Hebrew Voices #190 – Mormon Chains of Authority: Part 1

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #190, Mormon Chains of Authority: Part 1, Dr. Nehemia Gordon welcomes back Dan Vogel to discuss a modern-day American prophet’s claim of divine authority, Mormon beliefs about Jesus' arrival to America, and the redefinition of angels.

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Hebrew Voices #190 – Mormon Chains of Authority: Part 1

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

Nehemia: How does he think he can get away with it? That’s an even better question!

Dan: Oh, yeah, really.

Nehemia: I’m back with Dan Vogel, the greatest living historian of early Mormon history, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating there, at least that’s my view on it.

So, alright, I want to read this. I want to show the people chapter 4 of the Book of Commandments from 1833, which I didn’t realize wasn’t published until you just explained that. But now you can see it online, what was printed… I guess it was salvaged from the destruction in Missouri. And this raises an interesting question that we’ll get to in a minute. So, it’s chapter 4, I’m going to share my screen here. It says, “A Revelation given to Joseph Smith and Martin,” I guess Martin Harris.

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: Oh, yeah, it says it in parentheses here. On the right here is their transcription, on the left is, I guess, a photo of it. “…in Harmony, Pennsylvania, March 29th, when Martin desired of the Lord to know whether Joseph had in his possession the record of the Nephites.” So, tell us, what is the background here?

Dan: So, Martin Harris had been fired from being a scribe.

Nehemia: Oh, after he lost the 116 pages.

Dan: Right, in 1828. And he comes back… Well, there was a trial, actually, somebody was trying to sue… Martin Harris’ wife had something to do with this trial, and at this trial somebody got on the witness stand and said, “Joseph Smith told me there was nothing but sand in that box. There’s nothing but sand.”

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: “It’s all a fraud.”

Nehemia: The plates don’t exist, they’re claiming, on the stand.

Dan: And Martin Harris is hearing this. So, he goes down to Harmony, Pennsylvania and says, “I need to have a greater witness.” Issac Hale tells this part of the story. “I need to have a greater witness,” and Joseph Smith told him, “Well, I’ll take the plates out into the woods, and you follow my footprints in the snow, and you will eventually see the plates out there.” And he does it, and nothing happens. He doesn’t see anything and he doesn’t get his greater witness. But Joseph Smith dictates a revelation to… probably Martin Harris is the scribe for this revelation, telling him that he wouldn’t get a greater witness.

Nehemia: He would or would not?

Dan: Basically until he had faith.

Nehemia: Ah. So, it’s Martin’s fault that he doesn’t have enough faith.

Dan: Right.

Nehemia: Okay, fair enough.

Dan: This is trying to tell Martin Harris basically that… you’ll read it, that Joseph Smith is not to pretend to any other gift that he would grant him.

Nehemia: That’s the mind-blowing part here I want to get to. Alright, so let’s read it. And by the way, and just because I don’t know, is this part the introduction?

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Is that considered part of the revelation?

Dan: No, no. Even though it has a “1” next to it.

Nehemia: Okay, so the italics… So, “Behold, I say unto you, that my servant Martin has desired a witness from my hand, that my servant Joseph has got the things of which he has testified and borne record that he has received of me.” Let’s keep reading, “And now, behold, this shall you say unto him.” So, the voice here is God speaking to Joseph, right?

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Meaning, the way it’s presented. “I the Lord am God, and I have given these things unto my servant Joseph, and I have commanded him that he should stand as a witness of these things. Nevertheless, I have caused him that he should enter into a covenant with me, that he should not show them except I command him,” meaning, don’t show them the plates?

Dan: Don’t show anybody.

Nehemia: Okay. “Unless I, God, command him to do so. And he has no power over them except I grant it unto him; and he has a gift to translate the book, and I have commanded him that he shall pretend to no other gift, for I will grant him no other gift.” Wow, okay. So, his job is to translate the plates, not to show the plates. And here’s an interesting thing…

Dan: Evidently, he didn’t get a commandment to show them to Martin Harris, that’s why he didn’t see them.

Nehemia: Let’s assume for argument’s sake that the plates are real, because later on he has these mummies, and what they do with the mummies is they charge people to see them, right?

Dan: Yeah. In 1835, in Kirtland, Ohio.

Nehemia: And the mummies are real.

Dan: They’re real.

Nehemia: He could have said, “Hey, I’ve got these gold plates, pay me two shillings and you’ll get to see the plates, these things that were written by ancient Israelites in America.” But God is telling him “No, he has no other gift other than to translate. He’s not allowed to show the plates unless I give him authority to do so.”

Dan: Yeah. He hasn’t even started dictating the part that remains of the Book of Mormon. He hasn’t even started that. He won’t start that until the next month…

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Dan: When Oliver Cowdery arrives. But right now, he hasn’t done anything. His only goal is to translate the Book of Mormon.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: And nothing else! Nothing about founding a church, nothing about anything. And that same revelation goes on to say that through the Book, God will cause a reformation to appear among the churches, among the believers.

Nehemia: So, he might have thought originally that he’s not going to start a new church, but that he’ll change the existing churches to get them right or something.

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: Through the book. The book will solve anti-doctrines, resolve doctrinal disputes, it will solve all of those debates about whether you should baptize infants or not.

Nehemia: But doesn’t that kind of go against what you’re saying, that his aspiration was to found the theological empire? Meaning, at some point that might have been the case, but at this point…

Dan: That’s later.

Nehemia: Okay, so at this point he’s not thinking of a theological empire, he wants to fix the Presbyterians and the Catholics and whoever.

Dan: Yeah, he hasn’t worked out everything in advance. He knows the end and the beginning of the story, that begins with the Israelites coming to America and it ends with the Indians destroying this supposed white Jewish race and burying their bodies in these mounds that exist in Joseph Smith’s neighborhood, and all over America, basically, too. It’s the Moundbuilder Myth.

Nehemia: And you wrote a book about the Moundbuilder Myth…

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: …which is an incredible subject, but we probably won’t get to it today.

Dan: No. So, he knows the end and he knows the beginning. He doesn’t even know Jesus is going to come and visit these people. There’s several clues along the dictation, when you go according to the order of dictation, he doesn’t even know that Jesus is going to come and visit these Nephites after his resurrection. That’s not even seen. But he knows a lot about what he wants to do. He knows the historical structure of these people. He’s just going to tell the story that these people that come from Israel are bringing true beliefs with them, which includes a version of Christianity even though they’re Jewish. And they lived the law of Moses, but they looked forward to Jesus coming, and they all know about what’s going to happen with Jesus because they’re prophets.

So, it’s going to be a story of a family that comes to America that has religious disputes, and finally the patriarch, the prophet patriarch, is trying to teach the truth and some rebel against it. And this is the story of what happens when some rebellion…

Nehemia: This is Lehi you’re talking about?

Dan: Lehi and Nephi.

Nehemia: Well, so Nephi, essentially, we said, if I understand you correctly, in some respects represents Joseph in that he’s the son of the patriarch.

Dan: Yeah, and Lehi represents his father.

Nehemia: Right, wow.

Dan: A kind of a dual aspect of the father, actually.

Nehemia: What do you mean by the dual aspect?

Dan: The good and the bad.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: But Lehi is the good version of his father.

Nehemia: Okay. I want to now go back to the Book of Commandments, 1833. So, this again is Joseph Smith papers, and again, this is a publication of the LDS Church. This isn’t some critical organization; this is the LDS church’s publication. And it says here, Revelation, March 1829 D&C5. So, D&C5 means Doctrine and Covenants 5, meaning that’s what it’s called today.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay, so let’s go to D&C5.

Dan: Well, D&C5 doesn’t always… the numbers in the 1835 doctrine… oh yeah, it is the current edition.

Nehemia: So, in other words, although this is chapter 4, it’s equivalent to D&C5.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Now this is churchofjesuschrist.org, which I understand is the LDS church, and it’s D&C5, and it’s the same thing as we just read, except it says, “And you have a gift to translate the plates.” Let’s go back to the other one… is that what it says? I guess it’s not word for word.

Dan: No, well…

Nehemia: We’re coming to the difference, but I want to see the parts that are similar. So, it says, “I have given you a gift to translate the plates, and this is the first gift that I bestowed upon you.”

Dan: Yeah, the first gift.

Nehemia: “This is the first gift that I have bestowed upon you.”

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: “And I have commanded that you should pretend to no other gift,” and that is verbatim, right?

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: Let’s find it here.

Dan: It’s right there, right above the 3, right there.

Nehemia: Okay, “that he,” that’s interesting, here it’s in third person, and here it’s in second person, “that you should pretend to no other gift.” And it says, “that he should pretend to no other gift,” “until my purpose is fulfilled in this,” meaning translating the plates, “for I will grant unto you no other gift until it is finished.” So, once it’s finished, then I’m going to give you another gift, which is to establish the church maybe, and do other things. But here it’s, “that he shall pretend no other gift for I will grant him no other gift.” “Full stop”, as the British say, “period” in American English. And then it’s “other things”.

So, what happened between 1833 and 1835 when we got “until it is finished”?

Dan: Well, as he dictated the Book of Mormon it became more and more religious as time went on. It became more and more concerned with actual worship and the church and authority and organization. And when Jesus comes, he sets up 12 apostles, and those 12 apostles administer the church and… until there’s an apostasy among the Nephites, and there’s no more apostles left, and they go into this apostasy, and they actually dwindle and…

So, they were united when Jesus came, and had all things in common and everything was a golden era for 200 years. And then they started apostatizing and changing…

Nehemia: Just to be clear; when Jesus came to America everything was this golden era for 200 years according to the Book of Mormon, is what you’re saying?

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: But they apostatized eventually, and the church became corrupted and lost authority and lost the spirit. It didn’t have the gifts. No more gifts, no more speaking in tongues, no more healings, no more revelations, no more prophesy, and then they became ripe for destruction. This is all a metaphor for what the Book of Mormon is trying to warn Jacksonian America to be aware of. And they became ripe for destruction, and they split into tribes… they splintered into tribes, they were not united anymore. And then they started warring, and the righteous part became even more wicked than the wicked part, because they have sinned against the light.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: They have sinned against the light and become more wicked than even the Lamanites, who are only wrong because of the false traditions of their fathers.

Nehemia: Whereas the Nephites should know better.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: So, God allows the Lamanites to destroy the Nephites totally in a war of extermination, and that’s how it basically ends. And Moroni becomes almost the lone survivor, although the only Nephites that survive are the ones that apostatize over to become Lamanites. And the truth is gone, and Moroni writes the last parts of it and then buries the gold plates in the hill in New York near Joseph Smith’s farm. And then later, 1,400 years later or whatever, appears to Joseph Smith in his room.

Nehemia: This is incredible stuff, Dan! Alright, I want to just finish up this issue of the Doctrine and Covenants. So going back to the Book of Commandments, 1833, and then the modern Doctrine and Covenants, maybe it was changed in 1835. Whenever it was, did Joseph Smith, when they published the Doctrine and Covenants, did he have those revelations in his hand and he said, “I want to change this. I want to add the words until it is finished,” or is he trying to reconstruct it in his memory after this catastrophe that happened in Missouri and the press is destroyed? Maybe he doesn’t remember, or maybe he thinks nobody else knows, and he’s adding until it is finished to say, “Hey, I’m not just a translator, I’m actually the founder of a church.” How does that happen in a two-year period? It’s such a big difference! How does he think he can get away with it? That’s an even better question.

Dan: Yeah, really! Well, there’s several strings of the story here.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: But the thing that changes the whole story of the restoration, the apostasy and restoration, is when they’re trying to… Joseph Smith and Olver Cowdery, they were trying to keep the Missouri church from apostatizing because they’re questioning a lot of Joseph Smith’s revelations and his leadership. And they’re not so sure about certain innovations like the high priesthood. They’re not so sure about that. And him becoming the president of the high priesthood, “No, we’re not so sure about that.”

So, they kind of saw it as themselves in Missouri. The Missouri church had its own presidency, as a little autonomous to the Kirtland church over here. And then Joseph Smith started trying to control this one more. They are charismatic themselves, and David Whitmer is the president, actually, of that Missouri church.

Nehemia: Oh! Okay.

Dan: Bishop Partridge is over here questioning Joseph Smith, and there’s a lot going on over a period of years. And then finally, out of nowhere almost, Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith get together to write the history of the church and publish it in letters written to the Missouri church. And the first thing they announce is, “By the way, we were ordained by John the Baptist shortly before our baptisms while we were translating the Book of Mormon. We just never mentioned it.”

Nehemia: Wow! So, “I’m not just a translator now,” I, Joseph Smith. “I’m only the translator until it is finished, and now I’ve got this other authority.”

Dan: Directly from someone who has indisputable authority.

Nehemia: And David Whitmer is thinking, I presume…

Dan: “I’ve never heard of that before.”

Nehemia: Well number one, he’s thinking, “I never heard that.” And he’s also thinking, “I saw the angel. I saw the plates. Why is Joseph Smith so special?”

Dan: Before this, you mean?

Nehemia: Well, even at that point he’s probably thinking this right?

Dan: No, this puts a whole different concept of authority in place.

Nehemia: But does David Whitmer accept that?

Dan: We’re not just being commanded by revelation and obeying commandments, that’s the authority. We now have established a chain that can’t be broken.

Nehemia: Okay, I see.

Dan: You can’t splinter off over here in Missouri and be legitimate.

Nehemia: You’re not defying Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, you’re defying John the Baptist.

Dan: Right.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: There’s a chain of authority from John the Baptist, the authority to baptize. He physically ordained us because he was resurrected, right?

Nehemia: Was he? I mean, that’s part of the doctrine here, right?

Dan: Yeah. In the New Testament, he was beheaded before Jesus, and so when Jesus was resurrected, all the bodies of the saints arose and went into…

Nehemia: Oh, okay, so that’s the idea, that he’s been alive since the time of Jesus’ resurrection.

Dan: Yeah, so he could ordain…

Nehemia: Okay. Is that the claim about Moroni? That he was resurrected during the resurrection? Is that why they changed the name?

Dan: That’s a whole other story.

Nehemia: Right. Because originally it didn’t say Moroni was the one that appeared to him in the room.

Dan: Yeah, it was Nephi. It’s always been Moroni, the earliest is Moroni.

Nehemia: Oh, it is? Okay.

Dan: In his official history it was changed to Nephi. Some people claimed it was just a mistake, it was just an error. And I say, well what if it wasn’t? What if it was on purpose?

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: What if he wanted Nephi to have a body? Because Nephi is 600 years before Jesus, and it would make more sense. It wouldn’t be necromancy, delving into familiar spirits.

Nehemia: Oh, because Nephi was resurrected when Jesus died.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: But Moroni can’t be resurrected because it was 400 years after Jesus.

Dan: But the funny thing is that in 1838, he’s dictating his official history and he accidentally, or on purpose, says Nephi instead of Moroni. At the same time, he’s publishing answers to questions in the newspaper called The Elder’s Journal, in 1838 in Missouri, right around the same month, April, May, June, July of 1838. He answers a question about, where are the plates? Where did you get the plates? Where are the plates? He says, “Moroni, who was resurrected, gave them to me and took them back.”

Nehemia: Alright.

Dan: So, it must have been a special resurrection, in other words. So, he’s telling them that he’s concerned about a body belonging to that angel.

Nehemia: I see.

Dan: It’s not a spirit, it’s not a familiar…

Nehemia: Because like we said before, angels in Jewish and Christian culture had been this idea of a specially created being and not somebody who used to live and who now came back as an angel.

Dan: He’s actually redefining the term angel from what everybody else thinks an angel is. He’s redefining it to be mortals.

Nehemia: There’s definitely, in Jewish culture… I want to be careful about this. There’s all kinds of stories of rabbis having appearances of angels. Are there stories of the spirit of a dead rabbi coming to a living rabbi? I want to say there are, but somebody should verify that.

Dan: That would be a familiar spirit.

Nehemia: Well, you’re saying from an Old Testament perspective. I’m talking about medieval Jewish superstition.

Dan: Oh. I don’t know.

Nehemia: And medieval Jewish Kabbalistic beliefs. So, off the top of my head… we need to investigate that further. There’s definitely the idea of a dybbuk, which is the disembodied spirit of a dead person, but that’s usually an evil spirit of a sort.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: We’ll have to look more into that. So, I want to go onto the next thing, and we’re going to take a break before we do that.

Dan: Okay.

Nehemia: I’ve got to go to the bathroom again. But the last thing before that, if you still have the energy to go on…

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, the last thing before we take that break. I want to wrap up this issue of the Book of Commandments from 1833, chapter 4 verses D&C5.

Dan: No, D&C5 was published in September of 1835.

Nehemia: So, it’s two years later.

Dan: They were highly edited revelations. The edits that you read were done at that time.

Nehemia: They were done at that time?

Dan: Yes. Joseph Smith did them. So, along with introducing this angel story, angel ordination story, he’s actually worked in some of these early revelations, mentions of that visit.

Nehemia: Okay. I’m going to go back to this question, and I’m thinking as somebody in the 21st century. I have a web page open here and another web page open here, and I look at them side by side. Is he thinking no one’s ever going to check? And I’m talking about where he adds the words, “there’s no other purpose until it is finished”.

Dan: At the time they published it in 1835 there was a review committee, Joseph being on it and Oliver Cowdery being on it. This review committee, the statement they made was that the only published versions of these early revelations they had were in the newspaper. The Morning Star published some of them, and people would be able to compare. Nobody else could compare because they were all in manuscript versions. And they blamed it on the typesetter.

Nehemia: Okay, so they had an explanation.

Dan: A carelessness of the scribe; the scribes could make mistakes in hearing. So, they gave an excuse that wasn’t really transparent.

Nehemia: So, if you’re a devout Mormon, you can hear everything we just said about how he added the words “until it is finished” and say, “Okay Nehemia, don’t lie to us, don’t deceive us. That’s because of the typesetter, and you should have known that that was Joseph Smith’s explanation at the time.” Okay, that would be the apologist answer, right? I guess.

Dan: It was the explanation at the time.

Nehemia: At the time even, okay.

Dan: Most Mormons that know about this, that know that that doesn’t really cover it all, would say that Joseph Smith under inspiration updated the revelations.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Dan: That they were given line by line, precept upon precept, sort of like what I was telling you, that the Bishops were added later than the 1830 foundational articles and covenants, and that they had to come back and add to that. They would just say, “He had authority by God to update it.”

Nehemia: Just like he did with the Old Testament and New Testament, where he goes through, and he corrects the… but in that context…

Dan: It’s a little different.

Nehemia: …is he claiming he’s restoring the original truth about it?

Dan: He did. He claimed that. In one sermon he gave in Nauvoo, he quoted one of his changes, like, “God doesn’t repent… it repented God that He had created man.” Well, God doesn’t repent, so he corrected that to, “It repented Noah that God had created man.”

Nehemia: I see.

Dan: But at the same time, he delivered this sermon and gave one of his revisions, which were never published. He said that he believes the Bible as it fell from the lips of the authors. And so, by implication, he’s restoring it to the way it fell from their lips as it was originally written. Nowadays, if you ask more apologetic types, they try to say, “No, he didn’t claim to be restoring the text to its original reading,” as if it had been lost, because you can prove that that’s not true.

Nehemia: How can you prove that that’s not true?

Dan: It’s just not… it won’t work.

Nehemia: Wait, how can you prove it’s not true?

Dan: The revisions that he gives are too extensive.

Nehemia: Okay. Well, maybe whole chapters were lost, I don’t know, like the Book of Moses.

Dan: But there are some parts that people who know Hebrew…

Nehemia: Well, there it raises the question… in other words, if you wanted to be an apologist and maintain that he’s restoring the original words that came off the prophets’ lips, I guess you could say what has survived in the Masoretic text isn’t what Moses wrote, or Jeremiah wrote, or Isaiah wrote. That it’s not just the translation that’s wrong of the King James Version, it’s that there’s entire sections. That’s, I assume, what they would say. That’s what I would say if I was a devout Mormon.

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: That there were things that were corrupted… that’s what Muslims say, that there are things that were corrupted in the Jewish… and in the case of Muslims they’ll say the Christian Bibles, and Mohammed is essentially telling you what Allah really said. And the Jewish version is corrupt, the Christian version is corrupt, and Mohammed came to restore what was really revealed by Allah. That’s what Muslims say.

And I guess you could say that… like, let’s say, what they call the Book of Moses, or you have these whole sections about Enoch, maybe those were in the original Torah written by Moses 3,500 years ago and the Jews lost it until Joseph Smith came along and restored it. I don’t think that’s what happened, but I guess you could make that argument.

Dan: The Book of Mormon claims that this great and abominable church of the devil has corrupted the text and taken out of the text the plain and precious parts.

Nehemia: Okay, there you go! So, he restored them.

Dan: So, a textualist would say the Bible has been corrupted by glosses more than losses.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: The Bible suffers from additions, like accidental things, marginal things being incorporated in the text and things like that. And the Dead Sea Scrolls, more or less, show that the Isaiah text has been pretty stable.

Nehemia: Yeah. But then Jeremiah is fundamentally… not fundamentally different; there’s big issues with Jeremiah. But that’s a different issue.

Dan: Well, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Isaiah, that kind of thing, those things come up as problems with the Book of Mormon, actually.

Nehemia: Right, but that’s on the level of textual…

Dan: That’s an addition, textual additions.

Nehemia: Right, that has to do with chronology, that’s a separate… Let’s not get into that.

So, the last thing on this subject. There’s this apology channel on Tik Tok that I follow. I find it fascinating, and he addresses this whole issue… and it’s also on YouTube, he addresses this whole issue, and this guy…

Dan: I think I know who you’re talking about.

Nehemia: It’s called Saints Unscripted.

Dan: Oh no, that’s a different name.

Nehemia: And I wouldn’t even say he’s really hard core like The Joseph Smith Foundation.

Dan: No, he’s not.

Nehemia: I think he’s more liberal in his approach. So, he has a video where he talks about why LDS have multiple temples. And he says some people say, “Hey, you guys can’t have more than one temple. Deuteronomy 12, there’s one temple.” And the explanation he offers is, “No, that was made up by Josiah during the Josianic Reformation. That Moses didn’t write that,” that’s his explanation. “That was added by the priest in the Temple, Hilkiah, or somebody in the court of Josiah,” a Josian, whatever. He doesn’t get to that.

Dan: The Deuteronomist.

Nehemia: Right, the Deuteronomist. But he’s essentially saying, “Deuteronomy 12 is just made up. That’s not from God. We know what’s from God.” I’m paraphrasing what he said, and I might be getting it wrong, but what I understood he said is, “What came from God is what we know from Joseph Smith and our prophets in the LDS church. And what you see in Deuteronomy 12, that’s somebody who wanted power and wanted to concentrate,” which is what secular scholars say, “someone who wanted to concentrate the power of the Jerusalem Temple. He proclaimed there’s only allowed to be one temple.”

Dan: Yeah, there is that in the Documentary Hypothesis.

Nehemia: Absolutely, that’s the explanation of Deuteronomists.

Dan: There is a competition of where the holy mount is… which priest is going to win. I understand the guy’s argument.

Nehemia: So, then I wrote to him on the video. I said, “Well, I looked at the Joseph Smith papers. We have what, at least according to the Joseph Smith papers, is Joseph Smith’s copy. And in Deuteronomy 14, Joseph Smith says something to the effect of, in the note, ‘everything up until Deuteronomy 14 is correct.’ So, if Deuteronomy 12 was made up by Josiah or somebody in his court in the Temple, wouldn’t Joseph Smith have pointed that out to us?” So, I don’t understand how a modern apologist could ignore… If Joseph Smith is restoring the true scripture as it came from the mouth of the prophets, then why would you ignore that he says that Deuteronomy 12 is correct? I don’t know.

Dan: I don’t know. The multiple temple thing: Joseph Smith has to solve that problem since he wants to build the new Jerusalem temple himself.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: So, the question is, by what authority are you going to run this temple? And by what authority did the Ephramites, Menasseh or Ephraim, it’s supposed to be both of them there…

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: Because the tribe of Joseph is the wrong tribe for the priesthood to run the Temple.

Nehemia: Right.

Dan: And he solved that by introducing the Melchizedek priesthood.

Nehemia: Wow.

Dan: And Jews struggle with this question too! By what authority did Abraham offer sacrifice?

Nehemia: Right.

Dan: And the Patriarchs? And usually, it ends up going to Psalms 110.

Nehemia: Right. I’m impressed that you know that! That’s very interesting. That is one of the Jewish explanations, to say that God took the priesthood from Melchizedek and handed it off to Abraham, and then eventually it gets to the hands of Aaron. That’s interesting.

Dan: So, you’re talking about how it gets to Moses. But that’s an Aaronic priesthood temple for animal sacrifice and all that kind of stuff, and we’re talking about Melchizedek priesthood temples.

Nehemia: Well, I’m saying on the Jewish side. The other explanation, which I think is probably the more common Jewish explanation, is to say that it’s really Leviticus 17, not just Deuteronomy 12. Both of those passages together limit where you’re allowed to bring sacrifices. Well, before that was revealed… There is this idea of progressive revelation, and then Deuteronomy 12:32 says, “Don’t add and don’t subtract from anything I have commanded you today.” So, up until that time, God could bring in new revelations, just from that point forward you weren’t allowed to change things.

So, there is an idea of progressive revelation. So, Noah bringing a sacrifice, most Jews would say, isn’t a problem because at that time it hadn’t been limited to the Aaronic priesthood.

Dan: They had a Temple, but they also had the Tabernacle, and the Tabernacle moved around.

Nehemia: Right, for sure. So, there it gets complicated, the Tabernacle… Anyway, it’s beyond the scope of the discussion today. And then there’s the whole debate with the Samaritans on where the true chosen place is, but that’s a whole separate discussion. Because they would say the chosen place is Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem. And I as a Jew would say they’re wrong, but that’s beyond the scope of scholarship, I suppose, for here.

Alright, I want to continue, and you had brought up before the issue of the theory of how Joseph Smith could have written the Book of Mormon.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: And there was an explanation at the time that nobody today believes as far as I know, and I want to take a break and then come back and have you explain that.

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VERSES MENTIONED
Isaiah 28:10-13
Deuteronomy 12; Leviticus 17
Psalm 110

BOOKS MENTIONED
Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon
by Dan Vogel

RELATED EPISODES
Hebrew Voices Episodes
Hebrew Voices #164 – A Karaite Jew on Mormonism: Part 1
Support Team Study – A Karaite Jew on Mormonism: Part 2
Hebrew Voices #183 – Early Mormonism Revealed: Part 1
Support Team Study – Early Mormonism Revealed: Part 2

OTHER LINKS
Dan Vogel’s YT channel
FAIR Mormon Apologetic Site
The Joseph Smith Papers

The post Hebrew Voices #190 – Mormon Chains of Authority: Part 1 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.