David Bokovoy delves into Isaiah’s significance in Mormon scripture, prophecy, and current events with an emphasis on understanding biblical prophets as social critics, not predictors of distant future events. We discuss scholarly debates on Isaiah’s authorship and anachronistic references like brass plates, clarifying that the writings of Isaiah as known today did not exist in Isaiah’s time.
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Co-host: Gerardo Sumano · Guest: David Bokovoy
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Welcome and Introduction to the Episode
John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Welcome to David Bachavoy Week. This should be the last episode in our David Bacavoy series. Of course, we're welcoming back an old friend to Mormon Stories podcast, David Bacavoy, Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and the Near East.
David Bokovoy [00:00:22] Ancient near east
John Dehlin [00:00:25] from Brandeis. He's a Bible scholar. We've had him on Mormon Stories multiple times. Years ago he told his own Mormon story and then he talked about historical criticism as it relates to Mormon scripture. A must see top 10 of all time Mormon Stories series. But then we just had him back, if you haven't seen it yet, to sort of, sort of have a Where is he now? David Bachavoy update. And then today we're going to be focusing on Isaiah in Mormonism and basically the role of Isaiah in Mormon scripture, prophecy and current events.
John Dehlin [00:01:07] You will all know that we've recently been talking about Avraham Gileadi and Visions of Glory and, you know, Chad and Laurie Daybell and the one mighty and strong prophecies. We'll be touching on that today. We'll be talking about just Isaiah and how it fits into the Book of Mormon. And then also we'll be ending with a discussion of Book of Mormon historicity, Deutero Isaiah, which we've talked about a little bit on Mormon stories, but we're going to talk about TRO Isaiah and what is that and how does it impact Book of Mormon historicity? And with all that we have back Dr. David B. Hey, David.
David Bokovoy [00:01:45] Hey, John. Thank you for that intro. And I'm, I, I. So there's a David Bachavoy Week. It must be compared to Shark Week, I guess.
John Dehlin [00:01:52] Shark Week.
David Bokovoy [00:01:52] Thank you.
John Dehlin [00:01:53] Yeah, better than Shark Week.
David Bokovoy [00:01:55] It's David B. I hope we get a couple of listeners to the first such a topic, but we will.
John Dehlin [00:02:00] And if that weren't enough, we also have with us in studio the Gerardo Simano. Hey, Gerardo.
Gerardo Sumano [00:02:07] Hi, John.
John Dehlin [00:02:07] Welcome back, David.
Gerardo Sumano [00:02:09] Thank you.
John Dehlin [00:02:09] Thanks.
Gerardo Sumano [00:02:10] I'm excited.
John Dehlin [00:02:11] Yeah, Gerardo's always great for a deep dive and to tweak our cinematography. So it's great to have you.
Gerardo Sumano [00:02:17] Yeah, thank you. Thanks.
How Much of the Book of Mormon Is Isaiah?
John Dehlin [00:02:19] All right, so David, where should we begin this discussion of, I mean, if Joseph Smith, how much of the Book of Mormon is Isaiah?
David Bokovoy [00:02:27] Oh, yeah, I don't know. A significant portion of it. We have a good slide that will show, that shows at least block sections that are cited. But really there's a lot more than just those block sections. There are a lot of textual echoes, allusions to the Book of Isaiah all throughout. I, I would make the argument that the Book of Mormon could not exist without the, the Book of Isaiah. It is that dependent upon it from start to finish.
John Dehlin [00:02:52] And isn't it fair to say that Joseph Smith quotes Isaiah more than Jesus in the Book of Mormon?
David Bokovoy [00:02:57] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:02:57] I mean, hell yeah. He's the most quoted biblical prophet in the Book of Mormon. So I mean this episode you're about to watch is central to your understanding of Mormonism, Believer or not believer. Sure.
David Bokovoy [00:03:10] And John, you're right. And in fact, at the time of Joseph Smith, Isaiah was sometimes referred to as the fifth Gospel. Right. Because it has been used by Christians so extensively to connect with Jesus Christ and his mission and supposed prophecies that are found therein that link with him. Joseph Smith would have, like all Christians of his day, been fascinated with this book. And that fascination certainly comes forward in his production of the Book of Mormon.
John Dehlin [00:03:42] Yeah. All right, so let's dig in. We've got some slides.
David Bokovoy [00:03:45] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:03:46] And we've got David there. If you could see him. He's got, hold up your books.
David Bokovoy [00:03:50] I got my Bible, he's got his Bible. I, I, it's not, I couldn't do the King James Version. I, I hope people will follow along. We'll talk a little bit about, I'm using the Jewish Publication Society Transl. Which is anyway, but we'll talk, we'll connect it with what Latter Day Saints are a bit more familiar with.
John Dehlin [00:04:09] And we're trying to thread that needle of doing real legitimate discussion of scholarly topics, but making it as understandable and as accessible because I heard the word smoking gun today in our prep. Like for those of you who are trying to understand the historicity of the Book of Mormon, I mean, I think we're going to be talking about something that someone described as possibly a smoking gun.
David Bokovoy [00:04:36] I did. You're correct, John. And I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, of course. I mean it as a smoking gun. In terms of helping us to contextualize the Book of Mormon. What is its context? Is it an ancient document that has been translated and brought forth at our time? Is it in fact a modern production or at least a 19th century religious document? Because or book. Because context is so important. Because once we take something out of context, by definition we change its meaning. And so the context historically for the Book of Mormon is essential if we're going to talk about what that book meant and what it means to us today. And so far as a smoking gun, then the Isaiah Material in the Book of Mormon helps us do just that. It helps us contextualize the work as a 19th century religious production of the prophet Joseph Smith.
John Dehlin [00:05:28] Yeah, well, brilliant. So where should we begin, Dave?
David Bokovoy [00:05:33] Well, I'm excited to get into to breaking down Isaiah and talking about how the book was created and why that's relevant. But maybe for our listeners sake, maybe we jump into what you invited me to talk about a little bit, which is the one mighty and strong. Because apparently that is really important for some of the contemporary events that you guys have been discussing.
The One Mighty and Strong in Mormon History
John Dehlin [00:05:50] Yeah, it's a relevant current event that's really affecting Mormonism. But also I think it's a great introduction to the concepts we're going to be talking about and why I think many modern non scholar Mormon conservative folks are misreading Isaiah to everyone's detriment. But I'll just give the setup, you know, whether it's the Visions of Glory book we've covered with Tom Harrison, whether it's Avraham Gileadi's book and his books around Isaiah that I think Deseret books sold multiple Avraham Gileadi books and probably still does, to all the prepper nonsense that is leading to so many people believing that they're the one, the Davidic servant, the one mighty and strong.
John Dehlin [00:06:36] Whether that's a mother in Arizona taking her son into Alaska so that she can protect the son that she believes is the one mighty and strong. Or whether it's Chad and Laurie Daybell or Avram Gileadi himself. It's like there's an Avram Gileadi on every Mormon. I'm sorry, there's a one mighty and strong or a Davidic servant unlike every corner these days in pre Mormonism. And it's because the way that we've been taught to understand Isaiah is that Isaiah prophesied that in the latter days some dude named David's gonna emerge to usher in the second coming of Jesus. That's not Joseph Smith and by Avram Gileadi's account isn't even one of the members of the Quorum of the twelve or the First Presidency.
John Dehlin [00:07:18] It's some grassroots David that's gonna emerge to usher in the second coming. Now David, tell us what Isaiah is actually saying and not saying.
David Bokovoy [00:07:27] Okay, let's keep the David's though. Craig, I'm not the mighty and strong one. I'm the non Davidic one. Yeah, but you know, I cannot speak to any of the contemporary events that John, you just rehearsed and I appreciate, I have been outside of the loop, so to speak. It's not something I've kept up with. In fact, I just recently, Carolyn and I, we did a. We did the Grand Canyon. We hiked it from rim to rim with a group of our friends, including the Caldwells. They were the ones who organized it. And Mindy was on recently discussing a lot of these events. And our ride down, she kind of explained to us about the day that filled you in. Yeah. What was transpiring. And I was fascinated. And.
John Dehlin [00:08:09] Hey, Mindy.
David Bokovoy [00:08:10] Yeah. Captivated with that information, but it's not something that I'm qualified to talk about.
John Dehlin [00:08:15] In other words, you've been living a happy, healthy life and not paying attention to nonsense. Well.
David Bokovoy [00:08:19] Or some of the violence and sadness that has been connected with this as well.
Guest 1 [00:08:24] Right.
John Dehlin [00:08:24] It's dark, we laugh, so we don't cry.
David Bokovoy [00:08:27] Yeah, no, I. I hear it's. It's. But it's an interesting topic, at least. Oh, my goodness. That concept of the mighty and strong one really comes from the prophet Joseph Smith. Originally and not specifically. Isaiah, 18:32. The Prophet Joseph Smith receives a revelation and he incorporates that into a letter that he writes to W.W. phelps, and eventually that revelation will be canonized by Latter Day saints as Section 85 in the Doctrine and Covenants, the mighty and strong one who will come and set things in order.
David Bokovoy [00:09:01] But I don't want to get lost in the weeds because we got a lot of good Isaiah historical development to talk about. So perhaps instead of focusing on that specific LDS component of it, it would be good to jump then to just where is Joseph Smith drawing that mighty and strong imagery from? And then how is that being influenced by contemporary Latter Day Saints, including Abraham Gileadi and his work on Isaiah?
David Bokovoy [00:09:27] Well, really, that revelation from Joseph Smith is drawing upon two parts of Isaiah. The first one we ought to maybe take a look at. Where the mighty and strong one literally appears is in Isaiah, chapter 28. So I'm going to pull out my reading glasses and.
David Bokovoy [00:09:44] And jump to this. Now I'm in the Jewish Publication Society. Translation, this is an oracle that the prophet Isaiah gives regarding the destruction of the Northern Kingdom and their enemies. Now in chapter 28, then it starts off as talking about Ephraim, or Ephraim, who is from the North. And then verse two in the Jewish Publication Society. Lo, my Lord has something. Note the word strong and mighty, like a storm of hail, a shower of pestilence, something like a storm of massive torrential rain shall be hurled with force to the ground, trampled underfoot shall be the proud crowns of the drunkards of Ephraim, the wilted flowers, and so forth and so on. Now that Jewish publication society is quite a bit different than the King James translation that will influence Joseph Smith. Right?
John Dehlin [00:10:38] It's not even personified saying something.
David Bokovoy [00:10:41] Exactly.
John Dehlin [00:10:41] Wow.
David Bokovoy [00:10:42] Right, Exactly. And hence the confusion. I would go with the JPS translation of this rather than the King James translation where they actually have to add the word one in because it's not there. Those two mighty, strong, they're both adjectives in Hebrew and the one doesn't appear. And so more than likely what Isaiah is referring to is in fact Assyria. Assyria is that something strong that will come in and eradicate the Northern kingdom, kingdom of Israel in 721. So the one mighty and strong is not, you're right, personified here it is something more than likely. And if in fact we should understand those adjectives as personifying an individual, then that individual should be placed in the historical context of the oracle. And it would have been one of the Assyrian leaders from the time period.
John Dehlin [00:11:33] And you may have already said this, but where does the word David or the name David come into?
David Bokovoy [00:11:37] Not here yet. But not here yet. But it's not, in fact David really will be. Well, we'll talk a little bit more about why David is so important to these concepts.
John Dehlin [00:11:48] Do we know where Avram or Joseph would have gotten associated David with this prophecy though?
David Bokovoy [00:11:53] Because there are a number of prophecies that talk about their royal prophecies and things like that that talk about a Davidic ruler. And in fact this revelation from Joseph Smith on the mighty and strong one actually is influenced by this Isaiah passage, but it's also influenced by Isaiah chapter 11. That is where we have stem of Jesse and or the and and so forth. I can't remember the exact language than the King James Bible, but I'll turn over there real quick and we can look at that because that's where David's going to come in. So In Isaiah chapter 11 is 11,
John Dehlin [00:12:25] the stick of Joseph and the stick of Judah chapter. I'm trying to remember my, my scripture mastery.
David Bokovoy [00:12:30] Nope, nope, nope. That's going to be. Nope, that's going to be a different book, John.
John Dehlin [00:12:37] Yeah, that's why we have David here
David Bokovoy [00:12:39] and you a little different book. But, but it's. But here I'm in Ezekiel.
John Dehlin [00:12:42] That was Ezekiel.
David Bokovoy [00:12:43] Ezekiel 37.
John Dehlin [00:12:44] I'm just trying to kill time for you to find your chapter.
David Bokovoy [00:12:48] I got it. I'm quick. But okay, so here is one of the royal oracles that we find here in the opening part of Isaiah, chapter 11 is one of them. And this is the one that's very famous. And Joseph Smith's revelation on the mighty and strong one will be influenced by this section as well.
The Stump of Jesse and Davidic Prophecy
David Bokovoy [00:13:08] It's the one that starts off verse one. But a shoot shall grow out of the stump of Jesse. A twig shall sprout from his stalk. Now, Jesse, of course, is the father of David, right, in the book of Samuel. And the interesting thing about this passage is the fact that it actually does not name the Davidic ruler. Instead, it says the stump of Jesse. Interesting that it would list Jesse, right, as opposed to the stump of David, because Ahaz, who's the king at the time, is a Davidic ruler of David's lineage. And why is he not named here? Why is David not named here? Why is it?
David Bokovoy [00:13:47] Scholars aren't sure, but what we think is happening, we see this in other parts of the Hebrew Bible as well, where it's a way of being a little bit obscure and diminishing, perhaps because the Davidic ruler, because Ahaz, who is a descendant of David, then linking with Jesse, is probably the king that they want to avoid mentioning specifically at this time, because Ahaz is not. Not doing things that he should. Isaiah is going to tell him that he's in a state of apostasy and give him a judgment oracle that connects ultimately with Jesus as well. So anyway, coming back to this, then the stump of Jesse, to understand it, we have to go back actually to the previous verses, right before where Isaiah is talking about he's going to compare Israel's enemies with the stump of Jesse.
David Bokovoy [00:14:40] And he does so in the previous verses in chapter 10, which is. Oh, I'll just pick it up with verse 33. Lo, the sovereign Lord of hosts will hew off the tree crowns with an axe. The tall ones shall be felled, the lofty ones cut down, the thickets of the forest shall be hacked away with iron, and the Lebanon trees shall fall in their majesty. So notice that we have a comparison being made between the trees or the forest of Lebanon and the stump of the Davidic monarchy and Jesse. So God is going to cut down the trees, the forest of Lebanon, of the Arameans and of Ephraim, and he's going to then preserve ultimately a root or something that will come from this stump, and it will be a Davidic king that will be able to help restore order.
David Bokovoy [00:15:39] So a shoot shall grow up out of the stump of Jesse, and then the spirit of The Lord shall alight upon him a spirit of wisdom and insight, a spirit of counsel and valor, a spirit of devotion and reverence for the Lord. He shall sense the Lord by his reverence for the Lord. So he's going to help the people and then return to Yahweh. It's tough to know exactly who is being talked about here. Who is this prophesied, this individual prophesied as a Davidic king that will come and restore justice and equity. He's mentioned a few other times in Isaiah because Isaiah is concerned with him and we're not sure, but most scholars would link that with Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, who actually becomes a righteous king according to the Hebrew Bible. But it also has been linked perhaps with Josiah and his reforms, who's viewed as a righteous king as well.
Guest 1 [00:16:34] So.
John Dehlin [00:16:34] So not Chad Daybell.
David Bokovoy [00:16:35] No, no, no. In this, in this context, not Avraham Gilead. No, no, not either. Not me. David Bachavoy, either.
John Dehlin [00:16:42] How about Gerardo?
David Bokovoy [00:16:43] Yeah, I mean, perhaps, perhaps you got me there. But it's. I think this is helpful because what it does is it shows that when oracles and prophecies and judgment speeches, when anything is taken out of its historical context and it changes its meaning. And that's precisely what is done by contemporary Latter Day Saints when they grab these promises from Isaiah and make them relevant for the present time. I'm not saying that that is wrong for religious people to do because of course that would be the lightning process that Nephi talks about and that Latter Day Saints like to do for their own spiritual edification. But it is important to recognize that when we take something out of context, we change its meaning.
John Dehlin [00:17:30] And it's one thing to liken a, A, a myth or some sort of allegory that provides moral instruction or inspiration. It's another thing to lift a historical event or a prophecy that was supposed to be applied a couple millennia ago and pretend that it's applying to modern day when we know it's not being directed at modern day. That's a whole different thing than saying, what can we learn from Ammon chopping off the arms of excellent. You know, his bad guys.
Guest 2 [00:18:01] Right.
David Bokovoy [00:18:01] Yeah, no, excellent point. No, it's an excellent point and very relevant. And I would just simply take that in an ad John, that it's important not to misread it as well. And so it's one thing to take it out of context, another to completely misread the text. And once, if we're starting to link this in ways that have been done with other, you know, I don't know. It's been. The Lafferty brothers, for example, have been the mighty and strong ones and others.
John Dehlin [00:18:28] Even Tim Ballard, I think, was potentially believing that about himself.
David Bokovoy [00:18:33] Fascinating, maybe.
John Dehlin [00:18:35] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [00:18:35] But actually who Isaiah was talking about was not Tim Ballard. He's talking about the Assyrians who are going to come and be strong and to eradicate the Northern Kingdom, which is a prophecy that Isaiah, the historical Isaiah makes and it is fulfilled. But Judah in the south will be preserved during that time period. In fact, it actually connects with one of the views that is central to the historical Isaiah. Isaiah is going to hold a view that Jerusalem is inviable. And what we mean by that is Isaiah does not believe that the city of Jerusalem could ever be destroyed. It was God's holy city. It was the place of his temple.
David Bokovoy [00:19:13] His sanctuary is there, His Kavod is there. And it is the place of the Davidic monarchy which had received very sacred promises from God. If we go back to places like 2 Samuel 7, for example, we don't need to turn there. But what you'll see in those texts is that go. God constantly makes references and promises to the Davidic monarchy in the form of a grant.
David Bokovoy [00:19:39] This is actually very important, I think, for your listeners and all of us to understand. In the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, we find two different types of covenant relationships, if you will. We find grants and we find treaties. Now a treaty is something like the entire book of Deuteronomy, which is actually influenced by the vassal treaties of Esarhaddon from ancient Assyria. But. But a treaty is if you do xyz, then I will do A, B, C for you back and forth. It's a treaty where you're going to do this. And those were done politically and then carried over into the religious sphere in the Old Testament.
David Bokovoy [00:20:16] So we have lots of treaties. But when it comes to the Davidic monarchy, all the way throughout the Hebrew Bible. Well, until you get to the end of the Book of Kings, of course. When the Davidic monarchy is taken into exile, there is a grant given. And what makes a grant different than a treaty is that a grant is a promise that will not be broken. A grant is something different is that I grant you or bequeath you this reward. It's something like a king might do to someone who did something for him that he appreciated. He grants a reward, a piece of land or property or promise.
David Bokovoy [00:20:54] And it's in partuity. It's going to last forever. Right? It's Eternal. And so. So the promise that was made to the Davidic monarchy was that they would always have a Davidic ruler in Jerusalem and that David would always have an heir at his throne. God makes that grant with David because of his faithfulness and righteousness. We actually see a similar thing happening in what is called the Akedah or the binding of Isaac in Genesis chapter 22. Many have wondered why God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. And what was the that story about? Is it prefiguring Jesus Christ? Is it doing something that explains why? Oh, another, a polemic against child sacrifice, which was something that was practiced during that time historically.
David Bokovoy [00:21:37] None of that is there in the text. The only thing that the text in Genesis 22 says about Abraham is that because you were so true and faithful, I give you these rewards. So the story is given to show Abraham's faithfulness to God. Because Abraham was so faithful, God gave him a grant and it would be then passed on to his descendants. So the story explains why God favored the children of Israel because Abraham did this difficult thing. This ties back then to the mighty and strong image and why it's a Davidic king. Because many of the prophecies, or I shouldn't say prophecies, many of the historical texts of kings will again refer to the fact that there will always be a Davidic king, king ruling over Jerusalem.
David Bokovoy [00:22:22] Now when that doesn't happen, it's going to create quite the crisis then, religiously, politically and socially. And that's going to transpire with the Babylonian exile.
Gerardo Sumano [00:22:31] All right, so basically Isaiah got it wrong there.
David Bokovoy [00:22:35] Right, Sorry, say again?
Gerardo Sumano [00:22:36] Isaiah got it wrong about Jerusalem not being able to be destroyed.
David Bokovoy [00:22:41] Well, yeah, this is interesting because this is going to take us into the historical development of the book of Isaiah because. Yes, indeed, what we could look at is, we could look at a. For example, when Jeremiah much later on is going to be prophesying to the people that the city of Jerusalem will be destroyed. He's confronted by the prophets and the priests who tell him he is an apostate. And they know that the city cannot be destroyed because they actually hold the same view of inviability that the historical Isaiah had. It was prophesied, it would always have. So if we were to take Isaiah and put Isaiah into Jeremiah's this time period, actually Isaiah would have been one of those false prophets confronting Jeremiah, telling him, no, the city of Jerusalem can never be destroyed.
Gerardo Sumano [00:23:27] So Levi would have disagreed with the historical Isaiah.
David Bokovoy [00:23:31] Well, that's what's. Well, it's kind of. Well, I don't know, because, remember. Yeah, Nephi would. But guess who would have agreed with Isaiah, Laman and Lemuel. Remember the story Lamanuel thought, this great city cannot be destroyed. So actually they would have been in harmony with Isaiah perspective. And they actually. Yeah, it would have been in harmony with that. Whereas, you know, Jeremiah and Lehi.
Gerardo Sumano [00:23:54] That's cool.
David Bokovoy [00:23:55] Yeah. Would have had a totally different viewpoint.
Gerardo Sumano [00:23:56] Laman and Lemuel believe Isaiah more than Lehi did.
David Bokovoy [00:24:00] I didn't say that. But, yeah, you were on the right track, I guess.
Guest 2 [00:24:04] Right.
John Dehlin [00:24:05] Gerardo's mischievous. All right. So does that close out the one mighty and strong? You know, can we just. I guess we can't burn visions of glory, but. Well, in all of Avraham Gileadi's books. But, you know, someone should send him the memo, maybe.
David Bokovoy [00:24:24] Well, you know, and then I think as long as we. As long as he's been brought up, Avraham Gileadi, I think for the purposes of our general discussion here, his work that is most relevant to what we're going to discuss would be his effort to link the entire book of Isaiah with historical Isaiah, the Prophet, by identifying a chiastic structure that runs for the entire 66 chapters.
David Bokovoy [00:24:51] And the argument being that if there is a chiasm that is structuring the entire book, then it most likely came from the same author. Well, there are lots of problems with that sort of reading. Number one, it's easy to fake a chiasm. Okay. Meaning that there are not. There are.
David Bokovoy [00:25:13] There are. It's easy then to make one up in a lengthy text, as long as you're going to omit certain sections and then focus on this one. And then cherry pick. Yeah, cherry pick it. And that happens sometimes with these structures. But even if one could identify a general chiastic structure as Avraham Gileadi has sought to do through the book, it would not prove that the book had been written by one individual. It would just simply mean that perhaps the book had been organized. Organized or structured by someone who wanted to put it into that particular pattern at a later date after those oracles have been received. Does that make sense?
John Dehlin [00:25:50] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [00:25:50] Yeah. So it's a. I, I. It does not. It does not do what. What Abraham Gileadi hoped to do, which was to establish Isaiah authorship for the entire work.
Gerardo Sumano [00:26:02] Yeah, well, we're gonna get into that for sure. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:26:06] All right.
David Bokovoy [00:26:07] But maybe I, I think, though, it's worth. Maybe we should jump in because I think it is pretty, this inviability of Jerusalem and it's pretty essential to understanding the next section when we're going to talk about exilic and post exilic Isaiah. So maybe just for our audience sake, maybe we should show a couple passages or two. Let me do that real quick. For Isaiah's inviability. I'm going to take you over to. Oh, let's go to Isaiah 31.
David Bokovoy [00:26:42] Okay, so I'm going to go to Isaiah 31 and I'm going to take a look here. Then. Oh, let's pick it up, I guess in verse in. In verse 5. Look at what Isaiah prophesies here. Like the birds that fly, even so will the Lord of hosts shield Jerusalem, shielding and saving, protecting and rescuing.
David Bokovoy [00:27:06] Right. God is always there to shield this sacred city because it's where his temple is. It has an important destiny to fulfill from Isaiah's perspective. And so this is one text amongst many that we could identify. Oh, Isaiah 33:20. As long as we're here, that would be another 1. Isaiah 33:20.
David Bokovoy [00:27:26] Look at this one. When you gaze upon Zion, and Zion is a synonym for Jerusalem, the holy city. When you gaze upon Zion, our city of assembly, your eyes shall behold Jerusalem as a secure homestead, a tent not to be transported, whose pegs shall never be pulled up, and none of whose ropes shall break the tents of Zion, the tents of Jerusalem will never be pulled up. God will always protect this city. It's a central and important point and it connects with why Isaiah tells.
David Bokovoy [00:27:59] It tells the people not to worry too much about Assyria, that God will protect them, shield them, because of these sacred promises. It's one of the central theological points that Isaiah held in his lifetime.
John Dehlin [00:28:11] Okay, yeah.
Biblical Prophets and Their Role in Ancient Israel
David Bokovoy [00:28:13] So this takes us then, perhaps then part of the confusion that contemporary Latter Day Saints have, particularly those who jump into these passages and want to make them relevant to modern day David or Davidic figures, is a misunderstanding of what it meant in ancient Israel and in the Bible to be a prophet. And it's at this point that it might be helpful to then draw upon. Oh, John, in our last series of interviews, you mentioned that I had a chance to publish a chapter on the prophets in the book Latter Day Tradition. The Bible.
John Dehlin [00:28:46] I'll show a screenshot of the book, actually.
David Bokovoy [00:28:50] Right, yeah, yeah, that's perfect. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:28:52] The Bible and the Latter Day Saint Tradition, edited by Tater Petrie and Corey Crawford and Eric. I can't read that last name. Can you guys read that anyway? Three. Three dudes.
David Bokovoy [00:29:09] I don't remember who the third editor was. I can't. I should remember.
John Dehlin [00:29:12] But I'm sorry, Eric something.
David Bokovoy [00:29:13] Yeah. Oh, yeah, sorry. All right, my point, this quote that I have here on the slide comes directly from my article then that I was able to share in that volume. And it reads. Biblical prophets typically functioned as outsiders and critics of authority. They were individuals who censored both the religious and social system of ancient Israel rather than administering over the people in either a religious or political sense, the way prophets traditionally function in Mormon traditions.
David Bokovoy [00:29:42] The biblical prophet was typically a figure who instructed leaders concerning the way they should properly exercise their authority in terms of military, cultic and moral activities. In ancient Israel, prophets provided a check on the power of the king, the upper class, and the religious leaders who controlled the system. This historical fact may account for the decline of prophecy in Judean society after the waning of the monarchy following the Babylonian captivity.
David Bokovoy [00:30:11] So what I'm saying here is that biblical prophets, it was actually a profession for many. They had. The sons of the prophets are talked about prophetic guilds or groups that were hired on occasion to ascertain the divine will. Someone would go to a prophet and find out, okay, should I, should we go to war? Should I go to battle? What should I do with my flock? What should I do with this? And then the prophet would, would read the signs, determine what the will of divinity was, and then share that message. So we have prophets who would function that way and would be hired out to individuals.
David Bokovoy [00:30:43] And we have royal prophets and Isaiah is one who seems to be connected with the kings and maybe a royal prophet, it's hard to say. He certainly has access to the monarchy and is able to censor them and talk about them, which is the role that I'm talking about here. So unlike in Latter Day Saint tradition where the prophet is the leader of the church, the prophet is kind of the outsider and the critique, the critic, sorry, the critic of what's happening.
David Bokovoy [00:31:10] A better way of, I guess, of thinking about it from a contemporary perspective would be, I don't know, the social critics and those who are.
John Dehlin [00:31:19] Yeah, I was going to say, like Sam Young criticizing the Mormon Church about how it treats children or Natasha Helfer Parker talking about how the Mormon Church is getting it wrong on matters of sexuality. It's not Russell M. Nelson or Gordon McHinkley, the president of the corporation of the church. It's the person who morally corrects the president of the church for, you know, in the modern equivalent is that.
David Bokovoy [00:31:46] That's exactly correct. And so, and it's important for a society when you have, you're going to have a Monarchy because nobody can censor the king. The king is at the top of the of the social status. So no one can censor the king unless you have a prophet that can actually ascertain the divine will, because God's will is going to be above the king. So it's not just ancient Israel that had prophets. They were actually prophets were common throughout the ancient near east and culturally, socially, religiously, the Hebrew prophets fall into that greater context.
John Dehlin [00:32:17] That's fascinating.
Gerardo Sumano [00:32:18] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [00:32:20] All right.
John Dehlin [00:32:20] It's fascinating how the modern Mormon Church has co opted that term prophet to mean almost the opposite of what it originally intended.
David Bokovoy [00:32:29] Yeah, you know, I, I prophets today in Latter Day Saint tradition function more as priests did in ancient Israel, which would they were protectors of the orthodoxy and protectors of the temple and ensuring that the rights and rituals were done correctly.
David Bokovoy [00:32:43] It's more of a priestly type role from, from the Bible rather than a true prophetic one. But moving forward then to this next slide. In my article I talk about how there really are two different categories of prophets in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. We have what are called pre classical and classical prophets. Now pre classical is simply going to refer to those prophets who were not writing prophets, but they are talked about in the Book of Samuel, the Book of Kings. And then the classical prophets are going to be the those that allegedly write books. Those like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea and so forth.
Pre-Classical and Classical Prophets in the Hebrew Bible
David Bokovoy [00:33:25] And so just to refer to the quote that I wanted to share with your audience from my article, scholars typically divide biblical prophets into two categories, Pre classical and classical. These two types of biblical prophets existed at the same time. Historically, the terminology does not imply that pre classical prophets operated prior to the classical tradition.
David Bokovoy [00:33:45] Classical prophets are those who spoke and wrote to the general population. This would include figures, as I mentioned, Isaiah and so forth. Each of these prophets has a book connected with him as author. But the pre classical prophets spoke primarily to the king. Their messages were brief and appear in the context of biblical narrative. This would include biblical prophets such as Nathan and God from the 10th century BCE and Elijah, Eliyahu and Elisha from the 9th century. And many of them, and this is important, many of these prophets are without question women as well. So women could be prophets in the Bible, which again makes it a little bit different than the way a prophet is understood in the contemporary Latter Day Saint tradition.
John Dehlin [00:34:29] So they don't necessarily get their own book?
David Bokovoy [00:34:31] No, no, no, they do not. Many, for example, Elijah does not have his own book, but his stories are preserved and talked about for us. And they would be part of that pre classical tradition, then.
John Dehlin [00:34:43] Nice.
David Bokovoy [00:34:44] Yeah. And then finally, I don't want to get, I don't want to lose our audience in the technicalities of these things too much. But it is very important if we're going to understand Isaiah, to recognize this fact that prophets in the Hebrew Bible were forthtellers, not foretellers.
David Bokovoy [00:35:04] And what I mean by this is that prophets were concerned because of their role that we just identified with the contemporary events that affected their people and their community. So their prophecies were written for a specific audience dealing with specific challenges and problems. And if we go into the historical context of those prophecies, we can identify those and then understand that prophet's message.
David Bokovoy [00:35:28] They were not concerned about the far distant future. We don't see that happening with the Hebrew prophets. Instead, everything that they produced was written to discuss things that pertained to the present time in which they ministered. And that's an important thing to recognize because that will of course clarify a lot of misunderstandings that people have when they try to interpret an Isaianic prophecy as a latter day event, which transpires a lot, of course, in Latter Day Saint traditions, but it also happens in the New Testament. Isaiah, again, Christians sometimes refer to it as the fifth Gospel, has a tremendous influence upon the gospel writers and the stories of Jesus, particularly the Gospel of Matthew, which we'll quote from the Isaiah passages and take those passages out of context and apply them to Jesus.
David Bokovoy [00:36:23] Because again, we can talk about this in just a minute, but we'll be able to show that when Isaiah is talking about a son that will be born and these types of things, it's very, very obvious that he's talking about the events that pertain to his lifetime. And he uses these things as a sign to bear witness of the veracity of the revelations or oracles that he is providing the people with.
John Dehlin [00:36:47] Okay, excellent. Okay, all right, that's good. I feel my understanding developing.
David Bokovoy [00:36:53] Good, good, good, good. Okay, so with this, then maybe we should go ahead and then, I don't know, maybe we should then, then take a. Who is this Isaiah that we've been talking about? We've just talked about what prophets were and what they did. Isaiah is a prophet. And there is an entire book with 66 chapters there that have been produced for this book. And yet scholars are convinced that the historical Isaiah did not produce the entire literary volume. So when we understand, when we understand that the Hebrew prophets were primarily concerned with the events of their time period, it helps us recognize what their true message was in their historical context. So prophets in that sense in the Bible, very different from the way that prophets are understood in the contemporary Latter Day Saint tradition.
Gerardo Sumano [00:37:56] So I have a question.
David Bokovoy [00:37:57] Sure, David.
Gerardo Sumano [00:37:58] So are you basically saying that prophets in the Bible at the time wouldn't have been considered as someone who, like, necessarily predicts the future or is seeing Jesus coming in 600 years? Like, that's not what prophets were concerned about or talking about? Is that kind of what you're saying?
David Bokovoy [00:38:15] I am, but we have to be careful. They will predict the future. For example, returning Isaiah is going to predict the destruction of the Northern Kingdom. But those predictions are connected usually within the lifetimes of the community, because, again, they're social critics. What they're trying to do is they're trying to get the people to change their course of action or the monarchy, depending upon who the audience is. And so if, for example, Isaiah is. Is going to use a prophecy and predict something that's going to happen hundreds and hundreds of years after his time period, it's not going to really help his primary concern that we see addressed all throughout. The oracles.
Gerardo Sumano [00:38:58] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [00:38:58] Does that make sense?
Gerardo Sumano [00:38:59] Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like Michael quinn saying in 20, 30 years, the church will become clean about its history because the Internet is coming.
Guest 2 [00:39:08] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [00:39:09] They're going to be forced to come clean out.
David Bokovoy [00:39:11] Yeah. So they do make predictions, but those predictions are not far distant, reaching hundreds, thousands of years into the future. That was not their concern. They had more contemporary issues that were bothering them.
John Dehlin [00:39:23] This is what I remember Dave McClelland saying about the Book of Revelation that it wasn't talking about two millennia later. It was like John the Revelator, if he even existed, was talking about imminent events. Indeed, when the apostles, when Jesus's contemporaries were still alive.
David Bokovoy [00:39:42] Oh, be careful what Dan tells you, though.
John Dehlin [00:39:43] I do not. No.
David Bokovoy [00:39:46] Dan is a wonderful scholar and he actually helped me move into my town daybreak. And a wonderful person. And, yeah, he's a brilliant man. So that's exactly correct. Exactly correct with the Book of Revelation as well. And this next, which is another book
John Dehlin [00:40:03] causing a lot of trouble nowadays.
Guest 2 [00:40:05] Oh, is it?
John Dehlin [00:40:05] Yeah, I mean, all the. The end times prophecies, moon turns to blood, that whole thing, you know.
David Bokovoy [00:40:10] Of course, the Book of Revelation is an interesting one because a lot of people will kind of talk about the Old Testament God versus the New Testament God. And, you know, Old Testament God is so judgmental and harsh and violent. And then the New Testament God is loving, forgiving, and merciful. No, no, no, no. Not so much. Not so much. The most violent imagery with God is actually the book of Revelation where Jesus comes back and his enemy's blood is piled up so high it covers up to the horse's saddle. I mean, it's very violent. And yet then you have books in the Hebrew Bible like the story of Jonah where God is so merciful and kind that he won't even destroy the wicked Assyrians, who are the enemies of the people, according to Isaiah. So it's just. There's not a consistency. You can't divide it up that way.
John Dehlin [00:40:58] I'll never forget when one of my kids comes home from primary with a little worksheet of like, the signs of the times, and it's like scorpions and fire. My kid's terrified. Oh, yeah.
David Bokovoy [00:41:11] Oh, yeah.
John Dehlin [00:41:11] Nothing's as terrifying as the book of Revelation.
David Bokovoy [00:41:14] Oh, I know. I think I went to a youth conference when it was on the. Yeah, when I was in.
John Dehlin [00:41:18] Yeah, they were talking about the maggots.
David Bokovoy [00:41:19] Yeah. All at the end of times. And I think the guy started off, he said, my goal is to scare the hell out of you all. Well, literally. So, yeah, yeah.
John Dehlin [00:41:28] No, it's.
David Bokovoy [00:41:29] Yeah, so it's, it can be. But anyway, Dan's right. Exactly right. In the book of Revelation. It's the same point we're making here as well. And it's, it's, it's. It's not just a scholarly understanding. It actually comes right from the text itself. If we don't cherry pick verses. Unfortunately, that's what happens in Sunday school lessons. They'll take Isaiah verses and they'll say, okay, this is Jesus. And then everybody looks around at the surrounding passage. They're like, this doesn't make any sense. Isaiah is so confusing. Well, the reason he's so confusing is because you're just taking that one verse and saying it's Jesus. And then everything else around it is pointing to what is happening in Isaiah's time.
John Dehlin [00:42:02] And I don't mean to keep reading this back to Avram Gileadi, but that's one of the. You know, he was excommunicated before he was rebaptized. And you could even argue he should be re. Excommunicated only because his basic argument is Joseph Smith used so much of Isaiah because Isaiah is essential to understanding the end times.
John Dehlin [00:42:25] But Isaiah is too complicated for you mere mortals to understand it. You need someone like me, a scholar, to interpret it for you. And that's a lot of power. If all of a sudden Avraham Gileadi is saying the brethren aren't going to be able to interpret Isaiah for you. It's got to be me. Basically, he's saying he's our prophet, Syrian revelator to help us understand the modern times. And then he can say whatever he wants to or whatever he thinks is true. And that gives him a lot of power. And it's what Tom Harrison and. And others then run with to create visions of glory that then creates Chad Dabo, Lori Valow, Tim Ballard, and, you know, all the problems.
David Bokovoy [00:43:01] It's a pattern though, Right. We see the same thing with Denver Snuffer.
John Dehlin [00:43:04] It's a power grab.
David Bokovoy [00:43:05] Yeah. Who has also, it's my understanding his. Some of his followers view him as the. As this Davidic figure that the one mighty and strong.
John Dehlin [00:43:12] Yep. That's another example.
David Bokovoy [00:43:13] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:43:14] So it's just a lot of power. I'm just going back to the idea that this decision to interpret Isaiah is kind of a power grab, whether it's intentional or not, because you have a lot of power once you start saying you know how to interpret the scripture for modern times.
David Bokovoy [00:43:31] Yeah, right. Which is one of the reasons why you have J. Reuben Clark talk about, you know, that famous two religious educators, the charted course. He talks about the threats and dangers of biblical scholarship and. And it's unfortunately set up a course that has continued to affect Latter Day Saints to this day.
Gerardo Sumano [00:43:50] Who is being a prophet.
John Dehlin [00:43:54] That's good. Okay, keep going.
David Bokovoy [00:43:55] All right, let's do it. This last part from the article that I shared is important, I think, because it gives an idea of how unique these prophetic voices were in their societies and what they did. In order to be taken seriously, a prophet needed to first capture his or her audience's attention. This was often accomplished through strange or erratic behavior. The Bible preserves a variety of stories that illustrate the notion that in ancient Israel, prophets were strange people who did odd things. Hosea was commanded to marry a wife of whoredom and name their children symbolic names. Isaiah untied his sackcloth from his loins, removed his sandals from his feet, and went about naked and barefoot for three years.
Strange Symbolic Behavior of Old Testament Prophets
David Bokovoy [00:44:42] I don't think a lot of people recogn that Isaiah was a nudist. The Judean prophet Jeremiah wore a yoke around his neck to represent captivity. And Ezekiel, who's by far the strangest of them all. He reports he was commanded to lie on his left side for 390 days next to a miniature model of Jerusalem while eating food cooked over human dung.
David Bokovoy [00:45:04] And it's strange and it's meant to be Strange because once you read that, you're like, you take note, right? What, What? Why is Isaiah walking around naked?
John Dehlin [00:45:12] This is like Monty Python God. Like skinny bearded, white bearded dude who's naked running around saying crazy things. Oh, I mean, that's kind of.
David Bokovoy [00:45:20] Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, I mean, well, again, what would be more. I hate to say this, but in some ways the people that are standing outside the street corners with their signs yelling, you know, yelling, you know, as to the church members and calling them repentance as they're walking into a building and acting very strangely and strange signs and are on the outside. It's a little bit more of what it would have, like it would have been like to have met an Old Testament prophet than to go sit in the conference center. A lot more like it.
John Dehlin [00:45:55] Like low socioeconomic status.
David Bokovoy [00:45:59] Well, sometimes, but yeah.
John Dehlin [00:46:02] Not viewed as necessarily wealthy, educated or respectable.
David Bokovoy [00:46:07] Well, as doing as erratic and strange and, and unpredictable. And they're doing this for a reason. Because if they are erratic and strange and unpredictable, people will take note. And if they take note, then not only will they pay attention and apply their oracles to their lives and to their communities, but they may even go so far as to write them down and preserve them on a scroll for subsequent generations. So that's. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:46:32] Kind of the squeaky wheel gets to Greece.
David Bokovoy [00:46:34] Yeah, exactly.
Gerardo Sumano [00:46:34] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:46:35] It's a good way.
David Bokovoy [00:46:35] That's a good way of looking at it. So I, I like to set it up this way so that we can understand just kind of the background of what it meant to be a biblical prophet. Because if we're going to talk about Isaiah and, and the development of the book and then its connection specifically with the Book of Mormon, it's good to have a little bit of perspective as to what a, what an Old Testament prophet really was like.
John Dehlin [00:46:54] Yeah, got it. Okay, great.
David Bokovoy [00:46:57] All right, so who was this Isaiah? You guys had a good video on, on who he was historically and perhaps he said, I wasn't even aware of this video. And you brought it to my att. There was a TikTok of some kind that was done a Mormon sent Mormon central, Book of Mormon central about the Isaiah, about the Isaiah seal or Bulla and its relationship to the. Develop the historical Isaiah. Maybe we should watch that now.
John Dehlin [00:47:23] Okay. Okay, let's do it.
Gerardo Sumano [00:47:26] Okay, so we have this video from Scripture plus that we found where Jasmine Rappali is talking about Isaiah and just this, this big discovery that has been done and she talks about how that's proof, you know, that Isaiah existed and now we don't have to worry about Isaiah being part of the Book of Mormon. So everything's good. So I think we want to show it to you, David, and then have you just talk to us about what your thoughts are. Okay.
John Dehlin [00:47:55] And for those who don't know, Scripture plus is like the TikTok channel of Mormon apologists these days, where Jazz Jasmine basically provides the most cutting edge Mormon apologetics, trying to defend Mormon scripture, Mormon theology, et cetera. So let's roll the tape on Jasmine Rapalai on Isaiah.
Did Isaiah Really Exist? Archaeological Evidence
▶ Video Clip 1Video Clip 1 [00:48:20] Scholars have questioned whether Isaiah wrote all of the writings attributed to him. And in the past, some have even gone so far as to question his very existence in history. And this poses an interesting challenge for the Book of Mormon because. Because Isaiah is the most quoted prophet in the Book of Mormon. But as far as Isaiah's historical existence, we have good news. Scholars have discovered ACL impression from the 8th century BC in Jerusalem that plausibly could have belonged to the biblical prophet Isaiah. Respected Hebrew archaeologist Eilat Mazar and your team found an 8th century seal impression that possibly reads Isaiah the prophet. So a seal impression is kind of like an ancient stamp for signing documents or marking property.
Video Clip 1 [00:48:54] On the first line, the paleo Hebrew says or belonging to Isaiah. Now the second line only contains a partial word with the paleo Hebrew letters nby. So depending on what the missing letters are, this second line could potentially be spelling the Hebrew word for prophet or navi. Now if this seal impression does indeed say belonging to Isaiah the prophet, then this would almost certainly belong to the actual 8th century prophet as described in the Old Testament. Now where it was found is important too. It was found in a controlled archaeological excavation, but only 10ft away from another seal attesting to the existence of King Hezekiah, who was the king over Judah at the time and occasionally consulted with Isaiah during his reign.
Video Clip 1 [00:49:31] So between the seal and Prussian's inscription, its dating to the 8th century, and its location in Jerusalem close to the seal of Hezekiah, it seems like a pretty tantalizing possibility that this could have belonged to the Isaiah of the Old Testament.
John Dehlin [00:49:43] And really quickly, David, is it even in dispute that there was an actual historical figure named Isaiah? Because that's what I'm inferring from what she's saying.
Gerardo Sumano [00:49:51] No,
David Bokovoy [00:49:54] it's not up for debate. So it's an interesting video. I appreciate you drawing my attention to it. I kind of. Again, I'm out of the fray and I hadn't seen this, but the first thing, it's interesting that she Links that with the fact that not all of the book of Isaiah can be attributed to the historical Isaiah and that there's some sort of link, therefore, with this Isaiah bulla that would actually, I guess, provide some hope for those who want to see the book as a unified whole. Am I.
Gerardo Sumano [00:50:30] That's kind of what I'm understanding.
David Bokovoy [00:50:31] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I don't understand how that would be a link at all. But anyway, just to discuss this, I guess we should talk the first thing. I appreciate that she. And I hope people caught about all of a sudden. She. She said might possibly and threw that in there. And I appreciated that she did that because here's the thing. Yeah. This bulla, which is a clay seal impression, was discovered in 2009 and could possibly be linked with the historical Isaiah.
David Bokovoy [00:51:09] I would love that it was an impression that was linked with him. I think that would be wonderful. But we'll never be able to establish that one way or actually quite possible. In fact, I'd probably lean more towards the fact that it did not belong to the Isaiah, prophet of the Hebrew Bible, because she mentioned that the second line of the seal has the word prophet on it or possible word prophet on it. It has paleo Hebrew script, the first letter. In fact, I think we have a slide on that, don't we? Let's go to that. That and show our audience that.
John Dehlin [00:51:46] All right, here's the slide.
Gerardo Sumano [00:51:47] The next one.
David Bokovoy [00:51:48] Yeah, there we go. There it is. There's the Isaiah Bullah. And that's. Notice that it's only partially preserved. The missing piece at the top would have had some sort of pictographic representation that has been lost to us. It'd be nice to have what that was. And then the line below it is the name that is identified with Isaiah. Well, the first thing that I would look at right there, look at that script. Really. We only have three consonants. We have in Hebrew, what is a yod, Then we have a sheen, and then we have an ayin there. And indeed, that can be the name Isaiah, but it actually could be a lot of other names as well.
David Bokovoy [00:52:28] So without further information, we can't even be 100% certain that that line actually refers to the name Isaiah directly. Probably, but there are other possibilities as well. And then the second line, it is incomplete, as we can see, and we're missing the end of it.
David Bokovoy [00:52:48] There could be a. Instead of that yod, for example, being a vowel marker, if in fact, there was. What is the letter hey? It's called the letter hey. After that. That would actually be a theophoric element. And that's the divine element in a name. So going back, for example, to the name Eliyahu or Elijah in Hebrew, if we break it down in English, El is God. In Hebrew, the I is the first person common singular pronominal suffix on nouns. So my God is El, and then the I and then the Jah, or in Jehovah is the theophoric element. So Jehovah is my God. You see, names in Hebrew were typically verbal expressions like Jehovah is my God, and they often have a reference to a divinity of some sort.
David Bokovoy [00:53:37] So it's very possible that this actually the bottom name, the bottom word isn't prophet at all. But if we have that last letter, it might have been like a reference to Yahweh is what I'm suggesting, and therefore have been a patronym. We can't say one way or the other.
David Bokovoy [00:53:57] So this is one that. That scholars debate back and forth. I don't think there's any way that anyone will ever be able to say definitively that it is Isaiah's signature or not. I would love it if it was. But we need to be very careful in just saying, oh, my goodness, now we have proof that there was a historical Isaiah. Well, there almost certainly was a historical Isaiah, whether or not this bullet is what it claim. What. What she's claiming it to be. And either way, that has no bearing whatsoever about the historical development of this book attributed to the man. Did I explain that? Okay, that's great. Okay, thank you. Thanks for drawing that. That video to my attention. I think that's very interesting that's being used.
The Case for Multiple Authors of Isaiah
John Dehlin [00:54:37] Well, now I think we turn to this idea that Isaiah was written by more than just Isaiah.
David Bokovoy [00:54:42] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:54:43] And that there are actually not just maybe two authors, but maybe even three or more authors. I think that's the dramatic sort of. Now we're hitting the climax of drama once we start introducing this idea of deutero and trito Isaiah. So should we jump into that?
David Bokovoy [00:54:59] I would love to. In fact, I think this is where it actually gets really exciting and what I've been really looking forward to share.
John Dehlin [00:55:04] So get ready for your climax.
David Bokovoy [00:55:06] Here we go.
Gerardo Sumano [00:55:06] It is so blue slide be helpful right now.
David Bokovoy [00:55:10] So on this slide, what we're showing is the way that scholars understand the divisions that exist in the book of Isaac. So Isaiah is a book. Well, let's talk about what that means for a second. Isaiah isn't a book. Isaiah is a scroll. Right. There was no such thing as a book in the ancient near east, at the time of Isaiah, sacred text or others were put on scrolls. And I think that's kind of important. It actually ties into one of the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. The idea that there would have been brass plates that existed as a type of book where all of these scrolls would have been brought together like the contemporary Bible,
Gerardo Sumano [00:55:54] like that Laban would have these brass blades with the words of Isaiah and the words of.
David Bokovoy [00:55:59] Yeah, not only a book, but then brought together and organized into that fashion and translated from Hebrew into an Egyptian script. It just doesn't work historically.
John Dehlin [00:56:13] The idea of bright brass plates, is it anachronistic?
Gerardo Sumano [00:56:16] Well, the idea of a compilation of all these books like starting with Moses and then ending with Isaiah, the idea
John Dehlin [00:56:22] of several books compiled into a central text on plates in book form, that idea in and of itself is just totally not fitting.
David Bokovoy [00:56:35] Books are a medieval creation meaning 1500.
John Dehlin [00:56:38] What for 1300?
David Bokovoy [00:56:40] So. Well, I don't know exactly what we should off the top of my head, but it is medieval. They're medieval creation. But it's.
John Dehlin [00:56:47] And for those who don't know what that means, that's what, 1200?
David Bokovoy [00:56:49] Yeah. Somewhere along A.D. yeah, it's very late now in Joseph Smith's day, the Bible is viewed as a book. In fact the word Bible itself means books. It is a book where we've taken and brought everything together. And in fact many readers today look at the Bible as if it's one unified source, but it is a compilation of diverse material written over a long period of time. So for example, the books of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament were written over a thousand year period. So the earliest parts, the earliest sections of text in the Hebrew Bible date to about 1200 BCE or so. And then the most recent parts of that, about 200. So more or less a thousand year period that that material had been developed for the Old Testament Testament.
John Dehlin [00:57:34] The 200 BCE would be Malachi or what are the final books?
David Bokovoy [00:57:40] No, so the last part you're going to get actually some of the Aramaic sections that we're going to find there that are having. So it's which, which is a language that the Jews in are going to pick up through their exilic experience which is going to actually once we understand that we can then go in and see how reading the book or the book, reading Isaiah in its original language, we're going to be able to identify old forms of Hebrew, middle forms of Hebrew and actually Aramaic influences that will help us date the material as well.
John Dehlin [00:58:10] And Just to put a fine point on it, when we're talking about the date range for Isaiah, it's going to be XBCE to xbce. What are we talking about?
Gerardo Sumano [00:58:20] There's going to be as light.
David Bokovoy [00:58:21] Yeah, which one? You're talking historical Isaiah.
John Dehlin [00:58:23] Yeah, yeah. Just because we're talking about Isaiah being too early, the times of Isaiah being too early for books.
David Bokovoy [00:58:30] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:58:31] Scrolls. We just need to give them.
David Bokovoy [00:58:32] Okay, so. Yeah, so let's talk. So in essence, for right now, just Isaiah is an 8th century prophet. Okay.
John Dehlin [00:58:39] 8th century BCE.
David Bokovoy [00:58:40] Yeah, BCE.
John Dehlin [00:58:41] Okay. Yeah. So 800 years before Jesus basically is approximately when Isaiah would be writing, which is before books had been invented.
David Bokovoy [00:58:49] Indeed.
John Dehlin [00:58:49] So this breast plates of Laban thing, which would be 600 BCE, wouldn't have even been a thing is kind of what we're saying.
David Bokovoy [00:58:57] Well, yeah, A book that had compiled all of this diverse material and brought it together and translated into a different language. I mean, that's just not going to be even possible at that time historically when this is produced. So the Bible is not a book, it is more a library.
David Bokovoy [00:59:20] It is more an anthology, like a Norton Anthology Reader or something like that. We're going to have lots of different genres and perspectives that contradict each other. There is not a single topic, Sorry, there isn't a single topic of significance really that we can find consistency on, including who God is and what he's like, if he's anthropomorphic or not. And does he punish people for their sins or does he punish later generations? These are all debates theologically that we can see happening between the different sources that are found, compiled together into what becomes the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament.
David Bokovoy [00:59:58] So again, the book of Isaiah that we have now was originally a scroll and it now is composed of what we have is 66 chapters. It's very long. And returning back to the slide then that we had, whether we show it. Yeah.
David Bokovoy [01:00:16] So the first 39 chapters are more or less identified with Isaiah proper. So we use the term, scholarly term, proto Isaiah. Historical Proto. I mean, first proto. Yeah, early. Yeah, proto. The beginning.
John Dehlin [01:00:31] First.
David Bokovoy [01:00:31] Yes, of it. Proto Isaiah. And then we're going to have from 40 to chapter 55. Okay. We're going to have what scholars would call deutero Isaiah. And deutero means second, like Deuteronomy, which means the second law, repetition of the law, Deutero Isaiah, meaning the second Isaiah, who is a different author that jumps in and produces this material at a later date, pretending to be Isaiah or Asia. Right.
John Dehlin [01:01:02] Are we saying it's Pseudepigrapha. Someone writing as if they're Isaiah.
David Bokovoy [01:01:06] I wouldn't call it that that, because what's interesting is that there are lots of biographical. There's a lot of biographical information about Isaiah the historical prophet in the first 39 chapters. And then you get to chapters 40 through the rest, and we don't have any biographical information.
John Dehlin [01:01:23] So that's prophecies and stuff.
David Bokovoy [01:01:25] Well, yeah, but that's one of the reasons why. Also a difference between the literature. Right, got it. It's a later author. Is the author pretending to be Isaiah and therefore pseudepigraphic or not? That's something we don't really have an answer for.
John Dehlin [01:01:39] Or is it just other writings that got added?
David Bokovoy [01:01:42] Well, what happened is what we believe the mainstream consensus is at this point that these chapters in 40 through 55, that they were actually written directly to be added to the scroll of Isaiah. They are dependent upon it. They did not stand alone is what we believe most contemporary scholars believe. They did not stand alone now, but they actually were were developed to be appended to the first part of Isaiah. And the reason for that is that Isaiah material of proto Isaiah, the historical Isaiah, was considered very important and inspired to this later prophetic individual or school, and therefore needed some type of update to the material in order for it to be relevant to the exilic community.
David Bokovoy [01:02:32] I'm not going to go so far as to say that the author was pretending to be the historical Isaiah because I don't know that I have evidence for that. But it was added as an update to make relevant the material that preceded it, because these scrolls were considered sacred. But ancient scribes did not have a canonical view that later readers of the Bible will have, that every word is God breathed and it cannot be added or changed. We see a lot of evidence for additions, things that are taken out, things that are moved around. When we read all of this material from the Bible very carefully
Gerardo Sumano [01:03:11] and we're going to show a slide with the dates, but just to be clear, by the time these chapters 40 to 55, which is Deutero Isaiah, were written, there's no way the historical Isaiah was still alive.
David Bokovoy [01:03:27] No, right. No, no. It's almost. It's 150, almost 200 years after Isaiah. Yeah. So we're talking about. Yeah, it's a very, a very long time period.
Gerardo Sumano [01:03:38] Okay.
David Bokovoy [01:03:38] And then the tri part division to finish it off concludes with the third section called Trito or third Isaiah, which is composed of the last 10 chapters of the book. So chapters you know, 60 through 66. Sorry,
Gerardo Sumano [01:03:55] 56.
David Bokovoy [01:03:56] Thank you. I got a little distract. 56 through 66. The last 10 chapters of the book then are linked with Trito or third Isaiah. And that material was added to the scroll because the prophecies in second Isaiah, some of them weren't fulfilled. And so a later author wants to make that material relevant and update it for what the, the post exilic community was facing during that time.
David Bokovoy [01:04:25] So in third Isaiah we have evidence of material that was written even later and that was after the exilic time period as the Jewish community starts to return to Babylon. So that's the general way of understanding how this book was created by scholars. And I would say that it is the most. Well, let's see, it really is the most well established scholarly perspective regarding any development or anything regarding the Hebrew Bible is the fact that we are actually dealing with three separate major divisions within this book. And it's very clear to all who read it carefully.
Gerardo Sumano [01:05:10] Something interesting, David, you sent us a video from byu, BYU podcast where some BYU professors were presenting this information. Something that was interesting was that on the introduction they were making it sound as if, you know, as if this is not totally accepted. There are some scholars who disagree, but then when the actual professor scholar came on who actually knew about this subject, he basically said, no, this is accepted. There's basically no way around it. This is, you know, most, if not all biblical scholars agree that this is the way it was written.
David Bokovoy [01:05:50] Yes. I mean, 99.9% of you're always going to find somebody out there. In fact, going back to Avraham Gilead, he had some wonderful training and had an agenda to show that it was all unified. If you take any scholar that without an agenda such as that, religious, religiously or whatever, it's yes, entirely agreed upon, which is why the BYU professor acknowledged it as such. It is blatantly obvious.
Gerardo Sumano [01:06:20] Yeah, there's a really good slide with a map, if you can put it up.
David Bokovoy [01:06:24] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:06:25] Are you ready for that?
History of Israel and Judah in Isaiah's Context
David Bokovoy [01:06:25] Yes, let's jump to that. Let's put this together. I think it's essential that we understand the basic history of Israel and Judah in order to understand what's happening here with the division of Isaiah into these three different sections. So united monarchy, if there ever was such a thing as the Bible describes, David is kind of a King Arthur, legendary type figure. We don't have really any historical evidence to suggest that he was a real figure. But anyway, regardless, the story that is told in the Bible, Saul, David, Solomon, you know, the United monarchy would have ended 9, 28. And then we have a divided monarchy.
David Bokovoy [01:07:12] We have the northern kingdom of Israel, the southern kingdom of Judah. And the kingdom is divided during Isaiah's time period. Then jumping to his time period in which he lives, he's going to live from 740 to 700 BCE. Well, at least those are the years that he seems to have been operating as a prophet. Sometime like during those, those time periods, give or take a few years. This is a time period when Judah and Assyria, or sorry, Judah and Israel are, are both facing the threat of Assyria invasion. And looking at the map, you can see Assyria is up there in northern Mesopotamia, the land between the two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, up above Babylon.
David Bokovoy [01:07:56] Assyria is the major empire at the time. Assyria, the king of Assyria will be Sargon II and he will reign from 722 to 705 BCE. Sargon II is going to actually be very important. It's because of Sargon and then the legends of the great Sargon that you're going to have some of the traditions, perhaps that about Moses being put into a basket and floats down the river, which is a Sargonic tradition that may have been brought into the stories of Moses because of this time period and the influence of Assyrian tradition.
David Bokovoy [01:08:31] That's probably where we get some of those Moses traditions. But anyway, then after Sargon II we have Sennacherib 705 through 681 BCE and the destruction ultimately of the northern kingdom kingdom and the subjugation of the southern kingdom of Judah, although they will survive the onslaught, just as Isaiah, the historical Isaiah predicted when the Assyrians come to invade. Because again, Isaiah, historical Isaiah believes in the inviability of Jerusalem. Now our next thing that we need to jump to is the Babylonian exile. Okay, so we're going to look at Jeremiah, the famous Old Testament prophet. He's going to be from 627 to 605.
David Bokovoy [01:09:15] Ezekiel will be a contemporary. And then Nebuchadnezzar II will besiege Jerusalem. And we're going to have the first deportation of Jews into Babylon at this time going down again. Just to clarify, Assyria is no longer the dominant empire now at this point it is Babylon in southern Mesopotamia. And Babylon will come down and further besieged Jerusalem with Nebuchadnezzar ii and a deportation will take place. That's how Ezekiel the prophet is going to get into Babylon and start writing to the people, chastising them, at least in the initial part of his ministry. And then once he receives news that the city of Jerusalem has been destroyed, he shifts to a message of comfort for the exilic community at that point.
David Bokovoy [01:10:07] But that's the first deportation. Now going to the Book of Mormon story, Lehi would have been right after that, right after that, Lehi would have picked up his family and left Jerusalem and had access to, then shortly thereafter, the brass plates which supposedly contained the entire scroll of Isaiah in them.
Gerardo Sumano [01:10:27] And this would have been around 100 years after first Isaiah would have. Or, you know, Isaiah would have lived.
David Bokovoy [01:10:35] Yeah, yeah. So Isaiah's ministering 740. And so then by. It's. It's more than 100, right? It's. Yeah, it's 100. Almost 150.
John Dehlin [01:10:44] Really.
Gerardo Sumano [01:10:44] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [01:10:45] So yeah, about 150 years later you're going to have. Lehi would have existed if he was a historical figure. And then we'll have the second deportation in 597, right after that. And Jerusalem will be destroyed in the third deportation, which is 587. And that's when we really then pick it up, in 587. That would really be the exilic time period. Because now the Jewish community, with the exception of at least all of the aristocracy and the wealthy and the upper class, have been removed from Judah and marched into Babylon. Now, they couldn't cross the Arabian Desert directly. It was just they didn't have the main means to be able to do so at that time. So they're going to have to travel
Guest 1 [01:11:29] up
David Bokovoy [01:11:31] through the Fertile Crescent. And you know, we don't know exactly, because we don't know exactly where they would have gone to or started. But we're talking in essence about a thousand mile journey. So it's a significant distance that they moved and deported this Jewish community too, if the calculations are correct. Let's say they. What some things I've looked at, if they. If the community had marched for 15 miles per day, at that rate, it would have taken about three months for them to make it into Babylon. So it's a long distance between these two communities and they are brought there into captivity. And that is really then when the city is destroyed, Jerusalem is no more.
David Bokovoy [01:12:14] And this creates a major theological and political challenge for the Judeans because remember, many of them, like Isaiah, believed in the inviability of Jerusalem. It was God's sacred city. Many of them believed in the grant given to David and his posterity that there would always be a Davidic ruler there. Now all of a sudden they are in Chaos. The temple is no more. Does God care about us? Is God even real? Does he love us? What is happening? And there are a lot of challenges that then the religious community faces, that its leaders tried to address in their effort to stabilize the community, to inspire the community.
David Bokovoy [01:12:59] And the writings from this time period share a lot in common, not just linguistically, but thematically, so that we as scholars can jump into the exilic material and we can go, oh, yeah, look at the themes, look at what's happening here. This is clearly exilic because. Because it was a major event that transpired in Judean history. And that event changed the way that prophets and priests and religious figures understood their relationship to God and the relationship of the community to Yahweh. And so those issues are then faced in this exilic material. And guess what?
David Bokovoy [01:13:38] They're right there in the Deutero Isaiah section. Because Deutero Isaiah, the author of this material, which is chapters 40 through 55, he is going to write. He's going to write around the time of 5:38. So it's not even at the beginning of the exile, but it's really at the end of the exile. And the reason we know this is because when we jump into that Isaiah material, there's a lot of it that points to the events that are transpiring right then and there, including naming Cyrus the Great, who was not a Babylonian king, but was a king of Persia, who will then come down and conquer Babylon and issue a decree that the Judean community can return to their homeland and rebuild their temple.
David Bokovoy [01:14:25] And the author of this material in second Isaiah is dealing with those events, those themes, those challenges, and is going to mention Cyrus by name. Now, just to finish our timeline, the Jews will return to Palestine between 520 and 515.
David Bokovoy [01:14:43] And it's during this period and shortly thereafter that the last 10 chapters of Isaiah were written and added to the scroll that is third Isaiah or Trito Isaiah. Post exilic material in those final three chapters. So that is the basic history and summary of what's happening and how this material came to be.
John Dehlin [01:15:06] Yeah. So again, the year of the exile is one.
Gerardo Sumano [01:15:09] What? There it is. Jerusalem destroyed. 587.
John Dehlin [01:15:15] Yeah, that's the key date.
David Bokovoy [01:15:17] Yeah, 587. We link it from there from 587 to, you know, for about, you know, until again, till they're going to return in 520 through 515.
John Dehlin [01:15:29] Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [01:15:29] And Deuterosa. So then Deuterosa is written around 60 years after Lehi was supposed to have left Jerusalem.
David Bokovoy [01:15:39] Exactly.
John Dehlin [01:15:40] So basically 2/3 of Isaiah were written after Lehi would have left Jerusalem.
David Bokovoy [01:15:47] Exactly.
John Dehlin [01:15:49] Which means that, I mean, and we'll be getting into this, which means that stuff shouldn't be appearing in the Book of Mormon. If. If the editors or authors of the Book of Mormon were. Were basing their Isaiah quotes on. On Laban's breastplates. Is that right?
David Bokovoy [01:16:07] Yeah. If the historical narrative of the Book of Mormon is true, and Lehi existed with a family that left Jerusalem and had the writings of Isaiah, they would not have had the material produced by deutero Isaiah, and they would not have had. Certainly had the material produced by third Isaiah or tried to Isaiah, because it
John Dehlin [01:16:25] hadn't been written yet. Exactly. Okay.
David Bokovoy [01:16:27] Yeah, it's basics.
John Dehlin [01:16:28] And it wasn't written by Isaiah. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, that's an introduction. Now we're going to show the receipts, basically.
Deutero-Isaiah and the Babylonian Exile
David Bokovoy [01:16:35] Okay. Maybe we should talk. I want to talk. I just don't want to throw that out and say, okay, that's the way scholars interpret it, so believe it.
Gerardo Sumano [01:16:42] Right.
David Bokovoy [01:16:43] I'd like to take just a couple of minutes and just kind of talk about why scholars see it that way and why it's so clear. So if we turn then to the start of Deutero Isaiah, it's going to be Isaiah, chapter chapter 40, And all of a sudden everything has changed.
John Dehlin [01:17:09] This is explaining Deutero Isaiah, second Isaiah, right?
David Bokovoy [01:17:12] Yes, second Isaiah, second Isaiah starts in chapter 40 of the book, up to chapter 40. The main enemy of Judah. Well, the enemy of Judah really main has been the Assyrians, and they are the ones. And now all of a sudden we jump to chapter 40 and the enemy is Babylon. And we get to chapter 40 and all of a sudden the message changes dramatically.
Gerardo Sumano [01:17:38] Even how it starts.
David Bokovoy [01:17:39] Oh yes, everything in the beginning. I mean, Isaiah's like criticized. Yell at my people, yell at my people. And then all of a sudden, 40, comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God, Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and declare to her that her term of service is over, the exile is over, that her iniquity is expiated. She has received at the hand of the Lord double for all her sins. So Isaiah is trying to say, I know you guys went through a lot, and some of it you deserved, but not all of it because it was so bad what you went through. The destruction of the temple, the destruction of your homeland, and being over exported into Babylon.
David Bokovoy [01:18:23] It was more than you even deserved. And so a voice rings out clear in the desert. A road for the Lord Level in the wilderness, a highway for our God. Let every valley be raised, every hill and mount made low. Let the rugged ground become level and the ridges become a plain. And the presence of the Lord shall appear and all flesh as one shall be whole.
David Bokovoy [01:18:47] For the Lord himself had spoken. So it's a message that is given here that God is going to make the valleys low, the rough places plain. He is going to make, he's going to lead the way. It's going to be a new exodus. Just as God led an exodus out of Egypt and into the promised land, God is going to lead the way and make everything simple and easy for the people to leave Babylon and return and rebuild their community. This is a message of comfort that is being provided here to the exilic community now.
Gerardo Sumano [01:19:24] And this message wouldn't have made any sense during the time that Isaiah is telling people Jerusalem is never going to be destroyed.
David Bokovoy [01:19:32] Exactly, exactly. It will not exactly. It's just all of it. This is a message that is given specifically to the exilic community in Babylon, trying to encourage them to leave Babylon and go back and rebuild the city. Now, to imagine that this would have been written by the historical Isaiah, we'd have to imagine a scenario in which Isaiah, the 8th century prophet, has, he's writing his prophecies and all of a sudden he gets a new message. It's no longer one of judgment, it's one of comfort and it's no long and it's comforting message to the community many, many years in the future. So to do this, he would have to project himself, astral project himself, if you will, into that space, space and time and address that community and their specific challenges.
David Bokovoy [01:20:37] And he would do so. And I think this is critical. He'd do so without telling us what he was doing, so we would be so. And then all this material would have been preserved for all of this time period and then never used by prophets like Jeremiah, right, who wanted to to prophesy about the destruction of Jerusalem. If this material had been available to Jeremiah, why wouldn't he have used it? Why when those prophets and priests came and said, haven't you read the prophets? This is David's city, it will never be destroyed. You're a false prophet. Why wouldn't any have said, oh yeah, look at the Isaiah scroll.
David Bokovoy [01:21:13] What did Isaiah produce in the 8th century? He told us that we would be in Babylon and that we would need to be comforted and we'd someday need to return. So I'm not a false prophet. Like, look at the Prediction, but he never quotes it because he doesn't know it, because it hasn't been produced yet.
David Bokovoy [01:21:27] It's very clear. Right, yeah. In fact, let's jump to this next quote. One of the great expositions that was done on this originally was done very early on in the 20th century by a scholar by the last name of Driver in his book, An Introduction to the Old Testament. This quote I wanted to share because I think he hits it on the head, nail on the head, so to speak. He writes, in the present prophecy, there is no prediction of exile. The exile is not announced as something that's still future. It is presupposed, and only the release from it is predicted by analogy, therefore, that is with Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
David Bokovoy [01:22:06] The author will have lived in the situation which he thus presupposes. And he continually elaborates, eludes. We must take seriously the author's own words. And he's telling us he's speaking to this community and he's dealing with this time period. And it would have been deceptive, to say the least, for the historical Isaiah to just switch his entire message and switch to an entirely different audience, projecting himself in the future without telling his readers or audience what he was even doing. It just. It doesn't work. It just doesn't make sense.
Gerardo Sumano [01:22:42] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [01:22:44] And one of the reasons we know, and then there are all sorts of differences. And I actually laid this out in some detail a few years ago in an online response I wrote to Kent Jackson, BYU professor, who wrote in an apologetic volume that was produced by Brian and Laura Hales, where he tried to discredit the notion of deutero Isaiah that is accepted by biblical scholars. Maybe we could provide a link to that at some point.
John Dehlin [01:23:10] Julia will get that.
David Bokovoy [01:23:11] Yeah. And get that on for readers if they want to follow up. But in that, I lay out some of the other reasons. Again, some of the reasons would include the fact that we have Aramaic words and things of this nature in this section, which we do not have attested in the first part of Isaiah. And it's because the Jews in captivity are being influenced by Aramaic now, when Isaiah just didn't have that same sort of imprint in his life. So there are lots of things like that that can be identified and shown that we just keep adding it up, adding it up, adding it up.
David Bokovoy [01:23:45] And it is very clear when this material was produced. Another thing that I point out in those two responses is the fact that this author, deutero Isaiah, knows Jeremiah. This author in this text knows Lamentations. At least one of the laments and this author knows one of the, you know, other post exilic material or exilic material that this author cites in quotes.
David Bokovoy [01:24:14] So in order to cite and quote that material, Deutero Isaiah would have had to have been written after the material. It's only logical, right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:24:21] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [01:24:22] So let's take a look. Maybe it's just a couple of those. I gave you a few of them to look at. So I wanted to show this one. I think this is a great one. Here's an example of this later authority in Deutero Isaiah quoting Jeremiah, who remember, was a contemporary of Lehi. If Lehi had been a real historical figure, Jeremiah 2:8 I noted because rebel Israel had committed adultery, I cast her off and handed her a bill of divorce. Yet her sister, faithless Judah was not afraid, she too went and whored. Now this prophecy had been given by Jeremiah and has influenced then the author of this later part of Isaiah.
David Bokovoy [01:25:03] Because look at Isaiah 51. Thus said the Lord, where is the bill of divorce of your mother whom I dismissed? And which of my creditors was it to whom I sold you off? You were only sold off for your sins and your mother dismissed for your crimes. So here's a clear example of Isaiah Deutero Isaiah quoting Jeremiah and therefore Jeremiah, who we know his date must have preceded the material that appears in this part of the book. Switching to the next slide, I wanted to show one more example of this. I like this one a lot too. This one comes from Psalm 107:35, which has really late biblical Hebrew.
David Bokovoy [01:25:45] So we know that Psalm 107 is a very late psalm, a very late text text. And sure enough, Deutero Isaiah will quote Psalm 107, verse 35. Let's take a look at that slide. He turns the wilderness into pools, parched land into springs. We read in Psalm 107 and then personified Isaiah 41, I will turn the wilderness into pools, parched lands into springs. So it takes God and uses this. Obviously the material is been inspired by a very late biblical psalm. So the quotation of scripture in this material that was produced after the historical Isaiah is just one more piece of evidence that this material cannot be linked with the historical Isaiah and helps us understand precisely when it was written.
John Dehlin [01:26:37] It'd be like George Washington quoting Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
David Bokovoy [01:26:40] Exactly.
John Dehlin [01:26:41] Couldn't do it. Couldn't it do do it because he lived later.
David Bokovoy [01:26:43] So therefore if we had it, if we. If we had it.
Guest 2 [01:26:46] Exactly.
David Bokovoy [01:26:46] If. So if you had a. A book that was allegedly written entirely by George Washington, and you reached a section where he started to quote Donald Trump. You know, because we're talking about that, that type of, of that type of distance. Really, you would look at his historian and say, okay, George, I don't think George Washington wrote that. I think that must have been added to the book at the, a later date. Well, that's what we're seeing here in the Bible.
John Dehlin [01:27:13] Or if George Washington was talking about the Civil War. Right. It can't happen to play a little
Gerardo Sumano [01:27:18] bit of devil's advocate. I could see some LDS people saying, well, God inspired Isaiah and he also could have inspired whoever wrote psalms to write the same thing. But the problem is like you're saying, David, this is not the only issue here. You know, there's so many other things like historical context, even just the themes that they're talking about.
David Bokovoy [01:27:43] Yes.
Gerardo Sumano [01:27:43] That just adds up and adds up and adds up. It's just undeniable.
David Bokovoy [01:27:48] Yes. Well, even if we didn't have the late biblical Hebrew and the Aramaic influences on this material, even if this material never quoted earlier sources like that, we would still be 100% convinced that it was a later author. Because, because the changes that happen here, now it's Babylon, now it's not Assyria.
David Bokovoy [01:28:12] In proto Isaiah, the foreign nations are going to be a scourge to Judah and keep Judah humble, whereas they're going to be a tool that God will use the foreign nations to help Israel and then Israel will provide a mission to the foreign nations. It's a totally different thing. And it's hard to imagine the inviability versus then the destruction.
David Bokovoy [01:28:35] And in fact, now we're talking specifically to the exilic community and it serves a specific purpose. Let's inspire them to go back and rebuild Jerusalem and leave Babylon, which was not an easy thing for this author to inspire the people to do. I mean, we've seen the pictures, the horrible, terrible pictures of Gaza that have come forward. Imagine what it's going to be like for the Palestinian people to go back into that area and try to rebuild that community under the rubble and destruction that is there. Well, imagine now going on a three month at least journey back to a homeland that is in rubble.
David Bokovoy [01:29:13] And you do not have modern technology and machinery to remove rubble and to recreate everything. There were obviously many people that said, well, God, God forgot us. Yahweh, our God. He doesn't care about us. He doesn't care about why would we go? He let the city be destroyed. Why don't we just stay here? It's a Hell of a lot easier, right? So this author has to tell them, no, there's a message of comfort. I'm going to comfort you.
Guest 1 [01:29:42] It's okay.
David Bokovoy [01:29:42] You've paid double for your sin. It's okay. You're forgiven. And go back. God's going to help you rebuild the city. Just go back and do it. And everybody, everything's going to be made wonderful again. So go back and do it. So even if we didn't have all these other elements, which we do, to quote Isaiah, line upon line, precept upon precept, building and building and building. Even if we just had that, it would be enough to convince us that we're dealing with the second author.
David Bokovoy [01:30:09] Right. Add all the rest and it's clear. One last point though, that is very, very important for understanding this material and that, and that is when Deutero Isaiah will give reference to the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great. And to set this up, let us look at the slide where we show the Cyrus cylinder.
The Cyrus Cylinder and Its Significance
David Bokovoy [01:30:33] All right. So thank you. I'm glad we could show this sign or this slide. Thank you. It's the Cyrus cylinder. It's in the British Museum. It's about the size of a loaf of bread. It's written in Akkadian language of ancient Babylon in Assyria. And it is a first person account of Cyrus the Persian king's conquest of Babylon and his restoration of the temples there. And how he is welcomed by open arms by the priest of Babylon who had been offended by the previous Babylonian rulers disregard for their temple and the worship of Marduk Nabonite. Titus, who is the king, is a mystic rather than a warrior.
David Bokovoy [01:31:19] And he's going to travel off into the wilderness. He's going to build a temple to the moon God, neglect the worship of Marduk. And there's quite a bit of turmoil during this time. The monarchy will shift hands after Nebuchadnezzar II between his offspring. And what happens when monarchies show a little bit of weakness like that? And having different rulers one after another other, it's a sign to the subject people that maybe is a good time now for us to revolt and establish our independence. That is what's going to happen then with Persia led by Cyrus the Great unifies the people and he will lead into the conquest of Babylon in 539 and invade.
David Bokovoy [01:32:01] And then this cylinder provides us with a first person narrative about what transpired. And, and what's fascinating then is this account directly influenced the writings of Deutero Isaiah, which also helps us date this material. So let's jump to the next slide. Then we won't go into all of this.
David Bokovoy [01:32:27] This actually I took right off of the I took it right out of that article that I wrote or published in online in response to Kent Jackson's essay. So it's available there. So we won't look at everything, but jump to well, I'm going to jump right there to the middle section.
David Bokovoy [01:32:46] It's written by the priest of Marduk. The document goes on to describe how the Babylonian God responded to Nabonidus. Upon hearing their cries, the Lord of the Gods Marduk became furiously angry and he left their border. Marduk turned toward all the habitations that were abandoned and all the people of Sumer and Akkad who had become corpses. He was reconciled and had mercy upon them. He surveyed and looked throughout all the lands, searching for a righteous king whom he could support. He called out his name, Cyrus, King of Anshon. He proclaimed his name to be king over all the world. He Marduk order him to march to his city Babylon.
David Bokovoy [01:33:28] He made him enter his city Babylon without fighting or battle. He saved Babylon from hardship. He delivered Nabonidus, the king who did not revere him, into his hands. And I write this text illuminates the historical context of the material in Deutero Isaiah. Jews living in Babylon who continue to embrace their religion would have rejected the assertion that Marduk chose Cyrus. Marduk's the King of Bab, or the God of Babylon. He chose Cyrus as a deliverer. Hence they developed a counter theology to these specific claims. And that theology appears in Isaiah 45 where their God Yahweh, not Marduk, called Cyrus to his position. The phrase I call you by Name in Isaiah 45,4 directly matches the statement in the Cyrus Cylinder calendar.
David Bokovoy [01:34:18] He Marduk called out his name, Cyrus, King of Anshon. He proclaimed his name. The connection illustrates that Isaiah 45, which mentions Cyrus as Israel's or specifically the Jews, at this point mentions their he's mentioned as their Messiah. The only time a Messiah is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible Testament, the Messiah is Cyrus. Christ, called here in this section because he comes in and delivers the Judean community and allows them to return and rebuild their temple. So these court officials, aware of the way that this is being politicized by Cyrus coming in and being anointed by Marduk by name to do this. They take that theme, they take the language, they take that and they run with it.
David Bokovoy [01:35:05] And they say, no, no, our God Yahweh did this. He called him by name. He is the Messiah and he will deliver us. And that's right there in Deutero Isaiah, which helps us date the material. I would just add to that then. Let's think about this logically.
David Bokovoy [01:35:21] Imagine if all of this material had been written by the historical Isaiah predicted prophecy. It had been there for a couple of hundred years and all of a sudden, I mean, why wouldn't they have taken that? Why wouldn't they have taken that? Why wouldn't emissaries have taken that into Persia and said, guess what, what a couple centuries now look, what we predict is going to happen, you're going to have this, you're going to be, you're going to be able to do this, you're going to be able to help us. And why wouldn't this have never been used? And if a remarkable prediction like this had been given long before the events transpired in the ancient world, why they weren't talking about it, nobody knew about.
David Bokovoy [01:36:02] Just doesn't make any sense. In fact, it just makes sense to, to just follow where all the evidence goes. And now I think we're starting to build a case that hopefully our audience can recognize that this is a, it's not a. Yeah, we call it the theory. But you know, evolution is a theory. We don't mean that in the, you know, that speculation. We mean that in the scientific sense.
John Dehlin [01:36:21] Gravity is a theory.
David Bokovoy [01:36:22] Exactly. This is, this is where all of the evidence points to and that is just clear and that it cannot be denied.
John Dehlin [01:36:29] Yeah, yeah, I used to think that like genetic, you know, let's just say genetics for sure, provided were capable of providing more conclusive evidence than textual analysis. But the truth is textual analysis can be more of an open shut case than even genetics.
David Bokovoy [01:36:48] So I hear you. So you're referring like to the DNA studies of the Book of Mormon for sure. And it's something that I've read like you have, but I'm not a scientist, I'm not qualified to talk about. But I agree with you, John.
David Bokovoy [01:37:00] I think it's more compelling because look, with the DNA evidence the book can be completely reinterpreted so that instead of every, instead of the indigenous population being the principal descendants of Lehi and his family, we can reread that so it's just a small, tiny little segment of the population and read it in different ways. But what does someone do with this when the Book of Mormon is going to quote from this material?
David Bokovoy [01:37:35] Tell us that it was there on the brass plates, Tell us it was all from Isaiah, put it in the mouth of Abinadi, put it into the mouth of Jacob and others and be so central to the Book of Mormon structure and its whole production. What do you do with that?
Gerardo Sumano [01:37:53] When the material didn't exist by the
David Bokovoy [01:37:55] time I would have left, what do you do? Maybe a good point. I love this quote. If we could share this with the audience, I think it's great. It's actually from a book called God's Word in Human Words. It's written by a scholar by the name of Kenton Sparks. And I choose this because Kenton is not a disbeliever. This is an evangelical scholar who believes that the Bible is the word of God. God. And yet he writes this in pages 106, 7 of his book. I'll quote. It strains the imagination to believe that Isaiah addressed these theological debates about a gentile Messiah some 150 years before they took place, and that his response to those debates was copied and recopied for many years by scribes and read by audience who could not have made heads or tail out of Isaiah's rhetoric.
David Bokovoy [01:38:44] It is more sensible to conclude that the prophet's words did not predict these debates so much as presuppose them. Right. It's obvious to us.
John Dehlin [01:38:54] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [01:38:54] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:38:57] All right. Well, that's compelling to anyone who's willing to really consider.
David Bokovoy [01:39:04] Yeah, maybe we should show that either the slide that shows where Isaiah is in the Book of Mormon. Mormon.
Guest 2 [01:39:11] Or.
David Bokovoy [01:39:13] Or. Yeah. Or perhaps even the. The video that.
John Dehlin [01:39:18] Yeah, here's the. Here's the slide just to show how much of the Isaiah in the Book of Mormon comes from first Isaiah, which would be possible if. If it were possible that Native Americans had Israeli origin to begin with and that books of brass plates even existed success. Years before Jesus, which they didn't. But let's just say that they did. Then, you know, some of first Isaiah appears in the Book of Mormon. But go ahead and talk us through that, Dave.
David Bokovoy [01:39:51] Well, I just think this lays it out here as to how much Isaiah quotation, how many Isaiah chapters are quoted in the Book of Mormon. Now, this does not even include all of the echoes and allusions and, you know, phraseologies that appear from later portions of Isaiah throughout the Book of Mormon. This is just the Isaiah blocks. So it is central to the entire work. And much of it could not have existed for the Nephites to have on their plates is really what this slide is showing.
John Dehlin [01:40:20] So for those who are just listening, talk them through what the slides chose.
David Bokovoy [01:40:24] Okay, so what we're seeing there is Isaiah in 20. We have. Sorry, first Nephi 20 is going to quote Isaiah 48, which is Deutero Isaiah, obviously, because remember Deutero Isaiah, chapters 40 through. It's chapters 40 through 55. And then you're going to have Isaiah 49, which is quoted in first Nephi 21, and then second Nephi 7, which is going to quote Isaiah 50, also Deutero Isaiah unavailable to the Nephi.
David Bokovoy [01:40:57] Then you're going to have Isaiah 51 quoted in 2 Nephi 8. Now we pause there because look at that. Look what Joseph Smith is doing as he's producing the Book of Mormon. He has the King James Isaiah available to him. We know he's actually using that material. And it's very clear because as my professor David Wright showed many, many years ago, Joseph Smith is being influenced by the italicized words in the King James version of the Bible to switch and change things in the King James Version. So it's clear that that's the case. But what you see happening in that slide then is that Joseph Smith is producing.
David Bokovoy [01:41:38] If we could go back to that one John one more time. So look what happens. Joseph Smith writes 1 Nephi chapter 20 and he quotes 48. Then he does the next chapter chapter. He just continues going to 49. Then you have a break where he gives some more Book of Mormon material and then he's going to pick up the Book of isaiah again, chapter 50, chapter 51. You can see exact. He's got the Book of Mormon.
John Dehlin [01:42:02] He's going in order.
David Bokovoy [01:42:02] Yeah, he's going in order.
John Dehlin [01:42:04] He's starting to do the.
David Bokovoy [01:42:06] Exactly, exactly.
John Dehlin [01:42:07] That's interesting.
David Bokovoy [01:42:08] Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. He's just going in order and taking it that way for material that wouldn't have been available at the time. Right.
John Dehlin [01:42:14] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [01:42:14] And then, and then the rest the. Of. Of it can, you know, that people can go back and look at that and see some of it is proto, some of it is deutero. And this presents a major problem for those who claim that the Book of Mormon is a translation of an ancient religious work. It just simply cannot be based upon the use of Isaiah.
John Dehlin [01:42:35] And for those who can't see this slide, second Nephi, according to this slide, seems to be primarily quoting from proto Isaiah. Right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:42:44] Yeah. But there's going to be an issue that we're going to talk about in a little bit.
Deutero-Isaiah and Third Isaiah in the Book of Mormon
John Dehlin [01:42:47] Okay, but then, but then just to say what this slide shows, when you hit mosiah again, Isaiah 53, Deutero Isaiah shows up. And then third Nephi 20 has Isaiah 52 and then third Nephi 22 has Isaiah 54 all being Deutero Isaiah. So to summarize, what we're showing here is seven Book of Mormon chapters in, at least in total that are, quote, infected by deutero Isaiah. Right, yeah, yeah. Explicitly, not to mention, you know. Yeah, references.
David Bokovoy [01:43:22] And the King James version of Deutero Isaiah.
John Dehlin [01:43:25] Yeah, right.
David Bokovoy [01:43:25] Yeah, yeah, exactly.
John Dehlin [01:43:26] Yeah. Okay. All right.
David Bokovoy [01:43:28] Precisely.
John Dehlin [01:43:28] Okay.
David Bokovoy [01:43:29] Yeah. So this maybe be a perfect time then to consider, well, what do apologists do with this then? Yeah, well, it'd be because it's so blatant, it's so obvious, it's a fact historically, as much as we can identify historical facts. So what do apologists do with it? So perhaps this would be a good place to maybe jump in and take a look.
John Dehlin [01:43:48] Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [01:43:48] I was just wondering about Third Nephi because I was like, oh, that's probably Jesus, you know? Well, Jesus would have had the words of deutero Isaiah by that point. But then if you actually read the chapter, Jesus is telling the people, kind of these are the words of Isaiah that you've had had for this entire time that you've been able to read. And here I'm gonna quote them to you. So even that it's a problem.
David Bokovoy [01:44:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John Dehlin [01:44:11] So Book of Mormon Jesus shouldn't be quoting.
Gerardo Sumano [01:44:14] Well, it shouldn't be telling the people
David Bokovoy [01:44:19] because they wouldn't have had accidents.
Gerardo Sumano [01:44:20] Right.
John Dehlin [01:44:20] Okay.
David Bokovoy [01:44:21] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:44:21] Fascinating.
David Bokovoy [01:44:22] Yeah. Okay, so what do Mormon apologists do?
John Dehlin [01:44:25] It's tough.
David Bokovoy [01:44:26] It's tough.
John Dehlin [01:44:27] Yeah. What do they do? Like, there are explanations.
David Bokovoy [01:44:32] Yeah, I think it's a good point then, to show that video clip where we see BYU professor addressing the topic.
John Dehlin [01:44:39] Okay, okay.
Guest 1 [01:44:42] Going back to the Book of Mormon, my question is this. If we invoke divine intervention or revelation as a way to explain a challenge to the Book of Mormon, I do not feel like that is a true cheat. It's not a deus ex machina because it's perfectly in line with what the Book of Mormon is already asking us to see going on here. We're talking about a book that we're saying was written by ancient Americans and then revealed by an angel to a farm boy to translate using a pair of stones. By the gift and power of God, revelation is assumed from the beginning, everywhere.
David Bokovoy [01:45:18] Yeah.
Guest 1 [01:45:19] Supernatural revelation, miracles. It's completely assumed. So for me, it doesn't make any sense to say this is what the Book of Mormon claims for itself in its development. And then someone come along about the Isaiah issue and say, ah, on this issue, only historical evidence is permitted. You're only allowed to use demonstrated texts and. And literary proofs and things. You can't invoke divine revelation to talk about this. Well, that really misunderstands what the Book of Mormon is claiming to be. Claims to be a revelation from God. So to say that any part of it comes from revelation is perfectly aligned, it's expected, it's normal. I don't think that we can have a complaint there. I think it should be a real possibility on the table that something like that happened.
John Dehlin [01:46:00] Wow. So. So for those who don't know, that was Joshua Sears. It's a. It's a. Why Religion Episode 86 Deutero Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, BYU Religious Education and that. He just lowered the bar. I mean, that was profound. Do you want to respond to it?
David Bokovoy [01:46:20] Well, yeah. What's happening? There are really only two ways of approaching this from an apologetic. Apologetic perspective. Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:46:29] Sorry, I'm gonna interrupt there, because he mentions four on this video. I watched the whole thing.
David Bokovoy [01:46:34] Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [01:46:34] He mentions four. I'm gonna mention the first two and then you tackle the other two, too. But the first one he says is not. Worry about it. Just believe that the Book of Mormon is true.
David Bokovoy [01:46:46] Don't think about it.
John Dehlin [01:46:46] That's not the droid you're looking for. Right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:46:49] He said that's the first one.
John Dehlin [01:46:50] Yeah. Have faith and belief.
Gerardo Sumano [01:46:52] Yeah. The second one is saying that the scholars are wrong. That basically going with Abraham, what's his name? Gileadi, and saying being, you know, one Isaiah.
David Bokovoy [01:47:07] Yeah. One Isaiah.
John Dehlin [01:47:08] Isaiah's got, you know, David Bacavoi.
Gerardo Sumano [01:47:10] Right.
John Dehlin [01:47:11] Everyone else got it wrong. And then all the Jewish.
Gerardo Sumano [01:47:14] Two more. Two other ones. Right.
David Bokovoy [01:47:16] Good. I'm glad you. Thank you for reminding me. Yeah. And then the two others that. That are possibility one is that perhaps.
Gerardo Sumano [01:47:24] Well, look,
David Bokovoy [01:47:29] I. I have been. I have been studying this issue. I stopped. This has been fun for me. I've done very little reading of Isaiah or the Book of Mormon or studying for the past six years. I have, as we talked about in the last segment, I've been very occupied with my other pursuits now. So it's been six years and I'm a bit rusty. I hope it doesn't come across too much in this interview, the rust. But for a lot of my life, decades, it was one of my greatest passions. And I hit a point where I just thought, okay, I've got to figure out a way to square the circle.
David Bokovoy [01:48:13] To square the circle to make sure. Because the fact is, is that the divisions of the Book are undeniable. And it presents a problem. So the first thing that I tried as an apologist I even gave a years ago gave a fair Mormon presentation back in the early days on it tried to suggest maybe we could find a way that we don't have to quote for them.
David Bokovoy [01:48:35] In other words, Lehi didn't have to have all of deutero Isaiah's writings. He just had to have the specific chapters that are quoted. So maybe if I could find a way to find those specific chapters that are quoted in the Book of Mormon and I knew that they wouldn't have been written by the historical Isaiah but maybe if they were written right before Lehi left, Lehi left and added that scroll. Maybe if we could find a way to make that work then it wouldn't be anachronistic. And I tried and tried and I tried and it is simply impossible because it just they are directly connected with the events of the exile. That won't work. So that was the third one that he mentioned. Right.
John Dehlin [01:49:15] You were hoping that Isaiah 4:48 through 54 somehow I could make it were written right before Lehi left.
Guest 2 [01:49:22] Right.
David Bokovoy [01:49:22] I tried. I tried really hard. I wanted it so bad. I wanted it so bad to be that way. I I look those who know called
John Dehlin [01:49:30] motivated reasoning in the psychology field.
David Bokovoy [01:49:33] I mean those who know what I did in my previous life. I lots of articles and different things that researching analyzing the Book of Mormon in its ancient context was very important to me to be able to do that and because I loved it so much and I wanted it to be and I got to find a way to make happen and work and it wouldn't work. So then I went so that was the third way that apologists will deal with it. And then the fourth way that is mentioned is the one that we just listened to and that's what I had to go to at the next stage was that it's revelation that Joseph Smith was in and that's what it's Sears, right? Joshua Sears, yes, that's what Joshua Sears from BYU Religion here is arguing that I should take it back. I don't believe he settles on any of these.
Gerardo Sumano [01:50:24] Right, he says that but he definitely gives a lot. He talks a lot more about this fourth one and he seems to lean on it more even though he tries to say oh there's four.
David Bokovoy [01:50:40] It's because he's well trained. Trained. He's well trained. I I don't know. I have never I don't believe I've met him. I don't know him well. But, but he's, he's, he knows what.
John Dehlin [01:50:48] And so, and I, and I'm reminded by all this logic a few years ago when my friends Josh and Brooke came to me after having recorded a conversation with Spencer Fluman, who was, you know, at the Maxwell Institute at the time, who's a great guy, and they're talking to him about how he, he makes sense of the Book of Mormon. And his answer was, what if we don't look at the book? And I'm paraphrasing, what if we don't look at the Book of Mormon as a translation? What if we look at it as a revelation? In other words, don't worry about the plates, don't worry about the so stone in the hat, don't worry about the Urimum Thummim.
John Dehlin [01:51:26] Just imagine Joseph Smith praying to God and God revealing the text of the Book of Mormon to Joseph and then he dictates it to Martin or whoever the scribe is at the time. In other words, it's just pure God to Joseph to the Book of Mormon manuscript. And that way you don't have to worry about Deutero Isaiah, you know, Trito Isaiah, anachronism, historicity, anything. Yeah, but then it just begs the question, why were the plates preserved? Why was there a Urimum Thummim? And why was it referred to as a translation by Joseph Smith and by all subsequent prophets for, I don't know, 200 years? And still to this day,
David Bokovoy [01:52:08] I can't speak to that, to Spencer's views or that experience, but I can personalize myself in that I held that view for many years because it's the only one that one can eventually land upon. Which is probably why Joshua Sears gives more credence to that based upon, upon what we're listening to.
John Dehlin [01:52:27] But it's also the same thing as the Book of Abraham justification, the catalyst theory. As soon as the text isn't working out, you gotta go to some mystic Hail Mary, right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:52:40] Well, to me personally, what Joshua Sears is saying is a little bit more problematic than even Spencer Fluman, because Joshua Sears wants to say, maybe this part is inspiration, but then it can still be historical, it can still be ancient, but maybe this little part right here was inspired.
John Dehlin [01:52:58] So it's kind of like switching back Joseph switching back and forth, more problematic from translation, revelation back to translation.
David Bokovoy [01:53:04] Yeah, it certainly was the view that I held as a believing Latter Day Saint for many years then, because there's no way of making it work historically. So I took that approach, which was that, okay, God inspired Joseph Smith to add that for our benefit into the text. Well, let's think about that for just a minute. Remember the old Sunday school analogy about the chocolate cake? And you know, they bake the cake, but they put a tablespoon of manure in it. And then you ask the kids. Right. I don't know if it was about sin or what. Okay. Would you eat this chocolate cake? Of course I would. Well, give me that piece of coffee. Well, what if I told you that I actually put a tablespoon of manure into it?
John Dehlin [01:53:48] Just a tablespoon. Just a tablespoon.
David Bokovoy [01:53:50] Just a tablespoon. And they're all concerned, no, I won't eat that chocolate cake. And they're like. Because a little bit of scent changes everything. And I do not mean to say that Isaiah is like manure. That'd be. I love the Book of Isaiah. It's beautiful work.
What Deutero-Isaiah Means for Book of Mormon Historicity
David Bokovoy [01:54:05] But my point, I think it's the same thing, is if you were to add material into the Book of Mormon through inspiration, even then it's no longer an ancient text. If Joseph Smith is inspired to add and to author portions of it into it, even if it's just a tablespoon, it changes the composition. And by their own logic, it would have to be identified as a 19th century religious production, not an ancient text.
David Bokovoy [01:54:38] And the fact is, is that we cannot extract those chapters from Isaiah, the deutero Isaiah chapters out of the Book of Mormon. They're central to its entire organization and placed into the mouth and lips of its central characters, including Jesus. So it's just. There's not. And in fact, where's the ancient core to the Book of Mormon? Because the fact is that there are anachronisms, scriptural, alluded to things that are out of place throughout the entire work. How can we even identify one portion of it, a small portion of it that was truly ancient?
David Bokovoy [01:55:13] There isn't one. And if we add to that ancient core modern material, it's no longer an ancient text by their own argument. So I just. The only way to go is that the entire book is a production of Joseph Smith, that It is nightmare 19th century. And that's how we as scholars assess it and interpret it and contextualize it. It's its context. If we take it out of that context, we'll change its meaning. If we take it out of context, then we won't lose the fact that Joseph Smith is trying to explain the origin of the indigenous people here on this continent. If we take it out of context, then all of a sudden the skin of blackness doesn't mean skin of blackness like it would for the indigenous people at the time of Joseph Smith.
David Bokovoy [01:55:56] And it's not a racial, really problematic text. Instead, at their tattoos or whatever. Is the latest theory on dark skin in the Book of Mormon. Well, if we put it in its context, you don't have those problems to deal with. It makes sense what Joseph Smith is doing and how he did it. And I think that's very important for people to understand. So the only way then a religious believer can go from there, I believe, and that's where I ended up when I was still there, was that the book is not ancient yet. It's inspired.
John Dehlin [01:56:28] Yeah. And if you saw a photograph, an alleged photograph of Abraham Lincoln talking on his iPhone, you immediately know it's photoshopped or something. But it's certainly not authentic. End of story. There's just no question if someone produces for you a diary excerpt from Abraham Lincoln quoting Donald Trump, you know, so it's plagiarism, end of story. It's like that, right?
David Bokovoy [01:56:55] Yeah, it really is. So that's why it's a smoking gun. I mean, if people are talking about apologetic versus critic wars. Yeah, okay, smoking gun. And that the critics are right. But for me, a smoking gun in terms of how do we contextualize this work, it is not an ancient translation. It is a 19th century religious work.
John Dehlin [01:57:15] And if you look at what Richard Bushman himself is saying in 2024 for he's saying the Book of Mormon looks like a 19th century document. The church scholars nowadays, I don't know if Terrell Givens has joined him in that regard, but it is not at all controversial. Patrick Mason himself on Mormon Stories podcast said that the Book of Mormon looks a lot like a 19th century, reads a lot like a 19th century document. It's not even controversial amongst faithful Mormon scholars today. That's just pretty much decided. Now, you're not going to hear general authorities get up in general conference and say that, but that's where the believing intelligentsia have arrived in 2024. Correct?
David Bokovoy [01:57:59] Yeah, that or they. I, I think I. Again, I'm not up on all of this, but I think it's either that or they feel that it is ancient with modern additions to it. But if it's ancient with modern editions, then it's not ancient, it's modern.
John Dehlin [01:58:12] Modern like Blake Osler's.
David Bokovoy [01:58:13] Yeah, the expansion theory. If, then, if, if the expansion theory is correct, then there, that's fine. But if it's been expanded so it's no longer an Ancient composition.
John Dehlin [01:58:24] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [01:58:25] By that logic.
John Dehlin [01:58:26] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [01:58:26] So there's really. I.
John Dehlin [01:58:29] It's either an authentic photograph or it's not. Yeah, it can't be authentic and photoshopped, both personally, to me.
Gerardo Sumano [01:58:35] There's also the issues of, of the, this idea of a trickery dog God,
John Dehlin [01:58:39] you know, the, that trickster God.
Gerardo Sumano [01:58:41] Yeah, yeah. Tries to trick me into believing that parts of it are ancient, but then some of them aren't. And then there's a problematic skin of blackness which is like, okay, is this historical or not? And why would God put that in there? And if God was big enough to inspire Joseph to put dude or Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, why wasn't he big enough to inspire him to not put the race racist verses in the Book of Mormon? You know, why were those there and still there? I don't know. It just, it just makes it complicated to me.
John Dehlin [01:59:14] And all of these backbending things require us to believe that Joseph Smith didn't know what he was doing. Because Joseph Smith didn't tell people. This is revelation, not a translation. This is just me coming up with stuff. He's telling people the actual translation process, which is like, I, I had the stone and the word shows up on the stone and then I wrote it down, and then a new word shows up on the stone and then I write that down and there's even confirmation between Joseph and the scribes. Okay. Did you say this? Yes, I said that. Okay, let's move on to the next word. Like, that does not leave any room for us to just sort of reinterpret this as Revelation Free form Form by Joseph Smith. Right.
David Bokovoy [02:00:01] Yeah, I, I mean, I mean, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know how to answer that.
John Dehlin [02:00:08] Yeah, well, scholars aren't supposed to get into that final conclusion. Scholars are supposed to just look at what the texts say and make their best interpretation. But the question of whether or not it's religiously viable or spiritually efficacious, that's where scholars are supposed to stop short of that.
David Bokovoy [02:00:28] I mean, I, I don't want to take away from anyone who, who finds religious or spiritual inspiration from the work. I, it's, it's. It's. I, I mean, I taught it as for its literary qualities for two semesters at the University of Utah in their languages and literature program. It is a, it is a problematic book in some ways because of the, again, the way it, it deals, the cultural appropriation and the racism, things like that. And yet there are inspiring and beautiful literary poetic parts of it even placing it in its 19th century setting.
David Bokovoy [02:01:03] It's a fascinating thing to read and to look at. And once we do that, then we're able to see a lot about Joseph Smith. And that would take us back to some of the great work that Dan Vogel has done through psychoanalysis, where he'll take parts of the Book of Mormon and actually based upon what was produced there, and link it with things that are happening in Joseph Smith's family and in his life and the making of the prophet in the first volume. It's fun to do that.
David Bokovoy [02:01:30] I'm far removed from those things now, I feel, at least in my heart. And so I actually enjoy going and looking at some of these things as a humanist to see how Joseph Smith did it. It's pretty fun and exciting and sometimes amazing. Miraculous. No, no. Everything was available to him right in his backyard. Including Isaiah.
Gerardo Sumano [02:01:52] Yeah. Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:01:54] Okay, so if, if the Deutero Isaiah problem wasn't problematic enough, we've got try to Isaiah, right?
David Bokovoy [02:02:02] Yes.
John Dehlin [02:02:02] So is that, is that our next. Oh my goodness, it actually gets worse. Sorry, everyone.
David Bokovoy [02:02:06] Yeah, this is, this is the one that's really exciting and is actually cutting, cutting edge stuff. Right. So if our audience will recall, then the last 10 chapters of Isaiah are not exilic by Deutero Isaiah. They are post exilic by a third author that we refer to as Third Isaiah or Trito Isaiah, and that is this division. And I wanted maybe just, just kind of show our audience really briefly what's kind of interesting to see. There are lots of reasons why we know it's a post exilic work, partly because it's dealing with and responding to unfulfilled prophecies in Deutero Isaiah. Like it really wasn't that easy for the Jews to get back into Babylon and rebuild their temple.
David Bokovoy [02:02:54] Everything that was prophesied didn't happen. And so you have a lot of discouragement and so a need to add those last chapters which are post exilic onto it. But Deutero Isaiah itself was a distinct composition that was influenced and directly added to the Isaiah material that we have.
David Bokovoy [02:03:15] And you can see this in one way by what scholars would refer to as inclusio or an envelope or envelope structure. And that is where we'll take words and ideas and themes from the beginning and repeat those at the very end to show conclusion.
David Bokovoy [02:03:35] Right. So this is a very standard biblical technique to create closure, a sense of closure. It's like closure is very important for any talk or literature. We have signifiers for that Right. We have like in LDS nomenclature, we'll have closure in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Or you know, a sense that, okay, even a fairy tale, you know, it's going to be. And they lived happily ever after, you're going to have something to signify to your audience over out, we're done. Well, quite frequently in the Bible, the way they do that and accomplish that is through inclusio. So in chapter 40, where Deutero Isaiah begins, remember, comfort the people.
David Bokovoy [02:04:13] Comfort the people. And then Deutero Isaiah gives this beautiful poetic stanza and he compares the word of God to grass. And grass fades and the flower fades. And then in verse eight of chapter 40, we read, but the word of our God is always fulfilled. This is the main theme. Have faith, exilit community. These promises are going to be fulfilled. The promises are going to be fulfilled. Rely on the prophecy, go back and rebuild Jerusalem. Well, at the conclusion then of deutero Isaiah, which is in chapter 55, if we jump to chapter 55, there are all sorts of allusions and references, references and things that connect with the whole theme of the book.
David Bokovoy [02:05:00] But at the end we're going to return to the theme of God's fulfilling God, the ability for God to fulfill his word. So in chapter 55, for instance, look at verse 11. So is. Well, even before that, he's talking about the seeds, the vegetation, like the grass, right? And everything that we just read. But then we read verse 11. So it is the word that issues forth from my mouth. It does not come back to me unfulfilled. See, it's a tie. Now we've tied all of those exilic chapters from chapter 40 through 55 together into a neat nice package. Turn the page.
David Bokovoy [02:05:38] New author 56:66 now in the exile, dealing with unfulfilled promises and themes that are very important. I'll set this up. Then if I turn into to this exilic section, I'm going to jump over to chapter 58, chapter 58 of Isaiah. This is one of the verses that gives scholars a really good indication as to when these verses were written. So Isaiah 58:12, we read, Men from your midst, talking about Jerusalem shall rebuild ancient ruins. You shall restore foundations laid long ago. Go and you shall be called. Repair of fallen walls, restorer of lanes for habitation. So at the time that this material is written, the temple has not yet been finished and that things have not yet been rebuilt.
David Bokovoy [02:06:29] And so when the Jewish community comes back and they start to try to fulfill the promises of deutero Isaiah, they run into all sorts of problems and challenges of trying to rebuild the. The temple. All of these can be discussed and looked at in books like Ezra and Nehemiah.
David Bokovoy [02:06:46] And we have that understanding. They're not making it happen. And so Trito Isaiah or Third Isaiah, is written in part to keep them going and keep that inspiration. And that's one of the verses that helps us identify it. And on the same page, same chapter, verse three, Trito Isaiah is going to talk a lot about fasting, like in verse three, and fasting as a very regular ritual performance for repentance that really doesn't pick up in the Jewish community until the exile and after the post exilic period. So these are the other types of things that help scholars recognize when these chapters were produced.
David Bokovoy [02:07:29] So that then takes us to the fact that, that for many years, when apologists dealt with the Isaiah challenge in the Book of Mormon, they would say things like, well, at least we don't have to deal with third Isaiah. At least Third Isaiah isn't in there. And the reason they assumed that is in the Book of Mormon.
Gerardo Sumano [02:07:47] Let me put that slide again up with all the chapters. You'll see. You know, we only have Deutero Isaiah there.
David Bokovoy [02:07:55] Yes. Because only Deutero Isaiah is quoted in chapter chunks and in blocks. And so the assumption was, therefore Third Isaiah is not there. We don't have to deal with that problem. We can just accept what the scholars have told us, that all of those chapters are very, very late. Well, there's a problem. Third Isaiah is in the Book of Mormon.
John Dehlin [02:08:18] Uh oh. Oh.
David Bokovoy [02:08:20] Third Isaiah is in the Book of Mormon.
John Dehlin [02:08:21] Oops.
David Bokovoy [02:08:22] Yeah. Now this takes us to Colby Townsend's research and an academic paper that he published in Dialogue Blog just last year.
John Dehlin [02:08:31] And I'm throwing it up on the screen.
Gerardo Sumano [02:08:32] Excellent.
John Dehlin [02:08:33] The Robe of Righteousness. Exilic and post Exilic Isaiah in the Book of Mormon by Colby Townsend in Is that Dialogue?
David Bokovoy [02:08:43] Yes, Dialogue Journal of Mormon Thought.
Gerardo Sumano [02:08:45] Okay.
David Bokovoy [02:08:46] And for those who don't know, Colby Colby is a textual critic. In fact, I would go so far as to identify Colby, in my opinion, as the premier textual critic of Mormon scripture today. Yeah, he's very, very gifted man and he a very good friend of mine.
David Bokovoy [02:09:09] He and I started working on this project together years ago. We started thinking, okay, let's really break down and find Third Isaiah and talk about the Third Isaiah and talk about that in the Book of Mormon. And we started working on that. And then I began, and really I became very focused on prison education, things that I was doing. And Colby kept working and kept working and kept working. All of a sudden he sent me a paper. He said, okay, what do you think we should add to this? And I looked at his paper and I said, colby, this is your project. Look what you've done.
David Bokovoy [02:09:37] This is far beyond anything that I have looked at. And I don't want to just now at this stage, I just add my name to it and edit a word or two. And I have no interest in doing that.
David Bokovoy [02:09:47] I'm so proud of you. This is amazing because he was a former student of mine, but I tell you, Colby has taught me far more than I have learned myself because he's brilliant and so well informed with this. Well, in the article, what he does in the beginning of this, he's going to go for it. He's going to identify textual allusions to Third Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. For example, In Isaiah, chapter 61, we have a reference to the robe of rock, righteousness. Well, Nephi is going to talk about that in the Psalm of Nephi and talk about the robe of righteousness. So although not a block citation like we see happening with Deutero Isaiah, we do see references, yes, echoes and allusions to that third part, that post exilic part, which, if we're approaching the Book of Mormon as an historical text, would lead to the perspective that those authors, like Nephi, would have had to have had access to that religious text that talked about the road of righteousness and other things that Third Isaiah refers to that are found throughout the Book of Mormon.
David Bokovoy [02:10:50] What is more exciting, though, with the paper that I would point out is the fact that Kolbe goes into a lot of research, and what he shows is that it's even worse than that because Deutero Isaiah, the second Isaiah, the exilic authority author, did significant revisions to the Isaianic material that we call First Isaiah or proto Isaiah. And that has just been well established now in the scholarship literature. And what Colby does is he'll take a few of these verses that technically should be Isaiah proper and in the Book of Mormon. And so apologists go, phew, Isaiah, for example, Isaiah 22, you know, it's in the Book of Mormon. If it's in there, then we're okay, because that's proto Isaiah.
Gerardo Sumano [02:11:40] Right.
David Bokovoy [02:11:40] But the problem is verse one, verse one is an editorial introduction that was added most likely by Deutero Isaiah. And yet that appears when Nephi or whoever. I can't remember, off top of my head, whoever it is that quotes that section from the Book of Mormon. Mormon. He quotes it and he quotes the deutero Isaiah additions to that. Another example off the top of my head would be Isaiah chapter six, which is Isaiah's prophetic call narrative. The very. And that's Isaiah proper. But at the very end, there's an illusion there at the very end of it that was added defining who the seed is and things like that.
David Bokovoy [02:12:18] That was added by the. By deutero Isaiah, added by a later author. And it wouldn't have been available there, therefore, in the Isaiah form that Lehi had. Yet when Joseph Smith puts it into the Book of Mormon, it has the deutero Isaiah and the third Isaiah edits and additions even into the Isaiah material proper. Did I explain that? Okay?
John Dehlin [02:12:42] Yeah, I think. Do we have some examples?
David Bokovoy [02:12:44] Yeah. Okay, let's go.
John Dehlin [02:12:45] All right, let's start here.
David Bokovoy [02:12:46] Sure. And this is the one that I was talking to. I was talking about just a minute ago.
John Dehlin [02:12:50] Just to drive it home.
David Bokovoy [02:12:51] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John Dehlin [02:12:52] Okay.
David Bokovoy [02:12:52] Yeah. So first Isaiah 2:1:5, the block quotation of Isaiah 2:14. This is Colby writing begins in second Nephi 12:1. And then all he's going to tell you is that, yes, Isaiah 2:1 as a late addition, even later than some of the other authors. So it even may perhaps have been third Isaiah, according to some authors. And I should pause for a second.
David Bokovoy [02:13:17] This is also something that apologists will do when it gets to some of the minutiae between the divisions of the book and the editing process, there still remains quite a bit of debate. So some scholars will say, okay, that edition is from deutero Isaiah, and that one's from third Isaiah. And there's not a lot. And so arguments are made and we're trying to refine our understanding. And every year we get closer and closer. And sometimes then apologists will grab that and say, aha. The scholars, there's no consensus. They don't agree on these things, and we don't agree on some of the things, and we don't agree on all things.
David Bokovoy [02:13:50] But what we agree on is enough to understand that we're talking about the essence of this is really clearly unavailable to Nephi and his people. So this is an example that he was referring to. Probably in light of time, maybe just. We could probably just invite the audience to go read that article. It's probably the best thing to do because Colby's to going. Going to lay it out in great detail and show how this material that technically Lehi should have had was edited and shaped by the exilic and later post Exilic authors of Isaiah. So even the legitimate material that is in the Book of Mormon has been touched up by those later authors and would not have been accessible to the Nephites. So, yeah, it's just.
Guest 1 [02:14:40] It's just.
David Bokovoy [02:14:40] That is just. We just keep adding and adding and adding the evidence.
John Dehlin [02:14:44] So let me just show this slide, this, this slide that would look familiar to those who've been watching today's episode because it shows where Deutero Isaiah, a quote, you know, by my words, infects the Book of Mormon. Again, first Nephi 20 and 21, second Nephi 7 and 8, Mosiah 14, and then third Nephi 20 and 20 too. Tell us what this slide is now suggesting. Sorry, this slide with the T question mark. Yeah. What does that mean?
Gerardo Sumano [02:15:15] So I added that.
John Dehlin [02:15:16] Yeah. And Herodo, what is. What were you doing with that slide?
Gerardo Sumano [02:15:21] So Colby explains that Third Isaiah, basically, you know, what David was saying, infects all the chapters from Isaiah 2 to 14 and 48 to 50, 55.
John Dehlin [02:15:32] So basically, all those second Nephi chapters that we said were deutero Isaiah are also quote, infected by tr.
Gerardo Sumano [02:15:40] Yeah. And also the ones that were initially by. By first Isaiah were also, are also probably also, you know, edited in some ways by Third Isaiah. So even those that, you know, might not seem problematic are problematic because Third Isaiah would have gone on and edited.
John Dehlin [02:16:02] So if I had to summarize, what I'm hearing you say is that what Colby Townsend has demonstrated is that like 80 to 90% of the Isaiah quoted in the Book of Mormon is infected by Third Isaiah, which is even less likely to be available than Deutero Isaiah.
Guest 2 [02:16:20] Right.
John Dehlin [02:16:21] As well. So it's just a problem all the way around.
David Bokovoy [02:16:23] Yeah, I wouldn't, I would. I don't know if we. I don't know if I'm ready to put a percentage on it.
John Dehlin [02:16:27] But just in terms of these chapters.
David Bokovoy [02:16:29] But. Yeah, but it, but the point is, is that, the point is this, is that the Book of Mormon is going to use, is going to have textual allusions and echoes of Third Isaiah, which wouldn't have been available to the people. It's going to directly quote Deutero Isaiah, which would not have been available to the people. And even when it quotes the Isaiah material, material, the Isaiah material it quotes has been edited and worked over by Exilic and post Exilic authors. And yet. The edited versions of that appear in the Book of Mormon. And so this is very. This is also. So in other words, they're actually deutero Isaiah and Trito Isaiah appear in the Book of Mormon much more frequently than scholars have recognized. Once we understand that the proto Isaiah material was reshaped by those later authors.
Closing Thoughts and Final Reflections
John Dehlin [02:17:27] All right, and then I'm going to just pull rank. And because he's my cousin and because I do think this point is important to be made, I'm going to go ahead and play the Ezra Taf Benson clip at the end. Sure. And Gerardo, do you want to tell us why you thought we might include this video clip?
Gerardo Sumano [02:17:41] Yeah. Well, it's Ezra Tuf Benson talking about how important the Book of Mormon to the entire truth claims of the church.
John Dehlin [02:17:48] Yeah. So this is prophets here in Revelator as a Tevinson probably, while he's a prophet. Yeah. Just sort of letting us all know what the stakes are with the, the veracity and the validity of the Book of Mormon. So let's roll. Prophet Ezra Benson, my cousin. The first is that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion. This was the prophet Joseph Smith's statement. He testified that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book
David Bokovoy [02:18:26] on earth
John Dehlin [02:18:29] and the keystone of our religion. A keystone is the central stone in an arch. It holds all the other stones in place and if removed, the arch crumbles. And David, because you're a scholar, we don't expect you to really speak to this, but from my perspective, what I've always wanted to know is is the Church what it claims to be or not? Is the Church true or not? Is the Book of Mormon scripture and a translation or not?
David Bokovoy [02:19:02] Not.
John Dehlin [02:19:02] That's really important to me. Scholars stay away from that question. But people's lives are deeply affected by the answer to those questions. And this is Ezra Tab Benson just saying, if the Book of Mormon isn't what we all were taught, if the Book of Mormon isn't what Joseph Smith claimed it was and is, then think of that as the keystone of an arch crumbling. The arch crumbles with the keystone own crumbling. And that's. I'm not going to ask you to speak to that, but you know, but
David Bokovoy [02:19:34] I will, thank you. You're right. Scholarly. Of course, we're not going to assess whether something is inspired or not. That's not it. But as a historian of ancient text, ancient Bible, the Book of Mormon is what it is. It's a 19th century work. Now what does that mean for Latter Day Saints?
David Bokovoy [02:19:56] I truly believe that it is fine for someone and inappropriate to still believe in God and believe that this work was inspired to uplift the Spirituality of humanity and to help people draw closer to divinity. I understand that. That certainly was my conviction for many years, so I understand that. I'm sensitive to that. But I would just add this, John, if that's the case, and if the Book of Mormon sermon isn't ancient, and then that raises questions about priesthood restoration, and it raises questions about temple ordinances and all sorts of things that extend from that, as Ezra, Heff Benson and others have suggested, then in order for the church to be true, in my opinion, it would need really strong leaders, inspired leaders who were great spiritual leaders that were giving great spiritual advice to the community that was coming from God, and that that inspiration, then could help us live happier, better lives and draw closer, as I said, to God, to divinity.
David Bokovoy [02:21:01] If the Book of Mormon is not ancient and yet the church is still true, or people want the church to still be true, then in my mind, that places a huge responsibility on its leaders. Because what are you left with if you don't have the prophet, if you don't have the Book of Mormon, what are you left with? You don't have priesthood and ordinances. Well, you're left with modern prophets and modern prophecy. And you see what I'm saying. And therefore, my goodness, if those leaders. I'll speak personally.
John Dehlin [02:21:32] I take your str.
David Bokovoy [02:21:33] I loved that. I loved that church, and I loved it. And I gave my life, my profession, everything to it. I loved it. If those leaders. If those leaders were reliable spiritual guides, I would still very much be involved, because I love it, and I love the community, and I love. It's my family.
David Bokovoy [02:21:56] But. And it breaks my heart to say it. I am. I breaks my heart. They. They are not. They are not. And we're not just talking the problems and hurt that they cause my children and my friends and my family that are part of the LGBTQ community. We're talking about the patriarchy that is preserved and that is deadly and just to women in general and so hurtful to men and women that is preserved.
David Bokovoy [02:22:26] We're talking about taking money from the poor and the needy in forms of tithes and offerings, things that Jesus was very critical of and then being dishonest about that. That both to the government and to the members abroad. We're talking about entering into legal litigation to try to make sure that people that, like Heber cannot have, you know, they have to have their lights. They have to have the temple on all night long instead of, you know, a night sky that. That people can look at in that valley. And. And the church goes to Fight against that. And in Star Valley, Wyoming, the steeple has to be so large and they don't stop to think about that.
David Bokovoy [02:23:06] There are people that want those lights off in Hebrew at night because there are people like me that when we look up into the night sky and we see the stars shining and we see the heavens above, we feel deeply inspired.
David Bokovoy [02:23:18] And the lights that are turned on those temples, they use up natural resources and they cause problems and they interfere with our worship. That's not spiritual to do that. That I could go on and on. And it breaks my heart because I love that.
Guest 2 [02:23:33] Sure.
David Bokovoy [02:23:34] And I would like them to do better, but I cannot find them worthy to be spiritual guides in my life. And therefore, where do we go from there?
John Dehlin [02:23:49] Yeah. And see your previous episode where you talked about where you've gone from there.
David Bokovoy [02:23:56] Well, where do you go? You go. It's happy. It's wonderful. It's hard, as we've talked about, but it's wonderful because, my goodness, there's nothing better than spiritual independence. We get to think critically for ourselves and decide what we believe and define our own purpose. I could go on and on, but yeah. Oh, my goodness, it's a wonderful life of independence. I'm grateful for.
John Dehlin [02:24:25] Any thoughts? Rota, Any closing thoughts?
Gerardo Sumano [02:24:28] Love it. Well, it's definitely. I've learned a lot this past week reading and preparing for this episode. And it's been really cool to learn more stuff about Isaiah and the Book of Mormon. Thanks, David, for sure for bringing this to Mormon Stories and our audience.
John Dehlin [02:24:49] And.
Gerardo Sumano [02:24:50] And yeah, I've loved it.
John Dehlin [02:24:52] All right, well, this concludes David Bachavoy week on Mormon Stories. We hope you've enjoyed it. We hope we've reintroduced this important person and scholar to all of you. If you haven't, go back and watch the original story of David's journey in his early years as a Mormon. Check out his work on historical criticism and. And Mormon and biblical scripture. And then you don't check out his update that we just did. That's a great companion to this fourth part. And David, we hope if you decide to dip your toe back into any of this stuff, we hope you'll consider coming back. But if you don't, we. We're just excited to know you're grateful for you and we're happy to watch you live your big, beautiful new life. Life.
David Bokovoy [02:25:43] Thank you. Thank you both. And thanks to Margi, who was here last time. Again, I don't want to that. And I am. Yeah. Maybe another 10, 6, 10, 10 years from now, come back and do it again. How's that sound?
John Dehlin [02:25:55] All right.
David Bokovoy [02:25:55] I hope, I hope too that what we'll see is that, you know, this was kind of quick and I off the cuff too for me and it's been a while since I've looked at it, but I hope then it, it piques an interest in our audience and that they'll go back and read Colby's article, then go back and read that two part response I did to Kent Jackson and really see the details for themselves laid out and how that works. And then my goal in wanting to share this was, I think it's interesting, I think it's exciting. As a scholar and like you, John, I believe this information should be democratized.
David Bokovoy [02:26:30] It should be out there. It shouldn't just be scholars like Colby and myself and others that kind of sit and look at this and oh, isn't that interesting? This needs to be democratized. People need to understand this so that they can be informed and make informed consent. And I would just add in if, if, if this affects you and you're a believing member. It's okay. It's okay. Life is really, really wonderful as you continue the journey.
John Dehlin [02:27:02] You're saying there can be joy after Mormon orthodoxy or even after Mormonism.
David Bokovoy [02:27:07] I am happier now and I'm filled with more feelings of what I identify as the Holy Ghost than I ever have been before. And I know we showed the picture when I was heavy with my shirt off and the challenges with eating and so forth, but it's there. I wanted to share that, to send a message. And that is this. Life does not end once one disaffiliates from the church. It's just the start of a new, a new wonderful beginning. At least it can be. And it, I, I, it has been for me, despite the challenges, and I look forward to seeing where it goes from here. So thanks.
John Dehlin [02:27:41] I'll show that photo one more time because it kind of, it's a, it's a physical representation of, you know, what your health was then versus now. But it's kind of a spiritual and a psychological representation.
David Bokovoy [02:27:55] Total, totally.
John Dehlin [02:27:56] Don't you think? Oh, that dude looks kind of spiritually and psychologically dead. And that guy on the right looks kind of spiritually and psychologically happy and healthy. Is that possible? Yeah.
David Bokovoy [02:28:08] And I, I know, I look, I, yeah, it is, it is. People need community and they need, you know, all the things we've talked about, but it, it's out there. So go find it and, and, and live each moment to its fullest and love each other. And be good and kind and. And life is just beautiful that way. I think there's got to be a
John Dehlin [02:28:29] Bob Marley quote in here somewhere.
David Bokovoy [02:28:32] One love, right? There you go. One.
John Dehlin [02:28:35] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [02:28:36] Thank you, John.
Guest 2 [02:28:37] Thank you.
John Dehlin [02:28:37] Let's get together and feel. All right.
Gerardo Sumano [02:28:39] Let's do it.
John Dehlin [02:28:40] Yeah.
David Bokovoy [02:28:40] Thank you.
John Dehlin [02:28:41] All Right. David Bacavoy, Dr. David Bacavoy, thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories. All our love to Carolyn.
David Bokovoy [02:28:46] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:28:47] And come back to soon.
David Bokovoy [02:28:48] Will, too.
John Dehlin [02:28:49] All right. Thanks, Gerardo.
Gerardo Sumano [02:28:50] Thank you.
John Dehlin [02:28:51] And thanks to Julia and Maven and everyone, the open storage foundation that makes this possible. Thanks to our donors. We couldn't do any of this without you, our donors. So thank you. Thanks to our listeners and viewers. Please subscribe to this channel. Please like it. Please share and know that we lose donors every month. We lose 10 to 20 recurring donors. So that if you value this type of content, content and you want to see continue, or if you want to pay it forward for people who are yet to come, please consider becoming a monthly donor on mormonstories.org that's how we pay for this and future content.
John Dehlin [02:29:29] Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Check out our LDS discussion series where we talk more about Mormon Church truth claims. We've got over 50 episodes of in Depth, as neutral as we could possibly do coverage of Mormon church truth claims. If you like this ST stuff with David Bacavoy and Isaiah, you'll really like the LDS discussion series as well. So check that out on Spotify, on iTunes, on YouTube. There's a playlist for LDS discussions wherever you see, wherever you consume your Mormon Stories podcast. All right. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Thanks, everyone.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
Thumbnail Credits: Painting of Isaiah by Antonia Balestra (public domain)
One Response
On the Brass plates issue, there is only about 100 years between when Lehi leaves (600BC) and when scholars generally agree that the brass alloy was invented (500BC). So not much of a smoking gun there it seems.