussions feature.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:04:18] Hey, everybody. It's nice to be here and good to be back on track and back on being live, which is kind of fun. So this is good.
John Dehlin [00:04:26] Yeah. So last episode we covered the long ending of Mark, and you felt like Deutero Isaiah was the next logical episode to cover. Do you want to. Do you want to kind of introduce why Deutero Isaiah in the Book of Mormon is kind of the topic that you felt like we needed to cover next?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:04:47] Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, once you've gotten to some of the biblical scholarship stuff, I guess the order of like necessarily wasn't indicative of, like, the. How bad the problems were, how big the problems were. But Deutero Isaiah is one that I think most scholars, even some of the more faithful ones, will actually acknowledge is kind of a problem for the Book of Mormon. I've heard some people that I've had conversations with which were more nuanced members who will actually say, yeah, I don't really know what to do with that, or that's actually a real problem that at some point we'll have to figure out. And so for me, I think it's a good place to kind of end the biblical scholarship episodes on, just because I think it's one that kind of has all of those elements we've been talking about, like late edition anachronisms, all of those things kind of all in one. And it just helps us to frame how biblical scholarship really does undercut the Book of Mormon. Before you even get into the historical stuff, which we'll begin in our Next episode.
What Is Deutero-Isaiah and Why It Matters
John Dehlin [00:05:44] All right. And I'll just. I'll just say that this term, deutero Isaiah, is a term that almost no active, believing, faithful orthodox Mormon will have ever heard. It sounds weird, it sounds arcane, it sounds scholarly, it sounds geeky. But it's a simple. It's a simple topic. But I think that if we were to list the top five to 10 issues that just for many people, just once they read, can be something that just immediately can take them out. This is one of those issues because it's just. It seems to be a real open and shut case for which even the top Mormon apologists or scholars, they acknowledge it and they have no good answer for it. That's my impression. And I just want to make sure we give the introduction it's due because this is not a small issue. Even though you've never heard about it, and even though it sounds kind of geeky and technical, this is a major issue. Is that fair to say, Mike?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:06:48] Yeah, I think it's one of those ones where, like, when you hear about it, your eyes, you know, will kind of glaze over. But at the same time, it just. It's so important because it's another area where you could show that the Book of Mormon cannot be what it claims to be with being a literal historical record. Because this, as we'll get into, is just material that they would not have had access to. And yet it permeates the entire Book of Mormon.
John Dehlin [00:07:07] Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let's get into it. Deutero Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. Let's start with the introduction.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:07:17] Yeah, so just, you know, we've been doing these episodes on biblical scholarship. We've been talking about how the Book of Mormon uses the King James Bible as a foundational source text. I don't think there's anyone that can really argue with that at this point. I'm sure there will be some that try, but because of that, it brings in errors, anachronisms, and late editions that would not have been in an ancient text because they were not in the original manuscripts. And so this undercuts the claims that are made by the witnesses to the Book of Mormon translation process that Joseph Smith was engaging in a tight translation because if he was reading the exact translation off of the Peep Shearstone in a hat, you wouldn't have these late editions and you certainly wouldn't have the King James English. And so this shows that Joseph Smith was engaged in the production of the Book of Mormon. From an apologetic standpoint, you might say. Michael Ash Calls him a co author. Carol Gibbons has bricolage. But it just shows that Joseph Smith has an active role in the production of the Book of Mormon, which I think is something, you know, that 30, 40 years ago you would be excommunicated for really publicly stating. And more importantly, this ties into our lost 116 pages episode in a way, because this is kind of where Joseph Smith is starting to replace those lost pages. And he uses a lot of Isaiah to fill in the gaps of those missing. The missing parts of the manuscript as he recreates it. And so the King James Bible issues we've talked about in previous episodes are all kind of going to play a role here as we dive into the Deutero Isaiah problem.
John Dehlin [00:08:48] Yeah. Okay. So, yes, I think that's just a reminder. Go back and watch the previous episodes before you watch this one, because we're building on a foundation we've laid in those previous episodes.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:09:00] Yep. I think because the whole point of these. This not the whole point, one of the points of the series was, like you said, was to make sure that they build on each other. So you realize these are not isolated issues. And this is one of those areas where all of those episodes we've done so far will kind of pay off in this one because you'll start to see those patterns emerging. And once you see those patterns emerging, that's how you start to see how Joseph Smith was doing it and the fingerprints he left, which I know is a phrase a few people have said, I say too much, but, you know, kind of how I feel. So.
John Dehlin [00:09:28] Yeah. Okay. And if any of you want to create a better series than Mike, we would love to have that series as well.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:09:36] Yeah, please do.
Defining Deutero-Isaiah and Its Scholarship
John Dehlin [00:09:39] Okay. All right, so the next slide is what is Deutero Isaiah?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:09:44] Yeah. And this is a lot of what I'm going to talk about actually comes from Dr. David Bachavoy, who's been on Mormon stories a few times and who is just super kind and super nice and just such a great speaker to these things. And he had done a couple of essays on Deutero Isaiah for rational thought. And he also has been on Mormon stories and talked about it. And so he kind of explains what Deutero Isaiah is really well in his two part essay. And he says one of the most insightful perspectives held by mainstream biblical scholars involves the historical development of the Book of isaiah. Since the 20th century, all mainstream scholars have held the position that chapters 40 through 66 were written after the Jewish exile into Babylon, which took place about 586 BC. Scholars typically identify the exilic material in chapters 40 to 55 by the title Deutero Isaiah, which means second Isaiah. And the post exilic material in 56 through 66 is the trito or Trito Isaiah. Though those works might have been actually written by multiple authors. This means, of course, that the second half of the Book of Isaiah was not written by the historical Isaiah, a prophet who lived in Jerusalem during the 8th century BCE for latter day Saints. This presents a direct challenge to the traditionally, for traditionally held paradigms concerning the Book of Mormon, since some of this material is not only attributed to Isaiah, it has had a significant impact upon the Book of Mormon. If mainstream scholars are correct, then this material would not have been available to Lehi's family as something they could have taken with them to America.
John Dehlin [00:11:16] And, and that's going to be a lot of kind of technical biblical critical scholarship speak that most people don't understand what you just read.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:11:27] Yeah, basically what it's saying is that scholars have come to the conclusion through basically, you know, reading the text of Isaiah with a critical eye that chapters 40 and on were written by different authors because those authors leave clues that it's not the same writer. And we'll get into those a little bit.
John Dehlin [00:11:44] Maybe we can even back up. And just especially for those who are Mormon or don't understand the Book of Mormon or haven't read it, Joseph Smith quotes endlessly, chapter, chapter, chapter from Isaiah, word for word almost in the Book of Mormon. So Isaiah probably appears more. The Book of Isaiah from the Old Testament probably appears more prominently in the Book of Mormon, plagiarized or reproduced more than even the New Testament that we've covered. Right?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:12:16] Yeah, I mean, it's just large, large chunks. Whereas the New Testament will be like, you know, little, you know, sentences and phrases. But this is just massive chunks that he's pulling in and it makes minor changes, but I mean, he's pulling it directly in from the King James Bible.
John Dehlin [00:12:29] And for those who haven't read the Book of Mormon, it starts out with the book first Nephi and then second Nephi. And we'll be talking about this. But in second Nephi there's just at least half of what? Half of Second Nephi is just. Yes, a lot re quoting of Isaiah. So that's why talking about Isaiah from the Old Testament is so important. The contest text of the Book of Mormon. And then again, what you just said is pretty. And this is what's important is David Bacavoy, who got his PhD from Brandeis. Like, he's not. Yeah, he's not some lightweight, apologetic Mormon scholar or apologist. This guy has studied historical criticism, the Old Testament, ancient languages better than almost anyone within Mormonism. But. But certainly he deserves to be mentioned in the same category as people like Bart Ehrman and others. And what he will attest to is that pretty much all scholars agree that there's multiple authors of Isaiah. Right. That's what you just read. And that some of the later authors of Isaiah would have written Isaiah after Lehi left Jerusalem. And that's critical to understanding the. Or asking the question, why are these parts of Isaiah that were written after Lehi left Jerusalem? How did they get on the brass plates and then show up in the Book of Mormon? Which is what this episode is going to be about.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:13:55] Right?
John Dehlin [00:13:55] Yeah. Okay, so the next slide is why scholars identify multiple Isaiah authors. Let's get into it.
Evidence for Multiple Authors of Isaiah
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:14:02] Yeah. So chapter 45 of Isaiah mentions Cyrus, the king that would liberate the Jews by name. And so this indicates that the writer of the material was aware of this historical event, which is why they can give such specifics, such as writing Cyrus by name. And so I know, from a believing standpoint, say, well, no, they prophesied of it, but the fact is, in the Bible, like the Book of David or Daniel, sorry, has the same thing where all of a sudden the details get so specific that, you know, it was written after the fact. And in 1879, the Cyrus cylinder was discovered in the Middle east, which was created sometime between 539 and 538 BCE. It's written in Akkadian, the language of the Babylonians. It gives more historical context to the material in deutero Isaiah. In Dr. Bacavoi's Deutero Isaiah piece, he outlines how the context of that cylinder allows scholars to see that the Deutero Isaiah material was written after that the Cyrus cylinder was created. Is Deutero Isaiah serves as a polemic that belittles other gods and vindicates Israel's deity. Yahweh is one of the main themes that ties Isaiah 40 to 55 together as a literary unit. And so he goes on to explain that the historical Isaiah believed in the infallibility of Jerusalem and that it wouldn't fall. He did not believe that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed, as it was sacred. And yet Isaiah 40 begins as a message of comfort to the Judean people since Jerusalem had been destroyed. But this was not something that the historical Isaiah believed could even happen. And so if this theology had switched so drastically that you could go from chapter 39 to 40 with that complete change in tone, you would expect some sort of a statement that explained how he came to know that his earlier oracles were incorrect. But in reality, chapters 42, 66 never speak of the Babylonian period as a distant future reality, as if somebody were prophesying about it. Instead, the Babylonian period is described as the present historical condition. And so it's all of these little clues. It's not just the reference to Cyrus, it's. It's the surrounding material of these chapters and the language being used and the tone that tells you that it was written from a completely different perspective than the historical Isaiah. Which is why scholars can look at that and say, yeah, there's a clear cut here between chapter 39 and chapter 40.
John Dehlin [00:16:19] And if I can just kind of try and restate this from my feeble understanding, historical criticism or biblical criticism, it's basically a very scientific approach to the text, where you look at the text word for word and you try to understand where the text came from, when the text was written, based on word clues, context clues, etc. And so if we're in Isaiah and it's mentioning what the name of a king like Cyrus, it's mentioning the king by name before the king should appear in the timeline of the story. Is that right? Then that's giving you a clue that. That actually the account wasn't written by Isaiah. When Isaiah was writing it, it must have been kind of like Pseudepigrapha. It must have been written later by somebody else in the voice of Isaiah to give it sort of scriptural authority. And so the discovery of the documents, the analysis of the text, all of that points to the fact that these other authors were writing as if they were Isaiah, but they were knowing things they couldn't have known if it was Isaiah. Is that a good restatement for those who don't understand the scholarly gobbledygook?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:17:40] I think so. I mean, I think that's basically it. It's just there's too much there. It's not, because a lot of times you'll hear people go, you know, it was historical Isaiah wrote it. A later scribe wrote in Cyrus, because the later scribe knew that it happened. But the rest of the material is good. And what David Bachvoy talks about is, no, because the rest of the material in chapters 40 through 66, they have different tones, they have different language influences. And the next slide has even more reasons. So, like you said, it's a scientific approach. Where all of these different areas of kind of analyzing the text of Isaiah are pointing them and confirming the other things. So it's like there are all these different areas that say, yeah, this is written after the exile. And then, oh, and then this was because the language used. Oh, and this because of the concepts being used. And so it's not just one thing, it's a bunch. And they all are in that same. They're all pointing in the same direction, which is that these are later chapters being written by someone using the name of Isaiah, likely to give it more credibility among the community that they're trying to, you know, effectively influence with this text.
John Dehlin [00:18:43] Absolutely. I'm just going to, I'm just going to share a quick comment. Gene Judson writes, learning about Deutero Isaiah in Pseudepigrapha on Dan Vogel's interviews and videos really rocked my Mormon world. And I just want to, you know, Gene is just one example of many people, number one, who have valued Dan Vogel's work and, and, and then who have been affected by learning about Deutero Isaiah. So we'll make sure we just want to call attention to the amazing scholarship not not only of David Bacavoy, but also of Dan Vogel and others and Brett Metcalf. And we'll include links in the show notes to, to that content.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:19:24] Yep, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the work they've done has been so huge for me and trying to figure some of it out. And, and, and Dan Vogel has put together some of those videos on YouTube, which, yeah, I would watch. And then I'm like, oh, man, I'm so. My, my eyes would glaze over because I'm just like, I'm so confused right now. I need to watch him like two or three times, but he has so much info and it's just so well done to kind of like what David Bachvoi does with Deutero Isaiah, where it's just like layer after layer to show you, like, there's no way around this. This is a problem. And so their work has just been so helpful to trying to figure all this stuff out because, you know, a lot of people, especially when you talk about Deutero Isaiah, the people that are really focused on that don't care about Mormonism one bit. They don't care about the Book of Mormon. They're, they're scholars looking at the Bible. And so people like David Bockboy can then help us to understand how that impacts the historicity of the Book of Mormon, because those other people don't Even they're not focused on the Book of Mormon. They're looking at Isaiah. And so, you know, Dan Vogel and David Bockvoy and John Hamer, Brent Metcalf, they all do such a great job of then taking that and helping us to understand what to look for in the scriptures of Mormonism to see how that impacts us for better or worse. And in a lot of these biblical scholarship episodes we've done have kind of shown that the work being done by these scholars is impacting what we know about the credibility of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon is just obviously not going in the way that obviously the Church would want it to go because of the fact that they are bringing a lot of myths in as literal history.
John Dehlin [00:20:51] And it's also important to note that Joseph Smith wouldn't have known any of this, right?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:20:54] Yeah, he wouldn't have known. I don't even think at this point that was a theory being pushed around. But at this point, I think I mentioned it somewhere in these slides. But it's like, at this point, the belief in his worldview was, this is a literal history book. They believe the Bible's history.
John Dehlin [00:21:07] And.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:21:08] And that's the problem. When you cement that into the ground and build on top of it, if your cement is wrong, you're screwed. And that's one of those things. Like, we'll get to it at the end. But that's why these biblical scholarship sections, they might seem kind of boring and dry, but they're so incredibly important, because if you want to understand where Joseph was pulling from, what ideas he was pulling from, and where he made those mistakes and what those mistakes tell us, these episodes are huge. It's just that they're probably not as exciting as the historical ones will be once we kind of go into that area.
John Dehlin [00:21:40] Absolutely. Okay, so let's go on to more reasons why scholars identify multiple authors in Isaiah.
Seven Reasons Deutero-Isaiah Is a Secondary Author
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:21:48] Yeah, and this is kind of continuing David Bacavoi's essays on why we know that Deutero Isaiah is a secondary author. And one of the things he points out, which is kind of cool, is he says that there's an influence of Jeremiah's teachings on Deutero Isaiah. And the material presents a timeline issue because Jeremiah lived after the historical Isaiah. So this is an anachronism that allows scholars now to date the Deutero Isaiah material. As the author was aware of Jeremiah's teachings, but the writings of Jeremiah make it clear he was unaware of the Deutero Isaiah stuff. So basically, that's another area where you can show this had to be written after Jeremiah because of the fact that they knew of him. He didn't know of the deutero Isaiah material. And he points out that there's a use of Aramaic language in the deutero Isaiah chapters, whereas it's absent in the first 30 chapters. And he says, unlike what we find in the first half of the book of Isaiah, Aramaic has heavily influenced the language in Isaiah 40:66. Not only does this fact provide compelling proof that the material in 40 through 66 was written by other authors, it shows that these authors were living in a time when Jews were speaking Aramaic. And so, similar to the use of Aramaic, the deutero Isaiah material is written in a form of Hebrew that dates to post exilic times. And so Dr. Bachvoi says, unlike what we encounter in the historical oracles of Isaiah, the material in Isaiah 40:66 contains many, many examples of Hebrew words and phrases that appear solely in the exilic and post exilic periods. And so again, it's not just the Cyrus mentioned, it's all of these language issues, it's theme issues, and they're just one after another. And there's no way to look at these and say some later scribe just basically revised all of the original Isaiah and just made it more modern, because that wouldn't make sense to just to do it to those chapters. And so it tells us that somebody else wrote this material.
John Dehlin [00:23:40] Okay. And if I'm trying to understand and restate this, we know, you know, we know according to the chronology of the Old Testament, Jeremiah follows Isaiah, but somehow we can see Jeremiah's, the stories in Jeremiah and the writings attributed to Jeremiah showing up in the later parts of Isaiah, which, that's what you mean by an anachronism that shouldn't be happening. And then also the emergence of Aramaic, again, that happens later. And you shouldn't be seeing the influences of the Aramaic language appearing in Isaiah, which would have been written, what, in Hebrew. You shouldn't see those influences in there. So again, and they all the. And I guess you're saying they start halfway through Isaiah. You won't see the Aramaic influences in the first half, but then you'll start seeing them show up in the second half. And this is all super technical and detailed stuff. And so our purpose is just to give people a general understanding. And, and if you really want to dig into this, you got to really get into, you know, technical historical criticism of the Old Testament. Right?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:24:57] Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm trying to think of A good way to phrase the Jeremiah thing, but it's like, you know, say you have, you know, for football, you have Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, and they are constantly referencing what each. What. What each other is doing. And then there's this writing that's attributed to Peyton Manning down the road, and he talks about all the stuff that Tom Brady said and also all this other stuff. And then you look back at Tom Brady. Why isn't Tom Brady referencing all of this stuff that Peyton Manning said? Well, it's because he didn't know it was there because it wasn't there yet. And so it might not be the best example, but basically, Jeremiah is aware of Isaiah, but he's not aware of any of this other material. But then this deutero Isaiah author is well aware of Jeremiah. And so you could tell they're not on the same timeline because there's that, you know, there's disjointed knowledge of each other's stuff that only occurs once you get to those chapters.
John Dehlin [00:25:47] Yeah. And since most people aren't going to know. NFL football chronology.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:25:50] Yeah, I know it's probably a bad example.
John Dehlin [00:25:52] If we want to do another example, it would almost be like accounts, let's just say accounts supposedly written during the time of World War I that were supposed to be, you know, in the chronology between, let's just say, 1914 and 1920. They're making references to Hitler's war or German, you know, the Second World War during the. During, you know, during the time of World War I. You can't be writing about a future event while you're supposed to be writing about the events that are happening when they're happening. Is that fair to say?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:26:27] Yeah, I mean, it's just I'm trying, like, I'm trying to think in my head, like, of a good way to do it with the church. It's like, you know, if you had Gordon. Gordon B. Hinckley and Thomas S. Monson in their Cons General Conference, you're always quoting each other, and all of a sudden we have this writing from, you know, Thomas S. Monson today. That's all the stuff that was never referenced contemporaneously. And yet it's also referencing Gord B. Hinckley. And all of a sudden you go, well, how come he knows everything Gord B. Hinckley said? Gordon B. Hinckley never quotes any of the stuff that Thomas S. Monson supposedly said. That's very out of. Out of style with what Thomas S. Monson was saying. And so it's basically like, why is one person aware of the other person's entire catalog, but then this other person is only aware of, you know, the second person until a certain point? It's just one of the easy ways to go. Because it wasn't written yet. That's why the first person didn't know, because he didn't. It wasn't available to him. And so I know it's a complicated. This is kind of a dry episode, but it's really important because once you use all of these different data points, then you're allowed. Then you're able to apply it to the Book of Mormon. Because this might not be a huge deal for a. Anyone who believes in the Hebrew Bible, because you just go, well, that's okay. It still has a lot of valuable lessons. But the Book of Mormon is the one that takes it and cements it as history. And that's where you get into the problems, because they're kind of rewriting the history in a way that it was never meant to be or that it certainly wasn't.
John Dehlin [00:27:54] Yeah, absolutely. Really quickly, kind of at. Kind of at a little break between slides, I just want to give a shout out to my friend Scott Purvis. Hey, Scott. Scott gave a 50 donation through the Super Chat feature on YouTube. Number one, Scott, we love you. Number two, check out Scott and his Wonderful Families episode on Mormon Stories podcast. The Purvis family is amazing. And number three, Scott, thanks so much for your financial support. You make your donations like yours are what makes this possible. And if anybody else values this series, you. You can either donate through YouTube on any live stream we do. Or you can also donate through the Facebook Stars feature or just through going to MormonStories.org and click on the donate button. But, you know, we're able to pay our staff based on your financial support. So thank you, Scott. And thanks to anyone who wants to throw a little support behind this series. Okay, so now let's go to being unaware of biblical fixtures. Sorry, Being unaware of biblical figures until they're not.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:29:04] And this one's kind of cool because it kind of meshes a little bit with our Adam and Eve episode, which is to say that the writer of the Deutero Trito or Trito Isaiah are written later. And so the first 39 chapters of Isaiah never mentioned Abraham. Yet once you get to Deutero Isaiah, Abraham's mentioned multiple times. And I suppose you could say from a cynical standpoint that it's a coincidence. And maybe it is, but because the Deutero Isaiah stuff is not written until after the exile. That's after Genesis is first composed. And so that's what we talk about with Adam and Eve and Isaiah, is that the author of Isaiah in the first 40 chapters, 39 chapters, has no idea about Adam and Eve. They never mentioned them, even though Adam and Eve now today is considered one of the most foundational events, you know, obviously in mankind. And the original Isaiah has no idea because that early material was not finalized until after the exile. So in that same line of thought, the deutero in trito, Isaiah are not familiar with the story of Abraham, or, I'm sorry, the deuteron trudo. Isaiah are familiar with the story of Abraham. So they mention it, but the original Isaiah is not. And so it's never mentioned. It's just another way you could say that that material is being written from a different time period because they're starting to bring in things that are being introduced to the world at the time they're being written, but they weren't available for the original Isaiah. I know it's confusing. It's just these data points are important. They're just kind of goofy.
John Dehlin [00:30:29] Yeah. To me, that's kind of inconceivable that, that Jews in, let's just say the 7th or 8th century BCE weren't, you know, didn't have it in their mindset. Well, it's clearly Adam and Eve and then it's Noah and then it's, you know, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and the twelve tribes of Israel. And that they just didn't. That they didn't have that. Those stories and that chronology all in their mindset. But what you're saying is they didn't. And Abraham doesn't appear. The story of Abraham doesn't really start appearing until after the first part of Isaiah was written. And so again, even though this is technical, even though this is detailed, when we have Abraham appearing in the later parts of Isaiah around the same time that we know that the story of Abraham starts getting integrated into common, I guess, Jewish understandings of the world. That's just another really important sign.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:31:31] I think so. I mean, and like, like I said, I think those are the coolest clues or clue, the most fascinating things to find because it really does help to understand what, how the development of all of this stuff was beyond Mormonism. But obviously they have huge impacts on Mormonism as we'll get into. Because these timing issues are really crucial when you're writing a book that's supposed to have taken place at a certain time. And, you know, we'll get into that in a second. So, yeah, it's, it's. These are important.
Deutero-Isaiah Passages in the Book of Mormon
John Dehlin [00:31:59] All right, so that takes us to the next slide. Deutero Isaiah in the Book of Mormon.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:32:05] Yep. So as you mentioned earlier in Second Nephi, Lehi cites the deutero Isaiah material, and then Jacob reads the words of deutero into the Book of Mormon in Second Nephi Chapter eight. Not only does this deuterizer material appear in the Book of Mormon, but it contains the exact King James Bible language that, as we've discussed before, includes mistranslations, italicized text, and in this case, late editions. And the one thing that David Bokvoy mentioned a lot in his episode with you is just the themes that come out of this Deutero Isaiah material influences the Book of Mormon beyond just the words of Lehi and Jacob. So in the following verses from second Nephi chapter 8 are copied from the King James Bible of Isaiah 52, which is Deutero Isaiah. And it says, awake, awake. Put on thy strength, O Zion. Put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city. For henceforth there shall no more come into the uncircumcised and the unclean. Shake thyself from the dust. Arise. Sit down, O Jerusalem. Loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. And so this material is thematic throughout the entire Book of Mormon, and yet it's from writings that weren't available to Lehi when he left. I mean, it's not just like one entry. It's the fact that it's referred to throughout the Book of Mormon, and it's just they wouldn't have had access to it. And so this is a huge problem.
John Dehlin [00:33:26] Yeah. And we talk about this, and I'm just restating what you just told us, but we talk about this in previous episodes. Not only should the second half of Isaiah deuteron Trito, I guess Isaiah, not only should they not be appearing in the Book of Mormon, but they're appearing word for word, including italics, identical to the version or the copy of the Holy Bible that we know Joseph Smith would have had available to him, that he would have looked at. And then, however he produced the manuscript or the translation of the Book of Mormon, we know that it's exactly what he would have copied from from his version of the Bible into the Book of Mormon. Which makes it even more ridiculous that this stuff's in there. It's ridiculous.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:34:16] I mean, it just simply comes down to he did not know that this was written by a second author. And so he thought he was safe in bringing it in. I mean, it's one of those things where that's like the simplest way to explain it, because that's what happened. And that's why we have so many of these late additions that are in there, because the long ending of Mark, which, to be fair, shouldn't be in there anyways, because New Testament. But he doesn't understand, because nobody did at that point, that the scholarship would show it's not original. So you bring it in there because you don't even. He wouldn't have had a second thought about it. And then all of a sudden, now we can look at it and go, he's pulling from stuff. Well, yeah, it's because he was using the King James Bible and was not using brass plates, because the brass plates didn't exist. And so we've covered this in all these episodes to go through why these anachronisms just pile on each other. And every time you add on the layer to the story, it almost makes the earlier ones more problematic because you can't undo what you've already cemented as history and Deutero Isaiah. It seems like such a small problem, but it's such a great example of what can happen when you bring in anachronisms and late editions into a text that you're claiming is historical. It just. It blows the entire thing up.
John Dehlin [00:35:21] Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the next slide is Deutero Isaiah beyond Second Nephi.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:35:29] And so just to quickly say that, you know, most of the time it's referred to as being in second Nephi, but they have a lot of Isaiah 52, which is in third Nephi, spoken by Jesus, and also Moroni chapter 1031. And it's just to say if this material was not composed prior to Lehi leaving, it presents an instance where the Book of Mormon is using material that's anachronistic to the Book of Mormon narrative, which tells us that the Book of Mormon cannot be an ancient historical literal text, because the people that are in the Book of Mormon are giving us material that they would not have had access to, but someone in the 19th century would have had access to. And it just is another area where you could say, this is where Joseph Smith is leaving unintentionally his fingerprints on the text that this is not what it claims to be. It's just. It's hard to get around it because this cannot be in there. Even setting aside the fact that gold plates were anachronistic or brass plates at that time, this material just would not have been accessible to them in any way.
John Dehlin [00:36:30] Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the next slide is Fair Mormon. So now we're going to get to the apologetic responses. How are Mormon scholars, Mormon apologists, the claim to they claim to be scholars, which mean they understand and even accept scholarly consensus. How are they going to try and wiggle out of or get around this issue amongst all the other issues?
LDS Apologetic Responses and Their Problems
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:36:59] Yeah, I think, like I said, the problem on this one is so straightforward. I think the apologetics is more important to cover, so we're going to spend more time on that. But from Fair Mormons write up, they say second Nephi 12 through 24 quotes first Isaiah. This is not a problem because it is agreed by scholars that this author wrote before Nephi obtained the brass plates. First Nephi 20 through 21, second Nephi 7 through 8, and third Nephi 16 18, 20 all quote from second Isaiah, which is a problem if those chapters were not written by Second Isaiah until after Nephi had obtained the brass plates. Third Isaiah is not quoted by the Book of Mormon. It is important to remember that the only part of second Isaiah we need to account for is 48 through 52. And then they say first Isaiah wrote during a time when a powerful nation, Assyria, threatened the destruction of Israel. While this was the immediate issue in First Isaiah's mind, he also may have been inspired to make general prophecies about a future destruction of Israel while not specifically mentioning Babylon or Cyrus. This First Isaiah may have made broad prophecies about a future threat to Israel separate from the immediate Assyrian threat. LDS scholar Sidney B. Sperry has suggested that we pay attention to the research of several non LDS scholars who held that Isaiah 40:66 arose in exilic times but consisted in considerable measure of ancient prophecies of Isaiah which were reproduced by an author of Isaiah's school living in the exilic period because the events of the day were bringing fulfillment of the prophecies. In other words, our current Isaiah 40:55 or 40:66 may originate in primitive writings of first Isaiah, but which were reworked and reinterpreted by second Isaiah. And so long story short, we're going to see this a lot as we go through some of these issues both in history where they're just saying like, look, if you just read this a different way, it is okay because someone else altered the text kind of like the long ending of Mark. They'll say, well, there was an original ending of Mark, but a later scribe kind of had to reproduce it because it was originally lost and it just as we'll get to. It's like you're trying to solve one problem, but you're opening up other problems. And I think sometimes I know they know what they're doing, but I don't think. I think they're doing the best they can with what they have to work with. But yeah, this by itself is just going to create another problem which we'll get into.
John Dehlin [00:39:17] So summarize the solution that they're offering here on this slide.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:39:22] They're saying that the entirety of Isaiah was written by an original, the historical Isaiah, and that what happened was as the prophecies began to be fulfilled after the exilic times, a scribe who was in the school of Isaiah rewrote second Isaiah to basically put in the details of the prophecies that Isaiah had made generally before. So they're effectively filling in the gaps. So they're saying Isaiah made these prophecies, they came to pass, and that a student of Isaiah then reworked the text to basically put in the details of those prophecies, which, as we've talked about earlier, doesn't make sense because of the fact that the language changes, the tone changes in the original. Isaiah makes that transition from not believing Israel can be taken down to, you know, awake, awake. And it just doesn't. There's no transition that makes it sound like Isaiah had any idea that was possible. And then all of a sudden it goes from that, you know, that kind of tone to that gentle, loving tone of, you know, awake, awake, you know, arise from the dust kind of a thing. So it just. It's a problem that it's an apologetic argument out of necessity, but it's just not backed up by the consensus for sure. It just doesn't. It's really more of a Mormon problem than anything else because of the Book of Mormon using it than it would be for really anyone else.
John Dehlin [00:40:39] I mean, I'm going to say my problem with this type of logic is that I was born Mormon. I was raised Mormon. I went to four years of early morning seminary in high school, I went to four and a half years at BYU with mandatory religious education. I attended an elders quorum in Sunday School for 45 years within the Mormon Church. Not only did the Mormon Church never introduce to me this idea of historical criticism, of critically looking at the text of both the Old and the New Testament to understand where it came from. They never introduced Bart Ehrman to me. They never introduced this idea that the books were. Weren't written by the prophets themselves, but were written by other People, the word pseudepigrapha, I never, never, never heard until after I had lost my faith in the Church. Not only all of that did they never open up and disclose the fact that we were allowed to consider that Isaiah wasn't just written by Isaiah, because the way it was framed to me is God speaks to prophets. Prophets write it down. And that's what the scriptures are. None of this stuff about future scribes writing what they, what they remember the prophets saying years or decades or even centuries later. None of that. But not only none of that, but they excommunicated people like David Wright, like Brett Metcalf, like others, anyone who tried to show support for historical criticism, either at BYU or elsewhere. The Church excommunicated them. And that makes it so now. No, no, no, don't start resting your apologetics on historical criticism sort of theories and scholarship. You don't get to do that now that you've been caught with your hand in the scholarly cookie jar, so to speak. Is that fair?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:42:43] Well, I mean, it's just like, it's just one of those things where it's just like, it's a weird one, because this is not, I don't think, nearly as big of an issue for anyone else who believes in the Hebrew Bible, because like I said earlier, they cement it into history. And now they've spent all this time, like, the Church really hasn't done an essay on this. So I think most of it's apologetics, but they just, they keep wanting to keep you from kind of getting below the surface on this. So it's like, I think they'll tell you, like, oh, yeah, you know, there might have been a second author, but then they'll also tell you, but there's ways to make it work if you just view the text a little differently. Like in this case, to say it's probably just a reworking of an original text, but that doesn't line up with really anything else that we know. Like, it just doesn't make sense. And I think to say they found a few non LDS scholars, there are going to be a few, because, you know, there are a lot of people are very fundamentally engaged in the Bible that are outside of Mormonism as well, but the consensus does not agree with it. And so to put these arguments out there as if there's another way of looking at it is really just telling you to suspend your belief and engage in special pleading because we need you to in order to maintain belief. And it's just, it gets messy really quick. And that's why these episodes, I think, layering on top of each other just shows that you can't just set them aside because it just keeps compounding on each other.
John Dehlin [00:44:04] Well, the summary of my point is that if apologists are going to be able to start getting into acknowledging only convenient parts of historical criticism, if they're going to be able to do that to address this problem of Deutero, Isaiah and others, they need to go to the entire church membership, formulate an entire church education curriculum, and tell everybody that Mark wasn't written by Mark, Matthew wasn't written by Matthew, John wasn't written by John, and that all of these scriptures that we have are likely changed and or written by other authors who don't bear the name that the books attribute, and that so much of the scriptures, if not all the scriptures, are basically pseudepigrapha. They need to do that before they can start allowing their apologetic responses to be based on historical criticism, in my view.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:44:57] Well, I mean, I would agree with that because historically, it would be like if you, if you taught the New Testament during the New Testament year, if you said all the four gospels were anonymously written long after the fact, they're not eyewitness accounts, they'll be more honest. But, you know, obviously that's never going to happen, at least not in our lifetimes, probably.
John Dehlin [00:45:12] So, yeah, the other, the other thing is they need to apologize to David Wright. They need to apologize for David Bachavoy, for not hiring him at BYU when he was the most qualified candidate to be hired at byu. And they need to apologize to people like Brett Metcalf, who they excommunicated for, for just believing in and talking openly about invalidating this method. Why are these fair Mormon apologists excommunicated for acknowledging the validity of historical criticism? Yeah, they should have been excommunicated, only really quick. Only. One other thing I want to say is there's this amazing apparent scholar, Dr. Allison Schoenfeld, who's commenting in the YouTube comments. She clearly knows a lot about historical criticism in the Old Testament. And if she's as amazing as she seems to be, maybe we need to get her on Mormon Stories to kind of follow up to some of the stuff that David Bacavoy shared with us, since David is appearing less on podcasts these days, apparently.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:46:11] Yeah, I think that'd be great because obviously I can't speak to it much more than the surface. I think if she would ever be willing to come on, that'd be great. Just because I think anytime you can get more context and more depth to this stuff is a positive. So I think that's really cool and I think it's great that she's watching because it's always nice to have that instant feedback. I know sometimes we can't do it live, so that's actually pretty cool.
John Dehlin [00:46:33] So yeah. So if any of you want to go check out the YouTube comments, the live comments, even if you're watching this days or years later, you can still go into the YouTube episode and turn on live comments and watch the comments as they come in. But thanks Dr. Allison Schoenfeld, for your comments. This is an open invitation to come on Mormon Stories to help educate us more. I'll also just share a comment from Maven. Maven writes, it's funny they meaning the church, do teach some biblical scholarship at the Jerusalem Center. Now I don't recall learning about Deutero Isaiah, and I think Maven's referring to when she went to the Jerusalem Center. We'll reference everyone in the show notes to Maven's amazing Mormon Stories episode. But. But she says, I don't recall learning about Deutero Isaiah when she was at the Jerusalem center. But I for sure learned that learned the document hypothesis about pseudepigrapha. So again, Maven, that's great, but that's like the elite wealthy Mormons or those who just somehow are scrappy or lucky enough to be able to go to the Jerusalem center, which would be more your case. But not sharing the the term pseudepigrapha or the documentary hypothesis with the general church membership is, I believe, an act of deception or withholding of transparent information, which I think the church is, is just obviously, obviously guilty of. Okay, so let's go ahead and go to the next slide, which is solving one problem while creating another, which apologies do because they deal with. I. They do. They deal with issues in isolation instead of dealing them, dealing with them in aggregate. So.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:48:14] And they also don't like and just yeah, we kind of covered this a little bit a second ago. But basically, just like the long ending of Mark, what they're saying is, hey, if there was an original ending of the long ending of Mark and then a new scribe had to reproduce it, that's why Joseph Smith is pulling that into the book. Or they would say that's why it's being in the Book of Mormon, they wouldn't necessarily say Joseph Smith pulled it in. But so with Deutero Isaiah, they're saying, oh, it was primitive. And because it was primitive, a second Isaiah just went in and basically filled in the gaps. But, you know, one of the things, you know, we've tried to talk about a bit is that, you know, when you look at the. Actually if you can go back to the slide, I think that's.
John Dehlin [00:48:51] Yeah, let's do it.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:48:52] Let's do it. Yeah, sorry. You know, they're trying to give plausibility that the text of Deutero Isaiah was originated earlier but then changed later. But that's not the most obvious or the consensus answer. And so they're trying to give you a much less likely possibility. And every time you do that, it compounds. We've talked about the probability and you know, it's kind of similar. You know, the way they can date that is similar to look at the Book of Mormon. And we'll get into this when we get into our episodes on revelation and prophecy. But the Book of Mormon is really specific about the founding of America, the arrival of Columbus, and then it just gets completely vague. And you know, these, the way that scholars could date these materials is because of the fact that when they get awfully specific, it's because. Not because they could prophesy in that specificity, but because it's being written at that time. That's why the surrounding details tell us that as well. And you know, I mentioned this earlier, but, you know, using several non LDS scholars is just. It's a very sneaky way of trying to not say that you're going against a consensus, but I can find a few people that'll back me up. And I just, again, it's like you want to look for the simplest, most reasonable solution here. And you know, you can find a few scholars who will back up just about anything, especially when you get into like, fundamentalist beliefs. And I just, I think that's kind of a little bit of a distraction to try to give it credibility when they're directly going against what I would argue is a pretty strong consensus now.
John Dehlin [00:50:19] Yeah. Are you going to get into the theory that basically somehow Nephi was able to channel the writings of Deutero Isaiah through his prophetic powers, even if he didn't have the text with him in the brass plates? Because I've heard that argument as well, which is obviously what Joseph claimed to be able to do. Right?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:50:41] Yeah, I mean, they say that a lot for the New. They'll say like apologists say, look for the New Testament material. It wasn't written yet, but the, you know, they were given it through revelation by angels and they wrote it down on the plates. And again I, at that point I feel like you're just, you're indistinguishable from fraud. It's, that is an argument you would never give to anyone else. And it is, it's, you know, the whole God in the gaps thing where you're saying there's this huge gap so let's put God in there to fix it. But it, you know, I feel like that's one of those things where it's just so beyond reason that it's not even, it's, it's bad and, and so it's not in here. Just because I don't think Fair really actually even attempted to go that route on this. It's just that those arguments are horrible and I get them, I see them all the time. It's just every time, I mean, what do you say to that? Because it's so. You would never give that space to anyone else. And yet you're going to say that these very obvious anachronisms are actually okay because it was prophesied by an angel before it was even written in the exact words of, you know, it's just. You'll go cross eyed trying to think about all of that. What needs to happen for that to work.
John Dehlin [00:51:48] Yeah. Another type of explanation I've heard is that, you know, searing is hard work and for Joseph, looking at the peepstone in the hat is hard work. So basically God gave Joseph permission. It's like, well, whenever you could just use the Bible, the King James version, the 17, whatever version of the King James Bible that you have in front of you, whenever you can use that, Joseph Smith, I'm just going to tell you to use that. But when you can't use that, then I'll give you revelation through the seer stone and the hat. You've heard that argument as well, right?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:52:21] Yeah, actually that we're going to go. That one isn't in the slide, so we'll go over that one. Okay, that's a good transition because that is actually kind of where they're going to go. So in Fair Mormon's response to this, they actually go into the tight versus loose translation stuff. And so they say the answer to this question will involve a brief consideration of the translation process of the Book of Mormon. There are two major methods that have been proposed for the translation. The first is a tight control method in which the text of the English version strictly matches the text of the gold plates, often right down to the spelling of names. The second method of translation is loose control in which the English translation is a bit more fluid and matches the general meaning of the original reformed Egyptian text, but may not strictly follow every word. Latter Day Saints scholars and students fall into both camps and some believe that both methods could have been used throughout the translation of the Book of Mormon. This is relevant to the question of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon because a loose control theory or something similar to it would help account for why we have the KGV version of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, as discussed below. And so we could just go right to the next slide on this one, actually, because it, you know, this argument, we did the whole episode on the tight versus loose and John Larsen did one with Mormon expressions. It just doesn't work because Fairmormon is talking about the text of the gold plates without mentioning that they were never used in the translation process. They don't mention that the only translation method used by, at least according to witnesses, was Joseph putting his head in the hat with the stone. And so because of that, there's no way for the loose translation to really be considered if you go with the account. So for them to do this, we already now have to remove ourselves from all of the witness accounts of the Book of Mormon to make space to allow for this. And that's why those instances are often contradicted on Fairsight when you look at other problems, because in other problems they'll tell you that it was absolutely done with a tight translation. And so I just, you know, we've brought this up over and over again. It's just about how now they're jumping from issue to issue in isolation because they, they want to answer the problem with at least something that's plausible. But as you said earlier, it's like when you take them in totality, when you, when you move away from isolation, they're gonna contradict themselves because they're going to tell you loose translation here because they need something, but then later loose translation doesn't work. And so they'll tell you, well, Joseph was reading off the stone and that's why this is this. And it just, it doesn't make sense. And it also, more importantly, it doesn't make sense because of the fact that even if Isaiah was rewritten by a second author in the post exilic time, why is Joseph Smith pulling in earlier material? And if that material was corrupted by a second scribe, are we really to believe that God was willing to let the material be corrupted so that Joseph could basically be lazy? It doesn't make sense. And the last thing I'll Say, is it would be just as easy for Joseph Smith to read the correct words off of a stone than to read it out of the Bible. Like that argument is really, really bad because of, you know, just stating the obvious here. It's no more difficult to read out of the King James Bible than it would be to read glowing words off of a stone. You know, it's just I. The typ versus loose thing. And that's why we covered it earlier because here's a great example of where they want it both ways and you just can't have it both ways.
John Dehlin [00:55:36] Yeah, Yep. It's, it's just motivated reasoning. That's, it's, it's, it would be just sort of like a human foible or frailty if we didn't know that they knew that there were other problems that then, when, when considered in aggregate, make these isolated, apologetic arguments disingenuous or deceitful.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:56:04] Yeah, you know, it's just, it's rough and, you know, it's frustrating just because you, you know, they know. So that's what drives me nuts because I know they know better, and yet they're going to put this theory out here knowing full well they're going to contradict themselves in other areas in order to get out of those problems, and it's just. It doesn't work.
John Dehlin [00:56:22] Yeah. Okay. Did we finish this slide?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:56:25] Yeah, that one's fine. And so basically, fair is going to create a loose translation scenario here as they started in our last slide, where they basically are going to say, as Joseph was translating the Book of Mormon, he would find himself translating something he recognized as being similar to text from the Bible. This would occur most prominently when Nephi quotes from Isaiah. Instead of translating Nephi's quotations of Isaiah, Joseph deferred to the KGB translation of those chapters. This may have been done to save time and to respect the quality of the KGV Bible. The chapters of Isaiah that we find in the Book of Mormon were taken largely by Joseph Smith from the KGB Bible instead of being translated from Nephi's word of that text or Nephi's version. In other words, why reinvent the wheel when the work has already been done? If Joseph Smith did this while translating the Book of Mormon, it would fall under the broad contours of the loose control theory of the Book of Mormon. As a result of this, the Isaiah chapters on Nephi's plates would have looked slightly different from the Isaiah chapters that we have now in the Book of Mormon. Remember, the only second Isaiah chapters that show up in the Book of Mormon are Isaiah 48:52. Nephi's version of Isaiah 48:52 that he quoted on his plates was the primitive early version written by first Isaiah, which did not include the specific references to Babylon. This version of Isaiah 48:52 that we now have in the Book of Mormon is not taken from Nephi's plates, but rather copied from the KGV Bible for reasons suggested above. That version of Isaiah 48:52 is the older reworked material of second Isaiah, which inserted specific references to Babylon. And it just.
John Dehlin [00:57:56] So is this the scenario I'm referencing where basically you're making the argument stone in a hat, stone in a hat, stone in a hat, direct revelation from God, word for word. Looking at the plates, the stone is reading reformed Egyptian. The stone's telling him what. What he should say. He's telling the scribe, this is what it says. This is what it says. The scribe repeats it back. It's all very clearly a delineated process. And then all of a sudden, it's almost as if the stone says, oh, Joseph, pause here. You've got go refer to your Bible for the next portions. The stone is gonna stop doing what it's doing very naturally, very meticulously, very specifically, all of a sudden the stone is gonna say, oh, okay, go grab your Bible and now read a bunch of chapters and verses and then come back to me after you're done. Yeah, right.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:58:46] I mean, let's just put this as simply as we can here. The Book of Mormon witnesses, the people who were involved in the process, said that if Joseph Smith did not have the words written down exactly as they're written on the stone, including spelling the rock, the stone would not change to any further words. And yet we are to believe that Joseph Smith could just stop, go to the Bible, use a bunch of words that obviously are not what was supposed to be there, walk back, and the stone would just pick right back up, even though we were told very specifically it wouldn't work if it was not at all correct. I mean, that's what it boils down to. And then fair Mormon here in the middle of these four bullet points, they actually say, why reinvent the wheel when the work has already been done? The work was already done on the gold plates. If you believe that they really had gold plates with the text on it, the work was done. They wrote the. The text. There is not. They weren't reinventing anything they were reading. So as I said earlier, what is the difference between reading out of the King James Bible to A scribe or reading off of the gold plates via the, the rock and a hat. There's no difference. The only difference is that Joseph Smith was trying to pull in large sections of Isaiah and needed the King James Bible because obviously he's not going to memorize all that. I. This is a really bad apologetic because one, all of the people involved in the Book of Mormon are telling us this scenario absolutely did not happen. And number two, why reinvent the wheel? You're not reinventing anything. You're literally just choosing, do I read off source A or do I read off source B? Source A, we know where it came from. Source B is from what's supposed to be in ancient texts. But this is a horrific apologetic response that is taking advantage, I think, of believers desire to believe and giving them information that I think is just, it really completely reinvents the entire translation process to solve this one problem, even though they're going to contradict themselves when they need to, when they need to with other, with other issues of the Book of Mormon. And this is why this stuff frustrates me, because they know full well everything I'm saying right now. They're aware of all of that and yet they're going to put this out there because this is all they can do to keep people from leaving the church. And I just think it's dishonest. And I think in this case it's just really, it's just, it's just, it's, it's, it's wrong, it's wrong to, to give people one apologetic for one and then completely flip on another just because it's convenient. I mean, they're basically doing the apologetic version of Joseph Smith, deciding to do loose translation here, tight translation here. It's just here they're like, we'll give you this answer here and then contradict ourselves there. You can't have it both ways. And they constantly want to have it both ways.
John Dehlin [01:01:20] Yeah. At the, at this point I, I want to incorporate some really amazing comments because we're getting some great comments from our viewers and listeners. Jacques Hincks writes, the deutero Isaiah writer did not speak 16th century English. I, I think that's, that's an important point. What would you, what would you say to that?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:01:45] Well, I mean, you know, again, that just goes more to the King James Bible issues. But yeah, it's just I, he goes on to write.
John Dehlin [01:01:51] He goes on to write. Well, look, man, if I am translating something even in the current vernacular, I'm not going to be reading an old Text saying thee and thou, I would say you and yours. So adding the complexity of the King James English.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:02:06] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:02:07] In addition to the, you know, the, the anachronistic problems of deutero, Isaiah just compounds it. Right?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:02:15] That's the problem. Even if there was a primitive version of Isaiah, because they'll say, well, they didn't mention Cyrus in the Book of Mormon. Well, okay, but even if there was a primitive version, we wouldn't have the King James translation in the Book of Mormon. And yet we do. So, I mean, that's kind of like, you know, the long ending of Mark is the same thing. Well, there probably was this original ending, but even if there was, that's not what's in the Book of Mormon. So that doesn't solve your problem. It only compounds it because you're saying Joseph Smith still took the late edition even if there was a better source. And that's even more problematic when this is supposed to be a pure translation that hasn't been corrupted by man. That falls with the same.
John Dehlin [01:02:50] That brings us to Charles Mendeley's comment. He writes, it makes no sense to copy from the King James Version when Mormons believe it contains translation errors and has been corrupted. Right.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:03:01] Yeah, that's just it. We covered the King James Bible stuff earlier and now it's coming back into play. And that's why we tried to cover it in the way we did, because that's exactly it. It's like, if these texts were corrupted, if our article of faith is the Bible as it is, you know, is translated, was it translated correctly or whatever, then why is Joseph Smith constantly using it in the Book of Mormon when we are to believe he had access to the uncorrupted version? Like, that's. Do we really want to make the argument that Joseph Smith was so lazy and that God allowed him to be that lazy? Like, the implications, the problems that leads you into, especially when you get further down with polygamy. Like, I don't mean to, I don't want to jump too far here, but we're to believe that God sent an angel down to Joseph Smith because he wasn't getting into polygamy fully. And yet God also is. Like, you can use inferior version of the Bible that you're supposed to bring people back into Christ. The inconsistencies in the way that Joseph Smith does things should be a big red flag that he's the one doing them and not God. And I just. Yeah, like, it's just, it's, it's full of problems. And the next Slide kind of probably is a recap of what we've already said, but, yeah, it's just these, creating these solutions only creates more problems. And that's why if you take them in isolation, you might not catch it. But, you know, it's just. So we've already kind of said this, but, you know, fair wants you to believe that Joseph Smith noticed that they were quoting Isaiah, recognized it, and said, okay, I'm going to switch to the King James Bible because I want to save time. That means, although, you know, as we just said, Joseph Smith made comments about how the Bible had been improperly translated over time. He decided to use it when he could save some time, which makes no sense at all. Because if the Book of Mormon is, you know, declared to be the most correct book on earth, why is like 10 to 20% of it copied from a version of the Bible translated in 1611 that contains errors, italicized words, and late editions? And, you know, we've already said this too, but nowhere in church history is the loose translation validated. It's a theory that only born out of necessity. It would require that they had literal gold plates that they actually engraved these records on, and that God put all this work into preserving, only to allow Joseph to switch between source materials, basically at convenience, because otherwise how would he know when he needed to stop translating from Isaiah to go back to the. Go back to the hat, do you know what I mean? Like, otherwise he could, you know, like, when would he know, okay, this is enough, Isaiah. I'm going to go back and they'll magically pick up, like, these are the problems. Like, to synchronize the rock to the King James Bible is a whole other issue. And, you know, it's just, if you're translating with a seer stone, it'd be just as quick because you're just reading off the words. And then the last thing you know, Pharaoh goes back to assume that the plates actually had the primitive writings on them, but that Joseph only missed including that because he was copying from the kgv, which implies that Joseph Smith was lazy and didn't want to do it correctly and that God was okay with it and just let the rock go right back to where it was. And I, I cannot emphasize enough how much that contradicts the accounts we have from those involved in the process and how much it contradicts the very concept that God would restore this text just to let somebody use a corrupted text. It just, it's so bad. And yet this is what we get, because this is really the best you can do to explain why there's a massive anachronism in the Book of Mormon?
John Dehlin [01:06:17] Yeah. And I don't think. I don't know. Was it. Was it Blake Osler who was the first to kind of come up with this loose translation?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:06:28] His was. Wasn't his the modern English one or something like that? I thought that was his thing. I can't remember for sure.
John Dehlin [01:06:33] But yeah, it's just there's no reason to believe that a loose translation ever happened. All throughout the 19th century and early 20th century. It's only when these problems start hitting the church that apologists start making stuff up. And apologists aren't prophetseers and revelators. They have no business trying to weigh in on how Joseph Smith translation happened. Not fair. Mormon, not Farms, not the Maxwell Institute. These dudes aren't largely dudes. They're not sustained as prophets, seers and revelators. It's the prophets and revelators should be telling us how Joseph Smith translated and they're silent on all this stuff.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:07:16] Yeah. I mean, that's the other thing, too. It's just like we could very easily get answers if they wanted to and they don't. And it's because there are no good answers. And I know I'm more ranty on this episode. It's just these apologetics are just bad. And we've been kind of covering them in all these episodes and now you're starting to see the contradictions that come from doing it. And I hope if you did watch the tight versus loose, that now all of a sudden you're going, oh, I could see why you didn't episode. Because it's a big problem. Because they jump back and forth and you can't do that.
John Dehlin [01:07:41] Yeah. John Joe Walker writes, you can't be tight and loose. That usually ends in accidents.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:07:47] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:07:48] And then John Michael Hollahan writes, I always thought it was hilarious that the Book of Mormon is basically the corrupted version of the Bible that Joseph Smith later corrected. It just doesn't make sense.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:08:01] Yeah. And I know we'll get into a little more as we go. The Joseph Smith translation of the Bible and how there are some areas where he kind of, you know, brings it into the Book of Mormon and then he changes it. And when he revises the Bible and you're like, why would you do. It's just he, you know, is doing so much stuff that I don't think he keeps track of it. And that's something we're going to go really into when we get into history with First Vision Priesthood because he's, he's just, he's a guy that's really smart, and I think he's a very creative guy. But he's also someone who doesn't always, you know, think in a way that's going to cover his back statements. And that's why you see a lot of things being changed. And in this case, he just didn't know this was written by a second author and that came back to bite him. And now, 200 years later, we've got people who need to make excuses for that in order to maintain this idea that it is a true historical record. And it just doesn't work. And we've had, I think this is like the 16th episode or something. And I think at some point, you know, it just becomes pretty clear that this is not a historical document. And you don't need to even get into the historical issues of the church to realize that because of the Bible being pulled in, it's just there's so many examples, it's overwhelming.
Complexity Arguments and Alternative Explanations
John Dehlin [01:09:12] Yeah, I'm also going to just address something very common, which is just this canard or trope that the Book of Mormon is just too complex and too sophisticated to have been written by, you know, Joseph Smith or a single author or, you know, any 19th century uneducated schoolboy or whatever. But this is just one of the many issues we've already covered that shows that that's a fallacious argument from the start, because this is the exact type of obvious error or problem that's strewn throughout the Book of Mormon that just defeats that thesis before it could ever be advanced.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:09:57] It does. That's just it. It can be complex in some areas, but if you're having all these errors and late editions in other areas, and like, it's the whole Texas sharpshooter fallacy. You're looking at these few things, say, oh, this is complex. But then you're like, but everything around it is just full of riddled with errors and, you know, just disjointed things and bad biblical scholarship. You can't claim it's complex and then say, oh, but all the errors are just, you know, not really errors if you just read them differently. But, you know, it's like saying we have these really complex chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, but then at the same time, it's a loose control. So, so fair. Mormon right here is saying it's a loose control. Joseph Smith is kind of the vehicle of the author. Yet they'll also tell you that there's all this great chiasmus. Well, you can't have chiasmus with a loose control unless you're willing to say Joseph Smith was able to produce chiasmus. And then at that point you're screwed. So it's like pick your poison. And that's why it's such an important argument to go tight versus loose. Because now fair Mormon saying it's loose. Well, you just lost chiasmus because you can't have. If it's a loose translation, you can't then claim that Joseph Smith brought forth chiasmus because now you're admitting Joseph was the author of it or at least was framing it in his own language, which would make him at least a co author of it. And that's a problem. And it just doesn't go away. And yeah, I mean, I know I'm more ranty on this one just because we've covered these apologetics and when you read them, it just. It's so misleading and I know. You know, yeah, it's a tricky one. So. All right, anyway, so the next slide
Nuanced LDS Perspectives on the Problem
John Dehlin [01:11:32] is by Common Consent. Takes a more fair approach.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:11:35] Yeah. So pun intended, but yeah. So one other apologetic argument was featured in an article by Common Consent.
John Dehlin [01:11:41] Is this the blog?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:11:44] And it focuses on a theory from LDS Grant Hardy. In his book Understanding the Book of Mormon, Hardy concedes that the Deutero Isaiah problem is more crucial. Do we lose you? Nope, we're good. Are you there?
John Dehlin [01:12:00] Yeah, I'm here. Are you here? Can you hear me?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:12:03] Okay, cool. Sorry, yeah, cut off for a second. Anyway, yep. So the Deutero Isaiah problem is a more crucial one than many apologists will admit, but that a more promising avenue for faithful Latter Day Saints is to acknowledge that we probably know less about what constitutes an inspired translation than we do about ancient Israel. Once one accepts the possibility of divine intervention, the theology can accommodate the always tentative results of scholarship. And it's a fair approach. It's just, it's still bad. So, you know, if we, you know, basically if you go to the next slide, it's just this is a conclusion that we've talked about multiple times, which is they. They present the problem. And this happens in the essays all the time. They'll concede their issues, but they'll basically say if you fall back on your feelings and your testimony, and you basically say scholarship is, you know, tentative, which they love to use tentative, and they use that in the DNA essay as well, that the problems just go away. And it's true. I've said this before. It's true that there's a lot of things we cannot understand that we can't see. But the problem here is that there are a lot of areas that we can see. We can see where Joseph Smith's pulling from. We can see the errors he makes. We can see things that are historically wrong. And so it's deceptive to tell members to just accept those as divine intervention when we can outline it with actual documentation, historical scholarship, Joseph Smith's own works and, you know, looking at how he's using surrounding material, that he's then reworking his own historical scripture. All of those things tell us it's not ancient. And so just to tell us to say, well, all of that is tentative and you just need to believe, I think is just. It's a better argument than fair is making, but it's also one that it really doesn't work unless you engage in special pleading. And I think that's one of the things these episodes are meant to take away the God in the gaps. Like, I'm not acknowledging that because I don't think we would give that space to anyone else. And so in this case, I'm not going to say that these errors can be just taken away if you accept that God gave Joseph Smith bad biblical scholarship. Because I don't think anybody would agree to that until you're forced to.
John Dehlin [01:14:03] Yeah, yep. It's, it's just, it's. It's an argument after there's a problem.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:14:10] Yeah. If they had made this argument like 200 years ago and said, Joseph Smith said, yeah, I know this material is written late. This is how it was given to me. Like, oh, wow, he knew it before anyone else. But this is a reaction. And so you don't get to have. In my opinion, you can't take the approach of, well, God just gave it to him incorrectly, which we'll get into with the book Abraham as well, after it's already been found to be incorrect. I don't think you're then granted that kind of benefit of the doubt at that point, because now you're reacting to a problem and that you told us wasn't there before. And so I just, I think it's a bad deflection from the problem to tell people just to basically let it go and just have faith. Because it, you know, if Warren Jeff said that if David Koresh, if, you know, the president, United States, whether they're, whatever political party there are, says that you're going to be like, nope. But here we're told to do that. It's just. It's not how we would work under any other circumstance.
John Dehlin [01:15:02] Yeah, really quick. I want to. I want to thank Randall Hodge for his Super Chat donation. We just always appreciate those who are supporting the work that we do. So thanks, Randall. Okay, so are we at the conclusion now?
Conclusions on Biblical Scholarship and Mormonism
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:15:17] Yeah, so we're at the conclusion and, you know, we. This is kind of, you know, we're going to do a couple of slides here to kind of conclude this whole group of episodes on biblical scholarship. But, you know, we can show that Joseph Smith included vast material from the King James Bible, including mistranslations, errors, italicized words. We covered that with the late additions to the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount, the long ending of Mark, both of which make it into the Book of Mormon. And then we're going to show in future sections or future episodes, I should say that this pattern is going to continue because Joseph Smith is going to take from contemporary sources for the Book of Abraham, the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, the endowment ceremony, the first vision, the priesthood restoration. This is. You know, on the website, I have a section from way back when where I talk about Joseph Smith's in the mixtape theory, which is he was like making a mixtape of theology where he's pulling from all these sources and he's putting together a greatest hits tape. I know cassettes are probably something that most people listening probably are too young for, but, you know, back when I was a teenager, we made mix tapes where you pick all your songs off the radio and get the songs you like. But, you know, this is a pattern that Joseph Smith is pulling these contemporary sources, in this case the King James Bible, and then trying to repackage it and calling it ancient. And we've pointed out that by doing that, he's leaving fingerprints that we can trace back to when it was written. And in this case, it couldn't be written until after 1611 because of using the King James Bible. And it certainly could not have belonged to somebody who claimed to leave Jerusalem before the exotic period. And so with Deutero Isaiah, we can show that the people of the Book of Mormon would not have had access to the material, which is a problem that's going to continue to grow as we do these sections, because it shows time and time again that Joseph Smith's misunderstanding of some of the timelines in the Bible and some of his misunderstandings of the Bible in general are going to lead him to cement ideas into ancient scriptures that we now know are completely wrong. And by doing so, it makes the scriptures that he made himself completely wrong because they can't have those errors in them if we're to believe they're, you know, from ancient historic times.
John Dehlin [01:17:31] Yeah, yeah. So just to make my quick John summary of this is, you know, one option is, is that there really were Lamanites and Nephites, there really were golden plates. This really was translated through a stone and a hat. And Joseph and the gift and power of God, even though the DNA evidence and the archeological evidence and the linguistic evidence, none of it supports that possibility. Along with all of that resting on the validity of Adam and Eve and Noah and the Tower of Babel, which we've already disprove in previous episodes of this LDS discussion series. But just taking all that away and putting all that aside, another possibility is that Joseph is just kind of like this, you know, a kind way to put it would be what, what Terrell Givens calls an inspired syncretist or engaging in bricolage, which are all these euphemisms for him, being this inspired synthesist where he's just taking all these things out of what out of his 19th century information available to him through the gift and power of God and then creating the Book of Mormon, creating the Book of Abraham, creating the temple ceremony, or he's freaking plagiarizing and just simply creating fiction from all the sources that are available to him and calling it inspiration. I mean, those are kind of the options you have to consider.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:19:03] Yeah, I mean, at some point, when you have example after example of where he's pulling from, and we talked about this with the fact that, you know, the Book of Mormon, not only does it pull from the King James Bible, it's pulling from 19th century ideas, 19th century things happening all around him. You can't then be like, well, the ancient people were using the exact same framing and that's why Pharaoh is going to go to the loose translation. But like we said, once you go there, you're now detached from the accounts of the people who were with Joseph Smith during the translation process. And you're now in kind of like a new reality which would never have been accepted like 30 years ago because it's, it goes completely against the narrative that we've all been taught.
John Dehlin [01:19:44] Yeah, I really, I really like this comment that I've heard others make and that I think I've made in several, several years prior. Elisa Galleon calls the Book of Mormon Bible fan fiction. And I didn't know what the term fan fiction meant until 2004. 2005. But it's basically, it's like books written about Harry potter not by J.K. rowling, but by some author who comes after J.K. rowling, who likes, who likes the Harry Potter universe and then wants to write a book that maybe J.K. j.K. Rowling doesn't have the time or interest in writing. That's what fan fiction is. It's taking a genre that exists and then writing your own extension to that genre. I think the Book of Mormon is best understood as 19th century Bible fan fiction written by Joseph Smith.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:41] Well, yeah, I mean, like, you know, I know fan fiction is a loaded term, but like pseudepigrapha is basically fan fiction because you're writing in someone else's name in order to give your own ideas credibility. Because, you know, in this particular case, Joseph Smith is writing in the name of ancient prophets. Using the Bible is a foundational text because he wants people to believe that what he is pushing is credible. And so we're going to get to this way more because, you know, to what you just said, Richard Bushman flat out admits that the Book of Mormon is best understood as a 19th century document.
John Dehlin [01:21:14] And he's even used the term pseudepigrapha.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:21:16] And he's used the term pseudepigrapha for the Book of Abraham and the Book of Moses. And like Dan McClellan who is on, he's, he's employed by the Church, he's super nice and he's a really good scholar and he is a believing, active member of the church. But he'll say too that he's made videos saying the Book of Mormon is best understood if you look at it as a 19th century text. Now, he's not saying it's fake. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I think most scholars, even some within the church, are starting to say, yes, you need to look at the Book of Mormon as a 19th century text. And now at that point you are left with the choice of saying, okay, now it's either still an ancient text that's being reframed in the 19th century, or Joseph Smith is writing it using 19th century ideas, which is what obviously I think the evidence shows. But yeah, it's something like I think the Church is going to very, very slowly abandon the idea that this is all ancient because more and more scholars are coming out and saying that you have to look at this as a 19th century text. And it's getting to the point where I think it's going to be even among church faithful. Scholars, I think you're going to have more and more of a consensus saying you have to read this as a 19th century text to better understand it.
John Dehlin [01:22:26] All right, so the next slide is conclusion on biblical scholarship and Mormonism.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:22:31] Yep. And so this is just kind of to wrap up our last, like six episodes in a way. It's just to say, you know, these are all the things that you have to think about from the Bible alone if you want to think about the Book of Mormon being an ancient text. And so you don't even need to get into the historical issues, which we're going to get into in the next few weeks. But every, as we mentioned earlier, every biblical prophet was unaware of Adam and Eve until Genesis was created, which was around the exile, which is further illustrated with Deutero Isaiah. If the global flood is not literal, the Americas were not baptized for the Book of Mormon people, as all of the early leaders told us. If the Tower of Babel is not literal, the Nephite interpreters that Joseph Smith claimed to have are made up and mythical. That's obviously a massive problem because he claimed to physically have something that came from an event that didn't happen. If you go to the next one and you know, so these, all of these things are why this matters. Because if the, in Joseph Smith's time, the Bible was treated as a privileged text that was literal history. And so this led Joseph Smith to take those events I just mentioned and cement them into the Book of Mormonist history, because he believed they were. And if Adam and Eve are not real people, how did they live in the exact same spot that the Church happened to settle in, in Missouri? And if the Book of Mormon was translated from gold plates, how did they include late editions for Deutero, Isaiah and the New Testament stuff like the lion ending of Mark, the Doxology and the Sermon on the Mount. And you know, Anthony Miller, who's been on Mormon stories before and who's just really nice and really knowledgeable about this stuff, was the first person who really turned me onto biblical scholarship. And his point was you don't even have to get into the CES letter. You don't have to get into the historical issues. You don't have to get into polygamy or the first vision to know that the Book of Mormon doesn't hold up. Because you can just look at the scholarship that's been done on the Bible and how that impacts the Book of Mormon and the truth claims of the Book of Abraham and the Book of Moses, and you already know that Joseph Smith or whoever authored it got it wrong. And then when you look at all of the surrounding material that Joseph Smith pulls in that's unique to him, it tells us that Joseph Smith created it and that he created it with a lot of errors because he was just a guy in the 19th century who didn't have the access to the biblical scholarship we do today. But because we have access to it, we can make better judgments about the Book of Mormon. And unfortunately for a believing member, the evidence is going to tell us that it's not what. What it claims to be. But it's still important to be able to analyze them and to get the truth from it than it is to constantly look for reasons to avoid it. And I know it's painful. I know it sucks. I know people have emailed me that are. I've had a few people, I'm sure you get a lot more that are mad at me because they're mad that they came across this stuff. And I had one person who was upset with me because they said it was my fault that they were having issues. And I was just like, I'm not the first person you came across, likely anyways, but even still, like, this is what it is. So I just, I want everyone to be able to look at this stuff. And if you want to ignore it, fine. If you want to choose to believe, as Russell Nelson tells members to do, you can do that. But this stuff doesn't go away because you don't like it. And so now that we're kind of concluding this section on biblical scholarship, I just hope that it's been helpful. And I hope that people can understand that some of these stories are mythical and they're late additions and maybe not as upsetting as it is. I think sometimes there's also a lot of beauty in being able to be able to use that to understand the world that these people lived in anciently and how they viewed it and how they allowed it to better their lives, even though that might in the process have us reevaluate our own paradigms about what we believe and what we think of the Book of Mormon. Because the Book of Mormon, the Bible doesn't need the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon needs the Bible. And so I'm not saying you should be Christian. I'm not saying any. I'm just saying, you know, being able to kind of compartmentalize all of these things, at least to me, was helpful because I could still find value in the Bible even if I don't believe its literal history. And I could still find value even in things from the Book of Mormon, even though I know that it's not from God. And I don't need to do the things you need to do to be an active, believing Mormon anymore. And so I just hope that if you are a believer and you're watching this, you can, can understand that this stuff is real and you can understand that it has to be dealt with one way or the other. And hopefully doing it through these episodes in this way has been at least a little bit more of a safety net, a soft landing than maybe it would be if you had come across, come across it like in different ways. So I know I'm rambling on a bit here, but now we're going to kind of move to history. So I wanted to kind of try to wrap up why this stuff is so important from, from the biblical scholarship and then we'll transition to the first Vision next week. So.
John Dehlin [01:27:25] Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Mike. So I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna give my, my reiteration as well and kind of some kudos to you, Mike. I don't know anyone like Jeremy Runnels is amazing. Mormon think is amazing, like Michael Quinn's amazing dialogue Sunstone, you know, decades and decades of Mormon scholarship. I don't know. I don't know that anyone, including Brett Metcalf or Dan Vogel, who has been able to successfully distill and integrate the scholarship into a more easily understandable and concise and kind of cogent and thoughtful, you know, series of essays than what you've done. And so I am just going to plug it one more time. You can go to LDS discussions.com if you want to read these essays. And if you want to just watch these Mormon Stories episodes without the other Mormon Stories episodes integrated in, you can go to Anchorage and check out LDS discussions. You can go to Spotify and either listen to or view in video these LDS discussions episodes, or you can go to the YouTube playlist and these are all provided now in sequence. And then I'm also just going to add in addition that as you said, this represents kind of the first 16 episodes, which deal a lot about the Book of Mormon and the Bible and that sort of thing. And what we are so excited is you ain't seen nothing yet. We already have at least 39 or 40 episodes total planned, which means we've got at least two to three dozen more episodes and we're going to be covering in the weeks and months ahead, things like the First Vision, which has Already been recorded. Talk about anachronistic anachronisms. First visions, coming up, priesthood restoration, word of Wisdom, changes to the Doctrine and Covenants, race and Scriptures in Mormonism, the Temple endowment, polygamy, Book of Abraham, Kinderhook plates, spiritual witnesses and testimonies, which is the three and eight witnesses, you know, Revelation, Joseph Smith's Revelations, et cetera, the transfiguration of Brigham Young, apologetics and Mormonism. And we've even talked about other specialized episodes as well. So there's more coolness ahead than the coolness that's behind us. One of our viewers, Simo Ferro Pearl, is asking to post a schedule of when we are live. Right now we're shooting to go live with one LDS discussions episode per week on Thursdays at 12pm Mountain Time. Is that right?
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:30:23] I think that's the plan.
John Dehlin [01:30:24] So that's the plan. Sometimes we have to bump that up or back, depending on people's schedules. But if you want to join us for these historic live chats, and we had 300 people join us today, which is a good little group for such a geeky technical discussion.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:30:40] I know these are kind of dry. That's the thing, like biblical scholarship. Anthony Miller, I mentioned him already. He got me in on this. And I started reading. I'm like, oh, it's so boring. And the reality is I didn't even scratch the surface. There are some papers written that are just crazy detailed, but I think it helps to give a better understanding. And then, like we said, once we get into the history, it gets a little more, I think. I don't know if fun's the right word. It gets a lot more interesting because it's stuff we're more familiar with. But I think hopefully this has helped people. Maybe that haven't. Cause I didn't really even kind of get into this until about two years ago when I. Maybe even not even that long when Anthony Miller mentioned it. So I know a lot of people don't really focus on this stuff. And I think it's just as important to understanding how he did it, how Joseph Smith put it together. And so I think it'll be good. And I think the historical stuff will be more. It'll be more lively, I guess, once we get going. And so I'm looking forward to switching from the dry kind of glazed kind of topics to the more, you know, sensationalized ones, you know, like the first vision. Because we all can relate to how it was taught to us. We can all relate to how we experience those lessons. And Then to look at what the history says will be, I think, really cool. And I think the next two episodes are going to be particularly important. So I'm looking forward to them.
John Dehlin [01:31:57] All right, well, Mike, you're a legend. Thank you so much for all your amazing work. Stay healthy, stay happy, and we'll see you next time.
Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:32:06] Thanks, everybody.
Closing Thanks and Final Reflections
John Dehlin [01:32:07] And I want to thank. I want to thank Maven for helping out with the chats and the show notes and time codes today. I want to thank Jen for all Jen Camp, for all her work, Gerardo for all of his work and everyone who helps make the Open Stories foundation possible. Our friend Julia has been helping a little bit with the. With the shorts. But mostly I want to thank our donors because, you know, basically, we couldn't do any of this without the financial support of people who do live, you know, donate, give super chat donations through YouTube, who click on the stars feature on Facebook, but mostly just the bread and butter. Donors who go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button and they become monthly donors. It's these donations that make Mormon stories possible. They make me possible. They make our staff possible. They make TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and Facebook make all of that possible and that make our ongoing work all possible. So if you're a donor, thank you. If you're not a donor, and if you really value this content and you want to see it continue with, we wanna make a plea that you go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button and become a monthly donor. We lose 10 to 20 donors a month. People fall on financial hard times. They lose interest, they move on, or they just wanna donate to other things which are worthy causes. So if we don't have donors step up to replace the donors that we lose every month, then we start to have to have a constricted budget and we have to lay people off or cut services or stop doing things that are making a difference. And we don't want to do that. So if you value this content, if you want to see it continue, if you want to pay it forward, if you want to see it available to generations in the future, in the months and years ahead, decades ahead, please become a monthly donor and pay this forward. And we promise to continue providing these services. If you have any doubt that your donations are making a difference, I want to just let everybody know. Our viewership just on YouTube alone has doubled in the past one year. Hundred percent growth just on YouTube, to the point now where half of our YouTube viewers have never been Mormon at all. So we're starting to actually influence Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists and evangelical Christians and Jews and Muslims and other religious traditions and or high demand religions and or cults. So your donations are having a global impact and so we want to thank you but also just say please support us financially or we can't keep doing this. We really need your help. So thanks to everyone who supported us. Thanks. And Arv nez writes, is Maven getting paid? Yes, Maven is getting paid. We haven't made any announcements about that, but Jen gets paid, Maven gets paid, Gerardo gets paid, I get paid. And that's where all these donations go. Julia is helping out, she's getting paid. So. So yes, your donations go to all that. A final thing I'll say is that we do have John Larsen tonight. So those of you joining us on the live stream, Cara Burrell, Nuance Ho and John Larsen will be joining us tonight for another episode John Larsen treatment. So please join us if you can. Then please share all this, subscribe to us on all the social media channels, comment, share these episodes everywhere and again become a supporter and we'll keep doing this stuff in the weeks, months and years ahead. So thanks everybody. Thanks for all your support. We love you and we appreciate all you do and we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
Join John and Mike, from LDS Discussions for an introduction to the multiple authors of Isaiah and what that means for the Book of Mormon.
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Show Notes:
- LDS Discussions on Anchor
- LDS Discussions on Spotify
- LDS Discussions Playlist on YouTube
- LDS Discussions Essay on Deutero-Isaiah
- Tight vs Loose Translation Episode
- David Bokovoy MS episodes
- David Bokovoy: Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis – Deuteronomy
- MS Bart Ehrman episode
- Noah’s Flood – w/ Simon Southerton
- Adam and Eve MS episode with LDS Discussions:
- BOM translation episode with LDS Discussions
- Maven’s MS Episode
- By Common Consent: 2 Nephi and the Deutero-Isaiah Problem in the Book of Mormon #BOM2016
- Anthony Miller’s MS episodes
One Response
According to PhD biblical scholar Michael Kruger, in his book , Surviving Religion 101, those with evangelical (more mainstream) convictions face an uphill battle to get admitted to secular university doctoral programs in religion. As a result, many don’t end up in places like UNC (where Bart Ehrman teaches). Instead, they end up in evangelical institutions. The following paragraph is a direct quote from Dr. Kruger’s book.
“So beware of religion professors who defend their position by saying such as ‘all scholars agree’ or by saying that their view is ‘standard fare’ among biblical scholars. What that really means is that their view is standard fare among all the scholars they already agree with (which, if you think about it, is not an overly significant point).”
Dr. Kruger goes on to write that overlooked in such claims are thousands of evangelical scholars around the world who would disagree. He goes on to point out the hundreds of professors in the ten largest seminaries in the United States who are part of this group. Those ten largest seminaries are all evangelical.
Dr. Kruger didn’t address Deutero-Isaiah specifically, but I suspect most of those he is referring to would not agree with the Deutero-Isaiah theory.