Welcome and Introduction to the Evening

RFM [00:00:00] Wow. Good evening, everybody. It's like everybody just left the building right there, right at the end. They just ran out.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] We can pretty much end with that intro ending.

Brent Metcalfe [00:00:09] Ovation.

RFM [00:00:09] Who are you? Strange man in black ball cap.

John Dehlin [00:00:13] Hi, everyone, it's John Dehlin. Hey, how are you?

RFM [00:00:16] John Dehlin.

John Dehlin [00:00:17] Hey. It's good to be back on Mormonism Live. It's been a hot minute.

RFM [00:00:23] It has, Bill. Good to see you too.

Bill Reel [00:00:28] Hey.

RFM [00:00:28] It's just the thing is I. I don't know what that means. I was going to ask what it means, but then I thought, I don't care enough to ask. So then I went to bed. That was what was going on upstairs.

Bill Reel [00:00:37] If there are any ill feelings in this circle.

Brent Metcalfe [00:00:41] How are you doing?

RFM [00:00:43] I'm doing good. And we have our very special guest star on tonight's show, Brent Metcalfe, LDS scholar and historian, whom everyone should know, and hopefully everyone will know who doesn't know after tonight's show.

Brent Metcalfe [00:01:00] Thank you.

Bill Reel [00:01:01] Yeah, I think they do know. Everybody should know.

Brent Metcalfe [00:01:04] Metcalfe.

RFM [00:01:05] Yes. So what I want to say is, first off, I don't know if I got through everything. I talked about today's date. It's Wednesday, December 11, 2024. Or is that in the first time we did it, that it wasn't recording? Is that it?

Bill Reel [00:01:20] It was.

RFM [00:01:20] We weren't live at that time. You had fooled me into thinking it was. So tonight is December 11, 2024. It is Wednesday. And by the way, I went back and I checked because we had some confusion about when our four year anniversary was on Mormonism Live.

Bill Reel [00:01:37] Bill.

RFM [00:01:38] It was, it looks like it aired on December 7th of 2020. So we are about four days past the four year anniversary. We are into our fifth year officially now at Mormonism Live.

Bill Reel [00:01:52] Four years is quite a bit of time to be running a program. I, I'm proud to have been doing that with you and we did a lot of work before that and other things. But that show has been a lot of fun.

RFM [00:02:03] Yes, it has. It has. And it's going to be a great time tonight. And it's going to be such a great time because John Dehlin is with us not only here, but also on his own platform. It's. It's an up and coming thing. What, what's it called? Bill, can you help me out? What's. It's more than something.

John Dehlin [00:02:21] It's called Word Radio.

Bill Reel [00:02:25] Are you thinking of the title of this episode, which is he's got how the Book of Mormon Was Created, or are you. Are you asking about Mormon Stories Podcast, which if you've forgotten that name, shame on you.

Bill Reel [00:02:37] Radio.

RFM [00:02:39] That was the whole stick. That was the basis for the entire stick skit there. Yes, Mormon Stories. So this is streaming out of Mormon Stories, Is that right, Mr. Delenn?

John Dehlin [00:02:48] Yeah, yeah. And welcome to all my viewers and listeners. If y' all don't know about Mormonism Live, you need to radio Free Mormon. And Bill Real, every, every Wednesday night at 6:20 Utah time, they do an amazing show in addition to the Mormon newscast every Monday at what, 6pm yeah. So I'm always happy to reintroduce my audience to these geniuses. They're often accompanied by Rebecca Biblioteca of Mormonish Podcast. But it's super fun to do collabs. And so I'm honored for this very important guest, for this truly epic historical heavyweight giant of a guest. I'm super honored to be joining with Mormonism Live today.

RFM [00:03:36] Well, what we're doing by pre arrangement is we're going to divide this up into basically two parts, running roughly an hour for each part.

Brent Metcalfe [00:03:47] Sorry, Bill.

RFM [00:03:51] What is it?

Brent Metcalfe [00:03:51] I know John too well, so I

Bill Reel [00:03:54] don't think Mormon Stories can do just two parts. I think this has to be a five part show.

John Dehlin [00:04:00] 12 hours.

RFM [00:04:03] Fast forward to junior high, just started junior high. And you can keep it within an hour, I think. Okay, just saying. No, but then the second half, which better be only an hour, that's the one I'm going to be in charge of mostly, is to talk with your. Well, first off, I'm sorry, you're going to be talking to him in the first half about his personal history with the church, butting heads and all that 30 years ago or so. And then the second half we're going to talk about the paper that he wrote for which he is most famous and deservedly so, about the Mosiah priority in the Book of Mormon translation process and the impact that has on so many things related to Book of Mormon studies.

Bill Reel [00:04:50] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:04:51] Amen and Amen.

RFM [00:04:55] And that would be handing it over to you, Mr. Delaney.

Introducing Brent Metcalfe to the Audience

John Dehlin [00:04:58] All right. All right. Well, thanks. Thanks again to RFM and Bill for having me. I'm so excited to reintroduce to the Mormon Stories audience and to the world, one of the most important scholars in the history of Mormon studies, as far as I'm concerned, is his name is Brett Metcalfe. And I've got some slides that I put together just to kind of, you know, support that introduction. But we're. But we're. And so kudos to Gerardo for This, this wonderful thumbnail. As always, first thing I want to do is just kind of highlight for me, definitely, I would say a top 10, maybe even a top five iconic classic Mormon stories episode. For those of you who have been longtime fans, longtime supporters of Mormon stories. About 10 years ago, a little over 10 years ago, I believe I, I, on my birthday, I released an episode with Brett Metcalfe. And it was on the 20th anniversary of his excommunication. It's episodes 493 through 494 and then 497 through 499B. But you know, we're not going to re, re. Introduce you all to the details of that story because that would be duplicative. But you know, in that episode we talk about, you know, Brett Metcalfe's early years in the church, his employment in the LDS Church, I believe is a security guard. He was friends with, with forger Mark Hoffman. He hot tubs with Mark Hoffman. If my memory is correct, it's true. He wrote a book that we're going to be featuring today called New Approaches to the Book of Mormon Explorations in Critical Methodology. That's going to be the focus of today. Of course, that led to his excommunication in 1994, a year after the September 6th. But then he also went on to do really important scholarship with the Book of Abraham. And I just, I want everyone to please consider going back and listening to that full episode. If you want the full story, we'll try and include a link in the show notes. Today we're going to be focusing specifically just because we have a limited time. I'll just add part of why I think this interview is so significant is because that was, that was back in the days Mormon Stories was all audio. Now, Brett, you may have preferred that we did video 10 years, but Brett, you're a handsome, you're a handsome guy. So we'll take your, we'll take your visuals of you in any context. But, but that episode was all audio. So for me, I'm particularly thrilled to have video of Brent, you know, a record of Brent on video, even though I know he's appeared on Mormonism Live before. But for me that's. So we're going to be focusing today on Brent's epic book, Prescient Book, Game Changing Book. As I mentioned, new approaches to the Book of Mormon. He was the editor. It was published by signature books in 1993. As I've already mentioned, both Brent and David Wright, who is a BYU professor and Ultimately a Brandeis professor and David Bachavoy's mentor. They were both fired from the church employment and excommunicated from the church in 1994. But this book is groundbreaking and if you just look at, if you just look at the contents or the table of contents, there's a really important preface or introduction by Brent that we're going to talk about. And then there's essays from people like Dan Vogel, David Wright and others. And then a very important chapter, 10th chapter, called the Priority of Mosiah, a prelude to Book of Mormon exegesis, which, which RFM is going to focus on in the second half of this episode, which is a groundbreaking episode in and of itself that RFM's been working on for a couple years. So we're thrilled that we're going to get that today. So anyway, that's just a brief introduction before we dive into discussing the book. Brent, I want to welcome you on this, this collaborative podcast and maybe give you a chance just to say a few introductory words and then we'll, we'll talk about your story a little bit.

Metcalfe's Background and Approach to the Book of Mormon

Brent Metcalfe [00:09:43] Well, it's a pleasure to be here and I feel like we're about to break out into a party or something because I know you all really well and, and I consider you my friends and it's a pleasure to be here with you. And we'll get into the nitty gritty of things in a few moments, I think.

John Dehlin [00:10:04] Okay. Well, Brent, I talked a tiny bit about, about your story, but maybe before, before we dive into the book, would you feel comfortable just giving maybe a five or ten minute overview of your story that, that lead, that kind of leads to the book?

Brent Metcalfe [00:10:22] Yeah. So, so basically I was born into a very devout LDS family. My, my mom was a convert, my dad was a convert. My mom actually converted my dad. And we are from New Zealand. We migrated to the US Kiwis, right? Yeah, exactly. And Pacquiao for, you know, the term that Mari's use for, for us that are not Mari. And so, so we moved to the States. My dad went through all kinds of church positions when I got back from my miss Worked for the LDS Church security and basically had a number of experiences there. I should say that my dad had already on my mission become the managing director of temples for the LDS Church. So the best way to think of that is he was basically the chief operating officer of all LDS temples throughout the world. And so, so I, I, I was devout working for LDS Church security. And then I had the misfortune of writing an article for the 7th East Press and tell people what that was. Okay, so the 7th East Press was an off campus newspaper at BYU and it was basically BYU students and professors who contributed to this and I was invited to come along for the ride, basically. And so I published a number of things that were actually fairly apologetic. And as a result of that, I got called in by, you know, my, my church employers, the director of security, the director of human resources and so on. And I committed to following what they asked me to do, which was basically to break off ties with all of this. And so I did. But evidently Markey Peterson wasn't satisfied with that. And so when he found out that I was still employed with the church, he just basically sent down the word saying he needs to be terminated. And so I was, I was fired from church employment.

John Dehlin [00:12:53] Were you a student, Were you a student at BYU at the time?

Brent Metcalfe [00:12:56] No.

John Dehlin [00:12:56] Okay.

Brent Metcalfe [00:12:57] No, I was just a friend of the people who were producing the newspaper and they said, well, you know about this stuff, so why don't you write an article on it? And I did. And like I said, most of the stuff I produced was fairly apologetic, but that wasn't good enough because it was the paper itself that had committed the crime. And so I reaped the rewards of that, which was basically being terminated from employment. And so after that, you know, I'm just going to push way ahead now. Went through my life and there was a stake president who tried to excommunicate me at one point. And because my dad was managing director of temples at the time, that was basically shut down.

John Dehlin [00:13:48] Brett, can I ask you, can I ask you a question?

Brent Metcalfe [00:13:50] Yeah, please.

John Dehlin [00:13:51] Okay, so. So you leave church employment and you know, you enter, didn't you kind of enter the field of Mormon studies kind of full time?

Brent Metcalfe [00:14:01] Yeah, because, you know, essentially what had happened is that I've been doing some serious research ever since I got off my mission in 1979 and then, you know, visiting the archives regularly, got hired by church security. And so in my off hours, I spent my time in the church historical department. And after that I, you know, how can I put it? Everything came down on me at one time and it was so unexpected. And so Steve Christensen, who I had never met before, stepped in. John Kenny. I'm sorry, Scott Kenny. Thank you. Scott Kenny had, had met me in the historical department and said, has Steve Christensen contacted you yet? And I had no idea. Lives. And so I just.

John Dehlin [00:15:04] For our viewers and listeners, Scott Kenny was, was one of the co founders of, of Sunstone along with Peggy Fletcher Stack. And Steve Christensen was the son of Matt Christensen, who is Mr. Mack, you know, the. The Mr. Of Mr. Mac clothing store. And also Mr. Mack, who was the head of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for a long time. Steve Christensen was his son, right?

Brent Metcalfe [00:15:27] Yeah. And. And Scott Kenny was actually the publisher for Signature Books. And so he said, have you talked to Steve Christensen? I said, no, I never heard from him. So Steve hired me to come and do research for him because, as he said, somebody needs to atone for what the church has done to you. And so I went and started working for him, and we were building up his library, which was already massive at the time. And he basically gave me the job of reading the books that we were getting in, which were coming in dozens at a time. And he basically said, I want you to read these and then report to me on what they say. So in other words, he didn't have time to read all of them, but he wanted to get a solid synopsis on what all these books were saying that he was getting. And so that's what I did for a few years. And then Steve tried to hire me to do work on the Book of Abraham with Ed Ashman. That ended up getting closed out because the co founder, Gary Sheets, who was Steve's business partner at the time, got cold feet. And so as a result, that's when I got hired by Mark Hoffman to do genealogical research for him to find out where, you know, rare volumes of the Book of Mormon may be coming from. Because people may not know that there are rare volumes of the Book of Mormon in other languages that cost more money and go for more money than the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon. That's how rare some of these volumes are. And so that's what I was doing for him. And then came the whole Salamander letter. Explosive events. And. And I can only turn people to. If you want to know more about this, go back to the episodes that John was talking about, and if you have access to Netflix, go and watch Murder among the Mormons and you'll find out much more about what happened.

The Hofmann Bombings and Their Aftermath

John Dehlin [00:17:50] Both Gary and Steve were killed by Mark, right?

Brent Metcalfe [00:17:53] No, it was Steve and Gary's wife.

John Dehlin [00:17:56] Oh, that's right. Gary's wife.

Brent Metcalfe [00:17:57] Right. And so. And then the following day, after he had bombed them, he actually made a mistake, I think, and bombed him. Bombed himself in his own car as he was trying to move the bomb that I think was meant probably, almost certainly for Brent Ashworth, though another Brent, namely me, also had a lunch appointment with them that day. I went out to his home to try and find him and basically he stood me up. And the next thing I knew after driving into signature books that day is I found out that Mark's car had blown apart.

John Dehlin [00:18:43] And I think, I remember from our interview that it was possible, it was within the realm of possibility that you could have been a target.

Brent Metcalfe [00:18:51] Absolutely. I, I was, I was taken into protective custody as were my, my wife at the time. I, I remember that, that we went home that day and you know, the police went with us. They did a complete sweep, bomb sweep of our car. They came into the place where we were living at the time, did a complete bomb sweep through the entire place. I mean, nobody really knew what was going on at that point. It was pretty horrifying.

John Dehlin [00:19:28] So. Oh, we're.

Brent Metcalfe [00:19:31] No, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:19:32] So I guess one quick question. How in the world could you continue in Mormon studies after. After that traumatic experience? Like I, I wonder if you had pause to even continue doing Mormon studies once those bombs went off and friends died, you know.

RFM [00:19:50] Right.

Brent Metcalfe [00:19:51] I, I understand what you're saying. And I think for me my interest in Mormonism was never tied to any person that I knew. It was an experience that I had had from the time I was on my mission where I was already doing research and reading some of Nibley's works. I read some of the Tanner's works at the time and, and for me it was all about the fascination and being enthralled in discovering new things and looking at historical documents. And quite frankly, that's what's kept me going up until today because there have been many of many times that I could have walked away from all of this, ranging from the bombings to my excommunication and so on. But, but that's never what drove my interest. I was fascinated with the documents themselves and trying to understand them. And so that was my driving force the ever time, all the time. In fact, I've said to people before, if you have never experienced looking at an original document and realizing that you have found something that nobody has seen before, you will never understand my interest because that's what drives me. And, and I understand that, that it's completely a self satisfaction in many ways.

Bill Reel [00:21:27] You.

Brent Metcalfe [00:21:28] But it's also the satisfaction of sharing it with others.

John Dehlin [00:21:33] Makes total sense. So, okay, so you go on to work on this book, new approaches to the Book of Mormon and, and I guess I just, I just. Maybe you can share with us kind of what led to the writing of this book. Like as they go back and read it. Now, most, most podcasters don't have the depth of knowledge. And I'm even, I'm even potentially daring to say those who are on this panel right now don't even, don't even grasp the scholarship that went into this book that was published in 93, let alone does the Mormon population today even start to understand what's in this book. So for me, it's a truly groundbreaking book. Can you. But, but, but back in 93, just the boldness of this book is kind of mind blowing. And we're going to jump into just a few of the pages of the book in a second. But, but can you share with us maybe the milieu, the context that led to you wanting to write this book?

Returning to Mormon Studies After the Bombings

Brent Metcalfe [00:22:36] Well, well, one of the things in particular centered on my chapter that's in the book, and that is that I had been going through and doing these numerical counts of the evolution of words and Joseph Smith's language in the Book of Mormon. And that was first suggested to me by Ed Ashman as well as Scott Kenney. Via, via Ed Ashman. They said, you should go back and look at the Book of Mormon in terms of the order in which it was dictated. Now, I had already believed that it was dictated from first from Mosiah on and then the replacement text next. But, but when I started looking at that, I noticed some pretty phenomenal things which we can get into a little bit later. The evolution of the word choices of Joseph Smith and so on. And that, that kind of drove me forward. And then I started meeting people like DM Metheny, who came to one of my Sunstone presentations that I gave. It was a documentary analysis of the self episode where I went through all the different manuscripts related to, to the discovery of Zelf. And it was at that point I met her. I started talking to other people. Tony Hutchinson, Melody Charles, Dan Vogel, of course, who was already a good friend, Mark Thomas, David Wright, you know, all of us came together and said, yeah, let's get this together and show LDS folks what the Book of Mormon looks like if we take the biblical methodology of analysis and then apply that to the Book of Mormon. And that was kind of our goal. And so that's what we came up with. 1993, it gets published. And yeah, it was, how can I put it, an earthquake moment

John Dehlin [00:24:53] for sure. So, so just, just in your personal life, that means there must have been a point where in your mind you went, oh, crap, this book isn't historical. Can you talk us through your arrival at that. When was that and what, what year approximately was that?

Brent Metcalfe [00:25:11] It was very early because I. I remember even when I was working for church security. And you have to keep in mind that I was forced to. To resign from church security in 1983. And so it was right prior to that that I had been reading numerous autobio, autobiography, I'm sorry, autobiographies and so on at BYU, as well as reading numerous early 19th century works. And I started seeing so many parallels in the language, in the, you know, in the structure, the discourse and everything else to the Book of Mormon that at the time, being a believer, I kind of equated it to the Book of Job in the Old Testament and saying, well, maybe God had taken Joseph Smith. And Joseph Smith had an experience that he tried to recreate and he created the Book of Mormon as a result of it. But the book basically was as historical as. As Job was. And so that was my first initial thoughts as a believer. Right. I was trying to figure out, how do I put this in a context of belief? And it was after that that I started thinking about it more and more, especially after the whole episode with the Salamander Letter, I started thinking about it more and more in terms of a secular view of the Book of Mormon. But that never detracted from my interest in the Book of Mormon because I felt like even if this book weren't ancient, I would still consider it an amazing artifact of early American religion. And not only that, I saw it, this whole, you know, enterprise of Joseph Smith as a microcosm of religious experience and religious beginnings. And so that's kind of how I viewed it. And then by the time I wrote the book, I really didn't believe it was historical at all. And. But I still believed that it was a volume worthy of consideration, that this was my faith heritage that I had grown up in, and I wasn't going to abandon my academic interest in it.

Bill Reel [00:28:01] Right.

Brent Metcalfe [00:28:01] I wanted to push it forward, and that's what I did.

RFM [00:28:05] Hey, Brent, can I ask you a question?

Brent Metcalfe [00:28:07] Yeah, please.

RFM [00:28:08] Going back a little bit, it sounded to me like the way you were saying your story was that the final straw on your faith in Mormonism was what happened with the Salamander Letter. What was it about that. What was it about that incident that made it the last straw for your faith?

Brent Metcalfe [00:28:27] And actually, I. I need to give, I guess, a broader context, and I think I may have even covered a lot of this in my first interview with John, but what it brought me to was looking at the world that I lived in and trying to find God, any, any model of God from any religion that I saw in the world. And I remember going with my now ex wife to the. The temple to do some ceilings and we had fasted and prayed, you know, gone. There was with a specific intent, not looking for a sign, but just looking for a feeling that this is, you know, that God has a hand in all of this. And I remember us coming out from the Jordan River Temple that night and sitting in the car and looking at each other and I said I didn't feel anything. And she looked at me and said, neither did I. And for me, my problem wasn't with Mormon history. It was with where is God in

RFM [00:29:51] all of this current events.

Brent Metcalfe [00:29:54] Exactly. How, how can I figure out my relationship to God if I can't even find God in the world? And you know, I, I know I mentioned this in my first interview with John, but I still remember, I guess, what my born again experience was with disconfirmation, with, With God, because the one thing I could never say in my mind is that there is no God. And I remember driving down South Temple and passing the Catholic Catholic Cathedral there and just finally saying in my head for the first time, there is no God and it is us that we all depend on and we need to make this right.

RFM [00:30:50] And

Brent Metcalfe [00:30:52] yeah, it was, it was an overwhelming feeling. And like I said, it's my born again experience into agnosticism. And it was profound.

John Dehlin [00:31:06] And Brett, I'll never forget, in my very first Sunstone in 2004, which I think was your 10th anniversary celebration. Not celebration, but reflections on what happened in 94.

Brent Metcalfe [00:31:18] Right.

John Dehlin [00:31:19] I. You told that story about God dying for you during the Hoffman bombings. Let me. Because we kind of teased it in the thumbnail. I want to jump right to your book, but before we do, you know, we titled this just for clickbait. How the Book of Mormon was Created. Do you have a theory of, of how the Book of Mormon was created? Spalding sole authorship? You know, was Rigden involved? Like, did you ever come up with a kind of a cogent theory on, on, you know, how the book was created?

Joseph Smith as Author of the Book of Mormon

Brent Metcalfe [00:31:55] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:31:56] Well, give us your, give us your summary of it. Yeah, that'll be worth its time in gold.

Brent Metcalfe [00:32:01] So, so Joseph Smith, like, like I, I've said before, I cannot posit anyone, whether divine or this worldly, other than Joseph Smith as the author. And there are many reasons for that, aside from autobiographical, you know, influence and so on, that you can read, especially in Mormon and in First Nephi. I can't imagine anyone else as being an author of this book. And part of that is because of my essay. When you read through and see all the implications of what's in my essay, I cannot see anyone. I don't care whether it's Spalding Rigdon, you name it. All the Dartmouth scholars that are bringing to bear on Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon. No. Now that's not to say that Joseph Smith wasn't influenced by those around him. A good example is, is Joseph Smith's reference to the infinite atonement in the Book of Mormon. Oliver Cowdery is one of his scribes. Well, guess who uses the. The term infinite atonement far more than Joseph Smith ever did. Oliver Cowdery. And so I'm not saying that he wasn't influenced by those around him. I'm just saying that the notion that he is plagiarizing from some other work is completely incomprehensible with me knowing the data of what's in the book.

John Dehlin [00:33:48] Okay, that makes sense. And so then if you, if somebody were to say, oh, you know, the strawman that, that, that apologists often use, it was written in a matter of weeks or a couple short months, there's no way an uneducated farm boy could have written it, you know, plus he was, he was dictating it. Plus the scribes all believed it. So it has to be a miracle book from God, because there's no way an uneducated farm boy could have done it in that short amount of time with all these people, including Emma, his wife, believing that it was from God. Do you have anything else to say about how he could have done it in response to those straw men? Basically?

Brent Metcalfe [00:34:34] Absolutely. I mean, if you look at Lucy Max Smith's history, Joseph Smith told tales about the ancient Americas, in fact, in Lucy's words, as if he had lived his whole life among them. And these were tales that he was telling before he ever started working on the Book of Mormon. And so, yeah, I think that there is strong evidence that he was creative, he was talented. You look at things that he produced in the, the 1829, they had nothing to do with the Book of Mormon. His revelations, letters that were being composed. And then the publication of the Book of Mormon goes out. Then he starts working on the new translation of the Bible, and you look at what he did to Genesis with the Book of Enoch material and all of this. He was absolutely a gifted storyteller, and that was what he needed to produce this book.

John Dehlin [00:35:48] So, so incredible storyteller, lots of years to, to develop these stories. Obviously, he used his own personal experiences as inspiration, his own family and experiences. Obviously, he uses a lot of the Old Testament, Isaiah. He uses a lot of the New Testament.

Brent Metcalfe [00:36:06] Right.

John Dehlin [00:36:07] And then there's all the military stuff and, and I guess the Masonic stuff. Would you say that Grant Palmer's book, an insider's view, does a pretty good job of summarizing kind of how you, how you see he likely kind of the sources from which he. He mainly drew or not?

Brent Metcalfe [00:36:29] Well, well, Grant and I were, were dear friends, you know, before he passed. And I remember back in the, the 1980s in particular, I mean, there is a period of time where I don't know if a night went by without Grant calling me and we would go over this stuff in detail. And so there are several things that are really important in, in what Grant wrote. The, the chapter that I would probably have the most difficulty with is his work on the golden pot that's in there. In fact, I, well, Dan Vogel and I both reviewed the book for Signature Books before publication, and we both recommended that that chapter be removed and independently. So we had not even discussed it between ourselves. And I said, I think that this could do more harm to Grant's book than help it. But the problem was that Grant felt that that was one of the most unique contributions that he had to the book. And so Signature, you know, deferred to him and decided, yeah, we're, we're going to go with this. And, and that's fine. I mean, that's, that's their prerogative. But I, I think if I had to point out a weakness in Grant's book, it would be that chapter. If I would point out a strength in Grant's book, it would be everything else that he wrote.

John Dehlin [00:38:14] Yeah, really, we just need good storytellers to kind of put together the story of how the book was created. I still, I still. If I could wave a magic wand, Brent, I'd have you write a book on, just for the layperson, how the Book of Mormon was, was created. Brent's opinion. But anyway, okay, thank you for sharing that, Brent. Let me just, let me just. If I can share with everyone just a little bit from this book, just to give people a sampling. So this is from chapter one of Brent's book. The, the chapter is. It's called the Word of God is Enough. The Book of Mormon is 19th century scripture. I just want everybody to imagine this book dropping in 1993. This is the same year, the September 6th. I'll get excommunicated. You know, this is from a lot of former or current BYU professors and or church employees. Just imagine what it would be like for this book to drop really quickly. Who in the heck is Anthony Hutchinson? That's a name I haven't thought of outside the context of this book.

Brent Metcalfe [00:39:22] Well, he's actually a dear friend of mine. Anthony was a PhD candidate at the Catholic University of America. And he ended up. Anthony has a total history. Anthony ended up becoming an Episcopal minister, if I remember correctly. He basically left his. Left the church on his own accord. And if I remember correctly, he is no longer a pastor or priest. And after his wife sadly passed away, Tony came out as a gay man and now he's living with his husband, I believe, I want to say, in Oregon. And he's one of the kindest people you could ever meet and also one of the most intelligent people you could ever meet. And so everybody in that book now has a history beyond that book. And Tony is such an amazing person, intellectual and so empathetic and kind to others.

John Dehlin [00:40:50] You know, it would be amazing to do a series of episodes with the living authors of this book. That. That would be super fun. Let me just. I'm just going to read for our viewers and listeners a sample of what this book, what this book says. So please forgive me. And Brett, you can stop me and comment, but this is like the very first sentence of this book. Chapter one. Anthony Hutchinson. My thesis is simple. I will state it as directly as possible for the sake of understanding and discussion. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints should confess in faith that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. But also abandoned claims that is a historical record of the ancient peoples of the Americas

Brent Metcalfe [00:41:43] that. Well, there you go. I mean, I remember. I remember when some of the first reviews from FARMS at the time came out about it. I think that Lou Midgley described this as, up to this point, the most. How can I put it, the most technical and, you know, corrosive attack on the Book of Mormon to date in the history of Mormonism. So, yeah, I. I could see that. And, you know, I knew what all the authors were going to write. I was the one editing the book.

Bill Reel [00:42:27] And

Brent Metcalfe [00:42:29] I'm glad that they were honest with how they felt.

John Dehlin [00:42:35] Yeah, honest and direct.

Brent Metcalfe [00:42:38] Exactly. And that was Tony. I mean, Tony was not afraid of confronting these issues. And, you know, I remember spending hours with David Wright going through the material he was working on, and it was brilliant. I mean, David Wright's exegesis on Alma is Some of the best material that we've ever had. And to this day, and so, you know, I think all of the authors produced amazing works. I'm proud of the book. It led to my excommunication. I'm still proud of the book.

John Dehlin [00:43:22] Absolutely. If it's okay, I'm just going to read a little bit more, please. So it says we should accept that it is a work of scripture inspired by God in the same way that the Bible is inspired, but one that has at its human author as its human Authority, Joseph Smith Jr. The Book of Mormon should be seen as authoritative scripture, part of a larger canon, reliable in conveying the truth of the restored gospel when read and used in faith and repentance and doctrinally construed in light of all scripture and revelation, past, present and future. In terms of general interpretation of the book's themes and stories, our overall approach should not be substantially changed by abandoning insistence on the book's ancient origin. What would be changed, though, is our general use of the book as an apologetic argument or a sign of the uniqueness of Mormonism and warrant of its authority and truthfulness. So what I'm seeing here is the classic thing that I did, that Dan Witherspoon did, that Taro Givens has tried to do Bushman others. It's basically to say, hey, it may not be what we thought it was, but it could still be inspired scripture. So you're sort of doing the inspired syncretist bricolage, you know, given sort of argumentation. You, Brett Metcalfe, along with your co authors, are doing that in the early 90s.

Brent Metcalfe [00:44:50] Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:44:52] And, and you're basically saying, don't throw, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Book of Mormon has spiritual value. It's just unfortunately not historical. But don't let that affect the Mormon Church or anyone's actual spiritual faith. Right, right, right.

Brent Metcalfe [00:45:07] I. I mean, even if you look at the last paragraph of, of my chapter in the book, one of the things that I'm trying to get over is that, you know, basically it. The issue is no longer whether or not Joseph Smith was, you know, influenced the Book of Mormon. The question is how much. And then I go on to say, basically that what this means is, is that Joseph Smith is no longer, you know, a marionette being puppeted by. By God or, or being slavish to his, you know, sources. It means that Joseph Smith plays an incredibly important role in, and the actual composition of the Book of Mormon. And so I wasn't trying to Discount belief. I was just trying to say consider this, you know, because what I'm looking at here and what I'm presenting you with does not exclude Joseph Smith as being an active participant author in the creation of the Book of Mormon. And so I, I think that that comes through in a number of the chapters. Stan Larsen's chapter on the Sermon on the Mount again, Stan David Wright's chapter on Melchizedek being mentioned in, in Alma and how that relates to the Book of Hebrews in the New Testament. And so. Yeah, that's your question stuff.

RFM [00:46:50] Yes, please, your question. Out of all the essays in this book, which one caused the most controversy?

Key Scholarly Works on Book of Mormon Criticism

John Dehlin [00:46:57] So I've got them here, I've got them here. Listed the 10 chapters.

Brent Metcalfe [00:47:00] Yeah, please go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:47:02] No, no, no. Okay, yeah, so. And you can make a comment on any one. In fact, I was going to ask him rfm, if it's okay if I can add this as a framing. I'll read each one and if you could just summarize in a couple sentences what they did. So the word of God is enough. The Book of Mormon is 19th century scripture. That's Anthony Hutchinson. What's that one about?

Brent Metcalfe [00:47:23] Okay, so one of the things that he brings up in that chapter is the notion of the Book of Mormon or the Bible as being idolatry. Where we worship these books so much that we lose sight of what our beliefs are and what our theology is and how we interact with our fellow man. And so that was kind of a core part of his presentation. And he also gave samples of where the Book of Mormon has certain things in it that there's no way that they could have come from an ancient setting, that they would have come from Joseph Smith's environment.

John Dehlin [00:48:07] Love it. And a huge shout out to Tyrese for that super chat donation. We really appreciate it. Okay, we have Dan Vogel in the chat. Dan Vogel's a legend. His chapter is chapter two, and it's anti universalist rhetoric in the Book of Mormon. What's. What's that about? I know, self explanatory, but.

Brent Metcalfe [00:48:25] Okay, so that, that's a very essential thing to understand because sometimes people will misconstrue that. Are you saying that there's universalism in the Book of Mormon? And it's like. No, that's not what we're saying. What we're saying is, is that there's anti universalist rhetoric in the Book of Mormon which is coming from Joseph Smith's environment. In other words, it's a complete caricature of what universalism was right. Because all he's doing is he's adapting this anti universalistic rhetoric and then giving it an incarnation as if people actually believe that in real life. But they didn't. The universalists didn't believe that stuff. It's. It's basically embodying the rhetoric into actual humans. And that's not the case in the early 19th century. Love it.

John Dehlin [00:49:27] All right in here for just a second, Bill, please.

Bill Reel [00:49:30] This idea of all of you pushing this unallowed boundary of claiming that the book came out of Joseph Smith's own head in milieu, in today's parlance, in today's world. You take Blake Osler and the expansion theory and he's essentially doing the same thing, but from the inside. And it's such a strange thing to watch people in the past get in trouble for the very things that apologists can do today. And it's sort of blows my mind. You've got. We were talking about before the, the, the show started, Ben Spackman, and he says the church is in a period of unlearning. We gotta deal with the fact that lots of things that we thought were doctrine are just false traditions and we gotta unwind all of that. When you look at what people have gotten in trouble for all throughout the church. Fast forward 50 years. Take Lowry Nelson, Dr. Lowry Nelson and his point of view on the race and priesthood band. Today, he could have no problem saying what he said it Mormons become ex Mormons by saying the very thing that 20 years, 30, 40 years later will be perfectly allowed.

Brent Metcalfe [00:50:36] Exactly. I mean, you look at Charlie Harwell's book, this is my doctrine. In that book he was a BYU professor. In that book he lays out these are the modern things in Joseph Smith's era that were going on. And then goes and looks at ancient things and says basically these resemble more like Joseph Smith's milieu. And so. Yeah, and, and he's had no problems. You know, Dan McClellan, my friend, who I don't want to jeopardize anything with him, but he is saying things that go far beyond what we ever said in that volume. But you know, today is a different day. You know, scholarship is emerging with the Joseph Smith Papers project and we're in a different era for sure. My, my thinking is, is if new approaches were to come out today, none of us would have been excommunicated or disciplined or called in by any of our leaders.

John Dehlin [00:51:50] No way. There's no way. No. You would added to the Maxwell Institute.

Brent Metcalfe [00:51:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:56] I mean, as residents of The Maxwell Institute.

Brent Metcalfe [00:51:59] Yeah, it's. It's a different world today for sure.

John Dehlin [00:52:04] Okay, really quickly, Mark Thomas, A rhetorical approach to the Book of Mormon. Rediscovery Nephite, sacramental language.

RFM [00:52:12] Before you say, I'm so sorry, I gotta interrupt, because this idea came to me and I want to say it. Okay, yeah, it's a different world today, Brent, but in large measure, it's a different world today because of you.

John Dehlin [00:52:26] Absolutely. Amen.

Brent Metcalfe [00:52:28] Thank you. I. I appreciate that. And. And, you know, and I. I don't want to just focus on me. I mean, there have been so many trailblazers that along with me during that time period. You know, we're kind of laying this. This path. We just never knew what would happen next. And today, like I said, we're in a different world.

John Dehlin [00:52:55] Thanks to you and others of your contemporaries.

Brent Metcalfe [00:52:58] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:53:00] Well said. Rfm. Okay. Rhetorical approach to the Book of Mormon. Rediscovery Nephite sacramental language. Mark Thomas.

Brent Metcalfe [00:53:09] Yeah, Mark. Mark Thomas. I've always considered a gifted scholar on the Book of Mormon, especially when it comes to 19th century relationships to the Book of Mormon. And that's basically what he's going through there, is. He's revisiting it in terms of 19th century thought. And I. I thought his chapter was actually quite profound.

John Dehlin [00:53:38] Let's see, there's a Book of Mormon Christology. Is that just. Is that just. What is that?

Brent Metcalfe [00:53:47] So, so the Book of Mormon Christology that that Melody is investigating is. He's looking. She's looking at what are the themes that we see in the Book of Mormon that would basically create a Christology. So is there one God? Is there two gods? Are there three gods and that type of thing, looking at the Trinity and how it influenced the Book of Mormon, and that's essentially what her paper is on. And again, going back to the themes going back to Joseph Smith's milieu, this is what we're looking at, is that the milieu of his time matches the Book of Mormon better than what we would expect from an ancient environment, especially when it comes to having Christology in the Book of Mormon that goes back to Old Testament times.

John Dehlin [00:54:46] So, yeah, a backyard professor saying that that chapter really bugged Robert Millett, the Dean of Religion at byu. Is that what you remember?

Brent Metcalfe [00:54:54] No doubt.

John Dehlin [00:54:55] Okay.

Brent Metcalfe [00:54:56] I mean, this is one. This is one of his hobby horses.

John Dehlin [00:54:59] So, of course, thanks for that contribution, backyard professor. Okay. The historicity of the Matthews. This reads like a subset of the LDS discussions episodes that we did with Mike. And obviously, yeah, he would have Borrowed a lot of his work from you. But the historicity of the, of the Matthew Sermon on the Mount in Third Nephi. Stan Larsen, that's basically saying it's a problem that it appears. Is that right?

Brent Metcalfe [00:55:26] Well, not just it's a problem that it appears, but that it reproduces some of the mistranslations of the KJV and brings it into the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:55:37] Yeah.

Brent Metcalfe [00:55:37] And so, yeah, that's like a smoking gun.

John Dehlin [00:55:40] Right. If, if errors in books that Joseph Smith had access to are appearing and injected into the Book of Mormon.

Bill Reel [00:55:48] Right.

John Dehlin [00:55:49] We've got a problem.

Brent Metcalfe [00:55:50] Well, think of it this way. Joseph Smith liberally changes the, the Old and New Testaments when he puts them in the. The Book of Mormon and in the new translation of the Bible. But when it comes to the errors that are in there, he'll just leave him standing.

John Dehlin [00:56:09] Yeah. So, yeah, if God were directing, he would probably take the errors out.

Bill Reel [00:56:14] Maybe.

Brent Metcalfe [00:56:15] Maybe.

John Dehlin [00:56:16] Yeah, that's the idea. Okay, this is great. In plain terms, that we may understand Joseph Smith's transformation of Hebrews in Alma 12:13. Now that's David Wright. Correct.

Brent Metcalfe [00:56:31] And, and that is an extremely important work because he's showing how what's going on in Alma 13 is directly a response to the New Testament Hebrews on Melchizedek priesthood. And he just goes through it with such clear precision. And. Yeah, that one is one of the most important works in the book, I think.

John Dehlin [00:56:59] I wonder if David would ever do a Mormon Stories interview. Do you. Are you ever in touch with him, Brent?

Brent Metcalfe [00:57:03] I haven't been in touch with him for some time. He was the, the Chair of Judaic Studies and Hebrew Bible at Brandeis for a number of years. And I believe he's retired now.

John Dehlin [00:57:19] Maybe he. Maybe he moved on. Good. Good for him.

Brent Metcalfe [00:57:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:24] Okay, just a couple more. Multiply Exceedingly Book of Mormon population sizes by John. Yeah, that's a problem.

Brent Metcalfe [00:57:32] Right. So. So John's work specifically focused on how historically different population sizes have grown and how rapidly they grow. And effectively what he was saying is that when we go to the Book of Mormon and we see multitudes die in wars and so on, that that does not match actual population growth. If you had all of these people being killed in wars, you would end up with no one. So that becomes problematic for historical, you know, data on how populations grow.

Bill Reel [00:58:15] And you certainly wouldn't have a clean hill.

Bill Reel [00:58:18] No.

Brent Metcalfe [00:58:19] Evans? No.

John Dehlin [00:58:23] All right, just a couple more. Does the Shoe fit? A Critique of the Limited Teotuhatapec Geography by Deanne Matheny Matheny.

Brent Metcalfe [00:58:35] So deanne was a brilliant scholar, and I say was because she passed away a few years ago, but Deanne had a PhD in anthropology, a JD degree in law, and she was absolutely brilliant. And she was also married to the foremost archaeologist in anthropology that Mormonism has ever produced, and that is Ray Matheny. And Ray was a brilliant scholar. DeAnn put this together. Ray, of course, read through the drafts and so on. Ray had given a very controversial talk at Sunstone years before, where after he gave that talk, he was basically told never to talk or publish on the Book of Mormon again. But deanne was there. And so deanne was an instructor at byu. And so she went ahead and did this paper and it was quite brilliant. She was basically saying, based on what we hear or read in the Book of Mormon, it does not match what we see in the ground in Mesoamerica. And that was her whole point. And John Sorensen tried to respond to it, and I thought it was actually pitiful and only underscored how well she argued her points.

John Dehlin [01:00:20] Love it. The penultimate chapter, A Record in the language of my father, Evidence of Ancient Egyptian and Hebrew in the Book of Mormon by Ed Ashmut.

Brent Metcalfe [01:00:34] Right. So Ed at the time was a PhD candidate in Egyptology, and he had actually been spending some time on this for years because I first met Ed right after my mission in 1979. And Ed had given so much thought to these issues, like, for example, can you really truncate, you know, the Hebrew, the Egyptian, and so on to match what the Book of Mormon is saying. And basically his point was no. And a lot of the Hebraisms have been assigned to the Book of Mormon were. Were not really plausible for an ancient text. And so that. That was the point of his piece. Love it.

John Dehlin [01:01:23] And then the final chapter is the one that RFM is going to be covering in the second half of this episode about the priority of Mosiah. A very, very important chapter in and of itself. Just for the sake of time, I'm going to go ahead and jump forward to the response to the book.

RFM [01:01:41] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:01:44] It's super fun to see that the Deseret News was bold enough to republish an article by the Associated Press. I've got a screenshot of it here. Imagine them doing this today. They would never do this today. But the article is Book of Mormon Scholars unleash salvo of Barbs. And it basically says, when Brett Metcalfe compile, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I'm just Going to read a couple excerpts. This is a publish of the Deseret News written, you know, written from the Associated Press. When Brett Metcalfe compiled a book of essays last year suggesting that Mormonism's founding scripture wasn't the ancient history it purports to be, he expected some criticism. Nearly a year later, he's getting it in a vitriolic volume that exceeds his own book by 100 pages and seeks to expose him as a faith destroying secularist masquerading badly as a well meaning pursuer of historic truth. So they're basically calling you a wolf in sheep's clothing. Metcalfe. Metcalfe, his fellow essay has said their publisher again have run afoul of the foundation for Ancient Research in Mormon Studies, otherwise known as farms. And the gloves are off, if there ever were any are off. Pseudo pious, shoddy, pseudo scholarship, deceptive and specious and distorted are just some of the barbs aimed at Metcalfe and other contributors to quote new approaches to the Book of Mormon explorations in critical methodology. I'm going to pause here. I can't imagine the Deseret News ever publishing an article like that now. But I also can't imagine the Associated Press writing an article like that now because the mainstream press doesn't give a fig these days in 2024 about Mormon Church truth claims. But back in the early 90s, it clearly they did. What are your thoughts about just the way that article started.

RFM [01:03:44] It was half a year after the September 6th as well.

John Dehlin [01:03:47] Still.

Brent Metcalfe [01:03:47] Right.

John Dehlin [01:03:48] Still. Nobody really cared about the excommunications of the past five years or so. Go ahead, Brent.

Brent Metcalfe [01:03:55] Right. So as far as the criticisms go, I consider those accolades coming from apologists. I mean I, I consider those as compliments and, and I'm glad that they paid attention to it. And as far as my essay goes, it actually continued to get reviewed in the Farm's review of Books. And so there were multiple reviews of my essay and I welcomed every one of them. Royal Skousen, I think, gave, albeit, you know, a somewhat antagonistic view, you know, review to, to my presentation. I still think I really actually liked what he's had to say and, and I take that stuff in and you know, I, I feel complimented that scholars who I consider to this day are talented scholars like Royal Skousen took the time to pay attention to what I had to say. So, yeah, I, I mean I actually have fond memories of that stuff now, you know, after all these years.

Responding to Critics and Defenders of the Text

RFM [01:05:18] Was it Johnson that you mentioned to me the other day? That you thought you had persuaded over to your point of view.

Brent Metcalfe [01:05:24] BRENT well, no, it's not that I thought I had persuaded him over to my point of view is that when Mike Ash, who is, you know, a thoughtful apologist who has done many works with, you know, fair, he did a presentation at a fair conference saying, what has been the impact of critics on basically mainstream Mormon scholars or apologists? And one of the people that he went to was Royal Skousen, and he asked him, you know, has. Have any of the critics had an impact on you? And he actually said, yeah, Brent Metcalfe's presentation of the Priority Mosiah switched me on pass from the priority of First Nephi to the priority of Mosiah. And so, you know, I look at that and I say, I'm not looking at that and saying, yeah, I showed him. I'm just looking at that and saying, you know, that's, that's wonderful that, that we can talk as scholars to each other and say, yes, you persuaded me on this, and, you know, or no, on the other hand, that's fine. And so I kind of welcomed that critique. In fact, I still have that volume sitting next to my book, New Approaches to the Book of Mormon, the FARMS volume sitting right next to it, you know, because it's not like I'm afraid of that or anything. I welcome that because it helps us fine tune our understanding and allows us to keep fidelity to the text and not try and overreach one way or the other.

RFM [01:07:18] Brent I have to tell you that I was certainly in my farm's heyday still in the 1990s when all this was happening. I'm not in Utah, I'm in Washington doing stuff in my own life, but still, I'm a member card carrying member of farms, and I'm a subscriber to the FARMS Review, which I read whenever it came out. It was my guilty pleasure. And I remember, though, never having read your book, this huge volume of it was like a Stephen King novel. This review of books on the Book of Mormon comes out, and it is entirely devoted to your book and responding to the articles in your book. And they were mad as hornets. That much was obvious.

Brent Metcalfe [01:08:05] Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I think a few folks were caught a little bit off guard because, you know, John de Vetnaz, who had, you know, heard me talk before, you know, at different conferences and so on, you know, he said, you know, I thought Brent was a smart or brilliant guy or something, and now, you know, he's kind of done this and I'm reevaluating and I feel like that's fine. You know, I, I'm not trying to, to impress you all. I, I'm just trying to say these are my findings, take them for what you will, and let's go on from there.

The Origins of the Metcalfe Is Butthead Controversy

John Dehlin [01:08:52] Well, that's a great segue, rfm, because the article goes on, we can't mention, we can't do this video interview with, with Brent without mentioning the Metcalfe is Butthead incident. So the article goes on to say, as RFM mentions, the salvos contained in the 566 page review of books on the Book of Mormon comes as no surprise given the long standing animus between scholars associated with farms, many of them professors at Churchill and Brigham Young University, and those published by the independent Signature Books. Two years ago, Signature threatened to sue FARMS for referring to some of its writers as anti Mormon. Recently, a review by BYU history professor, the late William Hamlin. That's me. Containing an encrypted message Metcalfe is Butthead was hastily edited out after the review had gone to press. Can you explain what, what, what happened with, with the article and the Metcalfe is Butthead secret encoding. Just explain what happened there.

Brent Metcalfe [01:10:00] Yeah, so, so it kind of gets a little bit strange, but for scholars.

John Dehlin [01:10:06] Yeah, scholars at air quotes.

Brent Metcalfe [01:10:08] Right, right. And, and Bill had written this piece where basically every first letter of the main paragraphs. I'm not talking talking about the quotations that are inset, I'm talking about all the first letters to the main paragraphs spelled out Metcalfe's butthead. Well, as it turns out, there was a document that Bill started spreading at BYU at the time that was basically all it had on it is Metcalfe as Butthead and Vogel is Beavis. And then there was a footnote and that was repeated throughout this whole document. I mean, it's like seven pages long or so.

John Dehlin [01:10:56] And RFM is showing, for those who are just listening, RFM is showing visually the circling of each of these.

Brent Metcalfe [01:11:02] Exactly. And, and by the way, I actually got this from Kurt Bench, had bought a volume, this volume from a woman in California who had actually received it via mail because a lot of, a lot of apologists, including Dan Peterson have made the claim, but the book was never sent out with that. Well, what you're looking at there is actually from a volume that was sent to a woman in California that Kurt Bench contacted and bought the volume. And then he, he basically let me photograph all of these entries and then I went through and circled them all in Red so that you could see them. And so, so the acrostic was there. And basically so, so they publish a volume. It's already started to go out. But then Scott Fallring, who was involved with farms, called me and was talking to me about it. And I said, have you heard about necrostic being in there? And he has the volume with him and he opens the volume and I, he starts reading it. It's like. And then at some point there's another letter. And I said, what, what are you reading right now? And he says, it's, it's a quote. And I said, ignore the quotes. Go back to all the letters from the primary paragraphs throughout the work. And he starts spelling it M, E, T, C A. And he goes, oh my God, is this for real that this is going out? So he contacts Brent hall at farms, who's basically their office manager, and says, you're not going to believe what is in this volume. And he starts reading it to him. And then all, everything, the house is on fire, the volume gets called recalled and they strip off the covers to put in extra pages to obscure the acrostic. And then they rebind it and that's what ends up going out. And, and, and so anyway, I get this apology from Bill Hamlin that basically says, you know, I'm really sorry that this ever happened, and so on. And then I talked to my friend Scott Fallring, and this is, I, I, I want to say it's the Monday after or whenever they have their brown bag lunches where people speak. And Bill Hamlin comes in that day. This is after they've already gone through all this wearing a Beavis and Butthead T shirt. And so it's like, well, so much for the apology. You know, he still thinks it's a joke. And it's like, well, think whatever you want about us. I don't really care. You know, I just thought that it was kind of a strange sense of humor. It's like Mike Quinn said, it's like turning an academic journal into a bathroom stall wall, you know, where people are just scribbling crap on it.

RFM [01:14:32] Something about that. It wasn't supposed to go out like that.

Brent Metcalfe [01:14:35] Yeah, not at all. I mean, that's why they're recalling them all. They were even trying to recall them from the, the reviewers of the volume who are in their inner circle, get

RFM [01:14:46] rid of the evidence.

Brent Metcalfe [01:14:47] But, yeah, but, but I know that Bill Hamlin never got rid of his because he said after it that I still have my copy from the time and And I know that some other, you know, reviewers who are in their inner circle did not turn it in either.

RFM [01:15:05] Yeah, Dan's just mad. It's hard to start a paragraph with a V.

Brent Metcalfe [01:15:11] Well, that was the plan originally. It was supposed to be Metcalfe is Butthead and Vogel is Beavis, but he didn't have time to do it, and so that's what it got.

John Dehlin [01:15:22] I didn't know. I didn't know the second part about Vogel, so that's awesome. I just learned something today that's fun.

Brent Metcalfe [01:15:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:29] Okay. Well, that's super fun. Thank you for sharing the visuals. Rfm. Can we get back. Can we get the other slide back really quick? Bill, I'm sorry, I. Oh, we just. We just went forward. Okay, cool. Okay, well, we're a little bit past time, so I'm just going to. What I'll just go ahead and do is maybe just ask a couple final questions of you, and then we're going to handle. Hand this over to RFM to. To dive in. Into what he's prepared. I guess. I guess I wanted to ask what. What's been, you know, the. The impact of the excommunication on you, because I think you're. I. I would. I would venture to say that just like Sam Young, Jeremy Runnels, me, Natasha, Bill, Real, you know, possibly Julie Hanks, Julie diazebeto Hanks, she's potentially facing church discipline, it looks like, all the way back to the September six and others. It seems like one unified strain across all these people is that they were trying to help. They were being honest, that they had a deep, sincere love for the Mormon people, if not the Mormon Church, and they were just trying to help fix obvious problems. And then what they get as a result is a very spiritually and psychologically violent act, which is excommunication. Do you mind just sharing what that was like for you and how you've. How you come through all that?

Excommunication and Its Impact on Family

Brent Metcalfe [01:17:10] Yeah. So. So when my excommunication occurred, I would say that the. The greatest violence that happened through all this was more to my family than it was to me because my. My mom really wanted to go in and give a witness on my behalf. And. And I told her no. I said, I don't want anyone there witnessing on my behalf.

Bill Reel [01:17:43] And.

Brent Metcalfe [01:17:43] And. And she did not like that because she felt like that her and my dad had spent their entire lives serving the church. My dad was managing director of temples. My mom went everywhere with him, and I think her feeling was, how can you do this to our son when when we've given you our entire life. And so she was pretty angry about the whole thing. And because of that, I especially didn't want her to go. I did, because I knew what was inevitable, this was not going to go well, and I didn't want to have any harm caused to her. And as far as I go, for, for me personally, I had already come to terms with it because when, when they set up the whole excommunication court, I had never actually met any of the people in there, with the exception of the stake president, who had only come by to, to my home to tell me that this was going to happen. And, you know, so as far as I was concerned, it was almost cathartic to go through the experience. Now, Gordon B. Hinckley had approached my dad and said, if Brent wants me to stop this, I'll stop it, but it's up to Brent. And so my response to Gordon B. Hinckley, via my dad was that I don't want to live under this shadow for the rest of my life and think that at any point they may come back and just say, we're holding a court for you anytime in the future. And I just decided after already having gone through an experience where another stake president wanted to excommunicate me and that got shut down by a general authority, that with this one, I felt like, you know, no, I, I don't want to be dealing with this the rest of my life and wondering when is this going to happen? Who is this going to harm beyond me? And, and I felt like, no, I, I'm okay with this. And so I say that, you know, the excommunication was their choice, because it was. But in a way, I kind of acquiesced to that choice because I didn't want it to be some other person's choice in the future. And if I can just comment really quickly on the, the posthumous re baptism of Lavina Anderson, one of the September 6th. Yeah, exactly. That really got me thinking about the whole thing of, you know, vicarious works for the dead. And, and somebody brought this up to me. In fact, it was a good friend who's one of the moderators on Mormon Hub, and she asked me, have you set anything in place to make sure that they don't do vicarious works for you after you die? Because I, I mentioned with regards to Lavina that I felt that her re baptism after she's dead, she was one of the most worthy people I could imagine to be re baptized while she was alive. And I said, wow, this is such a backhanded thank you. You know, that, that they waited until she had passed and then they went ahead and re baptized her without even notifying her son, who is still a member of the LDS Church. And so my response to it was, this is complicated because as much as I don't want to have the ordinance performed, I firmly believe that my family will have it done after I died. And so I gave the example of when my sister and brother in law visited Aaron and I a couple of years ago, and as they were about to leave, my brother in law said, can I give you a blessing? And both of us said, sure, you know, that that's fine. And so he gave blessings to both of us. And I explained to the folks that in my view, I consider such blessings of, as acts of love. Right. Because I understand what it feels like to be a Mormon and to do that type of thing. And so in my mind I consider that like, that they're trying to show their concern and love for me. And so when I said that, I undoubtedly think that they will re baptize me after I'm dead. And I said I would consider that an act of love for those who I leave behind because I won't even know about it. I'll be dead. But I look at it and consider that is something that will sustain them in life. And if it makes them happier, I'm glad for that.

Surprising Persistence of Belief Despite Evidence

John Dehlin [01:23:43] That's beautiful. That's beautiful, Brent, thank you for sharing that. Let me just end with a couple super quick questions. Are you surprised, like when you, I, I could tell that when you released the book, you were trying to still bridge the gap of faith and, and, and science and evidence and scholarship, but you know, you were excommunicated and then there, you know, the church sort of, you know, kept doing what it did for so many decades. Are you surprised? You know, if you, if you were, if we were to have asked you in 93, in 2024, what do you think the percentage of members will be that still view the Book of Mormon historical? Do you think in any way that percentage that we would estimate today, a very high percentage of active faithful Mormons still believe the Book of Mormon is historical. Have never heard of your book, have never heard of Mormon Stories podcast or Mormonism Live or Jeremy Reynolds or the Tanners? Like, would you have guessed that the bubble would be that impenetrable and that ignorance to science and evidence would, would be that tenacious and persistent? Or would you have predicted the status of, of persistent literalistic Faith in the historical Book of Mormon that we see today?

Brent Metcalfe [01:25:11] No, I, I, I would have thought that there would be people who would be more scientifically, if not academically oriented. But having said that, I think it's really easy to impose your thoughts on others. I mean, I remember early on when, when I started having doubts about the Book of Mormon, I couldn't help but think, well, surely other members are thinking this. If you've ever read the Book of Mormon, you've got to be thinking about this. But I think that that's largely not the case. But I would say that whatever that small grouping is of active LDs who no longer think the Book of Mormon is an ancient text has grown since my time. I think that that group has expanded. How much is it expanded? I don't know. I think that Terrell Givens and others, you know, Richard Bushman and, and so on, you know, Patrick Mason, I could go through the whole list, are trying to give members an out. Like if you don't believe these things are literal, that's not a problem. We can still accommodate you within the faith. And I think that that outreach, when I look at my active LDS family, which are the most of my LDS family, I hope that they embrace that type of outreach at some point because when they reach the point of understanding what scholars are actually saying about Joseph Smith's ancient text, that perhaps it'll be a softer landing than it was for folks during my earlier days.

John Dehlin [01:27:13] Yeah, not only, I would say the majority of employees of the Maxwell Institute, which is the successor of farms, I would say most of them now view the Book of Mormon as a non historical document, just like you did 30 years ago. And I know Spencer Fluman, you know, as early, as late as 10 years ago or as early as 10 years ago, was telling people as the head of the Maxwell Institute that the Book of Mormon was Joseph's grandest revelation, meaning that it wasn't a translation. But, but that's, that's not even the coolest thing I, I think we're starting to see Mormon apostles start to start to hedge their bets in ways that are very significant. And maybe I'll go out on this, I'll just share with you a couple quotes that I, I think we could probably attribute to you. Here's Russell M. NELSON in, in 2016, are you, you and your co authors and the shoulders of the giants you stood upon in 2016. President Nelson says to all new Mormon mission presidents, there are some things the Book of Mormon is not. It is not a textbook of History. Although some history is found within its pages, it is not a definitive work on ancient American agricultural politics. It is not a record of all former inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, but only of a particular group of people. I wonder if you would have expected, you know, 30 years ago for the prophet of the Mormon Church to say something like that to all, you know, outgoing mission presidents and their spouses. Again, in 2021, President Nelson said that the Book of Mormon is not a textbook. Any formal history textbook would give equivalent attention to all its components. And even David A. Bednar, as recently as three years ago, again said the Book of Mormon is not a book of history. So that'll be my final question. How does it feel to see prophets, seers and revelators starting to echo what they excommunicated you and your, you know, along with your co authors for saying 30 years ago?

Brent Metcalfe [01:29:37] I think it's. It's progress. And the only reason why I say that again is thinking of my family who remain active LDs, and it's not all of them, but it's the vast majority of them. And yeah, I, I think again, it, it provides a softer landing for when you find a more expansive view that accommodates academics in that. And so, yeah, I think that that's a very positive thing. It can't be a negative thing. Right. Because there are scholars who are going to university, getting their PhDs in a variety of these fields, and you can't just ignore it. It's something that needs to be confronted head on. And again, to give members a softer landing, because I don't. I've never considered my approach to things to be a way of leading people away from Mormonism. It's been a way of just trying to say, are you interested in coming into my world and being a little bit more informed in a different way about the underlying beliefs and history of the church. It's never been to say, I want to draw you away. And so that's my take anyway.

John Dehlin [01:31:06] Well, I'll just end by rhetorically asking the question, who's the real prophet? I'd say you were 30 years ahead of these other prophets or revelators. And Brett Metcalfe, I hope you feel vindicated, but mostly I hope you feel honored by all of us who in so many ways stand on your great shoulders, knowing that you would be the first to say you stood on the shoulders of others. We love you, we honor you, we respect you, and there's still no one like you to this day. Not even rfm.

Brent Metcalfe [01:31:41] No, I, I don't know, he's, he's a, he's a, a very unique person who I think is, like I said before, he's brilliant, he's considerate, he's thoughtful. I appreciate all of that.

Introducing the Mosiah Priority Argument

John Dehlin [01:31:55] Well, let's change. Let's change to the true way that this episode about me, all of a

RFM [01:32:01] sudden I thought it was about Britain Metcalfe and John de Lind's encomium toward Brent and all of a sudden does this magic superpower thing and default rfm.

John Dehlin [01:32:11] You need to sing, but mostly me. I'm only 30 minutes late. RFM. Time to. I'm sure that's less than you thought it would be. I turn the time now over to rfm.

Bill Reel [01:32:25] Can I say one thing before you start our family?

RFM [01:32:28] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:32:29] I just want to show a couple of comments and I just want to make a little note because you asked Brent if he was surprised by how many people just believe no matter what. Like they just do. Somebody says again, isn't God all powerful, all knowing? Can he play with horses and DNA? Yes. If you are a believer in religion, you can create lots of loopholes and outs for your God of your faith. But if you give the same cover, it works within every religion. So Jehovah's Witnesses could also do this. Isn't God all powerful? Can he play with when Jesus came back and didn't actually show himself in 1914 or 1893 or whatever other 12 times Jesus was supposed to return? Every religion can claim to have a God who plays with the facts loosely and allow loopholes. And it's. He wasn't the only one. Faith of Abinadi. Yes, it takes faith. That's the point. Just like Moses asking the Israelites to look at the bronze serpent to be healed. No, it's very different. There's a myth story of looking at the bronze serpent and being healed. There isn't any evidence that that story actually happened. And there's a bigger problem in Mormonism when almost all of the evidence on every truth claim points to the critic having a better, more rational, more evidence based argument than the believer. And so yes, Brent, it's a weird thing that people continue to believe no matter what. And yet I think we've all sort of come to grips that we're human beings are not rational, thinking human beings. We, we find the things that, whether it's politics, whether it's sports, whether it's religion, when something is important to you, you will find every reason in the world to maintain your belief, no matter how much evidence lines up against it anyway. Rfm, back to you.

Bill Reel [01:34:19] Right.

RFM [01:34:19] And the biggest problem is that the bronze serpent can't be the Book of Mormon for our day, because the serpent was made out of bronze and the Book of Mormon was made out of gold. Hello. All right, so I want to dive into this great paper that you wrote and that you very humbly put at the end. Yes, we all notice that. I think, Mr. Metcalfe, at the end of your collection, Dan Vogel almost got first, but he only got second. He got beat out. So there's Brent Metcalfe and his Mosiah priority. Now, I think most people who are watching this know what the Mosiah priority is. It sounds like a Tom Cruise movie priority. Mission Impossible. That's gonna be the last, the last Mission Impossible movie coming out. Mosiah Priority. And this is what it is. All right, let me just tell you, for those of you who don't, who don't know. 1828, Joseph Smith translates and loses 116 pages. Eight months later, 1829, he comes back to the project. He begins translating slash dictating again. The question is, does he begin with First Nephi, which is the start of our Book of Mormon as we have it today, or does he start where he left off at the beginning of Mosiah? And the first one would be called First Nephi Priority. And the second one would be called the Mosiah Priority. And what Brent Metcalfe has done is he has so promoted and I think cemented and nailed down and demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the Mosiah Priority is correct, that his name has become forever associated with that theory. So I wanted to say that first, second thing is that all the evidence, well, a lot of the evidence that Brent has in his article, he's got scads of evidence, and they all seem to point one way to support this theory, and it's really remarkable. But I'm going to also say, I think that in almost every example, if not every example, the evidence that shows the Mosiah priority is correct is also evidence that ends up indicating strongly that Joseph Smith is the author. Is that fair to say, Brent, do you think?

Brent Metcalfe [01:36:37] Absolutely.

RFM [01:36:38] Okay, so let's see here. There's a cover that we've seen before, new Approaches to the Book of Mormon. BRENT LEE metcalf, Editor and here's something that I think you read before as well, John. And we went through these. I brought them in out of order for the the Metcalfe is butthead. And this is what his tape.

Brent Metcalfe [01:37:03] I'm just Kidding.

RFM [01:37:04] I'm sorry, what?

Brent Metcalfe [01:37:05] I said stop repeating that. Oops.

RFM [01:37:10] Excuse me. Okay, so here, Here we are. No, the priority of Mosiah. A prelude to Book of Mormon exegesis. Exegesis, I understand, to be the interpretation of scripture. Brittle Metcalfe. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. So this is what it looks like in that actual volume from 1993. And I just wanted to point out that when he's talking about different people holding on to different theories, some people felt first Nephi priority was correct. And I think Brent Metcalfe here really shows his research chops, his scholarly chops, by going through everybody, including their dog, who holds these different theories. And then here, number three, the priority of Mosiah, the one that Brent Metcalfe agrees with and pretty much everybody else has agreed with since then, he puts all these people down, including Dan Vogel and look there, our very own Tim Rathbone, who frequently watches the show. So I wanted to underline that. That was the whole point of the slide was for Tim, just so.

Brent Metcalfe [01:38:15] Yeah, nice.

The 600-Year Prophecy and Mosiah Priority Evidence

RFM [01:38:17] All right, so now tell us about the 600 year prophecy of Jesus coming in the Book of Mormon and how that plays into the Mosiah priority.

Brent Metcalfe [01:38:27] Well, basically the problem is, is that when you go through Mosiah, into third Nephi and so on, the prophets in that time period seem to be oblivious as to when Jesus is actually coming. They're. They're actually saying things along the lines of, you know, we know not when Jesus is going to appear and so on. So you go through the priority of Mosiah in that direction, and then you come back to first and second Nephi, and all of a sudden they know exactly the time in which Jesus is going to come, and they're prophesying it right, right in the record. And, and so again, we're going through the volume, coming back to the beginning, not remembering everything necessarily in between. And now we have the prophets knowing everything. And yet this record that they're, that we have here, the plates of Nephi, they're. They're also going to be quoted throughout, you know, the, the rest of the Book of Mormon. For example, when you have discussion of the Liahona that's being discussed in the, the portion through from Mosiah on, when you have discussion of. Well, there are actually several things. I won't get into all of them right now, but, you know, you have these references, Lehi's vision of seeing God upon his throne. You have that down in Alma. And so there, there are all types of things like that that we could get into. And so it appears that they know of this record. They know of it, in some cases verbatim, and yet they have no idea about the, the 600 year prophecy regarding the coming of Christ.

RFM [01:40:32] The other thing. I'm sorry, but the other thing I was going to say along that same vein is that one of the things that the Nephites are famous for, at least amongst the apologists, and I think there's some merit to it, is their timekeeping.

Brent Metcalfe [01:40:44] Right.

RFM [01:40:45] At different points, they have three different calendars, sometimes running concurrently. These guys, if they can do anything, they can carve on gold plates and they can keep track of time.

Brent Metcalfe [01:40:54] Exactly.

RFM [01:40:55] So what's, what's the problem with 600 years? Every time a year comes by just making. Not in the palm tree.

Brent Metcalfe [01:41:00] Yeah. And in fact, the, the prophets, you know, from Mosiah forward, there are times when they feel like they, they have no idea when he's coming. Yes, he's coming soon, but they don't know when.

RFM [01:41:13] And that's over a hundred years before he comes.

Brent Metcalfe [01:41:15] Exactly.

RFM [01:41:17] I remember that. Okay, so that's a huge problem in the Book of Mormon. It's a huge question. But it becomes explained through the Mosiah priority. The reason that authors in Mosiah and Alma and Helaman don't know when Jesus is coming is because the small plates haven't been translated yet.

Brent Metcalfe [01:41:39] Right. In fact, I, I would take it a step further in saying that they don't even know about the small plates yet because that's not a decision that gets made until it's further down in the dictation sequence when D and C10 is given. And then you have the idea that there's another set of plates that need to be dictated or translated.

RFM [01:42:08] And we are sort of engaging in the Book of Mormon's own fiction. When we're saying they didn't know about the small plates yet. What we really mean is Joseph didn't. Hadn't conceived of the small plates yet. Is that correct?

Brent Metcalfe [01:42:20] Yeah, exactly. And there, there are several indications of that throughout not only the Book of Mormon, but also Joseph Smith's revelations at the time.

RFM [01:42:31] Okay, let's go to the next one.

John Dehlin [01:42:32] Can I ask you guys a quick question?

Brent Metcalfe [01:42:34] Yes, please.

John Dehlin [01:42:35] So tell me if I'm totally mixing things up. I probably am, almost certainly. But if we were to frame this story in a way that maybe my listeners who aren't as connected to the academics will understand, are we basically. Does this have to do with the last 116 pages. And Joseph having, you know, shared the original pages with. With Martin Harris and then they got lost. It's such that Joseph had to then finish writing the book and then go back and replace the pages later. Is all. Is any of that tied into this and. Or would y' all be willing to just give kind of that quick overview of the story and how. How what you're about to explore ties in maybe to, you know, to questions around Joseph Smith authorship of the book, kind of at a meta level?

Brent Metcalfe [01:43:25] Yeah, yeah. It has everything to do with it.

John Dehlin [01:43:28] Just for context, I think my viewers would appreciate the context.

Brent Metcalfe [01:43:32] So Martin Harris and Emma had been doing dictation on what Joseph Smith identified as the Book of Lehigh. And whether or not that was 116 pages, I have serious doubts about that because Joseph Smith puts that information in the introduction to the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon. But if you go to the printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon, you'll find that that entire section from First Nephi up through Words of Mormon barely goes over 116 pages. And I think that that's where he gets that number from. In other words, I suspect that the initial dictation was probably longer to significantly longer than 116 pages. He loses that material, doesn't really know what to do about replacement, replacing it at that point. And so he continues on from where it left off. And we know that, you know, Mosiah was broken off for whatever reason, because in the printer's manuscript, Mosiah has no introductory information to the book, and chapter two is what appears there. Then that gets crossed out and a one is put on. Now, Royal Skousen, I believe, believes that it was actually chapter three originally, and the two Roman numerals are crossed out to create a chapter one. So what that means is, is that the part of the original Book of Mosiah was lost with whatever Martin Harris took. And so now he has to come up with a way to bridge the gap. And so that's what comes next. We'll get into that a little bit more because I want to talk a little bit more about the structure of the actual Book of Moron. When you look at the physical structure that would have to exist for the plates, and that's a completely different scenario. Yes, please go ahead.

The 116 Lost Pages and Textual Composition

Bill Reel [01:46:00] So we did an episode three months ago titled the 116 Lost Pages, and part of them and I had a long conversation where

Bill Reel [01:46:10] the.

Bill Reel [01:46:11] When Joseph Smith lost those 116 pages, he didn't know for sure. Where they were. He didn't know if bad guys were waiting to come out of the woodwork. He didn't know if Lucy Harris had burned them. He didn't know if Martin was holding him to see what would happen. Joseph didn't want to do the extra work. So it makes absolute logical sense for him to continue with the Book of Mormon where he was at and only come back to replace the missing part when he has got no choice left. Which is way late in the game. And so I would highly suggest folks, check out the episode. It is Mormonism Live 193 the Lost 116 pages of the Book of Lehi. Because we logically go into lots of things going on at the time that can that contextualize 116 pages and clearly show that Mosiah priority is the most logical rational way Joseph had to move forward through the problem that he had at his feet.

Brent Metcalfe [01:47:13] Exactly. And in fact you'll notice in some of the revelations and so on, he thinks that. That evil men have stolen them. Change the words that are in the book so that if he were to re translate it again, it wouldn't look the same. Well, wow. That, that's. That's a hard one to get through. Right. Because it's kind of like if you saw the material that had been stolen, they had changed the words and so on. All you'd have to look at is the documents and you would know immediately that they've changed the words. It's really clear to me at that point that Joseph Smith lacks the confidence that he could actually replicate those words. Whether you believe it's ancient or not. Irrespective of that, I think that it's clear that he lacks the confidence needed to replicate that entire text.

Bill Reel [01:48:16] He.

Bill Reel [01:48:16] He's actually telling the truth. What he's telling the audience who hears that quote, which is D and C. And I mean he scripturalizes that whole idea. What he's telling everybody is a dead giveaway. What he's saying is if I don't know where these pages are.

Brent Metcalfe [01:48:31] Yeah, but if.

Bill Reel [01:48:32] Because in that obviously baddies didn't bring them forward. Whatever. Whatever the 116 pages were, it's not the fear that Joseph Smith claims to have had because it never transpires. What he's actually afraid of is what he says, which is if those guys bring those pages forward, those aren't going to match if I try to redo it. And they may even have contradictions if I try to replace it. So I need to create. I need to create a narrative that you distrust the people who might bring those forward later rather than distrust me, if that happens.

Brent Metcalfe [01:49:07] And when he moves on to Mosiah, which is where he picks up next, and I suspect that they dictated actually a fair amount, he does have one revelation which says that you are to continue to dictate or translate a few more pages and then you're to stop. Well, I. I take that as that a substantial amount had already been dictated, and then he's told to stop, you know, and dictate a little bit more, and then that's it. And so how much of the Book of Mosiah was actually dictated before Oliver Cowdery comes along is difficult to assess. It could have been one chapter. And by chapter, I'm talking about in the original manuscript, where the chapters now would have comprised several chapters in the modern edition, that he may have dictated one chapter, he may have dictated multiple chapters, perhaps even the entire Book of Mosiah. We don't really know at this point how far he had gone with that.

John Dehlin [01:50:33] And just to tie back what we've already talked about into the narrative. Thank you for explaining that basically you were applying textual criticism to reading the Book of Mormon and you noticed at some point in Mosiah that all of a sudden the prophets don't know when Jesus is coming. And then all of a sudden, as the book finishes, obviously Jesus comes. And then all of a sudden you went back and checked pre Mosiah and. And noticed that the prophets all of a sudden knew that when Jesus was coming. And it must be. I guess the theory is that Joseph Smith, once he got to the end of the Book of Mormon and then had to replace the 116 pages, he forgot in his mind that when he started writing originally, he was writing the prophets as if they didn't know when he came, but forgot to re. Reshift back into that mindset. And that's a big tell that Joseph Smith was indeed the author of the book. Did I get that right?

Brent Metcalfe [01:51:33] Yeah. Yeah. The way that I would put it is that a lot of

Bill Reel [01:51:39] Book of

Brent Metcalfe [01:51:39] Mormon scholars with an apologetic bent, and I. I think some of these people are incredibly talented scholars, they view the Book of Mormon as complex. And I say, yes, it's complex. Not sophisticatedly so, but it is complex but not always consistent. And it's those inconsistencies that start to reveal the underlying author to the book. And we'll get into that a little bit more, I'm sure, as we.

John Dehlin [01:52:16] Okay, thanks, guys. Thanks. Oh, you're Muted rfm.

RFM [01:52:22] Yes. Putting this back on the stage. We've already gone through the 600 year prophecy of Jesus is coming and now this. Really, I don't know that this has to do necessarily with the, the Mosiah priority theory, but it just totally blew me away because it has importance in other respects. And this is a slide that says the story attributed. By the way, these are my thoughts as I'm going through reading this fascinating paper by Brent Metcalfe, the story attributed to Emma Smith about scribing for Joseph Smith toward the beginning of the Book of Mormon in 1829, as we have it today, when he claimed surprise at dictating that Jerusalem was a walled city may not line up with the evidence. I trust everybody knows what I'm talking about. Toward the end of her life, Emma left a statement in which she said a number of things, recollecting decades earlier about her participation and witnessing the translation of the Book of Mormon by her then husband, Joseph Smith. And uniformly, she makes him as dumb as possible and the book and the translation as amazing as possible. That's the whole point of her statements, right? And one of the famous statements that she left, and maybe this was said to a third party, maybe you can correct me, but this is Emma Smith saying that when I was scribing, acting ascribe for Joseph Smith dictating the Book of Mormon, that Joseph Smith came to a point where he talked about Jerusalem being a city that was surrounded by walls. And Joseph Smith looks up out of his hat, apparently, though we'd never heard that part before. Recently, out of his hat, he looks up, he says, does Jerusalem have walls? And Emma, who's much, you know, smarter right. Than Joseph Smith, that's the portrayal, says, well, yeah, it did. And then Joseph Smith says, oh, well, thank goodness, I thought I had been deceived. And then he continues, well, there's only one place, apparently, and I think that's true in the Book of Mormon, where it talks about Jerusalem having walls. It's where they're coming back for the plates. It's first Nephi chapter four. Can you take it from there?

Brent Metcalfe [01:54:29] Yeah. So. So, as my, my friend from the Joseph Smith Papers project, Mark Asher's McGee, is fond of saying, whenever anybody comments on my essay, he's prompt to say that, hey, there were a lot of people who believed in Mosiah priority before Brent. And it's like, well, if you've ever read my essay, of course you know that, because I list out an entire list of people who believe that. So One of the purposes of my essay was to go back and look at the reasons why people believe that. And this was one of them. And, and I looked at that and said, this is a really bad reason for believing in the priority of Mosiah. And so that's why I wrote that up. Is.

RFM [01:55:24] Can we back up just a second? Brent, I apologize. This is. Once again, I'm going to do it before John does it this time. The story is. And the history is, is that after, you know, the, the 116 pages, 1828, eight months goes by. It's now April of 1829. Now we're commencing the Book of Mormon translation as we have it today. And the question is, as you know, does he start with Mosiah or First Nephi? But regardless of that, what we know is that before Oliver Cowdery shows up, who's the main scribe, Emma spends a little time being the scribe for Joseph Smith translation at the very outset.

Brent Metcalfe [01:56:02] Right. And. But the most important part is, is she was not dictating as we know it today, what's in the present Book of Mormon. She was not dictating 1st and 2nd Nephi or taking transcriptions of the dictation.

RFM [01:56:17] And we know that because of the handwriting.

Brent Metcalfe [01:56:20] Exactly. We would have picked up from. She would have picked up from Mosiah on. And it would have been Oliver Cowdery to begin in the first couple of bits of the original manuscript of First Nephi going to John Whitmer and then Christian Whitmer. And so, no, she. She would not have been involved in that section of the present Book of Mormon that would have had that information.

Bill Reel [01:56:51] So can I just.

RFM [01:56:52] What I'm taking from it. Okay, so you find this place. It's First Nephi, it's Chapter four. It's obviously the place that Emma's talking about in her story, because there could be no other. And what we know is that she was not acting as scribe, no, not at all. During that part of the dictation and translation of the Book of Mormon. No, not at all. It was John Whitmer who wrote those verses. Right. So what the heck is Emma Smith doing at the end of her life except making up stories or creatively charitably wishfully recreating memories or creating memories that make the Book of Mormon more fantastical and more miraculous in its production than it really was by making it more difficult for Joseph Smith to do and making him. Him appear dumber than he was?

Brent Metcalfe [01:57:42] Yeah, I. I think that one of Emma's goals were, was to. To actually create a legacy for Joseph Smith, a legacy that would also match her perceptions of him, or at least the believer's perceptions of him. It's part of the reason why polygamy goes away. Right. She's Joseph never had any other wives, you know, and her whole discussion of the Book of Mormon is beyond miraculous that anybody was talking about in that early New York period. And so, yeah, I think that you,

RFM [01:58:28] to finish out your thought, you meant that that's the reason polygamy went away in the reorganized.

Brent Metcalfe [01:58:32] Exactly, exactly. And, and not only that, she, she had this ongoing beef with Brigham Young. They both disliked each other immensely. And so she had every reason to disavow polygamy because she knew that Brigham Young and the Utah church were practicing it, and she wanted to remove Joseph Smith as far as she could from that.

RFM [01:59:02] And so in these statements, that was another thing that she said which was ahistorical. How's that for being nice?

Bill Reel [01:59:09] Right.

RFM [01:59:10] That Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy. So she's got one thing that's not correct. This is demonstrably the one about the story about the Book of Mormon and Jerusalem being a walled city. Not correct.

Bill Reel [01:59:20] Right.

RFM [01:59:20] And I think that throws into question all of her other stories about how Joseph Smith would come in and he would commence dictating without having anything read back to him.

Brent Metcalfe [01:59:30] Right.

RFM [01:59:30] That there were no papers or books present when he was translating. And we already know that her statement that Joseph Smith could not dictate a well worded letter is belied by the evidence of letters he dictated during that time period.

Brent Metcalfe [01:59:44] Yeah. And. And two other points. One, there is evidence that they were, that those around Joseph Smith were actually reading the text of the Book of Mormon while it was being dictated. And I'm talking about Joseph Smith senior Oliver Cowdery again, going back and reviewing the, the text and, and then the, the whole idea that, that, that people were just ignoring it is ridiculous. I mean, and when we get to. There are no books included, no books around. Right. Well, here comes a problem that needs to be addressed, and that is the kjv. Not just because it actually follows it word for word at time, at times, that could be somebody who's memorized the text. But the problem is, is that in a good two, a good third of all of the passages that Joseph Smith changes in the KJV are found in the italics of the 1769 Oxford Standard Edition of the KJV. And those italics is where he's changing them. And to have that, that means he has to have A visual contact with the document. You cannot do that for memorization. You may memorize all of the passages that you want, but memorizing the italics as well, that's absurd.

KJV Italics, Language Patterns, and Authorship Clues

RFM [02:01:22] Very good. Are we ready to go on to the next part?

Brent Metcalfe [02:01:25] Please.

RFM [02:01:27] This was something I thought was interesting, and I think it's important to point out, even though apologists may think it's a, a point on their side. I'm really not into teams, the apologist team and the other team. I'm really just trying to find out what the truth of the matter is, and I appreciate that so much. About your essay, Grant. In translating slash dictating the Book of Mormon, this was the concept that I came across. Joseph Smith probably did not substantially depend on 19th century literary works other than the KJV Bible. I think you mentioned this earlier when you were talking with John.

Brent Metcalfe [02:02:03] Yeah. This comes out of the development of Joseph Smith's use of the word therefore early on in the Mosaic Priority, and he uses that word a lot. And then you get to. To third Nephi and it starts tapering off and he starts replacing it with the word wherefore. And the Book of Ether is actually the actual precipice of where the word changes. Because as you get into the first third of Nephi, the word therefore dominates over wherefore. As you get to this, the middle section of the Book of Ether, the word therefore and wherefore being exchanged quite a bit. As you get to the last third of the Book of Ether, the word wherefore has taken over the word therefore. And that becomes the predominant word throughout the remainder of the dictation. And that's what leaves me. And so this is what I had looked at when, when I looked at this in comparison to, let's say, when Joseph Smith is quoting portions of the kjv, what he does is whatever word is used in the kjv, whether it be therefore or wherefore, he will use at whatever point he is in the dictation. So when he's adding new material, for example, to the Sermon on the Mountain, third Nephi, he goes ahead and primarily uses therefore when he breaks out of that text. However, when we go back to first Nephi and Second Nephi in particular in the Isaiah passages, what he will do is he will use whatever word is used in the kjv. But when he breaks out of the text now, he begins using the word wherefore more prominently. So the, the point that I'm making from that is that whenever Joseph Smith is dependent on a literary work he will use whatever word they use, whether it be therefore or wherefore. But when he breaks out of that, he uses whatever word he is predominantly using at the time. And by the way, that, that this is one of the things that frustrates me a little bit when I hear people reusing my essay is that they say, well, you know, here's an exception or here's an exception. But they ignore the fact that I trace the same phenomenon through Joseph Smith's revelations. For example, when you look at his early revelations, there's a passage which he duplicates time and time again during these early revelations. And the, and the text goes, basically the field is white and ready to harvest therefore. And that's the word he uses, right? But take for example, DNC14. He uses the same text where he gets to the word therefore. As soon as he breaks out of that text that he's copying from earlier revelations, he uses the word wherefore. And so what I'm saying is, is that this doesn't just follow the dictation order of the Book of Mormon. The revelations are following that same dictation order with the usage of therefore and wherefore that only ascribed to Joseph Smith.

RFM [02:05:51] So over a period of time, which I guess would have been around three months during this time period of the dictation of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith goes into it favoring in these circumstances, literary circumstances, the use of the word therefore. Correct. And you can trace that in the dictation of the Book of Mormon, starting with Mosiah. You lose it if you start in Nephi starting Mosiah, and then you can trace where he switches over to favoring wherefore and brings it all the way up through second Nephi and to the words of Mormon. And not only that, you can trace the exact same phenomenon in the revelations that Joseph Smith was dictating during the same time period. Is that right?

Brent Metcalfe [02:06:31] Correct. And. And also into the new translation of the Bible. So when, for example, we get to Isaiah 29, right, where it goes on about the person who is learned and so on in that section in the Book of Mormon, there's a mixed bag there, right. What we have, well, he reproduces what's in the Book of Mormon into the new translation of the Bible. But when he now when he goes out and starts adding new text in, in addition to what's in the Book of Mormon, he uses the word exclusive wherefore exclusively, with the exception of one time, and that's it. And so what we're seeing is that When Joseph Smith is dependent on a literary document, he will use whatever term that document uses, but when he's not following that, he uses whatever term he favors. And so we don't see any what scholars would call literary aporias or seems in the text where you can see a division where he's going from only him speaking to using a literary source. And we don't see that throughout the rest of the Book of Mormon.

Chiasmus, Name Anachronisms, and Malachi in Third Nephi

RFM [02:07:58] Okay, I got to ask you this question, and I apologize, it takes a bit of a backup, but here we go. Back in the late 70s and the early 80s, a guy named John Hilton and his team started analyzing the words in the Book of Mormon and came up with wordprints. This is, I think, called stylometry is what the name of the Science is, and WordPress for the different four major voices in the Book of Mormon. Because at the time, the idea was that there were only four individuals represented or identified in the Book of Mormon. It's leaving sufficiently large number of words to make a statistically verifiable or meaningful analysis. And what they came up with at that time was that there were four different voices that these guys have. Four different Broni, Mormon, Nephi, Alma, probably were the four. And so they have distinct voices which are all distinct from Joseph Smith. And they had all the charts and everything. And I remember that was exciting as heck as a, as an apologist. And now John Hilton, I think it's his grandson, John Hilton III has resurrected this. This idea kind of languished in obscurity for a few decades. He's raised it again. He's written a book, and now it's being used in certain areas of the apologists, including the Light on Truth Letter, as evidence that the Book of Mormon is true. Because we can show by these word studies now it's not just for four authors. It's like 26 of them or some really high number. How does your analysis of the Book of Mormon, which traces Joseph Smith's word usage through it from Mosiah all the way around the Horn and up through Words of Mormon with your. Therefore, wherefore, how does that relate to. And what do you think of these wordprint studies?

Brent Metcalfe [02:09:49] Okay, so. So let's look at it in practical terms and a real world setting. And, and that is when we go and look at some of Joseph Smith's sermons and we look at the various recordings of them. We have his diary, we have other people, you know, Thomas Bullock, we have William Clayton and others who are, are recording what he's Saying at the same time, and I'll tell you right now, and this is more of a high tech level than you would be looking at in antiquity, trying to catch an absolute, you know, a person's sermons. And there are some occasions where you would not even recognize that the scribes are actually recording the same sermon. That's how different they are. And yet the wordprint studies would have us believe that they have recorded these sermons on whatever plates or whatever their, their media was that they were using, and that it's actually carried through the precise words of an individual speaker. I don't want to talk about an author here because that's not what it is. Mormon is actually the editor of this volume. And so now we have to believe that Mormon, in editing this volume, has actually caught the actual precise words that these people spoke. Well, that's a level of recording that I can't even fathom in the ancient world to capture a sermon like that with such precision. But aside from that, it doesn't deal with my stylistic analysis and looking at the evolution of therefore to wherefore, not only in the Book of Mormon translation, but in Joseph Smith's own writings, independent of that, his Revelations, the new translation of the Bible. Yeah, so I, I consider it highly problematic, both in practical terms as well as in fundamental methodological terms.

RFM [02:12:25] I know that Bill had brought up this graph, which is a representative one of the.

Bill Reel [02:12:32] In fact, I want to keep that off there for a second because I just want to pose the issue which is if Mosiah Priority is true again, when the Church does wordprint analysis, it puts a dot over here and says, that's this guy and that's that guy. That one is all these authors. You already posed one problem, which is Mormon is the editor and he's the one that's abridging all these big stories, synopses. It just wouldn't be the. You wouldn't capture everybody's voice that way. And there are only four major voices that you even could claim to have enough material from to be able to do it. So if Mosiah Priority is true. Well, and Joseph Smith is.

Brent Metcalfe [02:13:13] Oh, and it is. We'll find out in a second that it's very true.

RFM [02:13:17] Okay.

Bill Reel [02:13:17] And if Joseph Smith is the sole author of the book, we would expect to find Mormon running into Moroni, running into Nephi, correct? Yeah, that's exactly what we find. Now, Alma does seem to be a bit of an anomaly, but there's also debate about certain parts of the book are more history based parts and certain Parts of the book are more spiritual based parts and those also seem to have some concrete differences to them that I won't, I won't try to explain those here, but we know that. So what we find is that Mormon runs into the one side of moroni. This is WordPress analysis. The other side of Moroni runs into Nephi and it's exactly what we would expect to find. Now it's not the only one. Let me pull up the other one here. Chris Smith showed this research which is if you start with Nephi priority, and often when you see the word print analysis graphs, that's what they do. If you actually lead with Mosiah priority, rather than looking like tons of different authorship voices, the voices are close enough together and follow a pattern that it actually could be explained as stylistic drift, which means that one author's voice slightly changes over a long project so that he does word things slightly different as he moves along through the project. And when you look at it from Mosiah priority, that seems to be exactly what's happening.

Brent Metcalfe [02:14:48] Yeah. And going through Mosiah Priority, you know, to the, the end of the book and then going back, you know, Mormon is editing all this stuff. Now, presumably when we get to first Nephi and forward, he's not editing it. It's, you know, there are all these first person accounts, but as RFM and I were discussing the other day, there are portions where suddenly you will hear a voice that comes into the narrative where you're going, who the heck is that? That's adding this in. Right. And the fact is RFM was pointing out it's not anybody who's talking here. It's like again, we have this God voiced speaking as if Mormon is an editor again. Yes, but that doesn't make any sense because we're basically being told that that's not the case. Right. Which if I, if I can bring up another issue with the, the dictation sequence is the, the title page of the Book of Mormon. Right. Because Joseph Smith said that that was the last plate on the group of plates. Right. It's the last one on, I think he said the left hand side or however. Right. And if you look at the, the text closely and you read it, basically what it talks about is you have the bridgment portion which is, you know, Mosiah on. And then you have the Book of Ether mentioned. And then everything is to, you know, convince the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Messiah, you know, and in the case of the Gentile that Jesus is The Christ, the Case of the Jews, that Jesus is the Messiah. No mention of the replacement text, right? No mention of it. So I think that actually the title page is probably done when he gets past ether, and that's when he writes the title page. But he doesn't know yet about the replacement text, so we have no mention of it. And that. That's another fascinating phenomenon. And talking about all this sequential stuff. And of course, the title page, I believe, is on a separate page, completely independent of the rest of the. The manuscript.

RFM [02:17:34] And we know he had to produce it in order to get the copyright.

Brent Metcalfe [02:17:37] Right. Exactly. So fascinating stuff.

RFM [02:17:42] All right, are you. Were you done with that, Bill? That was a great, great point you made.

Bill Reel [02:17:46] Yeah.

RFM [02:17:49] All right, so let's go to. The Book of Mormon has trouble keeping track of who knows the name of Jesus Christ prior to his advent. Yeah, he talks about that.

Brent Metcalfe [02:18:00] Yeah. So. So you had, you know, graciously sent to me a link to this recent podcast dealing with is Jesus Christ's name anachronism in. In the Book of Mormon? And, and my point is, is that whether it is or not is beside the point. That. That's kind of. Let's just push that aside and. Because it is, of course. But aside from that, let's push that aside and just look at what happens within the Book of Mormon. And the problem is, is when did the name of Jesus Christ first get revealed? Right, to the Nephites. So we have the one passage in first Nephi that has them learning that, you know, the name shall be Jesus Christ. Right. But then you go down to second Nephi, and Jacob gets shown the thing again that, that. And. And it was real, revealed to me that his name shall be Jesus Christ.

RFM [02:19:12] An angel had to show up to tell me this.

Brent Metcalfe [02:19:15] Exactly. And so keep in mind that the way the Book of Mormon treats the term Jesus Christ is almost like Jesus is the given name, Christ is the surname. So it doesn't have all of these messianic things attached to the name per se. But then when you continue on and you go from Mosaic with King Benjamin and so on, they also learn, surprisingly, that his name shall be Jesus Christ. And so then here comes. The problem is with Jacob's event of having learned the name of Jesus Christ. The problem is, is that Nephi, back under first Nephi here has already learned the name. So now Joseph smith in the 1837 edition, goes back and tries to fix this. So what he does is he crosses out the name Jesus Christ in the first instance and puts about the line Mosiah, which I think is basically because Joseph Smith, not a great speller. And so I think that this is a phonetic pronunciation of how he pronounced the word Messiah. And he. So he spells it Mo, you know, mosiah. And, and that because. And then when it gets printed, the printer corrects it to Messiah and that's what gets added in. So it seems to me that at this point, at least, Joseph Smith is aware that that first instance has caused a problem with the second instance. And then also the other instances don't ever get resolved. Right. Where they're learning the name Jesus Christ for the first time. And so I think that that's going on with the, the text there, and that's what we're. We're actually looking at, is that Joseph Smith in 1837 is trying to resolve this issue.

RFM [02:21:36] Yeah. It's like everybody's having an angel appear to them to reveal to them that the name of the Savior is going to be Jesus Christ.

Brent Metcalfe [02:21:43] Exactly.

RFM [02:21:43] And it's so strange when Nephi has his vision, right. And learns about it, and Jacob's his brother, he's a good guy. They're right, Right. And somehow Jacob, later on now in, in second Nephi, or is it J.

Brent Metcalfe [02:21:57] Right.

RFM [02:21:58] Yeah. He says, hey, an angel appeared to me last night, and guess what he told me exactly. His name is going to be Christ.

Brent Metcalfe [02:22:04] Exactly. Exactly.

RFM [02:22:08] And so then Joseph Smith goes back, tries to fix it, like you said, by making Nephi say Messiah instead of Jesus Christ so that it doesn't make Jacob look so out of place.

Brent Metcalfe [02:22:20] Right. Or even Nephi looks so out of place.

RFM [02:22:23] Yes, right. Yes. And. And, yeah, but we still have in there dear King Benjamin, who says the same damn thing, hey, everybody, guess what happened to me last night? We never see it happening. It's just like these guys saying, hey, you know, walking along and, hey, an angel appeared to me last night and told me the name of the Savior is going to be, guess what, everybody? Jesus Christ.

Brent Metcalfe [02:22:45] Right, Right. And going back again to apologetic arguments that that may say that, well, that, that's not the issue because they may not have had those plates, but then apologists will say, well, in Alma 36, it's actually quoting from the vision that Lehi has word for word.

RFM [02:23:12] Yes.

Brent Metcalfe [02:23:13] And it's like, well, did they or did they not have access to these plates? Because it's highly doubtful if they had the lost manuscript that that was accessible to them, that you would have this exact same text word for word.

RFM [02:23:30] You would know what Jesus's name was if you were Not a lazy learner. And if you studied the Nephite scriptures.

Brent Metcalfe [02:23:37] Right, exactly.

RFM [02:23:38] Of course they would know.

Brent Metcalfe [02:23:39] Exactly.

RFM [02:23:40] These are wrinkles in the text, I think, that indicate that everything is not well in Zion. And these word account studies may not bear the punch that the proponents like to think.

Brent Metcalfe [02:23:51] Right, right.

RFM [02:23:53] Do we know what's going on? I'm so sorry. I have to bring it up. Background.

Brent Metcalfe [02:23:58] I'm hearing it, too. I don't know where that's coming from.

Bill Reel [02:24:01] It just FYI. Yeah, it's John. John had a. Had to switch a mic for something, and for whatever reason, the new mic is giving some statics, so.

RFM [02:24:09] Oh, that's when he left. I see. Okay.

Brent Metcalfe [02:24:10] All right, come back.

RFM [02:24:12] All right, so let's go to the next thing. We'll wish John luck on his quest. Oh, this is something that we had talked about as well. I think this is just an example of what we had talked about before.

Brent Metcalfe [02:24:22] Exactly.

RFM [02:24:23] And this as well, amending Jesus Christ to Mosiah. Oh, here's the last one we want to talk about before the article, the newspaper article, which we'll finish with the writings of Malachi. Can you tell us about that? And how that indicates not only Mosiah priority, but also Joseph Smith authorship.

Brent Metcalfe [02:24:42] Yeah, so. So what we have is that in third Nephi, Jesus wants them to record some writings that they don't know about. And the writings happen to come from chapters in. In Malachi. And so those get recorded into the text. And. And keep in mind, again, that Jesus is telling them that these are things that. That you have not heard of before. And so I'm giving them to you now. And so the issue is, is that when we go back to the beginning of the. The. The Book of Mormon, as we enter into, you know, first Nephi, all of a sudden we start having these quotes from Malachi popping up. And. And it's completely anachronistic because they would never have had access to this before they left for the Americas. And. And suddenly they're quoting it, in some cases verbatim. And yet Jesus had already acknowledged that you don't have access to these. Now you could say, well, Malachi is quoting an earlier prophet. Well, prove it.

RFM [02:25:59] That's what they. Completely unfalsifiable. I know. I've been there, done that, got the T shirt. And one of these quotes is, like, along the lines of that the sun will arise with healing in his wings.

Brent Metcalfe [02:26:10] Yeah, precisely, Malachi. And by the way, that there's more than that, because in Malachi, the sun is sun. Right. It will arise. But in the early portions of the Book of Mormon, it's the sun, as in the Son of God shall arise. Well, if you go to early 19th century hymns and literature, you find out that that's how preachers were using it. They were giving it a Christological significance that this is the Son of God, not the sun. That you see the solar body up in the solar system. Now we're talking about the Son of God. And so those early passages in the early portion of the Book of Mormon are reflecting 19th century usages of that phrase.

RFM [02:27:07] Yes. It's like that old Star Trek episode.

Brent Metcalfe [02:27:11] Which one?

RFM [02:27:12] Waiting for it to land. No, S U n sun.

Bill Reel [02:27:19] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:27:19] There you go.

Brent Metcalfe [02:27:20] Exactly.

RFM [02:27:21] That was where the Nazis took over on that world. I think that was the one. Anyway.

Bill Reel [02:27:25] Oh, wow.

RFM [02:27:26] Anyway, enough of a trip down memory lane, if I'm understanding you correctly, here's what goes on. Okay. Malachi is written way after 600 BCE, which is interesting because the author of the Book of Mormon is very cognizant of this idea. We know that. We talk about the Book of Mormon getting caught up with second Isaiah, right. Third Isaiah, right. Which were produced after the Lehighs left Jerusalem in 600 BCE, circa. But. But the author doesn't know that. But the author is aware that there could potentially be a problem with including writings. I don't know where that author was when it came time to quote the New Testament, but there you have it about writings of Malachi. So Jesus now has to actually give them two chapters, chapter three and four. There's only four chapters in Malachi to the Nephites. And this happens, of course, in third Nephites. Toward the end there, Jesus is running out of stuff to say, so he starts quoting Malachi. Yeah, he's got Malachi there. But Malachi has certain phrases that are unique to Malachi. Another one is burn his stubble. Right, right. Yeah, he does a lot of that in Malachi. Very memorably. So what you have now is if you start at Mosiah, all right, with the Mosiah priority, nobody quotes Malachi. You wouldn't expect anybody in the Book of Mormon to quote Malachi. And you get it to the point now where Jesus shows up and Jesus says, hey, everybody, I want you to have this Malachi. It's good stuff. Here's two chapters worth for you.

Brent Metcalfe [02:28:59] Exactly.

RFM [02:28:59] And you get to the end of the Book of Mormon and now you come around to the beginning of the Book of Mormon. Right. With first Nephi, you run it all the way up to words of Mormon, where Mosiah begins. And now these guys in the first part of the Book of Mormon are identifiably and frequently quoting from Malachi. Yeah. In fact, the two chapters that were quoted in Third Nephi. So how do you explain that unless after it's quoted, it's on Joseph Smith's mind, and now he's quoting from it as he continues to dictate around the horn and into the Nephi's. Is that basically it?

Brent Metcalfe [02:29:40] Yeah, precisely.

RFM [02:29:42] Because it doesn't make any sense any other way.

Brent Metcalfe [02:29:45] Exactly.

The Book of Ether and Compositional Order

RFM [02:29:46] Okay, now, drumroll, please. Are you ready for this?

Brent Metcalfe [02:29:49] Yeah.

RFM [02:29:50] Kansas City Times. Take it away, Brent.

Brent Metcalfe [02:29:56] So. So this is actually a testimony that was given by Catherine Smith Salisbury, who was Joseph Smith's sister. And this came from a conference that she spoke at to the RLDS Church at the time. And she was considerably older at the time, I believe. I want to say it was 1895.

RFM [02:30:26] That's what it looks like. April 11, 1895 there.

Brent Metcalfe [02:30:29] Exactly. And this was published in the Kansas City Times, where they recorded several things from the conference. This was the morning session, and then they quoted a few things from the afternoon session. But this particular paragraph stands stands out. Now, I actually had this document before I wrote my essay, but I had forgotten the entirety of the content, which I did not revisit until a few years after the essay was published. And so, Corbin, if. I'm sorry, rfm, if you wouldn't mind reading that paragraph for us.

RFM [02:31:15] So to be clear. I think I'm clear on this. This is something that is not in your essay.

Brent Metcalfe [02:31:21] Yeah, that's correct.

RFM [02:31:22] Additional to it and supportive of. Yeah, okay, great. So what it says is this a quoting from a sister of Joseph Smith, though somewhat older in 1895, I would expect, than she was in 1829. The angel came and took the Urim and Thummim from him, presumably Joseph. He fasted and prayed several days, and the angel returned them again and told him that his sins were forgiven. And for him to go ahead and translate, but not to translate that that was lost, but to commence, but to begin where he had left off. So don't translate. Don't begin to translate what was lost, I. E. At the beginning of First Nephi today, but to begin where he had left off, I. E. Mosiah.

Brent Metcalfe [02:32:18] Exactly.

RFM [02:32:20] Neatly done. How on earth could you forget to put that in your paper?

Brent Metcalfe [02:32:24] I. I had forgotten the quote. I mean, I had this. Well, there it is right there. I had this in. In my files for years because it was part of the stuff that I did when I was working with Ron Walker and Dean Jesse on the Salamander Letter. And so these were things that I was gathering every possible account that I could get from everywhere. And I just had. And quite honestly, I had forgotten it completely. And it wasn't until a few years later that I actually read it and went, oh, my goodness. How. How did I miss this?

RFM [02:33:10] And the only reason I.

Brent Metcalfe [02:33:11] Very prominent.

RFM [02:33:12] I said that so accusingly. You. Excuse me. I said that so accusingly to you because I've done this and worse a million times, and it's always a smack upside the head. It and say, how could I have forgotten that?

Brent Metcalfe [02:33:24] Oh, absolutely.

RFM [02:33:25] But I do.

Brent Metcalfe [02:33:26] Yeah. Yeah. So. So I. I should probably. Before we go, if you don't mind, I want to talk about something really quickly that I think is important and important spin off from the work that I did. Did you want to talk about that next?

RFM [02:33:44] I don't know, because John is nodding his head up and down. It looked unfamiliar to me. This was the last slide for which I was responsible.

Brent Metcalfe [02:33:53] Okay, so do you want to go on to the next one, John?

Bill Reel [02:33:59] Just FYI, I put that one in the last.

Brent Metcalfe [02:34:02] Okay.

Bill Reel [02:34:02] For me.

Bill Reel [02:34:03] So I can. If we're gonna. The only thing I wanted to say here was this was back in 2004, the church was changing on its issue around DNA.

Brent Metcalfe [02:34:14] Right.

Bill Reel [02:34:14] You were pointing that out.

Bill Reel [02:34:16] You.

Bill Reel [02:34:17] The whole paper is about how Mormonism is having to change to fit the scholarship. And I only wanted to note to the audience that it is continuing to happen at an even faster rate, even according to those on the inside, such as Ben Spackman.

Brent Metcalfe [02:34:33] Yeah. And so. So this was published in Sunstone for those who are interested. This is actually available online for free. If you go to the Sunstone, I think. I don't know if it's Sunstone foundation or Sunstone Magazine is the URL now, but if you go there and go to that specific year, you'll find this essay in there. And I'm sure if you just put in the title Reinventing Lamanite Identity, then put my name in on a Google search, it'll probably call it right up. So, yeah, yeah. This is a very important thing because along with this, as well as what Tom Murphy was publishing at the time, I think that that was really what precipitated the change in the introduction to the Book of Mormon, which was a really subtle change. It went from the Lamanites being the principal ancestors or the primary ancestors of the Indians to being among the ancestors of native Americans. And so I think that, you know, what Tom Murphy has written, what I wrote here, they remain pivotal to that switch. But what I wanted to get to as kind of a final thought is some other interesting implications of the priority Mosiah. And I'd like to have everyone, if they could, envision the gold plates as like a solid stack of plates. And the issue that we run into with the actual internal structure of the Book of Mormon, and that is that we begin with basically the opening chapter of Mormon where Mormon is told that when he reaches about the age of 20, that he goes and gets the plates that Amaron had deposited, which contain the abridgment of the text that he's going to be working on, right? And then Ammon enjoins him that the rest of the plates must remain. So now we go on through Mormon into Mormon's valedictory that he gives at the end of chapter seven of Mormon. Then Moroni picks it up in chapter eight, and he says, I would give the intent thereof, but my father has already written it, which was actually in chapter seven. He says, the intent of this is to bring people to persuade them to believe the words that have been written. And then in also in chapter eight, Moroni goes and says that I would have written the intent thereof, but I have no more plates, and there is no more room on the plates. And. Or I have none and I have no friends. Right. Now there's a change to that verse. I'm fully aware of that. I think that actually buttresses my point even further. So that's his point, is that he has no more room on the plates, nothing to do. But all of a sudden, after we leave Moroni's valedictory in Mormon Chapter 9, all of a sudden the Book of Ether suddenly appears. It's like, where on earth did that come from? Because all the other plates have already been buried in the Hill Shem according to Amaron, and none of those plates are supposed to be taken out. And all of a sudden we have the Book of Ether. Well, if you go back to Mosiah, chapter 28, the anonymous editor at the time says that, you know, that they were translated by Mosiah and an account in a written account will be given of them hereafter. Well, the reason why I say he's anonymous is because we have no idea of who the identity of that editor is until Third Nephi chapter five, where he says he is Mormon, right? A descendant, a direct descendant of Nephi. And he says, I was named after the land of Mormon which is really odd because when you get to the first chapter of Mormon, he actually says, my name is Mormon and my father's name was Mormon. Well, what's more likely, that he was named after the land of Mormon or named after his father who has also bore the name of Mormon? But that aside, we go on after Moroni's valedictory and all of a sudden we have the Book of Ether. And now it's an abridged account, not a translated account like Mosiah gave back. In chapter 28 of Mosiah, he has this abridged account of it and he's inserting all of these editorial ideas all the way through. And then he ends the book. And now we have another valedictory, right, via Moroni. And it's now Ether gives the end of his book. Then suddenly we have another book appear, the Book of Moroni. Don't forget, he's out of room on the plates, right? He has no friends, he's alone. And so now we have Immoroni, chapter one, verse one. And he's basically saying that, well, I didn't think I was going to write anymore because Ray is trying to explain for why the Book of Ether is in there. I didn't think I was going to write anymore, but as yet they have not discovered me and I have not perished. Well, that's not the reason why you said you weren't going to write anymore. Back in Mormon, you said it was because there was no more room on the plates. And so now we have this Book of Moroni that includes words from Mormon. Who knows where he got those from? And then two epistles from his father Mormon, which is like, so where did those come from? Now, have you been carrying them around since you got the plates? Which he got the plates when he was 20 years old, and so he's carrying all this stuff around. So now we go on back to the beginning of, you know, first Nephi, on through the Words of Mormon. And what Mormon says in the Words of Mormon is that as he was about to hand the plates over to his son Moroni, he was looking through all the plates and he found these plates. They preserve the prophecies of Jesus and so on. But it's like, well, wait a second, we already know that Amaron has buried all the plates in Shem the hill. Shem and has told you once you get these other plates when you're 20, that you're not to retrieve any of the other plates that are in the hill. So here he is saying that he's at the end, he's about to give these over to Moroni, and suddenly he finds these other plates from where? Where is he getting these from? But more than that is that basically he's saying, I'm going to give these over to. To Moroni. So where exactly in this physical stack of plates do those plates insert themselves? Well, it would have to be at least before chapter seven of Mormon in the Book of Mormon, because he's giving his valedictory and he's passing the plates off onto tomorrow night. So why didn't Joseph Smith ever know that these place in this stack of plates were already there? If he had been going through the plate sequentially, he would have already run into them. And yet he doesn't.

RFM [02:43:12] And indeed, where could it be other than at the very end?

Brent Metcalfe [02:43:16] And so this is what I'm saying is that while the Book of Mormon may be complex and generally consistent, it is not consistent without substantial flaws in the narrative that cannot be accounted for by the narrative on its own. Because what we ended up with is this indecipherable number of plates that are not matching the sequence in which the book is being dictated. Well done. Yeah. So few final thoughts.

RFM [02:43:56] Talk about a valedictory.

Brent Metcalfe [02:43:58] Exactly. Multiple times, no less.

RFM [02:44:04] So do we want to take some phone calls? Are the lines open?

Bill Reel [02:44:07] Yeah, we've got them. There are three in the queue, so I will. Yeah, let's go with the first one. This might be Shane.

John Dehlin [02:44:15] Is that.

Bill Reel [02:44:15] Is that the name Shane?

Bill Reel [02:44:18] Yes, sir.

Audience Questions and Live Discussion

Bill Reel [02:44:19] All right. You're on the show here with Radio Free Mormon John De Lynn. Myself.

RFM [02:44:25] Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:44:25] Brett Metcalfe. What's on your mind?

Bill Reel [02:44:29] Nice to meet you, Mr. Metcalfe. My question, I guess you believe in the sole authorship. I just wanted to ask you your personal reasons why you think Mosiah priority fits better with sole authorship rather than the Spalding Rigden theory. That'd be all right.

Brent Metcalfe [02:44:49] Well, yeah, so. So one. One of the main theories, and something that's missed by a lot of Spalding theorists who have tried to use what I've written about the. For example, the trans. The transformation from therefore to wherefore, and in the process of dictating the book, is that they've tried to say, well, you know, maybe that's rigged in at one point, and so, so on and so forth. But what they fail to recognize is that I demonstrated the exact same thing is happening through Joseph Smith's revelations during the exact same time period that the book is being written. So again, when Joseph Smith is dependent on a Text, specifically the kjv. When he brings that into the Book of Mormon text, he uses whatever word, whether it be therefore or wherefore, that the KJV preserves. And as soon as he breaks out of that text, he will use whatever word he favors at that time, whether it be therefore or whether it be wherefore. That same exact phenomenon is occurring through his revelations and continues on into the new translation of the Bible. That's the reason why I think it completely discounts the Spalding theory or any of the other theories related to multiple authorship of the Book of Mormon, whether ancient or modern.

John Dehlin [02:46:29] You're muted.

Bill Reel [02:46:30] Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Bill Reel [02:46:31] Thank you.

RFM [02:46:32] Yeah, I want to say it was great, great answer, great question. Thanks, Shane.

Brent Metcalfe [02:46:36] Thank you, Shane.

Bill Reel [02:46:38] All right, the next call, I believe might be someone by the name of Dion. So, Dion, welcome to the show.

Bill Reel [02:46:45] Oh, hello.

Bill Reel [02:46:48] Hey, how are you?

Bill Reel [02:46:49] Hi, I'm well. How are you guys?

Bill Reel [02:46:51] Excellent.

Brent Metcalfe [02:46:52] Doing well.

Bill Reel [02:46:54] Great. I don't know if I like, ask a question or just like make a statement. You guys respond like, how is the

Bill Reel [02:47:00] setup of you can, whatever's on your mind. If you want to ask a question or you want to share a thought, it's up to you.

Bill Reel [02:47:08] Okay. Well, I was once a Mormon. I've been a Mormon. I was Mormon for like 6 months. I read the entire Book of Mormon when the Mormons missionaries came. You know, I was like, this is awesome. If it important, I'm a dark skinned person. But it's like throughout my life as a young person, I always had this interest in like the American idea, you know, all of us being together, everyone's equal. I love my white brother, I love my black brother, all those things. So it kind of spoke to me in that way. And I always like separated that singularity of the story from the rest of it. And when other people don't do that, that's kind of how I see religion. In every religion, people have their little thing they like and then the rest of it is kind of like this barrier to, you know, not corrupt the original idea. I, I just don't. I wonder how you guys see it, because at a certain point, the deeper I dig it eventually just became a business, you know, something that if I didn't do the right things the right way that got the most money and all that, it became, you know, something that's not good. But I kept understanding it because we live in America. America is a capitalist society. I like the idea of keeping our economy and all that good and well, but I genuinely would have these moments of, like a heart to heart with something that I didn't think was there. And when, you know, our actions don't. Don't go towards that the way that we're supposed to, and don't move towards that like I was told they were. It starts to get weird to me. So we always talk about the truth and that there's a real truth, but I personally, from my experience, I always thought the truth has to be something that's unseen or not something you can't see. And that's, you know, But I. That puts a little bit of variability around.

RFM [02:48:59] Dion, I hate to interrupt.

Bill Reel [02:49:01] You

RFM [02:49:04] know, I'm not muted. I know that. Okay, can you move this toward a point or a question? Because right now I'm having trouble following you.

Bill Reel [02:49:12] Well, I mean. Okay, what's with. Where are you having trouble following me? I mean, all.

RFM [02:49:18] Ever since you called. So here's the thing. If you have a question, could you just ask a question? That would be great. Because that's really the. This is what this is for.

Bill Reel [02:49:28] I don't have a specific question, really. I just. I think there's like a level of, you know, community we're supposed to have here that, you know, I don't really feel in these moments. You know, like, my question originally was like, where do you guys feel that, like that light, spirit when it comes to the church that, you know, something that someone couldn't feel based off of like, commandments or any of those things

RFM [02:49:54] in there, you know, here's the deal. If you want community, this is a great place. Newscast is great. Mormon stories even thrives. Wonderful. Best place in the world. Friday nights. Mormonism after dark. See you there, Dion. Okay, that's gonna be 8:00pm Mountain Time. Please join us. Please be in the live chat. We got a great community. It's caller driven. And that would be a much better time for you to call in, I think, rather than on tonight's show with Brent Metcalfe. So will you do that? I hope you will.

Bill Reel [02:50:26] I ended up letting that go. I just assumed you were sort of sending him off to join.

RFM [02:50:30] Well, I hope you will. I hope everybody will join us, and especially you, Dion. We will be watching for you.

Bill Reel [02:50:36] And I'll just note for future reference, folks, when you call. Yes, like, you can really say anything, but at least tie it into the subject matter and not. Not sort of go somewhere different. But anyway, we've got one more call.

RFM [02:50:50] Does that one count?

Bill Reel [02:50:52] It does. I think so. I think this might be Nathan, correct?

Bill Reel [02:51:01] Yep. That's correct. How are you doing? Yeah.

RFM [02:51:02] Welcome back to Detroit.

Bill Reel [02:51:04] What's on your thoughts? What's your thoughts on the show?

Bill Reel [02:51:06] That's right. Yeah. Thank you. First, briefly, I wanted to, of course, thank Brett McCaff for all of his hard work. So I will say I, I learned first of the Mosiah priority in a BYU religion class that brought it up. But unfortunately that led to the question or the concern that Brent mentioned right at the end of if, you know, if that's, you know, if there's a faithful, you know, if there's a faithful way to say, okay, Mosaic was the first thing translated. The, the order of the plates, you know, in the stack doesn't make any sense. So I really appreciate that you're giving voice to that. A. My question is that I have heard on, I believe it was on Mormonish podcast, the suggestion that kind of based on the. On the text, if we assume or if we go with the based on the Mosiah priority, that it would appear that at least initially, Joseph Smith was perhaps more interested in writing a Christian adventure story that he could sell as opposed to founding a religion. And that right around Ether Moroni is where his intention seems to have shifted to forming a church. And I wanted to see, obviously not one. I don't think we can jump into Joseph Smith's mind, but I wanted to see if your thoughts on that idea. Thank you.

Brent Metcalfe [02:52:49] Yeah, that is actually an excellent point because this is something that we have a good idea on. And, and that is that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery would have very different roles. You remember the. The occasion when Oliver Cowdery tried to translate using his rod. It didn't work out well, and so no longer was he to be involved in a translation. But what we do know from the early Revelations is that Joseph Smith in the earliest versions of the Revelations portrayed himself as being only a translator of the Book of Mormon and that he was to pretend to no other duty.

John Dehlin [02:53:46] Right.

Brent Metcalfe [02:53:47] That was his sole role, was to be the translator. Now, that's really important because if you remember, Joseph Smith is a seer. He can use the stone to see what is written on the. The text. And if you remember correctly, in the Book of Mosiah, a seer is even greater than a prophet. So he's basically assumed the pinnacle role in a religious community at that point. He is it. But the issue is he's to pretend to no other gift. And so now here we come with Oliver Cavalry, we go to section or DNC 18 and what we have is that Oliver Cowdery is now being addressed to actually build the church. He is going to be the one building the church. And he is to do it based on the words that are in the book. And this is part of the reason why I think our placement in the priority Mosiah that Moroni is in probably the wrong place. It could have been Dick dictated as late as after Second Nephi. And the reason why I'm saying this is specifically because this is what becomes the issue with Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. And unfortunately on all of these revelations that he's talking about this stuff, it's June 1829, we have no specific day. And so as a result of that, Oliver Cowdery creates a revelation that is also only dated June of 1829. And he creates a copy of it that's in the Joseph Smith Revelation collection in the Church history department. And in that revelation, he opens it by declaring himself to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. Now keep in mind, this is before any of the hierarchy has ever been figured out in the church. He declares himself to be an apostle and then he goes through and begins to create an organizational structure for the church, ranging for how people are being set aside or anointed as priests and so on, as well as the baptismal prayers, I'm sorry, the sacramental prayers and so on. All of that is in there. All of that is coming from Moroni. That's what he is quoting. And that's why I suspect that Moroni doesn't actually belong at the end of the dictation sequence for Mosiah through Moroni, but maybe somehow floating in between first and Second Nephi or thereafter. And what's more is that unfortunately we can't test that claim based on the original manuscript, because we have no original manuscript for the Book of Moroni. And so all of that becomes incredibly important. And understanding their roles, well, somehow between June of 1829 and when the church is organized sometime in April of 1830, that is all shifted. And now Joseph Smith is receiving or assuming a major revelatory role. But that doesn't discard what Oliver Cowdery has to bring to the plate, because they now are not president and assistant president of the Church. They are essentially co presidents of the church. And so that preserves Oliver Cowdery's role while also allowing Joseph Smith's role to expand. So I hope some of that may make sense, but that's kind of my simple overview of how that all is.

RFM [02:58:13] And that's amazing. Did you get all that Nathan Security on.

Bill Reel [02:58:18] I ended the call with Nathan.

RFM [02:58:20] Well, that's okay. Hey, I could sit here and listen to you all night. Literally. Brent, you're so fascinating. By the way, small historical fact you may or may not be aware of, Brent, is that even though Oliver Cowdery could not use his rod to translate, some people say that Oliver did use his rod to play the piano.

Brent Metcalfe [02:58:38] What?

RFM [02:58:40] Little known historical fact about Oliver Cowdery and his rod.

Brent Metcalfe [02:58:44] I. I thought you were going so, so much in a different direction with that right now, but thank you for bringing it back to a wholesome point.

RFM [02:58:53] Just go ahead. When you include that in any future publications, you can just cite our event.

Brent Metcalfe [02:58:59] I will. RFM says. Yeah.

RFM [02:59:03] Oh, my gosh, and he's so talented too. Play Chopsticks.

Brent Metcalfe [02:59:07] I'll include the word brilliant in there.

RFM [02:59:11] Do you have anything you want to say, John Dehlin, before we get out of here and YouTube? Bill Real.

John Dehlin [02:59:16] Just. Just riffing off of your enlightening comment. Rfm. There was a. There was a commenter that mentioned that Joseph Smith not only delivered the. The King Fallet sermon, but he also delivered the King phallic sermon.

Brent Metcalfe [02:59:29] Oh, my God. Well, that's my way of putting it.

RFM [02:59:33] That'd be facsimile too, I'm guessing.

Brent Metcalfe [02:59:36] Oh, good point.

RFM [02:59:38] I'm just guessing this is that Trevor

John Dehlin [02:59:40] said he did write the King Phallic discourse.

Brent Metcalfe [02:59:43] There we go. Oh, my.

John Dehlin [02:59:45] We've really. We've really unraveled here towards the end.

RFM [02:59:49] Well, that's why the end is the best. Did you have anything you wanted to say?

Brent Metcalfe [02:59:56] I appreciate you all inserting some degree of humor in this, and I hope I haven't bored everyone with all this.

RFM [03:00:04] Well, not me. I'll tell you, I find you endlessly fascinating.

Bill Reel [03:00:08] What.

RFM [03:00:09] What I would.

Bill Reel [03:00:10] What I would say to just to end out anything. Any thoughts I've got. First off, Brent Mosiah priority. Seems like it's the. Just a little thing like, oh, okay, the lost 116 pages. And so he kept translating and then he came back to Nephi. But the repercussions of that. It's little tentacles out in lots of places and it affects so many issues in Mormonism. And this is the difference between even post Mormons who don't think a lot about it, but specifically believers who just sort of ignore the data. There's a bunch of us out here who just sit and we think about these things. And your. Your developing the idea of Mosiah priority has led me down at least 10 paths in my time in the church of going like, oh, like that means something here and that means something there. And I'll, I'll just say one of them. And I sort of said it earlier, but I'll reiterate it. Once you understand Mosiah priority and you understand the lost 116 pages story, if you see Joseph Smith as the author of the Book of Mormon making it up, it makes perfect sense for him to buy himself as much time as possible for the 116 pages to turn back up and him be able to just insert it back in as is. And that he wanted to buy himself as much time as he could. And when they didn't show up, finally, his back was against the wall. And it led to not only Mosiah Priority, but it led because of that, to certain mistakes happening that RFM is covered in the last year or two on Radio Free Mormon, that we've covered on Mormonism Live, and that you and other scholars like you, Brent, have been pointing out for decades. So I just want to say thank you for all of your work in the Mormon arena.

Brent Metcalfe [03:02:08] And I would want to reiterate again, whether you're a believer or not, just recognizing kind of the development and the path of this, I think will help you find a more grounded position in whether you believe or whether you don't believe. It provides a much solider, you know, solidify. It solidifies belief and it gives a softer landing for you when you find out this other information, I guess is what I want to say. Yeah.

Final Insights on the Mosiah Priority and Farewell

RFM [03:02:48] Can I tell you the big insight that came to me before we sign off? This is great. This insight that came to me because of the Mosiah priority is this. I'll put it this way. Let's say the Book of Mormon is dictated in such a way. Last date in it, I think is 421 A.D. i think Orson Pratt figured all that out for us anyway. But let's say it doesn't end the way it ends, but for whatever reason, Joseph Smith has to have it end at 421 A.D. or CE as we call it now. Okay. And then let's further say that, oh, around 200 years, say 221 or so, 200 years before that, Joseph Smith completely runs out of story, or the Book of Mormon runs out of story, let's put it that way. And all we have is a sequence of characters that end up saying nothing except I got the plates, I got the plates, I got the plates, I got the plates. And then you run out the clock until you get to 4:21, and then you're done, right? And not only do you do that, I mean, it would look like, okay, you got to get 421. So now you're just gonna make up stuff and have nothing happen and have all these generations pass so you can get there, right? So you can finally cross the finish line and say, I won, even though you kind of cheated to do it. Now, the thing that's amazing is that that's exactly what happens with the Book of Mormon when you understand the Mosiah priority. Because once you come around the horn from Morrow, night of first Nephi, Second Nephi, Jacob and Enos, now you get to Jeremy Omni, where he's coming around. He's got to link it up to the beginning of Mosiah. He's got, like, a hundred, 200, 179 years, whatever it is. I did an episode on it to cover to make that distance, to reach across that gap. And what ends up happening with the Book of Mormon, whatever you make of it, it's there. It's in black and white, is exactly what I described. I got the plates, then I got the plates, then I got the plates, and I got the plates. Phew. We're back at King Benjamin at the beginning. Mosiah. We can carry on with the narrative. I'm sure that. That it occurred to you as well, Brent.

Brent Metcalfe [03:04:59] Yeah. If. If folks want to go look at my dialogue article that I think it's titled Apologetic and Critical. I can't remember the title exactly. It's basically, go look at my dialogue article. Just put in my name dialogue. You'll find it. It's apologetic and critical assumptions about the historicity of the Book of Mormon. If you go look at that, you'll find some of the things where I'm looking at. For example, I found it.

RFM [03:05:37] It's right there, Brent.

Brent Metcalfe [03:05:39] Oh, okay.

RFM [03:05:40] Because, of course, William Hamlin is reviewing it,

Brent Metcalfe [03:05:44] so. So, yeah, so. So that article is available online for free. And what. What you'll discover is that portions of the Book of Ether are taken right from, like, Mosiah and other portions of the Book of Mormon that he had already dictated. And so it's worth taking a look at that and seeing some of the examples I give.

RFM [03:06:10] Very good. All right. Well, this has been a great love fest. It could go on all night, but it better not.

John Dehlin [03:06:16] Brent, you've forgotten more than the cl. All three of us have ever learned. And it's been so fun to have people like Sandra Tanner come back on Mormon stories or Dead Vogel and others. And I, you know, this selfishly, I hope this isn't the last time we get you back.

Brent Metcalfe [03:06:34] So, yeah, I, I hope so, too, with all the caveats that we've already, you all already know about. So, yeah, yeah.

RFM [03:06:45] Thank you for joining us. Brent, Bill, it's a pleasure as always. John THE Lynn, thank you. I say thank you for joining us. We're also joining you and thank you for allowing all that to happen on your, your YouTube, your, your platform, whatever it is you kids call these things nowadays, your platform. And thanks, everybody, for watching. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I know I've, I've had a great time. Please join us next Wednesday at 6:20pm Mountain time for the next episode of Mormonism Live. Good night, everybody.

Brent Metcalfe [03:07:17] Good night.

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