You're entering outer brightness. Hey fireflies, this is part two of our discussion with Steve James. We're going to pick up where we left off last time.
Hope you enjoy. So let me ask just a couple more questions with regards to the article of faith aid if you're okay with that, Steve. So you asked, are there any Christians who don't believe the first part of it? I guess I would ask you, do you believe the first part of it given 1st Nephi 13?
1st Nephi 13. Are you talking about where he talks about the corruption of the scriptures? Yeah, and plain and precious truths removed. Yeah, I certainly, I mean, I think that that's the reason the first part's there. You know, when we look at what's happened to the Bible, and we'll explore a few things down here in detail, but there's only a few really obvious errors that have bubbled to the top. But when we're doing a reading, we need to, I think, understand that certain things are kind of a level beneath and that that's part of what, you know, translated correctly means.
But no, I certainly think that that's a, that that's a, I think the reason why we have to say translate correctly is because of that corruption that happens in the text. And it's also important to mention that corruption happened both before and after the New Testament. And that's something that Latter-day Saints sometimes don't remember. You know, Nephi's talk about corruption in his time during the intertestamental period. And that's kind of its own topic for itself.
But I certainly think those are compatible. When Nephi's writing and talking about, you know, the Bible going forth in purity from the Jews under the Gentiles in 1st Nephi, chapter 13, and that after it goes through, goes to the Gentiles, to the great and abominable church, that is when plain and precious truths are taken out. What plain and precious truths do you believe are taken out or were taken out? Oh, sure.
So a few that come to mind. The use of the Melchizedek priesthood. That's something that we now know, scholars know that that was in practice up until the Exodus among all the Israelites.
Every tribe had a right to priesthood. All men who were patriarchs over their family they did sacrifice in the role as priests. You know, we can learn about the suffering Messiah. So there's a lot of work being done by Christians regarding what things that have been moved from the Jewish scriptures.
Two themes that you'll find if you dive down that rabbit hole is two powers in heaven and suffering Messiah. Those are both teachings that were within Judaism at the time that were kind of stripped out either right before or right around the time Christ came. And, you know, there are early church fathers, I guess, talking about it.
I'm not too familiar with that. But so those are some of the doctrines I found missing. I think that in the early church they practiced akism, which was sort of like an initiatory. It'd be similar to what LDS practice today as initiatories and endowments. I think a lot of temple work stuff in general had been stripped from the scriptures. Another that comes to mind is the aspect of Christ grace that pertains to healing and suckering. We could call it atoning grace or healing grace. But, you know, in the Book of Mormon we're explicitly told that all of our pains and afflictions were also experienced in the garden so that Jesus would know how to heal us. Whereas that's not a teaching I really see in Christianity.
And I don't know of a verse in the Bible that explicitly comes out and says that. You know, I need to have a better checklist of, you know, running list of things. But those are a few doctrines that I could see definitely had been stripped out. I think the organization and hierarchy is another one. So you think that those things were actively stripped out?
I guess, what do you mean by actively? Like, I mean, you think scribes in the early church removed them from the scriptures? Rather it was intentional or not.
That's not really my place to say. But what I can say is that, you know, we have it now. And it's not there in the scriptures now. So if it ever was there, it had to have been removed. The reason why we know that there's stuff that there was more that was there is because we see in the early church certain practices that aren't done today that are at least close to what LDS believe or at least have the same general feel to them. And so when you see things like that, you know that for a time this was believed and then it didn't make the cut in terms of the canon.
So rather that was done intentionally, rather that was done just accidentally. I'm not really sure. And I don't know that I'm in a place to judge that. I look at the like Deuteronomy 35, 8. I think that's what we've talked about where it says sons of Israel or it says sons of God.
And the original Dead Sea Scrolls says sons of God, whereas a lot of translations say sons of Israel. That's one where in particular I do not think that could have been done by accident. I don't think that the words the Hebrew words Elohim and Yisrael or whatever are close enough to where we could really say that was just a mistake. And especially given how the Jews were so for lack of a better term anal, anal about how they copied their scripts. If there's one mistake, they do the whole thing out, start all over again.
It seems hard for me to think that that particular change that we know happened was done purely accidentally. So, yeah, you mentioned a lot there. I think the one, you know, one I would kind of touch on, as you mentioned, Chrism, you know, that's a practice still that's still part of the Eastern Orthodox rights. That's one of their sacraments. And it aligns with the Roman Catholic confirmation.
Right. So, you know, those are things that are still kind of there. I think for me, as I think about like First Nephi 13 and the claims that are made there, you know, for a biblical studies guy who really is interested in the texts and the manuscripts and that history, I think you would have to have evidence that things were stripped out. And when it comes to the New Testament, you know, with the manuscript evidence we have, you just don't see a lot stripped out. You see, like you were saying a couple of things that the scholars think, well, this might have been added at a later date because it doesn't show up in the earliest manuscripts. But we find, you know, really close fidelity to, you know, within the manuscripts to each other throughout, you know, as they trace them back.
The vast majority of variants are, you know, grammatical or spelling type errors. So, yeah, I just think if the claim is that there were these plain and precious truths removed, you know, I would want to see manuscript evidence for where those were removed. I get what you're saying about B'nai Elohim and you and I would probably agree a lot on that topic if we kind of ran down that road. But, yeah. So.
Okay. Well, so maybe three or four really quick New Testament examples that I would jump to as evidence that something was removed. First is there's a letter from Paul to Corinth. A lot of people kind of consider the Lost Epistle because it gets referenced, but it never appears in the record.
That's one. Now you have the 40-day ministry of Christ, which again received lots of reference, obviously a very important event, doesn't show up in the record at all. The more interesting one is Jude, where you actually have a reference to a prophecy given by Enoch that's found in the Book of Enoch. Almost word for word, it's clearly the same exact prophecy being fulfilled in Jude, but all they take was that one specific prophecy. And, you know, there are evangelical scholars who've done the work of looking into Enoch and found a lot more connections to New Testament writings, which, you know, when you read the work of someone like Heizer, I know I bring him up a lot. He's a guy who pretty much outright says certain things have been either hidden or taken out or otherwise messed with. Another good non-LDS source for that would be Margaret Barker.
I probably dropped her name a time or two in the chat. She's a Methodist scholar who expertise in New Testament or intertestamental period. And she has a great article where she pretty much takes the beginning of the Book of Mormon compared to what was usually to what was going on before Josiah's reform and essentially tells us it's a match. Interesting scholarship to read, but that's something we could double. That's almost worthy of its own podcast there.
Yeah. So kick my memory that the third or the missing letter of Paul, Jude, what was the third one you mentioned from the New Testament? Oh, a 40-day ministry.
40-day ministry. So what I would say about those three, first, the missing letter of Paul, there are some scholars who believe that it's actually integrated into, I think, 2 Corinthians. There is some scholarship around the idea that, don't quote me on that because it's been a while since I looked at it. I think it's 2 Corinthians, but there's some scholarship around the idea that there's a portion of 2 Corinthians that looks like it may not fit with the rest of it. And so it looks like maybe a scribe combined two letters together. Right.
So there's that. Jude and 1 Enoch. I mean, 1 Enoch is really important to understanding Second Temple Judaism and what the people of that time period believed. So it's not problematic to me that Jude quotes from 1 Enoch. I would say that doesn't necessarily mean that the groups considered 1 Enoch to be scripture. Because you look at Paul when he's preaching and he quotes from the Greek poems. He's not quoting the Greek poems as scripture, but he's making a point to his listeners from something they believe in, something that's important to them. So Jude could be doing the same thing.
What was the third one? 40-day ministry. 40-day ministry. So that comes up a lot in Gnostic writings, which are later. So yes, they used it a lot, but does that mean that it was originally part of the New Testament?
It doesn't look that way from the manuscript evidence and what else we see in the New Testament. So the mysteries and the things that the Gnostics held to, that all comes later in the second century and onward. And you're right, the 40-day ministry was a big part of that. And I know Hugh Nibley wrote pretty extensively on that. But as a Christian, I would say, I don't think that the Gnostics fall early enough to believe that that was a big part of early Christianity.
Sure. Well, and I don't know that any Gnostic writing would qualify necessarily as New Testament beliefs so much as give us an example of that people believe things. And we're teaching things about the 40-day ministry using records that we don't have, if that makes any sense. It's evidence that there was something being taught that we don't have anymore.
Whether or not it's what those Gnostics were saying, I think is a different discussion altogether. There's a really great series by Michael Krueger. He's really an expert in the canon, specifically of the New Testament. And so he's written two books on the canon, and he has a free video series where he talks about the canon. And he talks about the Gnostic gospels and the infancy gospel of Thomas, where Jesus supposedly killed somebody with a rock, I think it was.
Yeah, there's three different versions. It's like somebody tripped over him or pushed him or something like that. And so he threw a rock or something and killed a kid. Yeah, there's some weird stories in there. So yeah, he talks about all these Gnostic gospels and why they weren't rejected, either because it was still in the second century, there were people who knew people who knew the apostles or themselves knew the apostles, because they lived up to the 80s and 90s. Well, John did. And so if they found this new book that nobody had heard of, they obviously knew that it wasn't written by the original authors of scripture. So there's a whole lot of reasons why they rejected those Gnostic gospels, or if they just came in the third or fourth century, you know, if this is too late for it to be, you know, to be original.
So yeah, there's a lot of discussion you can talk about in terms of the canon, and why some are rejected. But yeah, I don't think that's an indication that, you know, it's an interesting discussion when you can compare that to like, say, the woman taken in adultery, that's one of the major textual variants in the New Testament, because there's some people that take, some evangelical scholars that take the opinion that it is original, actually, a lot do. Because it was, it's in early texts, but it's not in the same place. It's kind of in different, different areas of John, or even in a different gospel, like this. It's like a story that they didn't, you know, that moved locations.
Yeah. And then, but some people say it was an oral history, like an oral story that was passed down through the church that was added later. So there's different, there's different ideas about that, where they, you know, that there's evidence that it was historical, but not canonical, if that makes sense. Whereas with the Gnostic gospels, you know, there's really no indication or evidence that they're of the same caliber, you know what I mean? It seems like they're all kind of like, like Michael Krueger talks about, he's like, you know, people in the Gnostics, they love secret knowledge. I mean, that's the whole Gnostic knowledge. So they see these gaps in the gospels, and they're like, we got to fill that up, you know, like, this would make for some awesome print, you know?
We're gonna make ourselves famous. And then they would also attach names of apostles like Thomas or Peter to their Gnostic gospels to kind of give them more clout. So they were pseudepigraphical, you know, they attached a different name to it. So it's not quite the same.
What I'm trying to say is that the case of like the woman taking adultery is much different from like the Gnostic gospels as to, you know, why that would, why the former would be reliable and the Gnostic gospels. So sorry, kind of long winded, but. No, no, I think that's well said. I would agree with that for sure.
Yeah. And I should probably know for our listeners here that this this episode will probably be a little bit challenging for some we're going kind of in depth on some things, but you know, these are questions that for Latter-day Saints or former Latter-day Saints are kind of burning questions. I know for me, when I was when I was kind of coming out of the LDS church, you know, I held to a lot of a lot of similar views that you kind of hold, Steve, like, you know, oh, well, the Bible was corrupted.
There's things missing from the canon. So I kind of gravitated to scholars like Bart Ehrman, Robert M. Price, you know, picked up some of their books from half price books. I spent a lot of time in there and I really wanted to know, you know, okay, if I'm if I'm going to be Christian, is the Bible reliable? You know, so I've read Bart Ehrman's what's his name is called Early Christianities. I think it's called as one of his books. And yeah, because his whole argument in that book is that there wasn't one early Christianity.
There were many. I would agree with them on that. Or Lost Christianities, maybe it's called and then the companion book to that is Lost Scriptures.
And yeah, of course, I would agree with him on that. There are there were various groups just as there were various Jewish sects at the time. There were various sects that claimed to be followers of Jesus.
So the question is what goes back to the apostles? And so I definitely read Ehrman. I've read the, you know, the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, his other big important work. You know, those those books pushed me to to look further.
Right. And, you know, read some books on canon, the canon formation. And, you know, one thing I would say about canon, because Matthew was touching on that, is that, you know, one of the big questions coming out of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was, you know, is the canon expanded? There's a canon of the Old Testament expanded by finding, you know, what the Essenes had. Should there be more books in the Old Testament canon than what we have come to us through the Masoretic text?
Right. And, you know, an interesting thing to say about that is if you look at my bookshelf, which is behind me, you don't see it because I'm sharing my logo. But, you know, I've got the Nag Hammadi library on my bookshelf. I've got several books with the Apocrypha.
I've got the full Dead Sea Scrolls on my bookshelf. So just because something is in someone's library doesn't mean that that person or group considered it to be scripture. Right. And so that's also an important question to answer when you're studying through the Bible. Is there a way that biblical authors kind of, especially New Testament authors, indicate that they are referencing what they consider to be scripture?
And is there, you know, when they when they reference something like 1st Enoch, that that tag of kind of like as it is written doesn't show up. Right. So. Sure. Yeah. And that's, you know, I, you know, in LDS there's kind of a similar so sayeth the Lord kind of thing where people try to put qualifiers.
But when someone in authority speaking, I, you know, to me, I think we rely on the fruit of the Spirit to discern ultimately what's what's really truly truth and what's what's more interesting and maybe some truth in it. But yeah. Okay. So anything else on the other? I don't think so.
I think keep on going with your outline. So one question I have is, is the JSC or the Joseph Smith translation just as true as the ESV? I would say no. And my reasoning being and I'm going to kind of sound like a broken record is, is, you know, the manuscript evidence. Right. So with the JST, Joseph Smith, I mean, I guess, you know, scholars say we don't know what he was doing.
There's some, some scholarship coming out of BYU and the Interpreter Foundation is trying to refute it that he might have been referencing Adam Clark's commentary in some. Yeah. Yeah.
So, you know, for a long time, I thought he had Adam Clark. And after reading the response of that, I'm actually really heavily swayed the other direction. Okay. I haven't yet read the response.
I'm gonna have to take a look at that. But in any case, you know, the, the, the RLDS church who had the, the manuscript of what he did there with the Bible for many, many years, you know, they kind of, when they published it called it the inspired version implication there being that, that he was inspired to make corrections to the biblical text. You know, some LDS scholars tie that back to first Nephi 13 and suggest that what he was doing there was restoring the text as it, as it, as it was when it fell from the pen. And again, I'd like to see manuscript evidence, you know, and, and the scholars who have looked at this very closely, is it Matthews, Robert J. Matthews, I think is one of the ones who wrote one of the big books on that.
You know, they admit there's, there's not a manuscript evidence for the changes that he made. So the ESV though, it seeks to be a literal translation, right? So like a one for one, this is what the, this is what the word is in Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic.
And this is what the best English equivalent to that is. And so there are various models of, of Bible translation, you know, for one end of the spectrum from trying to be a literal word for word translation to the other end of the spectrum, being like a paraphrase, like the message. And I actually like the message. I like reading the message for daily devotional, just because of the language is more poetic.
It's, it's putting kind of the, you know, today's vernacular. I don't read it for theological inspiration. You know, I read it for understanding God's love for us, right? So there are various uses for the various models of translation.
And I wouldn't even call, I wouldn't even call the message of translation, right? It's a paraphrase. It's not, it's not seeking to represent what, except for whatever, right?
It's not seeking to represent one for one translation. So, so where the ESV is seeking to be that one for one, the JST, it's almost more of a commentary. Yeah.
That's kind of the way it's being explained nowadays anyway, is that it's, it's more of a commentary. So I guess my question for you on that would be what, what do you think of the, I forget how many verses it is 13 or something like that, that Joseph Smith added to Genesis 50 with the proclamation about himself or the future. Exactly.
Yeah. I think that's actually gives us a great example of how he saw translation where he knows that this prophecy exists because of his translation of the Book of Mormon. I don't know that he understood it at the time when it was being written, but he eventually learned that. And so when he's looking at the Bible, he says, it's not in there.
Oh, I got to update that, put that in there. And he added, you know, a lot of things like that. I mean, the entire Book of Moses was essentially an add on similar to that.
It just was so powerful. That it became its own book. And so I think that when Joseph looked at translation, it definitely wasn't like, you know, this is the Greek word.
What is the English word, a functional translation? It may have been that way for the Book of Mormon, but in terms of the Bible, he was clearly seeking clarity. So he would go and, you know, maybe there's a passage where it's kind of implied it's talking about all, but it doesn't say he'll just write all in there because obviously it's talking about all and there should be no question about it. So I think he was actually seeking more to really get doctrine more rigidly, give a more rigid framework to the doctrine of the church. So for the saints at that time, because, you know, saints back then were a lot more diverse in their belief and there was a lot of kind of wonky things that people were teaching. And so as a way to correct them, I think that was Joseph's intent.
But, you know, we'll never know. So you would say that that was more of a commentary or would you say that that was rigid? Do you know what I mean? Oh, the addition of it in there. I mean, it wasn't original to him because it came from the Book of Mormon. So, I mean, I guess if you're saying that he wrote the Book of Mormon, it was original to him, but the same would be said of the Book of Moses. But I don't think that he was looking at it like this belongs here because of the Greek. He was saying this belongs here because this is part of the prophecy that's missing and so I'm going to add it in there. Okay. Yeah. It's interesting.
There's another case too that we hadn't brought up yet. I think it's maybe Doctrine and Covenants 7 or 8, something like that. The revelation given to him about John, you know, that's written on a... I don't know if he explained it, what it was written on exactly. It's like a parchment or something. Yeah.
Yeah. But he didn't actually have it. So what do you think about that one? I think Joseph had a gift to retrieve ancient texts. I mean, it's possible the Book of Mormon translation went down in a similar way where he was given, you know, specific verbiage on a pre-written document or something like that. But, you know, he was a seer and that's part of the gift of the seers to be able to see things from antiquity or from whenever. And so, you know, that's how I assumed that whole thing happened.
Whether or not that was always how he translated, I don't know. Kind of seems like maybe not the case. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for explaining that. I wanted to kind of ask about like how if you could, you know, kind of like put yourself and someone in the opposite side's shoes and see, you know, why that could be seen as like, you know, claiming revelation from a source, a written source that he doesn't have access to, how that could be seen as difficult to believe. Or to take that, you know.
Sure. No, I mean, the entire story of the Bible front to end is difficult to believe, you know, if you're really going to take things seriously. You know, Moses parting the Red Sea, that's a difficult thing to believe.
But, you know, I mean, I think that's a difficult thing to believe. In terms of Joseph, I think, looking at, you know, the way that he approached Scripture, he did it so many different ways that it's kind of fun to see this kind of smorgasbord where the Book of Mormon, he has a source he's working with. The Book of Moses, he has no source. But the Book of Abraham, he has a source that he's jumping back into and then adding things to. And so, I think it's interesting to see the different means that he was able to talk about stuff. And I think the overall, I mean, one of the things that I think helps bolster the testimony for Latter-day Saint studies is recognizing the correspondences that Joseph continues to make with ancient documents. The further back we go, the more we learn, the more on point he is with certain things. And it's, you know, he would just have to be the luckiest guesser in all of history to have gotten so much so precisely right, in my opinion. That's a little bit off topic, but that's kind of where my thoughts go on that. Yeah. So, I mean, the correspondences for me, you know, I've read a lot of Nibley.
He does a lot of parallel mania. The correspondences to me don't rise to the level of demonstrable to the point where I think they're convincing. I don't know if you saw our debate, the debate we did with, or I did with Brett Dennis on the Book of Abraham or not. You know, but I brought up the Sobek is mentioned in Adam Clark, which is a commentary that he had access to according to the historical record. So it's not, you know, that kind of correspondence is not surprising to see. I think, you know, I guess I would ask the question, like, if there were someone in the second century who produced a writing that claimed to be a prophecy of themselves, would you find that convincing?
Why or why not? I mean, that's a lot of what the Old Testament is though. You know, Isaiah's claiming to be a prophet, Ezekiel's claiming to be a prophet. Right.
But not, but not, they're not claiming to produce an ancient prophecy of their own work. Right. Oh, I see what you're saying. Like, they're not saying I'm this figure mentioned in there.
Yeah. I mean, there's probably examples of that. I'd have to look and see, oh, to me, I guess I've never thought of it that way before. To me, it makes sense. It should be in there. Like, I think he would get attacked either way. If he didn't add it, they would say, oh, he doesn't even believe his own prophecy about himself.
And he adds, oh, he's just adding prophecy about himself. I kind of feel like that's one of those things where no matter what, there's going to be criticism. Yeah. Yeah.
I hear you. And I think, you know, with regards to what a seer is, you know, we get that definition from the Book of Mormon. Right.
That is where Smith gives us that. So again, it predates him if the Book of Mormon is an ancient record. Well, even in the Bible, that word appears though, doesn't it?
Right. But not the definition of what a seer is that kind of is given in the Book of Mormon. So it's kind of, to me, it's kind of circular to say Smith is a seer according to the definition that he gave of what a seer is.
I mean, I don't know. I'd have to look into that and see, but I'm pretty sure that's a pretty common view of being a seer, is being able to see things. You know, I know that the high priests, when they had the Urim and Thummim, which obviously is its own deal, you know, that was something that they used in a way very similar to what Joseph did.
I don't know if that's ever described as being seer activity or not, but I think that would match what a seer would do. You know, and I liked your debate with Brett. I thought that, you know, you both kind of had different assumptions and landed in different places. To me, the more compelling part isn't just the correspondences with Abraham, but it's the details of some form. You know, when you keep in mind the fact that when Joseph produced this, the idea of Abraham even being literate was absurd. And, you know, now we have all these other all-powerful writings showing that not only was he literate, he actually wrote this book, he taught astronomy, and he did all these things.
I don't know. To me, that's just, it's easy for us to forget that we know more now than they did back then. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely, you know, some proposed correspondences to like second Enoch and that type of thing that weren't known in Joseph's day. But, you know, in terms of him being an astronomer, that's in Josephus. So that was readily available to Joseph Smith.
So yeah. And, you know, I hear a lot of Joseph, you know, having sources available to him. Are you familiar with any evidence that he actually like had these things at the time? Like, I know that some things were published later, but, you know, as anyone ever said, Joseph was reading Adam Clark's Bible or Josephus reading Josephus and this happened. Yeah, no, there's not historical evidence of that. You know, and that's, you know, to be fair, that's the critique that a lot of apologists make of my position, you know, because there's not someone saying, hey, he had this or he had that. But I also would argue that there probably weren't people in the room all the time. That's very likely.
We know Emma was in and out. So, you know, it's, is it, so here's what I want to say. I don't come from a position of Joseph Smith producing what he produced by supernatural means is impossible. I don't come from that presupposition. But I do come from the view that what he produced does not have any, any archeological or manuscript support prior to him. Okay. He produces it. He makes claims for what it is. But nothing exists prior to him to show that it actually is what he claims. Okay. I can point you in a few directions on that. I don't want to get too lost in the weeds, but we need to sometime either via this podcast or elsewhere discuss, you know, specifically, Mahidja and how Joseph was able to actually bring out two variants of an ancient name matching to a character within the story that matches books long before they were ever published.
He called it the most, the most testable thing for Joseph and he just completely nails it. We can talk about that later. I think that's a subject for itself. I've kind of brought us off of the weeds here. So let me kind of see. Oh, good.
That's kind of how we roll anymore. Yeah. Fair enough. So, um, so like, uh, in discussing Bible translation, you know, if we were to look at Matthew 5 22, um, that verse contains a section, depending on which translation you're looking at, it'll say without a cause he, whoever hates a matter offensive now without a cause. That's one of those things that's been found to be a later edition. And if you look at all the translations, you'll find that about only 14 of the 60 or so, uh, have that, that in there. Um, so I mean, and I'm sure that if we were to look at like this, the literary criticism, we'd find this was something that was added later. So to me, I look at that and say, okay, well, obviously it was 14 that have, it can't be the same exact amount of truth as the 46 or whatever that don't have it.
Right. Because one of them has a falsehood within it. Um, and I think it's important to mention that the book of Mormon correctly does not have that, that addition in there. So, you know, even though it isn't the KJV, so, you know, I hear a lot of Joseph copied the KJV when someone actually looks at the book of Mormon Isaiah content or Matthew content versus what's in the KJV, they find differences.
Uh, this being one of them that, uh, to me is at least interesting. How did he know to leave out that particular part when he was plagiarizing this? Um, but I guess going back to the, the infallibility, would you agree with me that those 14 that have that are, can't be considered the exact same amount of truth as the ones that don't correctly, if that makes any sense?
Could you, could you reset the question? Uh, so, so you mean like once with, uh, so, so, so, uh, um, so if a translation has this later clause that was added later, it cannot be the exact same amount of true as a version that does have it or that does not have it correctly, if that makes any sense. So like, because of this later portion was added on, it's less true than this one that doesn't have it added on. Is that something you would agree with or is that, am I just, uh, you know, grasping at straws here?
I would, I would say that it's, if based on textual criticism, if we can demonstrate with a very high level of accuracy that a text was added, that it reflects less accurately than the original text. That's kind of how I would probably state it. Okay. That's a good way of saying it, Paul.
Yeah. So I would, so for me as a biblical studies guy, who's kind of committed to the idea that, um, God inspired the original text, I'm okay with textual criticism, leading us to areas where we find that certain phrases are not in the earliest manuscripts. Um, and I think the closer we get to the earliest manuscript manuscripts, the better.
Um, so that's what I would say on that. The other thing I would say on, on that, on your comment on the book of Mormon, not including it, um, is that, uh, Adam Clark on his commentary on verse 22 does very explicitly talk about the fact that that clause is not included, uh, in, and it was very questionable. So if Joseph Smith had reference to Clark, uh, it makes sense. Yeah.
I mean, this would have to be super early. I mean, when he was doing the book of Mormon, there's no evidence, he even had a Bible of his own. So, I mean, you know, I'm not saying you can't make the argument you could, that Joseph had the Adam Clark Bible and somehow secretly studied it and knew a specific which details to do and memorize so that when he's looking into a hat, he's able to relate those to them. I mean, I'm not saying you can't make that argument. I'm saying that for me, personally, that probably not gonna, probably not gonna shift the needle all that much, but I get where you're coming from there.
Let me ask you that though. Cause that, you know, I find it interesting, um, that, you know, in the years since the LDS church has, has published the pictures of the seer stone and has kind of changed the narrative on how the translation was, was done in terms of looking at a rock and a hat, you know, I, I'm old enough to remember that that was, that was condemned as, as anti-Mormon lines previously. So I know that some members certainly felt that way. I was never taught that was anti-Mormon. Um, but I was also, you know, we definitely had him paintings and stuff.
It was conveyed in a very different way. I'd agree with that for sure. Well, I mean, you know, I referenced the books that I pulled off of my father's shelf, um, that were old LDS apologetics books, you know, that they really sought to, uh, discredit the idea that Joseph Smith was brought up on, on glass looking charges, um, until, you know, Wesley Walters found, uh, the 1826, uh, uh, court records, right. So I just find it interesting that, you know, that kind of like the, uh, and I'm not criticizing you. It's just something that I find interesting because people will say it to me now, uh, when I'm, when I say, when I try to make the case, well, you know, Smith might've had reference to other materials. Um, they'll say, well, like you said, you know, how, how would he reference that while looking, you know, or memorize it while looking in a, in a rock and a hat, whereas that, that kind of, um, apologetic never would have been given, uh, maybe 20, 30 years ago. Yeah, no, that's fair.
And we rightly should change our apologetics when we have new information. Like I think now I look at the hat thing and that's actually makes Joseph Casey's in stronger because if he's copying the KJP, he's memorizing it and freestyling while staring into a nothingness of a hat. So, but let me ask a question about that. Right. So in essence, what you have there is, is Smith doing kind of like something more akin to automatic writing, right?
He's staring in a, he's staring in a hat at the rock and he's writing, he's dictating what is given to him. Right. Um, so if you have some, something like the Urantia book, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that or not. Yeah.
I've heard of that a little bit. Yeah. So that, that book is claimed to have been written by automatic writing as well. It claims to have information about Jesus Christ and aliens. Sure. I wouldn't say the Book of Mormon is claimed to be automatic writing now.
Like, I don't think that's, that's what it was. Okay. So what, what do you have, what do you perceive as the difference then? Oh, I mean, I'm not entirely sure of the mechanics, but we know that Joseph would look into a hat and using the seer stone, he was able to see either the characters themselves or like a replacement of those characters.
It kind of varies depending on what third person accounts have said. Um, but when you look at Skousen's work regarding the scribal manuscripts, what he finds is that clearly the errors being made are errors that come from him reading something to his scribe. Whereas as opposed to him saying something, whereas, you know, with automatic writing, he would have had to, um, the errors would have been of a different sort. They would have, uh, they would have been errors that one makes when writing rather than one reading something. Um, but it's just never described in the same way as like an automatic writing or someone taps into some something and just lets their hand do whatever it does. That to me is a whole different, um, that's just a whole different approach.
Okay. But, um, in terms of like, how do you go about, uh, determining that say the Urantia book can't be true and accurate information, but the book of Mormon can like, how do you, how do you go about that? Well, I mean, in terms of that particular book, I've only read snippets of it. I think there's probably a lot of truth in there rather or not, you know, I think that it falls on the fruit of the spirit to discern what's really good and what's, what's not. Um, in terms of being a truthful record, I don't know that Urantia presents itself as if it's, it's, it's a historical record. This is a big difference between the book of Mormon and other books that a person couldn't pray to know the truth of is that the book of Mormon presents itself as an objectively verifiable actual historical record. And so that's the truth claim. Whereas with Urantia, I don't know that it's based on a particular history so much as like knowledge that has been received. And so some of that may be good. Some of it may be true. Um, I know a few LDS who, who are into that book.
Um, I've read only a little bit of it, so I can't really opine, but, uh, the stuff that I've read is interesting if nothing else. Okay. Um, what, what about, um, James J. Strang? Do you read much about him? Sure.
Yeah. So how do you, he claimed to do many of the same things Joseph Smith did, right? Found plates, the Voorhe plates translated them, the book of love Lord produced new scripture. How do you, how do you weigh that against, against Joseph Smith and say, Strang, Strang was wrong, but Smith was right. So the, what I love about Strang is that it shows just how hard what Joseph did would actually be if someone were to do it. So if you compare the Voorhe plates with the gold plates, the Voorhe plates are tiny.
There's only a couple of them really crudely done. Um, and the people who, who saw them, you know, talk about that. Whereas the book of Mormon, everyone who saw those and felt those, this was a massive record, beautifully etched, uh, hieroglyphs on it. The craftsmanship was just better. If I remember right with Strang, one of his co-conspirators later came out saying, I helped him make the plays and, you know, this is, we did that. You never obviously had anything like that with Joseph. Uh, Strang was a man who had a lot more knowledge. He was older. He was more, I don't know if cunning's the right word, but he was definitely clever. And I mean, what he was clearly trying to do was copy Joseph in every possible way that he could. And we see that he pretty much failed in every possible way that he could. He has witnesses coming out against him. He has plates that don't add up. He has, uh, visions that he admits kind of gets getting caught in.
Whereas with Joseph, none of that blowback ever happened. So I actually really like to compare those two stories because Strang is kind of like one of those guys, you know, I, I encounter a lot of people on the internet who say, oh, the book of Mormon would have been so easy to write. I didn't know what to do. And I said, okay, do it.
And Strang was a person who attempted that and failed, even though there were several witnesses who, who joined his church and even members of Joseph's family, because he was using those same, um, you know, those same telegraphs that Joseph was, those same markers, but in the end he didn't stack up and his religion died out quite quickly as compared to Joseph's, which is, you know, how long Matthew, any questions? So, uh, I know we've kind of gone all over the place. Should we jump into the Chicago statement? I know that you guys had a couple of specific questions about that. Yeah, we can jump into that.
Okay. So, uh, you asked me, I talked about article three, which, um, maybe, you know, I should have read, I don't have one up front here, but I could pull it up real quick for the listeners to know what it is we're talking about here. So article three says, um, we affirm that the written word in its entirety is revelation given by God. So my first question with that was how do we account for co-opted stories or events that had been added later that had been taken from other cultures that sort of repurposed, uh, for the Bible, you know, did these, uh, but my personal view is that this can be done under the direction of the spirit and that can become inspired just like, uh, the author speaking their own words could be inspired. So, you know, I believe Paul can take poetry or can take something else converted to his own use. And that becomes the word of God in him doing that.
But originally it wasn't. Um, and so the answer we talked about was the rich man and Lazarus parable from, uh, from the new Testament. I don't know if you guys had a chance to look into that or if you had any specific questions and things to bring up about that. Yeah.
I mean, I did look into it and what you said, you know, I would tend to agree with you, right. Because, um, like verbal plenary inspiration is the idea that, that the words used by the authors of scripture were inspired by God were breathed out by God. Right. Um, but also that, um, the personalities and cultures of the authors were not, uh, overtaken by God. So he's revelation is not by like a dictaphone type situation, right? When, when, when Christians talk about inerrancy and infallibility and revelation and inspiration, um, it's not like what we were talking about with automatic writing, where, you know, the personalities and thoughts of the authors are just completely out and whatever their hand is writing, that's not what's going on. Um, the authors are writing from their own contexts, um, and carried about by the Holy spirit, uh, to write what God would have them. Right.
And so with regards to the, uh, rich man and Lazarus, um, the first thing I would say is you might, you might get a different answer from me on this because I'm a biblical studies guy, then you might on some from somebody else, um, say, you know, a systematics guy, but, um, so, you know, you can't, you can't really take graduate level courses in biblical studies without encountering the idea that biblical authors used other literature. Right. So the ancient near Eastern literature is found, uh, in various ways throughout the old Testament. Sure. Um, an example of that is like, um, the, the Genesis creation account, uh, as kind of like polemic, uh, against the other ancient near Eastern, um, creation myths. Right.
Sure. Um, to say, Hey, you know, Yahweh is creator and excuse me. And so, um, that's kind of where my biblical studies background takes me with that, with, with regards to the rich man and Lazarus, I'm not fully convinced. So, uh, for our listeners here, the idea here is that, um, the rich, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is an older Egyptian motif that is used by, uh, Jesus in the gospel of Luke, um, and kind of repurposed. Right. And so that was, that was proposed by Hugo Gressman, a German scholar, uh, in 1918, I'm not fully convinced that, that that's the case. Um, so the reason why is that while there are some parallels, there's some significant divergences between the two.
Um, and excuse me. So just to, just as like the divergences between, uh, the ancient near Eastern myths and what the old Testament prophets, right. In a polemic against the myths are what are significant, right?
Because the old Testament prophets are saying, um, you know, Yahweh is, is the, uh, God almighty, right. Just as those divergences are important for the old Testament record that I think they're important in, in the parable as well. Um, so, um, so the, the, the Egyptian, uh, story is called, uh, set me and see Osiris. Um, there are some rough parallels that, that Hugo Gressman proposed one that, that both, um, contained the deaths of a rich man and a poor man, right. Uh, both contain a reversal of those, uh, two men's fortunes in the afterlife. And the third, uh, parallel is that there's a possibility of returning from the netherworld to reveal this truth to the living. Um, I think that third one is especially stretched given what, uh, the Egyptian account actually says, where it's somebody else who comes back, not one of those who dies. Um, so the, the significant points of divergence that I see, uh, are Abraham's bosom, the concept of Lazarus resting in Abraham's bosom. That's a, that's something that's not found in any text prior to the gospel of Luke, which is interesting. Um, there's no explicit reason given in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus for why their fortunes are reversed. Um, you can kind of infer that maybe it's, uh, just, you know, being rich is bad and being poor is good. Um, but there's no explicit reason, whereas in the Egyptian, uh, set me and see Osiris, it explicitly states that it's because of the rich man's evil deeds and the poor man's good deeds.
Right. So it's, it's, they're being, their judgment or reward is a result of their own deeds, which is absent in the Luke account. Um, one thing to note is that, um, this parable of Jesus is the only one to actually name a character.
The rest of his parables are more general. Um, the reason that's interesting is that, uh, and some scholars have pointed this out. Um, the name Lazarus is the Greek equivalent of the old Testament, uh, Hebrew name Eliezer, uh, and Eliezer was, uh, Abraham steward and named air prior to the birth of Isaac. So there's a very, uh, strong suggestion that, that that parable, what Jesus is actually doing is commenting on, uh, the story of Abraham and Eliezer, which is interesting. And the other thing about that to come back to first Enoch is Jesus's portrayal of the afterlife in the parable, um, has a parallel in first Enoch 22. Um, so this whole idea that there's a place for the, for the, um, uh, the, the righteous and the place for the wicked in the afterlife, uh, to await the judgment, um, is paralleled in first Enoch 22.
So it sounds a whole lot like a LDS plan of salvation too. Right. Um, so maybe there's, I mean, it's, it's interesting.
Right. Um, but the difference, I guess the difference I would, I would notice that in, um, in, uh, first Enoch, there's actually four caves in a mountain. Um, one of the caves is, is for the righteous three of them are for the unrighteous. Um, so, but just that there was, there was this idea that higher, higher up there would be, um, righteous and lower down, there would be unrighteous, uh, is parallel in first Enoch. Um, so just all of that, I think there's, there's really interesting suggestions and strong suggestions that it could be a story, um, uh, you know, wholly within the, the Jewish tradition and, and actually fits better within the Jewish tradition than some, than some of the strained parallels. Um, I mean, obviously there's some, some motifs that they share, um, but there's significant differences in the way that it's used in, in Luke is, you know, shows it to be thoroughly Jewish. Okay.
No, that's a good answer. Um, you know, what interests me in that one is that Osiris is taking Abraham's place. Uh, if, if we're to assume that there's a shared source or something in that, which just, it just, it's interesting to me from a birth of a book of Abraham perspective. So the other thing to note there though, is that, um, so, uh, it's interesting to think about the pair of the parable because it mentions Abraham and Abraham is bosom and it mentions Lazarus. Right. And so if you're thinking about along the lines of Eliezer is Lazarus and Eliezer was Abraham's heir, who was a non Israelite and that you're not, you're not, uh, not a member of Abraham's family. So not a descendant. Um, you know, what, what's interesting is that what you, what you might actually have there is Jesus commenting on, um, what you see later in the new Testament, um, where, you know, the, the truth originally came to, uh, the Israelites and then it's given to the Gentiles.
So the first, the last, last one first, which is also a thing in Luke. So sure. That's cool. That's cool. I like that. Um, so we discussed that.
Oh, did you have anything you wanted to add Matthew? Uh, yeah, actually. Um, so when I looked at it, I kind of, um, evidence to the opposite direction. So it's not like this Hebrew story, but it's more of a Greco Romans kind of context. There's another story. Um, I have the paper because I'm a perpetual student, so I have a university access.
So if you want, I can, I can send you this article, but it's by Ronald Hawk and, uh, it's basically the Greco Roman backgrounds to Luke chapter 16, 19 to 31. And he compares it to, uh, several, uh, two main sources. I think that speak of, um, the character, let's see, it's a poor marginalized artisan named my syllabus.
He goes hungry from early morning to evening. I must bear the slights, insults and beatings of the powerful. So this is a summarization in this website that I'll send later. Uh, when my syllabus and a rich tyrant named, uh, make, make, make a penthese or make up with these, I don't know how you pronounce that. They both make the trip to Hades. Um, so they get, they get like a penthese, the rich man and similar to the rich man and Jesus is parable. So it's his summarization tries to strike a bargain to alter a situation, but to no avail, finally, uh, my syllabus and, uh, he, you know, my mega Panthese, they face red amount this, the judge of the underworld.
Uh, my syllabus is judged to be pure and goes to the aisle of the blessed mega Panthese. His soul, however, is stained with corruption and he will, he is appropriately punished. So, uh, a Hawk, he says that, uh, this is kind of like a background to the parable, the rich man Lazarus. So it, so, uh, when Paul is kind of describing it, it's possible that this is just like this kind of story is ingrained in the culture, both the Jewish culture and the Greco Roman culture.
So something that's like easily identifiable, um, that, that, you know, that he kind of tapped into to teach a truth about, um, you know, uh, what it means to show mercy, you know, the value of showing mercy versus, you know, um, being unmerciful. So it's possible that, you know, and there's even debate whether this is actually a parable or not, but I think, you know, or an actual event, but I think he's just using this, he's tapping into this, you know, this mythos that's already in the cultures to try to teach a truth is that's how I kind of, I saw it. Yeah.
Yeah. And so what I would say there is that, you know, I think Matthew's right there, right? As I was saying, you see the same kind of thing with the Annie myth, uh, ancient near Eastern myths, uh, in the old Testament, the way that the old Testament prophets interact with and make use of them. And then ultimately say, you know, Yahweh is greater than the new gods, right? Um, this, this parable, if it is a parable, um, shows Jesus doing something very similar with, with a story and a theme and a motif that, that seems to have been within the culture more broadly.
Right. Um, and he, he makes use of it for, for his purpose. And that places Jesus very squarely in the tradition of old Testament, uh, prophet, right. Which prophet priest King is one of his roles. So it sounds like you guys are in agreement that a prophet could take, um, you know, something that's not scripture related, but just something that the cultural knows about, or that's floating around out there and use that.
And it becomes inspired scripture in his use of that. Is that inaccurate? Yeah.
I would say that's accurate as they're carried along by the Holy spirit. Yes. Okay. Cool.
Well, I think we're in agreement there. The faith after Mormonism conference is an annual conference that provides encouragement and insight for people leaving Mormonism to explore a new faith home in historic biblical Christianity through speakers, workshops, exhibitors, and individual interactions. You will receive helpful resources and meet others on a similar journey this year. The featured guests are going to be the folks from Adams road ministry.
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Whisper: medium.en / 2023-09-02 21:53:30 / 2023-09-02 22:18:04 / 25