Another Important Fact Hidden!

Radio Free Mormon here, broadcasting behind enemy lines. Tonight's episode 458. They didn't tell me this. Uh, good evening, everybody. Welcome to Radio Free Mormon. Tonight, we're going to talk about a certain fact, a very important fact, in fact, that they didn't tell me in the Mormon Church. And there's a possibility that if I had known this fact, and it hadn't been kept from me, I might have split the Mormon Church in my 20s instead of decades later. So, this fact is very important to me. In the absence of it, it was very important to me. There's no way of saying for sure what would have happened in an alternate reality, but I found out about this just a week ago from a listener to the show. And I'll tell you that story as we go along.

First off, I want to tell you, in brief thumbnail form, what it is that this is about. All right, it is about a fact that has to do with chiasmus. Now, I hate to say that word, chiasmus, because the eyes glaze over. We're not talking about chiasmus itself. We're talking about the way it was presented to the world by the man who discovered chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. His name is John Welch. Um, I read a great deal of what he wrote and what others wrote about what he wrote. I even wrote some things about chiasmus. It was a hard and fast and beautiful and amazing evidence that the Book of Mormon was true.

The problem with chiasmus is twofold. First off, you have to establish what chiasmus is, and you have to establish its presence in the relevant text, which in this case is the Book of Mormon. He did that, I think, quite well. I think that there are some places where there's more of an interpretation that's happening that's creating a chiasmus where there might not otherwise be one. But there are definitely many instances, I feel safe in saying, where there have been identified real and accurate and honest-to-goodness chiasmus in the Book of Mormon.

Now, chiasmus, for those of you who don't know, the one of you out there who doesn't know, is an old literary writing form. And it's a, um, it's simply, first off, you start with the idea of a parallelism where you say one thing and then you say the same thing again, maybe with a little bit different words, synonyms perhaps, to the original line. Well, that's a parallelism. A chiasm is an inverse parallelism or a reverse parallelism. It's had a lot of names over the years where you say something this way and then you reverse that order and you say it again. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" is an obvious example. So, it's not just ancient civilizations that use them, unless John F. Kennedy was an ancient Jew. No, they do happen in other forms, but this is something that happens in the Book of Mormon. It has been identified in the Book of Mormon. John Welch was the person who identified them in the Book of Mormon. And remarkably enough, while he was still on his mission, it was 1967, I believe, is how the story goes. And he had just attended a lecture, and the lecture was probably in German, too. He's a very intelligent person, John Welch, which is why he went on to become not only a professor of law, uh, but the dean of the law school there at BYU and the editor-in-chief of BYU Studies for many years. He has accomplished many things in his life, and one of the earlier things was he created the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, also known as FARMS, which then got bought up by BYU. But under the BYU umbrella, and subsequently, the name was changed to the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Studies. It's the same thing. And now John Welch has, I think, pretty much departed FARMS a long time ago, the entity he created. And I think he's carrying on the work that he saw as important in FARMS under another name, and I believe that name is Scripture Central. And I think that's where you can find him at work nowadays.

Um, okay. So, having said all of that, I, I think somewhere about half an hour ago, I said I was giving you a thumbnail version of what the issue was. Okay. The first part, there's two parts to the chiasmus. Remember, the first part is establishing what it is and where it exists. And it does exist in the Book of Mormon. I believe we can all agree to that. But the second part is just as important because really, identifying chiasmus in the Book of Mormon means little unless you can also establish one other thing. And that one other thing, of course, is that it wasn't known before Joseph produced the Book of Mormon. All right. So, if Joseph Smith and the world, and it's pretty common knowledge that there's chiasmus, that it exists, this inverted parallelism, especially in the Bible, it's there too. That's how, um, it was that Jack Welch, or John Welch, found out about it because he was attending that lecture in 1967 on his mission. And, um, the lecture was about the presence of chiasmus, what it was, and that it exists in the Bible. And the next morning, as the story goes, John Welch got up and he was reading the scriptures. He opened it up and boom, he saw it right there. It was in Mosiah. It was a really clear example and a relatively short example, so it was easy for him to see. And in his German edition of the Book of Mormon, which of course he was reading, it lined up the corresponding words just by happenstance perfectly so that they kind of jumped out at him because he was thinking about chiasmus at the time. Okay, I did complete that story. Going back to, can you, can you tell I'm doing this without notes, folks? Going back to the idea, the second thing that's important about chiasmus is you have to establish if it's going to have any evidentiary value for the Book of Mormon. Which means that frankly, whenever a Mormon, almost any Mormon, is going to find something like this, often they're looking for it, but sometimes they might stumble upon it. But the first thing they're going to want to ask is, did Joseph Smith know about this? Could he have known about it? Because if Joseph Smith would have known about it, and everybody would have known about it, then its presence in the Book of Mormon does not become that amazing or remarkable. You're not going to get remembered in history for that. But if nobody knew about this existence of chiasmus or inverted parallelism before the Book of Mormon comes off the press in 1830, or before it's dictated in 1829, it happens right there in those two years, a one-year period all told, April of '29 to April to March of '30. If nobody knew about chiasmus before that and it shows up in the Book of Mormon, and sorry, there is a third thing, and you can show that it was used by ancient Hebrews, ancient Jews, it shows up in the Bible, the Old Testament. Yeah, it does. So, you got that covered too. So, the main thing out of these is now you got the others covered. You got to show that nobody knew about the existence of chiasmus before 1829. 1829 is going to be the critical year because that's when Joseph Smith is producing the Book of Mormon.

Now, the problem here, and this is the thumbnail sketch, so we'll be here just for a little while tonight. The problem is that the temptation then is now going to be on the part of the person who has made the discovery, and I'm talking about John Welch, uh, who has made the discovery and is now trying to buttress it in order to make it a really good evidence for the Book of Mormon. You've got to try and not show that anybody knew about it before Joseph Smith. In other words, you had a heavy bias coming into this because the less information there was about it before Joseph Smith produces the Book of Mormon in 1829, the more miraculous the discovery that you yourself made becomes. And the less people knew about it before 1829, the more miraculous your discovery becomes. And I'm afraid to say that that temptation may have caught up with John Welch. He may have succumbed to that temptation. I'm going to tell you what the evidence is tonight.

And first, now, before I get to the evidence about what it is that I'm talking about, I'm going to tell you about how I came to this evidence, which is that it is through a viewer to the show who had contacted me and mentioned all the different shows being done about chiasmus here, chiasmus there. And there have been a few, which is why I didn't put it in the title thumbnail to this episode. Um, but this really is fascinating because this isn't about the chiasmus. This is about the cover-up and then the detective work that led to the exposure of that cover-up. And this detective work was not done by me. It was done by somebody else. But back to the listener. Listener lets me know, says, "Hey, did you know about this particular piece of writing?" And I thought, "I don't think so." And it's a footnote that the listener referenced me to. And it's a footnote in the book *Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview*. *Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview*, D. Michael Quinn came out in the 1980s. I read the first edition and, uh, did not understand much of it. And much of that failure to understand it was intentional and self-inflicted because I really didn't want to understand what it was he was saying. It was terrifying. But this book, this paperback version, is not the first edition. It is a second edition. It's called a revised and enlarged edition. And it is. It's like the director's cut. And he also put a number of things in there which he did not have access to when the original came out. One of these has to do with a very long footnote. Now, this book is very thick as it is. You can tell that half of this book is footnotes. They're actually endnotes. So they're in the end of the book. Here's the text of the book. Then it goes to pictures, and all of this is the endnotes right there. I mean, there is a little bit of an index at the end, but it's mainly all endnotes. And what it was that this listener referenced me to was a footnote. It's chapter 6. It's footnote 108 in this book. And this footnote is five pages long. It's a five-page footnote. Once again, technically it's an endnote. But I say that only because even though the print in the regular part of the book, the text of the book, the first half of the book, is small enough, but when you get back to the endnotes, they're actually even smaller. And it's five pages. A five-page endnote, and that's what we're going to be going over tonight.

So, first off, I wanted to attribute that to the listener who brought it to my attention. And I started to read this endnote. And fortunately, I had the book right here. Uh, I have some that are in, uh, some shelves back here. And then I have a bunch that are sort of in stacks over on the floor over here to my left. And this was toward the top of one of those stacks on the floor. And I was able to open it. I had never gotten really past the first chapter in this revised book. And it was a number of years ago. I had an idea in mind that I would go over the different chapters in sequence and make an episode series about it. But then something else came along, as things often will. Uh, I never got any further with that project. Although I will say that a number of the episodes that I've done with Bill Reel, or that Bill Reel has done with me, about early church history, like this past Wednesday on Mormonism Live, and talking about Moroni as a treasure guardian spirit, I think have caught me up with a lot of the contents of this book. But it was D. Michael Quinn who was really bringing all this together, bringing it out to the forefront. He was the one who brought this on the national stage back in the mid-1980s with the first edition of this book.

Okay. So now I've told you how this came to my attention. I've told you what it is I'm going to do tonight. Let me tell you what I'm going to do tonight. What I'm going to do tonight is I'm going to break down that five-page footnote in a way that's hopefully understandable to you the first time through. I have never read a researcher or historian such as, um, D. Michael Quinn, who's more dense in his writing. He packs more information into a sentence than most people do. So, it's a five-page. It's five pages already. It's footnotes. It's wall-to-wall footnotes, size and smallness. So, lots of material, but it also needs unpacking on top of all that. But it's a fascinating detective job that he did, figuring out not only that John Welch was understating the information available to Joseph Smith about inverted parallelisms in his day and time, but that, um, it looks like it was done intentionally. So that's what this five-page footnote purports to do. And I have to tell you, as I read through it, I became more and more saddened and disappointed. And I'm surprised that I'm saddened. I know why I am. Um, I mean, I had caught Daniel C. Peterson, is this 20 years ago? Is it 15 to 20 years ago when I initially caught him in his evidence about Alma through the Book of Mormon? And talking about how it's Alma is, you know, usually thought, at least in Western civilization, to be the name of a woman, okay? But there's two men in the Book of Mormon with the name Alma. And how can that be? And that looks bad for the Book of Mormon. But then he talks about how in 1968, I think it was, Yigael Yadin was digging at a dig in Israel and found a land deed among a bunch of other documents. A land deed on which appeared the name of a person who was the son of Alma, the son of Uda. And so Alma apparently was a male name back in old times in the general area from which the Book of Mormon purports to come. Alma. So this was a huge evidence for the Book of Mormon. It was only much later that I found out, and this was the 15 to 20 years ago, the much later that I found out that actually there were men and boys in Joseph Smith's neighborhood whose names were Elma, and there were quite a few of them. It was a very popular name, as it turned out, and that was all documented. And, um, which to me reduced the value of this whole Yigael Yadin, you know, discovery of the land deed, um, evidence. Because if there's all these guys around Joseph Smith's house whose name whose names are Alma, why would that not be just as reasonable an inclusion of a name into his book as to somehow know that it's an ancient Hebrew? The thing that made me saddest though, that really was sad enough because that was I had relied on that a lot personally and in argument with others, that Alma evidence. But, um, the thing that made me saddest about it was to discover that Daniel C. Peterson knew. He knew about all the names of the young boys and the men in Joseph Smith's day whose names were Elma. And if he did not know, if he did not know, it's because he intentionally did not find out. Because he did not want to find out. Because that would be the obvious thing that a researcher would do. A researcher who does not have a bias. And that bias is to not know. I don't want to know the answer to this question. So, I'm not going to investigate it. But yet I will make claims that are as strong as if I had investigated it and found nothing. That's the thing. And so that's what Daniel C. Peterson does. That's how I lost a lot of respect for him. But now John Welch, I mean, John Welch is no Daniel C. Peterson. I mean, I knew John Welch. I worked with John Welch. And you, sir, Daniel C. Peterson, or know John Welch. No, John Welch is, um, I think certainly a cut above Daniel C. Peterson in many regards, and I've certainly always considered him that way. Um, whenever I've mentioned him on this show or anybody else's show, I've always been very complimentary because he is a scholar and a gentleman. And I think that's one of the reasons that this information hit me so hard is I was reading it just in the past week, this footnote from D. Michael Quinn and taking it in, trying to unpack it and understand what it is he's saying, and then realizing how overwhelming the evidence is against John Welch on this score. Not that he fudged on the existence of chiasmus, not that he fudged on the fact that it exists in the Book of Mormon, but that he appears to have fudged on the issue of how prevalent knowledge was about it before the Book of Mormon came off the press. Because once again, the less that's known about it before it comes off the press, the greater evidence chiasmus in the Book of Mormon becomes for the Book of Mormon.

All right, we are at the 20-minute mark, and you know, I think I've set up this show pretty well. Here is the, uh, thumbnail. They didn't tell me this. And this is the, this I'm talking about now. So, let's work our way through this footnote. D. Michael Quinn, his book *Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview*. Here's a picture of him in younger days. Since passed, as you probably know. That was from 1998. Now, once again, this is the revised and enlarged version. This is the one that has the footnote in it. The original version does not have footnote 108 in it, the one from chapter 6 that we will be discussing this evening. And that, by the way, is an important thing to keep in mind because a lot of this is going to hinge on that very idea. This is a second edition. It has a footnote 108 in it. It has all this information about John Welch. We know that this is a second edition. We know there was a first edition. We know that there's a footnote 108 in the second edition. Okay. From that, from that, would we be correct to draw the conclusion that the information in footnote 108 in the second edition is contained in the first edition? Well, no, we would not. We know that there are some things that will probably be brought over from the first edition. In fact, probably the majority. But we also know that there are going to be some things that are in the second edition that were not in the first edition, by virtue of the fact that it's a second edition. And it's even called a revised and enlarged second edition, right? And so, we would not be justified in thinking that anything in particular that's in the second edition would be in the first. And we would need to go to the, get the first edition and check it out and look at it and see if it were in there, and then we would be able to be confident in that. And this is something that's going to come into play in this argument that D. Michael Quinn has against John Welch and the research that he did or did not do in chiasmus and the knowledge about chiasmus before 1829.

So this is from chapter 6, D. Michael Quinn, chapter 6, Mormonism. Let me see if I can get this off here so I can read what's under it. Chapter 6, Mormon Scriptures, the Magic Worldview, and Rural New York's Intellectual Life. That's the name of the chapter, which starts on page 178. This is a picture of Hugh Nibley over here on the right. In a discussion, this is not the footnote yet. I'm setting up the footnote. In a discussion that D. Michael Quinn is having in his book, the text of his book, about information regarding the Book of Enoch being available to New England residents prior to the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830, and specifically the, the Book of Moses in 1830. Information that Hugh Nibley downplayed in order to make the correspondence between First Enoch and Pearl of Great Price Enoch more remarkable. Quinn writes the following on page 192. Now, this could be its own half an hour, and I'm not going to go into it because you don't need to know it. I'm just letting you know this is what the paragraph in the text says that has footnote 108 in it. And I guarantee you don't have to understand this in order to understand the quote. "Furthermore, in 1840, a Mormon apostle wrote, this is the text, this is the paragraph, okay, from D. Michael Quinn's book. Furthermore, in 1840, a Mormon apostle wrote that he had a copy of Lawrence's Enoch." That's First Enoch. See below. "Similar to John W. Welch's," I have highlighted this. I have bolded this. You can see it's a little bit bigger than the other writing. This is the important part. "Similar to John W. Welch's claims about pre-1830 America's alleged ignorance of a form of biblical parallelism, chiasmus." And then he puts an endnote right there, 108. I didn't put it. It's in a superscript, the 108, but I'm making it clear by writing out endnote 108. That's where it occurs. So this five-page endnote that we're going to go through is simply to illustrate something that he's using by way of comparison to the main subject of Hugh Nibley that he's talking about. This is how brilliant D. Michael Quinn is. It's amazing to me. All right. It's not even the main subject of what he's talking about. What he's talking about is, um, Book of Enoch and Hugh Nibley, and he makes a passing reference that this is similar to John W. Welch's claims about chiasmus. I don't even think it's at the end of the, um, the sentence. It's actually at the end of the clause. In the middle of the sentence is the endnote. Okay. So, let me see. Yeah, he puts the endnote not even at the end of the sentence. It's in the middle of the sentence, at the end of the clause about John Welch. But he has a lot to say about John Welch, and he's going to be saying it all in the endnote. Let's get there now, shall we?

Endnote 108, commencing on page 499 of the book and continuing to page 504. This is the information that was given to me and how I was able to find it. It helped that I had the book itself lying on my floor as a graduate student. These are the first words of the endnote. Everything from here on out is endnote unless otherwise identified. "As a graduate student at Brigham Young University in the late 1960s, John W. Welch made the extraordinarily important discovery that there are many examples in the Book of Mormon text of a complex pattern of poetic parallelism which also occurs in the Hebrew Bible, known as chiasmus to modern scholars. This ancient poetic method states a series of ideas A B C, those being representations of the major ideas, and then immediately rephrases them in reverse order, C B A. We talked about that a little bit before, and you can see over here in the, that, uh, picture that's how it's sometimes diagrammed, and that's one that's being diagrammed there in Moses, Mosiah, one that's being diagrammed there in Mosiah 5:10-12, which I think was the very first one that John Welch discovered, which was actually back in 1967." I think that D. Michael Quinn may have a few slides a bit off here or a few facts a bit off there, but he discovers it on his mission, as I said, not when he's, um, at college. As John Welch noted in his early writings about chiasmus, Anglican bishop Robert Lowth. Lowth. If you're taking notes or you want to understand what's going on, pay attention to this picture, okay? This guy's important. There's a couple of guys that I'd never heard of before who were very important in this regard. And this is one of them. That's why I got a picture of him. Kind of an unusual picture. I put it on the slide. Every time he's going to be referenced again, I'm going to put this picture on the slide. So, this is a biblical scholar. He lives from 1710 to 1787. So obviously before 1829, as Welch noted in his early writings about chiasmus, Welch's early writings, Anglican bishop Robert Lowth discovered that textual parallelism was an essential characteristic of the Hebrew Bible. So this guy discovers the textual parallelisms being an essential characteristic of the Hebrew Bible. Now, this is going to be important because he's English, but the good news is he writes in English, too. And books that they wrote in England made their way over by these inventions called ships to the Americas, where they were sold and read by the inhabitants, and sometimes, I'm sure, vice versa as well. Okay, so this is Robert Lowth. Remember this fellow, and remember the fact that 1710 to 1787, the last thing he wrote was not anytime after 1787, and that's going to be about 50 years before the Book of Mormon is translated. '87, '97, 107, 117, 127, 137, 147, 157, 167, 177, 187. Forty years, okay? So it's about 42 years before the Book of Mormon is translated that he passes away. Robert Lowth. The British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books, which I had never heard of before because I'm not an advanced historian, but I've heard of it now. And what I want to do is I want to tell you what it is first, okay? Because I had to look it up. It's a huge reference work, and it has a huge name. The British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books, or BMC, is a monumental, comprehensive record of printed books acquired by the British Library up to the year 1965, containing over 4 million entries in 27 to 32-plus volumes, because they're always adding new volumes as their, uh, bookstore increases, book holdings increase. The photo-lithographic edition to 1955 represents one of the world's most extensive bibliographies, often available in compact editions. So what we have here is a, basically, it's a bibliography or, uh, books that are held here at the British Museum. So it has a whole lot of books in it. And it occurred to me, this is where people go, historians go, people are interested in finding out these kinds of things to the best of their ability as to what books existed and what was in those books that existed is in huge holdings such as this, and especially catalogues that have a list of the names of the books.

So going back to this previous slide, now we know what this catalog is. The British Museum. This is the footnote that D. Michael Quinn wrote. The British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books showed that Lowth's study, remember this fellow, his study of biblical parallelism first appeared in English in 1787 as his two-part lectures on the sacred poetry of the Hebrews, and again in 1816. Okay. So, what D. Michael Quinn has identified is he went to the British Museum General Catalogue and he looked in there and he found out this information, which we're going to find out later on in the footnote is it seems to be being withheld by, um, John Welch. If he knew about it, it was withheld. If he didn't know about it, he should have known about it since he was researching this very issue and creating bibliographies. And some of his bibliographies showed he knew more than he was admitting in the text of articles he was writing. Okay. So, what we have here is we've got a study of biblical parallelisms in English in 1787. That's 40 years before the Book of Mormon in 1829. And it's in his two-volume book, *Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews*. And it was again published in London. The same book, the same two-volume book with the same mention of the biblical parallelisms in it in 1816, which is 13 years before 1829. Those editions are in London. And I will tell you that when I was reading about this back in the 1980s, and it was forming such an important, indeed critical part, as it turned out, in my, my testimony, um, I read specifically John Welch's writings about this issue, and he would cite to one or possibly two authors who had written in the 1820s about this issue, underscoring the fact that those books were published in London, England. And that there was virtually no way conceivable, really, that those books could have gotten into Joseph Smith's hands, or the ideas in them into his head, such as such as that they could appear in the Book of Mormon. And I believed that. But that's mainly because I think I was going along with the idea that there was some sort of a hermetic seal somewhere in the mid-Atlantic that kept ships from sailing across on a regular basis with lots of things in them, including books. Um, yeah. Yeah, there are lots of books from England over here being read in the, uh, United States in the 1830s and the 1820s. So these are a couple of those. It's the same book, two editions, both of them mentioning it, um, the poetic biblical parallelisms, and one published in 1787 and the other in 1816.

Here's the other person you need to keep track of. His name is Horne. Thomas Hartwell Horne. H-O-R-N-E. This is an unusual picture. I'm going to be putting that up as well each time we talk about him. So, here's Lowth, and here is Horne. And they're both very religious men, both scholarly men. Obviously, they're writing, uh, these huge works about the Bible. And even as they're writing it and collecting information and basically writing down everything that's known about the Bible in their day and age, they're making their own discoveries and adding those in there. It's a very heady time to be interested in the Bible. And in Joseph Smith's day, it was the Second Great Awakening, and everybody was interested in the Bible. So, this is Horne, volume 107, 138. Now, this is continuing with the footnote and continuing with the D. Michael Quinn's reference to this British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books. That volume 107, page 138 of that catalog showed that Thomas Hartwell Horne, his book, *Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures*, had its first London edition in 1818 and its third edition, its third American edition, excuse me, in 1827. Now, here's the thing. This is a separate person, a separate book. It's about the Bible and about what's written in the Bible. But this one is also in London because this guy's English as well. He writes a book that had its first London edition in 1818 and, according to the catalog, its third American edition in 1827. Now, that's interesting because if there's a third American edition in 1827, a person might think that there had been two American editions prior to that third American edition in 1827. Well, we know there's at least an American edition in 1827, which is two years before the Book of Mormon is translated by Joseph Smith. And I expect the first and second editions would be even earlier. And then the question might become, is the same discussion? We actually haven't even talked about whether there is a discussion about the inverted parallelism in this book by Horne. Obviously, there will be, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it here.

These two volumes of the British Museum's author-title catalog were in BYU's library shortly after their publication in 1961 and 1962. Now, once again, this is part of footnote 108. And D. Michael Quinn is telling us this because what he's saying is that at the BYU library, they've had these two volumes in which the information he's just cited about Lowth, okay, and what was available in English before 1829, and also the entry about Horne, Thomas Hartwell Horne, in English about parallelistic structures, chiasmus, is really just a, um, another term for something. It's been known by different names and still is today. That's why I say inverted or parallelisms or chiasmus. So he has, he, D. Michael Quinn has found these references to Horne and Lowth in English about chiasmus prior to 1829 in this catalog. And now what he's going to show is this was available, this information, the ability to look these up at BYU was available as early as 1961 or '62 because that's when BYU acquired the two-volume version of this, and that's what he was using apparently to find that. Okay, so these two volumes of the British Museum's author-title catalog were in BYU's library shortly after their publication in 1961 and 1962. If it's not clear enough, I'll make it clear. What he's saying is, so why didn't John Welch just do what I did and find out that actually there were these additional, uh, books and authors and publications that could have been available to Joseph Smith on the subject prior to 1829?

Part of the reason, and it's occurring to me now, part of the reason that this has been difficult for me to do and, um, is not just emotional. I mean, it's mild disappointment, but really, after all these years, um, but also because to work my way through it is that, uh, what it is D. Michael Quinn is getting at, he doesn't always put them in the most obvious sequence. For instance, I've been having to explain to you is that as I've been going through the footnote in sequence, as he writes it in the book, I've been having to fill in information that's going to come up in order to make sense of why it is that we're covering what it is we're covering right now. And that's why reading it straight through, it's harder to, for me to understand, and why it took me a long time to try and craft it in such a way as to hopefully make it more understandable to you the first time through. And hopefully, I'm approaching that goal at this point. All right.

Now, here is another catalog. So, there's two catalogs. The first one was blue. That was the one at the, the British Museum, remember? And here's another one. This is called the National Union Catalog of Pre-1956 Imprints. So, they have these around, and it makes sense. I mean, what a massive undertaking. It's absolutely incredible to think of that undertaking, but God bless them for doing it, for having it available. It can serve very, very helpful, essential purposes for a researcher who wants to use them. And D. Michael Quinn did, and I'll let you make up your mind about whether John Welch did.

So, continuing with the footnote, the National Union Catalog of Pre-1956 Imprints also showed that in 1850, excuse me, also showed that in 1815, 1815, that's important, 1815, because that's four years before 1829. Also showed that in 1815, there was a one-volume American edition of Lowth. Remember him? He was the guy in the red. Here he is. There's Lowth. He had a one-volume American edition, excuse me, one-volume American edition of his *Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews*. And basically, these are long titles of, uh, books, research books that these fellows wrote. And it's pretty much always the same one that's associated with their name as we go through. So try not to get hung up on those names. It's pretty much the same, the same names of the same books in different editions that we're talking about. There was a one-volume American edition of Lowth's *Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews*, which was popular enough to have a second American edition in 1829. Okay. So, 1815, there's a one-volume American edition, and a second volume in 1829. This American-based National Union Author Title Catalog volume, he tells us helpfully, was in BYU's library shortly after its publication in 1974. So that's a little bit more ambiguous only because John Welch is discovering chiasmus in 1967, before 1974, although well after they'd gotten the British Museum, um, I almost said card catalog, the book catalog at the BYU library. But, um, John Welch has continued to write and publish about chiasmus since then, after 1974. There would be little excuse for us not consulting this when making claims that could be confirmed or dispelled by consulting this National Union Catalog, which is a different and separate catalog of books apparently that have ever been printed.

Here is John Welch, and this is the picture I chose, uh, to use of him in the screens where we're talking more about him than other people. "My most meaningful discovery." This is, I think, from Scripture Central. And his most meaningful discovery would be indeed chiasmus. That is what he is known for. The presence of these standard bibliographic sources, and that's those two massive catalogs. We even talked about the blue and the green. D. Michael Quinn says, "The presence of these standard bibliographic sources in BYU's library, first in '61 and '62, that was the British Museum one, right? The blue one. And second in 1974, that's the green one we just saw, is crucial for evaluating what John W. Welch claimed in publications from 1969 onward." Well, '69 is really his first publication about chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. I think it's his, his thesis at BYU. But yeah, it's important to know when these were available to, uh, John Welch in order to evaluate whether he used them and whether he had access to them in order to use them at the time he's writing whatever it is he's writing. In 1969, Welch was a BYU graduate student and later became a professor and later dean. I added that this is published in 1998. So, he may have become a dean after that, the dean of the law school, and later dean in BYU's law school and founder of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. He's a big deal.

Here's another big deal. Remember him? This is Ethan Horne. Okay. Advertising for sale in Joseph Smith's neighborhood. Let me just go back here. Was it Ethan? No, it's not Ethan Horne. It's Thomas Hartwell Horne. That's why I went back. Thomas Hartwell Horne. We'll just call him Horne, and let the E be silent. Advertised for sale in Joseph Smith's neighborhood. Horne's 1825, very important those years, as you know, and their relationship before or after to 1829. Horne's 1825 book called *Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures* emphasized the following. And he gives a source there. He gives sources throughout that I'm not reading because I think they, they make it more difficult, but they're right there on the screen so you can look up the sources. And, uh, D. Michael Quinn gives a source here as volume 2, page 449. That's what's in that, um, parenthetical statement there, 2 col 449. So this is what it says in the book by Thomas Hartwell Horne, published in 1825. Quote, "The grand and indeed the sole characteristic of Hebrew poetry is what Bishop Lowth entitles parallelism." So here we've got Horne, who is referring back to Lowth because Lowth was such an expert in the field and he has lived prior to him, and he is quoting from his works about this very subject that's so important to us. "The grand and indeed the sole characteristic of Hebrew poetry," writes Horne, "is what Bishop Lowth entitles parallelism, that is, a certain equality, resemblance, or relationship between the members of each period; so that in two lines or members of the same period, things shall answer to things, and words to words, as if fitted to each other by a kind of rule or measure. This is the general strain of the Hebrew poetry, instances of which occur in almost every part of the Old Testament."

All right. Now, that's kind of a general description, and he's doing the best he can with words. He will use diagrams as well, and we'll see that here in a second. Similar diagrams to the ones that we use today to outline or diagram these, these chiasms. It's much easier to see it, I think, on paper diagram than it is to explain it with words. And this may be a proof of that. But one thing that I want to tell you, um, and I need to tell you this now because I've, I've forgotten it three times so far, and this is one of the really, really main things. Let me take this off the, the screen here for a second. We are at this place where Horne's book, 1825, is describing parallelism and is referring back to Bishop Lowth, L-O-W-T-H, um, as an appeal to authority on the subject. So, it's certainly possible, you see, and very common for a person who's learning things. If you're reading this book, you're not only reading what Horne has to say on the subject, and he authored the book, you're also finding out what Lowth had to say on the subject, too, because he's being cited by Horne in the book by Horne. All right.

Here's what happened. It's the middle of the 1980s. This is why this was so kind of emotional to me is that in the middle of the 1980s, the entire world of Mormonism is exploding. I have never seen a time like that. I don't expect to since. But what I'm talking about is these letters that Mark Hofmann had been forging, and one letter specifically about a salamander. And it claimed that, um, Moroni did not show up as an angel, at least not initially. That when Joseph Smith took the stone off the box, there was a salamander in the box. And that the salamander transfigured into a human being or a spirit and hit Joseph in the head and knocked him flying. Now, at the point in time that this story happens, nobody knew that this was a forgery. Well, somebody knew, but it was not public knowledge. That had not happened yet. So, we are laboring under the delusion that early church history was very different from the way we had been taught it. And then we find out it wasn't a delusion at all, actually. Right? And we find out that the story, the forgery that Mark Hofmann did, was actually patterned off another story involving a toad and not a salamander, which basically is not a forgery. It is authentic. It just wasn't known widely. And so he used that as the backbone for his story. I think that's from the Willard Chase affidavit, the 1833 affidavit. Regardless, this was a very different time. People didn't know about this. The church didn't have essays. It wasn't admitting to things like Joseph Smith using even folk magic at the time. And so D. Michael Quinn's book, um, *Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview*, was earth-shaking. But I think it was before this book came out that the letters dropped. And that salamander letter especially, and that was shaking the world of Mormonism. I'm in Austin, Texas, going to the University of Texas at Austin, and, um, it is hard to describe to you the bewilderment and the panic that set in, not only with me but with other people, over this letter. It had gotten so bad that, um, the current president of the church, Dallin Oaks, as it turned out, gave a talk to the members of the church to try to assure them that there was really no problem at all with Joseph Smith calling an angel of God a, a salamander. Not kidding. It wasn't very convincing. That's the problem. And I wanted to be convinced. We all wanted to be convinced. We weren't convinced. And when I say we, me and other young adults my age. And I will always remember the incident that happened in the lobby, or the foyer, or the foyer of the institute building just off the campus at the University of Texas one night. And I'm in there. Other people are around. My memory tells me that this was, um, in close connection to Elder Oaks giving that talk and me not being convinced and other people not being convinced. And my friend Larry was right there. Larry was a smart guy. I'm a dance major, but Larry's a smart guy. He was already a graduate student in mathematics. And that's my definition of a smart guy. But he's panicking. And if Larry's panicking, everybody's panicking. But, um, we're practically holding each other in the lobby of the institute building. And I remember he looks at me and he says, like a man grabbing onto his last lifeline, he says, "But, but there's chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, right?" And I felt that was a weak lifeline, but I grabbed onto it too. And I assured him, yes, yes, there's chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. And I think you all understand what that means. Everything else may be going to hell in a handbasket, and Joseph Smith may have been working with, uh, folk magic and strange things that we were never told about. But however he did it, and whatever he did, and whatever bumps there were along the way, he produced a book that was authentically ancient and therefore true. So it's scripture. So the proof is in the pudding and made the pudding true. Now, when I shook my head, nodded it with, um, Larry on that, I was holding onto my last lifeline, and I knew it, and I think he knew it. And the reason that I thought it was a lifeline that was enough to hold onto to keep me in the church, don't get

me wrong. I wanted to stay in the church, but this was the last thing holding me in. Right then is because I had read and studied the writings and the research by John Welch about it and his claims that there were only one or two books that discussed the subject that were published in London in the 1820s and that Joseph Smith almost certainly had no access to them.

So, what would have happened? I've been wondering in the past week or so, what would have happened if back in the mid-1980s, chiasmus was not such a lifeline that I could grab onto because I actually knew the truth that there was a lot of information in English available to Joseph Smith about this subject. If I had known that, it would not have been so strong an evidence to me of the Book of Mormon as it was presented intentionally. And maybe I would not have stayed in the church. Maybe I would have left it earlier. Maybe my life would have been a lot different. But of course, there's no way of going back and telling that at this point. I probably would have stuck it out anyway. It wasn't easy, but I hung in there, very faithful as I think most of you probably were and many are still today.

Okay, so that's why the title of this whole show is "They Never Told Me About This." Another important fact hidden. Now, this is the important fact, and we're getting from the footnote the places where this information was available. Then he's going to start getting into John Welch and what John Welch wrote about the information that was available and how the information that was available was like this, and how when John Welch talks about it, it goes like that.

All right, we read this. It was 1825 and the description of chiasmus. By the way, don't forget this first part here. Okay, this book, the 1825 introduction by Horn was sold in Joseph Smith's neighborhood. It was advertised for sale in Joseph Smith's neighborhood. See how D. Michael Quinn packs a very important point just in an opening clause that you could easily just skip by. Okay. So, there's definite access to Joseph Smith of the book as well as the ideas contained in the book because everybody's talking about the Bible. I mean, this is where it's at. Everybody wants to know everything they can know about the Bible. They're studying it all the time. Joseph Smith doesn't say he had any problem finding meetings to go to to figure out which of the denominations was true because they were always having them all the time. Welcome to the Second Great Awakening. And so books like these were popular, and people read them, and people talked about them, and they were excited about the new discoveries. So don't think that you had to sit there and actually find a book and go to the right page and read it and understand it to know about this idea because the ideas about the Bible, as I say, were everywhere.

Um, we have ideas in our own society that are everywhere that are not based upon our reading books, and sometimes I talk about evolution as one, biological evolution. A vast, vast number of people believe in evolution but without ever having read a book about it or having read anything about the process. It's sort of out there in the zeitgeist, right? The spirit of the times, so to speak, and it's things that are just out there that we know without having read it anywhere because we hear about it from other people. All I'm saying is that the Bible was a very, very focus of interest and excitement at the time, and this is what people would have been talking about along with the next treasure dig, maybe.

And in the same book, the one that was from 1825 that we just quoted from, advertised for sale in Joseph Smith's neighborhood, Horn, the author, further explained that these parallel constructions and figures that he's talking about, the chiasmus, referred to, quote, "those passages in which the same sentence is expressed not precisely in the same words, but in similar words, more full as well as more prospicuous. And concerning the force and meaning of which there can be no doubt." Once again, he's continuing to describe what a chiasmus is. "Such are the parallelisms of the sacred poets which from the light they throw on the poetical books of the scriptures demand a distinct consideration."

So in the same book by Horn, the 1825 introduction to the critical study of the Bible, the Holy Scriptures, advertised for sale in Joseph Smith's neighborhood, he continues to describe this idea of parallelism, an inverse parallelism, as follows: "those passages in which the same sentence is expressed not precisely in the same words, but in similar words, more full as well as more prospicuous. And concerning the force and meaning of which there can be no doubt. Such are the parallelisms of the sacred poets which from the light they throw on the poetical books of the scriptures demand a distinct consideration."

So there, they're just talking about the writings, the Hagiographa, I think is what he's talking about. The poetical books of the scriptures, the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, um, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon, I think. Yeah, there's five of them, I'm pretty sure.

The footnote goes on, "Aside from Palmyra's advertising of Horn's 1825 American edition," see, remember they advertised it in Palmyra. Who lived in Palmyra? Joseph Smith. "The 1818 London edition was on sale in 1820 by the Canon Dagua bookstore." That's just a few miles from Joseph Smith. That's the same neighborhood. Canon Dagua bookstore, only nine miles from Joseph Smith's home. Okay. So, you've got Horn's book. One of his books is published. It's an 1825 book. It's advertised by Joseph Smith's home. It's an American edition. The 1825 book by Horn. It's published here in America, not in London. But his books have been in circulation and published for so long that he had an 1818 London edition of the same book. Not published in America, but his 1818 London edition of the same book was on sale in 1820 by the Canon Dagua bookstore, only nine miles from Joseph Smith's home. So you've got his same book with the same discussion of chiasmus that we've been talking about and the descriptions of it. The American edition is published in 1825 and advertised in Palmyra as being available at the bookstore. That's the American edition. The London edition from 1818 has made its way over to the States and is on sale by 1820, five years earlier and nine years before the Book of Mormon is produced. And that's at the Canon Dagua bookstore, nine miles from Joseph Smith's home.

Um, these books are available, and they're available in Joseph Smith's neighborhood. And this is what, and this is what D. Michael Quinn is proving before showing that John Welch did not prove it, did not talk about it, in fact, appears to have omitted it intentionally. Horn, his 1825 American edition, remember, said that such parallelism would be found in any ancient text written by Hebrews. This is interesting because not only does he identify this literary structure, but he says this is going to be found in any book written by a Hebrew. It's that endemic to the Hebrew writing system, is what he's saying. So if somebody read this, or somebody understood this, or heard this, and they're going to produce a book that is supposed to be written by Hebrews, and if it's supposed to have these kind of inverted parallelisms in it, then somebody might think that that was an important enough reason to make sure that inverted parallelisms were found in it.

He noted, Horn noted that Anglican Bishop Loath, once again quoting back to the master, Anglican Bishop Loath, did not think parallelism survived when Jews wrote in the Greek language. So, in other words, into the New Testament. But Bishop John Jeb, this is another name that's very important. Jeb, I don't have a picture of him. Too many cooks are going to spoil this broth. And I think that these two are most important for purposes of this discussion: Loath and Horn. So I'm limiting it to these two, plus John Welch is a third. But he noted that Anglican Bishop Loath did not think parallelism survived when Jews wrote in the Greek language. But, quote, "Bishop John Jeb, however, has demonstrated that this grand characteristic of Hebrew poetry," that's chiasmus, "grand characteristic of Hebrew poetry, pervades the New Testament as well as the Old." So among these three learned people, Loath, Horn, and Jeb, there is a disagreement about whether it continued on into the New Testament. They all agree about the Old. The discussion is about the New, and Horn is going to come down on the New along with Jeb.

Horn observed that the Hebraic parallelism occurs also with much variety in the Apocrypha and that he would expect a similar parallelism in any ancient writing by native Jews, Hebrews of the Hebrews, by men whose minds were molded in the form of their own sacred writings and whose soul stock of literature, with the exception of Paul and probably also of Luke and James, we don't need to go into that, whose soul stock of literature was comprised in those very writings. So other than those people, he says, basically all they had to read was the books of the Old Testament. Of course, they're going to pick up and continue and use chiasmus when they write new books of scripture, even if that is in a different language, such as Greek for the New Testament.

Now, it is improbable in the extreme, Horn says, that such men, well-versed in the writings of the Old Testament, that such men, when they came to write such a work, a new one in a new language, should, without any assignable motive, any reason not to, and in direct opposition to all other religious teachers of their nation, have estranged themselves from a manner so pervading the noblest parts of the Hebrew scriptures as the centin inches parallelism, which is a long way of saying they did it before. Of course, they're going to do it again. This is part of how they write. They wrote it that way in Hebrew. They're going to write it that way in Greek. So, it's of course, I think, better not to argue about it, but to demonstrate its appearance in the New Testament, but that has been done as well.

The main point of this is not to understand everything about this from reading this, but to understand what was available in knowledge to Joseph Smith and people around him at the time that Joseph Smith is producing the Book of Mormon, and that this is a chiasmus. It's a parallelism. It's an inverted parallelism that occurs not just in the Old Testament, although that's what Loath thought, but also in the New Testament as well, which is what Horn thinks. So why shouldn't it appear in the Book of Mormon? That's the point, I think, of D. Michael Quinn quoting this here.

The footnote continues, "Even Palmyra's 1825 advertisement mentioned this emphasis." And the emphasis being about the Holy Scriptures, right? "A critical introduction to the critical study and knowledge of the Holy Scriptures by Thomas Hartwell Horn, M.A." and then there's some ellipses, "the poetry of the Hebrew gurus." So what he's showing is that this is what it says in Palmyra's advertisement in the newspaper that they have this book to sell, which we've been quoting from, or which D. Michael Quinn has been quoting from. All this information is in there. So that was from April 6, 1825. For this four-volume study continued sale near Smith's home. See more new books from the Ontario Repository, August of 1826, and the same publication in January of 1827, where apparently they have lists of books that are new and people can buy, and this book was listed in those lists as well.

D. Michael Quinn, absolutely amazing, amazing historian. Here's a couple of the places where Horn diagrammed what a chiasmus looks like to make it easier for the reader. Whether that included Joseph Smith, we don't know, but we know it was available to him and just down the road from his house in the 1820s.

In the 1825 American edition, Horn also gave several diagrams of parallel lines, introverting. That's what he called them. And here's an example from Isaiah 27:12 and 13. And you can see how it's diagrammed there. "And it shall come to pass in that day," line one, "the great trumpet shall be sounded," line two. "And those shall come who were perishing in the land of Assyria," line three. "And who were dispersed in the land of Egypt," line three. Those are the two lines that equate in the center. "And they shall bow themselves down before Jehovah," line two, "in the holy mountain in Jerusalem." Line one. Okay. And when I say 1, 2, and 3, and then 3, 2, 1, that's like ABC, CBA.

Horn later included another diagram of introverted parallelism. This one's from Psalms. Uh, looks like 84. I have to read it. It's, um, Roman numerals. By the way, I typed out every single one of the words that you're reading here tonight or that I'm reading to you, and that you're reading. This is one of the ways I decided I had to get into the guts of this footnote, and that was by typing out every word of it, which I did in a word document, then copied and pasted the substance of it, not just the substance, but the footnote itself into these slides. And it did help. It did help me to understand better. So I've been through this five, six times by now. I think I understand, and it took me that many times to understand, I think, what D. Michael Quinn was saying. I did leave out a couple of sentences from the footnote, and I did that judiciously, and I did it because they distracted from the point that he was trying to make and made it harder for me to understand it, and it didn't add anything to the point. It's sort of like something where he had been researching and discovered something that was different or new. It didn't really have to do with the point he's making. Sometimes you put it in there anyway just to make sure you got it down somewhere. I took those out.

Horn later included another diagram, right? Psalm, and this is line one, "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee." Line two, "The passengers in whose heart are the ways." Line three, "In the valley of Baka made it a spring." You know, Baka is a funny word in Japan. Baka means idiot. I don't think it means that in Hebrew, though. "In the valley of Baka made it a spring." Line three, corresponding, "The rain also fillth the pools." Line two, "They go from strength to strength." And then line one, "He shall appear before God in Zion." Yeah, these are not super great, but there are much better ones. But the main point is showing that these are being done and diagrammed in books available to Joseph Smith in English, right in his neighborhood.

We're back to Loath, remember, from the 1700s. Horn mentioned in his 1825 text, that's an American edition, and footnotes the publications by Anglican bishops Loath and Jeb as his principal sources for this discussion of introverted parallelism, now called chiasmus. All of this information, Horn's book, everything we've been going over, his references to Loath, his references to Jeb, because it's in the same book. All this information in Horn's book was available in the Palmyra area as of 1825 through its own bookstore, which operated its own lending library. You don't even have to buy the book. You can actually go and have a library and borrow it, which operated its own lending library for those who could not afford to buy books they wanted to read. My text for discussion, I put everything in there where I was copying what was written in the footnote, and of course, that just means see the text in the first half of the book where I'm discussing it, not in the endnotes. So that's the text he's talking about. Okay. So that's the first main point that is being made here by D. Michael Quinn.

He goes on, "Despite all evidence to the contrary, in 1969, John W. Welch claimed that none of this information was available to Joseph Smith or even to other Americans during Smith's lifetime." This is what he's been leading up to. And, um, for me, it was helpful to understand it at the beginning instead of having to wait to this point. So now he's going to start talking about John Welch's representation of what was available to Joseph Smith and others as of 1829 about this subject.

Welch wrote in his article, his 1969 article for BYU Studies, which basically I think was his master's thesis, titled "Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon." It's BYU Studies 10, Autumn 1969, page 69. He wrote this: "Nevertheless, the awareness of such a form of biblical parallelism has, the awareness of such a form, except in isolated cases, remained a part of the intellectual subconscious of modern Western Europe, not America in the 1820s. Remained a part of the intellectual subconscious of modern Western Europe until frequent chiasmal passages were discovered in the Bible." Since that time, in the mid-19th century, since that time in the mid-19th century, 19th century, that's the 1800s. Mid. We're talking about the middle of it, not 1815 or 1820 or 1787, remember, which is in Loath published about it first. John Welch is trying to put the discovery of chiasmus in the Bible in the mid-19th century. These are his words that are being quoted here. "Since that time in the mid-19th century, there have been several reputed scholars, mostly theologians, who have published on the subject." So lots of people have published on it, but only since the mid-19th century, too late for Joseph Smith to use in creating the Book of Mormon. This is, this is like the last temptation of the Dean.

D. Michael Quinn quotes John Welch some more in the same publication. "Also, the rediscovery of chiasms in the Bible can be credited to three theologians of the 19th century: Robert Loath." Now, Robert Loath was not a scholar. He was not a theologian of the 19th century. He was of the 18th century. Remember, he lived and passed away in the 1700s. Let me just go back here just to make sure that this is understandable to you. Okay, I'm starting to get acquainted with these people, but I did not get acquainted with them on the very first try, and I know it takes some getting used to. This is Loath. He was one who talked about it and wrote about it, 1710-1787. And to him, I think we have the earliest so far reference in English to chiasmus, and that was in a publication, English, in London, 1787. Okay? He's not in the 1800s. So he's not in the 19th century. He's in the century before that. I just wanted to bring that up because the further back Loath is in history, then that means the knowledge of chiasmus has been around longer than is helpful to John Welch's argument.

So that's why I note here, actually, while we're reading it for the first time, I'm not reading it for the first time, but I'm noticing it for the first time that this is what Welch wrote. "The rediscovery of chiasms in the Bible can be credited to three theologians of the 19th century: Robert Loath," not 19th century, 18th century, "for whom Welch cited only an 1829 Latin edition, not his 1787 English edition. John Jeb," for whom Welch cited an 1820 English edition at London, "and John Forbes," for whom Welch cited an 1854 English edition at London.

This is very, very compact. There's a lot of information in here. Let me tell you. Let me break this down. This is what John Welch had written. I had read this article so much in the 1980s. I was so fascinated by the subject that I remember this. So what he cites as being available to Joseph Smith is Robert Loath, and Welch cites one book that Robert Loath wrote about chiasmus. It was 1829, so it's pretty dang late. I mean, the same year as the Book of Mormon being produced. And the Book of Mormon was produced early that year. But also, it's just a Latin edition. John Welch is citing to Robert Loath as a person who wrote about chiasmus, but only in a Latin edition that was published in 1829. That was the impression I was left with by John Welch in this paper. And he says, "John Jeb, for whom Welch cited an 1820 English edition at London." That's the English edition I remember. I didn't have to remember the Latin edition. Joseph Smith didn't know Latin. I only needed to be worried about the English editions as an apologist. And there was one, it was 1820, but it was London. There's like this wall between, you know, England and America. The ships can't pass. So the books can't make it. And they certainly can't make it out into upstate New York where Joseph Smith lives. Besides, remember, he's just this uneducated country bumpkin who wouldn't be interested in reading these books anyway. That's what we've been told, isn't it? Okay. So this is what he told us, and this is what John Welch told me. And the third one, which I didn't need to remember, was John Forbes. I've encountered his name before, for whom Welch cited an 1854 English edition at London.

So Jack Welch, in his original paper, which was republished 1982 as part of a collection, we'll get to that book here in a second, but he cites three sources that would have been available to Joseph Smith. One is 1829, it's Latin. One is 1820, it's English, but it's published in London. And the other one is English, but it's not published till 1854, so way too late for Joseph Smith to use it. So I remember only the one that is of any real concern. The problem is is that there was a lot more. And John Welch didn't tell me about the lot more. And the question is going to be whether he did know about the lot more or whether he should have known about the lot more. I think the best he can get out of this is he should have known about the lot more but didn't tell or didn't find it. It's hard to find things when you don't look for them.

Here we go back to Loath. "In support of his claim that this information about parallel." By the way, I want to go back and read this again. So now you'll understand it. Okay, now that I broke it down, hopefully you will. "The rediscovery of chiasms in the Bible can be credited to three theologians of the 19th century." This is what John Welch wrote. "Robert Loath, John Jeb, and John Forbes." Period. End of quote. Everything else are additions by Michael Quinn as he's quoting and saying where those sources came from, and we went over that.

So going on in the footnote, "In support of his claim," and this is John Welch's claim, "that this information about biblical parallelism was not available to Joseph Smith's generation, Welch's 1969 citations to Loath," this guy, remember, "was deceptive in two ways." Uh-oh. This is getting concerning. D. Michael Quinn is accusing John Welch of being deceptive. He says it was deceptive in two ways. First, it was deceptive by not acknowledging that English language editions were available since 1787. He only talks about the Latin one in 1829. John Welch doesn't mention that Loath also had English language editions of the same thing available since 1787. That's the first way that his footnote to Loath is deceptive. And the second way, according to D. Michael Quinn, is by citing Loath's 1829 Latin edition as if this were the first time the Anglican Bishop Loath published about the matter. He really did. That's the impression I had. This is the first time he published about it was in 1829. It's not even in the ballpark as far as Joseph Smith having any knowledge about its contents. But when it's 1787 and it's in English, that makes a difference. A big difference.

Continuing, "John Welch knew differently." So here's where D. Michael Quinn is accusing John Welch of actually intentionally doing this. He says John Welch knew differently. And now D. Michael Quinn is going to say why he thinks that. Dean, he says, "John Welch knew differently because his master's thesis, submitted early enough in 1970 to be read and approved by his graduate committee in April." His master's thesis cited to Loath's 1815 American edition in the English language. Okay, this is bad. So what D. Michael Quinn is saying is that Welch wrote a master's thesis. It was finished by 1970. It was approved by the committee in April of 1970. So he knows it had to have been written before that. And in that master's thesis is a citation to Robert Loath. I think it was Robert. I'm just going to stick with the last name to be safe. This fellow Loath, the Anglican Bishop Loath. But the citation in John Welch's master's thesis is not to the 1829 Latin version of Loath, which is all that he does in the later article. He acknowledges by citing to the 1815 American edition that Loath of the same thing. So here the hand is tipped, and we see that John Welch actually is aware of an 1815 American edition by Loath, which sort of makes it look suspicious when elsewhere he's just giving a footnote to Loath's 1829 Latin edition as if it were never in English and as if Latin were the first time it was published. Oops. I told you this was an incredible detective story, an incredible detective work by D. Michael Quinn.

So he says, "Welch cited Loath's 1815 American edition in the English language." And then he says, "See Welch's book, A Study Relating Chiasmus in the Old in the Book of Mormon to Chiasmus in the Old Testament, Ugaritic Epics, Homer, and Selected Greek and Latin Authors." That's the name of his thesis from 1970, his master's thesis. So, just to make sure we have that timeline down, John Welch publishes "Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon" in BYU Studies in Autumn of 1969. And that's where he quotes and gives the citations to Loath as if Loath wrote about the subject only in Latin and only in 1829. He references only that edition. So that's from the BYU Studies article from Autumn of 1969. That's toward the end of 1969. Presumably at the same time he's working on his master's thesis, because that gets submitted and approved by April of the following year, 1970. So the one other thing is that in his master's thesis, which appears to be going on at pretty much the same time as he's writing that article for BYU Studies and probably has a lot of stuff in common, why is it that the article he writes for BYU Studies cites to Loath, the Anglican bishop, as if the 1829 Latin version is the only thing he ever wrote, whereas in his master's thesis itself, there's a reference to the 1815 American edition of Loath's work, which obviously would have been much more available to Joseph Smith? Okay, so he knows about it, but he doesn't include it in his article. The question is, why was he trying to pull a fast one, or was it an innocent mistake? I don't know the answer to that, by the way. All I know is that the impact it had on me is pretty much the same, regardless of whether it were intentional or negligent.

In 1969, Welch further claimed, "In 1860, a section on chiasmus was finally added to Horn." Remember Horn's famous encyclopedia, "Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures." That's the one we've been talking about. He's the guy in the black and white picture that we've shown before. So once again, here's the article. In 1969, Welch is writing that in 1860, this is quoting from Welch, "In 1860, a section on chiasmus was finally added to Horn's famous encyclopedia." And there's that long name that we read. Okay, I underlined "was finally added" because the sense of this statement by John Welch is that there was no footnote about chiasmus in Horn's famous encyclopedia until 1860, because he writes, "in 1860, a section on chiasmus was finally added." That means there wasn't anything in there about earlier editions. John Welch goes on, "This marks the recognition of the form as genuine and significant." Period. End of quote. From John Welch.

The footnote by D. Michael Quinn continues, "John Welch cited this as Horn's 11th edition." So it's the 11th edition of this book. Lots of additions there. Okay. Concluding, once again quoting from Welch, "There exists no chance," I underlined that as well, "There exists no chance that Joseph could have learned of this style through academic channels. No one in America, let alone in Western New York, fully understood chiasmus in 1829." Boy, that "fully" may be doing some heavy lifting. I don't know. But this was what I read. This is what I believed, and this is why I thought chiasmus was such an important evidence for the Book of Mormon, and why it's where I went to in my hour of need.

So what he's quoting here from John Welch is not just that John Welch is not mentioning earlier or additional books with the same information in it that's in English that's available to Joseph Smith and is being advertised in his local newspaper as being there. He's not only doing that. John Welch is also using language, very strong language, to argue his case based upon the proposition that the three books he cites are all there is. Okay, those three books: the Latin one in 1829, the one that was English in 1820 but published in London, and the one that was English in 1854 or whenever, that was way too late. That's all he cites to. That's all he mentions. And from that, he's going to draw these very powerful conclusions as if those are the only books that exist. Even though we know he knew of at least one other because it's cited to in his master's thesis, that was the 1815 American edition of Horn's study.

So once again, these are the strong statements that John Welch writes in his article for BYU Studies. "I believe it is this marks the recognition of the form as genuine and significant." When he says, "1860, a section on chiasmus was finally added." No, there had been it had been there since before 1829. And that's part of the problem we're going to get into, or that John Welch got himself into, is that when you say in an 11th edition of a book that a section on chiasmus was finally added, that means that what you're representing is that you have gone through the prior editions and that you are representing to your audience the fact that the section on chiasmus was not in the prior editions. It's only through doing that that you could possibly know that chiasmus was not added until the 11th edition in 1860. All right? But if he had done that, he would have seen that actually it was there. So that's the horns of the dilemma upon which John Welch has thrust himself. And the other thing that he says that was very powerful was, "There exists no chance that Joseph could have learned of this style through academic channels." Well, maybe that's true if the three books that you acknowledge existing are the only ones that exist, but they're not.

To the contrary, the footnote goes on, "To the contrary, after 1787," remember that was the first English publication by Loath. "To the contrary, after 1787, any American could read British editions of Loath's study in English, as well as American editions after 1815." So information about chiasmus was published in English, the English language, since 1787, and in American editions since 1815. But as we saw, English editions came over to America sometimes faster than it took time to get the American editions published and distributed.

Once again, here's Horn. "Moreover," D. Michael Quinn continues, "Welch's 1969 claim in that BYU Studies article of a watershed in recognition for chiasmus in Horn's 1860 book." He's referencing the part where he says that it wasn't until the 1860 book that it was first, um, mentioned in Horn's book, his 1860 11th edition. This is what D. Michael Quinn is referring to here. And the claim that John makes there, what D. Michael Quinn is saying is that moment of recognition actually wasn't in 1860. It was actually in 1825, because it was in 1825 that the American edition of the same work, which the Palmyra area's newspaper shows is available to Joseph Smith from its first publication onward. So that's actually when it first occurred. This moment, this watershed moment of recognition happened in 1825, before the Book of Mormon came off the press. And that's if we're just looking at American editions.

Welch's 1969 citation, BYU Studies article, to Horn's 11th American edition of 1860, remember it's 11th edition, demonstrated that he knew this study had been in print for a long time. And I presume that D. Michael Quinn means just the obvious inference that if you're looking at an 11th edition, you know, it has been in print for a long time, at least 10 prior editions worth. So 11th edition in 1860, Welch must have known that this work had been in print for a long time. And his master's thesis cited Horn's 1836 American edition. I think we had mentioned that that shows that he was aware of it because he had cited it in his master's thesis. Once again, the point being made is that if John Welch is going to say that the first mention of chiasmus was not until Horn's 11th edition published in 1860, then it seems strange for him to say that while at the same time saying in his master's thesis, referencing the 1836 American edition by Horn in a way that would show that it had a discussion of chiasmus in it.

In 1969, John Welch had access in BYU's library to the British Museum's book catalog, which specified that Horn's four-volume study had three American editions by 1827. So once again, this is the blue-backed library. At least it is in this picture, and the blue helps me keep it separate from the green. This is the one from the British Museum. This is the one that BYU had since the early 1960s. And that's why by '69, Welch would have had access to BYU's library to the British Museum's book catalog. And in that book catalog, if he had looked, which he should have, I mean, this is what he's studying, he would have seen that Horn's four-volume study had been had three American editions by 1827. So, three American editions by 1827.

If he had not examined these earlier editions, how could Welch comment on what was finally added in the 1860 edition? This is the point I was making earlier. You have to read the earlier editions to know whether anything was added or when it was added or when it was first added. You said the discussion John Welch was made of chiasmus was first added in the 11th edition in 1860. You had to have read the earlier ones to know that. And this is what D. Michael Quinn is calling him on. If Welch had not examined these earlier editions, how could Welch comment on what was finally added in the 1860 edition? If he did examine these earlier editions, how could Welch claim that prior to 1860, Horn's study contained no section on inverted parallelism? Because they do. And that's what he has shown and is going to continue to show. He being D. Michael Quinn.

His 1969 article acknowledged that this was the earlier term for chiasmus. Now, that is a small sentence. It's a very straightforward sentence. The meaning for the sentence, I think, is clear because these structures that we call chiasmus today have not always been called chiasmus. They've been called inverted parallelisms. In many of the discussions that we've been talking about in these older books, refer to them as inverted parallelisms or introverted parallelism. What D. Michael Quinn is saying here is that John Welch cannot get off on the alibi that he was talking about chiasmus and not about inverted parallelisms, or that he was talking about inverted parallelisms only after they became known as chiasmus. He is using the terms interchangeably, as he should. And therefore, John Welch has sort of backed into a corner because he can't get out at a later date saying, "I was using them as different things or the same thing over different times," because he's using them interchangeably. I think D. Michael Quinn had a career as a lawyer as well ahead of him. He could have been a great lawyer.

Nevertheless, the footnote goes on, "After 1969, Welch intensified his original assertions that pre-1830 America was allegedly uninformed about biblical parallelism." So, even as more information is available and should be available and was available to John Welch at the BYU library, because in 1974 they're getting that huge additional catalog, remember the one that was green, the union catalog, as more information becomes available to him, which should temper his statements and his claims, he is doubling down and making those claims intensified.

Here's some examples. In the New Era, do you remember the New Era magazine? Well, back in February 1972, John Welch wrote an article about chiasmus that was published in the New Era. It's titled "Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon." And in that article, John Welch wrote, quote, "Taken as evidence of the Book of Mormon, chiasmus offers us a touchstone like we have rarely ever had before." And yet, "such a thing was totally unknown." I underlined it. "And yet such a thing as chiasmus was totally unknown to Joseph Smith and universally unrecognized by the world until the present decade." Now, that's pretty, um, intense. I'd say that's a pretty staggering claim, and it's a claim that is unfortunately contrary to the evidence. It's not necessarily contrary to the evidence that John Welch is sharing with us in his publications, but it is contrary to the evidence that he knows about that he's not sharing with us, or that he should know about. Well, actually, we know he knows about it because he cited to it in his master's thesis, at least one such example, don't we?

Okay, so this is "Book of Mormon Authorship." How many of you have seen this book or had it at some point? "Book of Mormon Authorship." It's edited by Noel Reynolds. It is from Religious Studies Center at BYU. And it came out in 1982, was it? Yeah, 1982. And it's a republication in it of John Welch's BYU article. So he has a chance to update it in accordance with things that he has been doing and new things he's been learning. I think that his updates are substandard.

According to D. Michael Quinn, in reprinting his 1969 article in Noel B. Reynolds' "Book of Mormon Authorship," John Welch repeated his 1969 statements concerning Loath, Jeb, and Forbes, but dropped all references to Horn's study. So, you remember those 1969 statements that we've been at some pains to talk about? Sorry, my back is a little bit hurting about Loath, where he, being John Welch, referenced only his 1829 Latin book. Jeb, only his 1820 London English book. And Forbes, only his 1854 London English book. Those are the 1969 statements concerning those three that D. Michael Quinn says. John Welch unfortunately repeated in the 1982 republication of that paper in this book, "Book of Mormon Authorship." But he did change one thing. He dropped all references to Horn's study. Now, remember Horn's study is the one that he had given a footnote for for 1836, an American edition. He's the guy in the black and white photo. Yeah. He was all over the place. That information, and that was being advertised in the Palmyra Register, and in the Wayne Sentinel, the name of the newspaper, a local newspaper, as being available in Joseph Smith's area before the Book of Mormon was produced.

So why is it then that D. Michael Quinn thinks that John Welch would drop all references to Horn's study in the republication of his BYU Studies article? However, D. Michael Quinn continues, "However, still using the recognition concept he had applied to Horn's book." In other words, it wasn't recognized. Chiasmus wasn't in the Bible till the mid-19th century. Welch concluded in 1982, that's the republication, right in this book, quote, "By the time the concept of chiasmus received currency or recognition, the Book of Mormon had long been in print." So this is what he means. He's still using that recognition kind of argument that he had applied to Horn's book, but he's using a bit different language. So here he's saying, "By the time the concept of chiasmus received currency or recognition, the Book of Mormon had long been in print." It's a very strong statement. It is contrary to the evidence.

The year before, the footnote goes on, the year before, so 1981, right? Welch had been editor of a European book about studies of biblical parallelism, which has this long title called "Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis," and that's a picture of the book over there on the right. So 1981 is the important part. Welch is an editor for this book about chiasmus. And Welch observes in this book, page 10 is probably the introduction, that introverted parallelism was one of the names for chiasmus. And the bibliography in this book made this comment about Horn's "An Introduction to the Critical Study." That's the book we've all been talking about. "Numerous editions printed in US and England for over 50 years following the first edition, and it shows the first edition is being printed in 1818 and fifth US edition in two volumes used herein Philadelphia, T. Dobson and Son, 1836."

So what we're seeing, because D. Michael Quinn is showing us, is that there are places in other publications where John Welch is doing bibliographies that are acknowledging the existence of earlier works in English by authors and scholars that he quotes elsewhere in a much more limited capacity that makes it look more favorable to the Book of Mormon. In other words, the stuff that they published wasn't around in 1820. This is about Horn specifically. And you will recall that in the BYU Studies book, we observed that Welch wrote about Horn that it wasn't until the 11th edition of his book in 1860 that the section on chiasmus was first placed there. Here's the problem. In his book "Chiasmus in Antiquity," which is in 1981, which is the year before the republication of the BYU Studies article, yeah, this is looking bad. John Welch acknowledges the existence of earlier versions of Horn's work. "An Introduction to the Critical Study." It says, "Numerous editions printed in US and England for over 50 years following the first edition, which was in 1818. And fifth US edition in two volumes used herein 1836."

So what we're seeing, because D. Michael Quinn is showing us, is that there are places in other publications where John Welch is doing bibliographies that are acknowledging the existence of earlier works in English by authors and scholars that he quotes elsewhere in a much more limited capacity that makes it look more favorable to the Book of Mormon. In other words, the stuff that they published wasn't around in 1820. This is about Horn specifically. And you will recall that in the BYU Studies book, we observed that Welch wrote about Horn that it wasn't until the 11th edition of his book in 1860 that the section on chiasmus was first placed there. Here's the problem. In his book "Chiasmus in Antiquity," which is in 1981, which is the year before the republication of the BYU Studies article, yeah, this is looking bad. John Welch acknowledges the existence of earlier versions of Horn's work. "An Introduction to the Critical Study." It says, "Numerous editions printed in US and England for over 50 years following the first edition, which was in 1818. And fifth US edition in two volumes used herein 1836."

Therefore, D. Michael Quinn concludes at this part of his footnote, end note, "Therefore, at least by 1981, which is when John Welch published this 'Chiasmus in Antiquity.'" Therefore, at least by 1981, John Welch knew how many American editions preceded the 1836 edition of Horn's analysis of chiasmus. And I believe what he means by that is if the fifth US edition in two volumes is published in 1836, that means there's four editions before 1836. That's what I think he's talking about. Therefore, at least by 1981, John Welch knew how many American editions preceded the 1836 edition of Horn's analysis of chiasmus.

Back to Loath. "Despite revising his article for its 1982 reprint by BYU's Religious Studies Center," of course, John Welch would revise his BYU Studies article for publication in 1982, over a decade later. "John Welch retained the deceptive footnote which listed Loath's 1829 Latin edition as his only publication on parallelism." This is why I believe this, because these kinds of, dare I say it, deceptions were being put forward in this kind of research by John Welch. Welch retained the deceptive footnote which listed Loath's 1829 Latin edition as his only publication on parallelism. Welch's bibliographies in 1970 and 1981 both listed Loath's 1815 American edition in the English language. This is a devastating slide because what he is showing, what D. Michael Quinn is showing, is that not only did John Welch get it wrong, John Welch got it wrong when he knew better and he knew different, and he kept information back that would have helped me understand that chiasmus in the Book of Mormon was not the slam dunk that he was portraying it as being, and that he was apparently fudging with his sources in order to make it look better.

The footnote goes on, "The fact that the 1982 Provo reprint," once again in that book by Religious Studies Center, "the fact that the 1982 Provo reprint deleted all references to Horn," remember, Horn is out now. D. Michael Quinn thinks that that shows that John Welch was aware of Horn's first American edition in 1825. The one that was being advertised, remember, in the Wayne Sentinel in the book list. What D. Michael Quinn says is Horn is now deleted from the 1969 paper in the reprint in 1982. And he thinks he knows the reason why. And he thinks the reason why is because between that time period, John Welch had discovered Horn's first American edition in 1825. In other words, he or somebody else had read the newspaper where it's on sale and instead of dealing with it, he just deletes Horn from any footnotes whatsoever, which is very sketchy, if you can't tell. This is not academics. This is apologetics. This deletion of any reference to Horn. This deletion may also indicate that someone had informed Welch that Palmyra's newspaper advertised Horn's study in 1825 and that the ad itself referred to Horn's discussion of Hebrew poetry. So that much is obviously speculation, but there's

There's got to be some reason that John Welch completely drops any reference to Horn from the 1982 republication of his 1969 article in BYU Studies. I mean, Horn is very important to the discussion, as we can all tell, can't we? There must have been a reason, and this one seems to make some kind of sense.

D. Michael Quinn goes on, "So many BYU religion professors have read through the Wayne Sentinel that such a discovery was inevitable on the part of someone who had also carefully read Welch's claims. At the minimum, by the time he was preparing his 1981 bibliography, Welch knew that Horn's discussion of introverted parallelism occurred decades before Welch's original claim for Horn's 1860 edition."

Now, going through this for like the sixth time, I'm starting to understand more and more myself. So, here's what I'm understanding is what he's saying. There's the 1969 article that John Welch writes for BYU Studies. In it, he says, "It's not until 1860 in the 11th edition that this guy Horn first adds a discussion about Kaiasmus, which is hopelessly too late."

So, what uh D. Michael Quinn is saying, well, at some point obviously Welch had to find out either himself or through somebody else who was reading the Wayne Sentinel that Horn's work was being sold. A much earlier version was being sold in 1825 and it was being advertised in this book in Joseph Smith's Neighborhood. So what do you do? Do you include that information in your reprinted article, which is a scholarly honest thing to do whether you're a scholar or not? Actually, that's the thing that you are supposed to do, or do you hide it? And he hid it so well that not only did he not mention it, he took out any reference to Horn at all. He took out the one about the 1860 cuz he knows it's not true. He doesn't want to positively dissemble or deceive by making that comment now that he knows about the 1825 publication. So instead, he's going to take it all out completely and keep the audience in the dark, but at least he's not affirmatively lying. He's lying by omission, not by commission. And sometimes that's easier for the conscience to deal with. So that's what's going on here. And this is what D. Michael Quinn is alleging.

He says, um, at the minimum, by the time he was preparing his 1981 bibliography, and his bibliography is this one right here, Welch knew that Horn's discussion of introverted parallelism occurred decades before Welch's original claim for Horn's 1860 edition. And we know he knew that at a minimum because it's included in that bibliography, though it's the 1836 edition. Nonetheless, Welch continued to leave his Mormon readers, and Radio Free Mormon was one of them. Nonetheless, Welch continued to leave his Mormon readers misinformed about how early the studies of biblical parallelism were published in America.

In his introduction to Kaiasmus bibliography study aid, here's another one. It's a different color, but it's similar to the one that was orange in 1981. This has become a major focus of John Welch's academic career because he discovered the bloody thing back in 1967. He discovers Kaiasmus in the Book of Mormon. And since then, he's been writing about it, identifying it, trying to come up with rules and parameters which would define or qualify a specific literary text as a Kaiasmus or not a Kaiasmus. But also a lot of it has had to do with this whole aspect of who knew what when about Kaiasmus and was it available to Joseph Smith and, um, trying to shade the evidence apparently in order to make it look more and more miraculous and less knowable to Joseph Smith.

So here's another book that he was an editor of or a co-editor of. John Welch in his introduction to Kaiasmus bibliography. So this is going to be a list of books that just talk about Kaiasmus. This is for FARMS, 1987. Welch wrote this quote: "This bibliography lists most of the books and articles I am aware of dealing with or utilizing Kaiasmus." Yet it made no reference whatsoever to Robert Loath's pioneering work about parallelism. Even though John Welch had acknowledged that the 1815 version of Loath's work had been published in a US edition.

All right, we know Robert Loath goes back to 1787 for the first English edition in London that discusses, uh, Kaiasmus, inverted parallelism. But in a Kaiasmus bibliography published in 1987 that John Welch is an editor of, he writes, "This bibliography lists most of the books and articles I am aware of." Well, he does say "most." I don't know why it wouldn't be "all of." I don't know why he has to say "most" there. That's puzzling. But what D. Michael Quinn notes is that there's no reference in this bibliography to Robert Loath and his pioneering work about parallelism at all, even though he was the pioneer of it. And the thing that gives the huge lie to it is that we know that Welch knew at least about the first US edition of Robert Loath's work, which was published in 1815, because Welch mentioned it in his 1970 master's thesis. Circles within circles, secrets within secrets.

The 1987 FARMS bibliography, the same book we're talking about, listed only Horn, okay? Nothing about Loath. But remember Horn, black and white photo. It lists only Horn's 1836 American edition of "Introduction to the Critical Study." Well, 1836 is after 1829, so it's safe, but it's not mentioning the ones that came before, the editions that came before 1829. Too much apologetics, not enough academics.

The 1987 FARMS bibliography listed only Horn's 1836 American edition of "Introduction to the Critical Study." However, a glance by bibliographer Welch. So when he's acting as a bibliographer and putting together this bibliography, which he was doing in order to create this, right? This is how you make bibliographies. He would have, as a bibliographer, or should have consulted, or at least glanced at the National Union Catalog of Pre-1956 Imprints. Remember that's the list of books that came out in 1974 with the green backs and the green bindings. And this is 1987. So it was there in BYU since 1974. D. Michael Quinn says, "A bibliographer, when you're writing a bibliography, looks at this. This is standard operating procedure. These are very basic academic tools." And he says, "However, a glance by Welch, acting as a bibliographer, at the National Union, which was in BYU's library reference section since his volume's publication in 1973."

Okay. If he had glanced at it, it would have told him that surviving copies of Horn's first American edition of 1825, not only that they existed and that it was in 1825, something he's not mentioning, but that existing copies of that first edition were located at the University of Chicago, Ohio State University, Alma College, and Alma, Michigan. That Alma guy got around. Yale University, Oberlin College, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and University of California at Berkeley. They all have a copy, first edition of Horn's first American edition of 1825. So that you could get it, you could look at it, and you could see whether it talks about Kaiasmus. You know, like you asserted it did not when you said it wasn't until Horn's 11th edition in 1860 that Kaiasmus was first introduced.

So this is why D. Michael Quinn thinks that John Welch is not just stumbling around and this is accidental. He thinks that this is premeditated and intentional because anybody doing a bibliography of this sort would go to this source, would look in this source, would find this source, and then they wouldn't be saying the things in their bibliography that are incomplete and inaccurate. And unfortunately, the inaccuracies and the incompletenesses all seem to go one way, and that's to make the Book of Mormon look better and Joseph Smith more of a prophet.

D. Michael Quinn continues, "If Welch had not already examined the 1825 edition for his 1970 master's thesis, with the implication that he should have, but if he had not, after 1973, he had easy access at BYU to information about where to find it, all those colleges." In a bibliography, such a lapse is extraordinary. This is one of the strongest things said in this footnote. In a bibliography, such a lapse is extraordinary that you wouldn't go into your very basic 101 research. I am not a bibliographer, but I get the impression that this is not something that you have to be a super smart person to come up with the idea. This is basically some of the first few steps that a person would do in creating a bibliography is to go to these basic sources.

Back to the footnote. After 1973, he had easy access at BYU to information about where to find it. In a bibliography, such a lapse is extraordinary unless the bibliographer is not interested in verifying the contents of publications earlier than a certain date, 1830. In Horn's case, he didn't want to verify that Horn had a publication with Kaiasmus in it earlier than 1830 because then it works against the Book of Mormon. John Welch didn't want to find it. So, either he knew it existed and he didn't mention it, and frankly, we've seen some examples of that already, unfortunately, or he didn't look for it because he didn't want to find it.

Since Welch's 1969 article defined the inclusion of Kaiasmus in Horn's book in the 1860 11th edition, remember, as a watershed for this poetical technique finally gaining recognition, why didn't Welch examine Horn's first American edition from 1825 to verify if there was actually an absence of this discussion before 1830? Yeah, that looks bad for John Welch because if he had, he would have found it, and if he found it, he wouldn't have said that it was first added in the 11th edition.

D. Michael Quinn says, because he cited Horn's 1836, the fifth edition, in his master's thesis. Remember we've talked about that. John Welch knew by 1970 this recognition of inverted parallelism was in American publications by 1836. So even though he could argue, "I wasn't aware that it was in the first edition which was published in 1825 before the Book of Mormon," he certainly knew that it was in the fifth edition which was published in 1836, which, even though it's after the Book of Mormon, still contradicts what he said in his article that the section on Kaiasmus was finally entered into this book in 1860, but only in its 11th edition. So, it's obviously a contradiction regardless.

However, Welch did not apparently want to undermine his prior claims by verifying and admitting that the first American discussion of introverted parallelism occurred in an 1825 publication, which was also on sale in Joseph Smith's neighborhood. Because if he had actually gone and done that, he would have had to include it, at least if he were acting ethically.

Now, all of this is the thought process that D. Michael Quinn is putting down for why it is that in the republication in 1982 of the BYU article, John Welch omits any reference to this guy right here, Horn. So, this is where he's going with this. However, Welch did not apparently want to undermine his prior claims by verifying and admitting, and his prior claim being that it wasn't until 1860 that it was first added to Horn's 11th edition. However, Welch did not apparently want to undermine his prior claims by verifying and admitting that the first American discussion of introverted parallelism occurred as an 1825 publication, which was also on sale in Joseph Smith's neighborhood. Yeah, that would have been embarrassing.

So, what does he do? Oh, there's another problem before we get to what he did. There was also the problem that Loath's study of parallelism was published in English in the United States in 1815 and 1829. So, the problems keep multiplying. It was the one that was in English in London that was 1787, I believe it was, but these are both in the US in 1815 and 1829. Welch knew this while preparing his 1970 thesis, which listed Loath's 1815 American edition. Remember, the thesis mentions it. It's when he gets to the article he writes for BYU Studies that he doesn't remember it or doesn't mention it or mentions only the 1829 Latin edition by Loath. Acknowledging Loath's publications also undermined Welch's claims for America's pre-1830 ignorance of biblical parallelism. Yes, it does. Thus, Welch's 1987 FARMS bibliography made no reference to Loath. No reference to Loath whatsoever. In this bibliography, 1987. It's getting late in the day. It's getting over a decade after the discovery. It's getting almost two decades. It is two decades after the discovery by John Welch of Kaiasmus in the Book of Mormon, 1967. This is 1987. And now Loath is completely gone. He's not there anymore.

By 1988, Welch decided to resolve this quandary in another way, by telling his LDS audience only about studies of parallelism that were not printed in early America. So if you go to the early American publications, there are several of them that occurred before 1829. We've looked at those, but now he's going to only talk about the ones that were printed in London, apparently after 1988. This is what D. Michael Quinn is saying in his "Kaiasmus in the Book of Mormon" presentation, which was a 1988 lecture series by FARMS.

Welch said, quote, "This in turn leads to the question, how much was known about Kaiasmus in Joseph Smith's day?" And the answer here is, "Not much. In England, two authors wrote books in the 1820s about Hebrew literature in the Bible, and they explored for the first time, for the first time." Yes, I underlined that. "And these two England authors in the 1820s explored for the first time the possibility of Kaiasmus in the Bible." It's astonishing now that we know the real facts about Loath's publications in 1787 and the American publications, and now to hear John Welch in 1988 changing the whole way he's going to approach this by reducing information instead of increasing it, and it's information he knows.

Okay, I'll continue. In England, two authors wrote books in the 1820s about Hebrew literature in the Bible, and they explored for the first time, Welch says, the possibility of Kaiasmus in the Bible. They claimed that such a pattern had been unnoticed by great scholars that had gone before them. But the idea took root slowly, and it wasn't until the 1950s, by the way, that is 1950s. It's small print. There were some places where I got some typos as I transcribed this entire footnote, but I went back and double-checked that. That's 1950s. I went back and checked all the dates. The dates are correct here. The dates are the most important thing: before 1829 or after 1829. But what he said in the footnote is, "But the idea took root slowly, and it wasn't until the 1950s." So, he's getting this as far past the Book of Mormon as possible.

His source note, Welch's source note about this "first time exploration" made no mention of Loath's studies of parallelism since the 1700s, nor of Horn's discussion of introverted parallelism since 1818. You can see why this is so disappointing to me. To support the myth he created in 1969 that Joseph Smith and all other Americans were ignorant of biblical parallelism, Welch, by the 1980s, simply withheld from his Mormon listeners and readers his knowledge that there were American printings of such studies in 1815 and 1825. Instead, Welch's 1988 FARMS publication cited only an 1820 publication by John Jeb and an 1825 publication by Thomas Boyce. Those are the two names that he's going to publish as English authors in the 1820s, publishing things about it in London. Both published in London and neither reprinted in the United States. So he picks those two, Jeb and Boyce, because they weren't reprinted in the United States.

I think he emphasized that these British books by Jeb and Boyce, and Boyce is the last name of that other guy. He emphasized that these British books were not in American libraries before 1830. So Joseph Smith could not have had access to them. And despite the Palmyra newspapers advertisement for Horn's 1825 American edition, there he is sitting over there. Maybe that's why he looks so glum. The treatment he's getting at the hands of John Welch. And by the way, which Welch in 1988 did not acknowledge the existence of. He doesn't even acknowledge the existence of it in this presentation that we're talking about now in 1988.

And despite the fact that Horn's 1825 American edition discussed Jeb's views at length, we saw that, right? Horn's book talks about Jeb's views. It also talked about Loath's views. In spite of all of that, Welch's 1988 FARMS presentation states this, and 13, I believe, is the page of the transcription. "And even if some of these books," Welch says, "and even if some of these books had made it to the United States, it is quite another thing to believe that Joseph Smith knew anything about John Jeb's pioneering hypothesis that this complex Kaiasmus existed in the Bible."

Okay, the reason why that's so damning is this. Look closely. The reason why is because John Welch says in 1988, his presentation, "Even if some of these two books," these two books he mentions that were written in the 1820s in London, that's all he's clinging to, "and even if some of these books have made it to the United States, it's quite another thing to believe that Joseph Smith knew anything about John Jeb's pioneering hypothesis." Well, of course he would have known and could have known about John Jeb's pioneering hypothesis because it was written about in the book by Horn, Horn that was published in 1825 and was just up the road from Joseph Smith in the bookstore. It was being advertised in the newspaper. That's why this is another problem, the thorny problem that John Welch gets caught up in and that D. Michael Quinn does an expert job of tracking down.

He goes on in a 1993 video cassette sold by FARMS. Welch repeated his 1988 statements. So another presentation, this one videotaped and distributed, and I probably had a copy and concluded, quote, "So I think that there was really very little chance, what should we say, a statistically insignificant chance that Joseph Smith had any awareness of this Kaiasmus through regular scholarly channels." Period. End of quote. So by 1993, Welch is saying, "No, no chance really, statistically insignificant chance that Joseph Smith had any awareness of this through regular scholarly channels." And there's the reference to another presentation, the 1993 one called "Kaiasmus in the Book of Mormon."

And who prepared the transcript? As I told, now this is D. Michael Quinn writing first person. As I told John W. Welch in a 1995 letter, D. Michael Quinn writes him a letter about this and calls him on it. This is what he wrote: "I have always admired and praised his discovery of the ancient poetic technique of Kaiasmus in the Book of Mormon. However, I believe that he has done a disservice to all Mormon believers by his decades of misrepresenting America's pre-1830 knowledge of this biblical parallelism." i.e., he's been hiding how much was known and published about Kaiasmus before Joseph Smith did his Book of Mormon thing in 1829. As stated in my text discussion, once again, that's that paragraph that we read, oh, over two hours ago now, that had the footnote 108 that led into this footnote that we've been covering. As stated in my text discussion, Q Nibbli's misstatements in 1975 occurred because of his lack of access to information that was not yet published or not easily available to him. So he gives some space to H. Nibbi because really he didn't have access to the information that would have shown that he was incorrect when he was talking about information available to Joseph Smith about the Book of Enoch. That was not the case. D. Michael Quinn concludes, "That was not the case with John W. Welch, whose publications for the LDS audience since 1969, in my opinion, have manifested an escalating intentional concealment of pre-1830 American publications about Kaiasmus." Period. End of statement by D. Michael Quinn. End of footnote 108 of chapter 6 in the revised and enlarged version of Quinn's "Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview."

So you can see why this looks really bad for John Welch. Now, I do not know that John Welch ever replied to that letter. This was published in 1998. He said he sent the letter in 1994, I think, five. So at least in those three years, apparently there was no response. I was talking on Thursday morning to my friend Don Bradley about this very subject and about this very footnote, and he rapidly found a paper, a presentation by John Welch that he published, which does appear to respond in part to these allegations made by D. Michael Quinn. So, I want to appreciate and recognize, um, Don Bradley for bringing this to my attention. And here it is. It was from 2003. It's the FARMS Review. It is a paper written by John Welch titled, "How Much Was Known About Kaiasmus in 1829 When the Book of Mormon Was Translated?" Okay, I'm going to read the relevant passages to this. I went through it, uh, yesterday. I marked what I think was obviously responding or attempting to respond to D. Michael Quinn, sometimes by name. So, I want to go over that here in the interest of completion, in the in the interest of giving John Welch a chance to speak for himself in relation to this. Um, you make your own judgments. My judgments were there was some information in here, but it looked more like excuses, and it really didn't cover the ground that would have had to have been covered to have been a successful and complete and thorough vindication or exculpation of John Welch on all charges.

In my opinion, even the abstract, listen to the abstract. "Welch shares his study of Kaiasmus in ancient texts. He states that Joseph Smith knew nothing of Kaiasmus when he was reading the Book of Mormon." See, the apologetics still comes through. Now, maybe John Welch didn't write the abstract, but he sure as hell had control over what it said. He states that Joseph Smith knew nothing of Kaiasmus when he was translating the Book of Mormon. And actually, John Welch is going to be a little bit not so strident on that issue in his language in the text of the paper, which we'll get to. Even so, the abstract concludes, "Welch researches how much the scholars of 1829 knew about Kaiasmus to show that Joseph could not have intentionally incorporated Kaiasmus into his own writing." So, you can see whatever response he's going to do to D. Michael Quinn is not going to dissuade him from his position. And I think we've seen that before in other people like Jacob Hansen.

Here is how that article starts. That's what it looks like. It's written by John Welch, so I'll have his picture over here on the other side of the slides. And here's what that article says. Starting with the second paragraph: "In this survey, after pointing out a few recent developments that may be of general interest to readers of the FARMS Review, I, John Welch, I wish to revisit and update some previous research on the historical emergence of Kaiasmus in the 19th century in order to address the specific question, how much was known by scholars about Kaiasmus in 1829 when the Book of Mormon was being translated?"

"In a way, of course, this question is irrelevant to the Book of Mormon. Irrelevant to the Book of Mormon since the only real issue is how much Joseph Smith knew about Kaiasmus in 1829." Well, he couldn't have known much if it wasn't in print. And that's really the point in English in his neighborhood, not how much was known about it in Germany, England, Boston, or Pennsylvania. He's tipping his hand that he's already going to talk about American publications in this article in a before 1829 in Boston and in Pennsylvania by scholars or theologians.

"So there is no direct evidence," he writes, "as far as I am aware that Joseph Smith had any actual knowledge of Kaiasmus." Well, except for the Book of Mormon, I suppose. So let's go ahead and let's move on to this next slide. I'm not going to read very much from this, but I do want to give him a chance to respond to what it was that was said about him by D. Michael Quinn.

Here's the next part from page 52. "A few additions, clarifications, and one main correction must now be made. The following is based largely on research conducted in Independence, Missouri in 2000 and at Oxford, England in 2001." He doesn't say anything here about D. Michael Quinn. He'll mention his name later. "In particular, it is now evident that John Jeb's 1820 publication became better known in certain circles in the 1820s than was previously thought." That's one major concession right there. "Although copies of Jeb's work probably did not make it across the Atlantic in the 1820s," that's the apologist speaking. "As has been previously conjectured by you, John, Jeb's sacred literature was positively discussed in a large treatise on the critical study of the Bible by Thomas Horn in 1825." And who gave you that information? That would be D. Michael Quinn. Where did he give it to you? I expect it was in a letter. When was that letter written to you? I think that was 1995. But you're saying that these clarifications are being based largely on research done in Independence, Missouri and Oxford, England.

This is the huge concession. He's going to concede the existence of Thomas Horn's 1825 book being published, remember, in the newspaper. I'm not sure he's going to mention it here, but that that also had in it references to Jeb as well as Loath. "As we have seen that edition of Horn, the 1825 edition was published not only in London but also in Philadelphia, an American publication. And so information about introverted parallelism was present in the United States earlier than I and others and suspected." Yeah, but mostly you. Mostly you, John. He's going to point to other people who were saying similar things and try and get some of the blame off of him and onto them. I think let's go to another place in this article.

Once again, this is his 2003 article. "Dissemination of information about Jeb by Horn." Once again, that 1825 book written by Horn quoting Jeb on Kaiasmus. "Contrary to what I had previously thought and as Michael Quinn has shown," he gives him reference there, "Thomas Hartwell Horn by the way, that footnote 59 references the footnote 108 that we've been going over in Quinn's 'Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview,' that's what that citation is too, so good on you for that, John. Contrary to what I had previously thought and as Michael Quinn has shown, Thomas Hartwell Horn adopted Jeb's basic terminology and presented a few of Jeb's examples of introverted parallelism in Horn's 1825 edition of his 'Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures.'" It's the same book every time. It just has a long title.

"In thinking," now he's going to give his explanation for why it is that he thought differently, "in thinking that Horn had not done this until the 1836 edition, I guess talked about Jeb, although if he's thinking that that was in a bibliography which I think was in his thesis, the 1836 edition, then why would he say in his article that he wrote for, was it BYU Studies or was it the republication? But why is it that he would subsequently write that this discussion of Kaiasmus did not enter into, was finally entered into in the 1860 11th edition of Horn's work? When you admit to you, you thought that Horn had not done this until the 1836 edition, you seem to be giving the lie to your statement that you made that it wasn't until the 1860 edition that he did it."

He goes on though, "In thinking that Horn had not done this until the 1836 edition, I followed the views of Bohlender and seemingly also of Lond." So he's going to say, "I followed these other scholars. I didn't look at it myself at the primary document." "In his 1942 'Kaiasmus in the New Testament,' Lond stated that Horn gave several pages to the kayastic form in later editions of his famous work, citing the 11th edition in contrast to the first edition of 1818." Okay. Well, he's not saying exclusively. Okay. I I see what you're trying to do there, John. You're trying to say Lond said this, that, uh, in later editions he gave several pages of the kayastic form, and so therefore you thought that meant not in the first edition. So you didn't go and look at the first edition, the 1825 edition. No, that 18, that language is so ambiguous, and that 1825 edition is so important for your argument that there's really no excuse. You should have gone and looked at it to see if Kaiasmus was in there, in my opinion.

John Welch goes on, "In writing my 1969 article on Kaiasmus, I followed Lond in this regard. So I copied what he said. During the ensuing research for my master's thesis a few months later, however, I found that Jeb was in fact discussed in Horn's seventh edition, published in 1836." So that's why he references it there is what he's saying, which was in the BYU library. "And thus my thesis states that Horn had adopted the terminology and formulations of Jeb in 1836." Based on, it still doesn't explain why you were saying in 1982 that it didn't enter into Horn's work until 1860. I'm just saying based on that new but still incomplete information, I removed the reference to Horn's 1860 edition when the 1969 article was reprinted in 1982. Also apparently was taken out. Okay, that makes sense. From Quinn's work, I became aware of the date and contents of Horn's fourth edition, published in 1825. The following description updates and corrects my previous statements in this regard. I regret the previous point of misinformation."

Okay, so, um, D. Michael Quinn writes and clarifies it all and shows all the mistakes he made, and it does seem like prevarications that he engaged in, and that was in a letter in 1995, and then in 2003, eight years later, he publishes this in the FARMS Review where he admits to some of his sins, though I don't think all.

Finally, on page 75, under the section titled "Joseph Smith and the Emergence of Kaiasmus," see that big long footnote? That's footnote 107. We'll get to that footnote in a second. That's a very important footnote in this article for our purposes. But let's read the text first. "Returning now to the questions once again," this is John Welch writing. "Returning now to the questions posed at the outset. What can we know about the possibility of Joseph Smith's awareness of Kaiasmus in the 1820s? Obviously, in light of this recent research, I wish I had found or learned of Horn's 1825 edition earlier." Well, okay. "And I wish that I could modify certain parts of my previous statements." That's where the footnote is that we'll be coming to later. "As I would hope everyone would always do as more information becomes available. In light of what I now know, I would qualify or clarify my position simply to assert a very low probability that Joseph Smith knew anything about Kaiasmus in 1829, being careful not to imply, claim, or suggest complete ignorance of this literary form in America at that time, as he had previously done in his prior publications." Which is what he's doing. Mia culpa for right here. "More than Lond believed and more than I realized, Jeb's work received greater and earlier attention, especially in the 1825 Philadelphia edition of Horn's impressive volumes introducing the critical study of the Bible."

And then he'll go on for his many reasons why he still doesn't think that this means Joseph Smith knew about it. Let's look at this footnote now in closing here. Okay. By the way, if you're liking the show and if you're watching this far, you're either liking it or you're asleep. Would you please hit like and please hit subscribe to this show? I want to thank everybody who's made a donation to the show. Your donations keep Radio Free Mormon broadcasting behind enemy lines. I do three live shows a week. I do this show, a pre-recorded show once a week. And this one especially has been very labor-intensive. And, uh, if it's been labor-intensive to listen to, you can only imagine how labor-intensive it has been for me to create, um, and get ready and organize. And this is the great challenge that I found with, um, D. Michael Quinn is organizing his thoughts in a way that makes sense to my thoughts such that I can hopefully communicate them to you so that you can understand them in your thoughts. So if you haven't made a donation yet, please go to radiofreeormon.org or click the donate button, make a donation today. Your donations do keep Radio Free Mormon broadcasting behind enemy lines. And now having said that, let's go to footnote 107. Very interesting footnote.

"Thus, in 1969, I wrote, 'Even though all knowledge of this form, Kaiasmus, lay dormant for centuries, it was rediscovered in the 19th century when formal criticism became popular. But by that time, the Book of Mormon had long been in print.'" He's quoting himself from his "Kaiasmus in the Book of Mormon" article. "Although it is true," he goes on, "Don Welch, although it is true that form criticism did not become popular until after 1830, one should not understand that Kaiasmus was completely unknown at that time." I feel like this mia culpa is important enough it shouldn't be buried in a footnote, but we'll take what we can get. "The knowledge of Kaiasmus was not completely unknown at this time, as my reference to Jeb's sacred literature in note three in my 1969 article recognizes." Remember that was his one reference that he's using now to defend himself, which actually kind of implicates him that he did know something different from what he was publishing in other venues. "In 1978, John Welch says, I wrote, 'No one seriously contends that Joseph Smith or anyone associated with him knew or could have known of Kaiasmus or had the training to discuss this principle for himself. The evidence is overwhelming against such a claim.'" And he gives a citation to his article in "Kaiasmus and Antiquity," which was restated in 1997 in another venue. "Today," John Welch says, "today I acknowledge that people in Joseph Smith's environs in 1829 could have known of Kaiasmus, but I still doubt that Joseph Smith actually did."

So now he's at least admitting that he could have known of Kaiasmus. He doubts Joseph Smith actually did because it's more reasonable to believe that an angel appeared to Joseph Smith with gold plates and he translated these plates by putting a seer stone into a hat and dictating what came up in the light and that that dictation contains Kaiasmus. It is more reasonable to believe that that's what accounts for the presence of Kaiasmus in the Book of Mormon than that Joseph Smith heard about it, had learned about it from one of the books that now John Welch has to admit, thanks to D. Michael Quinn, thanks to D. Michael Quinn that John Welch has to admit were available to Joseph Smith in his environs.

His final paragraph. Now on this footnote, John Welch says, "While it remains true that the works of Jeb and Boyce were not published in the United States, and while one still cannot assume that Joseph Smith would have had access to any of these British books, as I stated in my earlier publication, 'What Does Kaiasmus in the Book of Mormon Prove?' It should be clarified that he might have had access to Horn's 1825 treatise." So in other words, instead of just mentioning these two books by Jeb and Boyce that were published in the 1820s in England and waving them off as saying it's super unlikely they got across here to the Americas and made it to Joseph Smith. He's saying, "Yeah, I should have added that part about the American edition by Horn that was published in 1825." Yeah. He says, "It should be clarified that Joseph Smith might have had access to Horn's 1825 treatise, the one that was available in the bookstore down the road and that was advertised in the papers, that was also available from the library. It is also evident," John Welch says, "that information was available in the 1820s on various forms of parallelism in the Hebrew Bible." Yes, it was. But this has never been an issue. I think it has been an issue and I think it's been the issue you've been running away from for decades and now you're being called to account for it and now you're saying because of that that it's not really the issue. "I have not wanted to overstate or understate the case on behalf of Joseph Smith." Then why have you overstated the case on behalf of Joseph Smith? By limiting the information that your reader and readers knew about that was available to Joseph Smith about Kaiasmus prior to 1829. He says, "I have not wanted to overstate or understate the case on behalf of Joseph Smith. I think that's not true, but I see how such statements clearly could unwittingly be misunderstood." Yeah. And you can do it wittingly too, like I just did. "Others have made similar statements." So, it's okay. It's not that bad that I did it because others said it too. And a lot of them said it because I said it. And I was one of them who said it because you said it, John. "Others have made similar statements also without, I am confident, any intent to misrepresent." No, I didn't have an intent to misrepresent, but I wasn't the one putting myself off as the expert and making these claims back in the 1980s based upon evidence that wasn't there that you didn't show me, but that you knew about and hid for me. That's kind of how it seems to me.

Okay, so let me see if there's any more slides here. There is one, but it's closing slide. And that's it, everybody. They didn't tell me this. It's a small thing, isn't it? Talking about publications in English prior to 1829 mentioning Kaiasmus that Joseph Smith could have had access to. And yet it's like one of those, "for the want of a nail, the battle was lost" scenarios, possibly. You've heard the old expression about "for the want of a nail, a shoe was lost. A horseshoe. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of the horse, the cavalry was lost. For want of the cavalry, the battle was lost," leading to the idea, "for the want of the nail, the battle was lost." And so great things can depend upon very small things. And this small thing being the information about what was available to Joseph Smith about Kaiasmus prior to 1829. Did that cause a large thing of me holding on to Kaiasmus stronger than I would have? Definitely I did if I had known the whole story. The thing I don't know and will never know is if whether knowing that information would have made Kaiasmus such a weak evidence in my mind that I would have fallen away from the church and been able to pursue my own life for decades longer than I was able to otherwise, where I was happy through my loyalty, my stubbornness, my commitment to doing what I believed was right, where I continued to be a faithful Mormon for several decades more and did as best as I could everything that the Mormon church told me to, lived my life their way. Well, now I'm living my life my way. And believe it or not, I'm enjoying it much more. Living it my way. If you're living life your way, too, I hope you're enjoying it much more. I think that you are. Let me know how you're enjoying it in the live chat or in the comments. Well, everybody, that is about all for tonight. Thank you so much for joining me in this excursion. It has been a lot of talk about something relatively small, but once again, that relatively small thing was very important in my life. I hope I've explained that to you clearly enough that you can understand some of the magnitude of this issue in my life. Why it is that finding out about this at this date, it has been somewhat disappointing to me. I've had to restructure decades of my life and how I feel about different things and different people in relation to them, and it's not all pleasant. Well, thanks for joining me. That's about all for tonight. Until next time, this is Radio Free Mormon signing off the air. Heat. Heat.