Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. We are well into an amazing, what I think is historic series on Mormon stories about Mormon church truth claims based on the amazing work of, I'll call him a lay scholar, Mike, who has put together an amazing website called LDS discussions that can be found@ LDSdiscussions.com and we have covered so many cool topics so far on treasure digging in the Book of Mormon. And we are now just starting to also talk about anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, which we just recorded an episode on. And today we have an episode that kind of follows on that, where we're going to be talking very specifically about the King James Bible problem in the Book of Mormon. And that's the episode for today. And I think that a lot of Mormons would never even think that the King James Bible appearing in the Book of Mormon would in any way be problematic because, hey, they're both scriptures. It's the stick of Joseph, it's the stick of Judah. They belong together. So why wouldn't the King James version Bible appear in the Book of Mormon? Right, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:01:13] Yeah, I mean, that's just it. And so it's one of those things where, like, for me as a believer, I never really thought about it just because you're just. That's just. It is what it is. Right. You just use the King James Bible language and all that. So, you know, it ends up being one of those things where the problem gets deeper the more you look into it. And kind of, as we've been doing, all these episodes are building on each other. And that's why I think on this episode you're going to see a little overlap. But it's because now all of these things we've been talking about are kind of colliding together in a. In a way that I hope will not just make this episode more meaningful, but maybe make those previous ones that you've listened to or watched a little more meaningful as well, because it's starting to tie these things back together.

John Dehlin [00:01:50] Yeah. Yep. So there'll be a tiny bit of overlap, as there always will be, but this is a really important episode. What's the link for this? The essay for the corresponds with this episode can be found@ LDS discussions.com KJV will include a link to that essay in the show notes, along with other essays and episodes and topics and references that we make. We also should let people know at the outset that we're including. If you just wait you know, at least a few days to a week after these episodes are released. Um, we have show notes and time codes where you can actually jump to portions of the interview that you want to hear. We're trying to balance not going too fast for people that are new to these episodes or to these issues, but also not going slow to people that have been studying this stuff for a long time. We hope we're striking a good balance. We're doing our best to do so. But also feel free to slow these down at 0.8 speed or 0.75 speed if you think me or Mike talk too fast or if the topics are too advanced. And if you've heard all this before and you just want to get to the meat, feel free to speed it up to 1.25 speed or 1 1/2 speed or even 2 speed. Or you can use the time codes to jump backwards and forwards as you wish. But please, in your feedback, understand we're trying to make these. These episodes meaningful and relevant to people no matter where they are on the spectrum. So try to be kind in your feedback. Um, all right, well, why don't you go ahead and give us. Oh, oh, and I'll just say one last thing. As we try and say in all of our episodes, we are not doing this to destroy faith. We're not doing this to tear down the Mormon Church or to take people out of the Mormon Church. We're doing this entire series under the. In the spirit of informed consent, we believe that everyone should know what the Mormon Church truth claims are and what the evidence is that support them. Because so many important decisions are made in people's lives based on these truth claims in the history and the context that they're provided, whether they're born in the church or an investigator or they're looking into the church now. So it's the. It's the spirit of informed consent and not any desire to destroy that hopefully informs these episodes. And we promise to do our best to be as respectful as possible. And sometimes we come off as critical, but I think that's only when the evidence just really merits it. But even when the evidence merits criticism, we're still going to try and be as respectful as we can. Right, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:04:38] Yeah. I mean, and again, it's just. It's one of those things where I think, for me, I look at it like we talk about, you know, it's not. We're not going door to door telling people who are in the church, like, hey, you're wrong. This is, for me, My belief is that most people that come across LDSdiscussions.com are already having questions. And so it's about giving what I feel the evidence leads us to and giving that, Giving the sources for that, and giving the apologetics that the church gives to try to explain why I don't think they necessarily work for these topics. And so the real goal here was, like I said at the beginning of these episodes, I was asked to put this together as a way to show whether or not the truth claims of Mormonism were true or not. And so everyone who watches these or listens to this can do with with it what they want. But I also think even if you disagree with the outcome of where I'm at, at least you can hopefully acknowledge that this evidence is out there. And maybe it won't change the way you feel about certain things, but maybe it will allow you to maybe be a little more nuanced with things, or maybe it'll help your relationships with family members who leave. There's a lot of different, I think, hopefully, outcomes that can come from this, from people having a better understanding of the issues and the evidence to kind of understand where other people are coming from as well. So hopefully, even if you disagree with the. The ultimate outcomes of these overviews, it'll at least give you some perspective that'll help you elsewhere, you know, at the same time.

John Dehlin [00:06:00] And if you're a Mormon bishop or Mormon stake president or mission president, or a church education system seminary or institute instructor, or even a Sunday school teacher, or an Elders Quorum instructor or Relief Society teacher or youth teacher, it will help you teach an honest, accurate view of our history and of our truth claims. So you're not misleading future generations.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:06:22] Yep, exactly.

The Core Problem with Joseph Smith Using the KJV

John Dehlin [00:06:24] All right, so what is the problem with Joseph Smith using the King James Bible? Give us that overview.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:06:30] Yeah. And so basically, this particular episode is going to be a sort of getting to a culmination of what we've been talking about in these other episodes, which is what, why the Book of Mormon creates major problems for the truth claim to the Book of Mormon being an ancient historical text. And we're going to look at some areas of the King James Bible itself now, looking more at the text and some of the errors that are in it to better understand where this material is coming from that ends up in the Book of Mormon. And just as a note, you know, just kind of saying it again, now that we're starting to kind of build to the, you know, sort of the climax of the Book of Mormon episodes in this project, there's going to be some overlap, but I think it's going to be important because it should hopefully give more context to some of the earlier episodes. And also, you know, it's going to give more context to some of the biblical scholarship ones we're going to do once we get out of the Book of Mormon. So I think that this episode is going to give a lot more kind of depth to some of the stuff we've already done and hopefully kind of set up some of the stuff we're going to do in future episodes as well.

John Dehlin [00:07:29] All right, so the next slide, it asks the question why the King James Bible presents problems for the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:07:40] Yep. And this is just, again, it looks at some of the areas we've kind of covered a little bit. So there are certain things that the King James Bible is going to do for the Book of Mormon that is really going to kind of present issues, such as the bottom line is it's anachronistic to be in the Book of Mormon because of the fact that this translation was not done until 1611, which means that is not an ancient translation. It's a modern, more modern translation that is not going to be accessible to the Book of Mormon people. And that becomes problematic when there are certain phrases and wordings that are unique to the King James Bible that are going to work their way into the Book of Mormon. And one of the bigger things, and this is one that kind of was interesting to me when I kind of did kind of stopped privileging the King James Bible, is the translation of the King James Bible is not considered to be one of the most accurate and is actually considered an inferior translation to the more commonly used translations today, the niv, the nasb. Those are different translations that are more commonly used now because the King James Bible obviously was done by scholars at the time, but it was, again, it was done without maybe some of the. I think it was done before the Dead Sea Scroll. So it's not going to have as much of the earlier texts that some of them have. And so that is, you know, the Book of Mormon. Mormon Church, in a lot of ways is dated because of the fact that we still use the King James Bible in it. But most churches today would not use it just because they don't consider it to be nearly as good and as accurate. The King James Bible obviously includes the New Testament, I mean, because it is the Bible, but that should not be in the Book of Mormon. We've covered that in the Anachronism episode, but we'll cover that a little bit more here as to why that presents issues. And one final thing is just to say, going back almost to the early episodes, using the King James Bible in the Book of Mormon goes directly against the witness accounts of the tight translation, which is to say we are told that the Rock and the Hat gives exact words that will not change until they're written down. Yet here we're basically going to show that, and we've shown in previous episodes, too, that the King James Bible is used, you know, all over the place in the Book of Mormon, which tells us that either God is presenting the King James Bible through the Rock in the hat, or Joseph Smith is using the Bible to pull in phrases and even big chapters of Isaiah. And that presents an issue when you look at the accounts that are given by the witnesses to the process.

John Dehlin [00:10:04] All right, that's a wonderful overview. And are you saying that all of these bullets are going to be covered in today's episode?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:10:09] Yes.

KJV Mistranslations Found in the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [00:10:09] Okay. All right, well, let's jump in with mistranslations of the King James Version that end up in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:10:18] Yeah. And this is one we really haven't talked about too much. And so the King James Bible has errors in the translation, which is going to happen anytime you're translating an ancient text into a different language, especially one of this length. But the problem is those errors should not appear in the Book of Mormon, given that Joseph Smith is claiming to be receiving translation of a different source that is not the KGV through the gift and power of God. These errors being in the Book of Mormon are going to leave fingerprints as to how they got there. And then that allows you to understand who brought them into it. And so these are errors that maybe wouldn't seem like huge deals, but they do allow us from a textual standpoint, to understand how they got there and when they were put there and who would have put them in there.

John Dehlin [00:10:58] Okay, so just to restate what I think I heard you say is that the King James Bible has errors in it, and the version of the King James Bible that Joseph Smith would have used would have contained some of those errors. And magically, those are appearing in the Book of Mormon. Okay, so you're going to give us some examples of that now.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:11:17] Yeah, and so this is just a really quick one, which is a good one, because if you look at Isaiah 2, 16 in the NRSV, it says, against all the ships of Tarshish and against all the beautiful craft. And then in Isaiah and the King James Bible, it says, and upon all the ships of Tarshish and upon all the pleasant pictures. And then in Second Nephi it says, and upon all the ships of the sea, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures. And we have a write up on this overview page on LDSDiscussions.com and we're borrowing from a write up that explains this particular error. And what they say is one of the reasons I like this example is because it's a twofer. In the same verse we have the Book of Mormon preserving a KGV mistranslation while introducing a new redaction. It's difficult to argue that God is simply transmitting the KGV to Joseph, errors and all, when in the very same verse Joseph is going to make another incorrect redaction. And if you look at our overview page, we have some links to kind of show why they consider this an incorrect redaction. And then they say another reason I like it is because the source of the mistranslation is clear, meaning that we know he's pulling directly from the kgv and the implication would be that there was no Egyptian loan word that could be shifted from it.

John Dehlin [00:12:30] So really quickly, for those who just heard a bunch of words but didn't actually detect the error, so you've got an NRSV verse in Isaiah and then a King James verse next to it. What's the, what's the error?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:12:46] So in the King James Bible they're going to say upon instead of against. And then instead of saying pleasant pictures, they say instead of saying beautiful craft, they're saying pleasant pictures. And so Joseph Smith is going to bring in those errors from how do

John Dehlin [00:12:59] we know what's right and what's wrong?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:13:02] Now this is something I don't think there's any real, real argument on today. I don't know if it's because of the Dead Sea Scrolls or if it's just because when you look at the original Hebrew now, they just know it's wrong. But this is one I don't think anyone argues against that.

John Dehlin [00:13:14] Okay, so, so the wrong. So when, when the King James scholars made this translation in what the. For what, what year?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:13:23] 1611 when it came out.

John Dehlin [00:13:25] So they translated a Hebrew word to mean to be what in English.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:13:31] So they have it say pleasant pictures. And the actual translation would be beautiful craft.

John Dehlin [00:13:36] Okay. Now more modern scholars who really can read Hebrew well say that it should have been beautiful craft, not pleasant pictures.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:13:45] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:13:46] And then there's also upon all yep, in the bad, in the King James version, that's been corrected to say against all instead of upon all. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:13:56] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:13:56] Okay. Sorry, I had to just slow that down.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:13:58] And that's to say it's. And it's one of those things where it's like the actual wording isn't as important as just showing that not only is Joseph Smith pulling directly in from the kgv, which is the incorrect translation, but when he's making the little changes. And that's why if you go to the LDS discussion, kgv, we link to it. Of course it goes into depth.

John Dehlin [00:14:18] Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:14:18] It goes into a ton of explanation.

John Dehlin [00:14:20] But what you've got, just to be clear, for Those listening in 2 Nephi 12 16, it's carrying forth the King James errors.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:14:27] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:14:28] Because I'm seeing there pleasant pictures instead of beautiful craft. And it's saying oh, but it's saying upon all. Oh, it should be saying upon all.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:14:40] It's just he's adding in all of the ships of the sea in front of Tarshi. So. Yeah. And so it's just. It's an example of where you can show Joseph Smith pulling directly in from the kgv, and you can't really argue he's pulling from some other source because the KGV has this unique error, whereas the other translations don't. And so, you know, it's coming from the kgv, which is a problem.

John Dehlin [00:14:56] And what's the redaction?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:14:58] I think the redaction, man. I need to look it up because I should have looked at it.

John Dehlin [00:15:03] So just let people know there's a redaction where Joseph takes something out. Yeah, that. That, you know. Okay. That shows that he's tweaking things.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:15:13] Yeah. And so it's just, it's showing that he's making these small tweaks. And that's what we're going to get into in the next slide because this is where. This is the pattern that's going to kind of pick up here.

John Dehlin [00:15:20] Okay. I know none of us are scholars, so we're just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:15:22] Yeah, it's tough. Off top of my head, I can't remember exactly why. I just. I know that it's a very long article that explains it as these things tend to go when they're talking about the specific meanings of words from these different texts. But.

John Dehlin [00:15:33] But as I know you'll admit to later, all. All biblical scholars, pretty much all biblical scholars across the world are going to agree with this. These translation issues that you're highlighting, including the church's own biblical scholars like Dan McClellan, like David Bacavoy or Brian Hauglid. Before they, you know, lost their faith, etc.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:15:55] Etc.

John Dehlin [00:15:56] Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:15:56] Yeah. I mean, these are not really controversial. It's more. Again, it's just a problem because of the fact that we're so reliant on the King James Bible. Otherwise this would not be a big issue.

Italicized KJV Words Appearing in the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [00:16:04] Okay. All right, that takes us to the next slide, which is italicized words in the King James Version that appear in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:16:12] And this is one of the areas a lot of people point to, because obviously the italicized words in the King James Bible are there to make it more readable. And so the translators would insert words in italics and that were not part of the original translation, but they did it to make the text flow a little more naturally for the readers.

John Dehlin [00:16:27] And these are King James own scholars are including italicized words, but they're not in the original scrolls. Right. They're just what the scholars felt would be helpful to emphasize certain words.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:16:40] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:16:40] Okay. But earlier, later versions of the King James Bible, not to mention other different translations, are gonna have probably either no italics or italicize different words. Is that right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:16:53] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:16:54] Okay. Okay, keep going.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:16:55] And so the point is, this was well known during Joseph's time. And so W.W. phelps actually cites this in an 1833 article in the Morning and Evening, Evening and Morning Star. And he says, as to the errors in the Bible, any man possessed of common understanding knows that both the Old and New Testaments are filled with errors, obscurities, italics, and contradictions, which must be the work of men. And then W.W. phelps, actually, a few months earlier, makes this a more distinctive kind of claim where he says, the Book of Mormon as a revelation from God, possesses some advantage over the Old Scripture. It has not been tinkered by the wisdom of man, where he has not been tinctured by the wisdom of man, with here and there an italic word to supply deficiency. So they're outright saying the italics are almost like a crutch to make it more readable. And W.W. phelps is saying that because the Book of Mormon is a direct translation, it doesn't have that same problem. And as we're going to see, it does have that same problem.

John Dehlin [00:17:52] Okay. Yeah. So let's go ahead and see if the Book of Mormon really avoids the italics problem.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:17:58] Yeah. And so this is from David Wright, who is a pretty, I think, respected scholar of this stuff. And so he wrote extensively on Joseph Smith's use of the KGV chapters of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. And this is a good Summary from the problems we're mentioning when it comes to the italics. And so it says, depending on how conservatively you judge them, between 22 and 38% of all differences between the Book of Mormon and KGV's Isaiah parts text are associated with words italicized in the kgv. Skalazin, who's a scholar that we mentioned, he's more of an apologetic scholar, calculates it at 29%. So just say 30% ish. The difference is that only 3.6% of the words in the relevant KGV passages are italicized, so the correlation is significant. So what it's saying is that only 3.6% of the words are italicized, but they still account for about 30% of the differences. That's a pretty telltale sign where the focus is. Furthermore, 40% of words italicized in the KGV are missing in their corresponding Book of Mormon passages. Of the other 60%, many passages had environmental changes related to those italics. The Book of Mormon seems to be particularly concerned with with KGV italics, which suggests that it's derivative of the English KGV text rather than an ancient common ancestor. These revisions often cause problems. For example, Isaiah 51:19 reads, these two things are come unto thee. The Book of Mormon changes the italicized words things to sons. The revision doesn't work in Hebrew since the phrase is formulated with the feminine, whereas the word son is masculine. There are many more similar examples you can read in Wright's essay. And so what this is saying is that Joseph Smith clearly aware of the italics problem. And so as he's bringing these, these chapters into the Book of Mormon, his entire, I shouldn't say his entire, a large part of his focus is on figuring out how to make the italics work. So when they say that only 3.6% of the words are italics in those Isaiah chapters, and yet about 30% of the changes are of the italics. That's telling you that an overwhelming focus is on the italics as opposed to the rest of the text. And even then, Joseph Smith is trying to sometimes change the words around the italics to make it make more sense. But in this case, when he does it, he makes an error. And these are the, like I said earlier, the fingerprints that Joseph Smith is going to leave on this text that you can tell without any question is starting with the King James Bible and not starting with words appearing on a rock and a hat, because again, we

John Dehlin [00:20:25] know what version of the King James Bible Joseph Smith had in his possession, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:20:30] And so we know the source material of where this would come from. And so when you see these changes are completely dependent on the source text he had, there's really no reason that you could logically say, well, he started with what the rock and what the. What the sear slash Peepstone was saying, and then. And then adapted it. Because it doesn't matter when. When your source material is something that we know, you know, Joseph Smith had in his possession.

John Dehlin [00:20:53] And I'm just going to say you mentioned David Wright, and I'm just going to share something that, you know, that may seem a bit jarring to some of you is my understanding is that David Wright was a classics professor at BYU when I was there. And my understanding is not only was he kicked out of BYU or he left BYU because of pressure, but eventually I believe he was excommunicated from the Mormon Church. And some of you might go, well, wow, that automatically discredits him. If he's excommunicated, then he's a bad guy and we shouldn't listen to him. But if you go back into the 19, you know, the 1990s and beyond, even starting with Fawn Brody, you find that when a scholar is excommunicated for apostasy, be it Fawn Brody for her book no Man Knows My History, be it Michael Quinn for his book Joseph Smith, you know, Folk Magic in the Early Magic in the Early Mormonism worldview, whatever the name of that book is, whether it's Grant Palmer, whether it is others, Simon Southerton, David Wright, the Church excommunicates scholars historically when they reveal truths about the Church's truth claims that are problematic. So if you look at the credibility of Fawn Brody's scholarship, who Richard Bushman himself acknowledges is one of our top Joseph Smith scholars, when you look at how all of Michael Quinn's writings about folk magic have proven true, along with his publications about post manifesto polygamy and other things. And when you look at David Wright and even Brett Metcalf's scholarship, you'll find that all of them were spot on and that yesterday's apostate excommunications become today's gospel topics, essays and apologetics. David Wright's excommunication becomes an endorsement of the validity of his work, not a denunciation. Is that fair?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:22:57] Well, yeah, I mean, I just. I think the fact is we've talked about this in other episodes with different topics, but, you know, David Wright is pulling these things out, but he's not being contradicted. He's being confirmed by other scholars. And so it's not just one person. And again, you can look at the KGV and you can look at the Book of Mormon and you can do these comparisons for yourself. And so David Wright's problem was the fact that he was coming up with articles that were telling us there's a problem here and making it public. And obviously, I think today the church operates a little differently. Obviously, you know, they're not going to come after someone like me for it because I think now it's just out there. But back then, David Wright was doing something that hadn't been thought of. And so I think for a long time they tried, they did try, you know, September 6th and all that was an attempt to try to keep scholarship of the Book of Mormon faith promoting or else, you know, you would, you would face discipline. And I think now all of those people are being referenced in these Gospel topics essay. I know Michael Quinn has been. I know other people have. And so it's really hard when you see that to not go, you know, why would they excommunicate for telling the truth? But the truth is in these cases, they were. Because these things are true, they're just not faith promoting. And so again, we've talked about this before. If your goal is to maintain faith and your equation is that it must be true, these episodes aren't for you. But if you want to start with a clean slate and kind of get to where the evidence leads, you're going to end up in the same places that these guys did. I don't think you're going to be excommunicated for it, obviously, but they were excommunicated in publishing these things, which I'm certainly getting a lot of use out of to help me understand it. So I'm thankful to them, even though I know they went through problems for doing so.

John Dehlin [00:24:31] And many of the church's own Gospel topics essays reference excommunicated, you know, the scholarship of excommunicated Mormons. And they do, which validates, you know. All right, so. So the next slide is Joseph Smith leaving fingerprints when dealing with the italics.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:24:47] Yeah. And so just as we said in the last slide, obviously it seems like there's a huge focus on the italics and so he's aware of the problem. And we know that this is something known because WWF Phelps mentions it twice, obviously, a few years later. But it's, it's something that was not like people obviously understood. These italics had kind of stuck out a bit. And so as we mentioned in the last slide, if Joseph Smith is reading the words off of a stone and a hat. And the scribes can't write down the next part until it's written right. Why are the KGV words being pulled in and all italicized or not? And so that is something again where we get into the type versus loose. You know, we have to acknowledge that Joseph Smith is using the King James Bible. And one of the best ways to illustrate how Joseph Smith is going to begin with the KGV text of Isaiah and then revise it as he saw fit is this example that Stan Larsen was able to pull from the printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon. And he says in First Nephi 2011, the words of Isaiah 48:11, how should my name be polluted? And the words my name are polluted or sorry, the words my name are italicized. Those words were initial. It was initially revised to how should I suffer my name to be polluted? Then the KGV words how should in the Book of Mormon I were crossed out in a super linear revision, gave the final Book of Mormon declaration, I will not suffer my name to be polluted. This revision shows that for a biblical quotation of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith used the English KGV as a base text for the later revision that's embodied in the Book of Mormon. And this is one where he actually had access to parts of the surviving printer's manuscript. And you can see those changes on the printer's manuscript, which is showing that Joseph Smith is pulling the KGB into the text. And then they made this kind of superficial change on the printer's manuscript. So we know that he started with the KGV and then made the change. And that tells you that Joseph Smith is trying to make sense of those italics and to make them work. And so in this particular case, he puts I suffer in front of the italicize my name. And then at the end he crosses out the house or he changes it from how should I suffer? To I will not suffer. And again, it just shows the progression is KGV to how it was dictated to Oliver. And then the printer's manuscript has that final change. And that's a big deal because it shows us without any question where he's starting from in these Isaiah chapters. He's not starting from the Seer Peep Stone and then working his way back to the kgv. He's starting with the KGV and working his way to the finished product.

John Dehlin [00:27:20] And you've already said this, but I'm going to ask you again. When the scholars are creating the King James version of the Bible. Why are they including italics?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:31] I think it's just because they're trying to translate this language.

John Dehlin [00:27:35] Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:35] They're trying to translate Hebrew into English. And when they're doing it, I think the literal translation isn't readable. It would come off kind of clunky. So the italicized words is almost like to put a filler in the middle so that it reads to you better. So when you're reading and it doesn't read super clunky and I don't know a good example, but I'm thinking it'd be something like, you know, I went car drive home. And you might put like to the. Or something like I went to the car so that you. When you're reading it, it's just to someone who wants to read these stories at night to their family, it's going to make sense, it's going to feel comfortable as opposed to being a super clunky literal translation that's going to lose kind of that readability to an English audience.

John Dehlin [00:28:12] Okay. So when Joseph is looking at the King James Bible, you know, behind the sheet or however he's doing it, when he's dictating out of his King James Bible to the scribes, these italics are kind of cues to him that he's at a part of the verse that are problematic or need further explanation or maybe could even be unclear in some way. And so just to make sure I understand, we're seeing whenever there's a change, maybe important changes between the King James version of the Bible that he, we know he has versus what ends up in the Book of Mormon. It's almost all. It's oftentimes, you know, when Joseph was cued first, firsthand beforehand by the italics that are there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:29:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:06] And then when he makes the changes, oftentimes those changes don't reflect the original Hebrew or the original sources that we, that we have in our possession.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:29:15] Correct. Yeah. A lot of the changes just don't make a lot of sense. I'm sure there are some where you could say it made it closer, but again, I would say he's making a lot of changes. And so they're saying in Isaiah is changing, you know, like we were saying earlier, 30% of the italics are being changed. So he's making a lot of changes because he's aware that they aren't original to the text. And it just again leaves your fingerprint that who the author is because they're starting from the King James Bible. They're not starting with ancient records on Gold plates.

John Dehlin [00:29:40] Okay. All right. The next next slide is New Testament material in the Book of Mormon. So have we left. We've left the italics part now.

New Testament Errors and Borrowed Phrases

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:29:50] We've left the italics for now. So now we're kind of looking at some of the errors that come into the New Testament and kind of the different. Different examples of errors. So now they're not all just like the same kind of error. And so it just shows that there's different areas where different kinds of errors are coming into the Book of Mormon to kind of show you that it's not just like one thing. It's. It's a lot of things. And so let's dive in.

John Dehlin [00:30:07] Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:30:08] This particular one, we've mentioned this on previous episodes, but any use of the New Testament material is anachronistic because of the fact that it wouldn't have been available on the brass plates. But here's an example from Stan Larsen's essay that we cited in the previous slide. So Matthew 5. 27 in the NRSV, which is considered a better translation, says, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. Matthew 5. 27 in the KGV says, you have heard that it was said by them of old time. Thou shalt not commit adultery. And then in third Nephi 1227, it says, Behold, it is written by them of old time that thou shall not commit adultery. And so the phrase by them of old time is actually a late addition to the text of Matthew, which is a problem, because if it's a late edition, it's not authentic to the original text. So that's a problem right there. And furthering that problem is that it's still a mistranslation of later manuscripts that include this edition. So it should, instead of saying, buy them of old time, it would read the unto them of all time. So it should have said, it is written by them unto or is written on by that. Wait, you would have say you have heard that it was said unto them of old time. Thou shalt not commit adultery. So what we have is a late addition to the manuscripts that wouldn't be authentic to the original Gospel and a mistranslation that both end up in the King James Bible, that both get pulled in the Book of Mormon. So this is again showing that if the Book of Mormon is being translated off of ancient plates, first of all, you shouldn't have New Testament material anyways, but you certainly shouldn't have a late addition to the manuscript and a mistranslation. So this one gives you kind of Three problems into one. And that these are the issues where the King James Bible is just giving us all of these clues as to where the foundational text is. And you cannot argue that Joseph Smith is translating off of, like, directly off of ancient scrolls because it has something so unique to the King James Bible.

John Dehlin [00:32:00] Got it. Okay. That makes sense as to why that's a problem. So now we're going to address why these little phrases matter.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:32:08] Yeah. And so when you look at it, you would say, well, why does the phrase unto them the whole time matter? It's just a little throwaway phrase. Why do we care? And just. We've mentioned this in previous episodes, but if Jesus is truly speaking the same words to the Americas as he did during his lifetime, as many apologists would argue, in order to give plausibility to the New Testament material being in the Book of Mormon, why is Jesus speaking to the Book of Mormon people in words that were not even original to the. To the earliest manuscripts, as well as giving improper translations of the words? And so these problems with using late editions, they're not just isolated to one passage. We've covered this in the Anachronisms episode where we talk about deutero Isaiah, and those are going to have the same problem where you have material in there that wouldn't have been available until Lehi left. But in this case, it's just worse because not only is it an anachronistic, but it's a mistranslation. So if you want to claim Jesus is saying the same thing, it just. You have to then answer why Jesus would speak the same thing. That is also has a late addition in an error. It's just, you can't make this. You can't reconcile this problem unless you're willing to, again, as we've talked about in earlier episodes, give the space that kind of detaches it from the evidence. And you would not give that same space to another religion. I mean, I don't think you would.

John Dehlin [00:33:22] Yeah. And here's another way I'm thinking about it just as we're processing it. Like, we all know that the whole reason we needed a Book of Mormon was because the Bible was corrupt. Like Mormons teach. We believe in the Bible as far as it is translated correctly. We believe in the Book of Mormon to be like the most correct book ever. I just slaughtered the article of faith. But basically Mormons believe that the reason why we have the Book of Mormon is because it's pure God to Native American prophets, to Joseph Smith with a pure translation process. Most correct book ever. And so that's the whole value proposition of the Book of Mormon. And then if you think about it as well, this is like God and Jesus chance to deliver the pure unadulterated Gospel not just to, you know, Nephites and Lamanites and their descendants, but to us. Right. And so you think if ever it's going to be pure, if ever it's going to be perfect, this is it. And so like you said, why is this in King James English to begin with? And then why is the King James Bible in here and the exact edition that Joseph had? And then why are the italics influencing it? And then why are there inaccuracies and problems? And the reason why that's all significant is because that's, that's the whole value proposition to begin with. You know, we are downgrading the Bible because of its problems. And so it makes no. And selling the Book of Mormon because of its purity. So it makes no sense that the Book of Mormon is importing the impurities of the Holy Bible into the Book of Mormon when with a, with a magic stone and God's pure revelatory power, this would have been the chance to get the pure words of Jesus, you know, straight from the God's mouth, so to speak.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:35:22] Yeah, and it would have been a win, win for Joseph Smith because if you're translating off of old brass plates and you're getting the translation that's different than the kgv, which at the time would have been jarring to the people of Joseph's time. And then over the next couple decades or century, all of a sudden people are like, holy crap. The Book of Mormon's translation of Isaiah is actually closer to what we have with these better translations with the Dead Sea Scrolls, whatever the case might be. Then all of a sudden it's like Joseph Smith was a prophet, because no one at the time would have known that. But instead he's just rehashing the kgv. And it goes against not just the translations we have today, but it also goes against the accounts of the witnesses of the process. And so all of these little things combine together to tell you that something is off. And that is where if you're going to make an apologetic response, you have to explain how you get back to a place that can be reconciled by the evidence that doesn't put this as a 19th century text. And so far I've not seen anyone do that in a way that doesn't create like a privilege, like a special pleading for Joseph Smith. And without kind of using God to fill in those gaps. It just can't be done because the evidence is too overwhelming.

John Dehlin [00:36:27] Yeah. And again, if you want to learn more about Deutero Isaiah, we talked briefly about Deutero Isaiah in the Anachronisms episode, But we're going to have. Deutero Isaiah is going to get its own episode.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:36:38] Yeah, it's going to have its own episode because that's a really important one and huge for many.

John Dehlin [00:36:43] It's like up there with the Book of Abraham as like, one of the smoking guns of the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:36:48] Yeah, it's a big one. And so now we're going to talk some about the New Testament material in the Book of Mormon. And I know we've talked about this before in a lot of episodes, so what we want to do here is just kind of, again, restate that any use of the New Testament is anachronistic because the Book of Mormon people would not have had access to this in any way. But it's not so much in this particular episode, the New Testament materials in there, it said it's bringing in translation errors, compiled text, and late editions in the process. Kind of like the last error we just showed. So we're going to give a little bit of a teaser to two upcoming episodes because they illustrate this problem really well.

John Dehlin [00:37:23] Okay, we're going to talk about them here.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:37:25] Yeah, just we'll do one slide on a couple of them. So first we're going to do. This one is just kind of giving a bit of an intro to it. So here's a. Wait, we did this one. So actually we're going to go the next slide. There we go. So the long ending of Mark is one that we're going to have an episode on, but effectively the original ending of Mark would end at chapter 16, verse 8. And almost all scholars now concede that verses 9 through 20 in Mark 16 were written up to 200 years after the initial manuscripts, likely attached from a scribe who was trying to give an ending to the book, to the gospel Mark that'd be more liked by the community because they did not like how abrupt it was. And so that is something. Again, we're going to have a whole episode on this and go into that more detail. But just understand that a lot of the newer translations even put notes in there saying verses 9 through 20 are not in the original and earliest manuscripts. And so what I want to read is Mark 15, Mark, chapter 16, verses 15 through 18, and then compare it to the Book of Mormon. And so it says, and he said unto them, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. But he that believeth shall not be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe in my name. They shall cast out devils. They shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents. And if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. Now compare that to Mormon chapter 9, verses 20 through 30 through 24. For behold, thus said Jesus Christ, the Son of God, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. And he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. But he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe in my name. They shall cast out devils. They shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents. And if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. And so this is just showing that Joseph Smith is pulling from the KGV and not understanding this as a late edition, and so he's pulling it directly into the Book of Mormon. And again, it's an anachronism already, right, because it's New Testament. But this is also showing that he doesn't understand that this is a late addition. And again, we're gonna have an episode on this, so we'll go into this in a lot more detail. But it's just to point out that we have the italics we mentioned earlier, we have the translation errors, and now we're having late editions that are being pulled into the Book of Mormon that should have no place there because they're not authentic to the original text.

John Dehlin [00:39:55] Yeah. Listening to the long ending of Mark episode, I had never heard of that before. And so I struggled to understand it during that episode, which we've already recorded. But, yeah, it really does end abruptly in the middle. It's like a reboot. I call it a control alt delete. You're reading that last chapter of Mark, and then all of a sudden, it clearly ends. And. And then it, like, starts over and then says a bunch more stuff. It's obvious that. That. That made no sense. And. And so these verses that you're quoting here are. Are in the later part of that chapter that were added later. And again, unless you go watch that full episode, you might struggle to follow. But it is important to mention here in this episode.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:40:49] Yeah, when we get there, it'll make a lot more sense because we go into more detail. But it's just. Just to show in this particular point that there are late editions being brought in in addition to all the other areas we mentioned. And it's just really important because this is not an issue where the King James Bible presents, like, one problem. It's. It's translation, it's italics, it's late editions. All of these things Joseph Smith is assuming are close to what the original intent was because he doesn't have a lot of the biblical scholarship we have in 2022. But that also leaves his fingerprints on the text. And it also makes claims that we can now test better, and they're just not coming up as passing those tests as far as the evidence proving them to be credible and ancient.

John Dehlin [00:41:29] Yeah. And it's just hard not to say that those verses in Mark. Well, that those verses in Mormon weren't heavily inspired or influenced by Moses.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:41:42] They're pulling in phrases just identical. So to say that. That they don't belong. It's a problem.

The Sermon on the Mount and Anachronistic Material

John Dehlin [00:41:48] By the way, this is totally just out of place, but wouldn't it have been amazing if Jesus gives us new teachings and new principles in the Book of Mormon that he didn't give us in the Bible? I know you've probably already said that a bunch of times, but, like, it's just really sinking into my brain now. Would it have been cool if Jesus taught new doctrine to the name Lamanites and Nephites that we didn't hear in the Bible? Wouldn't that have been super cool?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:42:13] I mean, that's just it. And that's a good.

John Dehlin [00:42:16] Like, what if Jesus said, for behold, the three degrees of glory are real? Or, for behold, someday, you know, Joseph Smith, someday Mormons will be called to practice polygamy. Like, come on, Jesus, Book of Mormon, Jesus, you could have given us more.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:42:32] Well, I think that's just it. And, like, you know, again, you know, if we go. We'll go to the next slide, because the Sermon on the Mount, to me, is the biggest illustration of what you just said, which is we're gonna have a separate episode on this as well. So this is kind of just a really short kind of tease for that. But when the writer of the Book of Mormon. Actually, I'll back up a second. So the Sermon on the Mount is obviously a famous sermon in Matthew, and in the Book of Mormon, they have the sermon at the Temple, which is effectively rehashing the Sermon on the Mount. And so the problem is it relies on the reader of the Book of Mormon accepting the fact that Jesus is going to give the exact same sermon that in America that he would have given in, you know, in the old world. And the problem is that by doing so, it's going to have a lot of things that don't make sense to people in America. Just as if you're a presidential candidate and you're giving a stump speech in Seattle, Washington, you're going to want to give a different one if you went to say, like, you know, Georgia, because they have different, different needs of these states. And in the Book of Mormon, you can see where Joseph Smith, just like we mentioned with the italics, he's very concerned with certain phrases that he knows won't make any sense to the people in America, but because he doesn't know that some of the other ones are what exactly they are, he leaves them in. But then when now, through the hindsight of having more scholarship, we can show that those phrases would have no meaning either. And so then you'd have to believe that Jesus is going and telling people stuff that would just have absolutely no meaning to them and in fact, be confusing, because they'd be like, what in the world are you talking about? And these are the ways you can tell that Joseph Smith is starting with the King James Bible and then just making some superficial changes to fit the Book of Mormon's narrative as it goes. And by doing so in the Sermon on the Mount, the best example of that is when you get to.

John Dehlin [00:44:15] This is good. This is really good.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:44:16] Yeah, yeah. So in Matthew 5. 26, there's a phrase that says, thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. And so Joseph Smith knows that farthing is English currency and would have absolutely no meaning in the Americas. So Joseph smith in Nephi 1226, is going to change that until thou has paid the most the uttermost senine. And that is the Nephite coinage that is mentioned in Alma, which is just two books earlier and then never mentioned again after this one passing mention. It's almost like Joseph Smith knew he needed to set up currency for this exact moment. I mean, that's my kind of personal thought on that, is he sets it up two books ahead so that he's ready for this because he knows that that means nothing. But the problem gets deeper because the Sermon on the Mount, by the way,

John Dehlin [00:44:59] using the word senior again confirms the tight translation narrative that Joseph can come up with words that aren't understood in modern parlance. And of course, that makes all the apologetic attempts to do the loan shifting that we talked about in last episode to explain all the anachronistic words. It just, I just have to reiterate that invalidates all of those attempts to loan shift and to redefine words. Because we know Joseph can call any person or any object whatever name it actually was because of the tight translation reading from the stone in the hat.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:45:43] Okay, keep going. Yeah, because he works in this entire monetary system, which is basically used once and then thrown away, which is another area that tells you when they talk about complexity and they'll say, oh, he's got a currency system. It's like he's got a currency system that's mentioned like twice and then gone. And that tells you he brought it up to get through a specific problem, which I believe it might be this case, to get through the Sermon on the Mount. And then it's gone. And then so he mentions that. But then on the other hand, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus refers to the Roman law of going a mile in Matthew 5, 41 says, and whoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him Twain. And this ends up in third Nephi 1241. And the problem is this is a Roman law. So by the time Jesus is telling us to the people in the Americas, they would be like, what are you talking about? I have no idea what that means.

John Dehlin [00:46:28] Meaning a mile of the word mile.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:46:31] Yeah, I think it's something like with. I don't know if it's slavery or something, but if you.

John Dehlin [00:46:36] Because mile. Wait, wait. Because mile is a British unit of measurement of distance. Right? And Nephites wouldn't have. Nephites wouldn't have used the word mile. So why. Why couldn't he said dollar for, you know, when he said C9 or quarter, he's going to use the Nephite word for currency, but then he's going to use a British word for distance. That doesn't make sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:47:03] In Britain. They use in Britain these kilometers, Right. So I don't even know these miles.

John Dehlin [00:47:08] Mile is a. Is like. Is like.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:47:09] I mean, it has to be right, because it's in the KGB. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:13] So again, why would God use C9 in one verse but mile in like a subsequent verse?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:47:20] Oh, yeah. And that's the problem, because mile he knew would be familiar to everybody. And so he doesn't need to change it. But he knows that farthing would be a red flag to say, why in the world is Jesus talking about farthing? Whereas mile works in America, so there's no need to change it. But the bigger problem is just this is a Roman law that is about going a Mile, I think with a slave or something like that. And I should have. We'll do more of this in the Sermon on the Mount episode because I have a lot more on that. But it would have no meaning to the Book of Mormon people. And that is really where it's a really easy way to know that Joseph Smith is seeing the superficial changes he needs to make, but he doesn't understand some of the other things. And so he leaves them in. But those are just as problematic. And it tells you where that he's starting from the King James Bible before he makes these changes. There's no way to work from the brass or the gold plates as a translation and make these changes because they would already be changed because they would never be mentioned the first place. It just shows, just like with the italics, he's focused on these things that stand out and are out of place. But then when he doesn't kind of understand what it is, like with the go a mile part for the Roman law, he leaves it because he just doesn't know it's a problem.

John Dehlin [00:48:27] Yeah. And again, why are these Britishisms, why are these Romanisms, why are these problems with the Bible all being imported into the Book of Mormon, which is supposed to be the most correct book ever?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:48:42] Yep. And that's just it. I mean, we're just. And these things just pile on. And so, you know, it continues on. And so, you know, there are other examples of where the writer of the Book of Mormon brings in words from the KGB that hold different meanings as to how they were actually used. And so a really cool example is in second Nephi, in Isaiah 54 it says wherefore when I looked that it should bring forth grapes. Brought it forth wild grapes. Second Nephi 15:4, it says wherefore when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, it brought forth wild grapes. And from the write up I mentioned earlier about some of these King James issues, what they say is the distinction is subtle but important. In the kgv, wherefore means why. So if you read it, read it, read it that way in the kgv, it should say why when I looked that it should bring forth grapes. Brought it forth wild grapes. It doesn't mean wherefore like as a transition. But the nrsv, which is a better translation, actually changes it to when I expected it to yield grapes. Why did it yield wild grapes? But the Book of Mormon changes it into a conjunction. It's like wherefore, you know, meaning like therefore this happened. And so he says wherefore when I Looked that it should bring grapes. It brought forth wild grapes. And this is a small thing. Again, these are. Some of these problems are small problems, but they tell you that he's working off of the King James text because of the fact that he's kind of misusing wherefore there and kind of interjecting the 19th century use of wherefore into the KGV translation. Except he got it incorrect. And that kind of tells us that he misunderstood what the text was trying to say, which tells us that he started with the KGV and not from, you know, a translation off of gold plates.

Apologetic Responses and Explanations

John Dehlin [00:50:16] Yeah, because the translators of the King James Bible weren't. They weren't, you know, they weren't God. Right. They were just men doing their best to translate their understanding of Hebrew or of Greek, you know, or whatever. This was God's chance to give us the, you know, we know, you know, from saying Pele El and the temple ceremony, we know that Joseph Smith could find out God's pure language, the Adamic language, that Joseph could receive that sort of revelation. Why couldn't Joseph have translated God's pure, you know, translation of the original intent of the Bible?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:50:59] Yeah, and that's just it. I mean, like, we have so many instances where Joseph Smith has a chance to get it right and to show that what was around him was wrong. And every time, he tends to just go with what was already out there. And that tells you that he.

John Dehlin [00:51:11] Or make it worse.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:51:12] Or make it worse. That tells you that he's working from a 19th century, in this case, source text. And there's no way around it because all these problems pile up. You can't just pull one at a time. And when you have all of them coming together at once, it tells you there's no way around the fact that he used the KGB when dictating the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:51:31] Yeah. Okay, so now we're going to get to apologetic responses to the King James Version. Problem for the Book of Mormon. What do the apologists have to say about all this?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:51:42] Yeah, so this is from the fair Mormon response to the CES letter about their section on the kgb. And it says the Book of Mormon incorporates text which seems to be taken from the Bible, including passages which are now considered to be mistranslations in the King James Version. We do not know the specific mechanism by which the biblical passages were included in the translation. Therefore, we cannot answer this question definitively based upon current historical information. The only description of the translation process that Joseph Smith ever gave was that it was performed by the gift and power of God in that the translation was performed using the Urim and Thummim. And the one really nice thing about this particular quote is that fair is acknowledging that the Book of Mormon contains errors that are unique to the King James version of the Bible. So that's why this verse, why this quote is helpful. Just because right off the bat they are acknowledging that this is a problem and that they don't have an answer for it.

John Dehlin [00:52:33] Yeah, and this is a non answer answer. It is both, because it's basically just saying we don't know anything. So we can't, we can't make observations or criticisms about the resulting text because Joseph Smith didn't give us more detail except for the fact that the witnesses to the Book of Mormon made it very clear how the dictation, the translation, the dictation was happening. And so we really do know.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:53:02] Yeah, that's just it.

John Dehlin [00:53:03] We really do know. And the apologists know that we know, but they're trying to, they want to make it vague when it suits them to make it vague. And, and then they want to make it specific when it suits them to make it specific.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:53:14] Yeah, exactly. And so that kind of is a good transition to our next one. And so this is more from the Fair Mormon response on the CS letter. And they say witnesses to the translation process never reported that a Bible or any other book was present during the translation. Given this evidence, we could assume that the biblical passages were revealed to Joseph during the translation process in a format almost identical with similar passages in the King James Bible. Joseph performed most of the translation in the open using the stone in the hat. Thus, how do we get the language from the King James version of the Bible? And on this one, I just point out the word assume is doing a lot because they're trying to make an assumption that kind of gives them plausibility here. And we know what the witnesses say happened. We know that the witnesses say it was read, and if it wasn't read correctly, it wouldn't go to the next thing. So that's what we do know. And we know that they would have gotten that information from Joseph because obviously they're not putting their head in the hat. They can't see it. So they only know what Joseph tells them in this case. And what I would point out is that we've said this in a lot of our overviews, but once you start making these kind of assumptions that do not fit with the evidence we do have, it just becomes indistinguishable from outright Fraud. And so to say we don't have evidence that Joseph Smith had the Bible open, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. The fact that we have so much coming straight from the Bible is evidence that he's using it. So for them to say we don't know how he did it doesn't change the fact that we know he did do it.

John Dehlin [00:54:33] Yeah, it could be anything from they were co conspirators in knowingly creating a fraudulent book to during the times when Joseph Smith was clearly quoting from the version of the King James Bible. We know he had that he had a sheet up that he was sitting in the stairwell to. He wrote stuff that he put in his hat. Like, you know, there are lots of very plausible explanations for, you know, how he may have used the King James Bible and maybe even hidden it from the scribes. But like you say, what we know for sure is that he used it because there's a gazillion fingerprints that he did. So the proof would be on the apologists to prove that he didn't use it when all the evidence points to the contrary.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:55:24] Yeah. And you know, the one thing too is like I really don't believe any of them are co conspirators just because they do seem to be true believers. There's no indication of any kind that, that they are in on it. But I would argue that, you know, when they talk about Joseph never having a book open, that to me more refers to like the Spalding manuscript theory. But Joseph Smith having a Bible open I don't think would raise any alarm bells for any of the witnesses. It's, you know, so Joseph Smith could. And one of the things we hear sometimes with his treasure digging is sometimes he would say he needed to take a break because his eyes hurt. And you could just as easily see Joseph Smith saying, recognize that they're referring to this chapter of Isaiah. My eyes hurt. I'm going to read off of here and I'm going to pray about it and see if God is okay with it. I mean there are a lot more plausible scenarios where Joseph Smith has the Bible open and no one really thinks anything bad of that because it's not like a completely foreign manuscript like View of the Hebrews. And I think that is almost certainly what likely happened with those Isaiah chapters where Joseph could say my eyes hurt from looking at the rock. But I'm recognizing that it's these chapters of Isaiah and I'm going to read them from the KGV because it's the same thing effectively and nobody would probably think anything of it from a witness standpoint. And at that point, remember, only Oliver is involved in the process anyway. So you really only need one person. He doesn't really talk a whole lot about the translation, like, ever. So, you know, I just think. I think fair, like you said, is trying to kind of create this alternate.

John Dehlin [00:56:47] That's a good point. That's a good point. Right. But yeah, when we talk about Joseph Smith using the stone in the hat and having nothing else there, that's usually Emma or Martin Harris or one of the Whitmer brothers or Isaac Hale. We can't forget Isaac Hale.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:57:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:03] So since Oliver was probably relatively silent and commanded to be silent, there's all sorts of stuff Oliver didn't tell us that we have no idea because he didn't really talk about it at all. That's a really good point.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:57:16] At all. And so it's a really good point. Yeah, I just. I don't think that you can draw any conclusions there, like I said, because you can show he did use it, then it really becomes irrelevant, like if it was open on a table or if he said, my eyes hurt, I need to take a break. Because we know he did it. So that part is interesting, but it's not important.

John Dehlin [00:57:33] Yeah. And it reminds me of that saying that the absence of evidence is not evidence for absence. And in fact, what the evidence shows is the presence of a King James version of the Bible. Yeah, that's. That's. You know, and so the apologetic attempt to say we don't have any evidence of somebody saying you use the Bible, that's no evidence. That's. Yeah, that's proof of literally nothing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:57:58] Yeah, I agree.

John Dehlin [00:57:59] And it's. And it's. It's actually that argument is made in the face of factual evidence that is hard to dispute.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:58:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:07] Yeah.

Tight vs. Loose Translation and Royal Skousen

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:58:09] And so we mentioned in our last episode the Royal Skouse and kind of approach. And so I want to kind of reference that here because it's important for this one as well. And this is part of Fair Mormon's response. They talk about when considering the data. Royal Skouse and proposes that instead of Joseph or Oliver looking at a Bible, that God was simply able to provide the page of text from the King James Bible to Joseph's mind. And then Joseph was free to alter the text as he pleased. In those cases where the Book of Mormon simply alludes to or echoes KGB language, perhaps the Lord would allow those portions of the text to be revealed in such a way that they would be more comprehensible and comfortable to his 19th century northeastern frontier audience.

John Dehlin [00:58:46] Okay, so let me. For people that just heard a bunch of words but didn't really grasp what that just said. So Skousen, which is a paid BYU professor, right, who's literally paid to try and keep people from losing their faith, right. His theory is, is that Joseph Smith is looking at the stone in the hat that Joseph presents to him in his mind's eye, a picture of the Bible page that he would be familiar with. And then Joseph's doing remix on the fly, but God just showed him the erroneous, you know, version of the Bible because that's what Joseph would have felt most comfortable massaging.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:59:30] Yeah, I mean, that's basically it. And it's a problem because just like we mentioned the last slide, fair Mormon talks about the witnesses to the process. Well, the witnesses in the process tell you without any question, Joseph was not free to alter anything. And so.

John Dehlin [00:59:42] Right. Because the word appears on the stone, Joseph reads the stone to the scribe, the scribe writes it down, says, I wrote it down. The stone hears that, and then the stone then erases the previous words and shows new ones. None of that tight versus loose translation theory just shoots down Skousen's theory here. So why would he make such a disingenuous claim? Because most people tend to respect Skousen's work as it relates to the manuscripts of the early Book of Mormon printing process. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:00:18] Yeah. And I don't know particularly why he made like, I don't know what context he made this theory and how fair Mormon is using it, if they're using it quite right or not. But this is how they replied with their CSO to reply to say why we would have it. And you know, just to point out that it goes against the witness accounts that they previously cite. And it's only created out of necessity because they would not be making this claim if the translation didn't have issues. You're only making this claim to try to basically kind of retreat to a position that is plausible after your initial claims are proven false. And, you know, I think that's really all that needs to be said. There is just that these are just, these are apologetics that just. They come out of necessity. They come out of. Out of trying to find a solution to a problem they don't have a solution for.

John Dehlin [01:00:59] And by the way, Russell M. Nelson has a seer stone and he is, you know, ordained as a prophet, seer and revelator. He could freaking look into his seer stone or he could just Pray to Heavenly Father. And Heavenly Father could tell him how the Book of Mormon was translated. He could tell him how and why the King James Version appears in the Bible. Like, why do we have modern day prophets, seers and revelators if all they're going to do is say, hey, you know, eat healthy and be a good dad and be a good spouse and, and pay your tithing and read your scriptures? Like, why don't they use their gifts as prophets, seers and revelators to answer some of these questions instead of relying on unofficial apologists who are not ordained and they have no office? Why should we listen to Skousen?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:01:49] Well, I mean, yeah, I'm sure they would say why should they listen to me? But yeah, it's just, it goes to the point of you either have answers or you don't and, or, you know, you've got like the apologetic answers. But if you're going to do that, then you have to answer the other, the other side of it. And, you know, like I said, so we just kind of already touched on this. But the tight versus loose translation episode we did is so important because it fits into all of these episodes so well. And you know, David Whitmer said, when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear and another character with the interpretation would appear. Martin Harris said, if correctly written, the sentence would disappear in another in its place, but if not written correctly, it remained until corrected so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely in the language then used. It is impossible to reconcile those two statements of the people who were there at the time with the fair Mormon approach and the royal scows and apologetic that Joseph Smith was allowed to change the text on the stone as he saw fit. You just, you cannot reconcile those two things. And so for me, I believe any historian would tell you, go with the earlier one, because the people that were there contemporaneously are going to be more correct than the people 200 years later who are trying to account for the errors that came from that initial dictation.

John Dehlin [01:03:00] Yeah. And if God can make like in the Jared Art bar, if he can make like stones light up, if he can make a vessel tied into a dish that can be submerged with animals and not leak and not blow up, he can freaking give Joseph an accurate translation of the Bible. When Joseph's like reading from a magic stone, like, God can do this, he's powerful enough to do it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:03:24] Well, I mean, we have to believe that God gave him an accurate description of the rest of the Book of Mormon. The stuff that isn't in the Bible. I mean, so it's really hard. And that's why the tight versus loose is so important, because it really implies that you have this tight translation for the stuff that's not in the Bible, the loose translation for the stuff that isn't. The idea that you could jump between the two constantly. It just doesn't work with what we know from the witnesses. And so that's why that conversation was so important to have. Because now that we're doing these later episodes, you can see for yourself, like why those two translation methods can't be reconciled as a jump back and forth. Because it goes against everything we do have and only comes as a way to try to salvage the text as being historical when the evidence is telling us overwhelmingly that it can't be.

John Dehlin [01:04:06] Got it. All right, so what does BYU professor Richard Lloyd Anderson have to say about all this?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:04:12] Yeah, and so this was an article in the 1977 Ensign which Richard Lloyd Anderson writes, and he's going to quote a latter day scholar named Daniel H. Ludlow, who is emphasizing the inherent variety of independent translations. And he concludes there appears to be only one answer to explain the word for word similarities between the verses of Isaiah in the Bible and the same verses in the Book of Mormon. That is simply that Joseph must have opened Isaiah and tested each mentioned verse by the Spirit. If his translation was essentially the same as that of the King James Bible version, he apparently quoted the verse from the Bible. Thus, the Old Testament passages from Isaiah display a particular choice of phraseology that suggests Joseph Smith's general freedom throughout the Book of Mormon for optional wording.

John Dehlin [01:04:56] Now what in the heck was that gobbledygook saying?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:04:59] Yeah, so basically saying that Joseph would open the Bible instead of reading like off of the rock in the hat, he's going to read each verse to Oliver and effectively God is going to answer him on each verse to tell him, yes, that's okay, or no, that's not okay. So this would be more of like how he translated the Joseph Smith translation into the Bible. So you're reading it and getting impressions as to whether or not it is allowed to go straight through. But like I said earlier, this is a problem because of the fact that you're still bringing an error. So then you get into that whole area of like, does that mean God was okay with some errors but not others? Does it mean God was okay with Joseph? Basically, kind of for convenience, going to The Bible, as opposed to reading off of the stone, it just opens a lot of other problems. And this answer is only being given to try to solve other problems. But when you try to solve this one, then it opens up others. And that's kind of what I've been mentioning in some of these overviews, is just to say this is basically loose translation.

John Dehlin [01:05:51] Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:05:51] It's loose translation. And it just. It doesn't. It doesn't. Then you then have to address all the problems that come from a loose translation, and they're not going to do that, because they don't. The implications here go well beyond what he's saying, but he's hoping you just read this and just kind of go, yep, that makes sense. But it goes so much deeper, and that's why we've been spending so much time on these problems to try to illustrate that.

John Dehlin [01:06:12] Got it. Yeah. You can't have it both ways. You can't have it that God wanted a tight translation in these parts. And then, yeah, just go get the Book of Mormon and read whatever. Or go get your King James Bible read, whatever. And even if it's got errors in it, I don't care, you know, do it anyway.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:06:27] Yeah, it just. It doesn't match with everything else we have within Mormonism as a whole. And with Revelation as a whole, it just doesn't work and defeats the purpose

John Dehlin [01:06:35] of having the most correct book. Again, to be importing all the errors into it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:06:39] Exactly. Okay, just. Why would you do that? And so, you know, just kind of rehash what we just said. You know, the apologetic spin here is that God is allowing Joseph Smith to copy directly from the KGB instead of simply dictating what appeared on the stone. And it's just an argument that goes against common sense when you look at the witness accounts that are telling us that Joseph had to read directly off the stone. And I just can't understand how you could say that. In some parts, he's got his head in his hat. That cannot change unless you read it perfectly. And then he's allowed to sit it down, go grab a Bible, read a few verses, and then go back to the stone. And the stone's just going to pick up. You know, the stone's like catching up. It doesn't. It doesn't add up. And so that is why I say if you start with a clean slate and you start with witness accounts and you use that as your kind of guide to look at the text, this stuff is really clear that Joseph Smith is pulling this and he's pulling it improperly in cases. And it just, it opens up so many problems that all of them point to the author of the Book of Mormon being Joseph Smith. And that's why we have those errors. If it was an ancient text on gold plates that a tight translation, as we're told, you just wouldn't have the 1611 or 1769 errors in there. It wouldn't happen.

John Dehlin [01:07:49] Yeah. And so fair tells us, don't worry, the evidence is just around the corner.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:07:55] Yeah. And we talked about this a little bit in the Anachronism episode where they always kind of tell you, look, we're getting there and it's going to keep going. And so this is one from their response to the CS letter about King James Bible errors being in the Book of Mormon. And so what they say is it is not the case that the Great Isaiah scroll is the original text of Isaiah. It is an earlier witness to the text than we previously had before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But it itself is centuries removed from the originals. And this is an argument that is true because even the Gospel manuscripts, the earliest Gospel manuscripts of the New Testament, I think are 100, 200 years old. So ideally, or not ideally, but they would have been written down over and over again. So we've lost a lot in the Gospels that we have from what they probably originally were written as. But this doesn't help the problem that we're talking about with the Book of Mormon, because even though the original Isaiah text would be different than what we have in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the fact is the King James Bible is pulling from a very specific translation. So whatever changes might have happened earlier has no impact on what ends up in the Book of Mormon. If the Book of Mormon had Isaiah different from the King James Bible and it didn't match the Dead Sea Scrolls, you could make that argument because you could say, look, we don't know what to compare to, but in this case, we know exactly where it comes from. So to say there might be an earlier text that's different, it just doesn't help Joseph Smith in any way because we can pinpoint exactly what he's pulling from.

John Dehlin [01:09:17] Okay, so just to try and make sense of this, I guess the Great Isaiah scroll is some compendium of the writings of Isaiah and it would be the one that contains Deutero Isaiah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:09:36] Well, I think it would, because not positive on this, but the Great Isaiah Scroll I think would be the one that was discovered with all these scrolls. So it's just the earliest scroll that we have. And they're saying the earliest scroll we have is not going to be the very first Isaiah scroll ever written. So they're saying that we would have lost a lot of or had changes throughout every one from scribes. And so they're saying because of that, we can't judge what's in the Book of Mormon because we know eventually we'll find earlier manuscripts.

John Dehlin [01:10:03] This almost feels like the missing scroll theory in the Book of Abraham.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:10:07] It is a little bit.

John Dehlin [01:10:08] Yeah. They're trying to just shift your concern away from the deutero Isaiah problem to say, well, there's earlier versions, more complete versions, more accurate versions. And so you can't trust the evidence. That's right. Staring you in front of your face.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:10:25] Yeah. And just to reiterate the fact that even if you had an earlier Isaiah scroll, and maybe you even someday find a scroll that you can tell was the very first one ever written, and it's a lot different. The wording is different, some of the phrases are different. It's not going to help Joseph Smith because the Book of Mormon tethers itself to the King James Bible version. So no matter what you see before it, whatever changes might come, they're not going to change the fact that the Book of Mormon is relying on the King James Bible. It doesn't really matter at that point because of the fact that Joseph Smith is pulling in errors from that exact version. So I'm honestly not sure what their point is outside of telling members, hey, if you just keep. Eventually we'll find out these answers, but don't worry about it, because otherwise an earlier scroll is just not going to help because the earlier scroll, however different it's going to be, is still going to be irrelevant to the Book of Mormon tying itself to the King James Bible.

John Dehlin [01:11:15] Got it. Okay. So the next slide is deflecting by saying the manuscripts are copies of copies. This is similar to the previous.

Scholarly Conclusions on the KJV Problem

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:11:24] Yes, it's similar to what we just said. And so far says even the Book of Mormon texts would have been far removed from Isaiah. The brass plates would have been at least a century after the fact, with many copies intervening. And that was copied and recopied into the Book of Mormon records, which was translated not in a scholarly fashion, but instead by the gift and power of God through Joseph Smith. Therefore, it is a fallacy to assume that the Book of Mormon text ought to be the exact equivalent to the original text. And so to reiterate what I said in the last slide, because this is important, what they're saying is that it's our fault for expecting it to look like, say, the Dead Sea Scrolls. But that's not at all what we're arguing. What we're saying is it matches a translation done in 1611. No one's saying the Book of Mormon should match the original text because no one can say what the original text look like. But what we're saying is that the Book of Mormon claims to have been written thousands of years earlier. It shouldn't match a translation written in 1611 that just happened to be owned by Joseph Smith. That's the problem. It has nothing to do with what the original text might have looked like. It has to do with Joseph Smith was copying from a 1611 translation. So if Joseph Smith had said, my heart delighteth in Isaiah in the Book of Mormon and then copied chapters and with all sorts of changes that we don't know what they are, we'd be like, we don't know. It's because we do know where he pulled them from that we can judge them. Not. So they're kind of trying to flip it on its head. But again, I don't know why, because it's kind of irrelevant to me to claim that earlier copies of the Bible would somehow make Joseph relying on a 1611 translation any better. It wouldn't solve the problem. It would just create a better earlier translation for scholars to look at. But Joseph Smith in the Mormon Church is still tied to 19th century translations and ideas. It doesn't really matter.

John Dehlin [01:13:04] And this is where apologists want us to focus. On the bark of the tree and never really look at the forest. And so they make disingenuous arguments that may address a micro issue or at least create plausible deniability or reasonable doubt for an attack against a church claim in the specific, when they know that that argument to deal with the specific criticism undermines their broader rationalization for the truthfulness of what they teach.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:13:39] Yeah, I agree. And like I said, at some point it doesn't matter if they find an earlier one. It won't matter for Mormonism. And that's why I'm like, why are we talking about this? It won't help you.

John Dehlin [01:13:48] It's a red herring, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:13:49] It is. It's just. It's so irrelevant, and yet it sounds good when you read it. And that's what's kind of frustrating about it. But yeah, yeah. And so instead of doing a conclusion slide, I'm gonna let Richard Bushman do

John Dehlin [01:13:58] the conclusion for us.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:13:59] Because this quote is a really honest and important quote, and it's from an interview he did on Mormon discussions with Bill Real.

John Dehlin [01:14:05] Really quickly for those, just to be clear, Richard Bushman. What's that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:14:10] No, no, go ahead.

John Dehlin [01:14:11] Richard Bushman is a former Mormon stake president, which is higher than a bishop. He's a former Mormon Church patriarch. He's a Harvard trained scholar who is a professor of history at Columbia University. He is the church's foremost Joseph Smith scholar. He wrote Rough Stone Rolling that Deseret that the church commissioned him to write and that Deseret book published. He is the church and he's still a faithful believer. So in every way he's completely legitimate and the best faithful Joseph Smith scholar the church has. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:14:50] And so he had done an interview with Bill Real on Mormon discussions a while back. And this is his quote. And he says, and then there is the fact that there is phrasing everywhere, long phrases that if you Google them, you will find in 19th century writings. The theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century theology. And it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew Bible as an Old Testament. That is, it has Christ in it the way Protestants saw Christ everywhere in the Old Testament. That's why we now call it Hebrew Bible, because the Jews never quite. Never saw it quite that way. So these are all problems we have to deal with. And I just think this is a great way to conclude it because he's right.

John Dehlin [01:15:24] That should have been in the Anachronisms episode.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:15:27] Yeah, I know, I probably should have. I figured I had to include one or the other. It's fine.

John Dehlin [01:15:30] It's good. It's good.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:15:31] It's a good way as we start recapping this stuff to look at it, because it just shows that everything in the Book of Mormon is 19th century and you can date it there and you can show the source materials there. And so at some point it's really hard to keep this equation that Joseph Smith couldn't have written it because of the fact that everything in the Book of Mormon that we can kind of pinpoint and date is pointing right back to him. And the fact that Richard Bushman is willing to kind of say it, even though he ultimately is going to maintain kind of a more faith promoting position, I think just shows that the Church can no longer escape these things in the King James Bible use. It just encompasses all of the things that Richard Bushman just said. And so that's why it was important enough for us to do this episode, to show why scholars can really outline without any question that Joseph Smith used the King James Bible as A foundational text and what that says about the kind of credibility of the Book of Mormon as an ancient historical text, I love it.

Closing Thoughts and Resources

John Dehlin [01:16:26] Okay, well, as again, Mike, for. From LDSDiscussions.com, a brilliant episode. And dang, we're only like nine episodes in.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:16:37] I know.

John Dehlin [01:16:37] We've still. Next episode's gonna be how the Book of Mormon was composed. Then we're gonna get into Adam and Eve, Global Flood, Tower of Babel, Sermon on the Mount in detail, long ending of Mark, Deutero, Isaiah in detail. And that's before we even get to first. Vision, priesthood, restoration, Word of Wisdom, Kinderhook, Plates and polygamy and Book of Abraham and so much more. But, man, what a powerful. Like, if you're going to have like nine or 10 episodes to kind of set the stage and to provide the framing, we've done some. I think you've done some really important work here.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:17:15] Yeah, like I said, I think one of the cool things I think about this is, you know, this episode and the anachronisms ones, I think, are really where you start to see everything we've done so far kind of tie together in a way that really shows why we did it the way we did it. And I think going back to that puzzle metaphor, now you're starting to see how the puzzle pieces are fitting together. And then once we get out of the Book of Mormon and the Bible stuff, when you start looking at the church history stuff, it's going to continue off of that. And I think that's why it's so important to do it this way. And I just hope, as I've said before, that people who watch it, even if you ultimately don't agree, that you can at least understand that this evidence is real, these problems are real. And hopefully, even if you don't ultimately agree with me, it'll help you a little more when you do interact with family members who might have doubts or people in your community who have left. Because these are real problems that scholars can point to and say without any doubt that it shows the truth claims don't hold up. And I think just through our first nine episodes or whatever, we've illustrated how they pile onto each other and not in isolation. I think that's the really important thing. It's just showing the common threads and. And why they fit together naturally with the evidence in a way that is, like I said earlier, it's satisfying because it's really cool when you can kind of solve these little mysteries, and then all of a sudden when they Start kind of naturally fitting together. It's a really cool thing, even if it forces you to change your overall paradigm.

John Dehlin [01:18:38] And honestly, it was the Mormon Church that taught me the truth matters. It was the Mormon Church that taught me that honesty matters. And I want to live in reality, and I want to base my decisions, how I live, how I raise my kids, how I, you know, whatever time I have on this earth, I want to spend it rooted in reality. You know, and if, you know, if there wasn't a Nephite, if there wasn't a Layman, if Jesus didn't come to the Americas, if Native Americans are Native Americans and they're not Nephites and Lamanites, I want to know that. I don't want to go to a Guatemalan and Mormon and say, hey, La Manita, that's insulting. You know, we want to live in reality. We do.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:19:21] And, you know, the thing is, it's really. This happened for me, and it still happens to a certain degree as I go through this stuff. But it's really scary to question your beliefs, and it's really scary to get to a point where you're like, if this isn't true, do I want to know? And to your point, you do get to a point where you need to know. Because if you don't know, then, or if you know there's problems but you won't look into them, then you're going to live the rest of your life kind of in the back of your head going, am I doing this for the right reasons? Am I doing it because it's true or because I need it to be or because I want it to be? And so doing these episodes, I think, will hopefully help some people who maybe are early in that process and just trying to figure it out, and maybe help them to kind of more of a gentle landing, a better understanding so that it's not quite as emotional as some of the things you'll come across online are, that'll be a little more gentle, a bit more consumable, so that it helps you to get to that point of understanding or at least getting some answers to some questions you might have in a way that maybe you could share with others. And it won't be so, like feeling like you're being ambushed or feeling you're being attacked. And I just hope, as we keep going, that that'll be kind of the spirit of it, where it's about, you know, if you want to know this stuff here, we're here for you. And if you don't we'll be here when you are. You know, if you want to watch this in a year because you're not ready for it, that's okay. Just know that this material is here when you're ready for it.

John Dehlin [01:20:39] All right, Mike, you're a treasure, and we can't thank you enough for taking time out of your busy schedule to take us through this series. And we've got 20 or 30.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:48] Yeah, we got a lot more to go.

John Dehlin [01:20:50] 20 or 30 more episodes to go, which is going to be amazing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:53] It will. Thanks everybody for checking it out and talk to you soon.

John Dehlin [01:20:56] Take care. Thanks so much.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:57] Bye, everybody.

John Dehlin [01:20:58] And again, everybody, the essay that we were referring to today is at ldsdiscussions.comkjv we have other show notes. In the show notes, within a week of this being released, hopefully you'll be able to find links to the other episodes, like the Tight versus Loose Translation episode, the Book of Mormon Anachronisms episode, and the Long Ending of Mark episode, and eventually the Deutero Isaiah episode. You know, we'll have links to all of those. We'll also have time codes so that you can jump back and forth to different parts of the of this presentation as you so desire. You can also always slow it down if we're going too fast at 0.7 speed or speed it up to 2 times speed if we're going too slow. We just want to make these episodes usable for everybody. We love your feedback. Please give us feedback@mormonstoriesmail.com we also love your comments on YouTube in the chat or in the comments section or on Facebook or you can leave comments on the blog or. We're grateful for that. Please share this information if you disagree. If you think we've got it wrong, if you think we've interpreted the history wrong, if you think our context is wrong. We invite you to let us know either through email or through the comments. Wherever you want to make comments, we want your feedback. If. If you can demonstrate that Mike and I got something wrong, we'll freaking bring you on Mormon Stories podcast and let you make your case, if you have a credible case. And then finally, we just wanna remind you all that if you really value this stuff, if you like it. So many people have told us they love these episodes, but we need you to know that we're losing donors every month. We're gaining donors and losing donors every month, but we need to replace the donors that we lose. And when we lose donors, it's not cause we've done anything wrong. Oftentimes it's literally just because somebody loses their job or falls on financial hard times or they lose interest or they've been studying this for 20 years and they're ready to move on. You know, sometimes their spouse finds out that they are supporting us and they get in trouble and they have to cancel their donations. So for whatever the reason is, we need you to step up and replace the donations or to just most importantly, tap in your. Your. Your conscience, tap in your soul. If you have a way to support us and if you value this work, we would love you to demonstrate that and to support the work not only for current generations, but for future generations. So to support us financially, click on. Click on the links in the description. Go to MormonStories.org click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor. Set it and forget it. Whatever amount works for you. 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford. These episodes are tax deductible in the United States. We're transparent in our finances. We publish our 990s every year when the IRS completes them and lets us know they're available. And every dollar you spend is going to go to me. Gerardo, Jen, Jennifer, Brooklyn. The equipment, the lighting, the broadband, the studio marketing. There are all sorts of expenses. Equipment, lighting, cameras, lenses. So much goes into making all of this possible. We really want your support. And honestly, there's more we could do if we had more support. So please support us if you can. Thanks so much for all those who do support us. Thanks for your support of this series. We really love and appreciate you guys. Most importantly, be kind to each other. Love each other. Don't tear people down. Find ways to build people up. But truth matters and keep pursuing truth. Everybody. Love you. Thank you. And we'll see you guys all again very soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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