Introduction and Book of Mormon Geography

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 1068

John Dehlin [00:00:04] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under Support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible in the United States and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Let's go to the actual discussion about some of the content of the Book of Mormon now. You know there are all sorts of things we can talk about. A lot of people like to make issue of the fact that so many of the names, the city and location names in the, you know, we'll call it the Geography of the Book of Mormon resemble actual geographical cities and bodies and mountains and hills and in Joseph's surrounding area. So there's the geographical formations, there's the location names, there's the hill Cumorah itself, which clearly is probably going to tie to the hill that Joseph referred to near his home. And of course, we have the church coming out with a recent statement on the hill cumorah just this February 2019. Let's talk about geographical locations, city names, and the hill Cumorah, and then we'll get to other matters of content. What do you want to say about that?

Dan Vogel [00:02:00] Well, the geography is One of the things that got me onto the Indian designation was debates I was having with apologists over geography. And I knew this limited geography theory was a farce as soon as I heard it because it just does not fit and that they're trying like crazy to twist and distort the Book of Mormon itself as well as the geography in Central America. In the Mound Builder myth, some versions have the Indians, or what became the Indians, the Mound Builders. They landed in South America, built mighty civilizations in Peru, traveled up through the Panama, the neck of land, up to Mexico, built those mighty civilizations around Central America, traveled up to the Mississippi River Basin, built all these mounds, and then finally into the Great Lakes region where these tremendous battles took place. And they were destroyed and buried in the mounds. So they got they were civilized when they landed, and they started deteriorating as a civilization as time went on, as they traveled up, which made them ripe for destruction. So. The Book of Mormon is very clear about the neck of land. And there's a passage, the main passage is in Alma 22:32, which describes the land southward and the land northward connected by a narrow neck of land. And it says that the land southward was nearly surrounded by water, there being a neck of land between the land northward and the land southward, meaning it was. It was all surrounded by water except for where the neck of land is connected to it going in, that leads into the land northward. Part of the land northward is the neck, and the narrow pass is the smallest part, which is Panama, or what they called in Jos Miste the Isthmus of Darien, about 62 miles apart, whereas the Isthmus of Tehuanapec in southern Mexico is about 120 miles. And various apologists have tried to narrow it or say that some guy can run across it really fast. And that is the distance of a day and a half for a Nephite on the line. So that's what the Alma passage also says, that it was a distance of a day and a half's journey for a Nephite on the line between desolation and bountiful, which is the land northward, land southward. So you can imagine, you know, the Isthmus of Panama or this Isthmus Sudarien, right? South America goes across, is east to west. And anyone on the land down on the ground, the Isthmus of Tehuannipec is nothing. It doesn't. It doesn't narrow, you can't tell. It narrows. It's 120 miles from sea to sea. So but if you're on Darien, so it goes. The Central America goes east to west and then turns downward and connects into South America, right? Where it connects, 62 is 62 miles across. And you can draw a line east to the west, because it says that in Alma 5034. It says that, that they went through the narrow pass which led into the land northward by the sea on the east and the west. So when you're going through this passage, the sea is on the east and the west, and it. And it's only a distance of a day and a half's journey for a Nephite, which fits perfectly. It does not fit this missive. Tehuannipeg. No matter what the apologist said, when I was young and I was researching this, they. Their arguments just in my mind, totally failed. They were trying way too hard to make it fit. They still are. It's totally a bogus argument. The distances being traveled are too great for. And that's why the Book of Mormon is a farce in a way, because traveling from the narrow neck up to the land of many waters, which would be The Great Lakes region where the hill Cumorah. The only Hill Cumorah just Smith knew about was the one in his backyard practically. So there is no other Hill Cumorah. They've invented another Hill Cumorah to make their geography fit. It's one thing after another to try to make it fit.

John Dehlin [00:08:20] Was there any doubt during Joseph Smith's day when where Joseph Smith thought whether Joseph Smith thought there were multiple hill cumorahs and where Joseph Smith thought the hill Cumorah was.

Dan Vogel [00:08:33] No, he believed it was in New York. All of his followers believed it was in New York.

John Dehlin [00:08:41] Not just in New York, but like right outside his house.

Dan Vogel [00:08:43] Right, right. That's the whole purpose that the last battle. Oliver Cowdery is writing his history with Joseph's help. And part of the history talks about the big battle that took place right there in New York between the Jaredites ended. This is another farcical thing about the Book of Mormon is that the Jaredites civilization ended at the same hill as the Nephites met their demise. So and the Mount Builder myth located actually located the last battles in New York.

John Dehlin [00:09:24] Right.

Dan Vogel [00:09:26] It's in just his backyard. I mean, he's the imagination. He was a kid. There were mounds in, in a 10 mile radius of his house. There's, you know, several mounds that. There's like maybe five, six mounds, one in Canandaigua and some others that are even closer than that, that I can't remember the cities. But they're all around these fortification mounds where there's ridges of earth with picket works that the Book of Mormon describes. This is what they imagined. Some of these ridges of earth were topped with pickets. They even claimed to have dug down and found the rotting wood. And it's true. The Indians, even during Joseph Smith's lifetime were building these ridges of earth with picket works. And the one in Canada, I think it was, was burnt by Captain Sullivan. There is a Captain Sullivan. There is even a historical site there even now. And so it was the historic Indians still building these fortification mounds. But that's what Joseph Smith. The odd thing is that Joseph Smith describes the fortification mounds in vast detail, but he doesn't describe the mighty temples in the same kind of detail as these fortification mounds because they're like further away, you know, down in Central and South America. So that the limited geography was invented really when in 1887 and Orson Pratt was publishing a new edition of the Book of Mormon with footnotes giving all these traditional geography locations for the Hill Cumorah and other sites, the Reverend Mt Lamb wrote a book called the Golden Bible and where he talks about the Book of Mormon and he makes fun of this traditional geography about the distances being traveled and the population it requires a massive or very rapid population growth. He was making fun of that and some other things in the Book of Mormon as being, you know, ridiculous history. When the Mormon apologists started looking for a smaller geographic area and they debated between various places along Central America and some in South America with, you know, larger ocean encroaching on the land, and they finally settled on the Isthmus of Tehuannipec for want of a better place. Even Blake Osler, one of the leading apologists, I would say, suggested in Sunstone magazines many years ago now that it was actually an island. It's not anywhere on the mainland. It has to be an island somewhere that we can't locate. That's how desperate it's gotten. This is what I call desperate apologetics.

John Dehlin [00:13:06] And my experience is it actually ends up deteriorating faith in the long run because people initially feel encouraged and hopeful that the apologists are providing credible answers to the problems that the truth claims. But then the answers are so bad. Like, you know, when he said horses, he meant tapirs. Or, you know, there really wasn't one hill cumorah, there was two. And it's in Central America. Once you do a little bit more digging, you realize that's preposterous. And then all of a sudden it even reinforces more the fact that the church is lying and deceiving people versus just doing the move that John Hamer and others do, which is to say, all right, the Book of Mormon isn't historical, but it can still be inspired religious text or myth. Even David Bachavoy has this feeling that the book can have value and have mythical or even moral value or even spiritual value and still be a 19th century text. Which it. Which many say clearly is right.

Dan Vogel [00:14:15] Yeah, clearly you don't really understand the message of the book if you try to take it out of the 19th century context. But I would say the apologists are gaslighting, which is nothing is as it appears there. They have to reinterpret everything to make it look feasible or plausible. They have to reinterpret everything. And so nothing, nothing is as it appears. And you need the apologists, lengthy reinterpretations to make it fit the modern world. Same thing a lot of Christians do to the Bible.

Apologist Explanations and Joseph Smith's Invented Names

John Dehlin [00:14:59] But so many and so many of these explanations defy what, what Joseph Smith himself and every prophet from Joseph Smith to let's just say Spence W. Kimball taught and believed. And so to believe the apologists, you have to rank their explanations as superior to 100 and whatever 80 years of prophets, seers and revelators. And Joseph Smith himself, who was the very author of the book and the man who claimed to be speaking with Moroni and whoever. Or Nephi or whoever else he was speaking with. Correct.

Dan Vogel [00:15:39] Well, I feel that you have to pay attention to what the first readers of the Book of Mormon interpreted, that it was written to them. And Nephi even says he delights in writing in plainness, that I'm prophesying in plainness. So then when moron, I mean, Nephi describes the latter days and he describes people that shall believe that they should be beaten with a few stripes and then enter into heaven, or people who deny that there's a hell. And the original, the first readers of the book interpreted that as reference to universalists, then you got to pay attention to that because it was written to them in plainness and they're interpreting it when they interpret the secret combinations as a reference to in ancient times with the Nephites and that the secret combinations were responsible for the downfall of two civilizations, that they were Mason like organizations, not made. They weren't Masons, they were Mason like organizations. But the book predicts that it will come forth at a time when there shall be secret combinations and secret murders. And the readers connect that with masonry. Then you have to listen, you have to pay attention. You can't just like, oh, it's. That's meaningless.

John Dehlin [00:17:20] Right, Right. Okay. Well, this is super interesting. So what do you make? A friend of mine, a close family member of mine, reached out to me lately and just said we need to do a wordprint analysis of the probability of so many local city names and lake names and geographical names appearing or Bible names appearing as either character names or city names or regional names in the Book of Mormon. The idea is that Joseph just clearly was pulling local cities and towns and bodies of water and mountain ranges, or from names he was familiar with in the Bible, filling those into all the character and geographical names that he finds in the Book of Mormon. And I think the CES letter also references a map or a comparison of city names and location names, ancient or New York local to the Book of Mormon to show all these comparisons. What do you make of that comparison? Is it credible? Is it significant, Is it a significant dent in the truth claims argument that Joseph Smith comes up with these names that conveniently are all around him?

Dan Vogel [00:18:50] Yeah, well, he's Inventing names. He has to be inspired by something. The only thing I would resist would be the one of the critics that try to say that these geographic names represent the Book of Mormon's geography. It's sort of like a critics version of the limited geography that I can't really follow. But as inspirations, who knows where the inspirations come from? You have to be really careful with names because it becomes a name game. I mean, just like the 19th century researchers trying to find Hebrew words, they can find, they find Hebrew words scattered, but there's no context for it. They're free floating words and the words don't necessarily mean the same thing. And so you can do that. You can take names and find parallels to any language really. And some scholars have cautioned against finding names. The apologists will find names, Hebrew names, and they make a lot out of that. And the critics find names and they make a lot out of that. So that we have this like dueling name search going on. So no one could say for sure. All you can say is because there's no context for the names, all you can say is that they're possible. You know, and Joseph Smith is making up names. It's not impossible for him to make these names up. I like Ed Ashman's piece in Brent's book, New Approaches to the Book of Mormon. He divides them up into families of names where there's like Nephi, Nephi, Ha, Moroni, Moroni, Ha. You know, so that it could go Moron, Moroni, Moroni. Huh. You know, so he's riffing off one, one set of invented names. There's, you know, There's Moroni, Moron High, which isn't in the Book of Mormon, but it's another name he invented. So he keeps on inventing names. He invents Egyptian names profusely. Invents Egyptian names we know aren't Egyptian. So he's, he can invent names. He's, he's good at it. He knows he's good at it. It's part of what he does.

John Dehlin [00:22:02] Okay, so the fact that, and I'm just, I'm re. I just grabbed off of, you know, I just grabbed off of Google Images, one of many graphics that you could find. And this is the Vernal Holly sort of comparison. There's Alma. There's an actual place named Alma somewhere near Joseph. There's an Antrim, which is like Antom. There's a Boas in both places. Connor versus Commner. There's Ephraim, St. Ephraim versus Ephraim Hill, Helam versus Helam, you know, Jerusalem, Jordan. In both, there's a Kishkimentas which is similar to Kishkumen. There's a Lehi near Joseph. There's a Mantua which is close to Manti. There's a Monroe. There's a Minoah versus a Minon, even

Dan Vogel [00:23:01] a

John Dehlin [00:23:04] Moron versus Moron. There are Noah Lakes instead of the Land of Noah. There's an Oneida nearby. And there's also Oneida in the Book of Mormon. Omer vs Omner Rama. There's a Rama with no H vs the Ramah with an H. Sodom vs Sidom, Shiloh vs Shiloh, Lake of Midian vs the Land of Midian. You're saying that, okay, maybe there's something to that, but it could also just be confirmation bias where you're just looking for anything to confirm a conclusion. You don't lean one way or another in that.

Dan Vogel [00:23:45] They're not good. Names are not very good evidence.

John Dehlin [00:23:48] In your opinion.

Dan Vogel [00:23:50] In my opinion, because he's pulling him out of the air. He's influenced by the Bible. That's kind of obvious, I think, where some of the other names came from, you know, it's hard to know. Like I said, he makes up names and he did it with the Egyptian materials. And we know in the Egyptian Alphabet and grammar, and we know those aren't Egyptian, that they're made up. So. And they look like what you would think they should look like if you were making up Egyptian names, you know, in that time period. He does this stuff very well. So I don't know where. It's hard to say where he's came from, but it could. It. Who knows where these influences are coming from,

John Dehlin [00:24:54] Right. One of our listeners, Fred, he writes, growing up in Upper State New York, I assumed all the names around me that matched so many things in the Book of Mormon were because they had named them after the Book of Mormon. It wasn't until I was older that I found they had their names first, that they had their names first prior to the Book of Mormon being published. And then for him, that was a major shelf item. So that's Fred's own experience growing up in upstate New York. I guess that's reasonable, right?

Dan Vogel [00:25:24] It could be. These could be influences, right?

John Dehlin [00:25:28] Yeah. And a lot of people. I just want to say, Dan, just stepping aside from the substance, so many people really appreciate you particularly because even though, you know, you don't hide your feelings that this book was written by Joseph Smith, you're not Eager to grasp at any attack is valid. And you're willing to suspend judgment or even denounce an attack, much like Gerald Tanner was about Mark Hoffman, if you don't think it's a credible attack. Dave Wilson, what's that?

Dan Vogel [00:26:05] I'm not necessarily. Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:26:08] But you're trying hard to be fair is all I'm saying.

Dan Vogel [00:26:10] I'm trying to be fair, but you want more of a context. The reason why I'm so hesitant is that. So what do you do with a situation like Nahom, you know, and they have a name, and that's all they have, really, in a general geographic area, and that's it. So. And then they run with it and there's nothing more to substantiate it. The Nahom connection.

The Nahom Apologetic Examined

John Dehlin [00:26:39] Right.

Dan Vogel [00:26:40] So what do you do with that? And what do you do with. So I would ask the. Well, what do you do with the Camorra Islands of Moroni? You know, these are all situations that could be explained by coincidence, Right, Exactly. Okay. If that's all you have is the coincidence of names and they're all over the place names all over the. How many names of cities were there in just my day is incalculable. So.

John Dehlin [00:27:20] Right. Okay. So let's address the Nahom apologetic. You've referenced it, but I just want to give listeners a little bit more detail about it and then your response to it. Tell us about the apologetic origins of the Nahom defense, and then give your best apologetic version of why they think Nahom proves the Book of Mormon's historical document. And then give your quick response to that, if that's okay.

Dan Vogel [00:27:52] No. Okay. So Nahum is, you know, they tout this widely as, you know, archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon. It's some spot in the Arabian desert. Now, Lehi leaves Jerusalem and travels eastward and then travels nearly southward down the Arabian peninsula, and then makes a turn and travels nearly eastward to a place they called Bountiful. And then they build a ship and take off. So the apologists found that there was a Nahom N, H, M. Because Hebrew and Arabic do not have these vowels. Or the. The ancient consonants didn't have vowel marks necessarily. The vowel marks come later. But so they say it's Nahom, the Book of Mormon. And in the Book of Mormon, you read this story of Lehi's travel. And when they get to the bottom and make their turn to go eastward to the sea, this is where Ishmael dies and they bury him. And then it says in a place that was called Nahom. And every Time before that, it always says we called this place. And they're making up names of places as they go. So the Polish tried to make a lot out of the wording of it was called, you know, it could be. It was called by who? It was called by somebody. It doesn't say who could be called by us. It could be called by the Nahomites. The Book of Mormon doesn't mention any people, you know, but they found an altar that has the nhm on it. And there's various criticisms of this designation. Like the H is a long h instead of a short h or vice versa, I can't remember which right off. And it means slightly different. Okay. There's a prophet, Nahom in the Old Testament, and his name means to mourn, you know. And so if Joseph Smith picked Nahom right at this point where Ishmael died, and then he says, I'm gonna pick Nahom, this Hebrew word or Nahum, you know, so that the vowels don't matter really. Nahum. And it means to mourn. And the people are mourning over Ishmael's death. So this is a coincidence. Coincidences happen whenever you have a large body set and we were talking about, you know, 144 names in the Book of Mormon and you're in a part of the world, you know, where, where there are existing names, there aren't any in the new world to try to latch Book of Mormon names to really. But you in the old world, so you have nah home nhm, they make a big thing out of that. So like I said, when you study large data sets, you're going to find coincidences. Coincidence that are usually described as uncanny coincidences. Meaning, wow, you know, how do you explain that coincidence, you know? Well, another one I try to point to is the Moroni in the Camorra Islands. And that I believe also is a coincidence because this is the Captain Kidd book.

Buried Treasure Legends and Book of Mormon Parallels

John Dehlin [00:31:59] This is. We know that there were these legends of, you know, buried treasure. We know that Joseph Smith was a fan of the Captain Kidd book, right? And we know that Joseph Smith was into treasure digging.

Dan Vogel [00:32:13] Well, Captain Kidd book, sorry, there's a claim in 1885 by Anna Ruth Eaton, a resident of Palmyra, whose husband was a minister there, who said that there's stories of Joseph Smith reading Captain Kidd's book. So there could be Captain Kidd. I mean, it would be a popular book for kids to read, but nobody knows if Joe Smith really read it. I mean, that's not a very solid evidence of it. But the important thing is Is that okay? It's fairly well known that Captain Kidd went to the Camorra Islands, but it's not a major part of the story of Captain Kid. It's a very minor part.

John Dehlin [00:33:03] But there's a map in the book that's got an A Camorra and a Moroni on the map. Right? Or something like Cumorah.

Dan Vogel [00:33:11] Right? I don't know. I didn't ever hear that. The map was in the book. But if you look on a map from before the Book of Mormon, you go to the Cumorah Islands and there's several. Moroni is not the capital of the Camorra Island. Later it became the capital, I believe, but at the time of Joseph Smith, it was just a minor name among many names along the coast. Why Joseph Smith would look and latch on to that name, I don't. You know, it doesn't make any sense.

John Dehlin [00:33:55] So, and I'm looking. I'm looking at a fair Mormon response to this argument. And it shows a Comoros C O M O R s island with the city Moroni. So that's. I just want to make sure we're using the right language. It's a Gran Comore C O M O R E or Comoros C O M O R C O M O R O s with a Moroni as a city. Right?

Dan Vogel [00:34:26] Right. So it's obscure. It's not part of the main. If it were the main part of the story, you would have a really good case. Like, if you had a book that. And this has not been found. This is like Joseph Smith. If only we had a book.

John Dehlin [00:34:48] Right.

Dan Vogel [00:34:49] That's what Joseph Smith thought. If only we had a book that you opened up. It told the Captain Kidd story and that he buried treasure on Camorra island and Camorra island was his main place and he hung out at Moroni in one book. That would be, wow. And maybe a book like that exists that we haven't found, but so far we haven't found it. That's what I would like to see before I said, oh, you know, for now, I'm thinking it could be very well just a coincidence, one of those uncanny coincidences. It's hard to say that it's a coincidence. I mean, because. Because of the similarities in the names. But we might be doing to ourselves what. You know. You've heard of the term pareidolia, which is when you look at ink blots or clouds and you see shapes of familiar things. The human brain does that. Well, this would be one of hearing, you know, this would be an example of hearing pareidolia, but. So I'm hesitant to make the conclusion. I'm not. I don't think we should like be giving ourselves high fives or anything for discovering this coincidence.

John Dehlin [00:36:09] Okay. And I just shared three articles, one from Wheat and Tares, one from Grant Palmer maybe. What's that? Oh, there's a Grant Palmer article. There's a Grant Palmer article that I shared from the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal that you can reference. There's a Wheat and Tares blog article and there's a dialogue article by Noel Carmack. Those are just three examples of different attempts to make these ties. And it's good to have your perspective on that, Dan.

Dan Vogel [00:36:45] But for now, it stands as a challenge to the Nahom designation, which is less striking really, compared to this, right? This coincidence over here and their coincidence over there. If they had more like they dug there and they found some record of Lehi or something, or, and, or if the Book of Mormon mentioned that they met people there, that might be a little more. So that'd be something. As it is, the Book of Mormon does not mention meeting anybody. And it sounds like they're trying to avoid everybody. And as Nibali reconstructed the whole journey down the Frankincense Trail that they tried to avoid that trail, the Book of Mormon says they followed the more fertile parts of the land which was close to the water, whereas Nahom is up on the plateau. It's actually a whole region, not just a specific place really. And it's not Nahom necessarily. It was also called Nim n I h m, the Nimites. So. And they didn't have any one certain location really. They were nomadic. And so it's a little. So you find this site where Nephi supposedly takes the name of the place that's already there, but you can't find any Nephite cities. Once you get to all that, you know the New World, you can find one little thing out in the desert, but you can't find a whole civilization in the New World anyway. So that's the name game. That's how the name game can be played out and lead you off. If you make too many bold conclusions about name coincidences, you can really get yourself into trouble.

John Dehlin [00:39:03] Okay, so that's. So on the one hand, you don't make. You don't see the Nahom defense as credible, but on the other hand, that means we have to be consistent and not make too much of the, for example, Moroni, Comoros Island, Captain Kidd map either.

Dan Vogel [00:39:23] Right.

Chiasmus as a Defense of the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [00:39:25] What do you make of the. Of the Jack Welch chiasmus apologetic defense of the Book of Mormon that chiasmus is this ancient common Hebrew sort of form of writing. It appears in the Book of Mormon, therefore the Book of Mormon is an ancient document. What do you make of that?

Dan Vogel [00:39:49] Okay. When it first came out in BYU studies about 1968 or 9, it was touted as proof that the Book of Mormon is Hebrew, along the same lines as Hebrew idioms that they find in the Book of Mormon, which is like instead of saying plates of gold, it's. I mean, instead of saying golden plates, or. They say plates of gold, which is the way you would say it in Hebrew if you translated it literally. So chiasmus was touted as a proof for Hebrew, but when it was also discovered in other ancient writings, Any ancient writing, Greek, Latin, Arabic, I think even cuneiform, not sure. But then it became not a proof of Hebrew origin. It became proof of ancient origin. Then it was started to be discovered in the Doctrine and Covenants. A guy named Richard Shipp wrote a whole master's thesis on it, fascinating thesis. And he pulled out chiasms in the Doctrine and Covenants. And one of them I quoted in the last interview, which is a DNC19, which I'll quote now, behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all if they would repent, but if they would not repent, they must suffer even as I, which is a chiasm. So, and we have chiasms in English, you know, that's not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. And they, you know, sound great. So what of this chiasms? And it was actually known in Joseph Smith's time. Quinn made a lot in his reprint of the magic book, Early Mormon, Early Mormon history in the magic worldview or something like that, Early Mormonism and the magic worldview he found where they talked about chiasmus in Hebrew in the Old Testament during Joseph Smith's time. But I think a more likely source is. Rhetoric, how the ministers were taught rhetoric. There's actually chiasms are only one part of the overall Book of Mormon style, and the style is to imitate the Old Testament. The Old Testament uses a lot of parallelisms, you know, where it repeats the line, the word of the Lord shall come out of Zion and the law from Jerusalem, when Zion and Jerusalem are the same place. So it's kind of like a parallel, these parallelisms, and they're throughout. That's the form of Hebrew poetry. I mean, we like to rhyme that's our poet. One way of writing poetry anyway, rhyme. And there's different schemes for writing poetry and different rhyme schemes. But so in Hebrew there was different parallelisms and different parallelism schemes. And it's generally under the title rhetorical repetition. So you use it to emphasize even in English in speeches like Martin Luther King and Bible oriented preachers, especially Baptists, Methodists, in their emotional speeches, they like to use this rhetorical repetition. And the ministers learned it. And there's a whole bunch of different categories for repetition. There could be like anaphora is one. It's, you know, we teach Christ, we preach Christ, we believe in Christ, you know, the repetition at the end of the line or whatever. So epistrophe. And there's a whole bunch of these categories of rhetorical repetition. There's no mystery to Joseph Smith's time and the chiasmim. Chiasmus was called in Joseph Smith's day anti metaboly. Anti metaboly. And you can look this up in rhetorical books of Joseph's day and they'll give you examples of antimetaboly where they repeat one way and repeat it backwards. So that's generally what chiasmus is. It's not a big mystery of the Hebrew origin of the Book of Mormon. Another aspect of chiasmus. Is that when you look for chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, people that did this eventually started seeing chiasmus everywhere. You know, it's the guy with the hammer, everything looks like a nail thing. And they got, they found chiasmus in into the thousands. And there's. I have a book written by a Mormon apologist that at one time there was chiasmus everywhere. And the problem is the ingenuity of the researcher sometimes invents chiasmus where were none was intended. And intended is a very hard thing to prove, especially when the chiasmus gets so scattered and you start picking words here and there to make your parallels out of. You're only picking this word over here and that word and this word and this word, and you're making them. And with a little imagination, you can make one almost anywhere in the Book of Mormon. Well, Jack Welsh didn't like that. So he invented some rules about what. What should be a real considered a real chiasmus and what should not. And the tighter the chiasmus, the easier it is to prove intentionality, the intentionality of the author. So he called things that interfered with the tightness of the chiasm as mavericks. So some chiasms would Be. And there's also another rule that he made was imbalance. So on one side of the chiasmus would be like a few words, maybe a sentence, and on the other side, end of the chiasmus would be a whole paragraph. And this is how they manipulate the text to make a chiasm out of their imagination. Now, Jack Welch made these rules because there aren't any ancient rules that they found where the Hebrews said, this is how to do it and this is how you know it. This is a real one and a false one. This is Jack Welch trying to give integrity to his original theory and not. Not have it all scattered out and it loses its effect. When you apply these rules, you only come out with a dozen or so chiasms in the whole Book of Mormon. And. Anyway, so when you examine some, even some of these chiasms, let's say one of the big ones is always Alma 36, where Alma's being describing his conversion for three days and three nights. I was racked with the pains of a damn soul. Well, this is where he goes one way. It appears that he go, he tells the story one way and then he reverses it and tells the damned part. And then where he was released from his torture and received a spiritual experience. And so if this is what is called a natural chiasm, which is when you're telling a story and then you reverse the story and you just go in reverse order. And it's a very natural thing and it's very loose. Alma 36 is not all that tight. And even the guy that byu, I believe, or BYU studies anyway, his last name is Edwards, and his son, I think it is, did a computer analysis and tried to find the, you know, which ones were the most intentional by which ones had the fewest mavericks. And he even had to cut the Elma 36 down smaller because he didn't think some of the parts that Jack Welch mapped out were legitimate. They weren't tight enough. And so. And Welch has given several versions of it, but I believe, like I said, it's a natural chiasm that more or less works out. But to prove that, oh, there was this, you know, intention on every word and everything. And then with some of these chiasms, the questions arise as to the content or which words. And so lately, apologists have wanted to argue that the translation is very loose, even Blake Osler, some of it's added. And whereas these chiasms, some of them would require a very literal translation taking place, so there becomes that conflict. So I don't think it is all that the evidence that apologists have made it out to be. It's possible that Joseph Smith wrote some of these sermons. These are mostly in sermon areas, the tighter ones. And he could have wrote sermons out, went out to the woods when he was praying during those other hours and or had some of his own sermons memorized. And that's how he retained some of this tightness of some of the chiasms.

John Dehlin [00:52:16] And again, and this is just a simple other point to consider regarding chiasmus. Dr. Seuss books include chiasmus, but that doesn't prove that they are of ancient origin. Right.

Dan Vogel [00:52:33] That's how I feel about it. Some of it's invented in the eye of the beholder. There's a lot of other structures though, when you get outside of chiasmus. There's other rhetorical repetitions that are very interesting that Joseph Smith does and all of this appears in his Revelations. And some people try to argue that the chiasms in the Doctrine and Covenants aren't as good as the ones in the Book of Mormon, but that's really not a very relevant argument since you're using chiasm to prove that it's ancient if it appears in the Doctrine and Covenants, but not as good. Plus, if somebody can go and make thousands of chiasms in the whole Book of Mormon and you have like this little contest to see which ones are the best or the tightest, and you forget about all the rest, you don't see the ocean and you're only, you're cherry picking the chiasms, the best ones, then what you're doing is committing the fallacy of the favor of favorable circumstances, meaning you're in a sea and it's a very favorable circumstance of repetitions of all different kinds occurring. And then you pick out these, the repetition of favorable circumstances, then you have to consider the odds are that some of them could be created by accident.

Listener Comments on Translation vs. Revelation

John Dehlin [00:54:06] Okay, we have, we have a couple important, you know, good comments from listeners. Kristin Gluth Cranny. Hey, Kristin. She writes Thomas Wayment, BYU professor that headed up the Joseph Smith Translation Project, basically said that Joseph Smith, quote, spoke King James Bible. Kristen writes chiasmus was in the King James Bible. Therefore, if Joseph Smith were even to give a sermon, it would probably be spoken at least in part in chiasmus. So that's a good point.

Dan Vogel [00:54:38] Unintentionally.

John Dehlin [00:54:39] Right.

Dan Vogel [00:54:40] He could be following an Isaiah pattern.

John Dehlin [00:54:43] Right.

Dan Vogel [00:54:44] You know, but true, I think he, that's what I say. He spoke Fluent Bible when he wanted to.

John Dehlin [00:54:53] So shout out to Kristen for that. Great comment. Pat Flanagan writes.

Dan Vogel [00:54:57] Good comment.

John Dehlin [00:54:58] Pat Flanagan writes the word chiasmus sounds like a nerve that you only feel when rain is coming. I think he's trying to be cute. No, but it speaks to a sense

Dan Vogel [00:55:10] of humor about this stuff.

John Dehlin [00:55:12] What's that?

Dan Vogel [00:55:12] It's good to have a good sense of humor about this stuff.

John Dehlin [00:55:16] But it does speak to just this, what appears to be kind of a desperate attempt by apologists to make the Book of Mormon work when it just doesn't work as historical document. Let me ask you just really quickly. Okay, Dave Wilson. I'll come back to Hebrewisms in a. Jeff.

Dan Vogel [00:55:34] One comment I want to make is.

John Dehlin [00:55:36] Oh, go ahead.

Dan Vogel [00:55:36] We should acknowledge that from the point of view of the true believer, they have evidence that they have a hard time explaining and there's going to be those kinds of things. But it's where you want to put the, what you consider to be the strongest evidence. To me, if you show anachronisms, anachronisms in my mind trump anything you think that supports the Book of Mormon because anachronisms are used by scholars to date forged documents. That's how they do it. And to me, one negative, well founded, negative evidence overrides all this other stuff that you think is impossible for Joe Smith to do. And that's a subjective judgment. The thing that Brian Hales is trying to do lately, and this is where I would go if I were a believer, would be to try to prove the Book of Mormon's an inspired revelation. Not history, but inspired revelation. And this is, you would want to point out how difficult the task was. The only difference is that I use this evidence to tell me how good Joseph Smith really was, who he really was. So that's one thing about the Spalding theory is that while Joseph Smith and other early Mormon apologists are trying to tout Joseph Smith as an ignorant, you know, the unlearned who read the sealed book, right? Why they're trying to push him as that unlearned person trying to read this old book that, that God will use the weak things to confound the mighty. You know, that's the way they looked at it. That's the miracle. I look at it as this is a ruse that it's not true. You know, Joseph Smith is not that stupid. This is who he really is. This is his talent. This is what he gave his talent he gave to God. This is his religious sacrifice. In a way, this, in a way Joe Smith used to like this metaphor. He was raising his hand to study the Ark of Covenant. You know, the Ark of the Covenant. He's studying the Ark of the Covenant that he saw was weak, which was the Bible. And one time he said, only God and Joseph Smith can steady the ark. So he is smart. This is who he is and this is the talent that he gave. This is what he gave to the cause of God.

John Dehlin [00:59:10] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. All right to Be youe is a collaboration song by electronic musician Milo Craft and singer songwriter Angela Sof. In 2018, they founded the Be Moved Project to create music that helps people feel happy and connected. To hear more music or support the project by becoming a patron, please visit angelasoff.com that's s o f f e dot com there's a light beyond the shore Calling to you once more this is the life you're making There is a love for the taking it's all right these guys don't have to be you Baby you're somebody new when the lines are drawn in front of you it's all right to be you. It's all right to be you Shame, disbelief It says who you want to be but there is a wiser part of you.

Was the Book of Mormon a Revelation Rather Than Translation

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 1069

John Dehlin [00:00:04] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the donate button on the right side of the page under support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible in the United States and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

John Dehlin [00:00:47] So the Church, in fact, is moving towards this interpretation of the Book of Mormon being a revelation, not a translation. I have a recording of Spencer Fluman from the Maxwell Institute trying to give his best apologetic response to some doubters. And in that, he calls the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith's grandest revelation, again, which is code word for it not being an actual translation. And, you know, we have other people reporting that the Church intentionally is going to be moving towards this. This type of language going forward. This. And you mentioned Blake Osler and his. What do they call it, the loose translation theory that, that Joseph Smith basically is just doing his best. He's not literally translating word for word,

John Dehlin [00:01:40] but instead he's got, you know, he's seeing things in the stone and he's being told these stories, but he's got his own language and his own culture. And somehow the Book of Mormon isn't really a translation. It's Joseph channeling, maybe not even using the plates, but just channeling his best attempt to write down what he's seeing in his mind that God's giving to him as revelation. What do you think about that theory? You said that's the way the Church should go. That's the way you would go. If somebody's trying to make sense of whether this is actually authentic, whether this is really based on actual historical figures, this Book of Mormon, how reasonable is

John Dehlin [00:02:28] that of a theory? Given that you already admit to have a secular, scientific worldview, what would you

John Dehlin [00:02:36] counsel somebody who just wants to know

John Dehlin [00:02:38] what really happened, whether that's a credible way to interpret or to explain how the Book of Mormon was produced.

Dan Vogel [00:02:52] So we can't, as scholars, can't answer whether the Book of Mormon's inspired. Right. Remember this I talked about last time was we can't say whether the Book of Mormon's inspired or not, whether God inspired Joseph Smith to do it or not. The question is, did Joseph Smith believe he was inspired when he dictated the Book of Mormon, even though he knew it wasn't history? And I think the answer is yes, by his own definition, anyway, of truth. And I refer to Moroni 7 where Moroni says, whatever inspires to do good and to believe in Christ is sent forth by the gift and power. God, the light of Christ is given to all men to know the truth. And so right in that he repeats several times, a filthy fountain can't bring forth pure water, which is an allusion to the Book of James in the New Testament. Evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit. This is what Joseph Smith believed. If the Book of Mormon is good, it commands to people to obey God's commandments and to believe in Christ. It can't be evil. It has to be from God. All good comes from God. And so, by his own definition, inspired. And it's true. And he's a prophet because the prophet, and he defined a prophet several times during his lifetime. He referred to the Book of Revelation. I think it's 19, verse 10. But the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So he had a testimony of Jesus, and therefore he had the spirit of prophecy. He was a prophet by that definition.

John Dehlin [00:05:12] Okay, so in your mind. And Maxine Hanks is actually the first person that I really heard explain this. And I don't, you know, please don't take this as her theory. This is just my memory of her explanation of the.

John Dehlin [00:05:26] The.

John Dehlin [00:05:27] She actually agrees with you that Joseph likely manufactured some false plates to give people the impression that he had gold plates when he didn't. And she acknowledges that the Book of Mormon wasn't translated from the golden plates. But she, number one, believes that there were. She, like others, believes that there were, you know, ancient, you know, Native Americans named Nephi, Moroni, et cetera, that the historical figures actually did exist and that when Joseph was doing his production of the Book of Mormon, he was maybe even channeling real manuscripts that were written by these actual historical figures hundreds or thousands of years ago to produce the text. And Joseph believed he was actually translating or produce or, you know, or producing real history and real scripture from real ancient figures, but that he just manufactured the plates to help, like Pseudepigrapha, to help give credibility to his story. But in his own mind, he actually believed there was a Moroni and a Mormon and a Nephi, and in his own mind, he was translating from an ancient record. It just wasn't from the plates. It was from some sort of document in his visionary mind. Just like when he translated that scroll or papyrus from John in that fictitious hill somewhere in Jerusalem. Is that kind of the. Am I getting that? Right. That sort of theory that some people are trying to advance.

Dan Vogel [00:07:14] I haven't heard it. I might have heard it a long time ago, but I'm not sure. I can't. Just like you are unsure about her theory. Heard Maxine Hanks theory. I'm unsure too, but I would say that it sounds plausible. Except when you get to the parts where Joseph Smith loses 116 pages, then tries to recover from the 116 pages by inventing the small plates that covered the same period of time that just happened to be more religious. There's just too much. Thinking, you know, too much calculation behind it to be that everybody wants to try to excuse Justice Smith from being a fraud as much as possible, you

John Dehlin [00:08:20] know,

Dan Vogel [00:08:23] and so they're, they're very hesitant of going all the way to. He knows that there's no knee fights or the story is inspired in the general, and he's just using the history part to teach the religious part, which he really believes. He believes in these doctrines that he's, he believes he's solving doctrinal disputes. When he tried to solve them before, no one would listen.

John Dehlin [00:08:53] Right.

Dan Vogel [00:08:53] No, he's just a farm boy. Who cares what his opinion is, you know, And I'm sure the ministers would dismiss him like that. So he wanted to get more authority so that people would hear his ideas anyway. So I don't believe, I don't believe he was that deluded that he believed there was actual gold plates somewhere else that Mormon wrote on that he just didn't have access to. And, and that he was somehow inspired to just repeat them. Like he actually saw something in the stones, you know, he was repeating in the stones. No, I just believe he was like a patriarch and the stories would come into his mind and he would write them for the betterment of his.

John Dehlin [00:09:48] Except the patriarch probably believes that what's coming into his mind is from God.

Dan Vogel [00:09:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:54] And is, is not every word. What's that?

Dan Vogel [00:09:58] Not it. They don't. They don't. They're not a stenographer, you know, they're. They're not hearing words. Words, exact words. I mean, I believe they will tell you sometimes they might feel that way sometimes in the midst of hoping, trying to follow the, their, the spirit promptings. But these promptings are very general and not specific. He has to. Usually the patriarch puts them into words, words that he studies beforehand. Actually formulas and patriarchs eventually fall into formulas themselves, which Joseph Smith did. He fell into formulas too, but the same as he did with the John parchment hidden in a Cave the same as he did with the book of Abraham, the same as he did with the prophecy of Enoch in his inspired revision. These are things that he's riffing off of existing things, making new things. I don't think he thinks that these actually exist somewhere.

John Dehlin [00:11:13] Okay. And there is that quote where somebody claims that either they saw or that he claimed to see actual words in the stone and to be dictating the words word for word as part of the translation process. Which doesn't that conflict with a Blake Osler kind of, you know, inspired revelation, loose translation sort of process?

Dan Vogel [00:11:43] Well, Blake, he believes. Well, it does conflict with a loose translation. The loose translation people would probably argue that it's happening in his mind. But then what he works out in his mind gets reflected onto the stone, so it looks. So then he reads it off. It's not like he's reading off a literal translation of the characters. Blake Ostler would say he does that. But every now and then he feels authorized to expand the text. And he likens it to the Midrash where Jewish commentators would add to Bible. They would add to Bible passages these Midrashic, what they call midrashic commentary. And that Joseph Smith would do that. And so there's a mixture. And what Blake Ostler does is everything he can explain as an ancient parallel. Well, that was on the plates. Everything that sounds like a 19th century thing that he can't explain is Joseph Smith expanding that text. So this could actually go one way or the other, you know, so the more ancient parallels that they can manufacture in their research, the smaller Joseph Smith's commentaries get and the Book of Mormon gets more and more preserved. Whereas the opposite would be the more we find in the 19th century that explains some of these ancient parallels, the smaller the plates get. So that's Osler's is an expansionist theory where he admits that, hey, there's stuff in the, in the Book of Mormon that can't be. That art is obvious from, from Joe Smith's environment. That kind of runs into problem when there's big things like the mound builder myth, which is the whole structure of the book. But. The revelation part is, like I said, is what I think will. They will end up. And they will have to emphasize the miraculous. The miracle of it is. And that's what Brian Hales wants to do. It's don't talk about history anymore. It's just talking about how could Joseph Smith produce this book without inspiration. And so they try to make it as hard as possible, short of time as possible. You know, all this structure and detail and, you know, how does he keep this all straight and inventing names and it's impossible. Well, that is a subjective judgment. Whether it's impossible or possible for. Nobody knows whether it's possible or impossible for Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:15:06] Yeah.

Dan Vogel [00:15:07] We're judging him by our inabilities.

John Dehlin [00:15:10] Right. Yeah. There's several good comments from our listeners. Shaloma Leeson writes, Harold Bloom, who's a famous Yale historian, he sees Joseph Smith as an authentic religious genius. So that's a non believing Mormon, secular Yale historian who studied Joseph Smith enough to say, this is not some yokel, uneducated farm boy. This is a genius. Right?

Dan Vogel [00:15:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:40] Aaron Gluth Spencer. Hey, Aaron. Aaron's awesome. Aaron writes, pushing Joseph Smith as an unlearned person was the mojo at the foundation of the church and still is today. And that's what apologists, they want it both ways. They want to say that Joseph Smith was an unlearned yokel and that he was the greatest person since Jesus for, you know, the, the restoration. How can you be both? You kind of got to go with one or the other, right? David writes, Joseph Smith may have felt inspired to write fiction and publish it as nonfiction, but his definition of good is still problematic for building a decent moral ethic in today's world. This is probably an area that Mormonism needs to address to stay relevant, especially the leaders in today's world. It's no longer okay to for a church to, quote, lie for the Lord and still maintain ethical credibility. It's a weak ethical argument. So David is questioning the ethics of what Joseph Smith did. And then Kristen Gluth Cranny, Kristen is Aaron's twin sister. Kristin writes, would it be fair to say that we could view the Book of Mormon as a creative piece of art, just as we would a collage material cut and pasted together in a creative way instead of inspired scripture from God. What would you say to Kristen about that? That question? Dan?

Dan Vogel [00:17:08] Well, yeah, Joseph Smith was a poet. You know, this is where he was different than some of his other followers like Sidney Rigdon Parley P. Pratt and others. He was the poet, the guy that took and a revolutionary and a narcissist. And he created. He didn't have boundaries. Everybody else had boundaries.

John Dehlin [00:17:38] Okay.

Dan Vogel [00:17:39] He didn't have any boundaries. Okay. He had a hard time with boundaries. And one of his, the things that shows who he was is when the revelation he dictated, when he was being criticized for the language being used in his revelations, he challenged this group of, you know, smarter. So called smarter men than him, like William E. McClellan, to try to reproduce the least of these revelations. And if you can't, you have to testify that they're of God. And this is when they were deciding whether they're going to publish Joseph Smith's revelations or not. In 1831, I think it was. And they had hesitant. They were hesitant about publishing them in their current form because of these problems. So they obviously thought they could actually write better than Joseph Smith. Right. They weren't overwhelmed by the language of it necessarily. But the challenge, they failed in the challenge not because they couldn't outdo Joseph Smith in the language department, but because they couldn't write in the name of the Lord. They couldn't. They couldn't. Their morals that their psyche wouldn't allow them to even pretend like they're speaking in God's voice. Whereas Joseph Smith could do that. Even though he felt he was inspired in a general way, he was able to do that. He was able to break that barrier that the other men could not break. So he was a poet. Sorry. If you read his Liberty Jail letters that he wrote in Liberty Jail, real long letters, and they have some of the language in there surpasses what's in the Book of Mormon. They're fabulous. They're some of the poetry poetic. It's not like rhyming poetry, but it's more. It's a poetic kind of voice. So it's a different voice. Joseph Smith writes, when he writes in the voice of God, he switches. He channels a different voice when he's doing that. That's why the Book of Mormon should be compared to the Revelations, not his letters to Emma.

Joseph Smith's Motivations and Self-Awareness

John Dehlin [00:20:33] So in terms of Joseph's motivation, Aaron writes, her opinion is that Joseph Smith was fully aware of everything he was doing, but easily rationalized the deception. You know, you talk about in your book the pious fraud theory, you know, there's this term lying for the Lord, which the church clearly adopted this approach of lying for the Lord very early on. When you have polygamists, missionaries going out and saying there's no polygamy, you've got the church openly. Joseph denying that he was involved in polygamy, publicly lying to Emma. You've got the church signing the 1890 manifesto that it was stopping polygamy. And then you have all the post manifesto polygamy that continues into the early 1900s performed by Top church leaders. So we've got the church with this legacy of lying for the Lord, this belief that lying is okay if it's for a Noble purpose. Do you tie that to Joseph Smith and claim that he was consciously deceiving people, albeit for a good purpose, versus what I was trying to say about Maxine Hanks theory, which was that he actually believed his own, you know, imagination versus was consciously deceiving people. What do you say about Aaron's, you know, Aaron's position that he was consciously deceiving people?

Dan Vogel [00:22:04] It's. That's the way I see it too, that even though he thought he was, you know, inspired in a general way, he. He was totally conscious. He's not an unconscious fraud. He's totally conscious, but he believes that he's being led because of his definition of truth. He can't be doing good things without God's help. And I gave the example of the faith healer last time, which was they used tricks, out and out fraud tricks. But then when the psychosomatic illnesses start being healed and they see that happening, they believe that those are real miracles, that they used the fake miracles to raise the level of faith to the point where the real miracles can occur and then the real miracles happen. They interpret that as God approving of the method. And I think a similar thing rational, that's a rationalization. A similar thing happened with Joe Smith that he uses deception and pseudepigrapha that he believes is inspired in a general way, that he's spouting off true doctrine about translation and all that other stuff that he thought was real. And that when the conversion started happening, especially his father, he was. Took that as a sign that God had approved of the method. If you recall, when Joseph Smith Sr. Was baptized, Joseph Smith, according to Lucy Smith and Joseph Knight Sr. Who was there, Joseph Smith went all emotional and crying and everything out into this vacant lot, crying, and was very overwrought that his father had finally been baptized and joined the church. So I believe that he had a degree of sincerity in what he was doing.

John Dehlin [00:24:30] Okay. And that's ironic. So what I hear you saying is that in Joseph's ethical mind, if he's bringing people to Christ, it kind of doesn't matter how he does it. Right?

Dan Vogel [00:24:41] Right.

John Dehlin [00:24:43] The ends justifies the means. It's almost like Malcolm X is by any means necessary. If you've got to do some pseudepunga, if you've got to invent some historical prophets, if you've got to invent some tin plates and a story about golden plates in a hill, and if you've got a claim you're a prophet that's talking to angels, if it brings People to Jesus, all that's okay, that.

Dan Vogel [00:25:08] But it gives him power. In his mind, he's a narcissist. It gives him power to do more good, like establish a utopian society in the wilderness of Missouri.

John Dehlin [00:25:24] Right, Makes sense.

Dan Vogel [00:25:26] And he's combating, he's combating the deists. The Book of Mormon combats the deists. And his inspired revision was to restore faith in the Bible, to get rid of the contradictions and problem verses that the deist pointed out, which is some of the reasons why he made changes. Anyway, so he's combating those who are trying to destroy Christianity.

John Dehlin [00:25:58] Right? Yeah. And he's trying to answer all these questions, resolve the family disputes, resolve the issues of the day, unite people, feel better about Alvin's death, feel better about all the children that have died and probably form a religion and make money and gain rep, you know, increase his station in his reputation, probably all that. Right.

Dan Vogel [00:26:23] Well, there isn't just one motivation for doing things, there's many motivations. David Hackett Fisher in his book called Historians Fallacies says that, and he said this is him. A man or a woman will do something for every reason they can think of. And some that they don't want to think of.

John Dehlin [00:26:48] Right. So we don't even know our full intentions. Right. Or motivations.

Dan Vogel [00:26:54] No one is totally altruistic. You know, just say, would a doctor, does a doctor become a doctor to help people or to make lots of money?

John Dehlin [00:27:08] Right, it's both.

Dan Vogel [00:27:10] He makes lots of money, but does he want to help people? Does that mean he doesn't want to help people? You know, so I think the same thing with Joseph Smith. The money is the ends to means. I mean, you can't have power. You know, in the study of charismatic leaders, sooner or later they all, at the beginning they, you know, disavow riches and you know, it's all about their mission and truth. But eventually if they are to survive, they have to do the day to day things in building an organization that will survive over time. It involves money at some point and I'm not saying that, oh, you know, maybe he misappropriated some church funds because they didn't have all the rules that they have nowadays. When you raise funds for whatever reason, it has to be, you know, all proven that you're using those funds for that reason. All that wasn't in place in just this place. So, you know, he may have misappropriated some funds, but I think on other occasions he shared and helped people with some of those funds. The poor, that was Part of the raising the funds was he set up and it's a way of taking care of the poor. Those were part of his concerns. And just because he's a narcissist, you know, in a very loose way, I mean, nobody knows. One of the questions that people have asked was could we diagnose Joseph Smith with a psychiatric condition? You know, and I went through the Diagnostic Statistical Manual trying to find something fit so we could like nail it down. And I couldn't. I couldn't nail it down. And. But Robert Anderson wrote the book Inside the Mind of Just Smith. And he tries to give us specific diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder. And it warns in that diagnosis, you know, the deferential diagnosis would be to be careful because a lot of leaders have narcissistic personalities. They show narcissistic traits in their personalities, but they're not necessarily suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. And Robert labels it even further than that as a malignant narcissist. You can't do that. I recently, I was consulted by a scholar that was Lawrence Foster, who wants to push the narcissistic thing to a diagnosis level. And I advise him not to do that. It's unnecessary to give Joseph Smith a formal diagnosis because we know he has narcissistic traits. He shows them really clearly in Nauvoo.

John Dehlin [00:30:37] And

Dan Vogel [00:30:42] so it's. We can really. We can show that he has narcissistic traits, which is no big surprise really for a charismatic leader. And like I said, we don't need to push it to a diagnosis level and push beyond that. It's really not necessary to do that. We get a general sense of the personality type, which is important to do, and that gives us insight into a lot of other aspects. And even Bob Anderson, who gave this extreme diagnosis, he admitted that Joe Smith occasionally showed that he cared, had genuine caring about people. And one of the examples he gave was at the time when Jose Smith lost 116 pages in June of 1828,

John Dehlin [00:31:43] and

Dan Vogel [00:31:45] Emma was giving birth to the child that they named Alvin, who died in childbirth and was buried there in the cemetery next to the house in Harmony, Pennsylvania, that Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:32:01] Alvin.

Dan Vogel [00:32:02] They named him Alvin.

John Dehlin [00:32:03] Okay.

Dan Vogel [00:32:04] The child that died.

John Dehlin [00:32:06] Oh, right. Joseph's.

John Dehlin [00:32:08] Yeah.

Dan Vogel [00:32:09] Joseph's little infant.

John Dehlin [00:32:10] Right.

Dan Vogel [00:32:11] Was named Alvin.

John Dehlin [00:32:12] Right.

Dan Vogel [00:32:15] And Joseph Smith was very anxious about the 116 page manuscript that Martin Harris had taken to Palmyra. He wanted to go and retrieve it, but he didn't. He stayed and nursed Emma during her illness and when she was finally, well, then he went. So Robert Anderson says that sometimes narcissists can feel genuine care about other people. But the, the, some, some of the crit. My critics, some of the former Mormons tried to criticize the, the pious fraud theory based on that. And which is. It can't, it cannot be used in that fashion. It just can't. So I don't argue that Joseph Smith was genuinely pious. You know, Joseph Smith never made that claim for himself. He never, he always said that, you know, he was subject to like passions as other men, he was a sinner himself, and that he's a wit, he's wicked and a wicked man, and he said those kinds of things. So, and he was always being chastised in his own revelations for things. Well, But that doesn't it. Just because he's a narcissist and he's after power doesn't mean that he can perpetuate a pious fraud. And these same former Mormons tried to say Joseph Smith was only after power, wealth and sex. That's all he was at, that's all he was concerned with. And that there's no pious in him. Well, to me that's a caricature of Joseph Smith. It's just as bad as the saintly prophet that the true believers believe in. So what I would argue is that what were Joseph Smith's motivations when he started? I'm not arguing that he remained pious. You know, he had these pious intentions and then it didn't evolve over time or that he didn't, he wasn't interested in wealth and then sex later. What I'm saying is that what started him was to change the world of religion through a pseudo graphical writing that when he was to pretend to no other gift. This is before he started dictating what we have of the Book of Mormon. The next month, Joseph Smith dictated this revelation to Martin Harris that said he was to pretend to no other gift. Well, so he's going to write the book, translate the book, but what's after that? He hadn't even determined that. So when he starts dictating, the goal is to produce a book that would reform the religious world. Because the same revelation says if the Gentiles accept the book, the God would work a reformation among them. So a reformation was the goal. When Joseph Smith revised this revelation, he changed the wording to, to pretend to no other gift until it is finished. And then he changed the work of reformation. He changed that to and the church shall come out of the wilderness. So by the time he gets through dictating the Book of Mormon. His goals have changed. But the major goal of that book is not for Joseph Smith to get wealthy or to have sex. The major goal of that book is for Joseph Smith to get power, to be the leader of a community called the New Jerusalem government. And so in the book, he wouldn't, if he was a. If he was about after wealth, he wouldn't condemn priestcraft, those who preach for hire. He wouldn't condemn polygamy and make sexual sins the worst sin next to murder. I mean, if you were after women, I think the last job you would probably want is a beat to be a minister. But so he wasn't after that. Later on, he gave in. He gave in to those temptations. And that's why I write in my biography. He wanted to be like Nephi, you know, who never complained, who was always faithful and, you know, a stalwart religious man. But he ended up being like the vill, somewhat like the villains he wrote about, you know, because those were inside him too when he's writing. And so over time, he gave into temptation and his goals morphed and became somewhat different. He started abusing his power. He got power like narcissists covet this power, really. And then he started abusing the power. And that's, that's what these other things are, you know, getting wealth and getting women. He's abusing his main interest, which is power over these women. And so my take on the polygamy thing is that he couldn't live monogamy. He had a hard time being a monogamist. So he changed the rules so that he could have more than one woman within the rules, new rules that he formed. And so in his mind, I believe he didn't like this part of him. He wanted to kill this part of him, like Laban, you know, and. But he couldn't. He lost the war. That's what the whole Book of Mormon is about. A war between good and evil, and the evil wins.

John Dehlin [00:39:21] I love it. Makes a lot of sense. Okay, we've got, we've gone, I think, three hours so far, and we could go forever. But I'm gonna try and get a few more things covered before we end at least this four hour block, because Facebook only lets us broadcast in about four hour blocks. And we've got about 20 minutes left, 25 minutes left, based on my calculations. Let me ask you a few more questions. Is that okay?

Dan Vogel [00:39:49] Sure.

Hebraisms, Anachronisms, and Other Apologetic Claims

John Dehlin [00:39:50] So really quickly, another apologetic defense is Hebraisms, the appearance of a lot of Hebrew Texts or structure or phraseology, I guess. Do you want to just make a quick response to Hebraisms as a evidence for Book of Mormon authenticity?

Dan Vogel [00:40:12] Yeah. Well, just like chiasmus, the apologists, even before chiasmus, I believe they made a lot of the Hebrew isms in the Book of Mormon. Phrases that if you translated literally the text, these Hebrewisms show up like plates of gold or repetitive things that are redundancies, like lehi, I dreamed a dream, you know. But all of these things can be found basically in his Revelations where he's conceivably, he doesn't have to talk in the King James language ever. But really. But since the Book of Mormons and the Revelations are in the King James language, that's what you get. And you can find the same kind of situations in other imitation scriptures, like that Great War book that imitates scripture. That was a genre that was done all over the place where they would write verses and imitate the Bible in a sarcastic way. Usually. Sort of like Abner Cole in Palmyra when he was making fun of the Book of Mormon, he wrote the Book of Pukey, you know, and it's written in a fake scripture style. He wasn't just imitating the Book of Mormon. This, this was a way of making fun of your political foes in Joseph's day. So Hebraism show up in those kinds of things too. It's kind of a video I'd like to do someday on chiasmus and hebraisms in a couple of years.

John Dehlin [00:42:00] Okay. And I just want to let people know there is a Dan Vogel YouTube channel that is phenomenal. And, and in addition to his many books, you gotta check out the Dan Vogel YouTube channel because he takes issues like the Book of Abraham, you know, Book of Mormon, Pious Fraud, you know, there's so many polyandry, polyandry, so many important topics that he addresses in depth with visuals that's really valuable. So check out the Dan Vogel YouTube channel for so many good things.

Dan Vogel [00:42:38] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:42:40] And I'll share that in the show notes as well. Okay, so we've talked about Hebrewisms. You wanted to talk really quickly about anachronisms, archaeological anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, of course. We want to refer our listeners to my two interviews with Michael Kohler, the Yale Mesoamerican anthropologist, archaeologist. That really eviscerates. He's a good natured guy who's very polite and intelligent and respectful. But his scholarship eviscerates any chance of the Book of Mormon being an authentic historical document as he talks about all the incredible, not only anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, you know, animals and food and, you know, themes and things that just shouldn't be in the Book of Mormon. But he also mentions all the things that should be in the Book of Mormon if it's a Mesoamerican history that aren't there. But you wanted to just speak quickly your view on the archaeological anachronisms in

John Dehlin [00:43:43] the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:43:44] What do you want to say about that for listeners who haven't had time to listen to the Michael Koh interviews?

Dan Vogel [00:43:50] Yeah, I'll leave the archaeological designations of the anachronisms to Michael Coe. I mean, he's a Mesoamericanist. And you know, another thing, Mesoamerica didn't have metallurgy really until after the Book of Mormon times. And my angle is from Joseph Smith's culture. What does the Book of Mormon talk about that they perhaps got wrong? And so the Jaredites were supposed to bring over all the seeds and animals from the Old World and Lehi brings like the honeybee and things like that over. The. The. I did touch on it already where I talked about where it was an assumption of Joseph Smith's contemporaries that the mound builders used iron and steel to build. It was assumption that they had the horse and all the other animals the Book of Mormon wrongly mentions. So these things didn't stand out to anybody. It was only until later that it was discovered that these things had been brought over by the Europeans.

John Dehlin [00:45:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:16] So Joseph sees Native Americans riding around on horses. So when he writes the Book of Mormon, he includes them riding around on horses, Right? Yeah, yeah.

Dan Vogel [00:45:26] And that's why I mentioned Spalding made that same assumption. And another thing was that they would find bones of the mastodon and they would conclude that the ancient Indians coexisted with the elephant. And I think the curleaums and Kumams, you know, mentioned in the Jaredite era were the sloth and bison, because those were also in museums, in Peale's Museum in Philadelphia. They had all these bones assembled for display. And the newspapers talked about the elephant bones being discovered. And the Indians assumed that their ancestors had coexisted with these extinct animals. So it was an assumption, Jose Smith put it in the Jaredite era. Most likely not true.

John Dehlin [00:46:35] Okay.

Dan Vogel [00:46:36] That's a. That's. That's the only. That's kind of the angle I wanted to mention. And the anachronisms, like the biblical anachronisms, was one of the first things that impressed me I read Mike Marquardt's essay on the, on the Bible in the Book of Mormon. And it wasn't just that the Book of Mormon quoted New Testament passages. It would quote a new test, it would quote a New Testament like in the Old Testament. There's Alma. And Alma is arguing against universalism and says, you know, basically one argument against universalism is that there's the sin against the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost which shall not be forgiven in this world nor the world to come. That turns out to be a proof text of the anti universalists. In Joseph Smith's day. They would say everybody's not going to be saved because Jesus talks about the sin against the Holy Ghost being unforgivable and they're not going to be saved. So you find that that's a New Testament passage in the Old Testament part of the Book of Mormon. In the context of an anti universalist argument, Alma's trying to give his son Corianton. Corianton was a believer in universal salvation. There was a whole school of universalists called the Order of Nehor. And in the beginning of Alma, the first chapter of Alma talks about Nehor believing that all mankind shall be saved. The end. And then Nihor actually commits murder and is executed by hanging. And this was an example of a universalist who believed in universal salvation, not believing in God's commandments. Because this is what people feared about universalism in Joseph Smith Day was that they would, it would become a murderous society because no one would have any morals and, or fear of hell and damn fire. So they would commit sin and murder only fearing man's law. And so Nihor is an example of how universalists meets his ignominious death for murdering a righteous man. And then this Order Nehor reappears throughout the Book of Alma, you know, and Ammon and Alma preach against the Nehorites and you know, in various places. And their arguments against the Nihors are typical arguments given by universalists in Josephus Day. I have a whole video on this by the way, of anti universalist rhetoric in the Book of Mormon. And rhetorical criticism is one of those biblical criticisms like form criticism, you know, that Bible scholars used and these are techniques actually that when Brent Metcalfe and I were very young, we would read this biblical scholarship and we would try to emulate some of their techniques in analyzing the Book of Mormon text. So rhetorical criticism is one of them, where you try to listen to the argument that's being made and who it might be Made against. And that gives you clues as to the inspiration of those passages. But so anti universalist Kohor. I mean, Corianton and Alma. Alma is talking to his son Corianton and giving a few arguments against universal salvation. And anyway, he quotes that passage about blasphemy against the Holy Ghost that is in the Old Testament, but it's a New Testament passage. So these are serious historical anachronisms. And the only way out of it, the apologists try to talk about a loose translation and that there was some kind of Old Testament passage there instead and just mis substituted it with a New Testament passage. This is desperate apologetics again. This is desperate.

John Dehlin [00:51:28] Right.

John Dehlin [00:51:30] Okay. So going back to this issue of Biblical Anachronisms, one of our listeners asked, how do you respond to David Bacavoi's assertion that the Deutero Isaiah material, the Book of Mormon is perhaps the most damning evidence against the Book of Mormon? And just if you want to remind people what Deutero Isaiah is, for those who haven't seen David Boy interview, of

Deutero-Isaiah and Closing Reflections

Dan Vogel [00:52:00] course, David's all about this subject, but one of the most. I don't know. It's one of the most. Okay, because there's many. The necronisms are many. And it's not just that they quote the Bible New Testament passage in the Old Testament and that the apologists try to say, oh, it's being substituted. Sometimes they say, as the prophet said, and it's in the New Testament, you know, so it's, it's nailing the. It's not just a substitution. They're actually quoting the New Testament. And then the apologists have to invent, oh, there must be a third document, a missing Bible book somewhere that has this passage that James was quoting, you know, or some sort of thing like that. There's no end to apologetic excuses. But for David Bachavoy's statement, it's absolutely true. I mean, and he gave all the evidence of the historic that scholars have already determined that various parts of Isaiah were written after certain periods because of things that they. That those passages talk about had to be that help date it. And I mean, George Smith wrote one on Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. Dave Wright also wrote on Joseph Smith in Isaiah or something like that in Brent's book New Approaches to the Book of Mormon. That's another one that you can find on the signature signaturebooks.com in the free library part you can find Dave Wright's essay on Isaiah. That's a very good book that anybody interested in these Book of Mormon Problems should read, but we're running out of time. Probably the. Anyway, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:54:13] No, no, no. Go ahead and finish your thought.

Dan Vogel [00:54:17] I think I lost it.

John Dehlin [00:54:19] Okay. You're referring to the book. Is it American Apocrypha, Essays on the Book of Mormon.

Dan Vogel [00:54:28] Yeah. Or New Approaches. New Approaches. No, sorry, that's another book Brent and I edited, American Apocrypha.

John Dehlin [00:54:38] Okay. You're talking about New Approaches.

Dan Vogel [00:54:40] New Approaches is an older book. New Approaches to the Book of Mormon Explorations and Critical Methodology. And that has a lot of biblical scholarship kind of methodology used on the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:54:56] Okay. And I'll include in the comments to this Facebook live stream a link to that book because it's important

John Dehlin [00:55:06] and it's

John Dehlin [00:55:06] what got Brett Metcalf and David Ritex communicated, right?

Dan Vogel [00:55:10] I believe so.

John Dehlin [00:55:12] Okay. I sometimes get those books confused. All right, so just to summarize a couple more things about. About the Book of Mormon, you can just confirm this for those who didn't listen to my other interview with you. You feel like the Book of Mormon that we have today actually was written within, what, a month or two's time? Is that right?

Dan Vogel [00:55:37] 75 days.

John Dehlin [00:55:39] 75 calendar days.

Dan Vogel [00:55:41] 75 days that the apologists talk about. It could be more. But remember, I believe he was thinking about writing it for years. He was gearing up to it, thinking about what would be in the book, practicing his sermons, probably. And.

John Dehlin [00:56:04] And he was telling these stories from a very young age about Native Americans, etc. Right.

Dan Vogel [00:56:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:11] Mound builders. You think he was a solo author? A lot of people mocked me and you for this idea of tin plates. What do you make of people who just think it's fanciful that. Where did he get the money for the tin? Where did he get the tin? Where did he get. I know we already covered the tin plates, but some people, some apologists were mocking me for not giving you a harder time about your theory that Joseph created tin plates. What's your response to that?

Dan Vogel [00:56:46] Well, like Dan Peterson tried to mock it by saying, oh, I suppose Joseph Smith was a metallurgist, you know? Well, he didn't have to be a metallurgist. The tin were in sheets.

John Dehlin [00:57:01] You talked about this in our last interview. Sheets that were used for wagon wheels. Right.

Dan Vogel [00:57:07] For buying, making straps to bind buckets and barrels to make actual buckets out of, to make candle holders, to make lanterns. You've seen the tinsmiths. There's some, you know, old cities that are historical sites that you can go to and watch tinsmiths work. I'm sure. They have a YouTube thing on it where they would make an object out of tin and then they would make holes in it for the lantern with a certain, you know, an instrument. And the rods, the rings, you know, those are like the handles on a bucket. They use the rods to bind things with. Also they made nails out of them. Back then, they made homemade nails. They would take a rod and cut it and sharpen the ends and flatten the. The other end, you know, you know how the nails look kind of squarish, you know, Anyway, so.

John Dehlin [00:58:09] So there's lots of availability of tin sheets that he could have used.

Dan Vogel [00:58:13] He didn't buy them. He. He borrowed them, you know, pilfered them. He. He found them around, you know, scrap heaps, or he found some that were being prepared probably to make a roof or who knows? But I believe he was hiding them away somewhere, probably in a hollow log somewhere in the woods. And then he took the opportunity on the night he and Emma went to the hill to go and start making these plates and using tin snips or shears, cutting.

John Dehlin [00:58:52] And there's gotta be plate. And the reason why you feel this way is because there are instances where people are feeling and hefting the plates under some sort of blanket. So there had to have been plates, and if they weren't delivered by an angel, where were, you know, where did they come from? And we know that they. That given the descriptions of the size of the Book of Mormon, if it was gold, it would have been way heavier than anyone could have ever lifted or hefted or carried. Especially Emma dusting, you know, around a table. So that pretty much mandates that he had to have created fake plates from somewhere.

Dan Vogel [00:59:30] Well, what's under the cloth? Are they gold? Are there gold plates or tin plates? Both have the same evidence for them. Both are theories. You know, people lifted them, didn't know what was under the clothes. Even believers, they couldn't say that it was gold plates under the cloth. They couldn't say it wasn't tin plates either.

John Dehlin [00:59:56] Right.

Dan Vogel [00:59:58] So what makes me think that their tin plates is that the Book of Mormon's not history. The Book of Mormon is not history. There were no Nephites to make the plates, to bury the plates, to appear to Joseph Smith to reveal the plates. So that's what resolves whether it's gold or tin. I mean, gold is too heavy. And the apologists have worked really hard, as usual to make the plates as light as possible. And so they refer to Tamboga. Tamboga is a mixture of copper and gold that exists in Central America that they hammered out and they could get the gold to rise to the surface. But how they treated these plates left little pits in the gold and left the copper exposed. So to get them as light as possible, some apologists speculate that they were only 3% gold. That's how you can get them as light. And they're still like 70 to 80 pounds. Okay, so they're too heavy still. They're on the light side of 60. William said 40, I believe, or Harris Harrison. William gave weights between 40 and 60 pounds. Okay, so they're on the light side, not on the heavy side of 60. So they're still too heavy at 3% copper gold. And they would have been the green plates. Okay. Not the gold plates they would have. In the ground, in the moisture, they would have corroded. And that's one of the problems with Tombaga is that the ones you see in the museum have been polished and restored. They're really corroded when they actually find these Tamboga samples anyway. So Joe Smith could have made him sometime. I'm going to make a video and I'm going to show you how to make them. So. But I haven't got around to that.

John Dehlin [01:02:25] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org.

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