This FBI Investigation May Prove Joseph Smith didn’t WRITE the Book of Mormon | John Hilton III

if you publish my essay I'll stop bombing people John Hilton the thir John Hilton the thir so great they made three of them and professor in religious education at briam University M degree from Harvard University let me take you back to the 1990s it's a totally different world back there a guy named Kinski who's on the FBI's most wanted list because he's sticking bombs in people's mailboxes for 17 years the uni bomber people have died people have been hurt the FBI cannot figure out who this guy is what have you been up to I've been doing a lot of writing get anything published yeah one thing and he sends it to the New York Times says if you publish my essay I'll stop bombing people New York Times contacts the FBI and then they contact my grandpa hon has used his techniques to help the FBI identify possible authors of the uni bomber's Manifesto and that leads to the unibomber being arrested the idea that there's a unique style of writing it's part of the academic literature and it was actually part of the criminal literature but also has led to helping us discover that there are many unique voices in The Book of Mormon and helps us answer the question if Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon there's so much intellectual evidence that says there is no way Joseph Smith wrote the book of morm and word prins is one of those and so I thought it was awesome that my grandpa's research was you know fighting crime but it was even cooler when I discovered what he was doing in terms of the Book of Mormon so a question is did Joseph Smith write the Book of Mormon if Joseph Smith made up The Book of Mormon then he's not a true Prophet the church he started is not true right there so much hangs on is the Book of Mormon the word of God did Joseph Smith Make It Up so what my grandpa was doing was he took a corpus of Joseph Smith's words and then he took words from Mormon words attributed to Alma in the Book of Mormon because there's lots of different speakers in the Book of Mormon and basically he statistically proved Joseph Smith Oliver cry did not write the Book of Mormon the word prints are totally different just help us understand a little bit more of like what exactly is it is the the structure of stylometry and how it works in just lame in terms so with the type of stylometry that my grandpa was doing and and there are different branches of it he was looking at small words the of and so words that we use all the time and we might not distinguish how frequently we're using them or in what way or in what order but there actually is a coherence that individual word print or fingerprint and how people use them and so that's what he that was kind of the main method that he was using to detect differences in speaker voices so he's using these different he's using this uh method to look at in the Book of Mormon okay there's these multiple characters right and so Nephi um Alma Mormon they have a specific way that they Place their words and then how does it look how does it appear on like a if if I'm looking at it visually what does it look like so this this is kind of funny some grandpas take their grandson fishing my grandpa never took me fishing but he showed me awesome charts like he's got he would make like this little 3D models kind of showing in a three-dimensional space Here's kind of the zone of what Nephi is talking here's Elma over here here's Mormon over here here's Joseph Smith he's way different than all of them and so like that that was how he would conceptualize it and kind of show it in a 3D space so in a 3D space you can because because I know I mean we have to get into the detail details of it they can basically calculate whatever the analysis is that they use and it distinctly shows the differences this is specifically the consistencies that you see on this graph of Alma this is specifically the consistencies of Nephi and they're they're separate right right so and especially separate from Joseph Smith there's no doubt that Joseph Smith is not the voice of Mormon Mormon's voice is distinct Alma's voice is distinct from Nephi's voice different and and that's actually one of the interesting findings is that it's not just that Joseph Smith didn't write the Book of Mormon it's that there are different word prints within the Book of Mormon which is what you'd expect the Book of Mormon is a multiauthored work and so you could say because I'm just thinking about you know in my mind mind okay I mean I've read Harry Potter okay you know I've read you know you know the classics right you got Shakespeare you got a lot of people that have that are like genius writers okay can just give us an understanding of what would be the likelihood that Joseph Smith could pull this off a great question so some researchers actually did statistical analysis they looked at Jane Austin Charles Dickens other authors in that genre and found that they did have voice distinction the Jane Austin character had different voices just like you're talking about with Harry Potter however there was a there's a way to measure the difference between voices and when they looked at Book of Mormon individuals like Mormon versus Nephi or versus Alma the difference in Book of Mormon voices was greater than the difference in Jane Austin characters and again that's something that I would not base my testimony of the Book of Mormon but it's so interesting to think here's Joseph Smith with very little formal education and he's translating The Book of Mormon in his early 20s so is this something that a young adult with no education can pull off this level of voice distinction yeah probably not so there's there's multiple voices Joseph Smith at the time he's only 23 what details do we have about his writing ability generally so his wife Emma Smith says that he couldn't dictate a coherent letter and I think that she's actually one of the most interesting Witnesses of the translation process of the book of morm she's there up close and personal she tells us that Joseph Smith as he's translating he would if he took a break come back and pick up immediately where he left off to me that's astonishing like if I'm writing a research paper yeah type type type go eat lunch come back first thing you do scroll back see where you've been Joseph Smith never does that it's like he scribed and it came to pass and the Scrib's like and it came to pass I if I S to my father and they write that down hey let's go get lunch come back I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded they just boom pick up right where they left off that's amazing so how long did it take him to from the time to to complete it yeah from the time Oliver calry arrives and they start scribing uh transla the book of more until the time that it's done is less than three months and during that time they're doing tons of other stuff they're running back and forth to different cities baptizing people receiving revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants so altogether Scholars estimate that there's about 60 working days to translate The Book of Mormon 65 working days so within those three months knowing that they were doing all these other different things 65 days only of all those days of like those potentially close to 90 days even that's impressive but even of those it's it's likely just what do they do journal entries that they could see what they were doing exactly looking at other records letters and one of the things I think is so interesting is Imagine that's eight pages per day of translation that means something like the psalm of Nephi is translated in an hour or two and then if you start digging into the psalm of Nephi you see that there's all these Old Testament psalms that are integrated into the psalm of Nephi really is this amazing poetic piece of literature there's no way this was composed in less than an hour so this is second Nei chapter 4 you talking about correct yeah and it has references to pieces of the Old Testament psalms of the Psalms from the yeah so what it what what what is really happening is there's a real person Nephi he's been reading Psalms that are written on the brass plates or that he had reflected learned at the temple whatever and it's pouring out of him and so here's a real person with real feelings who's going through a real hard time quoting from the Psalms and that's something that even you and I we don't even realize that we're educated readers and the writers and we're like we we often don't even see that there's Psalms embedded in and this is something that Joseph Smith translates in less than an hour and a half that's amazing so so so wait so back up cuz cuz I cuz I've always wanted to ask this what what do we have that helps us know that like for sure it is 100% sure certain that it was three months and it was and it was 65 days like what is it what helps us know that so if you start backing things up Joseph Smith gets the plates in September of 1827 he translates the first 116 pages but those are lost by Martin Harris so the plates are taken away from a time and when he gets them back it's September of 1820 8 so the first year has gone by and we have zero in terms of what we have as the Book of Mormon today then over the next six months Joseph Smith tries to make some sporadic attempts to translate but he doesn't have a scribe Oliver calry comes in April of 1829 that's when the translation of the book ofor begins in Earnest and it's done at the end of June so that's where you get the so we know for sure just and is mostly is it is it just journal entries basically yeah journal entries letters so I think I just because a lot of people would say say okay well he still could have just been this really genius guy like he could have just written this you know and I'm not trying to play like you know the Devil's Advocate or anything I'm just trying to think like like because for me I've read the book of Mormon and I believe that is true I know that is true I've had God witness that to me um and there's these different technicalities of it right but um so so let me back up so we're we're actually getting to the point where we know that there are distinctions in the different authors an example of that being in second Nephi chapter 4 there's no way in the time span that he did this that he could have like written those those intricacies you believe that it was a Nephi was a man and he had the these experiences and you can see that in this in this uh research of the distinction in his voice great qu yes absolutely and so if you take um Nephi as a specific example so my grandfather he did statistical research where he was looking at these uh small words I'm not a statistician so I'm not looking at things the exact same way but I looked more at unique words and phrases so consider the phrase my soul delighteth sounds like a scriptural phrase it appears 11 times in the Book of Mormon and it's only used by Nephi he uses it on multiple different occasions it's like a signature Nephi phrase so that's what I was looking at is not not so much the statistical details but more of the Nuance details of what are the topics where a person is just clearly gravitating that or in this case of my soul Delight it's just a unique phrase that seems to be a signature for that person so it seems clear that Nephi is a distinctive character he has distinctive ways of speaking just like your great Aunt Sally has her own distinctive voices and phrases that she uses that's so cool um before we leave this topic one other thing you you were kind of you're kind of saying I don't want to play The Devil's Advocate but you know people might be wondering is it possible Joseph Smith could somehow be writing writing things down ahead of time so he's prepped or he's just a super genius and Emma Smith tells us he has no notes there's he is he's got his face into a hat and he's reading the words that appear on the searstone so according to the closest witnesses there is no way that Joseph Smith is reading off a prepared text so is it technically possible that Joseph Smith is a super genius and somehow creates this it's possible and that's why I always say like don't base your testimony of the book ofs it's that spiritual witness that really matters but can I take us on a little diversion yeah yeah so a couple years after this experience I had with my grandpa at BYU I'm serving as a full-time missionary in Colorado and we knocked on a door and the people like oh come on in and we're so excited but as soon as we went in they just started throwing the all this antim moring material at us they're like did you know that briam young said this and all these things and I'm like you know a 20-year-old kid I've never heard this stuff and and as I walked out I was kind of like whoo like what what just happened like are are all these things that I was just told by these guys true and what I think is so helpful is that I had a grandpa who taught me about word prints and we could talk about kmus the translation process of the Book of Mormon other of these little intellectual details that show us that Joseph Smith is not making up the Book of Mormon so when I was confronted with some new facts that I needed to assimilate and come to understand it was really helpful to have some intellectual backdrop for the Book of Mormon again you don't like base your testimony on it but people are going to hit you with intellectual evidence against the Book of Mormon so I think it's helpful to know that there's a lot of intellectual evidence for the Book of Mormon and to be familiar with that so for you you felt that when you're on your mission yeah you know your book your Book of Mormon testimony is based on spiritual things as well but you're saying having the intellectual pieces that your grandpa helped you establish that actually was helpful for you to not not get thrown off yeah and I would kind of describe it as like the scaffolding when you're building a building you use scaffolding to kind of support the building while it's being constructed that's right I think there's something similar here as your deep spiritual testimony is being constructed for there to be an intellectual scaffolding so when some kind of random new fact I use the word fact in you know air quotes here some some something that maybe even is taken out of context maybe it's not even a fact is thrown at me I don't just like oh well forget about everything no no no I've got a holding space to be able to think and analyze more independently well let's take a second and look at like what what would you say are some of the assumptions that might be made because there are different things that come up so if the question is did Jose Smith write the Book of Mormon what are some assumptions that that are that's at the top that's the question at the top what are some of the assumptions that might be made with some of these accusations or that might throw somebody off if they don't have the scaffolding yeah so so I mean maybe a person grows up and in their mind their mental picture of the translation process of the bookm is that there's a sheet between Martin Harris and or Oliver cry and Joseph Smith and they're translating and then later on they find out oh Emma said that Joseph is looking into a hat at a sear Stone and I'm like whoa that like that's not what I heard and all of a sudden that starts to make me feel like well maybe everything's not true okay that I I feel like that kind of thing could throw somebody off so like the idea of if if the expectation if what I'm assuming that it is is I'm assuming that it was a certain way and that it's always that way that could throw me off is that what you're saying yeah okay because I think it's important to address the Assumption because I think that we always see the question at the top and it's like well what are the assumptions that we might make one of them being it's it's this way that I'm always picturing that's the way that it is and if it's not that way then that means that it's wrong yeah are there any others that you could think of that might be potential like Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon and I find out X whatever fill in the blank what might be the assumption that I'm making well for example think about the bank failure of Kirtland Ohio some people might think well why is Joseph Smith telling people to invest in the Kirtland safety Society if he's a prophet he should have known that it was going to fail so maybe he's not a prophet then maybe he didn't translate The Book of Mormon so I think anything that attacks the prophetic power of or mantle of Joseph Smith is something that could then cause someone to question the authorship of the Book of Mormon you've you've gone through all these different studies and research compiling different people's research and all of these different are I want to say different areas but uh you've been in the thick of it is what I'm trying to say what are some of the things that you've noticed in the distinction of these different voices so back in 2011 I had a good friend named Randall Wright and he invited myself and a couple of other professors Sean Hopkin and Jennifer Brinkerhoff to work with him to split apart the text of the Book of Mormon by the person who is speaking and if you're ever looking for a fun exercise to do in your scripture study this is great you know to to like walk through the text and figure out like okay when's Nephi talking and then Nephi will say thus saith the Lord yeah so then like now we got the voice of the Lord when does it go back to Nephi to Jacob so we took the entire Book of Mormon and we split it apart by the person who was speaking and then with the help of some people with a software program called word cruncher we put it all into a database and by the way this database word cruncher you can download it for free at word crrc and this voices in The Book of Morman database is a part of it you can just download it for free and what it allows you to do is pick any word repent and all of a sudden you can find out who says the word repent in the Book of Mormon and see if there's unique patterns around them so we were able to use this database then to try to start to figure out who has unique voices and sometimes it's in really small words like Alma he'll use the word now and yay statistically more than any other major speaker and you can kind of hear it once you're like on once you're looking for it you see like there's an urgency in Alma's speeches you know now I want you to do this yay behold you know you got let's do this like that's kind of an alma he's an INT guy you can you can feel that sometimes they're more theological in nature you'll see for example Jacob uses words like death hell way more than any other speaker and so while there's a really tender side to Jacob he also uses the word anxiety more than any other speaker there's also sort of a a side that says there is really a god there really is a devil he really has angels and you're going to be one of them if you don't follow God's path it's a distinctive way that Jacob speaks you know what you just gave me this thought this is so Random like uh you know angel speak by the power of the Holy Ghost therefore they speak the words of Christ I'm wondering if when Joseph Smith is translating I'm wondering if like uh if they were repres like you know if they were in the translation process talking you know what I mean and that that's so Random that's so speculatory I'm not trying to speculate but what if that because because it makes me think of the question of if Joseph Smith did this we're talking about translating from words right like do you have your distinct voice within the thing that you wrote but in this case Joseph Smith is translating something that somebody else wrote right one of the interesting things that Scholars have found is that word prints are detectable even through translation really so if you take like a author who wrote in Spanish and a separate author who wrote in Spanish and their works are translated into English and we do the word print analysis on the English we should be able to see a difference between those texts this is still kind of an early St like this is a like a newer phase of research but the early research church seems to indicate that stylometry is visible through translation wow that's so so Mormon's distinct voice Nephi's distinct voice Alma's distinct voice can come through in English translation that's really interesting yeah and it would make sense because it's almost like the consistency and the aggregate of how it's being translated we would probably see the same patterns yeah interesting let me share with you one of my favorite distinctions and this is one I can't take credit for my son discovered it when he was 11 years old so so about this time president Nelson gave an invitation to go through the Book of Mormon and look for every reference to Christ so my son bless his heart he created a spreadsheet and he would read he was reading through the book Mor every time he saw any reference to Jesus Christ he would put it in a spreadsheet and he kind of put he put in like how old is he now he was 11 at the time what a guy this is amazing so he would put in like if it was said God he'd put in God great God or Lord Lord God Almighty every title he would have as a separate row and then he had every chapter of the Book of Mormon in columns and he would type in Little Numbers of how many times this specific title for Jesus Christ appeared in this chapter okay so he is doing all this research and he shows me and I noticed something that I thought was interesting so in the book of Jacob Jacob used the word god a lot more than he used the word Lord now to me those would be kind of interchangeable terms and if we go back and look at first and second Nephi Nephi uses the word Lord a lot more than God H but now the question what about second Nephi 9 and 10 in these chapters Jacob is the author Jacob is speaking but it's in second Nephi and in those two chapters it follows Jacob's pattern really God Appears more than Lord whoa so he like he showed me all this and I was like we got to run this through in the database we put it in the database and what we found is that it is statistically significant ific that Jacob uses the word God more than Lord Nephi uses the word Lord more than God these two are different than each other so I think that some people may not even know like in second Nephi Jacob is the one writing he's the one speaking and you know and it it does show that he does say that it's him speaking but what you realized was the same way that they refer to God our Lord was the distinction whenever he takes over insec and Nephi right on exactly wow so there are times like you said before where they are mentioning or they are quoting or they are speaking um in different chapters yep right so Jacob's pattern of speech in the book of Jacob also appears in second eepi 9 and 10 when he is the attributed speaker wow and one other thing that I think is just so kind of intricate and detailed about this is I read the book of Morman a bajillion times you have to never notice this that's amazing so so did Joseph Smith as he's transl he's like you know what I'm going to create a unique character named Jacob who's going to use the word God more more than Lord and then I got remember to switch it back and forth like that just defies that doesn't make any sense yeah so there's a distinct there's a distinction in the voices in your 11-year-old son figured this out yeah wow what other any other insights that you found so uh there's because I think it'd be cool to to go through the different voices right like you're kind of given some differences between the two between all of them um what are some of the things that you found like who speaks the most you know what I mean yeah so the what are the things like here's the top five speakers so Mormon who's the main narrator once we get to words of Mormon forward he's got the most words he accounts for about one third of all the words in the Book of Mormon so roughly okay then Nephi comes in at number two he accounts for about 10% of the words in the Book of Mormon third is a surprise it's Elma Elma so even though Elma is not the primary author of any of the books Mormon who writes the book of Alma quotes Alma extensively so Alma accounts for a little over 7% of the Book of Mormon and Moroni the son of Mormon is just behind Elma and then the fifth is Jesus Christ himself wow and I think that's a powerful voice to explore in the Book of Mormon so the top five is first is Mormon is Mormon because he's the one he's a bridging it he's the one um can you give us an understanding because I think because Nephi to a degree is in a way a bridging more history and I think that's probably why he's like probably comes in second right yeah so Nephi is the author of first and second Nephi so we're hearing his voice directly once we get to Mormon once yeah once you get to mosiah through Mormon Mormon is the narrator so even though we might think oh the book of Helman is written by helan that's not correct helan wrote The Source text for it but Mormon is AB bridging it or summarizing helan his son's records and so Mormon is technically the author so the narration we hear from mosiah to Mormon 7 that's Mormon and he's telling these distinct stories of people and and often times isn't there a little bit of a distinction where he's not necessarily quoting people right but he's almost like hypothetically speaking on behalf of them correct yeah I mean so this gets back to the question of like how do we know what a specific person said because they're not like doing voice memos at the time Samuel lame might speaking from the wall so I me I think there is some kind of question as to what extent is Mormon drawing on quotations from original authors and to what extent are those original authors giving like verbatim transcripts versus kind of their summary of what they said so I think there there's some a little bit of uh kind of question that's up in the air but here's something that's like a unique voice that I find fascinating is Samuel the lonite okay so Samuel the lonite there's something unique about him in the Book of Mormon multiple times we read Mormon telling us that Samuel spoke the words that God put into his mouth so God's putting things into his heart Samuel's speaking them Samuel is going to quote from AMC Elma Nephi Jacob and the way that he quotes from these earlier authors is really interesting he he takes prophecies about stuff that's going to happen in the future and then he says now is the time it's happening wow so Elma had or AMU had say said something like if you cast The Righteous out from among you then is the day you'll be destroyed and Samuel says you have cast out the righteous from among you you will be destroyed he takes prophecies that have been made in the past and shifts them forward in the future and that's a consistent thing that he does or he'll take words that were spoken about the Nephites and show how they're now true about the lamanites that the Nephites were the righteous ones now the lamanites are the Righteous ones and so so as you think about this phrase that Mormon uses that the Lord is putting words into Samuel's heart it makes me think that here's Samuel he had been studying the words of earlier prophets and then now as he's teaching God's putting into his heart these words in the very Mo he's treasured up the word and now in the very moment God is helping Samuel give the message that he needs that's one of the values I think of doing this study of individual voices in The Book of Mormon is it forces us to kind of slow down cuz we're used to just like we just got get through my chapter you know we're just reading the text and we already know what's going to happen so this forces us to slow down and think about Sam Lites a real person or here's another example Alma the younger is counseling his son Corey Anon Cory anon on his mission had done some things that weren't right now imagine that you're counseling with your son your son is thinking about leaving the Covenant path and he says Dad I'll listen to you one last time this is your last shot to talk to your son to try to help him out what are you going to say what words will you turn to to help your son now think about Elma the younger his dad Elma The Elder had been converted from the words of aadi his dad was going astray when he's one of King Noah's priests abinadi brought dad back so now Al was thinking my son's going astray let's turn to aadii so when you start when you're attuned to the individual voices of aadii and Alma what you see is that when Elma talks to Cory Anon there's about a dozen times where he will quote from abinadi he never says thus says a benadi but if you look at the word phrases side by side it's obvious he's quoting a benadi and here's what's cool Cory Anon has three major concerns and the quotes from abinadi all address those concerns wow it's like what Al was doing is he's saying I hope the words that help my father will help my son he's carefully crafting his message oo to bless Granton yeah and so like that's a nugget That You Don't See if you're not attuned to the individual voices so uh there's these very intricate experiences that people are naturally going to that aren't just we're not you know checking the box I'm reading today but no Alma had this real experience with his real son and he's going to use his his uh his his dad's experience to help help him come back yeah so Elma one of the people that we might not think of as a major speaker in the Book of Mormon let me just give you a few of his kind of signature things that he talks about the plan okay so the plan as in the Plan of Redemption or the Plan of Salvation this plan is mentioned 30 times in the Book of Mormon and more than half come from Elma wait so it's mentioned 30 times and he mentions them 15 yeah 18 18 better fact check that yeah we can fact check that but I'm saying he he really cares about this yeah more than half the times or another word that's distinctive to Alma is the word Soul so in almost every address Elma gives he uses the word soul and when he talks about Resurrection he says the soul and body will be reunited again now we would think like oh it should be the spirit but that this is how Alm was talking when Jacob talks about the resurrection he talks about the spirit and body United again so it's like this subtle detail that Jacob talks about and Jacob is the second most frequent user of the word soul but he doesn't use it how Alma does he doesn't say the soul and body will come together for Resurrection that's more of what Elma does so so what's the distin what do you think I mean obviously we don't want to speculate but like because people could say well I thought the spirit the soul is the body and the spirit right and what you think I just think Elma Elma doesn't have Doctrine and Covenants 88 in his mind he's not thinking about that distinction I think it's just a unique way that he speaks another example is questions so you know that Alma 5 is full of questions even if you took out Elma 5 Elma still asks more questions than any other speaker in the Book of Mormon really this is again one of his signatures about 20% of all the there's 543 questions in the book of Morman and almost 20% of them come from Alma wow who only accounts for 7% of the text so this is just like his propensity is to teach by asking questions maybe he was kind of more of a teacher you know maybe feel was kind of like it would be interesting to consider like the personalities you know if you were to do like a personality like breakdown of of the different um because I know that people have done that and I know like you know like the Myers break test like you know scientifically you can look at the consistencies that he breaks down into like the intuitive versus extroverted versus introverted you know whatever anyway it would be interesting to see but like even just but even like in the consistencies of the words they say if it compares to that but so Alma says the word he asks a lot of questions asked a lot of questions and and I think that you're right there is something about the personality when you think about Jacob who uses the word anxiety more than anyone else he uses words like tender or wound and he's the only one that uses the word wound to talk about feelings others talk about like physical wounds that makes us start to think about Jacob what what is it like if you're born in the wilderness and when you're four years old or 5 years old you're on a ship and you see your older brother tied up by your other older brothers and your mom and dad are like hey guys stop and L like shut up mom and dad and like that's your mom and dad and you're 5 years old like there's probably what we would call today like a lot of psychological scarring in Jacob it's not surprising that more than anyone else he talks about anxiety and and again like these thinking about his unique voice then helps us think about him as unique person and what it feels like to grow up and I'm not sure exactly how old he was maybe he's 15 25 years old and Nei like knocks on his door one day he's like hey Jacob we're heading out and you're all of a sudden split you're leaving your family behind like this is a challenging life that Jacob has thinking about his voice helps us think about him as a person are there any personal connections you have with any of them from you personally does that make sense like which one whenever you got because not many people have gone through all of this data right right which is the one that just like it just is like man I know that guy from my own personal experience so there there's a lot what Jacob really stands out to me for a couple of reasons one is that he becomes a foundational figure we probably don't realize this but multiple later prophets King Benjamin Mormon Moroni they're all G to Samuel the lonite they're all going to be quoting from Jacob yeah so the words that he has make a huge impact on later prophets they made a big impact on me I mention mentioned that Jacob will use words like hell fire Brimstone death like some of the kind of like the serious words he uses more than any other author um this is like a little bit nerdy but when I say like he uses the more I just want to put the C that that means proportionally more because Jacob speaks way fewer words than Mormon so we'd expect Mormon to have more words so a lot of times you'll use a statistic called the number of times a word is used per per 1,000 words spoken yeah yeah so per 1,000 words spoken Jacob is using words like hell uh death fire way more than any other speaker I see I see the ratio yeah the ratio and one of those is in second Nephi chapter 9 and I remember is a there's a lot of beauty but there's also a lot of sternness and I remember when I was maybe 10 years old I was certainly not a wicked child but maybe not always the most obedient and we had this family home evening where we read second e59 and I was like what I better shape up like this is not look good and I know this really happened because my grandmother a few who was happened to be visiting us for that family evening wrote me a letter a few weeks later and she's like I noticed that after that family home evening you started becoming a lot better really so I you know I I think Jacob has a unique voice and that voice really spoke to me now there might be some people who talk of hell and fire and brimstone is going to be you know I don't know too much and maybe a different voice is g to speak to them tell me more about it though why did it hit you so hard as a little kid whenever you read that and even now whenever you're looking at the consistency you even know even more that it was so specific yeah what was it about it that touched you well I mean I think it's just a little kid I was like I don't want to have a hell of fire Bri like that doesn't sound good as an older person though let's face it like this is not a happy thing to talk about you're a bishop like when you're up at the pulpit my guess is you spend more time talking about God's love and mercy and repentance than you do Hell Fire Brimstone this is just like it's a more pleasant topic yeah but I love that Jacob is not afraid to say the hard thing yeah but what you said he uses the word anxiety I think that he has maybe he's more of a caring person like he really doesn't want this for his people right cuz he's writing in his mind I think that he knows that he's that eventually I'm sure he had an idea that he's going to be talking to us but the context of it though is he's like I want to I'm talking to my people I'm talking to my family I do not want this to happen to you you know that's why my the chapter in my book on Jacob is called Jacob tender and Stern yeah he's both and honestly I think that we see that today with President Nelson with President Oaks with other church leaders the ability to speak truth and sometimes this can be like oh wow I got to step up well you remember president Nelson saying I'm gonna have to which talk was it he's like I'm going to have to report soon I don't know when he's going he didn't know when he's going to die but I'm going to come before God and I'm going to have to look at Joseph and I'm going have to look at Brigham and I'm going to be like this is what I did when I was whenever I had the mantle you know he doesn't say those words but he's like I'm going to be accountable for this you know yeah I think we see in our modern prophets and apostles firm Direction but also that tender loving care and that's something that Jacob exemplifies in his voice I don't think that the right reason to be a Christian or to follow Jesus is cuz you're scared of fire and Bri so so I don't think that like as a 10-year-old I think that was you know a good a good boost for me um and I think that maybe at times different times in our lives we're going to have different motivations and some motivations are better than others hopefully today I'm motivated to love God and serve him because I love God but not um out of a a fear motive but I think sometimes maybe at different stages in a person's conversion process maybe different motivations are going to come into play uh so before we leave the topic are there any other distinctions that you thought were interesting and insightful to you so here's one that I I do think is kind of interesting is to notice how Mormon uses some phrases differently so there's a phrase he talks about being baptized un repentance this is a consistent phrase that Mormon uses until we get to third Nephi 11 when Jesus Christ visits the people and over and over again Jesus will talk about being baptized in in his name from that time on from 3526 on Mormon does not use the phrase baptized unto repentance anymore he uses the phrase baptized in the name of Jesus interesting and so I kind of feel like either either Mormon is learning as he's a bridging and so he's like this is you know the way I talk and now he's like oh Jesus talks this way and he switches or maybe he's being true to the source records what he's reading about his earlier Nar aters had used the phrase baptized under repentance so he kind of follows suit MH but then once Jesus comes there's a shift in how people talk about baptism and so to see it's like it's just this clear demarcation where's it at 35 yeah with the it's in 351 is when Jesus himself is emphasizing being baptized in his name and then after that 3526 and forward as Mormon is narrating he never uses that phrase baptized into repentance he shifts and uses BT in the name of Jesus well isn't that what Jesus said he's like you you're baptizing my name so he's like okay that's what he said right I wonder if that's what it is he's just like oh we'll do that now you know exactly okay Joseph Smith didn't write the Book of Mormon there were these individual people who really existed who have their own unique voice that wrote the Book of Mormon what have you found in your own perspective and even from what you see that you know is true right of of insights that you have about God's voice in in his son Jesus Christ as you've done this research one of the things that was super interesting was to look at the voice of Jesus Christ when he's textually identified as Jesus Christ which is in 3i 11 Christ is personally there preaching to them but there are several other times in second Nephi in first Nephi in mosiah where it's really clear from the text that Jesus Christ himself is speaking and he identifies himself as such so we gathered all of those references together to be able to see the unique voice of Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon and there are some things that are sort of like small little details like the word verily verily verily I say unto you you would think that that's just like a common scriptural phrase Nephi says it everyone says it but that's not true only Jesus says it with one or two small exceptions the word verily is just associ iated with Jesus Christ give us the context of that word give us the meaning I mean we know so kind of like truly truthfully I tell you I'm telling you the truth might be another way of saying it but it's it's one of those kind of distinctive signature phrases it's Unique to Jesus in the Bible and it's Unique to Jesus in The Book of Mormon what does it tell us I to me it just kind of shows that this is a distinctive way it it's to me it's telling me that Jesus Christ is a real person who has a real way of speaking now much more like that's like a nitpicky example much more significant to me we're seeing how more than any other person in the Book of Mormon Jesus Christ uses the words baptize name and father wow and I think there's a lot of like power in each one of those so let's take for example the word baptize whether you're looking at the words of Jesus Christ within third Nephi or outside of third Nephi he uses uses the word baptize way more than any other speaker when it comes to invitations to be baptized he directly invites people to be baptized way more than any other speaker wow and I don't know about you but in the past like if my Bishop called me and said we'd like you to speak in church on one of the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel baptism probably would have been my last Choice like faith I love repentance Holy Ghost everything like those are all great but like baptism I I would be like H like I don't know to say about baptism but now that I see Jesus Christ himself heavily emphasizes it it made me realize wow I need to think more about my own baptism and I need to be more bold in inviting others to come under Christ and be baptized what's interesting though is that the ratio with which Jesus uses the word baptize is the same before he comes as while he comes so whether he's there in person or whether he's speaking back in second Nei 31 Jesus is emphasizing the importance of being baptized with the same amount of frequency why do you think that is I just think it signals to us how important baptism is and maybe for some people maybe I grow up in the church I get baptized when I'm at it just kind of feels like almost a ride of Passage it's a reminder this is not a right of passage this is a sacred Covenant and I'm I'm not trying to like suggest how missionaries should prze or anything like that but you know sometimes I've heard missionaries say like oh well I don't want to like Rush people to be baptized and obviously you don't want to rush anyone to be baptized but we also don't want to minimize the importance or the urgency of baptism of making this Covenant and you can feel that urgency in the voice of Jesus Christ another thing that's really powerful as we talk about being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ more than any other speaker Jesus connects his name with being baptized wow so it's personal to him him and I think he puts his name on it yeah you're being baptized in my name you're not just being baptized kind of like in the past you know we might say oh the atonement we now been reminded no it's the savior's atonement the atonement of Jesus Christ it's not just baptism it's being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ that's what the savior's emphasizing a personal connection between him and baptism which for me you exactly that which makes our being baptized not checkbox not a ritual it's a connection with Jesus Christ like he's owning this he's like saying I want this so bad for you and I'm putting I'm willing to put skin in the game and I did put skin in the game you know what I mean like this is a like it's not just this thing that you're doing it's the thing that I am like I'm taking part of I want to be a part of it you know yeah that's so powerful anything else so speaking of his name this is another uh interesting point the Savior uses the word name also proportionately more than any other speaker in the Book of Mormon so sometimes it's talking about being baptized in his name another example is when he talks about the church being in his name and I don't know like as I'm reading through in Jesus they're asking like hey what should we call the church and Jesus says how be it my church save it be called in my name if it be called in the name of a man then it be the Church of a man but if it's called in my name it's my church you can see that Jesus cares about his name wow for me this one has been really interesting to make me think about how often do I use the name of Jesus Christ and I think maybe when I was growing up a verse that was really emphasized was from Doctrine in covenants 107 where it's talking about the mzc priesthood it used to be called the priesthood after the order of the Son of God but to avoid too frequent repetition they Chang it to mezic priesthood so I was kind of taught growing up Don't Say the Name Jesus very often could be disrespectful and obviously we don't want to disrespect his name but seeing how much the Savior himself emphasizes his name made me wonder if in my life I've like kind of the pulum for me is swung too far where out of you know respect I don't say his name enough and maybe I need to say his name more and as I thought about that think about like a dinner table conversation like picture a mom a dad eating broccoli spaghetti with the kids and it's like so how did you see the hand of Jesus Christ in your life today or I'm tucking in a child into bed and I say I want to testify to you I know Jesus Christ loves you like there's a power that comes with saying the name of Jesus Christ obviously reverently respectfully and I'm certainly not suggesting that we should use his name in vain or like make it too frequent but again for me personally seeing the savior's emphasis on his name made me wonder if I needed to emphasize his name more than I had been well isn't it a way that we live as well I mean I just it makes me think of Moses chapter 5 when he's when the angel appears to Adam and Eve and then they're offering sacrifice and he says well why are you offering sacrifice and he's like I don't I don't I know not say the Lord commanded me and then he says this you shall do in the name of the son and he says he commands them to do all that thou doest do in the name of the son like everything we do and I don't think it's just what we say but it's like I'm living in his name I'm doing things in his name you know what I mean everything you do do in the name of the son I think that that's an interesting distinction you know yeah more than just obviously bringing it up but the way that I interact with people the way that I talk to people the way that I the way that I think you know to do it according to his will to let him Prevail do you know what I mean yeah I love that so I I don't know I think that that's something that we should all consider and I've never even thought of until you said that you know I think about like our family prayers I I start once I started to see the savior's emphasis on name I noticed that in our family prayers we had a lot of like little phrases like Heavenly Father thankful for this day bless the food dener strength in my body but I didn't hear a lot of the name Jesus Christ in our prayers except sometimes at the end like in a rush like in the name of Jesus Christ amen yeah makes you wonder like okay so could I be praising the Savior more reflecting on him more pondering on him more and slowing down when I say his name at the end of the prayer so again I'm not trying to script people's prayers or say this is what everyone needs to do but for me thinking about like just being a little more conscientious of what is it mean to take upon myself the name of Jesus Christ he cares about his name do I care about his name and do I show that in the things that I do the things I say what I post on social media so forth well it's the Covenant we've made to always remember him that we might always have the spirit to be with us I mean if we remember him I think part of that is doing things in his name doing things according to his will right yeah I don't know if that's exactly what the intention is I feel like a lot of this is in the context of Covenant right it's in the context of like he wants like baptism it's in the context of the Covenant and even at the front page of the Book of Mormon he's saying I have a covenant with Israel and I going to go through the third and fourth generation to to get this Covenant back and when he appears he's like I'm serious what I said I want you in my Covenant I want you to be baptized I want to be with you I want to be connected with you I want to help you and I put my I put my life on the line for it in fact I gave it all for it you know yeah um so yeah I I want to give you one more yeah and that is that more than any other speaker Jesus talks about the father he quotes the father he defers to the father he emphasizes the father's Commandments and you sense this deep reverence that Jesus Christ has for heavenly father so that's something for us to emulate but I also think it's interesting because I've talked with people some people who have said I feel really close to Heavenly Father because I prayed to him but I don't feel close to Jesus Christ that's a good question or I feel close to Jesus but I don't feel close to Heavenly Father and seeing how frequently Jesus Christ is emphasizing quoting from referring to his father is just a reminder that as he said I and my father are one so if I'm close to the father I'm close to Jesus if I'm close to the Savior I'm close to Heavenly Father sometimes I think we have a tendency to try to like we want to like dis make some distinctions you know like God's here Jesus is here Holy Ghost is here and it is definitely true that there are three distinct people but the savior is not like kind of distancing himself from the father he's bringing him and the father together referencing the father and so to me it's just a reminder that as we become closer to one member of the godhead we're becoming closer to all of them because their purpose is the same yeah and he's always like even in the New Testament he's saying I'm doing this for him this is what he told me to do and when in 3517 is he he's about to leave and he's like the father has something else for me to do but he stays but he's like but he's still I think that he's like wondering if that's what he wants him to do maybe I don't know he's wanting to always line himself up with them yeah that's a great example in 3517 and then and then when we get to chapter 19 it's like okay the father really has stuff for me to do I I've got to go yeah but then later in 359 as he's praying with his people like he's praying father help these people become one with us just like you and I are one so the same level of unity that Jesus Christ has with the father he wants us to have with him it's that practice and I guess we in the long term is what he really really wants yeah so with that with that said what is your what is God in and like what does he put on your soul as Alma might say right using the word Soul right and Alma means Soul right what would he doesn't it isn't that what it means like in Spanish in Spanish and I don't know anyway I'm getting off but what I'm saying is what is he what do you feel like he want like you did this research what do you feel like he wanted you to know about him I think that one of the thing I mean there's this research has brought me closer to father in Jesus Christ in so many ways one of the ways is to for me personally is to emphasize more learning all I can about Jesus Christ part of that is studying the words of Jesus Christ part of it is noticing how different Book of Mormon authors have distinctive ways of speaking of Jesus Christ of testifying of him emphasizing different parts of his gospel or different names for the Savior and it's a reminder that the more we know know Jesus Christ the more we study his teachings the more we come to understand who he is the more we're going to love him and the more we're going to want to keep his commandments so sometimes people will say like oh I don't I feel like I know heavenly father because I prayed to him but I don't know Jesus Christ well study his words learn all you can about Jesus Christ the more you know about a person the more you care about them and love them and the same is true for studying Jesus Christ so for me one of my big takeaways from writing this book has been to focus on the voice of Jesus Christ and how other prophets testify of him take me back to the if we're going to Harmony we out right you have these distinct voices what do you notice as the harmony of all of the voices because we know we hear people we believe that the prophets are speaking on behalf of the Lord I'm like you know especially in the context of the Covenant right what did you notice any consistencies I don't want it to be a looted question do you notice any consistencies that harmonize their voices so one of the ways that I think you see a Harmony of voices is in how later prophets will take their own voice and combine it with the voice of a previous Prophet one of the people who does this more than anyone else is Moroni so Moroni the last author of The Book of Mormon is going to be quoting Jacob or he'll quote from Nephi or he'll quote from even his own father Mormon Grant Hardy in his book understanding The Book of Mormon brings out one of the most beautiful examples of voices speaking in Harmony and if you look at just like the last 10 or so verses in the Book of Mormon in these 10 verses Moroni will quote these are his last words he'll quote from the last words of Nephi Lehi enus a Malachi Mormon in other words it's sort of like the analogy Grant Hardy uses is a curtain call where everyone comes out for one last bow in his last words Moroni is bringing out earlier Book of Mormon authors for One Last Bow by quoting their last words it's this beautiful Harmony of voices and the kind of thing that no one had discovered in the first 180 years after the Book of Mormon had been published he's quoting them there's no way that Joseph Smith was making that up no way there's no way and if you look at you're talking chapter 10 yeah and he's and he's come unto Christ and be perfected in him who's he quoting that's uh he's quoting am Malachi he's quoting a Malachi he said and he's saying all of these prophets have been telling you about Jesus Christ and let me give you my some of my favorites Jesus is the Christ the son of the Living God and come unto him and deny yourselves of all ungodliness Nephi tells us that he saw Jesus Christ Jacob tells us I saw Jesus Christ Mormon Moroni these are witnesses of the Savior and they have words from him that I need to deeply integrate I don't know for me like just remembering that these are real individuals makes it so that it's not just words on a page I'm not just reading the book of Mormon because that's what we're studying and come follow me or that's what like I know I'm supposed to do I'm reading it because I'm learning from prophets who have seen Jesus Christ and they've seen me they've seen our day and they're writing with specific messages to us so when we've been talking about Witnesses of the book of you we're often speaking about like the different prophets but if we go back to the translation process of the book of Mor think about the three Witnesses and the eight Witnesses these people are up close with the translation process one of those is David Whitmer so part of the translation is taking place in his home of anyone who knows about the translation David whitmer's got to be in the top five he sees an angel he's confirmed that he's seen the plates well well a few years later David Whitmer is living in Missouri and according to some eyewitness accounts as part of the Missouri mobs David Whitmer is pulled into the county square and all of these militia men are pointing a gun at David whitmer's chest and the general says look If you deny the Book of Mormon you can go be a free citizen otherwise we're going to kill you I mean think about that moment if you've been making up this whole thing this is like a little practical joke you know now is the perfect time to reveal it okay okay okay I was kidding yeah but David Whitmer in this context lifts up his hands and he says the Book of Mormon is the word of God and then the mob lets him go wow I wouldn't base my testimony of the book of Morman on that episode from David whitmer's life but it's a powerful witness that someone who was up close with the translation process did not believe Joseph Smith made it up he believed that the book of warm was the word of God and he was literally willing to stake his life on it so you believe the Book of Mormon is true absolutely and you believe that the witnesses of the Book of Mormon witness of Jesus Christ 100% we've talked about a lot of really amazing things and I always say this at the end I believe that these things are true but don't take our word for it find out for yourself amen till next [Music] time

Channel: Let's Get Real with Stephen Jones

Views: 51,488

Keywords: Unabomber, Book of Mormon, Stylometry, Ted Kaczynski, Joseph Smith, BookOfMormon, LDSChurch, ReligiousStudies, TextualAnalysis, AuthorshipQuestion, JosephSmith, TedKaczynski, FaithAndScience

Id: nUhelZMBlsc

Length: 57min 20sec (3440 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024