Introduction and Episode Overview

Part 1 of 4 · Ep. 1019

David Bokovoy [00:00:00] Sa.

John Dehlin [00:00:31] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. We are broadcasting to you live today from our new, I'll call them the Holly Alden Mormon Story Studios. We have a new office building. We needed more space.

John Dehlin [00:00:48] So a generous donor, Holly Alden, a dear friend, donated some extra money to allow us to sign a new lease in a new facility with more space we haven't decorated yet. We have plans to actually make it look spiffy and nice, and we're just super excited about it. So we're broadcasting to you live today. It is December 3, 2018, and as always, we are super excited for today's guest who's returning. His name is Dr. David Bacavoy.

John Dehlin [00:01:23] And we just got done interviewing, doing four good hours of David Bacavoy just a week or two ago, a very popular and important episode where David talked to us about his life growing up in Southern California, ultimately studying, you know, different languages, including Hebrew, which led him to Brandeis University, where he ultimately obtained both the Master's and a PhD focusing on the Bible and specifically Old Testament stuff. And he ended up being the chaplain at Harvard Teaching Seminary and Institute, working for CES and Teaching Seminary Institute to students at mit, at Harvard, at Wellesley Smith. Was that the other one? Yeah, yeah.

David Bokovoy [00:02:14] Like this Berkeley School of Music.

John Dehlin [00:02:16] Yeah, that's right. A bunch of cool people. The Mashing Dragons guys went to Berkeley School of Music. I don't know if you would have run into those guys. At least two of them did any or three. Anyway, that led to a 18 year career with CES.

David Bokovoy [00:02:29] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:02:30] Where he taught Seminary Institute and ultimately came back to Utah and has been teaching seminary there. Epic story about how he had designed and architected his whole life around teaching at BYU as a professor there, how that didn't work out. And it was a super tragic but also uplifting story about how that did and didn't come to be. And ultimately what led David to leave his position with ces. And now he's working for Salt Lake Community College in the prison system there, providing university level education to inmates in the Utah prison system. Did I get that right?

David Bokovoy [00:03:12] That's exactly right, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:14] All right, so why are we having him back? We're having him back because we've only scratched the surface of David Bacavoi's brilliance. And what we are going to focus on today begins with this book. This book is called Authoring the Old Testament Genesis Through Deuteronomy. And it's published by Greg Coford books. Gregcofford.com that's Coford with two Fs. And it's basically David Bacavoy applying higher criticism, which we'll be talking about, which is an approach to looking at the text of Scripture very meticulously, almost scientifically and very seriously, to really understand the origins of Scripture, where they come from, what is true, what is factual, what might be problematic, contradictions, etc.

John Dehlin [00:04:09] It's a method that was developed, as we discussed in our last episode, in the 19th century, coming out of Germany. Is that right? But it's, you know, if anybody anywhere is studying ancient scripture in academics, they're applying something called a higher criticism to that process.

John Dehlin [00:04:29] So this book is David's attempt to apply higher criticism to the Old Testament, but his expertise doesn't end there. David Bacavoy in this book, does not just apply higher criticism to the Old Testament, but he also applies it to the Book of Moses, that is Mormon scripture, the Book of Abraham, and the Book of Mormon. And he also has insights about the New Testament and the Doctrine and Covenants that are all relevant. So think of today's episode as really looking at the text of all Mormon scripture and trying to understand what's reliable, what's not reliable, what's literal, what's problematic, what's contradictory, and what value we can still derive from Mormon Scripture in spite of, or maybe even because of the flaws or contradictions or problems.

David Bokovoy [00:05:23] I love that.

John Dehlin [00:05:24] How does that sound? That's.

David Bokovoy [00:05:25] I love. And I love the way he expressed that in the end. Not in spite of, but because of.

John Dehlin [00:05:30] That was a stretch. Is that true?

David Bokovoy [00:05:33] And that's really. I think what I was trying to articulate in the book. Yeah. Is that very idea. So thank you so much. That was a beautiful summary.

John Dehlin [00:05:40] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:05:40] Very kind and generous.

John Dehlin [00:05:42] Yeah. Now we are live streaming this on Facebook Live and we already have gathered dozens and dozens of questions from you because we let people know we were doing this interview beforehand. I have captured all of those questions and we'll be already asking those. But if any of you have stories or questions that you want to share, please share them on the Mormon Stories podcast, Facebook Live stream, and I'll incorporate them as it makes sense. But welcome to everyone who's joining us on Facebook Land. It would mean a lot to me if you would right now, go to your Facebook page or Instagram or blogs or groups or whatever and say, hey, there's this amazing biblical scholar, David Bacavoi, who's on Mormon Stories.

John Dehlin [00:06:29] Tune in live right now. Share it with everyone you can. And if you're listening to this asynchronously after it's been live recorded, please share it as well, because David's wisdom and scholarship will benefit everyone. Non believer, believer, semi believer, quasi believer, pseudo believer, Jew, gentile alike will benefit from the wisdom of David Bacavois. So please share this right now, everywhere you can.

David Bokovoy [00:06:57] Will you speak at my funeral?

John Dehlin [00:07:00] I will. Thank you. That'd be an honor. All right, David Bakavoy. So welcome back. How's the feedback been from your first four hours with us on Mormon Stories? Do you want to share that really quick?

David Bokovoy [00:07:12] Yeah. Thank you so much. It's been incredibly positive. I am just so grateful to everyone that has reached out and expressed support and has shared their own journey with me a little bit. I've just received so much feedback that has been incredible. I haven't even been able to respond to everything at this point. So if you sent me a kind message and I haven't responded yet, I will do so eventually and get to it. But I was especially grateful to, to those who, you know, through that, through my experience, were able to kind of see it as part of their own life, their own journey, and to, to see what were some positive things that they could take out of their LDS experience.

David Bokovoy [00:07:51] Mormon scripture, just based upon that conversation, that they're, you know, an ability to see some, some goodness come out of it. I wrote, I thrilled with that sort of response. Thank you. Thank you for that opportunity.

John Dehlin [00:08:05] Excellent. Well, it's our honor and our privilege. Okay, so let's dive in. And what we're going to be covering today again is Old Testament. This is the order we're going to go in. Old Testament, Book of Moses, Book of Abraham.

John Dehlin [00:08:21] So Old Testament, two Mormon Scriptures. Then we're going to come back to New Testament, then we're going to do Book of Mormon, and then we're going to end with Doctrine and Covenants. And of course, we can freeform as well. But those are all the scriptures we're going to tackle in the next two and a half hours.

Mormon Assumptions About the Old Testament

John Dehlin [00:08:35] But we begin with the Old Testament. Now, before we jump into higher criticism, I think it's cool to start with assumptions that Mormons have. Now. I'm going to just guess that most Mormons haven't really thought about, you know, who authored the Old Testament. I think they just sort of think Genesis, God wrote it, or who knows who wrote it, but it's God's word. And so we've got Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus 2, and probably most Mormons have never read the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, at least cover to cover. So, of course, since they haven't read it, they haven't done a lot of thinking about it.

John Dehlin [00:09:08] For those who have done a little bit of thinking about it or read a little bit about it, I'm sure that they assume what many assume, which is the first five books of the Old Testament were written by Moses. So it's Moses telling the story of Adam and Eve, it's Moses telling the creation story. It's Moses telling the story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all that stuff.

John Dehlin [00:09:29] Wait a minute. Moses couldn't have told the story of Isaac, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob because he came before. So it's Moses telling the story up until the point that he dies, and then, you know, the prophets, the subsequent prophets after Moses take off from there. Also, I'm sure that Mormons are believing that Adam and Eve were literal historical figures that lived around 6,000 years ago, that, you know, Noah was a historical figure, that the flood really happened, and that all of those figures, including Moses, that there was a Moses, that there was a literal Israel, that Moses had followers, that Moses really went to Egypt, that Moses really led the children of Israel in bondage out of Egypt, and.

John Dehlin [00:10:13] And that set up what ultimately became the story of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, leading to David and all the New Testament stuff. So I'm just going to say that that's probably some core assumptions. What would you add to what you expect?

John Dehlin [00:10:27] Some core Mormon assumptions would be both about the story and about the Scripture, so that we can then begin to deconstruct or look at more intensely the narrative.

David Bokovoy [00:10:37] Oh, I think you expressed it very well. As we discussed last time, even the Book of Mormon itself refers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament as the Books of Moses. That is a tradition, as I discuss in the Book Author in the Old Testament. However, that emerges much later on in history. Those books themselves never identify Moses as the author. In fact, if we consider, for example, the fifth book of the Pentateuch, the Book of Deuteronomy, not only does it narrate Moses death, but it also refers to him in the third person and is clearly written from the perspective of an audience that exists on the other side of the River Jordan, already established in the land of Canaan.

David Bokovoy [00:11:21] So just if a reader goes through carefully, without even any absolute training in higher criticism, all sorts of questions emerge as to, yeah, indeed, who did this material stem from? I think, though, an additional Thing that we should add to a traditional Latter Day Saint assumption regarding this material is that it is indeed the inspired word of God. If you think about that great article of faith, we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. And by translated, Latter Day Saints aren't referring necessarily to, oh, the King James translation or the NIV translation or whatever the translation might be, be, but rather interpreted, transmitted perhaps is a better term to describe what Latter Day Saints are referring to. A belief that although inspired, there is corruption, there is error that is found there in the text. Perhaps we should add that point.

John Dehlin [00:12:20] Okay, all right, all right. So we got the basic Mormon assumptions down in terms of what people are thinking. So when we say. So, let's just jump right to it. When we look at. Well, let's back up, introduce to our listeners again sort of a little bit of the history of higher criticism. And in it you talk about one of the main authors and one of the main books that did the groundbreaking work to sort of bring higher criticism into the minds of scholars. I think in the 19th century. Right, yeah.

Higher Criticism and the Documentary Hypothesis

David Bokovoy [00:12:58] 1878 was the first publication of the synthesis of the documentary hypothesis by a German Protestant scholar by the name of Julius Wellhausen.

John Dehlin [00:13:08] Before you talk about that, talk about privileged texts so that we can understand the old way of looking at the Scripture to contrast it with kind of his approach.

David Bokovoy [00:13:16] Okay, yeah, sure. Well, up until the time, up until the 19th century, it was very common for readers of the Bible to treat the book as a privileged text. And what I mean by that is a book that isn't written or interpreted like a regular book would be. So in a book, if there are spelling errors, if there are grammatical problems, if there are, you know, if there are inconsistencies, for example, between an author's thesis versus some of the argumentation that is laid out later on, we have skills that we use to identify those and to, to. To take seriously those challenges, those issues.

David Bokovoy [00:13:57] Well, the Bible is filled with inconsistencies. It's filled with. If we talk the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament, we have two different flood stories that have been blended together with inconsistencies. We have two different creation accounts that open up the Book of Genesis, again within consistencies. But then some of the stories are told twice as well. How Jacob gets his name, how Abraham and, you know, you know, the sister wife motif. You know, a lot of these stories are repeated with some crucial differences and inconsistencies, not to mention just the theology.

David Bokovoy [00:14:33] I like to tell students that in reality there is not a single biblical perspective on any topic of import and that includes the very nature of God. There are books like the book of Deuteronomy, as I discuss in my, in my book author in the Old Testament, that which present God as non anthropomorphic. He doesn't have a human body, you cannot see him. You and, and the authors make clear that Moses Israel were unable to see God because God has no form. It's a view that develops later on in Israelite and Jewish theology that appears in that book which I then contrast with earlier theological portrayals of God where he will literally sit down with Joshua and some of the elders up on the Mount Sacred mountain and, and consume a meal.

David Bokovoy [00:15:23] Or God is so anthropomorphic and human like in the second creation story which begins in Genesis chapter 2, verse 4b. And biblical scholars will do that will divide verses into half because sometimes the versification process does not match what we actually see happening in terms of, of of textual divisions. So the second creation account begins in Genesis 2.4b. And in that one God is so human like that he literally walks around in the cool of the day when a man would walk around because he doesn't want to get too hot in the garden.

David Bokovoy [00:15:59] Compare and contrast that image with God versus what we see in Deuteronomy or even in Genesis chapter one, where God is transcendent and just speaks the words of creation and then the acts obey and follow. So what is God like? Well, it depends from a biblical perspective. Well, it depends upon which biblical source we're discussing. And so there are inconsistencies and doublets found throughout the text. And historically religious readers would see that and find creative ways to harmonize or explain those challenges.

David Bokovoy [00:16:35] That's what I mean by a privileged text rather than treating it in a scientific manner and identifying those inconsistencies in the way that critical scholars would do today. The tradition was to harmonize and to fill in the gaps so that it was one smooth pristine record or privileged text.

John Dehlin [00:16:58] Yeah, for me, the best example that I can think of is when I was reading the New Testament semi critically as a seminary student in high school. And I may have mentioned this before, I noticed two big problems. I noticed that the, the sign above Jesus's head had different words in all four of the Gospels. You know, when he was crucified, the sign, it was here lie King of the Jews, here lie he who saith is the King of the Jews. You know, every sign was different. I'm like, that's Weird. Why couldn't they get that right? Like that. That's a pretty simple thing. Why couldn't they get that right? But then the one that was more problematic for me is I was reading about the suicide of Judas Iscariot.

David Bokovoy [00:17:39] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:17:39] And there's, there's one verse where he hangs himself and that. That is pretty clear. He hangs himself. Then there's another one where he's running along a field and he like trips and he. And he. And he disembowels and is. Yeah. Like he falls on a stone or in his bowels gush out.

David Bokovoy [00:17:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:56] And I'm like, wait a minute. That's two very clear different stories. Yeah. So I actually went, I think I went to my seminary teacher and maybe I went to a Baptist preacher. And I'm like, how do you make sense of this? And they're like, oh, oh, that's easy. This is what happened. He hung himself, but then the rope broke and then he fell on a rock.

David Bokovoy [00:18:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:14] And his bowels gushed out.

David Bokovoy [00:18:15] Very, very common way of harmonizing. So it's, it can't be treated as a real book that has different stories in it that need to be interpreted individually and on their own accord, but rather harmonized so that it's consistent, unified and telling. One view about God. That's why this concept, again, to just emphasize when we get online or social media and people like to have debates and like, well, what is the biblical view of social justice? Or what is the biblical view of God? What is the biblical view of marriage? What is the biblical view of homosexuality?

David Bokovoy [00:18:50] There is none. There are multiple views. And we're talking about the Hebrew Bible. Right now the Hebrew Bible is more of a library than a book. The material in the Hebrew Bible was composed over a thousand year time period from approximately 12,000 BCE to 200 BCE. So about a thousand years.

David Bokovoy [00:19:10] Now think about how much Mormonism has changed in the course of 200 years. I mean, just cultural religious constructs exist in a perpetual state of flux. Just. That's just the reality of human existence. And we see that certainly within Mormonism. I mean, even Mormonism has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. So imagine a thousand year period. We're talking about incredible development theologically, socially. And that's an important point to make for students of the Bible.

Founding Fathers and Early Biblical Criticism

John Dehlin [00:19:44] So before we talk about Julius Wellhausen, I was surprised to learn that some of the men we kind of think of as our founding fathers in the United States were highlighting problems with the Bible even in the 18th century.

David Bokovoy [00:19:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:19:58] Do you want to talk about that really Thomas Paine. And do you talk about that as a precursor?

David Bokovoy [00:20:02] Sure. You know, it really. This idea of actually taking a scientific approach to Scripture does not begin with the Protestants in the 19th century, as I discuss in my book, that really is a product of the Enlightenment. So we talk about Thomas Paine and, you know, the Age of Reason. And I talk about Spinoza, who was a very important Jewish thinker during the Enlightenment time period that came to this conclusion that the Bible should be read scientifically, that we can observe it the way we observe natural phenomena, and that those seeds were planted then in terms of pointing out challenges or problems in the text that were then picked up in the 19th century by German, specifically Lutheran ministers who began to take an academic approach about the same time as Joseph Smith into identifying those issues.

David Bokovoy [00:21:00] Eventually, those views will then be synthesized and put together. In 1878 is really the first publication of that by a German Protestant scholar by the name of Julius Wellhausen. And that is the creation then of the documentary hypothesis, or at least the synthesis, I should say. Sorry, documentary hypothesis existed before that, but the synthesis was done there with, at that time period.

John Dehlin [00:21:25] And the book is Prologomena. How do you pronounce that?

David Bokovoy [00:21:28] Yeah, Prologamina.

John Dehlin [00:21:29] Prologamina to the history of ancient Israel.

David Bokovoy [00:21:32] Yeah. Which is. And that term just simply means a critical introduction.

John Dehlin [00:21:36] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:21:36] Is what that means.

John Dehlin [00:21:37] So again, higher criticism means taking the. The text at face value. How would you summarize higher criticism?

David Bokovoy [00:21:44] Yeah. So higher criticism just recently has started to be become a term that biblical scholars avoid using because it's sometimes misunderstood than by the general public. And what that means, scholars traditionally would refer to higher criticism and its opposite, lower criticism. And my book, author in the Old Testament deals with this higher criticism, where we're looking for the sources that were used to produce the biblical books.

David Bokovoy [00:22:23] Lower criticism is an effort that scholars take to find the original form of a canonized text. And what is the best reading, whether it's a gospel account or whether it's the book of Deuteronomy, to try and identify the best reading that reflects the best, the way that it originally existed. So those are the two terms that are used.

David Bokovoy [00:22:46] And yet, as I mentioned, higher criticism is starting to become a little bit less popular. And a synonym for that that is often used is just historical criticism, because not only then are we identifying the sources that went into the development of the biblical books, but we're attempting to read those books independent of any contemporary religious belief, political or social agenda, but instead to identify what an ancient author would have thought and how that material would have been interpreted in its original sitzenleben, which is a German term meaning setting in life. And so a lot of the terms, because this was developed by German scholars in the 19th century, a lot of the terms that we still use to identify these elements and this effort that is done in biblical scholarship, they still use a lot of German phrases, and sitzen leben would be one of them, or setting in line.

John Dehlin [00:23:39] Okay, so you made reference to this a little bit in our introduction. So again, tell us some of the main obvious triggers. You know, we would think, okay, well, let's see. If Moses wrote the Old Testament, then basically he came down from Mount Sinai and had a journal, and he pulled out his little pad and he wrote down what happened. And each day as he was traveling with the children of Israel, he'd sit down and write some things. And at some point in his life, he abridged all that, and he put together what was the Pentateuch by Moses, and he gave that to his son before he died.

John Dehlin [00:24:21] And then that was passed down. And then when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were tooling around, you know, they had a copy of what Moses had written, and, and, and then they added to it. And over time, we got the Old Testament right. Yeah, that's clearly how it happened, right? Not.

David Bokovoy [00:24:36] Not so much. But I think that that's the. That's the typical assumption. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:24:40] Okay, so what is it about the Pentateuch? And let's go to Genesis. You already made reference to this, but let's dig a little bit deeper. What is it about? Just a few main obvious things or problems in the Old Testament in the Pentateuch that give us a clue that that's not how it happened.

David Bokovoy [00:24:58] Okay, good. Well, yeah, let's build on that. That's good. And I did bring my. My quad here so that I could. I figured it's like we're having, like, a family home evening Sunday school discussion,

John Dehlin [00:25:08] and I'll let up and show the audience. I haven't seen one of those in a while. Who brought that in here?

David Bokovoy [00:25:14] Yeah, well, I figured. I knew you wanted to talk scripture, so I figured I'd better be prepared. And I. You know, it's funny, people usually ask me, and I don't mean to sound cocky or anything, but people even ask me, what translation of the Bible do you use? And I'm like, well, I don't, you know, I don't. I look at the original material. But I, you know, when talking to an LDS audience, Or Sunday school or something like that, or certainly when I taught seminary, it's always this. This guy. But anyway, opening up then to Genesis chapter one, just the very beginning. Notice that at the very first verse in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Genesis Creation Accounts and Source Analysis

David Bokovoy [00:25:50] And that verse begins in. Heaven and earth is technically known as merismus, meaning two opposite words that describe a totality. So, you know, it's not just heaven and earth. It's the entirety of the cosmos, the entirety of the universe.

David Bokovoy [00:26:05] Another example, you know, good and bad. You know, Adam and Eve partake of the fruit that will grant them a knowledge of good and bad, not just good and bad, but they'll become like the gods, knowing a totality of something that's called merismus. Jesus is alpha and omega, beginning in the end. Well, it starts off with this reference and then the first thing to note is it's. What is the term that is being used there to describe divinity? Well, the King James uses God. It's the Hebrew noun Elohim. And all throughout this account, it's God said. And then the events transpire. The event, though the.

David Bokovoy [00:26:40] The actual story clearly concludes in Genesis chapter 2, verse 4, the A. The first half of it, where notice then the. The statement is made. These are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created.

David Bokovoy [00:26:53] So that's called inclusio, where an author will take phrases, words from the beginning of a text and use them to conclude that, to show that we're done. You know, it's kind of like. I mean, it's very common. It's like, you know, we do it in the same of, you know, an argumentation essay where we state the thesis and then return to it at the very conclusion. It's. It creates closure, is the technical term for that.

John Dehlin [00:27:16] Well, you would think that at the end of chapter one with the last verse would be.

David Bokovoy [00:27:20] Yeah, so somebody. So much longer. And they, as I mentioned, they really don't reflect.

John Dehlin [00:27:25] Moses didn't break what he wrote into chapters.

David Bokovoy [00:27:27] I know.

John Dehlin [00:27:27] Or verses. And I know he didn't.

David Bokovoy [00:27:29] Okay, but so it's.

John Dehlin [00:27:31] Someone did. I did that later.

David Bokovoy [00:27:32] Yeah. And so we have to. That's one of the things that we learned when we read the. The Bible critically. And let's define that term I'm not using in the sense of criticizing or critiquing. It's to be critically minded. It's to be, you know, to step outside of our own personal agenda and to. To try and control our bias. Nobody can overcome bias. But to recognize what bias we're bringing into a text and try to wreck it, try to try to identify that critical from that sense of the expression. Well, if we think about that first story of where God creates the order is really plants, then God creates the animals, and then he creates man and woman at the same time.

David Bokovoy [00:28:11] And that's the famous 26 and 27, right? Those verses. God said, let us create man in our image, in the image of God, he created them male and female. And there's the story then, though, once that is concluded in Genesis chapter 2, verse 4a, a second creation story begins in the day that the Lord God made earth and the heavens, every plant of the earth before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew and so forth. Well, the first thing to note is now all of a sudden, a new name is being used for divinity. Now it's Lord, capital L, O, R, D, which is a translation of the Tetragrammaton or the divine name Yahweh, which we render as Jehovah.

David Bokovoy [00:28:53] And that is used. And not only is the portrayal of Jehovah, as I mentioned, very anthropomorphic, but it's. It's different than what we see in Genesis chapter one. And the order of creation is very much different. So in Genesis chapter two, instead of like we see in one where the order was plants, animals, man and woman, same time, man is created first before anything grows, and then the plants come, and then the animals come. Because God is like, well, this. This man needs a helper.

David Bokovoy [00:29:22] Let's make the animals for it. But none of the animals work. See, in this view, God doesn't even have a plan or an agenda. He's just kind of figuring things out. He just wants a helper, really take care of this beautiful garden. And then the animals don't work. And so then he creates the woman from the rib. And so scholars looked at these sorts of things and asked, how come?

John Dehlin [00:29:42] Why?

David Bokovoy [00:29:43] And what we started to notice is that the text that used the term Elohim versus those that used the divine name Yahweh had a lot of similar agendas and theological portrayals. And not only that, but we could start to combine them together. And once they were combined together, they read consistently and told a consistent version of creation and the rise of Abraham and the covenant community. So that led to the observation that is universally accepted by biblical scholars today, that the Book of Genesis, this is comprised of separate historical sources that have been amalgamated or edited to be together by someone we refer to as a redactor.

John Dehlin [00:30:32] Okay. And that's the documentary hypothesis.

David Bokovoy [00:30:35] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:30:35] That they're actually, it's assumed that maybe there are four texts that were woven together.

David Bokovoy [00:30:43] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:30:43] By different authors or groups of authors to then, to then comprise what we have as the Pentateuch.

David Bokovoy [00:30:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:30:51] Which is the first five books of the Old Testament.

David Bokovoy [00:30:53] In the traditional documentary hypothesis, as articulated by Wellhausen and as believed by the majority of biblical scholars certainly in North America and in Israel, that is the basic model. Now that has been questioned in recent years by European scholars who have tried to argue that, well, perhaps there aren't four documents, perhaps, you know, there are only two, and the rest are fragments that have been added or supplements to those narratives. So there is some debate in the academy as to, you know, how many sources, how do they relate to one another. But there is not a debate that we are dealing with separate historical sources that contradict one another and that react to one another on occasion. You certainly see that in the flood story as well.

Mosaic Authorship and the Pentateuch

John Dehlin [00:31:45] Okay, so before we dig into the documentary hypothesis and the different sources, what are other, you know, for a skeptical, let's just say an orthodox believing Mormon, that's like no way Moses wrote the old test, the Pentateuch period. What are some other glaring problems, including what you made reference to earlier about Moses demise, that make it pretty much a locked case that Moses didn't write the Pentateuch.

David Bokovoy [00:32:14] Okay, well, one being that, and I mentioned this in the book, is that these sources we know were composed in Hebrew, can tell when, you know, know by word plays and puns and, and conjugations and things like that, what was the original language that something was, was composed in. Even if we're dealing with, all we have left is a translation. Scholars do this all the time with ancient sources that exist only in translation. We're able to then go back and identify, well, what was it, what was it originally written in? And it's a very technical process, but it's very effective as a tool. And these sources were written in Hebrew, but Hebrew, Hebrew did not exist as a written language at the time that Moses would have lived.

John Dehlin [00:32:58] So what year, around what century do you think Moses would have lived?

David Bokovoy [00:33:02] You know, I, you know, it's, it's difficult to say and to put any, any dates and specifics because we really do not have any historical evidence that Moses walked the face of the earth other than the fact that what you have in, in, in Genesis and sorry, not in Genesis but in, in Exodus and then in Deuteronomy. So anyway, by the time that Moses would have existed, you know, in the 1314, somewhere around there, depending on how people want to date him with the Hyksos, who were a Semitic people that came in and conquered Egypt. Hebrew didn't exist at that time as a written language.

John Dehlin [00:33:38] So give us a rough millennia that Moses would have existed.

David Bokovoy [00:33:41] So and I'd say, you know, well, the conquest supposedly happens around. We have a reference to the tribe of Israel and the Merneptah stele. So we're talking, you know, 1300 or

John Dehlin [00:33:55] so, 1300 years before Jesus is somewhere

David Bokovoy [00:33:58] around that there that would probably date Moses somewhere around that time.

John Dehlin [00:34:01] 1300 years before Jesus. BC do you call it? BC BCE BCE meaning what?

David Bokovoy [00:34:06] BC before the common era.

John Dehlin [00:34:07] Before the common era. Common era would be when Jesus was born.

David Bokovoy [00:34:10] Yeah, so we still use the, the reference to Christ, which is the way westerns have. Westerners have traditionally understood human history, but scholars try to not privilege Christianity over Judaism or you know, non belief in Jesus. And so yeah, we use the terms BCE and ce, the common era now to refer to what traditionally was known

John Dehlin [00:34:35] as BC or AD okay, so you're saying Hebrew didn't exist as far as we know it, 1300 BCE?

David Bokovoy [00:34:43] No, no.

John Dehlin [00:34:44] Why not?

David Bokovoy [00:34:45] Because we can document how it evolves as a written language from Canaanite scripts and we understand how this, this process took place historically. And as I document in the book, it's just, it's something that, you know, and we can date, then we can tell when these sources were written based upon an internal examination of the Hebrew. My book goes into that as well. See again, since we're talking a thousand year time period that this material was composed, think how English has evolved over the years. I mean, if you're talking a thousand years from right now going back a thousand years into English, you're talking Beowulf.

John Dehlin [00:35:27] We can't even understand it. No.

David Bokovoy [00:35:29] And so you know, and you can tell therefore more or less when something was written based upon the style of the English grammar. We can do that with Hebrew. We can see that and state specific portions of it to a time period based upon its relationship to other Canaanite languages.

John Dehlin [00:35:47] So what, what are the earliest languages and the time periods for those earliest languages that we actually have in written form in that area of the world.

David Bokovoy [00:35:57] Well, there are other. So you know, and I. One thing I talk about in the book then, and this will connect with the book of Abraham and why, you know, one of the reasons why Abraham couldn't have written that. I mean, if Abraham would have had a written language since he Came out of Ur, which was a Sumerian city state from Mesopotamia. And he.

David Bokovoy [00:36:18] We should talk about that for a minute because BYU scholarship have tried to argue that he came from the northern Syrian section up there because it connects better with the book of Abraham. But that really destroys everything that we see happening in the Bible.

David Bokovoy [00:36:37] One of the things I talk about in the book is that without Babel there would be no Bible. And I didn't make that up by any stretch. It's a famous statement meaning that Babylon had a tremendous impact influence on the development of this material. Genesis 1 was clearly influenced by Enuma Elish.

John Dehlin [00:36:56] What is that?

David Bokovoy [00:36:56] Anuma Elish? It's a Babylonian story of cosmic kingship. How Marduk, the chief God of Babylon became the ultimate ruler of the universe. And it has a creation story and that has influenced Genesis chapter one.

John Dehlin [00:37:09] So the, the air, the time period of Babylon was around what millennia?

David Bokovoy [00:37:13] So we're talking depends on which Babylon we're talking about. So writing emerges in southern sumeria in Mesopotamia, 3200 BCE.

John Dehlin [00:37:26] Okay. And that's getting close to when we think Adam and Eve walk the face of the earth.

David Bokovoy [00:37:31] So that's when writing is and that's when we really marked in the dawn of civilization 3200 BC.

John Dehlin [00:37:36] That's before it appears in China.

David Bokovoy [00:37:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:38] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:37:39] It appears. It's the first is a cuneiform or wedge shaped writing that the Sumerians develop and then that is adopted by Semitic speaking people and it becomes the system of cuneiform that is used to write the famous code of Hammurabi which has a.

David Bokovoy [00:37:57] Which the Code of Hammurabi, as I talk about in my book, had a direct influence upon the legal formula of the Covenant collection or Covenant Code which begins in Exodus chapter 21. The vassal treaties, the Assyrian vassal treaties that the Israelites were forced to sign and to agree to by their Assyrian conquerors influenced the book of deuteronomy. Genesis chapter 2. The story of Adam and Eve has been influenced by traditions that we see appearing in the famous Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Babylon.

David Bokovoy [00:38:31] The flood stories come from Babylon, from Noah are in. Those are influenced by the Babel Mesopotamian versions. The Tower of Babel is a polemic against Babylonian ziggurat worship. I mean, without this Babylonian influence, that material in the Bible would not exist.

John Dehlin [00:38:49] So you're basically saying Genesis is Babylonian fan fiction. Is that what you're saying?

David Bokovoy [00:38:54] You know, I certainly wouldn't use that

John Dehlin [00:38:56] term, but it's, it's a riff on, on long existing myths and stories.

David Bokovoy [00:39:03] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:39:03] A creation story, a story of Adam and Eve, a story of a flood. It wasn't that some dude named Moses talked to God and wrote those stories. It was that for millennia there had been handed down stories or existing on a wall somewhere, on a scroll somewhere, stories about God, stories about a creation, stories about an original woman and man who began mankind, story about a global flood and that they just get passed down and the Pentateuch becomes a version of those myths from originating in Babylonia, written in Hebrew with a twist. Yes, with a modern twist around 1800 BCE or whenever they were good.

David Bokovoy [00:39:51] I would use the term actualize or actualization. So in other words, you have these Israelite scribes that are being trained in cuneiform writing so that they can communicate with their, with their overlords, and they, they have exposure to these traditions, these actual texts, and they will take them then and put them into their own religious viewpoint and usurp the information and, and make it consistent then with their theological perspectives and an understanding of their origin. So it's, it's actualization. It's taking these things from a dominant, superior culture and then using that to create their own story of origin.

John Dehlin [00:40:33] Okay, so where did the. If, if the original scrolls or manuscripts that. That. The earliest version of the Old Testament or the Pentateuch that exists. Right. If that wasn't written by Moses. Right. If it was written by these scribes, as you say, where did they get the idea that there ever was a Moses?

David Bokovoy [00:40:56] Oh, it's a great question. I tend. Okay. And this connects with a question that I think a lot of your listeners, I've seen this question, you know, ask them about the Exodus and, you know, what happened and things like that.

John Dehlin [00:41:12] So Egyptians don't have. Have any. Oh, this dude named Moses came off in a little basket down the river and somebody plucked him out of the river and the Pharaoh raised this dude named. There's no. Is there any Egyptian evidence for the story of Moses?

David Bokovoy [00:41:29] No, not any Egyptian evidence. Not in Egyptian.

John Dehlin [00:41:32] No.

David Bokovoy [00:41:32] No.

John Dehlin [00:41:33] Even though he, he punked the pharaoh and brought all these plagues and stole a bunch of his slaves away?

David Bokovoy [00:41:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:41] Egypt never bothered to write about that.

David Bokovoy [00:41:42] No.

John Dehlin [00:41:43] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:41:43] No.

John Dehlin [00:41:43] And they did write about stuff, right?

David Bokovoy [00:41:45] Oh, yeah, absolutely. This is it. This is one of the, the points that people make. Now. Scholars will look in the text itself to try and, and find some evidence that perhaps it preserves an authentic memory, the very name Moses itself, without the theophoric or divine element that we see in traditional Egyptian names like Ramses Ra, most say Ram. You Know, Moses literally in Egyptian means born of. And then you have the theophoric or divine element born of Ramses or Thutmose or Kamose or, you know, that these divine elements are placed there. So there are elements that scholars have identified that tend to say, oh, then maybe it's based upon some authentic memories.

David Bokovoy [00:42:27] But in terms of Egyptian evidence, no, I'm not aware of any that would sustain the narratives. And I state that John in the plural intentionally, because there actually are multiple versions of the Exodus story that are found, not just the one that we see in Exodus. We have them in the Psalms, we have other references, and they're not all internally consistent in terms of what plagues took place and the order and the sequence. So that tells us that we're probably not dealing with history as we would understand it when we are reading that material in the Bible.

David Bokovoy [00:43:00] I believe there was a Moses. I believe there was a Moses. I do believe that the children of, that there were Israelites who were slaves in, in, in Egypt. I do believe that. It's, it seems illogical to me as an, as a student of the ancient, of ancient history to have a community make up an origin myth where our ancestors were a bunch of slaves.

David Bokovoy [00:43:27] One of the, you know, you just wouldn't typically see that if we're going to make up an origin myth, we came from these great heroes or warriors or the gods.

John Dehlin [00:43:36] Yeah, right.

David Bokovoy [00:43:37] But to say, oh, our ancestors used to be slaves and we got out of Egypt, you know, that, that's, that's number one is historically, we know that took place and just makes sense. So I'm convinced an Exodus out of Egypt took place, but I am also convinced that the very versions that are found in the Hebrew Bible are not historical and that they are, you know, highly mythic portrayals of something that took place at a much smaller level and was not nearly as grandiose as the versions that we encounter in the Bible would indicate.

John Dehlin [00:44:09] Now, to be fair, there are Jewish rabbis that doubt the existence of Moses, who would have been the founder of their religion. Sure. So even though you tend to think that there are credible, wise, even Jewish scholars who would have all the incentive in the world to believe in historical Moses who actually kind of go, I don't think there's enough evidence to really come down on that side, is that fair to say?

David Bokovoy [00:44:33] Oh, absolutely. And I, and I.

John Dehlin [00:44:35] So it's not a foregone conclusion. No.

David Bokovoy [00:44:37] And I, and I. And that's what I, I, it's, it's really just based upon and I fully acknowledge there. We do not have any evidence outside of the Bible for Moses existence. Now, that is some evidence, though it shouldn't be thrown out. I mean, that they are preserving some memories of the past, even though they certainly have been embellished.

John Dehlin [00:44:59] Okay, okay. So again, for whatever scribes we attribute to the Pentateuch and other sources about the Exodus story and Moses, are you saying that it was just handed down as oral tradition and then.

David Bokovoy [00:45:15] Not entirely. There certainly are oral traditions that are used and found in the book of Genesis. But some of it is literally. Or literally. They're literally taking earlier Babylonian, Mesopotamian sources

John Dehlin [00:45:31] that don't exist now. That aren't.

David Bokovoy [00:45:33] No, they do exist.

John Dehlin [00:45:34] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:45:35] And. And rewriting that to. Changing those to make their Israelite versions.

John Dehlin [00:45:41] Oh, wow. So they've tied the earliest Old Testament texts to other existing portions of them. Texts.

David Bokovoy [00:45:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:48] That come out of Samaria.

David Bokovoy [00:45:50] Yeah. For example, the. The Covenant Code or the.

John Dehlin [00:45:53] Those are the things you talked about.

David Bokovoy [00:45:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:55] You're saying the texts are too similar, the ideas are too similar. Yeah. To not make that connection.

David Bokovoy [00:46:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:01] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:46:02] And I provide lots of evidence for that in the book.

John Dehlin [00:46:04] And what do you call that? That's. Is that plagiarism? Is that pseudepigrapha? Is that just, like I said, fan fiction?

David Bokovoy [00:46:11] Actualization?

John Dehlin [00:46:12] And again, what does that term mean?

David Bokovoy [00:46:13] That means that they are actualizing. They're taking something that existed in a previous source or material and making it relevant for their own religious understandings.

John Dehlin [00:46:21] You said that before, but now.

David Bokovoy [00:46:24] And see, that ties into. And that's what Joseph Smith is doing.

John Dehlin [00:46:27] Right?

David Bokovoy [00:46:27] That's exactly.

John Dehlin [00:46:28] Is that all scripture?

David Bokovoy [00:46:29] Yeah, that's what Joseph Smith is doing. He's. It's the same process that we see happening in the Hebrew Bible, in the New Testament, in the Jewish, you know, the writings of Josephus, the Jewish historian. It's taking these. These sacred sources and actualizing them, making them relevant for their contemporary religious community. That is the production of Scripture.

How Scripture Was Produced and Transmitted

John Dehlin [00:46:50] Okay, I'm getting it. Okay. So. So thank you for your patience. Now.

David Bokovoy [00:46:55] You're great.

John Dehlin [00:46:56] So, okay, so where are the earliest manuscripts that. That make up, you know, the old. The Pentateuch? Are they sitting in a museum somewhere? What are. What are they called? Where are they?

David Bokovoy [00:47:09] Our earliest manuscripts would be the Dead Sea Scrolls, and that's why that material is so important to us, because that gives us our earliest versions on record.

John Dehlin [00:47:19] But unfortunately, these were found where and

David Bokovoy [00:47:21] when in the Dead Sea scroll region in the hills of Judea. You know, the famous story about the little shepherd boy who three up a. The 1940s threw up a rock and it. He hurts the shattering of pottery and went up and there were all of

John Dehlin [00:47:37] these scrolls that were in the, what, 40s.

David Bokovoy [00:47:40] 1940s.

John Dehlin [00:47:41] 1940s, yeah.

David Bokovoy [00:47:42] I'm trying to remember the exact.

John Dehlin [00:47:43] But we've had Bibles. We've had Bibles for a couple millennia.

David Bokovoy [00:47:46] Oh, sure.

John Dehlin [00:47:47] But you're just saying this is the earliest known text ever discovered.

David Bokovoy [00:47:52] Of that. Of that. Yes, of that material. And they. And we should note that they even that material is not a Bible. The concept of a book, you know, bringing all this material together and putting it in a book, that is a medieval notion or creation of bringing things together like that.

John Dehlin [00:48:12] So you're saying Lehi didn't have a triple combination in 600 B.C.

David Bokovoy [00:48:16] no. And it is even more difficult for the Book of Mormon, unfortunately, because. Or challenging for traditional understanding, understandings or perceptions because not only with the Pentateuch, those five books have to exist as a bound book, but they'd have to be bound with the other material, including Isaiah, which we discussed in the previous podcast, beginning with chapter 40. That material hadn't even been written yet.

John Dehlin [00:48:43] And we'll come back to that. But. But just this idea that there was no Old Testament.

David Bokovoy [00:48:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:47] Pre Jesus and the Jews were, you know, we know there were Jews hundreds of years before Jesus. Individual scrolls, they weren't walking around with their version of the Old Testament or their. Right.

David Bokovoy [00:48:58] Okay. It's a little bit more complicated than that. But going back to then the Book of Mormon, that material. Not only did that material not exist, but it would have had to have been translated according to the Book of Mormon into Egyptian because it's written on, you know, the plates of brass in Egyptian.

John Dehlin [00:49:17] And we'll come back to the book and it's like.

David Bokovoy [00:49:20] But that's. But I'm just saying. Is that. So not only would that material for the Book of Mormon's traditional assumption have to exist, but a translation of it would have to exist into Egyptian. And as a historian, I just can't. I can't find any way that that would mesh with the data. It's just. It presents a significant challenge.

John Dehlin [00:49:40] And just. And again, from a Mormon point of view, we're like, okay, Genesis was written, and then when Exodus was written, they were combined and they'd walk around with their little two books and then three books and then four or scrolls. Basically. You're just challenging this idea that. Yeah, that, that, that scripture in an ancient way sort of was managed and used as we would Use it today with our quad.

David Bokovoy [00:50:04] Yeah, I mean, we will see translations of that sacred material and it put together, but that'll be part of the Septuagint, which is a. Which is a Greek translation done in Alexandria, Egypt, you know, couple centuries before Jesus is born.

John Dehlin [00:50:20] Okay, so it's not a couple hundred years before Jesus that we start to see this notion of. Of a book.

David Bokovoy [00:50:26] Yeah. And translation.

John Dehlin [00:50:28] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:50:29] Into a. Into a language other than Hebrew or Aramaic, as the case might be.

Dead Sea Scrolls and Lower Criticism

John Dehlin [00:50:33] Okay, so the Dead Sea Scrolls were. Were discovered in the mid-1900s. And what. What are they?

David Bokovoy [00:50:42] They're a compilation of the combination of different sources. Some of it is the. The own writings of the Essene community that exist there at Qumran and how, you know, they. Their own sectarian viewpoints and perspectives, which are very important for scholars to understand Jesus and the Judaisms that existed during his time period. And as I mentioned, some of them are. They're biblical materials. All of the biblical books have been found there with the exception of the Book of Esther. For some reason, they didn't like Esther.

John Dehlin [00:51:15] Now you're talking Old and New Testament.

David Bokovoy [00:51:17] No, I'm just talking Old Testament.

John Dehlin [00:51:19] Old Testament. Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:51:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:20] So there's something like a Genesis in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Something like an Exodus, Leviticus. And do they have a title? They're written in what language? Hebrew languages.

David Bokovoy [00:51:30] Hebrew.

John Dehlin [00:51:30] Okay. They're all in Hebrew. Now, how did we have. When did the. When did the King James Bible come on the scene?

David Bokovoy [00:51:36] 1600s. Right.

John Dehlin [00:51:37] Okay. How did we get a King James Bible when the Dead Sea Scrolls hadn't been discovered yet?

David Bokovoy [00:51:43] Because manuscripts.

John Dehlin [00:51:44] Because it included an Old Testament of copies. So there's.

David Bokovoy [00:51:48] Okay, copies of copies of. Copies of copies had been preserved. And so that was prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. That was a criticism that people raised that like, how accurate is this information system? All we have are copies of copies of copies of copies. And it turns out. And that ties into what we were talking about in terms of lower criticism. The Dead Sea Scrolls have been very important for lower criticism, trying to understand how a text existed in its original form. And some of those are really exciting discoveries. One of my favorites is Deuteronomy 32.

David Bokovoy [00:52:20] For quite some time, scholarship viewed some of the passages that were there as. That have. As with a reference to God creating the world and organizing humanity according to the number of the children of Israel. The children of Israel. And scholars started. They're like, wow, that doesn't make sense. I bet a later scribe changed that. And it probably said something like the sons of God, meaning the divine beings, as if they're multiple gods. And yet a later Jewish redactor was. Or editor was kind of like, that doesn't seem to work theologically with monotheism. So let's change it. And that was kind of speculated. And then when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the earliest version of Deuteronomy was uncovered, sure enough, it sustained the scholarly hypothesis.

David Bokovoy [00:53:05] And that earliest version doesn't refer to the children of Israel, but refers to the gods of the universe. Okay, it's a cool. So that's kind of an idea of lower criticism and how it is important.

John Dehlin [00:53:16] Okay, so the Dead Sea Scrolls are the earliest versions that we have. That we have of the Pentateuch and the books that follow.

David Bokovoy [00:53:25] Those are copies of copies as well, though.

John Dehlin [00:53:28] But. But we. We date them to about what time?

David Bokovoy [00:53:30] Oh, it varies, but, you know, a couple. It depends upon the. The particular source. But, you know, it's generally speaking, a couple hundred years before Christ.

John Dehlin [00:53:39] Okay, so that's. That's pretty good.

David Bokovoy [00:53:41] Pretty good. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:43] But still probably a thousand years after.

David Bokovoy [00:53:46] Yeah, I mean, the material varies.

John Dehlin [00:53:49] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:53:50] Different days.

John Dehlin [00:53:50] Okay, so. So all right, so let's jump now into the documentary hypothesis then and talk a little bit more in depth about it. So we've got these Dead Sea Scrolls, and as you read them, let's go back to this idea that there are different voices or different strains. And let's talk about PJ, E&D and how they relate, because these scrolls. Do we know who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? Is there, you know, is there someone's name at the bottom that says, I wrote these? Are they multiple scrolls, like in a library? What are they?

David Bokovoy [00:54:21] Well, I mean, some of them, they can be multiple scrolls, but that's one of the reasons scrolls are hard to work with. So one of the reasons why some of the biblical books are divided up into, like, First Chronicles, Second Chronicles, or First Kings, Second Kings is because they were written on scrolls. And a scroll eventually becomes so big and wieldy that it, you know, you can no longer use it and function. So they would split up biblical books into separate scrolls. And that's why you have First Kings, Second Kings, First Chronicles, Second Chronicles.

John Dehlin [00:54:52] Okay. So basically, each book that we think about is its own scroll. There's a Genesis scroll, there's an Exodus scroll. Like, there's a Leviticus scroll.

David Bokovoy [00:55:01] There would have been in history. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:03] Okay, but in the Dead Sea Scrolls, not necessarily.

David Bokovoy [00:55:06] Well, yeah, no, the Dead Sea Scrolls have that material too.

John Dehlin [00:55:08] As scrolls, as. As individual Scrolls.

David Bokovoy [00:55:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:10] Okay. Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:55:12] Sorry, I didn't understand that.

John Dehlin [00:55:13] No. Okay, cool. No, that's good. So, okay, so as. As. As. As scholars are looking at those scrolls, tell us how the documentary hypothesis emerges and. And what the. The main authors are for the Pentateuch.

The Four Documentary Sources Explained

David Bokovoy [00:55:30] Okay. The documentary hypothesis emerges not from the scrolls, but actually just from the biblical books themselves. So there isn't any archaeological evidence to sustain or support the documentary hypothesis, because it's not an archaeological issue. Instead, it is a. That's a literary issue, a literary historical issue that makes sense of the inconsistencies and discrepancies and repetitions that we encounter when reading the first five books. So that first creation narrative is associated with the priestly material in the Pentateuch, and scholars will use the term P then to describe that Genesis 1 source.

John Dehlin [00:56:14] And so priestly material would be characterized as what?

David Bokovoy [00:56:18] Well, the theological view of God is that God is transcendent, that God and that he has an absolute plan in mind. But also the priestly view is really concerned with. Well, I can show you this. Maybe we should just jump to the flood narrative itself. I'll turn over here.

David Bokovoy [00:56:39] So the flood story of Jonah, or, sorry, of. Of Noah, you know, he's mentioned in chapter five. And then it starts in. In chapter six and the story is told. And. And if I move. Then I'll just move to chapter seven in the King James. And we read the Lord said unto Noah, come thou and all thy house into the ark. For thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Then verse two. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to the by sevens. The male and the female and of beast and are not clean by two, the male and his female, and also fouls.

David Bokovoy [00:57:24] So according to the account right here, how many types of animals did Noah bring into the. Into the ark? Did we catch that? No. Every clean beast thou shalt take to the seven.

John Dehlin [00:57:38] I got seven. But.

David Bokovoy [00:57:39] And the unclean two. Okay, clean means that is something that you could offer as a ritual sacrifice. Okay, so the reason, according to this account, why does he need to bring

John Dehlin [00:57:51] seven of the clean to do the priestly stuff? So he doesn't sacrifice.

David Bokovoy [00:57:54] Exactly. He doesn't extinguish a species.

John Dehlin [00:57:56] So two of everything that is not

David Bokovoy [00:57:58] clean, you can't offer sacrifice.

John Dehlin [00:58:00] But seven of the clean. So they could do their religious rituals on the ark.

David Bokovoy [00:58:04] And that's exactly what he does at the end. He offers a sacrifice at the end.

John Dehlin [00:58:07] And a priest would care about that.

David Bokovoy [00:58:09] You would think. You would think. But no, actually, let me Say it right. A priest would care deeply about this, which is why if we jump, is we. If we jump later on in the account, what's going to happen here is if we notice, then verse seven. Same. I'm in still in chapter seven, verse seven. Now, Noah went in and his sons and his wife, so he goes into the ark. Right. And because the waters of the flood had come, verse 8. And of clean beast, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that creepeth upon the earth, there were there went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, female, as God had commanded.

John Dehlin [00:58:55] So there's no more seven for the clean beast.

David Bokovoy [00:58:57] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:58:57] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:58:58] There's an inconsistency. Did he take two or did he

John Dehlin [00:59:01] take two and seven or two?

David Bokovoy [00:59:03] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:59:03] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:59:04] All right. Well, it actually makes perfect sense when you start to combine the sources together and think about the theological concerns that drive the creation of the. Of the document. So yes, John preach. Priests were deeply concerned with sacrifices. One of the things that happens in P is that Aaron in the story of the Exodus is elevated constantly. It's never just Moses did this and Aaron did this. And Aaron is the spokesman because the priest traced their power through Aaron.

John Dehlin [00:59:35] Aaronic priesthood.

David Bokovoy [00:59:36] Aaronic priesthood.

John Dehlin [00:59:37] He was Moses's sidekick. Yeah, Right.

David Bokovoy [00:59:40] So they elevate him in that material. But the one thing that the priest want to make sure happens is that sacrifice never transpires in Israel's past until that priesthood is given to Aaron and his descendants. So the priestly author knew that earlier tradition that I quoted at the beginning of Genesis, where Yahweh, the Lord, notice it's an even a different divine name tells him, go and bring seven of the clean, the ritually fit and animals for sacrifice and offer sacrifices there. A priest read that and said, no, no, it could not. He didn't have the priesthood. So that's why they react to this and they specify.

David Bokovoy [01:00:22] And they don't just say he brought two of every animal. They're like, no, no, no. He brought two of every beast, two of the clean and two of the unclean. Because they want to counter that viewpoint, because they want sacrifices only to be associated with their priestly authority.

David Bokovoy [01:00:38] And so those are the types of things that the documentary hypothesis help us to identify and make sense of as we read through this material Critically.

John Dehlin [01:00:47] So the 2 and the 7. The earlier verses would have been P.

David Bokovoy [01:00:50] So the earlier one would have been J. Because according to Jehovah source or Jehovah, the Lord term that is used there. Sacrifices began early in human history. In fact, that's J source is going to have the story of. Of. Of. Of Cain and Abel and how they offer sacrifices and offerings to God and how they call upon the name Yahweh and Jehovah and how they do this. And so from a Jay's perspective, their Jay's concerned with ritual and purity and sacrifice and things like that as well. But sacrifice takes place early in Israelite history. From a priestly perspective, you know, you're in P if there's no sacrifice happening until that priesthood is given to Aaron and his descendants.

John Dehlin [01:01:37] Okay, so the later the 2, 2 and the 2. That was P. Yes. Okay, so now you just gave us an example of J, the Yahwistic source and P, the priestly source.

David Bokovoy [01:01:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:01:49] Okay. All right, so that's. Those are examples of. Of P and J. Yeah. Tell us about E and D. Okay,

David Bokovoy [01:01:56] so E. E is the most controversial source. I'm convinced that E is an independent documentary tradition. Some wonder if it's maybe just fragments and things like that. It didn't exist. But I think, in fact, I, based upon a lot of evidence, I think E is, from my perspective, is the earliest of the material. And that really begins in Genesis chapter 15 with the story of Abraham. And so E does not include the creation story. It doesn't have anything about Noah or about, you know, anything up until the time you get to the actual Israelite story.

David Bokovoy [01:02:32] And scholars will actually link that with the priestly source that appears in Numbers 23:9 and in Numbers 23, Verse 9, I won't turn to it, but it states in essence that the children of Israel are to be counted and to understood in the, you know, above and set, set apart then from all other nations. And that's. It tends to explain why their focus is really not in anything that is just not specifically Israelite. Any of that pre Israelite material is not found there. And that E source then begins in Genesis chapter 15.

David Bokovoy [01:03:06] Another interesting thing about E is that God, when he typically appears, appears in dreams in the Eloistic tradition. And Genesis chapter 22, the famous story story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac upon the altar, is part of that E strand.

David Bokovoy [01:03:23] So Genesis 22 begins and Abraham. God calls Abraham and says, abraham, take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into a mountain and offer him as a offering from one of the mountains. I will show thee. Well, how did God appear? Some people kind of wonder that. I mean, did God. Was it A physical manifestation, like sacred grove Experience. Experience. Was it, you know, were they walking along and talking and having this conversation? The text is silent. But because that story is presented in the Eloist source, in the E source, based upon the pattern, we'd have to assume that it was a dream that God appeared to him, whereas he typically does.

David Bokovoy [01:04:01] And in divine manifestations in that narrative, in that tradition comes in in the context of a dream and tells him to sacrifice Isaac. So that's a little bit about E.

John Dehlin [01:04:11] Okay, so what I wrote down in my notes, E refers to God as Elohim. Focuses on Israel as a people.

David Bokovoy [01:04:18] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:04:19] Focuses on the north.

David Bokovoy [01:04:21] Yes, it stems from the north and its. Its origins.

John Dehlin [01:04:24] North of what? North.

David Bokovoy [01:04:25] Sorry, that. Remember, if you remember your biblical history, there's a northern kingdom of Israel and a southern kingdom of Judah, and the

John Dehlin [01:04:32] Northern, Northern 10 tribes, and then the

David Bokovoy [01:04:34] Southern 2 tribes were destroyed in 721 BCE by the Assyrians. Well, prior to that destruction, the north was much more powerful and much more. It was much, much stronger than the south. And they are the ones that have the scribal traditions that really kind of start the process going with the creation of the Eloist tradition from my perspective. And then that's taken down into the south by some of the escapees from that monumental crisis. And then they tend to produce the narratives and. And the books, as they will appear, are then produced in the southern kingdom of Judah.

John Dehlin [01:05:10] So at some point Israel had a schism where there was a northern and a southern, and the northern ended up getting carried away or defeated by the Assyrians. By the Assyrians. Become the lost 10, which were the lost 10 tribes. They probably just got killed or assimilated.

David Bokovoy [01:05:23] Right, Precisely.

John Dehlin [01:05:25] They're not in the northern ice caps, the polar ice caps, like I was taught in seminary or taken off to space to a different. They were just.

David Bokovoy [01:05:34] I've heard.

John Dehlin [01:05:36] I've heard all those growing up.

David Bokovoy [01:05:37] And yeah, they were just. They just assimilated into the. Into the local population and they referred

John Dehlin [01:05:44] to God as Elohim. They lived more in the North, Northern 10 tribes. And like you said, they focus on prophecy, on dreams and visions and. And indirect communication with God.

David Bokovoy [01:05:55] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:05:56] So you know that if. If prophet is not like, hey, God, give me a ham sandwich, not a direct communication, then you, You. You have a good clue that that might be E that's speaking.

David Bokovoy [01:06:07] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:06:07] Is that right?

David Bokovoy [01:06:08] As. As opposed to what we saw in the J Source, which includes the story of Adam and Eve where God talks to them, walks in the cool of the day. And in the J version of the flood narrative, God himself will literally shut the door of the ark after. After Noah and his family enter into the boat.

John Dehlin [01:06:24] So in the J source, God's a dude.

David Bokovoy [01:06:26] He is absolutely an anthropomorphic dude. Yeah, very much so.

John Dehlin [01:06:30] That's important, right?

David Bokovoy [01:06:32] For Mormons.

John Dehlin [01:06:32] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But E is a less personal God. A non anthropomorphic God.

David Bokovoy [01:06:39] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:06:39] Now, something that. Bringing my Mormonism in for a second, I remember reading that, first of all, Elohim is like, oh, don't use that word. That's the name we give God in the temple. God the Father in the temple. But it's not some Mormon sacred temple word. Although it's in the temple narrative. Elohim comes from the Old Testament, just like Jehovah does.

David Bokovoy [01:07:00] Yeah, yeah. In fact, it's, it's a fun word because it's actually an abstract concretized plural verb, noun. Sorry.

John Dehlin [01:07:08] In other words, God's not God.

David Bokovoy [01:07:10] Exactly. The eam on Hebrew nouns is like adding an S or an es in English. The. The actual base to it is eloah, which is a direct Hebrew cognate with the Arabic and also a Semitic word, Allah. So yeah, that's.

David Bokovoy [01:07:26] Yeah. And it creates some confusion for some text. Most of the text we can tell. And this is interesting. So for example, if you go to Genesis chapter one, which is P, and it uses Elohim, God. Joseph Smith plays with that a lot. And, and Joseph Smith, you know, in his Nauvoo sermons, he's like, you know, I. Oh, he says, I asked. Oh, he says, I. It's terrible, I think, but you know, you understand, it's 18 19th century language. He said, I asked some old Jew, why not render the noun Elohim gods in the plural there? And he said, oh, that would ruin the whole Bible. I'm sure you remember that discussion for Joseph Smith. Well, wish I could have had that conversation with Joseph and just explained it.

John Dehlin [01:08:13] What would you have told Joseph?

David Bokovoy [01:08:14] I would have been like. I would have been like Joseph. No, no, it's, it's, it's actually you can tell because of the grammatical constituents that surround it. So in other words, because the, the verb is create is third person masculine singular. Bara.

David Bokovoy [01:08:29] You know, it's not a plural verb or the adjectives that surround it. And so we can almost always tell in the Bible or whether the author wanted to use gods like thou shalt have no other gods before me in the Ten Commandments, or whether he meant God singular but was using that abstract concretized plural form like divinity or godhood or something like that, as a. As a proper name. So you can almost tell. There are some cases where you cannot tell. And one of the most interesting ones, I think, is in fact Genesis 1:26, 27, where God says, let us notice he's speaking in the plural there.

David Bokovoy [01:09:03] To his divine counsel, let us make man in our image after our likeness. And then it says, and in the image of Elohim, he created them male and female.

John Dehlin [01:09:13] Yeah. That makes you think God's up there talking to somebody. Right.

David Bokovoy [01:09:15] And he was. He was. From an ancient Israelite perspective, he has a divine council of other gods and goddesses, and he converses with them. And in that, everyone translates it as the good King James Bible does. In the image of God, he created them male and female, but in reality, it's the image of Elohim in the image of gods, he created them male and female. It could be rendered either way. And I argue, and actually my dissertation, that you have to take it as gods, meaning that he created the male in his image in the image of masculine gods and the female in the image of female goddess.

John Dehlin [01:09:54] So ancient Jews believed in male and female divinity.

David Bokovoy [01:09:57] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:09:58] That's kind of cool.

David Bokovoy [01:09:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:59] So that didn't originate from Joseph?

David Bokovoy [01:10:01] No, no.

John Dehlin [01:10:02] I mean, a mother in heaven, basically.

David Bokovoy [01:10:04] No, no, absolutely not. I mean, they're just. I just. Joseph Smith's ability to capture ancient theological constructs and produce scripture is incredible. I mean, it just. And I've written extensively about it, and I hope to do so in the future because, you know, it's just. It's. It's just really amazing what he was able to do and what he was able to see and accomplish. That doesn't mean. It doesn't prove that it's historical. Doesn't prove that it's inspired, even. But the fact is, is he was astute.

John Dehlin [01:10:35] He was very astute and in his understanding of scripture.

David Bokovoy [01:10:38] Theological genius.

John Dehlin [01:10:39] And he was trying to read Hebrew. Right? He was trying to study this stuff. Yeah. Like much more than the average Mormon. Like, he was taking the text through seriously.

David Bokovoy [01:10:46] Oh, yeah. His statements about studying with Joshua Statius, how he says in one quote, on my soul delighted in learning to read the word of God in its original language. And I hope that God will open up our hearts so we can learn all languages and things like that. Joseph Smith really was fascinated by the ancient world, and he tried to incorporate that into his theology and in his scripture. And he did so in some remarkable, extraordinary, extraordinary ways.

John Dehlin [01:11:14] Okay, really quickly I remember my Mormonism being taught that. Well, is it Elohim or is it Jehovah? It's both. It's Elohim is God the Father and Jehovah is Jesus in his pre incarnated form as, as God's right hand man, so to speak, and his Son.

David Bokovoy [01:11:32] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:11:33] Is there any back backing for that in the Old Testament? Does that make sense?

David Bokovoy [01:11:38] No, no it doesn't. We cannot apply that to the Old Testament.

John Dehlin [01:11:42] Why not? How do you know?

David Bokovoy [01:11:45] Because Latter Day Saints really first start to formulate that. Well, the first time that viewpoint is really canonized that Elohim is God the Father and Jehovah is the premortal Jesus is in 1915 by the first presidency of the church, first president, if the church will issue an official declaration and say we designate the term Elohim as a reference to God the Father and Jehovah premortal Jesus.

John Dehlin [01:12:10] But didn't the temple ceremony pre1910 or whatever? It did use that Jehovah, Michael, blah, blah, blah.

David Bokovoy [01:12:16] There were other changes too. I mean with Adam and you know, bail ceremony and you know, which one is which God becomes very confusing when we get back into Mormon history, which actually ties into the fact that there are all in the Kirtland prayer and the Doctrine and Covenants for the dedication of the Temple. Joseph Smith uses the term Jehovah clearly in reference to God the Father.

David Bokovoy [01:12:40] So the way I look at it is 1915, really, that's when the first presidency of the Church comes out and states, all right, let's get on board. Let's all be consistent now and use the same terminology to avoid some of the confusion that we've had in the past. We have early LDS hymns that use Jehovah for God the Father.

David Bokovoy [01:12:59] The Adam God stuff gets even more messy. So in 1915 that really then is kind of canonized in the sense of let's all use the same type of terminology so that we aren't confused and that's what happens there. But we cannot retroactively go back and apply that to Joseph Smith's revelations, let alone back into the Hebrew Bible and think, okay, it's, it's Jehovah or the Lord, therefore this means Jesus. Jesus. You can't do that. It's just not.

John Dehlin [01:13:26] That's anachronistic and I'm going to be repeating my question and I may be asking you something you don't know, but I just want to get really clear on this. In the Mormon Temple ceremony, there's Elohim speaking and he's saying Jehovah, Michael, let's go down, you know, and let's. Let's organize the earth. And he's clearly. It's Elohim speaking to Jehovah, the underling. Was that structure in the Mormon temple ceremony pre the 1900s?

David Bokovoy [01:13:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:13:52] So there, There was a differentiation between Elohim and Jehovah.

David Bokovoy [01:13:56] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:13:57] You're just saying it was never specified who Jehovah was in this.

David Bokovoy [01:14:02] It was.

John Dehlin [01:14:02] It wasn't in the 1800s.

David Bokovoy [01:14:03] Universal, universally in. In LDS hymns, in LDS writings, in prophetic discourse.

John Dehlin [01:14:11] Okay.

David Bokovoy [01:14:11] Until that time period.

John Dehlin [01:14:12] And you're saying even Joseph Smith's, who he attributed the term elohim or Jehovah 2, you're saying it changed for Joseph Smith over his lifetime or was not consistent.

David Bokovoy [01:14:22] Well, it's. Those terms are. Are used interchangeably for God in the Hebrew Bible, and they're used interchangeably in Joseph's writings and Eliot's discourse prior to that point of 1915. And it's at that point then when you start to see really consistent.

John Dehlin [01:14:37] Got it?

David Bokovoy [01:14:37] Is all I'm saying with that. But the name Yahweh or Jehovah is actually a third person masculine singular inflected form of the Hebrew root Hawa or to be. And third person masculine singular meaning that is he is. And it's vocalized with an ae vowel pattern. Sorry to be technical, but it's great. AE vowel pattern, which creates a. Which is a heel. Verbal conjugation that makes it causative and nuanced. So it's probably not so much he, he is as much as he causes to be. He causes.

John Dehlin [01:15:11] It's a prime mover. It's a moving force that they've given a masculine.

David Bokovoy [01:15:16] Sure. So for pronouns like creator is what it means. So I mean, even theologically for Latter Day Saints, would it be acceptable to call God the Father, the Creator? From an orthodox Latter Day Saint perspective? Of course, because he's the architect of the plan. It's his plan, and Jesus is the Creator underneath him, and he's the creator of our spirit. Spirits. So Jehovah's perfectly fine theologically to use for God the Father from that perspective, as would Elohim be. So I just.

John Dehlin [01:15:45] Yeah, okay. All right. So we've talked about P, we've talked about J, and we've talked about E. And those are for you and for pretty much all biblical scholars, very clear voices running through the Pentateuch and the Old Testament. Let's talk about D. Cool.

Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History

David Bokovoy [01:16:03] So D actually is Deuteronomy and It is that fifth and final book of the Pentateuch, and it is remarkably distinct from what we see happening in other places theologically. I like to. Oh, what I do in the book, their author in the Old Testament, I jump in and I try to show the altar laws. So, for example, you have altar laws in Exodus Church, chapter 20, verse 24, where it says, you know, every place that the Lord God places his name, you may offer a sacrifice to in essence. Right. And then in Deuteronomy, it takes that, it takes that tradition which is earlier and changes it in chapter 12, verses 13 through 14. And it says every place where you cannot offer a sacrifice, every place. But it has to be the place that God has chosen, which is Jerusalem.

John Dehlin [01:16:52] So Deuteronomy is contradicting previous books.

David Bokovoy [01:16:54] Precisely.

John Dehlin [01:16:55] Very clearly.

David Bokovoy [01:16:56] Very absolutely revising that so that you. Now then when you read those earlier sources, you'll think about Deuteronomy's agenda, which was the centralization of ritual sacrifice in Jerusalem at the temple there.

John Dehlin [01:17:12] It's kind of Israeli correlation.

David Bokovoy [01:17:14] Yeah, exactly. That's, that's exactly. I love it. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:17:18] They're basically saying, let's systematize this and corporatize it and get it in a solid structure, integrated, centralized.

David Bokovoy [01:17:25] And that's the book of Deuteronomy.

John Dehlin [01:17:26] Okay. And I have here, it's Moses's last speech. It talks about the rise of Israel. There's little narrative or story, lots of sermons. Again, it's very northern. It has prophecy. God has no physical body and God can't be seen in physical form. Those, that's what I wrote in my notes about. Excellent. Is that right?

David Bokovoy [01:17:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:17:50] Okay.

David Bokovoy [01:17:51] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:17:51] And so those are the four. That's the documentary hypothesis.

David Bokovoy [01:17:56] Yeah, the traditional model of it.

John Dehlin [01:17:58] And there's a really good graph on page 71 of this book by Greg Coford, authoring the Old Testament by David Bacavoy. 71. It's got the four columns with the four authors and sort of how things are similar and different across various dimensions. Yeah, it's a very useful graph.

David Bokovoy [01:18:17] Good. Yeah. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:18:19] Okay, so what else is worth talking about in the Old Testament? I, I, I talk, I've got in

David Bokovoy [01:18:26] here everything is worth talking about in

John Dehlin [01:18:29] the Old Testament, John. I've got anachronisms, doublets, redundancies, discrepancies. There's a really cool thing about slavery and how the rules for slaves change. Yeah. If you were to kind of give some just final, you know, elements of important or interesting higher criticism as it applies to the Old Testament. What would you mention?

David Bokovoy [01:18:50] Let's. I think we covered the Pentateuch really well. I would, I would say that then it also has implications for other books. We've talked a lot about Isaiah, and we should put a link. I think I did a, a two part essay in response to an apologetic piece that was published denying the legitimacy of Deutero or second Isaiah as a, as a, as something that's happening in the text. And I responded to that, and it laid it out for a general audience why apologists, when they try to make that argument, are just unfortunately missing all of the evidence that is out there. And we put a link to that, maybe to our readers. It was rational faith. I think I did that to a two part series on Deutero Isaiah that will become immensely important for the Book of Mormon. As we've discussed.

Doublets, Anachronisms, and Ethical Problems

Part 2 of 4 · Ep. 1020

John Dehlin [00:00:31] So I guess it suffice it to say, buy this book because this book and read it because this book highlights, you know, we care about anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, we care about redundancies and discrepancies in the New Testament. The Old Testament's got it too. Give the example of slavery and some of the, some of the varying.

David Bokovoy [00:00:51] So I, Yeah, so that's one of the things. And I mentioned this. I had to throw that in there right in the beginning of the book because as I mentioned in our previous discussion, I went in to study at Brandeis and I said, I'll never buy into the documentary hypothesis.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] Right, Famous last words.

David Bokovoy [00:01:09] Yes, exactly. And then I. My very first class that I sat in was a course on ancient Near Eastern and biblical laws. And we were, we just lined up the different slave laws that appear in, in the Pentateuch and compared and contrasted them and we could, I could see that if you just. It was the first time I ever looked critically and carefully at that material that there were major into, There were major discrepancies and that. And it couldn't have been written by a single author. It just. The light bulb went off on my, in my mind and I realized that means that these are separate historical traditions that are found there.

David Bokovoy [00:01:44] And once I allowed for that, it was only a couple of weeks in. That just opened up my whole world where I realized, well, if I'm going to allow for separate historical historical sources, and that's the only way to make sense of the inconsistencies found in slave laws and how they're addressed, not to mention other laws.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] So what are some slave discrepancies?

David Bokovoy [00:02:03] So, for example, are we talking how many years that a slave can be held in bondage versus then when the slave is freed, how does it compare to a, A, a daughter versus a son? These sorts of things are set up and lined up differently so that you could not, you could not govern a society when it comes down to, based upon those inconsistencies and discrepancies which are reacting to one another, which is the way that I think most people have traditionally looked at that material, that these were the laws that were set up by God to govern our, our political existence.

John Dehlin [00:02:41] So like in, in one version, you can keep a slave for what, seven years and then you have to set them free.

David Bokovoy [00:02:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:02:47] And you do or you don't compensate them? Yes, that was the first.

David Bokovoy [00:02:51] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] Which one? That you do or you don't?

David Bokovoy [00:02:53] That you don't.

John Dehlin [00:02:53] You don't. So it's seven years. You don't compensate them. And what happens to their spouse and

David Bokovoy [00:02:58] kids that then they go free?

John Dehlin [00:03:00] Okay, that's the, that's, let's say, version one.

David Bokovoy [00:03:03] Yeah. And then another, they will not go for.

John Dehlin [00:03:06] Is it still seven years on the other version?

David Bokovoy [00:03:08] Yeah. I'd have to look at them, see which ones we were looking at. But there are lots of discrepancies like that. Do you. Different years, do you let a daughter. One of them will say the daughter has to go out free. Another one will say the daughter cannot go out free. She has to stay there and remain the property of her new owner. I mean, they're just.

John Dehlin [00:03:23] And in one version you compensate them when you let them go, but in another one you don't compensate them and their kids are yours versus they're not. And it's, it's just clear discrepancies.

David Bokovoy [00:03:31] Yeah. And it's been a little while since I've looked at it.

John Dehlin [00:03:33] That's okay. What's a doublet? Tell us what a doublet is.

David Bokovoy [00:03:35] So doublet is like when there are two different versions. Versions of a story for two different versions, for example, how Jacob got his name changed to Israel. Two different versions about, you know, about. About taking. About Moses taking water out of a, out of a rock.

John Dehlin [00:03:52] You know, and they have different details. So it's the same story told in two different ways.

David Bokovoy [00:03:57] Exactly. And so.

John Dehlin [00:03:59] And you're saying the creation narrative is another example.

David Bokovoy [00:04:01] Exactly. And we'd expect a little bit of that, perhaps maybe a different focus or something. But when it keeps happening over and over again and the, and the, and the inconsistencies are consistent within that documentary strand, it provides really compelling evidence that makes sense that we are dealing with separate historical traditions.

John Dehlin [00:04:21] So redundancies suggest multiple authors. These doublets that are consistent in the differences of details represents multiple, you know, provides evidence for the documentary hypothesis.

David Bokovoy [00:04:34] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:04:35] Talk about anachronisms. You wouldn't really think. You think we all, you know, progressive post Mormons, we think about anachronisms all the time in the Book of Mormon.

David Bokovoy [00:04:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:45] How does the Old Testament have anachronisms?

David Bokovoy [00:04:47] Oh, sure, yeah. Tons of them. One of the most famous ones that scholars refer to is Abraham's wealth and, you know, that he has camels. That's one that scholars will refer to. And there's. It's debated. People try to argue that, oh, Abraham lived during a time period when the camel was domesticated, but the general consensus is that Abraham would have lived in a time period without that or reference. To the Armenians or different groups of people that we know did not exist during that time period, but are found mentioned there or references then looking back and saying, you know, this happened when the Canaanites did this or that, you know, showing that it's out of time period, that it would historically would not have been written by somebody during Moses's era.

John Dehlin [00:05:30] Yeah. Something that you write that's really interesting is, is how the chronology and changes that are made follow this pattern of the. Of the writings written later, often incorporating what was known before, but then. But then making the change. And so the later change always shows an understanding of the earlier writing. Yes, Talk about that really quick and why that's important.

David Bokovoy [00:05:58] That shows that. That some of this material was already deemed sacred scripture in the Judean community. And therefore later scribes who want. They couldn't just throw out that older sources. It was easier than to just change the way that people read those sources by giving it a new lens. And that especially happens in Deuteronomy. As I point out in the book,

John Dehlin [00:06:22] as they're trying to correlate Jewish religious practice, they know that they've got these old documents that they have to deal with that may contradict the way that things are done at the time of Deuteronomy. So they want to sort of massage them and append things to them to try and be consistent with previous scripture, but then make the change so that it doesn't look like they're making it up as they go along.

David Bokovoy [00:06:47] Exactly. Yeah. That happens a lot. That happens a lot.

John Dehlin [00:06:49] It happens in Mormonism today.

David Bokovoy [00:06:51] Exactly. No, that's a very good point. And that's why in the book, and you pointed this out, I mean, it was very difficult for me to decide to write this book. John, the acquisition editor, my good friend Lloyd Erickson, came to me and asked me if I would write the book. And I said, sure, I'll do it sometime. But I didn't plan on writing it at that point in my career because the only thing I figured it would do would be to hurt me.

John Dehlin [00:07:19] Because at the time you're in ces,

David Bokovoy [00:07:20] I'm in ces, and to write it, even though I would always, as I always do, even when I express criticism or concern, it's always in the context of wanting to uplift and to make the community, to make the church, to help individuals, help us be better.

David Bokovoy [00:07:38] I never express criticism just to tear down or to be negative. That's not part of my nature. But anyway, I knew that writing about these sorts of things, especially as A professional religious educator could be disconcerting to some individuals, and it certainly has been.

David Bokovoy [00:07:59] So it wouldn't help my career in church education. And if I decided to leave church education and pursue a job as a critical biblical scholar, to have written a book that was so filled with Mormonism, to helping Mormons make sense of this material and to understand how they could then be religiously active in their community while still believing in the scholarly views that I expressed there in the book, that wouldn't help me with a secular academic position either. So all the book could ever could do for me in my career would be to hurt me. Is I really. The way I looked at it. So I thought, I'll write it, but I'll write it at the end of my career.

David Bokovoy [00:08:37] And then my friend Lloyd, we kept talking about it, and I'm like, man, this is so important because I already shared, you know, when I went and first started studying these things, I was told, you'll lose your testimony. We've never had a Latter Day Saint pass through a program and learn this material and study this and come out a believer. I was told, do anything except for Bible.

David Bokovoy [00:08:59] And I had really, the whole book. Then once I decided that I was going to do it because I wanted to help people, I wanted to help Latter Day Saints know they didn't need to fear this material, that they could make sense of their religious convictions in light of this, and that there are ways of understanding it. Not that I had all the answers, but things that I had labored with for years and years and years that I knew could help some people.

David Bokovoy [00:09:24] Once I decided, okay, I'm going to do it, I'm just going to do it because I want to help. It needs to be written. And once I did it, I wrote the book in just a matter of weeks because it just poured out all this stuff I've been thinking about and wanting to offer and help the community with.

John Dehlin [00:09:40] So what you're saying someone who's really bright, who cares passionately about something, can write a really intense, thoughtful book in a matter of weeks?

David Bokovoy [00:09:48] Well, I mean, this stuff I've been dealing with for years and years. So it just. It just. It was really.

John Dehlin [00:09:52] I'm joking, but it refers to the creation of the Book of Mormon. Oh, okay. Right.

David Bokovoy [00:09:56] I didn't catch it. Sorry.

John Dehlin [00:09:57] No, I'm just saying. Yeah, yeah, right. A lot of people, well, how could the book so amazing have been authored in. Oh, yeah, in a matter of weeks. Right.

David Bokovoy [00:10:04] Yeah, it's easy to. As we talked about last time, as an historian understand the creation of the Book of Mormon from historical perspective. But in terms of my book, it was like. It was therapeutic. It was like, okay, I'm just getting. Here's how I see it. Do with it what you will. I hope it helps people. And. And I. I'm very pleased when it does because even people that are not religious, and I tell my students this now all the time as I teach it Slick or it Utah State University or I taught at the U. Places where I've taught. Even if you're not religious, the reality is you people should understand the Bible because the Bible is used in our society.

David Bokovoy [00:10:42] Jesus is invoked in our society and on the floor of the US Senate and by politicians left and right and used to justify economic and social issues of today. So everyone in our society, I believe, should have a basic understanding of the Bible and how scholars interpret its development and Jesus as well.

John Dehlin [00:11:02] Agreed. All right, let me go into just some general questions about the Old Testament from myself and from listeners, and then we'll move on to the book of Moses.

David Bokovoy [00:11:11] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:11:11] Is that all right?

David Bokovoy [00:11:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:12] Okay. My biggest question was, isn't the idea of a chosen people kind of racist? Like God chooses Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to then have this royal lineage that. That leads to David and then ultimately leads to Jesus? Like, we usually think about, you know, Judaism as being the victims of racism, which they have been. And we're not going to deny that. But when I think about this idea of God's chosen people, I'm already offended. What are your thoughts about that?

David Bokovoy [00:11:50] Yeah, there's definitely.

John Dehlin [00:11:51] Because there's Chinese people. Sure. There's definitely Asians, Native Americans. There's like all different people on the earth that aren't coming out of the loins of. That's even a little bit distasteful. The loins of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Daniel.

David Bokovoy [00:12:05] Right.

John Dehlin [00:12:05] David.

David Bokovoy [00:12:07] You know, I mean, am I going to answer as a historian or I'm going to answer theologically?

John Dehlin [00:12:11] Both.

David Bokovoy [00:12:11] Okay. As a historian, it's just I don't think we can escape. Humans can escape that. Americans nationalism. We see ourselves as, you know, every

John Dehlin [00:12:23] civilization is part of themselves, you know.

David Bokovoy [00:12:24] Yeah, exactly. And. And this is their. I see the Bible as their. The as ancient as a group of ancient Israelites understanding of their place in the universe and their relationship to the divine. And I see it that way. Now, that's not to deny that there are some awful racist perspectives that appear manifested in the Bible. I mean, they are there. And we can talk about, for example, the commandment to Eradicate all of the Canaanites, men, women and children, enslave their, their women and destroy the beast of their community that you see in places like Joshua and other accounts. It's horrific and, and, and problematic.

David Bokovoy [00:13:06] But then there are other portions of the Bible that react to that, like the book of Jonah. The book of Jonah is a reaction to that theological perspective because, you know, here you have the enemies of ancient Israel. The Canaanites are not given a chance to repent or change their ways. God doesn't send missionaries or prophets or anyone in there to try and change them and give them a chance to say, hey, if you want to stay here in the land of Canaan, this is Jehovah's sacred land, you're have to worship him and present these rituals. And if you don't do this and we're going to eradicate you, they weren't even given a chance.

David Bokovoy [00:13:40] And that's deeply troublesome to a lot of modern readers, and it was to ancient readers as well. So part of what the book of Jonah is doing is reacting to that. That. And so you now you take the, the enemies of Israel who are even worse, the Assyrians, and you have a God that is so gracious and concerned about them that he sends a prophet before he destroys. The prophet, gives a false prophecy because Jonah just goes in and says this, this city's going to be destroyed in three days. And then, you know, the king is like, no, maybe we can do something, perhaps, who knows, we can change God's mind.

David Bokovoy [00:14:09] And then Jonah is so angry because he says, that's why I wouldn't come here, because I knew that you're a gracious, a kind and forgiving God and that you would give them this opportunity. Part of what that story is doing theologically is reacting to some of the things that we see happening in the Book of Joshua and other sources. And so rather than interpret, and I encourage religious readers who still revere the Bible to look at it that way and to see what's going on. And therefore, rather than viewing Scripture as a manual that perfectly defines God's nature and who he is, Will. Yeah. For us, see it as a springboard to your own personal enlightenment of your understanding of yourself and your relationship to these texts, to the divine, to love whatever it is and, and recognize that if there are portions of it that offend you, there'll be other portions of it that you will like.

David Bokovoy [00:15:03] But even the portions that, that offends you or that you think are not, are not okay because they're Racist or ethnocentric or what have you. We learn from that. And therefore the book becomes incredibly valuable to all people who take it seriously.

John Dehlin [00:15:17] So it becomes kind of a mirror to our better and our lesser angels.

David Bokovoy [00:15:20] Precisely.

John Dehlin [00:15:21] So that we can sort of use that spectrum of good versus evil and neutrality as. As an influencer to help us choose.

David Bokovoy [00:15:31] Precisely.

John Dehlin [00:15:31] Good. Good.

David Bokovoy [00:15:33] And that's how I see Scripture. It's like I was asked the question. I was giving a presentation recently, and people asked. Somebody asked me about DNC Section 132 and asked if I thought it should be taken out of the LDS canon. And I said, absolutely not. And I know, and I mean, don't get me wrong. I mean, there's some really hard, awful statements in section 132 about women. And I can understand and am sensitive to, to those who say, oh, this is not healthy. Perhaps this shouldn't be part of the LDS canon. I get it. Trust me, I understand. But at the same time, that's just.

David Bokovoy [00:16:06] I don't want to do that. As somebody who looks at it, I'm like, I want the good and the bad that is in there, and I don't want to cover it up. I want to learn from the bad. I want to learn from section 132. I think religious people should learn from that and that this is something that happened in the past and we better guard ourselves in the present, that we do not abuse our position, our religious authority, and take advantage of those who are vulnerable.

John Dehlin [00:16:29] Okay. So the benefit of awful stuff in the scriptures is that we can have a record of bad things that have happened and sort of a. A cautionary tale.

David Bokovoy [00:16:41] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:16:42] To say, stay away from this kind of stuff. It's bad.

David Bokovoy [00:16:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:45] Don't do it.

David Bokovoy [00:16:45] Let's avoid it. Because.

John Dehlin [00:16:46] Avoid it.

David Bokovoy [00:16:47] Let's avoid the. The, you know, the ethnocentric viewpoint that is manifest in Genesis and other places about Canaanites where they're just hypersexualized and awful vermin, basically. Yeah. I realize that that is a. That is something that has plagued humanity

John Dehlin [00:17:02] throughout the generations, but don't attribute that to God. See, that's the thing. The scriptures are attributing these heinous things, including polygamy, including genocide, to God.

David Bokovoy [00:17:13] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:17:13] Is that where the Scriptures get it wrong?

David Bokovoy [00:17:15] Yes, because that is their interpretation. That is. That is their interpretation based upon their experience. Experiences. And they're looking back at the past of who God was and what he wanted from them.

John Dehlin [00:17:25] So anytime Scripture is written, according to David Bacavoy, it's not God speaking, it's the, it's the writer writing down what they think. God's mind and will is not actually God's mind and will. Is that right? Is that fair?

David Bokovoy [00:17:43] I wouldn't want to say any. Every time.

John Dehlin [00:17:47] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:17:47] I don't know that I would want to say every time.

John Dehlin [00:17:51] I often.

David Bokovoy [00:17:52] Oh, I'd say majority. I mean, let me think this. Okay, I'll say every time.

John Dehlin [00:17:59] Why were you hesitating?

David Bokovoy [00:18:00] I. Well, I just, I don't want to

John Dehlin [00:18:02] leave the room for the divine.

David Bokovoy [00:18:03] Yeah. I don't want to leave things on God.

John Dehlin [00:18:05] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:18:06] You know, and I don't.

John Dehlin [00:18:06] God could be speaking.

David Bokovoy [00:18:08] Yeah. I don't want to put any limitations on God. But in the reality, the way I do see it is that I don't think any revelation or inspiration, I don't think it's possible, you know, assuming that there is such thing, that reality that it takes place, if that is the reality that takes place, it would always pass through a weak human vessel. And I see that's one of the great things about the Book of Mormon from my perspective is it teaches Christians how to read Scripture. Because here's the Book of Mormon and the very title page, very beginning, it allows for the possibility of mistakes.

David Bokovoy [00:18:41] So on the one hand, this book presents itself as the most inspired, most correct book that has ever been created. A man and woman can get near to God through this book, more so than any other book. But then its very title page allows for errors. And then every author reminds you, or authorial voice, we should say. Right. Narrative voice reminds you.

David Bokovoy [00:19:01] This is my perspective. I have weaknesses, I have these issues, I have problems, I. And so on the one hand, what the Book of Mormon is doing is it's calling, I think people to recognize that any inspired text is going to have human imprint. It's impossible to escape it. And therefore part of what we should do to read Scripture is not just interpret it as a manual for God, but to realize that this is people's interpretations of the divine and they don't always get it right.

John Dehlin [00:19:29] Okay, so more. Let's just say a Fowler Stage 4 approach, or Fowler Stage 5 approach to scripture is Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, whatever. Every verse you read, you're not reading God's will, you're reading through the filter of a mortal who is doing their best to ascertain God's will. And so you always have to have a grain of salt with everything you read in the scriptures.

David Bokovoy [00:19:54] I, I see it that way. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] Things could be False and evil and wrong, but presented as true and good. And they're still wrong.

David Bokovoy [00:20:02] Yeah, right. I absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:20:04] And it's scripture.

David Bokovoy [00:20:05] I absolutely see it that way. I don't. But the reason I hesitated, even though I see it that way, is I'm not gonna put any limitations on the divine, what can't happen. But, but yeah, I, it all passes through human vessels. I mean this, that's this notion of that we say it, you know, that's so famous for seminary institute teachers to like step back and they'll say, okay, I'm gonna give you the gospel according to brother McConkey or something like that, you know, I mean, or this is, this is my take on it. Well, I don't think you even need to say that because it's always your take on it. Right, right. It's always your spin. It's your perspective. There's no such thing as, in my perspective, pristine, absolute revelation that does not pass through weak human vessels.

John Dehlin [00:20:46] Got it. Okay. Yeah. That's a very different way than we've been taught to read scripture.

David Bokovoy [00:20:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:53] And it, I guess what's, what's important about that is it allows us to look at the scriptures with new eyes. Because if it's not, if you have this totalistic view or this absolutist view that it's either every word written by God or it's a fraud, then you throw it all out and say scriptures are garbage, we have nothing to learn from them. Better just to look to Oprah or Dr. Phil or Brene Brown or whoever, the modern, wisest, noblest or even modern science. But, but your reading says, hey, let's look at the history of civilization as reflected in scripture and see what time worn lessons over centuries and millennia, good and bad, we can glean from, from this human history.

David Bokovoy [00:21:38] Absolutely. And I do the same thing with all world traditions and faith. The Quran, Islam, same thing.

John Dehlin [00:21:46] So for you, those, those scriptures all tend to be on the same level.

David Bokovoy [00:21:54] Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. I think that they are reflections of people's interaction with the divine and that they have good things in them and they have terrible things in them. And that we as humanity should understand what is in them historically, critically, and then use that as a springboard for further enlightenment.

John Dehlin [00:22:12] Got it. Okay. So going back to this idea of God's chosen pure blood, and they talk about blood, you know, when you get to the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, like Joseph Smith, I'm taught through, like the McConkeys believe that Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith believed that he was a Literal descendant of Jesus. He wanted the blood of Israel in him.

John Dehlin [00:22:35] And that's all these patriarchal blessings are literally in Mormonism, about discerning your blood lineage. And, of course, the Book of Mormon is all about God's chosen Israelites versus the Gentiles. Right. And the pure blood of Israel being in the Native Americans. So, like, this idea of God's chosen people is very central to Mormon doctrine and theology of Mormon scripture. And so that's all just to say that it seems to be this idea of a literal chosen people with the blood of Israel being so central to Mormonism. Now, going back to it, you know, does David Bacavoi believe that if there's a God, that God came down and picked the descendants, the blood descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be his chosen people? What do you think about that? As a human. As a.

David Bokovoy [00:23:28] No, no, I wouldn't. I. No, I. Yeah, no, if they're not going back to what I don't. I have a hard time with an interventionist God, except as it is. So, no, I see that as their perspective of their relationship.

John Dehlin [00:23:43] Plus, would God be choosing favorites? Sorry, Chinese people. You're not part of my chosen lineage. Right. Sorry, Native Americans. Sorry, Africans. You're not part of my chosen lineage. Right.

David Bokovoy [00:23:55] Chosen, but I mean, chosen to do what? Right? I mean, chosen to be the priesthood yet, but to bear the priesthood. But it would be chosen to serve. Right? Chosen to serve.

John Dehlin [00:24:05] But everyone's chosen to serve. Right. Yeah.

David Bokovoy [00:24:07] I'm just saying ways that it's been interpreted or understood.

John Dehlin [00:24:09] I'm not saying, but for you, that. Just that idea of a God. I mean, for me, I guess what I'm trying to project on you, what is bothersome to me, and I just don't like the idea of God having chosen people.

David Bokovoy [00:24:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:22] Because that leads to tribalism and it leads to, you know, pride. It leads to.

David Bokovoy [00:24:28] Yeah, I see that.

John Dehlin [00:24:30] Genocide or, you know, elitism, all that stuff.

David Bokovoy [00:24:33] Right, Sure, I see that. And I. I'm. That's, you know, I'm a humanist from the perspective I, you know, I want humanity to unify and not that I want to see humans, like, eradicate tribalism.

John Dehlin [00:24:47] Because it's how we protect each other.

David Bokovoy [00:24:48] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:24:49] And order society.

David Bokovoy [00:24:50] And I love. And I love, you know, individual cultures, and I think it's more learning to. Learning to appreciate the beauties that are found within each culture, within each group, within each tradition, like the symphony of

John Dehlin [00:25:03] the flute and the violin and trying

David Bokovoy [00:25:05] to say, oh, let's all be one.

John Dehlin [00:25:06] Right.

David Bokovoy [00:25:07] But not in that sense.

John Dehlin [00:25:08] But, but, but the violin isn't better than the viola, isn't better than the tuba isn't better than the percussion section.

David Bokovoy [00:25:13] That's how I see humanity.

John Dehlin [00:25:14] Yeah. We're all standing shoulder to shoulder.

David Bokovoy [00:25:16] Yeah. So I think you and I are.

John Dehlin [00:25:17] I. Yeah, Yeah. I remember hearing one thing from a podcast long ago. There's never been a civilization that received the revelation from the divine that those other guys were God's chosen people. In other words, every civilization thinks of the chosen people. Sure. Right. Of course. And that the other guys are.

David Bokovoy [00:25:35] Of course.

John Dehlin [00:25:36] Of course. And that's what. That's what's happening in the Old Testament.

David Bokovoy [00:25:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:39] For. For you.

David Bokovoy [00:25:40] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:25:41] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:25:41] I think that's important as, as a whole. But then there are times when, where we see where, like for example, Jonah, where it's like, no, God is bigger, bigger than that. Nineveh is important to him. And even these people that did horrible things historically to the Israelites, God still cares about him and he's universal. So there are different views that are found there.

John Dehlin [00:26:04] And so this is something that I think many progressive and post Mormons don't really make. The connections we always talk about. Is polyandry a smoking gun? Is, you know, is the Book of Mormon anachronisms or DNA in the Book of Abraham, Is that a smoking gun? All of Joseph's doctrine and theology rests on the Old Testament. But if Adam and eve didn't exist 4,000 years ago and weren't the first humans, if there was no global, truly global flood, if there was no Tower of Babel. Right. If there may or may not have been a Moses, and if instead Genesis comes from Babylonian myth rewritten, and what is the word used again?

David Bokovoy [00:26:50] Actualized.

John Dehlin [00:26:50] Actualized for the people who wrote it. And then if there is no true God's chosen people and blood of Israel, isn't that a little bit of a smoking gun to the absolutist truth claims of sort of fundamentalist orthodox Mormonism?

David Bokovoy [00:27:07] Could. Yeah, I. I would say so.

John Dehlin [00:27:08] That's why isn't it the ultimate original smoking gun?

David Bokovoy [00:27:11] I. That's why I was hesitant to write the book, because even exposing people to these ideas,

John Dehlin [00:27:20] it's the foundation. The Old Testament is the foundation.

David Bokovoy [00:27:24] But. But what I wanted to do in the book is to say there are ways that you can still make sense of your spiritual convictions regarding Mormonism. Not that I have all the answers, but here's what works for me.

John Dehlin [00:27:36] There's still truth and beauty and wisdom and even history in the scripture.

David Bokovoy [00:27:41] And we can See that, for example, what I. The way I articulated is that I see Joseph Smith not only reflecting the same sort of creation of Scripture happening and actualization of patriarchs and priesthood and Old Testament themes for his religious community that happened time and time again in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. But it's more than that for me. To me, Joseph Smith was an astute observer of everything around him. He was an astute observer of scripture, of messianic rituals, of, you know, of Indian folklore, of all of these sorts of things. And what does he do? He imitates in the creation of Scripture.

David Bokovoy [00:28:20] He imitates God's creative process as he understood it. Joseph Smith steps forward and he says, there is no such thing as creation ex nihilo, even though most Christians and Jews believe in it. God does not create out of nothing. He organizes from chaos. And I see Joseph Smith then is reflecting that in the creation of his theology and his scripture. He is just trying to understand Egyptian documents and learning Hebrew and taking all of these resources into the creation of Scripture that actualizes priesthood, that actualizes temple and patriarchs and all of these things from the Hebrew Bible and makes it relevant for the spiritual lives of his community.

David Bokovoy [00:28:59] That's fundamentally what a prophet does in many respects. So that's what I articulate in the book, and it causes a shift of paradigm. But I think Mormonism can handle it. I think people can handle it, and it's not.

David Bokovoy [00:29:16] I remember I had a conversation with some church administrators at one point, and they were concerned. They were very concerned with critical biblical scholarship and the way we've articulated it now. And I could understand those concerns. But in their statement, they said something like, oh, this is. This is dangerous. It's not something that you should do. It's very different than studying actually the Scriptures the way that you study the Scriptures, the way we should read it for enlightenment. And I said, I absolutely. I respect your views, but I absolutely disagree. I'm more with Joseph Smith. When he said that Mormonism is a religion that seeks to embrace all truth, let it come from whatever source it may.

David Bokovoy [00:29:58] I said, if there is truth in historical, critical biblical scholarship, truth about the scriptures and how they developed, it's something that Mormonism should tackle, that it should understand and that we should. We should embrace in our understanding of that sacred writ and our relationship to one another and the world and divinity. That's been my perspective, what I try to articulate in the book, a couple

John Dehlin [00:30:22] other questions about the Old Testament. So in Mormonism, it's a restoration tradition which means that Joseph and probably contemporaries and probably predecessors to Joseph had this idea, no, let's go back and see what rituals and traditions, you know, we're going on in the Old and New Testament, and let's restore them because they've been lost. And so this idea of restoring the plain and the precious truths and, you know, even polygamy comes out of probably Joseph thinking, well, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did that, so we gotta restore all things, because if it was righteous for those prophets to do it, it must be righteous for these prophets to do it.

John Dehlin [00:31:01] So it's just the idea of a restoration. So we often think about, well, we have the Aaronic and the Melchizedek priesthood, and Aaron is an Old Testament figure, and Melchizedek is an Old Testament figure. So Joseph must have, you know, tapped into the way priesthood was organized back pre Jesus. Right, With a lower and an upper priesthood. And this has even led people to think, and I think even McConkeys believe this, that they were doing baptisms, pre Jesus baptisms by immersion. Some have even said that there were, you know, temple or celestial ceilings prior to Jesus. Right. But. But let's just go to something very basic, which is something one of our listeners wrote in to ask.

John Dehlin [00:31:43] And they basically said, he says, I'm in the middle of a naked Mormon Mormonism podcast episode where he breaks down Joseph Smith's claim of priesthood lineage in the Old Testament. He rips it apart. Can you talk about why there would be concerns about Joseph's claim of restoring an upper and a lower priesthood and why that may or may not be consistent with the Old Testament?

David Bokovoy [00:32:04] Sure. My understanding has always been a restoration. I shouldn't say always, but my understanding as a committed believer has always been much more nuanced than that, obviously. And I would refer canonically to DNC Section 121, which talks about the time, the fullness of times. And Joseph Smith's revelation in verse 27 states that this is a time which our forefathers have awaited with anxious expectation to be revealed in the last times which their minds were pointed to by the angels as held in reserve for the fullness of their glory, a time to come in which nothing shall be withheld. And it goes on and starts to explain that a lot of Joseph Smith's revelations give us the indication that it's his revelations are not just restoring something that once existed literally, but it's also adding onto and giving things that were never understood.

David Bokovoy [00:32:59] But that Joseph Smith, through his ministry, is going to provide us with greater clarity On. So I think it's a. And I would see it as a combination of both. I have written extensively about how incredible Joseph Smith's ability to tap into certain theological constructs that were forgotten by biblical scholars until the historical critical method came about. And yet they're found in his theology, they're found in his revelations. There are things like that. And I, in a sense it is restoring truths or I should say ideas or constructs that were once lost and forgotten. We certainly see that happening. But does that mean that, you know, the traditional understanding of Mormonism with priesthood and, you know, was there an Aaronic

Priesthood Origins and the Elijah-Elias Problem

John Dehlin [00:33:44] and a Melchizedek priesthood in the Old Testament or anything like it?

David Bokovoy [00:33:49] We don't really have a Melchizedek priesthood in the, in the, in the Old Testament, you have certainly Aaronic priesthood.

John Dehlin [00:33:54] Meaning what?

David Bokovoy [00:33:55] Meaning the authority of God to officiate and offer in sacrifices and ritual and things like that. That's certainly there. Melchizedek is mentioned, but he's just simply the King of Jerusalem or Sam Salem, a priest. Priest. But so far as like Melchizedek priesthood and the way that priesthood is understood in our, in the LDS Church today, just to cut to the chase. No, we, we don't find that articulated precisely that way in the Hebrew Bible. No.

John Dehlin [00:34:22] So we almost want to think that Abraham puts his hands on Isaac and bestows the Aaronic priesthood, and then Isaac does it to Jacob and Jacob does it to.

David Bokovoy [00:34:31] That's certainly an.

John Dehlin [00:34:32] And that. That gives them the right to do this subset of rituals and ordinances. But then there's a higher version and there's a Melchizedek thing and they're doing the higher stuff, maybe with the temple, and maybe there were temple ceremonies going on in Solomon's temple.

David Bokovoy [00:34:47] No, no.

John Dehlin [00:34:50] What. I mean, isn't that the idea of the restoration that. I mean, I remember drawing my priesthood lineage back to Joseph Smith. Right. And wasn't Joseph Smith restoring what John the Baptist and Peter, James and John gave to him through the laying on of hands that would only then assume that. And I think as you look at paintings that the Mormon Church has produced from the Old Testament, you would see prophets with their hands on the heads of other prophets bestowing priesthood.

David Bokovoy [00:35:18] Sure. It's the way that it's traditionally been understood and the past has been. And it's a story about the past. It's a story about the past that makes the past relevant for the current lives of the religious community. But is that a reflection of what we see happening in the Bible? No.

John Dehlin [00:35:36] Is There. Ordination of priesthood at all.

David Bokovoy [00:35:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:39] What is it like?

David Bokovoy [00:35:41] Well, you see laying on of hands and you see authority to administer passed on. We see that happening. Moses and Aaron and the priest. But it's a different.

John Dehlin [00:35:51] How's it different?

David Bokovoy [00:35:52] Well, it's different in the sense that, you know, this idea of. That it's connected with the church, that it's bestowed upon all worthy males, that it's something that allows people to act in the, you know, a special capacity in the name of God. In that sense, that's very different than what you see as a. An authority to administer rituals, to clean the temple and to receive certain opportunities in connection with. With temple worship and sacrifice that you see in the Hebrew Bible. Yeah. It's just not the same thing.

John Dehlin [00:36:25] Okay, somebody writes, can you address the Elijah Elias problem? Do you know what they're referring to? Tell our listeners what the Elijah and Elias problem.

David Bokovoy [00:36:37] So, okay, so in Joseph Smith's Revelations, Elijah and Elias are identified as two separate beings, but Elias is simply the Greek form of saying Elijah. And it's one's New Testament one's from the Hebrew Bible. And so they're not. And this is especially problematic, I guess, in the. In the Revelation where Joseph Smith talks about the different beings who have appeared to him in connection with the purestone of priesthood keys in the Kirtland Temple, and that they're the same. They historically would have been the same person. I mean, I don't know what else to say other than that.

John Dehlin [00:37:13] So. So in Joseph's mind, both Elijah and Elias appear to him.

David Bokovoy [00:37:18] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:37:18] As separate beings. But in your study, the Old Testament, the story that.

David Bokovoy [00:37:22] The narrative as he tells it.

John Dehlin [00:37:23] Yeah, but in. But in your study of the Old

David Bokovoy [00:37:25] Testament, you're talking the same.

John Dehlin [00:37:27] The same person, same dude.

David Bokovoy [00:37:29] Just different forms of the name.

John Dehlin [00:37:30] Okay. Different roots or different Hebrew and verse.

David Bokovoy [00:37:34] Hebrew is Eliyahu, Elijah is Eliyahu, which means Jehovah is my God, and Elias is the great. Just the Greek form of Eliyahu, same individual. Okay, that's what they're getting at there.

John Dehlin [00:37:44] Okay. Another listener wrote in. I've read that scholars don't read the Malachi tithing verses like Mormons. What's the scholarly take on Malachi and tithing?

David Bokovoy [00:37:57] Okay, so, yeah, there are lots of differences on that. One of the interesting things, I think the most interesting thing to point upon that is this idea that God will open up the window of heaven and pour down a blessing upon his community if they tithe and do this.

David Bokovoy [00:38:16] Well, that whole idea is actually, you can see it reflected in the flood narrative. How did God in one of the flood narratives, flood the earth? Well, he opens up the windows of heaven. And the idea behind this, you can see in Genesis chapter one, the firmament, which is the way it's translated in the King James translation of the Bible.

David Bokovoy [00:38:38] The firmament is really just a plastic dome. That is the best way to describe it. That's keeping the water up above from falling down on top of us. I used to do this, John all the time in San Diego. I would lie on the beach and it'd be. There wouldn't be a cloud in the sky or whatever, you know, just a blue. And I'd look up and I like, man, it's like water.

David Bokovoy [00:38:59] And I would even have this imagination, this image of, like, oh, if you flipped it over and there was no gravity, I would fall into the sky, which would be like falling into the water. Ancient people looked at the world that way, too, and it made sense to them that there was water up there because water comes down. So God must open up a window and allow for the water to pour down and flood the earth or to provide crops, in this case, with malachite, as it might be.

David Bokovoy [00:39:25] And it's based upon an ancient view of the cosmos which we know today is not. Is not correct. There's not a firmament up there that also connects ultimately with Genesis chapter one and explains why animals are created on certain days. So if you think about the order of creation in Genesis chapter one, it's really fun.

David Bokovoy [00:39:43] On the first day, God creates the light. Then three days later, on day four, he creates the things that pertain to that sphere. So he creates the sun, the moon, the stars. Day two, he divides the waters from above, the water versus the waters below by putting in that firmament, that plastic dome. And then three days later, on day five, he creates the things that pertain to that sphere. Fish and birds. And people wonder why birds? Well, because they think there's water up above. And like Malachi, he'll open up a window and pour down that water if you pay your tithes.

David Bokovoy [00:40:21] And then on day three, he creates the land. And then on day six, three days later, he creates the humans and the animals. So it's. It shows that there's structure, that God has a plan in mind, that everything is orderly, which is very different than what we see the God. The portrayal of God in Genesis chapter two, when he just figured, oh, let's create animals, let's create whatnot.

David Bokovoy [00:40:41] So every one of these texts, including the. The one on Malachi and the pain of tithes and what that meant have a different meaning when looked at historically and critically, contextually versus the way that Latter Day Saints use that material today. That's just every text. Every text. And that would just be another example of it.

John Dehlin [00:41:06] So there wasn't some. So first of all, Malachi was a king, not a prophet.

David Bokovoy [00:41:12] Well, Malachi. We don't know who Malachi was. We don't even know what the book was named. The term Malik, the term Malachi is. Is literally my messenger. The I is the first person common, singular, pronominal suffix on nouns. Malak, my Malak, my messenger. And the title for that actually comes from like, chap. It's hard. It's confusing because the chapters are different in English versus Hebrew. I think it's like chapter three. He says, I will behold, I will send my messenger. I will send Malachi. And. And so we don't know who Malachi was. We don't know the name Malachi literally comes from that text. And so that was added to. We don't know who wrote the book.

John Dehlin [00:41:51] Okay, but in there there's some instruction to. To give money to who, Tie it

David Bokovoy [00:41:58] to the poor and the needy.

John Dehlin [00:42:00] Not. Was it to the church?

David Bokovoy [00:42:02] No, there's no church.

John Dehlin [00:42:03] There's no church in the Old Testament.

David Bokovoy [00:42:05] No, no church. Jesus didn't even establish a church. So.

John Dehlin [00:42:09] So the. So saying that interpreting Malachi to mean give 10% of your gross or net income to the church.

David Bokovoy [00:42:18] I'm not saying it's wrong. People can actualize. Like Joseph Smith. That's what the LDS Church is doing. They're actualizing it, but suggesting that that's what that text meant historically and what the author intended. No, it's not what he meant or intended.

David Bokovoy [00:42:31] So, but that doesn't make it wrong. It just makes it different, the way different communities use religious text. We see the same thing happening in the New Testament, for example, you know, especially in Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew, that author will quote from the Hebrew Bible a total of 14 times because Matthew loves the number 14. That's the text that will have 14 generations. 14 generations. And he budgets the information to line Christ up constantly with 14 generations. And he quotes from the Old Testament 14 times. And that's because number 14 is the symbolic number of David. And he's linking Jesus with David as king and there.

David Bokovoy [00:43:07] And what he quotes from the Old Testament, he will quote out of context. He'll say Isaiah. His first one is, you know, reference to Isaiah. Therefore a virgin shall conceive and Bear a child and call his name Emmanuel. Well, if you go historically, was Isaiah talking about Jesus? Was he talking about. No, not at all. You can read it. It doesn't make sense to even refer it to Jesus. He's talking about probably Hezekiah, because the text itself, if you look at the prophecy, is before this chosen child learns to distinguish good and bad, my prophecy will be fulfilled that you should not link yourself. Isaiah states to the southern king with the powers in the north.

David Bokovoy [00:43:45] And so if it's Jesus, it doesn't work as a person prophecy. So what happens then is that Matthew takes that, or the author of Matthew takes that out of context and gives it actualization and new meaning for his religious community and links it with Jesus. That's what the Dead Sea scroll community does. That's what Josephus did, what Joseph Smith does. It's what the latter, the Church, Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints does today.

David Bokovoy [00:44:08] And I have no issue with that as long as we are not covering up what the original meaning was of the text, which time and time again happens, unfortunately, in LDS curriculum.

John Dehlin [00:44:23] So that's something Mormons don't really even consider that applying Isaiah to Jesus is probably a misapplication.

David Bokovoy [00:44:31] No, definitely.

John Dehlin [00:44:32] I mean, because there's Handel's Messiah, Right? And what's that quoting from?

David Bokovoy [00:44:36] Yeah, you know, various portions of Isaiah, Handel's Messiah quotes from Isaiah, but also from the Psalms.

John Dehlin [00:44:42] And lots of, I mean, Christmas is coming up. Are you going to dash our, our Christmas hopes that, that this, the Isaiah and the Psalms were actually prophesying of Jesus? Is that what you're doing?

David Bokovoy [00:44:51] I, I, I, if that's what our hopes are based in, then yeah, I guess I would dash that.

John Dehlin [00:44:56] But it's because for you, that's anachronistic or it's technically not really possible that, that Isaiah was prophesying Jesus.

David Bokovoy [00:45:04] No, we can look, it just, it doesn't make any sense that way. If you read it, and that's why Isaiah is so confusing to Latter Day Saints, because we pick these verses and we'll say, okay, this, we got it. That's about Jesus. But then you read everything around it. You're like, how the hell?

John Dehlin [00:45:17] What does that have to do with Jesus?

David Bokovoy [00:45:19] You know, it's like, that doesn't work, man. It doesn't make any sense. And everybody gets all confused. Well, it's because just look at what the text is doing. Put it in its historical context. If we do that, and that's my issue, John, is if we do that, that's what I think should happen first. First we should look at the original authorial intent as far as we can decipher it, how it functioned in its original sits in leben or setting in life, and then actualize it, then try to make it relevant to the religious needs of the, of the community. If we ignore that which unfortunately happens too frequently in our faith community, then we miss the opportunity to understand how those people saw the world, how they understood divinity, and to learn from it because their experiences are so different than ours.

David Bokovoy [00:46:07] And so we ought to learn from them and let them give us a message before we then seek to actualize. And that's what I try to lay out in the book and try to do.

John Dehlin [00:46:15] You heard it first here. Mormon stories. David Bacavoy ruins Christmas.

David Bokovoy [00:46:19] We can work well. Yeah. Well Jesus a little more, we can ruin it even further. Jesus was not born in Bethlehem, born in Nazareth. I'm quite confident that that's the case. But, but I love the Christmas story. I love it. And it's just, it's as a, it as we talked about with the cognitive revolution, Homo sapiens created a brain that could create fiction, to create myth, that could, and that we could then believe in the principles, the ideas behind it and cooperate together.

John Dehlin [00:46:55] That's Yuval Harari. Right. And Sapiens. Have you read?

David Bokovoy [00:46:57] Oh yeah, it's a wonderful book.

John Dehlin [00:46:58] I love read. Sapiens talks about the power of myth.

David Bokovoy [00:47:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:02] How myth is what's allowed us to transcend Dunbar's law, which is sort of this limit of us being able to work in civilizations around 100, 150, as mammals, as primates. That's kind of a limit. You know, gorillas and monkeys all have this sort of limit of how big their, their group can grow until there's some sort of fraction and separation. Yes, it's, it's the power of myth that has allowed humans to cooperate at a level of a million different people contributing to the creation of the atomic bomb, which is just one example of many. Just the idea of currency is a myth. You know, a $1 bill isn't inherently more valuable than a hundred dollar bill. What, what, what makes them difference in value is that we all agree that $100 bill is worth 100 times more than a dollar bill. And that's myth.

David Bokovoy [00:47:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:52] We're all agreeing to a certain set of symbols, stories, heroes, whatever it is, teachings, principles, and as soon as we can share those things in common, we can trust each other more than we normally would. We can identify with each other, we can feel connected with each Other. And we can collaborate at the level of hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands or millions, in the case of Mormonism, to. To do great work. So the myth. Myth, Harari. Is that how you pronounce his name? Myth, he would argue, is sort of the defining crowning characteristic that distinguishes the human Homo sapiens, you know, from. From every other mammalian species or. Or other.

David Bokovoy [00:48:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:37] Is that right?

David Bokovoy [00:48:37] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:48:38] Is that what you're saying?

David Bokovoy [00:48:38] Yeah. And that's how I. Scriptures have brought us.

John Dehlin [00:48:41] They've got us to the dance, they brought us here.

David Bokovoy [00:48:44] That's. And that's how I've seen scripture and religion for a long time and. And why I was able to, you know, make sense of it and speed. Completely devoted as somebody who had shifted paradigms obviously quite a bit extensively over. Over. Over a lifetime of study.

John Dehlin [00:49:02] Right.

David Bokovoy [00:49:03] But that's how. And I. That's how I see religion. It's how I see it all.

Heavenly Mother, Monotheism, and Sexuality in the Old Testament

John Dehlin [00:49:07] Couple a few final questions about the Old Testament, just from listeners. How do you make sense of. Okay, you mentioned Heavenly Mother. Is there anything else you want to say about. Somebody's asking about Asherah? Anything else you want to say about Heavenly Mother in the Old Testament than what you said?

David Bokovoy [00:49:30] Yeah, my dissertation topic, the title of my dissertation is Yahweh as a Sexual Deity in Jay's Prehistory. And what I. And I. So I deal a lot with Asherah, the female goddess or consort, who's Ashura. Many Israelites believed that Yahweh, their. Their God had a. I would. I would hesitate to use the term wife because that implies a lot of things that I don't know that they necessarily thought in those terms, but definitely a consort, a people, female divinity, a heavenly mother type figure. And she is alluded to all throughout the Hebrew Bible in places. And that's what I. What I wrote my dissertation on, in essence.

John Dehlin [00:50:18] So what's going on in the theology of Jews? That God has a partner that's female.

David Bokovoy [00:50:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:23] Are they. Are they. Are they monotheists? Are they polytheists? Well, you kind of think of Judaism as one of the first monotheistic religions.

David Bokovoy [00:50:29] Yes, definitely.

John Dehlin [00:50:30] How does that all square?

David Bokovoy [00:50:31] Well, ancient Israelites were not monotheist. And they weren't. They were not. And so there are, you know, references to the gods and their council and the divine beings who governed the universe all throughout the Hebrew Bible. Where most scholars would see monotheism emerge is in text like Psalm 82, which tells the other gods of the universe to sit down and to die like men because they're not doing their job effectively. And Jehovah, the God of the Israelites, is going to take over and just be the one God. So you start to see in the later text of the Hebrew Bible a movement towards monotheism, but that is not the majority perspective that is found in the Hebrew Bible.

David Bokovoy [00:51:16] Scholars will use the term monolatry and they'll use henotheism to describe it. A belief in the existence of literal gods and goddesses, but focusing their attention on one. That's more what we see happening in the Hebrew Bible.

John Dehlin [00:51:28] Interesting. And so just like we see Joseph's theology, even around God, changing from 1830, when the book of Mormon was written, to the Nauvoo time period, where it's a council and it's, we can become gods. We see that in the Old Testament, even the Israelites had significant transformation in their own theology about God.

David Bokovoy [00:51:51] Absolutely, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:51:52] That's interesting.

David Bokovoy [00:51:52] And we'd expect to see that because we're talking a thousand years, but that material is written.

John Dehlin [00:51:56] Right, right.

David Bokovoy [00:51:57] So, yeah, definitely.

John Dehlin [00:51:58] Interesting. That's so cool. All right, I'm glad we asked that. Well, I'm sure you have sympathies with the idea that having both a male and a female version of God or gods can be really cool, especially for women and men out there that, that want to see themselves in the divine.

David Bokovoy [00:52:15] Right, absolutely. I. I love it. I think it's beautiful. It's like going back to what I was talking about, Genesis 1:26, 27. The only way in my mind to make sense of that is in the image of gods. He created them, male and female. Elohim.

John Dehlin [00:52:31] Right, right. Very cool. All right, really quick. How do you make sense of polygamy in the Old Testament? Any quick commentary on that? And then as it applies to Joseph's practice of polygamy, I mean, it's.

David Bokovoy [00:52:46] It's very clear that it doesn't work. Right?

John Dehlin [00:52:48] What?

David Bokovoy [00:52:49] Polygamy?

John Dehlin [00:52:49] What do you mean? Well, I mean, look, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they're all doing it.

David Bokovoy [00:52:53] But look at all the conflicts between. In their families because of plural marriage.

John Dehlin [00:52:57] Is God ever commanding polygamy in the Old Testament of the prophets?

David Bokovoy [00:53:01] No, no, we don't. We don't see that.

John Dehlin [00:53:03] There's no doctrinal polygamy in the Old Testament.

David Bokovoy [00:53:05] No, I mean, he does command it in some, in the legal forms, because, you know, where you see it, I guess commanded will be the law of levirate, where a woman's husband will die and God commands that she be taken as the wife of his brother.

David Bokovoy [00:53:25] Well, that allows for polygamy, then, and presents it as a commandment. That's really the closest that you'll see to it. And the reality is, I mean, an argument could be made that it was a cultural tradition of the time period, but the authors of the Hebrew Bible recognized that it didn't work. Because the reality is every time that. I mean, it's just. Look at all the family. It's one story of family contention and problem after another because of the. Because of plural marriage and the different sons who stem from. From different wives, whether it's, you know, Esau and Isaac or Joseph and his siblings. And I mean, really, if you look at it carefully, it seems to me like plural marriage, although a cultural tradition, the message of the Hebrew Bible is this doesn't work out so well.

John Dehlin [00:54:08] It leads to family strife.

David Bokovoy [00:54:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:10] And again, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, there's no point in the Old Testament where God is like, behold, Abraham, I present to you an angel with a flaming sword that will compel you against your will and your better nature to take upon you a second and a third and a 56th wife.

David Bokovoy [00:54:26] We don't see that happening.

John Dehlin [00:54:27] No. So how does it happen? How does it happen that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob take on extra.

David Bokovoy [00:54:34] It's part of their cultural tradition, as least as it's portrayed in the book of Genesis. I mean, in the case of, you know, in the case of Hagar, the, you know, concubine, which is just a wife of a lower standing or status. That was Sariah's idea. She's the one that's like, look, we're not having a child.

John Dehlin [00:54:50] And God said it was just practical.

David Bokovoy [00:54:52] Let's do this.

John Dehlin [00:54:52] She's feeling bad. I'm not able to bear you a son.

David Bokovoy [00:54:56] Doesn't come from God, at least in that narrative.

John Dehlin [00:54:58] Right. Concubine. And just the idea of a lower spouse, that's not fun for anybody either, right?

David Bokovoy [00:55:03] Of course not.

John Dehlin [00:55:04] Of course not. Okay, so for the. So for you, the Old Testament is not a resounding endorsement of polygamy as being from God?

David Bokovoy [00:55:11] No, I'd see it. I mean, if anything, it's kind of the opposite.

John Dehlin [00:55:16] It's a condemnation.

David Bokovoy [00:55:18] It seems to be.

John Dehlin [00:55:18] You read the Old Testament as a condemnation of polygamy?

David Bokovoy [00:55:20] In a sense. I mean, you never see them come out and say, no, you can't do this. This is bad. But I mean, if you read, you know, against the brain. Right. Isn't that kind of the message? I. I certainly see that.

John Dehlin [00:55:31] Got it. Last question. What do you make of the statements in the Old Testament that have been associated with homosexuality, same sex attraction. What do you make of that?

David Bokovoy [00:55:40] Good. Okay. It depends on which ones we're talking about. A big one of concern that I have is the story of, Of. Of Lot and this destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. At the time the newest seminary curriculum came out on that story a few years ago, I was really concerned and I wrote to the powers that be and tried to get them to understand that portraying that story as a condemnation of homosexuality is not only an incorrect reading of the text and its meaning, but it's incredibly dangerous. And then I started blogging about that as well, and I got into quite a bit of trouble over that. But the reality is that story, for example, it just. First of all, it's a story of rape. It's not a story of homosexuality.

John Dehlin [00:56:42] Sodom, the Sodom story. Yeah, that we get sodomy.

David Bokovoy [00:56:45] And yeah, the angels or messengers from God come to this city and are looking for one righteous person. And all it says, all of the men, all of the people of Sodom, male and female. So it's not just even men. They want to come in and they want to have relations with those messengers against their will, have sex, have sex with those women against their will. It is a story of rape. It is a story of inhospitality, which was a way it's interpreted later on in the prophetic material of the Hebrew Bible. It has nothing to do with homosexuality whatsoever. And yet even in our footnotes that we look, it's just, you know, the sin of Sodom is homosexuality, and it's used that way and it's a misreading of, and misrepresentation of what's transpiring there.

David Bokovoy [00:57:32] And you know, when I, when I taught it in seminary, I, I corrected that. And I, I had gay students. I had one gay student. I'll never forget. He, he shared with the class. As we started talking about this, he said, I am gay and I am Mormon. And people ask me why I'm Mormon. It's because I find God here in this church. He said, but I've been told by, I've been asked, why do you go to church? I've even been asked, why don't you just kill yourself? You don't belong here and you don't belong anywhere. And he said, that's where I find God.

David Bokovoy [00:58:07] And so I had experience lots of experiences like that in the seminary and institute classroom. I felt like I was supposed to be there to help students with who were either LGBT themselves or had LGBTQ family members or friends understand these texts in a way that would allow them to love LGBT people and welcome them into fellowship. And I still believe strongly that that's the way that the LDS church and community needs to evolve.

John Dehlin [00:58:38] So are there verses? You know, was there. Was there Judaic law that there wasn't forbidding of, well, one of the men to lie together?

David Bokovoy [00:58:46] Yes, you've got that. Of course, the prohibition. Not female relations, but you have a prohibition.

John Dehlin [00:58:52] Lesbianism isn't forbidden.

David Bokovoy [00:58:53] No. In the Old Testament, they were concerned with men, and. And the concern was not on homosexuality even there. From. I mean, the idea of homosexuality is more a modern construct in the sense of recognizing that people's sexual identity is fundamental to who they are as a human being. Like a friend of mine, I remember we were talking about my daughter, and he's like. And he was very kind and loving anybody. He said about it, but he said, oh, you're so supportive and so loving. I bet you wish, though. I'm sure you wish, though, that your daughter wasn't gay so that she wouldn't have to live a.

David Bokovoy [00:59:27] A difficult life. It's more difficult being a gay person in our civilization. He meant it in the. In the kindest, most respectful, loving way. But I had to correct that and say, oh, no, I absolutely do not wish that. Because being gay, being a homosexual, is not just simply about sexual intercourse. It's a fundamental part of who that person is as a human being. And so.

John Dehlin [00:59:51] And it's who they want to vacation with. It's. They want to build a life with. It's who they want to wash dishes with. It's who they want.

David Bokovoy [00:59:55] And I would never walk the dog with.

John Dehlin [00:59:57] It's who they want to.

David Bokovoy [00:59:58] I would never up with when they're

John Dehlin [00:59:59] watching a TV show.

David Bokovoy [01:00:00] No, I would never change that about my daughter or any other My LGBTQ friends and people that I love. Never. I think it's a beautiful. I personally believe that it is, you know, that it is a beautiful way of filling the world with more love.

David Bokovoy [01:00:15] I mean, how boring would the world be if the only type of love that existed was heterosexual love? No. We need as much love as we can possibly fill this planet with. And so I. It is a. To me, it's a. It's. It's something that comes from God, and it's a good thing now that. So that mandate that you have in the Hebrew Bible about. It's really. The concern is not homosexuality, because they didn't. They didn't think about homosexuality as part of someone's identity and who they were as a human being. They were literally thinking about an act which, from their perspective, crossed the bounds of what.

David Bokovoy [01:00:50] What was supposed to exist within nature. And the whole reason, it's this whole reason why they. You can't eat certain types of fish in the book of Leviticus, because if it doesn't, if it lives in the ocean, but it doesn't act like a fish, then it's not something that is superstition, right? Yeah, that. It's something that is unclean. And, and so having, you know, gay sex or something like that is really in the same line. It's, that's, that's why they're formulating it that way. It's because it's, you know, not acting like a fish or the way it's supposed. The fish is supposed to act, or not acting like the way that a animal is supposed to act.

John Dehlin [01:01:25] And so if you're going to basically try to apply the Old Testament prohibitions on homosexuality to people today, you're going to also have to accept what other prohibitions to be consistent. Give us just a list of 10.

David Bokovoy [01:01:40] Mixing of wool. Mixing of wool, what with the types of, you know, you can, you know, your dairy and your, Your cheese and your meats.

John Dehlin [01:01:48] No cheeseburgers.

David Bokovoy [01:01:49] I mean, it's just the list goes on.

John Dehlin [01:01:51] But I like, like menstruation with women. What is it?

David Bokovoy [01:01:54] There are lots of them. Lots of them. But the, it's part of the priestly mindset that there were. There was order and structure. We see that in Genesis chapter one. And humans need to maintain that order. So when things aren't functioning in the order that they understood it, they labeled it as unclean or something to avoid. And so that's how they see. That's how they see sexual intercourse between men in the same way that they see the problems with, like a dolphin, because dolphin lives in the, in the, in the water, acts like a fish, but it's not a fish. So you can't eat a dolphin.

John Dehlin [01:02:26] Right.

David Bokovoy [01:02:27] And that's why, that's the whole reason it's unclean. It has nothing to do with, you know, it's just. It's not God's watching. No, it's the way they understood the

John Dehlin [01:02:35] world, the world at the time. And so if you're going to say up Old Testament says, no homosexuality, you can't eat shrimp, you can't eat, you know, any shellfish. You know, you on the Sabbath there also, you know, you get killed if you violate The Sabbath. Like, yeah, there's 100 different or a thousand different Old Testament prohibitions that you're also going to have to incorporate if you're going to hold modern people to Israeli standards.

David Bokovoy [01:03:01] And you have to realize that they weren't talking about homosexuality in the way that we use the term. They're literally just talking about a sex act. And when we use the term homosexuality in our contemporary culture, we mean something much more than just sex.

The Book of Moses and Pseudepigraphy

John Dehlin [01:03:16] All right, is there anything else we need to talk about the Old Testament as sort of a introductory survey before we jump to the Book of Moses?

David Bokovoy [01:03:25] No, I think we did it. That's good.

John Dehlin [01:03:26] Okay, so tell us a little bit about the Book of Moses.

David Bokovoy [01:03:30] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:03:30] And how it, you know, where it came from and how we might learn something applying higher criticism to it.

David Bokovoy [01:03:38] Okay. So the Book of Moses is a complicated book, actually, because it starts off as an individual revelation. It's now included as part of Joseph Smith's inspired translation of the Bible.

John Dehlin [01:03:52] But where did Joseph get. Where did the text. The original. Where did Joseph claim it came from?

David Bokovoy [01:03:57] The Book of Moses, as it's identified as a revelation. So he doesn't have a manuscript. It all comes just from his mind, from revelation. It's identified specifically as a revelation. And that would be Moses, chapter one. And what that does is it provides a new introduction, a new Zitzenleben. I'll use that term again.

David Bokovoy [01:04:22] A new setting in life for the opening chapters of Genesis. It takes the creation stories, it takes Adam and Eve. It takes all of that material and puts it into the context of a revelation that Moses receives on an exceedingly high mountain, and then he is then commanded to write a book about. So it takes the tradition of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and canonizes it in LDS thought.

David Bokovoy [01:04:50] And we've just discussed the fact that, well, Moses didn't write that material, so it changes its meaning. But what I show in the book is I don't think that that's a bad thing as long as we recognize that a change is taking place from the way that these sources functioned in antiquity and the way that it changes it. I argue in the book is that it changes it to an endowment experience or a temple revelation. That's what an exceedingly high mountain is and function and how one functioned in the ancient world. It was a connection between heaven and earth. So it transforms the way that we as Latter Day Saints see that as prophetic material, as inspired endowment material, as temple material, and gives it really sacred meaning.

David Bokovoy [01:05:33] So I. I love what the Book of Moses does. I think it's fantastic. I think it's brilliant. I articulate that in the book. But it is, it's clearly not a restoration of a source that was once written down by Moses and that was included in the Pentateuch.

John Dehlin [01:05:50] Okay. And so just to drill a little bit down on that based on kind of my inadequate understanding. So first of all, it's interesting to note that Joseph is claiming to be able to produce scripture without any source text.

David Bokovoy [01:06:03] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:06:04] So for those who are like, well, Book of Abraham and Book of Mormon, if you didn't use the plates, if he didn't use the papyra, you know that that doesn't make sense that he would just generate scripture through revelation. Well, the Book of Moses is an example where he. That's exactly what he did.

David Bokovoy [01:06:21] Yeah. And there are others as well.

John Dehlin [01:06:22] Book of John, didn't he. There's some scroll in some cave where he Somehow channels the Scroll 7 and

David Bokovoy [01:06:28] you have DNC Section 93, which supposedly restores some of the author of the Gospel of John. So writings that he that were lost and that didn't exist.

John Dehlin [01:06:39] So it's pretty clear that Joseph felt like he had the ability to generate scripture where there was no source document to translate from.

David Bokovoy [01:06:48] Yeah, absolutely. He does this over and over again.

John Dehlin [01:06:50] Okay. So again, to kind of really put a fine point on it, Moses couldn't have written what we now know as the Book of Moses. Because why?

David Bokovoy [01:07:03] Because it is a new introduction to Genesis 1:2, which we know he was not responsible for and that were written centuries after he would have lived.

John Dehlin [01:07:18] So if Moses didn't write Genesis 1 and 2, and the book of Moses is a riff on Genesis 1 and 2, Moses would never have written that.

David Bokovoy [01:07:28] But we should have been able to see that even without historical criticism, just by being careful readers of the text. Because Moses isn't talking about himself in first person. It's all, you know, third person references. Then Moses did that, Moses did that, and first person forms were known. Why wouldn't, if he was really was writing this down about himself, why wouldn't he have just said something like we see in the Book of Mormon and I Nephi having been born of goodly parents, and I Moses having, you know, gone up onto a mountaintop and done this. It's all about him. It's about him. It's not something that he wrote down.

John Dehlin [01:07:59] Do you know if he claimed it was a translation Book of Moses?

David Bokovoy [01:08:02] No, I don't, I don't know that Joseph Smith ever did.

John Dehlin [01:08:05] Okay. I, I Have here written in my notes that it was an outgrowth of treasure digging. Did, did I get that from, from the book? Is that something that you're familiar with

David Bokovoy [01:08:17] that idea with the Book of Moses? I don't see it there. I mean certainly the Book of Mormon. There, there.

John Dehlin [01:08:23] Okay, okay.

David Bokovoy [01:08:24] But not necessarily Book of Moses, but I don't know. Not that I see.

John Dehlin [01:08:27] Okay. And, and there's you. You write something about Joseph's self prophecy. Joseph prophesying of himself in the Book of Moses.

David Bokovoy [01:08:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:39] Is that, does that appear. Is. Does that happen?

David Bokovoy [01:08:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:42] Does Moses prophesy of Joseph?

David Bokovoy [01:08:44] No, not. I mean that that stuff is all added to. To again actualize, make relevant Joseph Smith and put c. Find him in the text. Find him in that.

John Dehlin [01:08:54] So when Joseph writes the Book of Moses as if he's Moses, he injects himself into.

David Bokovoy [01:09:02] Yes. You know, and as I explained in the book, that is a venerable respected way of creating scripture throughout history.

John Dehlin [01:09:08] What do you mean? Well, he says in the Book of Mormon too, right?

David Bokovoy [01:09:12] Yeah, it's. It. You know, the term that I use is pseudepigrapha.

John Dehlin [01:09:15] Okay, tell us what that word, That's a big word.

David Bokovoy [01:09:17] What does that mean? So pseudo like false. Right. And figrafa, which is writing, a falsely attributed writing. The Bible is filled with scriptural text that are written in the place of ancient authority figures, prophets, patriarchs, priests and, and, and written as if it came from those individuals, as is the New Testament. We have lots of, for example, Second Peter, which is clearly a very late source in the New Testament and impossible and possibly attributed to Peter. But it's written as if Peter was the voice to address the needs of that community and to give it authority. That happens all the time. And Joseph Smith does that in the creation of his scripture, which is what I point out.

David Bokovoy [01:10:00] And I'm not saying that, that therefore it's, it's all good and fine, but it, it, it is a way for a faithful person who sees this material, is aware of it, to understand. Joseph Smith is just doing what every other prophet had done. Writing in the authoritative voice of someone from the past, couching his revelation in that person's.

John Dehlin [01:10:21] So people are going to take it more seriously. Whatever revelation Joseph wants to reveal, if he claims it was Moses that wrote it, versus if he claims he wrote it sometimes.

David Bokovoy [01:10:31] But I also point out in the book that Joseph Smith didn't need to do that.

John Dehlin [01:10:34] Right. Because he had written his own scripture.

David Bokovoy [01:10:36] He had already was producing his own scripture, so he didn't have to do that.

John Dehlin [01:10:39] But it gives it an extra umph.

David Bokovoy [01:10:41] Certainly does. It shows. And it shows that he has that umph, for lack of a better term. Right. That he, this is a guy who's totally tuned in with and in harmony with the prophets of the past.

John Dehlin [01:10:52] So what keeps us from just saying, well, Mark Hoffman, that was pseudepigrapha, like he was, he was writing, you know, documents. Again, just, just trying to enlighten us, but using other people's names as an authoritative source. What's the difference between forgery and pseudepigraphy? And I actually looked it up because there is a hierarchy of sort of authoritative and non authoritative sources.

David Bokovoy [01:11:15] Yeah, I met, you know, Bart Ehrman, who is a great New Testament scholar, and you interviewed him on Mormon stories and did a great job. I, he has a book called Forged where he talks about, and he uses that term forged forgery for these biblical books.

David Bokovoy [01:11:28] He's one of my favorite scholars. It's a great book. I hesitate to use that term forgery because I think it implies so much on, you know, from a modern perspective that I do not know, really captured the intents and viewpoints that the creators of that material had.

David Bokovoy [01:11:51] So I hesitate to use terms such as that, you know, and a part of it is, you know, in the, you know, it's, it's up to every individual to decide is what Joseph Smith produced, is it spiritually viable? Does it feed your soul? Does it make you a better human?

David Bokovoy [01:12:11] Is it promoting good, then it's good. And if, if, to the extent that it's, it is harmful or destructive to individuals or to communities, it needs to be jettisoned.

John Dehlin [01:12:22] Right. And I just, this is something I think the, the listeners and, and, and viewers will find interesting. I, I just Googled, you know, pseudepigrapha. What's. I, I basically google what's the difference between pseudepigrapha and forgery. And I got a Wikipedia article that talks about seven levels of authenticity of a text. And I think it's really cool. The highest level is literal authorship, where a church leader writes a letter in his own hand. So that's like the most authentic. The second is dictation. And we have all this with Joseph Smith. Right. I think. Did he write some stuff in his own hand? Probably did at some point. Yeah, Some things journals or whatever. So, so that's number one. This step down is dictation, where Joseph or a leader dictates a letter word for word to some sort of scribe or it says ammonis. What is that?

David Bokovoy [01:13:17] Word that means a scribe. It's a technical term for a scribe.

John Dehlin [01:13:19] What's the word? Amanuensis. I've never heard that word before. Then the third is delegated authorship, which is a church leader describes the basic content of an intended letter to a disciple or a scribe. Then there's posthumous authorship, where a church leader dies and his disciples finish a letter that he had intended to write, sending it posthumously in his name.

John Dehlin [01:13:47] Then there's apprentice authorship, where a church leader dies and disciples who had been authorized to speak for him while he was alive continue to do so by writing letters in his name years or decades after his death. But they knew him or her, and they probably knew their teachings, and so they're just trying to carry on and spread the gospel as they heard it from that prophet. Right. Then there's honorable pseudepigraphy, which is, as you say, a church leader dies, admirals seek to honor him by writing letters in his name as a tribute to his influence and in a sincere belief that they are responsible bearers of his tradition.

John Dehlin [01:14:29] So. So it kind of speaks to intent. Is your intent to deceive, to manipulate for your own gain, or are you truly trying to honor that leader and write it as a tribute and with a sincere belief, you know, that what you're writing is good? I think that's what this article is basically using describing as a way to distinguish between that and forgery, which is the last level, which is a church leader obtains sufficient prominence that either before or after his death, people seek to exploit his legacy by forging letters in his name, presenting him as a supporter of their own ideas, not even trying to remain true to the original source, but instead just shamelessly injecting your own ideas and exploiting that person's name by. By trying to inject that into the writing.

David Bokovoy [01:15:25] Yeah. And I see Joseph Smith doing a little bit of all of that.

John Dehlin [01:15:29] Wait, all of it? Yeah. Even the last?

David Bokovoy [01:15:31] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:15:33] Oh, okay. Cool.

David Bokovoy [01:15:34] I think. I mean, there's no question that he. He's, you know, the creation of scripture not to exploit them and like to do bad things. I think he always believed in his heart that he was convinced himself, even when he was doing with things with plural marriage and whatnot.

John Dehlin [01:15:50] You could argue. DNC132. Yeah, he's basically saying, God. God's saying this. But you don't believe God said this?

David Bokovoy [01:15:56] No, no, not at all. But I think so, and I was.

John Dehlin [01:15:59] And clearly he probably wanted to have sex with some other women.

David Bokovoy [01:16:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:02] So in that sense, it would have Been forgery.

David Bokovoy [01:16:04] Yeah, but I don't think I know. My sense is that Joseph Smith really believed that he was being true and authentic to God and to the prophets

John Dehlin [01:16:16] that followed him, his understanding of Scripture and ancient prophets and theology and doctrine and the restoration. He was sincere.

David Bokovoy [01:16:27] I do believe he was very sincere.

John Dehlin [01:16:29] Yeah.

David Bokovoy [01:16:30] There's no question in my mind that he was sincere. But I know deep in his heart that he wanted to profit from the creation of scripture and increase his authority, increase exposure to women, increase funds and that the church, I mean, there are lots of reasons. It's never just a black and white issue, not when it comes to psychology. And you know this better than anyone, John. I mean, to say that he was motivated by pure evil or pure good or whatever, it just. That would be naive on our few human.

John Dehlin [01:17:00] Few humans are that binary.

David Bokovoy [01:17:02] Yeah, exactly. Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:17:03] And humans can fool themselves definitely.

David Bokovoy [01:17:06] All the time, I'm sure.

John Dehlin [01:17:09] Really quickly. As you know, your book authoring the Old Testament talks about the Book of Moses. You mentioned briefly apologists that try and find Near Eastern connections with the Book of Moses. It mentions the control of water, a divine council, earth cursed but cleansed, and an emotional God. I'm guessing that farms people and Maxwell Institute people have tried to sort of validate the historicity or the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as sort of being sourced from ancient text by finding any parallels they could between Near Eastern writings and the Book of Moses. What are your thoughts on that?

David Bokovoy [01:17:47] And I point some out in my book, you controlling the waters and things like that. But I present it from the perspective of not that this shows that it's an originally had some sort of ancient core, but know that it's Joseph Smith being able to, through his spiritual religious genius to be able to tap into some incredible ancient constructs in the production of the Scripture. So that's a different viewpoint. I wouldn't see it because that's one of my problems with apologetic works such as that is that you may take, oh, it is impressive that Moses is controlling the water like God. And God's ability to control the water is one of the central ancient constructs that we see time and time again in the Hebrew Bible.

David Bokovoy [01:18:35] Traditionally, apologists might grab to that and then just ignore all of the other things that I address in my book that show that it's impossible for Moses to have written that material. And I think scholars need to be consistent. Sure, go ahead. Let's. Let's point out the beauties, the intricacies, the way that it captures ancient constructs. Sometimes Forgotten. But let's also not cover up all of the evidence that works against traditional claims of orthodoxy, because there's a lot of it out there.

John Dehlin [01:19:01] So for you, there's probably no credibility that the Book of Moses is historical or written by Moses or any of that?

David Bokovoy [01:19:09] No, none of it. I couldn't accept any of that as ancient.

John Dehlin [01:19:13] Okay. You quote Phil Barlow saying that something can still be scripture even if it's not historical. Historical.

David Bokovoy [01:19:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:20] What do you mean by that? Or what does Phil mean by that?

David Bokovoy [01:19:23] Well, you know, I won't speak for Phil, but I mean, for me, I mean, what that cuts into what scripture is. Is scripture something that is God breathed or is scripture something that is holy and revered by a community and upheld as a standard of orthodoxy and tradition? You know, there, as we've talked about, obviously the Quran is scripture and you know, Upanishads are scripture. These are all scripture, but doesn't mean necessarily that they were literally given by the gods or reflect historical reality. Scripture is Scripture is a text that an individual or community upholds as sacred guide for their life.

John Dehlin [01:20:08] Got it. And to end this section and listeners, we're gonna. And viewers, we're gonna. We're gonna end in just a couple minutes, grab lunch and then we're gonna come back. If you have time. Do you have time to.

David Bokovoy [01:20:22] Yeah, we can do that. We gotta. We gotta do Book Abraham.

John Dehlin [01:20:24] Oh, yeah, for sure. And Book of Mormon. Okay, so we're. But what time do you have to leave today?

David Bokovoy [01:20:29] I'm pretty free today.

John Dehlin [01:20:30] Okay. Okay. So we are gonna come back and talk about. Don't go away. We're gonna talk about Book of Abraham and Book of Mormon and New Testament and Doctrine Covenants in a final section. But end with, is there anything beautiful in the Old Testament or the Book of Moses? What do you find as beautiful or interesting as someone who may even be a little bit more secular than you were even when you wrote this book a few years ago? Just to end what's beautiful and worthwhile about these books.

David Bokovoy [01:21:00] So for the Hebrew Bible, this is material that has been deemed and held sacred for centuries, that has helped to construct Western civilization. This is a book that presents the stories about the past that were believed by an ancient people to define their place in the cosmos.

David Bokovoy [01:21:22] It's beautiful. There's be. There's beautiful morality and teachings of inspiration and kindness and love and compassion. The story of Ruth, my goodness story of absolute devotion by these two women and living in a patriarchal society where they would have been destitute and homeless. And using their creativity, their strength, their power to be able to overcome that environment. That's incredibly inspiring, as are many of the theological views about God. I love the portrayal of God in the Hebrew Bible. God is. People see it oftentimes as being jealous and vindictive. And there are those components, of course, but. But I also see that God, who is so sensitive, so loving that he actually cares about what humans have to say about him, that matters to him.

David Bokovoy [01:22:05] We see that in the Psalms all the time. The psalmist will say, God, if I die, heal me, heal me, heal me in the Psalms of individual lament, and if I die, there'll be one less person to praise you. It's a motivation for God to intervene. And I think that's beautiful, as is the construct of Moses when he's in the wilderness with the people and you see this strange story of where Moses, where God speaks to Moses and he's like, I'm going to wipe the Israelites out. And Moses like, no, wait, what will people say about you that you led your people out here to just destroy them?

John Dehlin [01:22:33] He's kind of bargaining with God and

David Bokovoy [01:22:35] it's based on trying to influence God. God is so loving, so sensitive, so concerned that he literally cares about what humans think about Him. It's a beautiful idea, beautiful construct. I love it. I just, I think it's incredibly inspirational. Inspirational. I think it is obviously scripture and it's. I believe it's inspired, but it's, you know, got a lot of problems.

John Dehlin [01:22:57] Fraud.

David Bokovoy [01:22:58] Yeah, of course.

John Dehlin [01:22:59] And same thing about Book of Moses. You find beauty there.

David Bokovoy [01:23:02] I. Absolute beauty in it, as I articulated in the book. I think what Joseph Smith did with the opening chapters of Genesis is incredible because he transforms it into a temple. Reading a. It's something that is. That takes place in the setting in life is now changed from just reading this ancient source to something that relates to Latter Day saints and in the context of our temple experiences and sacred encounters with the divine and those buildings. So, yeah, I think it's granted a traditional believer will look at this and at first it may prove shocking and uncomfortable, but I think in the long run, not that I have all the answers, but that there are ways of looking at this material critically and historically that preserve the sanctity of what we're reading.

John Dehlin [01:23:52] So for you, the Old Testament and Book of Moses have value, even if you don't believe in an anthropomorphic God or a chosen blood of Israel or an Abraham or a Moses, maybe even did or didn't exist for you there's still deep value.

David Bokovoy [01:24:07] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:24:08] All right. Yeah.

David Bokovoy [01:24:09] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:24:10] Thank you. Dr. David Bacavoy, thank you for joining us for these first parts of Mormon Stories podcast, where we're featuring David Bacavoi's book authoring the Old Testament, published by Greg Crowford Books. Do not go away. The very next episode, as soon as we grab lunch, we will be applying higher criticism to the Book of Abraham, to the New Testament, to the Book of Mormon, and then finally to the Doctrine and Covenants. And we'll be wrapping it up with just some general questions about David's theology and beliefs and Mormonism today and apologetics and kind of where we all are in 2018.

David Bokovoy [01:24:49] Awesome.

John Dehlin [01:24:49] Thanks, David.

David Bokovoy [01:24:50] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:24:50] Thanks, Cody. And thanks to you listeners. We'll see you guys again very soon on Mormon Stories podcast. Appreciate you tuning in.

Introduction to the Book of Abraham

Part 3 of 4 · Ep. 1021

John Dehlin [00:00:31] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to my extended interview with David Bacavoy. Dr. David Bacavoy here on Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. Again, it is December 3, 2018, and we're several hours into our today's interview with David Bacavoy. Of course, those of you who follow us closely will know we did four hours with David about his personal journey a couple weeks ago. You can check out parts one through four where he talks about becoming a Bible scholar, you know, working for ces, working as a chaplain at Harvard, teaching ces, you know, Seminary Institute to Harvard and Wellesley and MIT students, and then eventually coming to Salt Lake to go work for byu and how that didn't work out.

John Dehlin [00:01:21] But he stayed teaching seminary to high school students and authoring this incredibly important book, authoring the Old Testament Genesis through Deuteronomy, published by Greg Crowford Books, which I hope all of you will buy and which I'm going to ask my people to make as the book of the month for December on the Mormon Stories website.

John Dehlin [00:01:45] Then after that epic four hours, we spent a few hours with David this morning digging into the application of historical criticism and the documentary hypothesis to an understanding of the Old Testament and to the book of Moses, Joseph Smith's creation. And for me, you know, I've been doing this a long time. We've got over 1,050 episodes. And you would think I had heard it all and seen it all and would be kind of bored, but I was riveted and captivated in that discussion. So if you haven't checked that out, go back and listen to those first few hours where we deconstruct and reconstruct our appreciation for the Old Testament and the book of Moses.

John Dehlin [00:02:32] And it was not only shocking and alarming, it was also inspiring and enlightening and edifying. It was all of those things. So I'm really grateful to be back after we had our, our lunch at. What's the place called?

David Bokovoy [00:02:49] Alberto's.

John Dehlin [00:02:50] Alberto's in Salt Lake City.

David Bokovoy [00:02:51] Yeah. Good San Diego style Mexican food.

John Dehlin [00:02:53] This episode is unofficially brought to you by Alberto's Mexican Food. I had the carne asada tacos. So now what we have to do is we have to apply historical criticism to the remaining Mormon scripture that we have yet to discuss. So we've talked about the Old Testament, talked about Book of Moses, at least chronologically in terms of historical figures. Abraham would come next. Now we've, we have had Brett Metcalf on Mormon Stories, and we've talked a little bit of Book of Abraham. He certainly is a scholar. But it turns out you've done a whole Doug Fabrizio Radio west episode on the Book of Abraham. So you've, you've dug into that, dug into that issue as well?

David Bokovoy [00:03:35] Oh, yeah, extensively. Yeah, that's right. I did the Radio west interview right after the, with Doug right after the, right after the Gospel topic essay came out. I was doing a postdoc in Mormon Studies at the University of Utah, teaching the Book of Mormon as literature there through the Languages and Literature program. And, and he invited me to come on, and we had a great conversation a couple years ago now.

John Dehlin [00:04:01] Yeah. So you, you know a bit about the Book of Abraham controversy or story, as it is, as it were. So let's, let's just pretend, at least an introductory level, that there are listeners that kind of want to know the basics of the Book of Abraham, give us a little bit of background and history about it, and then let's apply some of this historical criticism to our understanding of that book as well. And what you could teach us about that whole piece of Mormon scripture.

David Bokovoy [00:04:32] Good. Yeah. Well, Joseph Smith, as we've mentioned, was fascinated by the ancient world, by ancient scripture. And during a time period in Kirtland, Ohio, when things were starting to get a little bit difficult for him from an administrative perspective, there were times, it was a time of renovation, a time of change in the 1830s. And he, a traveling salesman by the name of Michael Chandler had purchased some mummies and Egyptian documents that he was traveling around like a traveling salesman showing this material to people. And he heard that Joseph Smith was interested in those types of things and thought maybe he could make a sale.

David Bokovoy [00:05:12] So he traveled to Kirtland, Ohio. The mummies and papyri that he had in his possession were purchased by Joseph Smith. He actually went to the leaders of the faith community, and they raised the funds. And then Joseph Smith set about trying to translate that material. And in the production, in the process of that, he created what we now have canonized as scripture in the LDS Church as the Book of Abraham, the basics of it. But, yeah, probably more than like just talking about the actual translation process and its connection with the various documents that kind of illustrate from an historical perspective what Joseph Smith was doing in the creation of that material and how he was using the papyri.

David Bokovoy [00:05:59] We can actually avoid that, that conversation and just look directly at how source criticism, how higher criticism of the Bible sheds light on the authorship and origin of the Book of Abraham, which is not something that is typically done most of the discussions surrounding it, either from the critics perspective or from the apologist perspective, is, you know, talking about the length of the scroll that was in Joseph Smith's perspective or in his. In his possession, or how that scroll then relates to the production process, what he was doing. All of those things are very important.

David Bokovoy [00:06:36] But if we just look at the actual book itself, the text itself that we have and use the skills that we've discussed so far in higher criticism, it sheds significant light on this sacred text.

John Dehlin [00:06:50] So I guess there are a few questions that listeners have. One is just trying to get to the bottom of the extent to which, you know, as I understand it, when Joseph Smith produced the book of Abraham, he's telling people that I had the papyra and I translated it from the gift and power of God from Egyptian into English, and it was written by Abraham's hand. As I understand it, that's kind of what Joseph Smith is claiming.

David Bokovoy [00:07:18] By his own hand, upon papyrus.

John Dehlin [00:07:20] By his own hand upon papyrus. So, of course, to a lot of Mormons, there's just the question of, is it authentic? Is it original? Is it really what Joseph Smith claimed, the writings of Abraham? And then there's sort of like, if it isn't, what was Joseph Smith thinking?

John Dehlin [00:07:42] And how credible can it be as scripture? If Joseph either lied or misrepresented what it was, in that case, maybe it would have been pseudepigrapha. Or if he thought he was translating but really wasn't, what does that mean exactly? If in somehow, in his mind, he felt like he was translating and producing this, but he didn't even understand what he was doing?

John Dehlin [00:08:05] But I think what I heard you say is you can get to some of these questions. Ignoring the hieroglyphs, ignoring what was actually on the papyrus, ignoring any Egyptology of trying to. Trying to tie whatever is on the remnant, extant portions of the scrolls with the text that he produced, you're saying that through historical criticism, we can get to understand some of these questions through a different means altogether. Is that what I heard you say?

David Bokovoy [00:08:34] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:08:35] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:08:35] Exactly.

Historical Criticism and the Book of Abraham

John Dehlin [00:08:36] So teach us, Brother David.

David Bokovoy [00:08:39] I've got my scriptures open ready for round two of Sunday school.

John Dehlin [00:08:41] All right.

David Bokovoy [00:08:43] I was thinking about how we might lay this out and how I might best illustrate it. And I think the way to do that is to actually start with the book of Genesis and with the story of Abraham as it's presented therein. So beginning with Genesis chapter 11, where Abraham is introduced in a lengthy genealogical list, we then jump to the narrative portion, and that's I'm looking at it. It's in verses 28. So basically 28 through the end of the chapter, verse 32. I'll read that. Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his Nativity in Ur of the Chaldees. And Abram and Nahor took them wives.

David Bokovoy [00:09:21] The name of Abram's wife was Sarai. And the name of Nahor's wife Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and the father of Iskah. But Sarai was barren, she had no child. And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter's and daughter in law and his son Abram's wife. And they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan. And they came unto Haran and dwelt there.

David Bokovoy [00:09:50] And the days of Terah were 205 years. And Terah died in Haran. Okay, so there's this story is an introduction of Abraham. We learned that who his father is that they live in the land of Ur in southern Mesopotamia. And going back, it has to be southern Mesopotamia. Which presents a challenge to the Book of Mormon because of its the supposed connections between Egypt and Ur, where Abraham comes from. If you'll recall the Book of Abraham, it talks about the priest of the Pharaoh and Abraham being sacrificed on an altar. Mormon historians have, apologists, I should say, have wanted to push Ur to a more northern location so that there might be some Egyptian influence.

David Bokovoy [00:10:31] But that is an argument that is outside of byu, not taken very seriously. From my perspective would we would lose a lot of what we see happening with the Bible. Without Babel, there would be no Bible. So if we think about it going back what we discussed in the previous podcast. Genesis 1 is influenced by the Babylonian story of enuma, Elish, Genesis 2, 3 influenced by traditions from the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Flood story comes from Mesopotamia, the Tower of Babel, Babylonian polemic, the law, the laws, the legal collection.

David Bokovoy [00:11:09] From the connection between the Covenant Collection in Exodus 21 and the code of Hammurabi, the oldest complete law collection from ancient Babylon, the Assyrian vassal treaties of Esserhaddin, those connect with Deuteronomy, all of this connection. So it's very important from a biblical perspective to show Abram, the father of the Israelite nation, leaving Mesopotamia and coming to the land of Canaan, the promised land. It's actually a reversal of the exile where the Jewish community goes into the Land. It goes out of the Promised Land and into Babylon. So Abram has to leave Mesopotamia and go into the Promised Land. It's a reversal of that exilic experience.

David Bokovoy [00:11:52] So just from the perspective of the Bible, Abram has to be linked with southern Mesopotamia, which is where 99.9% of all biblical scholars would put him. That presents an historical challenge for the. The narrative as presented in the Book of Abraham. But it's even more than that, John, because what I just read to you in that introduction, going back to our previous discussion, that all stems from the priestly document.

David Bokovoy [00:12:14] Notice what happens here. Abraham's father takes him out of the land of Ur, and it already identifies and says, Abraham, Abraham's father is going to take him into the land of Canaan. Then if we ignore the chapter division and just move from Genesis chapter 11 right into 12, then we read, now the Lord said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee. It's repetition and it's inconsistent, because in the priestly narrative, which stems before this, in chapter 11 that we just read, Abraham leaves the land of the Chaldeans.

David Bokovoy [00:12:57] He leaves Ur with his dad, who's very much alive, and they're leaving, and they're going on a journey to Canaan. Then this next story it tells, God speaks to him and says, hey, get out of the land of Ur and leave your dad behind. See, there's. There's inconsistency there. But it makes sense when we recognize that the second narrative in Genesis 12, 1 through 2, is from an entirely different historical document, edited and compiled together in the book of Genesis as Genesis 11 and Genesis chapter 12. Genesis 11 stems from the priestly narrative. And this first part of 12, where we have Yahweh mentioned, is J or the J source.

David Bokovoy [00:13:34] Right? Now, if we jump then to the actual book of Abraham that Joseph Smith produces, Kirtland, Ohio, watch what happens. It not only is the story all presented in first person, as if Abraham himself is now telling the account.

John Dehlin [00:13:54] Unlike Moses.

David Bokovoy [00:13:55] Yeah, unlike what we see in the

John Dehlin [00:13:56] book of Moses is not first person, right?

David Bokovoy [00:13:58] Yeah. We have chapter two of Abram. Now, the Lord God caused the famine to wax sore in the land of Ur, insomuch that Haran my brother died, and Terah my father yet lived in the land of Ur of the Chaldees. And it came to pass that I, Abram Ham, took Sarai to wife, and Nahor, my brother, took Milka to wife, and Was the. Who was the daughter of Haran? All of that information right there is a reflection of the priestly Source in Genesis 11. It's a revision of that.

David Bokovoy [00:14:29] But then, now here's the J material, verse 3. Now, the Lord had said unto me, abraham, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, and unto a land that I will show thee. And so notice how those are two different historical documents that contradict one another, that have been brought together in the Book of Abraham as if it is one single harmonious narrative put into the words of Abraham.

David Bokovoy [00:14:54] And that is an illustration of how source criticism presents direct challenges to the claims, traditional claims and assumptions regarding the Book of Abraham. How could this come from Abraham when we know that these are two separate historical sources written years, many centuries after he would have supposedly lived? And that's just one illustration of many, including the end of the Book of Abraham, which is going to again present a retelling of the opening chapters of Genesis with the priestly creation story and then the J creation story as if it's one harmonious text, all presented as if it's divine revelation from Abraham.

David Bokovoy [00:15:35] So I don't even know from my perspective really. I think the apologetic critic arguments that get into, you know, trying to analyze the papyri that is still in the church's possession and Joseph Smith working with it, to me, those are silly arguments, interesting historical arguments, very significant, but silly in the sense of, you know, as if there's an apologetic argument that could somehow then from that angle, taking it from that angle, sustain the traditional assumptions and narrative about the Book of Abraham, when all we have to do is actually go into the text itself and we can see the way that this was composed of separate historical traditions which that contradicted each other, that were put into the Bible, that the author of the Book of Abraham, you know, Joseph Smith, assumed from his perspective were all just one revelation originally from Moses, now put into the lips of Abraham.

John Dehlin [00:16:33] So I know you never use these words, but the way I interpret what you just said is all the work of John Gee of trying to find true Egyptian or historical sort of a basis for the belief that, that the Book of Abraham is a translation of a historic ancient document is just on a bad foundation.

David Bokovoy [00:17:01] That's exactly. I would be happy to use that exact term. It is a bad foundation because the reality is we have the Book of Abraham. We can analyze the Book of Abraham, its actual content, historically, critically, and it teaches us that this is a 19th century document that Someone has used the Bible to help produce.

John Dehlin [00:17:25] Right. What do you think about. And this is kind of jumping ahead a tiny bit, but tell us what the Catalyst theory is and what you think about that.

David Bokovoy [00:17:39] Okay, so I believed in the Catalyst Theory as a believing Latter Day Saint long before I had even heard what, you know, the term Catalyst. Catalyst theory. In fact, I don't know that I really love that term because it, it just, it. I think it's kind of confusing. The reality is someone like John Ge or Carrie Milstein, who actually believed that Joseph Smith literally translated the Book of Abraham from an Egyptian document that existed at one point, they still believe that that papyri was a catalyst for the revelation. So it can be a little bit confusing, but in essence, what apologists mean by that is, is that Joseph Smith did not have in his possession the actual Book of Abraham, but in his efforts to interpret and render that Egyptian papyri that he purchased from Michael Chandler, he then is inspired to produce the Book of Abraham.

John Dehlin [00:18:40] So that's so kind of like he did with the Book of Moses, somehow purchasing the papyra, having them sitting there with him wherever he was in Kirtland or whatever, having them in the room then gives him some creative prophetic juices to then channel from God a revelation much like he would have done with the Book of Moses without that same inspiration. Moses kind of begs the question, why would he need the scrolls if he could have just done it without.

David Bokovoy [00:19:12] He wouldn't have. But that's why it's very important to recognize that the evidence is clear historically that Joseph and his scribes believed that they were doing a literal translation, that they were interpreting literally those Egyptian characters and through inspiration, receiving that directly from God, and that it was a. A literal translation and that therefore something that made it very, very different from the revelation that was the Book of Moses.

John Dehlin [00:19:42] So you believe that Joseph believed he was translating the papyrus?

David Bokovoy [00:19:47] Oh, yeah, yeah. The evidence is very clear. He is definitely.

John Dehlin [00:19:50] And some of that evidence is, you

David Bokovoy [00:19:53] know, the characters that he is trying to define and interpret and explain. The new Joseph Smith Papers Project that was produced by my friend Ryan Hoglit, and it's very clear to me the evidence that this is something that is, as they write down characters from the text and then try to identify with the meaning of that, that they're using that as a translation document and source to produce the Book of Abraham. And, you know, long before the Joseph Smith Papers Project, Brent Metcalfe showing that quite effectively for years.

John Dehlin [00:20:30] Okay. Because that. So a couple questions come from that is that. That. That kind of seems to address the idea of it being a fraud or a forgery. That kind of, based on our discussion last episode, upgrades it from forgery to at least pseudepigrapha in the sense that there. It wasn't an intentional fraud to deceive for personal gain. It was. Is that fair or not fair?

David Bokovoy [00:20:57] Yeah, I don't see any evidence that it was to deceive for personal gain. Another way that I like to define it is prophetic midrash. Midrash is a term that is, you know, there is Jewish midrash. And I'm not saying that this. That's what this is with a capital M. But midrash we see happening in the Bible as well. And it's, as you know, authors tried to deal with gaps in the narrative or problems or inconsistencies. They would be very creative in. In producing elaborate forms of sacred text to answer those needs. And I see that Joseph Smith, you know, very much involved with that, which is, again, a venerable sacred tradition from. In. In Judaism and in early Christianity.

John Dehlin [00:21:43] So. Yeah. So just kind of creatively riffing, spontaneously, spiritually prophesying in conjunction with some existing material.

David Bokovoy [00:21:52] Sure. And Abraham, I mean, he is, you know, the father of three major world religions. I mean, you cannot get a more important.

John Dehlin [00:22:01] Christianity, Islam and Judaism and Judaism all

David Bokovoy [00:22:04] look to him as this great patriarchal figure. Whether he was a real historical figure or not, we have no evidence that he was. But regardless, he's still viewed upon as this great ancestral figure. And so what is Joseph Smith's text do? It takes that figure and makes him relevant, personally relevant for a Mormon community of believers, and then introduces doctrine about the premortal existence, the divine council of gods, all of these things that are. That Joseph is starting to come up with and that find their way in the Book of Abraham as inspired scripture.

John Dehlin [00:22:40] So we'll get to sort of some cool things about the Book of Abraham in a second. But going back to this question of the mechanics and what it all means. What does it mean? What does it mean for someone who either wants to believe the Book of Abraham is valid or is scripture, or for someone who wants to say it's not? What does it mean that Joseph didn't understand what he was doing, that he thought he was translating when he actually. Because the Rosetta Stone had not yet been discovered, so no one could read Egyptian at the time. So his guess was as good as anybody's, I guess. But at the same time, now we know, because the Rosetta Stone was discovered that it was wrong and he wasn't. What does that mean?

David Bokovoy [00:23:29] Yeah, it's. Well, I mean, one could obviously make an argument and I have no problem with people that say, oh, therefore it's, it's, it's just silly. It's all, you know, and gobbledygook that I really have no interest in. And I have no issue with people taking that perspective. I think it's perfectly logical. But on the flip side of that, I think my perspective that I have advocated for years is also perfectly logical for a believer. And that is, does it really matter that Joseph didn't understand the revelatory process? I don't expect perfection from my friends. I don't expect it from prophets, from sacred text or Scripture. And, you know, yeah, I wouldn't hold. Just because Joseph Smith misunderstood what was literally happening in the process, in my mind, does not mean that it's make the scripture any less sacred or inspired.

John Dehlin [00:24:24] And there was a note that I took in reading your book where I have you saying something to the effect of the Book of Abraham is no less legitimate than the Old Testament. In other words, could you find, and I think you addressed this in the last episode. Can you find pseudepigrapha in the Old Testament? Yeah, like. And, you know, so an example would be. You probably talked about this already, but.

David Bokovoy [00:24:48] Well, for example, like from the Old Testament, I'd say the one of my favorite examples we've discussed already a bit is Deutero Isaiah. I mean, the reason that material was attached to beginning with chapter 40, that that scroll of Isaiah is because somebody was writing as if they were the 9th century BCE prophet Isaiah or from that school of thought and felt that that addition needed to take place. We see it a lot more frequently in what is often referred to as, you know, from a Christian perspective, the intertestamental literature, which is a loaded Christian term.

David Bokovoy [00:25:29] But the material, like, you know, we've got lots of books that have been preserved from Isaiah, from Enoch, different books of Enoch, from, you know, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Apocalypse of Abraham, all these different books that were written by Jewish authors as if they were those figures from the past. And then that obviously happens in the New Testament, as we've already discussed with Peter and Paul.

John Dehlin [00:25:53] And so, and we'll get into this with the Book of Mormon because it's probably the biggest question about higher criticism in the Book of Mormon. You just said that Isaiah didn't write all of Isaiah.

David Bokovoy [00:26:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:06] That the latter portions of Isaiah were actually written by somebody else. But as pseudepigrapha in Isaiah's name.

David Bokovoy [00:26:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:26:15] And so I guess to me, where that becomes relevant is I'm sure that there are many people that leave Mormonism and become evangelical Christians, let's just say, like Sandra Tanner or Sean McCraney or, you know, whoever. Thousands of people have done that. You can see them discard the book of Abraham purely because it's pseudepigrapha or a book of Moses. And what I hear you saying is if you're going to apply that standard in this direction, you would necessarily need to apply it in the other direction too. And either say you're open to Scripture being a lot more flexible and nuanced and sophisticated and imperfect in both directions, or you got to throw it all out. Is that consistent?

David Bokovoy [00:27:05] Absolutely, John. In fact, you mentioned Grant Palmer in a previous discussion. And I got to know Grant a little bit after he wrote his book Insider's Guide to Mormonism. He came to couple lectures that I gave on historical Jesus and it was interesting to me. And you know, that Grant, especially when I gave a presentation on historical Jesus and it made Grant very uncomfortable. You know, he did not like it. And I just, and I'm not saying anything negative about Grant, who's a wonderful person, great human being, rest in peace, Grant, and a friend I consider. But I, it just didn't make sense to me that here was a man who was so critical about Joseph Smith. I mean, especially as things got going. I mean, Grant, you know, Grant, I

John Dehlin [00:27:58] mean, he just double barrels, he hated Joseph Smith.

David Bokovoy [00:28:02] I mean, he just had nothing good to say about Joseph Smith whatsoever and was so critically minded about Mormon scripture and Mormon history. But then he wouldn't take that into the Bible. And that lack of consistency was always a bit confusing to me. And he's certainly not the only one that is, that takes that approach. But yeah, it's, it's.

John Dehlin [00:28:24] Yeah, you're basically saying all scripture, Mormon, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, all scripture is messy, consistence, inconsistencies, anachronisms, pseudepigrapha, you know, questionable authorship, ahistoricity.

David Bokovoy [00:28:43] And isn't that beautiful?

John Dehlin [00:28:45] Yeah, that's where you're maybe a bit refreshing to my audience, or at least for some. And that's not to say you are necessarily an orthodox Christian or even a believer in God necessarily. You're just saying instead of that, condemning all scripture and making it invalidating all scripture, you're like, no, no, that. What do you mean it's more beautiful? What do you mean?

David Bokovoy [00:29:08] I think it's I think it's more beautiful from my perspective, to see the, The. The messiness of it all, to see

John Dehlin [00:29:15] why some would say messy, beautiful, messy, by definitions, gross and ugly. Beauty is beauty. Messy is not beauty.

David Bokovoy [00:29:22] I, I love. I love the. I love to see human beings struggling to try to verbalize their experiences with the divine and allowing their culture, their biases, everything come into the creation of sacred literature. Even when I disagree with what the final output is in terms of morality or what it might be. And I think that's all part of the process.

David Bokovoy [00:29:53] I don't know. I'm just attracted to that idea of humans, of being okay with the lack of perfection and allowing human imprint on the creation of something sublime. To me, that makes. Doesn't make, for example, the book of Abraham any less inspirational and less wonderful to have Joseph Smith as the author of it. I find it interesting then to jump in and see. Well, and try to figure out what was going on in Kirtland, Ohio, that led him to feel like he had a desire to create this. And what is the historical context? What can that teach us about the revelatory process? What can that teach us about Joseph Smith?

David Bokovoy [00:30:32] I. To. I guess that's what I mean when I say that. It's, It's. It's. I like it better because I'm. I'm able to then delve into questions that I, I would have. Along those lines.

John Dehlin [00:30:44] I would imagine you'd say as well, you like it. The messiness of it. Because it's real, because it's true.

David Bokovoy [00:30:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:52] Because it's vulnerable. And maybe it's kind of fun and creative at times. Even if there's dark and light, it's just more human.

David Bokovoy [00:31:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:01] And you love humans.

David Bokovoy [00:31:03] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:04] So why not love their scripture?

David Bokovoy [00:31:05] It's reflective of my own experience and, And I think everyone's experience. The reality is, I don't. I mean, sometimes we may think we're absolutely 100 right on track, and then years later, we look back from a different perspective angle and we thought, wow, I really blew that, or I'd sure do things differently now. It's good to allow for growth. It's good to allow for mistakes, for human error in each other, in our religious authority figures and in our sacred text.

John Dehlin [00:31:32] There was this quote from your book that I wrote down. The book of Abraham is. Someone wrote that. The book of Abraham is what Abraham would have written if given the chance.

David Bokovoy [00:31:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:45] And that was. It was a little bit maddening and outrageous to me when I read it. Who said that? And what did it mean? Was that you.

David Bokovoy [00:31:51] That was me. That was me. If. If from it. But from Joseph Smith's perspective.

John Dehlin [00:31:55] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:31:56] From Joseph's Smith perspective, this is what Abraham would have said if Abraham had. Was given a chance and he was given voice to that. From Joseph Smith's perspective, that's important to add, but.

John Dehlin [00:32:06] Yeah, but yet he didn't think he was doing pseudo pig or he thought

David Bokovoy [00:32:11] that on his, on his. By his own hand, upon papyri. I mean, he makes it very clear.

John Dehlin [00:32:17] And how could Joseph, just to push back a tiny bit on that. How could Joseph think he was translating when he wasn't? How could he have not known what he was doing? And I know you're. I'm the psychologist.

David Bokovoy [00:32:32] I was going to say. You are so funny. I was just going to say, John, I should ask you that. You're the psychologist. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:32:38] No. There are people that genuinely believe they've been abducted by aliens and they genuinely believe it.

David Bokovoy [00:32:43] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:32:45] We know that there are people that claim to have been there when Sidney Rigdon and Brigham Young were fighting, you know, over the succession of the church

David Bokovoy [00:32:54] and watched Joseph Smith, John de Lee and watched the transfiguration, and they weren't even there.

John Dehlin [00:32:58] And they were. We have boat records or ship cruise line records or whatever that they were in England at the time. Like, the human mind has incredible power.

David Bokovoy [00:33:07] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:33:08] To make you believe all sorts of things.

David Bokovoy [00:33:11] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:33:12] Why would that not be true of Joseph Smith?

David Bokovoy [00:33:14] Absolutely. And he, I mean, it just. I'm not, I'm not going to suggest that there weren't ever times in Joseph Smith's life where he thought, oh, if I produce this, this will help me get a following, this will help me get money, or this will be. Obviously he would. A complicated individual like all of us, and I'm sure those, those were drives that, that he dealt with. But at the same time, I think overall there's just, you know, he absolutely believed that what he was doing was the right thing. The call of God. I mean, Dan Vogel points out Section 19 of the Doctrine and Covenants where God in Joseph Smith's Revelation states, you know, let me tell you the truth.

David Bokovoy [00:33:59] I'll paraphrase it here. Right. Just for fun. But it's. Let me tell you the truth, there's really no such thing as eternal punishment, and there's really no such thing as eternal damnation. Nevertheless, I allow people to use that to scare the hell out of people because it works for their good. It works for the good of the saints. And in the hearts of men to think in those terms. So Dan Vogel points that out, you know, and he says, look, this is Joseph Smith's view of God, that God is in essence a pious fraud. So why would we think that Joseph Smith wouldn't feel justified in doing that on occasion if, if, if he felt God did that?

David Bokovoy [00:34:34] I think it's a very, it's an extremely valid point. And I, you know, I, I'm sure that was an element there to it. But at the, in the end, I also see Joseph Smith as sincere believer. I don't think he could do what he did and accomplish what he accomplished. And as I study and I read his writings and his revelations and you know, and I've read everything, I've read through all of Vogel's early Mormon documents here. I've read through about every resource that I have and I, I see a man who was complex and on a, and was overall speaking absolutely a true believer, that he was called of God to do what he did.

John Dehlin [00:35:14] That's, that's fascinating. Tell us really quickly who Robert Rittner is and what his role in all this is.

David Bokovoy [00:35:19] Okay, so Robert Rittner is an Egyptologist. John Gee, the LDS Egyptologist who works UCLA.

John Dehlin [00:35:26] What was his PhD?

David Bokovoy [00:35:27] Do you remember Yale?

John Dehlin [00:35:28] Yeah, yeah, that's right. Not, not a shoddy school.

David Bokovoy [00:35:31] No, not at all. And Robert Rittner.

John Dehlin [00:35:34] And wait, really quick. How do you explain John G. How do you explain you've known these people, you've interacted with them. How do you explain a Yale PhD Egyptologist who would go to such lengths to try and explain kind of the unexplainable to. I think you line up 100 non Mormon people, you kind of tell them the story, you lay out the evidence.

John Dehlin [00:36:02] I think 100 or 99 out of 100, if not 100, are all going to kind of arrive at the similar kind of conclusion about how this all happened? Now, maybe I'm overstating it, but I don't think I'm overstating that too much here. You have a Yale trained PhD Egyptologist that's going to dedicate his life and reputation to defending the indefensible, to defending kind of objective untruth or a position that is falsifiable from many, many different angles. Help us. And I'm not asking you to speak for John G.

John Dehlin [00:36:38] Or, and I'm not asking you to be critical of him because I know you wouldn't be anyway. But how does that phenomenon of a John G. Happen? Well, I, if you had to explain it.

David Bokovoy [00:36:49] You know, I mean, I'm, I'm similar in the sense. I mean, I, the reason I did historical critical biblical scholarship is because I believed with all my heart might, mind and soul in the Bible, in Joseph Smith's work. And I felt called of God to pursue that education so that I could bring that back and, and help the church.

David Bokovoy [00:37:17] Yeah, there weren't. I mean, you know, there weren't. There were. There are very few people in latter day, the history of Latter Day Saint movements who've had critical training in Bible scholarship. And that is something that I was interested in. I felt the doors opened somewhat miraculously for me to do as a father of four small children. And I felt driven, absolutely driven to provide, to use my scholarship to help build the kingdom.

David Bokovoy [00:37:47] And that's how I see John Gee and Carrie Mealstein as well, even though I disagree with them obviously in their scholarship and what they're doing. So I would just explain it that way. And when you are that driven, it's, you know, it's.

David Bokovoy [00:38:00] You feel called. And I, I'm assuming that that's similar to their feelings of it on the matter. You know, Kerry Milstein just wrote a. Another Mormon Egyptologist at byu, just wrote an. An article for the Insign that just came out recently, you know, a couple weeks ago. And in it he opens up, basically, the first paragraph says that, you know, that all that really matters is revelation when it comes to assessing the book of Abraham.

John Dehlin [00:38:28] And, and that's a pivot, right?

David Bokovoy [00:38:31] Yeah. Well, the thing that frustrates me about that is then, then why are we advertising that you're an Egyptologist, if that's all that matters, why does your training matter?

John Dehlin [00:38:40] I can say that, you know, why does it.

David Bokovoy [00:38:41] Why does it matter? Or, you know, and then before that, a couple of years ago at a fair presentation, Kerry did the same thing. He kind of came out and he began the presentation saying something along the lines that whenever I find new information, I immediately make it fit into my religious convictions about the book of Abraham. So I analyze all the material from that perspective, and the truth is, is I don't have any issue with that, John. It does. It would. That would never work for me, ever work for me. But if it works for other people, that's fine. That is absolutely fine. But then why are we pretending that a degree in Egyptology matters?

David Bokovoy [00:39:20] Why are we pretending that scholarship matters on some level and that scholarship can sustain our religious assumptions when in reality all that really matters is revelation? To me, we have to be consistent. So either say, revelation is all that really matters and so we don't really care about scholarship, or then be consistent, say, yeah, we actually value scholarship. So let's take the whole of it into perspective and not pick and choose the parts that will sustain our traditional religious narratives. And that's my big issue with what I see in Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, apologetics and what frustrates me.

John Dehlin [00:39:54] Yeah. Because the Q15 could just short circuit apologetics and say, Book of Moses, Book of Abraham, New Testament, Old Testament, Book of Mormon. It's all revelation, period. Sure, that's it. Who cares about the mechanics and how it happened? Gift and power of God, revelation. Let's move on. You don't need a department. You don't need the Maxwell Institute or FARMS or Fair of Mormon and annual fair conferences and a huge fair Mormon website with all these tomes and tomes of explanations and all these debates. If in reality it really comes down to just revelation.

David Bokovoy [00:40:27] Yeah. And I think that's the way that it, it should go because it, as it stands right now, by doing poor scholarship and just picking and choosing and acting as if it's a big deal that this Insight article has been written by a professionally trained Egyptologist, but then really coming down to it doesn't really matter. All that matters is revelation. You know, that's, that's inconsistent. And I think we should. That that's why it's unhealthy right now and why I think so many believing Mormons who start to learn and delve about these things and delve into these waters, all of a sudden they feel deceived. And that's not good.

John Dehlin [00:41:04] Yeah, that's not good. Okay. So I'm going to scratch the surface a tiny bit more because there was David Bacavoy as a believer who was still holding a more realistic, sophisticated view of the Book of Abraham. So what's the difference between a John Gee and a believing David Bacavoy who was willing to kind of describe reality versus sort of deny reality? Because both of those dudes were believers, right?

David Bokovoy [00:41:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:37] What was it that allowed you to sort of go with the Catalyst Theory, whereas Guy wouldn't. What would make a Guy reject the Catalyst Theory in the way that we generally think about the Catalyst Theory?

David Bokovoy [00:41:52] Because they, I would say, do not have training, and they don't have training in historical criticism. And I'm not suggesting that they're not smart, they're not intelligent, they're not brilliant.

John Dehlin [00:42:04] They are Yale, PhD. That's all you got to say.

David Bokovoy [00:42:07] These are brilliant. Men.

John Dehlin [00:42:08] Yeah.

David Bokovoy [00:42:08] And they have wonderful training in their respective fields, but in the end, they're not Bible scholars. And it's through reading the Bible critically and looking at it seriously that that shifted my viewpoint of Scripture and where I was much more open than to take a non traditional view of it that I wouldn't have been able to do. And I think. And it goes back to, you know, I'm not saying anything about John or Carrie. I don't know their stories well enough. But if you'll go. We go back and remember, I was told by a BYU religion professor, don't do Bible, do Egyptology, do assyriology, do comparative Semitics, do anything but Bible.

David Bokovoy [00:42:49] And this is not unique to Mormonism. Evangelical conservative Christians groups have done this for decades. They'll send their personnel to Yale, to Brandeis, to Harvard, to Berkeley, to these great programs, but they won't actually do Bible. They'll do like a history of Bible scholarship or they'll do Egyptology and then they return back to their respective faith communities as experts in Bible because they have this peripheral expertise and training and they've never had to engage the actual Scripture critically and carefully. And that's really fundamentally what makes the difference. And it's why, you know, not that I ever had the all the answers or pretended to have them, but it's what I wanted to do for church education is to say, look, this isn't going anywhere.

David Bokovoy [00:43:42] It's all out there. It's now. We live in a world of information accessibility. Let me help. Let me just help and offer this gift to my community, to my church that I love so dearly and help them help you say, it's okay, we can still go forward, we can move as a people. Not that these are all the right answers, but there are ways of making this, this work. But it just, it's just, you know, at least professionally didn't work for me as much as I tried to.

John Dehlin [00:44:13] I'm trying to imagine four or five years at a PhD program studying the Bible, but walling yourself off from, from all the tools and all the full, robust, you know, understandings of that discipline. How do you survive four or five years? Not really digging into historical criticism. Historical criticism. Getting a PhD in biblical studies like I would. I think that deserves its own book on how somebody would find a way to kind of avoid learning or thinking about the prevail. It's almost like a biologist trying to do biology. Never accepting of evolution. Yeah. As a foundation. Right?

David Bokovoy [00:44:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:59] It would be like an adventure and absurdity, almost and

David Bokovoy [00:45:04] that's why these people from different faith groups will do Egyptology or do these other fields, because they want to delve into the topic, but they don't want to have to have their traditional paradigms, religious paradigms, deconstructed. And they know that their viewpoints of Mosaic authorship or whatever it might be that they cling to would never be accepted by the academic community. So they avoid it and then return to their scholars. But.

John Dehlin [00:45:31] And then it's just hard to imagine how their conscience doesn't sort of prick through and say, you know, some. Some warning lights going off saying, you're denying something that everybody believes and understands within this discipline. You're avoiding it. At some point, you'd think they would go, wow, I kind of am. And doing something that is on a shaky foundation, but somehow they just kind of barrel forward and spend decades in the same pursuit. Right.

David Bokovoy [00:46:00] Well, if. And if your religious convictions are so deep and entrenched, I. It, yeah, it makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:46:08] Yeah.

David Bokovoy [00:46:09] I just, I had, I went down the second I made that decision to say, okay, I appreciate the advice, but I want to do Bible. And I won't buy any of these things, but I want to understand it. The second I made that choice, it was, well, my life would never be the same. And they were, you know, I don't look back at those. At that advice I was given by those BYU professors and think, oh, how unsophisticated or naive. I mean, they were right. I mean, the reality, look what happened to me at BYU and church education. I was always deemed as someone who was a threat, someone to be concerned about, someone who was, we better watch, because we don't know what's going to happen with him. And that was a hard position for them to be in, and it was certainly hard for me and my family.

John Dehlin [00:47:00] And it's just. It's super problematic. And Bill, Real, in his recent disciplinary council, just is pounding on this idea that it's disconcerting when a religion that claims to be, you know, run by God and Jesus Christ himself is willing to throw the truth under the bus for convenience and is unwilling to face the realities of truth. I mean, I, you know, my favorite hymn was, oh, say what is Truth? You know, as a Mormon, truth always mattered to me. And it's. It's weird when this church, that so many people put their full trust and confidence and build their lives upon it, when they're almost at sometimes allergic or hostile to truth.

David Bokovoy [00:47:46] Yeah, I see a little differently in the sense, I think these are sincere for the most part. Sincere men who, you know, whether we're talking local priesthood leaders or all the way up, who, when they're exposed to things like this, think, okay, we don't have an answer, but there'll be an answer somewhere down the road that will make sense. So in the meantime, let's not allow this to distract what we're supposed to do. And those who are calling for, hey, let's get answers to this historical issue or let's address this matter of scholarship.

David Bokovoy [00:48:27] When they feel that the Lord hasn't spoken on the matter, you know, that concerns them, they feel threatened by it and want to. Want to protect the institution, want to protect the general church members. So I get it. I get where they're coming from, and I appreciate that, that it comes from a place of sincerity. It's just. I just feel like I'm just a little bit different wired.

John Dehlin [00:48:54] Just to be clear. I'm not saying they're bad people. Yeah. And I'm not saying they're intentionally defrauding or misleading people.

David Bokovoy [00:49:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:02] But I'm. But I am saying that there is aversion to truth. There is. There is an aversion to truth. That doesn't fit the narrative.

David Bokovoy [00:49:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:11] You know, that doesn't fit the narrative that. The popular narrative or the convenient narrative. And then there's a willingness to punish people that are advocating what we would all agree to is true, that that comes at a high human cost.

David Bokovoy [00:49:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:29] And I'm not saying they're bad people or the church is bad, but I'm. I think that's. That's kind of evident.

David Bokovoy [00:49:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:35] From. From Juanita Brooks to Fawn Brody to little Bennion to Eugene England. David Wright.

David Bokovoy [00:49:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:43] September 6th. Michael Quinn.

David Bokovoy [00:49:45] Even in my life, even though I haven't been disciplined, and I don't ever see that happening, but I. But it just. It was hard to be in church education and to try and. And to try and help along these lines when that help wasn't wanted.

John Dehlin [00:50:01] Yeah.

David Bokovoy [00:50:03] That was hard.

John Dehlin [00:50:04] Super hard. Yeah.

David Bokovoy [00:50:07] And I don't blame them. I blame.

John Dehlin [00:50:08] No. Myself, you know, I don't know about that. What do you mean?

David Bokovoy [00:50:12] I blame myself in the sense that. Not that I feel like I did something wrong, but I mean, I'm the one that chose to study what I said. I'm the one who said I want to help the church. Church never asked me to do any of those things. It's not their fault. It's just, you know, that. It's just I. They were my choices. I own them. I accept them and I'm grateful I made them. But from that perspective, I'm to blame. Does that make. Did I.

John Dehlin [00:50:37] It does. I remember. I remember an interview I did with Albert Peck. Albert Peck, one of the early editors of Sunstone magazine. And if I'm remembering the story right, Gordon B. Hinckley calls him in. And this is when Sunstone was becoming really controversial. And Gordon Hinckley says to Albert Peck, who called you to this? In other words, you think you're helping us. We didn't ask for this help. Exactly, exactly.

David Bokovoy [00:51:08] I, I felt that it was needed and that. And that God wanted me to do it. And I still do.

John Dehlin [00:51:17] It's so sweet. It's so sweet that you had that impulse and it's so sacred.

David Bokovoy [00:51:24] Yeah, yeah. I, I, Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:26] But then it, it, in some ways, it ended in a violent way. And I don't mean physically violent, but kind of emotionally and spiritually.

David Bokovoy [00:51:33] It was hard. It was hard the whole deal. But it, you know, you and I have talked about this before off, off the air. But I just. You cannot really go in. You cannot try to just coast. If you just want to coast through life, it's going to be easy and you won't run into too many challenges or problems. But if you want to really push to try to help people, to help institutions, to make a change in the world, to do things different, to get beat up along the way, that's just part of that. Just goes with the territory. You have to accept that. Otherwise, just coast. And I'm not a coaster, and neither are you. And that's, you know, that's part of the process.

John Dehlin [00:52:12] Amen, brother. I can relate a little bit to that. Yeah. All right, back to Robert Rittner, who's Robert Ritter? Really quick.

David Bokovoy [00:52:18] Okay, so Robert Rittner, I can't remember where he. I'm not an Egyptologist.

John Dehlin [00:52:22] Chicago.

David Bokovoy [00:52:23] Is he. Oh, he's at Chicago now. That's right. Yep. He is at Chicago now, at least. Last I heard, he was at Yale when John Geese studied with him. And he developed an interest. I don't know if it was through John or. He already had that kind of. In the Book of Abraham and so started publishing. He wrote for the Journal of Near Eastern Studies on the Book of Abraham, the LDS Book of Abraham, showing why it was not ancient and authentic. And then did. Most of his most recent publication was with signature book where he goes through and, you know, really critiques. Nibley, critiques John. He. John G. In the footnotes, Carrie Millstein and their, Their scholarship And you know, shows the human influence that is found in the, in the Book of Abraham.

John Dehlin [00:53:09] Is he applying historical criticism? Absolutely. Okay. Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:53:13] Yeah. From an Egyptological perspective, not from a biblical perspective. There are a couple of biblical scholars that write in the introduction on the Ur of the Chaldees and some of those issues that are topic. But he's an Egyptologist. But yeah. And a great one.

John Dehlin [00:53:26] So he, he's kind of like Michael Coe is to Book of Mormon archaeology what Robert Rittner is to the Book of Abraham.

David Bokovoy [00:53:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:35] Kind of a non Mormon scholar that cared enough to dig in and then the comment on modern apologetics. Yeah, in that realm.

David Bokovoy [00:53:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:44] And he kind of tears Guy and Milstein apart, I guess, or their arguments.

David Bokovoy [00:53:48] Certainly in the footnotes. It gets pretty volatile. Too volatile for my taste. Even though I, I, I don't know Robert Rittner personally. I've had some email exchanges with him and he, he's an excellent scholar, one of the best. And his publications, especially in the Book of Abraham, need to be taken seriously. I had a lot more written, I'll just admit this. I had a lot more written or cited in my book authoring the Old Testament. And my editor was like, well, don't know that. You don't know that.

John Dehlin [00:54:19] You need. All right. Or we call him.

David Bokovoy [00:54:22] He was like, you know what? He's like, all this is going to do is upset people that are really traditionally minded that you're relying so heavily on this very critical scholar. Let's take this out. And Lloyd was right because there was no need for me to just rehash stuff that he had already written, but you know, to put it into the context of that book. So Good, good move, Lloyd.

John Dehlin [00:54:43] Lloyd's going to give you grief about that. The book is the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri, a complete edition by Robert Rittner, PhD. So. And that is, that's the signature books. Signature books book that you mentioned. Excellent. So we'll put that maybe in the show notes. Yeah, but that's worth, that's worth mentioning. Okay, so I guess let's conclude by just what we did before. Tell us a couple beautiful things about the Book of Abraham that would, that would give a questioning or doubting or even post Mormon reason to not come. Completely discard the book. Do you have a couple things and you, you referenced a few things earlier.

David Bokovoy [00:55:21] Yeah, yeah. I, I think the, the, the construct of human premortal existence that comes out of there and you know, is just a beautiful way of looking at our lives and, and the structuring of the universe. I think it's fascinating to see Joseph Smith's presentation of. Of gods in the plural, especially in the creation and narrative, as he reworks the priestly narrative to God's creating in reflection of his evolving theology at that time period. To see the way that Joseph Smith is incorporating his study of Hebrew. The book of Abraham is the way that it is because Joseph Smith was studying Hebrew at the time. And we can document those historical influences in the creation of the narrative. And I. I think that's beautiful to uncover and to see.

John Dehlin [00:56:09] Excellent. Somebody asks. There's a couple questions from our listeners. One was it was around the statement of the book of Abraham being what. What Abraham would have written if he could have. The reader writes. That sort of logic or justification makes my head spin. I know I'm not a biblical scholar and this is my first fray in a higher criticism, but it leaves me scratching my head and wondering whether you really believe this or if that's just spin you had to take to keep your job with the church. Now, what I heard you say was that you believe that's what Joseph Smith believed.

David Bokovoy [00:56:44] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:56:45] That's not what you believe. I don't mean to answer for you, but.

David Bokovoy [00:56:47] No, no, no. I don't know if Abraham. If Abraham was a real person.

John Dehlin [00:56:55] That's the first question.

David Bokovoy [00:56:56] Yeah. I mean, there's no evidence that he was. I mean, all we have is the Bible and that comes so many centuries later and is so anachronistic and so mythological and all of it to use that to say, okay, he's real.

David Bokovoy [00:57:12] And I don't know that historians can say one way or the other based upon that. So if you believe that Abraham was a real historical figure, that is a. That's a matter of faith. That's a religious theological assumption and just own it. Own it. I believe this because that's my religious conviction. I know there's no evidence, but I just. I believe it and just own it. That's what I would encourage people to do.

David Bokovoy [00:57:37] So what I'm saying is not that the book of Abraham is what Abraham would have written if he had. Was given a chance, because I don't even know if there really was such a figure in the real world. It's Joseph Smith giving voice to that. Joseph Smith's perspective. This is what Abraham would have shared if he was given a chance.

John Dehlin [00:57:57] Yeah.

David Bokovoy [00:57:58] It's different.

John Dehlin [00:57:59] Yeah.

David Bokovoy [00:57:59] Yeah. And I don't. And hopefully not too complicated to. To understand. I know it's. I think when. When people say it leaves me Scratching my head and stuff like that. It's because, and I don't mean to be dismissive of where anyone is at in this faith journey, but I think it's a reflection of the fact that we as Latter Day Saints have been taught to think in this binary worldview that it's the Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham. It's either all true or it's all false. And, you know, it's. It's hard to shift out of that perspective if that's been your mindset for 30, 40 years that you've been raised with. So I'm not speaking critically of anyone. I just, I understand why you. It would be hard, but there is another way of logically looking at these things if you step outside of that box.

John Dehlin [00:58:45] One, one final question about Book of Abraham from listeners. And I don't know if you even know, but do you believe that the Egyptian grammar book is the work of Phelps, or do you believe Joseph came up with the translations of the Egyptian characters found on the Horus scroll?

David Bokovoy [00:59:00] I think it's primarily Joseph Smith, but I do believe that, you know, he was taking Phelps's and others imprint and that that was no doubt captured. I think all of these men were familiar with Abrahamic lore and tradition. That was found in Adam Clark's commentary, that was found in Messianic rituals, that was found in Josephus, was found in all of these sources, and they were very well read and they were able to take that information and bring it into the context of a project that Joseph Smith himself oversaw. There's no doubt in my mind that that's what took place.

John Dehlin [00:59:38] Okay. All right. Well, that wraps up our application of historical criticism at a high level to the Book of Abraham.

New Testament Higher Criticism and Christology

Part 4 of 4 · Ep. 1022

John Dehlin [00:00:25] Foreign. It's time to move to what you wanted to talk about, the New Testament before we jump to the Book of Mormon, because we've kind of. Now, because. Because Moses and Abraham were kind of part of the Old Testament now. We've covered Old Testament, Book of Moses, Book of Abraham, chronologically, the next step would be the New Testament.

David Bokovoy [00:00:47] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:00:48] So let's, let's move to New Testament.

David Bokovoy [00:00:50] Yeah, let's do that. Just for. And I think what I'll do for that is because I, as I've mentioned, I. I love historical Jesus studies. In fact, I finished my dissertation in 2012, and I've done a couple of little publications on Hebrew Bible topics Since then, but 99% of my research since 2012 has all been on historical Jesus.

John Dehlin [00:01:14] Maybe we need to have you back to have that episode.

David Bokovoy [00:01:16] Hey, that'd be fun.

John Dehlin [00:01:17] Would you do that?

David Bokovoy [00:01:18] Oh, yeah. I taught historical Jesus for about three years at Utah State University and loved it.

John Dehlin [00:01:22] It's. Capture some of that learning.

David Bokovoy [00:01:24] Yeah, it's, it's, it's a wonderful topic. And as I've mentioned before, I have this deep love for Jesus. Well, the, the first time I'll share this story, because it is Mormon stories, first time I was ever exposed to historical Jesus analysis and a historical critical reading of the New Testament was at Brandeis when I was working on my master's. We had a visiting scholar by the name of E.P. sanders, very famous New Testament historian Ed Sanders. And he came to Brandeis to teach for a semester. And I was thrilled.

David Bokovoy [00:02:01] So I jumped into his classes and took those. And those were my first. That was my first exposure to a critical reading in the New Testament. And that was actually harder for me. And this is not. I was not atypical of this. I know a lot of Hebrew Bibles, scholars who have Christian backgrounds, and they're very critical readers of the Hebrew Bible, but they don't even want to touch critical New Testament studies because that's. That takes it. That's a lot more difficult.

John Dehlin [00:02:33] Too sacred.

David Bokovoy [00:02:34] Too sacred for him. I shouldn't say know a lot. I know a few that are like that, but it's. That's harder because that cuts to the core. I mean, it's one thing.

John Dehlin [00:02:44] It's one thing to mess with Moses. It's another thing to mess with Jesus.

David Bokovoy [00:02:47] It is. It is. Even Latter Day Saints. Of course.

John Dehlin [00:02:50] Especially Latter Day Saints.

David Bokovoy [00:02:52] Yeah. And it's just so. I remember John, the first time I sat in this class, and I was. I was loving it, but I also felt dirty.

John Dehlin [00:03:02] Yeah.

David Bokovoy [00:03:02] I did, and quite threatened by it. I remember there. And there was one in particular. He started exposing us to this idea that was written about by John Dominique Cross, and who was a famous New Testament scholar about Mark's Gospel and the invention of the pericope concerning Barabbas. And it fit too perfectly from his perspective to have actually be a reflection of historical events. The Gospel of Mark is a wartime gospel. It's written about 68 or so CE, so right when the Jews are revolting against Rome. And it incorporates a lot of those themes into the. Into the account.

John Dehlin [00:03:43] And again, CE is common era, meaning translate that into AD for those who lived a long time ago.

David Bokovoy [00:03:49] So, and then Cross. And then I learned in Sanders course, he makes the argument that, okay, first of all, it's Passover. It's a really volatile time period, and the Romans are there in Jerusalem to ensure the peace. If there was really, there's no way that Pilate, knowing everything we know about him historically, would have released a man who was a violent robber, a zealot fighting against Rome. He never would have released them. And then we have no evidence of such a, you know, event happening at trials of crucifixion whatsoever.

David Bokovoy [00:04:25] So it's inconsistent historically with what we know to be true of the past. But it also fits the narrative because bar is Aramaic for son and Abbas, father. So you have a choice for the Jewish people, the congregation, to choose the real son of the Father, who from Mark's perspective, became the son of the Father at his baptism.

David Bokovoy [00:04:47] Or you have this violent, revolutionary son of the Father, Barabbas. And Jerusalem ultimately chooses the way of violence and the way of the zealot and revolution, instead of going with the Son of the Father who wanted peace. And so they chose the way of the zealot as opposed to the way of peace. And I remember I heard that for the first time. I'm like, oh, that makes so much sense. And it felt dirty. I felt bad. I just. It really bothered me because you're messing with the Jesus story. And I love Jesus so much. And it was really hard for me at first, but then I just let it simmer for a while.

David Bokovoy [00:05:27] And the more I did, I was like, you know what? It just really makes a lot of sense. It's probably what took place otherwise. It does. And then once I allowed for that, even as a believer in Jesus, I looked at it and I thought, how awesome is that? That it's okay? So it's not history, but it is a beautiful theological presentation about the past that Illustrates a very significant point.

David Bokovoy [00:05:52] Every one of us has a choice. Are we going to go with the powers of the world that try to overcome through violence and through worldly power, or are we going to try and make a difference by, you know, going against that grain? So it's a beautiful theological message, but it took me a long time to get there before I was ready to. To. To do that. And then. So that must have been in 1998. I guess it would have been 1998. And. And then as the years went on, it just became this huge passion of mine that I've developed that I've devoted a lot of attention and time towards, more so than the Hebrew Bible, even since finishing my dissertation in 2012.

David Bokovoy [00:06:31] But I. I guess maybe more of an example then of how that relates, because we're really. We're concerned about how does that relate to Mormon scripture.

John Dehlin [00:06:38] Right, right, right.

David Bokovoy [00:06:40] So. And I can illustrate that by talking, returning to a conversation that we had earlier where I talked about the historical development of Christology that is very clearly marked in the texts that are found in the New Testament, from the rituals and hymns that are embedded in the epistles that reflect the earliest Christological view held by followers of Jesus, that Jesus became the Son of God at his.

David Bokovoy [00:07:08] At his death and went through his resurrection to the new theological Christology that we see Mark present, which, no, Jesus became the special Son of God who God chose as the Son of God, whatever that meant, means something different for each source at his baptism. And that. And then Matthew and Luke, which come next in line, historically push that to the virgin birth. No, he was the Son of God at birth. And then John's Gospel, which is the latest, written at the end of the first century. John is the one that starts off in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God.

David Bokovoy [00:07:44] Verse 14. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And all throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus is God. I mean, he says, I am the great, I am. I am the bread of life. I am this. He talks about himself in his divinity constantly.

John Dehlin [00:08:03] So the later the gospel was written, the earlier they're claiming Jesus became the Son of God. Is that right? In his life?

David Bokovoy [00:08:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:08:12] So in Christology would be the study of figuring out when Jesus became the Son of God.

David Bokovoy [00:08:17] Yeah. The view of Christ and Messiah and what that means, because they were all

John Dehlin [00:08:23] looking for a messiah.

David Bokovoy [00:08:25] No, actually, probably most Jews were not looking for a Messiah at the time of Jesus.

John Dehlin [00:08:30] Really?

David Bokovoy [00:08:31] Yeah, most Jews probably were not. But those who were looking For a Messiah had different viewpoints. We see that from the Dead Sea scroll community. We see it from other sources. Some believed that this Messiah would come and restore proper priesthood ordinances and rituals in the temple that they believed were corrupted. Others believed that the Messiah would be a conquering hero and liberate the Jewish people from Rome. Whatever the viewpoint that Jewish groups held about the Messiah, the one thing that they held, the one common denominator was that the Messiah would come and be a figure of great power and grandeur.

David Bokovoy [00:09:08] One thing that none of them believed was that the Messiah would come and suffer and be conquered by Rome and executed as a political insurrectionist. Nobody believed that. And so that's actually a very important piece of historical information. Why scholars, historians say well Jesus was real because he didn't meet the expectations that everybody had. The Jewish community had to actually go to their Hebrew Bible text and force, find typology and symbolism, things that they felt alluded to the concept of a suffering Messiah because none of them believed that that would transpire.

David Bokovoy [00:09:44] And so that is actually pretty strong evidence for his, the fact that he was a real person who lived and walked on the face of the earth. Because no one's going to make up a myth about someone who fails to meet every expectation and flies in the face of, of of all everything that people believed at the time concerning the Messiah. I mean there's other pieces of evidence as well.

David Bokovoy [00:10:06] But the thing to note about that for Mormon Scripture is how Joseph Smith then how his, his revelations run into direct conflict with the New Testament. Because of historical criticism, we could look at it in terms of the Book of Mormon and the fact that Matthew for example, the Sermon on the Mount, scholars are convinced that Jesus never gave that sermon. It was the author of the account. It's an amalgamation of different things that Jesus supposedly said at time that are put into that form. Yet Jesus appears in the Book of Mormon re giving that, that sermon word for word in a way that would not have made sense to people of ancient America because so many of the themes are connected with first century Palestine and Jewish life at that time period.

David Bokovoy [00:10:56] So those are challenges that his scripture faces. But this one in particular I'll show this because this is so interesting, I think so in section for our audience will probably remember that in DNC section 93, the LDS doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith restores lost writings from John, the author of the Book of John.

David Bokovoy [00:11:19] Well, I'll notice for example verse 8. I'm in DNC 93 verse 8. Therefore in the beginning The Word was. And he was the Word, even the messenger of salvation, the light and the redeemer of the world, the spirit of truth. You'd think you were reading from the Gospel of John there. It's all Johannine language. Who came into the world because the world was made by him, and in him was the life of men and the light of men. Worlds were made by him. This is all Johannine. John's literature really wants to emphasize this idea of contrast between light and dark. And then we read first person.

David Bokovoy [00:11:54] And I, John, bear record that I beheld his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father. And then move down to verses 12 and 13. In Joseph Smith's Revelation I, John saw that he received not of the fullness at the first, but received grace for grace. And he received not of the fullness at first, but continued from grace to grace until he received a fullness. And thus meaning, therefore, meaning because he did not receive a fullness at first, but he received it a little bit by a little bit here and grew and grew. He was called the Son of God, and I underlined, called the Son of God because he received a knot of the fullness at first.

John Dehlin [00:12:34] That's very different than what Mormons are taught, John. That's alarming.

David Bokovoy [00:12:38] Oh, John. The fact of the matter is the author of the Gospel of John would have been so offended by this language.

John Dehlin [00:12:45] Right?

David Bokovoy [00:12:45] Because that's the gospel where Jesus wasn't called the Son of God. Jesus was the Son of God from the beginning. He didn't receive grace for grace. It was all from the beginning.

John Dehlin [00:12:54] What was that again? What was that?

David Bokovoy [00:12:55] That was DNC section 93, verse 14. That's presented as if it's John's language. But John would never have said that. Mark could have said something like that, that he was called the Son of God at his baptism. But even Luke and Matthew would have struggled a little bit with that because he's born as the Son of God. This idea here reflects a theology, a Christology that is completely antithetical to the. To what the author of the Gospel of John would have written. There's no way he could have been responsible for any of this material. Yet it's presented that way in Joseph Smith's revelation that presents a significant challenge for traditional believers once they're exposed to higher criticism in the New Testament and to see how that affects Mormon scripture.

John Dehlin [00:13:38] And I would imagine that Joseph Smith just had this idea of eternal progression, that even Jesus progressed. Is that. How do you make sense of.

David Bokovoy [00:13:47] Sure that it's a reflection of Joseph Smith's theology.

John Dehlin [00:13:49] Right?

David Bokovoy [00:13:49] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:13:51] But he's attributing it to John.

David Bokovoy [00:13:53] Yeah, this is received.

John Dehlin [00:13:54] And John would have.

David Bokovoy [00:13:54] 33.

John Dehlin [00:13:55] John would have flipped in his grave, you're saying.

David Bokovoy [00:13:57] Yeah, exactly. Because he was called the Son of God. You see that there? No, yeah, but that. Joseph Smith does this all the time. He receives, he authors revelation in the first person for ancient prophetic figures of the past and writes what they should have said or would have said from his. Joseph Smith's perspective if they had been given a chance with the fullness of the perspective that he felt that he was. He had obtained at that time.

John Dehlin [00:14:28] Okay. All right.

David Bokovoy [00:14:30] So I, I mean, I, I think. And we could do. We could do hours on the New Testament, but I think that's just semesters. Yeah, it was certainly. But just. I think that's a good, quick illustration of how Joseph Smith's revelations are impacted through higher criticism in the New Testament. And it's all over the place.

John Dehlin [00:14:47] And I want to refer listeners to the Bart Ehrman episode where we talk about this, but just as a second witness. Out of the mouth of two or three witnesses, all truth will be established. Does the New Testament have contradictions and acronyms, all the same problems that we ascribe to Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon and Old Testament now, and Book of Moses?

David Bokovoy [00:15:08] Absolutely. All we have to do is just. I would invite our listeners to do is just line up the resurrection story in the four Gospels and just look at the differences, look at the contradictions, look at the problems. For many, many years, the Bible is treated as a privileged text. And so those were all.

John Dehlin [00:15:25] Even by. Even by scholars, Christian scholars. Right.

David Bokovoy [00:15:28] Harmonized to make sense instead of actually just taking the words, making the words mean actually what they say on the text.

John Dehlin [00:15:36] And Ehrman talked about this. But who's at the. Who's at the tomb when you know, when it's rolled back and who Jesus talks to and what he says. It's. It's.

David Bokovoy [00:15:48] It all changes.

John Dehlin [00:15:48] It's not just, you know, different points of view. It's not just some things are left out and other things are included. It's contradictory information. Is that right?

David Bokovoy [00:15:59] Absolutely. And you can.

John Dehlin [00:16:01] Mutually exclusive information.

David Bokovoy [00:16:02] Yeah, yeah. So, well, a great illustration of that. And we. You were kind of talking about this, you know, in the marking account of the crucifixion, Jesus starts to doubt himself at the end. Right. He's like, you know, calling upon his father and, you know, and my God, my God, why have you forsaken me. And this fits into all of Mark's themes that are found. It's so perfect for Mark, where no one understands who Jesus is in Mark, except for Mark the author.

David Bokovoy [00:16:30] You, the reader, know the demons know who he is. Right. But none of his disciples, his family doesn't know who he is. Even Jesus doubts himself at the very end. Well, Matthew and Luke used Mark to create their gospel narratives. And what do they leave out? Jesus making that assertion. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because that was uncomfortable to them to have Jesus doubt at the end when he's going full well, knowing what he's supposed to do, to suffer and die. So you see those sorts of changes and grow, that sort of growth theologically. And it's. I think it's exciting to see it.

David Bokovoy [00:17:06] And for a traditional believer, yeah, it causes challenges, but at the same time, that's my whole argument, always was. You know what? Mormonism has all of the tools necessary to be able to handle stuff like this. It really does. With the Scriptures. And looking at it, it's just if you know it can handle it. Granted, it's going to cause some serious stretching and the eradication of traditional paradigms of truth, but it's got the skills. It can handle it.

John Dehlin [00:17:37] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Really quickly, why didn't your book cover the Joseph Smith translation of the New Testament? Any. Any reason why you left that out

David Bokovoy [00:17:49] of the New Testament?

John Dehlin [00:17:49] Yeah, Joseph Smith translation of the.

David Bokovoy [00:17:52] The. It's supposed to be a series, and this was volume one. And.

John Dehlin [00:17:58] But I mean, you cover Book of Moses, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon. Oh, you would think you would throw in the Joseph Smith translation.

David Bokovoy [00:18:05] I see. Well, I kind of linked the Joseph Smith translation with the Book of Moses since it was part of that. Okay, that's kind of. I was thinking in those terms, but he.

John Dehlin [00:18:13] There's. He rewrote parts of the New Testament, Right?

David Bokovoy [00:18:15] Yeah. And it certainly extends. The revisions that Joseph Smith does will extend beyond the first five books. But since I was mainly concerned with. I just. Book of Moses kind of covered what I was most concerned with.

John Dehlin [00:18:28] Oh, because it was Old Testament. Because the book is about Old Testament.

David Bokovoy [00:18:30] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:18:32] And I asked. I told you I was going to make reference to this. Some scholarship that some of my Mormon Stories listeners won't know that I have here. Released March 16, 2017, by a BYU undergrad named Haley Wilson and a BYU professor named Tom and Weyment, who's a professor of ancient scripture. This is an article that BYU published called a recently Recovered source Rethinking Joseph Smith's Bible Translation and in it, what we find is that these scholars have identified large portions of the Joseph Smith translation, which we all assumed came from God, was Joseph's, you know, divinely inspired correction of parts of the New Testament that he viewed as, you know, that God viewed as inaccurate.

John Dehlin [00:19:25] We find were likely plagiarized right out of a source called Adam Clark's Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, which it writes was a mainstay for Methodist theologians and biblical scholars and was one of the most widely available commentaries in the mid-1820s and 1830s in America. So we all know that, you know, the Book of Mormon has problems, the Book of Abraham has problems.

John Dehlin [00:19:53] You know, now we know the Book of Moses has problems and of course the Old Testament, New Testament have problems. Now we know that large portions of the Joseph Smith translation was apparently plagiarized from just a common biblical commentary that Joseph Smith clearly had access to. Do you have any comments on that? I know that's not anything you've written about.

David Bokovoy [00:20:12] No, but I. Yeah, but I've read the scholarship and Tom Wayman is a wonderful scholar and a great person and we're starting to see people a lot more open to, even within the mainstream of the church to these sorts of ideas. It's going to have to happen.

John Dehlin [00:20:30] And I just want to make a shout out to Haley because Haley was an undergraduate scholar who discovered this. It wasn't Thomas that discovered this, it was Haley.

David Bokovoy [00:20:38] Oh, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:39] And she's now at Notre Dame getting her at least her master's degree. And I just want to give her a shout out because she's like a modern day scholar hero, at least to me.

David Bokovoy [00:20:50] That's awesome.

John Dehlin [00:20:51] And this is an important piece of the puzzle.

David Bokovoy [00:20:53] Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And one of my former students, Cody Townsend Kobe, is doing incredible work on this as well and showing and documenting all of the. Phrases from the New Testament that and other sources of scripture that appear in Joseph Smith's revelation and tracking that down and where he's taking that from the sources. A lot of cool stuff is coming out right now.

John Dehlin [00:21:20] He was at the U. Is he still at the U, Colby?

David Bokovoy [00:21:22] No, he graduated from the U. I over. I got to oversee his honors thesis that he wrote. He wrote it on the Book of Mormon, showing some of those influences that won the, you know, one of the Honors Thesis of the Year award. He did such great job. And then now he's working on his master's degree at. In Religious Studies at the Utah State.

John Dehlin [00:21:43] So he's at Utah State.

David Bokovoy [00:21:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:45] Colby Townsend.

David Bokovoy [00:21:46] And now we.

John Dehlin [00:21:47] Colby, we need to have you on Mormon stories.

David Bokovoy [00:21:48] Yeah, you should.

John Dehlin [00:21:49] Telling you right now.

David Bokovoy [00:21:50] And then. And he's applying for a doctoral program. He's brilliant young man.

John Dehlin [00:21:54] Does he hope to end up at BYU or no? I don't think so.

David Bokovoy [00:22:01] You never know. BYU could change, right? I mean.

John Dehlin [00:22:04] Yeah, it could change. Yeah, maybe it could. Absolutely. Okay, well, let's jump to the Book of Mormon, as you know, is probably, you know, Gordon B. Hinckley threw down the gauntlet and basically said, or was it edged out, Benson, that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion.

Isaiah in the Book of Mormon

David Bokovoy [00:22:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:25] The whole church, in its validity rides on the truthfulness of the falseness of the Book of Mormon. It's either exactly what it claims to be or is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind. I'm sure I'm paraphrasing, but.

David Bokovoy [00:22:38] But that's about. Right.

John Dehlin [00:22:40] So what is. What does historical criticism or higher criticism tell us about?

David Bokovoy [00:22:45] I wish we could get away from that mindset. I really do.

John Dehlin [00:22:48] Well, you're helping us.

David Bokovoy [00:22:50] I wish we could get away from that and not be so black and white in the way that we see any of this material and the way that we use it, I think it presents problems, obviously, you know, and I wish we could get away from the way that we've used, as a church, the Book of Mormon. Seems to me that we've used the Book of Mormon, which, as I've discussed at length, I think is one of the most inspired books ever. I just. Its message is so powerful, so necessary for our world right now.

David Bokovoy [00:23:25] But instead of, like, thinking about the messages that you have, like in King Benjamin's sermon about wealth and how we handle that, thinking about Jesus's visitation as a. As a story about overcoming tribalism and becoming one unified people, instead of realizing that the only people that are really successful at saving and changing people's hearts and minds are. Are the anti nephi, Lehi, the pacifist. They're the only ones that really work. Instead of recognizing the problems that racism presents for the authorial voices in the. In the Book of Mormon, how it leads to the eradication of the entire civilization, all of these messages that are really important for today's world.

David Bokovoy [00:24:03] Right. We don't use it that way. I wish we would, but we don't really use it that way. Instead, we take it and we go door to door and we tell people, all right, read. You don't even have to read this book. Just read this part of Third Nephi, read this part of Second Nephi, read these little sections, Pray, ask God if it's true. And when you feel the Holy Ghost, when you feel good, you will know it's true. And if you know it's true, then Joseph Smith is a true prophet. If Joseph Smith is a true prophet, then President Nelson is a true prophet living today.

John Dehlin [00:24:34] And then follow the modern prophets and

David Bokovoy [00:24:36] whatever they're saying the way. And so I wish we, we. I wish we would look at and use the Book of Mormon for its message. It's a little bit more. Instead of using it as a tool to get people to, you know, church authority and leadership and be in obedience. Instead, I just wish we would look at it and appreciate this incredible scriptural text that is produced by Joseph Smith and given to the world as this incredible gift. And I believe that's what I believe it is. So nonetheless, in terms of historical analysis, the same type of challenges that we see in the book of Abraham, the

John Dehlin [00:25:16] book of Moses, after that lovely, after that lovely positive disclaimer.

David Bokovoy [00:25:21] It's from an. In terms of historical criticism, it's going to put the book in the 19th century and we're going to have a perfect explanation historically for how Joseph Smith creates this.

John Dehlin [00:25:32] And what are the big problems?

David Bokovoy [00:25:35] The biggest problem, the biggest problem from my perspective is without question the deutero Isaiah material that we linked to.

John Dehlin [00:25:44] So remind us what that means. So we talked about multiple authors of Isaiah.

David Bokovoy [00:25:48] So chapters one through 39, more or less of Isaiah, the book are kind of linked in with first Isaiah, a Hebrew prophet living in Jerusalem during the 9th century BCE.

John Dehlin [00:26:05] Now which century? 9th, 9th. That would have been three centuries before Lehi. Yeah, allegedly leaves Jerusalem. Okay, so,

David Bokovoy [00:26:19] So the Isaiah material, now Isaiah 1 is an exception to this Isaiah. You know, there's, there's some, some blocks that are clearly not written by the historical Isaiah, but for the most part, you can think of it in terms of, of the actual Isaiah, with a few exceptions. But chapter 40, the message changes dramatically from call my people to repentance, Call my people to repentance to chapter 40. Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. And then all of the beautiful messages of comfort and restoration come back to Jerusalem and have this unification with God is the overall theme. So it's a shift in transition.

David Bokovoy [00:27:01] And scholars are convinced that the material from 40 through 66 was written much later during the exile when the Jews were in captivity after 586, when, you know, lot, you know, a few years after Lehi left Jerusalem and even into the post exilic time period shortly thereafter. The problem is, is that that material appears in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:27:27] Okay, really quick, before we jump into that, what are a few evidences and acronyms, whatever it is that would substantiate that this latter portion of Isaiah, deutero Isaiah as it's called, would have been written much later. Are there evidences? Because theoretically Isaiah could just kind of have a change of heart or receive new revelation and all of a sudden be talking about grace or mercy when it was justice before or whatever the difference.

David Bokovoy [00:27:53] It's not just. Yeah, it's very good. And I, I lay out all the major pieces of evidence in those two blog posts. But just to hit them, just to hit them briefly. The Hebrew is very late and it has Aramaic influence that these authors were in that shows that they were, they were influenced in the, in their language by the Babylonians who were using Aramaic as an administrative language to, you know, to govern their empire. That's a big one. The fact that it mentions Cyrus by name, the Persian leader, Cyrus the Great, who will. Will overcome Babylon and then send the Jews back home. Cyrus is the only figure that's called the Messiah in the entire Hebrew Bible, ironically enough. So there are these sorts of.

John Dehlin [00:28:46] Of pieces of evidence that would have lived later.

David Bokovoy [00:28:50] Yeah, that it shows clear inaccuracy. The text shows a detailed understanding of Jewish life during the exile and thereafter. That that would be beyond the abilities of someone to identify unless you would they were supernatural.

John Dehlin [00:29:09] Now I guess someone could say, well it is a prophet. So they could have prophesied these things.

David Bokovoy [00:29:12] And that's typically what people will say,

John Dehlin [00:29:14] but you're not your point of view.

David Bokovoy [00:29:16] But if, then if that's all there was, I guess people would say, oh well, yeah, I can just chalk it up to faith. But again, there's the Aramaic influences of the language that we're able to date that help us understand that. It's the fact that, for example, that as I talk about in those blog posts, if this material all existed, why didn't Jeremiah quote it? Why didn't Jeremiah quote this when people were saying, you're crazy, Jerusalem will never be destroyed. Why didn't he just say, oh yeah, well look what Isaiah said. We will be destroyed, but we'll be brought back. Why didn't he quote that?

David Bokovoy [00:29:51] He never did. But why does Isaiah, the second half of Isaiah, why does that quote from Jeremiah? See what I'm saying? Why does that, that part of Isaiah, why does it quote from the Psalms? That were written later during this time period.

David Bokovoy [00:30:04] So you start to add up layer upon layer upon layer. And there's not a single biblical scholar that I know of who fails to recognize this truth, that this material was written after Lehi and his family left Jerusalem, yet it appears in the Book of Mormon. And it.

John Dehlin [00:30:21] And so just to connect the dots, so. So a Book of Mormon reader would remember the story of Nephi being sent back to Jerusalem to chop off Laban's head to get the brass plates. Because on the brass plates was the Old Testament, you know, whatever. As much of the Old Testament had been written up until that point, because that was needed so that the Nephites could stay righteous as they're traveling and use that to govern their religiosity. Is that okay to say?

David Bokovoy [00:30:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:52] So now, really quickly, would there have been plates, brass plates? Like, how much does even that make sense before we jump to what appears in the Book of Mormon?

David Bokovoy [00:31:02] Well, it could have been brass plates, but brass plates with all of the scriptural material compiled together and translated into Egyptian.

John Dehlin [00:31:12] Reformed. Reformed? Well. Well, we don't know. Do we know?

David Bokovoy [00:31:15] Well, reformed is usually interpreted as just an adjective meaning an altered, changed form of it that was conducive to their writing. But to translate it.

John Dehlin [00:31:22] And where does it said the brass praise. The brass plates were written in Egyptian. Where's.

David Bokovoy [00:31:28] Various locations.

John Dehlin [00:31:29] Okay, okay.

David Bokovoy [00:31:29] Throughout it's. And they needed. They needed to have that with them so that they wouldn't forget their scriptures and their origins and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:31:36] Okay.

David Bokovoy [00:31:36] But it's all.

John Dehlin [00:31:37] But there would not have been breastplates

David Bokovoy [00:31:39] written in Egyptian with all that material translated. That's hard for me to understand how that could happen now. It would be somewhat easier. It still would be like. Yeah, I don't see it if it had been like in Acadian, the language of ancient Babylon and Assyria, because they were the ones that control them. Egypt is kind of out of the way at this point. But even then, I'm just saying that at least you could like, say, well, Akkadian was kind of big, but in Egyptian. That doesn't make sense to me as a historian.

John Dehlin [00:32:07] And also it's just making it sound like Laban had his own version of the quad.

David Bokovoy [00:32:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:11] And is that. Were Jews in 600 BC running around with the Old Testament quad. Of all the books compiled together, how would it have more scrolls?

David Bokovoy [00:32:20] Yeah, scrolls that in individual scrolls and sacred scrolls that would have been kept by scribes, rabbis or scribes would not have had. Yeah, the general population would not have had access to such things. Okay, but I can. Let's illustrate it this way. John.

David Bokovoy [00:32:33] One of the most beautiful parts of that deutero Isaiah, from my perspective, is in Isaiah 52, verse 1, where this is God speaking to the Jewish community now in exile in Babylon. And we read the words, awake, awake. Put on thy strength, O Zion. Put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city. For henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. Shake thyself from the death, the dust. Arise, sit down, O Jerusalem.

David Bokovoy [00:33:03] Arise, sit down, O Jerusalem. Well, Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggeman in the 1970s wrote a wonderful article where he illustrated that what was happening here is when someone is called to get up out of the dust. It's a movement from kingship. Sorry, out of. From humanity to a position of kingship. God takes humans from the dust and then makes them king and royal and queen. And so this idea of get out of the dust, the city's been destroyed, get out of the dust, arise and sit down. It doesn't tell you what to sit down, but when you understand the motif, he means sit down on a throne.

David Bokovoy [00:33:43] And it's actually a reversal that happens earlier in Isaiah, back in chapter 46 7, where the call is given, come down and sit in the dust, oh virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground. This is verse one. There is no throne for you. So Babylon is the great power of the time period. Babylon is told to get off the throne and go sit in the dust, be in a position of obscurity. Jerusalem's been destroyed by Babylon and is literally in the dust, told to get out of the dust, and you are going to go sit on a throne and. And be this great influence for good in the world.

David Bokovoy [00:34:18] It's a beautiful section. But these are all written then to the exilic community of Jews who were now in. In exile was composed during that time period. And yet the Book of Mormon relies heavily upon that little section right there from start to finish, just to illustrate it quickly. In Second Nephi chapter one, when Lehi speaks to his sons, and he uses that verse, awake, awake, my sons. Get up. Rise from the dust. Be men, Shake off the vines, the bounds that are, and come out of obscurity. He uses all of this. So he's literally, from this perspective, he's drawing upon Isaiah 52, this section here, to create his final sermon that he gives to his sons before he dies.

David Bokovoy [00:35:07] And then a few chap. Then after that, of course, Lehi dies and the sons split up and they go their separate ways. And you have the formation of the new Nephite nation. Well, Lehi, sorry, Nephi then commands Jacob, his brother, to give the first Nephite sermon. And what does he assign him? Isaiah 52. So he quotes from Isaiah 52 and expounds it so literally. Then Jacob is asked to give an exposition on the final sermon that his dad gave. And what this shows thematically is a continuation from his final sermon, from Lehi's final sermon to the prophetic continuation of the line of authority, now specifically with the Nephite nation.

David Bokovoy [00:35:53] That's. That connection is very profound and powerful. Then when Jesus comes and visits with the people, what does he do? He opens up a lot of scriptures and he spends a lot of time on Isaiah 52, arise from the dust and come forward and be this great nation, be this great people. Then when Moroni tries to conclude the Book of Mormon, he has all these false endings. Remember that he's like trying to figure out how to get this, this ending correct. And he finally gets to the end. And how does the Book of Mormon then conclude the Book of Mormon? Concludes finally when he gets it in chapter 10 where that famous promise is issued.

David Bokovoy [00:36:29] Moroni 10 yeah, if you get to that very end, what does he finally do? Moroni 10, verse 31. Awake. Arise from the dust, O Jerusalem. Yea, put on thy beautiful garments, O daughter of Zion, and strengthen thy stakes and enlarge thy borders. Come unto Christ and all these things. So this one passage from Isaiah, if we walk through the end of Lehi's life, the beginning of the Nephite civilization and, and their people, then a movement to Jesus when he visits. And he uses this then to the conclusion of the Book of Mormon. It frames the entire Book of Mormon. So it really becomes a symbol in my mind for what the Book of Mormon is.

David Bokovoy [00:37:11] Book of Mormon is a book that claims to arise from the dust, literally come out of the ground that is then helping humanity rise to a higher position of royalty through the messages and inspiration that's found therein. Get up there and get out of the dust and become royal, become kings and queens and, and rule with power and, and goodness and kindness and, and all the great things. So it's this beautiful structure to the Book of Mormon that's witnessed. But the problem is it's all from deutero Isaiah.

John Dehlin [00:37:45] So it's from stuff written after Lehi.

David Bokovoy [00:37:49] So it's why. Right. Illustrate that as well.

John Dehlin [00:37:51] Wouldn't have made the brass plates if they had even existed. Yeah, so it couldn't have been quoted.

David Bokovoy [00:37:56] So what I want to show is, on the one hand, it's beautiful, what it's incorporating, the way it's using it, it's consistent, it's powerful. We see this theme happening that is incredible to behold, but at the same time, from a pure historical perspective, from start to middle to finish, the Book of Mormon is structured around material that it. It, you know, that Joseph Smith believes would have existed and would have been accessible to them, but that would literally not have been in any form.

John Dehlin [00:38:26] Okay, now, so that's a big problem.

David Bokovoy [00:38:29] Yeah, Historically, but not theologically.

John Dehlin [00:38:32] Right, but. But historically it is.

David Bokovoy [00:38:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:35] It questions the historicity of the Book of Mormon, you know, differently from horses and.

David Bokovoy [00:38:41] Yeah, and steel.

John Dehlin [00:38:41] And steel swords and all that stuff. It's just a textual. Is it an anachronism? Is that what you'd call it?

David Bokovoy [00:38:49] Absolutely. And I chose that one because I love it. I love that one. And I. The way I tried to lay that out is to show how beautiful the Book of Mormon is, is incorporating it. But literally, we could go through every single sermon and find references to the Book of Malachi, references to the New Testament references, representations of sources accessible to Joseph Smith that he knew very well. He knew inside and out that were part of his cultural milieu, but that were not part of the milieu of ancient Israel.

John Dehlin [00:39:20] Right.

David Bokovoy [00:39:21] And so historical criticism presents those specific challenges then, to traditional assumptions regarding the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:39:30] Now, I know that believers are going to say, well, with God, all things are possible. And who's to say that God, just like Joseph, can translate the book of Moses without any. He can channel the book of Moses and Abraham without any real source text? Who's to say that Lehi or Moroni weren't just channeling deutero Isaiah through the gift and power of God.

David Bokovoy [00:39:53] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:39:53] And they didn't need the brass plates.

David Bokovoy [00:39:54] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:39:55] They didn't need deutero Isaiah in the brass plates.

David Bokovoy [00:39:58] And as I've suggested, if people want to take that perspective on their religious faith and documents, I don't have an issue with that. That would never work for me.

John Dehlin [00:40:10] Why does that work for you?

David Bokovoy [00:40:13] Because I. It doesn't work for me because his. I care about historical scholarship and what that reveals about the origin of this material and how it was created. And to me, Mormonism is not just about what I feel. It's about the development of the mind.

David Bokovoy [00:40:34] It should be, anyway. I mean, I see this. The development of mind. That's certainly as I've. Regardless, that is my Religion is to love, but also to develop the mind and to use reason and science and scholarship to try to improve the condition of humanity upon the planet. So that would not work for me, but I don't have an issue if it works for other people. I just think we need to be honest then and say, yeah, I understand that this flies in the way of all scholarship, the way of all science, but I believe, and this works for me and it works for my family, and I have strong spiritual convictions of the truthfulness of this.

David Bokovoy [00:41:12] So I'm going that direction. I just would hope that people would accept that and go with that and do that. But it's this meshing of, like, scholarship and apologetics of like, oh, we can pick and choose and look, we can sustain this argument through reason and through scholarship, when in reality it cannot be done. Not if we're being completely open and honest. It's the evidence leads in one way and traditional assumptions lead the other.

John Dehlin [00:41:37] Okay, are there other big problems with the historical Book of Mormon or. Or whatever that that historical criticism sort of uncovers that that are anywhere on the same par as Deutero Isaiah?

David Bokovoy [00:41:57] Yeah, they're references to Malachi and as I mentioned, new. The New Testament with Deutero Isaiah. There's actually a third Isaiah too, in the very final chapters, which is definitely post exilic. And for many years Book of Mormon apologists would say, at least there isn't any third Isaiah in it. But there is third Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. Colby has found some references to third Isaiah in the Book of Mormon and in almost all of the Book of Mormon apologetics that I've read that have addressed this, they've said, well, at least we don't have to deal with this issue. Well, sorry guys, you do. It's there. And I'll wait for him to publish that to show it to the world, but it's there. The third Isaiah, which is even the latest.

John Dehlin [00:42:38] And you say Malachi came after very late. So it mentions Malachi.

David Bokovoy [00:42:44] Yeah, and Colby just wrote on that too, in dialogue with Boyd Peterson as the editor. Just that just came out a couple months ago. Okay, so people can read that one too.

John Dehlin [00:42:55] Any other big.

David Bokovoy [00:42:57] Well, the New Testament references.

John Dehlin [00:42:59] Yeah, talk about that for a second. Like, I've probably said this a few times, but I'll say it again. How can it be that the literal ancestors of Jesus Christ, the Jews that would have preceded Jesus in Jerusalem or Nazareth or wherever he was in the Holy Land, weren't able to know the name of the Messiah that was coming and weren't practicing things like baptism and what other Christian rituals are in the Book of Mormon Preaching about an atonement in the same way and a resurrection and a foreknowledge of Mary that it was going to happen in Jerusalem or near Jerusalem or Bethlehem or whatever. It was like there's so much Christianity in sort of like the Book of Mormon before Jesus is ever born. Yeah, that's a problem.

David Bokovoy [00:43:48] It is because that's a challenge because

John Dehlin [00:43:51] the native Americans were Christian basically before Christ was born, but the Jews weren't given that same privilege. And they were the actual legitimate true

David Bokovoy [00:44:00] blood and not just Christians, but Christians that reflected the actual sermon practices and procedures and theological concerns of 19th century American Christians. That, I mean, that's sort of just a reality of, of what we see there. And it ignores the fact that what I've tried to explain, we can see the historical evolution of Christology of religion from polytheism to monolatry and henotheism to monotheism to belief in a messiah figure to belief that this Messiah would then suffer and die. These things take a long time to evolve and we can document the historical evolution. And then all of a sudden the Book of Mormon comes in and is a place.

David Bokovoy [00:44:45] It's a book that is completely out of time because it's taking all of this information and putting it as if it exists already in the hearts and minds of American prophets, seers and revelators here on this continent. From an historical perspective, that's. That presents a significant challenge.

John Dehlin [00:45:03] Yeah, yeah, that's a real problem. Okay, any other thing you want to mention about the Book of Mormon?

Book of Mormon Origins and Hebrew Connections

David Bokovoy [00:45:12] You know, other. Okay, I would say that, you know, I wouldn't. I, I teach world religions now I'm going to be teaching world religions in the prison. And I know that a lot of believers hear things like this and they feel attacked, they feel threatened, it makes them feel uncomfortable.

David Bokovoy [00:45:36] I would just say, please understand that there are that scholars, when we deal with these things, we're not trying to destroy faith. And what I tell my students when I teach these things to them, and most of them come from an LDS religious background And I tell them, look, I'm not asking you to believe in anything I'm saying or to accept this scholarship, but I do think believers should understand the way scholars interpret it and then do with it what you want to dismiss it if you want, but please understand it and then recognize that it's not a desire to attack or to bring down, it's a desire to understand.

David Bokovoy [00:46:14] The past based upon the best evidence that we have. And there are ways. There are ways to. For faithful, believing, active, committed Latter Day Saints to acknowledge all of this and to still find themselves as committed Latter Day Saints and to reconcile that with their religious convictions. Yes, it requires a shift of paradigm, but there are ways of making it work. So please don't feel threatened, like ever, your whole world has come crashing down. If that's the. The case, you find yourself in that position. There are ways of making sense of it that are quite logical and that work. My book presents ways that it works for me.

David Bokovoy [00:46:57] I stand by everything that is there that is written there. I believe it's possible and logical. And it's something that should not threaten people of faith, but excite them because it's going to teach them a different way of seeing God and the revelatory process that might help them in their own personal relationships with their community and with divinity. That certainly has been the case for me.

David Bokovoy [00:47:21] Taking a different approach that I was forced to adopt concerning scripture and prophets helped me transition away from homophobia to that of an ally of being someone who was so concerned when my wife walked out of that Harvard Square Theater and was feeling love and sympathy for the portrayal of those who love, love each other but cannot be together. And I felt concerned that she was buying into Hollywood's gay agenda as where I was at religiously at the time. I thank God that I made the choice to pursue historical critical scholarship because it has made me a better human being. I am more open and sensitive to those who struggle.

David Bokovoy [00:48:07] I feel kinship and connection with those outside of my faith that I wouldn't have felt. It has changed everything for me in the sense of making me so that I am a different person, open to truth, even when it challenges my preconceptions. And I'm very grateful for it. So, yes, I understand it's threatening to traditional believers, but there are ways of making sense of it.

John Dehlin [00:48:35] Yeah. Again, David Bacavoy's creative and refreshing and enlightening contribution to Mormon stories is, you're saying it's all messy and it's beautiful and it can still be inspiring in Scripture instead of it's all messy, therefore throw it all away and it's all garbage and worthless and silly.

David Bokovoy [00:48:57] Yeah. And although I would say, and that's how I feel about it, but I also want to be clear that, you know, I reckon I've got lots of post Mormon friends, that it's just for them, they just have to completely disagree, disengage, and if people are in that situation and that's good for them emotionally and spiritually, I support that 100%. I wouldn't try to convince them otherwise. If something is, if it's a bad or negative influence in our lives, we should jettison it and that would include religion.

John Dehlin [00:49:33] So really quickly, do you have a theory about, you know, the, everyone and we could do a whole episode on this and maybe we'll have you back when we really dig into Mormon truth claims in the Book of Mormon. Do you have a personal theory of how the Book of Mormon was created? You've read all the Dan Vogel stuff. Have you put together a timeline or a theory on kind of how it happens?

David Bokovoy [00:49:54] I. Not exactly. I've been working on it for many years. I think I'd like.

John Dehlin [00:49:58] You have been.

David Bokovoy [00:49:58] Yeah, I'd like to write a book on it at some point.

John Dehlin [00:50:02] Oh, man, I'd love that.

David Bokovoy [00:50:03] I'd like to, I'd like to do that at some point. That's something I have.

John Dehlin [00:50:06] Because where's a single book that sort of says, here's how I think the Book of Mormon came together?

David Bokovoy [00:50:10] Yeah, we don't really.

John Dehlin [00:50:11] Does that exist?

David Bokovoy [00:50:12] No, not really.

John Dehlin [00:50:13] Even Dan Vogel hasn't written that book. Dan Vogel, what is going on, brother?

David Bokovoy [00:50:16] We got a lot of great articles and a lot of great scholarship that has been done, but there should just be a book.

John Dehlin [00:50:21] Yeah, here's a theory on how the Book of Mormon came together.

David Bokovoy [00:50:23] And that would work and it would explain, explain and show how beautiful the Book of Mormon is. And the amazing thing that Joseph Smith accomplished, I mean, this is incredible that he produced something that has been so transformative spiritually for millions of people.

John Dehlin [00:50:38] It's hard to deny that.

David Bokovoy [00:50:39] Yeah, I mean, it's just reality is. But like I said, as an historian, especially, if you go read all of the documents that Dan Vogel has assembled in the Early Mormon documents collection, I can't remember how many volumes, like six volumes or whatever. And you go through that and you can see, man, it just changes you. You can see the narrative of the Book of Mormon in all of Joseph Smith's treasure digging and Seer Stone activities and, you know, traditions of guardian angels and all of it just emerge right out of his cultural milieu.

David Bokovoy [00:51:13] And then you have this creative genius who is so, so adept at telling stories and who has, is surrounded by Indian origins and who knows the Bible really, really well. I, I, we do not recognize how well Joseph Smith knew that Bible. He knew it, that, that was his book. He lived in that Bible and It when he spoke, he spoke scriptures, he spoke the word that came out of there and he, his language, his words were the words of the King James Bible and everything that he did.

David Bokovoy [00:51:43] So it's an extraordinary accomplishment without question, but it's also one that from a historical perspective can be explained as a product of Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:51:58] And so you're saying you want to wait to tell us kind of your theories on the authorship.

David Bokovoy [00:52:02] I'm kind of giving you hints on it, yeah, but I, I, yeah, but I, I of where it is. But yeah, I, and I don't know that I have all the answers or have everything I'll for formulated in my mind yet either.

John Dehlin [00:52:12] Do you, do you think it's a single author? Do you think Cowdery or oh yeah, Rigden or Lucy or any of those comes from.

David Bokovoy [00:52:21] I think, you know, it's all can be attributed to Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:52:25] Okay, and does it, does it have to have been written in 30 days or that really constricted narrow timeframe that they want us to.

David Bokovoy [00:52:32] You know what? Sure. I mean that's in a sense it is, but in the sense Joseph Smith was writing the Book of Mormon his whole life, right?

John Dehlin [00:52:40] What do you mean?

David Bokovoy [00:52:41] Well, I mean he was having the experiences with, with the Bible and struggling with questions of religion and the baptism of infants and which church to join and his father's universalism, which is addressed in the Book of Mormon and then his mother's commitment to, you know, Presbyterianism and how this makes conflicts in home. And he's trying to resolve this in his mind and use scripture to do it. Just Joseph Smith was creating the Book of Mormon his whole life up to that point and came out

John Dehlin [00:53:20] and it could have, could it have been written in a year or in a couple

David Bokovoy [00:53:24] years and the complexity that we see happening there, a lot of it happens because of the actual historical events that that took place with, you know, the loss of the 116man page of the manuscript that will dictate it as well as we see evolution from historical critical perspective in the development of the Book of Mormon itself. For example, a lot of people will talk about the fact that if you approach it in, in terms of its translation production, as Brent Metcalfe originally showed, that is now universally accepted. The first text of the Book of Mormon that was created was Mosiah.

David Bokovoy [00:54:04] And then he went from Mosiah through what is, you know, those large plates. Well, if you go, it's interesting that if you jump to King Benjamin, who should have had the writings of Nephi and Lehi and had all that material. What does he find in the. But he says, well, it's been revealed to me from an angel that God himself is going to come down on earth and his name will be Jesus and his mother will be married.

David Bokovoy [00:54:30] Well, historical critics will read that and say, well, why did he need an angel? If all that material pre existed and he had access to Nephi's writings, he would have known that already. Why does he need to present it as if it's a new revelation? But from an historical perspective, First Nephi, second Nephi, that stuff hadn't been created yet by Joseph Smith. This is the way historical critics see it. And so that's why it's a new revelation.

John Dehlin [00:54:54] First Nephi got written. Later, after the 116 pages got stolen. Yeah, they had to go back and rewrite the beginning of the story and they decided. He decided to make it a religious narrative because the previous film was some other type of narrative that wasn't as

David Bokovoy [00:55:10] religious, didn't have all the. That wouldn't have had all of that.

John Dehlin [00:55:13] And so this would have required Benjamin, King Benjamin, to have a revelation when

David Bokovoy [00:55:17] he wouldn't have needed it because it was explicitly stated in scripture that should have existed and that he should have had access to. And according to the Book of Mormon itself that he trained his sons in and they knew it. And then why then. And then you. Then you start to wonder and think about questions such as why those opening chapters of the Book of Mormon as they were produced from Mosiah and Alma, none of them talk about Jesus's visit. It's as if from an historical critical perspective that Joseph hasn't yet gotten to the idea that Jesus will visit America. It's all absent in those sections.

David Bokovoy [00:55:49] But if you go to First Nephi, Second Nephi, Jacob, Enos, Jerome, Omni, the small plates, Jesus is coming to America. Something that they're really excited about. So, and I am, please understand, I am not saying. I mean, there are lots of ways that apologists have looked at these things and have given explanations for them. Some work, some don't, some are fine. I'm just saying that from an historical critical perspective that takes, that doesn't take into consideration God creating the book. It's easily explainable as something that Joseph Smith created. And so that's what happens.

John Dehlin [00:56:29] Tony is asking, Tony Fieldson, please ask David about what you. What he currently thinks about what you wrote in your first book about Hebrew connections to the Book of Mormon, and maybe you gave some speeches at some early apologist conferences. Maybe talking about Hebraisms. What's the term in the Book of Mormon? How do you explain the emergence of those connections if Joseph and any of his contemporaries could have made all those up?

David Bokovoy [00:57:02] So I've been asked this question, and I try to be very careful in my language, even in those earliest publications of mine, I never wanted to suggest that it was impossible for Joseph Smith to come up with these things on his own. I always found like that sort of claim to be much too strong, even in my most conservative believing years of whatever they might be. And I'm not saying I never spoke in that terms of language, but if I did, I tried to avoid that. That's not language that I would use.

David Bokovoy [00:57:38] And I have documented a lot of those. And I think the suggestion that it would have been impossible for Joseph Smith to create such things is just. That's not a good historical argument because in historians, as I mentioned before, we're trying to uncover what most likely happened in the past based upon the evidence. And if Joseph Smith translated this book by the gift and power of God and it was given to him by an angel, then all of those things are miracles.

David Bokovoy [00:58:09] And by definition, a miracle is the least likely thing to have happened. That's what makes it a miracle. And so if we use miracles to talk about the past, even though miracles do happen all the time, we can't rely upon those without evidence. And we just don't have the evidence to, to make that word, that, that sort of assertion that things like that would have been impossible for Joseph Smith to, to uncover. Many of the Hebraisms and things like that that are identified that I've seen, some of them are King James ism, like for example, a big one that is emphasized is the cognate accusative.

David Bokovoy [00:58:48] The accusative is a, in a sentence, grammatically is the direct object. And cognate accusative is a technical term for when the verb and the direct object are the same. So a Hebraism would be when Lehi says, behold, I have dreamed a dream.

David Bokovoy [00:59:07] So in English we wouldn't say I have dreamed a dream. We just said I had a dream. And so we point that out as a Hebraism, which it is, but that doesn't mean the Book of Mormon is a translation because you'll find King James references to dream, to dream and, and other sources that were familiar to Joseph Smith, that he had access to Joseph Smith's vocabulary because of his extensive study of the Bible. He spoke, he spoke in Hebraisms, he spoke in Hebraism that was because of his. Because the King James Bible tries to oftentimes be very literal in its reproduction of some of that phraseology.

David Bokovoy [00:59:50] And so it sounds like scripture. I mean, Latter Day Saints do this all the time today. I mean, we speak in the and thine and ye and thou and thine and these archaic English pronouns, because it sounds like scripture to us. But that's not how Jesus spoke.

John Dehlin [01:00:07] It's not how Native Americans spoke.

David Bokovoy [01:00:09] That's not how they walked around speaking in those languages. It's all King James's, but it's. It sounds like scripture. So we incorporate it when we start talking to God or when we start, you know, giving sermons or what happens. Why would we think Joseph Smith wouldn't have done that in the creation of his sacred text, when, in fact, it's easily documented that he did? Now, that's not to say that Joseph Smith didn't do some extraordinary things in his. The way that he was able to. I mean, the Book of Mormon, from a literary perspective, it's a schematic narrative, which is a different type of narrative than most Westerners are familiar with.

David Bokovoy [01:00:47] But a schematic narrative, once you learn to read it and appreciate it as literature, is really a cool text to read. And the Book of Mormon incorporates type scenes and biblical literary devices and things that are extraordinary to suggest that they were beyond the ability of Joseph Smith. I certainly don't believe that. But they're there and they're awesome and they're fun to uncover.

John Dehlin [01:01:14] So you weren't highlighting the Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon to try and claim that it's an ancient text?

David Bokovoy [01:01:24] I wouldn't say. I never did that.

John Dehlin [01:01:27] Maybe there was a time earlier, maybe

David Bokovoy [01:01:29] early night, late 1990s, probably. Okay, probably kind of to make an. An argument that at least it could be there. But it was, but I never did it in the sense of this is impossible. You know, you add up enough of these things, I think. I'm sure I wanted to do that to, like, give it plausibility, which is different than proving it. I never felt the. The reality, the historical tools lead us to the conclusion that it's not. I've always recognized that, even when I was writing in the 1990s, late 1990s, and that book that I did with John Twetnes on the Testaments, I still recognized that if we were. If we took all of the evidence, it would lead to a different conclusion. All I wanted to do was to make it, I guess, make it interesting and I guess plausible and Later. I just wanted to make it interesting.

John Dehlin [01:02:22] Okay. All right, let's talk briefly about your choice to have John Welch or Jack Welch write the forward to this book. I was really surprised. I think in, in the circles I've run in, he's often lumped into the Daniel Peterson, Lewis Midgley kind of crowd, even the Hugh Nibley crowd of like kind of those old school apologists that have either used pseudoscience or ad hominem or those sorts of tactics that has given Mormon apologetics such a bad name. And then of course, he's known as the guy that has found chiasmus, I guess, in the Book of Mormon, which is also found in Dr. Seuss. But for him, finding chiasmus in the Book of Mormon proves that it's a historical document or ancient document.

John Dehlin [01:03:14] And for people in my circles, that's all just kind of silliness and, and then all the apologetics, Mormon apologetics 1.0 stuff is just like a huge embarrassment to Mormonism. And yet he wrote your forward. So I'm sure I've never met the man.

John Dehlin [01:03:31] I don't know anything about him. And I'm sure I've got a completely messed up version of him because it's all biased and stilted and inadequate and I've never even met him. So can you talk about that?

David Bokovoy [01:03:43] Sure. Jack Welch was a. Let's see. First of all, I would say yes, he is the found original founder of farms. He is also a very kind, loving gentleman. And I. He has always stayed above the, the fray that others have enjoyed getting into. So I do not see him as one who's been involved with negative or attack aggressive. He's never been involved with any those types of apologetics. That's just foreign to his personality.

John Dehlin [01:04:22] Okay.

David Bokovoy [01:04:25] Now, he was my teacher. I, as an undergraduate, I got to know him. And then, you know, as I continue with my education, he was always very kind to me. He gave the very first presentation at the Society of Biblical Literature Convention that a first Mormon, the time a Mormon had ever gave a presentation there. It was while I was in Boston, it was 1999, I want to say, on his work on the Sermon on the Mount, showing that it was, you know, connecting it with temple ritual. I sat there and I thought that was wonderful and I was impressed and I thought, I want to do that same thing. I want to do what Jack is doing here at the Society of Biblical Literature. I want to be that type of scholar for the church and representation of our faith. So he meant a lot to me and Then so has.

John Dehlin [01:05:20] Has. He's engaged in legitimate, credible scholarship.

David Bokovoy [01:05:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:25] Okay. See? Yeah, yeah.

David Bokovoy [01:05:27] Oh, yeah, yeah. He has.

John Dehlin [01:05:28] Even though he's an attorney. Law professor.

David Bokovoy [01:05:31] Yeah. And he likes to delve into biblical law. He takes a very different approach than the historical critical one that I take. Nonetheless, I really love him and I look up to him, and he was, you know, this big influence for me. Thinking my early years, I'm like, that's what I want to do. It meant a lot to me. See that. And then Jack has always been very kind to me.

David Bokovoy [01:05:55] One of the times when I was paying for my own way to go to the Society of Biblical Literature Convention and my BYU colleagues without any training in biblical scholarship were going on the church's dime, Jack reached out to me and he said, if you'll come help me man the booth here for the Maxwell Institute, I'll help you pay your way.

David Bokovoy [01:06:19] We shared a hotel. We prayed together in the morning. And he is a wonderful, loving, kind Christian man whom I revere. So that was, you know, the primary driver there. Then there was also a driver that I thought, if Jack would be willing to do that, it would help protect my book. It would help to protect me. I realized that what I was saying would make some people feel uncomfortable, especially in light of my profession.

David Bokovoy [01:06:47] And so I thought maybe if there was this introduction by Jack Welch was so highly respected that it would give. It might open the doors for people to be a little bit more receptive to what I was saying in light of his reputation. And that proved to be the case.

David Bokovoy [01:07:05] I never faced any questions or concerns about the book from CES administrators, from anyone in church education. It was just, you know, that was never a topic of concern or issue. And probably Jack may, in his introduction, may be one of the reasons why.

John Dehlin [01:07:24] And I think you may have mentioned to me offline that your editor deserves a little bit of the credit for that idea.

David Bokovoy [01:07:30] Yeah, it was actually. The idea was actually, it wasn't Lloyd's idea. It was Brad Kramer. Okay, Brad Kramer. Brad Kramer. He. He. We were talking about this, and I said, well, I don't know. I'm going to get to write the forward. And Brad was like, how well do you know Jack? And I'm like, actually know Jack really well. And so, yeah, that was a. That was a great move. Thank you, Brad. And thank you, Jack. I'm grateful to both.

John Dehlin [01:07:58] Do you. What do you think about the idea that Kaiserbus in the Book of Mormon bolsters the claim that it's a historical document?

David Bokovoy [01:08:06] I usually Say it's easy to fake a chiasm.

John Dehlin [01:08:10] Can you say that in a chiasm?

David Bokovoy [01:08:16] No. I mean, by this, I mean, I really think that if you take a large enough document, especially one that's prone towards repetition, which the Book of Mormon is, and you start to extract major sections of it, you'll find chiastic structures happening. It's a natural way of articulating speech and of making central and important points. I mean, if we just think about reversing structure and how that happens, I mean, it's an argumentation, essays and everywhere that we look. So I don't see chiastic structures as evidence for its ancient authenticity. In fact, I don't know that I ever really saw that. That having been said, I think it's a beautiful literary observation to uncover those and to see them the way that Jack and others have, and I think it's beautiful. But evidence of its antiquity? Absolutely not.

John Dehlin [01:09:18] Tell us a bit about what Blake Ostler's expansion theory is about and your thoughts on that.

David Bokovoy [01:09:24] Okay, so Blake Ostler Mormon PHILOSOPHER and Dialogue I don't remember the date off the top, top of my head was really the first to articulate this idea of an expansion model, that there was a historic core to the Book of Mormon and that Joseph Smith was inspired to add things into it that reflect the 19th century worldview that he, that he lives in. I think most Book of Mormon scholars today who are believing accept that as a fact.

John Dehlin [01:09:57] So in addition to whatever inspiration he got, he's mixing in his own words, his own nouns, his own stories, been

David Bokovoy [01:10:05] some historic basic core to the Book of Mormon that was then expanded upon either by Joseph Smith's own imprint or even by divine inspiration. A lot of scholars that are believing will say, you know, they'll handle the deutero Isaiah material that way. And they'll say, okay, God wanted that stuff in the book. He wanted it so that he could use Isaiah to help connect all of this material together for the spiritual benefit of humanity.

David Bokovoy [01:10:33] So that's the way that's often looked upon and how it's explained. And I think it's very viable. It's certainly the model that I, that I bought into for many, many years. It just becomes problematic because at some point in time you have to look and say, okay, if I take out all the 19th century elements of it, what am I left with? Where's the historic core? And I don't know how to find that. I can't find that because it's just those 19th century elements are so central to the entire structure, as I illustrated with the deutero Isaiah example that I provided. So I chose that one to show that it's beginning, it's middle, it's the end, it's.

David Bokovoy [01:11:15] You can't take that out. What. If you take that out, what are we left with? And the answer is I don't know. So as a historian, I don't know what to do with that. As a believer who wanted some ancient core, it's certainly the model that I embraced for many years.

John Dehlin [01:11:36] Yeah. So. And that's. And I guess expansion theory would say that the reason why steel and horses and elephants that are likely anachronistic in the Book of Mormon appear there is because Joseph's seeing animals and tools that he may not have a proper name for, and so he's just calling them whatever name he has access to in the 19th century.

David Bokovoy [01:12:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:12:04] And maybe all the names, if there was a Lemuel that he knew down the road or a layman or Lehigh's Dream or whatever. Nouns, people, names, objects, stories. The reason why the Book of Mormon is dripping with Joseph Smith and his history and 19th century Evangelical Protestantism and, and themes, Masonic themes and all that is because it's sort of Joseph being creative and mixing in a soup of some, like you said, some historical kernel with the New Testament, with the Old Testament, with his father's dreams, with Joseph Smith Sr's dreams, with his Protestant sermons that are happening. All that's true. And there's still a historical core.

David Bokovoy [01:12:55] Yeah, right. Yeah, that's. And that's the essence of it for me. It just, it comes down to ultimately consistency. Am I applying the historical critical method consistently me. Or am I picking and choosing portions of it that sustain my traditional religious assumptions? If I'm doing that, then that's a problem for me. I want to be consistent. So I guess that's the way that I would respond to that.

John Dehlin [01:13:21] Okay, we're. We're probably five minutes away from me having to run and I, I still have at least an hour more worth of questions for you, so I don't know what to do with that exactly, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. But I do have a couple final questions. I was struck by this idea that thinking back to your own narrative, that it, it wasn't all these problems with the Book of Mormon that sunk your devotion to active, faithful Mormonism. It was your daughter and prop. It was, it was a November 2015 policy. But then find having your daughter come out to you, that was kind of a one, two punch.

Personal Faith Journey and Final Reflections

David Bokovoy [01:14:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:08] So the first question I had is, what if BYU had hired you?

David Bokovoy [01:14:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:13] And then have you thought of, and it's almost, for me, a scary thought. What if David Bacavoy had gotten hired at byu?

David Bokovoy [01:14:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:24] And then your job and your pension and your reputation is all tied to being that faithful defender of the faith. But knowing higher criticism, but being an apologist, as they expect BYU professors to do, your whole livelihood would have been tied to remaining faithful.

David Bokovoy [01:14:44] Yeah, but it already was.

John Dehlin [01:14:47] Yeah, it was. It was. But BYU was the ultimate dream.

David Bokovoy [01:14:51] It was definitely. But.

John Dehlin [01:14:54] So it's like. It's different to quit.

David Bokovoy [01:14:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:55] In a Triple A. It's different to quit baseball when you're in a Triple A farm league team. Yeah. It's another thing to walk away from baseball when you're in the major leagues. I don't know if that's a fair.

David Bokovoy [01:15:05] No, I think that's a fair analogy. Okay. Okay. But I. But I would have anyway. I mean, as it is, I took a huge financial pay cut with an uncertain future once it reached the point where I just felt like I needed to be true to my employer, I needed to be true to the church.

David Bokovoy [01:15:29] I couldn't keep accepting paychecks from them and earn a retirement from them when I had reached a point where I just could not sustain the theology and the institution in light of the damage that I saw that was happening to LGBTQ people. And so, yeah, granted, it would have added a layer to it, I suppose, as a BYU professor. You're right. Without question. But still.

David Bokovoy [01:16:02] Yeah. It couldn't have gone any other way for me. I just feel too passionately, as I shared in the previous discussions, that. That I just. This epiphany that, as I shared, I will never, ever, ever allow religious authorities, no matter how much I love them or revere them, to step in the way, to stand in the way of my devotion to human rights and social justice. I cannot do that. I can't wait. I can't wait. I love the church. I wish. I miss it. I miss many aspects of it. And it's. It's hard. It's hard when you've devoted your whole life to something because of your love, your education, the financial debt.

David Bokovoy [01:16:49] I mean, just think of student loan debts and things when you're raising four kids and trying to live out east and in Boston and go through that. I mean, we'll. We'll never recover. I devoted every. I gave everything.

David Bokovoy [01:17:02] And I don't regret that. I do not regret that. Because I am so grateful that for what Mormonism has done for me. I mean, it's helped me have a compassion and a concern for service and a desire to pursue education. All of that stems from my Mormon upbringing.

David Bokovoy [01:17:20] It's helped me in so many ways. I love Joseph Smith. I love the Book of Mormon. I love the church. I. I can't. I cannot support or sustain, though, the theology and the policies that are hurting people.

John Dehlin [01:17:37] So you. So you think if. It's impossible to know, but had you been hired by BYU and gotten that job once November 2015, enrolled around, you wouldn't have been able to.

David Bokovoy [01:17:49] It would have taken me a while. Like, it did take me a while then to figure it all out.

John Dehlin [01:17:53] But you would have left eventually. Okay.

David Bokovoy [01:17:55] Without question.

John Dehlin [01:17:57] And then how do we.

David Bokovoy [01:17:58] Yeah, that's not even. I'm not even a doubt. It just. It would have gone on and then I just would have started looking for jobs. The problem outside the problem is, though, it's. BYU is a terminal position because once you enter into that and especially start publishing on the Book of Mormon, it's very difficult to get picked up, especially at secular academic institutions for religious studies or Bible scholarship. That could have been a challenge, but something would have worked out. I mean, it did, and I'm very happy.

John Dehlin [01:18:30] And. And then I'm just thinking about, you know, there was a time where I got to know Spencer Fluman a little bit and Patrick Mason, and I know Phil Barlow, and I know, you know, I've gotten to hang out with Richard Bushman and Claudia and Terrell and Fiona. And there are so many people that have continued almost seemingly unfazed, like people that I would suspect would have the same sensibilities as you and I, because I would like to think even if in some weird alternative universe, I had ended up at BYU teaching whatever, psychology, teaching technology, whatever it was, I would hope that I would have made that same choice given.

John Dehlin [01:19:12] Given my commitment to civil rights. Well, I know the people whose names I just mentioned are also very committed to civil rights, and they care about LGBT people and they don't like, mean things and bad things and people kill themselves. And yet so many of those really good people aren't faced and stay on that path. How do you make sense of that?

David Bokovoy [01:19:38] I think they are phased. And I'm not going to mention specifics, but I. Specific individuals, but I do. I mean, that. That was. I was trying to. I was trying to explain it to it. I had a bishop who came up to me because I was still attending, and my wife and my two teenagers at home were not. And. And he was very kind, and he was very sweet, and he was trying to show compassion. And he was said, you know, I. I get it. It's like, for your family, it's. It's kind of like for a lot of other families in our ward that were so committed to the Scout program, and now the church has backed away and issued a policy against the scouting program, and that's how it is for your family with LGBTQ issues and the policy.

David Bokovoy [01:20:25] And I just said, no, it's not. It's not. It's not at all like that. Please let me help you understand where I'm from. Coming. Coming from, I don't know that you could find someone who loves the LDS Church and has given more than I have.

David Bokovoy [01:20:40] I've spent my whole life, my career, my finances, my education, everything. Everything that I had for love of it. And then now I said, if my daughter has a biological or an adopted child and turns to me and says, dad, sure, go ahead, and you can take my. You can take your grandson to church.

David Bokovoy [01:21:07] I could take my grandson to church. And I said, bishop, his wife was the primary president. And I said, your. Your wife would. She wouldn't say, no, your grandson can't come. He has gay parents. You would. You guys would welcome him. He said, of course we would. So you would welcome my grandson? You would let my grandson come and learn about the church and learn everything about this?

David Bokovoy [01:21:31] But I could not bless that grandson. I could not give him a name in the church. I could not baptize that grandson. I could not give that grandson the gift of the Holy Ghost. So the argument that this is done to protect the children because we don't want cognitive dissonance based upon our doctrine and based upon what they are here experiencing at home, makes no intellectual sense. Because we're not saying to these children of gay parents, you can't come to church. We're saying, you cannot have a saving ordinance.

David Bokovoy [01:22:07] You cannot have the gift of the Holy Ghost, not because of who you are or any choice that you have made because of what your parents did. I said, bishop, I am not asking you to agree with me that the policy is wrong. I'm not going to try to make that argument. But I would just like you to understand it's a little bit more difficult than somebody that's disappointed that there's not a scouting program anymore in the church.

David Bokovoy [01:22:34] That's. That was our conversation. And it just. Yeah, I just. I. I just. I cannot. It's just. And Again, I love the general authorities. I believe, and I am sincerely believe, even when I disagree, that they are good men that are trying to make sense of their deep spiritual and doctrinal convictions in light of a rapidly changing world.

David Bokovoy [01:23:00] And I support them and sustain them in that effort because I know that's a big challenge. But they've gone a direction right now that, as much as I love them, I cannot follow.

John Dehlin [01:23:11] Last question for today. What would you say to someone who said to you, okay, great, LGBT stuff is a problem, but it's just the end of a super long list of major glaring smoking guns and problems. Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Abraham, Book of Moses book, you know, Book of Mormon, polygamy, polyandry, Mountain Meadows Massacre, peep stones, folk magic. Like, what if someone were to say to you, what took you so long? Or what about just feminism and women being subjugated, or all the racism and the cultural genocide of the Native Americans and the Indian placement program and the racism in the Book of Mormon and, you know, the mall and there's a million things that someone could say. Say it took you that long. Like, sure, there were a hundred smoking guns along the way that you could have seen at any point.

David Bokovoy [01:24:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:11] What. What. How do you explain.

David Bokovoy [01:24:13] I'd say that it. It wasn't as if it was just the policy, and I'm just like, okay, that I can't keep going down, that it was all those. There were all those things that you

John Dehlin [01:24:21] mentioned, but someone could say, why didn't. That. If Fon Brody could write in 1945, no, man is my history. If the Tanners could do what they do in the 60s, you know, and if you knew all this stuff, starting at your BYU years, what took you so long? And I'm not trying to be insane.

David Bokovoy [01:24:37] No, no.

John Dehlin [01:24:38] Because I have deep respect for you.

David Bokovoy [01:24:39] No, I. I know that it's a great question, and I would just say I was an absolute believer. I mean, that's. That's what it comes down to. I mean, I. It's not like I was just shifting paradigms because I thought, oh, this will bring me a paycheck, or, you know, this will let me have my career that I want, or. No, it was that I had deep, powerful spiritual experiences with Mormonism that are very real to me, that I'm very grateful for that. I just. So you know that when that happens, I don't think it's. That's not something you just walk away from.

John Dehlin [01:25:23] Takes a lot.

David Bokovoy [01:25:23] Yeah. And I haven't walked away. Now I get Messages from people now that have concern, and they're like, oh, you've left the church. I don't feel like I've left the church. Yeah. I don't attend, and I can't see myself attending anymore. But it's something I've devoted my life to. I'm going down with a ship. I mean, I want to help. I want to help people in my community. I want to help the church leaders. I want to help. I want to. I want to help Mormonism grow and become the most beautiful thing that it possibly can. And the extent that I'm allowed to do that, I'll offer my services and do that, because we're talking about a deep love affair.

John Dehlin [01:26:11] And I think also you were inoculated. Your. Your early exposure to varying points of view and that flexibility that you talk about in those BYU years or the UVU years, whatever they were, where you just started getting used to a shifting paradigm.

David Bokovoy [01:26:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:31] As David Bacavoy. It's almost like from an early set of years, developing a very flexible view of the gospel.

David Bokovoy [01:26:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:43] Set you up to be very flexible for all these different problems.

David Bokovoy [01:26:47] That's a. And that's a very important part of my narrative. That's why I tell that story. I mean, it was. I'd been home for two months on my mission, and I am up in the archives, and I found that article.

John Dehlin [01:26:56] And then Eugene England and Bruce Harmon.

David Bokovoy [01:26:58] I'm telling you. So it just. With my studies, it just required constant movement and shift and flexibility and. And. And I do not judge anyone who, like, reads the CES letter and is exposed to that. The first. A lot of my friends. I've got lots of friends now that read the CES letter. That was the first exposure.

John Dehlin [01:27:16] 15 minutes.

David Bokovoy [01:27:17] And they're just like, what am I gonna do now? And they're just like. And. And I. Some of my dearest, closest friends. And I don't look at that and say, oh, you're so naive or, you know, you're so silly. And why did you have this black and white viewpoint in the perspective? Everybody has their own journey. And it's. It was just very different for me. Exactly. It was a demand of 20 some odd years of incredible flexibility.

John Dehlin [01:27:41] Stretching and stretching and stretching and stretching. Yeah.

David Bokovoy [01:27:44] So that, like, you know, I just. For me, you know, those. The issues that we've talked about, historical criticism. I had ways of making sense of it and still do and preserving the inspiration of Joseph Smith and all that scripture. And so it. No, that stuff would never lead me to a Discontinued. I don't need the church to be true with a capital T. I need it to be good with a capital G. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:09] And I. I also have to think that immersing yourself in the scriptures for that long, how could you not love, grow to love them so much as you clearly have to? Where you. You want to hold on.

David Bokovoy [01:28:21] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:22] You want to hold on because you love those scriptures.

David Bokovoy [01:28:25] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:28:25] It's obvious you still do.

David Bokovoy [01:28:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:27] God or God or Moses may not exist or Nephi, but you love those scriptures.

David Bokovoy [01:28:32] I do.

John Dehlin [01:28:33] I do.

David Bokovoy [01:28:34] I do. And it, you know, that's just there are, you know, for people that are on the outside who look at it and think, how the hell can he do that? The reality is, it's. How many people just love Tolkien's work or how many people absolutely love Shakespeare or experts in those various.

John Dehlin [01:28:52] Or J.K. rowling.

David Bokovoy [01:28:53] Yeah, exactly. And, you know, not that I'm saying it's the exact equivalent.

John Dehlin [01:28:59] Yeah.

David Bokovoy [01:28:59] It's not. And I recognize that, but that's. Yeah. Those texts have changed my life and shaped my viewpoint. The reason my religion is love and the reason I'm devoted to service, the reason I'm devoted to changing the world and making heaven on earth, that's all because of Jesus. The reason I'm devoted to social justice, that's the Hebrew prophets, that, That's King Benjamin. The reason I want to eradicate poverty and end war. It's. It's all in those scriptures. Everything that is good in my life has come because of those scriptures, because of Joseph Smith and because of Mormonism, including my wife and my children. And I thank God for that. And I'm so grateful. And I want to help. And I love them, love the church, love its leaders. I just. I hope we can do better.

John Dehlin [01:29:47] That's how we're ending this interview with David Bacavoy, at least today. What a beautiful ending.

David Bokovoy [01:29:51] Thank you. Thank you, John, for that. I mean, we did hours of this, and I'm so grateful for this venue to share my story. I'm so grateful that it's helped. I've got so many messages of people that it's really helped. And I. That's why I wanted to share. So thank you for hosting.

John Dehlin [01:30:06] Well, I just want to tell you, well, how much of a pleasure it's been to have you. I hope we'll have you back. I have hours more of questions for you. But I just think it's ironic that one of the strongest witnesses I've ever heard for the Book of Mormon comes from someone who's left the church or at least who's no longer practicing in the church.

David Bokovoy [01:30:28] Okay. Independent Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:30:30] And it's not just your verbal witness of the beauty and of the power and of the significance of those scriptures, but. But it's how you live your life and your integrity, your kindness, your compassion. You know, your life is a testament to the power of the scriptures, even if they're not historically true.

David Bokovoy [01:30:50] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:30:51] And that's a. It's a. It's a twist. Something I'm not used to, but something that I find very beautiful. And I'm just so thrilled that you. You shared your. You, David Bachavoy, with us. Not just your wisdom, but you.

David Bokovoy [01:31:07] Thank you so much. You're a good friend.

John Dehlin [01:31:10] Listeners, thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. I don't know, is that seven or eight hours of David Bacavoi? And we're not done, but we'll see if we can get him back to answer the rest of my questions. But email us@mormonstoriesmail.com Go up to the website and share your thoughts and feelings. Please share these episodes with everybody because everybody, Mormon and not, needs to hear this stuff. Share it on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram. Buy this book from Greg Coford Books. Authoring the Old Testament Genesis through Deuteronomy. People are expecting a couple more volumes. Do you think they'll ever happen?

David Bokovoy [01:31:45] I hope so. I hope so.

John Dehlin [01:31:48] It's hard to keep your mojo.

David Bokovoy [01:31:49] That policy took a lot of wind out of my sails, but I'm starting to get it back.

John Dehlin [01:31:52] Okay. So we'll see if those happen. And I want that Book of Mormon explanation book as well. David Bacavoy, Good luck with the prison system, but also thank you to all the donors who make Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation possible. We couldn't do without you. Thank you to Holly Alden for helping us acquire this new facility that we're going to beautify. Thank you to Cody Layton for producing these episodes. He does a great job. Thanks to the Opus Stories foundation board, which includes Kim Sandberg Turner, Steve Holbrook, Nadine McCombs, Hans, and and Jeremy McDonald with an assist from Craig Woodfield, who oversees our finances because he's awesome.

John Dehlin [01:32:34] Thanks to all of you. Make this possible. And if you really loved this content, if you really value it, we can't do this without contributions. So please donate to the Open Stories foundation. Go to MormonStories.org Click on the Donate button. 10, 50, $100 a month. Whatever you can afford.

John Dehlin [01:32:50] It's all tax. Deductible in the US and it goes towards sustaining the mission of the foundation, supporting the other podcasters. Dan Witherspoon Mormon Matters Podcast Gina Colvin A Thoughtful Faith Podcast Love and blessings to Gina Colvin as she's facing excommunication now on the Tale of Bill Real, who we also love and send a shout out to who we found out today was excommunicated.

John Dehlin [01:33:14] Love to you Bill Real. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. And a huge shout out to Brother Jake Jake Frost, who we found out experienced cardiac arrest last week and has been on life support. Jake Frost has given us so much. He's such a beautiful, creative soul where our thoughts are prayers with him. We hope he has a recovery and or our thoughts or prayers are with him and his family at this very difficult time. We love you Jake Brother Jake Frost.

John Dehlin [01:33:43] And anyway, please support us Mormon Stories when you can and we'll just keep doing this for as long as you support us. So again, love you, David Bockvoy. Take care.

David Bokovoy [01:33:52] Thank you, brother.

John Dehlin [01:33:53] All right, join us again soon with Mormon Stories. Everybody take care.

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