by Stephen O. Smoot1
Setting the Stage: Joel Kramer Vs. Mormonism
In 2003 Joel Kramer, an Evangelical Christian and proprietor of Living Hope Ministries based out of Brigham City, Utah, released a video entitled DNA vs. The Book of Mormon. This video attempts to disprove the Book of Mormon’s claim to be an authentic ancient record by appealing to recently released data on the genetic makeup of Native American populations. Since there was no detectable “Israelite” DNA in Native American populations, Kramer concluded that the Book of Mormon was not an authentic ancient record and that Joseph Smith was therefore a fraud.
Then in 2005 Living Hope Ministries released another video entitled The Bible vs. The Book of Mormon. In this follow up work to DNA vs. The Book of Mormon, Kramer enlisted the help of a number of archaeologists in an attempt to demonstrate that the Bible has been verified archaeologically while the Book of Mormon has been discredited archaeologically. Therefore, the video concluded, Latter-day Saints should reject the Book of Mormon as ancient history and inspired scripture, abandon their faith in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and adapt some form of fundamentalist Protestantism.
The initial release of DNA vs. The Book of Mormon attained noticeable media attention and achieved a fairly broad distribution. The video was hailed by some as a “Galileo event” for Mormons.2 A mass distribution campaign by the efforts of Kramer’s ministry aimed to put the DVD in as many hands as possible.3 Cultural Mormons, ex-Mormons and anti-Mormons heralded it as the silver bullet that would prove the Book of Mormon to be fraudulent. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the video, at least in the eyes of the critics of the Church, was that two “Mormon scientists”, namely, Thomas W. Murphy and Simon G. Southerton, were enlisted to spearhead the attack against Joseph Smith. Murphy and Southerton, both formerly-active members of the Church who had since renounced their former faith, were portrayed as unassailable authorities on the matter of DNA and Book of Mormon studies. Indeed, Murphy’s scientific credentials include a PhD in anthropology and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Edmonds Community College in Washington state4 while Southerton is “Principal Research Scientist in the Applied Biotechnology and Genomics area of the Commonwealth Scientific laboratories (CSIRO) in Canberra, Australia”.5
The Latter-day Saint response to the DNA challenge was swift and manifold. A long stream of books, articles, DVDs, blog posts, radio broadcasts, television spots and websites answered the allegations of deception by Joseph Smith and argued for the inherent flaws in the critics’ use of evidence, as well as their methodology and conclusions.6 In a more humorous vein, Mormon apologist Greg Kearney aptly compared the arguments employed by Kramer to theological suicide bombing, considering the fact that the exact same DNA evidence used by Kramer to attack the Book of Mormon has been used far more convincingly by secularists to attack the validity and authenticity of the fundamentalists’ reading of the biblical accounts of the creation, the account of Adam and Eve and the Deluge.7
But the story does not end with Living Hope Ministries’ first video. As mentioned, The Bible vs. The Book of Mormon seeks to attack the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon on the grounds of archaeology. Once again Murphy was consulted by Living Hope Ministries as an expert on the Book of Mormon, alongside anthropologist and former member of the Church William E. Wilson of Northern Arizona University. The video, though rich in film quality, suffered from the same problems that have plagued past anti-Mormon treatments on Book of Mormon archaeology.8 Despite the excellent production values, the video offered little that was new, invoking the same lines of argumentation that one might find in previous works published by the zealously active anti-Mormon crusaders Jerald and Sandra Tanner and their imitators.9
Thus Kramer has made a habit out of producing slick anti-Mormon propaganda, which uses a few estranged Latter-day Saints with secular credentials to attack the Book of Mormon. Usually, however, these videos provide little that is genuinely new, but simply repackage pre-existing attacks.
The Bible vs. Joseph Smith
The latest video produced by Living Hope Ministries (and as of 2007 online video provider SourceFlix) is The Bible vs. Joseph Smith. The film pits biblical prophetic writings against Joseph Smith’s prophetic writings. It then attempts to verify the former and discredit the latter via interviews with various scholars. The video primarily revolves around the following arguments:
- The Bible has made predictions and prophecies concerning a number of issues, the most striking being the coming of Jesus Christ as the Messiah and King of the Jews.
- Biblical prophecies have been fulfilled and can be verified as such by scholarly evidence and historical inquiry.
- Joseph Smith professed to be a prophet of God and made predictions in the Book of Mormon as well as in his later ministry. The video gives particular attention to the building of a temple in Independence, Missouri in “this generation” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:4). The video insists that this scripture is a prophecy which requires a temple to be constructed within the lifetime of Joseph Smith and his contemporaries. The producers regard the “failure” of this prophecy as the “smoking gun” which disproves Joseph Smith’s claims.
- Joseph Smith’s prophecies and predictions have failed in the light of historical and archaeological evidence.
- Deuteronomy 18 in the Old Testament provides a criterion by which we can test the authenticity and divine calling of those who claim to be prophets.
- Joseph Smith has failed this test, which brands him a false prophet.
But Kramer does not restrict himself to attacking Joseph’s prophecies in the Doctrine and Covenants. For example, he continues the time-honored anti-Mormon tradition of challenging the Book of Mormon’s predictions that Jesus would be born at “Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers” (Alma 7:10) as well as the Book of Mormon’s prophecies about the loss of plain and precious truths from the biblical texts at the hands of the Great and Abominable Church (1 Nephi 13: 24-29). Kramer also attempts to pick apart Joseph Smith’s inspired translation of the Bible, aiming to show that it was in fact Joseph Smith who corrupted the texts of the Bible, not, according to Mormon belief, early Christian apostates.
Since Kramer moved to Israel in 2007, most of the film takes place primarily in the Holy Land, with a brief stop in Independence, Missouri to review the supposedly-damning evidence of Joseph Smith’s failed prophecy that a temple would be built in that area in his generation. The video is structured around an exchange between Kramer and a Latter-day Saint named Greg Gifford.10 Besides his dialogue with Gifford, Kramer also meets with various biblical scholars and archaeologists, all of whom he solicits in his attempts to disprove the prophetic claims of Joseph Smith and establish the veracity of biblical prophecies.
As is true with Living Hope Ministries’ other films, The Bible vs. Joseph Smith doesn’t contribute anything new or engaging to the topic addressed, despite excellent visual quality with on-location filming at the ruins of ancient Palestine. The claims made by Kramer in the video have been the same standard anti-Mormon fare for at least several decades, and many go back to the earliest anti-Mormon writings. One searches in vain for anything even as relatively new or exciting as was offered in Kramer’s 2003 foray into DNA ancestry and the Book of Mormon.
A Strawman Mormon
I object to the unfair and unbalanced way in which Kramer presents his arguments. While Kramer makes a token gesture towards impartiality by having a faithful Mormon appear on his film to defend the LDS point of view, it becomes readily apparent that Gifford’s only real reason for being on the video is to create the impression that there is no strong Mormon defense against these damning proofs of Joseph Smith’s fraud. Gifford serves, in essence, as the strawman in Kramer’s debate. While Gifford’s sincerity and genuine devotion as a Latter-day Saint are legitimate (he is not a paid actor who has been hired to deliberately look entirely ignorant about the issues),11 it nonetheless becomes quickly evident in the film that Gifford is not an authority on the controversies discussed in the video.
Throughout the film Gifford doesn’t do much more than concede to Kramer’s arguments and nervously agree that there is a problem for the Mormons. At many points of the video Kramer will go on and on with an argument while Gifford does little more than nod his head and acknowledge Kramer’s points. Notice, for example, the following part of the video in which Kramer attempts to disprove the authenticity of the Joseph Smith Translation:12
Kramer: This is the “New Translation of the Bible” by Joseph Smith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Gifford: Yes
Narrator [Kramer]: Joseph Smith’s translation is also known as the inspired version. On each page, the column on the left contains the text of Joseph Smith’s inspired version, while the column on the right contains the Bible. Throughout Smith’s translation, there are multiple pages of additional text that are not found in the Bible. [tense, eerie music].
Kramer: Look at these sections in here. I mean, of, text, that, look at that.
Gifford: Boy. [shakes head]
Kramer: We are talking some major stuff.
Gifford: Some major additions.
Kramer: Here is Isaiah, chapter 29.
Gifford: Wow.
Kramer: So, we aren’t talking about a letter here, of difference. We’re not talking about a few words. We’re talking some major differences in how much text is in Joseph Smith’s Isaiah and our modern Bibles.
Gifford: Gosh.
Kramer: So are you curious what is in this text?
Gifford: Absolutely.
After some discussion of the text of JST Isaiah 29, which includes Kramer soliciting the unsurprisingly negative analysis of two non-Mormon biblical textual critics, the video then continues:
Kramer: Ok, so is that the same verse we find over here?
Gifford: Yes, it is.
Kramer: Logically, what do you think, when we compare the Isaiah scroll to Joseph Smith’s Isaiah? Do you think that this information of the coming of the Book of Mormon through Joseph Smith and the three witnesses is in it?
Gifford: I’m afraid to say, I doubt it.
Kramer: Is this an add on?
Gifford: Yeah.
Kramer: So, what does that say about what Joseph Smith did to Isaiah?
Gifford: Well, it sounds like it came from an ordinary man, and not from God.
Kramer: And so…
Gifford: [sighs sorrowfully]
Or consider this section wherein Kramer begins to attack the Book of Mormon for falsely predicting that Jesus would be born at Jerusalem not Bethlehem:
Gifford: [turning to scripture] Ohhh… this is… bad scripture [nervous laugh, grimacing].
Kramer: The Book of Mormon [gesturing at Gifford’s Book of Mormon] is saying that Jesus is born in Jerusalem, Micah in the Bible [gesturing at his own Bible] is saying that the Messiah is born in Bethlehem. Can they both be right?
Gifford: [shakes head slightly] No.
Kramer: Is this for sure a mistake because Mormon scholars say “well, Bethlehem is close to Jerusalem, so they can be the same”, but the historical geographers – in fact, I interviewed a historical geographer, and I didn’t tell him what the issue was. I just, just started trying to convince him that Bethlehem and Jerusalem are so close to each other that they could be considered the same thing. And he… treated me like I didn’t know what I was talking about, and corrected me.
Kramer: So… historically, have you been to Bethlehem? Which one do you think is right historically?
Gifford: Historically its Bethlehem. [shakes head, sighs] This causes me great angst, I’m… I’d like to say that Alma is a human [chuckle, shakes head] that he makes mistakes, but Deuteronomy says that you… in that context that you cannot make mistakes, so I, I, it’s hard… for me to uh, declare that [sighs] , that Alma… [shakes head] Well he obviously made a mistake.
This is about as much as Gifford is permitted throughout the video. I get the impression that in many instances he was perhaps only hearing about the issue for the first time, and thus he was unable to provide any substantive response. He is a typical, run-of-the-mill Latter-day Saint who simply hasn’t had reason to be confronted with the classic anti-Mormon canards. Though these have been around for decades, if not centuries, Kramer doesn’t provide a fair representation of the LDS scholarly literature on the points he believes are “home runs”, and so Gifford and his audience remain unaware of them. Kramer, on the other hand, is a career anti-Mormon who literally makes a living off of producing and selling anti-Mormon paraphernalia.13
I doubt that most LDS people would do much better than Gifford. This does not criticize Gifford, since until now there has been little reason for him to be concerned about the trivial points raised by Kramer. Faithful, sincere, and devout, Gifford is simply unaware of the controversies until ambushed with a biased and one-sided account of them. It is telling that Kramer did not discuss the matter with someone familiar with the issues. But, this gives us a window into Kramer’s tactics and targets—the viewer is not going to get both sides of the story, and the only ones who will be persuaded are those who have never heard these issues raised before. Many of Kramer’s target audience may even be outside the Church—the video discourages the viewer from considering Mormon claims further, and is likely an exercise in boundary maintenance.14
Most Latter-day Saints know very little about the strengths and weaknesses of their faith, including the controversies surrounding Mormon history and doctrine. But this isn’t a Latter-day Saint problem, it is a human problem which exists in any religious institution, including the Evangelical community. The problem is that the SourceFlix team is composed of individuals focused on the weaknesses of Mormonism, and who have a tendency to exaggerate or even invent weaknesses on the Mormon side. Kramer stacked the deck and loaded the dice. Gifford, as sincere as we was, was unprepared to rebut a professional anti-Mormon like Kramer. In short, I think it is highly misleading to present the conversation as fair and balanced, despite Kramer’s hopes that we will see it that way.15
Poisoning the Well and Other Dirty Tricks
Throughout the video Kramer only interviews scholars and researchers who will agree with his conclusion, never failing to withhold both sides of the scholarly picture. This annoying tendency is not new – it is a staple of his previous video on Book of Mormon archaeology and geography, wherein different scholars are selectively interviewed to argue that the Bible has been provedby archaeology (which is false)16 while the Book of Mormon has been disproved by archaeology (which is equally false).17 In short, Kramer presents his side of the argument without allowing the Mormons, here represented by an ambushed Greg Gifford, to give their own explanation or rebuttal. He triumphantly touts the authority of his cherry-picked scholars as definitive and moves on to make sweeping and drastic conclusions without granting the Latter-day Saints an opportunity to speak for themselves.
Now lest I be misunderstood, I readily concede that it is impossible for any single individual to address every objection raised by the opposition. I don’t criticize Kramer because he failed to spend countless hours picking apart the intricacies of the Mormon apologetic response to the issues he raises. It obviously wasn’t the intent of his video to do so. However, if Kramer wishes to maintain his scholarly integrity he must at least mention that there is more to the issue than he pretends, and that the Mormons aren’t without their own defense. But, to do so would abandon his chief – if not only – weapon, since there are extensive responses to every issue he raises.
Besides his selective presentation of information, there are other instances wherein Kramer, either intentionally or unintentionally, poisons the well against Joseph Smith with the scholars he interviews. A prime example is his discussion of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible with Dr. Christophe Rico. Notice how Kramer carefully leads Dr. Rico to the conclusion against Joseph Smith that Kramer wants his most likely primarily Evangelical audience to hear:
Narrator: A key verse that Joseph Smith rewrote is John 1:1, that refers to Jesus as the word. In the Bible, John 1:1 reads “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” But Smith’s version reads, “In the beginning was the gospel preached through the Son. And the gospel was the word, and the word was with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was of God.” By changing “was God” to “was of God” Smith stripped Jesus of his deity.
Dr. Rico: “The word was with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was of God.” Not a single scholar could tell you that this is an accurate translation of the Gospel of John. The most ancient copy of the Gospel of John that we have goes back to the year 150 more or less. That is the papyrus which is called Papyrus 66. We are very sure about the text that we have.
Narrator: This earliest copy we have of John 1:1 is only about fifty years older than when John originally wrote that Jesus was God. As one who personally knew Jesus, John is a more trustworthy witness of who he was rather than Joseph Smith who rewrote John’s testimony roughly 1700 years later.
Kramer: Isn’t it true that if people take this left side and what Joseph Smith is saying and then they are persuaded by it to follow that wouldn’t they.. wouldn’t truth be corrupted and wouldn’t they be led astray?
Dr. Rico: I mean, they would be reading Joseph Smith, not the Gospel.
Kramer: When you read John 1:1 in the Joseph Smith translation version and John 1:1 in the Bible, are those two different Jesuses?
Dr. Rico: Oh yes, completely, completely. We are talking about something completely different in each case.
Kramer: You can believe in the Jesus, Joseph Smith’s Jesus of John 1:1 or you can believe in the John 1:1 of the New Testament, but you can’t believe in both, can you?
Dr. Rico: No, you can not.
This ploy does not even grant the courtesy of being subtle. One can see how Kramer carefully leads Dr. Rico to state on film that the Mormons worship “different Jesuses” or “Joseph Smith’s Jesus” rather than the true “Jesus… of the New Testament”. This is a common Leitmotiv in most sectarian anti-Mormon material. To disqualify the Church of Jesus Christ from his idiosyncratic definition of “Christianity”, Kramer wants it to be clear that the Saints do not worship the “real Jesus” or the “Jesus of the Bible” but instead that they worship a blasphemous spin-off of the “biblical Jesus” who is the construct of the false prophet Joseph Smith. And with the respected authority of Dr. Rico on his side, how can anyone, let alone Gifford, argue against such unimpeachable reasoning and scriptural truth?
It is exceedingly unfortunate that Kramer has repeated the Evangelical polemic that the Latter-day Saints don’t worship the biblical Jesus of Nazareth just because they may have a different understanding of the nature of His divinity than do their mainstream Christian neighbors. It is a far cry from saying that the Saints worship a “different Jesus” when they respectfully submit to their friends of other Christian traditions that their understanding of the mission and divine nature of the Son of God is influenced not by the post-New Testament creeds that have been in vogue in Christianity for many centuries, but instead from what we profess to be modern revelation, additional scriptures and restored knowledge lost through apostasy from Christ’s primitive Church that act in concert with biblical truth.
Part 1: Joseph Smith and Deuteronomy 18
The Nature of Prophets and Prophecy in the Bible and Mormonism
Since one of the gravest charges leveled at Joseph Smith in the video is that he is disqualified from being in the same league as biblical prophets, then it seems only appropriate to explore the nature of prophets and prophecy in the Bible and LDS thought.
The video notes that Deuteronomy 18:20-22 is the standard test for determining a false prophet from a true prophet. Kramer informs us that “Deuteronomy 18:21 asks the question, ‘How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?’… The next verse answers this question. ‘If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken.’”
This seems simple enough, and we are meant to think so. After all, the verses appear to be remarkably straightforward: if X, in the name of Yahweh, utters a predication of future events and the event comes to pass, then X is a true prophet. If X utters a prediction in the name of Yahweh and the event does not come to pass, then X is a false prophet and must be summarily executed for false prophecy and taking Yahweh’s name in vain. Or, as Kramer defines it,
a prophet is someone who claims God is speaking through them. So how can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord? The answer is the test of a prophet. Here’s how it works. Since only God knows the future people can test a prophet by how accurately he predicts the future. If even one of his predictions does not take place or come true that prophet fails the test. And if a prophet fails than God commands the people to put him to death and to not be afraid of him.
While most individuals may think that this is indeed a rather logical, straightforward test, a more careful look reveals that Kramer’s simplistic characterization of Deuteronomy 18 is unwarranted, and thus his misrepresentation of the nature of prophets in both the biblical and LDS traditions is not warranted. In fact things are much more complicated than Kramer would like us to think.
First, it should be noted that Deuteronomy 18 does not present one, but two tests of a prophet. The first is that of his prophetic call, and the second pertains to that of his prophetic accuracy. Verse 15 shows that the first test is that of one being called of God. This differentiates between prophets called of Yahweh and pagan oracles. The verse is the direct continuation of verse 14, indicating that Israel is to turn to prophets for the services that pagans seek from diviners and magicians. Since prophets are raised up by God, who will put His word in their mouths, they are His agents, and by turning to them one turns to God. As with many prophets, in the LDS view Joseph Smith was call by God because he saw, in vision, God the Father and His Son (cf. Ezekiel 1), was forgiven of his sins (cf. Isaiah 6) and, in later life, understood that this vision was the beginning of his call as a prophet of God.18
As for the rest of the deuteronomic test, it would be unwise to absolutize the passage in the way that The Bible vs. Joseph Smith and other critics do. Instead, the scholarly view is that one is to understand the passage to mean that, unless significant historical contingencies interrupt, whether stated or not in the prophecy itself, the oracle should come to pass. This is a key factor that must be considered.
For example, in Micah 3:12, the prophet predicts the inevitable downfall of Jerusalem. This passage provides the only unambiguous instance in the Hebrew Bible of a prophetic message being specifically referred to in another prophetic collection, for it is discussed in Jeremiah 26:18-19. Jerusalem, however, had not fallen; but this does not mean that Micah was dismissed or condemned as a false prophet on the grounds that his prophecy had not been fulfilled, as Kramer’s reading would require. Rather, the claim is made that Hezekiah’s repentance had led Yahweh to change his mind and spare the city, and such a claim cannot readily be refuted. With his commitment to biblical inerrancy and sufficiency, Kramer is certainly in no position to dispute it.19
Indeed, many of the prophecies in the Bible are, either implicitly or explicitly, contingent upon other circumstances. Furthermore, applying the all-or-nothing hermeneutic of Kramer, one will have to dismiss, not just Micah, but other prophets and even angels of God! For instance, in one biblical account we read:
There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. His wife was barren, having borne no children. And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘Although you are barren, having borne no children, you shall conceive and bear a son. Now be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, or to eat anything unclean, for you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor is to come on his head, for the boy shall be a nazirite to God from birth. It is he who shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.’ Then the woman came and told her husband, ‘A man of God came to me, and his appearance was like that of an angel* of God, most awe-inspiring; I did not ask him where he came from, and he did not tell me his name; but he said to me, ‘You shall conceive and bear a son. So then drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the boy shall be a nazirite to God from birth to the day of his death’” (Judges 13:2-7, New Revised Standard Version).
Notice how the angel of the Lord prophecies, without any conditions attached, that Samson would be a Nazarite, free his people from bondage, and would refrain from alcoholic beverages and unclean foods. And yet not a single one of these were fulfilled, as we read subsequently in the Book of Judges. What are we to make of this? Obviously prophecies are, by their nature, contingent upon historical events and individuals, as stated above.
Another good example of a prophecy that failed miserably, applying Kramer’s standards, is that of 2 Samuel 7:5-17. Here we read that the prophet Nathan unequivocally prophesied to David that through his son, Solomon, the Davidic Empire would be established “forever,” that the children of Israel would dwell in the promised land “and move no more,” and that the “children of wickedness” would no longer affect them. These things are quite clearly stated. No conditions are attached to these clear promises, yet this clearly did not prove successful.
Examples of God’s contingent foreknowledge are part and parcel of the biblical text. 1 Samuel 23:1-4 records one of the clearest instances; David’s free-will decision, based on the contingencies that God gives him, prevents the occurrence of a harmful event foreseen by God.
Many critics will appeal to texts such as Malachi 3:6 to claim the effect that God does not change his mind, and, furthermore, such texts that speak of God changing His mind (e.g., Gen 6:6) are to be relegated as mere “anthropomorphisms.” Notwithstanding, such an approach is based on pure eisegesis. The context of Malachi 3:6 specifies that God’s exchangeability refers only to His unchanging willingness to forgive if the sinner repents, not that God cannot change His mind about previous decisions or about contingencies that arise in accordance with man’s free-will decisions (cf. Jeremiah 18:7-10).
Other passages which indicate that God “does not change” (e.g., Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29; Psalm 110:4; James 1:17) refer only to God’s inability to lie, take back an oath He made, tempt one to sin, or reverse decisions based on a capricious whim, since these would be adverse to His divine character.20
Exodus 32-33 is a very potent example of (1) God changing his mind and (2) God’s personal nature. Let us look at it in point by point format:
- God determines to destroy all of Israel for worshipping the golden calf.
- Moses pleads with God to relent, reiterating the promise to Abraham and the potential mockery from Egypt.
- God rescinds His threat to destroy all of Israel, yet punishes the leading perpetrators.
- Moses spends 40 days prostrate and fasting to appease God for Israel’s sin.
- Although temporarily appeased, God refuses to go with the Israelites through the desert, because they are so “stiff-necked” he “might destroy them on the way.”
- Moses pleads again with God to change His mind.
- God changes His mind and decides to go with them.
- God then remarks on the intimate relationship He has with Moses as the basis of His decision to change His mind.
- God confirms this intimate relationship by showing Moses part of His actual appearance.
These, and other texts, refute Kramer’s all-or-nothing, absolutistic approach to the test in Deuteronomy 18.
Jewish Readings of Deuteronomy 18
The Jewish Study Bible, an indispensable resource in studying the Old Testament, offers important commentary on the meaning and application of Deuteronomy 18:
The prophet’s oracles do not originate from other deities, from dead spirits, from skilled manipulation of objects, or from the prophet’s own reflections. God instead affirms, I will put My words in his mouth. The prophet reiterates the word of Israel’s God. That metaphorical promise is reused in the call narrative of Jeremiah {Jer. 1:9} and then dramatically enacted in Ezekiel’s call, where the metaphor is taken literally {Ezek. 2:9-3:3}. 20: Having established an Israelite model of prophecy, the law provides two criteria to distinguish true from false prophecy. The first is that the prophet should speak exclusively on behalf of God, and report only God’s words. Breach of that rule is a capital offense {Jer. 28:12-17}. 21-23: The second criterion makes the fulfillment of a prophet’s oracle the measure of its truth. That approach attempts to solve a critical problem: If two prophets each claim to speak on behalf of God yet make mutually exclusive claims – {1 Kings 22:6, 17; Jer. 27:8 versus 28:2} – how may one decide which prophet speaks the truth? The solution offered is not free from difficulty. If a false prophet is distinguished by the failure of his oracle to come true, then making a decision in the present about which prophet to obey becomes impossible. Nor can this criterion easily be reconciled with 13.3, which concedes that the oracles of false prophets might come true. Finally, the prophets frequently threatened judgment hoping to bring about repentance {Jer. Ch 7; 26:1-6} If the prophet succeeds, and the people repent and thereby avert doom {Jonah chs 3-4}, one would assume the prophet to be authentic, since he has accomplished God’s goal of repentance. Yet according to the criteria here {but contrast Jer. 28.9} the prophet who accomplished repentance is nonetheless a false prophet, since the judgment oracle that was proclaimed remains unfulfilled. These texts, with their questions and differences of opinion on such issues, reflect the vigorous debate that took place in Israel about prophecy.21
We thus discover from the investigation of the Jewish Study Bible authors that, contrary to Kramer’s fundamentalist, do-or-die reading of Deuteronomy 18, there is much more complexity and subtlety to the nature of biblical prophets and prophecies. Of paramount importance is the fact that the uttered prophecy is contingent upon cultural, personal, historic or theological circumstances that may change the course of the fulfillment of the prophecies. As the above commentary suggests, let us turn our attention to the evidence for this view as presented in the case of Jonah and Nineveh.
Jonah was called of God to proclaim the downfall of the great Assyrian capital of Nineveh, and that the city would be destroyed in 40 days (Jonah 3:4). Period. No loopholes or conditions were given for the prophecy. No explicit escape clause was provided wherein the people could escape the imminent doom through repentance and Yahweh would change His mind and stay His hand. However, that is exactly what the people did and that is exactly how Yahweh reacted. Jonah 3:5 reports that the people “believed God, and proclaimed a fast” and repented of their wickedness. In response God did not destroy Nineveh and its inhabitants, despite what Jonah had earlier prophesied. Jonah in turn was incensed (Jonah 4:1) that God would back down from His previous decree, and the rest of the book of Jonah is spent in accounting for God’s justification of the whole affair. Thus, to summarize:
- Jonah, a prophet, proclaimed that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days with no qualifiers or loopholes.
- The people of Nineveh repented of their wickedness and turned to God.
- God, who had previously declared the seemingly sealed fate of Nineveh, was turned to mercy with the repentance of the people.
- God, therefore, spared Nineveh from destruction, thus overturning Jonah’s earlier prophecy.
- Jonah, perhaps because the failure of his prophecy made him look bad in the eyes of the people, becomes enraged that God would alter his decrees.
We can thus see from this example that the fulfillment of prophecies in the Old Testament were contingent upon the circumstances and development of the events foretold in the prophecy. It would seem that prophecy in the Old Testament was highly conditional, and not as straightforward as Kramer would have us believe.
If we apply Kramer’s interpretation of Deuteronomy 18 to the example above, then Jonah becomes a false prophet who merits death. After all, he made a prophecy in the name of the Lord that didn’t come to pass. In Kramer’s reading, this is enough to make him a false prophet. Is Kramer willing to allow such a thing? Is he willing to concede that, based on his own standard, Jonah, as well as other Old Testament prophets for that matter, are false prophets? I suspect not, given his general inclinations to uphold the Bible as God’s infallible word. But the whole episode of Jonah once again goes to demonstrate that the Bible’s standard of a true or false prophecy is much more than just whether or not the words of the prognosticator who proclaimed the prophecy were fulfilled or not.
LDS Readings of Deuteronomy 18
John Tvedtnes provides some excellent points in his analysis of Deuteronomy 18, including the insight that “the Deuteronomy passage does not say that a man is a false prophet because his prophecy failed, only that the failed prophecy is false. This being the case, it is incorrect to conclude, as most critics do, that one false prophecy (even if some true prophecies are given) makes Joseph Smith a false prophet.”22 After expanding on the conditional nature of prophecy in the Old Testament and how the critics’ standards condemn biblical prophets just as they condemn Joseph Smith,23 Tvedtnes explores how the Latter-day Saints regard prophets and the nature of prophecy. He quotes Joseph Smith as saying “a prophet [is] a prophet only when he was acting as such”.24 The Saints reject the idea of prophetic infallibility or inerrancy. While the Saints acknowledge that the President of the Church, his counselors in the First Presidency and the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles are “prophets, seers, and revelators”, they do not believe that every word and every pronouncement made by these inspired men are revelations from God or official Church doctrine. President Joseph Fielding Smith, for example, insisted that
it makes no difference what is written or what anyone has said, if what has been said is in conflict with what the Lord has revealed, we can set it aside. My words, and the teachings of any other member of the Church, high or low, if they do not square with the revelations, we need not accept them. Let us have this matter clear. We have accepted the four standard works as the measuring yardsticks, or balances, by which we measure every man’s doctrine. You cannot accept the books written by the authorities of the Church as standards in doctrine, only in so far as they accord with the revealed word in the standard works.25
Michael R. Ash, in a wonderful volume published in 2008, explored this theme and concluded that the Saints, as well as critics of the Church, need to be careful in not applying an impossible standard of perfection to biblical or modern prophets.26 After all, Ash notes, prophets are human beings just like you or me, and thus are prone to the same foibles and follies that all other human beings are subject to. Furthermore, we need not assume that prophets are not allowed to have their own opinions, speculations and personal beliefs that may not necessarily be the revealed word of the Lord, but merely their own views.
Thus, although the Saints wholeheartedly sustain and support their prophets and apostles, they do not expect them to be infallible or perfect. This allows a comfortable balance in Mormon leaders between prophetic decree and revealed doctrine with reasonable doctrinal or scriptural commentary and expounding for the Saints’ edification and guidance.
Returning to Tvedtnes, we are informed that,
there are several basic problems with the various published (and unpublished) criticisms of Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling. But two of these appear to drive all the rest. The first is the predetermined view of the critics that the Bible contains all the revelation God ever gave to man or ever will give. This means that there can no longer be any prophets. By this reasoning, Joseph Smith is a priori a “false prophet.” The second problem is a natural consequence of the first: Since Joseph Smith must be a false prophet, all the evidence is interpreted in a manner to support that view.27
Such prejudiced attitudes make any attempt at a relatively objective non-Mormon exploration into the prophecies of Joseph Smith unlikely, which is truly unfortunate if not unsurprising. Notwithstanding, there are answers to the allegations that Kramer and other critics of Joseph Smith raise, answers which Kramer, not surprisingly, uniformly omits from his presentation in the video.
In short, the approach to Deuteronomy 18 taken by Kramer in The Bible vs. Joseph Smith is rather myopic, and is one that reflects a poor biblical hermeneutic. Keep in mind Kramer’s claim that if even a single prophecy doesn’t come to pass, then the one who uttered it is a false prophet. (A condition, we have seen, that actually isn’t reflected in Deuteronomy 18.) This puts multiple biblical prophets in a bad light, since they cannot escape Kramer’s rigid, all-or-nothing reading of Deuteronomy 18. Is Kramer willing to risk the authenticity of the prophets of the Old Testament by applying his standard to them as well? If not, then he has constructed a double standard to differentiate biblical prophets with Joseph Smith and has fallen prey to a classic logical fallacy.
This Generation
Kramer spends some time on attacking Joseph Smith’s allegedly failed prophecy that a temple would be built in Independence, Missouri in “this generation”:
Joseph Smith made his own predictions about the future, so he too can be tested. Recorded in Mormon scripture is a revelation given through Joseph Smith the prophet that was given in 1832, that a temple shall be built in Missouri. Joseph Smith predicted that the “…temple shall be reared in this generation. For the verily this generation shall not all pass away until an house shall be built unto the Lord,…” Just over a year later, the Mormons were forced to leave the area, and eventually the entire state of Missouri [picture shown of Exodus from Nauvoo] where the temple was prophesied to be built.
The video then shows black and white footage of the conspicuously empty Temple Lot where ground was dedicated for building the temple. The conclusion is inevitable, as Paul Trask “a former follower of Joseph Smith” wraps up the whole affair by pointing out that the Temple Lot is a “completely bare piece of ground with nothing but grass growing on it. And we’re certainly very far removed from the 1830s when that prophecy was given. So certainly this has to be counted as one of many failed prophesies by Joseph Smith.”28
As we have discussed before, prophecy in a biblical context is by nature conditional. The fulfillment of prophecy is contingent upon the circumstances of those involved in the prophecy and the timetable or other variables given that play a factor in the fulfillment of the prophecy. A true prophet may therefore utter a true prophecy that may not necessarily come to pass because the conditions of the prophecy, whether or not those conditions were stipulated in the initial prophecy, direct the fulfillment to take a different course. And yet, even if the contingencies associate with the prophecies ensure that the prophecy doesn’t come to pass, that doesn’t make the one who uttered the prophecy a de facto false prophet.
We have already drawn attention to Jonah and Nineveh. Jonah is still a true prophet even if his prophecy didn’t come to pass. Why so? Because conditions arose that altered the course of the prophecy and the ultimate outcome of the oracle. So it very well could be with Joseph Smith prophesying that a temple would be built in his generation. It may have been a legitimate prophesy that was expected to be fulfilled in the lifetime of the first generation of Latter-day Saints. As the movie points out, albeit in an attempt to bring further condemnation on Mormonism, Elder Orson Pratt of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles fully expected the temple to be built in his generation. However, even if Elder Pratt did think such a thing, and there is no reason to doubt that he did, such only reflects Elder Pratt’s expectations and hopes. We have already noted that LDS prophets and apostles are entitled to their own opinions and views that may not necessarily be a reflection of the official stance of the Church. Furthermore, Orson Pratt clearly did not draw the conclusion that Kramer does, since he did not attack Joseph Smith or leave the Church—Pratt obviously understood something about the biblical and LDS understanding of prophecy that eludes Kramer. An author less self-assured than Kramer might suspect he had missed something.
It therefore seems to me that we could have a modern day example of Jonah and Nineveh with Joseph Smith and Missouri. The prophecy was uttered in full legitimacy, but conditions turned into such that the Lord altered his course or his purposes to fulfill his will. In the case of Jonah the inhabitants of the city of Nineveh repented of their sins and destruction was avoided, even though there was no stipulated condition in the initial prophecy. With Joseph Smith the Saints of Missouri were driven from the state by wild and ferocious mobs and thus any possible construction of the temple was barred.
It should be noted also that this is not the only possible interpretation of the Independence Temple matter. The FAIR Wiki offers a response to this supposedly failed prophecy that is both reasonable and defendable.29 In short, the article argues that instead of being a prophecy the revelation in Doctrine and Covenants 84:2-5 was a commandment; in this case the word “shall” was being used as a directive, not a prediction, as in the “thou shalt nots” of the Ten Commandments. The article also discusses the meaning of the word “generation” and how it applies to a 19th century American context. And finally the article discusses the double standard employed by critics such as Kramer when one considers the prophecy given by Jesus in Matthew 24/Luke 21. It essentially argues that “Joseph Smith’s revelation in D&C 84 may appear on the surface to be a failed prophecy, but a more informed reading reveals that it may not have been a prophecy, and if it is, its fulfillment is still in the future.”30
Whatever the explanation may be, there is more to the revelation given in D&C 84 than Kramer wants to allow. Because of his narrow reading of Deuteronomy 18 and his uninformed understanding of the nature of biblical prophecy, Kramer hastily concludes that D&C 84 is simply a failed prophecy. This conclusion, however, doesn’t square with all the possible explanations.
Part 2: Biblical Textual Criticism and the Book of Mormon
The claim is often made, as it is by Kramer in the video, that the Bible has been remarkably well preserved. He brands Nephi a false prophet for falsely predicting that there would be corruptions to the texts of the Bible after the time of the Christ. The claim is made in the video that “when we are talking about the New Testament we are talking about the best ever, well known book of antiquity. And the difference between what we know between the New Testament and any other book from antiquity is amazing!”
In discussing the Book of Mormon and Nephi’s prophecy, the video offers a rather peculiar line of criticism that deserves some attention:
Kramer: So to test Nephi’s prophecy, I talked to Greek linguist Dr. Christophe Rico, because he is an expert on the reliability of the Bible.
(Kramer explains that Nephi was a prophet in 600 BC, and Rico gives him an amused, incredulous looks).
Dr. Rico: Well the first thing is, I won’t find any scholar who will take seriously the statement that this prophet is from the years 600 and 592 years before Christ. The first question I would ask, or the first demand I would ask, is that they produce a single manuscript of this prophet. I mean there is nothing. There is not a single manuscript either from antiquity or even from the Middle Ages that they could produce. So this is a text that has been written in modern times. There is nothing more that can be said about it.
Kramer: But what happened was the gold plates were given to Joseph Smith. He copied them, he translated from them and then the gold plates were taken back into heaven.
Dr. Rico: OK. You know tomorrow I can come and say “Look I’ve had a revelation from heaven and this is the holy book and all the other stuff is nonsense. I can do that. So the only guarantor of it is me. What does it mean? Does it mean anything?
Kramer [narrating]: So there are no ancient manuscripts to backup the prophecy of Nephi about the loss of many plain and precious parts of the Bible.
This criticism from a fundamentalist Evangelical Protestant is, quite frankly, mind boggling. Does Kramer realize the flagrant double standard he is employing against the Book of Mormon when compared to another ancient book that has no manuscripts that date to the time that its authors purportedly lived called the Bible? Kramer wants us to believe that the Book of Mormon is on shaky ground because it contains no ancient manuscripts that date to the time of its purported authorship. In other words, because no manuscripts come directly from Nephi but instead we have only a 19th century purported translation of Nephi’s record which we cannot directly examine, that therefore means that the Book of Mormon must be suspect.
But this is exactly what we have with the Bible. No manuscripts date contemporaneously to Moses (if he is even the author of the Pentateuch to begin with), Ezekiel, Daniel, Joshua, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah or any of the biblical prophets. What we have are copies of the texts that date hundreds of years after the autographs were purportedly written. Of all of the manuscripts that Kramer enlists as evidence for his claim, none of them are autographs and all of them date hundreds of years after the autographs. But Kramer and Dr. Rico also seem to forget that not having the Ur-text of a book but instead only later copies or translations is quite normal in the ancient world. Dr. Daniel C. Peterson has recently written on this subject, which is worth quoting at length:
One objection that has been advanced against some of the work prominently done at the Maxwell Institute holds, for instance, that any apologetic effort attempting to defend the antiquity of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Moses, and the Book of Abraham inescapably makes faulty assumptions about the verifiability of those texts. Why? Because the versions of these scriptures that we have today are in English and date from the nineteenth century, and because we do not possess (and, hence, cannot examine) the putative original-language texts from which they are claimed to have been translated. Accordingly, the objection runs, they cannot plausibly be read, used, tested, or analyzed as ancient historical documents. They can only be read as documents of the nineteenth century, as illustrations of, and in the light of, that period. This is, we are told, an insurmountable problem. But it isn’t. Scholars routinely test the claims to historicity of translated documents for which no original-language manuscripts are extant and, also routinely, having satisfied themselves of their authenticity, use them as valuable scholarly resources for understanding the ancient world. A few instances should make the point evident beyond reasonable dispute:
• Slavonic Enoch (2 Enoch) is probably the classic example. Coptic fragments of this work, which is commonly dated to the first century AD, have only recently been found. Although the text is generally regarded as having been written in Greek, or perhaps even in Hebrew or Aramaic before that, it survives in its entirety only in Old Church Slavonic, in medieval manuscripts dating from the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries.
• Similarly, 1 Enoch—or, as it is also called, Ethiopic Enoch or simply the Book of Enoch—was probably written somewhere between 300 BC and the close of the first century before Christ, in either Aramaic or Hebrew or some combination of the two. Fragments survive in Aramaic, Greek, and Latin, but the entire text is known today only in the Ge?ez language of Ethiopia, preserved in manuscripts dating to the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries.
• The pseudepigraphic Apocalypse of Abraham was probably composed between roughly ad 70 and ad 150, in Hebrew. It survives today, however, only in medieval Slavonic. (The Slavonic version may have been translated directly from the original or, alternatively, from a Greek translation of the author’s Hebrew.) Recall the suggestion mentioned above that the Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, and Book of Moses cannot legitimately be read or evaluated as ancient documents because we have them only in purported nineteenth- century translations. The Apocalypse of Abraham is generally regarded by scholars as a crucial document for understanding the earliest roots of Jewish mysticism; to the best of my knowledge, nobody has argued that it can validly be employed only to understand the Slavic Middle Ages.
• The Gospel of Thomas exists in a corrupt fourth-century Coptic manuscript. A tiny fragment of it exists in Greek, though, and Greek is thought to be the original language. Debate rages about whether it should be seen as a first- or second- century writing. Nobody suggests that it can shed light on only the world of fourth-century Coptic speakers.
• The Discourse of the Abbatôn exists only in Coptic. It claims to be a translation of an original kept in Jerusalem, but nobody knows whether this is true nor what the original language might have been if it wasn’t Coptic.
• The kabbalistic Sefer Ha-Razim, or “Book of Secrets,” was found in the Cairo Genizah but was pieced together and recognized at the University of Oxford in the middle of the twentieth century. The most important extant manuscript witnesses for the text include Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic fragments and a thirteenth-century Latin translation. It contains some passages in Greek written in Hebrew script, but those portions go back to an Egyptian original. There is almost universal consensus that the original text dates to the early fourth or late third century after Christ.
• The Gilgamesh and Atrahasis epics are known from Akkadian versions, but they derive from lost Sumerian originals.
• The biblical book of Daniel features large portions in Aramaic, although it is often thought that they were originally Hebrew. The original setting of the book is quite disputed.
• The (still unpublished) Book of the Temple was first discovered in a Greek manuscript, but now there are copies in Demotic, hieratic, and hieroglyphs, and it is known to be an Egyptian original.
• Likewise, several of the apocrypha (such as Ben Sirach) were known only from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint and were argued to have been originally composed in Hebrew before Hebrew manuscripts actually appeared.
• Origen’s De Principiis, or On First Principles, is known only from the Latin translation of Rufinus, dating to roughly a century and a half after Origen, and from a few quotations in Greek by other authors.
• Only one of Irenaeus’s works (Against the Heresies) is known in an original Latin version.
• Some of the works of the important early Greek-speaking Christian historian Eusebius are known only in Armenian translations.
• Likewise, as much as a quarter of the oeuvre of the prolific Greek-speaking Jewish thinker Philo of Alexandria (d. ad 50) has reached us only through Armenian versions dating to the late sixth century. Nobody thinks that they tell us only about late-sixth-century Armenia and nothing about first-century Philo.
• The third-century-BC Egyptian historian Manetho is known only from later quotations, some written in Armenian and Latin and only a small portion written in his original Greek.
• The New Testament Gospel of Matthew is thought by many scholars to have originally been written not in the Greek form in which we know it today, but in either Hebrew or Aramaic. Statements to this effect go back as early as the second century. Yet this Semitic urtext, if it ever existed, hasn’t been seen by anyone for many centuries.
The principle that, because they claim to be translations of unavailable ancient texts, the Book of Mormon, the Book of Moses, and the Book of Abraham can legitimately be studied only in the context of the nineteenth-century United States is unreasonable. If it were generalized to the study of the ancient world, it would cripple much of the study of Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Jewish, and Christian history. No scholar of antiquity of whom I am aware would agree to so indefensible and arbitrary a limitation.31
No scholar, it would appear, besides Dr. Rico.32
In the video Kramer also appeals to the Dead Sea Scrolls to see if any “plain and precious” parts of the Bible are missing, as per Nephi’s prophecy. The claim is presented in the video that the Dead Sea Scrolls are proof positive that there have been no corruptions to the biblical texts and therefore Nephi was a false prophet.33 However, the earlier we go, the more variations and textual corruptions we see. Let us start our investigation with the New Testament.
Textual Corruption of the New Testament
While figures like 99.9% textual purity are bandied about by Evangelical Protestants,34 scholars are much more considerate of the evidence, and that the first two centuries of Christianity reveal a wide divergence in the biblical texts.35 For instance, Philip W. Comfort and David P. Barrett, commenting on the Gospel of John portrayed in two manuscripts (Codex Vaticanus and p75) reveal 85% agreement, leaving 15% disagreement. This is a far-cry from the 99.9% figure!36 Further, Comfort and Barrett also reveal that the text of the Epistle to the Hebrews in p13 and p46 display 80% agreement and 20% disagreement.37
The German biblical scholar David Trobisch argues that the whole New Testament also underwent considerable redactional activity around the middle of the second century C.E. that essentially solidified what we now call the Textus Receptus and therefore this is actually as far back as we can reconstruct the text – what the documents looked like before this redaction is almost entirely inaccessible to us now.38
Contemporary with early Christianity, there were charges of corrupting the New Testament texts by early Christians themselves. Peter noted that one of the processes of corruption, misinterpretation, had started in apostolic times.
And account that longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you: As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction (2 Peter 3:15-16).39
Justin Martyr, a Christian philosopher who lived in the middle of the second century, levels the following accusation against the Jews: “From the ninety-fifth [ninety-sixth] Psalm they have taken away this short saying of the words of David: ‘From the wood.’ For when the passage said, ‘Tell ye among the nations, the Lord hath reigned from the wood,’ they have left, ‘Tell ye among the nations, the Lord hath reigned.’”40
Finally, we must remember that in the LDS view, the corruption of scripture discussed in the Book of Mormon occurred in the earliest first century—a century before even the earliest New Testament manuscripts extant. Nephi reports how many “plain and precious things” will be “taken away” (1 Nephi 13:28)—the deletion of text is the simplest way to suppress information, and it will leave the least evidence behind. Text that has been removed is simply gone from the tradition—thus, the changes to which LDS scripture alludes would have mostly taken place prior to the earliest manuscripts, and before a time when scholars can say much with any confidence about the future New Testament’s contents.41
Are New Testament Variants Significant?
It is true that most of the variant readings of the biblical texts are rather minor, the result of dittography and other characteristics one comes across from a copied work. Notwithstanding, scholars now admit that a number of these variants are of a theological importance. Bart D. Ehrman, writing in 1993, explained that some scribes corrupted New Testament texts for theological and apologetic reasons.42
Many familiar New Testament stories have been seen by some scholars to be textual corruptions of the texts. The story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery is arguably the best known of these, appearing in John 7:53-8:12. Despite all the brilliance of the story, its captivating quality, and its inherent intrigue, according to some scholars there is one major problem with the story. As it turns out, it was not originally in the Gospel of John. Instead, it is said to have been added later by scribes.
How do we know this? Scholars who work on the manuscript tradition have no doubt about this case. For instance, its writing style is very different from what we find in the rest of John (including the stories immediately before and after) and it includes a large number of words and phrases that are otherwise alien to the Gospel. The conclusion is unavoidable: this passage was not originally part of the Gospel. It seems that it was originally part of an oral tradition about Jesus that made its way into marginal notes of early New Testament texts, only later being added to the New Testament in the Medieval era.43 As a matter of fact, textual corruption of the New Testament texts seemed to have been such a significant concern that a page from the 4th century Codex Vaticanus contains a dire warning an unnamed “fool and knave” and charges him to “leave the old reading, don’t change it!”44
In concluding his study of the transmission of the New Testament, Ehrman gives a detailed summary of the “salient facts” that have direct relevance to our present investigation:
- “We do not have the original manuscripts of any of the books of the New Testament, but only copies – over 5,000 copies, just in the Greek language, in which these books were originally written.”45
- “Most of these copies are centuries removed from the originals.”46
- “All of these copies contain mistakes both great and small, as scribes either inadvertently or intentionally altered the text.”
- “The vast majority of these changes are insignificant, immaterial, and of no importance for the meaning of the passages in which they are found.”
- “Others, however, are quite significant. Sometimes the meaning of a verse, a passage, or an entire book depends on which textual variants the scholars decide are ‘original’.”47
- “These decisions are sometimes relatively simple to make; but in other instances they are exceedingly difficult, even for scholars who have spent years working on the problem.”
- “As a result, there are many passages of the New Testament where scholars continue to debate the original wording. And there are some in which we will probably never know what the authors originally wrote.”48
Far from representing an unassailable scholarly consensus, Kramer’s model flies in the face of virtually everything we know (and don’t know!) about the textual history of the New Testament.
Textual Corruptions of the Old Testament
Now let us examine the text of the Old Testament and see if Kramer’s arguments for a more or less perfectly preserved text holds up under scrutiny. In his study of this issue, David Clines of the University of Sheffield wrote that the
earlier a text in the Hebrew Bible in parallel transmission (2 Kings 22 // Psalm 18) that displayed a sizeable number of variants (104) when the two forms were compared with one another. When we went on to compare with those Masoretic Hebrew Bible texts the Hebrew text that Septuagint manuscripts witness to in common we found more variants (9). When we considered an individual Septuagint manuscript, Vaticanus, we found more variants still (9). When we examined a group of manuscripts, the Lucianic recension, we found yet more variants (39). When we brought the Syriac into the frame, we discovered again more variants (9). When we looked at the one Qumran fragment of 2 Samuel, we found further variants (9). We can hardly doubt that if the Qumran text of 2 Samuel 22 were entire, or if there were more than one Qumran manuscript containing this chapter, there would be more variants still.
Every time we find a manuscript, we find variants. Let us consider the situation with the text of Isaiah. Our textbooks tell us that 1QIsaa has many variants compared with the Masoretic text, but no one tells us how many. In an early article, Millar Burrows listed (by my count) 536 variants, excluding ‘a great many other variants’, whatever they were, and excluding corrections made to the original manuscript of 1QIsaa by the original scribe or an early corrector. If that is the correct number of variant, it would mean that in this single manuscript alone, there is a difference from the Masoretic text in at least one out of every 31 words. But that is too small a number; if we look at the variants that Otto Eissfeldt collected for the seventh edition of Biblia Hebraica (the 1951 edition of what is usually called the third edition of Biblia Hebraica, BH3), we find (again by my count) that the figure is more like 1698 variants, i.e. one in every 9.77 words. It seems highly probable that the more manuscripts we find, the more variants we will identify. Perhaps we will not find any more manuscripts, but we can be certain that many more existed than those we have now.49
The Dead Sea Scrolls, contrary to the presentation given in The Bible vs. Joseph Smith, is actually a star witness to the problems of the transmission of the Old Testament biblical texts. While some passages have been transmitted with some accuracy, such as the Fourth Servant Hymn of Isaiah 52:13-53:12, problems are plentiful for those who hold Kramer’s untenable views.
Of the two Isaiah scrolls discovered at Qumran, one corresponds more closely to the Masoretic Hebrew text while the other the modern Hebrew text. Detailed examination of these texts leads scholars to conclude that although the two Isaiah scrolls were preserved for the last 2000 years, they were not as well preserved from 700 BC to 200 BC (the period during which the Qumran texts were produced). Otherwise, there would not have been two very different version after the first 500 years.50
The Qumran Book of Jeremiah is considerably different from the Masoretic Hebrew text of Jeremiah from the Medieval period (e.g., the Dead Sea Scroll’s version of Jeremiah is only 87.5% of the length of the Masoretic 51), and among the Qumran corpus there are two different books of Ezekiel, the second being pseudo-Ezekiel. Five times more non-canonical texts were discovered at Qumran than those that are canonized in the Protestant canon, and many theological corruptions post-dating the Dead Sea Scrolls are now obvious thanks to the discoveries at Qumran. Thus, without the scrolls, there would be corruption that we didn’t know about, and which Kramer would likely deny. Furthermore, Kramer’s appeal to the Dead Sea Scrolls doesn’t do much to prove his fundamentalist Protestant notion of the infallibility of the Bible or the near perfect preservation of the text since “it is impossible to establish who wrote or copied [the Qumran texts]. [W]e cannot determine their canonical status… [or] agree upon [what] was exact boundaries of the canon as well as the final textual form of the individual books.”52
In short, while the Dead Sea Scrolls have been revolutionary in revising our understanding of the nature of the Old Testament texts (indeed, their importance cannot be overstated), it is entirely irresponsible for Kramer to claim, as he does on the video, that the Dead Sea Scrolls prove that there have been no corruptions of the Old Testament texts and that Nephi is thus a false prophet. As a matter of fact, the Dead Sea Scrolls not only prove a level of corruption of the different texts of the Old Testament but also throw into doubt the entire question of which texts the ancient Hebrews considered canonical and which weren’t.
Dr. Donald W. Parry, in an important study on the Dead Sea Scrolls published in 1997, notes that “although the DSS biblical texts bring us one thousand years closer to the original words of the prophets, we still do not have the so-called autograph texts, that is, those which were penned by the prophets (or the scribes of the prophets) themselves. We posses copies of the apograph texts, which were created several hundred years after the autograph texts.” Dr. Parry notes that “various errors” have crept into the texts of the Bible, a fact which is attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls. “Variant readings are frequent in the ancient versions and textual witnesses of the Old Testament. Students of biblical Hebrew simply need look at the… scholars’ editions of the Hebrew Bible… to discover that variant readings are listed on every page of the Bible.”53
Now I must clarify that, contrary to the popular Evangelical anti-Mormon claim, I am not gleefully pointing out the above facts because I disdain or distrust the Bible and want to prove that the Bible is unreliable or corrupted beyond any salvaging. As a Latter-day Saint I wholeheartedly believe that the Bible is the word of God as far as it is translated [or transmitted] correctly(Articles of Faith 1:8). While I do acknowledge the unavoidable conclusion that there have been corruptions to the texts of the Bible, as well as other LDS scripture for that matter, I also believe most of the basic, fundamental historical narratives and theological principles in the Bible to be accurate and inspired of God. I earnestly reject any notion of scriptural infallibility but simultaneously find great inspiration and value in the Bible.
The reason I have discussed the previous issues is to show how monstrously disingenuous it is for Kramer to claim that the Bible has been nearly perfectly preserved and that there are no major issues concerning textual corruption in the texts of the Old and New Testaments. His fundamentalist claims of biblical preservation fly in the face of the evidence offered by the manuscripts and his charges of fraud on the Book of Mormon’s part concerning the loss of many “plain and precious” things in the Bible are entirely without merit. Kramer owes it to his primarily Evangelical Christian audience (many of whom I assume share most of Kramer’s views on the Bible) to at least acknowledge that there is a much more heated controversy surrounding the textual transmission of the Bible than he would like to admit. Such subterfuge, in the end, will not help him or his followers when eventually confronted by these controversies.54
On (Mis)understanding the Joseph Smith Translation
Kramer includes an attack on Joseph Smith’s inspired revisions of the Bible, commonly called the Joseph Smith Translation (JST).55 According to Kramer “Joseph Smith claimed the Bible was not translated correctly, so he did his own translation of the Bible.” Kramer, as a fundamentalist Protestant, cannot abide the claim that the Bible is not inerrant or infallible, hence his need to attack the authenticity of JST to secure his own theological premises. Unfortunately, Kramer makes the same sort of fundamentalist mistakes in understanding the JST that, ironically, many believing Latter-day Saints make. The whole issue revolves around the word “translation” used by Joseph Smith in describing his work.
When most people today hear the word “translation” in the context of biblical studies they think of the standard academic pursuit of scouring over ancient manuscripts and rendering Greek, Hebrew, or Latin into 21st century English. However, to Joseph Smith and 19th century Mormons, the word “translation” had a much broader range of meaning and implication. From Joseph Smith’s works we soon learn that to him the word “translation” seems to have been synonymous with “revelation”. Thus, we should consider how Joseph Smith used the word “translation” in different contexts.
It is a fundamental Mormon belief that Joseph Smith “translated” the Book of Mormon from ancient plates of gold that were written in a script called by Moroni “reformed Egyptian” (Mormon 9:32) by the gift and power of God. Or, in other words, through divine investiture Joseph Smith was given the ability to render the script on the plates into English.56 Although Joseph was interested in an academic assessment of the plates and the characters thereon, as is seen with the Martin Harris/Charles Anthon episode, he did not use standard academic procedures in translating the text. It was done through divine means. In this sense Joseph “translated” in the more readily understood usage of the term, albeit through divine rather than mortal means.
Doctrine and Covenants 7 further illustrates how Joseph understood the concept of “translation”. In this section we read of a parchment made by John the Beloved and “hidden up by himself”. Through means of the Urim and Thummim Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery received a “revelation” of the “translated version” of John’s testimony. Notice that Joseph and Oliver had no access to the manuscript itself but by “revelation” were able to discern its contents and create a “translation”.
The Book of Abraham is another example of Joseph’s fluid usage of the word “translation”. Although it is not my intention to provide an in-depth discussion on how the Book of Abraham was translated, as there are competing theories that each carry compelling evidence, it is sufficient to note that some LDS scholars have reasonably argued that Joseph Smith was “translating” in the sense that he “translated” the scroll of John in D&C 7. In other words, the Egyptian papyri he received in 1835 acted as a catalyst (just as the Urim and Thummim acted as a catalyst) for Joseph Smith to receive by revelation the ancient record of Abraham, which he “translated” accordingly.57
And finally, Joseph did use the word “translate” in the general, secular sense of the word to describe his activities in studying biblical Greek, Hebrew, Latin and German in the School of the Prophets and later throughout his life.58
So what is the “New Translation” or “Joseph Smith Translation”? We have seen that Joseph Smith used the phrase “translation” rather openly to refer to items that he may not have necessarily “translated” in the normal sense. From the historical evidence we known that Joseph did not utilize ancient Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible in constructing his inspired revisions to the Bible. Rather, he went over a King James Version of the Bible and made changes, additions, deletions or corrections that he felt appropriate as the Spirit directed him. Thus, the Joseph Smith Translation is not strictly a pure restoration of the original texts of the Bible. It is not solely a restoration of the pristine biblical texts as they were originally written by the biblical authors.59 Unlike Kramer and his brand of fundamentalism, Joseph and the Latter-day Saints had no fixed conviction that only an inerrant, pristine text could lead them to salvation.
The late Robert J. Matthews was the leading authority of the JST. His research on the JST still remains the standard foundational work on the subject. Matthews concluded after careful study of the JST that Joseph Smith’s revisions can fall into four categories:
- “Portions may amount to restorations of content material once written by the biblical authors but since deleted from the Bible.”
- “Portions may consist of a record of actual historical events that were not recorded, or were recorded but never included in the biblical collection.”
- “Portions may consist of inspired commentary by the Prophet Joseph Smith, enlarged, elaborated, and even adapted to a latter-day situation. This may be similar to what Nephi meant by “Likening” the scriptures to himself and his people in their particular circumstance. (See 1 Nephi 19:23-24; 2 Nephi 11:8).”
- “Some items may be a harmonization of doctrinal concepts that were revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith independently of his translation of the Bible, but by means of which he was able to discover that a biblical passage was inaccurate.”60
Professors Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Dana M. Pike and David Rolph Seely succinctly explain that “the changes Joseph Smith made to the biblical text include restoring original text that had been lost over the centuries during transmission, adding prophetic commentary and inspired application, modernizing the archaic language of the KJV, and revealing the history and doctrine not found in the original text – augmenting the original source with inspired information and insights”.61
Considering, therefore, that the Joseph Smith Translation is not strictly a translation in the conventional, scholarly understanding, is it therefore appropriate at all to call it a “translation”? The answer is yes. In another publication Professor Matthews explored the range of possibilities that come into consideration with the JST when one considers the word “translation”, as we have discussed before. He reminds us that
it would be informative to consider various meanings of the word translate. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives these definitions: “To turn from one language into another retaining the sense”; also, “To express in other words, to paraphrase.” It gives another meaning as, “To interpret, explain, expound the significance of.” Other dictionaries give approximately the same definitions as the OED. Although we generally think of translation as having to do with changing a word text from one language to another, that is not the only usage of the word. Translate equally means to express an idea or statement in other words, even in the same language. If people are unfamiliar with certain terminology in their own tongue, they will need an explanation. The explanation may be longer than the original, yet the original had all the meaning, either stated or implied. In common everyday discourse, when we hear something stated ambiguously or in highly technical terms, we ask the speaker to translate it for us. It is not expected that the response must come in another language, but only that the first statement be made clear. The speaker’s new statement is a form of translation because it follows the basic purpose and intent of the word translation, which is to render something in understandable form…Every translation is an interpretation—a version. The translation of language cannot be a mechanical operation … Translation is a cognitive and functional process because there is not one word in every language to match with exact words in every other language. Gender, case, tense, terminology, idiom, word order, obsolete and archaic words, and shades of meaning—all make translation an interpretive process.62
With this in mind, let us turn our attention to Kramer’s specific charges leveled against the JST.
John 1:1
As we have noted before, Kramer uses this text as a jumping point into his “Mormons worship a different Jesus” polemic:
Narrator: A key verse that Joseph Smith rewrote is John 1:1, that refers to Jesus as the word. In the Bible, John 1:1 reads “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” But Smith’s version reads, “In the beginning was the gospel preached through the Son. And the gospel was the word, and the word was with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was of God.” By changing “was God” to “was of God” Smith stripped Jesus of his deity.
Dr. Rico: “The word was with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was of God.” Not a single scholar could tell you that this is an accurate translation of the Gospel of John. The most ancient copy of the Gospel of John that we have goes back to the year 150 more or less. That is the papyrus which is called Papyrus 66. We are very sure about the text that we have.
While Dr. Rico is corrected that Papyrus 66 contains a near complete copy of the Gospel of John, we must urge caution with the conclusions the video draws from this fact. First, while it is nice and certainly helpful to have an early copy of the text, the fact remains that we don’t have the autograph of John. Papyrus 66 dates to the second century and is thus nearly a century removed from the composition of John’s autograph. Thus, the confidence we have of what was on the autograph must be tempered by caution since we are without access to the original. We know next to nothing of the state of the text prior to 150 CE. There is still some uncertainty as to what really was originally written by John without being able to examine his autograph directly. This uncertainty at least leaves some possibility that JST John 1:1 was a restoration of the autograph after scribal corruption.
Secondly, as noted above the JST is not entirely a restoration of the original biblical texts, although portions of the JST may very well be such.63 Thus, it is likely that Joseph’s comments in JST John 1:1 amount not to a restoration of the original text but instead something of an inspired midrashic commentary on the text. In this case, the Prophet Joseph seems to be stressing that the “Word” (Greek: Logos) was not only the pre-mortal Son of God but also the Gospel which he preached “in the beginning”. Considering that other Latter-day Saint scripture speaks of the Only Begotten Son of God as “the word of [God’s] power” (Moses 1:32; cf. 2:5), there is no real contradiction between the standard John 1:1 and JST John 1:1. Latter-day Saints do believe that Jesus was indeed the Logos, or Word, but, as the JST clarifies, so too was the Gospel which he preached.
Joseph’s understanding of his biblical “translation” project is further enhanced when we realize that D&C 93 contains a direct reference to the same material. “If you are faithful you shall receive the fulness of the record of John,” Joseph reports the Lord saying. Then, material analogous to the first chapter of John—but different from the KJV and the JST—is presented: “in the beginning the Word was, for he was the Word, even the messenger of salvation” (93:8). This Word—both the gospel and its messenger—is also (despite Rico’s uninformed opinion to the contrary) clearly assigned a divine role:
I, John, bear record that I beheld his glory, as the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth…he received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness;… I, John, bear record that he received a fulness of the glory of the Father; And he received all power, both in heaven and on earth, and the glory of the Father was with him, for he dwelt in him” (D&C 93:11-17).
It is difficult to credit Rico’s claim that a Word with “all power” and “the fullness of the glory of the Father” is not divine.
Isaiah 29/2 Nephi 27
Kramer attacks the validity of JST Isaiah 29 and 2 Nephi 27. He claims that Joseph Smith merely added references to himself and the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon in an attempt to bolster his own prophetic credibility with a self-fulfilling prophecy. All we need to do, Kramer says, to “test Joseph Smith’s translation of Isaiah is compare it to the Great Isaiah scroll.” And since, according to Dr. Randall Price, the Great Isaiah Scroll amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls “doesn’t support his translation” then it is obvious that the JST is false.64
Once again we must urge caution with this conclusion. First, I have serious misgivings that the Great Isaiah Scroll is proof positive that there has been absolutely no textual corruption to the text of Isaiah, as discussed above. As important to our understanding of the book of Isaiah as the Great Isaiah Scroll is, the fact remains that the Isaiah scroll dates to several centuries after the composition of Isaiah in the seventh/sixth century BC.65 As is the case of the Gospel of John, as well as all the other biblical books for that matter, we simply lack the autograph of Isaiah’s text and thus we cannot be absolutely certain that there was no textual corruption in the centuries between the book of Isaiah’s composition and the copy found at Qumran.66 All the evidence that we do have of textual transmission suggests that a perfectly-preserved, inerrant text is a virtual impossibility, despite the importance of this belief for Kramer’s world-view.
A second possibility, and one that I find more likely, is that Joseph Smith was bringing JST Isaiah 29 into conformity with Nephi’s earlier adapting or “likening” of the Isaiah text to his prophecies of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. As Robert A. Cloward has argued, “Nephi likened Isaiah 29 to his own circumstances, formulating an original prophecy that gave the old scripture new significance and saw the fulfillment in the Book of Mormon.”67 What Joseph Smith did, in effect, was bring the Isaiah text in the JST to conformity with the text of the Book of Mormon in 2 Nephi 27 (which was in turn Nephi’s own adapting of the text of Isaiah to liken it unto his own circumstances and prophetic teachings) since such would have been more applicable and significant to the Saints, who see the Martin Harris/Charles Anthon incident as directly fulfilled prophecy of Isaiah 29:9-15. In this case, there was no intended restoration of the original text of Isaiah (thus rendering any of Kramer’s appeal to the Great Isaiah Scroll moot) but instead an attempt to harmonize Isaiah with Nephi’s earlier commentary of the text in order to adapt it to the faith and understanding of the modern Saints.68 Kramer’s preoccupation with a one-and-only true, perfect text is not shared by Joseph Smith or the biblical authors, much less Nephi.
Romans 4:16
No attack on the faith of the Saints from an fundamentalist Protestant would be complete without an assault on LDS soteriology. Kramer, in his conversation with Dr. Rico, brings up JST Romans 4:16 as further evidence that Joseph Smith’s inspired translation is not only bogus but blasphemous:
Narrator: Joseph Smith also changed Romans 4:16. Here the apostle Paul declares how men are saved when he writes, “…therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace;” But Smith’s version reads, “…therefore ye are justified of faith and works, through grace,…” Joseph Smith added, “and works” to Paul’s gospel of which he warned “…even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let him be eternally condemned.”
Dr. Rico: You “are justified of faith and works”?
Kramer: So, he added, “and works”?
Dr. Rico: Yep.
Kramer: So that…
Dr. Rico: The, the word “works” is not there.
Kramer, taking his cue from Martin Luther himself, engages in the classic exercise of Protestant proof texting of the letters of Paul to support the Protestant doctrine of salvation by grace alone, peppered with the typical sectarian charge that the Mormons follow “another Gospel” (Galatians 1:6-9).69 It is not within the scope of this essay to argue the intricacies of demonstrably biblically sound LDS soteriology.70 Rather, I wish merely to point out that in all likelihood we have another example of Joseph Smith, through his inspired revisions, clarifying and bringing into harmony Paul’s statement in Romans 4:16 with other Pauline teachings that stress the importance of good works that make the grace of Christ efficacious in the life of the Saints.71 It seems that Joseph was attempting to prevent exactly what Kramer and other Protestant theologians have a tendency on doing when encountering the writings of the Paul, namely, overemphasizing an unbalanced view of grace while ignoring the importance of works.
Kramer also ignores that another of the JST’s edits would seem to undercut his theory that Joseph is trying to shoehorn a “works-based” theology into Romans. JST Romans 4:4-5 reads:
Now to him that worketh who is justified by the law of works, is the reward not reckoned, not of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not seeketh not to be justified by the law of works, but believeth on him who justifieth not the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness (italics are JST alterations, KJV deletions stricken out).
Joseph goes even further in JST Romans 3:24, changing “being justified freely by his grace” to “being justified only by his grace”—a strange move indeed if Rico and Kramer’s surmises are correct.
Once again Kramer misses the mark entirely in his criticisms of JST Romans 4:16. He entirely misunderstands the nature of Joseph Smith’s revisions at this passage in a slavish attempt to criticize LDS soteriology.
In short, Kramer’s handling of the JST is sloppy, ignorant, polemical and highly suspect. His desire is nothing more than to score theological points against Gifford, and the Mormons in general, by appealing to authority and making broad, sweeping, conclusions that aren’t warranted by the evidence.
The Latter-day Saint View of the Bible
Consistently throughout the film there is a general impression generated by Kramer that Mormons view the Bible with utter contempt or disdain. He exaggerates statements in the Book of Mormon and by LDS leaders that speak of the loss of many “plain and precious” truths from the original biblical texts in what I can only sense is an attempt to make his Evangelical audience become more alienated from the claims of Mormonism. Thus, as previously noted, we discover from the video that “Joseph Smith claimed the Bible was not translated correctly, so he did his own translation of the Bible” and that he thought that “the Bible of the Christians is nonsense.”72
This is an egregiously oversimplified, even caricatured, explanation of how Joseph Smith, and, by implication the Latter-day Saints as a whole, felt about the Bible.73 Although it is common for sectarian anti-Mormons to claim that the Mormons have a long and deep-rooted disdain for the Bible over their other books of scripture, the following quotations from LDS leaders beginning with Joseph Smith should allow the reader to see how the eighth Article of Faith is a true statement of our belief in the Bible as the word of God, as far as it translated correctly:
- Joseph Smith: “I believe the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers. Ignorant translators, careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests have committed many errors.”74
- Brigham Young: “We as Latter-day Saints have confessed before Heaven, before the heavenly hosts, and before the inhabitants of the earth, that we really believe the Scriptures as they are given to us, according to the best understanding and knowledge that we have of the translation, and the spirit and meaning of the Old and New Testaments”75
- John Taylor: “Do not trust in yourselves, but study the best books— the Bible and Book of Mormon—and get all the information you can, and then cleave to God and keep yourselves free from corruption and pollution of every kind, and the blessings of the Most High will be with you.”76
- Wilford Woodruff: “Read the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the records which the Lord has given unto us, and treasure up these revelations and see what the Lord has promised unto us. We then treasure up something of worth to us.”77
- Joseph F. Smith: “The Bible, as all other books of Holy Writ, to be appreciated must be studied by those spiritually inclined and who are in quest of spiritual truths.”78
- Heber J. Grant: “All my life I have been finding additional evidences that the Bible is the Book of books.”79
- Joseph Fielding Smith: “The Holy Bible…is inspired and contains the word of the Lord delivered to his prophets, who wrote and spoke as they were moved upon by the Holy Ghost, since the world began.”80
- Harold B. Lee: “We are set apart to teach the principles of the gospel as found in the four standard works—the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.”81
- Spencer W. Kimball: “What a satisfaction it was to me to realize I had read the Bible through from beginning to end! And what exultation of spirit! And what joy in the over-all picture I had received of its contents!”82
- Gordon B. Hinckley: “The Bible is a marvelous book. I wish everyone would read the Bible more…It is a marvelous work.”83
The point should be obvious, but just to make sure that there is no lingering suspicion:
- True to the Faith: “In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we revere the Bible and its sacred teachings. We can receive strength and comfort from the biblical accounts of God’s dealings with His people.”84
- Preach My Gospel: “Latter-day Saints ‘believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly’ (Articles of Faith 1:8). Far from competing with the Bible, the Book of Mormon supports it, exhorts us to read it, and testifies of the truthfulness of its message.”85
- Gospel Principles: “The Bible is a collection of sacred writings containing God’s revelations to man.”86
- LDS.org: “The Bible is the word of God. It is a witness for God and Jesus Christ. Members of the Church are encouraged to study it and follow its teachings… The Bible is not God’s final revelation to humanity, however, and neither is this collection of sacred writings complete… Other books of Latter-day Saint scripture—the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price—clarify the gospel as taught in the Bible and corroborate the truthfulness of the Biblical witness of Jesus Christ.”87
- M. Russell Ballard: “Brothers and sisters, I am sure many of you have had the experience of hearing people say that ‘Mormons are not Christians because they have their own Bible, the Book of Mormon.’ To anyone harboring this misconception, we say that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior and the author of our salvation and that we believe, revere, and love the Holy Bible. We do have additional sacred scripture, including the Book of Mormon, but it supports the Bible, never substituting for it.”88
- Jeffrey R. Holland: “We love and revere the Bible… The Bible is the word of God. It is always identified first in our canon, our “standard works.”89
- Russell M. Nelson: “Love for the Book of Mormon expands one’s love for the Bible and vice versa. Scriptures of the Restoration do not compete with the Bible; they complement the Bible. We are indebted to martyrs who gave their lives so that we could have the Bible. It establishes the everlasting nature of the gospel and of the plan of happiness.”90
- D. Todd Christofferson: “Consider the magnitude of our blessing to have the Holy Bible and some 900 additional pages of scripture, including the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.”91
- George Q. Cannon: “The clause in the Articles of Faith regarding the mistakes in the translation of the Bible was never inserted to encourage us to spend our time in searching out and studying those errors, but to emphasize the idea that it is the truth and the truth only that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints accepts, no matter where it is found.”92
- Bruce R. McConkie: “There are no people upon the earth who hold the Bible in such high esteem as we do. We believe it; we read and ponder its sayings; we rejoice in the truths it teaches; and we seek to conform our lives to the divine standard it proclaims. But we do not believe, as does evangelical Christianity, that the Bible contains all things necessary for salvation, nor do we believe that God has now taken upon himself the tongue of the dumb which no longer speaks, or reveals, or makes known his will to his children.”93
- Rodney Turner: “The Book of Mormon is the single most compelling tangible witness for the validity of the Bible available in the world today. Although one may reject the claim of that the Book of Mormon is inspired scripture, it cannot be factually demonstrated that it contradicts or undermines the Bible on any given common point.”94
- Robert Millet: “I love the Bible. I treasure its teachings and delight in the spirit of worship that accompanies its prayerful study. My belief in additional scripture does not in any way detract from what I feel toward and learn from the Holy Bible. Studying the Bible lifts my spirits, lightens my burdens, enlightens my mind, and motivates me to seek to live a life of holiness.”95
- Robert J. Matthews: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always been a Bible-believing church, holding that the Bible contains the word of God as delivered to ancient prophets… Clearly, the Restoration did much to make the Bible understandable and complete, but the converse is also true. The Bible played a unique and indispensable role in the Restoration. This is particularly evident in the restoration of many fundamental doctrines of the gospel.”96
- B. H. Roberts: “The Book of Mormon was written also to be a witness for the Bible, to prove it true.”97
- John A. Widtsoe: “The real message of the Bible has been preserved, unimpaired, and is confirmed by every new translation. That message continues to be the greatest ever given to man.”98
- James E. Talmage: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints accepts the Holy Bible as the foremost of her standard works, first among the books which have been proclaimed as her written guides in faith and doctrine… Nevertheless, the Church announces a reservation in the case of erroneous translation, which may occur as a result of human incapacity… The Latter-day Saints believe the original records to be the word of God unto man, and, as far as these records have been translated correctly, the translations are regarded as equally authentic.”99
- Hugh Nibley: “In proclaiming the restored gospel, the Latter-day Saints do not minimize the importance of the Bible. We say that scripture and revelation are both necessary.”100
By now it should be apparent beyond any doubt what the Latter-day Saints think about the Bible. While we affirm the Bible to be scripture, we also acknowledge that over time there have been mistakes perpetuated in it throughout its transmission and translation. However, the Latter-day Saints by no means think lowly of the Bible because of what errors may have been introduced in its pages by the means of careless scribes or designing clergy.101 Given the Latter-day Saint acknowledgment of textual errors in the Bible, the Mormons emphatically deny the non-biblical doctrines of sola scriptura and the infallibility/inerrancy of scripture.
We also strongly hold to the notion of an open canon of scripture, which precludes any belief in the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Bible. This belief of the Latter-day Saints, in the words of Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, “irritates their critics”, of course, but it is nevertheless highly fallacious to suggest that a rejection of a closed canon disqualifies the Church of Jesus Christ from being a Christian.102 However, even though it is true that the Saints do not accept the non-biblical doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible, it is a gross mischaracterization to claim, as the video does, that Joseph Smith thought that “the Bible of the Christians is nonsense.” Such a claim is utterly and totally ludicrous.
Attacking the Strawman: A Jab at the LDS Doctrine of Exaltation
At one segment in the video, Kramer launches into a diatribe against the Latter-day Saint doctrine of exaltation, theosis, or human deification. After attacking the Joseph Smith Translation of Romans 4:16, Kramer asks Gifford “would you say that that gospel, that includes the works, is the gospel message that represents Mormonism?” Gifford answers in the affirmative, after which the narrator informs the audience that “another revelation, given through Joseph Smith the prophet was that these works even ‘enable men to become gods’.” But the video doesn’t stop there in exposing this blasphemous Mormon heresy. We are then reminded that “the apostle Paul preached that by grace God became a man to save men from their sins. In contrast, Joseph Smith preached that by their works, men can become gods. Interestingly enough,” Kramer continues as he again invokes Galatians 1:6-9, “Paul says that anyone who changes the gospel that he preaches is to be eternally condemned.”
This manifestation of Kramer’s either willful distortion or bewildering ignorance of the LDS doctrine of deification deserves some attention. Kramer wishes to contrast the allegedly biblical teaching that man is saved only by grace through faith with Joseph Smith’s supposed anti-biblical teaching that Mormons can work their way towards godhood. The consequences of this heresy are dire for the Mormons since, as Kramer ominously reminds Gifford, “if the evidence shows that actually the reverse of that is true and that Joseph Smith is the one that changed the Bible, then wouldn’t it be his followers and the church that he’s associated with that are in serious eternal trouble?” Gifford agrees with a resigned “Boy.. that’s scary.”
This entire segment of the video hearkens back to the mid-1980s with the release of Ed Decker’s infamous pseudo-documentary The God Makers. As the name of the video implies, Decker wished to shock his viewers by revealing the horrid secret that your smiling, friendly Mormon neighbors are aspiring gods who abandon Jesus in their own quest for personal aggrandizement. Decker was even courteous enough to re-enact the Mormon temple Endowment (the most sacred of Latter-day Saint liturgical practices that is strictly confined to be performed in LDS temples by those worthy to enter therein) for his audience to let any non-Mormons who have been denied access to an LDS temple know the modus operandi behind how the desperate, poor Mormons are to work their way to personal godhood. He even gave a thoughtful, objective and balanced overview of Mormon history and theology in the form of a cartoon segment that explains the Mormon teachings of the “Mormon God Elohim” and his many goddess wives on his “starbase” Kolob, the “Mormon Jesus” and his brother Lucifer, and the money digger and occultist Joseph Smith, who is, of course, the real focus of LDS worship.
Thankfully Kramer did not go as far in his attack on the LDS doctrine of exaltation as Decker. Instead, Kramer quickly contrasts the traditional Christian approach to salvation with his caricature of the Mormon understanding and moves on after implying that the Mormons are doomed to everlasting destruction because of the different Gospel which they proclaim. But in doing so Kramer leaves out the best information. He neglects to tell his viewers that the Mormon doctrine of exaltation is remarkably similar to the early Christian doctrine of theosis.
Taking their cue from biblical passages such as Psalm 82:6 (John 10:34), Matthew 5:48, Romans 8:16-17 and 2 Peter 1:4, early Christian apologists and Patristic Fathers such as Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Justin Martyr, Athanasius and others formulated the doctrine of theosis, which postulates that the fullest definition of salvation includes not only dwelling with God in heaven but become as God himself is, i.e. divine and deified. What follows are just a sampling of what many early Christian apologists mused on the subject:103
Irenaeus
- “We were not made gods at our beginning, but first we were made men, then, in the end, gods.”
- “Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, of his boundless love, became what we are that he might make us what he himself is.”
- But of what gods [does he speak]? [Of those] to whom He says, ‘I have said, Ye are gods, and all sons of the Most High.’ To those, no doubt, who have received the grace of the ‘adoption, by which we cry, Abba Father.’”
Clement of Alexandria
- “Yea, I say, the Word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god.”
Justin Martyr
- “[By Psalm 82] it is demonstrated that all men are deemed worthy of becoming “gods,” and even of having power to become sons of the Highest.”
Athanasius
- “The Word was made flesh in order that we might be enabled to be made gods….just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through His flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life…[we are] sons and gods by reason of the word in us.”
While it is readily acknowledge that there are differences between the early Christian and modern Latter-day Saint understanding of theosis, including the full ramifications and implications of what it means to be “gods”, the parallels between the two groups’ theologies are striking. It cannot be maintained by critics like Kramer that the LDS doctrine is foreign to Christianity or the Bible, since the testimony of the early Church Fathers is explicit on this point; they understood that complete salvation was more than merely dwelling in heaven with God but fully partaking of the divine nature wherein the Saint becomes one with God and as God (cf. John 17: 21-23). Further, despite the attempts of Decker or Kramer to shock their viewers by hollering in abject horror that Mormons believe they can become “gods”, it is clear that like the Latter-day Saints the early Christians were not shy on using the word “gods” to describe those who reach a fulness of salvation.104
And how is such a fulness obtained? A number of studies have been conducted that elucidate the early Christian and Latter-day Saint understanding of how one becomes like God, and in both cases not only is faith in Jesus Christ necessary but also saving and exalting ordinances and compliance to gospel standards and covenants.105 Both the early Christians and the Latter-day Saints agree that there is much more involved in deification than appealing to solifidianism or the doctrine that faith alone is sufficient for salvation. Those who confess faith in Jesus Christ must manifest their fidelity by obedience to the principles and ordinances of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In short, they must follow what the Savior himself admonished at the Last Supper; “if ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).106
Through the revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith the Latter-day Saints also believe that temple ordinances such as the Endowment and couples being sealed in the temple for time and all eternity are indispensable in the process of becoming like God. However, while we acknowledge that making and keeping sacred covenants are essential to returning to the presence of God, it is a gross falsehood to assume that the Latter-day Saints are trying to “work” their way to godhood on their own terms and through their own efforts. The atonement of Christ is central to God’s plan for His children and without the cleansing power of Gethsemane and the saving grace of Christ our efforts would be futile since we still all sin and come short of the mark of perfection by ourselves.107 On this subject the words of the late German theology and Christian history professor Ernst Benz are telling: “One can think what one wants of this doctrine of progressive deification, but one thing is certain: with this anthropology Joseph Smith is closer to the view of man held by the ancient Church than the precursors of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin.”108
Needless to say, this is not the perspective Kramer wants to pass onto his audience.
Alma 7:10… Yet Again
Just when I was hoping that this anti-Mormon canard would finally die, Kramer resurrects the classic criticism that the Book of Mormon is false because Alma predicted that Jesus would be born at Jerusalem, not Bethlehem. Indeed, like a lifeless zombie this anti-Mormons accusation is impossible to kill and tends to suck out the brains of those who get caught by it.
Kramer begins his argument by quoting Micah 5:2 and noting that the birth of the Savior according to the New Testament is Bethlehem. He therefore uses this fact to demonstrate that the Old Testament fulfilled prophecy concerning the location of the birth of the Redeemer. However, Kramer also notes that “Micah’s not the only prophet who predicted where the Messiah would be born. In the Book of Mormon the prophet Alma prophesied, “And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem”… The Book of Mormon [gesturing at Gifford’s Book of Mormon] is saying that Jesus is born in Jerusalem, Micah in the Bible [gesturing at his own Bible] is saying that the Messiah is born in Bethlehem. Can they both be right?” To this interrogatory Gifford shakes his head and sighs “no.”
To his credit, Kramer is at last willing to actually make his audience aware of the Mormon counter-argument. He shows clips of an interview109 with two Mormon scholars, Daniel C. Peterson and Kerry Shirts, who are quoted as follows:
Peterson: Was Bethlehem part of the land of the Bible? Well, even today, if you go to Bethlehem, you’ll realize, it’s essentially a suburb
Shirts: Bethlehem is how far away from Jerusalem? What… six miles? Of course it’s going to be in the Land of Jerusalem.
The following dialogue between Kramer and Todd Bolen, who is credited as a “Historical Geographer”, then ensues:
Kramer: Have you ever heard of Bethlehem being described as the “Land of Jerusalem?”
Bolen: It’s not the land of Jerusalem, Bethlehem is a city six miles south of Jerusalem.
Kramer: Is there any way that you could say that Bethlehem is so close to Jerusalem that you could just call it Jerusalem?
Bolen: [shrugs and slightly shakes head] No. And there’s, there’s cities in between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. [scene fade to black, then back to same scene]
Kramer: Cause Jesus was born in Jerusalem, right?
Bolen: No Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
Kramer: [Book of Mormon in hand and open] So is there any way to look at that, but that’s a mistake?
Bolen: [looking at Book of Mormon passage – presumably the Alma passage] No.
Kramer therefore safely concludes:
The New Testament declares that Micah’s prophesy was fulfilled when Jesus was born in Bethlehem [image of Micah with an arrow pointing to the words “Jesus was born in Bethlehem”]. Since Jesus was not born in Jerusalem [image added of Alma with an arrow pointing to an “X”], Alma fails the test of a prophet [image of the stamped all-caps word “FAIL” superimposed over the word Alma – scene fades to black and cuts back to seated Gifford looking thoughtful].
To this overwhelming verdict from Kramer, Gifford is defenseless:
Historically its Bethlehem. [shakes head, sighs] This causes me great angst, I’m… I’d like to say that Alma is a human [chuckle, shakes head] that he makes mistakes, but Deuteronomy says that you… in that context that you cannot make mistakes, so I, I, it’s hard… for me to uh, declare that [sighs] , that Alma… [shakes head] Well he obviously made a mistake… [sighs, long pause, shakes head] That… it’s, just a… mistake, I don’t know what else to say about it. That it’s… How could you make this mistake? It’s… [brief laugh]110
However, Gifford need not be saddened by Kramer’s accusations. Nor need he abandon Alma’s prophetic legitimacy. I propose that not only are both the Book of Mormon and the Bible correct in their predictions, but that Kramer’s criticisms against Alma’s prophecy have been thoroughly discredited by the historical evidence.
First, a word of clarification is necessary. What Kramer neglects to tell his audience is that the Book of Mormon doesn’t say that Jesus would be born in the city of Jerusalem, but rather that he would be born “at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers” (Alma 7:10, emphasis added). Whether or not Kramer intentionally withheld this information from his viewers cannot be determined, but whatever the case this simple omission makes a world of difference. The simple addition of “which is the land of our forefathers” to Alma’s prophecy entirely destroys Kramer’s argument.
Although Kramer was kind enough to feign objectivity by showing quick snippets of Daniel C. Peterson and Kerry Shirts, he only uses a few brief seconds of their argument and dismisses the entire Mormon apologetic response with a wave of his hand.111 When Todd Bolen informs Kramer that he has never heard of the “Land of Jerusalem” and therefore the Book of Mormon is in error, Kramer quickly wraps up his argument and the movie continues along to another subject without further discussion. But let us take a closer look at the facts.
Daniel C. Peterson, in writing on this subject in 1997, discusses his confusion over the entire issue to begin with.
I have never seen the point of their argument. To suggest that Joseph Smith knew the precise location of Jesus’ baptism by John (“in Bethabara, beyond Jordan” [1 Nephi 10:9]) but hadn’t a clue about the famous town of Christ’s birth is so improbable as to be ludicrous. Do the skeptics seriously mean to suggest that the Book of Mormon’s Bible-drenched author (or authors) missed one of the most obvious facts about the most popular story in the Bible—something known to every child and Christmas caroler? Do they intend to say that a clever fraud who could write a book displaying so wide an array of subtly authentic Near Eastern and biblical cultural and literary traits as the Book of Mormon does was nonetheless so stupid as to claim, before a Bible-reading public, that Jesus was born in the city of Jerusalem? As one anti-Mormon author has pointed out, “Every schoolboy and schoolgirl knows Christ was born in Bethlehem.” Exactly! It is virtually certain, therefore, that Alma 7:10 was foreign to Joseph Smith’s preconceptions. “The land of Jerusalem” is not the sort of thing the Prophet would likely have invented, precisely for the same reason it bothers uninformed critics of the Book of Mormon.112
Nevertheless, critics such as Kramer do frequently bring up this point, and thus we must press on in our investigation.
The very recently published Dead Sea Scrolls document called Pseudo-Jeremiah (4Q385), which purports to come from the exact time of Nephi, can quite accurately say that the Jews whom Lehi and his family left behind were “taken captive from the land of Jerusalem.” In Nephi’s personal experience—and therefore, in subsequent Nephite tradition – Judah was not an independent kingdom, but a tributary city-state, tenuously ruling only the “land of Jerusalem.”
The prophecy of Alma 7:10 thus fits into antiquity very well. As two prominent scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls observe of the reference in the Pseudo-Jeremiah fragment to “the land of Jerusalem,” it “greatly enhances the sense of historicity of the whole, since Judah or ‘Yehud’ [the name of the area on coins from the Persian period] by this time consisted of little more than Jerusalem and its immediate environs.” Isn’t it, therefore, reasonable to say that the similar reference in Alma 7:10 “enhances the sense of historicity” of the Book of Mormon? Far from being a serious liability, Alma’s prophetic comment about the birth of the Messiah is plausible evidence that the Book of Mormon is exactly what it claims to be.113
From this evidence we see that some ancient writers indeed identified a “land of Jerusalem” or, as the Book of Mormon puts it, “Jerusalem… the land of our forefathers”. Thus, even though Todd Bolen may never have heard of a “land of Jerusalem”, the Dead Sea Scrolls prove that at least some ancient Semites had.
But how does Bethlehem play into all of this? We shall allow Dr. Peterson to enlighten us.
Strikingly, Bethlehem itself seems to have been regarded anciently as lying within Jerusalem’s “land,” just as the Book of Mormon describes it. The so-called Amarna letters, which date to approximately 1400 B.C., allude to “a town of the land of Jerusalem, Bit-Lahmi by name,” which the illustrious American archaeologist W. F. Albright regarded as “an almost certain reference to the town of Bethlehem.”114
Thus, from the evidence offered at Qumran we discover that there existed an ancient conception of the “land of Jerusalem” and from the Amarna letters we discover that Bethlehem (yes, the Bethlehem of the Bible) was counted as being a part of the “land of Jerusalem”. Or, as Alma put it, Jesus would be born at “Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers” because Bethlehem was considered a suburb or a town that fell within the larger geo-political influence of Jerusalem.
Earlier I mentioned that both the Bible and the Book of Mormon are correct in their predictions. This is because the Bible and the Book of Mormon are talking about the same location but merely describing it in different terms. To illustrate, consider that in the United States today there are states, counties and cities. A city resides inside a county and a county in a state, and it wouldn’t be inaccurate to refer to any of them in describing a location. Thus, I could say that I was born in the state of Utah or the county of Salt Lake or the city of Salt Lake and still be accurate. Or I could say that I served part of my LDS mission in the state of Vermont or the county of Windsor or the village of Sharon and still be accurate. Any identification is acceptable. Thus, the Bible can say that Jesus was born in the village of Bethlehem while the Book of Mormon says that he was born in the “land of Jerusalem” (not the city, as Kramer wants us to believe) and both still be right. It is only a matter of technically speaking of the more precise locale or the more general area.
Hugh Nibley nicely summed up this LDS apologetic explanation for this apparent gaffe in the Book of Mormon with his phenomenal 1957 study on the Book of Mormon.
One of the favorite points of attack on the Book of Mormon has been the statement in Alma 7:10 that the Savior would be born “at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers” (italics added). Here Jerusalem is not the city “in the land of our forefathers”; it is the land. Christ was born in a village some six miles from the city of Jerusalem; it was not in the city, but it was in what we now know the ancients themselves designated as “the land of Jerusalem.” Such a neat test of authenticity is not often found in ancient documents.115
Furthermore, in another fascinating study LDS Hebraist David Bokovoy, posting on the Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board, has made some interesting observations on the Alma 7:10 controversy that deserves careful attention.
The Bible’s statement on Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem appears in the Gospel of Luke, which refers to Bethlehem as “the city of David” (2:4). The designation “city of David,” however, never appears linked with Bethlehem in the Old Testament, instead, this expression always functions as a title for “Jerusalem” [2 Sam. 5:7,9; 2 Sam. 6:10,12; 2 Kings 9:28].116
Bokovoy continues to explain that
by referring to Bethlehem as ‘the city of David,’ Luke creates a direct link between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. This technique reflects Jewish tradition which interpreted Psalm 87 from the Old Testament as a Messianic prophecy… This biblical Psalm refers to the birth of a ‘man’ in Jerusalem at the time God made up a census of the world. Some biblical scholars have suggested that this tradition may have influenced Luke’s reference to a census of the “whole world” at the time of Christ’s birth. Indeed, Jewish midrash held that the Messiah would be born at the time when God counts up all the people… So according to Jewish tradition, the Messiah would be born at Jerusalem, the city of David.117
Bokovoy then cites biblical scholar John Duncan Martin Derrett’s exegesis of Psalm 87 and its relationship to Luke 2. He quotes Martin as explaining that “the text, [Psalm 87] with midrashim to be found in the Targum, the LXX, Midrash on Psalms, and elsewhere has its major fascinations, but the important idea for us is that when God writes down the peoples, i.e. makes a census of the world, this man, or Man will be born there, i.e. in Jerusalem, the ritual limits of which, as Passover practice showed, included Bethlehem.”118
This new evidence leads Bokovoy to conclude that “the Book of Mormon’s reference to Jerusalem as the Messiah’s birthplace may provide evidence for the book’s connection with ancient tradition… [A]ccording to ancient thought, Bethlehem was an extension of Jerusalem, the expected birthplace of the Messiah. It would seem, therefore, that rather than a mistake, the Book of Mormon’s reference to Jesus’ birth at Jerusalem reflects a long-standing ancient tradition.”119 Had Kramer been more responsible with his scholarship he may have avoided this common pitfall for anti-Mormons. Far from being evidence against the Book of Mormon, Alma 7:10 is actually impressive evidence for the antiquity of the Nephite record.
Kramer’s Conclusion
After an hour of exploring how Joseph Smith failed as a prophet in light of Deuteronomy 18, Kramer wraps up his case with the following dialogue with Gifford:
Kramer: So what does Deuteronomy say your responsibility is, [Kramer stumbles over his words a little at this point because he is simultaneously trying to find Deuteronomy 18 in his Bible] because it’s not written to, it’s written to the one whose reading it obviously, and there’s a responsibility to the, “if what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true that is a message the Lord has not spoken” and it says what you’re to do with that person, “he must be put to death”.
Gifford: Argh.
Kramer: And what is that responsibility that God is giving, in response to the prophet, that’s found a false prophet, whose got the responsibility to put that prophet to death?
Gifford: Well, God’s not gonna strike him dead.
Kramer: Yeah it’s to the people who have come to realize this person has failed this test of a prophet, therefore it’s the people’s responsibility to put him to death, right? So in context to Joseph Smith we remember that death means separation, so what it means from a spiritual standpoint, a biblical standpoint, to put Joseph Smith to death is to separate ourselves from him and his writings and his church, and that responsibility God has given to the one who sees that he fails the test. So you’re saying that he’s failed the test but you don’t want to put him to death?
Gifford: [sighing uncomfortably] I don’t know what to believe anymore. Sometimes I’m, I totally see what you’re talking about and it’s….
This is a shocking case of eisegesis. Kramer is suggesting, in all seriousness, that Deuteronomy 18 doesn’t mean that we are to actually kill the false prophet, but instead merely separate ourselves from the false prophet and his teachings. As ingenious as this new reading may be, this approach to Deuteronomy 18 is highly flawed. For one thing, there is nothing in the Hebrew text to suggest that the death to be brought upon the false prophet was anything less than literal death. Furthermore, the evidence from biblical culture unambiguously shows that false prophets were to be actually executed for speaking in the name of another god. False prophecy, and its conjoined twin blasphemy, was a capital offense in ancient Israel. Jesus himself was condemned on these charges and was accordingly sentenced to be executed (Matthew 26:57-68; cf. Leviticus 24:16).
Jeremiah 28:12-17 provides an example of how the false prophet Hananiah was killed, in fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophetic decree against him, because he, Hananiah, “taught rebellion against the Lord” (v. 16). J. R. Dummelow’s monumental commentary on the Bible reckons this as direct evidence that the punishment for false prophecy was in fact the death penalty.120Another example is in one of my favorite Old Testament accounts, the contest of Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). Notice how at the end of the contest the false prophets of Baal are summarily executed for calling upon and acting in the name of a false deity, which violates one of the two tests of Deuteronomy 18 and thus brands them as false prophets.121
Why did Kramer propose such a markedly eisegetical reading of Deuteronomy 18? I am not a mind reader and thus I cannot definitively say. However, my suspicion is that since Joseph Smith has been dead for quite some time and thus cannot readily be executed for his theological crimes (keep in mind that a bloodthirsty mob beat Kramer to the chase 167 years ago), the next best thing Kramer could do is attempt to draw away as many of Joseph Smith’s followers as possible and lead them into the light of the “true” gospel of Christ as propounded by fundamentalist Protestantism.122 And, while one can be grateful that Kramer is not calling for the death penalty upon those he adjudges false prophets—including, one presumes, the living prophets of the Church of Jesus Christ—it is ironic that someone who is such an ardent advocate of a literal, infallible reading of scripture has to twist Deuteronomy 18′s sentence of death so badly.
Whatever the case may be, Kramer’s concluding remarks are at least bold, if not exceedingly naive and misapplied:
I have no fear of Joseph Smith whatsoever because Deuteronomy 18 says that if a prophet fails the test do not be afraid of him. I’m not afraid of Joseph Smith, I’m not afraid of being condemned to hell because I don’t believe that he is a true prophet because he fails the test of a prophet and therefore I can walk in freedom without having to fear what the Book of Mormon says about me, what it says about the Bible that I believe in and so on and so forth. This is what I believe [pointing to the Bible]. I believe in this alone and I don’t believe that it’s foolish to do so. This [placing the triple combination on top of the Bible] I have a problem with because there are so many contradictions between this [pointing to the triple combination] and this [pointing to the Bible] that to believe in all of that logically doesn’t work. Then you have to, honestly, you have to add this to the mix too [picking up the JST] because that’s a work of Joseph Smith [gesturing to the JST again], and this is a work of Joseph Smith [pointing to the triple combo] and now you’ve got a new translation. How can, that’s just a confusing mess! And John 1:1 [JST] isn’t the same as John 1:1 in here [Bible], and Romans 4:16 [JST] isn’t the same as Romans 4:16 in here [Bible] and Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, isn’t the same and the Torah isn’t the same, and then you have this [pointing to the triple combo] reflected more in this [the JST] I just, it’s hard for me to grasp how logically you can believe in that whole ball of wax without having what’s called cognitive dissonance which is these contradictory beliefs that cause great confusion.123
Well, if such is the case then I publicly and unapologetically declare myself confused. I for one find the claims of Joseph Smith and the Restoration very logical and backed by sound, reasonable evidence. While I ultimately rely on the witness I received from the Holy Ghost for the truthfulness of the work begun by Joseph Smith, after carefully looking at the claims of the Prophet, as well as his detractors such as Kramer, I see that Joseph Smith holds up remarkably well under scrutiny. To me after careful consideration the evidence screams that Joseph Smith was a true and honorable prophet of God. But I suppose that is just the cognitive dissonance taking over.
Little Big Horn in Jerusalem: Joel Kramer vs. Gutman Locks
A video posted on Youtube by Rabbi Gutman Locks offers a striking example of how Kramer’s own arguments against Mormonism can easily be used against mainstream Christianity.124 This demonstrates how Kramer, true to form, has done little more in his video than employ some flagrant double standards that could just as easily condemn creedal Christianity as it does Mormonism.125
The video begins with a meeting between Kramer and Locks at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. After exchanging pleasantries Kramer matter-of-factly asks for “an honest response to the teachings of Jesus”. Rabbi Locks begins his response with an analogy about a “special and beloved king” and one of the the king’s “many children that became the most famous” amongst much of the population that came to call this special child “the prince”. The analogy continues to describe how the king and the prince came into a village and were greeted by villagers who only paid homage to and praised the prince. Rabbi Locks concludes the analogy by asking Kramer how he thinks the king must have felt about this?
The analogy is a thinly veiled representation of Christianity in the eyes of most Jews. In it, God is the king, Jesus is the prince and the village populace seems to represent Christians. Rabbi Locks wants to point out that Christians pay what Jews consider unworthy devotion to a mere mortal (Jesus) and forget to worship God, or that Christians are “focusing on a man and forgetting God, the Father”.
Kramer counters by asking Rabbi Locks to explain Jesus’ self-proclaimed divinity in passages such as John 8:58, wherein it would appear that Jesus identifies himself as the great “I AM” or Yahweh of the Old Testament (cf. Exodus 3:14). He wants to know why people attempted to kill Jesus when he announced his godship. Rabbi Locks appeals to radical Jewish monotheism that insists that there is nothing else besides God and that God alone is the I AM, not any mortal man who claims to be God. “In Hinduism”, Rabbi Locks continues, “they say ‘that man is God’. That’s idolatry!” Kramer asks for clarification with his interrogatory “so it’s idolatry for a man to claim to be God?”, which the Rabbi responds to affirmatively through reiterating his transcendent, mystical views of God not being a mere mortal man but by “being all and in all”.
Kramer and Rabbi Locks next discuss if Jesus broke the Sabbath. The Rabbi refers to the account in Matthew 12:1-8 and dismisses Jesus’ claim that man is more important than the Sabbath. Kramer quickly reminds Rabbi Locks that Jesus claimed to be the “Lord of the Sabbath”, which Rabbi Locks dismisses with a disdainful “uh huh”, a noticeable eye-roll and a reminder that Jesus seems to be contradicting the Sabbath codes of the Mosiac Law “in the Bible”.
Kramer next goes to Mark 2:1-12, where Jesus heals a paralytic man and forgives his sins. Kramer asks Rabbi Locks why it was considered blasphemy for Jesus to forgive the man’s sins. “Because”, Rabbi Locks explains, “a man can’t forgive another man’s sins. God has to forgive the person’s sins. So I could say ‘your sins are forgiven’. What’s the proof of that?”.126 Kramer continues on to explain that he brought up this and his previous scriptural examples of John 8:58 and Matthew 12:1-8 as proof that Jesus “was claiming to be God”. Rabbi Locks quickly explains that he had previously lived in India for two years, where Hindus claim to be God. Because “thousands and thousands” of other people have claimed to be God, what’s so special about Jesus?
Kramer sums up his position by elucidating his trinitarian belief that Jesus is God incarnate who took upon himself a body to provide a sacrifice “as a passover lamb” for the sins of mankind. Rabbi Locks immediately responds by citing the Torah, which informs us, according to the Rabbi, that one man cannot die for another man’s sins. Clearly, Rabbi Locks argues, this means that Kramer’s beliefs “contradict the Bible” and the Torah’s teachings. To parry this new criticism, Kramer refers to John 5:39-40 and argues that the Old Testament scriptures are referring to Jesus.
Rabbi Locks, in what I confess is a rather clever criticism, responds by contrasting Malachi 4:6 which speaks of fathers and sons being reconciled and made at peace with Jesus proclaiming in Matthew 10:34-35 (or as Rabbi Locks calls it “your book”) that he came not to bring peace but the sword, and that he would turn parents against their children. The Rabbi then indignantly declares that Kramer is asking him to trust Jesus over “a trustworthy prophet” Malachi, since obviously both can’t be believed at the same time. Rabbi Locks asks Kramer if he seriously wants the Rabbi to throw away all of the scriptures, the Torah, etc. and instead accept Jesus.
Kramer interrogates Rabbi Locks as to his Messianic hopes. The Rabbi hopes that the Messiah will come “any minute now” and implores God to bring the Messiah. But, unfortunately, peace hasn’t come and the temple hasn’t been rebuilt on the Temple Mount so it is evident to Rabbi Locks “that the Messiah hasn’t come”. Kramer asks if Rabbi Locks’ misgivings about Jesus being the Messiah stem from the fact that Jesus “didn’t free Israel from the Roman Empire” and the Rabbi immediately responds that “that’s a small problem”. The other proofs that Jesus isn’t the Messiah are 1) “he didn’t bring peace to the world” and 2) “he didn’t bring the temple”. Kramer quickly implores the Rabbi to consider that Jesus may still return and fulfill these Messianic duties. To this, the Rabbi issues proof that he is the Messiah. He asks Kramer to demand of him a miracle that will prove beyond doubt that he is the Messiah. Kramer, after a moment of thought, asks the Rabbi to raise up the temple in three days. Rabbi Locks accordingly responds, “Okay, I’ll do it next time when I come back”. This clever response forces an unprepared Kramer to laugh and shrug. After reemphasizing his Messianic hopes, Rabbi Locks and Kramer shake hands and part with the Rabbi’s cordial blessing upon Kramer to “have a great life”.
This exchange is truly eye-opening. In examining the parallels between this video and Kramer’s own discussion with Greg Gifford, one can easily see that the roles have been reversed. Rabbi Locks becomes Kramer and Kramer becomes Gifford. Throughout the video Kramer makes no real cogent defense for Christianity or offers much in the way of scholarly discourse against his Jewish antagonist (although, as I noted before, there is a possibility that the footage was edited to create this appearance). But whether or not it was, it is ironic that the video has Rabbi Locks doing to Kramer what Kramer had done to Greg Gifford, namely, overwhelming him with various arguments while leaving no room or space for his opponent to respond or offer a feasible defense.
Furthermore, it is noteworthy that if the footage was edited to make Kramer look like he had no defense that he would then have reason to cry foul and respond that the Rabbi didn’t give him a fair opportunity to present the strongest Christian arguments. However, if this is the case then the Rabbi’s tactics are thus identical to what Kramer himself does in his videos on Mormonism. Kramer selectively edits any statements by Mormon apologists to create the impression that there is no real defense that the Mormons can cobble together. This is precisely what Kramer did in The Bible vs. Joseph Smith with Daniel C. Peterson and Kerry Shirts in their discussion of Alma 7:10. As my friend and FAIR colleague James Stutz has noted, “Kramer could potentially complain that the Rabbi doesn’t deal with the best of Christian scholarship on these issues (which I’m sure is true), but ironically Kramer is guilty of the same omission in all of his videos about Mormonism.”127 James has likewise noted that in the video “Kramer points out that on a number of occasions Jesus claims to be God. The Rabbi brushes it all off by pointing out that anyone can claim anything they want, but it doesn’t make it so. This is exactly the attitude that Christophe Rico, one of the scholars in Kramer’s “The Bible vs Joseph Smith”, takes towards Joseph Smith.”128
Throughout the video one can see the unmistakable disdain for which Rabbi Locks has for Christian scripture and prophets just as Kramer exhibits sheer disdain for Mormon scripture and prophets. Rabbi Locks consistently refers to the New Testament as “your book” and contrasts the blasphemous teachings of Jesus and his disciples with the truth of “the Bible”. The Rabbi, in a move that is a hallmark of Kramer’s oeuvre, even cites specific examples wherein the Old and New Testaments [read: the Bible and the Book of Mormon] seem to contradict each other. Thus Rabbi Locks has become like unto many Christian critics of Mormonism, including Kramer, who deny the need for any further revelation or scripture.
One can see Kramer doing the exact same thing in his exchange with Gifford, as throughout the video he is sure to contrast his own Bible with Gifford’s Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith Translation. At several points in the video Kramer even visually draws distinctions with his body language and movements, such as his exaggerated, animated and deliberate pointing to Gifford’s scriptures and then pointing to his own Bible, or his stacking the Bible on top of Gifford’s Book of Mormon in an attempt to seemingly “bury” it after it has been shown that the Book of Mormon has been discredited by the evidence and biblical truth. In the end, Kramer wants to send the message that there is no need for bogus, heretical Mormon scriptures since we have the Bible, just as Rabbi Locks wanted it to be clear that we have no need for the New Testament since we have the Hebrew Bible.
It is not within the scope of this paper to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Rabbi Locks’ arguments or Kramer’s defense. Nor was it my intention to argue against Christianity and side with Rabbi Locks and his criticisms. As a Latter-day Saint Christian I must disagree with the Rabbi’s arguments and conclusions. However, I did want to show how Kramer’s exchange with Rabbi Locks was illuminating – it casts Kramer in the same position into which he so earnestly puts the Latter-day Saints. It is a bewildering example of Kramer’s double standard, and how useless such tactics are for understanding another faith or critiquing it in a responsible manner.
Concluding Thoughts
In conclusion, The Bible vs. Joseph Smith is irretrievably flawed; its presentation misleading and misinformed. Kramer’s arguments don’t withstand scrutiny and it is unfortunate that he had to drag along Greg Gifford, an innocent bystander when it comes to Mormon/anti-Mormon polemics, into his theological brawl.
However, one thing about the DVD that I do appreciate is that, albeit unwittingly, Kramer is actually helping to fulfill one of Moroni’s promises/prophecies to Joseph Smith during his visits to the young prophet in 1823:
He called me by name and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do; and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people (Joseph Smith-History 1:33).129
There is a prophecy that, by any standard, has surely come to pass.
Notes
1 I owe a tremendous amount of gratitude to my friends Robert Boylan and James Stutz for their helping me articulate and formulate parts of this review and for helping me track down sources. The responsibility for any errors in fact or interpretation, however, rests upon me.
2 The news and hype surrounding the release of the video is documented in Daniel C. Peterson, “Editor’s Introduction: Of “Galileo Events,” Hype, and Suppression: Or, Abusing Science and its History”, The FARMS Review, 15/2 (2003): ix-lxi.
3 Kramer offers his videos free of charge to those who identify themselves as Latter-day Saints. Others have reported copies of the DVD being hung on door knob handles in neighborhoods that are predominantly LDS and I myself have seen the videos passed out to attendees of General Conference.
4 So says Murphy’s faculty webpage with Edmond’s College. http://www.edcc.edu/faculty/thomas.murphy/ (Accessed 16 February, 2011).
5 As he is described on Signature Books’ website that sells his book Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2005). http://signaturebooks.com/2010/02/losing-a-lost-tribe-native-americans-dna-and-the-mormon-church/ (Accessed 16 February, 2011.)
6 For a concise and convenient summery of the prevailing scholarly Latter-day Saint position on this issue, the reader is directed to The Book of Mormon and DNA Research, ed. Daniel C. Peterson (Provo: The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2008).
7 See http://www.fairlds.org/Humor/DNA_and_the_Book_of_Mormon.html (Accessed February 16, 2011).
8 See William Hamblin, “Basic Methodological Problems with the Anti-Mormon Approach to the Geography and Archaeology of the Book of Mormon”, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 2/1 (1993), 161-200.
9 Latter-day Saint scholarly responses to the video may be found in David Bokovoy, “The Bible vs. The Book of Mormon: Still Losing the Battle”, FARMS Review, 18/1 (2006): 3-19, and Brant Gardner, “Behind the Mask, Behind the Curtain: Uncovering the Illusion”, FARMS Review, 17/2 (2005): 145-195.
10 On Kramer’s webpage advertising the DVD, there is a conspicuous attempt to contrast the “Christian” Joel Kramer with the “Mormon” Greg Gifford. Instead of merely clarifying that the two participants represent two branches of Christian thought, Evangelical and Mormon, respectively, Kramer makes sure that the common anti-Mormon stereotype that Mormons aren’t really Christian is recognized.
11 This I have confirmed through personal correspondences with Gifford.
12 The dialogue provided here and throughout the rest of this review comes from a carefully prepared transcript of the video by volunteers with the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR). Unless otherwise indicated, ellipses in the transcript do not represent the omission of text but breaks in the speaker’s words. Likewise, unless otherwise noted any italics represent my own emphasis.
13 This has been noticed by other reviewers of the video as well. For instance, a non-Mormon and Evangelical blogger named Rob Sivulka observes how “Gifford comes across as a marshmallow, who does not give much of a fight for his faith. This leaves the unsuspecting viewer unaware of the various arguments that LDS apologists use to defend their faith. The film makes the viewer think that if one simply utilizes these arguments, then the LDS person will naturally have no response.” See http://mormoninfo.org/film-reviews/bible-vs-joseph-smith (Accessed 02 March, 2011).
14 As an aside, I mention this not to make Brother Gifford out to be any less of a Latter-day Saint because he wasn’t able to put up a grand defense of Mormonism throughout the video. Being a good debater or being aware of controversies within Mormonism doesn’t make one a good Latter-day Saint. A good Latter-day Saint is someone who has made and is keeping sacred covenants with God while exercising faith in Jesus Christ and His Restored Church and Gospel.
15 Kramer’s tactics are akin to picking up a random Evangelical Christian from off the streets and having them sit down with, say, vocal and militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens and having them debate the controversies of religion and science for a documentary. It might make a nice piece of propaganda, but it would hardly qualify as serious scholarship. Such tactics are as dishonest when Kramer uses them against Mormons as when Bill Maher uses them against Christians and other theists in his popular anti-religious screedReligulous.
16 There exists some rather palpable controversy amongst biblical archaeologists and scholars as to the historicity of many events described in the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Adam and Eve, the Flood, the accounts of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Israelite Exodus from Egypt, the conquest of Canaan and other events in the Old Testament have been seriously challenged as being exaggerated at best or utterly mythical at worst. To insist that there is a broad, universal consensus and agreement amongst biblical scholars as to the historicity of the entire Bible, as is consistently insinuated by Kramer in his videos, is naive in the extreme. For two examples of critical scholarship from qualified biblical scholars on this issue, see Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origins of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002); William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002). While I do not necessarily agree with all of the conclusions espoused by Messrs. Finkelstein, Silberman and Dever, I mention their works to illustrate the fallacy of Kramer’s argument in regards to the nature of current biblical scholarship. The point I wish to ultimately make is well stated by Alfred Hoerth and John McRay when they exhort their readers to keep in mind that “it must be recognized that [archaeology] does not “prove” the truth of the Bible in its theological and spiritual statements.” Hoerth and McRay draw a parallel to Homer’s Iliad and write that Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of ancient Troy “did not prove that the Iliad is true, only that it is historically accurate in its geographical placement of the site.” Bible Archaeology: An Exploration of the History and Culture of Early Civilizations (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005), 11-12.
17 Brant Gardner, “Behind the Mask”, 151, reviews Kramer’s general pattern of ignoring LDS scholarship in regards to Book of Mormon geography and archaeology and asks if “it is possible that the authors of the film were simply unaware of the major focus of Latter-day Saint scholarly work on Book of Mormon geography for the last thirty years”. He answers his own question by stating that “ignorance did not keep this information from the viewers but rather a choice made by the film’s producers, who decided to keep the best information from the audience.”
18 It must be remember that originally the First Vision was a private event for Joseph, as seen in his 1832 account written in his private journal. It seems that in the early days of the Church Moroni’s visitation and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon was understood by Joseph and the early Saints as being the event for him; it wasn’t until later in his life that the full ramifications of his First Vision were comprehended. For more on this, see James B. Allen, “The Significance of Joseph Smith’s ‘First Vision’ In Mormon Thought”, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 01/3 (1966), 29-46.
19 See Richard J. Coggins, “Prophecy—True and False,” in Of Prophets’ Visions and the Wisdom of Sages: Essays in Honor of R. Norman Whybray on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Heather A. McKay and David J. A. Clines (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 80-94. Shalom M. Paul likewise notes that, given cases like these, Deuteronomy 18 “cannot serve as an infallible criterion, because there are several occasions when an oracle delivered by a true prophet did not materialize even in his own lifetime. Such unfulfilled prophecies include Jeremiah’s prediction of the ignominious fate of Jehoiakim (Jer. 22:19), which was belied by 2 Kings 24:6, and Ezekiel’s foretelling the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar (Ez. 26:7-21), which was later admitted to have failed but was to be compensated by the Babylonian king’s attack on Egypt (Ez. 29: 17-20). Shalom M. Paul, “Prophecy and Prophets”, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, ed. David L. Lieber and Jules Harlow (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2001), 1411.
20 See passages where God promises to change His mind in the future free-will actions of man resulting in their repentance–Zechariah 1:3; Mal. 3:7; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9.
21 The Jewish Study Bible, ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 408, emphasis added. One LDS blogger who picked up on the implications offered by the commentary provided by Berlin and Brettler concludes that “the premise of the Test of the Prophet that counter-cult ministries use, is one that is difficult to ascertain without having to condemn prophets like Jeremiah as being false when their predictions did not come true as proclaimed by that prophet.” Furthermore, the astute author of the blog convincingly argues that “the misinterpretation of the text reveals the shaky foundation that is commonplace among many modern evangelical Christians [such as Kramer] today.” Found online at http://reasoningwiththecritics.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/the-bible-vs-joseph-smith-a-response-to-living-hope-ministry/ (Accessed 02 March, 2011).
22 John A. Tvedtnes, “The Nature of Prophets and Prophecy”, found online at http://www.fairlds.org/Bible/Nature_of_Prophets_and_Prophecy.html (Accessed 02 March, 2011).
23 Tvedtnes includes the following examples of biblical prophecies that, if judged by the critics’ narrow interpretation of Deuteronomy 18, fail miserably:
* “The Lord told David that the men of Keilah “will deliver thee up [to Saul]” (1 Samuel 23:12). This did not happen, however, because David fled from the city (verses 13-14).”
* “Isaiah told king Hezekiah, “Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.” (2 Kings 20:1) But after the king pleaded with the Lord, the prophet delivered a new message, saying that fifteen years would be added to his life (verses 2-6).”
* “The Lord told Moses that he would destroy the Israelites and make of Moses a greater nation than they. When Moses protested that this would be wrong, the Lord changed his mind (Numbers 14:11-20).”
* “The Lord said through Elisha that the combined armies of Israel, Judah and Edom would “smite every fenced city” of Moab and that he would “deliver the Moabites also into your hand.” But one city, Kir-hareseth, was not taken. When Mesha, the Moabite king, sacrificed his son on the city wall, the Israelites left and went home. The prophecy was not fulfilled because the Israelites would not cooperate with the Lord’s wishes.”
* “Through Ezekiel, the Lord declared that the Lebanese city of Tyre would be destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar, never to be rebuilt (Ezekiel 26, especially verses 4, 7, 12, 14). Though Nebuchadrezzar laid siege against Tyre from 598 to 586 B.C., he was never able to take the city. The Lord then told Ezekiel that, in compensation for his not taking Tyre, Nebuchadrezzar would be given the land of Egypt, (Ezekiel 29:17-10). Its people would be slain and its rivers dry up (Ezekiel 30:10-12; 32:11-15) and the land of Egypt would remain uninhabited for forty years (Ezekiel 29:11-13). But though Nebuchadrezzar defeated an Egyptian army in battle, he never conquered Egypt either.”
“Isaiah, in his prophesy against Babylon (Isaiah 13:1), declared that the Medes would slay men, women and children and that Babylon would “be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation” (Isaiah 13:17-20). In 539 B.C., Cyrus, king of the Medes and Persians, took Babylon without bloodshed, and made it one of the principal cities of his empire. Babylon remained inhabited for centuries afterward.”
24 Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. B. H. Roberts (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1973), 5:265.
25 Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, ed. Bruce R. McConkie (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1956), 3:203.
26 Michael R. Ash, Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt (Redding: The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, 2008), 19-30.
27 Tvedtnes, “The Nature of Prophets and Prophecy”. Tvedtnes devotes considerable time and attention to specific alleged false prophecies of Joseph Smith and his prophetic successors, all of which he ably handles and answers. The article really is a must read for a solid LDS apologetic response to criticisms of Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling.
28 What other multitude of “failed prophecies” Joseph Smith is alleged to have uttered are not numerated by Trask for the benefit of a curious viewership that desires more than an unsatisfying gratis dictum.
29 See http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Prophecies/Independence_temple_to_be_built_%22in_this_generation%22 (Accessed 03 March, 2011).
30 Ibid.m
31 Daniel C. Peterson, “An Unapologetic Apology for Apologetics”, FARMS Review 22/2 (2010), xii-xv.
32 As an aside, Dr. Rico’s criticisms that the Book of Mormon has nobody to vouch for its authenticity besides the one who claimed to receive the revelation, Joseph Smith, is at odds with the witnesses to the plates of the Book of Mormon. On such, consult Richard L. Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1981). I don’t hold this against Dr. Rico, however, since he was probably unaware of the witnesses and Kramer probably never bothered to mention anything about them to him.
33 Kramer seems to want to apply the evidence from Qumran not only for the Old Testament but the New Testament as well. How the Dead Sea Scrolls have any relevance to the textual transmission of the New Testament escapes me, since the Dead Sea Scrolls don’t contain any of the manuscripts of the New Testament.
34 Norman Geisler, “Alleged Bible Errors,” in The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics: Surveying the Truth about Christianity, ed. Ed Hinson and Ergun Caner (Eugne: Harvest House Publishers, 2008), pp. 97-100. See also Evangelical New Testament scholar Craig L. Blomberg’s remarks about the preservation of the biblical texts in Craig L. Blomberg and Stephen R. Robinson, How Wide the Divide? A Mormon & An Evangelical in Conversation (Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 38. Bomberg’s arguments about the preservation of the biblical texts, while laudable for their scholarly tone and professionally critical approach, have been convincingly critiqued by William J. Hamblin and Daniel C. Peterson, “The Evangelical is Our Brother”,FARMS Review 11/2 (1999), 190-199.
35 In the video Dr. Rico informs us that “we have like 6000 copies that go back to antiquity. They’re either in Hebrew for the Old Testament or in Greek for the New Testament. If we are talking about the versions the figure is much higher. We have 40,000 copies which is amazing. You don’t have a single other book in antiquity where you have so many texts.” However, there is more to the story than the video would like us to know, since “there are over 5,200 Greek New Testament manuscripts, no two of which are alike. They come from different areas and communities in antiquity and that accounts for some differences.” James A. Sanders, “Understanding the Developments of the Biblical Text”, in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Forty Years, ed. Hershel Shanks (Washington, D. C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1991), 61, emphasis added. Considering this fact, as well as the fact that of those 5,200 or so manuscripts only 34 contain the entire New Testament and 35 of them were compiled after 1000 AD, Dr. Rico’s words must be taken with a grain of salt. See Bruce M. Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Greek Paleography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 54-55.
36 Philip W. Comfort and David P. Barrett, ed. The Text of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts, 2nd ed. (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishing, Inc, 2002), 504.
37 Ibid., 83.
38 David Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
39 On the subject of corruption of scripture in early Christianity, see also John Gee, “The Corruption of Scripture in Early Christianity,” in Early Christians in Disarray: Contemporary LDS Perspectives on the Christian Apostasy, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2005), 163-204.
40 Justin Martyr, Dialogus cum Tryphone 73, as cited by John Gee, “The Corruption of Scripture in Early Christianity”, 167-168.
41 Gee, “The Corruption of Scripture in Early Christianity”, 163, discusses this points, noting that “while the image of medieval monks making changes to the text of scripture might be true in certain isolated instances, the changes [spoken of in 1 Nephi] came long before”.
42 Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Ehrman (p. 43 n. 108) calls attention to John Mill’s work on 100 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament and shows “some 30,000 variant readings”. And that is only with 100 manuscripts! See also Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005). Although I do not agree with all of Ehrman’s conclusions made in his books, I nevertheless highly recommend his works on the textual transmission of the New Testament for those who insist that that the New Testament has been perfectly or near-perfectly preserved. Especially insightful is Ehrman’s observation (p. 10) that “there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament”.
43 Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 63-65. Keep in mind that Kramer insisted in the video that corruption of the biblical manuscripts is “impossible because soon after the original writings of the New Testament, thousands of copies were made. So if a monk wanted to make a change, his change would stand out like a sore thumb.” As a matter of fact, passages like the one discussed above do stick out like a sore thumb to textual critics like Ehrman, and said textual critics therefore obligingly argue that they are, in fact, corruptions. Other “sore thumbs” noted by Ehrman (pp. 265-266) include 1 John 5:7; Luke 22:20, 44; Mark 16:17-18; John 5:4; and Luke 24: 12, 51. Kramer’s argument also assumes that the copyists of the biblical texts had access to all of the manuscripts available, which is highly unfeasible. Because there were many manuscripts in various parts of Christendom, it may not to be assumed that, as with our modern information age, the copyists had easy and ready access to these manuscripts. Manuscript variants and corruption (either accidental or intentional) were possible precisely because so many copyists were involved, and cross-checking all the texts an impossibility.
44 Furthermore, it also seems likely that John’s severe warning at the end of his apocalypse (Revelation 22:18-19) was a preemptive alert intended to stop a scribal corruption of his text.
45 And of these thousands of copies and manuscripts, most of them are scraps and fragments.
46 Contra Kramer, who claims that “soon after the original writings of the New Testament, thousands of copies were made”. The question I have is how soon? Five years? Ten years? Thirty years? Sixty years? One hundred years? Three hundred years? Kramer doesn’t tell us or provide any evidence for his claim that “thousands” of copies were made “soon” after the autographs. Indeed, such a feat would be truly remarkable for ancient scribes who would have had to work at an inconceivably torrent pace to fill Kramer’s claim.
47 Contra Dr. Rico, who claims that “when we compare all the ancient copies of the New Testament that we have the differences are very small so you cannot even show me a text where this has been done because the differences between the different copies that we have are very very very very tiny. They don’t affect the substance of the meaning. It is like saying instead of “but” saying “however”. It is this kind of small and tiny changes. You don’t have changes that affect the substance of the meaning of the New Testament. So it’s something that is utterly impossible.”
48 Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 260-261.
49 David Clines, “What Remains of the Old Testament? Its Text and Language in a Postmodern Age”, 11, lecture given in the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, 24 September 2001, paper in my possession, internal citations removed.
50 As an aside, while there are 113 Dead Sea Scroll readings from the Isaiah texts in modern translations, they can only find agreement on using just 8 of them (14:4; 21:8; 23:2; 33:8; 49:17, 24; 51:19; 53:11; 60:19), as noted by Harold Scanlan, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Modern Translations of the Old Testament: How the Dead Sea Scrolls have Influenced Modern English Translations (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1993), 126.
51 Immanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 2d ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001). For the Jeremiah information, see especially pp. 319-27 and for Isaiah, passim.
52 Esther Eshel, “The Bible in the Dead Sea Scrolls”, The Jewish Study Bible, 1927, emphasis in original.
53 Donald W. Parry, “The Contributions of the Dead Sea Scrolls”, in LDS Perspectives on the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Donald W. Parry and Dana M. Pike (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1997), 54-55. Parry goes on to note specific examples of variants that are manifest in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other biblical manuscripts and the reasons behind their corruption, including theologically motivated scribes who willfully altered the text (pp. 59-64). Contrast Dr. Parry’s research with the remarks made by Dr. Randall Price in the video when he claims, without a single example to back him up, that “there is nothing different between it [the DSS] and the translation from which our modern Bibles come. So there’s nothing missing.”
54 Bart D. Ehrman recounts how before he became an agnostic he shared fundamentalist assumptions about the Bible very similar to Kramer’s. However, upon recognizing the untenable position of biblical “infallibility” during his studies of the textual history of the New Testament and his inability to reconcile human suffering with an all-loving God, Ehrman lost his faith. See Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 1-15.
55 Joseph Smith himself and his contemporaries referred to the work as the “new translation”. The Community of Christ, formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, refers to the work as the “Inspired Version”. For the sake of clarity and consistency, I shall refer to it as the Joseph Smith Translation or JST.
56 What the exact process used by Joseph Smith entailed is not entirely known. It is known that Joseph used different instruments at different times, such as the Urim and Thummim or the seer stone, but there is enough ambiguity in the historical and textual evidence for scholars to postulate differing theories as to the exact method of translating. Even if one rejects Joseph’s ability to translate, the entire question of what Joseph and others believed he was doing remains. See Richard L. Anderson, “By the Gift and Power of God,” Ensign (September 1977), 79–85; Royal Skousen, “Translating the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript”, Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1997), 61-95; Stephen D. Ricks, “Translation of the Book of Mormon: Interpreting the Evidence”, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 2/2 (1993), 201-206. For a more recent analysis on the translation process, see Richard E. Bennett, “Joseph Smith and the First Principles of the Gospel”, in Joseph Smith, The Prophet and Seer, ed. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Kent P. Jackson (Provo: Brigham Young University, 2010), 39-47.
57 Michael D. Rhodes “I Have a Question. Why doesn’t the translation of the Egyptian papyri found in 1967 match the text of the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price?”, Ensign (July 1988), 51-53; Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, ed. John Gee and Michael D. Rhodes, 2nd ed. (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2005), 54-65.
58 ”At Evening met with my class at Professor [Joshua] Seixas Room, & translated the 17th chapter of Genesis.” Dean Jessee, Ron Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman ed. The Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Vol. 1: 1832–1839 (Church Historian’s Press, 2008),195. “Monday the 22nd [February 1836] translated Hebrew with the 1st class in the morning.” Dean Jessee, The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1984), 162.
59 Kevin L. Barney, “The Joseph Smith Translation and Ancient Texts of the Bible,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 19/3 (Fall 1986), 85–102. On the whole I recommend Barney’s article for those wishing to become more aquatinted with the JST, although I do not agree with all of Barney’s conclusions. For example, I believe that the JST does more frequently restore some of the original text of the biblical books that had been subsequently deleted by scribal interpolation than Barney seems to allow, although Barney certainly is correct in the general thesis of the paper that the JST needs to be seriously considered as more than just a simple restoration of the original texts of the Bible. My reasoning for drawing a differing conclusion than Barney comes partly from evidence offered by Matthew B. Brown, All Things Restored, 2d ed. (American Fork, UT: Covenant, 2006),159–181. For another perspective on the JST, see Plain and Precious Truths Restored: The Doctrinal and Historical Significance of the Joseph Smith Translation, ed. Robert L. Millet and Robert J. Matthews (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2001).
60 Robert J. Matthews, “A Plainer Translation”: Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: A History and Commentary (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1985), 253. The late Professor Matthews’ arguments and scholarship have been further explored by Professor Kent P. Jackson of Brigham Young University in a number of scholarly writings, including “New Discoveries in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible,” in By Study and by Faith: Selections from the Religious Educator, ed. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Kent P. Jackson (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2009), 169–81; “Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible,” in Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer, 51-77. Kramer completely ignores these excellent sources on JST scholarship which, incidentally, effectively answer many of the video’s arguments against the JST.
61 Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Dana M. Pike, David Rolph Seely, Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2009), 386.
62 Robert J. Matthews, “Joseph Smith as Translator,” in Joseph Smith, The Prophet, The Man, Susan Easton Black and Charles D. Tate, Jr., eds., (Provo: Religious Studies Center, 1993), 80, 84.
63 See, for instance, the arguments put forth by Professor Thomas Wayment of Brigham Young University, “Quest for Origins: The Joseph Smith Translation and Latin Versions of the New Testament,” in A Witness for the Restoration: Essays in Honor of Robert J. Matthews, ed. Kent P. Jackson and Andrew C. Skinner (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2007), 61–91. After carefully comparing the JST to various biblical manuscripts Professor Wayment concludes (p. 91) that “the New Translation has a legitimate claim for preserving a handful of original readings”. In another publication Wayment, along with Professors Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Eric D. Huntsman, explains with several examples that there is “a remarkable degree of textual support for the JST from a variety of early New Testament Greek manuscripts.” See Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Eric D. Huntsman, Thomas A. Wayment, Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2006), 15. As is expected, Joel Kramer neglects to address any of this evidence.
64 It may be appropriate to inform Dr. Donald W. Parry, a believing and active Latter-day Saint who is a member of the international team of the Dead Sea Scroll’s translators and a professor of Hebrew Bible at Brigham Young University, that his faith is seriously undermined by the Dead Sea Scrolls with this new evidence offered by Kramer. But I’m sure that Dr. Parry was already aware of the Great Isaiah Scroll’s falsifying of the JST. After all, according to a biographical sketch, “Dr. Parry has authored or edited more than twenty-seven books, ten of which pertain to the Dead Sea Scrolls. He has translated the Dead Sea Scrolls books of Samuel (1 Samuel and 2 Samuel) and Isaiah. He has also published Poetic Parallelisms in the Book of Mormon (2007); A New Edition of the Great Isaiah Scroll: Transcriptions and Photographs (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998). Many of his books are written for the Latter-day Saint community, including Understanding Isaiah (Deseret Book, 1998); Understanding the Book of Revelation (Deseret Book, 1998); Understanding the Signs of the Times (Deseret Book, 1999); and Temples of the Ancient World(Deseret Book, 1993), among others.” See http://mormonscholarstestify.org/1774/donald-w-parry (Accessed 26 February, 2011).
65 Or, in the words of Mark Ashurst-McGee, “most scholars believe that the Old Testament scriptures had been altered centuries before the scribes at Qumran copied the Dead Sea Scrolls. So whether [Joseph] Smith restored original textual material may not be detectable”. Ashurst-McGee’s comments were directed at the critic Grant Palmer, the author of a popular but problematic book that, among other things, attempts to disprove the JST based on reasoning similar to Kramer’s. See Mark Ashurst-McGee, “A One Sided View of Mormon Origins, FARMS Review 15/2 (2003), 315.
66 Returning to professors William J. Hamblin and Daniel C. Peterson’s critique of Evangelical biblical scholar Craig L. Blomberg’s arguments against the JST (which are remarkably similar to Kramer’s), we discover that there is an inherent difficulty in comparing the JST to other biblical manuscripts since “the texts we now have are faithful to the scattered manuscripts of the late second century and thereafter. It cannot demonstrate anything about the mid-first-century originals, because these are lost… [I]t is virtually inconceivable that we will ever know all of the manuscripts and manuscript variants that have ever existed. But it is only on the basis of such complete knowledge that we could ever definitively rule out the possibility of ancient support for Joseph Smith’s readings.” In other words, it is an argument from silence to argue that Joseph Smith’s inspired revisions of the Bible are not justifiable when we don’t possess all of the ancient manuscripts of the Bible, let alone the autographs. See William J. Hamblin and Daniel C. Peterson, “The Evangelical is Our Brother”, 190.
67 Robert A. Cloward, “Isaiah 29 and the Book of Mormon”, in Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch, eds., (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1998), 191. The entire article is a worthy read, and is much more responsible in handling the text of Isaiah and the Book of Mormon than Kramer’s bombastic polemics.
68 For an overall more responsible and scholarly approach to JST Isaiah and the Book of Mormon, the reader is directed to Kevin Barney’s “Isaiah Interwoven”, FARMS Review 15/1 (2003), 379-401.
69 On this charge, consult Richard R. Hopkins, Biblical Mormonism: A Biblical Basis for LDS Theology (Springville: Cedar Fort, Inc., 2006), 137-157.
70 Especially useful in understanding the LDS interpretation of Paul’s statements on “grace”, “faith”, and “works” is Richard L. Anderson, Understanding Paul, revised ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2007), 156-160,174-185, 266-270, 277-281.
71 For explorations into and critiques of the sectarian anti-Mormon attacks on LDS soteriology, see Louis Midgley, “The Wedding of Athens and Jerusalem: An Evangelical Perplexity and a Latter-day Saint Answer”, FARMS Review 21/2 (2009), xi-xxxix; Louis Midgley, “Debating Evangelicals”, FARMS Review 20/2 (2008), xxx-xxix; John Gee, “The Grace of Christ”, FARMS Review22/1 (2010), 247-259; David L. Paulsen and Cory G. Walker, “Work, Worship, and Grace”, FARMS Review 18/2 (2006), 83-177; Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack the Latter-day Saints (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992), 138-148; Matthew B. Brown, The Plan of Salvation: Understanding Our Divine Origin and Destiny, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Covenant Communication, Inc., 2007), 251-257; Richard R. Hopkins, Biblical Mormonism, 159-216; Walker Wright, “Grace and Faith in History and Within the Context of Mormon Soteriology”, online at http://walkstar.blogspot.com/2010/12/grace-and-faith-in-history-and-within.html (Accessed 27 February, 2011).
72 In the video we have Dr. Rico criticizing Joseph’s claims by constructing a parodic situation in which “the only thing that you have, is something that has been printed in the 19th century, has been written by someone in the 19th century, and given to print. Ok, I can do the same, if you want. You can do the same. You can take, you can write, “I, J-O-E-L, I say that I am now the true prophet and the Bible has been corrupted, and all the Bible of the Christians is nonsense. This is the true Bible.” And yet what can we say. Who is the witness of that? Who is the grantor of what you are saying? Only you, yourself.”
73 Professors Holzapfel, Pike and Seely, Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament, 384, helpfully remind us that “instead of abandoning his belief and trust in the Bible, Joseph Smith announced that the publication of… the Book of Mormon came about to prove ‘that the Holy Scriptures [Old and New Testament] are true’ (D&C 20:11)”.
74 Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 327. Speaking of the Bible, the Prophet Joseph also declared that “he that can mark the power of Omnipotence, inscribed upon the heavens, can also see God’s own handwriting in the sacred volume: and he who reads it oftenest will like it best, and he who is acquainted with it, will know the hand [of the Lord] wherever he can see it” (pg. 56).
75 Discourses of Brigham Young, John A. Widtsoe ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1946), 125-126.
76 The Gospel Kingdom, ed. G. Homer Durham (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1943), 240.
77 Deseret Weekly, August 17, 1889, 226.
78 Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1919), 46.
79 Heber J. Grant, Improvement Era (November 1936), cited in Holzapfel, Huntsman and Wayment, Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament, 318.
80 Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 3:184, emphasis in original.
81 Harold B. Lee, Ye Are the Light of the World (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1974), 96.
82 Spencer W. Kimball, “What I Read as a Boy”, Children’s Friend (November 1943), 508.
83 Quoted in Holzapfel, Huntsman and Wayment, Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament, 319.
84 True to the Faith: A Gospel Reference (Salt Lake City: The Church or Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2004), 157.
85 Preach My Gospel: A Guide to Missionary Service (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2004), 106.
86 Gospel Principles (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2009), 44.
87 http://lds.org/study/topics/bible?lang=eng (Accessed 26 February, 2011). Also see http://lds.org/study/topics/bible-inerrancy-of?lang=eng (Accessed 26 February, 2011): “Latter-day Saints revere the Bible. They study it and believe it to be the word of God. However, they do not believe the Bible, as it is currently available, is without error… The Latter-day Saints have a great reverence and love for the Bible. They study it and try to live its teachings. They treasure its witness of the life and mission of the Lord Jesus Christ… As the Bible was compiled, organized, translated, and transcribed, many errors entered the text. The existence of such errors becomes apparent when one considers the numerous and often conflicting translations of the Bible in existence today. Careful students of the Bible are often puzzled by apparent contradictions and omissions. Many people have also been curious about references by biblical prophets to books or scriptural passages that are not currently in the Bible. In addition to the Bible, Latter-day Saints reverence and study the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the words of modern prophets and apostles. All these sources of eternal truth work together to establish, clarify, and testify of the plan of our Heavenly Father and to bring people unto Jesus Christ.”
88 M. Russell Ballard, “The Miracle of the Holy Bible”, Ensign (May 2007), 81.
89 Jeffrey R. Holland, “My Words…Never Cease”, Ensign (May 2008), 92
90 Russell M. Nelson, “Scriptural Witnesses”, Ensign (November 2007), 43
91 D. Todd Christofferson, “The Blessing of Scripture”, Ensign (May 2010), 35
92 Gospel Truth: Discourses and Writings of President George Q. Cannon, ed. Jerreld L. Newquist (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1987), 472.
93 Doctrines of the Restoration: Sermons & Writings of Bruce R. McConkie, ed. Mark L. McConkie (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1989), 279.
94 Rodney Turner, “Book of Mormon, what it says about the Bible”, Book of Mormon Reference Companion, ed. Dennis L. Largey (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 166.
95 Robert Millet, “A Latter-day Saint Perspective on Biblical Inerrancy”, Religious Educator 11/1 (2010), 88.
96 Robert J. Matthews, “The Role of the Bible in the Restoration”, Ensign (July 1979), 41.
97 B. H. Roberts, New Witnesses for God (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1909), 2:64.
98 John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1943), 101.
99 James E. Talmage, The Articles of Faith (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1965), 236.
100 Hugh Nibley, The World and the Prophets, ed. John W. Welch, Gary P. Gillum, Don E. Norton, 3rd ed. (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1987), 200, emphasis in original.
101 For scholarly treatments on the transmission of the text of the Bible, see Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, And Restoration, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible; “Canons of the Bible”, “Textual Criticism”, “Translation of the Bible into English”, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, ed. Michael D. Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 453-471.
102 Peterson and Ricks, Offenders for a Word, 118.
103 The following quotes and their sources can be found conveniently online, “Mormonism and the nature of God/Deification of man”, at http://en.fairmormon.org/Nature_of_God/Deification_of_man (Accessed 27 February, 2011).
104 For a treatment on this theme, see Daniel C. Peterson “Ye Are Gods: Psalm 82 and John 10 as Witnesses to the Divine Nature of Humankind”, The Disciple as Scholar: Essays on Scripture and the Ancient World in Honor of Richard Lloyd Anderson, ed. Andrew H. Hedges, Donald W. Parry, Stephen D. Ricks (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2000), 471-594.
105 Two excellent studies that elaborate on this are Keith E. Norman, Deification: The Content of Athanasian Soteriology (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2000); Jordan Vajda. “Partakers of the Divine Nature”: A Comparative Analysis of Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2002). Vajda’s work is especially useful in providing an overview of LDS and Patristic views on theosis and comparing the similarities and differences of the two. Vajda succinctly concludes his findings with this gem: “The Mormons are truly “godmakers”: as the doctrine of exaltation explains, the fullness of human salvation means “becoming a god.” Yet what was meant to be a term of ridicule has turned out to be a term of approbation, for the witness of the Greek Fathers of the Church, described in chapter two, is that they also believed that salvation meant “becoming a god.” It seems that if one’s soteriology cannot accommodate a doctrine of human divinization, then it has at least implicitly, if not explicitly, rejected the heritage of the early Christian church and departed from the faith of first millennium Christianity” (pg. 56).
106 Vajda, “Partakers of the Divine Nature”, 18, 34-37, compares the sacraments or ordinances of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Latter-day Saint traditions required for full human divinization. He also provides useful definitions and explanations on the Roman Catholic/Orthodox doctrine of Synergism and the LDS view of grace and works.
107 ”I am not unmindful of the scripture that declares: ‘by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.’ (Ephesians 2:8.) That is absolutely true, for man in his taking upon himself mortality was impotent to save himself. When left to grope in a natural state, he would have become, and did become, so we are told in modern scripture, ‘carnal, sensual, and devilish, by nature.’ (Alma 42:10.) But the Lord, through his grace, appeared to man, gave him the gospel or eternal plan whereby he might rise above the carnal and selfish things of life and obtain spiritual perfection. But he must rise by his own efforts and he must walk by faith. ‘He who would ascend the stairway leading upward to eternal life must tread it step by step from the base stone to the summit of its flight. Not a single stair can be missed, not one duty neglected, if the climber would avoid danger and delay and arrive with all safety and expedition at the topmost landing of the celestial exaltation.’ The responsibility is upon each individual to choose the path of righteousness, of faithfulness and duty to fellow men. If he choose otherwise and as a result meets failure, misery, and death, he alone is to blame.” David O. McKay, Conference Report (April 1957), 7, quoted in The Life and Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1978), 350-351.
108 Ernst Benz, “Imago Dei: Man in the Image of God”, Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels, ed. Truman Madsen (Provo: Religious Studies Center and Brigham Young University Press, 1978), 215–216.
109 The clips are from a DVD rebuttal to Kramer’s The Bible vs. The Book of Mormon produced by FAIR and available to view on the FAIR Youtube webpage at http://www.youtube.com/user/fairldsorg (Accessed 12 March, 2011).
110 With one exception where I have brought together some of his words from two different parts of this segment of the film, the ellipses here represent breaks and pauses in Gifford’s speaking, not the omission of material.
111 Kramer also constructs another straw man argument with his simplistic summary of the LDS apologetic response to the Alma 7:10 controversy when he informs Gifford that “Mormon scholars say “well, Bethlehem is close to Jerusalem, so they can be the same.” As shall be seen, what the Mormon scholars are arguing is not that Bethlehem and Jerusalem are the same place, but that Bethlehem can and has been considered as being part of the larger “land of Jerusalem”.
112 Daniel C. Peterson, “Is the Book of Mormon True? Notes on the Debate”, Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynold (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1997), 155.
113 Ibid., 155-156.
114 Ibid. See also Daniel C. Peterson, Matthew Roper, and William J. Hamblin, “On Alma 7:10 and the Birthplace of Jesus Christ”, located online at http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=37 (Accessed 04 March, 2011); Robert R. Bennett “Jesus’ Birthplace and the Phrase “Land of Jerusalem”, online at http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=127 (Accessed 04 March, 2011).
115 Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch, 3rd ed. (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1988), 102.
116 David Bokovoy, http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/52488-alma-710-jerusalem-or-bethlehem/ (Accessed 13 March, 2011).
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid, emphasis by Bokovoy. Bokovoy’s provided citation is John Duncan Martin Derrett, “Light on the Narratives of The Narratives of the Nativity,” Novum Testamentum, vol. 17, (1975), 86.
119 Ibid.
120 J. R. Dummelow, The One Volume Bible Commentary (New York: Macmillian Publishing Company, 1908), 130. It is also worthy to note that Dummelow, in his commentary, doesn’t miss noticing that Deuteronomy 18 doesn’t provide the cut and dry test for a prophet that Kramer would like us to believe it does. Dummelow’s reasonings upon this passage are in line with the other authorities we have already cited, as he notes that “at no time is it easy to distinguish the true from the false prophet. Different prophets in Israel not infrequently contradicted each other. One test of the true prophet, but not the only one, is proposed here, viz. the fulfillment of the prediction. Manifestly this test could only be applied to the predictions of the immediate future. But the prophet sometimes prophesied of things that were afar off (Ezk 12:22-27) so that his words could not be verified by those to whom they were addressed. The ultimate criterion of the true prophet is the moral character of his utterance. Conscience is the true judge.”
121 Intriguingly enough, according to the text of 1 Kings 18 the prophets of Asherah, a Canaanite fertility goddess, were left unharmed by Elijah. For one possibility as to why this was, the reader is directed to Daniel C. Peterson, “Nephi and His Asherah”, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9/2 (2000), 16-25.
122 The concluding sequence of the video would seem to confirm this, as it ends with the scripture “I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).
123 Contrast Kramer’s braggadocio pronouncements with Gifford’s simple admission that “for me to answer your question it’s going to take a lot of study and I have to come to grips in my own mind… I can’t just take your word for it I have to study it out for myself.”
124 See “Answers to a Pastor”, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZW-NKGXFGg&feature=channel_video_title (Accessed 12 March, 2011).
125 I begin with a word of caution since the video has been posted in an edited form by Rabbi Locks. While I am not explicitly claiming that the good Rabbi doctored footage to make Kramer look bad, after viewing the film I have a nagging suspicion that it may have happened. As such, my commentary should be taken with a grain of salt. Notwithstanding, from what footage has been posted it seems appropriate to call attention to this exchange between Kramer and Locks to illustrate Kramer’s double standards.
126 Ironically enough, one of the posters on the video’s comment function drew attention to Numbers 23:19 in an attempt to disprove Jesus’ right to claim to be God and have the ability to forgive sins. This is ironic because this same scripture is often used by Christians such as Kramer to disprove Joseph Smith’s teachings that God is an exalted, glorified man with a perfected body of flesh and bones.
127 Personal communication, 12 March 2011. E-mail in my possession.
128 Ibid.
129 Compare D&C 122:1.