Key to the Keystone

[The Nehor]

6 hours ago, Nofear said:

While I'm certain that Barnes will error in some particular here or there, I find that his basic theses seem to hold:

• Extant apocryphal literature often draws from much older literature
• High Christology, absent from the Old Testament, is explicit in the older literature

The first bullet point is sort of true. It is a huge jump though to assume that the later apocrypha are somehow more tied to older literature than the rest of the Old Testament which was written closer in time to said literature. It also makes a bunch of assumptions that the messianic stuff came from older literature when there is little evidence to support this. The concept of a Jewish messiah came to the forefront shortly before a lot of the apocrypha was written. Why assume it came from the distant past?

The second is just a guess and not even an educated one. It does fit in with the LDS worldview and tells the saints what they want to hear but that is more reason to be suspicious of it. When someone tells you something happened historically in a way that is perfect for them and you that is a sign to be on guard. History is rarely that neat.

[Benjamin McGuire]

14 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Jonah's effort is to show evidence that the Book of Mormon hints at issues brought forth by Barker, etc... thus providing evidence for it's Hebrew origins, and early timeline, instead of "ole Joe Smith wrote it!". It's mainly apologetic in nature, using modern historical research.

Which is just another way of saying what I said - it's about making the Book of Mormon evidence. It turns the value of the Book of Mormon into its value as an artifact instead of a religious text whose meaning comes from the ways that we read the text. Implied in all of this is that the keystone of Mormonism is the evidence argument (the apologetic argument) instead of the doctrinal and theological messages of the text. As an apologetic issue, there is a real problem here because the argument from the critics is also perfectly willing to fit into that space - that is, to make the Book of Mormon an artifact of evidence for modern authorship. The two positions are just different sides of the same coin. Years ago, I introduced this idea in the words of Larry Hurtado from his book Lord Jesus Christ:

Quote

Before we proceed further towards analyzing Christ-devotion as a historical phenomenon, however, it may be helpful to note a relevant (and in my view misguided) assumption shared by both the pre/anticritical and the history-of-religion approaches. It is worth identifying because it continues to be influential in both popular and scholarly circles. This is the notion that the validity of a religious belief or practice is called into question if it can be shown to be a truly historical phenomenon, and the product of historical factors and forces that we can attempt to identify and analyze…. Wishing to preserve the religious and theological validity of traditional christological claims, the anticritical view attempted to deny or minimize as far as possible the historically conditioned nature of early Christ-devotion. On the other hand, the history-of-religion scholars were convinced that their demonstration of the historically conditioned nature of early Christ-devotion proved that it was no longer to be treated as theologically valid or binding for modern Christians. In both views the assumption is the same: if something can be shown to have arisen through a historical process, then it cannot be divine “revelation” or have continuing theological validity.

The apologetic argument here is driven by the suggestion that LDS investigators can show uniqueness (an absence of historical process) by finding all of these parallels that couldn't possibly have been known in 1828. The critics will point to all the parallels that can be found in Joseph's environment. As an apologetics argument (both for and against) it simply fails. Here is part of my commentary (from the same review essay):

Quote

The notion is applicable to our discussion here, because the same principle is at work. Grunder describes the pre/anticritical Mormon view in very similar terms (speaking with the voice of such an individual): “We already accepted the transcendent truth of Joseph’s scriptures and teachings, so their evident prescience (confirmed, we suggested, only by later scientific and historical scholarship) must prove their origins to be prophetic and divine” (2008, p. 15). On the other side, Grunder’s naïve historical-critical pose claims that Mormonism was “worked up naturalistically through elements available in Joseph Smith’s world” (2008, p. 30). A key aim of this essay is to point out (in agreement with Larry Hurtado) that this assumption is wrong. There is no question that Mormonism arises from a historical setting (one that can be studied). Its beginnings involved real people with real histories—all of whom started out as something other than a follower of the movement that would eventually be called Mormonism.

Part of what fascinates me in all of this is that both apologists and their critic counterparts undermine their own arguments - because the same assumptions exist for both sets of data. Once the apologist convinces us that the parallels are meaningful as evidence, they open the door for the critics arguments using the same kind of parallels to achieve a different end. The same is true for the critics. People will generally believe what they want to believe - and can produce the evidence that they feel that they need to justify that belief. I am not overtly opposed to any of this - what really rubs me the wrong way in this discussion here of this book by Barnes is the assertion that it is this apologetic argument - this search for parallels - that constitutes the 'key' to understanding the Book of Mormon - and the further assertion in the title of the book that it is this apologetic understanding of the Book of Mormon that forms the keystone of Mormonism as a whole. According to Nephi in any case, it is the reading of the text with the Spirit, and the relevant contextually appropriate meaning we give the text from our own experience that forms testimony - and it is this testimony of the gospel that comes as we are filled with the "spirit of prophecy" that forms the keystone of our religion.

Edited April 5, 2025 by Benjamin McGuire

[Stargazer]

On 4/4/2025 at 12:58 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

I haven't read the book. I would like to make a couple of comments.

Having not read it, of course you would. Please pardon my annoyance.

On 4/4/2025 at 12:58 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

1: Anyone claiming that the Book of Mormon needs some sort of key to properly read it is off in left field someplace.

That isn't what the book is claiming.

On 4/4/2025 at 12:58 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Nephi, in the Book of Mormon, explains that the key to reading the Book of Mormon is personal experience - so that we can "liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning". He deliberately excludes historical context when reading scripture to his descendants so that they are forced to read the text in that way - and he provides examples of how to read a text in this way. I discussed all of that in this essay.

Yes, but does that mean we must also ignore historical context? Nephi didn't want his people to make the same mistakes the Jews in Jerusalem were making, so he deliberately avoided telling them about it. I think we can survive the experience.

Edited to remove verbiage which may be wrong and also to avoid unnecessary contention. Necessary contention remains 🙂 

Edited April 5, 2025 by Stargazer

[Stargazer]

Jonah Barnes frequently holds forth on Ward Radio, and posts both on the Ward Radio and Plain and Precious Publishing Discord servers. I've invited him to come here and discuss his book. I don't know if he actually will do so, but we'll see.

 

[Stargazer]

55 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Which is just another way of saying what I said - it's about making the Book of Mormon evidence. It turns the value of the Book of Mormon into its value as an artifact instead of a religious text whose meaning comes from the ways that we read the text. Implied in all of this is that the keystone of Mormonism is the evidence argument (the apologetic argument) instead of the doctrinal and theological messages of the text. As an apologetic issue, there is a real problem here because the argument from the critics is also perfectly willing to fit into that space - that is, to make the Book of Mormon an artifact of evidence for modern authorship.

So, your position is to ignore all attacks upon the Book of Mormon based on historicity, supposed anachronisms in the text, and lack of archaeological evidence, and require all to believe only based on spiritual confirmation? 

55 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

According to Nephi in any case, it is the reading of the text with the Spirit, and the relevant contextually appropriate meaning we give the text from our own experience that forms testimony - and it is this testimony of the gospel that comes as we are filled with the "spirit of prophecy" that forms the keystone of our religion.

Of course we should rely upon the "spirit of prophecy" in our acquiring of our testimony of the Book of Mormon. That's the final boss, as it were. But what about in the meantime before we reach that point? We're just supposed to be grass blowing in the wind?

Dan Peterson once wrote (here😞

"Sometimes, failure to respond to a criticism, claim or attack lends it unearned credibility even when it’s completely without any merit, and allows it to spread widely and to take firm root as if it were true. That is why the late Elder Neal A. Maxwell, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, advised Latter-day Saints to allow no more “uncontested slam dunks” from critics. Falsehoods should not go uncontradicted into the public record.

"'Be ready always,' says the King James translation of 1 Peter 3:15, 'to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.'

"The Greek rendered here as “answer” is “apologia,” meaning “defense.” And, rather than the perhaps misleading King James language of “meekness and fear,” several more modern translations suggest that we offer our defense “with gentleness and respect.”

"Elder Maxwell was fond of Austin Farrer’s praise of the great Christian writer and apologist C.S. Lewis: “Though argument does not create conviction,” Farrer wrote in 1965, “lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.”"

[ZealouslyStriving]

16 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

So, your position is to ignore all attacks upon the Book of Mormon based on historicity, supposed anachronisms in the text, and lack of archaeological evidence, and require all to believe only based on spiritual confirmation? 

Yeah, I don't get @Benjamin McGuire point either.

[Benjamin McGuire]

2 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

That isn't what the book is claiming.

Yes ... so the title is misleading then.

I have actually read some of it now. I think that my comments are at least a bit accurate here.

3 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Yes, but does that mean we must also ignore historical context? Nephi didn't want his people to make the same mistakes the Jews in Jerusalem were making, so he deliberately avoided telling them about it. I think we can survive the experience.

What Key to the Keystone says is that the brass plates were available to Nephi's descendants, and some of what was on those plates found its way onto the gold plates. And because there have been many documents of ancient origin that were not available in Joseph's day, of which traces can be found in the Book of Mormon, it suggests that we can partially reconstruct what was on the brass plates. And this provides an evidentiary foundation or suggestion concerning the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, and Joseph's prophetic calling.

I don't disagree with the premise that we can discuss that there is some overlap between the Book of Mormon and the Brass Plates. Isaiah, for example, was on the Brass Plates. We can't really tell what the Isaiah on the Brass Plates looked like because the Book of Mormon quotes the Isaiah from the King James text. We can tell that Deuteronomy was on the Brass Plates, because the Book of Mormon cites Deuteronomy. The Book of Mormon also cites from Numbers, Exodus, and Genesis. It quotes from Psalms. But then, it quotes from Malachi, which wasn't on the Brass Plates. And we get quotes from the New Testament - which also weren't on the Brass Plates. So we run into the problem of citations added during translation.

I addressed all of the rest of your points in a later comment.

Almost a decade ago, I gave my first major presentation on the translation of the Book of Mormon. There is this problem when we conflate the text of the Book of Mormon with the Brass Plates - and it's a problem that rears its ugly head when we start looking at parallels like this:

Quote

We could extend this idea even further. If we follow what the text of the Book of Mormon seems to suggest, then the Isaiah passages that Nephi quotes come from an Egyptian text, which was translated from a Hebrew original. That Egyptian text is then translated into the language on the gold plates, which is then translated into English in the Book of Mormon into a nearly exact copy of the King James translation. Is this really likely?

The Book of Mormon isn't a translation of the gold plates when it uses the King James language to provide us with (at times) entire chapters of the Old Testament. So at best, we can argue that there is a shared text that sits as a predecessor to both traditions. But when the Book of Mormon quotes from the King James, it doesn't help us understand what the text of the gold plates actually looked like. The best we can do is something akin to my notes in my discussion on Nephi and Goliath - we can make guesses as to the Hebrew language that Nephi was engaging when he writes on the gold plates. For the record, we can't reconstruct anything that was on the brass plates - we can only discuss the likelihood of various texts being present - and then only about various texts in an uncertain state in their development (none of them having reached what we might label as a final form - another issue that I discuss in my Nephi and Goliath paper).

And while you may think that this is somehow confirmation of Joseph's prophetic calling, my experience is that it isn't particularly good confirmation of such a thing (as I noted in my last post here in this thread).

17 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Perhaps he doesn't know what he is talking about. But it might be helpful if you would actually read the book, because you seem to be making a judgment based on very little data.

I would agree with this. I don't have the time to read the book, and not much interest based on what I have seen of the book (I did read the sample chapter). I understand, though, this sort of approach having seen it several times - and, I have a several decades long position on the problems of Mormonisms parallelomania. Barnes is not the first, either, to make the claim of having the "key to the keystone". One that comes quickly to mind is Avraham Gileadi's approach. His 1991 essay: "Isaiah: Key to the Book of Mormon" was, at the time, of significant interest to me.

24 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

The Book of Mormon text is a translation into English of an ancient text. Do you also call the King James Version of the Bible a modern text? Because it too was only published a few hundred years ago.

Yes. I would. It is, at least, in English (and EME is not that different from ModE). But this isn't a particularly useful comparison. Why? Well, the King James translation of the Old Testament was a fairly literal translation of Hebrew texts subsequent to the Masoretic formulation (MT) dating to around 1,000 CE. It tends to translate the same original source words consistently. We have the source material used for the KJV translation. And so we can evaluate the type and quality of the translation.

The Book of Mormon is a translation of the Gold Plates. The Gold Plates reference a copy of Hebrew scriptures, translated into Egyptian (allegedly sometime in the 7th century BCE), and taken by the Nephites and referenced in their writings in the Gold Plates. If the Book of Mormon was a literal translation of the Gold Plates, and if the Gold Plates contained literal translations of its sources, and if we had a good grasp on the original language of the Brass Plates, we might be able to do some reconstructions. But, all of those 'if' propositions fail. The Book of Mormon is not a strictly literal translation of the gold plates (we know this just by its inclusion of the King James language). The Book of Mormon does not give us a literal translation of its sources (just look what Moroni does with the Book of Ether). We have no idea what the language of the Brass Plates looked like. So we have this long chain of speculations - and all of this means that we can make general observations about the contents of the Brass Plates that might have been used in the Gold Plates and so carried over into the Book of Mormon - but it is difficult for us to distinguish what language comes from the brass plates through the gold plates into English and what is simply supplied in the translation itself as part of making the text accessible to the modern reader. These things matter in these discussions.

41 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Or perhaps you are one of those who does not believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon? If it's not an actual record of an actual people, then of course your arguments are completely valid. And the premise of the Key to the Keystone is completely false.

It isn't an either/or. Trying to make it an either/or doesn't help with the fact that this book presents really, really bad arguments.

42 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

The outrage is on the part of the non-LDS Christians who get worked up about Christ being mentioned and talked about incessantly in the Book of Mormon, while our current Old Testament contains virtually nothing concrete about Him. 

And this is mostly a myth.

According to most non-LDS Christians, Christ is mentioned all the time. Here is one good example. Now, I will admit, they don't like Him being identified by name as "Jesus". But, this brings us right back to the problems of translation and all that other mess.

It's kind of like our love-hate relationship with the Josian reform. As much as Margaret Barker has influenced some LDS academics and writers, we still generally would be in favor of the reforms that Josiah made. After all, it was partly his efforts that brought all the regionally distinct YHWH worshippers into a single umbrella. Instead of YHWH of Teman, and YHWH of Samaria, we have just YHWH. Mormonism likes the idea of YHWH having a consort (Asherah). But this is sort of lip service, since they really don't want all of the theology that goes along with it (that Josiah managed to suppress). The late Bill Hamblin had this to say:

Quote

Finally, I believe that Josiah’s reforms were necessary and inspired. The first thing to note is that no biblical prophet ever opposed or criticized Josiah’s reforms. No biblical prophet ever endorsed the worship of the goddess Asherah.18 No biblical prophet ever endorsed the worship of any god other than Yhwh. No biblical prophet ever endorsed the worship of idols. Now, one could in theory argue this is because the Deuteronomists decided which books to include in the Bible and consciously suppressed alternative viewpoints from non-Deuteronomistic prophets. But the fact remains that in the surviving texts, all the prophets agree with at least these three basics of Josiah’s reforms: (1) Israel should worship only Yhwh; Israel must not worship foreign gods; (2) Israel must not worship idols (or worship Yhwh as an idol), or follow other Canaanite cultic practices; and, to the extent they discuss it, (3) Israel must worship only in the Jerusalem temple. Even Ezekiel, whom Barker sees as one of the most important prophets of authentic temple theology and mysticism, agrees with these principles and insists that failure to follow these three principles was the cause for the departure of the Glory/kābôd of Yhwh from the temple (Ezekiel 10), leaving it ripe for destruction by the Babylonians.

I am not trying to diminish the arguments made by Barker (and Hamblin is careful to point out that his disagreements are only with parts of Barker's perspective). Nephi's response to these issues are far more complex than what is usually recognized. Why does Lehi go three days into the wilderness to make sacrifices? On the one hand, it is written in a way that suggests that the description is following the exodus from Egypt, when Moses leads the people three days into the wilderness to offer sacrifices. There is connected to this an early Israelite tradition that (contrary to Josian edicts) once you were a certain distance from the temple you could make sacrifices without offending God. So was Lehi respecting the Josian reforms here? Or is this an indicator that Lehi believed that the temple in Jerusalem was apostate, had been abandoned by God, and the three day journey was necessary (just as it was for Moses and the Israelites) to get out of the new Egypt and return to God in the wilderness? And, I note in passing, that I couldn't begin to ask such a question without having some sense of understanding of the historical and literary contexts for Lehi's departure. We often get out of the texts exactly what we are hoping to find.

The challenge is that such questions are not easily answered. There is no key to understanding them found in a smattering of parallels found in apocryphal writings. And in the long run, the answers make little difference to us in understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ as presented in the Book of Mormon. And that is the point I am trying to make. The truth of the Book of Mormon will never be established by finding parallels - parallels that are not particularly unique - parallels that we should expect to find, and which aren't nearly as unique or special as we are told that they are. The truth of the Book of Mormon comes to us only as we read it (and re-read it) with the spirit in light of our own experience and circumstances.

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

Or perhaps you are one of those who does not believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon? If it's not an actual record of an actual people, then of course your arguments are completely valid. And the premise of the Key to the Keystone is completely false.

A final note - you cannot demonstrate historicity from the text. The argument for historicity comes from locating specific people and events in specific places doing specific things. We don't make arguments for evidence for historicity in all of this - we make arguments for the verisimilitude of the text (and then we argue that verisimilitude would be impossible without revelation). It is not a particularly strong argument - as I keep noting - because the same arguments using different data sets can be made by critics and non-believers to show that the text must have originated in a completely different time and place. This is the nature of these arguments. These arguments still exist for the biblical texts and traditions - the Book of Mormon, from that historical/critical perspective is in far worse shape than the Bible. At least with the Bible we can find external evidence of historical places, and historical persons, and evidence for the things that these people did in the places that they did them. But in the end, it doesn't create convincing evidence for a Jesus Christ as the Son of God, who was resurrected from the dead after performing an act of atonement for all of mankind. We get that truth in other ways.

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

So, your position is to ignore all attacks upon the Book of Mormon based on historicity, supposed anachronisms in the text, and lack of archaeological evidence, and require all to believe only based on spiritual confirmation? 

Yeah. I think so. I think that its good to have good arguments. But, we don't base our testimonies on these arguments - and for those that do, once the argument falls apart, so does any basis for belief. And I see this built in to your question here. What are supposed anachronisms in the text? Well for us to actually determine what is anachronistic and what is not (for the purposes of determining whether the Book of Mormon is in some way a translation of an ancient 7th century CE text, we would have to actually produce a list of anachronisms that cannot be attributed to the translation of the text, and then determine how and why they are anachronistic. I am not saying that this can't be done - I am just pointing out that no one has ever done this. Mormons and their critics working from the same set of assumptions have always used the same approaches. The horse? It cannot be an artifact of translation - it must be because (a) there really were domesticated horses in the right place at the right time, or (b) there really weren't. The motivations may be different, but believers and critics tend to want to conflate the modern Book of Mormon with the alleged ancient sources.

And if you do not have a spiritual confirmation, the moment you become convinced that something that you built your testimony is wrong - that is the moment that you lose your faith. And that to me is a problem. So yeah, we should be building our testimony on spiritual confirmation - on personal revelation. And this is always hardest for those like Laman and Lemuel:

Quote

And I [Nephi] said unto them: Have ye inquired of the Lord? And they said unto me: We have not; for the Lord maketh no such thing known unto us. (1 Nephi 15:8–9)

The point of this object lesson in the text isn't to simply go to the prophet or the scriptures to ask for guidance and understand - it is to ask the Lord.

 

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

Dan Peterson once wrote (here😞

I know Dan Peterson. I have a lot of respect for him. We have interacted many times over the years that I have known him. But, do you think that apologetics is an adequate substitute for a witness from God?

Edited April 5, 2025 by Benjamin McGuire

[Steve J]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Yeah. I think so. I think that its good to have good arguments. But, we don't base our testimonies on these arguments - and for those that do, once the argument falls apart, so does any basis for belief.

I have talked to Ben for many years about a variety of issues regarding scriptures, theology, history, translation, etc… and he has thought and studied about this stuff on an intellectual level deeply

Edited April 5, 2025 by Steve J

[Stargazer]

6 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I know Dan Peterson. I have a lot of respect for him. We have interacted many times over the years that I have known him. But, do you think that apologetics is an adequate substitute for a witness from God?

You really like straw men, don't you? I suggested nothing of the kind, and then in answer to Dan Peterson's quote of Elder Maxwell's "No more uncontested slam dunks," you suggest I "think that apologetics is an adequate substitute for a witness from God?" A straw man argument, as I suppose you are aware, is chiefly used to avoid the appearance of not being able to answer the actual argument.

So you have a lot of respect for Dan Peterson, but when I use Dan's argument to answer you, you try maladroitly to slither on past the actual point to deliver a touché on the undefended target dummy instead.

What do you do when your child comes to you after reading Simon Southerton's "Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church," and says "There no archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, there's no DNA for it, and plenty against, and why should I read a book that is obviously a clever forgery?" Just tell him to "Pray harder!"? 

That's what apologetics is for! Not to gain a witness from God, but to “[b]e ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you...” [1 Peter 3:15] Note that the word translated as "answer" in the KJV is the word "apologia" in the original Greek, which means "defense".  Now please tell me that Peter "thinks that apologetics is an adequate substitute for a witness from God".

 

[Steve J]

8 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Yeah. I think so. I think that its good to have good arguments. But, we don't base our testimonies on these arguments - and for those that do, once the argument falls apart, so does any basis for belief. And I see this built in to your question here. What are supposed anachronisms in the text? Well for us to actually determine what is anachronistic and what is not (for the purposes of determining whether the Book of Mormon is in some way a translation of an ancient 7th century CE text, we would have to actually produce a list of anachronisms that cannot be attributed to the translation of the text, and then determine how and why they are anachronistic. I am not saying that this can't be done - I am just pointing out that no one has ever done this. Mormons and their critics working from the same set of assumptions have always used the same approaches. The horse? It cannot be an artifact of translation - it must be because (a) there really were domesticated horses in the right place at the right time, or (b) there really weren't. The motivations may be different, but believers and critics tend to want to conflate the modern Book of Mormon with the alleged ancient sources.

And if you do not have a spiritual confirmation, the moment you become convinced that something that you built your testimony is wrong - that is the moment that you lose your faith. And that to me is a problem. So yeah, we should be building our testimony on spiritual confirmation - on personal revelation. And this is always hardest for those like Laman and Lemuel:

The point of this object lesson in the text isn't to simply go to the prophet or the scriptures to ask for guidance and understand - it is to ask the Lord.

 

I know Dan Peterson. I have a lot of respect for him. We have interacted many times over the years that I have known him. But, do you think that apologetics is an adequate substitute for a witness from God?

I’ll let Ben respond in much more length if he decides-  but my guess is that he would state it is important to have a conversation on theology and epistemology first.

[Benjamin McGuire]

16 hours ago, Stargazer said:

That's what apologetics is for! Not to gain a witness from God, but to “[b]e ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you...” [1 Peter 3:15] Note that the word translated as "answer" in the KJV is the word "apologia" in the original Greek, which means "defense".  Now please tell me that Peter "thinks that apologetics is an adequate substitute for a witness from God".

Yeah - Peter believed that apologetics was an inadequate substitute for a witness from God.

Absolutely.

The problem has historically been that apologetics itself is often a flawed process. And faith, built on apologetics, is always shaky. I'll try to explain in a different way -

16 hours ago, Stargazer said:

What do you do when your child comes to you after reading Simon Southerton's "Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church," and says "There no archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, there's no DNA for it, and plenty against, and why should I read a book that is obviously a clever forgery?" Just tell him to "Pray harder!"? 

There is this problem here that you simply aren't addressing. Have you read Southerton's book? I'll quote a couple of passages - first from the Introduction, and later from the beginning of Chapter 14 -

Quote

the weight of evidence has forced Mormon scholars to rethink the scale, location, and nature of the historical account in the Book of Mormon. Over the past decade, there has been a marked shift among these scholars away from the views of the wider LDS community. Most LDS scholars today want to limit the Israelite colonization to the region of Mesoamerica, while a growing subset shrinks the book's claims even further.

And here:

Quote

After decades of Mormon and non-Mormon academic research and LDS apologetics, the rank-and-file are beginning to find themselves faced, not only with the absence of reliable evidence for the presence of Israelites who sailed to America and established a great Christian civilization, but also the fact that these Israelites made no discernable contribution to the gene pool of native peoples, either on the continent or across the expanse of Polynesia.

The challenge here is that Southerton's book is also an apologetics argument (for all intents and purposes, the distinction between apologetic and polemic is really just the direction of the argument from where the observer sits). Southerton is attacking the apologetics argument. For those who really don't care about the apologetics argument - who aren't terribly vested in it, there isn't anything here. Similarly, those who are invested alongside Southerton would run into a problem if suddenly we found DNA - it would need to be explained away. But these things creates chains of arguments - that are far more about the argument than they are about the text. Southerton is far more interested in engaging with the beliefs about the text than with the text. The text itself isn't approachable in the same sense.

I have, of course, published some apologetic material. My exposure to apologetics began in the late 1980s. But my arguments have shifted from apologetics. Rather than working to find ways to justify these arguments, I am much happier trying to promote an understanding of the text, and to try and change the way that people engage the text. Even among believing LDS there isn't this overwhelming sense that these different models have somehow been established conclusively.

My kids? I have tried to teach them to be critical thinkers - to engage logic. I have taught them the value of close reading. We have discussed theology and the epistemological claims made in the Book of Mormon. When Lehi has his vision of the tree of life, it is Laman and Lemuel who ask what it means and Nephi who goes and asks to receive the vision. Which should our model be? If we engage the text by trying to understand it within the context of our own experience, these other things generally don't cause waves. We know what we believe and we understand why we believe it. We are reliant on arguments (good or bad) about beliefs about the text.

[ZealouslyStriving]

22 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Yeah - Peter believed that apologetics was an inadequate substitute for a witness from God.

Absolutely.

I misread... Nevermind.

Edited April 6, 2025 by ZealouslyStriving

[Kevin Christensen]

In talking to Laman and Lemuel about Lehi's vision, Nephi explains that it was both temporal and spiritual.  Both literal and symbolic.  In the same passages where Nephi encourages his people to "liken the scriptures unto themselves" he also says that no one can understand the writings of the Jews like unto them, save it be that they are taught after the manner of the things of the Jews.   One thing that I have discovered in reading a range of authors who purport to just read the text itself, whether Mark Thomas or Joe Spencer, or Grant Hardy, or Northrop Frye, there are always places and moments where the soil in which a person contextualizes the word makes a difference in the harvest.  I am a post-modernist reader, aware that the knower always contributes to that which is known.  So Jesus says judgement, criticism, discernment should begin with self criticism. Being self aware of the implications of our own preconceptions, methods, resources, culture, and unconscious assumptions.   I am not a social constructionist however.  I believe there criteria to consider in comparing readings that are not completely paradigm dependent.  Testability, accuracy of key predictions, comprehensiveness and coherence (breadth and depth and internal and external consistency), fruitfulness, simplicity and aesthetics, and future promise.  Paradigm debate always involves deciding which problems are more significant to have solved.  If we consciously engage in paradigm debate, we have grounds for arguing, but not proving, which paradigm is better.  We can have "cause to believe."  My own spiritual witness contributes to my own cause to believe.  But at this stage in my life, I have more than that that I personally notice and value.  I am very much aware that anyone can dismiss all of my arguments with "So what?" Or what about this or that?

William Blake argued that the value of the Bible is in the examples.  That is, spiritual likening to ourselves.   The parables like Job, the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and for that matter, King Lear and Harry Potter and Discworld have value as ensamples, but what makes them potent and powerful is that as fictions they don't just point to airy astract principles, they point to something Real.  They are both Spiritual and Temporal.

God did not just give Joseph a book, but plates and witnesses, and a sword and breastplate and Urim and Thumim, and assured the witnesses that evidence of the Nephites would be forthcoming.  God could have given Joseph just the Doctrine and Covenants, and bound it as a Big Book of What to Think.  But we have the Book of Mormon.  And contrarities to wrestle with.  "By proving contrarities truth is made manifest."

I have considered a wide range of learned arguments that the Book of Mormon is not what it purports to be.  And defenses from a wide range of perspectives, some poor, some very very good, and the overall case magnitudes better than it was when I was young. In considering cause to believe or not, I am thankful that I have recourse to ways to weigh arguments that are not completely paradigm dependent.  And as with the Parable of the Blind Men and the elephant, I find it crucial to consider which examples a person chooses to generalize from and which metaphors a person uses to frame their reasons.

FWIW 

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, Utah

Edited April 8, 2025 by Kevin Christensen
Typos

[Benjamin McGuire]

I think that I should perhaps clarify something -

I don't think that contending with critics is itself a bad thing. I think that it is useful.

The problem comes when we try to take these issues and turn them into reasons for belief. To say that this book is an apologetic work (an apologia) is to suggest that it refutes the arguments of the critics. Which is fine - but it really doesn't stop there. It moves on to suggest that the evidence used to refute the critics becomes a key to understanding the Book of Mormon - and a reason for belief. So, I'll provide something of an example. And the basis for this claim is a very old proposition (at least in the context of Mormon thought) - there are things in the text of the Book of Mormon that are unique in the context of its production - things that Joseph Smith was unable to know of. Their inclusion then becomes evidence that Joseph was given these things through revelation. So the argument consists of two major parts - the first is that there are things that are included in the text that are "true" that can be confirmed through research, and that these things were unavailable to Joseph Smith in 1828 - and so could only have come through revelation.

So, Jonah tells us that his book is about the Apocrypha:

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This is a book about the apocrypha. Right here, up front, I am giving you summary information about the books we're going to talk about. You can read this straight through or come back to it later, as you're reading The Key to the Keystone, for reminders as to dates and language, etc., of the books in question. ... The last point bears some discussion. Some of these books (or close relatives to them) may have actually appeared on the brass plates, as discussed in the book. Others may be pulling from older documents that may have contributed to the brass plates, or from oral or liturgical traditions that were captured on the brass plates. ... So some of these apocryphal books testify to material undoubtedly on the plates, even if it isn't likely they appeared there themselves.

Two of these entries are of interest to me for this discussion -

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Book of Jasher
Language: Hebrew
Provenance: The "Sepher Ha-Yashar" means "Book of the Upright" but is frequently mistaken for a proper name "Jasher." The Book of Jasher is referenced in the Old Testament twice, in Joshua 10:13 and in 2 Samuel 1:18. Joseph Smith Jr. commented in the Times and Seasons Sept. 1, 1842 edition, that "the book of Jasher ... has not been disproved as a bad author." The Prophet then quoted from the book. John Taylor also quoted from it. This particular version was translated by Moses Samuel in 1840 and published in Salt Lake City in 1887.
Year: 1625 (Italian), 1840 (English)
Description: A very long book recounting the entire pre-Canaan history of the world, from Adam and Eve until the assumption of Moses.
Available to Joseph Smith Jr. in 1829: No
Brass Plates candidate? Definitely

It's fascinating that the one relatively recent LDS treatment of the text was Brandt's article here, in which he lamented:

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In studies of portions of Sefer Hayashar that have been based on historical criteria, which admittedly provides only a limited measurement, one scholar concluded: “How unwise and unscholarly it is to neglect, in the study of early Jewish exegesis, the testimony of a midrashic collection merely on the ground of its late appearance.”

Shortly after this was published (the same year), Joseph Dan published what remains the academic standard for the text and interpretation. He shows (convincingly) that the Italian text published in 1625 which claims to be a translation of a Hebrew text published in 1552, cannot be a translation of something significantly older. The 16th century Hebrew text has never been found, and Dan demonstrated rather conclusively that (based on the Hebrew notes in the 1625 text) the text must have been composed in either Spain or southern Italy in the early 16th century. It is, in this sense an apocryphal text. But it is not ancient, and it could never have been a part of the Brass Plates. It is one of several late texts pretending to be the text referenced in the Bible (one of at least 9 such texts that we know of).

This sort of thing illustrates the problems that we have in taking this approach to parallels with this sort of material. But it comes with an added burden. Brandt argues that Joseph Smith was not endorsing the text (and John Taylor explicitly denies it a place as scripture - merely as history). The argument that this text was included with the Brass Plates is certainly false. We might argue that there is a connection through the distant past - but such a thing is virtually impossible to demonstrate. We can take some of the things in this Book of Jasher back to historical rabbincal texts - but we get into a much more complicated situation when we do. And when Jonah starts trying to assert that it was promoted by Joseph Smith and John Taylor - a fraudulent text - we have an entirely different set of problems that rise up. It doesn't work well. And if there are more lines of traditions, then the argument of inaccessibility to Joseph Smith becomes more problematic. It becomes seen as camouflage. In the same way, so too is Jonah's suggestion that:

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Joseph Smith Jr. was a twenty-three-year-old kid who could barely write a letter ...

There is this (bad) effort to paint Joseph Smith as someone completely ignorant when he produces the Book of Mormon. Don't get me wrong - we can see the apologetic/polemic dialogue constantly. We have on the one side the apologist who believes that Joseph Smith couldn't begin to write anything compared with the critic who will suggest that Joseph Smith had read at least half of the books owned by Dartmouth College. It doesn't help that suggestions about all of this are rarely contemporary. The account that Joseph Smith could "neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter" came from Emma Smith to her son Joseph Smith III (who was now head of the RLDS Church) shortly before her death in 1879. I am not saying that it wasn't true - and yet, the early material that was kept during the dictation of the Book of Mormon - it is clear that this is an embellishment. Likewise, there is no way that Joseph Smith could have read even half the books that the critics will suggest he did. But the problem with putting all of this together is that it makes arguments that are neither helpful nor particularly accurate - and if you accept these kinds of arguments at face value, you run into the problem of what happens when they are proven wrong. And the critics do try to prove these arguments wrong. Consider this entry in Jonah's book (I'll just look at one more):

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Enoch, First Enoch, or the Ethiopian Apocalypse of Enoch (1 Enoch)
Language: Ge'ez, though probably originally in Aramaic
Provenance: Discovered in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and raised to western awareness in the early 19th century.
Year: 1801 (German), 1821 (London), 1838 ("a large order from America," 1833 edition preface,l Laurence)
Description: A history of the antediluvians until the birth of Noah.
Available to Joseph Smith Jr. in 1829: No
Brass Plates candidate? Definately

There is no question that this is old. The oldest fragments we have can be found in Aramaic in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is comfortably dated (in the oldest parts) to the third century B.C.E. A bit late for the Brass Plates. There isn't going to be much success at making it earlier than that. That's not where the problem is. It is also true that the Ethiopic text was largely introduced back to the western world in 1821. But it is this distinction that is important - the Ethiopic text. Significant portions of the text were relatively well known in western religious circles from the Greek texts that had survived. The Greek texts contain most of First Enoch. And there is a long list of publications containing translations of the Greek - Isaac Casaubon, Joseph Scaliger, Johann Fabricius, Edward Lewis, and so on. Certainly there are enough copies in English floating around that if we wanted to believe that Joseph Smith could have come into contact with one of them, it's not a stretch of the imagination. And consequently, the critics have already jumped on this issue. And what are we left with? We can say with some certainty that it was available to Joseph Smith, Jr. (which is certainly not to say that he had read it), and we can say with some certainty that it was not a part of the Brass Plates.

So, the apologetic argument, the polemical counter argument, and so on.

One final comment - sometimes parallels aren't caused by proximity. For me, there is a fascinating set of three parallel texts. One from the Book of Mormon, one from the D&C, and one from a sectarian text discovered with the Dead Sea Scrolls (the text - the Cairo Damascus document - was also found in the Cairo Genizah). It deals with the question of the polygamy of David and Solomon. Polygamy - particularly on the part of the king in ancient Israel is expressly forbidden in Deuteronomy 17 (a text which the Book of Mormon cites). Jacob introduces it in Jacob 2:23-24:

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But the word of God burdens me because of your grosser crimes. For behold, thus saith the Lord: This people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son. Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.

Of course, the D&C in Section 132 tells us this (verse 39):

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David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me, by the hand of Nathan, my servant, and others of the prophets who had the keys of this power; and in none of these things did he sin against me save in the case of Uriah and his wife; and, therefore he hath fallen from his exaltation, and received his portion; and he shall not inherit them out of the world, for I gave them unto another, saith the Lord.

Which is interesting. And then we get this text from the Cairo Damascus Document (which again is about polygamy):

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And the one who went into the ark went in two by two into the ark. And about the prince it is written: He should not multiply wives to himself. However, David had not read the sealed book of the law which was in the ark, for it had not been opened in Israel since the day of the death of Eleazar and of Jehoshua, and Joshua and the elders who worshiped Ashraroth had hidden the public (copy) until Zadok's entry into office. And David's deeds were praised, except for Uriah's blood, and God allowed them to him.

I truncated it for space, but the text is an argument for monogamy based on the creation (Gen. 1:27), based on the flood (Gen. 7:9), and based on the commandment in the Kingship code found in Mosaic Law. It is this last one that causes problems for Jewish believers who also hold King David in high esteem (King Solomon, they didn't hold in nearly as high an esteem). Because David violated this law (which is admitted in the text above) he has to be excused. It mentions "the sealed book of the Law" (which even then was understood as Deuteronomy), that was found with the appearance of Zadok. It was supposed to have been rediscovered in the temple by the priest Hilkiah, described in 2 Kings 22:8-11:

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And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the abook of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. And Shaphan the scribe came to the king, and brought the king word again, and said, Thy servants have gathered the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of them that do the work, that have the oversight of the house of the Lord. And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes.

Three different responses to the same issue. But they are parallels precisely because they deal with the same issue. And we all recognize the issues (at least those of us who have read enough of the contexts). Academically, it gets a bit more twisted because it is generally believed that the Deuteronomists put this into the Kingship code as a referendum on David and Solomon. So academics might excuse David and Solomon for an entirely different reason. But in any case, in the Book of Mormon, David and Solomon both get no reprieve. There isn't even any need to distinguish the issue with Uriah - because there is no justification for polygamy for Jacob. The D&C looks at Uriah and decides that this one event has damned David, but the polygamy was ok. The Dead Sea Scrolls community decides that while it is all bad, everything but the case with Uriah and his wife can be chalked up to ignorance, and so can be excused. This is one of the problems we have with parallels. When you have texts talking about the same things, there is often overlap. That overlap doesn't mean that there is a connection (except through that original biblical text). Both the Book of Mormon and the Dead Sea Scrolls reference Deuteronomy 17. D&C 132 does not. Both the D&C and the CD discuss Uriah. The Book of Mormon does not. You don't get sacred texts that have existed for thousands of years that don't develop a great many independent interpretations. To see parallels everywhere is a problem - and in apologetic literature that relies on parallels, embedded in the argument is that these parallels means something. And if they mean something to one side, the same sorts of parallels can mean something to the other side. The problem is the position that the parallels must actually mean something - without the need to carefully construct the argument of how and why the parallels are significant and important.

I'm all for good arguments against polemics/apologetics. I'm even all about finding good arguments for parallels. They have their place. But for us to say that the Key to the Keystone (the Key to the Book of Mormon) is to be found in the parallels we discover with apocryphal writings, I become super skeptical ...

Edited April 6, 2025 by Benjamin McGuire

[Kenngo1969]

9 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

... FWIW 

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, Utah

 Duuuuuuuude!  

Those are my old stomping grounds!  I know it's waaaay too much in-real-life info, but I'm beyond curious, now, what you're doing there!  Heh!  Small world.

[Kevin Christensen]

12 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

 Duuuuuuuude!  

Those are my old stomping grounds!  I know it's waaaay too much in-real-life info, but I'm beyond curious, now, what you're doing there!  Heh!  Small world.

We just moved from Canonsburg.  We are here but the furniture is in transit.  Not quite retired, but a few months off, depending on selling the house there so I don't have two mortgages in retirement. My wife's sister lives in Grantsville.  I have two brothers and a sister along the Wasatch front.  

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, UT

[Kenngo1969]

30 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

We just moved from Canonsburg.  We are here but the furniture is in transit.  Not quite retired, but a few months off, depending on selling the house there so I don't have two mortgages in retirement. My wife's sister lives in Grantsville.  I have two brothers and a sister along the Wasatch front.  

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, UT

Wow.  As I said, small world.  Tooele isn't quite the sleepy little town I grew up in, but we just buried my father there, so I suppose I'll always have a connection.  

[Brad Porter]

What's the alternative?  Wait another 10, 20, 30 years for academia to sort this out fully peer reviewed?  No thanks.  I've been looking for something like this for close to two decades.  We shouldn't have to sort out 19 volumes of Nibley and decades of academic symposia/journals to get half of this, or wait until we are almost dead.  I don't care if it's not perfect, if we later find some portion of it to be incorrect, or if we later find one of the references to be invalid.  Excessive caution about critics finding some fault would not have been justification for witholding this thesis (however imperfect it might possibly be).  Thank you Jonah.  I've had more fun studying the OT this year than ever before.  I feel like it's finally coming into focus.  Again, I don't care if the focus is imperfect or even wrong.  I deserve to be at least a spectator of the focusing process without being buried in academia.

[Brad Porter]

PS.  For the most part, although I find a few of his interpretations to be a stretch, I like the thesis.  It makes sense more than anything else I know of.  This is currently my recommendation as an introduction to the apocrypha.  Happy to consider others.