Hebrew Voices #164 – A Karaite Jew on Mormonism: Part 1

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Okay, then just to emphasize that point, around 590 BCE or something like that, Jews are coming over and becoming Christians in America. We'll get back to that.

Dan: Yeah, we’ll get back to that.

Nehemia: That's incredible.

Shalom and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I'm here today with Dan Vogel, he's the author of many books on early Mormon history; many is an understatement! He has a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Long Beach, and he's published around 30 volumes. You know when someone says “around”, that's a lot, when you've lost count, and about the same number of journal articles. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Dan Vogel is one of, if not the foremost expert on early Mormon history.

I've watched a lot of videos and read a lot of material where people quote you, people who are within the Mormon world… And it's interesting, I saw one scholar who quoted you, or referenced your work, and he calls you “the revisionist historian, Dan Vogel”, and I'd like you to comment on that term, “revisionist”. I'm not sure what he means by that.

And then others who are maybe taking a more critical approach will just refer to you as Dan Vogel. And one of the major works that you have done is, you've gone through and tracked down a lot of the early sources on Mormonism. And I've done a little bit of reading; this isn't my expertise, obviously, but I've done quite a bit of reading and seen a lot of historians before you would pick little things here and there, and then you went through systematically. Tell us about that, bringing all of these sources. And there's an abundance of sources; it's incredible.

Dan: Well, that was one of the first things I did when I was still in the university, actually, is to try to gather all the sources dealing with Mormon origins and put them all into one place, and I produced five volumes over a period of time. And so, I wanted to give everyone the sources to work with, plus the annotations of who everybody is and introductions to each of these documents.

As it turned out, it was five volumes! I didn't know how much there would be, but I noticed that a lot of people were having to retrace their steps every time anybody wrote about this period, and it was very difficult to get a hold of all these documents.

And I had some older friends that had been doing early Mormon history before me. I was just in my 20’s.

Nehemia: Wow, yeah.

Dan: And I noticed that they had quite a vast collection of documents themselves, before I started, and they allowed me to use their archives, their personal archives. And I started from there, and then moved out, and I went and did a lot of traveling around the United States to gather documents, to historical societies, and old courthouses, and jails.

Nehemia: Wow.

Dan: I just wanted to know everything before I wrote my biography of Joseph Smith, the Mormon founder’s early history. Which I eventually did after I collected those five volumes called, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet.

Nehemia: So, here's why I'm so interested in this topic. Let me explain, because the audience is thinking, “Why on earth is Nehemia talking about Mormonism?” Why I'm interested is, my main field is the Tanakh, or the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and I also do a lot of stuff on the New Testament. And I dabble, just barely dabble, in Islam just because it's one of the three great Abrahamic religions. And we have zero information about Moses from his time, other than the Torah, which scholars will debate whether Moses had anything to do with the Torah or whether he existed. I believe he did, but that's a faith statement, not an academic statement.

And then Jesus, we know a little bit more. We have things from within a hundred years, more about his followers, where the Romans will say, “There are these people causing trouble who follow this person named Crestus,” they don't even call him Christ in the earliest sources. And then for Islam, we really didn't have anything for the first 200 years, almost nothing.

But for Joseph Smith Jr., who's the founder of Mormonism… and this I found confusing. There's his father, Joseph Smith, who's “Senior”, and then there's his son, who's also a leader of Mormonism, “the Third”, and then there's his nephew, Joseph Fielding Smith. So that's confusing if you're not from the field.

But Joseph Smith Jr., who we'll just call Joseph Smith for the rest of this discussion, unless we're being specific about his father or something… so we have his trial records from before he even wrote the Book of Mormon, or translated, according to believers in Mormonism, the Book of Mormon. It's the type of thing you would dream about for studying Moses, or Jesus, or Mohammed!

So, I think it's an incredible analogy on just so many levels, both an analogy and a contrast. Look, if you believe in Islam, then you believe that the Angel Gabriel, and I might be getting this wrong because I'm not an expert on Islam, but I think they believe that the Angel Gabriel dictated the Qur'an to the Prophet Muhammad.

And Mormons believe… well, actually you'll tell us what early Mormons believe, hopefully. Or what you think early Mormons believe about how Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon. But it's incredible that we have people offering… or not just offering, pushing an alternative narrative and saying, “No, that's a lie.” And they're writing this within, I think even less than a year of when the Book of Mormon was published. Is that right?

Dan: Actually, newspaper accounts appeared before the book was published.

Nehemia: Oh, that's right! That's right, that's incredible!

Dan: In 1829 - it was published in March of 1830.

Nehemia: And he almost got into a fist fight over someone who was trying to steal the Book of Mormon and publish it in his newspaper.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: It's incredible stuff!

Dan: Well, you would think you would be in a better situation with so much being published, but it's still hotly contested, just about every little thing involved with early Mormon origins is hotly contested. There's a whole group of apologists trying to defend the traditional view, and the traditional view really doesn't appear until 1838, with Joseph Smith writing his official history.

But before 1838, there was quite an evolution that comes up, and apologists want to try to make it appear that nothing had changed that much during that period of time. And people like me, scholars like me, who study Mormon origins, like to focus on the development of ideas and that Joseph Smith didn't… it just didn't pop out the way it is taught even in 1838, let alone today. Changes continually occurred, but Joseph Smith used the writing of history, his own history, to shape his story as time went on, and to change it into a more mainstream Christian story.

Before that, it was kind of a non-traditional mixture of magic, folk magic… when I talk about magic, I'm talking about folk magic, or ceremonial magic, is Joseph Smith's early training as a treasure seer. And we'll get into that, no doubt.

Nehemia: Let's get it… Oh, I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt.

Dan: Well then, as time went on, his little particular culture, in which Mormonism was planted and nourished and started growing, that little culture was too narrow to attract a larger audience. And so, the story finally, as time went on, lost those particular cultural attributes and became more and more, not totally mainstream Christianity, but more appealing to a larger audience of Christians in America. The way they viewed things, anyway, at that time in the 19th century.

Nehemia: Talk to me about… I think it was Richard Bushman, if I'm not mistaken, who calls you a revisionist historian, which is ironic, because in some ways, compared to Mormons up until his time, he's a revisionist, or considered by some as a revisionist historian. I know there's this one apologist who calls him, “the liberal historian”. So, what does he mean by that, “revisionist historian”?

Dan: He's a serious historian himself, even though he has apologetic leanings, but he can be considered a revisionist by more conservative Mormon interpreters.

Nehemia: Right.

Dan: Because he appears to concede too much to the critical-minded Mormon historians. And a revisionist, just to me, means that I’m trying to pull the story back to its origins and trying to give a different, more complete picture of how Mormonism developed, rather than the finished version, which has become the traditional version.

So, I'm not repeating the traditional story, or the official account, and that way I appear to be revisionist because I'm revising their traditional accounts that they have grown up and repeated so many times in their meetings and schools and things. And so, it sounds odd to them. But all I'm doing is just telling the story as it was.

Nehemia: Would it be fair to call what you do… and I think probably the apologists won't appreciate this, or maybe they will, I don't know; what you do, is it more a critical approach to history versus a traditionalist approach?

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, I think a lot of my audience has no idea even who Joseph Smith Jr. was, when the Book of Mormon was written… Maybe start with what the traditional approach is, if you can, and then contrast this with what you discovered about who Joseph Smith was, and the Book of Mormon, and I know that might take 12 hours, but let's get the short version and then maybe we'll delve down into some details.

Dan: Yeah. So, Joseph Smith; he was born in 1805 and had a fairly normal existence with his parents, being religious, just like any other people that have developed from the Puritan stock, anyway.

But they became, themselves, a little wary of organized religion. And so, when Joseph Smith grew up, he grew up in Western New York, and Western New York was known as the “burned-over district” because there were so many revivals going on at that time. Camp meetings and revivals, and people were fired up about religion in the early 1820’s and late… 1920’s period.

Joseph Smith was confused about which church to join, and he finally made it a matter of prayer, and he went to the woods near his farm in Palmyra, New York. Actually, Manchester, which is a neighboring town, and he prayed, and then he claimed later to have a vision. And the vision was of God, the Father, and Jesus Christ standing next to him, and he asked which church he should join. And they told him to join none of them because they were all an abomination, their creeds we’re an abomination in his sight, and not to join any.

And so, Joseph Smith left that vision, just pondering it for several years, until 1823. In 1823, he decided to pray again in his room, and an angel appeared to him. An angel, later identified as Moroni, and Moroni was, as it turned out, the last author, the last writer, the last prophet, of the Book of Mormon.

Nehemia: And all this is the standard narrative, what you're telling us, right?

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: Of the church?

Dan: Yeah, I'm telling you sort of how they would tell it.

Nehemia: And the first one they call the First Vision, and then Moroni, what do they call the Moroni one? Is that called the second vision?

Dan: Yeah, some people do. But it has no special… not like the First Vision story that has become known as the First Vision with capital letters.

Nehemia: And calling it the First Vision, that's charged with this idea… correct me if I'm wrong, isn't that sort of charged with this idea like in the entire history of mankind, at that point God decided to do something different, and the First Vision was the opening salvo of this restoration. Is that how they view it?

Dan: Yes. When God, or Jesus Christ, told Joseph Smith that the creeds were an abomination, that was kind of like all the religious world is in apostasy. Okay?

Nehemia: Oh, wow.

Dan: They're spiritually and religiously dead. And the hint is that Joseph Smith is going to be the restorer of the true church, the true Christian church… although there was never one real true Christian church, but…

This is the connotation that is later given to the First Vision, and it's all implied, because you know the end of the story.

Nehemia: So, we're in his bedroom, and Moroni appears to him according to the standard narrative.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: What happens next?

Dan: So Moroni is supposed to be the last prophet in this Book of Mormon that was written here in America from about 600 BC to 400 AD, and they were Christians that came over from Israel, from Jerusalem, actually, and they had a history, and they wrote about it, and they included in their book all the true doctrines of Jesus and Christianity, even though it was BC.

Nehemia: Okay. Just to emphasize that point, around 590 BCE or something like that, Jews are coming over and becoming Christians in America. We'll get back to that. That's an incredible…

Dan: We’ll get back to that, yeah.

Nehemia: That’s incredible.

Dan: Okay. And then actually the story has Jesus come after his resurrection, and the book becomes a second witness for Jesus. Jesus comes after his resurrection in the Old World, comes to America, and shows himself, and they write about it. And the Book of Mormon becomes a second witness for Jesus's resurrection. And then they exist for 400 more years, the righteous group turns unrighteous, and they get destroyed by the more wicked part, which become the Native Americans.

So, the Book of Mormon was buried by this Moroni, the last prophet to write in the book. And then he appears to Joseph Smith and tells him where it's hidden in New York, in a hill near his farm, incidentally. And Joseph goes and he gets this… well, he looks at the plates. He's not allowed to take them for four more years.

Nehemia: What are the plates? Tell us about the plates. Or what they say.

Dan: Yeah! The plates are gold, thin plates, a stack about… according to Joseph's description, six inches of thick plates of about eight by six inches, and they're written on in this strange language of a mixture of reformed Egyptian and Hebrew. And Joseph Smith takes them in 1827, finally, and his mission is to translate them into English.

Now, no one is allowed to see the plates except for some special witnesses that come along later after the book's is translated, and it's usually in a visionary… according to Mormons, three of them in a vision and eight of them actually see the actual physical plates, which is disputed.

Nehemia: We're going to come back to that, but just to reiterate, three of them see it in like a trance or something, or a dream…

Dan: In a vision.

Nehemia: …but then eight supposedly physically see the plates?

Dan: Yeah, that’s the understanding of your average Mormon.

Nehemia: Right, I know you've written a lot about that… And by the way, Dan Vogel has this amazing YouTube channel with videos that are… It’s incredible, you have these videos that are at the level of… actually, let's be honest, probably above the level of most academic journal articles.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: And you have those as YouTube videos, and it's kind of an incredible thing.

Dan: Well, I treat them like lectures. That's how I envisioned… I try to keep them under an hour.

Nehemia: No, they're really impressive.

So, he has these plates, according to the story, and what does he do with the plates? What year are we in at this point?

Dan: 1827.

Nehemia: 1827.

Dan: September 1827.

Nehemia: September 22nd, which is an equinox, right?

Dan: Well, it's near… I forget, each year that he supposedly goes back to this hill coincides with either a new moon or a full moon.

Nehemia: Oh, wow. A full moon makes more sense because he’s going at night, and you can actually see at night with a full moon.

Dan: Yeah, but with a new moon, you can't see at all.

Nehemia: Right. So, you're going to suggest, I presume, that there's some mystical or occult…

Dan: Astrological.

Nehemia: Or astrological significance to that. But we'll get back to the critical approach later. So, he's got the plates, according to the official story, and…

Dan: Well, and then people are trying to get the plates.

Nehemia: Why do they want the plates?

Dan: Well, in the official Mormon accounts, there's no real reason.

Nehemia: Okay, so we'll save that for the critical approach. Fair enough.

Dan: There is no real reason. Who are these people that want these plates?

Nehemia: These are mysterious people who want to see… well, maybe they want to stop the restoration because Satan sent them. I don't know, I'm making stuff up. I have no idea.

Dan: That's it. They're persecuting Joseph Smith.

Nehemia: Okay. And look, he was persecuted. Let's be fair, right? The man was tarred and feathered.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Eventually. That actually happened, didn't it? That he was tarred and feathered?

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: And we use that as a metaphor, an expression… that's some serious business.

Dan: Yeah. It happened in 1831, a few years later.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: But he was persecuted, sure.

Nehemia: Alright, we'll get to that later. So, he got the plates on September 22nd, 1827. And then what happened?

Dan: So, he can't do much there, in Manchester, New York, because it's too hot there for him. So, he moves to his in-laws' town, down in Harmony, Pennsylvania, 120, 150 miles away, with his wife. He also got married that same year, just before this.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: So, he and his wife moved to his in-law’s place, and they weren't too friendly to him either.

Nehemia: And then his father-in-law said something like, “You can't be in the house if there's something here I'm not allowed to see.”

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: And I recently became a father, and I actually used that line on my son. I said, “Hey, you don't have to live in my house, you're a grown man. If you're going to do something in my house that I'm not allowed to see, don't do it here.” I actually stole that line from… what was his name? Hale?

Dan: Isaac Hale.

Nehemia: Isaac Hale, yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: It was a good line!

Dan: So, yeah, Joseph Smith brought the plates, and they were in a box, and Hale was allowed to lift them, but he couldn’t see them.

Nehemia: That’s really interesting. We’re going to come back to that, because that's part of the critical approach.

Dan: Yeah. So, he said, “You can't keep the plates in here if I'm not allowed to see them.” So, Joseph Smith supposedly hid them out in the woods, buried them, hid them in the woods until he got his own house. He eventually got his own 13 acres over here, near Isaac Hale's house, closer to the Susquehanna River. So, it happens to be right in this area known as the Great Bend, where the Susquehanna River bends around this mountain, around this huge mountain… not huge, it's a hill! But it bends around it, it's called the Great Bend Area. And he lived at the foot of that hill, near the river, and in this little house, in the upstairs portion of it, he dictated this translation to different scribes. Emma Hale Smith, his wife, was a scribe. Then Martin Harris, who was a benefactor of Joseph Smith, helped him financially and helped actually eventually publish the Book of Mormon, and Oliver Cowdery, who ended up being the main scribe, but he doesn’t come on the scene for a couple of years.

So, he dictates the Book of Mormon, and the average Mormon believes, until recently, that he dictated it using this instrument called the Urim and Thummim.

Nehemia: That's something we know from the Hebrew Bible, the Urim v'Tumim, which we actually don't know what it is. But in the Book of Exodus… and then it appears very briefly in two other passages, it's in Ezra and in Samuel, I think, very vague references, it seems to be what you could call a prophetic device. So that seems kind of appropriate. How it worked or what exactly it did… we just know the High Priest in the Temple… not necessarily in the Temple, the High Priest carried it, and he would somehow get a revelation through it when he didn't know the judgment in a certain matter. That's what's indicated in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible. And then it's not there in the Second Temple period. That's what Ezra mentions that we don't have the judgment of the Urim.

Dan: They’re waiting for a priest to come.

Nehemia: Right, exactly. We're waiting for a restoration. So, Joseph Smith, I guess, claims that's him. And look, Jews are still waiting for that restoration.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Believing Jews. So, what was his Urim and Thummim? We don't even know what it was in the Old Testament, like I said.

Dan: It wasn't called Urim and Thummim until several years later.

Nehemia: Okay, what do Mormons believe it was?

Dan: It wasn't even associated with the Urim and Thummim, that was all part of the story of Joseph Smith trying to mainstream his story.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: At first it was spectacles. They were two stones joined together, it says in the Book itself, by a silver bow, like a figure eight.

Nehemia: Okay. That's in the Book of Mormon itself? I didn't realize that.

Dan: Yeah, it says that these are interpreters, and they were only used to translate, really, in the Book of Mormon.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: They weren't associated with the breastplate or anything like that… they were just interpreters.

Nehemia: Wait, tell us about the breastplates, that's also part of the story.

Dan: There is a breastplate mentioned in the early story, but it's only Laban’s, one of the characters in the book of Mormon in Jerusalem; they just take his breastplate and sword with them. And it's not connected in any way to these spectacles, or these interpreters, is what the Book of Mormon calls it, because they're used to translate the Book.

Nehemia: And so, the belief of Mormons… and by the way, a little side point. The word Mormon, I know there are some LDS folks today who are not comfortable with that term, but did Joseph Smith call himself a Mormon?

Dan: Yeah, he called his people the Mormons. But it wasn’t anything he made up.

Nehemia: Okay, if Joseph Smith used that term, then I think it's fair to use that term. And by the way, “Mormons” doesn't just refer to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Aren't there other religious groups today that also are part of the word Mormon? Is that right?

Dan: Well, they have never used the term Mormon applied to, let's say, the reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Nehemia: Oh, they never called themselves Mormons?

Dan: No.

Nehemia: Okay. Do scholars refer to them as Mormons?

Dan: It only stuck with the Utah Church.

Nehemia: Oh, okay. All right. But in history, I think it's not wrong to talk about… It’s like if we were talking about the time of Moses, we would talk about Israelites rather than Jews, so I think it’s not inappropriate to say Mormons when we’re talking about the historical period where they use that term. Would you agree with that?

Dan: Recently, the leader of the church requested to be called Latter-day Saints.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: Because they're Latter-day Saints. And the Mormon nickname came about because they were called Mormons, Mormonites… it wasn't necessarily for derision, to insult them, it's because they believe the Book of Mormon and that’s how they got labeled.

Nehemia: And this is a period of history where Muslims were called Mohammadans, so… But then Christians… well, even the term Christians is they follow Christ. So, okay, in any event, so where are we in the story? I lost my place.

Dan: We're translating the Book of Mormon.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Dan: And the average Mormon believes it's done by this Urim and Thummim, from behind a curtain. Joseph Smith attached it to the breastplate, it's like Aaron's breastplate. The original story had nothing to do with any of that.

Nehemia: So, their description, if I understand correctly, is he's wearing something called the breastplate.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: And there's a piece of metal or something that comes off and puts these, what you call spectacles, or interpreters, over his eyes and he looks through some sort of stones and he sees the translation.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. That's their narrative.

Dan: In English.

Nehemia: Yeah. In King James English, not in his dialect of English.

Dan: Right. Well, it's a translation, and he used that as a means of translating, and using what people would expect scripture to sound like.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: So, the spectacles were never associated with the breastplate, like what you just described. That description came out of Joseph Smith's brother, William Smith, years later.

Nehemia: Oh, really?

Dan: And I do not know how he got that story. But the breastplate and the spectacles were never associated together until 1838. Before that, they were separate. They had nothing to do with each other.

Nehemia: Oh, really?

Dan: Yeah. So that's how the story is evolving. And so, instead of what Joseph Smith was trying to do, and other early Mormon apologists… Mormonism is an apologetic movement from day one, almost.

Nehemia: Tell us what that means, apologetic, because some of the audience members will think it means they're apologizing.

Dan: They’re defenders of the of the faith, you know, defending the faith. So, they're argumentative towards other Christian groups right off, to say, “You are wrong or you are right.”

Nehemia: So, apologetics doesn't mean you're apologizing, for those who don't know.

Dan: No!

Nehemia: It's from the Greek word that means “to defend”. So, by their nature, you're saying Mormonism is defending itself, specifically against Protestantism, right?

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Meaning, it’s not defending itself against Islam or Judaism, I don’t think…

Dan: No, that wasn't their focus.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: It's trying to convert other Christians.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: Is their focus. And to Native Americans, next, primarily, who they believe are Israelites from the tribe of Ephraim.

Nehemia: Well, not entirely from Ephraim if I remember…

Dan: Manasseh.

Nehemia: We can come back to that.

Dan: It’s Manasseh.

Nehemia: Right. Well, anyway, let's come back to that. So, he's translating the Book of Mormon and he's using these spectacles, according to the narrative, and then what happens?

Dan: So, he translates, there in Harmony, Pennsylvania, for a time, in 1828. And he gets a manuscript of about 116 pages, but nobody knows what size it really was, but it became known as “the lost 116 pages”, because he loses it. His scribe Martin Harris wanted to take the manuscript back to Palmyra with him to show it off to his unbelieving wife and relatives, to show them, “Look, this is a great book,” and read parts to them, and just say, “I'm not wasting my time or money.”

But it ended up getting stolen and lost; there was no other copy. So, this becomes a crisis, a translation crisis, for Joseph Smith. What does he do in light of this? Since it appears that he's just dictating largely off the top of his head, I'm sure he prepares, but he can't duplicate it.

Nehemia: But the Mormon belief is that he's not making this up, he’s looking through the spectacles and he’s seeing the translation, and he’s dictating word for word.

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: So, he should be able to do it again.

Dan: You would think. That’s why it’s such a crisis.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: It’s a crisis because he can’t do it. But he gets a revelation from the Urim and Thummim, he gets a separate revelation, it has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon, but it’s his direct revelation with God. And these are the first direct revelations from God that he gets during the crisis period.

Nehemia: Oh, really? So, this is an important point.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: The Mormon scriptures isn’t just the Book of Mormon, or the LDS scriptures, isn’t just the Book of Mormon, it’s also something called the Doctrine and Covenants, that you've also done some critical work on. We'll get to that hopefully later. Because I actually didn't know that when I started researching this. I find it fascinating that they have this entire Oral Law, I'm going to call it that.

Dan: Call it! They have an oral law.

Nehemia: Well, it's supplemental to the Book of Mormon.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: And then they also have the Book of Abraham and they have Pearl of Great Price, they've got a bunch of things in their scriptures which isn't just the Book of Mormon. I actually didn't realize that.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Until about a year ago, when I started researching this.

Dan: It's not clear when Joseph Smith starts if he's just a translator. It's not clear that he's going to get revelations himself; written revelations, where he dictates, and they write it down. And then they eventually get published. That even when he's writing them down, it’s not clear that he's going to publish this eventually at all.

Nehemia: So, here's where the analogy, to me, is so powerful. Because when Paul sends in a letter, an epistle, to the Galatians, I don't think he's thinking, “Oh, okay, now I've just added a book to the Bible.”

Dan: No!

Nehemia: He's thinking, “These Galatians have got to be set right because they're doing things wrong.”

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: But then it becomes canonized. And here we can see this happening almost in real time with the Doctrines and Covenants. It's called D&C, Doctrines and Covenants.

Dan: Yeah, the Doctrine and Covenants.

Nehemia: Doctrine and Covenants. Okay, we'll come back to that.

Dan: There’s the Doctrine, and there's Covenants.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: Or promises or Commandments.

Nehemia: And originally, it's not called that; it's called the Book of Commandments, which I want to come back to that.

Dan: Originally, yeah.

Nehemia: Because that in itself is really fascinating. It's almost like their Mishnah and Talmud; I'm going to use the analogy here. It's obviously not the same thing, but it has some analogies there. Or maybe if you were a Samaritan, you'd say, “It's like the Book of Joshua.” From their perspective, meaning something added to the Torah.

So, he gets a revelation, and the revelation is what? What do you do about the lost 116 pages?

Dan: The revelation says for him not to translate the same over again, because the wicked and designing men have changed or altered the manuscript, so that if he tries to translate it again, it will read differently, and they will use that as evidence against him.

Nehemia: Ah! So that's really interesting. In other words, I'm just thinking out loud here… if in the original 116 pages he said, “Lehi was 24 years old,” or something… I'm making stuff up, it might not be in there, and then when he re-does it, Lehi is 25 years old, and they'll say, “Ah, see, he's making it up and he got the details wrong.” Is that what it's implying?

Dan: Yeah, right.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: And Martin Harris, who was the scribe, might remember some of that even. So he doesn't translate the same, but he kind of fires Martin Harris as the scribe.

Nehemia: Okay, I think that was probably a good decision on his part… because Martin Harris had made some kind of an oath that he wasn't going to show it to more than three people, and then he's showing it to everybody left and right, and then he loses it.

Dan: Yeah. And the thing is is that Martin Harris had to ask Joseph Smith three times to take the manuscript.

Nehemia: Oh, wow.

Dan: It was “No, no, okay.” And so, he does, and he's not supposed to show it to anyone but his wife. But according to Joseph Smith, he showed it to more people and broke his commandment, his covenant. And that's why he's being punished.

So, for a while he doesn't have a scribe except for his wife, here and there. But eventually, a young man named Oliver Cowdery comes along. And Oliver Cowdery meets the Smith family in Manchester, and he's a schoolteacher. And he lives with the Smiths for a while, and he learns about the plates, and he becomes obsessed with the subject. He even has a dream where he sees these plates; it says, “The Lord showed him the plates.” And so, he gets obsessed, and he goes down to Harmony, Pennsylvania, and becomes Joseph Smith’s scribe for the rest of the Book of Mormon, as we have it.

Nehemia: He's the main scribe, but actually there's a whole bunch of different scribes. I've seen and looked at some of the stuff Royal Skousen has done.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Where there's one page with four different handwritings or something.

Dan: Yeah, well, as the story progresses, he leaves Harmony because it becomes too hot there for him to continue working. And he gets this opportunity to move back into New York to a town called Fayette, New York, which is about, 30 miles east of Palmyra. And it's right there by the Finger Lakes, and this family, the Whitmer family, lives there. They're of German stock, and the father, Peter Whitmer, still has a German accent. And they attend the German Reformed Church right there, and they invite Joseph Smith up there for the remainder of the translation of the Book of Mormon, which is just one month, basically…

Nehemia: Wow.

Dan: …as far as we can tell, from the beginning of June 1829 to about the 1st of July 1829.

Nehemia: What is the time period in which he writes the entire… not including the 116 pages, or whatever they were, but what we have today? How long of a period was that written over?

Dan: Well, Oliver Cowdery started in early April 1829. So, April and May, Joseph’s dictating and Cowdery's writing for a couple of months, April and May. And then they travel 120, 150 miles up to Fayette and do one month, of June. So, it's about 90 days, roughly.

Nehemia: So, the entire book, which is over 500 pages, was written in 90 days. We're going to come back to that. That's a very important point. I think from the Mormon perspective as well, it's an important point, because they'll say that's the miracle.

Dan: And the Book of Mormon is meant to be a miracle. It's the founding miracle of Mormonism and it was intended to be that.

Nehemia: Let's come back to that. I'm taking notes of things that we want to come back to.

Dan: Yeah, sure.

Nehemia: So, he finishes the Book of Mormon, he's actually dictating it while, according to them, looking through the spectacles. What happens next?

Dan: So, when he's dictating up in Fayette, he's dictating the first part. So, what he had done is continue from what we know as the Book of Mosiah to the end of the Book of Mormon, Moroni, in Manchester, from what we can tell.

And then when they move to Fayette, they do the first part. And the first part goes quickly, mostly because it has about 20 chapters directly from the book of Isaiah, the King James Version. So, we're only talking about less than 100 pages, but most of it's already been written.

Nehemia: So is their claim that when he was… maybe this is something we should save for later, but let's do it. So, is their claim that when he is dictating Isaiah, that he's looking through the spectacles? Or is he saying, “Hey Oliver, let's do chapter 49 of Isaiah,” and then Oliver's transcribing? Or he's reading it to him? Is there a specific claim about this?

Dan: Yes, this is hotly contested as well.

Nehemia: Ah, okay.

Dan: So, we have a few late 19th century statements, 1870’s-80’s, of some of the eyewitnesses describing what they saw when they weren’t doing their farmwork. The Whitmer’s described Joseph Smith as putting a stone in his hat and looking into the darkness of the hat, and reading off of that one stone, the translation. And so, they take from that that Joseph Smith never took his head out of the hat.

Nehemia: And we're going to get back to the stone in the hat, because that's incredible, absolutely incredible! We actually have the stone!

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: Which is the equivalent of having Moses’ staff. That's amazing!

Dan: Yeah. I thought I'd never get to see that stone myself.

Nehemia: But the church itself published the photos of the stone.

Dan: Yeah!

Nehemia: It's incredible. Alright. So, he's finished dictating the Book of Mormon, or authoring it, as you would believe. And then, what happens after that? So that's in 1829, it doesn't get published for another year. So, what's going on?

Dan: So, in the month of June they apply for the copyright in Utica, New York, actually, and they also go back the 30 miles over to Palmyra and start negotiating for the publishing with Albert G. Grandin, who has a print shop and bookstore on the main street of Palmyra. And he turns it down. And it's already known, I think, that Joseph Smith is kind of anti-Masonic.

Nehemia: The Book of Mormon is anti-Masonic.

Dan: The Book of Mormon has warnings against Masonry.

Nehemia: And this publisher is actually a Mason, right?

Dan: Yeah. And Grandin is known as a Masonic printer because he's pro-Jackson; he's pro-Andrew Jackson. And Andrew Jackson, in 1828, ran successfully for president.

Nehemia: And back then Freemasonry was a really big deal, not like today where… well, I don't know if it's a big deal today or not, but it seems like it's less of a central issue in American society. Back then it was a big deal, right?

Dan: Yeah. We'll get into that, probably.

Nehemia: Okay, yeah.

Dan: So yeah, Western New York especially was the hotbed of anti-Masonry.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: People just totally, violently... and there were churches that divided over that subject.

Nehemia: Wow.

Dan: Yeah, “You couldn't be a member of our church if you're a Mason,” kind of an idea.

Nehemia: Wow.

Dan: So, it was a hotly contested issue, and Andrew Jackson, being a Mason in the 1828 election, in western New York, was the hot subject.

Nehemia: And I want to point out, today a lot of times… it becomes like the focus of conspiracy theories. It wasn't a conspiracy theory that Andrew Jackson was a Mason. He was openly and proudly a Mason, right?

Dan: Yes. It wasn't that much of an issue in other states.

Nehemia: But it was in New York. Okay.

Dan: Western New York, especially.

Nehemia: Okay. And that's because of this guy who was murdered; maybe we’ll get to that, maybe we won't.

Dan: We'll get to that.

Nehemia: Alright.

Dan: The Book of Mormon has prophecies in it about a secret combination in the last days that shall kill and murder the prophets and the saints. So, it's woven into the Book of Mormon's narrative, and Joseph Smith went to Grandin, and Grandin said no. And then he went to Rochester, and he went to this guy named Thurlow Weed. Thurlow Weed was the main publisher of a newspaper in Rochester that was anti-Masonic, because he was against Jackson, and he was using the Masonry angle to try to hurt Jackson's chances for being elected or voted for in western New York, at least. And he went to Thurlow Weed and he gave an exhibition of putting the stone in the hat and reading, dictating stuff.

Nehemia: But to be clear, is this part of what Mormons believe? Or is this just that now we’re in the critical…

Dan: This is just a story.

Nehemia: Oh, we don't even know if this happened. Okay.

Dan: I think his mother, in her history, talked about him going to Thurlow Weed. But Thurlow Weed brought a thing up about his experience later on in the 50’s.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: Thurlow Weed turned it down; he didn't want to do it. So, Joseph Smith went to this other guy, Elihu Marshall, and he was famous for a spelling book at the time.

Nehemia: I love these names! He's got a name from the book of Job, Elihu, alright.

Dan: Yeah. And he was a Quaker, and he said, “Okay, I'll publish it.” And so, Joseph Smith went back to Grandin, and said, “I can get it published, but I don't want to travel to Rochester.” He still wanted Grandin to do it.

Nehemia: Do you think the Quaker liked it because it was anti-slavery? Or he just wanted the money because he's doing a professional job, maybe?

Dan: I don't know how he convinced him.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: But Martin Harris was of Quaker stock, so he might have had leverage that way.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: So, Grandin said that he wouldn't publish it unless they put the money up first, because he's not sure it's going to sell. And Martin Harris put up his farm for $3,000.

Nehemia: That was a lot of money back then, $3,000.

Dan: Yeah, to print 5,000 copies, which is a lot, which kind of demonstrates the confidence of Joseph Smith.

Nehemia: Just to give you an idea, in 2004 when I self-published my first book, I did about 3,000 copies, and it probably cost about $5,000. That was in 2004! So that's actually incredible that it would cost… Well, his book was a lot longer than mine, the paper's the most expensive part probably. Certainly, back then the paper was the expensive part.

Dan: They were leather bound.

Nehemia: Oh, wow! Okay. So that also is expensive, wow. Mine was a paperback. So yeah, that's a lot to print for a first run.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: And by contrast as well, when academic books are published by Brill, for example, he does a lot of Judaic studies. They will do between 750 and 1,000 copies. Today, that's not even the case; that was true 10 or 15 years ago. Today, they're going to print on demand.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: For the 200 libraries around the world who buy the book, and that'll be it. If you want another one, you wait six weeks for them to do the print on demand. And this is a very reputable publisher today in the academia of Jewish studies… they do other stuff too. So, he's doing 5,000 copies, did you say, for $3,000?

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Wow, okay, that is a lot of confidence.

Dan: Eventually, they had to lower the price.

Nehemia: Okay. Do we know what they were selling it for?

Dan: I forget now.

Nehemia: Okay. But it was probably in the neighborhood of a dollar? I mean, even that was a lot of money.

Dan: Well, it's got to be in shillings.

Nehemia: Oh, wow! So, I don't even know what that is or how that translates.

Dan: Something like $1.25 I think.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: Something around there. $1.75 down to…

Nehemia: I've heard you talk about the monthly wage for digging the Erie Canal. What was that again?

Dan: $12 a month.

Nehemia: $12 a month! So, $1.75 is a lot of money.

Dan: I think… Yeah. So, Grandin agrees, Joseph Smith finishes the translation process, then they make a copy. This time they make what is a printer's copy, Oliver Cowdery does.

Nehemia: He's learned his lesson about giving the only copy over before the invention of scanning and photocopy machines. Alright, so they make a copy.

Dan: So eventually, they start printing the Book of Mormon, and it takes a while. I forget what month they started in, but the first copies came off the press in March of 1830.

Nehemia: Yeah. Okay.

Dan: And I don't know how far, how much further you want to go!

Nehemia: Well, we can say the rest is history. And there's a lot more that happens between 1830 and when Joseph Smith is assassinated, murdered, killed, in 1844, but I don't know that we'll have time to get to that.

This has been a fascinating conversation, Dan. Definitely kind of a first for me to talk about a topic that I wish I knew a lot more about, and hopefully I'll learn more about. I've already learned more about it just from talking to you. Well, I want to say one final thing, and then I'll let you say some final closing remarks.

If you're watching this, listening to this, and you have the burning feeling in your heart that tells you Joseph Smith is a true prophet and the Book of Mormon is true, far be it for me to tell you that that's not the case. I always try to have this conversation… I'm not a believer, as Mormons would define it, and so I want to understand what happened, and more importantly for me, how I can apply that to other situations. And I think I've learned a lot from this process. Dan, any final words?

Dan: It was great being with you today. I've just recently become aware of your show. I must say that I have a lot of Jewish relatives.

Nehemia: Okay!

Dan: My wife is Jewish.

Nehemia: Oh, wow!

Dan: But she's a Christian now.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: And I'm nothing.

Nehemia: Kind of like the Nephites. I mean, the story of the Book of Mormon is that. And we didn't even really talk about this, is that you had these Jews who came to believe in Jesus even hundreds of years before he came.

And I was kind of making a joke there, but there is an interesting Jesus-believing-Jews, according to the Book of Mormon.

In some respects, the Book of Mormon is what you would have expected to find in the Old Testament, if Christianity is true. In other words, you have people openly saying hundreds of years before Jesus that God is coming soon and He's going to come down to Earth. Meaning, that's the way that Isaiah is interpreted, but it's explicitly stated in the Book of Mormon… by Christians.

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: So, I think that's really interesting. Anyway, thanks so much for all your time.

Dan: Thanks for having me.

Nehemia: I hope we are able to broadcast all of this. We've been recording at this point… guys, I think this is a personal record for me. We've been recording for, I want to say almost seven-and-a-half hours or something like that! So, thanks so much.

Dan: Alright!

Nehemia: Alright, shalom, Goodbye. Thank you, shalom to your wife!

You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

We hope the above transcript has proven to be a helpful resource in your study. While much effort has been taken to provide you with this transcript, it should be noted that the text has not been reviewed by the speakers and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If you would like to support our efforts to transcribe the teachings on NehemiasWall.com, please visit our support page. All donations are tax-deductible (501c3) and help us empower people around the world with the Hebrew sources of their faith!