Joseph Smith as Translator Part 3

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Our thanks to Adams Road Band for that musical introduction. Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. But we also have with us this week Sandra Tanner. Sandra is the founder of Utah Lighthouse Ministry, and you can check out her bookstore at 1358 Southwest Temple, and check out her website as well.

It's utlm.org. We've been talking about Joseph Smith as a translator, and for those new to the show, Joseph Smith was the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, claimed that he was a prophet, seer, and revelator, and that also he had the ability to translate. So we've been looking at some of the literature, you might say, that he has supposedly translated, and we find that there certainly are a lot of questions regarding the things that he has brought forth. Today we want to talk about the book of Moses, and I would say, Sandra, that the book of Moses is probably a lesser-known book that is really unique to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, even though it's supposedly a translation taken from the book of Genesis. It's found in the Pearl of Great Price. I want to read this introduction by John Witzow. John Witzow was a Mormon apostle. He wrote a book called Joseph Smith, Seeker After Truth, Prophet of God, and I'm citing from page 254. This is what Witzow said, The Pearl of Great Price contains the book of Moses as revealed to the prophet in 1830, shortly after the organization of the Church. This book came as a part of the revision or inspired translation of the Bible. Since the Church has not yet attempted to publish Joseph Smith's revision in full, the book of Moses, not complete, has been published separately.

This publication was made in the days of Joseph Smith. The book of Moses amplifies many of the brief accounts given in the Bible rendition of Genesis. Tell us a bit about this book of Moses, because I find that it's not something that's often brought up by Latter-day Saints.

Right, and so you would find there's no manuscript that he's supposedly using for this translation. So it's strictly by revelation that he is given this rendering of Moses' supposed account of Genesis. But in the book of Moses, you have a creation story.

And if we take this at face value, that this was what Moses would have truly taught, it would be a little different on the view of God than what they teach today. Because in the story of creation, it's just Heavenly Father and Jesus working on the creation. And it's the standard creation story with just a little embellishments of God and Jesus doing the work of creation. The odd thing is, is that when they then in the next section of their Pearl of Great Price is the book of Abraham, a record supposedly written by Abraham, because of Joseph buying a set of Egyptian papyri, he supposedly translated one of these to be the writings of Abraham. And this also contained a Genesis creation story. And yet the creation story in that book is different.

So right side by side in the Pearl of Great Price, you have the book of Moses, creation story, Jesus and God. Then the book of Abraham, creation story, where it's they, the gods, plural, created everything. And when we look at Joseph Smith's teachings of God, you see this evolution of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Moses teaching one God. And then through the years, he gradually gets more and more into this idea that there's a plurality of gods. So he does the Book of Moses in 1830, where it's just God and Jesus. But then by the time he gets to Nauvoo in the 1840s, when he works on that part of the Book of Abraham that deals with the creation story, he now has a new version. And so Abraham tells it that it's a whole council of gods that works on the creation.

So if you're just looking at Joseph Smith's life, you could say, well, there was a gradual unveiling to him of the doctrine of God that progresses from one god to multiple gods. But if you look at the dates when these books were supposedly originally written, the Book of Abraham chronologically would have had to have been written before the Book of Moses. And so here you have Abraham supposedly teaching a plurality of gods. And then later when Moses does his account, he switches back to it just being God and Jesus. So it doesn't make sense that you have these two accounts of Genesis with different accounts of the creation story, when chronologically the plural gods doctrine would have come first, and then Moses would have scuttled it and gone back to just God and Jesus.

Now that's fascinating, but you're absolutely correct. If Abraham, who precedes Moses, is teaching a correct understanding of the creation account, you have multiple gods that are involved in this creation. And then Moses comes along later on. So who is telling the truth? And which one are we supposed to believe?

Because I think you make an excellent point here. If Abraham, in the Book of Abraham, is telling us a correct account, then the Book of Moses would be inaccurate. How do Latter-day Saints get around that? I mean, did you ever think of that when you were a Latter-day Saint?

No, I never thought of any of these things. It was only when we started to realize there was a problem with the Book of Abraham as a genuine translation of the Egyptian papyri that you start thinking through which came first, which account is authentic, and is the Book of Abraham account authentic? It changed our whole view of these things. When you start with the Bible, and then you see Joseph Smith making different accounts of the creation story, which one is the believer supposed to take as the really authoritative one? And it becomes very confusing, because the Mormons today would say the Abraham account is the one that is most correct, the most full in its understanding, and yet the Book of Moses is supposed to be equally important, refilled by Moses, and he gives us a different account. And I think the idea that both of them are found in canon. I mean, they're both found in the Pearl of Great Price, and yet they contradict each other. That just is amazing. A lot of Latter-day Saints have never even thought through that before.

Right. Well, when you have this phrase, inspired revelation, I want to go back to what I said earlier. It seems like Joseph Smith can say just about anything he wants, as long as he attributes it to deity, and this is where he's getting his information, most Latter-day Saints just accept it. And what's frustrating is trying to communicate to a Latter-day Saint that there's a real huge problem here, because if it's in fact coming from God, why is God seemingly forgetting what he commanded earlier, and why is he changing his mind later on? That doesn't sound like the God of the Bible.

The God of the Bible is pretty consistent in the things that he's teaching. But you have John Witzel uses that phrase, inspired translation. We see that same phrase used for the Joseph Smith translation. Again, no ancient text. Why aren't more Latter-day Saints thinking through this?

It seems really to us so obvious, and maybe that's why I shouldn't even be using that as a guideline, because I'm not in that same boat with them. I don't believe Joseph Smith is a true prophet, and I guess once you believe he's a prophet, he can get away with just about anything, and he seems like he does, even when it comes to his plurality of wives. Well, he was a prophet, he could do whatever he wants. Very quickly, the Book of Abraham, because you mentioned the Book of Abraham. We talked about the different creation accounts between it and the Book of Moses.

A papyri that Joseph Smith came across in 1835 by a guy by the name of Michael Chandler, and he's going around the countryside showing off these mummies and such, and Smith is intrigued by this. People take an offering, they buy Michael Chandler's exhibit off of him, and Joseph Smith is going to now translate these papyri that came with these mummies. Again, how is this translation done when it comes to the eventual Book of Abraham? Well, the heading on the Book of Abraham states that it is a translation, and it leads you to believe that this is a product of normal translation. Joseph bought actual papyri and then claimed to translate them, and yet we find that when the papyri are shown to scholars, they do not see anything in the actual text that correlates to what Joseph Smith said they translated to say. So then the question comes up, what do we mean by translate? And the Mormons today are on the horns of a dilemma because Joseph Smith's work does not line up with the text of the papyri. So they can't just say he invented it, so they have to some way redefine the word translate.

And so now they're saying, well, it was by inspiration, it was a revelation that while he looked at the real papyri, he was inspired to see a different message. Then why are they still using the word translate in the heading? It is not a translation in any sense of the word.

There is nothing on the papyri that says anything about Abraham. And he just comes up with his own version. And yet they want to argue against the Bible that we only believe it as far as it's translated correctly, implying that historically a true translation would read like Joseph Smith said. And yet when it comes to the work that we can test him on, on the book of Abraham, where we have the papyri he had, and we have what he said was a translation, and we now have what scholars say is the translation, and what Joseph Smith said has no relationship to anything that a scholar would see on those papyri. So in what sense will they affirm that is a translation while still castigating the Bible's authority by saying it's not a worthy translation? And so it's like they get to pick and choose when they want to take the word literally for what it means. Their own scholars now are faced with the dilemma that the papyri do not support anything Joseph Smith said. They now concede that the book of Abraham is a product of revelation. Then they shouldn't use the word translate.

Let me ask you this. When you were a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were you taught that this is a literal rendering into English from the Egyptian text itself? Were you given the impression as a member of the church that it was an inspired translation as it's being sold today? Well, I was taught that it was inspired, but it was inspired in the sense of giving him the accurate translation of the text in front of him.

So that was the way inspiration was viewed in my growing up years. We've been talking with Sandra Tanner. She's the founder of Utah Lighthouse Ministry.

Check out her website at utlm.org. We're going to continue this theme in tomorrow's show looking at Joseph Smith's claim of being a translator. Visit our website at www.mrm.org where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.