Welcome and Episode Introduction

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is March 5, 2021 and as always, I am super excited to bring you another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Today we have something really special and fun in store for you. We've been having Radio Free Mormon on Mormon Stories podcast more frequently as of late and I've just been so thrilled to have this brilliant mind accompany us on Mormon Stories podcast recently. RFM Radio Free Mormon Dec that he was going to read the entire book View of the Hebrews written by Ethan Smith, which was a book published in 1823, trying in Vermont in New England area, trying to advance a theory for where the Native Americans came from and trying to tie them to the lost ten tribes of Israel. Anyway, this book was published via the Hebrews 18:23, coincidentally, perhaps the same year, the very same year that Joseph Smith claimed to have gotten the idea to write the Book of Mormon. This Ethan Smith character was a pastor in the same town that Oliver Cowdery, who became an eventual scribe for the Book of Mormon. Ethan Smith was the pastor in the local church that Oliver Cowdery and his family attended. Was that a coincidence or not? And of course, there are, by some people's account, many similarities between the Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews and frankly, other books. And if you don't want to take my word for it, just read about the life of B H Roberts Brigham Henry Roberts, a general authority in the LDS Church in the early 1900s who was so troubled by the parallels between View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon that he wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages outlining the similarities and the problems with the Book of Mormon. He of course, shared those problems with the first presidency, LDS first presidency, the quorum of the 12, and all the general authorities in what we now know as the the Secret Mormon meetings of 1922 brought to us by Shannon Caldwell Montez, the amazing emerging female scholar. And you can go back and watch those episodes of Mormon Stories podcast to learn more about the secret Mormon meetings of 1922. But in the end, I think what Shannon has pretty clearly established, and what is pretty much generally accepted in my opinion amongst people who really follow these things, is that by the end of B H Roberts life, the most ardent defender of the Book of Mormon in the first half of the 20th century ended up losing his faith in Book of Mormon historicity. And the View of the Hebrews was an important component of that. So for the decades and decades and decades, almost A century after B.H. roberts, Mormon apologists have been furiously trying to discredit View of the Hebrews as a possible source of inspiration for the Book of Mormon. Trying to distance the Book of Mormon from View of the Hebrews and downplay any concern in this rite. And so fortunately, we have the amazing Radio Free Mormon who has done the yeoman's task of reading View of the Hebrews from COVID to cover. And he has decided that he wants to share with us today his insight and analysis. So without any further ado, Radio Free Mormon, welcome back yet again to Mormon Stories podcast. We're so thrilled to have you here.

Radio Free Mormon [00:03:30] Well, thank you. Good morning, Dr. Delin. I am very happy to be here.

Why Read View of the Hebrews

John Dehlin [00:03:35] All right, so why don't we start with just kind of how did you get this idea to read View of the Hebrews? It's probably not the most fun read. I've tried to read it. You've done something that I literally could not do or didn't want to do. Tell us how you got this idea.

Radio Free Mormon [00:03:53] Well, I got the idea. First off, let's go back 40 years. You know, I joined the church in 1978, and I wasn't a member of the church too long before I started hearing rumors about this book, View of the Hebrews, as well as other things. But View of the Hebrews and this allegation that Joseph Smith had borrowed ideas or stolen concepts from this book in order to create the Book of Mormon. And in the 1980s, this came to a head and I was buying everything that FARMS put out the foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. And they would put out all these papers. And all of a sudden in the mid-80s, they start flooding with papers about BH Roberts and about View of the Hebrews and about how B.H. roberts really didn't lose his testimony. So I wasn't reading any of the original documents. I was just reading what FARMS had to say about those documents. And then recently, it's because of you, actually, John.

John Dehlin [00:04:50] What?

Radio Free Mormon [00:04:50] Yeah, that's why I finally read the thing. At the time, I really didn't want to read it because it didn't seem like this was going to be terribly faith promoting. And so I did not bother getting a copy of you the Hebrews and reading it back in the 1980s, although if I had been more diligent and perhaps intellectually honest, I might have done that. But I did not. But I did do it recently, and it's because you had Jim Bennett on your show and he mentioned that he had read View of The Hebrews. And he did not find it very compelling as far as similarities between it and the Book of Mormon. Do you remember that part of the interview you had with Jim Bennett?

John Dehlin [00:05:27] I do. He did not seem to feel like there was any credible association whatever between Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews. He seemed very dismissive. And by the way, I love Jim Bennett just because he was courageous enough to come on both Bill Real's podcast and mine and take the heat for 12 plus hours. Got to give him credit, but I did not approve of, appreciate his casual dismissals of you. The Hebrews.

Radio Free Mormon [00:05:53] Right. Well, when you're the only person in the room who's read it, you can say pretty much anything you want about it and nobody can question you.

John Dehlin [00:06:00] Yeah. So now there's two. Now there's two.

Radio Free Mormon [00:06:02] Now there's 2. Right. So nobody can question me, except I'm going to actually be reading from it. And instead of just having sort of a passing mention of it, like with Jim Bennett, because you were talking about everything under the world in Mormonism during those 12 hours, we're going to spend a couple of hours today talking about View of the Hebrews and how it is that actually there's more than just a passing similarity between it and the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:06:28] Okay, well, where should we, where should we dive in?

Background on Ethan Smith and the Book

Radio Free Mormon [00:06:30] RFM well, you've already mentioned a couple of things. The publication of the book 1823, was the first edition published by Ethan Smith, who was, I think, a Congregationalist minister in the town of Pulteney. P O U L T N E Y Vermont. It's population less than 2000. I am not sure that historians have placed Oliver Cowdery as a member of the congregation. I think they've definitely placed his mother and maybe his sisters as members of the congregation of Ethan Smith. And it's obvious when I read this book that this is an idea that he is fascinated with, he's passionate about. I mean, he wrote a whole book about it. And so it's hard for me to imagine that he didn't spend at least one Sunday and probably a lot more than that, talking about this idea to his congregation. Even if Oliver Cowdery did not attend the church, then in a town of less than 2,000, it's hard to believe he didn't know about Ethan Smith. I mean, he's kind of a big deal. He published a book, and this isn't the only book he published. So he's not just some minister down the road at a church you never attend. He's a big deal in a small town.

John Dehlin [00:07:35] And even today Pulteney, Vermont is not a huge town. Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:07:38] So I've never heard of it.

John Dehlin [00:07:40] Words going to get around.

Radio Free Mormon [00:07:42] Right. So, and Ethan Smith was the pastor of that church in Pulteney, Vermont from 1821 to 1826. So for that five year period, which is pretty important for the analysis. So of course apologists want to try and distance Oliver Cowdery from Ethan Smith and say, well, we can't show that he actually attended that church. Maybe, maybe his mom and his sisters did, but we can't put him in the pews. And there's nothing that says he actually knew about this book or had a copy of it or brought it with him when he came over in 1829. I think it was to visit Joseph Smith because he heard about what Joseph Smith was doing and wanted to know more and ended up being described for most of the Book of Mormon as we have it today. So there is that connection that's pretty hard to overlook. Later on in this talk I'll mention how I don't think that connection is really that important to insist upon. But that's the publication of the book. That's the connection. And now I want to talk about the thesis of the book, if that's okay.

What View of the Hebrews Is About

John Dehlin [00:08:46] Yeah, tell us what the book's about.

Radio Free Mormon [00:08:48] Okay, so everybody here knows what the Book of Mormon is. If not, go and read it. All right. I've read that 20, 30 times, studied extensively. I'm pretty darn familiar with the Book of Mormon and we all know what that is. Now, the thesis of this book, by the way, can you see that there?

John Dehlin [00:09:04] Yep.

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:05] This is the book that I ordered and read it. This is actually the second edition from 1825. I expect that it's similar to the first edition except for a part in the back, the last section is added because in the last section what Ethan Smith does, he calls it the appendix, is he's responding to reviews and criticisms of the first edition. So everything up to that, I expect, is probably going to be very similar. The book itself is 200 pages. It's not that big a book, but it is a bit dense. I mean, I made my way through it. It took a while for me to get through it because I was trying to read it very carefully and underlining and marking and making notes in the margins on things that I thought were significant. But it's a 200 page book. Like I said, I've read more difficult books than this. But this is a bit of a Slog. So I can understand why it is that a lot of people have not read it, but now I'm one of that sacred number who has. So the structure, the thesis of the book is very, very simple. Okay? The thesis of the book is that it's the origin story of the Native Americans. All right?

John Dehlin [00:10:09] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:09] And actually let's, let's talk about the Book of Mormon, because the Book of Mormon itself, it's not that long ago I realized that if you take a 20,000 or 30,000 foot view, look at the Book of Mormon and just look at what it is overall, without going into the stories and the different quotations from the Bible and all that stuff, you can get lost in the trees and not see. And I'm going to come back to that analogy as well here in a few minutes. But what the Book of Mormon is, it's an origin story of the Native Americans, right? It explains how it was that the Native Americans got to America and of course, they left Babylon. There's a family and a few others who left about, excuse me, left Jerusalem shortly before the Babylonian destruction in about 587 BCE and we all know that story. They go wander in the wilderness, make a boat, sail across the waters, end up in the Americas, and the Americas are basically empty when they get there. At least a straightforward reading of the Book of Mormon is going to lead you to that conclusion. And that was the general understanding of the church for a long time, up until they started finding out that really there was a whole lot of other people who were here who didn't come from Jerusalem. So it's been modified recently, but the basic idea is that they populate pretty much all of the Americas. And then they divide up into two main groups. One is more civilized and more advanced, more cultured, has more technology in terms of machinery or whatever it is they can do with metals and smelting of metals and writing even on the metals. And then there's this other group who of course are the Lamanites, who are not civilized, they're more savage in nature. And then over the course of time, over hundreds of years, there are wars between the two. And ultimately the savage group kills off everybody in the civilized group and it's the descendants of the savage group who are present when the Europeans and the, the English show up on the shores of America. So that's the meta story of the Book of Mormon, right?

John Dehlin [00:12:17] Yep.

Radio Free Mormon [00:12:18] Okay, so here is the meta story of the view of the Hebrews. The main thesis is that it's an origin story of The Native Americans. And the Native Americans are Hebrews, and they came over here from the Holy Land a long, long time ago, and they ended up coming to an empty land, and they end up populating this entire land with all these different tribes. And then in the view of the Hebrews, what it says is that they divided up into two main groups and one was more civilized than the other. Are you laughing?

John Dehlin [00:12:58] I'm laughing. Keep going, though. Don't let me interrupt.

Radio Free Mormon [00:13:01] Okay. The civilized group then has more technology and more advances. Right. And the uncivilized group doesn't. And so there's a series of wars between the two, and ultimately the more savage group kills off everybody in the civilized group, and it's the descendants of the savage group that are present on the shores when the Europeans and the English show up or present in America when these other people show up on the shores. Right. So when you look at the meta narrative of both books, they're actually identical, but there's some differences. And we want to talk about the differences as well. But that's the meta narrative. And this is where we get to the forest and the trees. There's the old saying, you can't see the forest for the trees. And my understanding of that, that old saying is that you're focused so much on the. The. The details of what it is you're looking at that you can't see the big picture. Right?

John Dehlin [00:13:56] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:13:57] So what we just looked at was the forest. That's the big picture of both books. And when you look at the big picture of both books, they look pretty darn similar. Yeah, but when you start looking at the details. Right?

John Dehlin [00:14:10] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:14:10] That's where there's a lot of differences. Now, if there's a hundred trees in this forest and we're looking at 100 trees, there's maybe 25, 30 of these trees that look a lot like what's in the Book of Mormon, and there's maybe 70 trees that don't look like what's in the Book of Mormon. Okay, so that's the thing that usually happens, is that what apologists want to do is they want to focus on the trees and try not to look at the forest.

John Dehlin [00:14:38] Actually, if I could just amend that. They want to get Mormon to focus on the trees and not ever pay attention to the forest. Does that make sense?

Radio Free Mormon [00:14:47] Yeah, I think it does.

John Dehlin [00:14:48] It's what they want to do. It's what they want Mormon to do because they don't want people to kind of connect the dots.

Radio Free Mormon [00:14:55] Right, Right. I think it's certainly in their interests, both for themselves as far as their own faith, as well as protecting and defending the faith of others, to focus on the trees that are not like the Book of Mormon trees, to stay away from the trees that do look like the Book of Mormon, and really to try and even make the forest look dissimilar from the Book of Mormon. Now, if I can just mention this, there's one main difference in the forest, actually two main differences, and I want to talk about those here. By the way, view of the Hebrews, let me also talk about the way it's written. This is not a narrative story like the Book of Mormon. It doesn't have all these characters in it. They're not having stories about the characters and having speeches and interactions and all the things that we know of in the Book of Mormon. Right. What this is is an argument. It is Ethan Smith's position that the Native Americans are the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. And so what he's going to do is he's going to write a book to prove it. So what he's doing is he's quoting Scripture in different parts of the book. But then in the main part of his book, which we'll get to, he gathers all the evidence as he possibly can in support of his theory that the Native Americans have all these similarities in what they do and how they do it to ancient Israel and especially the Old Testament and the law of Moses and things like that. And so that's what he's doing, is he's trying to prove his case that he's correct, that really the Native Americans are descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. And the point of writing this is not just an academic exercise. It is also because he is trying to get the Gentiles, the Americans, that's saying it wrong. The white Americans, let's put it that way. Okay. The Book of Mormon would call them Gentiles to understand who the Native Americans are, where they come from, in an effort to get them, to reach out to them in missionary work and convert them to Christianity.

John Dehlin [00:17:02] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:02] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:17:03] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:03] So this is all part of missionary work to the Indians, which is very important to Ethan Smith. It's also very important, of course, in the Book of Mormon and what it was Joseph Smith did immediately after bringing forth the Book of Mormon. Of course, that's the message in the Book of Mormon. That's who the Book of Mormon is written to.

John Dehlin [00:17:19] Specifically, as of the title page says, the main purpose of the book is to convert.

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:23] What? Oh, well, it's written to. Yeah, to the lot. I almost said lost tribes of Israel to the descendants of these people, to the house of Jacob, so that they can know what great things the Lord has done to their fathers.

John Dehlin [00:17:37] We descendants of European, you know, immigrants, basically are a secondary audience for the Book of Mormon, as far as I understand it.

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:46] We are a secondary audience. We're a necessary secondary audience because it is through us and through our being converted to the restored gospel that we will then take it to the American, the Native Americans for whom it was written.

John Dehlin [00:18:00] And that's an important parallel rfm, because if you think about immediately after the Book of Mormon, you know, gets published and the church gets created, Joseph Smith is sending missionaries to the frontiers of Ida, oh, Ohio. And isn't that how we possibly. How we end up, you know, learning about Kirtland? And it's because. It's because Joseph cares so much about converting the Lamanites to Christianity. And so if it's true that view of the Hebrews has that as a core goal, then that's a striking parallel that I never knew and had never considered.

Radio Free Mormon [00:18:39] Yeah, you said Ohio. I think you meant Missouri.

John Dehlin [00:18:42] Okay, okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:18:43] It's okay. It gets confusing because what happened, of course, was that it's 1830. The book of Mormon just come off the press in March. The church is organized in April. And the very first formal mission that Joseph Smith sends missionaries on is to the Lamanites in Missouri, over by the borders of the Lamanites, which means it's on the far side or the west side of Missouri, because that's where the frontier is. And you have all the American Indians living on the other side. That's where they've sort of been located. Right. And so that's why they go there. And there's Oliver Cowdery, who's one of them. There's the others, Ziba Peterson, you know, there's the four of them, right? And they go down there. That's the very first mission, and that's at the end of 1830. That's how early it happens. But they end up taking a detour through Ohio and talking with Sidney Rigdon, etc, and converting a bunch of people there. And then they go on their mission and it's very unsuccessful, unfortunately. If it were successful, we'd hear a lot more about it in church, I think. But they end up trying to talk to the. The laymanites as they see them, to the Native Americans, and the. The Indian agents from the federal government throw them out. So we don't want you Preaching this to these American Indians. So they did not have a lot of success.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] Yeah. Yep.

Radio Free Mormon [00:20:02] So that's, that's a similarity. Now here's a big difference, which is this. Is that the View of the Hebrews, by the way, that's a strange title, isn't it? View of the Hebrews. I always thought, what the heck does that mean? View what? View what? View of the Hebrews. But it has a subtitle which makes it a lot clearer. And I don't know if you can see that it says View of the Hebrews or the tribes of Israel in America. That's what it's about. It's about the tribes of Israel in America. View of the Hebrews is just more of this artsy way of having a title, but that's what it's really about in the subtitle. Now, these are the lost tribes of Israel, not a group from Judah. And I'm just going to go back here really quickly. Okay. For those of you who weren't paying attention in Sunday school in Old Testament class, and that's just this. All right, we have, of course, a united Israel under David. Right? We remember David, right?

Lost Tribes of Israel and Native Americans

John Dehlin [00:21:02] Yep.

Radio Free Mormon [00:21:02] The golden age. It's like Camelot.

John Dehlin [00:21:04] Camelot, Camelot.

Radio Free Mormon [00:21:08] I just had John watch that movie and he loved it as much as I did.

John Dehlin [00:21:18] It's a great movie.

Radio Free Mormon [00:21:19] I love it. But it was like a Camelot period with David. Right. But shortly after he dies. We're not going to go through all the details. This is just a thumbnail. Right? There's a division and there's becomes a Northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. They're no longer united. The northern kingdom is called Israel. That's important. Okay. It's called Israel. And the southern, southern kingdom is called Judah. And there's 10 tribes in the northern kingdom, and there's two tribes in the southern kingdom, technically two and a half, but we don't have to go there. Right. So. And the 10 tribes becomes important because what happens to the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom are similar, but they happen at different times. All right, so in 722 BCE, the Northern Kingdom gets destroyed by the Syrian empire. And the 10 tribes are. A lot of them are destroyed, a lot of them are removed. And what legend has it is that these 10 tribes went over the Euphrates river and they went north into an unspecified area where no man had ever dwelt before. So they're completely alone in this group, in this area, all of them together. So this is the lost tribes of Israel. And then they become lost. That's why they call it the Lost tribes of Israel, because nobody knows where the heck they are anymore. The Book of Mormon, however, is different because. Let me, Let me go back to the history, all right? Because now the. The northern kingdom's gone, and the southern kingdom of Judah remains for another 120 years, because it's about 587Bce so that's a little over 100 years later, right? They get destroyed by Babylon, who is now the big kid on the block as far as empires go. The Syrians have faded away. Now it's Babylon's turn, the Neo Babylonian Empire. And they come in, they take Judah, and take a lot of them back into Babylon. That's the Babylonian Captivity. All right? So this is a big difference between the two. And this is something the apologists will hammer on, which is that the view of the Hebrews talks about the Native Americans as being the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. It was the lost tribes of Israel who went north and then ended up coming into the Americas where they had all their tribes and everything. And the story unfolds from there. The Book of Mormon, however, is not talking about the lost tribes of Israel. It's talking about 120 years later when Lehi and his family and some other friends leave Jerusalem right before the Babylonian captivity, and then they come over to the promised land, and then the story unfolds from there. So that's a big distinction that the apologists try and make. It is a difference, okay? And there's no question about that. The question is whether it's as big a distinction as they make it out to be. By the way, there's nothing about these lost tribes of Israel in the Bible as we have it today, at least in the LDS Church. But in the Apocrypha, those intertestamental books which are common in at least Catholic Bibles, in some other versions of the Bible. In the Bible that was, you know, Joseph Smith's day, it had the Apocrypha in it. There's a book called Second Esdras. That's Esdras. I think it's Greek for Ezra. But in chapter 13, it talks about the ten tribes of Israel going over this, the Euphrates river, and actually God does a miracle and stops the water so that they can go over on dry land, kind of like Moses in the Red Sea. And then they go off into this northern country where no man dwelt. And that's sort of the end of the story for them. Except that in the last Days, they will come back. Okay, so that's one big difference. Another big difference is.

John Dehlin [00:25:18] Can I just. And I think we'll get to this later. But sometimes repetition is helpful because I understand the apologetic argument. It's sort of like, okay, View of the Hebrews talks about the lost North 10 tribes, but the Book of Mormon talks about the southern, you know, tribe. What'd you call it? Israel. Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:25:39] Israel's north. And this is where it gets confusing because we're used to calling all of them Israelites.

John Dehlin [00:25:43] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:25:43] But Israel is a northern kingdom. Judah is a southern king.

John Dehlin [00:25:46] Okay, Judah. So the Book of Mormon about Judah and View of the Hebrews is about Israel, Is that right?

Radio Free Mormon [00:25:52] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:25:52] Okay. And they're trying to say that because. Because the two books talk about different segments of the 12 tribes. Therefore, there's no relation.

Radio Free Mormon [00:26:04] They're not at all alike.

John Dehlin [00:26:05] And that. That, to me, that's sort of like saying. That's like saying, let's say that. That, you know, we start with a fictional book, which is the Harry Potter, you know, volume seven or whatever. Seven volumes. And then two loyal fans decide to create fan fiction. One decides to create fan fiction around the house of Slytherin, and a second fan decides to write, you know, some fan fiction around the house of Hufflepuff

Radio Free Mormon [00:26:40] or Ravenclaw or Gryffindor. 15 points for Gryffindor.

John Dehlin [00:26:44] And because. And because each of the two fan fiction authors decide to write about different segments of the larger book, which is also fictional, then there must be no relationship between the two. Is that right?

Radio Free Mormon [00:27:02] I think it's a good example of motivated reasoning where the difference is not quite as big as it's promoted to be.

John Dehlin [00:27:07] It's silly. It's silly.

Radio Free Mormon [00:27:09] There's another. There's another difference, though, that I do want to bring up because I have no idea when I'm reading this, really, what I'm going to find. But another big difference is, is that the group of Hebrews, by the way, I'm going to call them Hebrews. Okay? Hebrews is a term I'm going to try and use for all of the 12 tribes. I almost said Israel again. All of the 12 tribes. Okay. And I'll try and reserve Israel for the North 10 tribes and Jews for the bottom two tribes. The Jews from Judah. Right.

John Dehlin [00:27:40] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:27:40] Which is where they get their name from. So there's another big difference, though. And you decide how big it is. They all get to America, but they get here differently. We know how the Book of Mormon gets the Lehigh's family to America. And that's by building the boat and sailing across apparently the Pacific Ocean, which is quite a feat and raises some eyebrows in some quarters as to how it was they could actually make a boat that could withstand that voyage. But in view of the Hebrews, there is no boat, there is no ocean voyage. Instead they walk here and what they do is they leave Israel and they go north. And then he quotes a bunch of scriptures to show that they went not just north, but northeast. So they're going through the steps of Russia, they're going through Asia, they're going up into Siberia, and then they end up walking over the Bering Strait. And what Ethan Smith suggests is that it was probably frozen at the time to allow them to walk over. So he was actually pretty darn close to what it is that modern science has determined. Although the timing's way off, of course, because it's much more recent than the many thousands of years. I think it's like 10,000 or so years ago with the, the last ice age and thereby making it. So it wasn't just frozen, it was actually a solid mass, the land bridge from Asia over into the Americas. So that's another difference and I think that's important to point out. By the way, there is a good summary of this book. Ethan Smith is nothing if not duplicative in continuing to harp on his evidences. This really could be a hundred page book if he just wrote it straight through 121. Let's see here. He gives a good summary of his book. He says, may it not with some confidence be asked, among what other people on earth can such evidence be found of there being the ten tribes of Israel? This is toward the end of his big section where he's laid forth all these evidences. Right. Where are those ancient people of God who have long been lost from the knowledge of the world, but who must soon come to light and be recovered? Whence came the natives of our continent? That's the big question. He's got the answer. I mean, there has to be an answer right there. Here, Right. All these natives of the continent, they certainly found their way hither and no doubt over bearings, straits. And here it's spelled, by the way, B E E R oh I N G S. Bearing straits. Maybe it was a more fun journey for them. Bearing straits from the northeast of Asia. And the tribes of Israel might have found their way hither in that direction as well as any other people. Our natives are here and have brought down all these Israelitish traditions and ceremonial observances which it seems as though could be furnished from no other order than from the Mosaic Law, the Commonwealth of Israel. So that's a good synopsis of his entire book. So do you have any questions or comments so far?

John Dehlin [00:30:36] We have a. We do have one fun comment from a listener. F.W. willis writes. Shoot. That makes view of the Hebrews more accurate than the Book of Mormon. So both are kind of Bible fan fiction, but. But Ethan Smith got it a little bit more right, at least in one case, than Joseph Smith. Is that fair to say?

Radio Free Mormon [00:30:55] Well, yeah, he gave a theory that ended up being supported by science without saying whether it's right or wrong. Yeah. So. Because I wasn't there 10,000 years ago to see, but I understand that's pretty well accepted now. So I want to talk a little bit now about the nature of plagiarism. Okay. Because there's this whole idea. Well, Joseph Smith borrowed these ideas or he stole them, you know, or this was an influence, I think is a lot nicer thing to say.

The Straw Man Argument Against Plagiarism

John Dehlin [00:31:25] In other words, did Joseph Smith like. And this is the straw man that apologists want to erect, that Joseph Smith, like, is sitting there with View of the Hebrews, and he's literally copying paragraphs into the Book of Mormon. That's the straw man they want to erect so that then they can knock down the straw man, right?

Radio Free Mormon [00:31:42] Oh, right. And so whenever you're accused of plagiarism, let's just say, for example, that it's true. Well, what you're going to do is focus on the things that are not similar to what you plagiarized. And what the people are going to accusing you of plagiarism are focusing on the things that are similar to the things that you plagiarize. And then it's left to the audience to decide, well, which is. Which is it? Are these alleged plagiarism so numerous and so accurate that it looks pretty much like this is plagiarism or are they sort of incidental and not that significant? So the nature of plagiarism. Because here's what I want to tell. I want to tell a story on myself. All right? Okay. You have now heard, I know, John, of the story of the monkey's Paw. Right. It's a very famous story. It's a short story. It's actually an easy read. So I encourage everybody who hasn't read it to read it. Most people have heard of this story because you have to read it, like in junior high school. That's where I encountered it. And for those of you who haven't. I've actually been surprised because I brought this up to people at most of them say I, I've never heard of that story. So I have to give them the thumbnail story, right? And the, the. This family, now they're the Whites. Actually. This is A story by W.W. jacobs, I think, and it's a wonderful story. Very, very popular. But they come into possession of a monkey's paw. And this is from somebody else who comes from India. Says, there's this monkey's paw, it's cursed. It'll give the owner three wishes, but they come with horrible consequences. So anyway, they get this. And this is Mr. And Mrs. White and their adult son Herbert, who all live in this house. I'm pretty sure it's in England. And the, the father, the father takes this monkey's paw and thinks, well, this is kind of ridiculous. It's just superstitious. So he makes an idle wish for £200, right? So it's definitely England, £200. And so nothing happens. So the next day the kid goes to work, he's an adult. He goes to work at the factory and he's killed in a horrible accident where he's caught in the machinery and his body's all mangled.

John Dehlin [00:33:42] Oh, no.

Radio Free Mormon [00:33:42] Yeah, that's horrible. But the good news is that the company said, we deny all responsibility. Which was, of course, what a company would do. We deny all responsibility, but we'll make you a good faith payment anyway. And the good faith payment we're going to give you just to make things right is £200.

John Dehlin [00:34:02] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:34:02] And the £200, by the way, the only significance of that was that that was the last amount they needed to pay off their mortgage. That was the last mortgage payment that they needed to pay off their house. So their kid gets horribly mangled. He's de. But they get the £200. The monkey's paw works in a horrible, horrible way. So there's the funeral a week later. The mother's just totally in grief, grief stricken about her son. And she starts thinking to say to her husband, hey, you know something? We got two wishes left on this monkey's paw. I want my son back. And the father said, I don't think this is a good idea. But the wife, she convinces him. So he wishes for his son back from grave. And it's nighttime and there's kind of a storm brewing. And about an hour later, you know, the cemetery is like two miles away. An hour later they start hearing these footsteps coming down the street. Toward their house. And these aren't just nice, normal footsteps. These are like shambling monstrosity footsteps. Step, drag, step, drag. And it comes up the front walk, and it comes to the front door, and there's boom, boom, boom. There's knocking on the door. And the mother, she's overjoyed. She was running to the door, and she's fumbling with all the locks to get the door open. And then the father thinks, this is not a good thing. I'm not sure I want my son back from the grave. And he grabs the paw, he makes his third wish. The mom opens the door, and there's nothing there because he wished to send back in the grave. Okay, so on a lighter note. On a lighter note, you can see why it's such a fun story and so popular. Well, I'm in 10th grade. I'm in creative writing class in Sumner High school. My teacher, Mrs. Randall. So we got an assignment. We got to write a story. It's creative writing class. That's going to be the assignment. And I'm kind of out of ideas. I don't want to come up with another idea for a story. So I. I get. I get this idea, which is, you know, that's a really cool story, Monkey's paw. And I really liked it when I read it in eighth grade. So I'm going to write the story of the monkey's paw again, except very cleverly. I'm not going to have a monkey's paw. I'm going to instead substitute a rock. It's going to be an obsidian rock, and it's going to be hexagonal in shape, and it's going to be carved all over with strange runes. But other than that, it's the story of the monkey spot. It just has a rock instead of a monkey's paw. Right. It follows the exact same plot. And I think, okay, I got my story done. Fine. That assignment is taken care of. A few days later, we get the papers back. I remember I'm in the library with my friends, and I'm looking at this paper, and I turned to the. I got an. Okay, great. Believe it or not, I turned to the last page, and Mrs. Randall's has written in red ink, this story sounds familiar. Dot, dot, dot. And I looked at that and I went, oh, busted. And I still remember that feeling to this day. And in my 10th grade mind, I just was not aware of how darn popular and famous this story was. And that my teacher, my English teacher, my creative writing teacher, Mrs. Randalls, might be Able to see through my. My clever ruse of substituting a rock for the monkey's paw. And, you know, it's like if someone had actually come to me, I'm glad she took it in good humor. Because if somebody comes to you and says, you just did the monkey's paw. You stole the monkey's paw. And my response would have to be, what are you talking about? There's no monkeys paw in this story. It's a rock. This is not plagiarism. So what it tells me is that you don't actually have to copy every single element of a story in order to be guilty of plagiarism. Yeah, okay, that's one thing. And it's almost like if somebody gone to Joseph Smith and said this Book of Mormon, I mean, it's obviously lifted from view of the Hebrews. And. And his response, I imagine, would be, what are you talking about, view of the Hebrews? That's the lost tribes of Israel. This is. This is a family of Hebrews from. From Judah who came over here. There's no similarity.

John Dehlin [00:38:02] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:38:04] So. And then I mentioned to you another. Another analogy which is not so involved, which is the origin story of Superman. I know you like DC Comics, so I'm making this gesture to you. I'm not going to do a Marvel.

How Borrowed Ideas Shape Origin Stories

John Dehlin [00:38:16] You know, DC is decent.

Radio Free Mormon [00:38:19] What does DC stand for?

John Dehlin [00:38:21] Detective Comics. Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:38:23] Good job. Okay, you go to the head of the class. The head of the comic book nerd class. Superman has probably the most famous origin story. Everybody knows the origin story of Superman. Right. And I'm not going to repeat it here, but let's say that after Superman, super famous. And I want to do a comic book. Okay. And I think, okay, here's what I'm going to do. Superman comes from Krypton, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to have my superhero come from the same planet, Krypton, but a different area. And I'll have him leave Krypton 100 years before Superman leaves Krypton. And I have to do it before instead of after because it's hard to leave after Superman left Krypton because the whole planet blows up. So we'll have it 100 years before. And instead of. I think Superman's name was Ka? L, his dad's name Jor El, and his real name was Ka? L, I think. Anyway, so instead of Kael, I'll name my superhero Random L. Okay. And he comes to the planet Earth. Same planet, has a lot of the same powers, maybe some different ones, but basically the same kind of story. And then someone come would come to me and say, what are you talking? What are you doing? This is the Superman story. You just stole the Superman story. And I said, what are you talking about? This isn't Kyle, this is Randall. And he didn't leave at the same time. He left 100 years before.

John Dehlin [00:39:42] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:39:42] There's no similarity.

John Dehlin [00:39:43] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:39:44] I didn't copy that at all. So that's the idea of plagiarism. And I don't think we have to make the argument of plagiarism. I think it's much nicer and probably more easily defensible just to talk about influence.

John Dehlin [00:39:58] Yeah. And if I can just add just one other thing. I've been to graduate school. I actually did nine years of graduate school. You don't have to plagiarize an entire text to be guilty of plagiarism. You can literally, it can be one sentence. You can do a 200 page dissertation and you can get kicked out of grad school for plagiarizing one sentence out of 200 pages. It doesn't take much. You could even get. You get in trouble for plagiarizing yourself for copying your own scholarly works previously and copying them into your own scholarly works. That's called self plagiarism. It's also wrong, but also it's so silly because obviously Joseph Smith's gonna write a different book. If he was gonna just read published view the Hebrews and just slap his name on it, that would be silly. So of course there's going to be differences. That's the whole point of writing a book. You know what I'm saying?

Radio Free Mormon [00:40:52] Right. And I think that we need to make allowances for some kind of creative license. Like maybe, I don't know, like a 10th grader might say, it'd be too obvious if I did a monkey's paw in the monkey's paw story. So I'm going to make it a rock. And just possibly conceiving of the idea that maybe Joseph Smith thought if I do the lost ten tribes of Israel, this will be a little too obvious. So I'll make it from a different family from 100 years later, from the southern kingdom coming over here. I think that that's a reasonable idea that that could have happened. What do you think? Do you think that's reasonable?

John Dehlin [00:41:24] I do.

Radio Free Mormon [00:41:26] Okay. Okay. So let's go to now the structure of the book. Okay. Structure of the book. I've already talked about. It's. It's not a narrative like the Book of Mormon. It's A thesis arguing for why it is that Ethan Smith believes that Native Americans, all of them, are descended from the lost tribes of Israel. Let me just tell you, there's about. There's only four chapters in this, in a conclusion, but here's what goes on, okay? First chapter is the destruction of Jerusalem. Now, he spends the first chapter talking all about the destruction of Jerusalem. And this is neither the northern tribes or the southern tribes. This is 70 CE. This is after Jesus, right? When there's another destruction under the Romans and the temple is destroyed and the. The Jews are scattered again. Okay? And he talks about that in a great detail. And so that's the first chapter. The reason he talks about this is because the whole idea of this book is going to be, well, the Jews are now scattered. But we get to chapter two, which is called the certain restoration of Judah and Israel. Judah, southern kingdom, Israel, northern kingdom, the certain restoration of them. Because now he's going to go to the Bible and here's the main thesis, okay? If you break it down to its nuts and bolts, which is that the Bible, especially the Old Testament, but there's stuff in the New Testament too, but he's going to quote all these scriptures from the Old Testament, talking about the fact that it was predicted that these tribes would be scattered and that in the last days then they would be gathered again, and once again there would be that monarchy that, that unified kingdom of Israel like had existed under David and by the way, which had been predicted in the Old Testament would never, you know, cease. So it did cease. So they got to get it back together again. Anyway, this whole idea of the lost tribes of Israel, they get taken away or they get away, but the Bible is clear that in the last days the lost tribes of Israel are going to be restored to the Holy Land along with the tribe of Judah. So he's quoting all of these scriptures to prove his point. And his theological point is that these lost tribes of Israel have to be somewhere and they have to be in a body so that they can be restored once again to the Holy Land as the Bible predicts. And because the Bible predicts it, that's the final word on the subject, it will happen. And so now that. Then I'll get to the last chapter about how it is that these people are of the lost tribes of Israel, the Native Americans are, and we need to do the work of teaching them Christianity in order to get them to be restored to the Holy Land. That's an important part of it. Okay, but now we get to the chapter Three, and this is the guts of the book. It's a hundred and what is it, 124 pages long. It's from page 43 to 167 in a 200 page book. So you can see that that is definitely the meat of the book. And this is called the Present State of Judah and Israel, chapter three. And this is where he collects and sets forth all of the different evidences that he has for why it is the Native Americans are obviously descended from the house of Israel because of all the, the stuff they have that they do that the Old Testament talks about and then the Jewish language and things like that. So that's that. Let me see here. I think we've covered this pretty well. So are we ready to go to chat? Oh, actually I do want to go to the Last part. Chapter 4 is an address of the prophet Isaiah relative to the restoration of his people. So now he kind of goes back to the scriptures after laying forth all these evidences for over 100 pages. An address of the prophet Isaiah relative to the restoration of his people. And he's going to quote Scriptures again and he's going to focus on Isaiah. He quotes Isaiah a lot. He quotes other prophets as well, but all with the point of talking about the gathering, the scattering and the gathering of Israel.

John Dehlin [00:45:24] So quoting, quoting Israel. That that sounds familiar. Quoting Isaiah. I mean that. That sounds familiar.

Radio Free Mormon [00:45:28] Yes. And I've got to tell you, as I thought about this, you know, he does quote an entire chapter of Isaiah. It's not a long chapter, but he doesn't do what the Book of Mormon does where it quotes the chapter and maybe more than one chapter, maybe 12 chapters, and then starts talking about what it is that was mentioned in those chapters. He goes through a relatively short chapter in Isaiah. It's a chapter that's not quoted in the Book of Mormon, by the way, but a relatively short chapter in Isaiah. And he does one verse and then he'll talk about that, then he'll do the next verse and then he'll talk about that and so forth. But there's a lot of scriptures being quoted and primarily Isaiah. And as I thought about it, the reason Isaiah is. So it's inevitable that when you are talking about the scattering and, and the gathering of Israel and the prophecies relative to that, you're naturally going to go largely to Isaiah because that's one of his big themes and he talks about it a lot. There's a lot of stuff in Isaiah about the scattering, gathering of Israel.

John Dehlin [00:46:27] Okay, right. So it's a natural. It's a natural source to draw from.

Radio Free Mormon [00:46:32] Right. And it's also how it's used in the Book of Mormon primarily. There's stuff about, you know, that it's Christianized and prophecies of Jesus. But the way it's used in the Book of Mormon primarily is the same way, because the Nephites see themselves as the scattered tribes of Israel, or one of the scattered tribes of Israel. They see themselves as living out this prophecy of Isaiah that they have been scattered to far countries and they look forward to the last days when they will once again be restored to the Holy Land. Right. In accordance with the prophecies of Israel. Which is one of the main reasons that they write all this down. So that the Lamanites, because they know, right, because of Nephi's vision, they know that they're going to be destroyed. The Lamanites are the only ones who are going to survive. And they write this record so they can be brought forth in the last days to the converting of the Lamanites to the religion of their fathers, so that then they can be gathered and restored to their land of promise.

John Dehlin [00:47:34] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:47:36] So that doesn't sound similar, does it?

John Dehlin [00:47:38] Not at all.

Radio Free Mormon [00:47:39] Not at all. Okay. All right, so let's see here. Present state of Judah and Israel. It's 124 pages long. This is the big section in the middle. I'm going to my notes now, and I've skipped over a few things, but I just want to mention a couple of passages here because it gives a good summary of his arguments. These are the evidences that he gives, and he's really taken with these. He thinks it's conclusive that he's showing that the Native Americans are descendants of Israel. But when you read through this. Well, I wasn't as taken with it as he is, let's put it that way. Here's his summary of evidences, which he's going to present all this evidence for. But these are the main points. There's 11 of them. Okay, are you ready?

Ethan Smith's Evidence and Cherry Picking

John Dehlin [00:48:21] I'm ready.

Radio Free Mormon [00:48:22] These are the connections between the Native Americans and the ancient Hebrews, or Israel. Number one, the American natives have one origin. Okay, so he sees that as a big thing. That's number one. Number two, their language appears to have been Hebrew. Number three, they have their imitation of the Ark of the Covenant in ancient Israel. We'll get to that. For they have been in practice of circumcision. Okay, Saying there's circumcision among the Indians. I keep saying Indians. I apologize. I'm 60 years old. I didn't play cowboys and Native Americans when I was a kid. I mean, the Native Americans, I apologize. Five, they have acknowledged one and only one God. So he thinks that's important. Six, the celebrated William Penn, for whom Pennsylvania is named. William Penn gives account of the natives of Pennsylvania, which go to corroborate the same point. So, okay, so he's citing to another authority. That's his point. 6.7 is the Indians having one tribe answering in various respects to the tribe of Levi sheds. Farther. He says farther.

John Dehlin [00:49:35] Further.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:35] Light on this subject and what he's going to say here, I'll just tell you. Okay. A lot of these are not really persuasive to me. He's going to say that amongst the ancient Israelites there was one tribe and it was Levi, and everybody, you know, brought their sacrifice to the temple and they gave a lot of deference to the tribe of Levi. Well, he's saying, you know, among the American Indians, you've also got the tribe, the Mohawks is the one he points to. He says, you know, all the other tribes kind of look up to the Mohawk tribe. And so that's a connection in his mind. See, not that persuasive. Maybe you're persuaded. How do you feel about that one?

John Dehlin [00:50:12] A lot of. Just a lot of those points just aren't true. Like to. To say that all Native Americans, number one, came from the same origin, but number two, all had the same religion or deity. That's not true.

Radio Free Mormon [00:50:27] Yeah. And saying they just have one. Right. Yeah. By the way, these are his main points. We'll get to a few things, and a lot of them are questionable, but even the ones that he sets forth are not that persuasive, even if he could corroborate them sufficiently, I think. Yeah. Okay, so number eight, several prophetic traits of character given to the Hebrews do accurately apply to the Aborigines of America.

John Dehlin [00:50:50] That.

Radio Free Mormon [00:50:50] So he'll be talking about like medicine men, shamans among the American Indians. And that's like the prophets in the Old Testament. It's a little bit weak. A lot of these are very weak, in my opinion.

John Dehlin [00:51:04] Yeah. Like all Native Americans circumcised. I doubt it.

Radio Free Mormon [00:51:07] No, no, no, no. And I don't know if any of them did, honestly. Yeah, but that's right.

John Dehlin [00:51:12] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:51:12] Because what. Okay, I'll get to that. Nine, the Indians being in tribes with their heads and names of tribes afford further light. So 10 tribes of Israel, Indians and tribes connection.

John Dehlin [00:51:22] Oh, yeah, yeah. Because being tribal is not like a fundamental core component of human civilization.

Radio Free Mormon [00:51:31] Right? And number 10, there's only 11. 10, they're having something answering to the ancient cities of refuge seems to event their Israelites extraction. So he thinks that there's like sort of, sort of like even he says they don't have cities of refuge, but they have something answering to it. You remember the cities of refuge in the Old Testament there were like 10 of them or maybe 12. And the idea was if you accidentally killed somebody and the family gets to kill you back as an eye for an eye and all that kind of stuff, okay? Then you can flee to the city of refuge and you are like, it's home base. You know, you can't kill me here. Okay, okay. And finally, 11, their variety of traditions, historical and religious do wonderfully accord with the idea that they descended from the ancient 10 tribes. So this is like his catch all miscellaneous thing and he'll talk about that too. So Those are his 11 main points that he's going to talk about in this big section in the middle of his book. Okay? So that's the summary of his arguments. Now most of these arguments are tenuous, okay? And by the way, Ethan Smith is pretty clear. He feels free to pick and choose from anything from any of the tribes to support his argument. So he's not just looking at one tribe. And let's look at it in depth and compare it with the Old Testament. He can look at all the different tribes and pick anything that he wants to from any of the tribes to make his argument. And it's clear that's what he's doing throughout. He'll even go to South America for crying out loud in page 113. But 58, I have all these page numbers. So let me see here. Yeah, page 58 he says, although these customs may in their detail differ in one nation when compared with another, yet it is easy to discern that they have all had one origin. So you'll find places like this where he admits that really he's just talking about a detail here and a detail here from different tribes. Although those cus. These customs may in their detail differ in one nation when compared with. He's talking about the tribes of the Native Americans with another, yet it is easy to discern that they have all had one origin. All right, so he's cherry picking. This is really an apologetic piece for his thesis and he's going to look at all the similarities and try and disregard the things that are different, which is, you know, what, what we tend to do when we're trying to support a thesis. Right, right. Okay, so let's see here. Where am I? He even goes to South America. I said, let's see, page 113. Oh, yeah. Says, let us look at the natives in an extreme part of South America and see if they exhibit any evidence similar to what has been adduced of the natives of North America. And he finds them. Wow. Okay. He also says, let's see, page 115. This is all on this theme of picking and choosing. I'll call it cherry picking. He also says he talks about an abundance of trash. Okay. And when he talks about an abundance of trash, he's talking about all the traditions and things that the Native Americans do that don't line up with this theory. Okay. He says it appears that among the abundance of trash in Indian traditions, there are running through them some things which must have been transmitted from the Hebrew Scriptures. So you can see what he's doing, right?

John Dehlin [00:55:07] Yeah, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:08] And finally, in the conclusion 197, this is his conclusion. Let's see here. Yeah, I made a lot of notes and then I made an outline. Okay. Let it be remembered. It is not pretended that all the savages. That's of course, the Native Americans. It is not pretended that all the savages are in the practice of all these traditions. Those are the one that's the evidence that he just got done citing. Right? They are not. But it is contended by him in his book. But it is contended that the whole of these things have been found among their different tribes in our continent. Within a hundred years, a fragment of these Hebrew traditions have been found among one tribe and another fragment among another. And some of the most striking of these traditions have been found among various and very distant tribes, as has appeared in the recital from various authors, traders and travelers. Okay? So I'm not just making this up. This isn't my conclusion. He's actually saying that that's what he's doing.

John Dehlin [00:56:12] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:56:13] And it's pretty obvious that he recognizes this is a weakness, a potential weakness with his argument, and therefore he wants to address it and say, it's not that big a deal that I'm cherry picking things from all these different tribes in order to support my theory. In fact, there's one place I think we'll get to it here in a bit where he makes a very common apologetic argument. And he says, the thing that's amazing isn't that we have to cherry pick these different things from different tribes and ignore everything else. This abundance of trash Right. The amazing thing is that after all this time, any of these hallmarks of Israelite tradition and culture survived. That's the amazing thing. See? Okay, now. Oh, and I think that we get his excuse for why the evidence isn't better. That's right. Maybe this is it. It's page 121 for those of you following along. Page 121. Let me see here. Yeah, let's see. Okay, I'm going to read this pretty quickly. Let the inquirer then. That's the person who's reading the book. Let the inquirer, then, before he concludes that some other kind of evidence must be obtained. In other words, you don't have enough evidence to convince me before the proposition can be adopted. Consider that the divine manner of affording evidence is not always such as human wisdom would dictate. Does that sound like God's ways are higher than our ways to you? The Jews had their strong objections against the evidences when God saw fit to furnish the divinity of Christ, of his resurrection and ascension to glory. So he's going to say that even though the evidence was overwhelming, the Jews still didn't have enough evidence of those things right about Jesus. So he's going to liken people who doubt Ethan Smith's theory to those people. These were not such as they as they would have chosen. The evidences were not. In the midst of such evidences as God saw fit to afford, the Jews required something besides or something in addition to it. I'm going to skip this part and then go to this last part where it says, many things may be fancied concerning the kind and degrees of evidence which shall bring to light the ten tribes. But Providence, I. E. God is capitalized P. But Providence may adopt different methods. The methods adopted by the Most High relative to the affairs of men have usually been such as to baffle human wisdom and to stain the pride of all glory. So in response to the objection that, you know, these evidences seem kind of weak and there really isn't enough to convince me, he's saying, well, this is the way God does it. Okay, because you're. He's going to baffle your wisdom by not giving you all the evidence that you would want, but he's going to give sufficient, if you view it the right way, I. Ethan Smith's way to convince you that they are from the lost tribes of Israel. Does that sound like anything you hear in church?

John Dehlin [00:59:09] It does.

Radio Free Mormon [00:59:10] It does, doesn't it?

John Dehlin [00:59:11] It totally does. Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:59:13] Okay, so let's talk about Some of his evidence.

John Dehlin [00:59:17] What is that? What does that remind you of that said in church? Rfm.

Radio Free Mormon [00:59:21] Well, this is. Well, it's apologetics. Right, Right. It's apologetics about the dearth of archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon in the Americas.

John Dehlin [00:59:30] Yeah, right. Yeah. Like, what I've heard is, like, when critics of the Book of Mormon or just sort of, like, I would even say objective analysts of the Book of Mormon note that none of the steel, none of the helmets, none of the swords, you know, have ever been found. None of the horses. I remember the apologetic response. If only one thing was found, that would be amazing because the fact that anything would survive at all would be a miracle. It's a way to shrink the target so small that if you can find one association, you claim it. Even if it's specious, you claim it as a victory and case closed. Right?

Radio Free Mormon [01:00:16] Yeah. God could have given you everything, but then where would your faith be?

John Dehlin [01:00:20] Yeah, that's another.

Radio Free Mormon [01:00:21] Yeah. It's a permutation, isn't it?

John Dehlin [01:00:23] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:00:24] So here's the Ark of the Covenant. He says that the. The American Indians have an. An Ark of the Covenant. And he talks about a tradition, about a little box being carried on the back of a Native American into battle and sacred things are placed in it. And that this is the Ark of the Covenant from the. The Old Testament. Right. So this is a connection between the two. And then he focuses on another one, another vestige of the Ark of the Covenant, which, believe it or not, is a medicine bag. Okay, so he says that the medicine bag is a. You can tell he's a motivated reasoner. Right. This is motivated reasoning. He's going to find anything he can to support his thesis. So a medicine bag. And that's pages 58, 71, and 100. I'm not going to read those here. I don't want to get bogged down and stuff that really germane to what we're talking about. He talks about connections between Indian words and the Hebrew language in pages 60 and 64. And so these are things, by the way, he's not himself doing original research.

John Dehlin [01:01:35] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:01:35] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:01:36] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:01:36] And this becomes very, very important. This is one of the second most important things that I discovered in writing and reading this book is that it is so attractive to us to say, oh, it's the view of the Hebrews, because of the Oliver Cowdery connection. You don't need that. That's completely unnecessary because View of the Hebrews is not the only book that was ever published in America, in the United states prior to the Book of Mormon dealing with this subject.

John Dehlin [01:02:03] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:02:04] In fact, there are how many? At least a dozen books that were written prior to the Book of Mormon that all argue make similar arguments that the Native Americans are descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. And I don't have to do a whole lot of research to find it out because Ethan Smith quotes from them all over the place. That's what he's doing when he's adducing his evidences in this big section in the middle. He's quoting from all these other books that have been written by all these other people, arguing for the same thing. That's what he's doing to make his case. Like I say, it's like a legal case. You're quoting from here, you're quoting from there all to try and support your argument. And that's what he does.

Mound Builder Myths and the Lost White Race

John Dehlin [01:02:47] And rfm, if I can just add that there's a really good book. Well, I think it's a good book called the Mound Builder Myth, Fake History and the Hunt for a Lost White Race by Jason Colavito. And I'm showing it here on the screen. I have read a lot of this book and it talks about the very idea that the mound Builder myth starts with the Conquistadors, just about this dark race and the light race. And it's a super interesting book that highlights not only the origins of this mound builder myth, that was the cultural milieu that Joseph Smith and Ethan Smith and all of their contemporaries were swimming in, but it also just highlights how racist the whole idea is that we've got all these amazing relics, therefore, but we're killing and murdering and displacing all these Native Americans, so we can't have them be human. So we have to dehumanize them by assuming that another white race must have created these amazing relics, but it must have been these dark savages that killed off the lighter humans. Because dark skinned humans can't do great things. All of this is summarized in this really great book called the Mound Builder Myth. And it becomes the kind of social understanding or narrative that Joseph Smith and Ethan Smith turns out are both drawing from. Not just Joseph Smith or Ethan Smith, is that fair to say?

Radio Free Mormon [01:04:26] Yes, it is. In large part. I will say that the view of the Hebrews doesn't talk about light skinned or dark skinned or any kind of skin related to this. But you've got to understand this, John, and it's talked about in that myth of the mound builders is that the myth is one thing, but the mound Builders existed because the mounds were there and everybody knew about them. There are these huge earthworks and huge mounds in Ohio, throughout the United States, down the river to Mississippi, they are prevalent. They're huge, they're amazing. And it's kind of a surprise to me that I can grow up in the, in the United States school system and never learn about these. At least not that I recall that was ever talked about. But it was a huge deal at the time and they still exist today. And there's, you know, videos of them you can see on YouTube, one of them from 1995, I think, narrated by Leonard Nimoy, that talks about these things. And you can, you can see how incredible they are. And they're grown over with grass and everything. They're very old and they've been old for a long time, but they were old when they, Joseph Smith was around when these people get to the continent. So here's what they're faced with. Okay, they're faced. First off, there's all these people here in the Americas. Where do they come from? Second thing is there's all these huge mounds and there's things buried in the mounds that show some degree of sophistication and culture. And what they find is all these people who are here, the Native Americans, right, they're not building mounds. This is, they don't have the, the kind of culture or technology that was necessary for the mound Builders, whoever they were who existed here to do what they did. We know they did it and they had this because we can see the mounds and we've dug in them and we find out what's in there. Right? So who are these mound builders? Who are they?

John Dehlin [01:06:17] Right?

Radio Free Mormon [01:06:19] They, they're not here anymore, but we know they were here. It doesn't look like it's the Native Americans because they don't have this ability to do these kinds of things. And we think if, if these were related to the Native Americans, then they would still have the ability to do it today. They wouldn't have lost it. Maybe. So there's this huge society then that gets envisioned of a more technologically culturally advanced civilization. They're not here anymore. What happened to them? Well, obviously it's irresistible, isn't it? The ones who are still here, their ancestors are the ones who killed them off, right?

John Dehlin [01:07:00] But again, even though, even though the Hebrews may not say this, the common understanding was, or the common conclusion was they must have been light skinned because, because darkies, and I'm putting that in air quotes. Can't, can't you know, can't do sophisticated things. That, that was, as I understand it, the, the kind of conclusion in this folk, folk myth or folk legend.

Radio Free Mormon [01:07:26] Yeah, yeah, that was a very common understanding. So this, this idea of the lost ten tribes of Israel and the Native Americans being their descendants was huge. Everybody knew about this. You would have to have actually been hiding under a rock to have not heard it. And many people believed it. I don't, I can't say it was a majority, but a whole lot of people believed it. And not just backward country bumpkins either. People of high station, very educated people, very well placed people, very prominent people not only believed it but wrote books about it before view of the Hebrews and from which view of the Hebrews quotes. And I'm just going to give you a few examples. Okay. A book that was written in 1816 is called a Star in the west or and here's the subtitle of that one, or A humble attempt to discover the long lost ten tribes of Israel Preparatory to return to their beloved city Jerusalem. That's 1816. I've got to think that that was a bigger book. Oh, we got to talk about the popularity of this book. I can't tell you how popular it was, but I can tell you that the first edition was published in 1823, and two years later in 1825, they're publishing a second edition. Yeah, sounds pretty popular to me. Yeah, okay, absolutely. But, but Ethan Smith, he's. He's a Congregationalist minister in a small town in Vermont, obviously very well educated from what I can tell from reading this. But this book, A Star in the west that's quoted here was written by a guy named Elias Budino. And Elias Budino, I'm just going to tell you a little bit about him. Okay. He's a lawyer, which of course makes everything he writes good. He's a lawyer. He's a lawyer and he's a statesman from New Jersey. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress. He served as President of Congress from 1782 to 1783. He was elected a U.S. congressman for New Jersey. Following the American Revolutionary War. He was appointed by President George Washington as Director of the United States mint serving from 1795 until 1805. So what I'm saying here is this is a common idea and many well educated and respected people believe that it and wrote about it. And in pages 52 to 53, you'll find this throughout this book, but especially there, you've got name after name after name after name in close proximity of people and their writings that he is citing from in order to make his point. I'm just going to open this up and see if there's anything there that was particularly important. Yeah, he talks about a Dr. Jarvis. He talks about a book called the Hope of Israel by Manassas Ben Israel. He talks about history of the American Indians. And all of these are books that are written by people, by scholars, by people like Elias Budino, though he may be the most prominent among all of them. Who wrote such a book, who are writing the same kind of book. They're saying the Native Americans are the lost tribes of Israel. And here's all the evidence that show that it's true. So if we go back even further, this was interesting. A very important person named William Penn in American history. You ever heard of him?

John Dehlin [01:10:40] Yeah, yeah, I think there might be a state named after him.

Radio Free Mormon [01:10:43] Yeah, it's Utah. And that was his middle name. William Utah. No, it's Pennsylvania. Okay, so going back even further, William Penn. All right, and I'm just going to mention this one. All right. He writes a letter in 1683. Think how early that is. We're 100 years before the Revolution. He's. Let's see. He also believed the Native Americans were Israelites. He was well known for his good relationships and successful treaties with the Natives. In a 1683 letter to the Committee of the Free Society of Traders in London, England, he writes this. This is just one paragraph. I am ready to believe them, the Native Americans. I am ready to believe them of the Jewish race. I mean, of the stock of the 10 tribes. And that for the. And that for the following reason. So here's why he believes it. First they were to go to a land not planted or known, which to be sure, Asia and Africa were. Remember, Esdras from the apocryphal talks about them going to place where they were all by themselves, if not Europe. Okay. First they were to go to a land not planted or known, which to be sure, Asia and Africa were, if not Europe. And he that intended that extraordinary judgment upon them, God might make the passage not uneasy to them, as it was not impossible in itself, from the easternmost parts of Asia to the westernmost parts of America. He's saying the same thing that Ethan Smith says in his book from 1823. In the next place I find them of the like countenance, so they look similar to Hebrews, in his opinion. And the next place to find them of the light countenance and their children of so lively resemblance that A man would think himself in Duke's Place or Berry Street, London, when he sees him. But this is not all they agree in rights. R I, T E S is what he means. So he spells it differently here. They agree in rights. They reckon by moons they offer their first fruits. They have a kind of feast of tabernacles. They are said to lay their altar upon 12 stones. So that's from William Penn from 1683. And these are exactly the type of evidences that Ethan Smith talks about. He talks about all those different evidences in his book, among others, in view of the Hebrews. So it's not necessary, and here's the main point, it is not necessary that Joseph had this book view of the Hebrews in his possession. It's not necessary that he ever read this book. So that Oliver Cowdery connection is attractive as it is, is not necessary at all for Joseph Smith to know about it, because the idea was prevalent in the United States in Joseph Smith's day. And so do you have any comments about that?

Native Americans as Israelites in Early American Thought

John Dehlin [01:13:24] Well, I want you to just kind of tell us what that means. Rfm. In other words, what we're saying, what I think we're saying is that the Book of Mormon may have been. Let's just say Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery may have been influenced by a view of the Hebrews in their creation of the Book of Mormon, though they may not have. But what's probably pretty undeniable or indisputable is that both the Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews were cultural, were exactly the types of books we would expect to be created in the 1820s. Based on what we know, everyone's swimming in the 1820s and the time previous. But what does that tell us? Rfm what can we conclude from that?

Radio Free Mormon [01:14:18] Thank you. Because this brings me to my next point, because I'd read a paper from Farms a number of years ago, and Jim Bennett may have said the same thing. You tell me. I read a paper about the Book of Mormon. It was giving an apologetic argument. And the apologetic argument was that the Book of Mormon does not describe the Native Americans that we would expect it to describe or in the way we would expect it to. The Book of Mormon does not describe the American Indians the way we would expect it to describe them, if indeed it were written by Joseph Smith. Because the Book of Mormon doesn't talk about them living in wigwams or teepees or passing the peace pipe or putting on war paint. Right, Right. And so that's the argument that was made. Now, the. The thing is that when you read View of the Hebrews and you find out this idea was so prevalent among the United States at that time, and everybody and their dog is writing books about it, and everybody knows about it. And vast. I almost said majority, but a huge portion, a huge plurality at a minimum, believe it's true. What you find out is that actually the Book of Mormon is the exact kind of book we would expect to be written about the Native Americans and describe them in that way. It's a product of its culture.

John Dehlin [01:15:33] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:15:34] Does that answer your question?

John Dehlin [01:15:36] It does. It's almost as if to say, if you were to go back into the 1820s into New York and Vermont and sort of target the types of people that end up becoming the Smith family, becoming the members who joined the church, just basic frontier Christians in New England, what were the things they were thinking about? What were the things they were caring about? It was, who are these Native Americans? Where did they come from? Where did the lost tribes of Israel go? You know, Bible. Bible, Bible. And then why else would there not be. Of course there would be Bible fan fiction of authors writing books, trying to describe where the Native Americans come from, which is a very different picture than we are. We're sort of sold. Which is just like Joseph Smith, some farm boy walking around, and then, boom, God and Jesus and then Moroni come to him and say, lo, we have these plates and translate them. And lo, this book comes out of nowhere, just miraculously explaining where these Native Americans come from. What a miracle. The Book of Mormon must be true. No, it's more like, get in line, Joseph Smith. You're one of 10 or 20 people that wrote Bible fan fiction in the 1820s, trying to explain. And the only sort of maybe innovation of Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon is that he creates scripture out of it. He merges his Bible fan fiction trying to explain Native Americans. He merges that with a claim to have supernatural special powers that he got from treasure digging, and then tries to create a religion out of it. So that's the innovation is Joseph claiming special powers, claiming this is his revelation from God, and then turning it into a new gig, a new job, which is his religion, which L. Ron Hubbard has always told us is the real way to make money. If you want to really make money, start a religion. And maybe that was Joseph Smith's true innovation. That's me. Rfm. That's not you. But that's, you know.

Radio Free Mormon [01:17:56] Well, that's okay. And I would say the other innovation is that he creates it as a narrative with characters. So he's not writing about it from a third person point of view.

John Dehlin [01:18:05] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:18:05] He's creating a narrative with characters who are actually living this belief.

John Dehlin [01:18:11] Right, right, right, right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:18:12] Okay. So let me see, I'm gonna say

John Dehlin [01:18:16] this, which, by the way, as. As much as the Book of Mormon may be chloroform in print, it probably. Tell me if I'm wrong. Rfm. It's probably more interesting. It's a low bar, but it's probably more interesting than View of the Hebrews. Is that fair to say?

Radio Free Mormon [01:18:32] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:18:33] And that's because it's story. People like story. The people are always going to choose story over narrative or analysis. Is that fair to say?

Radio Free Mormon [01:18:43] Yeah. What's the name of your podcast again?

John Dehlin [01:18:45] Mormon Stories.

Radio Free Mormon [01:18:48] Yeah, yeah. People like stories. They're easier to relate to. And I would agree with you, by the way. Here's the other thing that came to me. Okay. This is why the Book of Mormon was as popular as it was when it came off the press. This is why Parley P. Pratt stays up all night reading it in one sitting. Remember the story?

John Dehlin [01:19:06] Yeah, absolutely.

Radio Free Mormon [01:19:08] Because what it's telling people who are reading it is that what their belief system is about. The Native Americans is absolutely correct. They did get here from the Promised Land. It might have been a different tribe, it might have been 100 years different. But yeah, these guys are from the Holy Land and they have their Hebrew ancestors. Right. So this is why it's so popular. And it's easy to lose track of the fact. And I didn't know this, really. I mean, who would that 200 years ago? Everybody understands this. And if you don't believe it, everybody knows that. A lot of people do believe that the Native Americans come from the Holy Land. They're Hebrew in origin. Right. But 100 years goes by, 200 years goes by, cultural memory goes away.

John Dehlin [01:19:57] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:19:57] We don't know that anymore.

John Dehlin [01:19:58] That's right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:19:59] Because science has eclipsed that. And no longer do we believe that it's not. It's not only not a common belief, nobody really believes it anymore except for the Mormon. And they believe it because they have to, because they have a book of scripture that's based on the idea that was prevalent 200 years ago but has since fallen into disfavor. And so now it seems miraculous and unusual that Joseph Smith produced a book with this thesis, because we've lost all memory of the fact of how popular it was 200 years ago among the United States.

John Dehlin [01:20:40] That's Right. There's a. There's a comment from a listener. F.W. willis, again, thanks for your comments. F.W. he writes, Dan Vogel said, the more you understand about the 1820s, the more you understand the Book of Mormon and that that couldn't be more. More true. Great comment. Do you agree with FW Willis, RFM No.

Radio Free Mormon [01:21:01] Certainly been my experience. I don't claim to be an expert on the 1820s, but the more I learned about it, the more I learned about the culture going on then. And Joseph Smith's neck of the woods. Oh, my gosh. Yes. And this is why, like I say, this is why the Book of Mormon was so popular. If Joseph. If the Book of Mormon were written today and it said that these. The Native Americans came from the Holy Land. Right. They're Hebrew in origin. I don't think it would have the same reception that it did 200 years ago.

John Dehlin [01:21:35] No, it wouldn't.

Radio Free Mormon [01:21:38] And you. I'll just elaborate on that a little bit further. And even so, the. The main LDS church. That's not right to say that most, many, many Mormon. Okay. The apologetic Mormon. All right. The farms crowd, the interpreter crew, they're trying to get away from that, too, because they know that science is not supporting the Book of Mormon narrative, which is. We've gone over it many times. I think we know what we're talking about. Right?

John Dehlin [01:22:06] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:22:06] And DNA doesn't support that narrative.

John Dehlin [01:22:08] Yeah. Yep.

Radio Free Mormon [01:22:09] So what they're trying to do now is say, okay, Joseph Smith and everybody, all the leaders of the church and all the members for 100, 150 years, they misunderstood the Book of Mormon. They thought it was one group coming over to an empty land in the Americas and then populating the entire thing. Well, DNA doesn't work with that. So now what they've said is no small group inserted into a much larger population that was already here, and because of that, they intermarried and their DNA got lost. Right.

John Dehlin [01:22:38] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:22:39] So that's a way of trying to get away from the narrative of the Book of Mormon, which makes sense in the 1820s, but doesn't make sense today because we've advanced so far in our knowledge about DNA and about the peoples who came to this country broadcasting from the United States. I'm talking about the United States and the Americas. Right. Yeah. But you still got the Meldrumites, the Heartland theory.

Guest [01:23:03] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:23:03] And the Heartland theory is still devoted to the original vision that Joseph Smith had, as is manifested by, I think, a straightforward reading of the Book of Mormon. That. Yeah, it's all Israelites. And so what they end up doing is they continue to believe the version of the Native Americans being the. From Israel, from Judah, from Hebrews. And they're about the only ones who do nowadays. I'm not aware of anybody else who really believes that. Even other people who believe the Book of Mormon don't believe that, but at least they're staying true to the original vision. But they're the only ones who believe that anymore. To my knowledge. I'm not aware of any other group that believes that the Native Americans are Hebrew in origin, except for the heartland theorists. And that's because they have to, because they're busy trying to support. Joseph Smith is a prophet and the Book of Mormon is Scripture. Yeah, it would be like. It would be like, okay, it's before Galileo, and everybody believes that the Earth is the center of the universe. And so somebody comes up with a book of Scripture, and it's posited in there that the Earth is the center of the universe. In fact, it's essential to the story of this book of Scripture that the Earth is central to the universe. And let's say it's 500 pages long. There's people who join this church, and then Galileo comes along and says, hey, God, guess what, guys? It's not. The Earth revolves around the sun, okay? So. And things go on from there, and science continues to go on from there. There's resistance to that idea, but, you know, things develop. And now nobody believes that the Earth is the center of the universe, except for this one church that still believes that the Earth is the center of the universe because they have a book of Scripture that was written before Galileo. That depends upon the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe. That's how I see Mormon today, and especially those who are in the Heartland theory. And interestingly, the Heartland theory ends up quoting things and evidences just like are quoted in the view of the Hebrews in support of their ideas. So they go back to these. These evidences, this research, which I think has pretty much long been discredited, but this becomes their apologetic material. And evidence is like it. Yeah, and unfortunately, we've got. I'm sorry, I'm getting a little bit off script here, but unfortunately we've got is all these people who believe that the Native Americans. Hebrew origin. And so you've got a basic cottage industry of people going out there to prove that that's the case, just like all these people that are writing all the books and they're finding all these evidences. Right? That show that what they believe is true. You've even got people going out there and creating artifacts and planting them so that people can found or saying that they got discovered. There's this famous fraud. The Bat Creek stone found in Bat Creek. Is it Kentucky or Tennessee? Long time ago. It's after the Book of Mormon, but, you know, it was a big thing for a long time. And it has Hebrew writing scratched on it. I think it has a tetragrammaton on it and all these things that were created in order to justify and be evidence for this popular theory of the Hebrew ancestry of the Native Americans. And these are things that Meldrumites point to. I know I'm going to make a lot of enemies here. I'm sorry. You know, believe what you want, please. And I don't mean to try and dissuade you from that, but it's my impression that these are the kind of things that the Meldrumites and people who believe this about the Book of Mormon narrative go to in order to support the Book of Mormon narrative, when actually both the Book of Mormon narrative and all these artifacts and all these stories about the Native Americans being Hebrew in origin, they all come out of the same cultural me.

DNA, Archaeology, and Book of Mormon Geography Problems

John Dehlin [01:27:00] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The. The DNA doesn't line up. The archaeology, the anthropology, the linguistics, the geography, you know, even. Even all the anachronisms. Just, just every, every scientific discipline you could possibly point to disproves the historicity of the Book of Mormon. And so what you see is Mormon apologists, whether they're traditional neo apologists shrinking the goals by saying it's all Mesoamerica now, or the Heartlanders trying to still rescue North America because it doesn't make sense for there to be two Camorras. A Camorra in upstate New York and a Camorra in Mesoamerica. That makes no sense. Or you have the neo apologists that are basically just saying, the Book of Mormon's all revelation. It's not a translation anymore. We have to redefine what the word translation means. These are all three desperate attempts to salvage a totally illogical and unsalvageable story. And I have to just add the comments from LDS discussions. There's just this amazing website called ldsdiscussions.com it deserves to be right up there with MormonThink and with CES letter. We're glad. We're always glad when LDS Discussions joins us. But LDS Discussions reminds us of a quote that I want to share every single time I talk about the Book of Mormon, LDS discussions Writes, I love the quote from Alexander Campbell, who is a contemporary of Signe Rigdon and Joseph Smith, a preacher who is a thoughtful guy who writes. The prophet Joseph Smith, through his stone spectacles, wrote on the plates of Nephi in this Book of Mormon every error and almost every truth discussed. In New York for the last 10 years, he decided all the great controversies. Infant baptism, ordination, the Trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious experience, the call to the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the question of Freemasonry, Republican government, and the rights of man. All these topics are repeatedly alluded to.

Radio Free Mormon [01:29:31] And he even decided the controversy about the history of the American Indians.

John Dehlin [01:29:39] That's right, that's right. And LDS discussions goes on to write, not only does Joseph Smith incorporate the mound builder myth and common beliefs about Native Americans, but every other surrounding mystery of Joseph Smith's time and place, it's inescapable. And of course, what this means is Joseph Smith as we know it, or whoever participated with him in the creation of the Book of Mormon, was a cultural sponge. He was paying attention to everything around him, and he was this amazing storyteller. And of course, we have to remind our listeners of this amazing book, Visions in a Seer Stone, written by Bill Davis or William Davis, who I had on Mormon stories recently. And if you understand that Joseph Smith was a storyteller, that he had a great memory, that he could captivate his audiences for hours at a time, according to Lucy Smith, then you combine that with all of these sort of general cultural understandings. And the Book of Mormon is literally the one of the exact books you would expect to be generated, you know, during the 1820s. Once you understand the cultural context. Is that fair? Is that fair to say?

Radio Free Mormon [01:30:54] RFM oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I had thought about that quote from Alexander Campbell too, when I was doing my research and thinking, you know, he didn't just decide all the religious questions, he also decided the question about the origin of the Native Americans in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:31:07] Right, Absolutely, yeah. Which is a main point of view. The Hebrews, right?

Radio Free Mormon [01:31:12] Oh, yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:31:13] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:31:14] Okay. Now, I think. Oh, the other thing is about the mounds. Okay. And the Mound Builders, not going to go into detail, haven't done the research on it. But basically my impression is, is that what the Book of Mormon peoples are described as doing is largely what it is that the Mound Builders did. They built structures like the Mound Builders, the forts, the way they built the forts, the places of refuge, all these kinds of things. And of course, in those mounds were buried lots of things and artifacts that, you know, were very common for people to go out there and do their own, you know, know, do it yourself archaeology and go and find things. Right. So, by the way, here's this idea I have, and I'm just going to say it because I don't know that I can support it, but we all know that the hill, Cumor, it was a drumlin hill, which means that it was created by glacial movements ages ago. It's really just a hill. It's a regular kind of a hill. I have this feeling that Joseph Smith conceived of it as a mound that things were buried in.

John Dehlin [01:32:21] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:32:21] And that may have even had caves underneath it.

John Dehlin [01:32:24] Yeah, for sure.

Radio Free Mormon [01:32:26] You know, I just have this idea. So this is just an idea. Okay, are you ready to go on with the book? I'll try and pick up the pace here.

John Dehlin [01:32:33] Let's do it.

Radio Free Mormon [01:32:34] Okay, so there's a quote from the Apocrypha, Second Estrus, which is quoted in the book that the ten tribes went to a land where never man dwelt. We've hit that before. And that's where we get to second Nephi chapter one, which is difficult for apologists who want to talk about all these people who obviously lived here when. When the Lehighs got here. Right. And intermarried with. But it's long been understood from this that that's. This is what happened in the Book of Mormon, too, is that these people from Jerusalem come to a place where. Where never had man dwelt. And this is Nephi chapter one, verse six. I'm going to go to verse eight. And behold, it is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations. Okay, nine. Wherefore I, Lehigh, have obtained a promise, blah, blah, blah. And they shall be kept from all other nations that they may possess this land unto themselves. Sounds like an empty land. And then it concludes verse 9. There shall be none to molest them, nor to take away the land of their inheritance, as long as they obey the commandments. Right, so this is where this seems to line up with this idea about the lost tribes of Israel. Remember, that's not the Book of Mormon, but going into a lamp where never had man dwelt, as it's related in the. The Apocrypha. Okay, now I'm going to talk about the Great Spirit. Okay, Great Spirit.

John Dehlin [01:33:58] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:33:59] I've read the Book of Mormon many times, even in My most faithful days. As I read through the Book of Mormon, there were places that caused me discomfort. And this is one of those places when you get to Alma, Chapter 8, and all of a sudden King Maloney, King Lamoni, starts going on and on about the Great Spirit. And I started thinking, gosh, that sounds kind of stereotypical for American Indians, doesn't it? Yeah, Great Spirit.

John Dehlin [01:34:29] Yep.

Radio Free Mormon [01:34:31] And, you know, he goes. I mean, I thought he mentioned it once. I went back and looked it up in chapter eight. And he mentions the great, Great Spirit in chapter two. There's four mentions later on. Six, seven, eight. There's eight mentions of the Great Spirit in that chapter. And how the. The Lamanites believe in the Great Spirit. Right. And then Ammon, who's teaching him the true gospel, tells them, okay, that's God, right? That Great Spirit you believe in. That's God. All right. Well, I had sort of thought, you know, I sort of hoped at the time that really Great Spirit was just something that TV writers for the scripts put in the mouths of their Native American characters, because that's the only place I'd probably heard it from. Great Spirit. Right. And I was kind of hoping that it wasn't something that went back before tv. In other words, that it wasn't an idea that was around in Joseph Smith's day. But dang view of the Hebrews mentions the Great Spirit over and over and over again.

John Dehlin [01:35:31] Yeah, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:35:32] And it talks about they believe in a Great Spirit. And guess what? Also he says, oh, that Great Spirit is God because they worship the Great Spirit. Remember? That was like one of his first points.

John Dehlin [01:35:44] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:35:45] They worship one Spirit, and that's the. The what they brought over from the Hebrews, being lost tribes of Israel. That's God when they say the Great Spirit. Okay, now there's a whole bunch of things. Let me go on here.

Parallels Between the Two Texts

Guest [01:36:00] Here.

Radio Free Mormon [01:36:01] There's a problem in here. I'm gonna say in page 123. Okay. A problem with the connection between this book and the Book of Mormon in that is that he talks about that these people had no writing. 123. Let me see if I can find this real quick. He says, and however many difficulties arise. Yeah. Many difficult, difficult questions may attach themselves to the subject. They are all less difficult than to. Okay. Some have felt a difficulty arising against the Indians being the 10 tribes from their ignorance of the mechanic arts of writing and of navigation. Okay. So how can they be of Israel if they. If they don't know how to write? So I picked up on that early On. Because I thought, well, that's obviously different than the Book of Mormon, which has a civilization that can write. Well, he's going to end up modifying that and saying that the civilized tribe, the one that got destroyed by the savage tribe, they could write. Which sounds a little bit like the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:37:00] Right? Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:37:01] Now, here's some passages. These are going to be very, very interesting to the audience. Okay, this is one. He mentions this in three passages, but this is where he talks about the two groups. And you have to actually get to page 124 before you find him start talking about this. Okay, here we go. This is the two groups that he talks about. The probability then is this, that the 10 tribes arriving in this continent with some knowledge of the arts of civilized life. There's a lot of typos in this book that I have to make allowances for. It says acts. I think he means arts here. With some knowledge of the arts of civilized life, finding themselves in a vast wilderness filled with the best game, inviting them to chase. Most of them fell into a wandering idol hunting life. Different clans parted from each other, lost each other, and formed separate tribes. Most of them formed a habit of this idle mode of living and were pleased with it. Does that sound like Lamanites? More sensible parts of the people associated together to improve their knowledge of the arts, and probably continued thus for ages. From these, the noted relics of civilization discovered in the west and south were furnished. And we talk about west and South. He's talking about Ohio and Mississippi from the mounds. Right. But the savage tribes prevailed. And in process of time, their savage jealousies and rage annihilated their more civilized brethren. And thus, as a wholly vindictive providence would have it, and according to ancient denunciations, that'd be the ancient prophecies from the Old Testament. All were left in an outcast savage state. This accounts for their loss of the knowledge of letters. That's the writing of the art of navigation and of the use of iron. Okay, he goes on. It is highly probable that the more civilized parts. Make sure I'm reading the right part. It is highly probable that the more civilized parts of the tribes of Israel, after they settled in America, became wholly separated, separated from the hunting and savage tribes of their brethren. That the latter lost the knowledge of their having descended from the same family with themselves. That the more civilized part continued for many centuries, that tremendous wars were frequent between them and their savage brethren till the former became extinct. So that really stood out to me as being quite similar, because that's the whole story of the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:39:43] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:39:44] After you get to second Nephi, chapter four, I think it is right after Lehi dies. Might be two. Right after Lehi dies. And then the Lamanites want to kill the Nephites. So the Nephites book it out of there, make a different city.

John Dehlin [01:39:58] Yep.

Radio Free Mormon [01:39:59] And then everything else is warfare, war for warfare until the end, when there's a huge war at the hill tomorrow and all the Nephites gather there on the hill, Cumorah, because they want the high ground and they still get killed by the savage ones, the Lamanites. Right. And he says this hypothesis, see, I want to read some of this, and I'm not going to try and read too much, but to let you know that what I'm saying is firmly grounded in this book. Because I'd like this to be a resource for people who are interested in what the view of the Hebrews actually says and to know that this isn't just some guy spouting off my thoughts, but it's really what's in here. Here.

John Dehlin [01:40:34] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:40:34] This hypothesis, the one he just said, accounts for the ancient works, forts, mounds and vast enclosures, that's the mound builder culture, as well as tokens of a good degree of civil improvement, which are manifestly very ancient. And from centuries before Columbus discovered America, these magnificent works have been found. And he mentions a lot of places where they've been found, and I'm not going to mention those, but in them, in a number of places, these works have evinced great wars, because they're forts. Right. These works have evinced great wars, a good degree of civilization and great skill at fortification and articles dug from old mounds in and near those fortified places, clearly events that their authors possessed no small degree of refinement in the knowledge of the mechanic arts. And he goes on, and I'm sorry, I'm just. This is so fascinating to me because you could not find a more neat parallel to one of the main themes of the Book of Mormon. These partially civilized people became extinct. What account can be given of this but that the savages extirpated them after long and dismal wars? And nothing appears more probable than that they were the better part of the Israelites. And when he says better party doesn't mean the larger part, he means the better part. The more civilized who came to this continent, who for a long time retained their knowledge of the mechanic and civil arts, while the greater part of their brethren became savage and wild. No other hypothesis occurs to the mind which Appears by any means so probable. Right. And there's the Book of Mormon for you. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:42:19] Right, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:42:20] Let me see here. I don't know if I need to read. He mentions it in two other parts, though not quite so lengthy. He's very taken with this idea and he repeats it over and over again. And that's something I want to mention. This isn't found in just one sentence. In view of the Hebrews, this is a big part of the book that he really likes a lot. And so he mentions it a number of times, just a bit. From 137. Thus situated and struggling to maintain. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. He's talking about the civilized group, thus situated and struggling to maintain their existence and to maintain their religious traditions. I mean, this strikes me, this is the. The title of liberty right here. And Captain Moroni, okay, he says, thus situated and struggling to maintain their existence and to maintain their religious traditions, they would naturally form many of the very things above enumerated. And these are all the villages and towns and mounds, walled towns, forts, temples, altars, habitation of chieftains, videts. Sorry, you'll have to help me with that one. And watchtowers. These cannot be ascribed to a people of any other origin with anything like an equal degree of probability. The whole process of the hypothesis stated in relation to these two branches of the descendants of Israel when finding themselves lodged in this vast wild continent is natural and easy. And indeed it's what we find in the Book of Mormon. There may be one other thing here. 145. I did mention Captain Moroni when he says that they are gathering together and fighting against this barbarous group to maintain their religious traditions. That was what immediately came to mind. It doesn't have our wives and our families and our sacred honor or anything like that, but it does talk about their religion, religious traditions. And finally, in page 145, this is in the conclusion, and I think this is a shorter one. Okay. Oh, yeah, this is really interesting because of course in the Book of Mormon at the end, they all gather to the hill Cumorah in kind of an impossible feat because it seems like there's too many Nephites to actually fit on Hill Cumorah.

John Dehlin [01:44:33] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:44:35] He's talking once again about all these different places and how huge they are, these mound builder things. And he says, though these tumult, okay, and that's apparently a technical word for the mounds, though these tumults were used as places to bury their dead and places for temples, altars and religious worship. They were no doubt places also for the last resort when likely to be overcome by an enemy. It's one of the reasons, I think, that Joseph Smith conceived of the hill Cumorah as a mound. It's a place of last resort when being overcome by an enemy. And then he talks about something that happened in Mexico, I believe, where he talks about the name teocalli was given to sacred places from the name of the God. Okay. But that's only important because the sacred places, these mounds, appeared like living hills. And the reason he says living hills is because they've got so many people on them that are going to be fighting against the onslaught that the hills themselves look to be living. Their teocalli appeared like living hills covered with warriors determined to defend their sacred places. Where were their temples, altars, and the tombs of their fathers Here they fought with desperation.

John Dehlin [01:45:58] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:45:59] Yeah. And that's why I wanted to read those, because there's different things in each one. We're talking about the general theme, but specific parts. And you go, oh, my gosh.

John Dehlin [01:46:07] And connected dots. What is that? What struck you about that? Spell it out for us. Rfm.

Radio Free Mormon [01:46:11] Okay. That's the last battle among the Nephites.

John Dehlin [01:46:13] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:46:14] Where they all gather.

John Dehlin [01:46:15] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:46:15] To the hill Cumorah.

John Dehlin [01:46:16] Yep.

Radio Free Mormon [01:46:17] And they all gather on this hill. And if the Book of Mormon, to be believed, there's so many on there that they probably even couldn't even fit. They're like.

John Dehlin [01:46:25] Sure.

Radio Free Mormon [01:46:25] Cheek to jowl.

John Dehlin [01:46:26] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:46:27] On the hill Cumorah.

John Dehlin [01:46:28] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:46:28] And there it says they're. They're. They look like living hills covered with warriors. And they're determined to defend their sacred places. And here they fought with desperation.

John Dehlin [01:46:37] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:46:39] So, yeah. I see that as a real connection or similarity between the view of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:46:48] Yeah. All these battles and mounds of bodies from deaths from all the battles.

Radio Free Mormon [01:46:53] That's.

John Dehlin [01:46:53] That's all just very similar. Right, right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:46:56] And that's the whole idea, is that these are not regular hills. These are the mounds they built which are their sacred places.

Guest [01:47:01] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:02] And so there's all the stuff buried in them, including maybe, I don't know, gold plates.

John Dehlin [01:47:05] Yeah, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:07] You know?

John Dehlin [01:47:08] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:08] Okay, so let's go really quick for. Through a few things because those are important things. I only want to touch on. Spend any time on things that are important. First off, in page 130, he talks about pyramids, and this is, of course, irresistible to anybody. You got pyramids in southern Mexico today and around that area.

John Dehlin [01:47:28] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:28] And connecting it with Egypt and Tikal

John Dehlin [01:47:30] and Guatemala, you see those.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:33] And everybody has to make the connection with Egypt. Right?

John Dehlin [01:47:36] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:36] But of course, the connection he makes is that the Hebrew children were slaves in Egypt and doubtless must have worked on the pyramids and therefore knew how to build pyramids. And so when they got over here, what did they do? Well, they built pyramids. Right. So this is another connection for him. There is also a mention. Now this is just a passing mention. Okay? So I don't want to make too much of this, but there is a mention in this book about a tribe going from a monarchy to a republican form of government. Okay. And that's page 131 and 132.

John Dehlin [01:48:11] Yeah, that's a parallel.

Radio Free Mormon [01:48:13] Why do you think that's a parallel?

John Dehlin [01:48:15] Well, I mean, in the Book of Mormon, I mean, there's the talk about moving from the king to the judges.

Radio Free Mormon [01:48:22] Right, Right, exactly.

John Dehlin [01:48:24] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:48:25] And it says judges, but it's described as a republican form of government in terms that sound eerily, I don't know, early American. So here it is. Our author proceeds. Once again, he's quoting from somebody. That's what he's doing all over the place, quoting from other people's writings. But the Mexican small colonies. And when he says Mexican, he's not talking about. He's talking about the ancient inhabitants of these small colonies in Mexico. But the Mexican small colonies wearied of tyranny. Okay, there's the monarchy. Weird. Of tyranny. Gave themselves republican constitutions. Now it is only after long popular struggles that these free constitutions can be formed. The existence of republics or a republic does not indicate a very recent civilization here. Like a wise politician, he was showing that the Mexicans from ancient date were a civilized people, at least in good degree. So there's the reference, just one tribe down there in Mexico, modern day Mexico, who he's quote, somebody else is saying they went from a tyranny or a monarchy to a republican government and even gave themselves constitutions. Once again, I don't think that any of this is true. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But he's just quoting people who are kind of writing books and I can't vouch for the accuracy of their information. I think a lot of it is not accurate. But the significance of it isn't the accuracy of it. It's the connections between what's in this book and what ends up showing up in the Book of Mormon. Right. He mentions hieroglyphs in a couple of places. It's nothing about Egyptian hieroglyphs. I don't think much weight should be put on that. He talks about buildings of hewn stone. This is one thing that surprised me in this book because I had this idea that, you know, those pyramids and the, the big buildings that show market advances of culture in southern Mexico and Tikal, Guatemala, like you mentioned, I had this idea that those weren't known when the Book of Mormon came forth, but they only got known in the 1840s. Right. And I think that I believe that because that's kind of how it was presented to me in apologetic material. But the fact is is that, yeah, they knew about him because they show up in this book and he talks about him in this book. Yeah, so they definitely knew about these. Buildings of hewn stone were known before the Book of Mormon came forth. So once again, not. It's not a huge thing and I don't think a lot of weight should be put on it. I think I've been clear about the things that I think more weight should be put on, at least for me personally. There is, oh, this civilized group. This was a small thing that I saw because we know in the Book of Mormon how the Nephites get out of town when Lehi dies because the Lamanites are out for their blood. So it's the righteous group, the civilized group that leaves behind the uncivilized group. Right. And we find a similar thing here in 134. That's page 134. Thus our author, once again he's quoting. Thus our author declines giving any opinion on this subject. But he here gives it as his opinion that these more improved tribes, the civilized tribes in New Mexico came from the northwest coast. Okay, Once again this is all going to be coming over the Bering Strait, which is obviously northwest to anywhere in the Americas and then they move down through the Americas and in South America. Now I do note that's different from the Book of Mormon because the Book of Mormon has the Lehighes coming over landing somewhere. And all the movement in the Book of Mormon is described as being from the south to the north. Okay, want to make that clear. That's different. But what he does say is that gives it as his opinion that these more improved tribes in New Mexico came from the northwest west coast and left some of their half civilized brethren there. So he has the same idea of the more civilized ones leaving behind the less civilized groups. Very small thing. Just mentioning it in passing. Don't think a lot of weight goes there. There is a mention of the union of the Civil and ecclesiastical power being joined in one person. In page 134 at the bottom where it says, these embrace. What is this? Oh, writings of the author. Another author. These embrace a great number of curious subjects, such as the union of the civil and ecclesiastical power in the same persons of the princes. All right, once again, it's a small thing. I don't know if it amounts to anything, but. Yeah, the Book of Mormon talks about the ecclesiastical power and the. The civil power being joined in one person. In fact, that's the way it was, apparently from Nephi all the way down to Alma. Because in Alma, chapter one, we read about Alma being the chief high priest and the chief judge. Right? He's the high priest and the chief judge. And that's where he decides, I'm gonna split these, and I'm just gonna go pursue my high priest duties and I'm gonna make somebody else a chief judge so that they can handle that. But up to that point, they're joined in the same person. They were able to work metals. That's on pages 138 and 143 vast populations. And that's pages 144 to 145. Quetzalcoatl shows up in this book, John.

John Dehlin [01:53:57] Okay. And remember him? And from Guatemala. I know that. Well, I guess Quetzalcoatls. Is that Mexican? Yeah, that's Mexico. Right. Cortez.

Radio Free Mormon [01:54:07] No, I'm sorry.

John Dehlin [01:54:10] It might be okay. I think of Quetzalcoatl as the great white God that appears in the Popol Vu in. You know, that comes out of the Guatemalan area. And in Guatemala, the actual currency is called the quetzal. It's a bird, but. But it's also a reference to the. The great God Quetzalcoatl, which is a Mayan kind of deity. So that's what. That's what I think of when I think of Quetzalcoatl.

Radio Free Mormon [01:54:38] When I joined the church in 1978, Quetzalcoatl was all the rage. There was actually a pamphlet that was published by the church. When I'm taking the missionary discussions, they'd give me assignments, right, to read from the Book of Mormon. And they'd also give me a pamphlet, at least one pamphlet each time, then supposed to read for the next discussion. One of those pamphlets was chock full of all these legends of Quetzalcoatl. And I think Cold Kahn, but Quetzalcoatl and how there's these legends of these great white gods among the Native Americans and how they leave and with a promise they will return someday. And then how it is that the. The Europeans, the explorers, end up showing up on their coast and they're honored and welcome because they think that they're the returning Quetzalcoatl. That story actually shows up in here about Montezuma welcoming Cortez, thinking he's the returning Quetzalcoatl. That's how long this has been around. Amazingly. The thing that's interesting, though, thing that's interesting is that view of the Hebrews does not conclude that Quetzalcoatl was Jesus. There's no Jesus showing up in this book among the ancient Native Americans. Okay? So that's another difference with the Book of Mormon. There is no Christianity among the ancient Americans in view of the Hebrews, which is another difference with the Book of Mormon. They are strictly Jewish. They have to be Christianized now and taught the Christian religion, the correct religion, religion. But it's not like this is the religion they had before Christianity and they just lost it, and now that's going to be restored to them. And the funny thing was, I'm so used to Quetzalcoatl being Jesus that I was kind of shocked when he gets around to saying, who Quetzalcoatl. He thinks it is. And that's Moses. He thinks it's Moses because he's looking at it through this paradigm.

John Dehlin [01:56:23] And is that rfm? Is that because he's not trying to impose Christianity on the Native Americans like Joseph Smith was?

Radio Free Mormon [01:56:29] Well, yeah, because it's strictly Jewish.

John Dehlin [01:56:31] He's got to stick it, which makes more sense. Again, this is where view the Hebrews would get it a little bit more right than the Book of Mormon. Because if we're going to talk about anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, having people baptized in the name of Jesus before Jesus was even born is just weird and crazy. That's what the Book of Mormon does. At least. At least Ethan Smith keeps his Native American Judaism to stuff that would have happened before Jesus is born.

Radio Free Mormon [01:57:04] Right. But on the other hand, Jesus fits better because Quetzalcoatl leaves and is going to return. Right? So that's better than Moses because Moses is never there in Ethan Smith's book. He's never there physically because, of course, he lived long before the ten tribes of Israel get lost. So he has to make him into a memory of Moses. That's a tradition that's brought and it's not a real person. So the Book of Mormon actually has some positive things on that story as well. But, yeah, it's Moses. And it also helped me realize that the Book of Mormon and Mormon look at Quetzalcoatl as Jesus, but here this guy looks at him as Moses. And both of them are probably questionable interpretations. But it helped me see how what our expectations are that we bring to a text can influence our interpretations. Because honestly, Jesus is probably just as likely as Moses. Or another way of saying would be Jesus is just as unlikely as Moses. Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:58:11] Both are unlikely.

Radio Free Mormon [01:58:12] But he sees Moses, Mormon see Jesus, and that's because of what they're bringing to the text and what they expect to see.

John Dehlin [01:58:19] Yeah, yeah.

Jewish Practices and Buried Records as Parallels

Radio Free Mormon [01:58:21] There's a number of pages spin about these Jewish phylacteries. Do you remember what phylacteries are, John?

John Dehlin [01:58:28] No, Remind us, remind me.

Radio Free Mormon [01:58:30] Jewish phylacteries, they really show up in the New Testament because Jesus is criticizing the. The Pharisees for having these phylacteries and wearing them, making them kind of ornate. The idea with the Jewish phylactery was, is that you would have little pieces of parchment on which were written four, I believe, four scrolls, passages from the Old Testament. And then they were put in little leather boxes, and one was bound around the head with a little box here and another was on the arm. And I think there was a cord and a box here.

John Dehlin [01:59:06] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:59:06] With those.

John Dehlin [01:59:07] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:59:07] Does it come into you?

John Dehlin [01:59:08] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:59:09] And the idea was it was a fulfill a very literal rendering of the Old Testament injunction about keeping the law of the Lord between your eyes and by your heart.

John Dehlin [01:59:20] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:59:21] And so this is Jewish as Jewish could be. I mean, if you could find a phylactery anciently in the Americas, that'd be pretty good evidence, right?

John Dehlin [01:59:28] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:59:29] Of Jewish influence a lot better than this other stuff he's been talking about. So there's this whole story, pages 159 through 163, about these Jewish phylacteries that somebody said they found somewhere. And he goes through all this effort. This is actually about the only research that he does. And he goes to these different people. He's trying to find these Jewish phylacteries. They're described, you know, exactly how they look, and they have the parchment in it, which is described as being dark yellow. That'll be important here in a second. But he's trying to track these down, and they can never find them. Just like, you know, the flat trees here were. Were here yesterday, but they left right before you got here. Sorry. He can never find them. People say, we know we saw them, but they never ever show up. And this is what happens. Over and over with these types of alleged antiquities, actual physical things. Right. That would show a Hebrew influence. People see him, people talk about him, but they never show up. And on those occasions when they do show up, then they're. They're fakes. So he goes on and on about trying to find this and cannot find out. And these things never show up in a museum either, by the way, you'll notice.

John Dehlin [02:00:38] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [02:00:38] So the reason it's page 165 is important, this is right at the end of this main section of his book, is because he talks about the leaves of this phylactery parchments in it. It's being dark yellow. Let's see. Yeah. Mr. Merrick observed. Because that's another witness, Right. He didn't hold on to it, but he observed that Mr. Merrick observed that the color of these parchments was dark yellow. Okay, now, dark yellow. This sounds kind of like gold, right? So that's like the Book of Mormon and the gold plates, right? That is, I think, one of the connections that B.H. roberts saw. And I'm looking at that and I'm thinking, boy, that's a stretch. So I think there are stretches that go both ways, Okay? I think there are stretches that Ethan Smith does in trying to talk about what the Native Americans did and how they functioned and connect those to ancient Israel. I think there are also sometimes stretches that a person who's thinks that there are problems in this book for the Book of Mormon, they can go too far on the other side, I think, by making connections that I think are tenuous. And I think that was one that B.H. roberts did. I. I read it, by the way. I did not read BH Roberts before I read this book because I didn't want my poison. Yeah, I didn't want. Yeah, I didn't want it to be influenced by my reading of the book. Excuse me. My goodness, I gotta have some breakfast. What are you having for breakfast there, John?

John Dehlin [02:02:11] It wasn't me.

Radio Free Mormon [02:02:12] I need to have. No, it wasn't you. I'm talking about my stomach's rumbling. I need to get something to eat. So that can happen both ways. But, yeah, I did not read anything like that before reading this. And the stuff I read back in the 80s, I've forgotten, but I wanted to be able to have a fresh take on it. And then I did read something about what B.E. roberts wrote, and he wrote about this yellow parchment being like gold plates. And I went, now I'm not even seeing that one. I think there are big, big connections between View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon. I think there are some smaller connections, but I think there's a lot of them that are just too tenuous to really amount to much in my mind. Okay, okay, so. But there is.

John Dehlin [02:02:55] Sorry, if I can summarize what I've heard so far, just because I want to make sure I'm getting it. What I'm hearing you say just in this, in this, you know, last hour or so, is that you, you, in your independent reading of you, the Hebrews have found several noteworthy similarities between view of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon, including civilized tribes versus uncivilized tribes, pyramids, a discussion of monarchy to a republican government, things like a civilized group leaving behind the uncivilized group, discussions of government, of civil power and ecclesiastical power and those being united metal work, vast populations, vast wars and the like, and even the discussion of a buried book. And your point is that those are noteworthy similarities, is that right?

Radio Free Mormon [02:03:52] Not quite, actually.

John Dehlin [02:03:53] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:03:54] Because here's the thing. I think the big things, the forest as opposed to the trees, the forests are overwhelming and indisputable, I think. Okay. At least from my point of view. When you start getting to the trees, which are the more detailed, by the way, I also think it's very, very important about. About the two groups and the civilized and the uncivilized and the wars and the destruction and the civilized tribes being annihilated. I think that's very important as well. A lot of these other things are smaller things that don't bear as much weight to my mind in this analysis because I'm also aware of the fact that once you start looking at these trees very carefully and you start looking at these 20 or 30 trees out of a hundred, then the response is to look at the other 70 trees and say, but these are not like anything in the book.

John Dehlin [02:04:38] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [02:04:39] And that's a valid response. In fact, I was reading something that I think John Welch had written back in the 1980s when this was coming to light. And he. He wrote something was for the Inside magazine. And he was saying, you know, if Joseph Smith is following view of the Hebrews and if he believes that Ethan Smith is on the right track and his evidences are correct, then why does he have the Lehigh sail over to America instead of coming across the Bering Straits? And I thought, you know, it's a valid point. It's a valid point. If he thinks that this is the Bible that he's got a hue to, and that this is really what science Shows, including the method of getting across here. Yeah, it's a valid point. On the other hand, it illustrates the, the idea and I think the logical fallacy that in order for a person to plagiarize from one work, work to another, then they have to plagiarize everything in the one work to the other. Otherwise it's not plagiarism. And we talked about that a little bit before too. But what I'm saying is when you get to the, the trees and the details and you start talking about those individually, I think some of them are, are possibly of interest. But their, their, their logical force, their evidentiary force is diminished by it. All the other things that are trees in this forest, of this book that are not matched up with what happens in the Book of Mormon. Did that make sense?

John Dehlin [02:06:09] Got it, got it. Thank you.

Radio Free Mormon [02:06:10] Okay, so I think there's a lot here, but it's usually it's the forest stuff that I find amazing. And you had mentioned buried book. I hadn't actually gotten to that because there is mention of a buried book in here and I think that's interesting. And that's on page 163. This is not the parchment, the yellow parchment in the phylacteries. It's in the middle of this discussion. But here it is. Okay. An old Indian. This is talking about the Reverend Chauncey Cook of Chile, C H I L I New York. Chile, New York. Have you ever heard of that?

John Dehlin [02:06:41] No, no.

Radio Free Mormon [02:06:42] It's right next to Polteny, Vermont. No, Reverend Chauncey Cook of Chile, New York. He was at my house and he told me this story. So he's going to include it in here. An old Indian informed him. Oh my God. I'm sorry, I'm sorry if I'm going to be correct. Reverend Chauncey Cook is actually saying that he heard this story from another Reverend. So now it's third hand or fourth hand. But anyway, here's the story. Okay. An old Indian informed him that his fathers in this country had not long since had a book which they had for a long time preserved. But having lost the knowledge of reading it, they concluded it would be of no further use to them and they buried it with an Indian chief. The Minister spoke to Mr. Cook of this information of Dr. West, as a matter of fact. So they had a book that they buried and they buried it because they lost the knowledge of how to read it and they buried it with an Indian chief. So this is a classic instance. If you look at a book that's buried and you think about the Book of Mormon. Well, that seems pretty suggestive, doesn't it? But then if you want to make focus on the dissimilarities to show it there's no connection, then you talk about it being buried because. Not because it's sacred to come forth in the last days, but because they forgot how to read. Read. Right. So if the Book of Mormon narrative, it would be the Lamanites burying this book because they're the ones who forgot how to read, not Moroni burying it. And also that they buried it with an Indian chief. Well, there's no Indian chief's skeleton that I know of that's mentioned being buried with the Book of Mormon. So you can see how this game is played. And it's up to the individual as to what it is that they think is more significant, whether it's the burying of a book or whether it's the details surrounding the burying of the book that are not replicated in the story of the Book of Mormon. Whereas the bearing of the book itself is. Okay, we are getting close. We're getting close. So I got the buried book. Oh, now we get to chapter four. So that's all his evidence is, right. I want to mention chapter four because this is about Isaiah where he quotes Isaiah heavily relative to the restoration of the lost ten tribes of Israel. The chapter he quotes of Isaiah there is chapter 18. I mentioned how we quoted it before, verse by verse with commentary interspersed. That's not in the Book of Mormon. It believes that the people of the United States of America are the subjects of this address. In other words, he's quoting Isaiah, chapter 18, and saying that the people of the United States are the ones that Isaiah was writing to. All right, okay. Doesn't sound like Moroni saying, I see you and I know your day and I'm writing to you. Once again, that's tenuous. Okay. But it's interesting. But Isaiah is useful. I mentioned this before because so many prophecies are contained therein about scattering gathering of Israel. Same with the Book of Mormon, by the way. Millennium's gonna. The millennium is going to come soon because the gathering is happening right now and we're going to be part of it by preaching Christianity to the Native Americans. And this is one another thing I found interesting because there's that expression, the isles of the sea, which sticks out to me in the Book of Mormon. And I think the reason why it does. Does it stick out to you, John? Isles of the sea, where the Book of Mormon talks. It quotes Isaiah and then it talks about, you know, we. I think it's Jacob, we are on an isle of the sea. And Isaiah and talking about this Israel being scattered even to the isles of the sea. He's talking about us. Do you remember that part?

John Dehlin [02:10:28] Sure, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:10:29] Okay, good, because I wrote it down. But I think everybody remembers. I think It's Jacob, chapter 10. It's actually, I, I got it right here. It's chapter eight. And yeah, I'm not going to go deep into that. If you want to go to second Nephi, chapter eight and read what Jacob has to say about it there, I know it is right here. For the Lord has made the sea our path, and we are upon an isle of the sea. Right. Well, that's from Isaiah. And this is quoted here. And this is probably why it sticks out to me, because it's such an interesting usage in the Book of Mormon talking about America being an isle of the sea, because we wouldn't usually think of north and South America as being an island. Right, but that's. But that's what he considers it here. He says, he quotes, hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off. And say he that scattered Israel will gather him and keep him, as the shepherd doth his flock. And he says, isles afar off, by the way, on the facing page, 171, he'll also quote, and the places from which they are recovered are noted, among which are the isles of the sea, or lands away over the sea and the four corners of the earth. Okay, so he is quoting from Isaiah, the same one that's quoted in the Book of Mormon, as well as an additional one. But he says, as aisles in the Hebrew language signify any lands ever so extensive away over great waters. Where can those isles afar off? So it doesn't have to be an actual island, it's just something across great waters. Where can these isles afar off these coasts of the earth here addressed by God in relation to the restoration of his outcast yet beloved Ephraim? Ephraim is another name for Israel. Where can they be so naturally found as in America? So I thought that was interesting that the, the quotation from Isaiah about isles of the sea is applied to the scattering of Israel to America just the same way as it is in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:12:31] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:12:33] He puts a lot of stock in Isaiah 173 through 175. It reminded me of the Book of Mormon talking about great are the words of Isaiah, page 178. He talks about an enzyme to the nations. It's a reference to Isaiah. Right. Oh, I thought this was kind of interesting too, because there was this passage in the Book of Mormon that where it talks about the Gentiles. A Bible. A Bible. We've got a Bible. We don't need any more stinking Bible. Do you remember that passage?

John Dehlin [02:13:06] Yeah, that was one of the seminary scriptures.

Radio Free Mormon [02:13:09] Yeah. And one of the things I liked about it was it says, you know, the Gentiles, they've got a Bible, but what do they thank the Jews for? The Bible? Bible. Because the Jews are the ones who put the Bible together and preserved it. Right. Says what? Thank they the Jews for the Bible.

John Dehlin [02:13:21] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:13:21] Which they received from them. Yeah. What do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the trails and the travails and the labors and the pains of the Jews and their diligence unto me in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles? And there's a similar thing that reminded me of when I was reading page 183. And we're getting really close to the end of this book now. Let's see if I can find it. Yeah. Look at the origin of those degraded natives of your continent. Here he's addressing his fellow American citizens and trying to encourage them to preach Christianity to the American Indians. Excuse me for a second, I have to cough. There we go. So look at the origin of those degraded natives of your continent and fly to their relief. Send them the heralds of salvation. It's also very similar to the Book of Mormon about the kings and queens being your nursing mothers and fathers and putting them on your shoulders. Right. Again, an allusion to Isaiah. Send them the heralds of salvation. Send them the Word, the bread of life. You receive that book from the seed of Abraham, the Bible. Right. All your volume of salvation was written by the sons of Jacob, and by them it was transferred from Jerusalem to the lost heathen world and to you and otherwise you had now been heathen and eternally undone. Remember then your debt of gratitude to God's ancient people for the word of life, restore it to them and thus double your own rich inheritance in its blessing. So that's what reminded me of the Book of Mormon saying, what did the Gentiles do? They thank the Jews for their travails and their labors and their pains in bringing forth the Bible unto them. Okay, so conclusion. Oh, this is his conclusion. There's not much there in his conclusion. He really recapitulates everything that he said before. You know, the idea of the olive tree in Jacob 5 is hinted at maybe. And that's pages 187 through 188. Now, we know that the olive tree idea is mentioned in Romans, and I think it's also mentioned in Isaiah briefly. But it's interesting because that whole huge parable is the longest chapter in the Book of Mormon. Right. Jacob, Chapter 5, the Parable of the Olive Tree. You've made it through that before, John.

Racial Distinctions and Isaiah in Both Books

John Dehlin [02:15:42] Oh, yeah, of course. Read it a lot on my mission.

Radio Free Mormon [02:15:45] Right. And all of that is about this gathering and the gathering of Israel. That's what the whole thing's about, right?

John Dehlin [02:15:52] I think so, yeah, it is.

Radio Free Mormon [02:15:54] Take my word for that one. But he does say here in his conclusion, upon their re. Upon their turning him off the. With hypocrisy and vulgar. Okay, okay. And it says. So it says that when the Israelites turn from God with hypocrisy and will worship, they're worshiping their own will and rejecting the Savior. Okay, maybe this is the Jews after Jesus came. Anyway, the denunciation cut it down. Why cumbereth it? The ground was fulfilled with unprecedented decision. So there's that reference there. Now, it's from the Bible, it's from Romans, and he's not making a big parable about it, but it is mentioned here and on the next page where he talks about this. In entail or inheritance ensures their. In grafting again into their own olive tree, which shall be as life from the dead to the nations. So there is. He's quoting from Romans 11:28, but it's the same idea that comes out in Jacob 5. It's just Jacob 5 is a lot more elaborated as far as a parable goes. Okay, I thought that was mildly interesting. I mentioned about Native Americans must be Christianized in order to be restored. That's page 188. Now in the appendix, he does mention white and black Jews. Okay, okay. But it is in a very different context here. He's arguing with people who say, no, it's not the American Indians who are the lost tribes of Israel. It's these other people over here. This appeared to have been a huge field of study and speculation at the time is that we know those tribes are out there. We know they're lost. So who are they? And we've kind of discovered pretty much everybody who lives on the earth. So it's not like they're hidden away in some pocket anymore. They've got to be somebody that we've seen. We just don't recognize who they are. And somebody was saying that they're the Inhabitants of the East Indies. And so what Ethan Smith is doing is arguing against that. And apparently this idea of the East Indians being Jews, there was something associated with that, with them being white and black Jews. So as I say, something similar to the Book of Mormon is mentioned, but it's in such a different context that I don't know that too much weight can be put on it. Page 202. Oh, excuse me. It is way at the end. Here we go. Dr. Buchanan, he's quoting people everywhere. Dr. Buchanan gives an account of white and black Jews at Cochin C O C H I N in the East Indies. Okay. Dr. Buchanan informs that the white Jews they are immigrated from Europe in later times. The black Jews have a tradition that they arrived in the Indies not long after the Babylonian in captivity. So there's a Babylonian captivity that's kind of like the Book of Mormon. But once again, I don't think that's too big a connection because this is a different theory about the East Indies that he's arguing is wrong where they have this idea of black Jews and white Jews. I just bring it up to try and be encompass all the different things here that are mentioned in this book. And I haven't mentioned all of them, but I. The most important ones I have that. Okay, there's this other thing. This is. This is kind of obvious, I think, but it mentions that first Nephi 5, 11 through 13, right. That we know that they had the brass plates with them and we know it was on the brass plates because it says that. What was on the brass plates? It says that, well, they have the writings of all the prophets down to the time of Jeremiah. Right. And they don't have anything after that because that's when they left Jerusalem. And that's what I thought was kind of. Kind of obvious. But there is a similar statement, I think here and I hope that I gave the reference. Let me see here, if I did hope it's 203

John Dehlin [02:19:51] in. In the view. In view of the Hebrews, you're saying.

Radio Free Mormon [02:19:54] Yes, and you know, I'm wondering, I may have actually not put down the page number for that. There's a. Mentioned several times of the black and the white Jews. It's not that important anyway. And I didn't put it down, so shame on me. But everything else I did. So that is the book view of the Hebrews. That's my book report for the class.

John Dehlin [02:20:20] Okay, so let's. This has been great and I think this is going to be an important record for future students and or Scholars that want to flesh out even more deeply, you know, parallels. But what I, what I think would be really fun would be and important would be to kind of summarize, kind of what's the bottom line of, of your analysis? And then I may have a couple questions, but what's the bottom line?

Overall Similarities and RFM's Analysis

Radio Free Mormon [02:20:50] RFM Bottom line of my analysis is that the view of the Hebrew Jews is similar in its overarching story to the Book of Mormon, as we've talked about, maybe different places in Israel or Judah in different times that these people came out. They may have gotten here in a different way, but it is basically the same story and it's a very common story. If I'm concluding, I'll also talk about separating the different tribes, civilized, uncivilized, and the uncivilized killing the civilized off. And only the uncivilized being left left when the, the colonists show up. So you've got that very similar. There are some similarities in the, the trees as well as the details, but there's a lot of dissimilarities. So this is not something where Joseph Smith just tore off the, the COVID and put his name on it. Obviously he didn't write the monkey's paw with the monkey's paw. He changed some things so it wouldn't be so obvious that he was borrowing. But once again, that's totally not necessary to show. That's the other main thing. It's not necessary at all to show that Joe Smith had a copy of this, that he read it, that Oliver Cowdery had a copy of it, or that he read it, because everybody knew the arguments in this book and it was written by at least a dozen other authors in a dozen other publications. And I know that because this book cites them saying the same thing and drawing the same evidences in support of that conclusion, that there's a Hebrew ancestry to the Native Americans. And the Book of Mormon comes out. And it's widely. I said widely. It's quite popular. There's a lot of people who are joining the church, not compared to the population, but you know what I mean. But the reason why, I think is because it's telling them a story that they already understand to be true. It's not saying that the Native Americans came from another planet, let's put it that way. Okay, I don't think that would have been that good a story. So. But it's quite popular and a lot of people read it and they agree with it and they understand that this is a history of the Native Americans and Then what happens after that is fascinating to me that 100 years goes by and 200 years goes by and science has moved on, archaeology has moved on, DNA has moved on. And I don't think anybody believes this anymore, except for the Mormon, because they have to, because they have the Book of Mormon. So they end up being forced into this real fringe position in 2021, which was a widely held position 200 years ago. And the other thing I think is interesting is how quickly this cultural memory can fade is that B.H. roberts is. A hundred years ago, he's a. He's midway between. Right? Here comes the book of Mormon. 100 years later is BH Roberts. Now we're 100 years after that. So 100 years after the Book of Mormon, it appears from reading B.H. roberts that the cultural memory had already pretty much vanished by that point.

John Dehlin [02:24:02] Point.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:03] And that it was a surprise to him to find out and to the people he talked to, to find out that when the Book of Mormon came out 100 years before, this was a commonly held belief, it wasn't something that was innovative or original to Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. This is something that was just repeating what was generally understood. Had you noticed that part about B.H. roberts?

John Dehlin [02:24:27] I mean, yeah, it. I mean, obviously, I think, I think he was as surprised as any of us to learn about these details, and I. I don't know how much they were studied before him. There may have been some, some analysis of this in the mid-1800s, but, yeah, I, I think it, it clearly took, if this is what you're asking, I think it clearly took BH Roberts by surprise. And in my opinion, and in the opinion of Shannon Caldwell Montez and others, it's this type of analysis that, that led B.H. roberts, by the end of his life, life, to express doubt about the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

Radio Free Mormon [02:25:05] Right. And I know that's a huge. What do you call it, Controversy about did he lose his faith, did he not lose his faith? I think that we can make the modest conclusion that he came up with all of these ideas that he himself thought were challenges to the belief in the historicity of the Book of Mormon, and he wanted to present it to the leadership of the church to get some answers because he couldn't come up with any, and they were not able to give any answers by revelation. And I think that whether he lost his faith or whether it remained equally as strong, I think there's probably a happy middle ground in there somewhere that it's hard to Expect that a person in BH Roberts position saying what he said about the strength of these evidences and doing what he did with them would not have your faith impacted to some degree be by his story that he did in his life. Coming up with these evidences, finding them significant enough that they needed answers for the rising generation, and then not getting any answers from the leaders of the Church. I think that that's got to impact a person's faith to some degree. Whether they lose it entirely is another matter. I don't know that he lost it entirely, but I think it definitely impacted his belief in the Book of Mormon. And my reading of B.H. roberts is that after that he started shifting to, to the Doctrine and Covenants as the basis for his faith and Joseph Smith's prophetic ability.

John Dehlin [02:26:29] And to me, what's also significant is that the Mormon Church, number one, sends B.H. roberts on a mission to get him kind of out of Utah after the secret Mormon meetings of 1922. But also that they do their best to wipe BH Roberts. I mean, this isn't absolute, but you get a sense that the Church does its best to kind of downplay BH Roberts whenever it can and try to wipe BH Roberts as much as possible from the memory of the Mormon people to the point that I think it was. I don't know if it was Truman or Brigham Madsen, but somebody writes a biography of B H Roberts in the 60 kind of 70s timeframe. I believe it's the 60s, and the church literally says, we don't want this published. And so the biography gets sat on until the 80s when these B H Roberts manuscripts that had been hidden suddenly resurfaced. And so the Church is like, crap, we got to get a biography out on BH Roberts to try and save the faith of the membership. And so of course, this biography gets released maybe decades after it was written. But for me, what's most important in all of this is just how the Mormon Church has. For over 100 years, Mormon Church leaders have intentionally misrepresented or hidden or skewed to its membership the important historical context and facts that should be presented if the Church wants to present an honest, fair and reasonable history to its membership. Would you agree or not agree with that RFM Well, I would agree.

Radio Free Mormon [02:28:24] I would agree. I do find myself understanding, if not agreeing with the way the Church does things because their whole goal is to get people into the celestial kingdom. Some would argue that they're more interested in having tithe pair years. I don't know that I can determine that. But they certainly want people to get to the celestial kingdom. You got to pay tithing, go to the temple to do it and their whole raison debt is to do that. So therefore they are going to give information out that is most likely to accomplish that goal. And that means to give a dominant, whitewashed, sanitized, very faith promoting history to the members of the church regardless of what the history actually was and try and keep the members of the church from finding out about that darker side of the history because they want them to go all the way. They're doing it only for their very best interests. And what they don't know won't hurt them. And they'll probably be glad when they're in the celestial kingdom singing God's praises that they were misinformed.

John Dehlin [02:29:26] Yeah. And for me, what I would have wanted from the Mormon Church, number one, you know, growing up in the 80s, going to early morning seminary as a product of the church education system, what I would have wanted from the Mormon Church, what I would have expected from an organization that is trying to maintain the highest levels of integrity would have been number one, not for the church to be anti science, not for the church to be anti evolution, not for the church to be teaching a 6,000 year old Earth, a literal global flood. You know, not to be setting the context in my brain as an impressionable youth that science is bad and that scientists are to be distrusted, that evolution is bad, that the earth is 6,000 years old, because that is an important context that misled me for at least a few decades. And then what I would have expected the church to do is not to sort of teach me as a kid or as an investigator. Oh, isn't it a miracle? None of us really knew where the Native Americans came from. But lo and behold, on one spring morning, Joseph Smith got a visitation from God and Jesus. And later he was told that an angel, Moroni would come and tell him about the origins of the Native Americans. And lo and behold, this miraculous Book of Mormon would have just, would have just emerged out of the dust to, to tell us all in a miraculous way where Native Americans came from. And it turns out that they came from, you know, this small family of Jews that escaped Jerusalem with Lehi and Nephi around 600 BC and they traveled to America through boat and write about their histories. And that's why we have the Book of Mormon today, because they wrote on plates that were preserved and then Joseph Smith. Smith sort of, you know, presented them what would have been A more honest representation. And what I hope the church starts teaching is something more along the lines of, hey, you know what? In the early 1800s everybody was wondering where did these Native Americans come from? And there were these mound builder myth that sprung up that, that tried to explain the origins of the Native Americans. And because everybody in the early 1800s in New England were fascinated with the Bible and they were fascinated with where the 12 tribes of Israel, they made this natural connection that most likely these Native Americans were somehow connected to the lost tribes of Israel. And that there are at least 10 different books prior to the Book of Mormon that make claims about the origins of these Native Americans, tying them to Israelites. And they also incorporated this myth about dark skinned and light skinned people that the dark skinned Native Americans killed off the lighter skinned Native Americans who were responsible for all whatever sociological, technological, cultural advances. It was the light skinned ones that you know, that were responsible and the dark skinned were the savages, which is a super racist myth. Well, there were at least 10 or 12 different books, lots of articles written prior to Joseph Smith. And when Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon, it was just one of the of many of these books that emerged along with the View of the Hebrews. That of course was a book that was written in the same hometown as Oliver Cowdery, who then ends up being miraculously a scribe for Joseph Smith when he produces the Book of Mormon. And of course there are all these parallels, coincidence or not, that you've highlighted RFM between View of the Hebrews and Book of Mormon, which doesn't necessarily prove that the Book of Mormon is quote plagiarized from View of the Hebrews. But instead both the Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews, it can be demonstrated almost beyond any reasonable doubt that they both are products of the historical and cultural milieus heavily influenced by the Bible and Christianity and common racist teachings of the day. Both of those books were heavily influenced and outgrowths of the early 1800s kind of folklore culture that was swimming all around New England, New York and Vermont during Joseph Smith's day. That would be in my mind, a more honest and fair narrative that the Book of Mormon isn't this miraculous, exceptional sort of outgrowth miracle of a production of Joseph Smith. But the Book of Mormon is just one of 10 or more attempts at doing Bible fan fiction to explain the Native Americans. That would be more honest for me of an account to tell the members.

Radio Free Mormon [02:34:52] Yeah, but you're not getting many people to the Celestial Kingdom that way, John. See, that's the problem with your whole idea. No, I hear what you're saying. Absolutely. I think you did a great job synopsizing this entire show with that. You did a much better job than I did. I did want to make a couple of comments, though. They're just ancillary. We can't forget the Jaredites. The Jaredites go from the Tower of Babel. They're not the lost tribes of Israel, but they do follow a much more similar path to what's described in the View of the Hebrews. Going northeast and over bodies of water until they get to the great ocean, and then they sail across it, and they're barges that they constructed. So that's one thing. Another thing is about these mounds, because lots of people are digging stuff out of mounds, and it intersects with LDS history in a number of places. By the way, Joseph Smith even quoted from View of the Hebrews as evidence for the Book of Mormon in 1842, I believe it was. And the Times and Seasons periodical, the newspaper in Nauvoo.

John Dehlin [02:35:52] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [02:35:53] So, yeah, he was aware of it, but we can prove he was aware of it. But, like, 13 years after the Book of Mormon was dictated, which is a bit late, but. Yeah, Zelf. Remember Zelf?

John Dehlin [02:36:05] Yeah, remember Zelf? Absolutely.

Radio Free Mormon [02:36:07] The. It's. He's a skeleton.

Guest [02:36:09] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:36:09] I think he had like, a arrowhead stuck in his hip or leg or something like that.

John Dehlin [02:36:13] Yep.

Radio Free Mormon [02:36:14] And that's Zion's camp. That's 1830, 34, I believe, but 34, 35, I think it's 34 somewhere. And heading from Ohio down to Missouri, and they come across, you know, some mounds. So what are good Mormon who are on their way to warfare with the government of Missouri to take back the land of Missouri, the land of Zion? What do they do? Well, they start digging around. They find a skeleton in this mound because it was buried there. It was a burial mound, at least as part of it. And of course, you know, Joseph Smith identifies the skeleton, but that's not the important part. For purposes of this story, William Fugate, when he decides he wants to bury something that's going to be found, the Kinderhook plates, what does he do with it? First he makes them. Right. Then he buries him. And where does he bury him? He buries him in a mound. Then he has a friend find him him. And then there's the rest of that story. But these are just some of the interesting places in LDS history where the mounds intersect and we actually see them talked about. So those are the only other Two comments that I had there.

Did View of the Hebrews Influence the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [02:37:25] Let me ask you this, rfm, in your conclusion, do you think it's likely that a view of the Hebrews influenced Joseph Smith and or Oliver Cowdery in the Book of Mormon or that just they're two independent, you know, productions of Bible fan fiction that have, you know, common influences higher up the kind of chronological food chain? Do you know what I'm saying? In the end of the day, is view of the Hebrew influencing the Book of Mormon in your view? Or are they just both being influenced by the broader cultural understandings in New England during that time period?

Radio Free Mormon [02:38:12] I think it's a common commonality. They're both coming forth from the same overwhelming belief among people that. About the Native Americans. That's what I think. I think it's certainly an easier position to defend to talk about a common influence because we've been able to demonstrate this overwhelming influence from the vast number of books that were written on the same subject by very educated people, by very influential people, by very smart people, well placed people, people that, you know, you would look to and think, well, my gosh, there's must be something to this and look at all the evidences that they're talking about. This makes sense. And so I think it's a common cultural thing that, like I said, it's hard to imagine anybody not being aware of this controversy going on and many of the people believing it to be correct about the Native Americans and the Israelites. And so therefore the Book of Mormon is not a surprise. It is the actual, most obvious book that would be produced in this time period. I'm hearing an echo now of me.

John Dehlin [02:39:22] Let me see. Tell me if. Is the echo gone now?

Radio Free Mormon [02:39:25] Let me see. Hey, it is okay. Yeah. So I think that when you, when you bind yourself to trying to say no, Joseph Smith through Oliver Cowdery. Excuse me. Yeah. View of the Hebrews. View of the Hebrews. Right. Then you bind yourself to an argument that is, that has some positive things to it, like the forest and the trees we talked about. The forest is good, the trees. There's some, some here, some there, and some of the ones that are here are not that, you know, know, persuasive. But that's a harder argument to make than the fact that the view of the Hebrews by its own terms is representative of a number of books that are talking about a very popular theory. And the Book of Mormon is replicating that theory within a book that presents itself as a history of those people themselves, not a history about them, but history of them that they wrote and then buried and then was found in a mound. I'm going to start calling it the mound Cumorah, not the hill. Cumorah.

John Dehlin [02:40:27] So, rfm, I just want to restate and make sure I heard. Did I hear you say that you don't think the view of the Hebrews book had much influence on Joseph Smith and or Oliver Cowdery in the production of the Book of Mormon? Is that what I heard you say?

Radio Free Mormon [02:40:42] What I'm saying? And thank you for asking for the clarification. What I'm saying is that proving that is the difficult now certainly possible. Certainly possible it had some direct influence. It's difficult to prove that. And therefore, in order to keep yourself from being mired in this argument about whether view of the Hebrews had this direct influence, it's not necessary to go there. You don't have to get mired in an argument about something that ends up being inconsequential because whether it's View of the Hebrews or all these other books that are written, everybody knew about this. This, most of them. I'm going to say. I'm actually, I'm gonna say most. I should say many people believed it and the Book of Mormon is just an outgrowth of what it is. That was a very largely held opinion at the time of the derivation of the American Indians.

John Dehlin [02:41:32] Got it. And, and so, so when apologists try and say, look at all the, look at all the dissimilarities between the two books. Look at all the things in view of the Hebrews that aren't mentioned in the Book of Mormon, look at all the things that are mentioned in the Book of Mormon that aren't mentioned in view of the Hebrews. That's a huge straw man. It's a huge red herring because nobody ever who's competent and credible has ever claimed that there was word for word, word for word, what's the word? Reproduction, copying, plagiarism, plagiarism between view of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon and a secular or a materialistic explanation of the Book of Mormon does not require Joseph Smith and or Oliver Cowdery's familiarity with view of the Hebrews at all. All you have to do is look at, at the number one, the common cultural myths and understandings about the Native Americans, about the Bible, about the origin of the Native Americans in the 1820s and about all the things that New Englanders and Christians were thinking about. All you have to do is look at that and all the other multiple books trying to explain the Native Americans before and after the Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews come out, to realize that what you would expect if you were, you know, trying to be a prophet in, you know, 1822, if you were going to be a prophet in 1822 and you were just looking at all the evidence around you, you would say, I bet over the next few years a bunch of books are gonna come out trying to explain the origin of the Native Americans, tying it to the Bible and tying it to the lost tribes of Israel and maybe even trying to incorporate some Christianity. If you were an astute observer of the culture in 1822, you would probably predict a bunch of books just like View the Hebrew and View the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon. Because that would be similar to in the 2000s, predicting that there would be a lot of true murder mysteries showing up on true crime podcasts and TV shows, emerging on cable television and on podcasts. Because you just realize that by the 2000s or 2010s, a lot of people are going to be fascinated with true crime. It's, it's, it's in my mind that's kind of what we're, what we're talking about here.

Radio Free Mormon [02:44:28] Okay, I was paying attention. I was paying attention. I think you make a lot of good points. I, I think that the way I'd put it is the Book of Mormon, contrary to the apologetic argument that I think Jim Bennett mentioned, that the Book of Mormon does not describe Native Americans the way you would expect Joseph Smith to have described them. It describes Native Americans exactly the way. Way that you would expect Joseph Smith to describe them.

John Dehlin [02:44:55] Absolutely. Okay, RFM, we have a five minute clip of the Saints Unscripted Podcast YouTube channel giving kind of their arguments for why the Book of Mormon wasn't plagiarized from View of the Hebrews. Do you have time to kind of have us play this and have you respond to it?

Radio Free Mormon [02:45:16] It. Whatever happened to those guys? I mean, they're going gangbusters at the end of last year and then they fell off a cliff or something.

John Dehlin [02:45:23] I don't know. I'm not sure.

Radio Free Mormon [02:45:24] All crickets.

John Dehlin [02:45:25] I don't know what's happened to those guys.

Radio Free Mormon [02:45:27] Well, I'm glad you're doing them a favor by resurrecting one of their, their best pieces. So this is, I, I think, and I had not watched this before you, you played a little bit of it for me right before the show started. This is because CES letter talks about B.H. roberts and his view about. View of the Hebrews vis a vis the Book of Mormon and the connection. And now they're going to try and say, no, these things do not look like each other. Reminds me of the old Sesame street song about one of these things is not like the other. Three of these things are kind of the same. But they're going to say that the view of the Hebrews is not like the Book of Mormon in the sense that Book of Mormon was not derived from it.

John Dehlin [02:46:09] Yeah. So is it. Should we play it and do a little bit of a response video to this? To this video? Do you have time for that?

Radio Free Mormon [02:46:17] Yeah, if we can sing a few show tunes as well.

John Dehlin [02:46:20] Okay. Okay. And what I'll do, because I don't want you to get that echo again, only don't try and speak while the video's running. I'll pause the video, bring it to us and just stop me at any point that something, a fallacious argument is advanced, a bad argument, some type of distortion or misperception, you just stop me and we'll go back and forth. Is that okay?

Radio Free Mormon [02:46:45] How will I stop you without speaking?

John Dehlin [02:46:47] You can just say stop. But just know that before you really start talking, we'll wanna mute the screen so that you don't get that echo. Is that okay?

Radio Free Mormon [02:46:56] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:46:56] Okay. And so to begin rfm, I think we need to begin just by this title. The title is, quote, is the Book of Mormon plagiarized from view of the Hebrews. So what is your reaction? Just to the title itself.

Radio Free Mormon [02:47:11] Himself, straw man.

John Dehlin [02:47:12] Why?

Radio Free Mormon [02:47:13] Why? Because I'm not arguing and I don't think anybody that I know of is arguing that it's plagiarized.

John Dehlin [02:47:21] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [02:47:21] Because plagiarized has all this connotations in it. Right. And that's what I was talking about, what I was talking about for the last 15 minutes. You don't have to go there. You don't have to get down into this argument. There's obviously an influence of the culture on the Book of Mormon. It's exactly what you would expect. And when you say, was the Book of Mormon plagiarized from the he Book of Hebrews? Well, you of course, course, cast the issue in such a way as that it's pretty easy to come out on the winning side of that argument.

Guest [02:47:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:47:45] If you start with a fallacious argument, with a bad argument, with an argument that no one's making, then of course you're always going to win the argument. The problem is you're not addressing the real problem. And it's a form of deception, whether conscious or unconscious. Framing the question like Jim Bennett did, or like Saints unscripted did, like, like Mormon apologists, Daniel Peterson, etc, have been doing for decades now. Framing the view of the Hebrews argument as a question of plagiarism is in and of itself a deceptive act, whether it's intentional or unintentional.

Radio Free Mormon [02:48:21] Can I just say something before you play this? Because I listened to that entire interview you did with Jim Bennett. I lost track of how many times he did the straw man stuff, stuff over and over and over and over and over. You could almost set your watch by it. He would immediately take an issue and set up a straw man. And to your credit, by the way, I was keeping track of you. You did a fantastic job of pulling him back. And every time you do that, you'd say, immediately you say, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. Yeah, it's not what you're saying. I'm saying. Yeah, it's what I'm saying.

John Dehlin [02:48:58] Yeah, that was hard. That was hard. And I think he was arguing in good faith. But I just. It's something we all need to get skilled about. Logical fallacies. Straw men, you know, red herring. Like, we need to all get better educated if we're going to have intelligent, thoughtful conversations around Mormon truth claims. We just need to get really wise to logical fallacies because apologists make them everywhere. And frankly, we don't want to be guilty of employing logical fallacies either as people who are questioning or criticizing the church. So it's just important that we get literate on logical fallacies. True?

Radio Free Mormon [02:49:39] Yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:49:40] Okay, so let's start this video. And again. Rfm. Just say pause whenever you hear something disturbing or problematic that you want to mention. Is that okay?

Radio Free Mormon [02:49:48] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:49:49] Okay, here we go.

Guest [02:49:49] Go.

Radio Free Mormon [02:49:50] Pause. Just kidding. Just testing.

John Dehlin [02:49:53] Okay, here we go.

Radio Free Mormon [02:49:58] I can't hear him.

John Dehlin [02:49:59] Can you guys hear the. Sorry. Just one second. Just one second.

Radio Free Mormon [02:50:02] I like the way he does that. It's like I want to do that like him.

John Dehlin [02:50:06] Logical fallacies. All right, guys. All right. Apologies. One more second. We don't want to be guilty. I can hear you from, like, employing logical fallacies. Either go as people who are questioning or criticizing. I know. Give me just one second. Just important that we get lit like

Radio Free Mormon [02:50:20] I'm doing the time warp again.

John Dehlin [02:50:21] Logical fallacies.

Radio Free Mormon [02:50:22] True, True.

John Dehlin [02:50:25] Okay, you can't hear it anymore. Is that correct?

Guest [02:50:28] Correct.

John Dehlin [02:50:29] Okay. Sorry about that technical glitch. I think I've got this already now. And let's Roll the same unscripted video called fallaciously and irresponsibly named is the Book of Mormon plagiarized from view of the Hebrews. Let's try this again.

Responding to Apologetic Counterarguments

Guest [02:50:49] Alright guys. So a lot of people believe the Book of Mormon is true and a lot don't. People who think the Book of Mormon is a hoax have been scrambling for almost 200 years now trying to figure out how this young farm boy named Joseph Smith whose own wife said he couldn't write nor dictate a coherent and well worded letter letter could have possibly produced it. Critics proposed that Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [02:51:11] Okay, what's the problem so far?

Radio Free Mormon [02:51:14] Oh, it would be scrambling. Scrambling to come up with an answer for how on earth this uneducated schoolboy could have come up with the Book of Mormon when he couldn't even dictated a well worded letter. According to his wife at the end of her life. And she's doing everything she can to support his prophetic ministry minus the polygamy. Me, but I think you know exactly what I'm talking about.

John Dehlin [02:51:37] Spell out, spell it out.

Radio Free Mormon [02:51:40] It's from a statement she made at the end of her life. It was like the 1870s or something like that. It was like her last testimony, you know where she's talking about Jose Smith. You know, you got to make things bigger. And the Book of Mormon is so true he could even dictate a well worded letter. And he never practiced polygamy. No, that never happened. So, so the deal is this is that use of word scrambling. It's this whole idea. He's uneducated, he practically walks around town with a drool cup. This is the Joseph Smith because the dumber he is, the more miraculous the production of the Book of Mormon becomes. And I listened to your interview with William Davis. William Davis, right. Vision and a seer stone. He talks about this, that this is something that is done intentionally and actually when you look at the evidence, Joseph Smith was not as dumb as the apologies would like to make him out to be.

John Dehlin [02:52:30] Absolutely. Okay, let's continue.

Guest [02:52:37] Have possibly produced it. Some critics propose that Joseph Smith modeled the Book of Mormon after ideas and themes he stole from Ethan Smith's view of the Hebrews. Let's take a closer look. Okay, so in 1823, this guy named Ethan Smith, not related to Joseph Smith published View of the Hebrews. In it, Ethan argues that ancient Israelites traveled from the Middle east to the Americas and Native Americans are descendants of these Israelite immigrants. This idea was not exclusive or original to Ethan Smith. A lot of people actually believed this back in the day, but the concepts sounds familiar to us because a similar idea is expressed in the Book of Mormon.

Radio Free Mormon [02:53:23] Pause.

Guest [02:53:23] And when you look at some of this stuff from 30,000, he's gonna say

Radio Free Mormon [02:53:27] when you look at it from 30,000, what he has done now is he has actually done a good job of setting forth the forest and how similar they are. And so he says when you look at it from the 30,000 foot view, yeah, these things do look similar. So now what we've got to do is we've gotta look at the trees. Right? So what he's actually going to do is he's going to illustrate the problem of not being able to see the forest for the trees. He actually can see the forest, but now he's going to ignore the forest and say the trees are what is important, not the forest.

John Dehlin [02:54:01] Got it, Got it. Okay, back to the video. All right.

Guest [02:54:14] Feet. Sure, they are indeed similar, but when you actually read View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon, you see just how different they actually are. For example, Ethan Smith's Israelites are the lost ten tribes of Israel that escaped the Assyrian captivity when the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered in 721 BC. They travel to the Americas on foot through the Bering Strike. The Israelites in the Book of Mormon are from the southern kingdom. They leave Jerusalem just before Babylon conquers around 587 BC they travel by boat to the Americas. So sure, they're similar, but actually very different. Both books also talk about the destruction of Jerusalem, but View of the Hebrews is referencing the roman invasion in 70 AD, the Book of Mormon, the Babylonian invasion hundreds of years earlier, both of which actually happen. Happened. Ethan Smith's Native Americans bury an ancient book written on yellow.

John Dehlin [02:55:06] Okay, really quick, really quick. Rfm. So that argument that the two books are talking about different, different parts of the. The twelve tribes of Israel that they. That they migrated in different ways. Spell it out. Why? Why? That's not a very good argument. I know we've already made it, but just spell it out one more time.

Radio Free Mormon [02:55:27] I think it's a fine argument in terms of. If you want to focus on the dissimilarities. Because you've got to do something with this. He's already mentioned that you've already. He says this looks really similar. Okay, it does look. Really. Because it does. Even he can't deny it. And he's an apologist. All right, but. So now he's got to try and say, okay, but these are Different. It might look the same and it does look the same, but underneath this forest canopy we've got a few different kinds of trees here. And instead of coming over in, you know, 721, they came over and in 587 and instead of being from Israel, they came from Judah. And instead of going that way like the Jaredites did up to the Bering Straits and then over like in the view of the Hebrews, instead they went and built a boat. And made by all accounts pretty much impossible technologically at the time. Both that could withstand a voyage across the Pacific Ocean and make it to the Americas that way. So this is where you are going to focus on the trees instead of the forest. He's already said the forest looks really similar, but if you look under this, these are kind of, these are kind of different. And I look at these and I keep saying, yeah, wow, that's completely different. Oh for. They came 100 years separate. Oh, that's completely different. Yep. Oh, they got here different ways. Completely different. No similarity between these books whatsoever. Now I have not watched past this point and I'm going to be very anxious to hear when he gets to the part in view of the Hebrew that talks about the civilized nation being destroyed by the uncivilized group of the Native Americans.

John Dehlin [02:56:56] All right, we'll see. We'll see.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [02:57:01] Actually happened. Ethan Smith's Native Americans bury an ancient book written on yellow parchment or leaves because they can't read and had no use for the book.

Video Clip 1 [02:57:11] I can't read.

Video Clip 1 [02:57:14] Shut up, Bugsy. Book of Mormon. Native Americans bury the gold colored plague plates to preserve them for future use. Additionally, many of the supposed parallels between the two books share a third common denominator. The Bible, for instance, the scattering and gathering of Israel is a major theme of both view of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon and also the Bible. The fact that both Ethan Smith and the Book of Mormon are interested in biblical prophecies and quote them isn't surprising nor concerning. At the end of the day, the claim that Joseph Smith stole ideas from view of the Hebrews suffers greatly from the false equivalence fallacy. For example, Anakin Skywalker was the chosen one and Harry Potter was the chosen one. So Harry Potter must be plagiarized from Star Wars. You see the problem? Just because two things are similar in some ways doesn't make them the same. Now there are lots of.

John Dehlin [02:58:08] Okay, rfm, respond, respond to that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:58:10] That. Well, this false equivalency. See, once again you're looking at the things that are not similar. And then saying anything else that disagrees with my position. It's an equivalency. That's the admission you got to make when you say it's a false equivalency. It's an equivalency, but it's a false equivalency. No, it's these equivalencies over here that I think are important. Therefore these are the true equivalents. So that's also a way of kind of poisoning well, and saying this is a false equivalency. When you talk about Star wars and Harry Potter, I don't know. I don't think there's any connection between the two. But my gosh, you know, a chosen one. It's a very, very specific little type of phrase. Right. But if you look at Lord of the Rings and the Sword of Shannara, if anybody knows what I'm talking about, you know, you've got the Lord of the Rings rings and you know that the Sword of Shannara, which ended up becoming the Elf Stones of Shannara and the Sion of Shannara and the, I don't know, the Tiddlywinks of Shannara. God only knows where Terry Burkes ended up with that series, but it was hugely popular back in the 1980s. But you're not going to have any names that are similar between that and Lord of the Rings, because that's what he's basing it on. I mean, that's the whole reason that he wrote it. It's a Lord of the Rings type book. And you can see that in the quest, even though they have different things, there's a rock instead of a monkey's paw. There's not going to be, you know, a Ring of Power, believe it or not. So it's. It's written knowing that that's what he's doing and therefore avoiding mentioning the exact same kind of things in the Lord of the Rings. So that's. Is that plagiarism? I. I don't know. I. I don't like to get bound up in these definitions of words. There's obviously a huge influence from one on the other, and that's the kind of thing that I look for.

John Dehlin [02:59:59] Okay. All right, thanks, rfm. Let's continue.

Guest [03:00:05] Other parallels. But I don't want you to get the impression that these books are just a bunch of parallels. There is a ton of stuff that Ethan Smith emphasizes in view of the Hebrews that just doesn't show up at all in the Book of Mormon, in view of the Hebrews, there's the 70 trees is non existent. Native Americans imitate the Ark of the Covenant and practice circumcision. The Book of Mormon doesn't teach any of these things. And in the case of continuing revelation, it teaches the complete opposite throughout its text. Now, to spice up this, and I'm

John Dehlin [03:00:36] just going to say, I just think that's a dumb argument, because basically what they're saying is that Joseph Smith didn't literally just copy the book, put a new title on it, like you say, and then release it as its own. Of course, there's going to be a lot of differences because he's trying to author an original text that of course, is influenced by things all around him and potentially influenced by the view of the Hebrews, but in no way does it need to be influenced by the view of the Hebrews. So just this whole act of highlighting differences just feels like a really disingenuous kind of argument, in my view.

Radio Free Mormon [03:01:12] I'm going to forthwith call this the monkey's paw argument.

John Dehlin [03:01:15] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Radio Free Mormon [03:01:16] This is the monkey's paw argument. The story is the same, but damn it, there's no monkey's paw in it. It can't have been derived from that story.

John Dehlin [03:01:24] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's continue

Oliver Cowdery's Connection to Ethan Smith

Guest [03:01:32] this conspiracy theory. Critics are eager to point out that Ethan Smith was a pastor in the same church that Oliver Cowdery's family attended. So Oliver must have acquired view of the Hebrews, given it to just Joseph Smith, and voila, the Book of Mormon. The only problem is that the latest record we have connecting the Cowdery family with this church is from 1818. Ethan Smith wasn't pastor until 1821. But even if Oliver did know Ethan, the historical record is clear that Oliver didn't meet Joseph Smith until 1829, after Joseph's translation of the Book of Mormon had already begun.

Radio Free Mormon [03:02:09] Centuries, centuries apart. There can be no connection here. What are you talking about? A connection?

John Dehlin [03:02:15] Okay, so basically what I just heard is first the point that the only evidence we have of Cowdery's family attending that church is prior to Ethan Smith becoming pastor.

Radio Free Mormon [03:02:26] Three whole years.

John Dehlin [03:02:27] What?

Radio Free Mormon [03:02:28] Or is it two years? I think it was three years.

John Dehlin [03:02:33] Okay, but then he's saying that there's no evidence of Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith ever hooking up until. Until the 1829, after the book of Mormon had already been commenced. So what? So why Checkmate. Rfm. Checkmate. Why is that not checkmate?

Radio Free Mormon [03:02:51] Well, what he's actually doing. What he's actually doing is Basically, this is really quite the connection. This is once again the attractiveness of this theory to students who are drawing this connection between view of the Hebrews and, and Joseph Smith that we've got the Oliver Cowdery as the scribe, his family going to this church where Ethan Smith is the pastor. And we've got this whole lineup of things. And it's so attractive, it's easy to get committed to that. And that's what I'm saying. You don't have to be committed to that because then this happens, right? And what they start doing is they actually start saying they sound like a defense attorney. What they're saying is, yeah, these things may be close in time, but they're not exact. And what they're actually saying is that you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the connection between Oliver Cowdery and Ethan Smith and his book. And then that book being taken by Oliver Cowdery. We actually have to have photographs from paparazzi in the bushes along the roads between Vermont and New York with him carrying a view of the Hebrews to Joseph Smith. And then we actually have to have Joseph Smith. Look, it's actually in the hat.

John Dehlin [03:04:01] Hat.

Radio Free Mormon [03:04:01] It's a smaller version. He actually has it in the hat with his face over the hat and he's reading the actual words line by line of the view of the Hebrews to Oliver Cowdery who's now dictating it. And probably it sounds familiar to him since he's the one who gave the book to Joseph Smith in the first place. See, this is. Well, gee, that sounds like a straw man, doesn't it?

John Dehlin [03:04:25] Yeah, yeah, it does. It's kind of like there's no evidence that Joseph Smith had sex with any of his, you know, polyandrous wives or 14 year olds. Like what do they want? Like, like, like video camera porn of Joseph having sex in the barn with Fanny. Like, yes, yes, they do. What's the standard to then it's not enough to have signed affidavits of many of his ex wives or many of his wives saying they had sex with them in the very deed. That's not enough stuff. You know, they, they need, they need video, which is a little bit anachronistic.

Radio Free Mormon [03:04:58] I think the standard of proof is very simple, John. It's whatever I want to believe. You are never going to have enough proof to overcome that. You will always need something else.

John Dehlin [03:05:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:05:11] By the way, we've got how much time is left on this video? Because I'm still anxiously anticipating him talking about this huge theme of the civilized group. Group being destroyed in warfare by the uncivilized group.

John Dehlin [03:05:23] There's a minute and eight seconds left.

Radio Free Mormon [03:05:25] So you think he's going to get to that?

John Dehlin [03:05:26] I don't know. Maybe.

Radio Free Mormon [03:05:27] I'm kind of wondering. Maybe he's not going to mention that. I don't know why that would be. Let's see.

John Dehlin [03:05:32] All right, let's see. Arfab.

Guest [03:05:35] Parallels from View of the Hebrews we could discuss. But here's what I suggest. If you read or watch something online that's got you concerned about View of the Hebrews, just read View of the Hebrew. Hebrews. Just read it. Find out for yourself if it's actually as incriminating as some people like to say it is.

Radio Free Mormon [03:05:52] I did that. It is.

John Dehlin [03:05:53] Okay. Rfm. So what's. You did it. You read View of the Hebrews?

Radio Free Mormon [03:05:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:06:00] You did what he said. What did you. What did you find? Summarize it.

Radio Free Mormon [03:06:03] I think it's more incriminating than what I had originally thought. And again, in the overall big picture, the big themes summarize why the Hebrew origins of the Native Americans and the destruction of the civilized group by the uncivilized group of the Native Americans. This is the broad picture. It's the same as the broad picture of the Book of Mormon. It is quoting from all these other books that have been written on the same subject, using the same evidences for the same effect. Everybody knows about this in Book of Mormon authorship times, early 19th century America. And he's saying, just read the. Read the. Read the. The View of the Hebrews. At that point, I'm thinking, if he'd read it, he would have announced it. But it's like, you know, this is a real tough book to get through, and I don't think anybody's going to take me up on this. Therefore, I'm going to go ahead and suggest they do this knowing that. No. Who's going to do that? It took me 40 years to do it. So if you actually read the View of the Hebrews and what I've tried to do is to read it with a thorough background knowledge of the Book of Mormon, which I bring to it, that's just because of my past and my studies, but to try and be as objective as I possibly can in looking at connections and parallels and similar themes, and that's what I've tried to talk about during this podcast and give it as balanced as I possibly can, and I think that even looking at it in a very balanced way, the evidence is overwhelming. That the main themes of the View of the Hebrews are the same main themes in the Book of Mormon. It.

John Dehlin [03:07:42] Yeah. All right, well, we've got.

Radio Free Mormon [03:07:47] Did he get to it? He's not going to get to it. By the way. By the way, I don't know who this. This fellow's name is, but I. I doubt that he wrote the script for this either. But whoever's producing this, okay, whoever actually has read the. The View of the Hebrews to write the script, knows that they're hiding.

John Dehlin [03:08:05] Yes, that. That is the thing. It's that. It's that that these apologists and frankly, church general authorities for over a hundred years know. Beach Roberts put them on notice. They know that there are problems that are legitimate problems. And what they never do is explain the legitimate problems as they weave their narrative. Like, even if. Even if you're going to reject the legitimate problems, I think if you're gonna talk about complete honesty, you have a duty and obligation to explain to seminary students, Sunday school students, investigators, if you're a church that believes in honesty, if you know there's significant, credible problems with the narrative that you're trying to spin, an honest, responsible person acknowledges those. When they're teaching the preferred narrative that they wanna teach. Otherwise, they are intentionally mislead, deceiving people by withholding that information. And the church, through its missionaries, through its CES program to this day, is still deceiving people intentionally. And they've been doing it for just a long, long time. And the extent to which now they are publishing the Gospel Topics essays, publishing the Joseph Smith Papers project, it's only because they've been shamed and forced to acknowledge these problems, either legally or because of Google, because of podcasts, because of CES letter, because of the Mormon History association, because of Sunstone, because of dialogue, the church has been backed into a corner and forced to be begrudgingly half honest. True?

Radio Free Mormon [03:10:02] No, I think that's absolutely correct, by the way. By the way, notice that he knows. Okay? And you play that last part again, because notice what he let slip. Hang on a second. Look at a coffee. Excuse me. Notice what he let slip. He's already talked about the parallels, right? He's covered the view of the Hebrews and all the important parallels. Not so fast, Bubba Louie. Because what he says is, oh, by the way, if you hear any other parallels about the view of the Hebrews in the Book of Mormon that make you troubled, that is, things I didn't talk about, things I didn't want to talk about, but if you Hear about those, which I'm not going to mention. Then here's what you do. Read View of the Hebrews. Can you play that part again? Because he kind of gives away the farm on that.

John Dehlin [03:10:49] Okay, I'll play it again. Just one sec.

Guest [03:10:54] If you read or watch something online that's got you concerned about View of the Hebrews, just read View of the Hebrews. Just read it. Find out for yourself. If it's actually as incriminating as some people like to say it is, I'll put a link to it in the description. Oddly enough, it's been published online by none other than the Brigham Young University Religious Study center, which I think shows you how threatened the Church seems to feel about it.

Radio Free Mormon [03:11:20] Yeah, I think that was in 1996, about 11 years after it was published by Roberts family.

John Dehlin [03:11:26] Yeah, so that's. I mean, and. And by the way, let me just show that. They show this mocking really quickly. They follow up with kind of a mocking. This is sort of the Quaker mode of kind of making fun. Let me just show the mocking video. And then I want you to just explicitly respond to it.

Guest [03:11:46] Feel about. I put a few links in the description to further research about some of the parallels we didn't get to.

John Dehlin [03:11:55] Okay, so rfm, they're basically making fun of us, saying that, whoa, clearly the church isn't afraid of you, the Hebrews, because they've published it online. So. Ha ha. Rfm, you know, take that. You know, the church isn't afraid of you. The Church isn't afraid of. Of being a View of the Hebrews or B H Roberts. What's your response to kind of that rhetoric?

Radio Free Mormon [03:12:22] Well, I think the church is famous for talking about and making accessible things that ultimately they were unsuccessful at hiding.

John Dehlin [03:12:30] For a century. Right. For a century.

Radio Free Mormon [03:12:35] Well, and mainly what I'm talking about here is BH Roberts, because his interaction with the view of the Hebrews. That's the problem.

John Dehlin [03:12:42] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:12:42] And so. Well, that wasn't a whole century, but it was about 60 years, maybe 50. Well, anyway, between 1920s and 1985 when it was that finally the family of B.H. roberts published it. And like you said, you and Shannon Caldwell Montez, I think it is, had talked about the. The suppression of that and the unwillingness of the Church to mention BH Roberts and his interactions with few of the Hebrews.

John Dehlin [03:13:08] Right, right. Yeah. Yep.

Radio Free Mormon [03:13:12] By the way, did you say that that crowd was going quakeu mode?

John Dehlin [03:13:15] Well, just. Just this. This, You know, one of the things that the fair Mormon, you know, by. By bringing on Kwaku and this Cardinalis and others by the whole Saints unscripted sort of mode is we need to appeal. This is John lynch, this is Scott Gordon and the whole philosophy of Saints Unscripted, of three Mormon and of the Kwaku videos that have since, you know, Fair Mormon is desperately trying to distance themselves from by publishing a crap ton of new videos to bury the Kwaku videos in their feed. The whole philosophy behind all that was we're losing the youth. The youth are used to humor. They're used to hip multimedia. They're used to sarcasm. And so we need to incorporate sarcasm and cutting humor and even fight back at the critics, you know, by using kind of these social media techniques of kind of destroying the critics through memes and through social media and by making fun of them. That's what I meant by that. Rfm.

Radio Free Mormon [03:14:28] I got it. And like I said, I thought. Is that like Depeche Mode?

John Dehlin [03:14:31] Mode, Depeche Mode.

Radio Free Mormon [03:14:34] Depeche Mode. Am I not hitting anything here?

John Dehlin [03:14:39] What do you mean, mode? I'm not getting it. I'm not getting it.

Radio Free Mormon [03:14:44] What do you. Let the listeners make some comments, please. Somebody educate John Dehlin about the. The highlights of 80s rock music.

John Dehlin [03:14:51] No, I know who Depeche Mode is.

Radio Free Mormon [03:14:53] Oh, you know who they are? Okay, good.

John Dehlin [03:14:55] Blasphemous rumors, you know, lie to me, speak and spell.

Radio Free Mormon [03:15:01] I know who Depeche Mode. I thought, is that like Depeche Mode? There was nothing more to it than that.

John Dehlin [03:15:06] I know.

Radio Free Mormon [03:15:06] Very, very simple.

John Dehlin [03:15:07] Okay?

Radio Free Mormon [03:15:08] It's just a name similarity is all. Don't look for anything deeper because there's no similarities. If you go deeper.

Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

John Dehlin [03:15:14] Okay, we've got like 30 seconds left. RFM, what do you think? Are we gonna have them mention. Are we gonna have them mention the, the important matches? What do you think? Think?

Radio Free Mormon [03:15:24] Oh, no, no. They're, they're, they're gone. What we know is that they know about this huge, huge red flag about the, the civilized society having all these wars with the uncivilized society. Because the uncivilized society doesn't like civilized societies just on general principles. And so they just fight, fight, fight, and they all gather together on the hill anyway, and that's destroyed the barbarians destroy the civilized people. And that is just a little too close for comfort to be mentioned on a video that is designed to show that the Book of Mormon was not influenced in any way by a view of the Hebrews.

John Dehlin [03:16:04] Yeah. So let's let the video play out, but the rest is just kind of silliness.

Guest [03:16:09] Put a few links in the description to further research about some of the parallels we didn't get to. There's also more info about the Ethanoliver connection theory and there's also more info on our website. Hope you learned something and have a great day.

Radio Free Mormon [03:16:25] I learned something. I learned that they are scared to actually give the full story about the connections and the parallels. That's what I learned.

John Dehlin [03:16:33] So rfm, let's just, let's just, you know, someday the church is going to learn to not be dishonest, to not be deceptive. Someday John lynch and Scott Gordon and Phil Mormon and Daniel Peterson and all that crowd is going to learn to be dishonest. If you're going to be, you're going

Radio Free Mormon [03:16:53] to learn to be dishonest. They're going to learn to be honest. They've already got that down, sorry.

John Dehlin [03:16:55] They're going to learn to be fully honest. And what I want to give you is a chance to coach them. Terrell Givens, Daniel Peterson Fairmormon if you're going to create an honest video about View of the Hebrews and it can still be, it could be six minutes instead of five, it could be seven minutes minutes instead of five. If you're going to honestly discuss View of the Hebrews and its potential connections with the Book of Mormon, with Joseph Smith, with Oliver Cowdery, rfm, what are the essential things that you must mention that they intentionally leave out so as to deceive? Just spell it out one more time.

Radio Free Mormon [03:17:39] Okay. Well, they did a good job at the very beginning, I think, mentioning the similarities, but I think that you have to go further than that. And they also mentioned some dissimilarities and that's fine, you know, that's totally fair game. But I think that when you don't mention a huge similarity about the, the destruction of the one group by the other group and the civilized and the uncivilized, I think that when you leave that out, I think that you are doing a disservice to a person who is looking to you to give them the full story. I think that's the main thing that I saw that was problematic in that particular video.

John Dehlin [03:18:18] And I'm just gonna add my opinion, which is that I think if you're gonna responsibly teach or try to inoculate people around Book of Mormon View of the Hebrews, you have to educate them about the mound builder myth and you have to tell them that there were 10 to 12 books all published before and or contemporaneous to the Book of Mormon that all had their different spins on the same question, and that literally the Book of Mormon is just sort of one of like 12 books within a genre of attempting to explain the origins of Native Americans by tying them to the Bible and to the lost tribes of Israel. I just think it's irresponsible to not mention that genre. All the other books and the mound builder myth that contributes to the Book of Mormon being just one of 10 or 12 publications that are all within a genre trying to explain the same type of things. That's my view.

Radio Free Mormon [03:19:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:19:25] I think it's a genre. It's a genre. The Book of Mormon is one book in a genre of books that we would absolutely expect to have come out of the 1820s and 1830s.

Radio Free Mormon [03:19:38] Yeah. And I hear what you're saying. I'd probably use just a little bit different words. I would say that the genre of the Book of Mormon is unique among those books, but they all have the same theme and they're all arguing for the same conclusion. I just see the. The Book of Mormon as being a genre of the. The historical narrative, as opposed to the argument. More like a lawyer's brief. And I'm not sure what the term is for that genre. But. But here you've got, and this is just very simple, right? You've got the view of the Hebrews and these other books, but view of the Hebrews quoting from Isaiah and others about the restoration and the gathering of Israel and how that's going to happen, how it applies to the Native Americans anciently. And then you've got the Book of Mormon, which is a historical narrative, different genre, but the same theme. And they're taking these same. The same or similar prophecies from Isaiah about the scattering and the gathering of Israel and saying, look, this is us. Isaiah was talking about us. We're scattered on the isle of the sea, but in the last days, we'll be gathered again. So that's what I mean. There may be a different genre. The way I use the term anyway, I could be wrong, but it's the same theme throughout.

John Dehlin [03:20:48] Absolutely. Okay. And so what I want to do really quickly, we have a really good question by one of our listeners. Amy writes, is there a list somewhere of the other similar books? And fortunately for Google, I was actually able to find an amazing list. And I think I first heard about this list on Bryce blakenegal's Naked Mormonism podcast. But what I just shared in the comments, if you just Google, where did Joseph Smith get his ideas for the book of Mormon, what you'll find from Utah Lighthouse Ministry, a list by none other than Sandra Tanner, a list of all the books that likely influenced the Book of Mormon. So there's James Adair, the history.

Radio Free Mormon [03:21:44] That's a big one, by the way. And there's Elias Budinot right there. Star in the West, West.

John Dehlin [03:21:48] James Adair, the History of the American Indians, 1775. Elias Budinois, you know, Budino, a Star in the west from 1816. Edmund Burke, An Account of European Settlements in America. 18.

Radio Free Mormon [03:22:02] Burke's A Big guy, too. I mean, very famous, very intelligent.

John Dehlin [03:22:06] David Cusick, Sketches of the Ancient History of the Six Nations. I mean, in this. This list is literally. There's like 30 books here, and it's literally too long to mention. If we read all the citations, it would probably take an hour. That's how many books there are that fit within what I'm calling a genre. You don't want to call that a genre, but I'll just say a clear attempt for decades prior to the Book of Mormon to explain Native Americans and their origins and to tie them to. To the Israelites and. Or the tribes of Israel.

Radio Free Mormon [03:22:46] Yeah, it's everywhere. It is everywhere. Think of something that everybody knows. Diet Coke. Okay, thanks. Excuse me. There you go. Diet Coke. Right? Everybody know about Diet Coke. Yeah, everybody knew about the idea that the. The Native Americans were Hebrew in origin in Joseph Smith's day.

John Dehlin [03:23:05] Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, rfm. Did. Did we. Did we make our point? Did we say everything we wanted to say about View of the Hebrews?

Radio Free Mormon [03:23:14] I fear we may have fallen into the trap of Ethan Smith and said it over and over again. But they say that repetition is the key to learning.

John Dehlin [03:23:21] Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Well, I think Rob Baron wants to summarize you, and he's saying, it is a forest. Is that what you're trying to say? Rfm?

Radio Free Mormon [03:23:32] Yes, and I think I've said it many times. I'll say it again. It is a forest. Like my physics teacher used to say in high school, repetition is the key to learning. Repetition is the key to learning. Repetition is the key to learning. Now, what's repetition? The class would go, thank you. To learning.

John Dehlin [03:23:50] Yep. Rob says. Can you please repeat that one more time?

Radio Free Mormon [03:23:53] Oh, my Lord, Rob, you're going to get me thrown off the air.

John Dehlin [03:23:57] All right, rfm. Well, you are a treasure to all of us. And honestly, just the fact that you took the time to sit and read the entire View of the Hebrews, you know, you deserve a medal because that is not a fun book to Read, read. So you took a bullet for all of us. Rfm.

Radio Free Mormon [03:24:16] You know, I've read worse recently. It's not that bad, but it does take a little plotting. It's only 200 pages. It really isn't like the hardest thing in the world, but it is difficult. I know, only because so few people have done it, but Jim Bennett is one of them. And respectfully, my conclusion seems to be a bit different after reading View of the Height than Jim Bennett's was.

John Dehlin [03:24:41] Yeah. Which is that, you know, we know that the Book of Mormon springs out of a cultural milieu like View the Hebrews and literally almost 100 other books. So. So, so apologists, stop making the plagiarism argument and, and start educating your members about the mound builder myth and all of the other books that came out before both the Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews that clearly, you know, they clearly say what we've been saying for the past three and a half hours. Rfm, we love you. How can people follow you and support you in what you do?

Radio Free Mormon [03:25:20] Oh, I'm so glad that you asked. Tell you what, we're. We're running long here. Why don't. If you want, please, please go to radiofreemormon.org make a recurring monthly donation there. $10 a month, $20 a month, $50 a month, whatever you can afford. Your contributions will help keep Radio Free Mormon broadcasting behind enemy lines. No job is too big. No fee is too big. Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:25:46] Thanks, rfm. We, we love you. Please come back again and, and stay healthy and keep up the great work. All right?

Radio Free Mormon [03:25:53] Okay, I will. I got this hit. Move down.

John Dehlin [03:25:56] I love it. I love it. Boom, boom, boom. All right. Thanks, rfm. Join us, Join us again soon, soon. And listeners, I just want to thank you all for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Thanks for all the comments. If you guys want some really fascinating reading, just go to Facebook, the Mormon Stories Podcast, Facebook page, or YouTube. A lot of great comments by our listeners that we weren't able to incorporate, although we were able to incorporate some. Please do support radio. Support Radio Free Mormon, but also please support Mormon Stories podcast. If you love this type of programming, if you want to see it continue, the Open Stories foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit. Your donations are tax deductible in the U.S. we are one. We are fully transparent in our finances. We have been since the very beginning. And 100% of your donations to the Open Stories foundation, two Mormon stories go to supporting me, my income, my health insurance, my livelihood, all this equipment, all this beautiful lighting and equipment and just, just basically all the, all the good stuff that comes out of Mormon Stories Podcast. The Open Stories foundation is supported by you. Less than one out of a thousand of our viewers and listeners actually donate. And just this week we lost probably 10 donors because they've either lost interest or have moved on or have fallen under financial hardship. So if you value this programming and you want to see this continue, we need viewers and listeners like you to step up and become donors. So please go to MormonStories.org today. Click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor. 10 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford. I pledge my life to this cause for as long as you guys are willing to support it. And of course, our purpose is to educate Mormon about their own church and their own history, educate investigators, educate the world about the truth about, about Mormonism, to minimize the harm that the Mormon Church causes to its members and to the general world, and to promote healing and growth of progressive and post Mormon and Mormon so that everyone's healthier. We want the church to be healthier. We want orthodox Mormon to be healthier, we want progressive Mormon to be healthier. And we want post Mormon to wake up and become to. To begin living a healthy and a happy life outside of the Mormon Church if they decide to leave. That's what we're about. That's our goal. We need your support, so please support us. Email us@mormonstoriesgmail.com if you have feedback and suggestions. Other ways that you can support us is follow us on, on YouTube. We're, we're almost, you know, we're close to hitting, I believe. Well, let's just say that, that we always need your support. So subscribe to us on YouTube, follow us or like us or subscribe to us on our Facebook Mormon Stories podcast page. Give us positive reviews on Apple, itunes app or the podcast app. Give us positive reviews on. On Facebook. Spread the word. Share these episodes with as many people as possible and fight dishonesty. Wherever you hear Mormon apologists making these fallacious red herring, you know specious arguments about plagiarism. Educate them. Email Jim Bennett and say, Jim Bennett, please stop making the fallacious argument that anybody is arguing that the Book of Mormon is plagiarized from view of the Hebrews, nobody credible is making that argument in 2021. But address the real arguments which are credible, which BH Robertson himself thought were credible. So spread the good word. Keep supporting us. Give us your good ideas. Comment everywhere, stay in touch and give us give us good ideas. We really appreciate all of your support and and as always, just please follow us in the future as we create more good content for you on Mormon Stories podcast. Love you guys. Take care. We appreciate it and we'll see you guys all again very soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care everybody.

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