← Church History Matters
Church History Matters
102 The Miraculous Translation of the Book of Mormon - Come Follow Me - E6 - VR - Feb 3-9
01:18:48
Loading summary
Transcript87 lines
- [00:00]
Jack Welch
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Scott Woodward
Welcome to Church History Matters. Come follow me edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025. We have a lot to talk about today, so let's get into it.
- [00:25]
Casey
Hi, Scott, how are you doing?
- [00:27]
Daniel Sorensen
Very well, very excited today. We have on our show today a very dear friend and special guest for our listeners and viewers.
- [00:36]
Casey
Special in a lot of ways, one of the founders of Scripture Central and a great researcher that's been doing good work for decades now. Jack Welsh is with us right now. So say hi, Jack.
- [00:46]
Jack Welch
Well, hello everyone and Casey and Scott, it's great to be on the show today with you and look forward to hopefully telling people some things they had never heard before about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, its translation and the timing. And we know so much about this. It's really, really fun.
- [01:03]
Daniel Sorensen
Well, that's what we're hoping for. That's why we wanted to invite you on the show today, Jack, because you have led out in the scholarship and research on this really important topic.
- [01:12]
Casey
So we know you are loaded for bear on this subject. You've got a lot to say, so we're gonna, we're gonna keep our chatter to a minimum and let you kind of run with the topic. But before we do that, point of clarification. We call you Jack. That's like the name you use around the Scripture Central office. Everybody that's looking for Jack should Google John W. Welch. That's your author name, I guess you'd say. I've got your bio here and please feel free to add anything, but let me give you a little introduction. So John W. Welch is the Robert K. Thomas professor of Law and Editor in chief of BYU studies. Jack practiced law in Los Angeles with O'Melvey and Myers, at which time he founded the foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. From 1998-91, he served as one of the editors for Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Mormonism. And he has served as the general editor of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley. He organized the Bicentennial Conference for Joseph Smith at the Library of Congress and has served on the Executive Committee of the Biblical Law section of the Society of Biblical Literature. And Jack is among the most prominent pupils of Hugh Nibley, having made several important discoveries and advances regarding biblical studies, Latter Day Saint scholarship, history, culture and thought. And his publications cover a wide range of topics including Roman and Jewish law, law and the trial of Jesus, the use of biblical laws in colonial America, chiasms in antiquity, and commentaries on the Sermon on the Mount and King Benjamin's Speech. And that is the tip of the iceberg. I want to add here. It would take us probably the whole podcast to list all the good work that you've done over time, but is there anything that wasn't in the bio we just read?
- [02:52]
Jack Welch
Well, the article that I published in BYU Studies a few years back on the timing of the translation of the Book of Mormon is, I wouldn't say definitive work, but it's probably the most comprehensive that we have. And I hope that people who are interested in this topic will go on BYU Studies or on the archive at Scripture Central where you can download that article. It's lengthy, it has charts and graphs. We'll talk about several of them here. But that's really kind of the handbook for working your way through all of this material and launching from there. I would say also the book Opening the Heavens, which I edited and put together and have two chapters in as well, published by BYU Studies that's Opening the Heavens has a long chapter in it on all of the more than 100 historical accounts of people who were involved in the translation of the Book of Mormon and left their testimonies and information about what they knew and what their experience was. So you can read all of Emma Smith's statements, what her experience was as she was close at hand when so much of this was taking place, and a lot of other people as well. It's not just the timing of the translation that's in that or the Book of Mormon witnesses statements. We go through all of the, we call them the main events of the restoration, and give all of the primary source material for the first vision, the translation of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the priesthood, visions of Joseph Smith. What we know of all of the accounts of people at the Kirtland Temple dedication, and then over a hundred and what is it, 128 say I was in this in the Grove in Nauvoo on that day in August when Joseph spoke and the mantle of Brigham Young fell upon him. But people aren't aware of how much documentation there is for each of these crucial events. I had one person catch me walking across campus once and said, I love that book. He put it this way, if I were banished to a desert island for the rest of my life, I'd take the Scriptures and that book and that's it.
- [05:08]
Casey
I was going to say we did an episode on Brigham Young's transfiguration, and we leaned pretty hard on that, too, because there's no better source on all those accounts of what happened that day in Nauvoo. And now there's a movie based on it. Six Days in August comes from a lot of those accounts too. So extremely useful stuff.
- [05:29]
Jack Welch
I've had an interest in this for quite a while because you may notice that those witness accounts was written by John Welch I and he was there that August, and so was a girl named Eliza Billington, and they got married. I've often wondered, wonder what they talked about on their first date and compared notes on what they'd seen. But Eliza Billington has an account that's in there as well.
- [05:55]
Daniel Sorensen
So I think we're going to do our listeners and viewers a favor here. We're just going to put in the show notes and in the YouTube video for this, we'll just put links to both of those articles. The first will be the BYU studies called Timing the Translation of the Book of Mormon. And then we have at Book of Mormon central the archived version of your article in Opening the Heavens called the Miraculous Translation of the Book of Mormon. So we'll put those both in the notes so that they're easily accessible to anyone out there that would like to take a look at a longer version of what or about to dive into today. So can you just tell us to start us out by talking about what are the historical anchor points that help us know exactly how fast the Book of Mormon was translated? What do we know about really strong historical anchor points when it comes to the translation of this book?
- [06:42]
Jack Welch
Well, that's a wonderful question. And to begin back in 1828, when Martin Harris and others were working as scribes for Joseph, when the 116 pages were being translated, Martin Harris goes to New York and talks to Charles Anthon about the characters on the plates and many things like that. And of course, the 116 pages get lost when we talk about the translation of the Book of Mormon, we don't include the 1828 material because that's gone. Maybe someday, who knows, it may or may not surface. But people believe that Martin Harris either lost or his wife managed to burn those. So we don't have that part of the translation. But we do know that they were able to do 116 pages in what must have been about six weeks, maybe less than that of translation. And Martin Harris was not a particularly good scribe. But you can only imagine how badly Joseph Smith must have felt at losing the 116 pages. And and then beyond that, you can only imagine what he felt when Moroni came and said you know, I think you've got to give me the plates back. And he took those, I believe. We don't know exactly when Joseph receives the plates back again, but I think it's a reasonable assumption that Moroni met with Joseph on their regularly scheduled fall equinox around September 22nd. And in the fall, I imagine that Moroni was kind but very stern in telling Joseph, you know, you were using a seer stone before. We're not going to do that anymore. Remember, Martin Harris was at one point, was trying to trick Joseph, and he put a different stone in the hat. And Joseph said, whoa, it's as dark as Egypt in here. Martin got a chuckle out of that. But I don't think Moroni thought that was very funny. I think Joseph learned a very stern lesson there, that he was going to do it precisely the way Moroni told him to do it, even better than they had before. And I think this leads to a couple things they do try to translate again a little bit in the month of March, but we're not so sure what actually happened or what came out of that. But most of all, Joseph is praying, I need a scribe. And at that same time, Oliver Cowdery, who had never met Joseph, but who had just finished teaching school in Palmyra and boarded at the Smith home, had been hearing stories about Joseph Smith and what he was doing. And when school let out so that all the kids could go work on the farm. The first part of April, Oliver Cowdery received a vision. And in that, he was told by the Savior, I need you to go and be a scribe for Joseph. And Oliver goes all the way to Harmony, Pennsylvania. He gets there on April 5. According to his own record, he says he conducted some business on the next day, the 6th, and they began working then on April 7th. And Oliver Cowdery will write almost every word in the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon. And then Joseph will tell him, we're not going to lose this again. So I want you to make a printer's manuscript so that we don't have to leave the original manuscript at the print shop. So Oliver will end up writing by hand the entire Book of Mormon twice.
- [10:03]
Daniel Sorensen
So these are some of the dates that people say, this is what Joseph and Oliver tell us. But do we have any independent documents that help us, like, check their work to be able to say, like, it really was April 5th that Oliver Cowdery arrived, it really was April 7th that they began the translation, you know what I'm saying? Maybe those of us who might be A little more skeptical.
- [10:23]
Jack Welch
Thanks for that question. Because a few years ago the answer would have been basically no. But guess what? We have now Gordon Madsen, one of my colleagues working on the Joseph Smith legal material found in the county courthouse, the mortgage that was involved when Joseph Smith purchased there from Isaac Hale in Harmony. And so we now have the purchase agreement between Isaac Hale and Joseph Smith. We have on the back the payment of the amounts that satisfied the mortgage and then the cancellation and the recording of this. To clear title, you have to keep your title clear if you're owning real estate. And so you have to be able to show that it's not encumbered any longer by a mortgage or who might have some interest in the property. Well, guess what? That document is dated. It's dated April 6th. So the business that Oliver Cowdery talked about, which we've known about for a long time, we now know what that business was. It was Joseph Smith buying that home. And why does he want to have that home? It's, you know, you've been there, it's a small kind of a cabin, but it's now his castle. And he could now exclude anyone from coming in. And he needs privacy. So even his father in law, Isaac Hale, doesn't own that anymore. And this allows Joseph to then commence translation with the security and the privacy that he will need. And that works for long enough for him to get through April and May. But as you know, persecution will mount and people are curious and want to know what's going on in that building.
- [12:00]
Daniel Sorensen
So that mortgage deed is dated April 6th and it's signed by Oliver Cowdery, is that correct?
- [12:06]
Jack Welch
That is correct. The deed, now it's witnessed by Oliver Cowdery and he actually, I think, wrote parts of it. So here we have a dated, signed, and Samuel Smith is also one who signed it because he was there at that time.
- [12:22]
Casey
That confirms Oliver's side of the story, which is that as soon as the school year was over, he and Samuel go from Palmyra down to Harmony and that's when translation commences with Oliver as scribe, correct?
- [12:34]
Jack Welch
That's correct. Now you wonder, why would Joseph have taken Oliver he had never met before? Why would he have given such confidence to Oliver and taken him into his trust and said, you and I are going to do this. And he explained, I'm sure I'm going to use the Urim and Thummim and I need to put the clear Urim and Thummim stones in a hat because it's hard to see in this room I need. You need light in order to write, so I'm going to shelter that so it's not in the bright light, so I can read these words as they're appearing on the stones. I'm sure he's explaining a lot of this, but he trusts Oliver implicitly. Well, In Joseph Smith's 1832 account of his early history, which contains the earliest written account of the first vision by Joseph Smith, it ends with paragraph or two about the arrival of Oliver Cowdery and how Oliver had told him that he had seen the Savior, had had a vision, and had been called by him to come. Joseph doesn't go into detail here, but I'm guessing that Joseph asked Oliver, so what did he look like? And they compared notes, and Joseph said, oliver, you're the real deal. You have been sent, and we are so grateful for you being here. But that makes so much sense of why Joseph would have trusted Oliver for as long as he did. And of course, Oliver, seven years later, will be with Joseph as the two who see Jesus again in the Kirtland Temple.
- [14:04]
Casey
I want to point out that this mortgage document does kind of signal the real translation of the Book of Mormon. I tell my students there's two phases of translation. There's phase one with Emma and Martin, that takes place in the winter of 1828. But then after the lost manuscript, there's this period where Joseph does hardly any work on it. It's when Oliver shows up that we hit the ground running. And this is the starting point for the Book of Mormon as we know it, beginning early April when Oliver Cowdery gets there, and then we're off to the races. The book, as we're aware of it, all 531 pages, comes from around this time, correct?
- [14:44]
Jack Welch
That's absolutely right. And we have some parts of the original manuscript that shows what page they were on when they started the manuscript, continuing after the 116 pages that were lost. So we know that there wasn't anything that has survived before Oliver Cowdery's transcription of the text that we have. So when we say, when did it start? You can't say, well, maybe Joseph was working on this in January and February and so on, and then just had Oliver Cowdery copy it over. No, it didn't work that way. And they don't start with first Nephi Chapter one. They start, they pick up where they had left off, which was with the beginning of King Benjamin and maybe the last little bit of the words of Mormon. And going on in Then to the Book of Mosiah. So this is important for people to realize that what was translated in harmony down in Pennsylvania in April and May was the Book of Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, Third Nephi, Fourth Nephi, Mormon, Ether, and Moroni. And the title page from Mosiah to the end of Moroni and the title page were then translated in harmony.
- [15:59]
Casey
This is when. Give us a date. When they moved to Fayette. So we know the translation starts early April, 1829. When did they leave Harmony and go.
- [16:09]
Jack Welch
Up to Fayette on June 1? A couple sources indicate that it was the end of May, that they finish their work there in Harmony and go up to Fayette. And it takes probably three or four days at least for them to pack up and move and get to the Whitmer farm. They're going in a buckboard. They can't go very fast. So that first week of June is not available for translation. But they continue. They pick up when they get to the Whitmer home. And we know basically that they are finished by the end of June. And what they have done there in Fayette is what we would call the small plates of Nephi, from 1st Nephi, 2nd Nephi, Jacob, Enos, Jerem, Omni, and so on.
- [16:50]
Casey
So just to clarify, Mosiah to Moroni and the title page, that's April and May of 1829. And then first Nephi up to Omni is June.
- [17:00]
Jack Welch
That's correct.
- [17:01]
Casey
Okay. That's a lot of material. Like, they must have really been cooking.
- [17:04]
Jack Welch
Well, they certainly were. And so that was my question as I got into the research here. How many total words are we talking about? When you look at the whole book of Mormon? 269,510 words. So a quarter of a million words, that sounds like a whole lot. Well, it is a whole lot, but it was doable. What I wanted to do was calculate, so how many days are we really talking about? And you begin by saying, well, from April 7 to June 30, there are 85 days at the outset. If you divide the quarter of a million words by 85 days, it'll tell you about how many words per day you've got to be doing in order to get it into the time period that's available. We'll come back to that point in a minute. But in the meantime, we have to realize that not all days were available. So the article in the BYU studies looks at what else do we know about this time period? And there were whole days, several of them, that were not available at all. We've already talked about some of those when they move from Harmony to Fayette. So you have to take those out of the 85 days. Remember, they also ran out of paper. And toward the end of May, they pack up and they have to go to Colesville. And I don't know how long that took them to go, but I assume a day there and a day back. We know that Joseph receives the copyright for the Book of Mormon and has to file papers to make that filable with the Federal District Court in the Western District of New York. I assume that took a day, maybe more, to go from Fayette to wherever he had to go to sign and get those copyright papers filed. On June 14, it was a day of baptizing and they go out to Seneca Lake. I'm guessing that they worked some on Sunday, but I think they observed the Sabbath day and maybe took it easy for part of the day when they worshiped and were grateful for what they were able to do. So I've taken off a half day for some of those kinds of things. Also depends on when you think the three witnesses received their vision. But I think it was before the end of June, maybe the last day of June or two. Again, it gets a little cloudy on when the eight witnesses have their opportunity to handle the plates. Some records say that that was the last day of June, and by the end of June that's finished, which may or may not be. If that was June 30th for the eight witnesses, then the three witnesses are probably on the 28th of June. So once again, you see, you have to go through this process of estimating how many of those 85 days were really available. I say, well, I'll take 11 of those 85 days away. And I think that leaves 74 working days. Now, you'd think it was all simple, but no, there's more because there were many days that were partially unavailable. And again, the article goes through this. There were other trips to Colesville and to Manchester. There were business trips, letters, farming, chores. Joseph had to be out working some of the time and maybe had a little personal time with Emma. I'm sure. I hope visitors come. Samuel comes, he's there. Hyrum will come. David Whitmer will come. Joseph Smith Sr. Is there. Lucy comes. And then there were hostile visitors that Joseph has to take care of. And there's also the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood and the baptism that takes place on the baptism on May 15 when John the Baptist appears. And depending on when you think Peter, James, and John appear? I think that was shortly thereafter.
- [20:45]
Casey
Hopefully they took a little time for both those things. And I was going to say, that is one date that we can pin down a little bit, which is May 15 is when Oliver Cowdery, by his own admission, says, yeah, we read up passage about authority being necessary for baptism. Does that give us kind of a pointer to say, ooh, they were probably in third Nephi by May 15, or what do you think about that?
- [21:08]
Jack Welch
That's exactly where I put it. And I say from that, well, if we know they started with Mosiah on April 7, and they have to be, I would think, to third Nephi 11, when Jesus calls those 12 disciples and calls them by name and explains to them and gives them the authority to baptize, I think that would have been the point where Joseph and Oliver would have looked at each other and said, we don't have that authority. We have not been baptized, and here we are unbaptized, and we're working on this. We need to go find out if we need some more help here. We need to be baptized. We don't know what that conversation amounted to between them, but that would have taken some time. They do go out into the sugar bush and they pray, and then they go down to the river, and there John the Baptist instructs them to how to baptize.
- [22:00]
Daniel Sorensen
So if they're starting in Mosiah in April, early April, April 7, and by May 15, they're 35, 11. How many pages a day are we talking here? We can calculate that speed, correct?
- [22:11]
Jack Welch
Well, you've got different options. You know, if. If they're going at a certain rate, let's say they are doing seven hours a day, or do you think they did eight hours a day? What are they able to do? You can get through the total, and I assume they went at a pretty consistent pace. And if they are able to go at the rate of 10 words per minute and work seven hours a day, you can get through the total number of words of translation in 64.2 days. If you need to go faster, or if you do go faster, if you work longer at 10 words a minute, you can get it done in 56 days. If you work only six hours a day, you're going to have to speed up and do it about 75 days. It'll take 75 days at 10 words per minute. So you have these variables. If you assume 15 words per minute, you can get 65 translating days. You can get it done in 65 translating days, working five hours a day. You can do 20 words per minute. That's getting pretty fast for him to dictate 20 words. Have Oliver Cowdery write it down, read it back to him if you can do 20 words a minute. I don't think they could, but anyway, they could speed it up. You know that. So you say, how fast did they go? We don't know. But I. I think the month of April and the first part of May were peaceful weeks. There weren't as many visitors. You don't have David Whitmer coming. You have the opposition and people knocking on the door and interrupting. So I think getting from Mosiah chapter 1 3rd Nephi 11 in that period is comfortably accomplishable. And why do I say comfortably? Well, my wife and I have actually tried this and I recommend to anyone that you get Royal Skousen's original Book of Mormon, the text published by Yale, where he lines out all of the Book of Mormon in what he calls sense lines. And he's done this because he looks at the original manuscript and he can see when Oliver Cowdery is dipping the quill into the inkwell. And so Royal assumes that every time the ink is flowing heavier. That's the beginning of Oliver writing what Joseph had just given him. And then Oliver reads it back. Joseph says, that's good. Oliver dips the quill in the inkwell again and begins writing as Joseph speaks. And that's repeated over and over again. So we did that just as an experiment to see how many words per minute we could actually do. We do it in a 30 minute block and count up the number of words. And we had a rate. And we did that several times and took turns, one editing with one of us first dictating and the other writing and then switched roles. And it was actually quite interesting.
- [25:11]
Daniel Sorensen
So what was your rate? How fast could you go?
- [25:13]
Jack Welch
We were about 17, 18 words per minute. We didn't pause and it was just 30 minutes. You know, if we, if we caught our breath and took a break after the 30 minutes, that would subtract from the rate. So I'm thinking that what we did was sustainable and could be done within about 15 words per minute. And getting that done in about five hours a day of work. Now, let me come back to the fact that we've got a lot of partial days. And one other thing that I haven't mentioned yet that I'd like to is that as you are looking at early church history, that a number of the earliest revelations in the doctrine and covenants were given during the time the Book of Mormon was being translated.
- [26:10]
Casey
Yeah, about sections three up to about section 17 or so correspond. And many of them are noted as being received the same way through the Urim and Thummim. At least in the early Book of Commandments, Joseph Smith seemed to go out of his way to say, yep, this was done using the same methodology.
- [26:27]
Jack Welch
And one of the biggest ones, you didn't mention section 18, but that was given to Oliver Cowdery and I believe during the month of June. So I've added the words in those sections and I get 6,124 more words that are given. But, you know, those weren't just simple. You know, look in the Urim and Thummim and transcribe it. Not that that was simple, but. But these are revelations being given to particular people. And they come in and they talk and they want a revelation, they want instruction. And Joseph feels a need to give them this. It's like giving a patriarchal blessing, you know, there's more to it than just turning on a switch and out come the words. So I don't know how long it would have taken for those additional revelations to be given, but they also had to be transcribed and recorded in some way in a copy given to the people to whom the revelations had been provided. So let me back up for just a second here and say it helps to talk about terminology because we've got a total of 85 possible days, then we have a total of something like 70 working days. If you take off some time for Sunday and these other visitors and revelations, I come out at the end of the process thinking that Joseph is doing this in something like 60 to 65 actual book of Mormon focused translating periods or days.
- [27:54]
Daniel Sorensen
That's fast, Jack. That is lightning speed.
- [27:59]
Jack Welch
Why do you think Oliver said those were days never to be forgotten?
- [28:03]
Casey
The thing that's getting me here, Jack, is your experiment, your reenactment, which, by the way, I think Book of Mormon translation reenactments are right up there with Civil War reenactments. Like it's something we should totally bring back. But you guys were just taking words already in the Book of Mormon and transcribing them, correct?
- [28:21]
Jack Welch
That's right.
- [28:22]
Casey
And to say they're doing something that has this level of complexity too, where there's intertextuality, where there's names like Gidgadoni and Moryan, Comer and Coriandermer in the texts, kind of does make a good case to say it's pretty much impossible, given this time frame that they're making this up. They wouldn't have been able to go that fast. It wouldn't have been able to be that coherent or comprehensive. When you put the timeframe up to it, we're talking a marvelous work and wonder. Like this is miraculous stuff that's hard to account for without bringing in supernatural beings and forces.
- [28:57]
Jack Welch
I defy anyone to come up with a rational explanation that takes the place of this, which is very rational. At least it's scientific. It's got numbers, it's got dates. We know that you begin on April 7, and you know by June 30, you have to be done. I don't know of any other book that has ever been produced in a similar way. You know, as a lawyer, as a practicing lawyer, I used to dictate a lot. And I brought that dictating practice with me when I joined the faculty at BYU and did a lot of dictating of letters and memos. And I think I'm pretty good at dictating. But I never sent anything out that was a dictated draft that I didn't go back and have to correct and work over and modify and things that I didn't get the way I wanted. But Joseph didn't have that leisure. What we have in the Book of Mormon is what he said. And it stood as the final text with minor, minor grammatical corrections. Can you match this anywhere in world history? I don't think so. I think it is unique. And why do you think God would want it to be so unique?
- [30:11]
Daniel Sorensen
It needs to be inexplicable, right? It needs to be like Isaiah said when he said that marvelous work and a wonder passage. In Isaiah 29:14, he says, wise men will have nothing to say. The sages will have no explanations. Like, this is an inexplicable miracle. Is the only word that comes to mind, an inexplicable miracle. This is. Even the phrase marvelous work and wonder is actually a dualism, right? It's. You can translate it, a miraculous work and a miracle. It's like a miracle miracle.
- [30:39]
Jack Welch
What this is is a miracle squared. Miracle squared. So Isaiah is saying this is not going to be an ordinary miracle, if such a thing even exists.
- [30:50]
Daniel Sorensen
And we've got Joseph Smith here, he's 23 years old. He's looking at rocks in the bottom of his hat. And we get in 60 to 65 working days, a book with the complexity of the Book of Mormon. We haven't even talked about the complexity of the Book And, Zach, you're in a very unique position in the church. We happen to be talking. I don't know if our listeners and viewers know this. We happen to be talking right now to the man who actually discovered chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. One of these beautiful Hebrew complexities, these Hebrew parallelisms of chiasmus. And maybe you can just take a second, Jack, and just tell us about not only the speed, but let's add that extra layer of the complexity of the Book of Mormon. If you want to talk about chiasmus, we'd love that or whatever else you want to talk about in the book itself, like, add some layers to this miracle. Miracle. Miracle squared, A miracle cube. Like, what makes this even more miraculous the more you dig into the complexity of the text?
- [31:44]
Jack Welch
Well, the timing, of course, precludes any kind of research or drafting. And people wondered, well, how about him copying things out of the Bible? And here we have actually, Emma Smith's testimony. She was interviewed toward the end of her life by her son, Joseph Smith iii. And she was asked, could Joseph have had a Bible and you just, you know, didn't notice it, or was he able to copy this out from the Bible or something? And she said, absolutely not. I was there, you know, in the room. It's a small place. She's her fireplace. She's cooking right next to where the. Where Joseph and Oliver are working. And she said, he could not have hidden that. And even if he had the Bible, do you think he could pop it open and put it in the hat and somehow fool Oliver Cowdery? You know, you can't get a Bible in a hat like that. And even if you could, how do you turn the pages? That whole theory just. Just collapses. You have to come up with some other explanation, like, well, maybe he had memorized all those Isaiah chapters or those chapters in Malachi, or, you know, whatever. We know that he didn't do that.
- [32:56]
Daniel Sorensen
How do we know he didn't do that? For any skeptics out there, how would you push back and say, we know he didn't do that? Because why?
- [33:03]
Jack Welch
First of all, there's so much of it. And to select a chapter in Isaiah like we find in the book of Mosiah, where abinadi quotes Isaiah 53 and part of 52, and then gives an explanation of what is being said there. To have the text memorized is one thing, but then to give a detailed commentary that relies on Hebraic elements in the text that you wouldn't even know if you're just Reading the King James Bible. It's much more than just plopping a text from the Bible into some place in the Book of Mormon, you know, and there are a lot of other things that are going on here. Joseph did receive some instruction from Moroni. So I think Moroni was saying who he was in those visits and telling him a little bit about what happened to his father Mormon and to his people. And maybe he picked up some names. As, you know, Moroni even said my dad's name was Mormon. And so some of this might have been familiar. But it's one thing to tell someone a story about what happened at Gettysburg and what Abraham Lincoln came and said. It's another thing for you then to be able to create the Gettysburg Address when you don't have that text in front of you. And not only create a text, these texts in the Book of Mormon are so eloquent, so accurate, so profound. I'd like to talk about a number of these things, and I don't know how much time we have or how much patience people have in listening to this sort of thing. But your question, you know, about the complexity of the text. Could this have been somehow done? And obviously Joseph is going to have to have memorized not only what he's dictating out of the Bible, so to speak, but he's also got to have memorized King Benjamin's speech so that he can then perform the King Benjamin's speech while Oliver Cowdery writes it down. And then he's got to be able to do all of Alma's speeches the same way. It just can't be that way. It's harder for me to believe that than to believe the Moroni story and the translation process that Joseph and so many other people clearly validated and saw to a considerable extent.
- [35:22]
Daniel Sorensen
So on the one hand, you've got a miracle where an angel led this boy to these plates, and then he's able to use the instruments, the Urim and Thummim, to read words off the stones through a miraculous process to his scribe. Or on the other hand, you have a miracle where this superhuman guy named Joseph Smith can memorize text like no other human has ever been able to memorize. And then to come up with speeches intertextuality, linking with the Bible, explaining biblical passages in a way that nobody could do. He's 23 years old. On the one hand, you've got. You've got a miracle. On the other hand, you've got a miracle is kind of what I'm saying. You're saying the. The first one is an easier miracle to believe than the second.
- [36:06]
Jack Welch
Well, for me, it's easier to believe Joseph Smith's account because that's how he explained it. If you have to pick between one or the other, I think the weight of evidence and the weight of testimony is in favor of Joseph's explanation. The idea that he's somehow doing it in some other way just fall short of being. Being persuasive or even helpful. I think it's much more helpful to believe Joseph Smith because when you do that, you take the text seriously. Each word has weight and value, and sometimes it comes in ways that you didn't think of before. Sometimes there's real practical value in what's being said. Even if when Joseph translates The passages in 3rd Nephi 18 about how Jesus administers the bread and the wine to the people who are gathered there at the temple in Bountiful, and we have some of the words that Jesus himself spoke as he prayed for the people and the sacrament that was being administered there. You take those very words and then you look in Moroni chapters four and five, and we see how the Nephites then, probably with Jesus's own instruction, the 12 disciples then take the words that Jesus had used in blessing the sacrament and formalize that into the prayers that are verbatim what we use in blessing the sacrament every Sabbath day when we have sacrament meat. What's happening here is you can see the development from the words of Jesus, which we call the vox ipsa, the actual wording, the voice of Jesus in the first person rendition of those phrases that then will be reformatted into a eucharistic set of prayers on the bread and the wine. That's very subtle. And very few people have even noticed that the wording. If you compare what Jesus says in 3 Nephi 18 with what we have in Moroni 4, 5, and it's inspiring because then you can see, yes, we can't just say it the way Jesus said it, because we can't say, I ask you to bless this bread for them. No, you have to change the pronouns. You have to change a lot of the words to make it make sense.
- [38:32]
Daniel Sorensen
It's a subtle. An example of a subtle nuance that makes perfect sense if this is an authentic document, but would be incredibly difficult to fabricate if you're doing this all from memory.
- [38:44]
Jack Welch
Yeah. And this is just one example of a place, and there are many, many of these examples where we in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints today do Things the way we do them, because it's the way it appears in the Book of Mormon. I've written a long article called the Book of Mormon as the first administrative handbook for the Church. Why do we pray in families? Because third Nephi 18 Jesus says pray in the family. And we take that one little statement that hardly anybody even knows is there, and we develop a whole religious practice of family prayer based on that little phrase. Or you take a lot of other things. Why do we have priests and teachers and elders? Well, you can go back through the text of the Book of Mormon and you can look at Moroni, chapters two and three, and we learn how to ordain elders and how to give the gift of the Holy Ghost. And that, of course, is echoing 3rd Nephi 19. And there are about 50 ways in which we do things in the church, because that's what we find in the Book of Mormon. Now, what I'm saying is, beside telling a nice story, you know, if you write a novel, those kind of elements aren't going to be in your text. You wouldn't go into the kind of detail that Alma wants you to know about, because after all, he was the high priest. And he's going to explain how the church should be run and how it's organized and ways in which his record actually reflects the priesthood order, which he calls the Holy Order after the Son of God. He connects it with Melchizedek. And you can begin to see that we honor Alma, the high priest, as we have the Melchizedek and Aaronic orders of the priesthood. Now, Alma wasn't thinking of us when he wrote that. You follow what I'm saying. There are these different layers of the Book of Mormon. Some of them are practical, some are doctrinal, some are social.
- [40:43]
Daniel Sorensen
To be able to write a text in such a way that an entire religious movement can find sufficient elements in there for its ecclesiastical praxis is another layer of complexity.
- [40:56]
Casey
And I'll just add too, that doctrine and covenants 20, the articles and covenants of the Church, which is sort of the basic operating manual of the Church, is largely text from the Book of Mormon. I was at a meeting once where there were these Community of Christ scholars, and they were arguing that, you know, there's no ecclesiology, there's no instructions on how to run a church in the New Testament. And I raised my hand in the meeting and said, well, don't you guys use the Book of Mormon? You know, they say it's one of their scriptures. They looked at me like you know, I was from Mars and I just argued. There's tons of ecclesiology in the Book of Mormon. There's all kinds of instructions on how to run a church. And it was really, really instructive to me to word how fundamentally different we are from them, because we sort of embrace the Book of Mormon and the teachings and practices within it.
- [41:44]
Jack Welch
Yeah. Why do we fast? Well, it talks about fasting and prayer. Why do we pay tithing? Actually, Jesus quotes Malachi that talks about bringing tithing. You can find so many of these details in the Book of Mormon. Like you say, if you take it seriously, it becomes a handbook of basic practices that, of course, have to be adapted to different times and cultures. But we have been faithfully loyal to the Book of Mormon. I don't know that we're consciously faithful to it, but we appreciate these things that are sacred, and they are a part of why we do things the way we do. Why do we go on missions? Well, Ammon and his brothers went on missions. And why do we go two by two? Well, Nephi and his brother Lehi went two by two. You can see these patterns coming out just in the storyline. But it's not a story that's just been made up. This is actual practice that worked for those people under inspiration, and that's why it's a restoration of these principles that had been lost and needed to be brought back. So there's another layer there for real. Interesting reading. As long as we're talking about the text and, you know, is Joseph really translating something? How accurate is the translation? Let me offer a few points that I've made among many. We begin reading at first, Nephi chapter one. But as we've already said, that's not translated until they're up in Fayette. So we have in Alma 36 a text that was translated somewhere around the first of May in harmony. And this is in the. A little bit after the turning point in the big chiasm in Alma chapter 36, where Alma rejoicing that he has been saved. He feared that he was going to become destroyed and extinct. And now in his rejoicing, in chapter 36, verse 22, he says, Yea, methought, I saw even as our Father Lehi saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels, in the attitude of singing and praising their God. Can you quote that back to me? What did Alma say? Did you write it down, Oliver? Yes. Okay. Well, methought I saw even as our Father Lehi saw. Now, wait a minute. They haven't translated First Nephi chapter one yet. Now, maybe it was in the book of Lehi, maybe, maybe not. But later they will translate First Nephi chapter one and verse eight says that Lehi was overcome by the Spirit and he's carried away in a vision. And the heavens opened and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God. 21 words. Now, does Alma know those words? He does. And he is attributing them as. Even as our Father Lehi saw, He's quoting those 21 words. How does Alma know these words? He's the high priest. He's got the sacred records. He studied these. He knows these. So here's another consistency. If we didn't find these kinds of quotes, we'd say, did Alma ever read First Nephi? And we'd wonder. And if it's absent, we'd say, there's something wrong with this. But no, Alma knows this text, and he uses it as authoritative as he is now, validating his conversion experience. So what does that tell you, Scott, about the. Is it a loose translation or a tight translation?
- [45:20]
Daniel Sorensen
That sounds like a tight translation or. I like the phrase tight dictation.
- [45:24]
Jack Welch
If you need a second witness. What does King Benjamin say? The angel told him that the name of Jesus Christ would be. This is the most sacred name. King Benjamin is being told by the angel the name of the Savior will be. And to know the name of a God or another person in the ancient world was sacred and risky because if someone has your name, they can curse you by name. They worried a lot about who has control or opportunity to make problems for you. So it's very, very careful. And there are 10 elements, what the angel tells Benjamin the name of the Savior will be. This is Mosiah chapter 3, verse 8. And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the creator of all things, from the beginning. 10 elements. These would have been then recognized and used in the Nephite temple as the holy name of the coming Messiah. And notice that all 10 of those words describe different functions or parts of the power and functioning of the Savior. Well, when Samuel, the Lamanite. Now we're just going to make up a story about Samuel. He's a Lamanite. He shows up on the walls of Zarahemla. Why is he in Zarahemla? Oh, his missionaries were Nephi and Lehi. Okay. And if you go back to Helaman chapter five, where Helaman, the son of Helaman, is sending his two sons, Nephi and Lehi, off on a mission. And he tells them, remember, remember, my sons, the words which King Benjamin spoke, that there is no other way whereby man can be saved only through the atoning blood of Christ. He's there quoting Mosiah, chapter three, just a few verses after the one that we've already quoted. That tells me that when Nephi and Lehi preach to the Lamanites, who become very faithful and very devoted, he's using King Benjamin's speech as their missionary kind of message, their training, among other things. Then Samuel, the Lamanite, who has to be one of those converts, probably visiting Nephi and Lehi in Zarahemla, sees how everything in Zarahemla's gone haywire. And he gets up on the wall, and in chapter 14, verse 12, the very center of Samuel the Lamanite's speech, he echoes the words of the angel in the center of King Benjamin's speech. And he stands there and says, I am here. And I'm telling you these things that you also might know of the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things, from the beginning, and that you might know the signs of his coming. Precisely. Not a single the, of or in about it that isn't the same.
- [48:25]
Daniel Sorensen
How many of these, Jack, are there in the Book of Mormon? These little subtleties like this, these complexities, these things that you can miss them if you're not reading carefully. You pointed out, too, but I mean, you've studied this text your whole life, and deeply and scholarly, like, how many of these would you estimate there are these kinds of just.
- [48:43]
Jack Welch
Well, Scott, you use the word intertextuality, and there are lots of elements of intertextuality. None quite so. I mean, this. This one passage is really central, very long. But there are intertextual connections with Zenas's allegory of the Olive Tree. Alma will refer back to that. But, you know, in the ancient world, they knew these texts so well that it only took a word or two. And you knew that you were, in effect, incorporating or quoting the whole passage anyway. So how many are there? Depends on what you mean by, you know, an incident of intertextuality. There are very few that are 21 words long. There are two of them. I've given you those two. Lehi's vision and the angel to King Benjamin. But there are other passages that are also, I think, dependent on previous passages. I don't Think we have a complete study of all the intertextuality and the possibilities there. But there are a number of them.
- [49:44]
Daniel Sorensen
What about Hebraisms and that kind of narrative complexity that you found so many years ago in the Book of Mormon of chiasmic structures? How much of that would you estimate is in the Book of Mormon? What should people know, generally speaking?
- [49:57]
Jack Welch
Well, again, it depends. The Abba, a very simple little back and forth. Those are rather insignificant in some ways. How many long ones are there? Whole books are. First Nephi is a chiasm. Noel Reynolds has written on that. First Nephi and what's at the middle of First Nephi? Nephi's vision, where he sees in chapter 11 the coming forth of Jesus Christ, the mother of God, and beautiful text. And I, I think in some ways Second Nephi is also a chiasm where you begin with Lehi's testimony, you have Jacob's explanation, you then have the block of text from Isaiah, you then have Nephi's explanation and end with Nephi's testimony. There are five parts in Second Nephi and they fall together very well. King Benjamin's speech is a seven part speech and it is structured in a way that the speech is organized and breaks into a way which builds to the climax, the turning point, which is when Benjamin puts people under obligation to receive and put off the natural man and become a saint through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. That is his central message. And it's dead center, I should say living center, not dead center, but that instruction you must put off the natural man and become a saint if you count the words. And the computer can do this for you before that center point and after that center point. In King Benjamin's speech, it's only off dead center by maybe five or six words. So these kinds of things, people of course, don't stop and calculate and notice. You kind of sense that though it's like climbing a mountain, you go up to the top of the mountain and there you are at the pinnacle and then you come back down. And that's what I call a macro chiasm. But there are others at the verbal level. Not too long ago, Don Perry put out a little book where he lays out for you 260 chiasms in the Book of Mormon. And we don't write this way, we write in paragraphs. But the ancient people didn't have paragraphs. They didn't even put spaces between the words. They didn't have punctuation. And so they used this kind of internal structuring to let people know when you had begun a passage, reach the turning point, and come back to basically the beginning. And now you have an inclusio, you've closed the text and you can go on to the next one. So it's functional for them to us. You know, maybe it's. It's clever, maybe it's artistic in some ways it's elegant. Often it helps to focus and also to draw contrasts. But that's not the main purpose, and it's not why they used it the way they did and other kinds of parallelisms that serve that purpose as well.
- [52:57]
Daniel Sorensen
And what are the odds that Joseph Smith was fairly conversant with chiasmus and he was just cleverly weaving that into the text that he had memorized as well?
- [53:07]
Jack Welch
It simply piles on one other element that you just can't explain. And it also, when you begin to realize this isn't just a dictation, this is a polished text organized and meaningfully constructed and using not just narrative as a form. We have, in ancient literature, farewell speeches. It's very common for someone to give their own funeral speech when they're about to die or say goodbye. There are several of these in the Bible. But in Greek and Roman literature, the farewell speech is a type of composition. Well, what's King Benjamin doing? He's saying goodbye. He doesn't know when he's going to die, but he's passing the baton to his son to be the king. And he does live for three years afterwards before he dies. But when you look at farewell speeches in the ancient world, everything that you need to do in a classic farewell speech, King Benjamin manages to do. He knows this literature, and he would have known it from the brass plates and places in the Old Testament where there are some farewell speeches. The end of Deuteronomy is Moses's farewell speech. But whoever reads that, let alone memorizes it, and then uses it as a model for something else. And let me give you another. You know, you wonder about the translation. We have to realize that there are lots of meanings going on in these words that we don't catch. We have to pause. Sometimes the names are significant and they can be translated. Often you may ask about Hebrew. Well, the word chemish means five in Hebrew. And if you go from Jacob, Enos, Jerem, Omni, Chemish, oh, he's the fifth, and he's called Number Five. Did he go by that? I'm John Welch V. People could call me Five and I'd answer, but you have a Hebrew word there. And we just think, Chemish, what a strange name. But maybe it had some significance. There are lots of other Abinadi. Abinadi, Abi Nadai. My father was a gift. That's a nice Hebrew name. You can go down the list of lots of those names. Books have been written by good scholars. Stephen Ricks has spent a lot of time with Dan Peterson, Matt Bowen and other people who continue this process. You can find a lot of this online on each of these names. And we can't identify all of the names. Of course, some of them are Jaredites, some of them are Lamanite. And we've got lots of different cultures, but within the mainstream of the Nephite royal line, these names tend to be very stable, and most of them have etymologies that we can identify. But let me give you one other people have wondered about. First Corinthians, chapter 15, where Paul talks about death being swallowed up in victory. This, of course, is a quotation from Isaiah 25. So that would have been probably on the brass plates. So we can go from what Isaiah says in Isaiah 25, where he says that death will be swallowed up in Netsak. Well, what does Netsak mean? Well, if you look in a Hebrew dictionary, you can see that Netsak means three different things. One is victory, but it can also mean the victor. And so in Mosiah 16, when Abinadi quotes Isaiah and is explaining it, he says, don't you guys get this? Death will be swallowed up in Christ. Who's Christ? He's the victor. And Isaiah is being used to substantiate that. Now, that point is clear if you understand what the word Netsak means. And then when you get Ammon in the Book of Alma, chapter 22, and Alma is there preaching to King Lamoni, and what does he say? I'm going to tell you now the Gospel and how death will be swallowed up in the hopes of glory. Guess what the third meaning of Netsach is? It's the glory of victory. So you've got that three different meanings. And this being swallowed up in it gets translated differently in the English here by Joseph Smith, because the context requires that and justifies it. But the Hebrew also supports and allows that, and maybe not only allows it, but demands it. So for someone to just say, oh, this is obviously Joseph Smith just using language that he knew from the New Testament, it's not that simple. Scott, you asked about Hebraisms. Lots of those kinds of things could be mentioned.
- [57:45]
Daniel Sorensen
And I remember a conversation we had once, Jack, where I asked you about critics of the sermon at the Temple. I don't know if you recall this conversation at all, but critics of the sermon at the temple that Jesus gave, where essentially he is quoting himself from Matthew 5 to Matthew 7, Sermon on the Mount, and that there are textual differences between Matthew 5, 7 and 35, 12, 14. And some people feel like they can play the game gotcha with Joseph, like, oh, you got this word wrong and this thing there. And this is clearly just plagiarism with, you know, he's just trying to do some. He's just doing some shenanigans. I remember I asked you something about that. I said, how do you deal with that, Jack? And you said, so calm and so cool. You just said, I just look at the original language in Greek and I look at the varieties in the. In the Book of Mormon, the other words that are used. And in almost every case, the alternate word that's used in the Book of Mormon is one of the viable alternate words. That word can be translated into from Greek. And you just showed us that with this word swallowed up in victory or in the victor or in hope of glory. And you have this language, you understand the base languages as well of Hebrew and Greek. And none of this stuff seems to faze you. In fact, on the contrary, it seems to strengthen your conviction that the Book of Mormon is actually an ancient record that was translated by a true prophet of God. And I've always loved that about you.
- [59:12]
Scott Woodward
J.
- [59:23]
Jack Welch
We could spend a lot of time. It's another, I think a whole nother session. Maybe we can do later on what you call the Sermon at the Temple. I might also call it the Sermon in the Temple. But what I have argued there has actually been published in London by Ashgate in a book called the Sermon on the Mount in the Light of the Temple. This was published for non LDS academics, biblical scholars, and the thesis, as far as I can tell, it's been adopted by and encouraged by Margaret Barker and lots of other people. When you look at the Sermon on the Mount, you have to remember that Jesus takes his young 12 disciples and maybe a few others. And it says, and they went up. And the Greek says, into the mountain. It doesn't say he went on a hillside. And that phrase into the mountain is exactly the same phrase that's in the Septuagint version of Psalm 24. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? What are they talking about there? What's the hill of the Lord? The Temple Mount. It's the temple and Psalm 24. Is who shall ascend into the Temple. Who can go up into the Temple? He who hath clean hands and a pure heart. Blessed are the pure in heart. Oh, that's one of the Beatitudes, isn't it? And you look at these little details and the Sermon on the Mount over and over again is really talking about Temple elements from beginning to end. It ends, by the way, with who shall enter into the house of the Lord, who shall enter into the presence of God. You have to be built upon the rock, and the rock is the Temple. Anyway, there are lots of these little elements that when you put them all together. I've now written an article in another book that you can dig out on seeing Third Nephi as the Holy of Holies of the Book of Mormon. Because it is there that Jesus appears as God, as the Son of God, resurrected, eternal being, and he chooses to appear at the Temple in Bountiful. As you go through and ask the question, what happened in the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem? And every one of the things that happens in the Holy of Holies happens in third Nephi. This is not just an ordinary Protestant farm boy coming up with a context in which to drop the Sermon on the Mount. First of all, it's not the Sermon on the Mountain, it's the Sermon in the Mountain. It's the sermon in the house of the Lord. And it fits. It works in a way that people have not noticed in the biblical world, and yet it's so clear and so meaningful. And remember that at the end of Matthew, when Jesus says to His 12 after the resurrection, and he spent some time with them right there in Jerusalem, he says, I want you to leave Jerusalem now. Go to Galilee. And what does he say? I will meet you there. Go into the mountain. It's exactly that same phrase. What's he saying? Go to the place where I taught you before. They know the place, he doesn't have to say to them, get out your GPS and I'll plot where you need to go. They know where to go. And it's a holy place. And there Jesus will complete the 40 day ministry of his 12. Now, the book of Mormon is a part of the 40 day literature, resurrection, post resurrection, post ascension. It may be that Jesus ascends first after 40 days and then comes to visit people in third Nephi and other places. I don't think it's a part of the 40 day literature, but I think it's right after those 40 days. Therefore, the continuities which who in the Christian world even talked about the 40 day literature until Hugh Nibley published for the first time an essay, a long article in a Dutch journal in the 1950s on the 40 day literature. And how did Hugh get this idea? Ah, the Book of Mormon. We know that there's more going on after the Resurrection and we take seriously those early Christian accounts of the 40 day ministry.
- [63:37]
Casey
I wanted to shift gears just real quick and cover something that we were talking about before we hit record, which is not only is there all this complexity in the Book of Mormon, but compared to other scripture that we use, what we know about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon is voluminous as well. For instance, you were making the comparison between the Book of Mormon and the Gospel of John. And yeah, the coming forth, the Book of Mormon gets a lot of criticism because it's such a strong pillar in our truth claims. But sometimes people don't appreciate, like, we know a lot about how we got the Book of Mormon, especially compared to other scripture that we use. Like, can you talk about that for a minute or two?
- [64:17]
Jack Welch
Let me ask you a question on this. If you were God wanting this book to come forth, would you want it to be kind of an open, ordinary process, or would you rather have it be rather sacred, secret, whatever you want to call it? If you were God for a day, Casey, how would you have this book Mormon come forth?
- [64:35]
Casey
I don't get asked that very often, but I mean, transparency is better, right? I want people to know as much information about where it came from as possible to strengthen their faith in the Book and thereby strengthen their faith in Jesus Christ.
- [64:48]
Jack Welch
Well, is it possible to have too much knowledge?
- [64:51]
Casey
Well, I remember Joseph Smith saying, I've never heard a man being damned for believing too much, but they have been damned for unbelief.
- [64:59]
Jack Welch
Why doesn't Jesus just walk the streets of New York and Paris and Beijing openly today?
- [65:06]
Casey
Maybe that would be too much. That takes out the question of faith. I guess if we know for sure everything, then you don't act in faith.
- [65:13]
Jack Welch
I think that's a big part of it. I think that for one thing, if the plates had simply been handed to Charles Anthon, what would he have done with them? Could he have translated them? Was there anybody on the planet who could make heads or tails of any of the inscriptions that were on the plates? From what little we know about them, but very little was known about ancient American cultures, I think they would have simply had to ignore it. And even if somebody had figured out and deciphered, oh, this symbol Must mean such and such. Would you believe that translation sooner than Joseph Smith's translation? I don't think so. I mean, I think God knows what he's doing and I think he knows that we have to have faith and that having too much human knowledge gets in the way of that. When we think we know and we really don't, and when we need to develop faith, having a record like this Book of Mormon, which is a miracle that you can hold in your hand and you can have confidence in, it's a testimony of Jesus Christ like no other. So I think, first of all, you've just got the uphill battle of impossibility. It's not going to happen without some divine assistance. And then I guess the question is, so who do you go to? Maybe, moron, I should go visit Charles Anthon? I don't think so. I mean, we're being hypothetical and maybe flippant here, but I think when you look at the purposes and the need and the results and even the prophecies about how the book would come forth, Mormon knew and Moroni knew this was going to take the gift and power of God, which is mentioned in the title page itself. This isn't a surprise.
- [67:01]
Daniel Sorensen
Wouldn't you say, though, that the definition of faith from Book of Hebrews, that faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, it seems as though God was intent on giving us some evidence as to the miraculous nature of this book so that we could believe in the unseen thing which is Christ as our Lord and the plan of God as outlined in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is the evidence of the thing not seen. Right, which is Jesus.
- [67:31]
Jack Welch
Yeah, I think that's right to an extent. But I think when Hebrews 11 talks about faith being the evidence of things not seen, it's the faith that's the evidence, not that there will be some other evidence. And in fact, the word for faith in the New Testament, pistis, doesn't mean faith as we think of it. We usually think of faith more as belief. But the Greek word for faith should be translated on almost every occasion as faithfulness. You can't be faithful as a servant without serving faithfully. And we have faithfulness when we are loyal to God. So when we have faithfulness is the evidence, the outward recognition of things not seen. It's our faithful behavior, it's our faithful obedience, it's our faithful doing, the will of the Lord that then will become evidence and make visible the work and hand of the Lord and then you read the examples in Hebrews, chapter 11, and you can see that that's what's being talked about. All those examples of faithfulness.
- [68:53]
Daniel Sorensen
Wow, this has been so fun, Jack. We could talk to you for hours and hours and hours, and we'll definitely need to have you back on the show. What have we missed today? What are some other points you'd like to make as we start to land the plane and kind of wrap all this up? What haven't we asked about? What's, what's in your soul that you want to tell us about? The timing of the translation of the Book of Mormon or anything else?
- [69:14]
Jack Welch
Well, I think first of all, the. The polished nature of the final product. Yes, there are some things that had to be, as we've said before, corrected, some spelling, some typos and a few things like that. But the essence of the Book of Mormon came fully mature, having had the laboring hand of abridgers and editors like Mormon and Moroni working on this text. And for us to have it and pick it up, I think it helps us to read the book better if we read it. Trying to listen for Nephi's voice, trying to listen for Alma's voice. And, you know, one thing that's, that's really interesting about the Book of Mormon that we haven't said much about here is the stylometry studies that have been done. Computer analysis is sophisticated enough now that you can take a text, you take 10 letters, and let's say three of them are written by one person and a bunch of others written by different people. The computer can sort out by stylometry which ones were written by the same person and which were written by different people, we can take and put into a database. And it's all been done. And this has been worked on for quite a while, but now at a much higher level of sophistication. You take all of Alma's words, you take all of Abinadi's words, you take all of Mormon's words, you take all of Jacob's words, and you put them into separate files and ask the computer, it's a supercomputer with a very sophisticated program, do these different writers separate out, or is this all coming from one, either as an author or a translator? And the results, the computer can identify over 20 different authors in the Book of Mormon. This is astonishing because even the translation by Joseph Smith doesn't blur the underlying personalities of these texts. So when you're reading something, and this is the Book of Jacob, read Jacob's words and listen for his voice and his concerns. And oh yes, he will quote Zenos in Jacob chapter five. And guess what? Zenos maps out as a completely different author as well. So you have these breaks that have been preserved, which tells me that Mormon, in his process of editing and abridging to abridge something, doesn't mean that you rewrite it, but you cut and paste portions out of a text or into another document. That's what we see here. It's a quilt of different fabrics being put together. Now that's kind of interesting all by itself. I'd like to also say I went and looked for with these different texts, what do they each tell us about Jesus Christ? And I began by saying something simple like what names are used by Nephi and only by Nephi for Jesus the Messiah? What names are used by Nephi, by Jacob, by Alma, by Amulek? There are three names that only King Benjamin will use. There are ten names that only Nephi will use. There are three names that only Alma will use, and so on. But more than that, you look at the personalities. Take Nephi. Nephi was of course, the younger son of Lehigh, and he's needing to take the place of leading his older brothers. And you know, that creates a family problem. What he wants to say is that I, Nephi, understand what it means to be a faithful son. So guess what titles for Jesus Nephi will use. Son of the Most High God, Son of the Everlasting Father, Son of Righteousness, Beloved Son, and so on. The sonship is something that Nephi can relate to. And of course that's a true and correct and important doctrine. But there's so many doctrines that he could have chosen. He identifies with that one. What does this tell us, though, about their testimonies of Christ? That Christ has all these different dimensions to him. And as we learn to follow Christ, as Jacob did, as Alma did, as Samuel did, as Moroni did, we draw closer to the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When we get the fullness of the picture. If we had only one book and it was all written by Mormon, we wouldn't get that. And in the end, what's the last word that Moroni wrote? The end of chapter 10. Until we meet at the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah. How many times do you think the word Jehovah appears in the Book of Mormon? That once Jehovah was a sacred name. Yahweh, Jehovah as a an ancient Israelite. If you pronounce the name of Jehovah out loud. It was a capital offense. The only exception was on the Day of Atonement, when you could receive the atonement and thank Jehovah for it in the Temple. Why does Moroni use that as his final punctuation? He knows that no one will read this or have this. He can put that as his final punctuation before we meet, before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah. He knows it's not going to be desecrated. He knows that the only people who will see this will be those who have been commissioned by God to have it, to respect it and to return it, so that it will all serve its righteous and holy purposes. To me, that's a powerful testimony in and of itself.
- [75:07]
Casey
Well, thank you, Jack. You're a wealth of knowledge and we appreciate you sharing your insights with us. We probably ought to wrap things up there, but again, we point you to Jack's numerous publications, not only on the translation process of the Book of Mormon, but also the text itself. I don't know if I know anybody that's done a deeper search and found more connections in the text than any other person that ultimately is the Greatest Witness. It's just the book itself. So, Jack, we thank you for your scholarship and we thank you for all you've done over the years to defend the faith. Just thank you for all that you do.
- [75:46]
Jack Welch
Well, thanks for both of you and all you're doing carrying on. And I hope this year will be a wonderful year with church history and this will help us in many ways. We've spent this last year reading the Book of Mormon and so I hope more than ever before as people go through church history this year, they will see the echoes and the reasons why things are being done the way they are and relate back to things that we've studied. The continuity within the four standard works is inspiring. It is so significant. These books have all come from different prophets in different times, but they all reflect the mind and will of God. I know that. And because of that, they do hang together. They support one another, and we are well advised and well rewarded if we read everything in all four standard works as going hand in hand this year and always. And I gladly testify of that. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
- [76:50]
Casey
Amen. Well said.
- [76:52]
Daniel Sorensen
Thank you, Jack.
- [76:54]
Casey
Thank you. Thank you, Scott. Until next time. Been great to be here with you.
- [77:00]
Daniel Sorensen
See you next week.
- [77:04]
Scott Woodward
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Church History Matters. Our new episodes drop every Tuesday, so please join us next week as we continue to dig into the context, content, controversies and consequences of the revelations of the Doctrine and Covenants. If you're enjoying or gaining value from Church History Matters, we would love it if you could pay it forward by telling your friends about it or by taking a moment to subscribe. Subscribe, rate, review and comment on the podcast that makes us easier to find. Today's episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Daniel Sorensen with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a non profit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter Day Saints Scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your Gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. Let me say that again, all of our content is free because people like you donate to make it possible. So if you're in a position where you're both willing and able to make a one time or ongoing donation, be assured that your contribution will help us here at Scripture Central to produce and disseminate more quality content to combat false and faith eroding material out there in the digital marketplace of ideas. And while Casey and I try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or the Church.
- [78:38]
Daniel Sorensen
Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
- [78:40]
Scott Woodward
Thank you so much for being a.
- [78:41]
Daniel Sorensen
Part of this with us.