The Sermon in the Hat: Joseph Smith’s Magical Oratory and the Making of the Book of Mormon

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Mormonish Podcast. I’m Rebecca. I am joined by my co-host, Landon. How are you this evening, Landon? I’m doing great. Fantastic. It’s good to see you here. You can’t always be on, but when you are on, it’s amazing. Well, I don’t miss when Dr. John is on. No, and I was going to say, the other person on the screen needs no introduction. Dr. John Lundwall, how are you this evening, John? I’m doing great. It’s great to be back on your show. That’s right. We’re really, really happy because your episodes are not only some of our more groundbreaking ones and the ones that we get the most response to, we also get the most response from apologists, too. They are just, I think, you know, crowd pleasers. So in order to sort of explain what we’re doing tonight, I’m simply going to say when Dr. John calls us and says, you know what, I have something I’d like to cover. Can I come on your podcast? We say the podcast is yours. That’s all we need to say, right? So take it away, Dr. John. Introduce what you’re going to talk about. And I know you have a fantastic slide presentation, too.

I do. And actually, tonight is some I think some really interesting, new, perhaps even groundbreaking stuff. And well, here I am on Mormonish to sort of share it. To be honest, I did most of this research a couple of years ago. And I’ve been sitting on it. And so I’ve decided it’s time to put it out. So I am excited to share it with your audience. I do have to warn everyone. It is a PowerPoint slide. It’s like 42 slides. When I do PowerPoint, I try to have heavy images, light text. The text slows everything down, and that’s what PowerPoint is for. Having said that, tonight is a very… text-heavy presentation. We’re going to be doing a lot of reading of text. There’s no way around it, and so we’re just going to walk through and do it. So I hope everyone brought their reading glasses, because I certainly will need mine. And I hope you two are ready to help read through some of these slides. Always. I’m excited. That’s right. We’re here for you, John. This is it. This is going to be fantastic, everybody. And I would also suggest when Dr. John is on and you’re watching the episode, keep a notebook. I’m not kidding. You’re going to want to take notes on some of this stuff. Like you said, it’s pretty groundbreaking and pretty innovative and pretty what? Can you see my slides? We can. Yep.

All right. I just thought I know that the Middle East is a total mess right now. And I pray for everyone involved. But I did want to share, everyone’s going on cruises, the Exmo, the Promo. I’m actually taking an academic group, a group of graduate students, May of 2027 through Egypt. And it’s priced for academic students. So it’s actually a really good deal, $3,800 plus airfare to Cairo. And we’re hitting all the major sites in Egypt with professional academic guides at each site, five-star hotels, four-day Nile cruise. Me, I’ll be there, and every once in a while I’ll point out the Book of Abraham panels. Thank you. And, you know, it’s Giza, Saqqara, Grand Egyptian Museum, Karnak Valley of the Kings, Edfu, you know, private entrance into the Sphinx enclosure. It’s going to be a fantastic trip. So I’m going to send you the link, and you will put it in your show notes, right? Yep, yep. I will. I see a barcode there or a QR code. Yes, a QR code will send you to the website. If you pay a $450 deposit by May 10th, you get $200 off the tour. The tour is $3,900. You get $200 off $3,700, $3,790. But that covers everything, internal airfare, cruises, boats, planes, everything.

You said it’s an academic. Would Rebecca and I understand what’s going on if we went? Yes. Yes. Speak for yourself. I don’t have a lot of time here, but let me tell you, I don’t know, about four or five years ago, I was in Egypt on a tour and the guide was strange. For this group. And somehow he learned I was from Utah. I didn’t tell him. Someone told him and he goes, oh, you’re from Utah. Are you Mormon? And I’m like, well, no, I’m not. Well, let me tell you about about the temple. This guy pivoted, right? He was going along, and then he stopped, and then he gave the Mormon interpretation. These guides are really good. That’s so frustrating. They know what you want to hear, huh? They tell you what you want to hear. But actually, the tour company we’re using does do professional academic tours, and I’m bringing a group of grad students. I’ve only got… 10, 12 open spots. So, again, it’s a great deal, great trip. It’s going to be a very active, full trip. And, well, there you go. That’s all I have to say about that. Let us start this presentation.

All right, here’s the deal. We’re going to start with some already covered ground. But that starts us on a rabbit trail. And once you start down that rabbit trail, you start finding things. And we’re going to cover things that, in my view, have not been covered. I haven’t seen them covered. And by the end, we’re going to be down a rabbit hole, at the bottom of which is a couple really interesting revelations, or at least potential revelations. So… Tonight’s presentation is entitled I, Nephi, having been born from invocation. I’m going to start with this slide that actually I did on your show a couple of years ago about how the Mormon apologists say there’s so much writing on gold plate that it just authenticates the claims of the Book of Mormon. And I showed this, their top three examples, Darius gold plates, Etruscan gold plates, the Pergi golden tablets, and showed that actually when you look at context, these claims not only do not verify the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, they argue against it. Do you remember this? All these examples that they give are ritual tablets. And whenever we find in a Near Eastern Mediterranean context a sacred writing on gold, it’s a ritual performance. It’s a ritual. And, you know, the Nephites are supposed to be writing history on gold plates. And there’s, again, even gold tablets found in the Americas. and they also are ritual tablets with almost no text on them. They’re pictures of the votive offerings that were probably offered right before warfare, and a ritual was performed. So whenever we find a writing on gold, it’s the wrong paradigm. It’s the wrong medium, and therefore that contradicts the claims of the Book of Mormon, right? Any questions? We’re going to be running into this problem over and over again tonight with the claims of the Book of Mormon versus historical reality.

So we’re going to start with reading the opening of the Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 1, verses 1 through 3. And can I get, Rebecca or Landon, can you read that? Verses 1 through 3 on the left. I think Landon should read it because he was a seminary teacher. So I feel that you have the weight behind this to read it in the way it is meant to be read. Sure. I’ll read it because I’ve probably read it hundreds of times but never got much past Second Nephi. Okay, here we go. I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father. And having seen many afflictions in the course of my days, nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days, yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God, therefore I make a record of my proceedings in my days. Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians. And I know that the record which I make is true, and I make it with mine own hand, and I make it according to my knowledge.

Okay. The opening salvo, when you open the first readings of the text, at least chronologically, you meet Nephi speaking, interestingly enough, in first-person dialogue, telling a first-person narrative. Now, this is quite unusual. It’s unusual historically in some aspects. And we’re going to talk a lot about this tonight and the implications of this. However, if you recall, the claim by faithful scholars is that this introduction is a colophon. And again, this is ground that’s been covered, but we’re going to go over a little bit of it. Can you read, Rebecca, these quotes? The top one is Brant Garner and the bottom one is John Tevednes. Okay, yeah, the first one is Brent Gardner, as John said, and he says, verses one through three are a complete literary unit and should be read together. They form a colophon or an indication of the author of the piece. And then John A. Tvetnes, did I say that correctly, close enough? Yeah, I think so. Close enough, I’ll go with yes. In his work, Colophon’s in the Book of Mormon, he says, several of the books in the Book of Mormon begin or end with a statement by the author certifying that he is the author of his work. Often he tells what is to come in the following pages or… explains or marks the end of what have just been said. Statements like this are known in ancient documents as colophones. And as Hugh Nibley pointed out several years ago, they appear in several Egyptian documents.

I have a feeling you’re going to do a colonophoscopy. Oh, dear. That’s exactly what’s going to happen tonight. You know, when I read the Book of Mormon with orality and literacy in mind, you know, that was about 2015-16 was when I did it. There are some features of the text that really stuck out to me that were unusual, and they wouldn’t leave me alone. They bothered me a little bit. And this opening is part of what I consider to be an unusual fingerprint of a literary style in the Book of Mormon that turns out to be only existent in the Book of Mormon. All right, so you’ve heard the colophon argument before, right, that these are colophons. Well, what’s a colophon? A colophon is a brief scribal or publishing note usually at the beginning or end of a text, mostly they’re at the beginning or the end of a text, that records information about its production, such as the author or scribe, date, place, or authority of the work. So most colophones… have date, author, place, patron, who the text is being written for. Sometimes there is some flowery language, acknowledgement of the patron. Sometimes there’s a blessing or curse. If you alter this text, you’re cursed. If you keep the text and honor the patron, you’re blessed. But the important thing is a colophon is a paratext. And again, a paratext is part of the text that contextualize, identifies the text without being part of the text.

So when we open 1 Nephi, we don’t get a paratext. We get a primary text. Nephi introduces himself in first-person narrative as part of the text. This is odd. So they also claim that these are colophones, and I thought we would just read them. This is Jacob 1, 1 through 3, and Enos 1, 1 through 3. And as you read them, maybe, Landon, you can read them, look for, do you have a date, a specific date, an author name? place where the text is written who the king or patron is the text is written for a blessing curse or some other magnification of the text do you find this in what scholars are calling colophones in the book of mormon can you read those jacob one one through three for behold it came to pass that 15 five years had passed away from the time that lehi left jerusalem Wherefore, Nephi gave me, Jacob, a commandment concerning the small plates upon which these things are engraven. And he gave me, Jacob, a commandment that I should write upon these plates a few of the things which I consider to be most precious, that I should not touch, save it were lightly, concerning the history of this people, which are called the people of Nephi. For he said that the history of his people should be engraven upon his other plates, and that I should preserve these plates and hand them down unto my seed from generation to generation.

You want me to read the other one right now too? Sure, go ahead, Enos. Enos 1, 1 through 3. Behold, it came to pass that I, Enos, knowing my father that he was a just man, All right. So… uh do we get place author date patron blessing curse um do we get that we we get the name of the person saying this is me writing it in one case there’s a little bit of a time frame but other than that i don’t see those other elements no yes right you don’t see those other elements All right. Nibley cites in his work the Bremer Rhine papyrus, or at least gives this as an example of an ancient Egyptian colophon identifying Nephi 1, 1 through 3 as a colophon. So I thought, let’s quote it. Here’s the ancient Egyptian colophon. I’ll read it. Written in year 12, fourth month of the inundation season, under the majesty of Alexander, son of Alexander, the count… In Divine Father, Prophet of Amun-Re, King of the Gods, Prophet Harprey, Great and Mighty, Prophet of Osiris, Prophet of Isis and Nephthys, Scribe and God’s Treasurer of Amun, Nesmin Justified, Son of the Priest of Petemestus, and the Lady Chasheret Entet. It’s you. As for anyone who shall remove this book from its place, may the gods judge him.

All right. That is a colophon. We get the author, Nesben the priest, his titles and lineages. This whole paragraph is his titles. We get his lineage, son of and lady of. We get a specific date written in the year 12, fourth month of the inundation season under the majesty of Alexander. It’s a regnal date as well as an agricultural date. This is the formal calendar that is being used. We see a cultic authority. We have a curse. And sure enough, this is I think that’s at the front of the text, though. Now I can’t remember. All right. So here’s what we have in the Egyptian example. We have a regnal date, the date of the king under the fourth month of the inundation. We have royal authority, formally priestly titles, genealogy, protective curse. More importantly, it’s a paratext. What we just read is not part of the text. It’s a signature. And now the text. Okay. Okay. The Book of Mormon is not a paratext. It’s a primary text. I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I will write and tell you the story. He is in the text. He is in the narrative. He is the narrative. That’s not a colophon. Colophons don’t do that. There’s no formal date from an official accounting. The only dating we get In some of these, you said there’s a hint of a date. Do you remember what that was? Yeah. Fifty five years after leaving Jerusalem. Yes. That’s the only date dating frame we get for 500 years in the Book of Mormon. It was so and so years after Lehi left Jerusalem. Not only are these not colophones, but as you follow the threads through the colophones, the different individual elements such as the dating in the Book of Mormon also is hugely problematic. We’ll discuss it.

No formal ruler, no location, no institutional authority, no cursor dedication. Nephi’s introduction is theological autobiography. It is not a colophone. Follow? Yeah, it’s interesting. Nephi can’t even locate the lands of the Book of Mormon. But your point is that apologists tell us this is related to Egypt, related to the writings of Egypt, because of this common element of the colophon. And they’re really stretching to make some of these parts of the Book of Mormon a colophon, the way that you’re explaining it here. It’s a huge stretch. It’s not real. Well, it stretches until it breaks. Yes. Ancient colophons are normally paratextual scribal notes, secondary written elements added by scribes that frame, identify, authenticate, contextualize a text without being part of the text narrative or argument itself. 1 Nephi 1.1-3 is integral narrative prose. Calling this prosa colophon relies on redefining the term prosa. not matching established forms. In other words, the only way that’s a colophon is if we redefine the colophon to include what the Book of Mormon is doing, and what the Book of Mormon is doing is found nowhere else. And so you have to then simply expand the definition. Move the goalposts. Move the goalposts. So you’re saying that this type of writing would not have, what the Book of Mormon is, this statement about a person and it kind of relates to the narrative and furthers the narrative, that doesn’t exist at all in the writings of that era that they’re claiming the Book of Mormon came from. It’s not something they did. We’re going to go over. Because this bothered me. Yeah. And, you know, I have a comparative degree, comparative myth and religion. So, you know, there’s upsides and downsides to that approach. But one of the upsides is I’ve read a lot of texts. And we’re going to go over some of the texts and how unusual and bizarre the Book of Mormon text actually is when you compare them to texts in antiquity.

I mean, the other problem, you know, so look, I want… an author, a specific name that identifies a scribal school, his scribal titles, and his genealogy. I don’t get that in any of those Book of Mormon examples. I want a specific date that can be used to locate the text, both temporally and in the library. And all the Book of Mormon gives me—so this is another problem. It’s not really part of the presentation, but I thought I’d make a slide on it anyway. One of the things that always bothered me in the Book of Mormon is the dating systems. The apologists are so happy to report that there’s three overlapping calendar systems that are internally consistent, and this— proves that the complexity of the text and the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Well, like the gold plates, once you dig into calendar systems, you realize actually the calendar system of the Book of Mormon only exists in the Book of Mormon. There’s nothing like it outside of the Book of Mormon. the colophons in the Book of Mormon only exist in the Book of Mormon. There’s nothing like it outside of the Book of Mormon. the book of mormon does something no known ancient culture does it begins its history with a migration that migration starts the narrative that same event becomes the total chronological zero point this system persists for centuries the calendar is internal to the narrative and is not external or administrative this is not how ancient time keeping works ancient calendars are regnal based off the king Fourth, 12th year, fourth month of the reign of Alexander. Right. That’s an oregano calendar. Agriculture, 12th year, fourth month of the inundation. That’s a seasonal agricultural calendar. Astronomical, solar, lunar, stellar or mythic cosmological time. The Book of Mormon system is none of these. It is instead narrative-anchored historical time, and that category is essentially absent in the ancient world.

So there’s no counter system that… only exist to drive a narrative. And if you could stop and think, what kind of calendar, how would you practice a calendar of a historical migration event through five centuries, because it’s used until the Reformation of the Judges. You know, during that time, people would start creating alternative ways Narratives, alternative migrations, right? The Lamanites would object to this counter system. The Amlicites, the apostates of Nephite civilization, there’s… This calendar system only exists to propel the narrative forward. There’s really nothing else like it in the ancient world. So this is just, I need a date. I need a specific date to make this a colophon. And even the dating system in the Book of Mormon is problematic. Any questions? I have to say, 20 minutes in, you’ve already blown our mind, John. We may as well stop here. But wait, there’s more. I never thought of that, but you’re absolutely correct. This is just sprinkles. We’re not even to the three-layer cake. My thought is that’s a modern calendar system. It’s just like the birth of Christ became the anchor point for what we do, and instead they anchored it on Lehi leaving Jerusalem as the anchor point. Well, the birth of Christ is a mythic cosmological time. God enters the world, but it’s abstracted. And it’s counted, yeah, sure enough, A.D., B.C. to be used. And so when people use it, they say 300th year, what’s the Latin, A.D.? Yeah, M.N.I. Yeah. So I should get something similar to that. There’s, you know, the Hijri, the Islamic calendar starts with the migration of Muhammad. But again, that’s a lunar calendar. So when they cite that, it’s this faith of the fourth month of this year of this calendar. And so it’s abstracted to day, month, year within the system. The ADBC is abstracted to day, month, year within the system. You don’t get that in the Book of Mormon. It’s a narrative unit that says, it’s been so many years since Lehi left Jerusalem when this person does this. Make sense? Yep. It’s not nitpicking. This is problematic. And it’s just, it goes with the colophones. It’s not nitpicking. We’ve got a problem calling these introductory texts colophones.

So… I thought we would quote William Davis in his book, Visions in a Seer Stone. We’ll return to this text later in the presentation. Perhaps one of you can read that. I can read it. This is a great book, by the way, if you guys have not taken a look at this, Visions in a Seer Stone by William Davis. He says, but the speculative leap from the structures of ancient colophons to the summaries in the Book of Mormon strains for evidentiary support. The transformation requires a scenario in which ancient Nephite authors adapted and modified colophons and perhaps superscripts to create the prefatory outlines that appear in the Book of Mormon. In other words, a scenario in which they created an entirely new and innovative textual apparatus that no longer constituted or functioned as a traditional colophon, but emerged as an entirely different paratextual feature for ancient texts. Such a theory does not provide any evidence to explain this abrupt and historically idiosyncratic transformation. For example, how scribal conventions for copied text transformed into authoritarial notations in original compositions. Nor does it offer explanations as to why the character Nephi, born and raised in Jerusalem and purportedly the only Book of Mormon author to receive a classical Hebrew-Egyptian education, immediately dropped the conventions of his scribal culture to create such radical transformations.

Well, I mean, that’s a very academic and straightforward deconstruction of claiming these introductory texts are colophones. From what scribal tradition? They don’t exist anywhere else. Why would you drop the scribal tradition in which you were educated? And getting educated in writing texts is a very rarefied thing. class of people how Nephi even gets educated to write text is really interesting but one thing’s for sure you would stick to the conventions that you are taught and they immediately are dropped the one complaint I have in this quote is as traditional colophon but emerges an entirely different paratextual feature these are not paratextual features remember paratexts are texts that do not belong the primary text there their signatures outside of the primary text but these texts in the Book of Mormon are the primary text which means they’re not paratexts does that make sense yeah so that’s William Davis’s assessment of the situation my assessment is just blunt there’s not a single colophon in the Book of Mormon because there isn’t all right So we have some problems. What is being called a colophon is not a paratext, but a primary text, and it’s a mismatch. What is being called authentic writing on gold plates? Well, ritual text versus historical text, you don’t find it. It’s a mismatch mismatch calendars ancient calendars are built around kings crops and cosmos the book of mormon calendar is narrative time embedded in the narrative that’s a mismatch there’s nothing here that has a corollary in antiquity it only exists in the book of mormon So what are we left with? I got this AI image. I thought you might like it, Rebecca. It’s the gold plates, the Liahona, and a brass megaphone in which people are composing first-person narrative dialogue as history. And that’s bizarre.

Writers in the Book of Mormon are crafting first-person narratives as primary documents. Indeed, the Book of Mormon is so laden with this rhetorical style that most of its content is first-person dialogue and narrative. Almost all sermons are written in first-person. Curiously, every author who writes on plates also writes in first-person narrative. Third-person narratives, Messiah, Alma, Helaman, constantly convert to first-person dialogues. This makes a thousand-year history with multiple authors across a millennium sharing the same tradition of writing their histories in first person. Well, there is the scribal tradition that the Nephites use. In fact, I’ve written down, you know, the small plates have Nephi, Jacob, Enos, Jerem, Omni, right? Omni has several kings. Everybody in the small plates introduces themselves in the language that we read. I so and so or similar to and they identify themselves as writing on the actual plates. If they’re touching the plates and writing on the plates, they are speaking in first, not only in first person dialogue, but in first person narrative. And then when we get to the edited plates that Mormon and Moroni edit. Zenith, who leaves Jerusalem, leaves their Himla to rediscover the land of inheritance. Nephi, he creates a set of plates and then he tells a story in first person. Alma, the elder, leaves the court of Noah, does the same, records this story in first person. Mormon and Moroni, who are writing as editors on plates, record in first person dialogue and narrative. This is bizarre.

Writing on plate, you know, the real estate of the surface of a plate is very special and limited. And if you’re going to write something, you’re going to write in short, episodic packets of information. This is what we get in Mesoamerica, by the way. When we look at Mayan writing, history is told on the royal stelas. And what do we get? They’re kind of like colophones. We get a date. We get a place, we get the name of the king, an event that’s being commemorated, and that’s it, right? And so you get that on this stela, that on this stela, that on this stela. One king might have three, five, seven, nine stelas, and that’s it. The Book of Mormon is this open, flowing, first-person narrative that leads to open, flowing, first-person sermons. And all of it is orally performative text. And this is really bizarre. It’s as if the people writing on the plates are actually performing the text instead of writing the text. Questions? Questions? You’re saying it’s kind of like a 13 year old teenage girl’s diary where they’re just going on and on and they’re narrating and they’re talking and they’re taking up so much space. And that’s not how it worked. I had a diary like that. I know exactly what we’re talking about. I Rebecca, right? I never wrote like that. I did. I never wrote a diary. I was supposed to keep a journal. One of the many things that I was guilt tripped on growing up as a Mormon. I don’t know when I was supposed to have time to keep a journal. But in any case, what we have is anomalous historiography.

The Book of Mormon is not a single continuous narrative. It is a layered composite consisting of first-person records, Nevi, Jacobinus, Mormon, Moroni, third-person abridgments, Messiah through Helaman, extended embedded first-person discourse, including sermons, prophetic speeches, letters, prayers, autobiographical digressions. Crucially, sermons dominate the text, and sermons in the Book of Mormon are almost always first-person. I say unto you, I would that you should. Scholars explicitly note that the book contains major portions of both first- and third-person narrative, with entire books written in the first-person and others oscillating heavily between narrative modes. And I’ve broken down the small plates, the large plates, the writings in 3 Nephi, the writings of Mormon in Moroni. And I used AI to estimate, but I also kind of overviewed the text to verify. And this is accurate. First-person dialogue and narrative in the small plates consist of about 80, 90% of the text. Masai Helaman, that’s third-person narrative, constantly converting to first-person speech, first-person sermon, with portions of first-person narrative in Zena, Phenelma, etc., 40 to 50% first-person, 3 Nephi 70, 80, Mormon Moroni 80 to 90. The entire book estimate, 60 to 70% first-person dialogue and narrative. Why does this matter? We just identified we’re not dealing with colophonic structures. This is something else. This is a primary narrative text.

Well, it creates two problems. Problem number one, What ancient texts, especially histories, are written in this way? Who writes histories as first-person narrative? Specifically, within the Book of Mormon geography and timelines, where does this scribal practice exist? Now, I know the apologists always go to the old world, biblical texts, Near Eastern texts, to try to prove the authenticity and historicity of the Book of Mormon. This drives me a little batty, because everything we should be citing to verify the Book of Mormon should be in the New World. So where in the New World do we get histories written in first-person narratives? That’s what I want to know. Where in the New World do we get large sermonic elements as part of histories written in first-person dialogue? That’s what I want to know. But, being that we are going to do a colophonoscopy, we are going to look at the Old World and the New World texts, histories and other kinds of texts. If we can’t find this, this presents a second problem. If the Book of Mormon is written by Joseph Smith, if this is actually not happening in antiquity, but Joseph Smith is creating it, what comparative traditions would create this rhetorical and oratory style? In other words, where’s Joseph Smith getting this? Are there contemporary histories in Joseph Smith’s day written in first-person dialogue and narrative? Okay? Two separate problems. Well, let’s go look. Let’s start our clone. Landon invented a new word. I’m going to use it because it’s kind of fun. It’s fantastic. Don’t worry, the church will have that as their word and we won’t be able to use it anymore. They’ll trademark it. They’ll trademark it. Well, look, I started with ancient histories. And we don’t find any in the Americas. We find royal stelae. Which I just talked about. They don’t record history in first person narrative. There is first person dialogue sometimes, but they’re episodic and they do not qualify as any kind of historiography that we find in the Book of Mormon.

I have to look at histories in the old world. In fact, uh, Herodotus is called the father of history, the late fifth century BCE. He goes around to different towns and ask people about the traditions in history of their people in time, writes it down in a book called the histories. And this is where we really get our first history book. It’s a different kind of histiography. It’s not modern histiography. He’s, uh, primarily asking people about their opinion and then recording it, and then he gives editorial asides. So on the left, I have texts that I looked up, and I chose these texts because I have read out of them. In my lifetime, most of these texts I read either in grad school or undergrad school, which is 15 to 30 years ago. So admittedly, some of these I haven’t read in a few years, but I’m familiar with them. And what I did is I took them to A.I. And I asked two different AI models, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, a series of questions to identify first-person speech and narrative in each of these texts, giving them parameters. I should say that when I first started, you know, AI is not perfect. I believe the numbers they’re giving me are accurate, but not precise. So they’re going to be within a couple percentage points. I believe they’re accurate within a couple percentage points. I did have to correct them. So, you know, Microsoft. Copilot told me that Josephus wrote the Jewish War 15 to 20 percent first person speech because Josephus actually is a participant. He’s there and he’s recording. What he sees. And so he would be writing in first person dialogue. The problem is, is I’ve read the Jewish war and I don’t remember anything like 15 to 20 percent first person dialogue in it. So when I told me it was 15 to 20 percent, I went and reread it. And then I went back and said, dear, I, you are totally full of bullshit. There is not 15 to 20 percent. I just reread it. Look for first person verb constructions, first person pronouns. Relook at the text and give me a new estimate. And it came back and said, you are correct. We. So they said we looked at intended. first person dialogue because josephus is in the text and writing about the world that he’s seeing ai assessed that certain sections were being written by josephus but they weren’t being written in first person and so it corrected it and put it back to a three to five percent first person dialogue so I know that’s a lot. I’m just going over my methodology.

But as you see, Herodotus, the history is the highest because Herodotus constantly interjects kind of like Mormon Moroni. But he says, I was at this place. I talked to this priest at this person and he told me this. And then he writes the history in third person. It’s not first person dialogue, not first person narrative, but it is a first person editorial. OK, and he repeatedly does that through the text. So that’s five to 10 percent first person speech, not autobiography. What we get in the Book of Mormon is first person autobiography. OK. Thucydides, same thing. He introduces himself at the beginning of the history of the Peloponnesian War and pretty much tells the entire war in third person. When you tell a history, when you write a history, you are describing people in other places and times and other events. And the brain automatically converts to third-person omniscient. And so all these histories are written that way. Xenophon actually writes in one of his texts about himself, but in third person, right? It’s kind of like Trump. I xenophone went. No, no, no. He doesn’t say I xenophone. He says so and so in xenophone went into the cities writing in third person. But he references himself in the third person. Right. So actually, first person’s about two percent. But there’s indirect third person references. Still not anything we see in the Book of Mormon. Diodorus, 1%. Plutarch, 3% to 5%. Livy, 1%. Josephus, 3% to 5%. Tacitus, 1%. I like Diodorus. Bibliotheca Historica. Yes, the history books. The history, Rebecca’s history, yes. It is Rebecca’s history. It’s her diary. Her diary, yeah. I’m going to write my history in third person because I can’t. It’s quite scandalous. If you read that text, it’s very scandalous. I’m shocked. It comes with pictures. All right. Looking at this list, it looks like everyone except Josephus is either Greek or Roman. Yes. We don’t see Egyptian or Hebrews writing this. At least Josephus is clear up to 700 years after Lehi, since we’re starting from a point, 700 years after Lehi left Jerusalem before you see this kind of writing in Hebrew. Yes. Well, we’re going to talk about the Hebrew Bible. That’s in an upcoming slide. Okay. But these are histories, and they’re not written in first-person. They’re written in third-person. First-person speech is present. There’s no first-person narrative.

All right. Further cross-comparison. I looked at other texts. Just to see, where do I find first-person narrative? Okay. And also first person speech, because I know I’ve read a lot of texts and I know that first person speech is present in antiquity, but almost always in a performance context, almost always. And of course, this is what we find. So I look at the epic of Gilgamesh. You know, that’s what? Eighth century BCE is our largest compilation of that epic library of Escher, Bonaparte. But that, you know, fragments of that epic go back to 2000 BCE. What we get in the epic of Gilgamesh is direct speeches by characters in the epic. And what we’re actually watching is actors performing that. This is a performative text. Right. The Iliad and the Odyssey also performative text. The Iliad has two to five percent first person dialogue, mostly third person narrative. But the Odyssey has a large section, books nine through 12, which is Odysseus’s story. And that is 15, 20 percent first person dialogue. But this is being performed by a bard who is playing the role of Odysseus. Right. This is why we get first person dialogue there. Mahabharata is the Indian national epic, 10 to 15 percent first person species, especially in the Bhagavad Gita spoken within the story. We’re going to talk about that in a sec. Ramayana, another Indian epic, five to 10 percent dialogues, non-narrative. The dialogues are not no first person narrative. The dialogues are not no first person narrative. The Upanishads and Plato’s Dialogues I’m going to come back to. Oedipus the King is a play. It’s a literal play. And I use this text as exemplar of all the Greek dramas because they’re all going to be very similar. And sure enough, the majority of the play is first person dialogue. Why is that? Because it’s a play. It’s a play. Right. The actors are speaking as the people performing a play. Right. Are the historians in Nephite civilization acting the history out in a performance context? Because right now, all of this is in a performance context in some form or another.

Let’s go back to the Upanishads. This is a it’s a moral, philosophical, religious text where you get dialogues of priests and gods giving moral prescriptions very often in first person. When gods speak, they often speak in first person, commanding the people, commanding the city, commanding the culture to do certain things. So that has a high uptick of first-person dialogue. Plato’s dialogues are almost entirely first-person dialogue. And if you’ve read Plato’s dialogues, it’s two people having a dialogue. And what we forget is Plato’s dialogues aren’t text. They were actually performed by two professors or students, people in the school, performing the argument in front of a student audience or at least a audience where these ideas were then debated and discussed. OK, so it is still a form of performance context, though a different form. In any case, you know, that’s 85 percent dialogic philosophical discourse. So high first person dialogue. Finally, I give the American examples. The Popol Vuh is a creation epic, the Mayan creation epic. There’s two to five percent divine speech that has first person dialogue. And every once in a while, the editor of the the right, the Popol Vuh was a play. It was a rich liturgy performed by Mayan priests. So again, a performance context. This is not archival text like the Book of Mormon is supposed to be. They’re writing on plates to make an archival history, but in first-person narrative. So the Popol Vuh doesn’t give us that 2% to 5% first-person speech. The Mayan codices, only four survive. Madrid, Paris, Dresden, the CODIS of Mexico, 0% first-person speech because they’re astronomical tables and texts.

Hey, John, quick question on that. Yes. I noticed since he says he wrote in Hebrew or Egyptian, there’s no Egyptian text and there’s no Hebrew like the Bible comparison there. Why wouldn’t we include those? I’m getting to the Bible. Okay. I’m getting to the Bible. You are anxious for that Bible text, Landon, I can tell. But you’re right. It’s kind of a smoking gun right there. I put the Bible on its own slide because I figured that should have its own slide and its own comparison. And what we discover is actually surprising. What we discover is what you’re seeing on your screen. Except I had you go back. There we go. All right. So we have different genres of texts, epics, dramas, dialogues. They are being performed, character speech through bards or tellers, generally in an oral performatory context, dramas through character embodiment. Even the dialogues such as in the Upanishads or Plato’s dialogues are interlocutors in a sort of pedagogical enactment where you perform it in first person in front of the people of in front of the people of the city, the people of the cult or the people of the school. So I’ve talked a lot. Will someone read the text on the right? I think it’s your turn, Landon. Yeah. OK, you want me to start first person speech is common. First person narration is rare. And we’re talking about the Bible in this case. we’re talking about all examples. We haven’t gotten to the Bible. Okay. So far, all the histories and all the comparative texts. Okay. This is a conclusion of what you said before. Okay. So first person speech is common. First person narration is rare. Even when first person is philosophically or theologically central, that is in, uh, uh, Upanishads or in the Gita, it is not histographical. Uh, The next point is extended first-person narrative blocks. Some texts give us extended first-person narratives, such as in the Odyssey 9 through 12, but these are special performances and not the default mode of how the narrative is told. These narrative blocks were literally performed by bards or actors. This sharply contrasts with the Book of Mormon, where history, theology, and sermon are routinely carried by first-person voices across entire books. And then the last, the Popol Vuh is a ritual performance. Codices are technical charts and texts. The only indigenous American example of religious epic was a religious ritual performed by priests. The codices are astronomical charts. Text genres use first person speech differently. First person is situational. It is voiced and not archival, and it derives its authority from presence and not authorship.

Well, there it is. It’s a first person speech is situational depending on the context of who’s performing it. It’s voiced. It’s performed. It’s not archival. It’s not history. It’s not being recorded as an archival text. And it drives its authority from performance, actually saying it and not narrative authority such as we get in the Book of Mormon. So what we have here then, you know, I have this image in the upper left of a Mayan astronomer priest performing at a Christian altar a sermon in first-person history. This is what the Book of Mormon wants us to believe, but we don’t get that in any text that we looked at so far. Let’s look at the Bible. Here’s your Bible, Landon. Here we go. Let’s do it. All right. I divided the Bible by different genres. We have to remember the Bible, Biblia means books. It’s a library. This is a problem that Mormonism and quite frankly, a lot of evangelical Christians face. protestant christians have made they condensed all the genres in the bible into history when in fact there’s only a few books in the bible that are actually written as histories joshua judges kings chronicles the torah is not It’s a different kind of history. It’s oral. Genesis descends from oral tradition. And what’s the oral tradition? It’s performative. Right. Those stories were performed generally in liturgies. So let’s talk about it. The Torah, we have two books. First off. As far as I know, whenever God speaks in the Hebrew Bible, he speaks in first person. This belongs to the convention of antiquity. When the gods speak, they speak in first person. So when God speaks in Genesis, he speaks in first person. God often interjects through oracles, through prophecies, or talking to certain prophets. So first person dialogue shows up then through the Bible when this happens. We have two large blocks of text, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, that have a lot of first-person speech in it, about 20 to 30 percent. It’s omniscient narrator, extensive quoted divine speech, but there’s no autobiographical historical voice.

Actually, the next slide, we’re going to read out of Leviticus and Deuteronomy so you can see what kind of first-person speech is in those books. While we have first-person speech, do we have first-person narrative? And we only get in the Torah 1% to 2% first-person narrative. This is someone saying, I did this, and then the rest of it converts to third-person. Dominant literary mode is third-person historiography with embedded divine legal speech. This is interesting because you would expect since this is a book of Moses and supposedly Moses wrote it, although we know that’s not the case, but traditionally Moses wrote this, you should have a large percentage of first-person narrative if Moses is in fact writing it. Deuteronomy has a ton of first-person speech, and it’s Moses speaking to the people of Israel in first person. However, it’s third-person narrative with first-person speech. So as you look at the first-person narrative, remember the first-person narrative in the book Mormon is at least 60%. And we’re in single digits. OK, and we’re and there’s a reason why Moses speaks first person in Deuteronomy. We’ll talk about it in the next slide. History is Joshua through Kings, five to 10 percent first person speech. It’s classical omniscient history. Third person, first person narrative, less than one percent wisdom literature. Wisdom literature is poetic, liturgical, and philosophical. And if you remember, philosophical texts often are in first person. Liturgical texts are often in first person speech. Why? Because they’re being performed. Remember, if you’re in a performance context, you’re actually speaking out the words of the text. Very often you speak in first person, right? The Psalms were songs, right? That were sung in the temple, you would go to the priest, pay him a sacrifice and ask for a blessing. And he would sing a psalm and then give you a blessing. So you do get quite a bit of first person speech, but this is performative speech once again. The prophets have a lot of oracular discourse. The Lord said first-person, and I do declare first-person. So a lot of first-person speech, but almost no first-person narrative. Overall estimate in the Bible, 25% to 35% first-person speech, 2% to 3% first-person narrative. First-person speech common, first-person hysterical.

History suppressed or absent. I thought we would just read the kind of first-person speech we get in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Do you want to tackle that? Sure. Leviticus 21 through 5. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel… or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel that giveth any of his seed unto Molech, he shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. And I will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among my people, because he hath given of his seed unto Molech to defile my sanctuary and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man when he giveth of his seed unto Moloch and kill him not, then I will set my face against that man and against his family and will cut him off and all that go a-whoring after him to commit whoredom with Moloch from among their people. Okay. Just to point out, verse 1, how does it begin? With a third-person narrator. And the Lord spake unto Moses. So the narrative frame is third person. It’s not first person. But then when the Lord speaks, what happens? He goes to first person. The Lord speaks almost always in first person. And that’s what we get. How about Deuteronomy? Okay, Deuteronomy 5, 1 through 6. And Moses called all Israel and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that you may learn them and keep and do them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us who are all of us here alive this day. The Lord talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire. I stood between the Lord and you at the time to shew you the word of the Lord. For ye were afraid by reason of the fire and went not up into the mount, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage.

So two first persons there. Yes. Moses speaks in first person. The Lord speaks in first person. It again begins in third person narrative as the frame. So what we get then is third person legal religious instruction containing embedded first person divine declarations. It functions as normative cultic law, not as first person narrative, sermon or historiography. The first person elements serve authority and sanction, not narration. In fact, there’s a great deal of scholarship that says that Deuteronomy, Moses’s first person speech, was actually a liturgical performance of a temple priest performing the covenant to Israel. And so this first person speech of Moses is actually being performed by a priest acting the role of Moses. And so, once again, we are here. Biblical scholarship is unanimous. That third-person omniscient narration dominates biblical historiography, with first-person news largely constrained to speech acts, prayers, laments, and prophetic oracles rather than sustained narrative voice. First-person speech is common in the Bible. First-person narrative history is suppressed or absent. No biblical corpus writes sustained national history in authorial first person or presents itself as a continuous autobiographical record. The Bible behaves exactly like ancient literature should. The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, is historically anomalous. All right. Questions. Remember, we’re trying to solve two problems. Why is all this first person speech and narrative in the Book of Mormon? Problem number one, where do we find and what do we find in ancient texts? Now, I should prefer ancient pre-Columbian American texts. And we find zero. Right? So then I have to go to old world histories, old world epics, old world dramas, and the Bible. And we still are not finding… what we should find, or at least nothing matching the Book of Mormon.

And I’ve created a heat map here. First-person speech, epics, 10%. Hebrew Bible, 30%. Philosophy, 40%. Greek drama, 70%. Book of Mormon, 65%. First-person narrative, well, look, 2%, 3%, 2%, 1%, 60%. This is so damning. Can I just say that? This is so damning. I’m gonna take a picture of this slide. I’m sorry. Yeah, it’s funny because this is kind of the fallback that the church has gone to is the text. There’s no DNA, there’s no geography, there’s no linguistics, everything falls apart. So they’ve had to go to the text itself and the text is what’s supposed to save it. But we can see right here that this text shows it out of, it’s not ancient in source. No, it’s an anomaly out of space and time. It does not exist anywhere with any kind of precursor. This is insane, John. I can’t believe it. It exists only in the Book of Mormon. Yes. And so, look, I’m trying to authenticate it or falsify it. Where can I find this kind of narrative in the ancient world? And again, I again say, you know, maybe the apologists are going to find some obscure text. Maybe. But again, I mean… I need to see this in the Americas. Everybody’s always arguing old world texts. And I always shake my head. A thousand year history of a literate society descending from Jerusalem, whose calendar system descends from Jerusalem. I should be finding texts in the Americas that reproduce first person. The scribal tradition is first person speech and first person narrative. Oh, the Spanish burned them all, John. That’s it. Or they were taken back up to heaven. It’s the only answer. Wow. All right. Will you read my conclusion? Here, I’ll read it. Can I just say one thing first though? I feel like a lot of this magical traditions were in the stories from a long time ago. My parents would share these kinds of stories with me. You know, just the crazy stuff, the punching toad, the monkey in the box. My parents shared those old magical stories that fit right in line with this. Those are gone now from the church narrative. No one knows those stories anymore, unless you really look, they’re really distancing themselves. I think from even a hint of this magical past. And I just wonder, I think that’s by design. I don’t know. I promise you, I’m going to put this center stage in front of everyone this year. Yep. And the church, well, you know, the church will do what the church does, but, um, Again, this rabbit hole goes deep. Go ahead and read this. Yep. Sorry. That’s what I was trying to say.

All right. Refocusing the lens, both believers and critics approach the book of Mormon through, um, Let’s see, sorry, I can’t read that. Competing textual biases. Believers such as Carmack and Skousen interpret early modern English idioms as evidence that Joseph Smith was dictating a preexisting ancient translation. Critics, by contrast, search for earlier or contemporary source texts from which Smith might have copied. Both approaches misidentify the process. Joseph Smith was neither a copyist nor a translating copyist. He was a weaver. He drew upon existing ideas, rhetorical registers, and speech transitions, but wove them into a new textual tapestry generated in real time through oral performance. His language was not borrowed wholesale from a single source, but inherited through repeated ritualized invocations and sermonized performance, allowing archaic first-person forms to surface naturally within the act of dictation itself. Boom. All right. The previous paragraph in this paragraph is my thesis. This is how the Book of Mormon is created. Joseph starts with ceremonial magic. It’s first-person command language. It’s Christianized in its oral dictation. It’s oral performance. It’s early modern English. It’s ritualized performance as first-person narrative, citing biblical stories. He… has that in his life. That’s what he believes in. But he lives in the Second Great Awakening, surrounded by sermon culture, which is first-person exhortation, moral authority through oral performance, and the sermons contain the theological content that are in the Book of Mormon. Right? And that sermon culture… is part of the second great awakening, which exists the primacy of sermons, restorationist theology, folklore of the lost tribes of Israel, millennialism, all of this is in the air and it’s popular and it’s selling. So basically the Book of Mormon is a combination of all these three things. My thesis is Joseph wanted to create a treasure, that would actually make money. He believed in treasure digging, but he never found any treasure. But he believed in the magic of treasure digging. So what if I use part of that magic and create my own treasure? To do that, what treasure could I make? What treasure would make money? Well, he’s surrounded. Weekly, daily sermons. The people talking about it, right? This is happening. And he sees, I can make money selling these sermons. And so he folds it in. But now, how am I going to do this? How am I going to pawn this off as an ancient text from ancient plates because that oh that’s the secret sauce man nobody’s got that people are talking about it people i mean again the indigenous peoples coming from israel that was in the air people were talking about that lost civilizations lost lost scriptures all of this he’s he’s tying into and he says, I’m going to fuse it all together. But now I have to create this text. I have to create this text. He’s using oratory performance that his prime avenue of training is his ceremonial magic. His secondary avenue of training is sermon culture. And he combines them both to create first-person narratives that are designed to deliver first-person sermons, which is what everyone is buying. So that’s sort of the deal.

So the… The picture on the right is Joseph orally performing the Book of Mormon using the picture up the upper left, sermons. But really, the secret sauce is the treasure digs. So this combines in a new way, and Joseph Smith produces this. Very creative. It’s a marvelous text. I agree. I think it’s a marvelous text. I think it’s a creative text. I think it’s very creative how it unfolds. I have a lot of compliments for the audaciousness and creativity of Joseph Smith. This is a true project. But none of this is ancient. Nothing in the Book of Mormon belongs in antiquity. You know, when I did the orality literacy with you guys, everyone’s arguing that the props in the play are anachronistic, steel swords, sheep, goats. And I was arguing, actually, the stage and the scenery is also anachronistic, right? The entire thing. It is every inch, every verse of the Book of Mormon is an anachronism. None of it belongs in antiquity. But when you get into these textual analysis of early modern English and sermon command forms and first-person narrative, first-person speech, you realize you are really dealing with a unique modern, as in Joseph Smith’s creation. This is not happening in antiquity. But, you know, I have some admiration for it. All right, that’s my ending. Final thoughts? I love those pictures. Landon, final thoughts. I just think what you’ve done is so important, John. You have a place in this narrative and the history as we, you know, try to understand really what it is. This is just incredible. Landon, what do you think? I think Joseph cannot escape his magical past. It just permeates everywhere. And every time the answer goes back to that early magical treasure digging that we all were told when asked on our mission, Joseph was a treasure seeker. We were always told, no, he wasn’t. That’s just anti-Mormon propaganda. And yet now we know that he did. And now we see why no one wanted to believe it because it permeates the church. Even today, there’s still those pieces of magic that permeate it. And so to To be part of the creation of the Book of Mormon is a new angle that I don’t think anyone has brought up, that his magic is what allowed him to do this. It’s where he received his oratory training. And so, sure enough, the keystone of Mormonism is permeated by magic. You’re not going to get rid of it. It’s in the DNA of Mormonism. And all I can say is this is just part one of several other parts. I can take this topic much further. and show very specific textual structures that are very interesting that will rewrite, in my view, will rewrite what the Book of Mormon is. So this is forthcoming, announcements forthcoming. What I want to try to do is actually make a video. And so, you know, a semi-professional video. So I’m trying to raise money to try to get my research out. And, you know, I’m not raising that on your show. But I’m just saying more is coming. And so this is one piece. This is the very first piece. Fascinating. Can’t wait for the rest. But wait, there’s more. That’s what we’re saying. If you can even believe that there’s more. This is so revolutionary and so groundbreaking and so innovative. And I hope that everybody that’s watching will start a dialogue about this. I hope other scholars will reach out to John. Maybe we can even include some contact information. I hope that this can become something that’s sort of living and breathing as people can add pieces to this. and it can just become bigger and bigger because this is this is something completely revolutionary just like your other podcast with us a couple years ago.