Introduction and Personal Connections to the Book of Abraham

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. It is May 10, 2022 and we are super duper excited for today's episode. Today's episode is entitled the Book of Abraham Translation Evidence with the backyard professor. And there's a probably a good chunk of you who know who Carrie Shirts is, and then there's probably a bunch of you, maybe even the majority of you who, who do not. But we are co hosted today with my. With my dear friend and colleague Gerardo Sumano, who is the main organizer of today's episode and is responsible for so much good here at the Open Stories Foundation. Hey, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:57] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:59] Thanks for making this possible.

Gerardo Sumano [00:01:01] Yeah, yeah, I've spent more time planning this episode than any other episode before.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] That's saying something.

Gerardo Sumano [00:01:09] So, yeah, it's saying something.

John Dehlin [00:01:11] And then we've got Carrie here. Hey, Kerry, thanks for joining us.

Kerry Shirts [00:01:15] Hey, it's good to finally get to meet you, John. And good to meet you again, Gerardo.

John Dehlin [00:01:21] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [00:01:22] But I am looking forward to this. I'm hoping that we can have a inspiring testimony building night on truth and clarity.

John Dehlin [00:01:32] Love it. Now, those of you who have been listening to Mormon stories for a long time will know that we've covered the Book of Abraham a few times, including an epic 13 hour series with Dr. Robert Ridner, the late Dr. Robert Ridner, who, you know, is one of the top, I guess, Egyptologists of all time, but he recently passed away. Of course, that's a series that we recommend that we know that many of you have probably listened to. We've also had Dan Vogel and Brett Metcalf on the past in the past, and others who have talked about the Book of Abraham. So that kind of begs the question as to why would we cover it again? And so. And so, Gerardo, I'm going to tee you up to kind of talk about why you felt like this would be a really cool and important addition to the Mormon Stories library. And of course, part of that is going to be you introducing Carrie and having Carrie tell us a bit about himself and why he's so super cool that Gerardo would want him on, along with me and others and of course, Carrie. We want you to plug your own channels and podcasts because that's an important part of what we want to do here. So, Gerardo, you start and then. And then we'll have Carrie go next.

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:54] Yeah. So I have a really special place in my heart for the Book of Abraham while I was at byu, Idaho, going through my faith Crisis. I, I think one of the things I hit harder was learning about the Book of Abraham. And I was taking a Pearl of great price class at BYU Idaho with probably arguably the more most knowledgeable religion professor at BYU Idaho who was teaching the class. And I was just confused because he was spouting all the apologetic arguments. And then I had already read some of Robert Rittner's stuff. I had watched some Mormon stories episodes on what, you know, the critics said about the Book of Abraham. And it was just still confusing to me, you know, what all the translation documents meant. And I'll be honest, even like we've had Dan Vogel on. I watched all things four episodes that Dan Vogel has on his channel about the Book of Abraham and the documents. Several hours I watched all Robert Rittner and I watched the recent episode with Dan Vogel. I was watching it live and I was honestly still not understanding 100 what the documents meant, the relationship with, between them and the Book of Abraham and the arguments that the Apollo, like the apologists were making. And it was not until finally like, I started meeting with Carrie and started watching some of his episodes. But then when I went to his house and saw his graphics and he laid out all his, you know, like, documents that he had and I was like, blown away because I f. Everything was finally making sense. And so I invited him on to common Mormon stories. We prepared this super cool presentation like you've never seen before, where you're going to be able to see all the graphics, the, the documents that we have, the papyri in like super high resolution. And hopefully you'll be able to come out understanding the Book of Abraham better than anyone else. And so, yeah, and I, I want to introduce to you Carrie. And Carrie is going to tell us a little bit about, about this as well and, and his background.

John Dehlin [00:05:21] And we got Dan Vogel, who's joining us. And Dan wrote, it's not easy. And I think he means it's not easy to understand all, all these papyra and all this documentation. But Dan Vogel, you're a legend. We're so glad you are joining us.

Kerry Shirts [00:05:38] Yes, we are. I. Well, thank you. It's. It's very nice to be here on your show. I have watched several of your interviews and I feel like a minnow among the whales. But we are going to have a fun, fun time. I don't believe in taking myself seriously, but I do the subject and tonight I'm going to take the subject seriously with this caveat that we don't have to have a Confusing subject here with the papyri and the Egyptian papers and the Book of Abraham and the facsimiles. The apologists have had this stuff in their possession for 60 flipping years, man. Come on, guys, you mean professional Ph.D. totenygyptologists have 60 years to try to figure this out and you can't do it yet? You watch Dan Vogel's videos on his response to say John Gee or Kerry Molstein. That's what got me to thinking. What the. You know, they're saying that we don't have to be confused. We can have a clarity here. So let me just briefly share with you. I am one of the original of three founders of fair, the foundation for Apologetic Information and Research. And Daryl Barksdale and Julianne Reynolds and myself. When the Internet first got on, we all started writing, of course, refuting the anti Mormons. And we were good at it. We were winning tens of thousands of souls and arguments and on and on and on. We found out we kept repeating ourselves. Daryl and Julianne suggested why don't we pool our resources and start an inline in house organization where we can catalog all of our answers. Because they really liked my research. So I said, okay, cool, good, we can do that. And thus we started fair. Now of course, today, they won't claim me. And that's their loss as far as I'm concerned. I don't see anybody as my enemy. Yeah, I see some of them as opponents because they keep muddying the issue for sure. But I don't believe in having enemies just because we don't think a lot alike anymore. We, we never did actually. But there's no reason to be enemies because we think different. But there is reason to clarify the dialogue. Clarity gives us personal ability to make better choices. Yeah, yeah. So that's why I want clarity. And I don't mean simplicity. There is complexity, you guys.

Gerardo Sumano [00:08:41] I mean.

Kerry Shirts [00:08:42] Okay, look at it this way. We have four kinds of documents we'll look at tonight. Think of them as computer files. Four different computer files. Think of them as four different manila envelopes. Okay, well that's a little bit more complex than having just two, but that doesn't mean it has to be confusing. Now the apologists don't like this stuff and so they're, they're trying to distance Joseph Smith away from it. In my extensive studies of this material. Thank you. Come on, give them credit where credit's new. I'm serious. The Joseph Smith papers. Come on, this is stellar. They handed us the evidence on a silver platter to defeat Joseph Smith, right there. And the other cool thing is, if you can't afford the book, you can go online. It is available. Everything we show you tonight is available. So, I mean, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but come on. 60 flipping years. No, we don't have to take that crap seriously tonight. I want to clarify and I want to emphasize something else that the apologists don't want you to know. Joseph Smith thought all of this material was very important. And thank you, Dan Vogel, for helping me see that. His new book. Oh, here we go. Dan, you owe me 20 bucks, my friend. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Right there. Book of Abraham Apologetics. If. If you haven't got that, you're just cheating yourself. Seriously, it's the newest best thing in print. And if you want to remain ignorant, don't buy his book. But I'm telling you, it's a great read.

John Dehlin [00:10:43] And we have covered that. We do have an episode where we covered that. Right, Gerardo?

Kerry Shirts [00:10:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:50] That's not to curtail promoting other things as well. We'll include that in the show notes as well.

Kerry Shirts [00:10:55] Oh, yeah.

Leaving FAIR and Background in LDS Apologetics

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:57] So, Carrie, can you tell us, just briefly, why did you leave fair? Because you were a. I mean, a lot of people know you as a very solid.

Kerry Shirts [00:11:08] The dingling backyard professor who kept interviewing all the fair scholars.

Gerardo Sumano [00:11:12] Right.

Kerry Shirts [00:11:13] At the fair conferences. Yeah, that was me. Yeah. Ultimately, when we began it, and we were all on the same page, make no mistake about it, we wanted to remain independent. Well, eventually that went the way of the brethren when they started to invite some of the general authorities into our private email list and to be on the board of directors and all. By that time, I had stepped off the board of directors because there had been some issues. I didn't want to get in legal trouble financially, so I got off the board of directors. I told him, I said, look, I am here to research and write and get on the Internet and completely refute everybody, okay? That's how this is going to work. And they say, hey, you're the director of research. You go do your thing. That was when we began making our own blogs, and I made my Mormonism research to mock the Tanners of all people title on theirs, you know. And then, of course, mine was all apologetic. So through time, it just. We began to see things a lot differently because I wanted to be the best apologist I could be. I did ridiculous amounts of research into. I found the Bible scholars. I was shocked at the sumptuous analysis of the Greek and the Aramaic and the Hebrew and the, the biblical languages and the iconography. They would show the archaeological digs and they would show the artifacts. Sorry, sorry. I gotta show you this, this William Dever, beyond the Texts. An archaeological portrait of ancient Israel and Judah. Great big, thick, juicy stuff. That stuff was turning me on. And I asked him, I go, why aren't the Mormon scholars producing this kind of stuff? Look, I know for a fact that many of the BYU scholars who keep producing the church articles and who keep discussing stuff in Sunday school, and they have their, their articles in BYU studies and the Ensign and the ERA and all that jazz, they're not translating the Hebrew or the Greek. I know they have PhDs using those languages. Why aren't they using them? And nobody could find the answer, you know, so eventually I tried to, I, I did a big one on Asherah, William Dever on Ashra, Just Rock, Heavenly Mother, the theme, you know, the best thing Mormonism had going for it at one time, and now they're too damn scared to even hardly mention her. It's too bad. But anyway, now I'm getting on a tangent. I promised I wasn't going to do that. So eventually, I promise, I, I, we were talking about atheism and they said, oh, atheists have already all been answered. I said, who? Which of us? Where's the article? Where's the book? Oh, well, you know, in general, Carrie. I mean, none of the atheist arguments hold up, right? I don't, I don't know. I've never read any. What ones have you read? Who would you recommend? And everybody kept saying, oh, for Pete's sake, shirts, come on. Obviously, atheism's faults, it's been responded to. Come to find out, ain't nobody knowhow had read much of atheism. And I'm going, now, look, that's it. So I went into the bookstore and grabbed my first atheist book ever, Dan Barker's Godless, and read it. And it just, it. You yank the rug out from under my feet. I'd never read anything so wonderful in my life. And I go, wow. So I opposed FAIR for having the general authority get put in the email list, something to that effect. I oppose the, the injunction. I said, no, we remain independent. I helped found this organization. We are remaining independent. And at that time, Scott Gordon was the president. He said, well, you're not on the board of directors, dude, so you don't have a say about it. We're. If the brethren tell us to shut fair down, we'll shut fair down. Oh, they had Kicked off Kevin Graham and. And.

Gerardo Sumano [00:15:52] Oh, yeah, that's a good story.

Kerry Shirts [00:15:54] That was a big one, wasn't it? Kevin Graham is the one responsible for waking up Robert Rittner to what John Gay was doing out here in the West.

Gerardo Sumano [00:16:03] Yeah, tell. Just briefly, because I think that's important for what we're talking about right now.

Kerry Shirts [00:16:07] It is. It's good background. Kevin Graham was on our fair mail list with us. Him and I were real good friends. We were researching and writing papers together. And he's a sharp cookie. Well, John Dee came along with the. I think it was the two inks theory of the papyri and just buffaloed his way through it and forced everybody to publish his stuff. And he knew he had had the argument and all that, and Graham just. He said, no, no, that can't possibly be working. Well, Gee somehow lied to Kevin about something or other. I honestly can't remember the details. Kevin emailed Robert Rittner and said, okay, here's my question. I don't think you're familiar with this piece of Paparai, but this is the Joseph Smith Paparai. Your student John Gee is saying this, this, and this about it, and I don't have the Egyptological expertise as a professional Egyptologist. Do you find that argument convincing? I don't quite know how to respond. Ritter came out like this. He said, the hell? Wait. My student John Ge is writing this? And Kevin goes, yeah, he's been doing this now for years. And that's when Ritten said, I did not train him to misuse Egyptology in that manner. No, that wouldn't have passed muster for a PhD warning. Steve Smoot. I'm just saying, I know you're after your PhD right now. If you're doing it to defend Book of Abraham, I'm going to advise you as a friend. Double check this. I'm just saying, you won't get your PhD with the review you wrote of Dan Vogel's book, which I will cover later tonight. So, anyway, to make a long story short, they kick Graham off the list. And I'm going, wait, hold it. You can't kick Kevin off. Oh, yeah, we can. We can kick him off. And I go, he was one of the better ones, you guys, for asking questions, right? Like, yes, contacting Rittner without permission, without. We're grown men, people. Come on, get serious. Well, then they booted off. Who's the. Oh, my gosh, brain fart? The radio guy. Van Hale. Van Hale. He was on our list.

John Dehlin [00:18:31] I remember.

Kerry Shirts [00:18:31] Yeah, yeah, he was on our list. And they kicked him off. You know why? Because he said, well, I mean, of course the Book of Mormon is scripture. It's just not ancient history. And they kicked him off, you guys. They said, wait, you've got to believe that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith really did translate it correctly and that the angel Moroni was real. And Van Hell said, no, no, no, no, none of that, but it is a book of scripture. Well, they kicked him out. And I'm going, what the. All of this crap's happening. And it finally dawned on me. You know what? I'm just. I. And then I ran into Thomas Riskus's book Deconstructing Mormonism, and that finished cracking my shelf along with the Book of Abraham stuff because of Kevin Graham's fabulous arguments online with Wade England back in 2011. 2012, man. That's what got me looking and going, oh, my goodness, Kevin Graham's got him, man. But it dawned on me. Wait a minute, that means Kevin Graham has me too. So. So again, I couldn't refute him either.

John Dehlin [00:19:51] So, Carrie, really quick, you had. I know, you had your own YouTube channel or something to that effect as. As still a believing kind of active apologist where you called yourself the backyard professor.

Kerry Shirts [00:20:05] Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:08] Was that something else before YouTube?

Kerry Shirts [00:20:13] I. I was. I was. After my mission, I just ended up going to byu, Idaho, which was back then Rick's. I'm giving my age away, but I found all of Hugh Nibley's materials. They had all of the Improvement era series right back to the beginning one on the open shelves. So I got a photocopy off all of his articles and all his books and all that jazz, so. But I was doing a letter writing campaign with several ministers locally and out of state, so. And then a friend of my wife's who was our computer tech guy, told me that I. He had a dream that Jesus wanted me to get on the Internet. And it took me a year or two to finally convince him that it really was Jesus who told him to tell me to get on the Internet. And so I did.

John Dehlin [00:21:03] Was YouTube the first way you got on the Internet, or was there another way?

Kerry Shirts [00:21:08] Well, no, it was before YouTube, actually. It was on the old message boards. Alt religion, Mormon, and maybe there's some in your crowd. Now I can't see the live chat. You guys have me on private chat. You don't want me watching.

John Dehlin [00:21:22] Switch to comments. Just click up four buttons and you can see the comments. It just depends on where you click.

Kerry Shirts [00:21:29] Oh, there they are.

John Dehlin [00:21:30] Hey.

Kerry Shirts [00:21:30] Oh, Teresa Pittman and Patty Cake. See, I gotta say hi to them. They're awesome. Anyway, Lamb Chop and all those guys. So anyway, you were known.

John Dehlin [00:21:37] You like, you had a moniker or pseudonym. Backyard professor in. Yeah, in the alt days before YouTube and social media.

Kerry Shirts [00:21:46] Yeah, because when. When my wife and I would go camping, fishing and all that, I took my books with me and I. I was known reading my books in the middle of the stream while I was fishing and catching 15 pound bass and stuff. No, not really, but still, it's a good story. No, I was reading a lot. So she just said you're like the backyard professor, and it kind of stuck. There are some who say, well, you know, you're phony, you're faking it. You're. You're trying to lie that you have a PhD from a college. No, I don't have a PhD. So anyway.

Gerardo Sumano [00:22:17] But you understand the documents better than the one, the guys that have PhDs.

Kerry Shirts [00:22:21] Well, thank you, that's very nice. Can I do something real quick? I know this is unorthodox, but I do have a few people I want to thank for helping me get here.

John Dehlin [00:22:31] Go ahead.

Kerry Shirts [00:22:31] Which is basically my list of friends that I've made who have influenced me and helped me along the way. And I would be remiss if I did not at least mention them real quick. Not in any particular order, but here you go. This is like the Academy Awards, isn't it? This is embarrassing, but I'm going to do this real quick. So I want to thank first off, my wife, my wonderful wife who's been so supportive of me. Hi, Char. She's upstairs watching me live right now. She's probably wincing and all that, but. And then there is Bill Real and Radio Free Mormon. Bill Real and Radio Free Mormon. Thank you for bringing me on to the Mormon Discussions Inc. And kind of getting my wheels greased back up and rolling. It is a blast doing stuff with you and Joe. Steve Swick and H. Michael McQuart and Dan Vogel, of course, and Brian Haugland, Brent Metcalf, Daniel don Bradley, Alcy Guy55 Simakis. I want to name all you guys just in case you yell at me. Over at the Shades message board, Paul Osborne. Oh, love you, brother Trevor.

John Dehlin [00:23:35] Luke.

Kerry Shirts [00:23:36] I love you, brother Moksha. Honor and Theos. Tom. Dr. Moore, Kevin Graham. Daddy, everybody's Wang Chong. Ray Sips the analytics, Randy Jordan. Randy Jordan was my nemesis on Alt Religion Mormon for. For years. And I called him just a couple years ago on the phone and he said, do you know why we always beat you in the arguments, Carrie? And I go, no, I never could convince him. He always had him out. He always had him out from my testimony of truth. And I asked how? And he goes, we quoted Joseph Smith back to you. And I go, you what? And he said, we quoted Joseph Smith. Smith back to you. Because apologetics isn't about defending Joseph Smith. It's about defending the modern church. That's a bombshell. I'll let you think about that. You just think through that. That's very impressive. That's what I'm going to do tonight, is quote Joseph Smith back to the apologists. Anyway, Academy Awards.

John Dehlin [00:24:41] This is like the Academy Awards where you're thinking, you gotta think. The Academy.

Kerry Shirts [00:24:45] I know, and I'm sorry. And I am. John Dehlin and Gerardo, you're the Academy. Thank you, Doubting Thomas. Bill for long. Elder Igloo. Elder Igloo just showed up, helping me with some of these graphics we're going to show you tonight. Thank you so much. Hay. Get Jersey Girl. Jersey Girl. And Miss Jack Lemmy. Let me gotta say hi to you. Jason Abbott. Now, he's a new voice. He just showed up last week on the message boards. He's only been studying this three months, you guys, and he's already put 90% more together than I did in 16 years of apologetics. Because he was looking at the evidence, not reading the apologists. The apologists are so confused after 60 years and you've got a guy who looked at it for three months and hasn't figured out, yeah, I'm slapping the apologist on that one. Ed Goble, Interesting theories. A little bit wild out there, but I'm going to mention you because he's so good. Dastardly. Stem Kishkuman. Miss Nobody. Barry Richards. Fence sitter, Chap. Santorum Themis. Doug Vincent. They're gonna laugh like hell at me at message boards. Mike Wagner. Other sheep. Jersey Girl. Oh, that's twice for her. Mocie Sunstone. Peter Higgs, J.C. tom Miller. Sploinky Doink. Mike Weiss. There's a reason I'm doing this. Just hang on. Tim Rathbone. Patty Cake. Teresa Pittman. Huff Daddy E from lds. Mark Crispin. I'm almost done. Noel House Learn now. Noel House Learn is like Kevin Graham. He has access to real Egyptologists who are talking to him. And I have the inside track behind the scenes with him so that we can see who's doing what and why. LDS Apologetics has failed. It's wonderful. Burrow Bikes. You're Awesome. Harriet Atkinson. She's a non member in the UK who always loves to watch me. Hi Harriet. Lamb chop. Dean Schwank, good LDS guy. Dr. Scratch, Dr. Stack. Huckleberry. Dr. Shades. Xenophon. Dr. Exile, physics guy. And Dr. Cam NC for me there. I'm done with that noise. Okay, now let's get.

Gerardo Sumano [00:26:46] All right.

Kerry Shirts [00:26:48] I had to do that. The thing is, look, I have so many awesome friends, even after I stopped being an apologist. Yeah, there is life continuing in a glorious way. Right? That's my point. So anyway, I've got real side. I apologize. So let's look. Should we get on with this or do you want to hear more about my idiocy? Oh, there we go. Let. Let's do this. This is so. This is so. And. And also Gerardo and John Dehlin, of course. You too. Seriously, Gerardo has helped me put this together in a way that I could not possibly have done it. So you guys owe thank you for tonight too. You're about to see something really fun. Let's go, Gerardo. What are you waiting for?

Gerardo Sumano [00:27:38] All right.

John Dehlin [00:27:39] Sorry.

Kerry Shirts [00:27:41] I get enthusiastic. So if I get on a roll and you need to, you know, shut me up or slow me down or get me back on track, feel free to jump in. Now this is the Book of Abraham right here. And what? Gerardo is the one that noticed this. He put this intro together. This is so much better than I ever could have. The Book of Abraham, translated from from the Papris by Joseph Smith. A translation of some ancient records fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand upon papyrus. Now, wanna see a cool parallel? Check this out. Go ahead and do the color her. Yeah, look at this now, really, seriously, look at this. The Book of Mormon. See, now this came out what, 18, 29, 30.

How the Book of Abraham Entered Mormon History

Gerardo Sumano [00:28:32] Yep.

Kerry Shirts [00:28:33] 29 short years later, we also get the Book of Abraham, right? Well, look what the Book of Mormon says. An account written by the hand of Mormon upon plates taken from the plates of Nephi, translated by Joseph Smith Jr. Here's the deal. To quote my dear friend, Radio Free Mormon, this looks very similar and familiar for a very interesting reason. And I just noticed this with Gerardo earlier today while we were tinkering around with some of the details in this. We just don't get away from reformed Egyptian in church history. We don't. And we're not going to. And if you think I'm kidding, I just read an article late Last night in preparing for tonight by Don Bradley. Bradley and Mark Amherst McGee on the kinderhook plates and Joseph Smith translating the Kinderhook plates. And guess how he did that? He used a hieroglyphic from the Joseph Smith papyri.

John Dehlin [00:29:43] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [00:29:44] And he identified the. In the Kinderhook plates, one of the descendants from the Loins of Ham, just like he did in the papyri. Is that not crazy or what, man? Yeah. So, yeah, interesting stuff.

Gerardo Sumano [00:30:01] Yeah. To me, this debunks right out of bat the Catalyst theory.

John Dehlin [00:30:06] So Gerardo explained to our audio listeners as well, what, what, what this is slide is conveying.

Gerardo Sumano [00:30:13] Yeah. So on the, on the left side, we have a screenshot of the introduction to the Book of Abraham, which was, I mean, this introduction is, was written by, well, dictated by Joseph Smith. And on the right side we have the title page, the introduction of the title page to the Book of Mormon. And like Carrie already read them, but basically they have the same stuff. They have.

Kerry Shirts [00:30:41] They're both perfectly parallel.

Gerardo Sumano [00:30:43] Yeah, perfectly parallel.

John Dehlin [00:30:46] Spell it out for Seroto.

Gerardo Sumano [00:30:47] So first of all, who translated it? The Book of Abraham was translated by Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon says the same thing. Translated by Joseph Smith. Who wrote it? The Book of Abraham. The. It says the writings of Abraham and the Book of Mormon says. Mormon. It says the Book of Abraham says that he was written by his own hand, just like the Book of Mormon says that he was written by his own. By the own hand of Mormon. It says written by the hand of Mormon. And then the Book of Abraham said it was written on. Upon papyrus, and the Book of Mormon says it was written up on plates. So basically, we have the same ingredients here on both. So to me, it was a revelation when I thought like, if you. We want to believe the Catalyst theory, the apologists have to apply the Catalyst theory to the Book of Mormon as well, because we have the same exact language on both.

John Dehlin [00:31:50] So the way to say this, that, that we can't run away from the, the books claiming they're claiming themselves to be translations of ancient records. Are you saying that the books themselves don't allow us to retreat to, quote, revelation or inspired myth or, or, you know, the Catalyst theory. The books don't allow us to do what Terrell Givens or, you know, Patrick Mason or Richard Bushman or, you know, many in the Joe Smith Papers Project are trying to do, which is to wiggle out of the claim that it, that these are translated documents that are historical of ancient records. You're saying that the Title pages don't allow us to do that. Is that right?

Gerardo Sumano [00:32:34] Yep, yep, That's. That's. That's right. And if they want to redefine words like the word translation or the word written by his own hand, they have to apply it to both. To the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham.

John Dehlin [00:32:48] Well, I think that's the direction that they're trying to move. Not explicitly, but behind the scenes. I think in 20 to 30 years, the church will. Will say, yeah, we always thought it was. It was a revelation

Kerry Shirts [00:33:03] that Long John.

John Dehlin [00:33:04] I don't know. I'd say conservatively. Conservatively, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kerry Shirts [00:33:10] Other Moving some interesting directions, but yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think their rescue missions are going to be able to change that much.

John Dehlin [00:33:17] That's a brilliant slide, Gerardo and, and Carrie, thank you for sharing that.

Kerry Shirts [00:33:22] I demur to Gerardo from that one.

John Dehlin [00:33:25] Nice work. That's powerful.

Joseph Smith's Acquisition of the Mummies and Papyri

Kerry Shirts [00:33:27] So the artifacts Joseph Smith claimed, four mummies, two scrolls, other scraps and fragments. Now, I'm not kidding. We want clarity. So I've noticed something interesting. When it suits their purposes, the apologists, for whatever reason, they refuse to quote Joseph Smith on some things in this subject, and then in other things, they will quote a part of Joseph Smith. Right. On other things, they denigrate what Joseph Smith valued immensely. For instance, those four mummies. That's not a joke. Here's the catch. Check this out. One male and three females. That could have been Joseph in ancient Egypt, being a polygamist before Joseph of modern America. No, that wasn't the relationship. No, that's. Sorry, Bad taste. Bad taste. So he did claim that he had form. Now, and of course, this is the. This is the remain of what had survived from Chandler's tour by the time he got to Kirtland. Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:34:50] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [00:34:51] Notice Joseph Smith called the male mummy King Onitis. And Robert Ritter indicated perhaps that was the priest of the Horus. Priest whose name is identified on facsimile number one and faculty facsimile number three. Truly, in the hieroglyphs, you won't get that from Joseph Smith, though. So, see, the uninspired Egyptologist is guessing while the prophet got it right. Right. And then the other female is Princess Katuman. Now, we don't know who the other two females are, but the two important ones are King Oneitis and Princess Katuman. Now, why is that so important? Because for years after they acquired this stuff, Joseph Smith immediately began looking into the papyri. Of course, we'll. We will too. But he actually identified these mummies and it's not just a superficial. Oh, okay, yeah, let's hurry up and make a name up. Etc. No, this is part of the over all historic context for the prophet to, to do something exquisitely important that he had started before he ever acquired the papyri. Man. When these mummies and this papyri got into Joseph Smith's possession, it was a godsend. This was better than Christmas for the prophet. King Omidis and Princess Khatuman were the royal line who came from Ham. And Egyptus was Ham's daughter whom brought the curse of Cain through the flood. This Joseph Smith identified as the woman who discovered Egypt while it was underwater in the book of Abraham. This Katuman is her descendant. So this is really important to Joseph Smith. I just want to point that out. We'll, we'll explain a little bit more about the mummies here in a little while. Just understand this isn't just. Oh yeah, okay, the mummies. Yeah, yeah, but we want to look at the. See, that's how the apologists have treated this. That's a wrong headed thinking. These were critical to establish the line from the beginning in the grammar. We'll show you this tonight. No joke. These guys are the remnants of the line of the patriarchal priesthood that Joseph Smith wanted to be in line with. This is what made him a biblical prophet to his followers. Were these mummies on the papyri. This is big stuff, in other words. So I've emphasized that enough. Okay, let's go on if we could, kind sir. Okay, now this is facsimile number two. Or I mean two. Hey, I saw the number two too. Woohoo. See, I told you I was going to clarify this crap. No, this is the two roles now. And look, the official history of the church. Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. No joke. Don't kid yourself. Don't let John G. Snowball you. Don't let Carrie Mulstein butter you up. Officially, historically, they only identified two roles. Scrolls. We want clarity. We go with the official source. We're interested in what Joseph Smith said, not John Gee, not Kerry Muhlstein. Right now I'm gonna show. That's perfect right there. Oh, you're gonna just scroll through it and show them. Yeah, this part right here, the papyri is really important. We. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make this absurd. Okay. Yeah. Now this is the rest of the book of breathings. There are two columns of Egyptian missing. This amounts to about 21 inches. It's not a lost role. John G is just wrong here. And then the end is the facsimile number three. And I'll get to that in a moment. What I want to do real quick here is show the. Yeah, and then that was the book of Joseph. He never translated that. Let's go back up by that facsimile number one in the Book of Readings, if you would, Gerardo, for just a moment. Zoo. Okay, yeah, well, zoom back out just a little bit more. That'll work. That'll work. Okay, now let. Let me give you some of the quick evidences of why we know we have the source that Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Abraham. Number one. These are genuine Egyptian documents. It's not like the gold plate, you guys. This came from an outside side source. But see, the gold plate story begins with Joseph Smith, right? So, I mean, Dan Vogel has like Radio Free Mormon and Bill Real, they've done fabulous jobs bringing in information. Joseph Smith is the one that controlled the gold plates, so of course he had to hide them. Right? With this. This comes from an outside source. This Joseph Smith can use to elevate himself into the biblical patriarchal line. Of course he's going to show this, right? This is the main piece of papyri. And we'll show this to you all night long. So the Book of Breathings has facsimile number one, one on the front and facsimile number three on the back. Now, I'm not arguing here. All scholars across the board, Mormon and non Mormon, agree. Quentin Barney, not 2019. Just a couple of years back, under the aegis of John Gee and Kerry Molstein as his advisors, he wrote the master's thesis on facsimile number three. Right? Well, he showed all of the iconography that is associated with all of the known Book of Breathings that we have. It's a fantastic collection of Book of Breathing's manuscripts. And he shows that the basic characteristic of most of the Book of Breathings is facsimile number one on the front or something similar like this as a lion couch, you guys. And facsimile number three, three on the back as a throne scene. Very similar to this. And we'll show you some parallels tonight. This is how the Book of Breathings was put together. This was all just one roll of papyri. When Joseph Smith unrolled it, this is how he would have seen it. This is important for the identification of that Book of Breathings. I'll show. I'll show you why Joseph Smith in the times and seasons now, this is not the modern church designation. This. This kind of surpr.

Identifying the Book of Breathings Document

John Dehlin [00:42:16] Here.

Kerry Shirts [00:42:16] A couple of years ago, see, after I was an apologist, all of a sudden clarity started coming up. Instead of defending the apologetic arguments, I began to look at the evidence, look at the papyri ourselves. What do you see? Joseph Smith identified every facsimile in the times and seasons as a facsimile taken from the book of. Of Abraham. So physically, they were showing this stuff off the mummies. You know, the. The one fun story. Lucy Mack Smith had the leg that broke off one of the mummies, right?

Gerardo Sumano [00:42:56] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [00:42:57] And she picked the leg up and she said, oh, well, this is the leg of. Of someone who was with Moses when he parted the Red Sea. Oh, no, no, it was the woman's leg who pulled Moses out of the way. Water. You know, stupid biblical stuff like that. Well, they were constantly showing it, so it was getting war and wear and tear. So they cut these. This roll. You can see the cuts right there and right there. There's another cut between. Yeah, you can see where they cut these apart. And they put them under glass slides. And Josiah Quincy and. And others mentioned the respect Joseph Smith had in handling these because they were very important. He put them under glass slides to preserve them. And these are the papyri that are described by the witnesses when they cut facsimile number one from that Book of Breathings, Joseph Smith identified it as from the Book of Abraham. There's your identity.

John Dehlin [00:44:07] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:44:08] And just. Just to make it really clear for people. So this scroll all together like this, it's called the. It would be called the Book of Breathings, right? I am, yeah. Because it would allow whoever was buried with it to breathe in the afterlife.

Kerry Shirts [00:44:27] Yes.

Gerardo Sumano [00:44:27] And this was specifically for the mummy Horror. Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [00:44:33] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:44:34] And then.

Kerry Shirts [00:44:35] But these all. Yeah, these are common, Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:44:39] Like, we have a couple dozen of them that have been found that are very similar to. It, maybe have some differences, but basically they all start with a scene very similar. With this.

Kerry Shirts [00:44:50] Absolutely.

Gerardo Sumano [00:44:51] With a. With an. They all end with a scene like this one. That's why we know the order and that's why we know.

Kerry Shirts [00:44:59] Yes. And they are all essentially the same length.

Gerardo Sumano [00:45:04] Right.

Kerry Shirts [00:45:04] Seriously, no joke. Robert Rittner's huge on that. That's how he destroyed Egyptologically now. That's how he refuted John Geese, missing scroll of life and feet.

Gerardo Sumano [00:45:16] Yeah. So people are. Know what we're talking about. Because modern Egyptologists, even though even the ones at byu, know that none of this has anything to do with The Book of Abraham. John Gee has come up with this idea that there's, that this scroll over here on top of here had 20 or 10ft, right. Like more of scroll that like would go from here to the end and it would like. And, and that's what would be the book of Abraham. And, and he says that that's a scroll that has been lost now.

Kerry Shirts [00:45:50] Right. And that is absolutely unprecedented.

John Dehlin [00:45:57] The reason, the reason why they're arguing that is because now that we've translated the papyrus that we have, it's obvious to everyone that Joseph Smith did not translate them correctly. And so they've got to manufacture the fiction of a, of a missing addition, additional parts of the scroll so that they can say that that that fictitious non existent missing scroll is what is must have been the source hieroglyphics for the, the book of Abraham that Joseph translated. Is that right?

Gerardo Sumano [00:46:31] Yeah. And, and not didn't, not just Joseph didn't translate it.

Kerry Shirts [00:46:36] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:46:36] Like there's nothing about the book of Abraham here. So he has to say, well there must have been another scroll that had the book of Abraham that it's now lost. And, and he has to make it 20 whatever feet. I think he's changed the numbers.

Kerry Shirts [00:46:54] He said 43ft at one time and then, and Smith came along and said dude, yeah, come on, get real. And they refuted the length and then he wrote a response and then they refuted his response.

Gerardo Sumano [00:47:11] And the reason why he needs it that long is because he needs all the book of Abraham that we have right now in our scriptures to be written in hieroglyphics.

John Dehlin [00:47:21] Yeah, and we, we talk about this with Robert Rittner a little bit. But like we start with the problem that there's no evidence that an Abraham ever existed. And then if Abraham did exist, he existed in 2150 BCE, you know, 4,000 years ago. So if this was written by Abraham's own hand, then that's how old the papyrus would be. But then we've got the problem that the papyrus were, were actually likely written between 100 and 300 BCE, 1700, 1800 years after Abraham, if he had even lived, would have died. And then we've got the problem that what, what we do have, literally the word Abraham doesn't appear anywhere on the entire scroll, let alone the stuff that Joseph wrote. So I mean it's like five levels deep of absurdity just out of the gate.

Kerry Shirts [00:48:11] Right. And, and here's the other thing about that too John, is it is at this point that the apologists quit using Joseph Smith's claims because they want this to be up to snuff with modern Egyptian understanding. So they quit. So then they say, well, Joseph Smith wasn't literally meaning by his own hand, and that is patently false. All the witnesses were told and shown the signature of Abraham. Let's look at that. He told the witnesses he had the signature of Abraham. And there's the character right there. Right there, those two guys. That is his. That is the hieroglyph Joseph Smith is pointing to. And I will demonstrate that tonight in the grammar. He, he takes that hieroglyph and takes it through 5 degrees of interpretational meaning and it ends up in the Book of Abraham, believe it or not. So truly, everything about this scroll, whether the hieroglyphs on the right hand side of the facsimile 1 or the hieroglyphs in the Book of Abraham, everything about this scroll screams Abraham, as we'll show. So this is the most important scroll. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to translate the Book of Joseph, which would have been that book of the Dead of Tasha Men. This is a Book of Breathings, a later document. And this, this class of documents were very, very similar. He couldn't have gotten away with, with much different than what he had here, size wise. So yeah, this would be the Book of Joseph. What do you mean?

John Dehlin [00:50:03] Do you mean to say that Abraham isn't anywhere in it? What do you mean it screams Abraham to Joseph Smith? To Joseph Smith.

Kerry Shirts [00:50:12] That role. Yes, I apologize. Yeah, yeah, thank you for clarifying.

John Dehlin [00:50:17] And again, I'm remaking a point you guys have already made, but this is for people newer that you guys just said and written or confirmed this, that we have multiple, multiple other examples of this exact, almost identical scroll that have been found all over the world. Yes, that shows that, that we know you can't call them copies, but, but in effect they're copies because they, like you said, Gerardo, they, they contain all of the same parts. So if there's 12 other existing scrolls throughout the world that basically look almost identical, it makes no sense to then add, you know, multiple feet of additional fictitious document to try and describe what the full document would have looked like. No, we know what the full document would have looked like. And it's disingenuous for Guy or Molstein or others to claim that this document would have been longer or have additional content.

Kerry Shirts [00:51:18] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:51:18] And what's super cool? Well, yeah, there's two arguments that I just want to bring up really quick. So the Book of Abraham itself. What's written on the scriptures, talks about the facsimile, which is, you know, in the book of. In the book of Abraham, I think it refers to the facsimile at the commencement of this record. So we know he must be translating from somewhere around here. And then we know what Clau Claus Bear, I think, was the one to. To first say that there was two columns of Egyptian characters missing in 1968.

Kerry Shirts [00:51:53] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:51:54] Right. And then there has been also a mathematically calculation by what's called the lacuna, which is this. Parts that are missing of the papyri, this kind of like torn parts. Because the scrolls are rolled. You can calculate how big those gaps are getting, and you can calculate how big the papyri was.

Kerry Shirts [00:52:21] The length between the lacuna. Yeah. The pattern is there. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:25] And that mathematical equation has confirmed basically Claus Bear and Robert Riddner suspicion that there must be like around 21 inches of papyru missing.

Kerry Shirts [00:52:37] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:38] Which is definitely not enough to fit the book of Abraham.

Kerry Shirts [00:52:41] Right. So. And then the other thing I wanted to bring out is other than the. The signature and Hugh Nibley, amazingly, now Klaus Bear was the professor, the teacher of Hugh Nibley. It was Hugh Nibley who got Klaus Bear to be able to look at the papyri and the edge of facsimile number one. The fibers match the edge of that book of Breathings. It was part of that same role physically. It did come from the book of Breathings.

Gerardo Sumano [00:53:22] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [00:53:22] And yet Hugh nibly denied that it was from the Book of Abraham. But Joseph Smith said the facsimile was from the book of Abraham. There's your identity, man, right there. That's the source right there. But there's something else here that's going on and that's the witnesses. Now, I want to read real quick. I won't take very long. This is what began to seriously cave me in. John Gee. And this is so unfortunate. John Gee and Michael Dennis Rhodes both used Henry Caswell's witness on the papyri in order to present a lost third scroll. But they only quoted part of Henry Caswell's testimony. Then they spliced that testimony with the testimony of Charlotte Haven. After leaving out part of Charlotte Haven's testimony, the effect was they made both Henry Caswell and Charlotte Haven mean something that neither one of them meant. And here is the irony of irony for me. It was Sandra and Gerald Tanner who caught John Gee and Michael Dennis Rhodes cheating with the evidence. And unfortunately, I have to say that word. There is no other word, because here's the Testimony. I'm going to read this. This is in there solving the mystery of the Joseph Smith papyri.

Early Witnesses to the Papyri and Translation Claims

Gerardo Sumano [00:55:09] And just, and just to clarify really quick, just to restate what you just said, John G. The BYU apologist who's trying to defend the Book of Abraham, who's trying to defend Joseph Smith, would use this testimonies that you're about to read to say we don't have the Book of Abraham. We have a papyri that is missing.

Kerry Shirts [00:55:33] Yes, yes.

John Dehlin [00:55:34] And.

Gerardo Sumano [00:55:34] And as you're going to be reading that, I'm going to be showing here on your screen that we actually have the papyri that this witnesses are talking about. Right?

Kerry Shirts [00:55:43] Yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah, you're right on it right now. The upper one in. In the article review books, Michael Rhodes used the statement made by Caswell to support his argument that there may be a third role in 1840. Here's Caswell's argument. Discussion in 1842, the fragments we now have were described as being mounted in a number of glazed slides. No, I'm sorry, this is roads like picture frames containing sheets of Papris. Then proceeded to quote Charlotte Haven's letter to support his thesis of a third role. If Rhodes had cited more of Caswell's statement, his argument would have fallen apart. Henry Caswell made it crystal clear that the very sheets that had been cut up contained not that one, the one above it, Gerardo, that one. That is what was under the sheets of glass. Caswell identified them as the writings of Abraham. Ghee sliced that out of Caswell's testimony. So did Rhodes. It was the Tanners, the apostate non Melchizedek priesthood holding the excommunicated liars for the Lord who ended up telling the historic truth. Mormons claimed they're liars. They were the telling the truth. It is the apologists who have been misusing the sources. That's ironic. So there's another evidence, an eyewitness account. Now see, Mormons make a big deal about eyewitnesses, you know, especially for the Book of Mormon. But it just appears to me like they think they can play fast and loose when with these eyewitnesses to the papyri and the mummies. Right? They can't. They can't. So there's another evidence that these were the ones under glass slides. Caswell identified them as the writings of Abraham. The fibers match. Joseph's writing was better. A witness described the writings, comparing the writings of that upper one, the Book of Breathings, with this lower one, the Book of Joseph. And he said the hieroglyphics were better in Joseph, and they are. So he's de. He's discussing actual documents that we have. And. And they had both of them. Finally, the book in English refers to facsimile number one, that you may have a knowledge of this altar. And I'll show you the picture at the front. He says that. That you may have a knowledge of the gods. I'll show you the picture in the front. And then finally, the length of the scroll that we talked about with Cook and Smith. And the entire story of the book of Abraham in the first two chapters revolve around facsimile number one. The whole thing of Abraham having to leave his homeland and go to Egypt and he was going to be killed and sacrificed. The whole story revolves around the way Joseph Smith translated facsimile number one, even though it's all bogus.

John Dehlin [00:58:57] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [00:58:57] Though he said the papyri. Refer back to it. So anyway, now that basically, as far as I'm concerned, tells us this is the source of the book of Abraham. The apologists are playing fast and loose with it. So now, my favorite. My favorite papyri here, though, is this one. Go ahead and show them. No, the other scrap.

Gerardo Sumano [00:59:20] Yep, there we go.

Kerry Shirts [00:59:21] Yeah, yeah, this one. This is such a. Fabulous. Okay, here's. Here's my beef with. And. And just recently, finally, the apologists have done an honest approach to the witnesses of the papyri with Kerry Muhlstein's article in his book Approaching Antiquity. Antiquity. His article on the biblical nature of Joseph Smith's knowledge of the papyri was the first breath of fresh air. Honesty of using sources that an apologist has used for a long time. And I don't mean to impugn them all, but they have been misusing the sources. This one, if you'll zoom up. Oliver Cowdery wrote a huge description of the this one. And it was claimed Caswell himself said that the proprietor to showing him this papyri said, well, do you see the Jacob's ladder? We have Jacob's ladder in the papyri. And Caswell said, you've got to be kidding. And he goes, no, here, look. See this lady's dress right there? See all those pleats right in the center of your screen? That's a beautiful shot, Gerardo. You can see that ladder. See that little dude up there on top? That was Jacob. He pointed that out. The ladder goes all the way up to Jacob. Now zoom back out a little bit, Gerardo. Caswell sarcastically Responded, oh, you mean that, that ladder of Jacob, the one that starts on the ground and goes all the way up to the waist of his wife. Notice it stops right at her waist. But notice they were giving it a big biblical provenance, right? And Jacob and his two wives. Now this wife that has the ladder of Jacob is actually the deceased. Behind her you can see a couple of arms. My suspicion is that was Anubis escorting her into the presence of Osiris, the guy over on the throne, she's been cut off. You can't see much of her except her two arms remaining. But this other gal facing her, you can see that's moss, that the feather on top of her head is kind of flaked off a little bit, but that's the goddess Moth, certainly. And then above her is the God Thoth and he was called Jesus Christ. This big guy here, this, this hippopotamus headed lion bodied deities, Amamet. And the interpretation was this is the old devil. And see these four guys in front of this devil, that is the four quarters of the earth. And the devil is going to try to destroy the four quarters of the earth and devour them, but Jesus Christ is behind him saving the world. That was the interpretation that was given to Henry Caswell and then back out.

Gerardo Sumano [01:02:18] And who gave that interpretation?

Kerry Shirts [01:02:21] It was one of the, it was one of the Mormon guys who was showing off the papyri, right? This guy on the throne, of course on the far left is Osiris. And see those guys sitting on top, all the way across the top of that. Oliver Cowdery said those represented the twelve tribes of Israel and see all the hieroglyphs underneath them. Oliver Cowdery said those represented the languages of the world so that the judgment of Jesus Christ, this guy on the throne was going to cover the entire world. Once the 12, the 10 lost tribes came back and the 12 tribes were put back together, they always put a biblical provenance on the papyri and there's no, nothing biblical about it. There is no Mormon scholar today who will write a church lesson manual, who will discuss a Sunday school lesson manual, who will publish an article in the Ensign. No church leader in general conference or on any rescue mission, no apologist or scholar from BYU will ever use this papyri to describe ancient Israel, Jacob and his wives, etc, because they all know there is nothing biblical here.

Gerardo Sumano [01:03:53] But this, this is, I think all this explanation that you just gave us really give us the background that they, Oliver Cow, Joseph Smith, they were all thinking about this scrolls and the Fragments as biblical?

Kerry Shirts [01:04:10] Yes. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, it was all biblical and yet none of it is and it never has been and it never will be.

John Dehlin [01:04:17] And just explain why for people that, that want to just kind of connect the dots, I guess if you read the Old Testament, it mentions Abraham in Egypt kind of together. Joseph would have been reading. You know, Joseph would have been reading, he would have known the Bible really well. And then there was this idea of like Napoleon Bonaparte in the early 1800s was like from France, he conquered lots of different areas in Europe and I guess in northern Africa. And so he would have his expeditions that would have gone into Egypt and, and uncovering tombs and discovering things led to what I think I've heard called Egyptomania, where throughout the world there was just this massive fascination with Egypt. And so when you combined Egyptomania with, you know, Joseph, you know, associating Abraham with Egypt, then of course, and the fact that no one could read, no one, no one was known to be able to read Egyptian at this point. Joseph could see this dude walking in with the scrolls.

Kerry Shirts [01:05:30] He could make up anything and, and think it.

John Dehlin [01:05:33] Well, whether or not he was lying, he certainly would have made associations with the mummies and the scrolls to Joseph, to, to, to Abraham. He was, he was known to be a translator. And I say that in quotes. That was from the treasure digging to the Book of Mormon to the Doctrine and Covenants. He was called by God to be a prophecy revelator and translator. People were expecting him to be able to understand. He already allegedly had translated the Book of Mormon from reformed Egyptian into English. And so there he might have even been pressure for him to be able to read the scrolls. And since he knew that he could control the environment, as Mike tells us from LDS discussions, he knew that no one could read the scrolls. Either in his fictitious, in his imagination, he thought he had the power to translate, or he was just flat out lying. Either way, he sees the mummies, he sees the scrolls, he thinks Abraham and boom, he's got another source for another production of scripture. Is that Carrie, how am I missing that?

Kerry Shirts [01:06:49] No, no. And Vogel also brings in the dimension that Joseph was very interested in this, in bringing forward a Book of Enoch as well. And so the theme for him now, this, this beginning, that's important.

Joseph Smith's Journals and the Beginning of Translation

Gerardo Sumano [01:07:07] Carrie. Sorry, sorry. I, I, I just want to say there something that you mentioned earlier. I, I want to validate what John said, but also Joseph was coming up with all these new concept about concepts about priesthood and about, you know, the idea of writing a book of Enoch without really a source. Kind of like what he did with the book of Moses and, and, and, and like brainstorming this new ideas that he was coming up with. And like, you just already explained, Carrie, tracing his line of the priesthood to Adam. So he had all this idea. So basically when this papyri arrived, it was like, like. Yeah, like Christmas, because Anna from heaven, man. Yeah, because now he has a, like a source that he can bolster all these ideas from and say this is written.

Kerry Shirts [01:08:00] He has a genuine ancient source that no one else can read or translate. Yeah, only him. I mean, that's an automatic win for him. Yeah. And the interesting thing is his ideas did not begin with the papyri. He was having this, this theme of the pure language of Adam and the patriarchal priesthood, man, that began in 1832. We're up to July 1835, when this stuff showed up. So for three years, that was percolating. Vogel shows that two months before the papyri even made it to Kirtland Rigdon, and we've got a slide of that rigged in on. In a letter to his wife Sally gave characters from the Adamic language. And a week before that, he had talked about the patriarchal priesthood and ordained Joseph Smith senior as the first patriarch of the church. Tell me if I understand what you

John Dehlin [01:09:07] guys are saying in this idea that Joseph Smith was a sponge, or as Terrell Givens likes to call him, an inspired syncretist. He's got Old Testament, he's got Abraham associated with Egypt. He's got all these doctrines and theologies percolating in his mind. The appearance of the papyrus and the mummies and the opportunity to produce scripture based on an ancient source or an ancient text, all of that converges like a perfect storm. And it gives him an excuse or a catalyst to produce some new scripture so that he can crystallize and codify the doctrines and ideas that are percolating in his brain. But, but.

Kerry Shirts [01:09:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:48] Is that right?

Kerry Shirts [01:09:49] But there, there's your catalyst. But, but it.

John Dehlin [01:09:53] Unfortunately, unfortunately, as you're making the, the major point, the papyrus literally has nothing to do with anything that ends up being produced by Joseph Smith.

Kerry Shirts [01:10:04] It's.

John Dehlin [01:10:05] It's a red herring. It's. It's. It's completely irrelevant to what he produces.

Kerry Shirts [01:10:10] But watch how we can now show the connection with the hieroglyphs and Joseph's concepts. This is incredible. Let's go that next slide, if we could. We've already been an hour and 10 minutes. Where does the time go? This is not right. You guys, you hear me? Yeah. So here's our basic timeline. 1835, the artifacts are purchased and. And then now it's interesting that the first translation, July through November of 1835, as we'll show you, is the Alphabet, not the book of Abraham. He starts translating an Alphabet. Then when he picks it back up in November, he has a couple of months off after July. And he was arranging the Alphabet, translating. He said that, translating the Alphabet. Then again in November, he picks it back up and he says, now we're translating the Alphabet and a grammar and the principles of astronomy.

Gerardo Sumano [01:11:16] We're gonna go there, we're gonna read his. We're going entrances.

Kerry Shirts [01:11:19] Yeah, yeah, that's our entrance. And so. And then, and then Nothing happened until 1842. That was the next one. Translation resumed. Now, interesting. Translation did resume. He didn't finish the book of Abraham. He In July 1835, like Gee and Mulstein. And now unfortunately, young Steve Smoot have advocated. Vogel has completely destroyed that. But again in 1842, translation resumed. And my dear friend H. Michael Marquart has demonstrated in Robert Rittner's book, the very first chapter, what an honor to be asked to write the opening chapter of his book. He demonstrates that the 1842 translation could only have been the arranging of the book of Genesis into the Book of Abraham. Now we all know that Genesis is just nowhere on that papyri. Nowhere. And yet 2/3 of the Book of Abraham is just Genesis with a plurality of gods instead of the singular. Because by then, of course, Joseph Smith knew Hebrew, you know, the Elohim, the gods, etc, the head God of the God and all that jazz. Yeah, in his discourse. But 2/3 of the book is just a redo of Genesis, Right. But he calls it translating. So and then 1880, there's a gap there, 30 years and it was canonized. And that was done over in the UK first. And then between there and then, Theodore Theodule de Verria and a few others challenged Joseph Smith's interpretations and St. Gustav Seafart. And then in 1912, Bishop Spalding, the Reverend Spalding, I mean, had the big to do with the eight Semiticist in Egyptologists that drove Osborne and B.H. roberts and those guys crazy and John Witso and they never really could rebut it. And then in 1967, of course, everybody said, well, dang it. Now the argument in 1912 was valid from the LDS point of view. They said, hey, you guys can't pass judgment because only the original documents give us the baseline now look, in that respect, the Mormons did win that argument. We love to tout the Egyptologist and all that jazz, but the Mormons had the right argument in 1912. Without the original, you're guessing because.

Gerardo Sumano [01:13:58] Because the artifacts had been sold by emma Smith in 1956. So the church didn't have the papyri.

Kerry Shirts [01:14:04] Yeah, without the original, you're guessing. That's important because come 1967, here come the originals. And now there's no guessing, there's only translating. But after it was translated. Crap. Maybe we better go back to 1912 before the original showed up. So the church in 2013 has been virtually forced, and this is an absolute mind boggling in concession. If you've read that essay on the Book of Abraham, they have conceded the method is wrong, the translation doesn't work, we don't find Abraham in any of the papyri. But I mean, after all, let's be real, Joseph Smith really was still a true prophet. And truly we are the kingdom of God on earth. I mean, it's pure enforcement of power. They've conceded the argument in that article. And interestingly, Robert Rittner, bless his heart, he was afraid he was going to be forgotten. No, Dr. Rittner, you will never be forgotten. We will imagine you every time we bring this subject up. His response to that essay is so fabulous that I taped it into my Joseph Smith papers copy, copy. I have the whole essay right there. So, yeah, so that's basically a timeline. Now here's what Joseph Smith said. Third of July, he gave some figures of the reformed. It's all good. He gave some figures of the reformed Egyptians. Chandler. To prove he could translate the characters.

Gerardo Sumano [01:15:47] Yeah, so Chandler, Michael Chandler arrives to Kirkland. The mummies shows the papyri, and Joseph provides a preliminary interpretation of some of the characters.

Kerry Shirts [01:16:02] Yes, because he wanted this so bad. His. He couldn't stand it. He saw, oh, this makes me. This makes my career. I don't have to hide anything now. I can exhibit this stuff, but I do have to have a storyline and this is important. So 6th of July, he commenced translation. Some of the characters commenced the translation of some of the characters of hieroglyphics. And he said, wow, we found it was the writings of Abraham and the writings of Joseph. This is the important one, though. This is so important. The writer. The remainder of this month, I was continually engaged in translating an Alphabet to the Book of Abraham and arranging a grammar of the English Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients. The whole rest of the month of July in the official history, you guys, to keep things clear, Joseph Smith said he was working on the Alphabet, not translating the book of Abraham. July has nothing to do with translating Abraham. Yet. Yet John Gee says he he finished the whole translation in July. Again, the apologists have to literally ignore the official history in order to view their theories as more accurate. But once you take Joseph Smith as your guard, the theories fall apart. Isn't that odd? And yet they say they're defending Joseph Smith, but we're the ones quoting him to him. Let's keep going. Now there's a break in time. And on the 1st of October this afternoon, labored on what? The Egyptian Alphabet. Again. He picks it up after two months and he doesn't start giving us a book of Abraham. He's still on the Alphabet with Oliver Cowdery and William Phelps. And from the Alphabet, the system of astronomy was unfolded. And we'll show you this and its significance, especially with the facsimiles here in just a few minutes. 7th of October, one week later, commenced translating the ancient records. 19th of no, now here he's talking about the ancient records. My argument is he has now shifted where he is getting the hieroglyphs from. And we'll show you the visuals of this just shortly. This is really important to get clear now. In October, he's translating the records. In November, translating the Egyptian.

Gerardo Sumano [01:18:50] Basically, what you, what you're saying is by ancient records, he means the book of, of Abraham. So the book of Abraham is starting somewhere around October

Kerry Shirts [01:19:00] of 1835.

Gerardo Sumano [01:19:01] Yes.

Kerry Shirts [01:19:01] Thank you. That's good clarification. Then the 24th, translating some of the Egyptian records. Then the 25th, spent the day in translating. Then on the 26th, we have something really interesting. He's transcribing Egyptian characters from the Papris. And that's where it stopped until 1842. So that's our timeline. So let's, let's go to the next one. Oh, thank you, Kilroy Daydream. That was very nice and generous of you. Appreciate that. Yes. I saw you donate something to Doug Vincent. You're awesome, dude. Okay, now. Okay, now. And here's where we can get some clarity. And let me just take time to emphasize this. This is not hard. I know the. We have to. Unfortunately it's come to this, you guys. Unfortunately. I don't want to call for this, but I'm going to on purpose just to make the point. We have to begin to ignore the Mormon apologists. They are just screwing all of this up. And there is no reason to this is not difficult. Now they've even gotten to the intimidating fact. You guys.

Gerardo Sumano [01:20:16] Fact.

Kerry Shirts [01:20:17] I say fact. The intimidating tactic where they say, oh, now wait a minute. If you're gonna do this subject properly now, you have to know all of the ancient Egyptian legends and stories. You have to learn all of the Abraham materials. You have to know Hebrew, Arabic, Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Taldaic, Arabic, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, and don't forget Mesoamerican. And don't forget early English Modern. You have to know a dozen languages. I'm exaggerating, but only.

Gerardo Sumano [01:20:49] But that's what Kerry Milson just wrote on the magazine.

Kerry Shirts [01:20:54] And Steve Smooton, his review chided Dan Vogel because Vogel said, I don't need a PhD in nothing. I want to know what Joseph Smith was. Was thinking. Yeah, we don't need that. Here's why. Because they don't want you to. Look at this. Let's be clear here. This is simple, I promise. We have four sets of documents. Just four. You've bought those multi subject notebooks for school. You can't tell me you haven't. Right? They have four different subjects. Okay, the number two, the valuable discovery notebooks. Don't click on it yet, Gerardo. Yeah, there's one file, valuable discovery, the next file. And these are just loose sheets of paper. And they're alphabets. Three different copies of the same information, just the Alphabet. All they're doing is figuring out an Alphabet. Alphabet. This is not rocket science. Then the third document, what they ended up doing is they wanted to explain, well, how does ancient Egyptian work? And so they began to share the grammatical aspects of those alphabets. So we have the valuable discovery, and that's just a few pages. Then we have the alphabets. Then they bound the grammar and Alphabet. Now there's three of the four. Was that confusing? Honest? No, of course not. The grammar is basically an expansion of what they already talked about in the alphabets. Now does that confuse anybody? No, of course not. Then these other three documents on the far right, those are simply the manuscripts of Joseph Smith manuscript Day and his two scribes, manuscript B and C as he dictated the translation of a different, different set of hieroglyphs than he used to make the alphabets and the grammar. There are two different sets of hieroglyphs represented in these documents, you guys. And Gerardo has beautifully separated this group of documents. Look on the left. July to October 1835. That's beautifully done, Gerardo. Thank you. I didn't notice that earlier, but that's very helpful. Helpful. These Manuscripts have a different set of hieroglyphs than the ones on the right now. Is that confusing? No, it's not. And we'll show you visually what those manuscripts were right now. Okay, let's look at the valuable discovery one. Okay, that's what.

The Valuable Discovery Notebooks and Characters Documents

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:04] That's what we believe is one of the first. What they would. They got the papyri, and then they go and copy some of the characters in the valuable discovery notebook first.

Kerry Shirts [01:24:18] Absolutely. And let me show now the really cool thing you guys is Joseph Smith is the one. I mean, he's the dude. He's the dude. Yeah, baby. Joseph Smith. I promise my people I would do the yeah, baby. And this is a yum baby moment. Joseph Smith himself thought this was the valuable discovery and he signed it. Joseph Smith only signed.

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:46] Go back to that.

Kerry Shirts [01:24:47] Yeah, and this was the one he signed. Apologists don't want to talk about this at all. They don't want to give you the historic context. And yet it was so important. Joseph Smith called it the valuable discovery and signed it. So what is it? This hieroglyphics comes from one of the extra fragments instead of one of the two roles. Okay, so a little bit more complex but not confusing. We have the book of Abraham, the one role, the book of Joseph, the other role. That's how Cowdery and Smith described the artifacts. Then they said there was some astronomical calculations, which was the hypocephalus facsimile number two, plus some fragments. This valuable discovery is from one of those fragments. And it was a book of the dead of Ammon Ho Hotep. See, that's not that confusing, is it? These are real hieroglyphs. Now notice something interesting about it. Go ahead and click the next one. See where that's colored up there, you guys. That's the only part of this valuable discovery that Joseph Smith got translated. But that is absolutely critical to the whole full historical context. What is that? Click on the next one, would you, Gerardo? Here we go.

John Dehlin [01:26:24] We got a comment from Dan. He's saying, book of me out, my

Kerry Shirts [01:26:31] good friend, scoop me out. He's exactly right.

John Dehlin [01:26:35] And then he says, fragment now missing.

Kerry Shirts [01:26:37] So, yes, thank you, Dan. You're ahead of me. Yeah, very good. Yeah, see, see, you got to start listening to the critics because they know a hell of a lot, a lot more than the apologist. Yes, this is the fragment, the book of the dead of Ammon Hotep. Notice that top hieroglyph, how we've colored it? Part of it blue, then pink, then yellow. That's very important. What Joseph and his scribes did is down in this next middle section you can see the blue one and their handwriting, then the pink one and their handwriting than the yellow one down at the far bottom we've got it typed out so that you can read it because they had sloppy handwriting. The blue part up there in the very top says Katuman princess, daughter of Oneitas. No, go to the type. I can't read that stupid handwriting. Thank you, Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Then the pink says, who began to reign in the year of the world 2962. Then the yellow says Katuman was born in the 30th year of the reign of the father and died when she was 28 years old, which was the year 3020. Now what makes this so vital is that he has identified the mummy as King Oneidis, this guy in the book of the dead of Ammon Hotep. The very fragment he had, he had the mummy, the king and the female was his daughter. This is who he is identifying the mummies from the papyri. That's why they're so important, including what we're about to show you next. Let's go to the next one. Because what Joseph Smith was doing in establishing the mum. Oh, was that all?

Gerardo Sumano [01:28:34] Yes, that's all, that's all.

Kerry Shirts [01:28:35] Okay, then let me say it this way. What Joseph Smith was doing in establishing the identity of the mummies was showing the royal line in Egypt that had come from the garden through the flood. Egyptus was the daughter of Ham. She is the one who preserved the curse of Cain through the flood. And Oneitis and Katuman are from that line and they're a thousand years later than Abraham. It is because of that sacred line that the records of the fathers were handed down and preserved in the mummy's coffins.

Gerardo Sumano [01:29:27] Or that's what Joseph believed. Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [01:29:30] Joseph Smith is establishing how could a book of a Hebrew patriarch end up in an Egyptian mummy coffin? This is how through the line of the priesthood. So these are really important in the valuable discovery. It's no wonder human he labeled that valuable. Because this line of patriarchal priesthood is where Joseph Smith taps himself into

John Dehlin [01:30:00] what

Kerry Shirts [01:30:00] was that electrified the early Mormons the most was Joseph Smith's literalness. Hey you guys, we have a biblical prophet right here. He is the only one who, who can translate the ancient records in the whole world. And we own those records. We have the bodies of the descendants of that priesthood line. Look, that's huge. That's the authority. That's no joke. Joseph Smith was given manna from heaven when this stuff came into his possession. That's why it's so vital. That's why it's so valuable. And the Apollo just want to skip all that and jump right to the Book of Abraham. They haven't got a clue what's going on. Now let me show you what's going on in the alphabets. This continues this. Let's go to the Alphabet.

John Dehlin [01:30:57] I'm just gonna drive this point home. We've been doing this series with LDS discussions and Mike, and we started with treasure digging. I make the point that once I talked to Lindsay Hansen park who said all of Mormonism can be understood through polygamy. And there may be some truth to that, but I think all of more. I think it might even be more true to say that all of Mormonism can be understood through treasure digging. Because if you. If you start with Joseph Smith claiming to be able to see buried treasure underground through a peep stone in a hat as folk magic, and then you add to that the fact that he's able to get people to keep believing that he has these powers even when he's not able to find any treasure, that's the beginning of. Of his career in religion. It starts in folk magic, then it moves to the Book of Mormon when he knew the jig was up and he was going to be put in jail and he knew that he couldn't keep treasure digging. So he moves to religion and creating a religious text and. And that only he can see. And then the Book of Abraham becomes an extension of that. Because there might even be this idea of what have you done for me lately? He needs to keep producing stuff. And.

Kerry Shirts [01:32:14] Yes, and. And he was having. He was having. Everybody was starting to question him too. Now that. Not the way Nibley said in his ridiculous article on the Kirtland Egyptian paper papers. I agree with Brent Metcalfe entirely. That was a mess. Poor Nibbley just. He muddied up the water and the apologists haven't recovered from it since. They keep taking his silly arguments. It's astonishing. But, yeah, credibility boost.

John Dehlin [01:32:42] Yeah. The point that I think you guys are making is if the church was built, the church's reputation, the vitality and the strength of the early Mormon church was built on the literal, explicit claim that Joseph Smith could translate ancient records and ancient languages that no one else could. And if you want. If apologists want to back away from that now, then they need to take away all of Joseph Smith's credibility and the early growth and influence of the church because it was based on that

Kerry Shirts [01:33:15] and all of their Holy Ghost given testimonies. Yeah, yeah. You have to begin to ask seriously. Not in mockery and not in blasphemy. You have to ask now seriously. Wait a minute. Wilford Woodruff testified the burning in his bosom of the truth of these three 500 year old writings coming forth just for Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [01:33:46] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [01:33:47] Wait a minute. What is that? Tens of thousands testified. They received that Holy Ghost testimony. And now we're starting to ask, do you even have a clue how that works? There is no way, you guys. No way, given what the Holy Ghost has been described as from scripture. Okay, let's go grant all of that. There is no way it can testify to them that this book of Abraham is true. It can't because it knows the truth. It's not going to testify to that.

Gerardo Sumano [01:34:25] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [01:34:26] So now God's on trial, not Joseph Smith. But crazy, isn't it? This is the implication Kerry Mulstein did not think about in his article in this magnificent book. It's the best article mostean ever wrote because he finally did justice with the witnesses. But he didn't think it out. He stopped one step short. Because if the biblical provenance is what gave them their testimonies of the book of Abraham and the papyri and all that, whoops.

Gerardo Sumano [01:35:00] You know, and I think all this background understanding how literal this was like, even to the point believing and teaching that though that mummy was the descendant of Ham and, and how she got the papyri, it just, it just damages the, the catalyst theory. How much can we rely on? How, how much do we have to rely on this being a catalyst like the, the more claims, literal claims that Joseph makes on the, on the mummy, on who got the mummy, on what, on the story of the people that they had the papyri, on the story of the people that discover Egypt, it just gets deeper and deeper and deeper. It's not a literal name of the

Kerry Shirts [01:35:44] king in facsimile number three. I do that for my good friend Paul Osborne. Yeah, yeah, right. And it's his literalness above all else that we know. He said this is the very papyri that Abraham himself touched, wrote, he drew the facsimiles. It was his pen upon by his own hand that he wrote those words. Of course he's gonna sign his own book. That's why Joseph Smith pointed out the signature. This is a. Look. John Gay, doesn't he sign his books? Carrie Mustein, doesn't he sign his. Why wouldn't Abraham

The Literalness and Scriptural Status of the Translation

John Dehlin [01:36:28] Yeah. And so just to summarize, I think for apologists to try and either take away the literalness of the translation or to downplay the scripture level, the import of the Book of Abraham. It would be like trying to remove the first level of a house and expect the house, all of us, to be willing to think that the second floor of the house would either remain there or to want to go in it, or to think that the house would remain integrity. If you remove the first level of the house, the second level of the house crashes and falls to the ground and the house is no longer of any value. If you remove Joseph's ability to literally translate ancient records and if you remove the literality of the Book of Abraham and it is a translation, you, you're basically undermining the entire restoration, I think.

Kerry Shirts [01:37:25] And that is a great analogy.

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:27] Just a lot. My, my last point is every person who I talk to who believes in the Catalyst Theory don't sit to think about the implications of what believing the Catalyst theory is. It just. The implications are so, so big. I think most of them, they're just thinking, isn't it so beautiful how the Book of Abraham talks about the Garden of Eden and how it gives us more knowledge about the creation but. And the pre existence and the pre existence. But they don't. They're not really thinking how literal Joseph was teaching and writing and talking about this papyri and the mummies and you know.

Kerry Shirts [01:38:08] Yeah. You gotta remember Joseph Smith said that Adam, that the papyri and Abraham and all that was 3, 500 years old. And Abraham wasn't that far removed from Adam. He's going with Bishop Usher's 4,000-year-old BC Earth.

Gerardo Sumano [01:38:27] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [01:38:27] That's how literal he is.

Gerardo Sumano [01:38:29] Yeah. So should we go to the Alphabet?

Kerry Shirts [01:38:31] Yes. Yeah. Yes. Because this follows right in line, please. Let's do. Now the next really cool clarifying point shows up immediately. Immediately from that valuable discovery and the importance of those mummies historically for Joseph Smith. Now we get to the alphabets. There's three of them. Joseph Smith's, Oliver Cowdery and William Phelps. Let's look at them. What happens with the alphabets is this. And this was one of the most amazing things, things I really realized once I purchased this Joseph Smith papers book. Yeah. Gerardo is the rock star. LC thank you for pointing that out. I love this guy. The hieroglyphs on the right side of facsimile number one in the red are the Alphabet. That is where they're getting the hieroglyphs that is the first thing Joseph Smith began to use off the papyri to figure out okay, what does this stuff say? How are we going to grasp this papyri so that we can get a book of Abraham out of it? The right hand side in the red is where they got the alphabets and that is what the Joseph Smith papers show except for that green portion. Now let's go to the next, Go to the next one. There we go. I have colored. Now this is the first page of. And this is in Joseph's Smith's handwriting. Joseph Smith wrote an Alphabet. Oliver Cowdery and William Phelps. This is Joseph smith's. The first 23 characters that I've colored. Thank you Dan Vogel again for, for giving this I. I am in debt to Dan Vogel. The graphics mine and Gerardo but the idea is. Dan Vogel Beautiful stuff. The first 23 characters are from the Book of the Dead Amenhotep which we don't have. This is concerning the woman discovering Egypt underwater. This is not the basis of the book of Abraham. Now we've discovered the, we've discussed the, the valuable discovery which is the line of the woman now in the Alphabet from the right side of facsimile number 1:1 here is the foundress, the original mama of the line of King Oneitis and she discovered Egypt underwater. And the second part, that lower portion is not even hieroglyphics. Those are. We don't know what, where those characters came from. This is the Adamic language and you're going to. Wait a minute, hold it. You just said he was taking the hieroglyphs from the right side effects of number one, which he is. Then all of a sudden the language of Adam and the discussion here is the relationship of God, angels, man, handing down the records of the fathers. This came about because of the patriarchal priesthood and the pure language which the Book of Mormon Jaredites were allowed to keep from the Tower of Babel. The Lord did not confuse their language. Interesting, isn't it? So this Book of Mormon theme with the purely language was continually on Joseph Smith's mind is just interesting just by sheer coincidence that there were discussions in Joseph Smith's contemporary time and over in the UK that Egyptian hieroglyphics were the atomic language. And sure enough we find these characters. Now let's go to the next one we're making. Now this is the second page of the Alphabet of Joseph Smith and I colored the hieroglyphs and when you look at their subject matter you find this idea of a First place of some kind of a garden. Beautiful. Exceedingly beautiful. Peaceful, lovely. This is where you would want a picnic. It's a place of happiness. Now look, we are three, four the way through the second page and dozens of characters of hieroglyphics from the right hand side of facsimile number one. And we haven't even heard Abraham's name yet, right?

Facsimile Two and Its Astronomical Explanations

John Dehlin [01:43:45] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [01:43:45] What's the next portion? Now this portion has to do with the cosmos, astronomy, Earth, moon, sun, eclipses, light time, all that kind of stuff. Can you zoom in on those for me, Gerardo? Pretty please? Yeah. Oh, dude, you're awesome. This is Abraham's system of astronomy. You remember in the church history where he said in November of I continued doing an Alphabet translating an Alphabet, and the system of astronomy was unfolded unto me. Now here's the kicker. These figures, Yami, ha, yah, O, A, the Earth flow east, the moon flows, Isis, the sun cleave, locisis, the measurement of time, they cleave, loses. I mean, it sounds fabulous, doesn't it? It power of one of the fixed stars, a star nearest God's throne. And the slowest. These definitions of the astronomy in the Alphabet from the right hand side of facsimile number one ended up as the descriptions of the figures in facsimile number two. This is where we're getting these from. The red part of facsim. The green part, I mean, I'm sorry, that upper green part in facsimile one. And they're about the astronomy. These descriptions end up being facsimile number two descriptions.

Gerardo Sumano [01:45:45] And this is on our scriptures. Right, like this. This is the descriptions on Mormon scripture today.

Kerry Shirts [01:45:53] Yes. For the hypocephalus number two, the round figure. Yes. So this is how Joseph Smith tied in the facsimile number two with the book of Abraham. But I want you to notice something. Facsimile number one came from the Book of Abraham, but facsimile number one came from the Book of Breathings. And he took the hieroglyphs from facsimile number one and stuck them into facsimile number two's figures as their explanation. There's another evidence that this role, this Book of breathing's role was the vital one to Joseph Smith. No other role of scripture or, or papyrus was used to come up with the descriptions of the facsimiles. Except this one. There's another evidence. There's your source of the book Abraham, right there, right in front of me.

John Dehlin [01:46:56] You're saying that that kills the Long Scroll Theory or the Missing Kills. Beautiful way to put it.

Kerry Shirts [01:47:02] Thank you, John. That kills the long scroll through. Now look at this, you guys. Here is the other fantastically cool thing about this. Go ahead and go all the way over. Gerardo, you made this graphic. Show it off, baby.

John Dehlin [01:47:16] Oh, no.

Kerry Shirts [01:47:16] This graphic was from my new friend, Jason Abbott. Thank you for allowing me to use your graphic. This is fabulous. Hey, you guys, I gotta show you this. Focus on me real quick, would you? Gerardo. Sorry. I'm not trying to be. Mr. Vane. Whoa. Look at me. No, look, I did something really cool. No, don't look at me. My hair's a mess. No, I did something really cool today. Seriously. And I'm going to advise you guys to do this. It brought better clarity. See my edge here? Look what I've done on the edge. I went to the grammar. And I put tabs on the method. The fifth degree, fourth degree, third degree, second degree and first degree. This is the method I'm about to show you of how Joseph Smith translated. Then on the top of it, I put in the. The second part of the fifth degree. The second part of the fourth degree. The second part of the third degree. The second part of the second degree. And the second part of the first degree. Don't let that confuse you. Here's what this is all about. Only with the astronomy terms. Did Joseph Smith give those hieroglyphs all five degrees of significance. That's how important the astronomy was to him. Here they are. This is so incredible because all of the hieroglyphs from facsimile number one that we just showed you. Those in the red read. He only gave each one of them one degree of significance each. Only when he gets to the astronomy does he unload, so to speak. And give you 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 degrees of significance. The first degree is the simplest explanation. Then it increases its definition, its magnitude. It's like adding one plus one to get two. Two is greater than one. Then two plus one to get three. Three is greater than both two and one. Then on to four, then on to five. By the fifth degree, you have a magnificent total. Full, all comprehensive definition and conception. So the higher the degree, the more magnificent, magnificent the translation is going to be. In the astronomy, Joseph Smith spelled out all five degrees. Then he combined all of that into the definitions. Into facsimile number two. That's fabulous. It ties in facsimile number two with facsimile number one. And the hieroglyphs from the Book of Abraham. But we're still on the right hand side of the facsimile. We're three, four the way through the Alphabet itself, and we still are not to the Book of Abraham. When Dan Vogel responded to carry

John Dehlin [01:50:54] Kerry

Kerry Shirts [01:50:55] Muhlstein's 2020 fair presentation, he was completely muddying up the water. He was causing confusion. He wasted our time. He did a disservice. Vogel responded and said, there is no matching between the hieroglyphs in the red down here. See, see in facsimile number one on the right hand side. There isn't any matching of those hieroglyphs in the Book of Abraham, you bloody moronic argument. Because nobody claims that the grammar is the original source of the Book of Abraham, but the hieroglyphs are important

John Dehlin [01:51:50] to

Kerry Shirts [01:51:51] the Book of Abraham. Yeah, but they're not the source.

Gerardo Sumano [01:51:55] I think this is a better, a better graphic right here.

Kerry Shirts [01:51:58] There we go. Thank you, dude, you're beautiful. Okay. At this time, when he got to the astronomy, the rest of the hieroglyphs in the Alphabet Tibet are undefined. He never finished it. He, he just didn't have time. He was, he was building the Kirtland Temple. He was getting persecuted. He had to run off and hide and go to Nauvoo. He spent time in, in Liberty jail for nine months. You know, he was having a hectic life. So when he came back from the right hand side and finished what he could could in the Alphabet, including the astronomy, then the blue, he started taking hieroglyphs from the blue section on the left hand side. And that is finally where the Book of Abraham begins. Here's the catch. Here's the.

Gerardo Sumano [01:52:57] Just to restate some of, some of what you said for people that you understand or haven't watched Carrie Muelstein's video Fair Mormon Carrie me was saying that basically car, like the apologists want to say that the critics want to say that the Alphabet and grammar are the source of the Book of Abraham. But that's not what the critics are saying. Right. They want to muddy up the, the waters and just want to say how, how can, you know, how can you

Kerry Shirts [01:53:31] get from this grammar, right? You can't, but we're not claiming you can. Yeah, the apologists are just making up a straw man.

Gerardo Sumano [01:53:43] Right? Abraham, basically. So just. I'm going to show the graphic really quick. So basically, Jo, what we're saying is that Joseph came, he got the papyri and he was like, I'm gonna start from the left side translating. And he came up with the alpha.

Kerry Shirts [01:54:00] He knew to read from Right to left. So he started from the right side of facsimile one.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:06] Right.

Kerry Shirts [01:54:07] But he started with the column that is closest to facsimile number one, which is column three on the right hand side.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:16] Right.

Kerry Shirts [01:54:16] Of those three, it's the left hand most. Yes. Where the astronomy came from.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:22] And he creates the alphabets. Then he expands the significance or the meaning of those characters in the grammar. Grammar.

Kerry Shirts [01:54:32] And they add grammatical rules for how to translate this Alphabet that they got from facsimile number one. There's still no Book of Abraham in the entire grammar either.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:46] Right?

John Dehlin [01:54:48] Really?

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:48] Now they start after that. Then that's when they start translating this part. And this is what becomes the Book of Abraham, right here.

Kerry Shirts [01:54:56] This is where the translation manuscripts come from, except for one little catch that's very important to show you. And that's right up there at that corner. Is it the next graphic or can we do it on this one?

Gerardo Sumano [01:55:08] Yeah, we're gonna. We're gonna do it later in the. In the next graph.

John Dehlin [01:55:11] Okay.

Kerry Shirts [01:55:11] Okay, so what's the next graphic? So we can see the line of demarcation. Oh, yeah, Here we go. Okay, so here is facsimile number one. And notice in the official church version, they've always cut off the hieroglyphs from facsimile1. All they do is show you the picture. I never knew there were hieroglyphs on that until I was years later into apologetics. That is so sad. That's not the historical context. People will want to know where do those come from? From? And they're going to want to know what significance they have. Now we know. Yeah, that's exciting to me. Now Joseph finishes the Alphabet and he begins expressing the grammatical rules in the grammar. And he expands the Alphabet finally, at the last two hieroglyphs in the entire Alphabet. Alphabet. And it has dozens of hieroglyphs. He gets to Abraham.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:13] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [01:56:14] And those two hieroglyphs are up in the corner. Now add to that graphic.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:23] Now we want to explain this, right?

Kerry Shirts [01:56:25] Yeah, yeah, There we go. No, we didn't go back. Well, yeah, this will work. This will work. Zoom in on that hieroglyph

John Dehlin [01:56:35] right there.

Kerry Shirts [01:56:36] Those first three characters. One, two, and three. Those first two, one, and two are the last two hieroglyphs in the Alphabet. Then number three, he gets off the C signature of Abraham. And let's show that. So we back up. And this is a great picture of Russell Nelson trying to imitate the seer, Joseph Smith, and can't see anything but a white felt Bottom, you know, but

Gerardo Sumano [01:57:10] this, I just wanted to include this because this is important because people might. I think I was always confused when, you know, graphics like this that would show hieroglyphs, but then I'm like, where there's nothing there, there's nothing there. Well, we have this nice quote by Lucy Smith, who said that when Joseph was reading the papyrus, he closed his eyes and held a hat over his face and that the revelation came to him and that where the papyrus was torn, he could read the parts that were destroyed equally as well as those that were there.

Kerry Shirts [01:57:45] Yeah. So why isn't Russell Nelson putting in the Joseph fragments? That's what I want to know. Oh, his problem is he kept his eyes open. Okay, so here's the graphic. Now here's a beautiful graphic. Here it is. This is wonderful. Thank you to Gerardo for putting this off. Now, this gives us the context of where on the roll Joseph Smith moved over to. And these first three, the reason those upper first three numbers, number one, two, and three, the first two are on the edge of that papyrus, but we can no longer read them because since Joseph Smith day, they have flaked some more. They're damaged again, but they copied those in Joseph Smith's day. And Robert Rittner could read another book of breathings that also read very similar to the this one. So he knows those are the correct hieroglyphs. This third one, however, that's the puppy. He put that in the gap, but he did not invent that. Number three is a genuine hieroglyph. And it's over here in the second column, the signature of Abraham. That is the hieroglyph that Joseph Smith put the first one in the gap and translated it in the second and third verses of Abraham, which we will show you. Now, here's the other beautiful thing about this. Let's go back over to the. To the. The 1, 2, and 3. Gerardo. Joseph Smith put all three of these first characters through the five degrees of significance number four, and the red number five and the red number six there. All those in the rest of that gap, those are composite hieroglyphs, invented pretty much, right? Dan Vogel said they're invented, and he is strictly correct. What he did, Joseph, is he took bits and pieces of hieroglyphs and combined them and then stuck them in there and then translated them. So those aren't actual hieroglyphs off of the papyri anywhere, whether the book of Joseph or the book of Abraham. Those are invented, but number three is not. And I'll show you the significance seconds of that and then of course going through that still the next character and the next one next. Now they're after they get through that gap, of course, then they're taking those hieroglyphs and putting them into the translation manuscripts. Randy Jordan's here. Randy Jordan. Hello, Randy Jordan. Sorry, I have to call out him. He. He's a cool dude. He's my arch nemesis. Boy, look at me now. Randy. I'll tell you what, this is a good program right there. I don't care who you are. Yeah, baby. So where were we lying about? Oh, okay.

Gerardo Sumano [02:00:59] Finish the alphabets and we're gonna go into the grammar.

Kerry Shirts [02:01:03] Let's go into the grammar. Okay. Yeah. This is fun. This is fun. Dang, this is fun. Okay, here we go. Here we go. This is the now. Okay, now the alphabets were single sheets, right? The grammar is a bound grammar. Now we. You guys already knew this. This was new to me. Gerardo, take it over for a moment. We have a very, very interesting parallel here that has to do with the Book of Abraham, truly.

The Grammar and Alphabet Documents as Translation Evidence

Gerardo Sumano [02:01:37] So I think we kind of expect explain a little bit about how on the grammar basically Joseph is going to show how each the. The way and how each hieroglyph can have so much a paragraph or more than a paragraph of significance or meaning

Kerry Shirts [02:01:56] and nibly mocked that. Yeah, an apologist have followed his mockery ever since, but he doesn't understand what Joseph Smith was doing.

Gerardo Sumano [02:02:05] But I. I think this was from a presentation that was done on Mormon stories by LDS discussion by Mike on the golden plates. And I think I found a really nice connection between what Joseph Smith could have been thinking about the hieroglyphs on the Book of Mormon could have looked like or how. How could he have gotten all that information, you know, from the hy. Hieroglyphs in the Book of Mormon. So basically here, this is a slide that just says that if you look at fair Mormon today, some of the bet on the best evidences for the Book of Mormon section on their website they have this listed this metal plates. They're called the preachy priggy plates.

Kerry Shirts [02:03:00] Pergy. Yeah, go ahead and show them.

Gerardo Sumano [02:03:03] And these are plates from Italy. And they claim this is proof that people in ancient times wrote in. In plates. Now there's a problem with this when we compare it to what the Book of Mormon would have looked like. Right. And just to give a little bit of background about the spiritual plates, a little bit. These are dated about 500 BC. They again, they were found in Italy. They are about 7.5 to and by 3.5 inches big. And two of the tablets are inscribed in Etruscan language, the third in Phoenician. And all three tablets combined have a total of 200 words. So we have all these three tablets and combined they all have 200 words. Now, this is an actual size comparison of what the golden plates would have looked like with the Purgy tablets. And on this graphic we have that the Purgi tablets. Each tablet could have had or has around 66 words per plate in average. So that's how many words now we have. Sydney Rigdon said that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon out of 14 plates. So the whole Book of Mormon that we have today was translated from 14 plates. And the total number of words in the Book of Mormon is 270, 000 words. So if you divide 14 plates, you know, and divided by the 270,000 words we have, that each plate would have had 19,000 words on each plate per plate.

Kerry Shirts [02:04:54] And we counted these on that Book of Mormon thing, and there's probably about 180 to 190. Each plate would have needed almost 19,300 words for the Book of Mormon to come out. And that's their best evidence. Yeah, crazy.

Gerardo Sumano [02:05:15] This, this I think to me is a big connection because this show, because the Book of Mormon was written in reform Egyptian, Joseph believed and, you know, like, how were they. How was Mormon or Moroni or Nephi were able to fit all that information in 14 plates. And the only way to do that is if each character has a comprehensiveness of meaning, which means that each character gives you about a paragraph of more or more of translation. And that's the only way. And just to compare here with the Purge tablets, that would mean that 292 times more words on the Book of Mormon plates than than on the Perry tablets or the Perry plates. And Carrie brought up this really good comparison that would mean. That would be like comparing a ruler to football field. Right?

Kerry Shirts [02:06:18] Now zoom in. You get the real effect of this.

Gerardo Sumano [02:06:24] There's a ruler.

Kerry Shirts [02:06:27] There's your ruler and there's your Book of Mormon plate. Anyway,

John Dehlin [02:06:36] we've joked a bit that that would have made the plates so large, so tall and so heavy that they would weigh about the same as Thor's hammer, basically.

Kerry Shirts [02:06:47] Right? It'd be like nine feet tall. Well, the. The interesting thing is too, is this reformed Egyptian with this comprehensiveness and all, it actually does work out crazy enough. And I wrote this down too. Gerardo when I. Gerardo was questioning A lot of this. So we did our own math on this just to make sure that is there about 270 000. And. And where did Sidney Rigdon say there were only 14 gold plates translated? That comes from Dan Vogel's the. The books on the early or the documents of Early Mormonism, his series of five books. So Vogel is the one that has tracked that source down, which is really cool. But if we took the 19285 and divided it by the hundred 180 figures on the gold plate that we just saw, then that would equal about 170 words per character. And that's what we have in the Book of Abraham translation manuscripts. Each character gives us a paragraph or more and we'll show you of those. So what an interesting coincidence, right? Joseph Smith knew calculus. Yes. I'm kidding. Come on. He didn't know calculus anymore than he knew Egyptian. So anyway, so let's keep going on this part. Now here, here is the. This is the method of translation. Beautifully. Joseph and his scribes began with those first three words of the Book of Abraham in the Egyptian hieroglyphic as the example to use for how they were going to treat every single hieroglyphic. Now they ran out of time. They did not. They were not able to do this with every hieroglyphic. Nibley uses this as a basis for a contradiction. Well, see, they started to translate and then they soon found out it wouldn't work and so they gave up. It was too difficult. Bull roar. That is not what was happening at all. That is simply fantasy. What happened was they couldn't have the time to translate the whole thing. But this was their method. And if you'll zoom in, this is that first character and it's called. No, the other one. I can't read that handwriting. Zoom into the other side. This is called Zaki Own, Hiash or Calcedon. He saw this is in the land of Chaldea. This is how he translates it out. Now Joseph Smith says this character is in the fifth degree, independent and arbitrary. It can be preserved in the fifth degree and it stands in the dependent arbitrary, I.e. without a straight mark inserted above or below it. So part of the method of the grammar is by inserting a straight mark over increases its signification 5 degrees. When we insert two straight lines over it, its significance increases five times more than that first five. And by inserting three straight lines it again increases five times more than the last last. So by counting the number of straight lines, considering them as qualifying adjectives, you can see the lines above it. See, it starts with one line above it, and he's explaining that. Then number three, two lines above it, and he's explaining the increase. Then number four, three lines above that character, and he's explaining the greater increase.

John Dehlin [02:11:08] Still.

Kerry Shirts [02:11:09] This was one part of the overall method that they were translating the hieroglyphs from. Okay, let's go to the next slide. No translation yet. This is just explanation in the grammar. The first part of the grammar. Now the next slide, Gerardo, shows that. Oh, whoops. The one before that. Sorry. This is the second page of the grammar. And they are continuing discussing the line method of multiplying 5 times 5, then 5 times 25. You can see on the top there equals 125. And then 5 times 125 equals 6. That is 625. Five grammatical parts to the hieroglyph with three lines. Okay, so it means more and more and more and more. Then the next hieroglyph. Yeah. Or the next slide. Where did they get this idea of the straight lines? I got this from Dan Vogel again, that. That guy is a pioneer man. I love how he showed this. Zoom in on that top one, would you? A little bit, Gerardo. This is the valuable discovery notebook. Notice the red lines that Vogel colored. And then look up and match the hieroglyph. That's. You can see there are some figures that have one line under them. Then there are some figures who have two lines over them. Then there are some figures that have three lines and so on and so forth. So that you can see why they're thinking, and this is from the Book of the Dead of Amenhotep. They're thinking, well, no one in their day read hieroglyphs. So it makes sense for this method to be involved with straight lines. One means something, two must mean more. Three straight lines must be really magnificent. But not only in the Book of the Dead of Amenhotep. Now scroll down, Gerardo. We can see the same way of reading this other piece of papyrus, the Book of Breathings, which Joseph Smith said was the book of Abraham. And the same way of studying the hieroglyphs is occurring here. We can see the lines. Some lines are above a figure, some lines are below it. There's one line here, there's two lines there, etc. So that across the board, here's the grammar down in that lower right hand of that first figure. 5 times 5 is 25. With the one line 25, 5 is 125 with 2. 125. 5 is 625 significant grammatical aspects to that one small character if it has three lines under it. Now let's go to the next graphic. Now zoom in on the papis. Oh, no, no, we can go to the next one. Now we get the second arm of their translation method, the grammar method. What they're doing here is they dissect the character. They pull it apart into its different pieces. And let's go to the next slide. Let's zoom in to number 1, 1, 2, and 3. This is where the characters are grammatically explained. With these first three, we just want you to be aware on the Papas, Joseph Smith has now moved over to the Book of Breathings. We're not lost spatially. We know where we are. We're at the beginning of the Book of Breathings. And that first letter in the gap, this is the one, the number three, that they begin dissecting and give you the example. Okay, let's go. Go to the next slide. I think the next slide shows. That shows a really good. Yes. Now here's the first hieroglyph again. The first three hieroglyphs are the only ones Joseph Smith put through all five degrees. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. They dissect the character. You can see the Beth and the ayata, the little dot, and then the beth Ka. Yeah, Beth, ayata, Beth ka is the angle part. Zubzul, Owen. And then they have key, another dot, and then they have high, an angle with a. With a check mark, like a backward check mark. They dissected that one little character. And each part is given five degrees, so that by the end of the translation, by putting it back together, we get verse 1. In the land of the Chaldeans, at the residence of my father, I, Abraham, saw that it was needful for me to obtain another place of residence. Verse 2 says, and seeing that there was greater happiness and peace and rest for me, I sought for the blessings of the fathers and the right wherein, too I should be ordained to administer the same. You mean all of that is in one stupid little character? No, it's not. It's in one stupid, stupid little character that is actually 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 characters built into it. And each one of those six characters have meanings. That is their method. Now let's go to verse two. The next one, the next slide. Now we get this character. Now, when they cut the papyri, which is too bad, they cut off the big tail. You can see the big tail in the chart up Here at the big corner, the number two, they cut it off. But the where it's pointing to with the red line, that's where it's at. Same thing, five full degrees of this character they called Abraham, having been a follower of righteousness, desiring to be one possessed great knowledge, a greater follower, righteousness, a possessor of greater knowledge, a father of many nations, a prince of peace, one who keeps the commandments of God, a rightful heir, a high priest holding the right belonging to the Fathers. I mean this guy is Superman. Yes, because it's been given five full degrees of significance. Now let's go to the next slide, verse three. Now, now they separate the character into five different parts and all five degrees are displayed. You can see the papri down there in the far lower right and Alphabet, C, B and A. That's how each one of the gentlemen drew it. They weren't exactly the same, but it was conferred upon me from the Fathers from the beginning of time. Even from the beginning or before the foundation of the earth down to the present time. Even the right of the firstborn or the first man who is Adam, or first Father through the fathers unto me. I mean my God. Who talks like that, right? Nobody. But they're not talking. They're breaking apart this hieroglyph and translating each various piece part and then cramming all of that back in to give us the fullest possible meaning. Because it is with this Abraham cat who descended through the line from Adam that Joseph Smith receives the line through the papyri and translating it. Yeah, that's why they made such a big damn deal about these, these first three hieroglyphs. So what's the next slide? And then this is the slide showing once. Go to that, go to the far left in the middle one. Gerardo. A little. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one. See this, see that? You can see facsimile number one on the right, that pink shaded area. That is where the signature of Abraham is found. And over here on the right hand, left, left hand side is the actual hieroglyph. And then this is the way they drew it. See, they couldn't see what this hieroglyph looked like. They're trying to draw it as best they can. But then they take this hieroglyph, look at the line below it and they break it all apart. And it has one leg there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The dot, the one leg, then the dot, then the other leg, and then that bar that goes over the top of bottom, both the legs and connects them. Notice how each part is given a separate name. Look at that fourth one. Man, Abra Om, a father of many nations, a prince of peace, and one who keeps the commandments of God. A patriarch, a rightful heir, a high priest, and so on. Teresa Pittman. We'll get to that shortly, too. Yeah, no kidding. Talk about a spirit snake, right? Now, they took this character. Go ahead and scoot over to the right. Here's their Egyptian grammar, where they have each one of the characters. Then here's those three characters put in. W.W. phelps. Now we're to the Book of Abraham. Translation from the hieroglyphs from the Book of Breathings, after being given the five degrees of meaning, now we're translating the Book of Abraham. And you can see the characters have full paragraphs, of course, because that's what they thought Egyptian worked like.

Evaluating the Catalyst Theory Against the Evidence

Gerardo Sumano [02:21:48] Yeah,

Kerry Shirts [02:21:50] that's their method. Now, the interesting thing is. Now, Nibbly right off the bat, he was smart enough. I mean, let's give the guy credit. He was genius. He was brilliant with ancient languages, and this didn't fool him for a moment. He knew when he saw it. The problem was, it was Joseph Smith produced. So Nibble had to come up with something fast. Here was his psychological point that he came up with genius. And it threw me off. For 15 years as an apologist, the first thing out of Nibley's idea was this. Okay, you guys, come on. You tell me. You expect me to think that just one little doodle, just one little hieroglyph is going to give you 75 words? And he started ridiculing the Tanners because they also made merry of the that vast disproportion. A Nibbly said, oh, you critics think you know exactly how Joseph Smith translated. He was challenging. He in the dialogue article behind Klaus Bear's translation of the papyri. You remember they put in an article too, and they said, the source of Abraham has been found. Nibley turns around and says, well, we're not mind readers. You can't say what Joseph Smith thought. We're not mind reading here, though.

Gerardo Sumano [02:23:19] He's literally telling us what he thought.

Kerry Shirts [02:23:21] We're looking at the evidence. This is Joseph Smith's evidence. Then Nibbley says, okay, smart alec, you show us how that translation works. Whoa, that's not your question. Ask apologists. That's ours. You show us how that method works because your prophet claimed it. Did you see how clever Nibley did that? Isn't that fun? I mean, the psychology is brilliant. Yeah, and yet.

John Dehlin [02:24:00] Wrong.

Kerry Shirts [02:24:01] He's okay. You show us how it worked. If you think you know, we don't know. Neither does any Egyptologist and neither does any Mormon. But yet you believe it works. That's why they're coming up with the Catalyst Theory, you guys. They can't show it either. Here's what RFM has told me in a phone call. And he said that publicly too. I know he's here somewhere. Hey, rfm. Yeah, there he is. Nobody lays it out like the. Oh, you are too kind. Thank you, rf. Here's what RFM said, man. And now listen to this. This is beautiful. Paul Osborne has also mentioned this on Shade's message board several times. And you guys already know this, but let me say it for my video sake. The apologetic of going to the Catalyst Theory is taking it out of the original arena of testable evidence into something that can't be tested, but it can be testified about. But who cares? Testimony doesn't ever trump evidence. I don't give a damn who says otherwise. Evidence changes the probability, not testimony. So that's the act desperately inspiration. John Gee gave 35 years of his life apologizing, defending and showing how the book of Abraham is true and the papyri are actually really good stuff to show. Joseph Smith's a true prophet. And now he's willing. He spent 30 years trying to show a lost scroll, and now he's saying, well, the Catalyst Theory is a good second choice. Are you kidding me, man? A good second choice? It's giving up. It is an admission that we don't have the evidence. Yeah, it's.

John Dehlin [02:26:01] It's reminding me again of this LDS discussion series with Mike. He talks about the 116 pages and how amazing of a translator. I say this in quotes. Joseph Smith was, you know, when he's looking into a hat and he. He can produce the text and there's no one there to compare the plates to the text he produces. But as soon as Lucy Harris gets a hold of the 116 pages and then Joseph has to reproduce the same text, all of a sudden, Joseph miraculously loses his power to translate and needs to take like six months off and it just. What's that? And then manufacture all these theories about. About small plates and large plates and the minor plates and the major plates and how God saw all this from the beginning.

Kerry Shirts [02:26:52] You gotta make it more complex to hide the fact that, oops, I blew

John Dehlin [02:26:57] it, or that there's no power there to begin with. Right?

Gerardo Sumano [02:27:01] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [02:27:02] Isn't that the apologetic game, John?

John Dehlin [02:27:04] Yeah, the complexity gets multiplied applied to excuse the fact that. That there's really no power there at all.

Kerry Shirts [02:27:13] Man. That's. Man, that's a great way to put it. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what today's apologists are continuing to do. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:27:24] That's why I think it's so. It was so important to me, for me to understand, because I think it's pretty easy. They're literally telling us how they're translated, translating the characters. And. And once you understand it. Yeah, once you understand it, it's really easy to see that the apologists don't have any answers because the apologists don't want us to see that. They actually explained the process.

John Dehlin [02:27:52] Yeah, they.

Kerry Shirts [02:27:52] They want us to show them. Okay. Show us the process. Are you kidding me? You show us the price. It's your prophet making that claim. And here's. Yeah, baby, here's the problem. They say God revealed it to him through the Urim and Thummim. They think that magic word revelation saves the game. Man, that's the destructor. Am I off here?

John Dehlin [02:28:22] And again and again. There's no evidence that there ever was a Urim and Thummim. Like. Like, why is it that everything's always so sketchy? Why doesn't Joseph just show the plates to people? Why doesn't Joseph just show the Urim Thummim to people?

Kerry Shirts [02:28:37] Why doesn't today's prophet use the Seer Stone to translate Joseph, I'm not trying to be blasphemous in asking that question. I am asking it sincerely. You claim you have the power. You've got the stone. You've got the papyri. What in the hell are you waiting for?

John Dehlin [02:28:56] Yeah, just translate it. Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [02:29:00] And then, of course, Book of the Dead.

John Dehlin [02:29:03] And of course, the Church hides the fact that there was a. A Seer stone for what, 150 years?

Kerry Shirts [02:29:09] 150 years. Yeah, right. Yeah. Just like they claimed. We don't have the paparae. Oh, thanks. Thank you. The Tanner. Thank you to Dan Bogle for those documents. In early Mormonism, it's because of their work they scooped the Church. It's because of their magnificent efforts that the Church finally realized we are being vastly outdated here. We better get off our dead asses and start doing something with historical documents. And now we have the Joseph Smith papers. But is the critics who forced them to it.

John Dehlin [02:29:46] Exactly.

Gerardo Sumano [02:29:47] Interesting that once Brian Howglet. Because Brian Howglet, he's a BYU professor who is on John G's camp of defending the Book of Abraham. Once he starts actually looking at the Documents. And he's gonna, you know, be the editor of this volume. He. He realizes how.

Kerry Shirts [02:30:08] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:30:09] Off they. Their explanation was and how easy it is to see that the answer is given to us by Joseph Smith and his scribes. The way they did it, why they did it, why they think the characters meant what they thought they meant. Like they're giving us the answers.

Kerry Shirts [02:30:27] And then turned around and said, you know what I didn't like is how John Gee was trying to force all the rest of us into defending Joseph Smith his way. But I didn't agree with his interpretation of the evidence so far. But I still believed in Joseph Smith at that point. Yeah, but John GE said, oh no, we defend Joseph Smith always. Above all else. Joseph Smith comes out smelling like a Rose. Well, Dr. John, John G. Then why do you have to manipulate the eyewitness evidence, history, witnesses in order to verify your ad hoc theories that have no evidence and is always based on missing documents when Joseph Smith's evidence of his method is based on actual existing documents. I'd like to see that answer.

Gerardo Sumano [02:31:31] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [02:31:32] Just my personal challenge.

John Dehlin [02:31:34] So RFM says Dan Vogel was a bad influence on Brian Hellgood.

Kerry Shirts [02:31:39] Or a good one, depending on. Yeah, Vogel, baby. Okay, let's go to the next one real quick. We're running out of time, aren't we? Two and a half hours. We're doing good though, right, John?

John Dehlin [02:31:52] Absolutely.

Kerry Shirts [02:31:54] Say 11:30, 12 tonight. Did you see him Flint on live TV? Yeah, baby.

John Dehlin [02:32:05] Okay.

Kerry Shirts [02:32:05] Yeah, baby. Hey, dude, you almost imitate me as good as me. Okay, so the next. What's the next slide that we were wanting?

Translation Notebooks and the Line-by-Line Method

Gerardo Sumano [02:32:14] We're gonna look at the. Now the book of. So we looked at the valuable discovery notebooks, we looked at the alphabets, we

Kerry Shirts [02:32:20] looked down grammar manuscripts.

Gerardo Sumano [02:32:22] And now we're going to look at what the actual book of Abraham comes from.

Kerry Shirts [02:32:28] Like. Yes, yes, yes. Now we're on the book of Breathing Source on the left hand side. Not. And Gerardo showed me this. It shows up real good here. Just pick any hieroglyph, Ferardo. And zoom in on comment on any page. Really, Truly. For instance, there's a good. Okay, now look, man. Oh, and you picked a beautiful hieroglyph. And you know why, Gerardo? Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Dude, you're awesome. Okay, this high, you can see. Look at how much English that this cotton picking hieroglyph is showing. Right? Well, actually, as. As has been shown, this hieroglyph is a composite hieroglyph.

John Dehlin [02:33:10] It's.

Kerry Shirts [02:33:11] It's kind of really weirdly drawn from the actual hieroglyph on the papyri. But notice it has three points to it at the top. One, two, three. I mean, it's a cool looking hieroglyph, right? Isn't it interesting that this is the hieroglyph? I believe in verse seven, eight, around there in the first chapter. Oh, there it is. I, I can't read the handwriting. I suck at reading. It says now this priest about the three virgins.

Gerardo Sumano [02:33:43] Yeah, now this priest had offered upon this altar three virgins at one time.

Kerry Shirts [02:33:51] At one time were the daughters of Oneitis. Look at this, you guys. You don't tell me those mummies were not important to Joseph Smith.

Gerardo Sumano [02:34:01] I mean he literally had Omnidus. He literally had the body of Oneidas on the book of Abraham.

Kerry Shirts [02:34:11] Fantastic. Very interesting. Yeah, you won't get an apologist analyze this like this. So anyway, yeah, so our point with this part is just to simply say, look, the hieroglyphs really do translate. Pretty much every one of them translate at least a version, verse or two or three. And rather than mocking it, what we want to understand. Now of course this is pure hokum, but we want to understand Joseph Smith. And so this based on what he said. There's another good one right there, Gerardo, at that bottom one. It's a couple of hieroglyphs on the far right. Look at the size that you. Well, the other one. Well, that one too. Look at the size of paragraph. You're just barely seeing the page now on. Yeah, that one, that one. Look at the size of paragraph for that one. But so yeah, you look at this and you say, oh, come on, that's just, that's silly. Yeah, of course it's silly, but it's consistent, you guys, with the method, if you can call it that, that they elaborated on. Now they didn't do that with every hieroglyph in the grammar. They gave us a couple of examples and now here we see them using them in action. Look at that middle one, you guys, that great big. Yeah, that dark hydro. Look at that. It takes up 2/3 of the plate. The translation of that. Now that is a couple of hieroglyphs there. That's a group. That's not a single hieroglyph. But I mean, my gosh, look at the size of that. Two thirds of a piece of paper. But that makes sense. Now you can say, okay, within the context, within the historical context of the way he said, this is how Egyptian works, then this is what we get that now begins to say, okay, that Makes sense. Now let's go on to the next one. And there's another really cool tie in.

Gerardo Sumano [02:36:10] I, I, I think I was, I was gonna. Oh, here's the Katuman.

Kerry Shirts [02:36:14] What did I miss? Oh, yeah, yeah. Now, this one, this one is a combined hieroglyph from various different alphabetic characters that Joseph Smith took one from number 14 and number 19 and number eight and so on. Not really those numbers, but anyway. And then he combined it. This is the hieroglyph in the gap in the lacuna. I mean, he invented the hieroglyph and then he went ahead and translated it anyway, and it gave us an entire paragraph. Man, that's amazing, isn't it? Oh, shoot. Come on. This is fun. Unless you're an apologist.

Gerardo Sumano [02:36:56] And, and I think, hey, you know, right here, it says character right here. And then he says. And then to the right, translation of the Book of Abraham.

Kerry Shirts [02:37:06] Yeah, yeah. So he's talking translation, you guys. Good point. Thank you, Gerardo. Because, look, he's identified. Look, this is the character, and this is the translation. Look, we're talking a translation, not a revelation now. And they say, well, he didn't translate by conventional means. This gives every implication that he is putting down the character. And this is what it means based on the evidence from their understanding of how the grammar worked. Now, granted, this, this is not how Egyptian works. But from their point of view, this is a translation. Yeah, it's not a revelation. It's a translation. And then they say, well, he didn't translate conventionally according to scholarship, but he translated. Tried. Look in facsimile number three, which, if we have time, we'll get to it. He deliberately identifies specific hieroglyphic characters and translates them and tells you what they mean. So he did claim to know Egyptian as a conventional translator.

Gerardo Sumano [02:38:15] And this character just. That's a really good point. Because the. Let me just change this because the. Because the Gospel topic essay starts with the premise that Joseph never claimed to translate ancient languages like scholars do. But if he didn't, then why was he creating an Alphabet? Why was he creating a grammar? Why was he explaining how the characters worked? How if you had a line, it added the significance, how you could dissect its character and, and get more. More 5 degrees of signific. Wasn't he trying to be, like, a scholar and trying to say, this is how it's supposed to be?

Kerry Shirts [02:38:56] Excellent point. Yeah. All the evidence again. Here we go. All the evidence shows they're not defending Joseph Smith. Yeah, they're ignoring him.

Gerardo Sumano [02:39:07] So just this isn't that ironic.

Kerry Shirts [02:39:09] I mean, am I the only one that doesn't think that's mindblowing? That just. You go, really? Why are you called an apologist?

Gerardo Sumano [02:39:17] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [02:39:18] First you mess up the contemporary eyewitnesses, then you misquote Joseph Smith or else ignore him entirely, and then you poo, poo all of his work and say, oh, yeah, that was the scribes that did it. Theory. The scribes did it. Joseph Smith signed his name to the most valuable discovery. It's amazing.

John Dehlin [02:39:38] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [02:39:39] So anyway, what are we showing here? Oh, yes, the gaps. Yeah. Now here we go. You just showed that. Zoom in right on those four. Right in the mid. Down. Now go down. I'm looking for the second. Yeah, those right there. That's that same character you just showed in the grammar. And this is verses 1, 23, 24. Now, again, these are the compound characters that Joseph Smith invented to put up there in that gap. This just happens to be the discussion of the woman finding Egypt underwater. And those are the characters from the Valuable discovery, ironically. Or the. Yeah, the alphabetic section from the Valuable Discovery that was emphasizing the first part of the Alphabet was emphasizing the royal line of cow tumen. Amazing. And then he puts it in the blank and translates it. So don't tell me the valuable discovery is. Is a waste of time to look at. And the mummies didn't mean a dang thing. They meant everything. They gave the historic context to his grammar and then the translation. Oh, and they expanded the cow to me in the grammar enormously. Page after page after page. It was fascinating. So, okay, have I confused you all totally yet? I hope not, because I honestly. I honestly love getting more clear on this. So. So what we're learning. Let me briefly recap on the artifacts. The first thing he did was work on an Alphabet. Well, he got the valuable discovery. And that was a different scroll on this one. The first thing he did was do an Alphabet, and he worked on it for all of July. Then when he picked it back up in October, he continued working on it. He found the royal line from Egypt. He found the Garden of Eden. He found where the curse came from. He found Khakuman and King Oneitas. Then he found the Adamic language. Language. And then he found the astronomy. And he's not even to the Book of Abraham yet. Yeah, when he gets all of that done, then he goes over to the other side. And now we're getting the Book of Abraham, but not in the Alphabet and not in the grammar. In the Book of Breathings on the other side of facsimile number one. The apologists want to confuse you on that. Don't let them bring them to this video and say, refute the backyard professor. Kerry Muhlstein, John Gee. Refute the backyard professor. You show me where those hieroglyphs came from because thank you, Mormon Church. I really do have the evidence. And you all can look it up. You don't have to believe my word. Yeah, baby. Look up Robert Rittner. You look up Robert Ritter. If you guys haven't read Robert Ritter by now, shame on you. That is essential reading. And then watch this. Fabulous. Okay, now I'm getting carried away. Get it? Carried away. That's enough of that noise. Okay, what's the next one?

The Facsimile Explanations and Hypocephalus

Gerardo Sumano [02:43:05] The facsimile explanation.

Kerry Shirts [02:43:07] We still have some really cool stuff to show the clarify.

Gerardo Sumano [02:43:13] So we're going to show about the facsimiles explanations.

Kerry Shirts [02:43:16] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do the facsimiles real quick then. I want to.

Gerardo Sumano [02:43:20] Let me just go really quick. So this is what I know.

Kerry Shirts [02:43:23] I'm not trying to sound rushed, I promise. You're going too fast. The audience has to let us know so I can sl. But we're actually close to the end.

Gerardo Sumano [02:43:33] This is. So if everyone opens their scriptures, this is what it would be facsimile number one. This would be facsimile number three, and the hypocephalus would be facsimile number two.

Kerry Shirts [02:43:50] So we're gonna to the same time.

Gerardo Sumano [02:43:53] We're gonna talk about them right now.

Kerry Shirts [02:43:56] Okay, go ahead. Yes, we are. Okay, so here. Now this is interesting, but because there have been some apologists who say that Joseph Smith was not responsible for the final form of the facsimiles. In fact, it was. It was the Times and Seasons editor. It wasn't Headlock. He was the artist who was the editor. John. The heavy guy that was in Carthage jail with Joseph. He didn't die. Come on, what's his name? I've got a brain fart.

John Dehlin [02:44:33] Not Phelps, huh?

Gerardo Sumano [02:44:36] John Taylor.

Kerry Shirts [02:44:37] No, John Taylor was badly wounded. Who's the other guy?

John Dehlin [02:44:41] Not Phelps.

Kerry Shirts [02:44:43] Not Phelps. No. Oh, come on, Carrie.

John Dehlin [02:44:47] Keep going. I'll look it up.

Kerry Shirts [02:44:49] Okay, yeah. He was the editor. Maybe Radio Free Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:44:54] Willard Richards.

Kerry Shirts [02:44:55] Yes, Willard Richards. Willard Richards, right.

John Dehlin [02:44:59] He.

Kerry Shirts [02:44:59] Okay, now let's go back to that quote.

Gerardo Sumano [02:45:06] There we go.

Kerry Shirts [02:45:07] Okay, so this is Joseph Smith saying, visited the printing office, gave headlock instructions concerning the cut for the altar and the gods and the records of Abraham as designed for the Times of Seasons. Now, this was in February, February of 1842. So this is number one. That's the first one he printed. There's the cool looking plate lead actually really interesting. Then a week and a half or so later, 2nd of March, read the proof of the times and seasons as editor for the first time. Number nine, volume third, in which is the commencement of the Book of Abraham. Is the commencement. Commencement of the book of Abraham is actually number one. So let's go to the next description if we could, kind sir. Okay. Now there's the original and there's the canonized version. So you can see there's been a lot of changes and all the controversy is of course where those gaps are and where we have penciling. But we've all heard all of that. What we want to do is show something. The most important thing in my take of this after all these years of being an apologist and so on and so forth, there are, there have been various constructions, reconstructions. The upper right is Charles Larsen's and that's very offensive because the guy is holding his phallus. But there are lion couch scenes where Osiris on the lion bed is impregnating his wife Isis as she is a kite or a hawk hovering over his middle. It is always Anubis who is at that lion couch figure. There never been a bald white headed black guy. Yeah, it's always in Anubis. Now the controversy now in the lower, in the lower left is Lanny Bell's reconstruction and he does disagree with Charles Larsen's construction. But he, he shows something very cool. Anubis is holding out his hand, holding a little cup. Now crazily enough, and Lanny Bell knows better than this, he left Anubis's head white. Anubis is always white black. It's his black fur. Right. So this is an actual from a tomb, a typical scene depiction showing a black Anubis holding a cup over the mummy. So my emphasis here is it should be ANUBIS now on the 4th of March. Yeah, keep going to that next one. In other words, Joseph Smith did not restore the facsimile correctly in 4 March 1842. We shall see. Now we're up one more month or another couple days exhibiting the book of Abraham in the original to headlock. So he can take the size of the plates and the arrangement of the writing etc and the principles of astronomy. So you know, he's talking about number two in a canonized version. Facsimile two is placed in the middle of chapter three. Abraham learns about sun, moon, star. So. So large cut refers to only number two. So let's go to the next one and we will see that this is the original and it really was. Thank goodness they at least made this copy. Right. Otherwise we wouldn't have it because we really don't have the original of the Papris version. And someone made this sketch and now it's not that they didn't finish it, it's that it was finished apparently. So the one on the right shows in red. We've seen charts like this and stuff. And there's a few. The rim has quite a bit of missing. And that upper ship guy in the ship with the solar crown of light is up there in that corner, the right hand corner. And then the two headed guy in the middle with his scepter. And then those baboons balancing the basketballs on their heads and. And then over here, the finished snake underneath it. Men. And then in those registers there's lots of hieroglyph there. Okay, that's what was missing. That's the final version. This ship really interestingly. And this surprised me when I realized what this was doing. This is not from the book of Breathings. This did not come from the book of Abraham Am. It came from the book of Joseph. Very interesting. That just shocked me when it really dawned on me. Okay, so let's go to the next one. And that's not a proper in. Oh yeah, this one. Now this is cool too because look at the two heads of the upper one and the. And the center. They're the exact same head. That. That's just. That's just simply copy and paste. That's cheating. That doesn't work.

Gerardo Sumano [02:50:08] So Joseph grabbed this, this, that was existing, right, this two heads and just copied it right here.

Kerry Shirts [02:50:14] Daniel C. Peterson learned well from Joseph Smith, didn't he? So then you've got this little plant deal that went into that upper register also. That's the same thing. So he's kind of try. It makes it look like he's trying to hurry up and finish the hypocephaly us to make it complete so that headlock can carve it correctly so that he can print it because he's already got the other two printed. Right. So let's go to the next one and we will see. Oh, this is what's fun now. And it dawned on me today with Gerardo earlier we were playing like crazy on this stuff and Gerardo was creating all these fabulous graphics, helping me straighten out my presentation here. And we just had a Ball. But I. I learned something really, really, really cool with this. Here is the book of breathings. And these four lines, of course, are the book of Abraham. Let's look at this fourth line that is enlarged here. Then flip this over 180 degrees. Pretend it's laying on your back. And then you flip over and lay on your belly. Now you're upside down. And then Joseph Smith broke this into three different parts. And the green part is up at the top in that century register. You can barely see the color. It's a little bit skinny. The line. Sorry. Then the blue part is in the middle. And the red part, the pink. It. Yeah, there we go. Is at the bottom. Those hieroglyphs are from the same book of Abraham that Joseph Smith just translated, but now they're being put into the hypocephalus. Joseph Smith said the hypocephalus was from the book of Abraham, but he didn't actually see the hypocephalus on the roll like he could with facsimile one and facsimile three. So the way he included the book of. Of the hypocephalus into the book of Abraham is.

Gerardo Sumano [02:52:34] John. Can you hear him?

John Dehlin [02:52:37] No, I can't hear him. Can you heard of.

Gerardo Sumano [02:52:39] No.

John Dehlin [02:52:41] Maybe he disconnected for a second. Okay, I'll write down in the.

Kerry Shirts [02:52:48] There we go.

John Dehlin [02:52:49] Oh, he's back.

Kerry Shirts [02:52:50] I am back. I blink out.

John Dehlin [02:52:52] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [02:52:54] Oh, I apologize. I probably had to take a potty break.

John Dehlin [02:52:57] Not really. Still.

Kerry Shirts [02:52:59] So the. The cool thing is Joseph Smithing. This is how he included the hypocephaly in with the Abraham. Because he brought in the Book of Abraham characters into. And of course, he didn't see this in the Book of Abraham. He saw facsimile 1 and 3, but not this one. And the next slide shows this also here he took line three that's already been translated into the Book of Abraham. You guys. And then he broke it up and he put it on the right rim. This isn't even hieroglyphic. It's heratic. It has nothing to do with the hypocephalus subject or characteristic. But it did put the hypocephalus in the same book of Abraham. Province provenance. So then the next one. No, no, go back. That's important. Important. Yoda said the copy.

Gerardo Sumano [02:54:00] Yeah. So he's basically grabbing the. The papyrus that he thought it was the book of Abraham. He's grabbing some of the characters of that and then filling in the hypocephalus with Those characters, and that's how he makes the connection. And that's why the Hypocephalus makes it into your scriptures today, because that's how he was able to, to connect.

Kerry Shirts [02:54:24] Remember too, the astronomy of the hieroglyphics on the right hand of facsimile number one became the description of the figures in the Hypocephalus also. Yeah, fascinating, isn't it? So now the next one. We're closing in on this now. Okay. Oh, now this is beautiful because when Joseph Smith opened up the role, this is how it would have looked. You got the picture, you got the two pages of text and then you've got the picture. That is how it would have looked right there. Four pieces. The original is missing, but that's definitely belongs to the book of Readings. And down here underneath the, see the little black guy, that little runt of a fellow as Joseph Smith would call the King Oneidis, the Mummy. The next figure in front of him, that's the deceased. See, that was supposed to be Anubis. Oh, thank you. Yeah. No, no, no, go back to that one. That's, that's a great one. Yeah, that's the proper. Yes they are. Thank you, rfm. Gerardo did a fantastic job with these slides.

Gerardo Sumano [02:55:36] Some of these are from the guy that, that sent you.

Kerry Shirts [02:55:38] The PDF presentation is decent because of Gerardo, not the motor mouth Yamran. But this, this Anubis character is guiding the deceased underneath that guy's foot. In the hieroglyphs it says horror Justified. It's identifying that guy as the owner. And of course the lady who Joseph Smith said was the prince, which is utterly stupid. She's got the deceased by the hand. That's the Lady Mott. Well, you can see, you can see in this one below, it's Thoth, not Mott in it. So there is a variation, but Anubis there, he is always helping the deceased get into the presence of Osiris. And Joseph Smith hacked his snout and turned him into a slave, which is just stupid. Michael. Dennis Rhodes a few years back said, yeah, you know, all of the interpretations of Joseph Smith and the facsimiles really do actually generally agree with the Egyptological point of view. I, I mean, my God, can you say lies any worse? That is just. That is outright lying and he knows it. It's so unfortunate that they're forced to that end because. And here's one that Dan Peterson hates, and that's just tough Tooty Cowboy. They're paid apologists. If you work at the church owned BYU that has the Quorum of the twelve Apostles as the board of directors, then we all understand that whether you like it or not, you can deny it all you want. You are paid to write faith promotion building material. That's the end of that discussion. So we know there is literally again, hey, I get to use Joseph Smith's literalism on him literally. There is nothing correct in the facsimiles. Oh, sorry, I'm getting carried away again. Here's Anubis. Now this is critical. Paul Osborne, shout out to you, my brother. Let's zoom in on that. The bigger zoom in, if we could real quick. We're almost done here. We're doing good. Check this out. That used to be the snout of Anubis. Now, Paul Osborne shared this with us on the message board and he's not kidding. When he saw this, he got it. Look at the disproportion of that human face. I mean, for one thing, they left the spike on top of the head. What the hell? Come on, seriously. That's not a human ear. That's silly. But notice the disproportion on the so called human nose. If you stuck your finger in your mouth and you're this guy, you're poking your own eye out, right? I mean, that's idiotic. But look at the outline of that snout. And then Osborne even says he thinks Headlock was mad that Joseph Smith had him hack. The snout. The snout was there originally and he was just about ready to print. And Joseph Smith had become a Freemason and the Masons had great respect for Anubis. And now that Joseph Smith was in Freemasonry and he was associating with the Masons and he recognized. He got caught up on Masonic lore and he recognized. Wait, I used Anubis in the Scepter of Power in facsimile number two. And the Masons love that. But man, if I called Anubis a mortal slave, they would catch my deception. Now that's a pretty cool theory. That's nice. So see how the teeth are formed? Formed above that lower arrow. Osborne speculates that Headlock was upset with Joseph for marring his piece of work into an obviously bad human head. So he put the teeth in there anyway just to spite Joseph Smith. That's a theory, but it's kind of interesting. We do know now. Now, Brent Metcalf argued with Paul Osborne on the Mormonism Live a few weeks ago about this hack snout. Osborne called him. I said, nope, nope, I'm sticking to my Guns. Metcalf called Robin Jensen and asked him from the historian's office that night. He called him and asked Robin Jensen, hey, what about that Anubis? Now, was that really hacked off? And Robert Robin Jensen said, yeah, yeah, we've. We've got the. We've got to play it. It was hacked off.

Reading Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Facsimile Details

John Dehlin [03:00:23] Off.

Kerry Shirts [03:00:23] All right, so Metcalf. And see, here's what it's all about. Metcalf got to the message board and apologized to Paul Osborne and acquiesced and said, you know what? This is all good. It all works out. We all can't be right. I mean, would that Dan Peterson and Lou Misley would take a clue from their own apostate brethren, quote, apostate who are telling much more historical truth than the apologists who are confusing the issues and just have a good discussion and dialogue and remain friends even though you disagree. And if you think differently. Now, I'm on a rant, but it's time for a clear, clarifying dialogue. The problem is the Mormon apologists are all wound up in interpreting their view of Mormonism and the scriptures and ancient history on such a personal level that it offends them. If you refute one of their doctrines and they take a personal. Yeah, it's nothing personal. We just want to be clear. Okay, okay, so enough preaching. Here we go. And this is, you know, what is the king's name? What is the king's name? In facsimile number three. Paul Osborne has asked that for 15 years and never received any answer from any Mormon apologist. Look, there's nine hieroglyphs, right? Joseph Smith specifically said, whose name is given in the characters above his head. There's a king's name in there. What is it? No one's answered because they can't. There is no king name in there, Joseph. Now, listen, Joseph Smith, you know, here's the other apologetic tactic. They say, wow. I mean, come on. Joseph Smith never claimed to know Egyptian.

Gerardo Sumano [03:02:33] Whoa.

Kerry Shirts [03:02:34] Full stop. I call facts only. Number three, right there, says, whose name is given in the characters above his head. You're telling me he doesn't know what those characters say? Look at the green as written above the hand. The Prince of. He calls Mott, the Lady of justice and Truth, the prince, a son of which Osborne just crucifies the apologetic arguments on that.

Gerardo Sumano [03:03:03] Because Joseph Smith is saying that this is a man. Because. Because. Right, but it's actually a woman.

Kerry Shirts [03:03:09] Yeah, and Rittner, of course, with John and RFM just destroyed this. But so was Paul Osborne. And now so is the backyard professor. So there you have it in the purple one. Zoom up to that a little bit. It's a little lark. Because I want to read this out loud so that we know one of the principal waiters, Shulem, as represented by the characters above his hand. Don't tell me Joseph Smith doesn't think he can't read Egyptian on the hieroglyphs. He wouldn't have worded it that way if he didn't think he knew I. Come on, it's obvious, right? So yes, you're welcome, Paul Osborne. I have now shouted it out to the heavens and across the earth. What is is the king's name. Here's this, here's the catch. If the apologists want to claim Joseph Smith got this by revelation, that magic word no longer saves the game any more than invoking that magic word priesthood or covenant path saves the game, doesn't it? Can't. Revelation does not help Joseph Smith. It damns God. Now that's crazy you guys, come on. But that's the fullest implication that the apologist will not go to. That's why the Catalyst theory is D O A. Let him bring it on. We've already defeated it. And if you're going to admit that then you really are bankrupt. There are no other theories to go with with, is there? None that I can see. Yeah, by looking at the evidence we get clear. And by getting clear we are able to better make a more actual good decision about what we'll think, about what will be about what we want to read next. Etc. Instead of pleasing someone else, we garnish our own minds with good evidence and good probability. Yeah, unfortunately it doesn't agree with a God revealing church. Sometimes it won't re agree with a robe toten pope church across the ocean, but the truth through the evidence really will set you free from the guilt and the shame of having to agree with what someone in authority above you tells you. You have to believe and you have to hide it. Or just be yourself and say, you know what, I'm gonna pull the Mr. Rogers on you. I like you just the way you you are. It doesn't matter what you believe, doesn't matter what you think. Yes, we can argue like crazy. You can beat me in an argument, then I can beat you in an argument. We're still friends. Let's go grill up a steak and have dinner together. Yeah baby. That is what it should be. Unfortunately it's not. So now I'm preaching. That's basically our presentation. Now would you what do you think, John? It's three hours and six minutes. What does your audience think? Have I put everybody to sleep tonight? It looks like I haven't.

John Dehlin [03:06:33] Oh, we've had a sustained audience of between two and 300 people, I think.

Kerry Shirts [03:06:38] Wow.

John Dehlin [03:06:39] I think there's a lot of people that really value what you're sharing. I think you're kind of a legend. Backyard professor. I think you're kind of. If you, if you've got like, if you've got Dan Vogel and Radio Free Mormon and, you know, and lots of other cool people hanging on every word, you must be doing something right.

Kerry Shirts [03:07:00] I just have really good friends. I'm so blessed to have really good friends. So, John Dehlin and Harry, we're gonna do some fun stuff. Would you guys like me to take about 10 or 15 minutes. Minutes. And show you the finest example I have ever discovered on the true comparison of apologetics versus actual scholarship?

John Dehlin [03:07:28] How could I turn that down?

Gerardo Sumano [03:07:30] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [03:07:31] What's that?

John Dehlin [03:07:31] How could we turn that down?

Kerry Shirts [03:07:34] Well, good, because this, this is why Gerardo called me. And I really can't find better example. So if you would please indulge me for just a few more minutes. I. I hope I haven't bored you to complete tears yet. Now we get to the good stuff. One of the emphasis I want to know is. Well, Joseph Smith is the problem. If only he had just shut up. He was too literal, right? But he couldn't because it was for him. I, I mean, seriously, come on. It was an ego. Have these thousand of people who just virtually genuflect and they build million dollar buildings for you out of real stone and they go cut the stone because they think you're the real deal. Come on. Pretty. That's pretty impressive, right?

John Dehlin [03:08:23] Yeah.

Examining Steve Smoot's Response to Dan Vogel

Kerry Shirts [03:08:24] So. So let. Let me get into this. Steve. Smooth. Now. Now I want to make this clear, you guys, seriously. I don't view myself as an enemy to anybody. I. I'm not here to antagonize beliefs, people. Personally, I'm not ad homining. I'm just asking. Can we not get a little more clear and can we not be just a little bit more truthful with the actual evidence? And can we not sit down together and have an actual. Just good discussion? Not in this. In the way of one of us has to win in order to be valuable. Oh, if you beat me in an argument, I'm gonna hate your guts. Come on. That school child stuff, that's playboy. That's playground antics in third grade. But I don't view Steve's I like Steve's movies. He's a great kid. He's a nice.

Gerardo Sumano [03:09:30] You've met him, right?

Kerry Shirts [03:09:32] I'm. I'm partially responsible for him being the PhD in Egyptology. I mean, it just like, I founded FAIR one time down at a FAIR conference in Provo, and I would. I think that's the weekend I videoed Blake Osler. I've had a few people tell me, dude, I mean, you just grabbed your camera, walked right up to him and said, blake Osler, come here. Stand in that corner. I want to interview you. And you turned on your camera, and he looked terrified. I didn't mean to, Blake. I apologize. But anyway, that night, I didn't have a place to stay. Steve Smooth invited me over and let me sleep at his place. And then we Talked, of course, 90% of the. The night, about his library and what he had read by the time he. I think I met him when he was only 16, and he had already read 10 times more than I had by that age. So I encouraged him, and sure enough, look at that kid go. Yes, you're getting a PhD. Good for you. However, I'm gonna ask you to be more cautious as a friend, not an enemy. Here is the problem with Steve Smooth's interview of Dan Vogel's book review, right?

Gerardo Sumano [03:10:54] So Steve Smooth.

Kerry Shirts [03:10:59] Review is in interpreter. Dan Peterson's interpreter. That is online and available. I believe it's for 2021.

Gerardo Sumano [03:11:09] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [03:11:09] So it's just brand new.

Gerardo Sumano [03:11:11] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [03:11:11] So I read his review, and then I read. I had already read Vogel's book, right? So I read Steve's review, and I go, no, no, that doesn't sound right. I reread Vogel's book. Then I reread Smooth review, and I go, no, no, no, wait a minute. Wait a minute. You have this problem. This problem. This problem. And then I talked to Dan on the phone, and he began to tell me, hey, here. Here's some issues, and here's what I think. And then he sent me a copy of a review he wrote, but he hasn't published yet. Maybe I shouldn't say that. I hope I'm not letting the cat out of the bag, Dan. I'm sorry if I am, but after all, this is my interview, pal. So. So I went ahead and I. I emailed him back and forth, and I said, dude, I. I see a lot of these things that you're seeing, too. And he very graciously thank you. He said, just use whatever you want. Well, by that time, I'd already decided I was going to do a video. But it was just nice to have the reinforcement, so I did utilize some of it. Here's the issue. We have a classic apologetic deflection taking place right in front of our eyes with this review. And here's why. He takes our eyes off of the only issue that matters. Smoot focuses on the vast amount of knowledge that it is necessary to find out if the Book of Abraham is authentic. Do you want to find the Book of Abraham authentic or not? Then you've got to get with it, people. You've got to do your homework and you have to know all about the ancient traditions and legends about Abraham in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Greek, Slavonic, and the studies of modern scholars on all aspects of the Book of Abraham, both Mormon and non Mormon alike. That's Hebrew. That's American Studies. That's Egyptian. That's the total package, baby. And it's going to suck you in by your arm. And it's a. A lifetime commitment. And you ain't gonna get it done in the first 15 years, but that's tough luck. Suck it up, cupcake, and get with it or shut up about the Book of Abraham because you're not qualified.

Gerardo Sumano [03:13:42] That's what he says,

Kerry Shirts [03:13:45] more or less. My response to that is, I don't need to do any of that. You want to know why? Because I don't give a damn about the Book of Abraham. I care about Joseph Smith's translating. That's what matters. So there's the first problem in his review, and he goes on like this for six first pages. And I'm going, when are you gonna get to the point, man? Right. So that's kind of a defect. Now the other thing that really bothered me, I mean, that wasn't that big of a deal. Carrie Wolstein did the same thing in his brand new LDS living that I did a special live session. Yeah, just a couple days ago. They all take that approach because, see, this is the intimidating approach. Because if they let. If they look directly at the evidence, just like Gerardo and I did tonight, and get better clarity, they. They won't have Joseph Smith as a true prophet. Well, they can't have that and get paid by byu. So they got to obfuscate. So they shift to the Book of Abraham. Nibley said, method doesn't matter. They've been stuck in nibbly shadow now for decades. I. I love the man. I read everything he wrote. I photocopied pretty damn much everything he quoted in the message of the Joseph Smith Papri. It filled up Two whole file cabinets of crap. I mean, scholarship stuff, articles, stuff of the stuff he was citing. But he blew it when he said, look, guys, Joseph Smith isn't on trial.

John Dehlin [03:15:42] The,

Kerry Shirts [03:15:44] the. Not the method, the method doesn't matter. The result. And his result, of course. Yeah, his translation method was hokey according to the world of conventional scholarship, but the result is that magnificent, magnificent book of Abraham. You've got magnificent doctrines, you have fabulous ideas of premortal existence, you've got phenomenal astronomy. I mean, my God, you've got lion couches and stuff. He completely mesmerized LDS apologetics right up to May 10, 2022. Yeah, that's amazing, because method is everything. It's not nothing. So they use this tactic to hide the fact that, well, we, we can't test Joseph Smith. It won't come out. Yeah, so let's go to the results. Anyway, anyway, sorry, I'm making. I'm hamming it up. I apologize. Okay, the second point, smooth. Mocks Vogel for saying Joseph Smith is in charge of the translation papers. Now this was amazing. He mocks down Vogel for saying Joseph Smith was in charge. Here again, they want to distance Joseph Smith from all this stuff we've been talking about tonight. They don't want Joseph Smith involved in the valuable discovery. And he signed his own name to it. The one document he said, I love this. They want to imagine William Phelps wrote it all with the grammar and stuff. So this is amazing. But he ignores all of Vogel's dictation evidence that he showed. In 90% of the chapter they go, wait a minute, that doesn't jive. So he won't touch it with a ten foot pole. Smoot is terrified of the dictation evidence. See, the apologists want each one to be involved in their own speculatory exercises, not Joseph Smith dictating to those guys while they copy the dictation. Joseph Smith can't possibly be the one translating. William Phelps knew more than Joseph Smith, therefore it's his project. That's what the apologists want you to think. Vogel makes hash of that. Well, Smoot mocks Vogel for that, but he won't discuss his dictation evidence from the grammar itself.

Gerardo Sumano [03:18:29] In other words, you're talking about the evidence on the documents. Sorry, on the documents that we show that proves that Joseph Smith was dictating.

Kerry Shirts [03:18:40] Absolutely.

Gerardo Sumano [03:18:41] And then the scribes were.

Kerry Shirts [03:18:44] I didn't have time to put all of that into this presentation. Yeah, Vogel has already in his wonderful video, so. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so the third point. Smoot never Mentions Cowdery's idea of the comprehensiveness of the Egyptian language. Very interesting. Nor how the five degree system of the grammar worked. He literally ignores Joseph Smith's method of translating. Yet this is the key evidence in Vogel's book. Now, it's supposed to be a book review, so why isn't he reviewing the book? Right. So the fourth. The fourth thing. Oh, and I misnumber that. I said five. What a dork. Oh, no, I didn't. Four. Smoot ignores the chronology that Vogel puts in the Joseph Smith history. The Alphabet was done in July 1835. As I honest to goodness think Gerardo and I have more than proof them tonight that cannot possibly be questioned. Unless, of course, you don't want Joseph Smith's word to be the final say. So. So it wasn't in October when astronomy was revealed. That's pretty important for the chronology. This fifth point. This was what caused me to do my video on this movie review. This sealed the deal. Not only did Smoot ignore 80 to 90% of Dan Vogel's first chapter in his book, Smoot Skips Chapter 2 and 3. I thought this was a Booker review. You can't skip whole chapters in a book review, can you? Now, here's the thing. The two chapters he skipped is about the valuable Discovery notebook and Princess Cotumen. And the grammar. Isn't that crazy? They just don't want to talk about it, man. They don't even want to try to refute it. They don't even want to discuss it. Yeah, all Smoot said was basically he said, well, William Phelps did it all

Gerardo Sumano [03:21:19] and then moved on.

Kerry Shirts [03:21:22] Are you kidding me, man? Anyway, don't let me get on a rant. Okay, here we go. John Gee now. Okay. A princess. Oh, no, no, no. The other. I'm sorry, The. The first. The chapter two is about Princess Khakuman, and the third chapter is about the pure language of Adam. Yeah, I misspoke. I apologize. Dan in the papyri. So John Gee has mockingly misused the valuable Discovery notebook, asking if the first 23 Egyptian characters of the Alphabet are the Book of Abraham. John G. You've been in that stupid chair of egyptology for. For 35 years. You've had access to the stuff, and you're asking about the Alphabet as the basis of the Book of Abraham. Wow. He doesn't have a clue what the stuff's about, and yet he's been in that chair for 35 years defending Joseph Smith Smith on the Book of Abraham. That's crazy, man. No one thinks this except the Mormon apologist Vogel's evidence damns the apologetic mockery. Six. Smoot mentions Rittner. Okay, okay. Let's give credit where credit is due. Smoot mentions Rittner. So he mentioned. Never engages. He never discusses. He only leaves him in a footnote so that he can add a footnote to his essay. He will not engage in anything Robert Ritter ever said, and he never has. Kind of odd. This isn't good enough. The thing that's crazy is we all know by now Rittner has completely destroyed every one of John Gee and Kerry Mostein's arguments. And yet Steve Smoot is defending the apologists John Gee and Kerry Molstein. He's not looking at the evidence. He is showing that his view is. Well, Dan Vogel, you're arguing against my two apologetic friends, so I'm going to defend them. He's being an apologist. That was where I stayed confused for 16 years. Once I started looking at the evidence, game over. So. So that's one of my arguments. And then I did mention the RFM John Dehlin interview with Robert Rittner for 13 hours. Not a peep out of Smooth. Not a peep. I have a hard time believing he's unaware of that. II Come on. He's got several articles, he's got several books and information on Rittner, all ignored. On why human sacrifice in Egypt is historically incorrect. The location of ER is wrong. Ulishim is a fantasy. Egyptian words such as shiny, ha, inish. Go on Das and crack Macra. All are fantasies. None of them are actual Egyptian words. Stephen Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Molstein, Michael Davis Rhodes. Really? Really? Come on. I don't even need a PhD to know this, you know. So, yeah, you're mistranslated. All three of them. And they are misconstructed. All three? Them of three of them. Crazy as it sounds, man, all are ignored by Steve Smoot and it's been in print for years. Are not Egyptian names. Stephen Smoot.

Gerardo Sumano [03:25:54] But he does. He doesn't even mention that. Right?

Kerry Shirts [03:25:57] He doesn't even bring me up. He doesn't even bring up crack. My car. That was one of the fixed stars. Okay, I'm almost done, you guys. Number seven, Smooth, focused. This is absolutely unacceptable. I actually got angry at this point in the review. The other stuff is kind of funny. This. This can't happen ever again, Steven Smoot, or your credibility is shot to hell. You seal your fate. So I'm telling you as a friend, don't you ever do this. Kind of review. Again, here's the problem. He focused on only one contemporary eyewitness that Vogel used to refute the long roll theory. Yet Vogel used seven witnesses to refute the long roll theory and Smoot simply copped out. That can't happen again, Steve. I so promise you. I'm saying that as a friend. You. Look, if you were to do this for your PhD, my friend, you ain't getting it. That. That kind of work can't happen. Now, if you think you're Gonna get your PhD and then pull this kind of stunt like you're your other fellow apologists, you're in trouble again because their credibility is zero. Except at byu and byu Hawaii and maybe byu, Rick's Idaho. But even Gerardo sees through that noise. So you really do have to strengthen this is unacceptable PhD. And I guarantee you John Gee and Carrie Mulstein did not do this kind of work under Robert Ritter and that lady Egyptologist down there in California. They didn't do this and get their PhD. I guarantee it. So why do they think once they get their Ph.D. they can then turn around and do stupid stuff like this?

The Long Roll Theory and Apologetic Arguments

Gerardo Sumano [03:28:26] So basically, just to reiterate what he's doing, he basically said. So Steven Smooth is saying, well, Dan Vogel says that the long stroll theory doesn't work. And he only mentions one of the eyewitnesses that Dan Vogel talks about and tries to debunk that one eyewitness. But the problem is that Dan Vogel mentioned seven.

Kerry Shirts [03:28:54] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:28:54] So he basically said, oh, I'm gonna debunk Dan Vogel's eyewitness. And case closed. There, there. There can be a long scroll, but you forgot.

Kerry Shirts [03:29:05] The crazy thing is. Yes, and, and here's what made me so mad is because if I had never read Dan's book and I was relying on this book review to get a feel for the book, I would have never known Vogel used seven different witnesses in a cross comparison. Cross checking, that really is the better approach. I promise. That's more realistic. I would have never known he did that. I would have said, Vogel, what a clown. Why'd you only use one witness? But that's not what he did.

Gerardo Sumano [03:29:40] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [03:29:41] See the problem? So anyway, number eight. And again. And this is the killer. This is the killer. Smoot misunderstands how the biblical provenance of the papyri does not save Joseph Smith. It absolutely destroys him because no one accepts it. You'll never see a general authority use that snake on legs talking to the woman as evidence for Eve's temptation in the garden. You'll never see it done. You'll never see the Godhead as defined by Oliver Cowdery in the papyri. You'll never see them use that papyri to define the deity. You just, you're never gonna do it. The general authorities is highly unlikely even know about Enoch's Pillar as described by Joseph Cephas. But you're never go. If they do learn about it, they're never going to use the papyri to damage. And you'll dang sure aren't going to see any Mormon apologist ever publish in an actual peer reviewed scholarly journal and use the papyri to defend a biblical exegesis. You haven't seen that yet and you never will. Even the Mormons don't believe it. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's crazy. Right? Okay, let's keep going. And this is a little harsh, sorry, but Stephen, did you even read Vogel's

John Dehlin [03:31:29] book

Kerry Shirts [03:31:32] before actually reviewing it? After reading through your review and realizing I was at the end now when I first saw this and I had did a video a few weeks before this video, you know, he translates Hebrew in the footnotes and he quotes some Egyptian and he's got 187 footnotes and he's using French and English and German. I mean, it's impressive. Had I been an apologist at the time, I would have been great. Green with envy. Well, having read Dan Vogel and then reading this book review and then rereading Dan Vogel and then rereading this book review, it's hard to believe that Smoot even bothered to read the book. I think what happened was Smoot saw that. Well, first he knew Dan Vogel's reputation as a biographer of Joseph Smith, and he knew that Vogel used actual real historical exegesis in order to inquire about what is most probably true and accurate in history. In other words, he does, oh, let's give Joe's brother Joseph a break. Dan Vogel says, oh, let's just look at the evidence. Right? That's what a historian does. My suspicion is Smoot knew this. And so what he did is he picked up the book and got to the chapters in Vogel's book where he was refuting Dan Peterson, John Gee, and William Hamblin's geocentric argument for the Book of Abraham. And that's where he started to criticize him because he pretty much skips everything else. So he's not that. In other words, you're. A book review is supposed to help you understand the author's book. What we understand is Smoot's apologetic feelings about the book of Abraham being actually ancient and authentic. And he doesn't like Dan Vogel for showing that Joseph Smith got the stuff from his contemporary people that he lived with in the neighborhood. So we wrote the book review. That is the essence of what apologetics is, as opposed to Vogel going through the evidence in the Alphabet, the papyri, the grammar, and analyzing how it affects the translation. That's the essence of scholarship. Now the other thing that really bothered me, Smoot knows. Smoot knows. Brian Hagled no longer accepts John Key's views. Don't buffalo man me, kiddo. So why on earth are you still using Howlet? Okay,

John Dehlin [03:34:46] crap.

Kerry Shirts [03:34:47] That's Paul Osborne told me a couple of months ago. He said, are you mad at Jeff Eny, backyard professor? I go, why would I be mad at Jeff Lindsay? You know who he is? He's a big Mormon apologetic just online. Well, he's now with interpreter with Dan Peterson. He's one of the main editors. I go, why would I be mad at him? Oh, he's still using your old Book of Abraham apologetic website and he's quoting your articles now. Yeah, baby. My reaction to that is, wow, this is going to be fun to refute my former apologetic self, because if you're really that damn desperate to quote his apologist, you've got bankruptcy, man. Hilarious.

John Dehlin [03:35:41] I love it.

Kerry Shirts [03:35:42] So that. That's my same impression with. With Smoot using Haglen when he knows you can't quote how it anymore, man. He repudiated that view. Right, So a little bit outdated. Apologetics confuses Vogel and scholarship clarifies. There's that word, clarification. We want to get clear, guys. Critics have never argued that nothing is missing with the papyri. Come on, you apologists, you've gotta come up to f freaking date. Honestly, man. Come on. That argument. We have never argued that. We have 100 of the papyri that Joseph Smith had. That's not the argument. It's a complete straw, man.

Gerardo Sumano [03:36:35] What's the argument? What's the argument? The critics.

Kerry Shirts [03:36:37] The argument isn't that there's nothing missing. The argument is what is missing is not the Book of Abraham. What is missing is not significant. We have the significant stuff. That's our argument.

Gerardo Sumano [03:36:55] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [03:36:56] So Gee's long roll theory is refuted by Cook and Smith. And, and this was interesting too, Chris Smith and I believe the name Roger Cook. Anyway, Cook and Smith. Smoot did not use the Egyptological of Rittner here. And in conjunction with the mathematical argument guy was soundly thumped and refuted. Smoot is just closed minded to keep accepting GHI's theory. He mentioned the argument. Oh well, mathematically they tried to show it. That's not. There's two prongs here. The mathematical, which you and I discussed tonight, Gerardo, and the Egyptological comparing all the other book of breedings that Robert Rittner presented in his book showing that even Egypt. Well, Klaus was bears at most two columns. And then Rittner comes along and extends that with some excellent more added scholarship of bringing in other book of Breathings that have been discovered since 1968 and said look, there's basically a standard here with the book of breathing. Now I don't need a PhD to know that I can look up Robert Rittner and read his English just fine. I can look up Quentin Barney's master's thesis. And the cool thing about that is the collection of the iconography from the Book of Breathings is absolutely sensational. We can look to our heart's content and compare everything. I don't need a PhD to do that and come to valid probable conclusions. Right. You see the gimmick they're throwing at us. And finally, and thank you for letting me rant. This is quite important to me because this is part of what helped me get a little bit more clear. And I know I can help others get a little more clear who are still confused. It's not a shame. I, I promise there's no shame in being confused. There's no shame in not knowing. There's shame in not trying. But there's no shame in ignorance. I mean, that's generally our lot. It's all good. So smooth thinking. Smooth thinking that he is refuting Vogel on the concept of revelation, is actually refuting his fellow Mormon apologist Terrell Givens, because Vogel was talking about Terrell Givens view. It wasn't Vogel's argument. And yet here's Smoot beating up on Vogel when Vogel was using Terrell Givens again. Again, the. I'm wondering if he actually read the book. You know, and I hate to bring it out that way because I like Steve Smith. I do. I'm. He hurried too much. He was too shallow. He, he was more interested. It appeared to me that he wanted to. He wanted to get another publication under his belt. You know, hey, I have published 1313 articles now. But it's like Dan Peterson, you know, they publish a new article every Friday, no matter what an interpreter, and 99 of it is obviously not peer reviewed. And the other 99 of it is obviously not that high a quality, but it's quantity that seems to be impressing the. The apologist. The. The outrageous review interview of Scott Gordon Affair with John Gee.

John Dehlin [03:41:14] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [03:41:15] And Vogel touches on this. The first question that he asks John is, why is everybody on the Internet saying you suck as a scholar? Wow, what a way to open the interview. You're going, oh, my God. And then G goes, oh, well, I don't know. You think I'm kidding? You gotta. Have you watched that?

Gerardo Sumano [03:41:43] Yeah.

Kerry Shirts [03:41:44] I mean, you go, seriously? And then he turns around and says, well, I've. I've written over 150 scholarly articles. Who cares if you've written 2,000 of them and none of them are valuable? What does the number have anything to do with it? Right. So that. That's part of my. My fear for Stephen Smoot is he. He is going too far into the path of the apologist because, of course, his best friends are apologists, and I get that. I understand that. Well, I. I can be a good friend too. I don't. See, that was the RFM interview with them or the debate with the Midnight Mormons. And that's what I found so sad about the whole debate is when the one kid said, well, you know, rfm, it's too bad you're not Mormon, because we really could have been really good friends. I mean, God, that still brings me the tears. Are you kidding me, man? That's your way of making a friend. Or not. That's horrible. That's so sad. I mean, my God, you're gonna let those idiots brainwash you into that attitude and psychology. Oh, well, if you were Mormon, we could have been good friends. Well, hell, I'd have been good friends with RFM anyway. I'll be good friends with. With anybody. That's the point. It's not about believing alike in order to be friends. That's, you know.

Gerardo Sumano [03:43:19] Yeah, yeah.

Kerry Shirts [03:43:20] Now I'm ratting. So anyway, yeah. Oh, my gosh, you guys, I've gone on and on and on. I honestly thought I could do this in 10 minutes. I'm sorry. I know it's getting late and you guys are probably saying, when is he gonna shut up?

John Dehlin [03:43:35] Dan Vogel and Radio Free Mormon are still tuning in. Oh.

Kerry Shirts [03:43:39] Oh, thank you. Well, there's Randy Jordan, too. Thanks, Randy.

John Dehlin [03:43:44] Dan Vogel writes. I hope John Geese non Mormon publications are better than his Mormon apologetic works.

Kerry Shirts [03:43:50] I can tell you right now.

John Dehlin [03:43:52] Don't hold your breath, brother Vogel.

Kerry Shirts [03:43:54] I. I know. I've read a few of them and they're pretty short. But he really doesn't publish anything of his Mormon defense stuff in any kind of scholarly article except the. In the invented Mormon publications because they're the only ones who will publish it. But, yeah, I, I agree with V. Anyway, yeah, I, I'm, I spilled my spill. I really sincerely hope that we got a little bit more clarified with the document and stuff. No, it wasn't glitz and glitter, but it was good.

John Dehlin [03:44:34] So the last goony writes, thank you Mormon stories for sharing my shelf breaker far and wide. The Book of Abraham is the smoking musket.

The Smoking Gun Evidence and Final Reflections

Kerry Shirts [03:44:43] The smoking musket. Yeah, buddy. That's the word. I wanted to use the same gun.

John Dehlin [03:44:51] Hey, backyard professor, what's it like to do your first Mormon stories interview and have it be called historic? Mosia says historic episode right here.

Kerry Shirts [03:45:00] Oh, my goodness. You, you are too gracious. I'm just another chump who wants clarity. But thank you. And I, I hope it, I hope if it isn't historic, I hope it's used for those who say, look, I, I give up. I, I've, I've run into these. They say, you know what? Just put that stuff away. It's too confusing. I'm not smart enough to. That's not true. I don't buy that anymore. Look, I'm not smart enough, but I figured it out.

John Dehlin [03:45:34] So I'm gonna make. Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna make this announcement. Dan Vogel writes Brent Mecca. For those of you who are interested in Book of Abraham stuff, Dan Vogel writes, Brent Meal and Dan will be talking about Problems of the 19th century Context of the Book of Abraham on May 18 on Mormonism Live with Radio Real. Yes, we're fans of all those humans and so we're, we're, yeah. Honored to promote.

Kerry Shirts [03:46:01] Oh, and tomorrow night, you guys, Bill Real and Radio Free Mormon and Mormonism Live is going to be talking about the kinder plates. You don't want to miss that. Yeah, that's good. Apparently there's some new information that's just come out, so I'm really looking forward to that.

John Dehlin [03:46:20] That's 6:10 or 6:15.

Kerry Shirts [03:46:23] Yeah, 6:20 Mountain Time.

John Dehlin [03:46:25] Okay. Okay.

Kerry Shirts [03:46:27] Anyway, so other.

John Dehlin [03:46:29] Joseph Kerry writes, if we asks if we can post the books and materials used tonight, I, we, we do publish show notes and time codes, you know, within a week or so of the episode airing. I've been taking notes of a lot of the articles and books and videos, but we may have her order or someone else clean those up a bit. But we'll do our best. We've got A list.

Kerry Shirts [03:46:52] And I will be happy to share what I've referenced also if you need help with it, because there's a few things I just kind of mentioned instead of.

Gerardo Sumano [03:47:00] Yeah. Awesome. Well, this has been great.

Kerry Shirts [03:47:05] Yeah, you two have been an absolute ball to be with all evening. This has been so much fun. I'm so glad you guys asked me to come on. Thank you so much, Gerardo. I. I can't even begin to say enough good about you and John. Again, I can't say enough good about you guys. So you have just. You rock. Don't let that swell your fat heads, but you rock. Hopefully I can come on again and share my actual story, if folks are interested in that. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:47:41] Absolutely.

Kerry Shirts [03:47:42] I'd love to come to your studio and do an in studio. That'd be fun. Out to dinner and all. Yeah, that'd be fun. Some of my famous smoked beef jerky. John, I'm bribing you here, pal.

John Dehlin [03:47:55] I'm in. I'm in.

Kerry Shirts [03:47:56] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:47:57] If our studio is good enough for Rodney Meldrum, it's good enough for you.

Kerry Shirts [03:48:01] Yeah, I. I've heard about that. I haven't watched it yet. I can. I apologize. But, yeah, I'll have to. Yeah, I actually saw a comment saying, boy, I'd love to see the BYP go head to head with Rodney Meldrum. That might make.

John Dehlin [03:48:15] Not on my channel.

Kerry Shirts [03:48:20] I'll see if I can get him over to mine.

John Dehlin [03:48:24] Daryl writes the.

Kerry Shirts [03:48:26] He's.

John Dehlin [03:48:26] He. He just wants some love. So, Daryl, down in Down Under Australia, we love you. Carrie, how do people follow your YouTube channel, your podcast? Where do they go?

Kerry Shirts [03:48:38] Oh, yeah, yeah, I was gonna. I'm on the Mormon Discussion Inc. It's the umbrella site that Bill Real has put together, who, incidentally, he used to be with Fair. Also. He was a little bit later than I was. But Fair, I think, loses more of US Apologist than any other organization. It's crazy. So, yeah, Mormon Discussion Inc. And my live session is on Sunday evenings at 6pm Mountain time in the United States. And. And I go for about an hour and a half. I try hard not to overdo it sometimes. I have gone on for two. We have some wonderful chat group audience, just like John does here. And so. But I do that and then the back. Where is that?

John Dehlin [03:49:27] Where is that?

Kerry Shirts [03:49:28] It's under. It's at Mormon Discussion Inc. And you get. You get there to the home page and there's across the. The center top, you can see a button that. That says Playlists. Just click on that and hit Backyard Professor. You can play all. Or you can hit Backyard professor and then select which. Which ones you want. And that includes all of my podcasts and videos. I do have an a channel, backyard professor.org that you can donate to if you would be so kind. I get a little bit more proceeds from that than I do from the other ways. But however you want to support Mormon Discussions, Inc. Not just me. Bill Real is putting a tremendous amount of brains and work into that, and he has got fabulous other podcasters except me. No, I'm kidding. That's too much false humility. I'm pretty damn good too. They say my audience likes me. And I mean Radio Free Mormons there, so. And. And he is also restarted doing his podcast as well. We have Scott R. Of Ramyuptum Ruminations. We have almost awakened another podcast. Excellent podcasts on social issues. So anyway, the umbrella site is. Is growing and doing better, but. But I'm definitely there and I am absolutely having a ball.

John Dehlin [03:51:05] That's Mormon. Mormon. I. I find it at mormondiscussions.org that's where I'm finding it.

Kerry Shirts [03:51:11] Okay. That's their mormondiscussion.org I believe, is their discussions plural.

John Dehlin [03:51:16] Mormondiscussions.org I'll provide a link. Okay. Perfect. Perfect.

Kerry Shirts [03:51:22] Yeah. Radio Free Mormon just said what I was thinking. Bill Rill is. Was freaking amazing. The man puts together Mormonism live shows, like. Absolutely. I mean, and then Radio Free Mormon does they alternate every week, one of them will take the one show and then next week and.

John Dehlin [03:51:38] All right, who's cooler, Bill Real or Radio Free Mormon? Pick one.

Kerry Shirts [03:51:43] I am.

John Dehlin [03:51:44] You're cooler.

Kerry Shirts [03:51:45] Cooler because I'm in the middle of a cold old spring. Who's.

John Dehlin [03:51:53] Who's. Who's more handsome, Radio Free Mormon or me?

Kerry Shirts [03:51:57] Oh, definitely you. I'm on your show, right? I mean, that Radio Free Mormon. Hey, the man,

John Dehlin [03:52:13] he would have hunted you down if you said me about that one.

Kerry Shirts [03:52:16] Oh, yeah, No, I. I mean, I got to stay on this good side. I spent two years trying to get on. Did I tell you that he tried to get me on his show for, like, four years, and I was being a redundant standoffish until he finally talked to me, and I wish I'd have done it four years ago. Hey, I get to meet wonderful people like you and Gerardo and all those guys at Mormon Discussions, Inc. And the. The chat group. I mean, my God. Well, all those names I listed at the first. It took me about a half an hour to say all those wonderful people. This is fantastic.

John Dehlin [03:52:53] So, Gerardo, you're Just such an asset to the Open Stories foundation into Mormon Stories. And you're a dear friend, and anytime you tell me something's important, I pay attention.

Kerry Shirts [03:53:07] Yeah, baby.

Gerardo Sumano [03:53:08] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [03:53:09] Yeah. Thanks for bringing this to us today.

Kerry Shirts [03:53:12] All right, you guys, I'm looking forward to doing this again. Thank you again so much.

John Dehlin [03:53:17] All right. Thanks, Carrie. Thanks, Gerardo. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Support. Support all the good things over at Mormon Discussions. Bill Rill, RFM backyard professor. Thanks for supporting Mormon Stories in the Open Stories foundation. And be good to each other and seek for truth and informed consent. And the rest is history, as they say.

Kerry Shirts [03:53:42] Real history, not the whitewashed.

John Dehlin [03:53:46] All right, you guys. Hey, I got. I like this. I like this last comment. We need to get rfm. John Dehlin, backyard professor, Dan Vogel, Bill Real and Brett Mac together. Gerardo, I have an idea.

Kerry Shirts [03:53:56] Could we do that, please?

John Dehlin [03:53:57] Let's host an annual Mormon Truth Clinic Claims Conference. That's not. It's focused on just history, truth claims, and evidences. And every year, we'll bring everyone together, and that's all. That's all that will be discussed.

Kerry Shirts [03:54:11] We have debates. We can be associated.

John Dehlin [03:54:15] We can have Q&As. What do you think, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [03:54:17] That sounds awesome.

John Dehlin [03:54:18] Will you come, Carrie?

Kerry Shirts [03:54:19] Let's make that happen. I will do everything I can to make that happen.

John Dehlin [03:54:23] All right. You guys heard that first here on Stories.

Kerry Shirts [03:54:26] I'm in. I am. I would love to.

John Dehlin [03:54:28] Maybe we'll do that this summer.

Gerardo Sumano [03:54:30] All right.

John Dehlin [03:54:31] All right, you guys take care, everybody. Thanks so much, guys.

Kerry Shirts [03:54:33] Thank you again.

John Dehlin [03:54:34] Soon on another episode of Mormon Stories. 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.