Introduction and Guest Background

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today, John Dehlin. It is April 8, 2024, and today we are here to discuss the alleged discovery of golden plates in Saudi Arabia that many Mormon apologists have sort of seemed to do kind of a victory dance, a celebration dance, suggesting that because these golden plates were allegedly found, I don't know, along what they like to call the Lehigh Trail, finding these golden plates along, quote, the Lehigh Trail somewhere in Saudi Arabia, suggests that the Book of Mormon is true, that it validates the story, Joseph Smith's story of receiving golden plates from an angel.

John Dehlin [00:00:53] And, and, you know, the Book of Mormon's historicity, and putting Book of Mormon historicity aside for today, what we're going to be doing is just talking about, you know, are these golden plates authentic or not? Are they, are they forgeries or not?

John Dehlin [00:01:12] And even if they were, maybe we'll ask the question, we'll answer the question of whether that they would bolster claims of Book of Mormon historicity even if they were true. I don't know. But joining us today to help us understand is the one, the only, Dan McClellan.

John Dehlin [00:01:34] And Dan, tell us about your, all your different channels and what you do in your educational background just so people know what scholarly background you bring to this discussion.

Dan McClellan [00:01:46] Absolutely. First off, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I thought we were talking about the eclipse today and how it's the end of the world, but we can do, we can do gold plates, too. That's okay. I did an undergrad in Ancient Near Eastern studies at Brigham Young University many, many years ago and then went over to the UK to do a master's degree in Jewish Studies at Oxford and then to Canada for another master's degree at a university and evangelical university and just outside of lovely Vancouver, B.C. called Trinity Western University. And then I did my PhD in the the degree says Theology and religion.

Dan McClellan [00:02:22] That's just because that's the name of the awarding department. But I wrote my dissertation on the cognitive science of religion and the conceptualization of deity in the Hebrew Bible. And now I decided that I was going to eschew traditional academia and just argue with people about religion on the Internet for a living. So I was a scripture translation supervisor for the LDS Church for just a bit over 10 years and a little over a year ago decided to pivot to doing this full time and, and have been great, having a great time, except, you know, I have to respond to things like this that pop up every now and then.

Dan McClellan [00:03:03] And I'M happy to be able to provide any relevant expertise. I, I think that I have a particularly relevant bit of experience with this because this is going to be, as I'm going to demonstrate, closely related to some artifacts that were publicized back in 2011 that came to be known as the Jordan led codices. And I and some friends were heavily involved in trying to get the word out to the public that these were modern forgeries and was threatened with lawsuits multiple times by the. The orchestrator of all this. This publishing or publication publicizing campaign. Sorry, my brain's not working right in English today.

John Dehlin [00:03:52] And, and just to kind of. I'm just trying to see.

Guest [00:03:56] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:03:56] I don't know if. If the Ward Radio folks have now taken down their videos because I'm not. I'm not actually seeing them. I was going to show you use that quote about the. The A lie making it around the world and, and the truth. Yeah, yeah.

Dan McClellan [00:04:18] Oh yeah. The. A lie can make it around the world before the truth gets its shoes on or the truth gets out of bed or something like that. That's something that I've been lamenting my entire social media career is that the misinformation and the disinformation out there is never going away and spreads like wildfire so quickly that there's no possible chance of. Once the. It's out of the bottle, there's no chance to get that. That genie back in the bottle. So unfortunately that's what we're trying to do here. But the quicker we are at it, the more we can mitigate the spread of the misinformation.

John Dehlin [00:04:57] Yeah. And that's why I wanted to jump on this because I. I noticed that it was it the Sons of helman website, a YouTube channel that had well over a hundred thousand views. Do you remember?

Dan McClellan [00:05:07] I don't remember the, the name of that channel. This. I. The folks reached out to me. I spoke on the phone either Friday or Saturday with one of the gentlemen from that channel just because he wanted to. To get up to speed on stuff. But yeah, it had an awful lot of views.

Guest [00:05:26] Shoot.

Dan McClellan [00:05:27] Yeah, I don't remember the name of that channel.

The Saudi Gold Plates and Their Claims

John Dehlin [00:05:29] Okay, well, I'm going to ask either the audience, those of us, those of you who we want to welcome all our. The folks in our YouTube and Facebook chats or ask Maven to find us. Oh, the Stick of Joseph, I think it's called. Let me just quickly.

John Dehlin [00:05:47] Let me just quickly pull up that channel because it looks like they pulled down. Okay, there it is. So I'm going To share this tab and show it just kind of illustrate how, you know, how, how this word gets around. So we've got the stick of Joseph YouTube channel and this, this episode that now it's. Now the thumbnail says, you know, possible gold plates found in Saudi Arabia. I think they changed their thumbnail, but it's already got 115,000 views from four days ago.

John Dehlin [00:06:21] And then there's a second one that says, are the gold books obvious frauds? But you know, we're talking about between that and Ward Radio before apparently they pulled down their episodes. I'm not able to find them. Anyway, I'll ask those of you who are viewing or listening, you know, we're talking about 150, 200,000 views of basically, I don't know, Mormons believing that these gold plates are real and that they bolster their faith. And so anyway, like you said, the, A lie can make its way around the world in a day when, when. While the truth is barely just putting its pants on. So, so why don't you back up and just tell us the story?

John Dehlin [00:07:05] Maybe any context we should know historically about archaeological digs, about the way records should and shouldn't be found or discovered or presented. What other discoveries in the past might bear on this, fraudulent or not, so that then we can have the context for how to talk about these gold plates.

Dan McClellan [00:07:27] Yeah, we, we find stuff all the time in controlled archaeological excavations. And from time to time, things come to light through the black market, through antiquities dealers who approach big time buyers and say, hey, I got some stuff you might be interested in. And some of it is authentic, some of it is fake, is forged. These days, scholars are increasingly wary of relying on or taking seriously artifacts that came to light through antiquities dealers these days. In fact, there are publishers now who are saying they will not publish anything that, where an argument relies on an artifact that does not have an established provenance. Provenance is, is basically like the, the background, the family history of this thing.

Dan McClellan [00:08:18] Where was it found? Where does it come from? In what circumstances was it found? And so professional archaeologists go to great pains to very carefully and meticulously record everything that they're uncovering. Every layer. They uncover everything they find in every layer. The, the relationship of every layer to the layer that is underneath so that they can recreate the circumstances of everything that they discover. And if they needed to put it back together the way it was.

Dan McClellan [00:08:49] The Dead Sea Scrolls are an example of something that initially came to light through antiquities dealers. And a lot of people were wary of them. That thought they might be forgeries. But archaeologists were led to the caves where they were discovered, and they managed to find almost a dozen other caves that similarly had scrolls in them and other artifacts. And so we were able to overcome that liability of the fact that the Dead Sea Scrolls came to light through the antiquities market.

Dan McClellan [00:09:27] But something like this is something that has no established provenance. There's no way to know for sure where this came from based just on, you know, the words of, of whoever's presenting it to whomever, because they can make up whatever they want. And there's a long history of people who have committed, invested a lot of money into the production of forgeries and into the production of plausible paper trails and plausible provenances, but things that aren't found in C2. So in controlled excavations in the ground, there's always going to be questions about those things.

John Dehlin [00:10:11] What would be the financial opportunity or the publicity opportunity for someone to forge plates like this or other sorts of relics? What, what's, what's the motivation? What's the incentive? What's the possible payout?

Dan McClellan [00:10:24] I, I think the, the biggest thing is they want to try to sell them to a museum or to a collector or something like that. And this, what we're going to be talking about today, is an example of specific types of artifacts that occur in large collections. So I don't know how many plates they have said were a part of this discovery in Saudi Arabia, but back in 2011, with the Jordan led codices, they said there were 70 of these things and, you know, most of them smaller than a credit card. And the person who was trying to publicize this was trying to gin up interest in these artifacts, whether on the part of private collectors, or on the part of universities or on the part of museums, I think they're just trying to cast a wide net in the hopes that someone bites.

Dan McClellan [00:11:20] Because since 2002, for instance, there have been about 80 Dead Sea scroll fragments that have come to light and have been purchased by museums and universities for significant sums of money. And a friend of mine named Kip Davis is a part of a team that was given access to a handful of these scrolls that have come to light since 2002. And that team concluded that every single one of those scrolls is a forgery. And so whoever was responsible for producing those scrolls probably sold them to intermediaries who then negotiated deals with universities, with museums, with others to sell them, and pocketed an awful lot of money.

Dan McClellan [00:12:03] So if you can find a way to efficiently create dozens and dozens and dozens of artifacts and then start selling them to museums and, and universities. You stand to make an awful lot of money.

John Dehlin [00:12:21] Thank you for that. I'll just share a tiny bit of history maybe to kind of set this up a tiny bit more. So there's, I guess this YouTube channel called Shabbat Not Live.

Dan McClellan [00:12:33] Well, kind of. There's a, there's a YouTube show called Shabbat Night Live. The channel is called A Rude Awakening. And rude is spelled R O O D, I believe. The gentleman who runs it, his name is Michael Rude. He has a big gray beard and he likes to record videos of him sitting in front of a fire in a, in a robe, looking all Mosesy.

Dan McClellan [00:12:54] And, and he, and I have gotten into it in the past on social media, but he, his organization is a, is a, a messianic Jewish ministry that aims to restore the, the Hebrew roots of the Christian faith. And so he, Nehemiah Gordon and some others spent an awful lot of time trying to argue that the real name of God was not Adonai, as scholars pronounce it another way, but he says it's Jehovah, that that is the original way that, that the tetragrammaton was pronounced. So that there, there's a history with this Michael Rude figure. But he's the, the source of this.

John Dehlin [00:13:35] And what are his scholarly credentials? He and those who he brings on.

Dan McClellan [00:13:40] Generally, I don't believe that he has a PhD. I don't know what his credentials are. And, and based on what I have seen of his arguments, he does not have advanced research skills.

John Dehlin [00:13:57] But the role he would play in Evangelical Christianity would be what trying to promote a.

Dan McClellan [00:14:05] There are a few different movements within Christianity that call themselves Messianic Judaism or they call themselves Hebrew Roots, or they call themselves Torah Observant Christians. It's, it's a mixture. It's basically Christians trying to, to feel more Jewish about themselves and they're, they can sometimes wade into controversy when it comes to Jewish identity and things like that. I'm, I don't, I'm not aware of anything that, that this gentleman has done, but certainly this is on the periphery of, of evangelical Christianity in America today.

John Dehlin [00:14:42] Okay, so jump in if I've got any of this wrong, but apparently on the Shabbat Night Live show on this channel on March 29, 2024, Dr. Miles Jones, it was, it was presented that Dr. Miles Jones presented the story while he was giving a tour in Saudi Arabia. A woman called him in the middle of the night and said that someone local had something he needed to See, that already sounds sketchy. And calls him in the middle of the night, says he needs to see something. They met the following morning at an unnamed Arab man. And an unnamed local Arab man pulled out a bag and showed him a small set of golden plates. There's a photo of them there. They seem pretty teeny. Are those teeny?

Dan McClellan [00:15:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah. They would be pretty small.

John Dehlin [00:15:36] So first, they're not big like the Book of Mormon would suggest.

Dan McClellan [00:15:40] No, no, they're. They're not big. And this, this fits a little better in with what we would expect when we see text being inscribed on metal. For instance, the oldest manuscript of any syllable of the Bible comes from two little silver scrolls that were rolled up and, and carried as, as an apotropaic amulet, so as a protective amulet with a version of the priestly blessing scratched into them. So usually when they were writing on metal back then, it was pretty small.

John Dehlin [00:16:15] Okay. And just to give people a sense, we have an episode of Mormon Stories where a guy makes tin plate and he makes them with the same tools Joseph would have had, with materials Joseph would have had and the size that he would have made them. And they're incredibly heavy, but also this is the size that they would be to be sort of relevant.

Guest [00:16:40] Excuse me.

John Dehlin [00:16:41] Relevant to this conversation about the Book of Mormon. And again, if for those of you who are listening, you can't see, these little plates are kind of finger sized. They're like the size of half a finger, if I'm getting that right.

Dan McClellan [00:16:54] Yeah, they're very similar to the Jordan codices and they're around credit cardish size rather than what we would think of a, like a 6x9 traditionally published book.

John Dehlin [00:17:06] Okay, so to go on with, with this Miles Jones. According to Living Passages.com's Dr. Miles Jones has earned three degrees in languages and linguistics, culminating in a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin in 1985. Quote, Most recently in March of 2023, Dr. Jones returned from an expedition to Mount Sinai in Arabia to document the evidence of the Exodus found there. On that expedition, he uncovered the archives of the Banu Kurai. How do you say that?

Dan McClellan [00:17:39] I haven't heard him, but it would probably be Banu Karaya Kariza Kuraya.

John Dehlin [00:17:46] Okay. A priestly Hebrew tribe in Arabia, including a book of their history made out of the pages of beaten gold. Any quick responses to that, Dan?

Dan McClellan [00:17:57] It's, it's a convenient origin story and, and it allows somebody else to kind of be the face of the public publicization. Publicizing man, I am having A rough time with that word. But it would allow someone else, someone with some kind of credentials to be the public, the public face of, of these things so that whoever is responsible for them, who probably has connections to unseemly characters, can stay in the shadows.

John Dehlin [00:18:25] Okay, here's a webpage that shows for the small price of $9199, you can do a two week trip with Dr. Jones through Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, etc. This is a biblical exodus route, Red Sea cruise and tour. So this guy apparently makes a lot of money taking people on tours through the Holy Land.

Dan McClellan [00:18:48] Makes a lot more money than I do off of those tours.

John Dehlin [00:18:52] I think you should conduct tours, Dan. I think that would be fascinating.

Dan McClellan [00:18:56] I did a tour in Israel and Palestine last year and we're going to be doing a cruise tour in the Mediterranean in October. But we. I'm not making any money off of it.

Guest [00:19:05] I'm.

Dan McClellan [00:19:06] They said we'll pay your way. And I was like, deal. So.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] Well, I hope you can make some money off of that sometimes. All right, let's go and just play the, the clip really quick. It's, it's just a minute attitude has changed.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:19:18] We've reached a temp, a tipping point over that time because the evidence is there.

Video Clip 1 [00:19:23] Well, the tipping point even just with your crew, I mean when the cameras were off here, I mean, Patrick, I think you'd mentioned there's people on your crew from literally all over the world. I mean this in our institute also

Video Clip 1 [00:19:33] we have people all over.

Video Clip 1 [00:19:34] Yeah, this group guys have. Is like growing. You know, this is, this is not just some little niche where there's a couple of guys who think this might be what it is. I mean there's a lot of people who are really invested in this.

Video Clip 1 [00:19:46] That's right. And they're, they're not there because of me. I don't have that kind of power. They're there because they were called by God to do this work with us. We couldn't be doing it without it because they're, they're volunteering. They're very valuable skills to do this work.

Video Clip 1 [00:20:00] Now the work. Speaking of which, we want to talk about a couple of things today. First of which being something called the Gold Book.

Video Clip 1 [00:20:05] Yes, the gold book.

Video Clip 1 [00:20:07] So what is it? This. I've heard about the lead tablet. So I think it was Aaron Lipkin who brought this to our attention. We've had another guest who's mentioned it as well. But that's not what this is. This is something else. This is a gold book. Not a lead tablet.

Video Clip 1 [00:20:21] This is an incredible thing that happened while we're in Arabia. We just finished a long Atlantic voyage in the air through. You know how exhausting those things are. And Rhonda sand, who set up our expedition for us of living passages. She was really great. She said, there's someone I trust. I trust you. And I wanted to bring you together. I made an appointment for you at six o' clock in the morning. So it's already like two o' clock in the morning. So I, I just said, okay, I'll be there. So I go down at 6 o' clock in the morning. And this Arab that she had contacted, that she trusted, will leave him unnamed. He opened up this bag and the first thing he pulled out was this book with pages of beaten gold.

Video Clip 1 [00:21:11] How big is this book?

Video Clip 1 [00:21:12] About the size of my two hands here.

Video Clip 1 [00:21:14] Okay, so 5 inches tall. About the size of this book.

Video Clip 1 [00:21:16] About this size.

Video Clip 1 [00:21:18] A little bit narrower. It was a little bit wider too. So it was about the size of, so golden pages.

Video Clip 1 [00:21:25] Right?

Video Clip 1 [00:21:26] Well, when you open it up. Yeah.

Video Clip 1 [00:21:27] And holding a gold book in your hand is exciting enough, but that's not the thing that really excited me. It was right there. You can see on the book a signet circle. And I'll give you a better look at it. A signet circle with the Yodhe vape in it. That's what interested me. Wow, that caught my attention right away. You had the, in the ancient letters, you have the Yodhevav. Hey, this is obviously a Hebrew artifact that has been discovered in Arabia.

John Dehlin [00:22:01] All right, so that's the claim. I'm going to give a quick shout out to my buddy Steve Pinegar, because Steve did interview you a few days ago. Yeah. Check out more Mormon Book Reviews YouTube channel. Stephen does great work. He helped break this story with you. And honestly, if, if Steve's, if, if his show with you would have gotten 100, 000 views, I wouldn't have even run this. But I just, I, I, we need as many people as possible to kind of have the facts about this story. But, but please, Steve, know that we really deeply respect you and check out Mormon book reviews. All right, Dan, what, what's your reaction to what you just saw?

Dan McClellan [00:22:36] Well, I've, I was interested in, in what? This, this gentleman, I think he goes by Mike Jones, but I'm looking him up and it looks like he goes by Miles Jones Elsewhere, but his PhD is in foreign language education, so nothing related to, to this. But he also claims to have discovered ancient Hebrew versions of The Gospels that predate their translation into Greek. So he's suggesting he has the original Hebrew versions of the Gospels, which is, which is a very, very fringe academic position. So, so already I'm a little suspicious of, of where he's coming from. But the. Hang on just a second. So he pulled up what, what he said was Yodhe VAV hey in a little signet thing. And when you look closely at this and I, I actually have the photo. If, if you'll let me share my,

John Dehlin [00:23:35] my screen, I'll, I'll add yours. Go ahead.

Dan McClellan [00:23:37] Okay, so there we go. So it looks like Yodhe vav hey in the center, but it's actually not because the second and the fourth letter, the haze, would actually need the, the horizontal lines, the three horizontal lines to be a lot closer together and the vertical line to extend way down below. And they're not doing that. They, they're basically backwards capital E's. And then the Yod and the VAV are also very uncharacteristic of, of any period of the alphabetic script of, of Hebrew. So, but this is it.

John Dehlin [00:24:14] Understand Hebrew. Why, what was he trying to say he was discovering and why was it significant if it were true what he was saying?

Dan McClellan [00:24:22] Well, we don't have a ton of examples of inscriptions from this time period that, that have the Tetragrammaton, but any, anything from this time period that has the divine name the Tetragrammaton inscribed upon it, particularly if it's something like Golden Books, is going to be incredibly significant and potentially reveal details about either early Judaism or early Christianity that have been unknown to, to the world. And for someone who's trying to prove that the Gospels were originally in Hebrew rather than composed in Greek, if this is a first century Christian artifact that uses Hebrew, then that would aid in his particular quest and also overturn long standing scholarly consensus.

John Dehlin [00:25:11] Okay, and you're saying even the thing he thought was significant isn't really to be found?

Dan McClellan [00:25:17] I, I don't think so, because it's not. The, the letters are not consistent. The letters don't match up with any period of the Hebrew script that we're aware of. And also the writing that is around it represents characters from different periods of Hebrew writing. Like there's old Hebrew and old Aramaic mixed in with the Aramaic square script, which is the post Babylonian exile version of Hebrew. And none of it is written by someone who is proficient in this particular script because the, the characters are also very inconsistent from one to another. And so this is just, this strikes me as composed by someone who is, does not know this script, is not proficient in this script, and is cobbling together text from chronologically disparate scripts which just is, is a red flag that there's something, something else going on here.

John Dehlin [00:26:22] Okay. In addition to how it was found and how it was presented, etc.

Dan McClellan [00:26:28] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:26:30] Yeah. All right, we'll take it. You've got a presentation, so. Yeah. What you've got prepared?

Connecting the Plates to Known Forgeries

Dan McClellan [00:26:35] Well, I wanted to, I'm, I'm trying to, to build a case here that these plates were made by the exact same group of people who produced the Jordan led codices, which were publicized by David Elkington starting back in late March of 2011. And the overwhelming consensus of experts is that they were modern forgeries. And so I'm going to go through, I'm going to show some of the characters, some of the symbolism, some of the iconography on the few photographs that have been released and then talk about how this lines up with what went on with the Jordan led codices and then show that this is certainly a, another iteration of this group's attempts to cash in on, on what they're doing.

John Dehlin [00:27:26] Got it.

Dan McClellan [00:27:27] So let's go ahead and share the screen here. All right, so these are two of the. I want to say they're probably the first two pages of the little golden booklet. And on the left you can see a collection of characters and the border looks like it's grapevines, clusters of grapes, along with some vines. And on the right you see some Hebrew characters. You see those same clusters. And you see what looks like wheat in the center with some starburst symbols on the lower left and the lower right. And again here, the Hebrew characters here are later Aramaic square scripts, but they're rather unusual versions of what's going on, and they are inconsistent.

Dan McClellan [00:28:12] On the left, I'm going to come back to what this text looks like, but I'll go on to the next page. Here we have some iconography. You have another attempt in the bottom left of the page on the left, underneath the palm tree, in between the pillar and the trunk of the tree, what looks like the Tetragrammaton Yodhe vav. Hey.

Dan McClellan [00:28:34] But here, instead of yod backwards capital E, VAV backwards capital E, it looks like two yods because you don't have a third horizontal line on that second character. And then a more traditional VAV and a more traditional hey, with that vertical line extending down further.

Dan McClellan [00:28:54] So once again, it's inconsistent and it is not accurate. It looks like Yod. Yod vav. Hey. Which would not be the tetragrammaton. And then along the border you see this. It's not quite the grapevine, but it is kind of a, some kind of palm frond or some kind of border. On the right you see the grapevine again, you see some more writing. You see a menorah to the left. And then you see above what looks like a man in profile. And this is actually, this is one of the, the first giveaways that, that this is not genuine because that profile is a man looks like he's got a laureate wreath on his head.

Dan McClellan [00:29:37] And this is almost certainly some variation on probably Marcus Aurelius and the, a coin showing Marcus Aurelius in the laureate head motif. And there's no reason that Marcus Aurelius would be represented this way if this were a, a genuine Christian book that were filled with symbolism of significance to Christians. Now I'm not saying that either of these coins is the, the source of the image that we see on the right there, but it is this style of coin very clearly.

Dan McClellan [00:30:17] And then we get back to the other page again. We see the, the borders with the, the grape clusters and a bunch of, of characters. And then there's one, there's another one that they showed. You can see the, the grape cluster border. You see the starburst symbols, you see the collections of characters. And then what looks like a seal, it's a menorah with a three tiered base. And then they've claimed that the writing inside that, that boundary says Shem Bet Yah, which would be the name of the house of Adonai, a shortened version of the, the tetragrammaton. Now, Shem at the top, I can see that that looks like a shin.

Dan McClellan [00:30:57] That looks like a mem. Whoop. Didn't mean to do that. I thought I was gonna be able to highlight stuff. Now to get bet, you would have to look to the left and the writing would have to switch from right to left to left to right.

Dan McClellan [00:31:13] So to get bet, we'd have to be coming down the, the direction of the writing would have to go in the other direction. And then on the bottom right we have what looks like a backwards yod and then what looks like an M or an upside down shin. So the notion that that is yod. Hey, I, I don't know where anyone's getting that from. So trying to read the name of the house of Yah from that is problematic to say the least.

Dan McClellan [00:31:40] But I want to come back to a couple of things. One is the letters here on the left. They happen to look an awful lot like the letters on the bottom right here. In fact, if you line them up side by side, they're exactly identical.

Dan McClellan [00:31:55] However, the writing on the. The right, you can see what looks like a. A backwards C, something that looks like an elongated P, a couple of backwards Rs and some dashes, and then like a Y with a little curl at the end.

Dan McClellan [00:32:12] And you can see the exact same line of characters on the left. And I've superimposed these two images, and they are exactly identical, but the one on the right has an additional line underneath it. You can see what looks like it's supposed to be a hey, what looks like it's supposed to be a yod, another little elongated P, which is probably supposed to be a kaf, Another hey. And you can just barely make out some of the tips of those characters on the left underneath, but they're obscured by the great border. But the writing on the left has a line above it. And if you look on the right, you can just barely make out some of the bottoms of those characters above the one line that's visible.

Dan McClellan [00:32:54] And so what this means is that each of these plates were made either by hammering out a die or by casting. And both of them are using a die, some kind of source that contains the exact same lines of text.

Dan McClellan [00:33:11] And on the plate on the right, the. The line above it is. Is visible. The line below it is obscured because they've covered it up with the border that they're using to make the rest of the plate on the. The plate on the right, that line above is obscured by other imagery. And so, in other words, somebody has created a die with a bunch with a handful of lines of text on them, and they're just reusing that die to hammer out text in plates.

Dan McClellan [00:33:40] And so these would all be saying the exact same thing to the degree they're legible. Some of the lines are not legible because the other iconography is crowding it out. So they've gone through great efforts to create these plates, and they're reusing these diesel, and they're not even ensuring that everything on the die is. Is visible, is legible.

Dan McClellan [00:34:05] In other words, it doesn't really matter what it says. And. And the reality is that they say absolutely nothing. It's just gibberish. It doesn't say anything. What's important is that it looks like it says something for people who can't read it.

Dan McClellan [00:34:21] And this is one of the dead giveaways that this is part of the work of the same workshop or group of people responsible for the Jordan led codices. And I'm going to get to how we know the Jordan led codices are fake in a moment. But I want to go to one of the Jordan led codices that was, that was publicized early on in 2011. And this was supposed to be this credit card sized tablets and there's a pound coin on, on the left, but it looks like a bunch of Hebrew text. And for someone who does not know the language well, it looks pretty convincing.

Dan McClellan [00:35:04] But my friends and I who got together and looked at this, one of them is his name, Steve Caruso. He's phenomenal philologist, linguist. But he showed that this is the repetition of two of the, the same sets of lines, just one over top of the other.

Dan McClellan [00:35:25] And so we have the top line is represented in pink on one side and red on the other. And then the bottom three lines are represented in blue on the right and in green on the left. And when we looked through all of the different dead, excuse me, Jordan led codices, they said there were 70 of them. There have been dozens and dozens of photographs that were released or that we got a hold of through, through other channels. But one of them is, is this tablet, which is actually where David Elkington, who was trying to promote the lead codices, imagined that the inscription on the top underneath the menorah says I will walk in righteousness or something like that.

Dan McClellan [00:36:03] And told me that I needed to go hit the books again because he had a Hebrew expert who explained that that's what that says. And I've spoken with that Hebrew expert who says, please don't use my name and I never want to be associated with again because that's definitely not what it says.

Dan McClellan [00:36:18] But we see the exact same four lines of text being repeated over and over again on this plate as well. We see it on this plate as well. And let's see if I have the, oh, I don't have the other plate. But these things are being repeated over and over again because it's not important that these texts say anything, it's just important that they look like they're saying something for people who cannot actually read the text, which is a dead giveaway that this is, this is not a cipher, this is not a code, this is just a forgery. This is, these are just things that are supposed to look authentic and ancient but have no actual linguistic content whatsoever.

Dan McClellan [00:37:02] And, and this is all gibberish as well. It doesn't say anything. But even if it did say something. The fact that they're overlaid on, on other lines of text and some of the lines are obscured and some of the lines are visible and some of the lines go off the side of the page.

Dan McClellan [00:37:17] It means it's useless even if it is a cipher or a text. And we have something very similar going on in these gold plates. As you can see, the line that is visible on the bottom on the right is not visible. Only the tops of the letters are visible on the left. The line that's visible on the left on the top is not visible on the right.

The Copper Codex and Forgery Analysis

Dan McClellan [00:37:37] Now I keep talking about the Jordan led codices and I want to talk about what we have come to know as the, or come to call the, the Copper Codex. When David Elkington published his press release In I think March 30th or 31st of 2011, he said, We've got these 70 books, they're covered in ancient Hebrew. These are first century Christian artifacts.

Dan McClellan [00:38:04] And shortly after that, someone shared an email from a classicist at Oxford named Peter Thoneman. And Peter Thoneman said, hey, just be aware, this dude emailed me last year, sent me these two photos and said, can you authenticate these? And he was able to show that these are 100% modern forgeries and wrote back and said, this is an easy one, these are definitely forgeries and I'll explain why in a second.

Dan McClellan [00:38:34] But David Elkington then released a different set of plates, not this one. And this one is, is indisputably produced by the same group that made the plates that David Elkington did release. And I'm going to try to show that the same group that made this Copper Codex and the Jordan Lead Codices also made these gold plates. So you can see here there's an inscription at the very top. You can see it in the image on the left. There are some iconography and there's a bit of an inscription on the bottom on the right. And then you see three faces in profile. You see one that is head on, you see an alligator.

Dan McClellan [00:39:15] And in the upper left you see what looks like a chariot. And the reason that that Thonman was able to demonstrate that this was a forgery is because that inscription up on the top is gibberish unless one realizes that whoever wrote it just could not distinguish a Majuscule Alpha from a Majuscule Lambda. And so when you actually replaced the correct, when you actually put the letters in how they were supposed to be, it is a fragment of an inscription and it is a specifically, it is the second line from a funerary inscription that was published in a book in 1958 and is on a funerary monument that is on display in a museum in Amman, Jordan.

Dan McClellan [00:40:04] So in short, someone who did not know this language copied the second line of this inscription off of this inscription onto this plate and confused the alpha and the lambda. And so this is definitely a modern forgery. Hang on, I'm just going to do one thing here if I can find the right. And one of the other reasons we know this is because this is why I have it in edit mode, is so I can edit while I'm going. Okay, so the, the chariot that's in the top left of this copper Codex matches exactly this image and this coin on the left. But this image of this coin on the left is a modern fake.

Dan McClellan [00:40:57] It is not actually an actual ancient coin. It is from the last few decades. And so the impression that showed up on the Copper Codex cannot have been made more than just a few decades ago. And I want to show you another.

Dan McClellan [00:41:17] Example of this with one of the other images of the face in profile. So if we go back to the Copper codex on the right, just below the alligator's head, you see this image in profile. And this is an image of Alexander the Great in a lion headdress. And we know this because it exactly matches this modern fake Alexander the Great and a lion headdress coin.

Dan McClellan [00:41:47] Every bump on that impression on that copper codex matches that coin. So these are coins that you can buy on the Internet. And so these, this Copper Codex is 100 fake. I thought the, the other face and profile on the bottom left looked an awful lot like a buffalo head nickel. It doesn' match exactly. And obviously the, the other face on the left with the horns has been some die was created using some kind of either larger coin or some kind of something plaque of some kind.

Dan McClellan [00:42:27] And so these are, these are entirely fake. And when we go back to one of these codices from the Jordan led codices from which David Elkington claimed that someone translated, I will walk in perfection. On the bottom of this, you see a tree, a stylized tree with some of those starburst images. And that tree matches in every imaginable detail the same tree that is on the Copper Codex. So if you, if you look very, very closely at this, every bump on there is identical. I think the copper Codex was probably hammered, whereas the lead codex was probably cast because it shows indications in the lead codex that whatever the dye they used to create the impression and whatever medium they were using for the cast, it moved around a tiny bit, but everything is, is exactly identical.

Dan McClellan [00:43:26] So the producers of the copper codex are the producers of the Jordan lead codices. And then I want to point to one other one, and this is without noting that all of the Hebrew characters on here have all the exact same problems and many have the exact same shape as the characters on the gold plates.

Dan McClellan [00:43:51] But on the upper right you can see a piece of wheat. And if we zoom in on that, I don't have a better photograph. This is the best one I have. But if you zoom in on that and you look at it carefully, that that wheat is identical to the wheat that has been impressed into the gold tablet on the right.

Dan McClellan [00:44:16] It's there the edges particularly on the left. The they wanted the inscription in the gold plate to run over that. So whatever they used to create the impression and whatever medium they were using to create the mold that went over top of the left edge of that wheat iconography. But whoever made the lead codex on the left is also responsible for the gold codex on the right. And you can also find the, the same kind of trim the, these grapevines. I don't think I included, I didn't include enough of the Jordan lead codices. But you can see some of the trim on here has the, some of that stylistic, particularly up in the, I can't really highlight anything, but in the upper left you can see the same kind of border that you see on the gold codex on the left here.

Dan McClellan [00:45:21] And then you can see grapevines on the, the gold codices. And you see those as well on some of the other Jordan codices. I don't know if I have. Yeah, you can see the grapevines on the right on the, the codex on the right. The starburst images are identical across the different codices.

Dan McClellan [00:45:42] So in short, if you just look at the gold plates on their own and you know how these languages work, you know how ancient writing works, it's very clearly a forgery. But beyond that, we can connect directly the production of these gold plates to the production of the Jordan led codices, which can be connected directly to the production of the copper codex, which is indisputably a modern forgery that had to have been executed within the last probably 30 or 40 years.

Dan McClellan [00:46:15] And oddly enough, if you get on social media on TikTok and other social media sites, you can find videos of people. It's always grainy videos. Usually it's somebody wearing white gloves in some dark home or cave or something pulling out some ancient looking scroll or tablet or something, and then flipping through the pages. And it's always the same stuff. Same iconography, the same jumbled and confused characters, the same little starburst symbols. The style, the. Whatever means of production they're using here are always the same. So there's somebody out there just mass producing forgeries like this. And the. The most organized they've gotten is when they got in touch with David Elkington.

Dan McClellan [00:47:09] They got organized. They got. They shot themselves in the foot with a handful of things when it came to the plates they were producing for David Elkington. They've made some improvements here. Like, they've gotten closer to producing some actual Hebrew words on the. The golden plates, but they have still. They're. They're still just transparently modern forgeries.

John Dehlin [00:47:31] Got it. All right, well, that's super helpful, Dan. Thank you for giving us that overview. If it's all right, I'll play a very quick clip of maybe just one reaction from kind of a Mormon context. This is the. This is the stick of Joseph guys. They're brothers. I've met them. They're actually super nice kids, and I think they're really sincere. But I'll just play a quick clip of, you know, from. From their reactions.

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 [00:47:59] He seemed genuinely surprised when I told him it was the. The name of Yehovah on there.

Video Clip 2 [00:48:03] Wow, that's pretty cool right there. It's like, because you have to remember, this is. Saudi Arabia is a Muslim country.

Video Clip 2 [00:48:11] Right.

Video Clip 2 [00:48:12] They. The Muslims and the Jews aren't getting along super well right now. Right, Right. Little tricky times. It's tricky times. And so the fact that, like, you're not going to have Arab Muslims coming up with fake artifacts that are Hebrew, that. That would lay any sort of claim to Hebrew presence in their country. Yeah. So I wonder if this is. If this is partly why. Who knows what the story is? Right. My. My sense is these two guys, maybe they're Jewish, but my sense is these two guys are maybe Christian and they're part of, like, a Bible tour. Yeah. And I've. I wonder if whoever this group is that this Arab guy represents found this and they're like, well, hey, can't really go sell this to any Israelis right now. Yeah.

Video Clip 2 [00:49:02] But maybe.

Video Clip 2 [00:49:03] Maybe these.

Video Clip 2 [00:49:04] Maybe these Bible tour Christians can hook me up with a potential buyer or someone who'd be interested. Yeah. Right. A lot of these artifacts, we. We may. We think of them maybe coming out of the ground and going right to a museum. They don't. They go through the hands of people who buy and sell them until some of them end up in museums and of course, some of them never do.

John Dehlin [00:49:21] Yeah. So do you know who that guy is on the right, Dan?

Dan McClellan [00:49:26] I, I watched a part of that video and I think I talked to the gentleman on the left on the phone the other day just because he wanted to, to touch base and let me know where they were coming from and, and see where I was coming from. But I, I don't know anything about the, either educational background or experiences.

John Dehlin [00:49:43] Okay. All right, so any, any response to the content of that video that you saw?

Dan McClellan [00:49:49] That part of it? I, I think they're just speculating about the, the likelihood of somebody making this up from, from, you know, coming out of Saudi Arabia. They wouldn't, this isn't how it would work in their, in their minds. But the Jordan led codices came out of Jordan and they were supposed to be Christian artifacts. But people who are engaged in, in forgery are going to target whoever they think is going to believe it and going to pay for it.

Dan McClellan [00:50:22] And so this is, there's nothing particularly surprising or unusual about the way this is coming about. I think the most unusual thing is that it went through these, these kind of Hebrew roots guys like there's a, I can see the reasoning of that, but at the same time the idea that this came out of Saudi Arabia and a priestly family left Jerusalem and took with them these things like it's tailor made for to exploit Latter Day Saints. And so that strikes me as, as a peculiar coincidence. It would not surprise me if there were some, you know, if they were there was scheming behind the scenes and they were hoping that this would get picked up because having been through parts of that part of the world, Latter Day Saints and their, and their desire to have artifacts from that part of the world are not unknown.

Implications for Book of Mormon Evidence

John Dehlin [00:51:23] Remind us what time period these gold plates are trying to sort of emerge from whoever invented them, whoever forged them. Do we have a sense for what approximate century they're targeting?

Dan McClellan [00:51:36] I, I do not recall hearing exactly when they were placing it, but if it is my, my assumption would be that they're trying to put it as, as near to the first century as they can. That's what the Jordan led codices claim was that they were Christian artifacts from the first century. It would surprise me if they were departing too significantly from that. If they said, hey, these are from 600 BCE then they were definitely targeting Latter Day Saints. But I don't recall hearing that specifically.

John Dehlin [00:52:13] So let's just say that these gold plates in some alternative universe were authentic, the writing was authentic, and they came from the time period that whoever forged or, you know, fake them, we're trying to, to, you know, produce them from. Can you talk about whether for, for those who are seeking confirmation that the Book of Mormon gold plate story is true? Can you speak to whether or not even if these Saudi gold plates were authentic, if that would comment or not, or add any credibility or not to sort of the fundamentalist Book of Mormon historicity narrative?

Dan McClellan [00:53:05] I think it would depend on what was on them. If it turned out to be

John Dehlin [00:53:11] biblical

Dan McClellan [00:53:12] texts that were being copied down, I think that would move the needle a little bit. However, there are still hurdles to get over the fact that these are, these would be. These would have been created as, as showpieces, not as utilitarian texts. These would have been created as just a.

Dan McClellan [00:53:35] Something for somebody to show off because they were clearly made through a long and laborious process. And so it wouldn't fit well enough to say this is any kind of smoking gun. There would still be hurdles to get over, but I would say it would be if, if it were biblical texts and, and it's not, none of the texts are, are recognizable as anything related to the Bible, then, then it would move the needle a little bit. But there are other examples of this from, from the ancient world of, of inscribing things on, on metal plates that fit the context better. For instance, the kataphanome silver amulets date to around 600 BCE and are a biblical text, our earliest example of a biblical text.

Dan McClellan [00:54:21] But the length thing is an issue with there, and the fact that it's being used as an apotropic amulet is also a big difference. So, yeah, I think it's, it would certainly muddy the academic waters. We would have to go back to the drawing board regarding some things, but I don't think it would be anything remotely approximating a smoking gun.

John Dehlin [00:54:43] These, these characters that you're showing, even if they were authentic, those are those words or those letters in the image that we're looking at right now.

Dan McClellan [00:54:53] They're letters. If they're, if there are words in there, they're accidents because they are just a jumble of letters. They're not even representing all of the Alphabet. They're repeating a lot of letters over and over again and again. They're using, they're using forms of these letters from vastly different time periods right next to each other, and they're very inconsistent. So, yeah, I. There. It's definitely not a coherent text.

John Dehlin [00:55:20] And can you speak briefly about if, you know, if the total number of English words and pages that, that make up the Book of Mormon that we look at today, if all of that had been etched into gold plates, you know, sort of how many do you know, do you have a memory of like how many plates, how many words, how heavy the plates would have needed to be, you know, to be able to sort of represent and to produce through translation the number of words and the number of paragraphs and the number of pages that we have today.

Dan McClellan [00:55:57] Well, if they, if it was writing on pages of this size and the characters were this size and they had all of this junk around it like they do on these pages is, it would have to be a couple of, of, you know, non carry on suitcases full of these things, chock full like you have to get on top of the suitcase in order to zip it shut kind of full of these things in order to, to be able to contain the entire text of the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:56:30] So even, so even these plates that I'm holding here, ah, if, if Egyptian had been carved into these plates that, that fit the dimensions that Joseph Smith described for the plates. And they're so heavy, it's, it's not even possible that the text that we have now for the Book of Mormon could have been produced from, from characters etched onto the plates that I'm even holding, let alone sort of deck of cards size little miniature plates. Right?

Dan McClellan [00:57:04] Yeah. I don't know the thickness of those plates. You're, you're looking at the, these small gold plates. Like for instance, there's only, they're only legible on one side. When you turn them over, all you see is the concave version of the other side of the page. So you only get to write on one side of the page. For thicker plates they could inscribe on each side. So you get. Double up the, the efficiency. But I, I don't want to say it's impossible. It would be, it would be very, it would be incredibly unique if anyone tried to go through the effort of getting everything onto a limited number of plates like that.

John Dehlin [00:57:47] Yeah. Okay. And then just to drive home this predicament that we're in now, I'll add back the slides that I was showing just, just to kind of make a point. So here we have the Stick of Joseph, you know, YouTube channel with their original videos having 116, 000 views and then a follow up video with 29000 views. And, and then we have Ward Radio that, that apparently has 12000 views. You know that's, that's 150ish thousand views of basically Mormons believing now that somehow these, number one, that these Saudi golden plates are authentic and number two, believing that that somehow bolsters their faith.

John Dehlin [00:58:32] We're not against or for people having faith here, but I think we're all for including you Dan, just people basing their worldview and even their beliefs on reality versus forgeries or superstitions. What, how do you, how do you respond to or make sense of this sort of dynamic of Apollo, Mormon apologists and believers being super excited about anything that will confirm or reinforce their faith and then probably having no interest or negative interest in anything that might disconfirm, you know, those said beliefs. Does that frustrate you? How does that make you feel? Do you have a sense for, you know what the answer is? And does that, does this type of dynamic inform why you do what you do?

Dan McClellan [00:59:18] Dan McClelland it absolutely informs why I do what I do. It's also just human nature. I mean that's, that's just the nature of how we engage the world around us. We're going to be more eager to consume data that intuitively turns us into good people, makes our social identities more valuable, things like that. So I don't blame anybody for jumping at this. That's just human nature. And, and the, the folks at the Stick of Joseph, one of the reasons they called me was because they, that follow up video was trying to take seriously the pushback regarding the, the authenticity of these plates. And, and the gentleman I spoke to said that at the time it had 90 some thousand views.

Dan McClellan [01:00:06] And he was like that's a lot of people who might be getting misinformation. So there was concern to stem the tide of misinformation and take some responsibility for, for that, but wanted to know my thoughts on some of the best ways to go about that and how to represent what these things are. So I, I, I don't think that the, there was any malice, uh, aforethought or anything like that going on with uh, that YouTube channel. I, I think they jumped the gun because they, they thought this was exciting and it was something that was not being shared by other Mormon apologists. This was something that was being shared by these Hebrew roots folks at a rude awakening.

Dan McClellan [01:00:49] And so that I think, and, and it only come out, I think the video only came out about five days before their own. And so I, I think that probably lended credibility to it. This was somebody who claims to have a PhD in a relevant field who was, who was sharing this information. And so I, I think they put more stock into that than, than they probably should have. So, but, but yeah, that's, that's just the nature of, of this kind of thing. Everybody's going to be more intuitively inclined to accept information that verifies and re. Reinforces their world views. And so that's. It's not a huge surprise.

Dan McClellan [01:01:30] It's disappointing sometimes, particularly when it comes to the, uh, the eclipse and, and whatever's going on over at cern. But, uh, but not a surprise.

John Dehlin [01:01:40] And, and Dan, just so people, you know, oftentimes they want to dismiss people with ad hominem attacks or even just guess what their assumptions are or their intentions. If somebody would want to say, well, Dan is just trying to take people's faith away. Can you, can you just address why that would be preposterous that you would want to weaken people's faith in, let's just say, the Book of Mormon?

Dan McClellan [01:02:05] Yeah, I, I don't know what my end goal would be for trying to destroy faith. I have no interest in that. I pursued the, the education that I have because I felt it enriched my faith and deepened it. And I get messages every day from folks who tell me that, that my, my content and my work is doing that for them and that it's making it stronger and that they appreciate that. And I, and I get far more messages or at least comments from folks who, who are sure that I'm the Antichrist or an Antichrist, or that I'm. I hate God, I hate Jesus, I hate the Bible, I'm trying to destroy God or Jesus or the Bible.

Dan McClellan [01:02:48] And, and I think that's just the way that people rationalize why someone so diametrically opposed to their own worldview would be doing what they're doing. I, I think it's another perfectly natural thing. When we perceive a threat to our self worth, our self image, the social identities that are important to us, we want to reach for the closest shield, the closest defense that we have, and frequently the closest rhetorical defense that we have is to just dismiss whoever we perceive to be attacking us as doing so arbitrarily or doing so because of malice or something like that. So again, disappointing, but not surprising in light of just human nature.

Closing Thoughts and Dan's Upcoming Book

John Dehlin [01:03:33] And I just do want to refer everyone to number one, my, my interviews with you, if you just want to Google Mormon stories. Dan McClellan. I have several fascinating hours with Dan, not only talking about Dan McClellan's personal journey as a Mormon, as a convert to the church, if I'm remembering right. And as someone who became a really important scholar for modern times, but also how he views scripture and specifically the New Testament and, you know, things we should and shouldn't be concluding or interpreting from the Bible, I do want to, I do want to reference and recommend that everybody check out those interviews. But Dan, can you also tell people really quickly what, you know, what they would find on your tick tock and YouTube channels and your podcasts just to plug that as well?

Dan McClellan [01:04:24] Yeah, absolutely, I appreciate that. My, my goal basically is twofold. I increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and then I combat the spread of misinformation about the same. So across all of my social media channels, those are the two driving motivations. So you're primarily going to find shorter and longer form content that is going to be responding to claims that is going to be sharing the state of the field. I'm actually engaged right now with my sister who is director of, of data and analytics for University in Colorado. We're working on a, a large scale biblical study state of the field survey so that we can say with a little more confidence and a little more precision what are and are not the consensus views regarding a wide variety of, of of questions related to the study of the Bible.

Dan McClellan [01:05:17] So that's mainly what I'm there for. On most social media platforms I go by McClellan M A K L E L A N which was a phonetic spelling of my last name that I used when I lived in Uruguay as a missionary because a last name that starts with four consonants is not comfortable for, for a lot of folks who don't speak English. And so I'm there. I'm at Data Over Dogma podcast. We have episodes that come out weekly. I think we talked about what the Holy Ghost is and, and the story of Elisha and the she bears and the episode that came out this morning.

Dan McClellan [01:05:53] And yeah, we also, I also joined some other biblical study scholars and we teach online classes every month. So the one I taught last month was, is Jesus God? The Christologies of the New Testament. And that's@didaskaloy.com d I d A S K O L Did I just spell it wrong? Yeah, I did. D I D A S K A L O I. Excuse me. My Greek transliteration skills are, are a little rusty.

John Dehlin [01:06:24] Beautiful. All right, well, yeah, please support Dan and his really important work. Dan, we're really grateful that you would take the time to help illuminate this issue for us. And we're Just, we know you're super busy. Did you announce a book contract relatively recently, is that right?

Dan McClellan [01:06:43] I think I announced it a while ago. I'm, I'm, I'm meeting with my publisher tomorrow. I'm trying to get the, the manuscript in by the end of the month. Yeah, so I, I think, I don't know how the, the schedule works for, for trade book books, but I expect within before too long to hear about pre orders and stuff like that for folks who are interested.

John Dehlin [01:07:07] And the basic book is about what.

Dan McClellan [01:07:10] It's basically kind of a greatest hits of, of what I do on social media. It's going to be treating. Each chapter will treat a different claim about what the Bible says about a given issue. And so, you know, we don't have, I don't think we have a title yet, but it'll be something along the lines of the Bible says so. And it'll just be does the Bible say this? Does the Bible say that? Does the Bible say the other thing? Some of them related to the ancient world, some of them related to hermeneutic questions, some of them related to social issues that are important to today.

John Dehlin [01:07:43] So like the five, some of the five biggest, most controversial or popular topics that you address would be what? Pick, pick five.

Dan McClellan [01:07:51] Does the Bible say homosexuality is an abomination? Does the Bible say that slavery is immoral? Does the Bible say Jesus is God? Does the Bible say you should beat your kids? Does the Bible say you need to beware the mark of the beast? Does the Bible say that you're going to be punished for eternity in hell? Does the Bible, I forget how, how exactly I worded the title of the chapter, but does the Bible warn you of, about Satan or something like that?

Guest 2 [01:08:26] Like that.

Dan McClellan [01:08:26] So wide variety of, of topics.

John Dehlin [01:08:30] How about is the Book of Revelations for our day?

Dan McClellan [01:08:33] Well, I, I answer that in, in the chapter on the Mark of the beast, I talk about what, what it's really referring to and how revelation is irrelevant for anyone who lived outside of the first century CE in terms of, of what events it's talking about.

John Dehlin [01:08:52] All right, well, Dan, I know you're super busy and we're just really grateful you took the time to come on Mormon Stories podcast. So please stay well, keep doing great work. We hope you have lots of success and we hope you'll come back.

Dan McClellan [01:09:06] Thank you, John. I appreciate your time. I'm happy to be here and absolutely I'd be happy to see you again.

John Dehlin [01:09:10] All right, thanks, Dan. And for everybody else, yeah. Please do check out Mormon book reviews with Steven Pinegar. He also did an interview with Dan. First, please check out all of Dan's social media stuff and and while you're at supporting Dan and his great work, we we also just want to let you know that we depend on your donations to support this work. So if you value this content, if you want to see continue the way to support us the best way to support us is to go to MormonStories.org click on the Donate button, become a monthly donor and you can step up to replace the monthly donations of people.

John Dehlin [01:09:49] We have 10 to 20 people every month canceling their donations for financial reasons. They lose interest other, you know, other other sorts of things. And so we always need new people to step up to replace the people who who back out or we have to start cutting resources. So please do support us if you can. We always appreciate those who were able to give us super chat donations through YouTube. We appreciate that as well. And you know another thing you can do is subscribe to our YouTube channel @Mormon Stories podcast. You can like this episode share it all your orthodox believing family members that now are excited that these Saudi gold plates prove the Book of Mormons true.

John Dehlin [01:10:31] Please share this episode with them for only for the no other purpose than just so that their faith is based on reality and truth and not lies. And I don't think it's good for anybody's life to have their faith built on lies. I think we all lose when that happens. So please do share this episode far and wide. By liking it, by subscribing to the channel and by sharing it, you'll, you'll help truth prevail. And that's super valuable. So please do that. Thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories. Thanks to Maven for moderating the comments. Thanks to Gerardo in Brooklyn and Julia for all the work they do.

John Dehlin [01:11:10] Be kind to each other, be good to each other and please follow the truth. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care everybody.

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