Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So can you evaluate the Book of Mormon and its origins, its authenticity, when it comes from angels and when we don't actually have the gold plates with us, that's what we're here to really dive into. Today we have with us Stephen Lundwall. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: And, Stephen, you are a retired IP and business attorney, and you've also taught at Brigham Young University in the religion department. And we're here today because you've published this book called Authentic the Book of Mormon Evidences of a Miracle. And it really goes into how can we take the claims of the Book of Mormon seriously and really methodically evaluate. Can we evaluate it being authentic? How can we identify the origins?
So let's just start off really quickly. You've used this word a lot in the framing of your book, Provenance.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Can you explain that word and how it relates to the Book of Mormon?
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Sure.
First off, I think we ought to say, let's not be scared of the word provenance. When Deseret Book and BYU and my wife and I were trying to come up with a title for this book, now, I told Deseret Book, well, the main theme is provenance. And that scared them because that's a word most people don't use. Right. How are we going to sell a book with that word in it? And you could see this book doesn't have that word in the title. So Deseret Book said, let's not put the word in the title.
[00:01:20] Speaker C: Good branding on their part.
[00:01:21] Speaker D: Right.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Well, let's just its simplest definition as it relates to a book, provenance simply means the story of how the words that you're reading got to you and the evidence to support that story. How did these words get to you? I mean, that is a simple way to look at it. And of course, for archaeology, the issue is how does an artifact, where was it found? Who found it? Where did it come from? And you overlay that for a book and it's how did these words get here? Where did they come from? Who wrote them?
What was the journey?
And is there evidence? I mean, that's the key part. Is there evidence to support that journey and that story?
[00:02:06] Speaker A: You got to trace who owned it before him and before.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: For him to make sure you got the origin right. Ancient artifacts is similar. Like, oh, where did you get this artifact? Was it from the black market? Well, there's a chance it could be a forgery or fraud. Oh, this one came out of an controlled archaeological dig. That's good provenance.
[00:02:22] Speaker D: That's right.
[00:02:22] Speaker C: That's always the specter in archaeology, is stuff that was bought off the antiquities market because it's the ultimate. Trust me, bro, this is real. If you're buying it from some dude on the streets in Cairo.
[00:02:33] Speaker D: But to bring it into something that our viewers may be a little more familiar with in recent news. Right. Is that the potential image of Joseph Smith? Right.
[00:02:42] Speaker C: Oh, sure.
[00:02:42] Speaker D: That has been in the news because it was recently acquired by the church.
And a big central question to that is its provenance. How did it get to.
How did it get from.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Was it really owned by Joseph Smith?
[00:02:57] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Who was the owner?
[00:02:58] Speaker D: Who was the owner?
[00:02:59] Speaker A: Before that, who was the owner?
[00:03:00] Speaker D: Yeah, that kind of chain of custody, if you will, is an important part of this topic.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: So I come from my world of law with evidence and authenticity in mind. I mean, you can't go into court and try to convince a judge or a jury that something is what it claims to be without evidence and a knowledge of, okay, who had it? What was the chain of custody? Can we prove it? And so, as a lawyer, I'm comfortable with the concept of authentic and provenance, or in the law, we call it chain of custody. We don't use the bigger word. But so that's how we started in this journey, my wife and I, as we read in the Book of Mormon, we thought, you know, there's something really different about this book, different than any other book we've ever come across, religious or not, and that is this book. The Book of Mormon, seems to be obsessed with telling the reader where the record is, who's got the record, what I'm doing with the record, who I'm handing it to.
And they're so fixed on making sure the reader knows at all times where the record is, what they're doing with it, why they're doing with it.
That I thought, this sort of sounds like a chain of custody that I would be worried about in a courtroom.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: It is not that different.
So it's not my idea.
It is built into the Book of Mormon itself. And then I started to think. It's almost like this book was designed to address issues of skepticism, address issues of authenticity.
It wants the reader to know the message that's in this Book of Mormon has been held by a series of connected custodians for a very long time, and that chain was never broken.
The last writer who wrote in the Book of Mormon bridged time to come to deliver that record before witnesses in modern times.
And those witnesses, you know, the three in Particular David Oliver and Martin, you know, are able to say, I saw that last writer.
I saw the gold plates.
And I also heard the voice of God tell me that the translation is correct. So, I mean, there is a continuity there that, in my mind is not accidental. We could ask, why did God do this? Why is it so important?
He clearly did it.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: I think that is interesting that Joseph Smith didn't just find gold plates. The last author and owner of the plates essentially handed it off to Joseph Smith. I mean, it really does create this unbroken line.
[00:05:57] Speaker D: Yeah. And it's not. Well, he didn't just find golden plates. And it wasn't just any random angel that showed them to him either.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:04] Speaker D: It was the final author of the text returning to complete the chain. Right.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:06:11] Speaker D: To be the one who passes it on to the next custodian, if you will.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: It's interesting how that also raises the stakes for the Book of Mormon, whether it is authentic or not, and Joseph Smith's credibility.
There are some who want to disconnect the Book of Mormon's inspiration from its historical antiquity or its authenticity or Joseph Smith's prophetic inspiration.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:32] Speaker C: They might say, well, the Book of Mormon doesn't have to be literally true. Didn't have to be actual Nephites or Moroni or Zarahemla. It can still be inspired and teach good things, which I believe it does, but not be historically valid. You kind of run into a brick wall with that when Joseph Smith says, a resurrected Nephite who helped write this book is the one who gave me the book. Right. So, yeah, like you said, it's sort of by design that this is kind of being done here.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: The idea of that inspired this book was almost random. I was perusing the fifth floor of the Harold B. Lee Library at byu.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Good place.
[00:07:08] Speaker D: As one does.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: As one does. You know, I knew I was winding down my career and I thought, you know, I'd like to write a book. I'm a lawyer. I'd like to have some kind of law angle to it. But I didn't know what it was.
And I stumbled across a quote by a man who published a book in 1827, a long time ago, the same year, by the way, that Moreau and I transmitted an ancient record to Joseph Smith, to modern times. Anyway, this Isaac Taylor, he knew nothing about the Book of Mormon. He's a British scholar.
But he said that the credit of literature, ancient literature, the certainty of history, and the truth of religion are all tied up in the secure transmission of ancient Books to modern times.
He was referring to the Bible. He's talking about the Bible. He says, if people know that that Bible is an ancient book that was securely transmitted modern times, they can know that truth of religion, certainty of the history and the literature. And I started thinking about this, about the Book of Mormon. I mean, how does one authenticate the Book of Mormon? So I started to read Isaac Taylor, and he said, there's two ways to do it, two ways to authenticate an ancient book.
One is if you have an intact provenance, if you can secure, you know, if you know that the copy you have was transmitted from ancient times securely, well, you know, that book's authentic. So that was one way.
And then the other way, we won't go into today because that's book two, my wife and I writing right now. Oh, all right.
[00:08:54] Speaker D: Preview right there.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Okay. So he said, provenance is critical to know that what you're reading is authentic. Now, incidentally, you would know this as a Bible scholar.
We don't have any original copies of
[00:09:09] Speaker C: the Bible text, unfortunately. So.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah, true.
[00:09:12] Speaker C: Yeah. No autographs. No autographs. Manuscripts. All later copies.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And people almost assume that we do sometimes. You know, the Book of Mormon and the Bible are both in that camp, is that we don't have the gold plates. We don't have any of the original texts of the Bible.
But the Book of Mormon is different than the Bible. We do have eyewitnesses to the gold plates. We don't have any eyewitnesses to the original texts of the Book of. Of the Bible.
We have people who saw the translation process. And if you don't mind, I think the translation process itself is one of the greatest pieces of provenance evidence to show that this book is true and authentic and is what it claims to be. In fact, when Joseph Smith was translating the Book of Mormon in 1829, many of the people that saw that process were convinced of its authenticity because they could not explain how this was happening other than it was a miracle. A miracle.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: Garrett Dirkmont made that same point on our podcast way back in the day. One of our first episodes was with Garrett Dirkmot talking about the translation Book of Mormon. And, you know, we have this image of Joseph Smith. He puts the stone in his hat, or he's looking through the spectacles, the Urim and Thummim, Right. Which they call them interchangeably. So he's looking at the translation instrument.
He's reading off words. And, like, that's such a funny image to us. Right. Like, people make fun of it. South park makes fun of it or whatever, but the people who actually were there, it was a miracle to them. How is this guy able to do this? He's able to produce words on a stone that he's reading to us, right. In a fluid, rapid manner. He's not going back and making corrections or changes.
He has to stop and spell out names and things like that. We have all these accounts which the manuscripts bear out. Right. So I'm with you there. And I tell my students, when I teach Book of Mormon, we do a. An introduction to, like, the translation coming forth, the Book of Mormon. I say, guys, the translation of the Book of Mormon is one of the best earmarks of its authenticity.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: That's right.
And I will just say, Stephen, that as a lawyer, even though the hat translation process does sound weird and bizarre, as a lawyer, it is great evidence that Joseph Smith did not plagiarize any of the text, because you can't do that when there's no light in the wall of a hat and you're dictating page after page, page. So I would say this, that those people who were eyewitnesses of the translation event were some of the most adamant proponents that the Book of Mormon is authentic and some of them were converted. Like Joseph Knight's wife at first thought, this whole thing's a fiasco, and my husband's believing it, but then she saw Joseph translate and she had no explanation other than, yeah, this is gonna be real.
[00:12:10] Speaker C: No, they are locked in after that. Whatever falling out, they have over leadership or plural marriage or whatever else. Right.
David Whitmer kind of famously doesn't like that Joseph Smith is publishing his revelations, which is kind of funny, but, like, whatever's going on there, they are all locked in on the Book of Mormon's authentic because we are firsthand participants in this process, and it's miraculous to them.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: So here's my exhibit A then.
If. If those who actually witnessed the translation event were convinced that the book is authentic, Exhibit A is something we can touch today, and that is the original manuscript, the product of that translation event we have today.
[00:12:50] Speaker C: We have what, 30. 30% of it? No, no, no.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: We have. Well, it's 20%. 20% of the original manuscript. We have 28%, but we have a 99.9 printer's manuscript. All but three lines.
[00:13:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Of the translation event is found in the printer's manuscript. And you can say the printer's manuscript is a very good substitute.
[00:13:12] Speaker C: First generation copy.
[00:13:13] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:13:14] Speaker C: The original. Yeah.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: So I would say that Viewers today, anybody who's interested, can look at those manuscripts and get very good information on what the translation process was like. In fact, it reads almost like a verbal dictation because the scribes were writing word for word what Joseph said real time.
Those words were written down. And now we can forensically examine those manuscripts and try to corroborate or not whether they match up what the witnesses said they saw during the translation process.
[00:13:53] Speaker C: And they do, do they not?
[00:13:54] Speaker B: They do. And that's part of what authentic does, is we say, we lay out. Here's what the witnesses said. Like Elizabeth Whitmer. It's a 14 year old girl sitting in the Whitmer home watching the translation process. She said she watched it day after day, hour after hour.
And she said, this is what happened. You know, Joseph would look into the hat and. And then he would start to read. Now you might think, well, that's a dangerous word, but that's the word she used. He would start to read as if text was in that.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: It was already there in front of him. Yeah.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: And she would describe how it proceeded. Emma described how it proceeded. All the witnesses, you know, they gave their testimony what they saw.
And the miracle is, is that the forensic examination of the manuscripts themselves bear that out.
[00:14:44] Speaker C: Could you give us an example or two for listeners who may not be familiar with that?
[00:14:48] Speaker B: So, for example, one of the most miraculous elements of the translation is what Emma said. Emma said, of course. And you know, she's probably the most competent witness on the translation process because she saw it all the time.
[00:15:07] Speaker C: Well, and she was one of the scribes initially. She had Martin Harris. Yeah, can't get much closer than that.
[00:15:12] Speaker D: But yeah, I mean, to your point, she was there in Harmony and then she's also there in Fayette. And there aren't a lot of other people who saw the process at both locations.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: That's right. And she said a couple times, you know, my husband didn't have the capacity to do a Book of Mormon.
[00:15:28] Speaker C: Right. I mean, yeah, he could barely dictate a coherent and well worded letter, let alone a book like the Book of Mormon, is what she said in her final testimony.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: And other people who know Joseph well and were his friends like Martin Harris, he also said, you know, he couldn't
[00:15:41] Speaker C: write a fun thing to do, a fun exercise. And you can all do this at home, ladies and gentlemen, and I do this with my students. Pull open the Book of Mormon, which is dictated in 1829, and pull open Joseph Smith's 1832 history, which is Written by him in his own hand.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: That's our earliest.
[00:15:57] Speaker C: That's our. One of our earliest autographs from Joseph smith is the 1832 history. There might be a couple documents before, but, like, that's one that we know it's him, right?
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:05] Speaker C: Read them side by side. And I defy anybody to tell me that the guy who wrote the 1832 history out of his own brain is the same guy who wrote the book of Mormon.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: 1839.
[00:16:14] Speaker C: Right.
The false starts, the choppiness, the poor spelling, all that kind of stuff. You see? And this isn't to dig on Joseph Smith, but just to say Emma has a point.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Emma has a point. By the way, that 1832 history, if I remember right, it was only three pages.
[00:16:27] Speaker C: Yeah. And then he gives up and he goes back to having guys do it for him.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: We're talking about a 500 page manuscript. The book of Mormon is that. That he dictated. And there was no evidence that he had the capacity to do that in 1829.
[00:16:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: And your history is.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Yeah, but Emma's his wife. She's like in on the con, Right?
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Okay, so Emma says this.
She says the thing that struck me the most from my husband, who she didn't regard as educated or having capacity to write a book, let alone a letter, she said that whenever Joseph would have an interruption, and there were plenty of them, Right. There were the nighttime runs of 60 miles to avoid mobs. There were farm chores. There were lots of things to interrupt. When he would come back to translation from the interruption after the interruption, he would just sit down, and the next word he said, looking in the well of a hat. Total darkness would be the word that followed Exactly. The priority translation dictation session.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: There was no. Would you go back to that last part? To me, honey? Right. Where do we leave off if I was doing what again? It was just right back to it.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: And Emma said, look, there are brilliant people that couldn't do that. Nobody can do that, let alone my husband.
[00:17:45] Speaker D: Yeah. I'm actually reminded of a story. Neal A. Maxwell brought this up once, but he talked about how you might dictate something to a secretary or things like that. And I understand that is something that's pretty common with lawyers, politicians will do it a lot, things like that.
And if you are dictating something like that to a secretary or whatever, and you get interrupted, someone comes in and tells you about, you know, asks you what you want to order for lunch or whatever. Right. Just a few seconds of an interruption. And what's the Next thing you do,
[00:18:17] Speaker C: where do we leave off? Could you read back that last line to me?
[00:18:19] Speaker D: Yeah. Could you read back, where were we?
You've gotta. You lose your train of thought and you've gotta get. You've gotta be reminded. Right?
[00:18:27] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:18:27] Speaker D: And for Joseph, he was.
They'd stop, eat dinner, do some farm chores, skip rocks on the pond, whatever it was, for however long it was, and he just comes right back and picks up without skipping a beat.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: So the evidence in the manuscripts that kind of bear that out, that's on the one hand, it's sort of difficult to prove. You know, it's difficult to fossilize in paper. An interruption. Then you come back, nobody reading anything, and you, you know, you. You pick up. But there are some clues that support that.
One is there are no. What Royal Skousen calls. There are no duplicate texts or where. Where the scribe is saying, you know, writing something down. And then Joseph says, no, where he got that. Or the scribe says, we've already hit that. So it's just one continuous flow of words without any duplicates. Yeah, that's supportive of it. And then another is even more persuasive. There's one section in the Book of Alma, so he's dictating. And then Oliver, who's the scribe, he needs a break.
Now, Royal Skousen, who's analyzed the forensic. You know, forensically analyzed the manuscripts just in detail.
He theorizes, he's guessing that Oliver was dead tired because a few lines before this asked for break. Oliver starts writing gibberish. It's like he's just so tired, he needs a break. And so Joseph says, okay, let's take a break. But Joseph had already received the next 28 words in the translation. And so Oliver leaves.
Joseph picks up the pen and he writes down those 28 words.
He needed to get them down because apparently when they were gone, they were gone.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: So he wrote them down. And that's the only place in the manuscripts where we have Joseph smith's own handwriting.
28 words in the entire Book of Mormon.
[00:20:27] Speaker D: But if I'm remembering right, the handwriting of Joseph Smith, what's really kind of interesting about it, it's like kind of mid thought. Like it doesn't complete a thought or a sentence before Oliver Cowdery's pen picks up again.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: He stops mid sentence. Because it's only 28 words and it doesn't complete a sentence. It doesn't complete a thought, as you said, after the interruption of however long. Then Oliver Cowdery comes Back. And the next word in the middle of sentence is the word that follows what Joseph had, you know, done before.
So this is evidence that Emma was right. She testified that, hey, whenever there was an interruption, Joseph didn't need anything read back. It was just given to him out of the hat.
And the manuscripts align with it.
[00:21:12] Speaker C: I know. We also. Just. One more example that's kind of famous is the spelling of names, which Emma says, Joseph come to weird names and spell them out. And the example you provide and that others have pointed to is coriantumr in Book of Helaman. Right.
Not the ancient Jaredite Coriantumr, but the Lamanite general that captures Zarahemla. Coriantumr. Right.
Initially, Oliver spells it phonetically the way
[00:21:35] Speaker D: that you would expect it as an English.
[00:21:37] Speaker C: As an English name. M, E, R. Right. And it's immediately crossed out. And we can tell from the ink flow that it's immediately crossed out.
And next to it, not interlinearly, I believe, but, like, right next to it, it's coriantumr spelled the way it is
[00:21:50] Speaker D: here, without the e. And there's even, I think, royal. Skousen suggests there's some evidence of frustration on Oliver's part. Like, fine, how the heck was I supposed to know how to spell that?
[00:22:02] Speaker C: So we've got. So know, we have our witnesses who attest to the process, and there's a lot of literature on them. The three witnesses, the eight, but also the scribes and, you know, the Whitmers, things like that. We have the manuscripts.
You also discuss textual features in the Book of Mormon that indicate its authenticity and that this is indeed a transmitted text from antiquity to the modern time.
You mentioned Hebraisms, internal consistency, repeated phrases and quotations. Would you like to walk us through a couple examples of that? Of how that bolsters the provenance of the Book of Mormon being a translation or. Well, yes, a translation, but also a transmission of an ancient text.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: So let me give you a couple examples, and I think these examples are unique enough, strange enough, that Joseph Smith could not have produced it himself. And hear me out. Joseph Smith could not have produced it himself because these are so different, out of time, out of place, from his world. Okay, so one example that this is actually Rose Gin's favorite example. When I've talked to him, he said that there are many places in the Book of Mormon where you have this conditional phrase like, if this happens, then that happens. So, you know, if A, then B. Right. And in English, we've used that construction. If Then, if, then than for hundreds of years and no surprise.
But in Hebrew it can be couched differently. It's not if then, it's if and same condition. If this happens, not then this will happen, but. And that will happen.
Now, in English, that has never been an idiom or characteristic of how we use.
[00:23:54] Speaker C: It's ungrammatical.
[00:23:55] Speaker D: And yeah, if you, if you ever like, if you actually say it out loud, a full sentence, you know, it really, it's strange, it's a little jarring.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:05] Speaker D: If you were to tell your, your kid, like if you clean your room and you can have some ice cream.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:24:13] Speaker D: What, like, what do you mean? And I can have some ice cream? It doesn't make a lot of sense.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: It doesn't make sense.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: So.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: But it's perfectly good Hebrew. And what we've shown in authentic and based on a lot of Royal Skousen's examination is that the Book of Horn was, I say was full of this if and condition. Now, Joseph Smith, when he was reviewing the transcript, he felt. So I'm going to say, you know, embarrassed or he said, this is self conscious.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: Self conscious.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
He tried. Him, he tried to get rid of it. He, he replaced the if and if
[00:24:48] Speaker C: then if then in, In Kirtland, the second edition, I think.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:50] Speaker C: And it's in the 1830s. Yeah.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: He tries to fix it and then subsequent editions, they fix it even more. But you know, this particular phrase, if and is found in probably the most famous verse of the Book of Mormon, Moroni, chapter 10, verse 4. You know, the great Promise.
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Promise, yeah.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: How you can authenticate the book. Right. How you can know it's true.
So in this verse, of course it's fixed in this verse, but this is not how it originally read. It says, I would exhort you that you would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true. And if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ.
In the original manuscript it says, and he will manifest the truth of it unto you.
Cleaned up. Now, there are actually a lot better examples in the original.
[00:25:42] Speaker C: There's Helaman. Right. There's a whole string of them.
[00:25:46] Speaker D: Of six or seven.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So that's an example where Joseph Smith was using verbiage, an idiom that was not from his world, but from the world of antiquity. Of antiquity. Right.
[00:26:02] Speaker C: Of the purported originators of this text.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:26:06] Speaker C: Coming from a Semitic speaking background. What about internal consistency in the Book of Mormon? Right. So Some people read the Book of Mormon, they think it's just a bunch of, like, kind of gobbledygook nonsense. Like, the plot doesn't make sense. The characters are dumb and flat and two dimensional.
I believe it was. Bernard DeVoto once infamously called the Book of Mormon a yeasty fermentation of imagination or something. Right. Like, it's kind of this, like, shapeless mess of, you know, literary jumble. Is that what the Book of Mormon is in terms of its literary structure?
[00:26:35] Speaker B: No, not by a long shot. So, you know, first of all, I will say on the translation process, it's interesting how Joseph Smith dictated the translation. You remember the first 116 pages were lost. Right. Joseph didn't want to repeat that. So he starts basically where they had
[00:26:57] Speaker C: left off in Mosiah.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: In Mosiah, in the middle of the book, goes to the end, then goes back to the beginning and finishes up to the middle. I was, like, trying to do a book from the inside out.
[00:27:08] Speaker D: Well, and talk about picking up where you left off after interruptions. There's the ultimate interruption.
[00:27:14] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:27:15] Speaker D: The loss of those pages. But yet he just picks up right where he left off, writes the rest of the book and then again has to pick up, go back to the beginning.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: My point is, everything matches up.
Yeah. The Book of Mormon does have complex plots, but you can follow them through. It's not like it's gibberish. Right.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Even if I were to accept, though, the textual evidence, the witness evidence, the translation evidence, at the end of the day, this is a book that came from an angel. There are supernatural elements that are inseparable from the origin story of the Book of Mormon. And for a lot of people, that just completely disqualifies the Book of Mormon from being authentic. What would you say to that?
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Well, you know, I have a story in the book, Authentict, that introduces this concept of what do we do about an angel? We can't avoid the angel when you talk about the Book of Mormon. Right. There's no getting around it. To toss out Moroni is to toss out the Book of Mormon. It breaks the chain of provenance. Right, Right. The whole point is that the ancient custodian came to modern times and delivered a book that was authentic. So how do we deal with Moroni?
So first off, as a lawyer, I would say we.
The evidence that humans offer on any subject, whether it be on angels or on a contract, boils down to the same things.
That is, we look for credibility of witnesses.
Were they honest? You know, the people who said they Saw an angel?
Were they honest? Were they competent?
And I, when I say competent, I mean were they in a position to know what they're claiming they saw? And were they sane? Were they delusional?
You know, what I'm talking about is things that we instruct juries or judges to instruct juries every day when they're asked to assess a claim that a witness gives on anything.
Was the witness honest? Was the witness competent?
Did the witness have bias?
Are they trying to say something to get gained for popularity, for some motive that is other than to tell the truth?
And is there testimony reasonable in light of all the other evidence?
So those are the four, and I call it the legal truth test in our book, authentic. The four criteria that we as humans are really good at. In general, we as humans are good at assessing credibility on any subject.
Now, some people, when you say an angel, they automatically say, forget it.
[00:30:09] Speaker C: You know, it's a non starter for them.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: It's a non starter. And you know, in our chapter on reasonableness, you know, we say that some people can take that approach, but that's not what the evidence would ask you to do. Right.
As a human being, you are entitled to say, what did I see? What did I hear?
What did I do? What did I see somebody else do? And we have, I have a case in there. It's a West Virginia case where in a courtroom a lady testified that she had seen an angel, communicated with an angel. And it was during a murder trial of her daughter. And this angel was her daughter coming back.
And you know, that is so bizarre, it hardly ever happens in court. But in this particular case, she testified that she saw her daughter come back.
The daughter accused the killer, named the killer, and this mother testified to that in court. Now, she was cross examined in court and that cross examination testimony was written down and published in the newspaper. And that's how I, you know, that's how I found it.
And my point is, is that even though that testimony is bizarre, the same principles that any testimony, any subject would be, would be applicable. Was the mother honest? The jury had to assess that. Was she competent? Not, you know, was she crazy? They had to assess that.
Was she biased?
Was she reasonable? Turns out in the court records and the newspapers after the trial, everybody believed the mother and they convicted the poor guy.
And there was a lot of other evidence besides her testimony.
[00:32:09] Speaker D: Well, and I appreciated when you talked about it. Yeah, there was other evidence that corroborated that testimony that goes to the criteria of reasonableness. Is it consistent with this Other evidence. But you also talked about how, you know, bias can exist and you have to kind of assess it within the context of everything else. And so sometimes I feel like people, they just look for bias and if they find bias, they say, oh, we've got to toss that out.
[00:32:35] Speaker C: That's it.
[00:32:35] Speaker D: Yeah, but it's one of multiple criteria and it has to be balanced with everything else to assess ultimately. Like, hey, can this be considered credible here? Yeah.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: So, you know, you see this in your experience, I see it in court over the, over my career, is that sometimes you cannot convince a jury of a particular point no matter what the evidence is. I, I have been, for example, I have been in a mock jury for, you know, some of the big cases I've been on. We do mock juries. And one of these big cases I was on, we, we hired a firm to put on a mock jury program. And like 20 people were behind a mirror that we could see through. Is that a one way mirror?
[00:33:18] Speaker C: Yeah, a one one way mirror where you can see them, but they.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. Right. And I was making a presentation on video to them and I would, then I was behind the mirror observing them to see what the reaction was to me making the presentation. Right.
And the particular point I was making, I had photographs.
It was about a condition of a piece of real estate, you know, and I had photographs to show the exact, exactly what the condition was. And I was telling the jury, and it was dilapidated, it was dangerous. And I put. Photograph, photograph, photograph.
99% of those juries were, were pushing a response button that we gave them to say whether they believed me or they didn't believe me. And 99% of them said, yeah, I believe, I believe, Mr. Linda, I believe. But there was this one juror, no matter what I said, and no matter what picture I showed, I don't believe him.
[00:34:11] Speaker C: I don't believe him. I don't believe him.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: People are like that.
[00:34:15] Speaker D: Well, some people just won't trust a lawyer. Right.
[00:34:17] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:34:19] Speaker D: That makes me feel good.
Yeah.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: Well, the point is some people won't be convinced no matter what the evidence is.
And I believe, you know, I believe the Book of Mormon was engineered with evidence in mind. I mean, there would be no point for the three witnesses if evidence was irrelevant, if God just said to us, read the Book of Mormon, trust me, bro. Trust me, bro.
There would be no point to having three witnesses testify that they saw an angel that go place, in my opinion. There would be no point to trying to document the provenance.
There's a Point to that is to gather evidence that the message and the vehicle to deliver that message are authentic, genuine. Now, it involves an angel. And I can say to you, Jasmine, I've got evidence to support claims to that. And here's the evidence. You get the opportunity to assess it like you do on any other subject. Just because it's an angel doesn't disqualify you. Say, okay, well, let's look at those witnesses. And that's what half of the authentication book does. Let's look at those witnesses.
Were they honest? Were they, did they have bias?
Were they competent, were they crazy? What did people consider them to be? You know, and one of the best pieces of evidence on, on these witnesses I'm just going to highlight because I asked the church history library to actually scan this so see the light of day.
It is, in my opinion, one of the best pieces of evidence about the credibility and honesty of the three witnesses that, that I've ever seen. This is on about David Whitmer.
So here it is on page 334.
This is an affidavit signed by the who's who of the people in the state of Missouri, Richmond.
[00:36:25] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: I think he's living in Richmond, Missouri, 1881 affidavit.
And David Whitmert wrote the first part of the affidavit and asked these who's who people to attest that David was honest and a person of impeccable character would not lie. Right. So David Whitmert in the intro to this affidavit says basically, hey, I have never denied my testimony about the Book of Mormon. I have never recanted the three witness testimony that's attached to the Book of Mormon. I have always stood by that because some of the rumors had said he had, you know, denied it. Right. And so I said, I've always stuck to that. That is true. That Book of Mormon is true. And then he went to the who's who in the state of Missouri and said, are you willing to vouch for my character with this statement?
The first person who signs this is Alexander Donipan, the man himself. Now, I mean, today you may not know who Alexander Doniphan is, but he was one of the great Americans the 19th century ever produced.
[00:37:35] Speaker D: And he does play a pretty crucial role in church history, actually. Well, before that.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:40] Speaker C: With this guy who defends Joseph Smith from summary execution.
[00:37:44] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, Joseph Smith dies in, in Missouri. If it's not Alexander Donovan, now he's
[00:37:50] Speaker B: not a member of the church. Don't you know he's not a member of the church, but what he is is a man of character and courage.
He's not going to be cowed. You know, he's going to tell what he believes to be true. He's the first signature on this to saying, David Whitmer, I've known him for 50 years.
He doesn't lie.
So you know, when you, so you say, yeah, we have angels, but we have witnesses who saw those angels.
You have to assess that testimony fairly. If you're not going to do it fairly, there's no point whatever.
[00:38:21] Speaker D: Right.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: But if you can do it fairly, you got to take into account the power and strength of the evidence.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: Well, what would you as a lawyer say would be your closing statement for the case for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon?
[00:38:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you. I would say this Nephi and Moroni talk about one of the reasons why in their opinion I'm going to use the word provenance. They didn't. Why the provenance, the hand to hand handoff of the Book of Mormon records for a thousand years, why that was so important?
Why are we talking about this at all? Why did God choose to have a thousand years of handoffs recorded?
Nephi says one reason why that is is so that the word, that's the word he used. The word would be convincing.
You think about that. Let's say, Jasmine, you had a family history and you write in your journal and that journal is appended to writings from your parents and you treasure those. And it happens, your grandparents and your great grandparents and it turns out your family has been writing in this family journal for a thousand years.
That would be one miraculous, right? That would be miraculous, yeah, yeah. And it would be so special to you. It would be a treasure.
And I think Nephi, who started this whole, he started the launch of this record and he gave the instruction, I want this record handed down generation after generation and kept intact so that when it reaches the end, we have a beginning and an end. And the witness testimony that is in between almost gets compounded the value of it, the treasure of it. People know the story of how they got these words in their hands.
It's convincing.
So Nephi says it's convincing. And then I think Moroni's testimony is that there is power in these words and in the way they were preserved.
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ the Latter Day Saints, we value a prophet and sometimes we think all a prophet does is give new revelation.
But the Book of Mormon teaches us that a large part of a prophet's job is to just preserve what's already been given.
That's what the prophets did for a thousand years.
Preserved the truth so that it's bright.
Word Alma uses for his son when he hands off the custodial duty. It's bright, it's powerful, it's true. And so I would say the Book of Mormon is the most correct book of any book on earth.
Joseph Smith, I was going to say that.
[00:41:38] Speaker C: Sounds familiar.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:40] Speaker C: Because
[00:41:42] Speaker B: it was preserved by custodians who took that responsibility as sacred.
They did not want to have it diluted in any way. They recorded it. They recorded how they recorded it, how they preserved it so that we could know that it was convincingly true.
It's a powerful book. And as my wife and I. And I want to, you know, I want to give credit to my wife too, and I greatly appreciate everything she has done in helping me in this book, but she and I are just so thoroughly convinced, I'll use Nephi's word, convinced that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and how it was delivered is part of the message and it is what it purports to be.
It's authentic.
[00:42:37] Speaker C: Amen.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Well spoken. If you want to dive into the full case for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, highly recommend. Authentic the Book of Mormon Evidence of a Miracle by Stephen and Rebecca Lundwall. Remember, guys, you can study deeply, believe boldly, and we'll see you next time.
[00:43:01] Speaker B: Sam.
