More Scriptures Than The Bible?, by Sandra Tanner

when most people think of Christianity they usually associate it with the Bible however the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints commonly referred to as LDS or Mormons is not bound by that volume alone the LDS Church asserts that the Bible has been corrupted but that their doctrines came directly from God to Joseph Smith thus guaranteeing a pure transmission of God's Word there are eight article of faith states we believe the Bible to be the Word of God as far as it's translated correctly we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the Word of God notice that there is no qualification on the translation of the Book of Mormon only on the Bible even though their articles of faith do not mention their other books of Scripture the Doctrine and Covenants and pearl of great price those books play a more central role in LDS theology than the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith is God's prophet the stakes a greater mantle than Moses or any writers of the Bible Milton our hunter general authority in the LDS Church once boasted the Prophet Joseph Smith produced for the world three new volumes of holy scriptures namely the Book of Mormon the Doctrine and Covenants and the pearl of great price and in addition he revised the Bible no prophet who has ever lived has accomplished such a tremendous feat there are only a hundred and seventy-seven pages in the Old Testament attributed to Moses while Joseph Smith either translated through the power of God or received as direct revelation from Jehovah eight hundred and thirty five pages and that's in the Deseret News well that's quite a claim granted Joseph Smith wrote a number of scriptural texts but on what basis would one accept these as the Word of God why should one believe that they are more reliable than the Bible where is the manuscript and historical evidences for his writings tonight we want to look briefly at the four different Scripture texts that he wrote first we're going to look at the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith grew up in a religious family studying the Bible as a youth however his parents were not members of any particular church when Joseph Smith was about 16 he found an unusual stone while digging a well for a neighbor and later announced that the stone had special powers to locate lost objects for treasures the LDS Church published a photo of Smith's magic stone in the October 2015 ensign for the next several years Joseph Smith his father and various neighbors were engaged in treasure hunting which also acting as the diviner who could see in his stone where the treasures were hidden however some evil power always seemed to keep the prize from their grasp after being arrested by the local magistrate in 1826 as a possible fraud preying on the local farmers Joseph Smith turned his attention to another treasure the Book of Mormon for more information on Smith's magic involvement see our book Mormonism magic and masonry Smith claimed that on September 21st 1823 an angel appeared to him to Commission him to translate an ancient set of gold plates the long-lost record of God's dealings with the former inhabitants of the American continent Smith's idea for such a metal record could have come from any number of books of that day such as James Sedaris 1775 book the history of the American Indians or Ethan Smith's 1825 book view of the Hebrews or from the 1826 book wonders of nature and Providence displayed both by Josiah priest hmm the main part of the Book of Mormon story covers from 600 BC to 421 ad and tells of a small group of Israelites fleeing Jerusalem who eventually settled in the Americas the records supposedly inscribed on golden plates also included an appearance of Christ to the new world shortly after his crucifixion the story concludes with a great battle at the Hill Cumorah in about 400 AD after which the place were buried in a stone box in the hill in 421 ad hundreds of years after this Moroni the last scribe hid the plates he returned as an angel in 1823 out of course after dying he came back as an angel in 1823 to tell Joseph Smith where the plates were buried and it was very convenient that it all supposed to happen on a little hill down the street from Joseph's house along with the plates the Lord supposedly preserved divine interpreters called the Urim and Thummim to enable a future translator to decipher the unknown script these were described as large spectacles with crystal or stoned lenses when I say large they were supposed to be too big for someone to look through the two crystals at one time the question that comes to my mind is who were they ever made for if they were too big for Joseph to use I mean look the wife I'm not sure who Joseph had in mind would you see huge spectacles anyways God saved this Germans of them all these years for Joseph Smith to use for translating contrary to illustrations often produced in LDS Church material those who witness this translation method such as his wife Emma and David Whitmer one of the witnesses did not describe him studying the plates as he dictated but peering into the stone in his hat and then dictating that next as the divine translation appeared on the stone in English from the statements made by eyewitnesses it is clear that the book was produced by the same means he used to search for treasures by looking at the stone in his hat now the two pictures that are up one the first one showing Joseph with his face in his hat is the way all the witnesses that left statements described the translation process the Mormon Church though has continually pictured Joseph Smith as the second illustration shows sitting at a desk studying the plates with his scribe across from him taking his dictation and there are a number of different drawings in church literature depicting this scene and it has only been in the last couple of years that you've started to see any illustrations by the Mormon Church that show the Hat but they never show him with his face in the Hat and that's what all the witnesses said so they'll have today they'll have illustrations where they'll show him sitting at the desk and they may even show the plates that's being wrapped in the cloth and maybe at the corner of the Hat he's showing but they still can't quite bring themselves to illustrate it the way everyone said it actually happened but it's the same method he was using when he was doing his money digging using these magic crystals to find buried treasure in spite of the divine magical method of reading the translation off the stone the reading like reading a text message on your cell phone evidently the process was not infallible the Book of Mormon was published in 1830 however the next printing in 1837 thousands of words were changed while most of these changes were to correct spelling and grammar a few definitely affected the meaning of the text additional changes were made as recently as nineteen eighty one and two and ten for more on this the artbook 3000 913 in the Book of Mormon and yes I counted them and yes I was the one that wrote in in the margins of an original photos of an original Book of Mormon all the changes that were made which was interesting when a Mormon challenging challenges me whether I've ever read The Book of Mormon and either oh yeah I've read the current one against the original in fact and marked all that changes by the way our count is off I've been informed by Mormons that it's more like 4,000 changes and excuse me you know I'm not gonna go back and recount anyway close enough Joseph Smith anticipated Christians objecting to a new volume of Scripture and he addressed the issue in his book in approximately 550 BC Nephi a prophet a leader in the first part of Smith's new scripture was shown by an angel that in the last days there would be Gentiles meaning the non LDS people that would be in the new world who would bring the Bible there would be Gentiles meaning non-lds in the new world who would bring the Bible to the descendants of the Book of Mormon people the American Indians however the pure Word of God in the Bible had been corrupted by that great and abominable Church see first Nephi 13 and many important teachings had been removed but God's Word to those in the new world would be preserved and used to establish God's true doctrine this message was then expanded in 2nd Nephi chapter 29 where God warns of those who will mock this new work of God saying quote a Bible a Bible we have got a Bible and there cannot be any more Bible I think that's interesting at 550 BC not only does someone have the concept of the Bible as a compilation of all the different books of the Old Testament and including the new but they even have the word Bible by the way they didn't have Bible word in 500 BC at the end of the Book of Mormon in Moroni 10 4 through 6 a person is assured that if he will pray with a sincere heart God will reveal the truthfulness of the book to him thus the test of the book Mormons historical validity is sidestepped and the focus is diverted to the sincerity of the one praying I might add here no such test is given to for the validity of the Bible yes we pray yes we come to God for wisdom and strength and guidance and all of those things but that is not the way you test the message of Christ I mean you can use it as a test but it's got to be grounded in the historic evidence for Christianity otherwise you could follow any prophet anyone claiming a new word from God which I find with the polygamist I have I've had polygamists that come in to talk with me and they have every bit as strong a testimony of how God's revealed the truth of their particular branch of fundamentalism to them the same as all the Mormons claims that they've had a revelation to them that it's true and then I point out to them there's got to be a way to break the deadlock because all your testimonies can't be right but then they all point out well the other guys didn't pray right so that's why they came up with a different answer but if there have been millions of people in the Americas for hundreds of years living as Hebrew Christians writing and reformed Egyptian building mighty empires going to battle with horses chariots swords and shields one would expect there to be at least a handful of artifacts to substantiate such a culture and as you read the book of Mormon you'll see that the two great battles between the Jared i'ts earlier and then the Nephi Lamanites after the time of Christ at the 400 period when they have that battle they all happened on the same hill in upper state New York and if you've ever been to the hill it's not the one I'd pick because if you had your choice I think I'd have found something a little more strategically helpful than that little hill there however the LDS Church has yet to officially present any artifact that these people or identify any specific location in the new world for the story even though they print maps in their scriptures showing the LDS Church's westward migration from New York to Salt Lake they have yet to produce an official map of the Book of Mormon story there is a chart of the locations titled possible book Mormons bytes printed in the 2008 study guide used in LDS seminary for their high school classes however at the bottom of the chart it cautions the reader to refrain from trying to correlate the names of the cities on the chart with an actual map and I quote no effort should be made to identify points on this map with any existing geographical location I find this odd since on page 53 students are encouraged to study the geography of the Holy Land referring to Israel if the Book of Mormon is a natural history why not study its geography as one studies the geography of the Bible the church obviously sees the value of maps as there are also maps of Arabia to show Lehi strip from Jerusalem to the place where he built his ship to go to America yet the manual never indicates where the group landed in the new world or where they traveled once they arrived currently there's a man Mormon man going around the valley putting on these big lectures on the Book of Mormon and you may have seen it in your Sunday paper or different ones when he's made the announcements of these meetings if your friends bring that up to you as a time when there's evidence put forward for the Book of Mormon remember those are not official and I always ask the Mormons when they give me some Mormon said this or this is that official has the church officially issued such evidences or claims of artifacts or claims of locations and they don't know they just take it from whatever someone said in some lecture and I said well to my knowledge the Mormon Church has not committed itself to a single location not only that they even have disagreements amongst themselves about where kimura is the hill that have the two last great battles BYU scholars sometimes want to place the Hill Cumorah down in Mexico because they know it doesn't make sense for all those Mayans to march up to New York but then there's a group of Mormons that believe it all happened in the Ohio Valley and the mound builders up through New York and they say well yes just fine to have it at the Hill Cumorah because they're all right there so but the church itself will not take a stand and I think that's telling I think the leadership know that there is no real support for the story and so they as long as they don't take a specific stand for specific locations then you can't disprove it and so it's a built-in escape hatch for anything that comes up anything a scholar comes up to say that point couldn't be true that spot couldn't have been that's what we never setup with that spot you know so it just leaves it all open many Mormons will point to the Mayan ruins in Central America as evidence of an advanced civilization like that described in the Book of Mormon however the Maya had a continuous history as a pagan group before during and after the timeframe covered by the Book of Mormon Michael dqo professor emeritus of anthropology at Yale University and a leading scholar on the Maya observed that the height of Maya culture extended from 250 AD to 900 AD their temples and monuments show no relationship to the israelites or Christians thus any association of the Book of Mormon people with a Maya would be contrary to existing evidence in 1996 dr. Cole was asked about his opinion of the Book of Mormon and he responded in a letter quote I see little worth in past efforts to prove the Book of Mormon and historic document in spite of decades of diligent archaeological research in the area absolutely nothing relevant to the Book of Mormon has ever turned up among literally millions of excavated artifacts and that was a letter from the for Michael D Cole sent to Craig Churchill February 15th in 1996 and I have a photo of that in my files for years scholars struggled to decipher the Mayan cliffs but this has changed their temples and monuments shion's can now be read and they do not speak of Hebrew Christians on the screen is a copy of what's referred to as the Anthon transcript while Joseph Smith preserved half a page of characters supposedly copied from the Nephi plates that script has not been found in any of the excavations in the new world there are numerous examples of Mayan script but nothing that matches Joseph's characters I might point out on the Anthon transcript there's supposed to be what the Book of Mormon script looked like they want to say reformed Egyptian was the language they used this is a hodgepodge of characters you can find as much English as anything else on that scholars that have looked at this see no patterns that would say to them this is an authentic language because of the way they look at repeats for languages not only that nothing of that type has been found in the Americas now we want to look at my in writing it depicts different animals now it is a language with an alphabet this can actually be read it isn't just pictures of different jaguars and things they have meaning in their script but that has no resemblance to the Anthon transcript they're just a totally different type of even writing as you can see from the examples the Maya style of script is totally different from Joseph Smith after Smith finished his translation of the gold plates he claimed they were returned to the angel thus there is no way to verify his story of finding an ancient record or to check the accuracy of his translation when composing the Book of Mormon Joseph tapped into the common view of the day that the American Indians were descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel ancient American ruins were already known in Smith's day in the early 1800s there were was high interest in American Indian culture and artifacts resulting in many books and newspaper articles these writings often mentioned that the Indians claimed to have a book from God that had been lost artifacts stored in stone boxes claims of two different cultures one more advance than the other legends of great battles for example the Smith's local newspaper that Palmyra Register for May 26th of 1819 reported that quote this country was once inhabited by a race of people at least partially civilized and that this race has been exterminated by the forefathers of the present and late tribes of Indians in this country and a quote this theme of Israelite descendent appeared in a number of books published prior to the Book of Mormon one important book for promoting the Israelite origin of the American Indians was view of the Hebrews by ethan smith who's no relation to joseph smith by the way his book was first printed in 1823 it was so popular it was reprinted in 1825 and we sell photo reprint of it if anybody wants to read the actual book view of the Hebrews proposed that the Indians were descended from Israel and looks forward to the future gathering of Israel it speaks to the ancient civilization using metal having a written language taken from the Hebrew and of a lost book from God it suggests that the Indians at one time had the gospel preached to them it recounts vast mounds or military fortifications throughout the Ohio Valley Hightower's Wars etc thus we see that the basic ideas behind the Book of Mormon were circulating in Smith's day add to this this familiarity with the Bible and you have the main sources needed to write the Book of Mormon contrary to the views of Smith stay and the Book of Mormon anthropologists today see no evidence for an Israelite civilization in the Americas between 600 BC and 400 AD DNA has also shown that the American Indians descend from Central Asia not the Middle East in April of 1813 osa Smith organized his church the Church of Christ which recognized both the Bible and the Book of Mormon as Scripture however the teachings in his new scripture were not that far removed from many other movements of his day it echoed the restoration movements call for a return to New Testament Christianity a rejection of the Catholic Church and infant baptism see first Nephi 13/4 or Moroni 8 11 and 12 it taught that there was only one God see for instance 1st 2nd Nephi 31 21 and that faith in Christ and Christian baptism more essential for eternal life Mosiah 1813 Moroni 8:25 and there should be no division between the various churches seem Mosiah 25 22 what the book does not contain our Joseph Smith Slater doctrines of free mortal life temple rituals eternal marriage plural marriage baptism and marriage for the dead three levels of heaven and man's hope a future exaltation as a god this in spite of the fact that the introduction to the book of mormon promises that it contains the fullness of the everlasting gospel and this is one of the problems refined throughout the Joseph Smith's period of Mormonism he's always giving new light and so he's always changing his doctrines and so over the fourteen years he ran the Mormon Church it reversed so changed itself on all almost every major doctrine of Christianity two other problems for the Book of Mormon are the lifting of hundreds of phrases from the King James Version of the Bible and the introduction of new Testament concepts into the Book of Mormon before the time of Christ the Old Testament has no mention of Jesus Christ by name or the Christian concept of baptism yet these are an integral part of the knee fight religion in the Book of Mormon during the period before the time of Christ for instance in approximately 550 BC God instructs the Nephites repent ye and be baptized in name of my beloved son ii meet by 3111 another book of mormon passage supposedly written about 121 b.c contains words obviously taken from first Corinthians 15:58 it says quote therefore I would that you should be steadfast and immovable always abounding in good works that Christ the Lord God omnipotent may seal you his and that's found in Mosiah 515 but if you look at the King James Bible at the first Corinthians 15:58 you would see therefore my beloved brethren be ye stedfast unmoveable always abounding in the work of the Lord and this is typical all through the book of these types of phrases that are dependent on the English King James Bible and are included in the text that couldn't possibly have been given before Christ or even after Christ for that matter they had no connection with Israel to have ever heard Paul preached or anything and yet we find Paul seems to have had quite a ministry in the new world because they put him so much hundreds of phrases from the Bible have been sprinkled throughout the Book of Mormon to give it the sound of Scripture for more on this the aerbook Joseph Smith's plagiarism of the Bible in the Book of Mormon thus over the last one hundred and eighty eight years scholar after scholar has concluded that the Book of Mormon is a product of the 19th century not an ancient record to recap let's look at a few comparisons so what is the historical evidences for the two books with the Bible we have thousands of nice trips and parts of manuscripts to back up our Bible today these are manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek there's dozens of authors throughout the history of the biblical books being written down the Hebrew Aramaic and Greek as in the different copies that we have in the manuscripts those are known languages that you could go to college and learn to read you could do your own translation we have thousands of artifacts from these people groups throughout the area we have actual people groups that are mentioned in the Bible and we have maps because we know where the cities are now we can't locate every city in the Bible but we can locate enough of them that we have confidence that we're looking at real history but with the Book of Mormon we have so no such evidences for it there are no manuscripts outside of Joseph Smith's English dictated copy there is only one author for the Book of Mormon he can put different names on the different books throughout the Book of Mormon but he is the only one who dictated the book there's no evidence that there ever was any reformed Egyptian we looked at the Mayan script has no resemblance to anything like the Anthon transcript there are no artifacts for the Book of Mormon peoples no Mormons will point to me to all kind of artifacts having to do with the Native Americans or with the Mayans or the Aztecs or whatever and I point out to them that yes but those are all known civilizations that have their own history and their own meanings they have nothing to do with the Book of Mormon peoples there is no people group no when I was growing up in Mormonism every American Indian was lame a knight and they had the Lamanites generation down at BYU and all kind of stuff that where everyone was told they were blaming I I don't say that anymore when they say anything at all nowadays it's usually to refer to the descendants of Lehi they they're even dropping even use the word lemonade anymore so they'll go to South America and they dedicate a temple a building or something and they'll speak to that the descendants of Lehi that are in the audience so they still are trying to tell the people they are the Book of Mormon peoples but they're more careful how often they use the terms Nephi done limonite and they have no Maps which we've already talked about okay moving on that's the end of the Book of Mormon section now we're going to look at Joseph Smith's revision of the Bible his second book of Scripture months after finishing the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith embarked on another ambitious project his revision of the King James Bible known as the Joseph Smith translation or it's often referred to as the jst or the inspired version between the years 1830 in 1833 Smith and his scribes went through the Bible noting places to be changed plus adding new verses to the text although Mormons often declare that Joseph Smith's Bible revisions were never completed in a letter dated July 2nd 1833 Joseph Smith wrote quote we this state finished the translation of the scriptures for which returned gratitude to our Heavenly Father and that's in the sixth volume history the church supposedly written by Joseph Smith volume 1 page 368 and the Mormons well tell me he didn't finish it because obviously he didn't change all the verses that they would have thought he would have changed if he would have really finished it but the problem is that he quit working on his revision in 1833 and he had not developed a lot of the doctrines of Mormonism that he later came up with in Nabu and so it doesn't reflect all of the places they would have liked to have seen change today this was not a translation in the regular sense as Smith had no ancient manuscripts and no training in Hebrew or Greek it was a matter of Revelation some of the changes were Smith's attempt to make a more logical reading some were issues Bible commentaries had already been discussing and some were simply insertions by Smith as with the Book of Mormon Smith moved knowledge of Christianity into the Old Testament for instance his revision of Genesis 6 52 and 53 indicates that Adam was baptized and received the Holy Ghost while Enoch only receives passing mentioned in the Bible Smith added pages to Genesis about Enoch and his City he also added over 800 words to Genesis chapter 50 including a prophecy about himself Genesis 50 verse 33 of Joseph Smith's translation reads and that seer will I bless and they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded for this promise I give unto you for I will remember you from generation to generation and his name meaning this future seer his name shall be called Joseph and it shall be after the name of his father this was obviously intended to be a reference to Joseph Smith whose father was also named Joseph and all the Mormons take that verse as a prophecy of Joseph Smith I think that takes a certain amount of ego nerve whatever to write yourself into the Bible furthermore Genesis 14 was expanded to enlarge the role of Melchizedek and his priesthood yet in first Nephi 13 back to the Book of Mormon first Nephi 13 24 through 28 The Book of Mormon states that the Bible went from the Jews to the Gentiles in its purity but was then changed so for him to go back and make changes in Genesis doesn't make sense if in fact according the Book of Mormon the Bible went from the Jews in its pure form and it was the Gentiles that made the changes with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls it is now clear that Smith's additions to the Old Testament are not supported by ancient manuscripts Christianity was not taught in the Old Testament Smith also added many words to the New Testament even rewriting the well-known opening to the Gospel of John John 1:1 states in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God however Joseph Smith changed it to read in the beginning was the gospel preached through the son and the gospel was the word and the Word was with the son and the son was with God and the son was of God that's the Joseph Smith translation needless to say there is no manuscript evidence for Smith's additions we have a portion of the book of John in the second century we have specifically John 1:1 in a manuscript in 180 approximately ad and that manuscript of John 1:1 reads in Greek of course but when you translate it reads just like our Bibles today there's no evidence for it ever having this long rambling sentence that Joseph Smith inserted as mentioned earlier the LDS articles of faith state that they believe the Bible as far as that's translated correctly however this reservation extends beyond the reliability of the translation Mormons often object to the form of our current Canon maintaining that early church councils decided which books were to be canonized and thus voted out many books that should have been included in the Bible interestingly when Smith did his inspired revision he not only did not restore any lost books but he excluded the Song of Solomon therefore if the Mormons are going to insist that the current composition of the Canon is an error that there were books meant to be included in the Bible that were voted out it is up to them to supply a list of those that should have been included and the reason for their inclusion in 1979 the LDS Church printed its own edition of the King James Bible at that time they certainly could have made their own compilation of books to be included in the Canon but they loved the Canon just the same now they did put new footnotes and cross-referencing but the text is they still use the King James they also included numerous extracts from Joseph Smith's Bible revision but they're put at the back of the book this certainly raises the question as to why their prophet has not seen fit to publish a corrected Bible if the one we have is so unreliable and I think an answer to that is they know that it would be harder to get into doors to give their message if they had a totally revamped Bible now we want to look at the Doctrine and Covenants one of the founding principles of Mormonism is the belief in continuing revelation through a prophet at the head of the church the majority of Joseph Smith's revelations covering 15 years have been canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants section 1 verse 30 of the Doctrine and Covenants declares that Smith's church is the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth section 13 tells of the appearance of John the Baptist to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery ordaining them to the Roenick priesthood and giving them the authority to baptize section 22 revealed that all those who desired to unite with the LDS Church must submit to LDS baptism regardless of the person's prior baptism in another Church while the Book of Mormon is the main book used in proselyting Mormonism's more unique doctrines are found in the doctrine of covenants such as pre-earth life in Section 93 ironic Melchizedek priesthoods in Section 107 and others sections as well plural gods started in section 121 and then continued in 132 Heavenly Father having a body of flesh and bones is in section 133 levels of heaven are in section 76 eternal marriage in section 131 polygamy and progression to godhood in section 132 baptism for the dead in section 124 and their dietary health code known as the word of wisdom is in section 89 on questions of doctrine the doctrine of covenants takes precedent over both the Bible and the Book of Mormon so you see this hierarchy of value in their scriptures the Bible is at the bottom it's the least reliable then the Book of Mormon which issues for proselyting but not for proving doctrine then you get the doctrine of covenants and then a minute we'll talk about the pearl of great price which is even more far out in the doctrines that are introduced there but that's and then of course above all of that is the current prophet and he aces anything so they can change anything any day that's there they are not bound by their printed word of the past 16 presidents of the LDS Church only two besides Smith contributed a section to the Doctrine and Covenants section 136 is the only one attributed to Brigham Young Joseph Smith successor in 1847 the Lord explained how the Mormons were to organize in various companies sharing their goods among the group on their journey west to the Great Salt Lake section 138 is a dream of President Joseph F Smith dated October 3rd 1918 which was not canonized until 1976 and I think the reason they canonized this old dream this past Prophet Joseph Smith was so that it wouldn't look like they had a closed canon at the end of the doctrine of covenants our two official LDS Church public declarations which are presented as the result of a revelatory process but they are not the actual revelations thus relegating them to the end of the book in a different category called Declaration 1 and declaration 2 declaration 1 was issued in 1890 by President Wilford Woodruff instructing members to no longer enter enter into plural marriages but if you go and read the what they termed the manifesto it is not written as an edict saying that it was the word from God that they were not to enter into polygamy it was his advice because of the problems are having with the government that they should stop entering into polygamy and it didn't stop to practice there's a book called solemn covenant by a historian and in the back of it he lists over 200 different top church leaders that took four wives after 1890 it did not stop the practice only it stopped it amongst the rank and file the leaders still had some sort of backdoor approval to continue in polygamy in my own great-grandpa Brigham Young junior took a plural life after the manifesto and he was an apostle and destined like to become president of the church if it out live Joseph F Smith declaration too was issued in 1978 under President Spencer W Kimball which announced the end of the priesthood ban on blacks opening the way for them to be admitted to the temple in the April 2008 General Conference LDS apostle Jeffrey R Holland explained that the Mormon concept of continuing revelation quote the fact of the matter is that virtually every prophet of the Old and New Testament has added Scripture to that received by his predecessors if one revelation to one profit in one moment of time is sufficient for all time what justifies these many others I testified that the heavens are open I testified that the presence of such authorized prophetic voices and ongoing canonized revelations have been at the heart of the Christian message whenever the authorised Ministry of Christ has been on the earth now that's a very curious statement it has now been 40 years since any addition has been made to the Doctrine and Covenants which raises the question of whether or not the LDS Church has arrived at a closed Canon now it's possible they will put something in in the near future I don't have any inside track on this but because of the problem of looking like a closed Canon I wouldn't be surprised at some point if they make their declaration on the family the proclamation of family I wouldn't be surprised to see it become a declaration number three but again it doesn't say it's revelation I don't think we're going to see another quote revelation unless they resurrect an old one from one of the old prophets Smith's revelations were first put into book form in 1833 as the book of Commandments been reissued in 1835 under the title Doctrine and Covenants such additional revelations have been received after the 1833 printing of the volume was enlarged however most members did not realize that Smith had rewritten that revelations when it was presented to them in 1835 and they had introduced new doctrines such as the inclusion of not hesitant priesthood David Whitmer one of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon stated that when it became known that Joseph Smith had changed his revelations the result was that some of the members of the church left on account of it so they printed the 1833 book of Commandments the press got destroyed they had to leave Independence they end up in Kirtland Ohio they do a new edition of the printing of his revelations changed the name to Doctrine and Covenants and they presented to the church for a vote but most people have not examined the volume they didn't know the revelations had been rewritten many of them wouldn't have even seen the 1833 printing because it was done in a different state and so when the vote was taken they didn't even know they were voting in a change to Canon and I think that would be true all along the line whenever they've changed the Canon the average person in the audience wouldn't have seen an advanced copy and wouldn't know what they're voting on today the LDS Church claims that in 1829 God sent Peter James and John to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery to ordain them to the Melchizedek Priesthood however all early Mormon documents and Diaries showed that the founding members of the LDS Church were not aware of any such claim to priesthood this is but one example of the waste miss doctrines evolved over the fourteen years he acted us prophet now if you heard my other lecture on priesthood you'll be aware of how greatly the revelations were changed through the years to add new concepts but here we have a photo from the 1833 book of Commandments this is chapter 28 showing the words that would be needed to be added to have it read as it does today in section 27 of the Doctrine and Covenants yet when a Mormon reads his current Doctrine and Covenants he will have no idea that section 27 is now twice as long as the original another evidence of Smith's evolving story is his rewriting of section 5 of the Doctrine and Covenants in the original 1833 printing chapter 4 of the book of Commandments he was told that the only gift and calling that God had given him was to translate the Book of Mormon this was free written in 1835 to read that the translation was just the first gift that God would give him thus opening the door for further scriptures section 8 was also rewritten in the 1833 printing which would have been section seven Oliver Cowdery Smith scribe was commanded commended for his gift of working with a divining rod or rod of nature but now the revelation euphemistically refers to Calgary's quote gift of Aaron C instead of rod in nature the rod of nature would have been a witching stick what looked like a why stick that people used to find water on their property but it was used to find minerals or buried treasures or any number of things in Joseph's State and Calgary was known for working with the rod of nature but as the Mormons moved away from New York and away from their magic beginnings they changed the revelation to say gift of Aaron to hide that magical involvement for more on the changes in the Doctrine and Covenants see our website at UT LMO org also one can read the different editions of Smith's revelations on our phone app gospel facts and friend of ours has been working to get that so you can see all the different editions of their scriptures now we want to look at the Aprilia great price the pearly great price is a compilation of several writings first is The Book of Moses which is an extract from Smith's Bible revision composed during the early 1830s covering parts of Genesis here we see Smith reinforcing the idea of only one God and Moses 1/3 we breed I am without beginning of days or end of years then in verse 6 we read there is no god beside me the story of creation in chapter 2 is carried out by the quote Almighty God and quote by mine only begotten the book of Moses is followed by the Book of Abraham which is purported to be the translation of an ancient papyrus written by the very hand of Abraham in it Joseph Smith moves from a strictly monotheistic view of God to that of polytheism Abraham for one states and the Lord said let us go down and they went down at the beginning and they that is the gods capital G with a plural capital G God's organized and formed the heavens and the earth next is another extract from Smith's Bible translation in the book of Matthew chapter 24 this is followed by an extract from Joseph Smith's history of the church recounting the beginning of Mormonism the last item in the promo great price is the articles of faith which was printed in 1842 but does not enumerate their most heretical doctrines such as temple rituals and multiple gods also it only mentions two books of Scripture the Bible and Book of Mormon leaving out the Doctrine and Covenants a pearl of great price so we see the Book of Moses written in the early 1830s has one God The Book of Abraham written in the late 1830s and early 1840s teaches plural gods his doctrines evolved through his whole time period as we've demonstrated in our book flaws in the pearl of great price each section of the pearl of great price has undergone many revisions now we want to look for a minute at the Book of Abraham which is part of the pearl of great price in 1835 Michael Chandler brought his travelling Egyptian mummy exhibit to the Mormon town of Kirtland Ohio upon examination Joseph Smith offered to buy the collection as he had discerned that one of the Egyptian papyrus scrolls contained the writings of Old Testament patriarch Abraham after purchasing the mummies and scrolls for $2,400 Smith embarked on his new translation project if this were truly the writings of Abraham it would be the oldest known of biblical texts even the Dead Sea Scrolls would dim in comparison like the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith professed to be translating an ancient record preserved by God to come forth in these last days it was no less than the original account of the creation as recorded by Abraham which would even predate his translation of the Moses account in his revision of the Bible which is funny when you look at it because the old Abraham version would have been plural gods and then his Moses version would have moved to one God which seems odd and Mormon view of things during this time the study of Egyptian hieroglyphics was in its infancy which no doubt left Joseph's feeling free to offer his interpretation of the papyri without fear of challenge while frenchman champ Olien had been involved in deciphering the rosetta stone in the 1820s which proved to be the key to translating Egyptian his research was little known in the United States during Smith's lifetime included in the Book of Abraham or three illustrations taken from the papyri and these are titled fact similes 1 2 & 3 facsimile number 1 which is on the screen shows a black standing figure a man lying on a couch a bird and four jars underneath the couch Smith described this as quote Abraham fastened upon an altar and quote the ideal idolatrous priests of Elkanah attempting to offer up Abraham as a sacrifice end quote the bird was identified as the angel of the Lord and the four jars were said to represent four idolatrous gods however Egyptologists would later identify this as a standard seen from the Egyptian Book of the Dead showing the god Anubis overseeing the embalming of Osiris originally the papyrus would have shown Anubis the black figure with a jackal head so be like a dog along snow but the papyrus had evidently been damaged and the Mormons were guessing at the type of head to place on the black figure underneath the couch are four canopic jars used to store the person's organs when you get embalmed the lid represent the four sons of Horus and the bird above the figure represents the soul of the person who's being embalmed facsimile number two is the disc with numerous figures and hieroglyphic inscriptions in smith's purported translation of the text he explained that the central figure represented Kolob the first creation nearest to the residents of God other figures related to priesthood various planets and stars in the measurement of time and God sitting upon his throne however these this object is known as the hypothesis it's a magical disk that is placed under the head of the mummy to aid the person in his journey in the afterlife and some of the writing on joseph smith's high pacifist can be deciphered it's a poor copy but a lot of the text that would be on there is standard to other hypo specialists discs that have been preserved in different museums like the Metropolitan the British Museum has a number of these pipe assemblers disks so this isn't special I mean it's not like there's millions of copies of these hypothesis discs but their standard Egyptian funerary objects that are common to anyone studying the Egyptian religion here we have facsimile number three this is a picture of five figures a woman standing behind a seated man and then another woman a man and a black figure and these three illustrations are all in their pro a great price today any copy of their scriptures that have protal great price will have these illustrations Joseph Smith explained that this was a picture of Abraham seated upon Farrell's throne with Pharaoh standing behind him now if you look that's clearly a woman standing behind the guy sitting down we can tell from her dress that's a woman the cross a thing that comes across for holding up a dress and the way the dress is drawn her hair everything and the horns on top tell us this is a particular deity it isn't just up for grabs who this is and Pharaoh sitting on the throne has the crown of Egypt it's clearly who these people are however Egyptologists identify this as a judgement scene from the Book of the Dead showing Isis standing behind the seated figure of Osiris standing in front of the seated figure according to Joseph Smith is a prince of Pharaoh Smith identified well okay Prince of farrell happens to be a woman and it's the the goddess Maat the god is the truth and that we know that from the feather circle thing on top of her head that identifies her besides her names are up in the stuff above their heads if you could he didn't copy their writing very good Smith identified the next figure at shulam one of the Kings principal waiters and the black figure as olam law a slave belonging to the prince however the three figures in front of Osiris have been identified as MOT the goddess of truth the deceased person for whom the papyrus was made and the black figure is the half-man jackal half jackal deity Anubis the black figure as scholars increase in their ability to read Egyptian hieroglyphs attention was turned to examining the fact similes reproduced in the Book of Abraham in 1912 and 1930 in 13 several of the world's top Egyptologists of the day commented on Smith's interpretation of the drawings one of the scholars who examined Smith's work was James H breasted pH D Haskell oriental Museum University of Chicago and breasted is still considered one of the top Egyptologist if you were going to school on this you would hear this man's name all the time and here's his quote these three fact similes of Egyptian documents in the pearl of great price depict the most common objects in the mortuary religion of Egypt Joseph Smith's interpretation of them as part of a new unique revelation through Abraham therefore very clearly demonstrate that he meaning Joseph Smith was totally unacquainted with the significance of these documents and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of Egyptian writing and civilization other Egyptologists have rendered similar verdicts of Smith's erroneous interpretations today the heading of the Book of Abraham still contains the same claim of being an authentic translation of the papyri it reads The Book of Abraham translated from the papyrus by Joseph Smith a translation of some ancient records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt called the Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus and you're looking a pro great price today at the Book of Abraham and you will see this heading at the of the book and there is nothing in that book that in the Book of Abraham that proves to be what it claims to be while the fact similes have come under attack since 1912 there had been no way for the scholars to test miss purported translation of the papyri as it was sumed that the papyri had been destroyed however Swiss translation would be put to the test in 1967 when a number of pieces of the long-lost Joseph Smith papyri were presented to the LDS Church by the Metropolitan Museum in New York once photos of the papyri were printed in the 1968 improvement era an official LDS magazine scholars began the search to determine which piece Smith had utilized in his claim of translating the piece was identified by comparing Joseph Smith's translation papers and his Egyptian alphabet and grammar with the papyri so this is with all his working papers when he's working on his manuscript it was soon determined that Smith had used characters from the piece of papyri identified as number 11 small sensin texts also referred to as the book of breathing's which is a condensed version of the Book of the Dead all of the first two rows of characters on the papyrus can be found in the manuscript of the Book of Abraham to the side of the papyrus you see the handwritten man is part of the handwritten manuscript of the Book of Abraham and I know you can't read it on that slide but we have photos where you can read them and you will notice the little arrows on the papyri and then the arrows to the side of the written text in English where you have it looks like a backwards e on the Joseph Smith Papers and then it looks like an x over an A and then it looks like hen scratches but a 1 and a 4 and this ero or whatever and it's obvious that those characters following an order are written down to the side of his translation and you can follow this through through the first several mine 4 lines of this papyrus you can follow through on his working papers where are the Egyptian characters are written to the side of the English text all of the first two rows of characters on the papyrus fragment and in the manuscript of the Book of Abraham other manuscript pages show that he used almost four lines of the papyrus to make fifty-one verses in the Book of Abraham these 51 verses are composed of more than 2,000 English words so you see four lines of Egyptian text there and he makes that to be 2000 in Bush words a person does not have to know Egyptian to know that it would be impossible to translate over 2,000 words from a few Egyptian characters and in those 2,000 words you would have very many proper names nouns and words that could not be contained in those small of a set of characters this piece Joseph Smith's number 11 small sentient text has been translated by several Egyptologists with virtual agreement contrary to Smith's version the English translation takes up just slightly more space than than the actual hieroglyphs and has nothing to do with Abraham and the translation has been published in a number of the Mormon historians journals so this is the translation of this is known by all their historians which creates a real problem how do you reconcile this Mormon scholars realizing the problem of defending a literal nation for The Book of Abraham have not now proposed that either Smith didn't use this in sent text and that the P Smith did use no longer exist or it doesn't have to be a literal translation of the papyrus but could be a revelation triggered by looking at the artifacts some have also proposed that Smith used the drawings from the papyri only to illustrate his revelation not that the drawings were originally an illustration as composed by Abraham however the heading of the Book of Abraham still carries the official statement that it is a translation not revelation translation of the papyrus and that it is the writings of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus if the Book of Abraham is a product of Revelation not an actual translation and the fact similes were not drawn to illustrate Abraham's text one wonders why the Mormons needed to purchase these papyri in the first place in Joseph Smith's day the papyri were certainly presented to the public as actually being abraham's record for a fuller treatment of the Book of Abraham problem see our book Mormonism shadow or reality or Charles Larsen's book by his own hand upon papyrus now in conclusion in 1992 the LDS First Presidency issued an official statement about the Bible and modern-day revelation and the August issue of the enzyme it reads in part quote the most reliable way to measure the accuracy of any biblical passage is not by comparing different texts but by comparison with the Book of Mormon and modern died at modern-day revelations however LDS scriptures disagree among themselves they've undergone significant visions and some are obviously not the ancient texts they claim to be how would these books apply a more sure foundation Mormon historian and author Gregory Prince observed quotes speaking of the Mormons if they take the time to read their own history they will understand that not a single significant LDS doctrine has gone unchanged throughout the entire history of the church the Bible supported by ancient manuscripts maps and artifacts was here long before Joseph Smith it should stand it should stand as the point of reference for evaluating Smith's revelations not the other way around the great Isaiah manuscript from the Dead Sea Scrolls dating a hundred years before Christ stands as a great witness to the careful preservation of the Scriptures today we have thousands of ancient Bible manuscripts and pieces of manuscripts demonstrating that it has always carried the same message there is no textual evidence that Mormonism's unique doctrines were ever part of the canon there is ample evidence that LDS scriptures have gone through significant revision and I want to make note here I'm not saying there aren't disagreements on different manuscripts and different certain passages in the translation of the Bible but there is no evidence of serious doctrinal tampering for the Bible to have ever contained Mormonism would have demanded such great revision that surely some manuscript would have survived that would show that type of doctrine and they simply are not there Paul warned in Galatians 1:6 eight I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel not that there is another one but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ but even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you let him be accursed surely Joseph Smith was preaching a different gospel than found in the New Testament we do not have every word that Jesus uttered but we have all that is necessary to come to him for eternal life in John chapter 20 verses 30 through 31 we read and many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book but these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and that believing you might have life through his name thank you in Joseph Smith day there were amongst the people involved a magic and money digging in that type of thing it was a common thought that certain rocks had magical powers and so some people found crystal stones and felt that they someway had some sort of magic powers this is like the crystal ball gazes at the gypsies or whatever there was this idea that certain rocks had certain powers he's digging a well and he finds this stone that's about like the size of a hen's egg and the striping in it is kind of unusual and this the smoothness of it and all I assume it was in some creek bed at one time and made it all round and smooth like that he just thought it looked unusual so he saved it and it's been saved all these years the Mormon Church handed in their first Presidency's fault when they came to Utah they brought it with them and they just have never owned up to it until just a few years ago and there was so much historical research done that obviously they were going to have to discuss the stone so they finally now have brought it out into the open but it's not something they just found they knew all along they had it in their vault many of the other early Mormons also had stones and some of these stones they had would have been Indian artifacts one of the the early Mormons had a stone that was round kind of flat each stone that had little holes drilled in it and that's an early American Indian artifact and so some of them had these types of things one of the stones is rectangular with a hole in the middle kind of like a piece of slate or something and so there were didn't all have to be like an egg shape it's just they had to be something that spoke to you that's unusual that you could use to Sarah to get revelation in fact in early Mormon ISM Hyrum page one of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon also had a stone and he started giving revelations at the very beginning the Mormon Church he was giving revelations and influencing some of the early Mormons and so Joseph Smith gets a revelation then oh wait a minute only one guy in the church gets to get the revelations through the stone so you can get revelations for your family but not for the church and so he kind of clamped down on others using their stones but others in the church had stones this was a common thing amongst those involved in this magic setting I think Michael Quinn researcher on Mormonism at one time said that the first hundred conference into Mormonism we're out of the New York magic world view and that's what made it easier for them to embrace Mormonism because this was their neighborhood there are their ideas of how things work that you could get revelations through his stone a this was a rock that Joseph thought looked unusual and you might have saved it for a object to put on your desk as a paperweight but he thought as a divine instrument which raises the question you wonder if the Mormon Church leaders ever look at it I thought you know if you knew you had this would you sneak it out sometimes just the look I uh it's just one of the things I thought about [Music] yes the man that the traveling sideshow thing that this guy comes with a wagon through town you would charge us so much money to go through his wagon and look at genuine Egyptian mummies and manuscripts so Joseph Smith saw this wagon with all of this Egyptian material they were genuine Egyptian material the guy who owned them knew they were genuine Egyptian material and so he knew what he was buying he also knew I'm sure from this man that no one can read Egyptian so he hotdogs you know I can say whatever I bought that they translate and who's gonna say different only he didn't count on the fact that people would learn Egyptian and that years later his documents would be challenged on the translation but yes he knew what he was buying he was just counting on no one understanding what the writing was [Music] yes the point the glance was making was that with the changes in Mormonism through the years it looks like the polygamous and the fundamentalist movements would be closer to early Mormonism than the actual official LDS Church and that would be true now the polygamists have morphed into some of their own ideas as well they've changed through the years but in general they probably are founded more on Brigham Young's Mormonism than the current church today and which I find funny that the Mormons want to hold Brigham Young as a prophet of God but they don't want to look at what he taught it's it's like yes he was a prophet but we don't study what he wrote okay how do you skip prophets if you have this chain of authority then it seems like each prophet should be valuable to study what they taught and if they taught on the doctrine of God I would think that a prophet would be pretty important to listen to and yet they don't follow Brigham Young is out of God doctrine and they skip over a lot of what he said so it's a curious mix when you start looking at all the splinter groups of Mormonism and compare them to each other and with a Utah Church the such a great variety of truth all coming from just Joseph Smith and then everything branches out into all sorts of different beliefs from there Aaron did you have well when they found when the myth prompt Museum turned over the papyri to the LDS Church the facsimile number one has been preserved and was connected to other pieces of papyri and so you have accidentally number one we have the original for that and the piece that were hooked to it of Egyptian text is the piece that we combined up the characters with his manuscript where he put pieces of the characters alongside his English wording so we know it all goes together and in the text of the Book of Abraham Abraham says when he's talking about being offered on his altar of sacrifice he says to give you an illustration of this I've given you a picture of this at the front of Mike record meaning facsimile number one where he's on the lion couch scene and supposedly being offered as sacrifice so in the text of the Book of Abraham of the English text Joseph makes reference to facsimile number one so there's no doubt about that and facsimile number three the judgment scene papyrus they can read some of the text on that and it was part of the same like a collection of papyri and the hypothesis disc that he draws the original that's been lost but in Joseph Smith's Egyptian working papers he did a drawing there someone did a drawing of the - seselis disk so we have that preserved in the Joseph Smith papers of the drawing at the hypersurface where he's giving his interpretation of all of these characters in his definitions underneath and when you look at the pearly great price under each facsimile is Joseph Smith's explanation of the text so he ties it all together as part of a composite group and everything he says about the papyri is wrong about the facsimile just well he got the four jars represented for God so I guess you could say that was right but that's pretty easy guess when you look at that that represented four deities so if you were taking a chat test in Egyptian and you had a hundred questions and you got one right I don't think the professor would think you knew that subject and so getting one good guess isn't enough to show what he knew what he was doing on the Book of Abraham oh yeah they because of the papyri being found at the Metropolitan Museum given to the Mormons it created for thirty years or more all sorts of articles and discussion of the papyri and how they don't translate and when Charles Larsen's book by its own hand upon papyrus came out that became a really popular book and so it was the entryway of questions for many Mormons of their first introduction to problem areas of Mormonism what the Book of Abraham however in recent years as scholars started turning their attention more and more to Joseph Smith history in his life the question of how many wives he had and how he married these women became more important and then you had Compton's book in sacred loneliness where he gives a biography of 33 of Joseph Smith's plural wives and this brought it so much more to the forefront of the fact of the married women which became a tremendous problem for men they could see how wrong this would be to approach married women to take them as plural wives and as that become became more known and discussed then polyandry a woman having more than one husband became an easier problem to understand and grasp and it became a growing awareness and problem for people believing Mormonism I think both issues look at me bruh ham and Joseph Smith's practice of polygamy are our serious struggles for people today but I think I'm hearing from people more of their struggles with polygamy and polyandry today than I am with people struggling with book of Abraham but both of them are both paramount in today's world of the start of questions in Mormonism okay the question was why did the metropolitan turn the papyri over to the church well that's another story as I understand it the Metropolitan Museum was going through a remodeling and was looking for any ways to capitalize on their collections to do better displays and more artifacts and things for the museum the museum knew that these were the Joseph Smith papyri they had known what was in their possession since I forget when they purchased them in the early part of the 1900s and they purchased them from descendant of a family member there was a house keeper to the Smiths or something and so there was a provenance with the papyri that they knew when they bought them it was the Joseph Smith papyri now they may have had in mind to do something with those at some point but they changed directors of the museum after they acquired them and evidently Byrd the next guy wasn't interested in the Mormons he put it in the back drawer and nothing was done with it and so along comes in the 1960s professor attea who was a Coptic Christian who taught at University of Utah and was the head of their Oriental Studies in Egyptians studies and that and here in Utah what's back at the Metropolitan Museum doing studies and so some smart guy and the museum thought oh this our chance we'll just slide those pictures in front of dr. Atia while he's sitting here researching and see if he makes any connection well anyone that's been around the Mormons in the Book of Abraham would recognize facsimile number one dr. Tiye thought you might be interested in looking at this particular papyri oh my goodness this is Joseph Smith papyri you know so they did not give the papyri to the Mormons and this was brought out the director of the museum was interviewed later and there are different published interviews with the people involved and the director of the Metropolitan mm-hmm can't remember his name anyways he was asked about what do you guys just go around giving stuff away to people that are interested oh no no this was made possible because of a gift to the museum in other words the Mormon Church went to a mission president and asked him to buy some ancient Egyptian artifacts to donate to the Metropolitan and so the Metropolitan would be able to gift the papyri to the Mormon Church so the Mormon Church could say we didn't buy them they always have a deniability to build into anything we saw this in the Mark Hofman case they always want deniability they had someone else buy things rather than themselves and so they have a mission president make a donation to the museum that puts them using in in a frame of mind to give the papyri to the Mormon Church so was an exchange but the Mormons knew what they were buying the Egyptian the Metropolitan knew what they were turning over everyone knew what they had and it turned out to be a big headache for the church I'm sure they wished it and never said yes we want to buy him I think we really close now I'm getting tired yeah yeah talk to me afterwards

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Length: 86min 51sec (5211 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 26 2018