Cwic Show- Don Bradley, The Lost 116 Pages of The Book of Mormon

'The Lost 116 Pages'
- The Brass Plates May have been originated by Joseph of Egypt in Egyptian
- The Sword of Laban may also be from Joseph & Joshua
- Both Moroni and The Brother of Jared appear to have left a physical 'seal' on the Plates of Gold.
- The Book of Mormon comes to light on key dates of Jewish festivals.

The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Book of Mormon's Missing Stories- https://amzn.to/2Je1fMz  This book is a must read!

Website- https://www.cwicmedia.com 

Don Bradley is an author and independent historian specializing in the beginnings of the Latter-day Saint Restoration movement. He completed a Bachelor's in History at BYU and a Master's in History at Utah State University, where he wrote his thesis on "American Proto-Zionism and the 'Book of Lehi': Recontextualizing the Rise of Mormonism." Don has performed an internship with the Joseph Smith Papers Project working with the earliest Joseph Smith sources. He was the primary researcher for Brian C. Hales's Joseph Smith's Polygamy series. He has published on the translation of the Book of Mormon, polygamy before Nauvoo, Joseph Smith's "grand fundamental principles of Mormonism," and the Kinderhook plates, and has forthcoming works on the Kinderhook plates and Joseph Smith's First Vision. His book The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Book of Mormon's Missing Stories was released fall 2019. He lives in Springville, Utah.

 

 Raw Script

 

thank you
all five of the distinctive things about
the brass plates
point us toward joseph of egypt you know
why not think
that these plates go all the way back to
him well then
if we look at the other relic that nephi
gets from laban
the sword we've got external evidence
saying that that went back to joseph of
egypt
[Music]
so don bradley very excited to have you
on here
i i think i've told you this before but
over the last 10 or 15 years
there's really been a couple of books on
on the book of mormon that have been
really
for me going beyond looking at a
doctrine or
something anecdotal or commentary that
have really
made me look at the book of mormon in a
different light
and your book the lost 116 pages is one
of those books and it's just
i felt like as i went through it you
know it was just
i just i you know it was it was like i
had a car brush i was just
i just wanted to keep consuming you know
what was
what was in there there was so much i
was learning and i and
since i've read that book book earlier
this year
i've just i just see it differently
right i i see the book differently
um both in terms of what was lost and
kind of
the the trails the breadcrumbs if you
will of what we see in
in the book that we have now but also
in terms of the identity
the unbelievable tribal identity
of of the yeah and
and and really i mean you can look at
his amulekites as well but uh
and so that that's been a lot of fun
with me so or for me but
before we go into some of these topics i
really want to go into i wanted to ask
you a little bit about
uh kind of your process right of of
how because obviously you don't we don't
know what we don't know that's lost
but you you've pulled in all these
references from
from interviews and eyewitnesses and
second-hand accounts and
and and then kind of tied those in with
i think really going through the book
the book of mormon
and seeing hey this looks like it's got
to be a trace
of something that should have been in
here before
right so so i like that i like the word
trace there that you used because
actually
there's a great philosopher of history
that i would recommend
for anyone who is interested really
interested in digging into history
especially
doing history his name was robin
collingwood and he wrote this a
wonderful book
called the idea of history most of it is
like a history of history
the history of doing the doing of
history but the
the final chapters the epilogues to the
book
uh they talk about really like how good
history is
done what is history and how is it done
and he brings out the point that what we
have in historical sources are not so
much
things that are about the past as they
are traces of the past they're actually
remnants of the past right so so you've
got like leftovers of the past so let's
let's take an example so section 132 of
the darkening covenants right addresses
a certain situation
that was going on between joseph smith
and emma
smith over polygamy right
and um it's not it has a number of
cryptic things that it says like it says
to emma
what says to joseph uh what's happening
to both of them
it switches back and forth but it says
um
that like that joseph doesn't have to
go through with a certain offer that he
was commanded to make
to emma because it was a test
right but it doesn't explain what the
offer was why doesn't explain what the
offer was
it's important to know what the offer
was right well because it wasn't written
for us
it wasn't it's not about the situation
this isn't
a a storybook telling about
joseph and emma and their ordeal with
polygamy
this is actually a remnant of
the past this is actually part of the
events that was going on that was
recorded
so that we have a piece of that puzzle
so joseph and emma
could both look at this revelation and
they knew what it meant
right but we have to take that actual
fragment of the past
and use it along with other fragments of
the past sort of arrange them like
puzzle pieces right like
suppose you've got i love to use this
analogy suppose you've got a
a thousand piece puzzle right and it's a
picture puzzle right it shows
a picture of something um but we've only
got 150 pieces of the puzzle
right well we're never going to be able
to see
from that the entire picture
but we can put together maybe enough of
the puzzle that we can tell what it was
a picture
of right we can get
portions of the picture we can get just
right and some of it we can infer
we can fill in some of the gaps right so
that's sort of a
general metaphorical way of talking
about this
this process for you know piecing
together
like what was in the the book of
mormon's lost pages the lost pages by
definition
they're lost right so so how can we know
what was in them
so um it might be useful to know how i
got started
in the project because that kind of
tells some of the about the purpose
behind the project
and some of the methodology so about
i worked on this a long time it wasn't
like by any means
the exclusive project that i was working
on but it was one of the big ones
during this whole period i started about
maybe 15
16 years ago inquiring on what was in
the lost pages and the reason for that
is
that as i was studying the portions of
the book of mormon that we have
i kept noticing that there were certain
ways in which the
the text that we have would sort of
build on itself
like if you looked carefully at
the language that's used in mormon's
abridgement
right he would often have things in
there that were alluding back to
earlier narratives of nephite history
that he'd already told us
and so you could kind of chain create a
chain
backward right from a later story to an
earlier story that he was
evoking and then in that story he may be
evoking or building on still earlier
narrations that he's given of of events
and then we come to this giant wall
because the whole first part of mormon's
irishman is lost
joseph smith tells us in the
introduction to the 1830
in the first edition of the book of
mormon that the lost pages were mormons
abridgement
of the first part of nephite history
and from that uh introduction
and uh section 10 of the doctrine
covenants which addresses the lost pages
and from the book of mormon text itself
we can see
that it's that what was missing
was the first four and a half centuries
of nephi history the first four and a
half centuries
of mormons abridgement because
the small plates is the replacement
for the missing text
and the small plates covers four and a
half centuries first four and a half
centuries of nephite history
so if you look at the total length of
mormon's abridgement
it's 920 years that's that's where he's
abridging other people's records to get
up to his time
600 years before christ 320 years after
christ
so um the half of uh 920 years is 460.
so we're missing almost exactly half the
first half
essentially of mormon's abridgement and
then we're supposed to just be
able to pick up and understand exactly
all the all the messages right that
mormon is trying to get
across in the extent part of his
abridgement
well i don't know i mean pick up any
other book
like tear out the first half of the book
have somebody give you a cliff notes
version of the first half
then read the second half and see how
well you understand
all the details so so
my rationale initially other than the
fact that just like
knowing what was in the last pages would
be fascinating and i'd wondered about it
ever since
i was like 11 years old about right and
i knew there were lost pages i wondered
what was in them um but so i started
collecting
um everything that i could find had been
written
on what was in the lost pages and that
wasn't much
i mean mostly at that point it was just
a a chapter that had been written by
john tfetnus
and then a few stray things here and
there
uh and what tibetans had written was
good he had gone through
the book of mormon texts that we have
the the available texture
scholars called the extent text and he
had
um identified clues
of the kind that i'm talking about where
for instance in
mosiah chapter 11
10 or 11 it says that
they were the um it talks about a group
traveling
and they were traveling near the hill
that was north of the land
shalom and this hill it says was the
same hill
that the children of nephi had used as a
resort
at the time they had fled out of the
land so they had resorted to it they
fled to
this hill right and uh
but it doesn't explain what it's talking
about when it says
the time that the children of nephi had
fled out of the land
it just assumes that we already know
what that is
well the only way that our narrator can
assume
that we already know what that is is if
he's already told us
about that event so john tfetnus
reasoned
that this is a remnant of a story that
had been told
by mormon in the lost pages and then
um i was able to gather other clues
from our extent book of mormon texts
that show actually what that event was
so we can combine it actually with
things that use
basically just the same language about
fleeing from the land that the nephites
fleeing from the land
in the book of omni when it's talking
about mosiah the first leading them on
an exodus
from the land of zarahemla i mean from
the land of uh
to the land of zarahemla right and it
turns out this hill north of shalom
is situated right in between it's a way
station between those two points
and almost every time that p groups
travel between
nephilians or hemlock they stop at this
hill right
and so um when we take again it's like
what the extant text gives us what the
the small plates because it's a skeletal
version of the same history
that was in the lost pages it gives us
puzzle pieces
and so we've got puzzle pieces there we
got puzzle pieces given by mormon in his
narrative flashbacks right how he's
building on
this lost narrative we've got a few
puzzle pieces given in some of the early
revelations
section 10 of the document covenants
already mentioned is most explicit about
this
but also the revelations that were given
in the immediate aftermath of the
manuscript loss
most most specifically section 3 of the
document covenants also section 5
they have echoes of material that was in
the lost pages where we can take things
that are in those revelations
and then take clues that we get from our
available book of mormon text put them
together and they they're
interlocking puzzle pieces right they
start to give us more and more of a
picture
then of course there are extra other
external
lines of evidence so there's internal
evidence right that's
like small plates mormons flashbacks
and such then there are
external evidences the the early
revelations
would be one but also things that people
say
about what was in the lost pages so
we've got accounts
we've talked about the early saints
right the early saints we've got well
yeah i mean in one case in a couple
cases we've got things that were said by
the early saints but then said to other
people
outside the church who then recorded
them but for the most part it's
it's the early saints themselves uh so
we've got
things a couple of little things that
joseph smith himself
told others that were later recorded
then we've got in particular my favorite
of all time
is this justice smith senior interview
that he gives to
a non-mormon neighbor in 1830 that the
neighbor later
publishes an account of we've got uh
accounts from different people connected
to martin harris martin harris's brother
emer harris
gives us a a tidbit or a couple tidbits
uh martin harris was was the primary
scribe for most of the lost pages or
primary scribe for most of the lost
pages and
and not only that he borrowed the
manuscript and took it home with him
he had you know a four day carriage ride
to read
the whole thing right he he was probably
reading you know most of what he hadn't
wasn't there described for
while he was down in harmony for a
couple months taking dictation for
joseph already
then we have a count saying that he once
he's got it home he's reading it out
loud to other people
martin harris knows what's in that
saying
better than anybody i mean possibly even
better than joseph smith
since joseph smith dictates it once
right
and then like it's it's gone yeah well
obviously there's not another copy but
right but martin himself has that
greater leisure to read it
so martin martin also confides in um
a kirtland friend and associate
gladden bishop who gives a bunch of
tidbits
on a bunch of people again more puzzle
pieces
the things we just take puzzle pieces
from different sources
internal sources external sources put
them together
a picture starts to emerge what do you
think
i mean as you went through this process
what was maybe you know as those
those those puzzle pieces came in to
focus
what for you was maybe the most
significant thing
that started to fill in the gaps for you
um so what so do you mean
like the most significant thing for
like methodologically to like flesh out
i mean i mean
actually what you saw was
lost but now fat now somewhat
found right by by you pulling all these
pieces together
what changed in your mind right how did
you look at the book of mormon
differently
what information was most what did you
think was most revealing
so so what was most revealing i would
say
i i'm going to answer that if you want i
can give a different kind of answer if
you want me to frame
answer from a different angle no you
roll how you want you're going right now
from the angle
of um like not us
not just a specific well actually i'm
going to give you two different kinds of
answers
okay let's go with two i'm going to give
you first an answer based on sort of the
pattern
of data not a specific data point not
one particular finding
but the fact that there were a number of
findings that had what
what scholars call consilience which
literally means like a jumping together
right so there were a bunch of evidences
that just pointed in the same direction
right they they just all it's like a
bunch of arrows right all
pointing the same way and and that was
um that they all pointed to the book of
mormon
that the nephite history being
a kind of replication of the story of
biblical
israel so so i started finding
different things uh
you know i would look at evidence for
what was in the lost pages
and i would notice that there were heavy
exodus themes
in what i was finding right so it was
like the
the the biblical exodus
right then you had um
like things where strangely surprisingly
it pointed to a sort of a sort of
conquest
theme even so when the when the biblical
israelites arrive in their promised land
they do what's what's known as the
conquest
right um and those
even though it doesn't play out in the
same way
the book of mormon narrative actually
evokes similar themes
to that um you've got
um you know you've got nephi uh
coming out in these different fragments
from the lost pages
as a kind of uh a second king like a new
king david
right so so david uh had been from
the line of judah right establishing a
new sacred dynasty
while nephi becomes sort of the david of
the line
of joseph right and just uh
over and over there were these
themed well another one another big one
that i think we're going to talk more
about later
is that of course
in biblical israel you have
the you have jacob's sons coming out to
be
coming out to found 12 tribes the 12
tribes of israel
that hasn't been much commented on a
little bit but
if you look at the number of tribes that
come out from
lehi's family right
you've got them enumerated always uh
as uh the uh you know the lamanites
lemuelights uh and ishmaelites
uh but also as the uh you know the
nephites
um jacobites josephites
wait who am i missing zoramites normites
yes
um so um so you've got three
on one hand and four on the other right
so you've got seven
tribes seven so just like you have 12
tribes of israel you have seven
tribes of lehi right which is a 12 being
one sacred number
that's composed of like three and four
you know their product from
multiplying them and seven being this
other sacred number
that's you know composed of three and
four their sum by
adding them and um it's like the
it's like lehigh is founding a new
israel or like a sub israel right
under the the umbrella of
the original israel of 12 tribes
well that and what follows on that i
think it is so
so fascinating with the book of mormon
is you have the fall
of judah with babylon
right and the king zedekiah right you
have the fall of the dynasty
the judaic dynasty right and then as
lehi
leaves along with these artifacts and
and these other things
you have the rise of
a josephite dynasty right right and and
of course those are the two kingdoms
right you've got the judah and the south
you've got ephraim or the northern
kingdom of israel in the north that is
ruled by ephraimite kings
right that and then and then they come
back to the americas
and who do the josephites meet up with
the jew the judaic mulikites who are
subordinate now to
the josephites is pretty pretty
interesting yeah
it's it really is wild and i as you know
like in the book i i flesh out some of
these
themes in depth and and just there's
there's a
there's an incredible complexity right
to what's going
on with the the
the biblical narratives the narratives
of biblical
israel when those narratives get
extended
into you know book of mormon israel
um it's it's like um
it really is like the book of mormon
is continuing the story of the bible
right the book of mormon is continuing
the story of biblical israel in a new
land
and certain things in that story get
flipped
right they get inverted you know
like you're talking about but very much
um you know that there's this
commonwealth of judah
in the old world you know prior to
up to lehi's time right where you
originally you've got a
davidic a sacred monarchy or at the
monarchy the dynasty of david
you've got you know the temple solomon's
temple in the sacred city
right jerusalem in their their sacred
promised land or at the land of
judea uh in their temple you have
you know a set of sacred artifacts
associated with the ark of the covenant
you go and and these you've got the the
high priestly
the priesthood of of aaron with the high
priest
will you go to the new world with this
group just
all these things collapse right at the
same time
with the babylonian invasion you've got
you know the ark of the covenant goes
missing
right with its sacred relics that are
the
like the center of the temple represent
the divine presence solomon's temple
gets destroyed the davidic
dynasty gets ended with the the death
well the death of zedekiah sons right
and um you know the the jews are kicked
out of their promised land
their sacred city is destroyed but you
go to the new world
and now you've got a new not judahite
promised land but a new josephine
promised land
in which there's a new sacred temple
city
right where you've got a new temple
that's modeled on solomon's temple
and then you know in that temple you've
got
sacred relics that actually as i show in
the book
line up with the sacred relics of the
biblical high priest and the ark of the
covenant
and systematically replace those and so
you've got the end of one commonwealth
of israel
but then the beginning of another one
that just takes over afterward this
commonwealth of judah is done but this
commonwealth of joseph starts up and
yeah it's it's there are these deep
riches in the book of mormon these
these complexities that that i think the
more we dig
right the more we find is is there
yeah it's like a passing of the torch in
in a sense and you know that
that happens there there the uh one
thing you had said there
about early on the
how how joseph saw the book of mormon
right this was not a new testament type
of book
even though you've got the term jesus
christ everywhere and it's
very very christian he saw this
you point out as as very much an
old testament israelite
tool and and and uh and record
yeah he wasn't he wasn't like adding
this as a new religion
the book of mormon was not to create a
new religion
but he was the prophet to bring about
the restoration of israel through
through the book
right so so this uh so i actually wrote
my
i did my master's thesis actually on
an overlapping topic so i included some
of the same
some of the arguments about the lost
pages most of that's just in the book
but some of that is in this
thesis but the thesis looked at
the early restoration right early
mormonism
in a context of things that were going
on in the 1820s in the us
and how joseph smith and martin harris
and others around them
first understood the book of mormon as
it was emerging
in that context and so
this this is another thing that gives us
some clues
to what was in the lost pages
is actually to look at what were martin
harris and joseph smith
right the people who are most familiar
with the contents
of these pages what were they saying to
other people
at that time about what was in the book
what the book was about
joseph during that time uh
is telling people down in harmony
pennsylvania
that uh he would he was a prophet sent
by god
to gather the jews right
and so he appears to have seen the book
of mormon at the time
as primarily as you said involved in the
restoration of israel
right which which again suggests that
its themes really
are these these heavy israelite themes
that i'm seeing in the different clues
these different puzzle pieces to the
missing stories of the book of mormon
uh martin harris during the same time
period
tells uh john h gilbert who later goes
on to become the
printer or the the typesetter rather for
the
first edition of the book of mormon he
tells john h
gilbert that the book would be a book to
quote unquote confirm the old testament
and and gilbert
uh who had a fantastic memory by the way
decades later he could remember all
kinds of details about
the book of mormon's original manuscript
that we can now confirm
by looking at the book of mormon's
original manuscript right
so gilbert
gilbert says that martin harris was not
talking about this at the time
as a new religion right martin doesn't
seem to be
really aware of what fully is going to
emerge
from this book he's seeing it primarily
as a book that's focused on these
israelite themes
of loss and restoration
yeah yeah that's that's fascinating of
course it's just it ties right in
on you know so much with what uh we're
kind of coming
full circle on this now with you know
going back to
president benson talking about how the
people are cursed because they haven't
remembered the new covenant which is the
book of mormon and now president nelson
talking so much about the gathering of
israel and
and i mean that's the book of mormon is
that tool that's what it always was
for that gathering i wanted to go over
this a little bit more on on
one of the things that fascinated me
from your book
was the the really almost extreme
identity of the lehights
as as a josephite tribe
and and uh some of the things that i
think that that
for me in my mind you know really
changed that is
first of all a clearer understanding
of why the
perhaps the the brass plates are written
in egyptian
and then of course the book of mormon is
written in egyptian
yeah and and you know i think for most
people we see that we say well okay well
maybe
you know we know that was done in a lot
of different languages people would
would would have different scribes a
king would have three or four or five
different scribes that would
that would translate into different
languages some of their documents
especially
uh uh religious documents but
and then we think about also the fact
that it looks like
they could they could fit a lot more
right with the egyptian hieroglyphics uh
a lot more a lot more of their hebrew
thought going into these
these uh egyptian hieroglyphics but
as you say in the book if we look at
this as
josephite records and
in fact i think you say in here
somewhere i don't know if you're quoting
someone but
that those brass plates very well may
have been originated
the original author was joseph
yeah and and then that bringing that all
the way
down to an ephraimide it looks like
laban yeah so
um yeah and this this kind of stuff i
find
just really fascinating um so
there is this is a case where we've got
uh internal at internal evidence within
the book of mormon text
that then aligns with external evidence
that we're getting from
other 19th century sources that are
talking about
the book of mormon talking about
specifically
referring to the lost pages
so first
well okay so nephi gets multiple relics
of course
from laban he gets the brass plates he
also gets the sword
all right we call the sword of laban and
that
both the brass plates and the sword are
handed down
actually as regal relics in
nephi's line they're handed down through
his dynasty their dynastic
relics right um
so when we look at
what the extant book of mormon text says
about the brass plates
it tells us several things about the
brass plates that are distinctive
right that make this record distinctive
let's say compared to the bible right
it's it's supposed to be
an overlapping record with the bible to
a great extent at least the same as the
bible
but in what ways is it distinctive well
um the book of mormon text tells us that
this record was not kept by
descendants of judah as we find with
the most of the biblical texts right or
written by
judahites or jews
right the um brass plates were actually
kept by joseph's line they were handed
down
we're told um in the book of mormon
uh from joseph all the way down to laban
and uh laban you know is the descendant
of joseph
right we're told um so um
well it doesn't say explicitly they're
handed down from joseph but it says that
uh they're kept in the lineage of joseph
right laban and his fathers had them it
tells us that laban was descendant of
joseph
and then it tells us actually there is a
place where it says
uh laban was a descendant of joseph
wherefore
he kept he had the records right
which suggests that um
the records could go they're handed down
from
joseph right right um another joseph
connection
and so on so the picture i'm going to be
painting here is to show that
all the most almost all the distinctive
things
about the brass plates have directly to
do with joseph right so we first have
they're kept in the lineage of joseph
right second not surprisingly then they
have joseph's genealogy
in them in fact they have joseph's
genealogy in them to such a degree of
detail
that the genealogy brings us all the way
down to
the time of laban and lehi well joseph
if you look at the biblical chronology
would have lived about 1700 bc
and laban and lehigh are around
600 bc that's about 1100 years
that's a lot of genealogy right
and yet the brass plates have a
comprehensive enough genealogy of
joseph's lineage
that lehi can locate his own line and
plug it into that genealogy
so it's got quite a joseph genealogy in
there
so again the record is distinctively
connected with the lineage of joseph
okay then we have unique
prophets in the
um in the brass plates who are
not talked about in uh
the bible and so uh
zenus and zenac i i forget i'm
forgetting offhand where this passage is
i
cite it in the book and i should
remember it but um
there's a passage where it says and it
may be christ saying it
and third nephi but it actually there's
a passage that actually identifies
zenus and zenith as having been
descendants of joseph
so this is interesting right because not
only are these
prophets that are not in the the book of
the jews as the book of mormon calls it
right the bible
that the judahite record they're
they're prophets who probably aren't in
the judaic record because they're
josephine prophets
right and this record the brass plates
has to do with the josephites in
particular
um and now it's a rival
in many ways a rival right right
right so a fourth connection of the
fourth distinction of the brass plates
that connects them with joseph
is they have first-hand prophecies of
joseph
right written in egypt
that aren't contained in the bible so
they've got distinctive josephite
content that stretches
all the way down to laban right and his
that whose genealogy
they they give from joseph all the way
down to him
and lehigh right but they've also got
uh josephite content that starts as
early as joseph himself
so you've got distinctive joseph like
content that stretches all the way
from joseph 1700 bc his first person
prophecies to lehi's time
600 bc and you've got various other
joseph distinctives in this record
why why is this record so joseph heavy
well if we look at the one other
distinctive
aspect of the brass plates i think it
gives us
a great big clue and that's they're kept
it tells us i think it's in mosaic one
uh tells us that the brass plates are
kept in egyptian
yes well egyptian as in the language of
joseph of egypt like the language that
he presumably would have been writing
or certainly could have been writing the
the genesis account makes clear that
joseph
had learned the egyptian language he'd
become proficient in egyptian
right and so all five of the distinctive
things about the brass plates
point us toward joseph of egypt
and so um you know why not think
that these plates go all the way back to
him well then
that's that's internal book of mormon
evidence
if we look at the other relic that nephi
gets from laban
the sword we've got external evidence
saying
that that went back to joseph of egypt
so
i mentioned earlier and martin harris is
the guy who knows
you know should know the the
lost pages narrative better than anyone
well he's got a close associate in
kirtland gladden bishop
who uh
we know he we know he tells things about
the lost pages too
because gladden bishop publishes a
description
of things that martin harris told him
about the physical appearance of the
lost pages
and then gladden bishop also tells a
number of things about the book of
mormon
that we have from other sources coming
from martin harris and from nobody else
so for instance martin harris gives the
dimensions of the plates differently
than anybody else
he's the only person to say that there
are only four the stack is only four
inches high
right when others put it higher than
that
except for gladden bishop who puts it at
the same exact dimensions that martin
does
right well he's friends with martin like
he's talking to martin
um he gladden bishop tells
us uh while he's well he's a close
friend of martin in 1850
that um the
sword of laban had actually originally
been made or caused to be
made joseph had caused it to be made in
egypt
so that it could be used later during
the
israelite conquest of the promised land
when they leave egypt and there are
other things as
that that's that's like wild but there
are other things
in the book of mormon narrative that fit
with that
again other puzzle pieces that go with
it and it goes with the internal
evidence that we have that
the brass plates handed down to laven
go all the way back to joseph so yeah
there's a very very heavy joseph
theme right in in
the book right right down to these
relics of joseph end up in the hands of
lehi and ultimately nephi and his
dynasty
so nephi becomes an heir of joseph he's
got the relics of joseph and you think
about nephi's a kind of new joseph right
he's a younger brother
who whose older brothers are envious of
him
and try to slay him he's bound and left
to the wild beasts and
right and so on he's a new joseph and he
he carries this authority of joseph he
carries these relics of joseph
and hands them down through a new
josephine dynasty
yeah that's that's pretty it i'm trying
to think in the old
genesis or the end there if uh there's a
reference to this or not
but you say that joseph built had the
sword made
for the conquest of the promised land
then therefore
knowing it would seem like that they
were going to go
to the promised land or back to the
promised land and of course his
his bones are carried right back
back to the promised land bones are
carried at his
own request we know that joseph knew
they were going back to the promised
land
because joseph himself says it this is
how the book of genesis
ends genesis ends with joseph on his
deathbed
putting his brothers under covenant that
they will
carry he says god will surely lead you
back
he will certainly need you out of egypt
when you go
you got to take my bones with you and
bury them in our promised land
and so the idea of joseph having a sword
made
would be joseph's having a sword made
because he's anticipating that it needs
to be used in the conquest
this account from god and bishop i
forgot to mention
says that the sword was used in the
conquest
by joshua who leads the israelite
conquest
and who is the descendant of joseph he's
an ephraimite
and so if this account is is correct it
would explain also
why laban inherits the sword and it
would show that laban
would be a descendant actually he would
be an ephromite
sure he would be a descendant of joshua
so the sword would come down to him
so it's just that's just fascinating and
then then of course again going back to
joseph's bones
that you could say is a precursor
to the nephites the lehites
carrying their josephite records on
their exodus
right because not only do they get the
mana and and and aaron's rod and all
these other things along the way
but the whole time as they leave they
are leaving with
the relics the the josephite relics
his bones right being carried to the
promised land
there are connections here that get
really really wild but they're
they're they're grounded right in the in
the narratives but i
uh there's a part in the book where i
talk about
uh a book um
that addresses uh called um
i think it's called joseph bones um
but it's um it talks about
a lot about this these incidents right
it's not a latter-day saint book
it's by a jewish author and it's about
you know joseph making his family
promise to take his remains back
to the promised land and how that
prefigures the conquest
and is connected with different aspects
of what joshua does
and so on and
he points out that in jewish tradition
in jewish reading of the torah
they talk about the um there being
two arcs not just one ark you have the
the ark of the covenant if you look at
the term that's used there for
ark uh the uh jewish the hebrew term
uh it's not the same as like the arc of
noah it's a different
word altogether right um
but it is the same term that's used
for joseph's coffin which in our bible
is translated as
i think coffin but is not translated as
ark
but uh i think the word is our own but
but um they point out
that and it's a very rare word in the
hebrew bible it's only used in one other
place and that's
that's in a temple context but um
they point out that the israelites on
their exodus they went forth carrying
the ark of the covenant right that's
holding the
stone tablets and maybe other
of the the jewish sacred relics right
and beside it they're carrying the ark
of joseph
right that these these things are both
in the hebrew
they're the same term and they're being
carried these lights are carrying both
of them
as they go forth on their exodus and um
you know something that i that i was
interested in exploring but
ended up not going into the book is
i mean i actually draw some connections
between
this well this did go into the book
between the
um the jewish sacred rolex in their very
specifics
and the ark of the covenant rolex right
and their specifics
and the the nephite sacred relics
including
the brass plates right and the sword of
laban
so for instance i talk about how um
the in the case of the
biblical ark of the covenant you have
stone
tablets in an ark of gold
right and um the
stone box that joseph smith finds the
gold
plates and martin harris refers to it as
an ark okay and it has tablets in it
also
right we don't call them tablets we call
them plates but
um so in the um biblical
with the biblical arc of the covenant
you have stone tablets an ark of
gold in the book of mormon
arc here you have golden tablets in an
arc of stone
right so you have an inversion there
beautiful inversion
sure and um the
um you know
if joseph's body was carried out in this
arc right and we have joseph
relics being carried out also like the
the brass plates
that he had started maybe they're
actually carried out in
joseph's ark so to speak right that
maybe they're actually in his coffin
i mean i i didn't put that in the book
but it's something that's interesting
would be interesting to explore further
yeah that's that's very interesting
um going toward the physical here as we
have just done here looking at these
items
another thing that really fascinated me
that i didn't know about i i i don't
know why i didn't know this but i
i did not know that there were physical
seals
you know pages in the gold plates
from at least from moroni and from the
brother of jared
and when we talk about the record being
sealed up
i mean sure we can look at the book of
revelation and
authority with a seal and we can talk
about
being closed up until a time in the
future that all that's true
you can use that term for seal but but
you bring up the actual
physical seal of at least these two men
that were found that that were part of
the the gold plates
yeah so this this stuff i i just eat
this stuff up i love them
right it's incredible history for me
it's solving mysteries right it's
detective work you know
and like there are wild mysteries here
they're they're fascinating things that
that nobody
i don't think anybody would have like
dreamed up you know
so we have it turns out we have a number
of very
interesting often very detailed accounts
from about the early restoration
right about the plates about their
coming forth
and um one of these accounts that i
mentioned earlier
is an interview an extensive interview
that was done by a palmyra
resident of fayette latham this young
man at the time
became a palmyra businessman um
he's actually a distant cousin of martin
harris's
mother rhodolathum um
fayette latham in 1830
early 1830 he's hearing all the buzz
in town about the book of mormon right a
new book
a new book of scriptures being printed
in town you know
um and he he really wants to learn more
about it he and one of his cousins
uh jacob ramsdale they want to know more
but the book's not off the press yet
so they can't just go buy it so they
show up
at the justice smith senior home and
they ask about it well joseph jr now is
down
in harmony pennsylvania again so he can
attend to his farm right so joseph
junior
gives the guy gives these two an
extensive account
first of the coming fourth of the book
of mormon and then
of the narrative of the book of mormon
and um the the narrative that he gives
can be checked it it has it has plainly
some places where it's
it's garbled right where we can see what
he was probably told and then how he how
he misheard it or misunderstood it
but there are also places where he just
nails
details that he couldn't have known
in any other possible way than by
talking by
that than by talking with an insider
right
so uh he doesn't publish his account
until a good while after
he publishes it later in the newspaper
but at the time that his account is
published even though
it's a good while later it's beef it's
well before
any of the other accounts are published
that confirm
many of the details in his account right
so for instance um
uh royal scousen the director of the
book of mormon critical text
project has you know he's done extensive
study of the original manuscript of the
book of mormon
and he's been able to answer an
old question that larry saint scholars
have had
about the the translation of the book of
mormon and that is
when joseph smith loses the initial book
of mormon manuscript
where does he pick up the translation
does he pick up where he left off
or does he go back to the chronological
beginning
do first nephi do you know the small
plates
to plug in to replace the lost pages and
then go on from there to the end
right um and so
ross galson has shown that there's
there's very good evidence
from the manuscripts that actually just
picks up where he had left off goes
through the end of moroni
then does the replacement right that
translates small plates right so
there are two historical accounts that
tell us this
one is from joseph smith's sister in
1893
his sister catherine where she's
interviewed and she says
that um the angel
instructed joseph to pick up where he
left off in the translation
about a quarter of a century before that
fayette leytham reports what he had
heard
from joseph's father another family
member
and says that joseph had been told
to pick up the translation where he left
off
right so you know long before
any other confirmatory information was
around
that layapham was telling us what we can
confirm later from another family
member's account
and from the manuscript itself there are
there are a bunch of things like this
where a fiat life nails it right so i'm
just laying out why
why to think this account is credible
right
so um the
joseph smith senior gives fayette latham
uh a description of the the relics
themselves that joseph gets from the
stone box
and this includes the plates right
and he says that on the top plate
there were engravings
that that latham remembers him saying
were
they were the he calls them the emblems
of masonry
right now um freemasonry has various
emblems or or
symbols uh there are
two most prominent symbols
of freemasonry by which it's known um
and that are used actually placed on the
altar of every masonic lodge on top of a
sacred book
usually the bible right and it's in
their symbol
right it's in their their fundamental
symbol it's the compass and the square
right and so um
fayette leifm you know reporting from
justice smith senior
is suggesting minimally that compass and
square
were on the top plate of the golden
plates right which would have
a um a significance for latter-day
saints
right that that it wouldn't have for
others
um but there are also without
going into this in too much detail
because it takes a lot of details you
know to lay this one out and it's in the
book
even with diagrams of what this may have
looked like
but the descriptions were given uh from
lucy max smith
and from joseph senior who who who
saw the interpreters right that came
with the plates
uh joseph senior tells us that the
interpreters were set on top of the
plates
right so so you've got this top plate
has these symbols on it but it also has
the interpreter
set on top of it and
based on the descriptions that were
given from them of the interpreters
themselves
they appear to have triangular shapes
of an equilateral triangle and a right
triangle
that corresponds to a compass
which is a a like
a 60 degree angle it's the same angle as
an equilateral
triangle and a square which is a 90
degree
angle right a right triangle
is is the same as a 90 degree angle same
as a square
so um the um
and and they're again which i i lay this
out
better than i can here now in the book
right there's reason to believe that the
compass and square were actually laid on
top of each other
over the accompanying engravings of
compass and square
which probably also were engraved one on
top of the
other right and so we have like sacred
symbols placed atop each other
to provide a kind of physical seal
so in the um
book of ether uh it talks about how when
the brother of jared had had
his experience with god upon mount
shalom
he has given the interpreters this is
where the interpreters come from
originally right
when he seals up his own record he seals
up the interpreters
with his record now it's not really
clear
off him what mental image that's
supposed to evoke what are we supposed
to picture
what what does it mean for the
interpreters to be
sealed right well i actually suggest
uh in how i lay this out in the book
that
when the compass and the square
shaped interpreters are overlaid on top
of each other
they form a kind of seal right
um and we we've got practices in the
ancient world
of you know sealing up documents
we've got um like like
the frequent use in various cultures of
circular
symbolic seals right
um and i think that
i i think that's what we're dealing with
here right
is that there's there are actual
physical inscriptions on the plates that
constitute
a seal and then as a further seal the
interpreters are sealed up
with the plates in that they're placed
you know in congruity with
those symbols atop each other to form
their own
seal so they're sealed up with the
plates
and then there's the whole
issue of the
there's a symbol that's on apparently on
the back
of the plates and we get descriptions of
this
from various figures um so we get
um charles anthony most notably so
people are familiar with the story of
course of
martin harris taking engraving cupping
well joseph cupping engravings off of
the plates
and then uh martin taking them to
charles anthony
and other scholars so um
he actually first takes them to a
scholar and politician
named luther braddish who lives in
albany
who had relatives a brother in palmyra
who is a neighbor to martin harris
and then later he takes the in great the
symbols to
charles anthon and so we get
descriptions
from the neighbors who remembered seeing
these symbols uh when martin had this
transcript
and then we get uh descriptions of
what uh luther braddish said
about the uh this transcription
the symbol that was transcribed there
and then we get
uh three letters written by charles
anthony where he describes the symbol
so we've got a number of descriptions of
this
and one of which actually comes from
joseph smith senior
and from what we're told
so so just to clear up some confusion
people are used to seeing a little scrap
of paper known as the characters
document
and having that identified as the anthem
transcript and the
the reason that that people the reason
that that gets identified as the anthem
transcript is
that is in fact a transcript of
characters off of the book of mormon
plates
and so people assume that because that
is
from the book of mormon plates that is
the transcript that's taken to charles
anthony
however when you look at every single
one of those accounts that i mentioned
describing the transcript taken to
charles anthony
the characters document doesn't fit the
description of any of them
right the those descriptions all
indicate
that there was a circular seal a giant
circle
right with uh various
astronomical symbols like sun moon and
stars
right as well as characters and so it
appears that there was more than
one transcript that joseph makes from
the
uh he apparently transcribes a couple
different plates
right but one of these the one with the
funky symbols
according to uh one of our one or two of
our accounts
is actually taken from the very back
plate
so on the front plate you recall or or
we don't know which side was
would have been considered the front
necessarily in these languages but on
the top plate
right you've got compass and square and
maybe other
quote unquote masonic symbols right and
the interpreters
placed over those on the on the what
is the bottom of the plates in the stack
the way that they're set in the stone
box right
you've got these funky circular this
funky circular symbol
with all these astronomical designs and
characters from various alphabets
as anthem describes it right and
um uh based on the
the descriptions that were given there
it it looks like this would be more
likely to be
not a seal created by one of the nephite
authors but actually by a
jaredi so again we're told in the book
of ether
that the brother of jared's record
he he he writes an account himself this
is not
ether's record of the jaredites this is
the brother of jared's record of his
theophany
that he writes at the time and seals up
right
um that that if he
if he's sealing it up then apparently
based on our precedent for what it means
for the
the moroni to seal the record at the
front
right which is at least partly involves
putting engravings on it
symbols you know there appears it
appears that the brother of jared puts a
different sort of
more elaborate seal on his own record
which
which which various people tell us is
the back the bottom part of the plates i
mean this is uh
david whitmer says this for instance he
says the top part
was the part that you could just leaf
through but the bottom part is sealed it
has it's sealed i think in multiple
senses
it has actually like a physical band
wrapping it shut
which is the sense of ceiling that we're
more used to which would make sense with
the brother of jared where a lot of
those writings had to be held
held back yeah right right right
right right yeah and so um you know
the um the jared
so charles anthony was able to recognize
egyptian characters in part of
the uh what had been transcribed that's
brought to him so i think this
is you know there was part of the
egyptian record
is brought to him right part of the
nephite record is brought to you
but part of it he says is in
not egyptian but he identifies several
other ancient languages
that it has characters from well you
know the the narrative given
by the brother of jared is that his
people
came out before the confounding of the
languages at the tower of babel
so they would be apparently they're
be using like the adamic language
right so it might make sense from that
perspective that it would have
characters that appear to be from
various scripts
in any case what anthony's describing
the characters associated with that
circular symbol
that's not egyptian that's something
else right what would that something
else be
it's not the nephite record it's it's a
jaredite record
right so it's possible then also that
that i think we talked about this before
but that
perhaps as you just said there could be
some
some a facsimile of that brother of
jared seal
that is brought because there are
several different descriptions
of of what was you brought to charles
anthony right and so
yeah and then maybe there was either
something from moroni's sealed plate
or uh that could have been characters on
there or
or maybe something from the nephite from
mormon's record abridgement
or even the small plates who knows that
that would have been
that would have been along with that
perhaps
this though just the the the idea of
this i want to just make a couple
comments on this
first of all going back to the the the
the one on top the seal on top
just another idea on that the star of
david
yeah you know i mean that's that's two
triangles
who knows you know you get a lot of like
you said you can go a lot of different
ways with this but
um
the star of david especially the star of
david pictured inside a circle
um was identified as a seal
during like the in medieval judaism
and in the kabbalistic tradition which
has deep roots
right mystical tradition in judaism that
it was
it was a seal that was identified with
david it was also identified with
solomon
yeah that makes sense yeah so the
davidic kings yeah
yeah and then and then the other one is
is the
you know we'll call it the brother of
jared seal here um
just the way it was described you know
what someone said it looked a lot like
an aztec calendar yeah no i'm not making
any jumps to that at all i don't care
about the geography or location or
anything like that but
but just to give a picture in people's
mind right
it it looks like that one where you've
got the the face of the sun
in in the center and and then rays
coming out
so that you had you had uh compartments
so to speak right right it would be
angled coming out and then it had
concentric circles
around it and and then around the sun
well you talked about the the the
symbols of the sun the moon and the
stars around the sun
apparently it had it had 24
circles right around the sun
with something to the effect of a half
moon is one
and then a star and then a half moon and
then a star and then a half man in the
star
which would give you 12 and 12 which is
a whole different discussion here but
but uh um you know that you've got 24
jared plates
yeah right right you you 24 is
oftentimes used
with the jews as judgment or or the word
of god
the the the torah could even be used
you know for 24 on that in terms of
commandments and
and and then of course around the in the
book of revelation
i think you bring this up in the book
you know in the book of revelation you
have the throne of god at the center
yeah and then you have the the 24 seats
with
24 elders sitting on it so actually i
should have i should have brought up
that they were surrounding
the throne of god i just mentioned the
24 elders i don't think i mentioned that
they're surrounding the throne so you'd
have
effectively a circle of the 24 around
the center point
i mean god being like the sun right that
the glory
in the middle and the interesting thing
there is as i read the book of
revelation what i see is the same thing
i read in abraham three
which which is which also goes through
uh
a cosmology right of of what it's
to me it's priesthood right it's a
hierarchical structure of priesthood
that you have you have you have the
sanhedrin which is really 23 but it's a
place of judgment it's
usually built from the 12 from the
people and then another
11 or 12 that come from the aristocracy
or or or the leaders and then the
biggest one to me in looking at
priesthood is the 24 courses
of the priests
that are there um that are assigned to
the temple
right and so they go through uh hugh
nibley talks about one eternal round and
he uses that with a facsimile number two
and and and you can look at that as one
day
right the sun the sun going around the
earth
if you they would have thought back then
or you can look at it as one year
yeah right and so you've got the 24
courses
going in the one round in the eternal
round that are going around the throne
of god
and uh it just that that's just fun
stuff
that's really fun stuff yeah trying to
understand that's
trying to picture that symbol and then
understand the symbolism of it that that
seal
like is is yeah super fascinating i'd
love to do more with that
in the future i'd love to actually
invite you know readers
you know to to delve in and try to
figure out more of it
also i mean for you know my my book as i
mentioned in the book
it's not meant to be like the final word
on these subjects on a lot of these
subjects like you know it's more like a
first
word you know there hasn't been a lot
done on these things
there's an invitation there certainly to
you know
come join into the investigation but
but there are the different descriptions
of this circular seal
they're fascinating they all like
converge right
so like you've got um as you mentioned
the comparison to an aztec calendar
um gives a certain picture right of the
the sun at the center with rays
and then you because you've got
concentric circles those rays end up
dividing
it into different compartments this
conjuncts that concentric circles
into compartments on a certain number of
compartments
right i think there are 12 rays was it
or
or remember how many rays there were but
it was something that would make sense
significant number yeah and then um
you look at um justice smith senior says
that
luther braddish when martin harris
showed him
this transcribed symbol he couldn't
figure out what it was but he said it
looked similar to
his turkish passport that he had been
given
by the ottoman empire when he was
traveling there as a diplomat
i remember that so i went and i tried my
best to find an
early ottoman passport i managed to find
one from the 1840s is the closest i
could find
but guess what crescent and star
are some of the the big islamic symbols
they were symbols of the ottoman empire
you've got circular seals on
their flag right yeah yeah and you've
got
you've got um crescents and stars you've
got
various things that that fit this
description
that that anthem gives of
the symbol of uh you've got things
gladden bishop
gives his own description pulling on
martin harris
right where he describes us a sun
in the center right and then he
describes like
a rays coming out from the sun which
like
goes in along exactly with you know
anthon's comparison to an aztec calendar
right and the the the i actually
um so i wasn't able to put the picture
of the
uh the ottoman passport in the book
uh because of uh copyright issues nobody
actually knows
who if anybody holds the copyright on
this image
right and so um i put it on
my uh facebook the facebook page for the
book
lost 116 pages good to know yeah because
i i i've been looking for that i
couldn't find it i've seen pages you you
can look at that there
and then you can compare it i've got the
the pictures in the book
of you know the um
uh like the aztec calendar
and there you can find out other places
as well but like i've got all the
various descriptions
that different people give in the book
they're but yeah fascinating to try to
figure out what
what does all this what did that thing
look like and what did this all mean
one last thing on that for a little
piece of fun on that that
that i think needs to be really looked
into is
is again going back to facsimile number
two
on that because the some of the
descriptions on there obviously there's
not a sun but there is a throne of god
in the center based on what joseph smith
gives us for figure one
in fact if you look at this is very
interesting
uh if you look at that symbol
you're going to see a little x
and and imagine if you will taking a you
know like we did when we were kids
uh in elementary school imagine taking a
a
writing compass with the the the pointy
part and putting it right
on that x and then taking your pencil
side of that compass
and creating a circle that's exactly
what you get with facsimile 2. there's
an x
marks the spot it's the exact center of
the circle
on that being made with a compass right
now you also have in their compartments
yeah right and and something that builds
out and you have
you have columns of of writing it was
another description that was on that uh
on that seal i'm not saying it is a it's
a fact similarly like an egyptian
facsimile i'm just saying
that there are comparisons and then i
don't know this about about you know i'm
not an
egyptologist but you know you think
about those hypocephaluses is they are
they're used to bring you through the
underworld yeah
and and so when you die you know it goes
behind your head
yeah and and and just reading your book
and the way you describe these as seals
i i
you know it just brings up the thought
that is that a seal
yeah right it's it what is it doing it's
sealing you to
osiris or it's sealing you to the after
world you know in a sense i don't know
just
again a little bit of fun based off of
of of what you started here
yeah well so i i think that um that's
that's really good so i i had not gotten
all those those insights um so
um i have thought that you know when
joseph smith
acquires the egyptian papyri in kirtland
he's got to be reminded by
you know that that hypocephalus of
this symbol from the plates and that may
be part of how he's
recognizing like the significance of of
what he's got there it's divided into
it's circular it's divided into
compartments it has ash he
it has astronomical significance right
like the sun moon and stars and so on
yep yeah it does yeah yeah pretty
interesting all right
we're going to finish up with this last
point that i also found very interesting
just to take a couple minutes on it is
and that is the jewish festivals yeah
and and there's both
inside the text of the book of mormon um
you you you shed light on for example uh
laban being drunk at a certain time
right and and then there's
also the jewish festivals that are
occurring
with joseph smith as he goes through
uh um the process of bringing to light
the book of mormon i want to start with
the idea first of all
just real quick is is uh the idea of
nephi returning to jerusalem with his
brothers
at passover what what helped you come to
that conclusion
so um i had been
reading you know having gathered
different sources
that um would suggest
what was in the lost pages of the book
of mormon are different clues
right um this justice smith senior
interview with fayette leyfan was
obviously significant there
um this had been recognized by a friend
of mine mark ashburst mcgee of the
joseph smith papers project
that when justice smith senior
gave an account to fayette lafam
after he tells them the story the coming
forth of the book of mormon he tells
them
this story in the book of mormon he
tells him the story of the nephites
and when he gives him that narrative he
tells him some things that are familiar
to us from the book of mormon
some things that are obviously garblings
of things we have in the book of mormon
and some things that aren't garblings of
what we have
they're just brand new details that
aren't in our book of mormon text
but if you look at them they fit they
fit like hand in glove
and so my mark ash first mcgee had
identified one of these
with the story of mosiah the first um
well that i argue as part of the story
mozart the first has to do with the
interpreters
um that is is in this
narrative from joseph senior and um
you know that he had argued was in the
just from the lost pages
and then looking at that further
i saw that joseph smith senior was
giving details
about the story of nephi and their
exodus from jerusalem
that are not in our present book of
mormon text
but they would fit right and so
um he's uh justice smith senior is going
along he's relating
uh how this this prophet he doesn't
remember
that latham doesn't remember the name
that lehi
had been warned of god to flee out of
jerusalem
that the prophet had uh sent his son
back
latham only remembers the main son the
one son
and you know he he sent him back to get
this record
um and he tries to get the record but
he's unable to
and then he's like wandering you know at
night
and he comes across someone lying drunk
in the street
and he remembers some detail here
um that um he drew the guy's sword out
of his sheathing i was drunk he drew a
sword out of a sheath he remembers
like admiring the hilt of the sword
right
um and
um but latham
leftham's justice miss senior report
gives the detail that laban was drunk
because of a great feast going on in
jerusalem
at the time so
he doesn't identify the feast
but it looks like we're talking about
like a jewish festival
context here um you know so when we read
in the book of mormon
that you know laban was drunk
it might we might just think he's been
out carousing
right but when we look at the text
the text actually has a number of
suggestions that
uh this account is correct that there's
some more formal
festival context here and it's not just
he's out carousing so for
instance if laban's just out drinking
with these buddies
he's got pretty high profile drinking
buddies because
it says in the text he was out by night
among the elders of the jews
these are the elders of the jews out
drinking with him
right um laban also curiously
like he goes out in armor and a sword
right
like he's for regalia
he's yeah he's he's dressed rather
formally
going out with a rather high-profile
religious group
right to drink and then uh
when nephi acting as laban right it
tells laban's servant
you know that he wants to take the um
the record the sacred record out to the
gates of the city
right um like um zoram doesn't bat an
eye at this apparently you know
um which which fits better again with
like
a formal religious context than it does
with you know carousing
with the guys um so there are various
things like that and then
there are more detailed textual
arguments where
when you look at what the spirit says um
to nephi about why laban has to die
and the wording that it uses um
you know it's better that one man should
perish than a nation
perish uh those those very words
are used by uh the high priest caiaphas
about jesus at passover
and they actually have a connection with
the themes of passover
it's it's not a coincidence that those
words are used at that time
yeah that's that's a strong parallelism
right there
if you look at the the calendar if you
look at the timing
and lehigh nephi's told us that this
happened all happens in the commencement
of the first year of the reign of
zedekiah king of judah
the biblical account actually tells us
when zelekaya's
reign commences and it turns out it's
right around the beginning
of the calendar year uh which then
you know we know when passover falls
relative to the calendar year it's very
early in the year
so that fits there are just so many
lines of evidence that point in the same
direction
so i've laid that out in the book i've
also laid it out in an
article uh in the journal interpreter
uh about lehigh's lehigh's passover
okay great that's a good reference i'll
put that in the link as well for that
lastly joseph smith
um this is great symbolism for for
everyone who's lds is you know he he
goes
four times right four years in a row as
you put it it's
like he's the high priest once a year at
the day of atonement
which is around the fall period he's
goes back
meets moroni and he goes to the ark
right and then and then finally he takes
he's
given the plates on september 22nd
1827 i believe okay and
and uh that happens to be
in the jewish calendar that year
the day of the feast of trumpets right
which is the first day first two days
basically of rosh hashanah but it's it's
it's the first day of the days of or or
the days of repentance the first 10 days
and what's our symbol that we've
typically used you know
in the past anyway is is moroni sitting
up on the temple on top of the temple
with a trumpet you know and it and it's
it's him that
on the feast of trumpets brings
out the the the record
which is the tool for gathering israel
which is what we do in those temples
but you know i i used to read uh many
many years ago
um i think it's is it john pratt
oh yeah yeah is it john yeah yeah
john pratt and i thought okay this is
interesting it's kind of fringy you know
and
he kind of puts this stuff together and
but you know
after reading your book i i'm giving him
a little bit more credibility on some of
these things because
the lord seems to work on a calendar i
mean it
is in the stars so to speak it's written
in the stars and
go over that just a little bit just real
quick we've only got a few minutes here
yeah
finish up of of kind of this laying out
of the
the jewish fall festival at the time of
the
of morrow named joseph smith so so just
so listeners know
because i don't think i mentioned this
up front the book is divided into two
parts
so the first part is the history of the
lost pages i call it
the coming forth the translation the
loss
of the lost pages and then the second
part is the history in the lost pages so
that's what we can know about the
content so this
this part that we're talking about right
now is the first part of that first
section of the book
which which with you know the coming
book well the coming sunday school year
being
doctrine and covenant church history
might be interesting because talking
about the
the opening events of the restoration
sure um but some of these opening events
really do
happen on a very tight jewish
sacred calendar which amazed me these
are things that i actually
was finding just in
just as i was finalizing my manuscript
for publication
um and i i managed to work them in
um but um as you mentioned
um september 22nd rosh hashanah
feast of trumpets
is you know joseph smith happens to get
the plates
on that day right and what he does with
the plates on that day
is he doesn't bring them home yet we're
told by
the smith family and others he takes
them and he hides them
in a hollowed-out log in the woods up
on kimura um and then
um we're told by one of the smith's
neighbors
who heard from justice miss senior one
of their close neighbors willard chase
that after about 10 days
joseph goes and retrieves the plates
from that hiding place
and brings them home so he had already
brought home by the way the interpreters
uh which which go with them as a sort of
sacred relic
and even like a a sort of high priestly
relic the jewish high priest had the
urban thumb
right parallel to the interpreters he
also had an engraved gold plate
the only one mentioned in the bible on
the front of his crown um
so so joseph sort of like reunites the
the interpreters now with these engraved
gold plates brings them home
and this is after about 10 days
[Music]
from uh you know getting the plates
initially well
if you look in the hebrew bible when the
festivals are on at the festival
calendar that's set up there
um the days of awe
are the 10 days from rosh hashanah
to yom kippur or the day of atonement
right
so it appears that joseph gets the
plates
on rosh hashanah and then hides them
brings the interpreters home that day
then goes retrieves the plates from
their hiding place
brings them home reunites them with the
interpreters
on yom kippur the day of atonement right
fascinating yeah then we can tell
from another these these tidbits about
the chronology have been out there for
years
we just never line them up to see what
they mean okay
so then um on the
the uh four days later
right on the um 15th day now of the
jewish month
right um you've got
14 days from rosh hashanah you've got
another uh jewish festival and you've
also got the next thing that happens in
the coming fourth of the book of mormon
so now joseph actually for the first
time
uses the interpreters he looks in them
and he sees that martin harris is the
person who is supposed to help him
bring forth the record and that
specifically that
martin is supposed to take a transcript
of the characters
and take a journey with those to the
east to take them to the learned
to see if they can read them right
so um that happens
on uh the uh the first day of the feast
of tabernacles
right so so far we've got three
uh opening events for the the coming
forth of the book of mormon
starting with joseph getting the plates
and every single one of the three
is on the first it's on the three
jewish festival dates right but by the
way i should have mentioned that the way
that we know
that it was exactly you know 14 days
from when he gets the plates
uh and therefore it was the day the
beginning of the feast of tabernacles
is lucy max smith is addressing the
church at general conference
18 years later and that's on wednesday
october 8th 1840
um 1845 yeah
and she says um 18 years ago last monday
was the day that this event had happened
well we can
identify exactly when that was you know
that's october
6th of um 1827
14 days from when joseph got the plates
right
so then um what about the next big event
in the coming forth of the plates
right well um there are no more jewish
festivals
during the the fall season but
um if you look at the date that martin
harris actually gives us the exact date
that um joseph um
leaves uh palmyra he leaves manchester
with the plates finally when the lord
allows him they have they have a period
of testing basically
with the plates right when people are
trying to steal the plates from them
and then joseph and emma are eventually
allowed by the lord to leave
and head south down to pennsylvania
where they'll be safer
with the plates well martin says that
was november 1st
so i counted the number of days
between september 22nd and november 1st
and it's exactly 40 days now 40 days has
the significance in the bible
right so for instance jesus goes through
a period of
testing of 40 days in the wilderness the
temptation
right but more directly applicable here
when moses so so rosh hashanah
the feast of trumpets sallow that the
day joseph smith went up on the hill
right and got the the golden tablets in
a stone box
right that feast celebrates
when moses went up on sinai and got the
stone tablets
how long was moses upon sinai according
to the biblical account
getting those tablets 40 days
40 days so that's the exact time period
that joseph has the golden tablets right
from rosh hashanah to when he's allowed
to take those tablets
plates and go down to harmony with them
interesting so
every single one of the four
opening events that happened with those
plates
right in 1827 is
key to the jewish festival calendar for
that year
and then i described in the book um
other another um festival connection
that i think happens with the the
translation process
um and so on so yeah that's that's
fabulous
fabulous that is great stuff don like i
said i
love the book just ate it up um i really
appreciate you taking the time
to do this yeah and uh go over these
things i think that a lot of our our our
followers here and and those that listen
to this podcast are
are going to uh uh feast on
on what they're listening to here so i
really do appreciate it
what you got next project coming up or
um
i had been hoping to get a book out this
year
this coming for this coming year on the
first vision
um but that you've worked on before yeah
which i've done papers on
in the past life circumstances have
interfered with that
i still will be trying to get something
out on that but i'm trying to
i'm trying to figure out right now the
best order of projects but i've got
um i started doing church history
research
uh when i was at the church archives
when i was 17.
i've got a lot of projects to get
you know written up and published so
yeah you'll be hearing
you'll be hearing more from me and
there's there's a lot more in this book
right that talks about both the coming
forth of the book of mormon and then
what was in those lost pages
and how it can shed light on the book of
mormon that we have i'll have other
projects that will deal specifically
with the book of mormon
and look a lot at the the period the
translation period
things that were going on in the
translation period and how those things
connect with what's going on with with
joseph and oliver and others as the book
is coming forward
how were they impacted by the
translation as it comes
as it comes forth um and priesthood
restoration events
um a lot of other things sounds
wonderful
thanks again really appreciate it than

 

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