Transcription
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dulin. We are in the middle of an amazing series with LDS Discussions, or my friend, um, oh, what name are we using? Mike. With my friend Mike from LDS Discussions. We have talked, uh, several episodes about the Book of Mormon, and now we're kind of knee-deep into the Bible and Mormon truth claims. We've covered Adam and Eve, global flood, Tower of Babel, and Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Mormon. And today, we're going to be talking about a subject I literally know zero about. Literally zero. The topic is the long ending of Mark and the Book of Mormon. And, uh, with us today, as always, on this amazing, everybody, is the host and author and founder of the LDS Discussions.com website. We're calling him Mike.
Hey Mike.
Hey, how's it going, everybody? Thanks for joining us again. This is such a great series. Yeah, I hope, like I said, I I feel like I said every time, I I hope it's helpful. And, um, we're getting into through the Bible stuff, and then I know a lot of people want to hear about the more historical stuff with Mormonism, so we'll be getting there soon. But these are definitely important ones to, uh, to cover to kind of give more of an insight into the the scriptures of Mormonism.
Well, today's gonna be, uh, a quicker one, and so let's just dive right in. We'll we'll break a record for the shortest episode. We'll do the long ending of Mark and the Book of Mormon. Tell, I don't even know what this is, so give us an explanation.
So this is really cool. This is, um, another one that I did not know about until I was in the middle of the overview project. And it was a Radio Free Mormon podcast where he was talking about, I think it was the backdating prophecy one, and he mentions this kind of at the end of the at the episode, and I was kind of like, what is he talking about? And this is really cool. But what it is, is that the, um, the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament has an ending to it that scholars now, um, have pretty much a universal consensus that was that the ending of Mark that we know in the King James Bible was actually a late edition. And if you see the, if you're watching this, the image on the right says, this is from a Bible, and it says, "The most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark chapter 16, verses 9 through 20." And so, like we've talked about in some previous episodes about like the global flood and in DNA, this is, um, solid enough to the point where in this case, Bibles are putting this notation in there. So they still have the verses in, but they're telling the reader of this Bible that these are, um, not part of the early manuscripts and it's likely a late edition, um, by a later scribe. And we'll get into some apologetics from people who who disagree and think that this was an original ending, um, but there are a lot of reasons why scholars can show that these verses were late additions to the Gospel of Mark.
Okay, um, I want to learn. I'm already ready to ask questions, but I know you've got another slide on this. You have, um, a reference or a quote from Bart Ehrman, who is a New Testament scholar who we've had on Mormon Stories. But he is one of the, he knows more than almost anyone in the world about kind of how the Bible, especially the New Testament, was put together. So I guess you're going to read from Bart Ehrman to tell us more about the long ending of Mark.
Yeah, and so Bart Ehrman kind of goes through and, um, talks about the clues that the text gives us to tell us it was not original to the text. And so Bart Ehrman says, "The evidence that shows that these verses were not original to Mark is similar and kind to that for the story of the woman taken in adultery. It is absent from the two oldest and best manuscripts of Mark's gospel, along with other important witnesses. The writing style varies from what we find elsewhere in Mark. The transition between this passage and the one preceding it is hard to understand. An example of that is Mary is introduced in verse nine as if she had not been mentioned yet, even though she is discussed in the preceding verses." Um, and then there's another problem with the Greek that makes that transition even more awkward. And then Bart Ehrman says, "And there are a large number of words and phrases in the passage that are not, um, elsewhere found in Mark. In short, the evidence, evidence is sufficient to convince virtually all textual scholars that these verses are in a late addition to the Gospel of Mark."
Okay. And just to back up a tiny bit, is is Bart Ehrman taught on his Mormon Stories episode? Um, I think of the, we think of the Gospels, especially Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as having been written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John while they were alive. And without really going into it, go back and watch the Bart Ehrman episodes. What we learned is that, you know, not only were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but they were written, like, sometimes many generations after the time that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John would have lived. And they contradict each other and conflict in all sorts of ways. And, um, and so this is called historical criticism or biblical criticism. And it's a really important, uh, approach to help you understand why, why there are so many problems with the Bible and why you need to take almost everything in the Bible with a grain of salt. And if you still want to believe in the Bible, you can. So having said that, to drill a little bit deeper, if I'm understanding you correctly, Mike, we all know what the Gospel of Mark is, but now we're finding out that there's this chunk that was added later. That, um, and and that's important. Why? Because it calls into question whether it's legitimate. It calls into question whether it's reliable. So for the purpose of this episode, it's going to relate into how it's going to fill into the Book of Mormon. Um, but to back up to what you said, so for anyone who has not done any research on the New Testament, um, textual scholarship, you know, we have the four Gospels. And the earliest written one is Mark. So Mark was written, they believe, about 60, 60, 60, 80, I believe. Matthew and Luke are written after. And so Mark, Matthew, and Luke are known as the synoptic Gospels. They all fit together. And then John is kind of off in its own little world. They believe that was the last one written. And so the reason it's important is because one of the things you see in Matthew and Luke, in a lot of ways, and one of them actually says, and I think it might be Matthew, they're actually kind of referencing Mark and basically saying, we're correcting some of the things that were said there. Because, um, John Hamer pointed this out, I think, on one of the episodes with you, but, um, he points out that the authors, all of the Gospel writers are anonymous. There's not Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But Matthew and Luke seem to hate the ending of Mark because the ending of Mark doesn't have this grand resurrection story. And so in a lot of ways, Matthew and Luke are trying to fix that. And then it would appear that this was a widespread kind of worry because this Christology evolves after Jesus dies and is crucified. As that evolves, the the the Gospels are going to have different meanings to different communities. And so Mark's not going to be written down for 60 years. I think Matthew and Luke are like 75 to 80, or 75 to 90, somewhere in there. And in that time, the Christology is changing, and people want that resurrection story in there, and Mark doesn't have it. And so the reason that's important is because using that textual analysis is going to fill in to the Book of Mormon. And that's going to be our next slide, and that will kind of answer that question as to why we're talking about this today.
Yeah, and just to kind of say one more thing about what you're saying, for those who know, again, know nothing about historical criticism or the Bible, the New Testament, if you don't look at Matthew, Mark, if you don't look at them as all harmonizing and just filling in holes, respective holes, if you look at them in the sequence in which we know they were written, it's kind of like, uh, a fish story, right? The fish grows over time. And in the same way, this is something you just mentioned, people won't know what Christology means. Uh, if they haven't studied this. What, what do you mean? Tell me if I'm right, Mike. What you mean by Christology is that that the story about who Christ was gets bigger and bigger and more significant, um, the later the account is. And so in the, in the first written, um, Gospel, and I don't remember which one it is, Jesus is more just like a wise, you know, um, more of almost like just a wise rabbi or a really important prophet, not necessarily the Son of God sitting on the right-hand throne. But then the next Gospel, the story gets a little bit bigger. Jesus gets more powerful. And by the end, Jesus is what, you know, Gospel Jesus is the Son of God. And, yeah, I mean, resurrected and, yeah, dies again and all that, right?
Well, the resurrection isn't isn't all. But what's what's really cool about the different Gospels is you can see a little bit of the evolution of how people perceived him. And so I might bungle this a little bit, but I think in Mark, Mark's the first one, um, I believe Jesus isn't really considered a divine being until he's baptized, I think. And then I think in Matthew, it's when he's born. And then when you get to John, he's divine from the beginning of beginning of everything, you know? And so it just shows that, you know, in the beginning, they viewed God, or sorry, they viewed Jesus's divinity a little differently. Then also, when you get to John, which John is the least, is not historical, really, it's more theological, um, but in John, Jesus is divine from the creation of the world, whereas in the other ones, it's when he's baptized. And then once he's born. And it's why Mark does not have a nativity scene, but Matthew and Luke have a nativity scene. Um, and so those differences are a lot have a lot to do with the fact that the communities that their these stories are being told to have different developments in their beliefs and also have different needs that they're trying to address with these teachings. And so that's why there are discrepancies. And as we've mentioned, these are not going to be written down for, you know, many decades after Jesus would die. And so, you know, imagine a game of telephone that you play on the playground. We have 10 kids, the first kid tells a sentence, and by the time you get to the 10th kid, it's a lot different. Well, these stories are being retold and retold and retold. And so that's why you have the discrepancies because this is like a game of telephone through different communities, through many decades, before they're written down. And so these stories develop in different ways. Um, and so while there are a lot of similarities, there's also a lot of discrepancies. And that's a problem, especially when you get into, um, issues within within Mormonism because of the fact that Joseph's going to pull these as if they were written contemporaneously and that they're, um, kind of free of problems.
Do you have an essay on New Testament scholarship? I mean, not really. We have, so we've got the long ending of Mark, and then we did our last episode was on Sermon on the Mount. So those things kind of, I think, cover a lot of it. But I don't really have one just to New Testament stuff, just because I, for the most part, everything I was doing was kind of looking at through the lens of Mormonism. But like I said, it's absolutely fascinating. And I would recommend anyone who is interested, especially in New Testament, um, Bart Ehrman has a blog. And he, I know he referenced it on the episode day with you. It's like, I think it's like Ehrman Blog. Just start Google Bart Ehrman Blog. And, um, it's like 25 a year. He donates all the money to charity. But he puts up like four or five things a week. And I, um, signed up for a few years ago. You know, I don't read it that often, but it's just amazing because you could search for literally any topic, and he will go through what the scholars say. He has people on his blog who disagree with him. Um, and so it's just really cool because you learn all these little tidbits as to why they were writing certain things, like why, you know, I never, I always grew up thinking the Book of Revelation was about the future. And then you learn, no, no, the Book of Revelation is about, like, you know, Nero and the Roman Empire. And it's just so cool because it really gives a much better meaning to the texts. It also helps you understand why they were written when they were written. But on the flip side, it also is going to force you to rethink some of the beliefs that we had, especially when we talk about literalism in the Bible.
Yep. And we'll also put a link to some of his books. Is, uh, is "Misquoting Jesus" is that that's one of his books? Um, so we've got "The Triumph of Christianity," "Misquoting Jesus," "Reinventing Jesus." We'll, we'll put a list to several of his books up there as well. Anyway.
Yep. Yeah. Anyway, so and that's why this is, and so, um, we go to the next slide. This is why it matters for the Book of Mormon. And so the problem with regards to the Book of Mormon is that language from these verses of Mark, which we now know were attached to the Gospel of Mark by an unidentified scribe, likely a couple hundred years after it was originally written down, appears in the Book of Mormon. And so, um, Mark, uh, chapter 16, verses 17 through 18, which are part of the late edition, says, "And these signs shall follow them that believe in my name; they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Now, this is in Mormon 9:24 in the Book of Mormon. "And these signs shall follow them that believe in my name; they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." So almost word for word in the Book of Mormon is part of a text in Mark which was not authentic or original to the Gospel, which the Book of Mormon people would have no access to anyway. So we have like, um, layers upon layers of anachronistic problems here. And that's why this is so important for the Book of Mormon.
Did you read the Mormon verse?
I did.
Okay. Okay. All right. And so if you go to the next slide, this will kind of explain. So we've talked about this before, but it's incredibly anachronistic by any definition for the Book of Mormon to have King James wording within its text, because the KJV was not produced until 1611. And then you add to that how anachronistic it is for the Book of Mormon to have New Testament material and a really frequent reliance on it. And it also carries a 19th-century Christology, which we talked about, which is a problem because these are supposed to be books of an ancient people, um, who have a 19th-century understanding of how we believe about Jesus Christ. Um, and so to think that they would have access to any of this material when Lehi leaves, um, with the brass plates, it makes no sense because he'd have no access to the New Testament. He would have no knowledge of Jesus Christ yet. And in the Book of Mormon, they know all of these things, even though they don't have access to it. And so the long ending of Mark, because it's not an original part of the Gospel, it's kind of like, you know, an anachronism on steroids because not only is it anachronistic to have King James language in the Book of Mormon, not only is it anachronistic to have New Testament material in the Book of Mormon, but now we have New Testament King James material that was not authentic to the original Gospel of Mark, which tells us that Joseph Smith is using a very late script for a text that's purportedly ancient. And again, this is probably coming from the Bible that we know Joseph Smith had, right?
Yes. And so the ver, the the phrases match the King James version pretty much identically, as we did the last slide. But yeah, so he's pulling in, you know, a King James version, which obviously has issues with the translation and the, the phrasing, as we've talked about before. Then New Testament material, which Book of Mormon people could not have accessed. And then have material that is not authentic to the Gospel of Mark appearing in another ancient text. That's highly problematic because, you know, we'll get into the apologetics, but yeah, it's like an anachronism on top of an anachronism on top of a huge one. Because it's like, you know, again, we talk about kind of foundational stuff. This is what is considered to not be a text that would be authentic to the original Gospel of Mark. So how is it in a text that's supposed to be happening in the Americas that they would have never known about? And it just, it really illustrates the problems that come from Joseph Smith relying so heavily on the King James Bible because he doesn't necessarily, he wouldn't have known at this time. No one, I don't think, at this time knew that this would be a late edition because they didn't have the, the, um, the textual, you know, desire to to criticize. You know, David Bokovoy talks in his episode about how how the Bible is a privileged text. And so people didn't criticize it in a textual way until, you know, I don't know exactly when. So Joseph Smith probably is not going to have access to people who are like, yeah, this is likely a late edition. And so he includes it in the Book of Mormon because he just assumes it's, it's authentic to the text. And also, we will refer people to our previous episode, like you say, Book of Mormon and the King James Version for an overview, um, as well, right?
Yep, definitely, definitely. And all right. And so we, we talk in a lot of these episodes, yeah, we're talking these episodes about patterns. And so we've been building on this theme, but the pattern becomes clear that Joseph Smith is completely reliant on both 19th-century text and 19th-century ideas when producing his scriptures. And so Joseph Smith is pulling material that would never have been made available to Book of Mormon people, that contains the errors of later translations, and worst of all, in some instances, such as the long ending of Mark, text that would not be authentic to the declared author. So in this case, it's an addition by a later scribe. Deutero-Isaiah, which we're going to get into, is where a second person is writing under the name of Isaiah, almost like pseudepigrapha. And they both make their way into the Book of Mormon, which is a huge problem because now we have patterns where Joseph Smith is not just sometimes pulling in biblical stuff and making errors, such as like believing that Adam and Eve has a literal story, of the global flood's literal story, but also pulling in text that is not only anachronistic to being in the ancient Americas, but becomes problematic because it's not authentic to the text. And so you just have all of these layers of problems, and then you have it happening over and over again, which is going to tell you that the writer of the Book of Mormon was using very late texts and ideas to produce it.
Yeah, and again, we have, if you haven't been watching or listening in series, we have a full episode on Deutero-Isaiah. And the, oh, no, our next episode, the next episode is Isaiah. Yeah, so that's our next one. And it's going to follow some of these. Yeah, it'll follow some of these same problems. And that's why this is so important to cover because once you start seeing that it happens more than once, it's really hard to just be like, oh, it's just, you know, an error. Or, you know, we'll get to the apologetic responses, but yeah, it's just, it becomes difficult to use these apologetic responses when it keeps happening in different ways that are all tied back to Joseph Smith.
Yeah. If God, and this is to our translation episode, of God, if Joseph's looking at a stone and literally Joseph's reading from it, why isn't God just giving the pure word of Jesus or, uh, an independent story that's in just regular English? Why is he happening to channel into the seer stone the text that conveniently is on the Bible that's probably sitting right next to Joseph at the time? It's kind of strange credulity that God would work that way. If Joseph's reading off a stone, and that's just it, you know, and we're told in the translation episode that the stone doesn't change until the words are read perfect. And so then you have to say, well, is God giving Joseph Smith, um, a text from Mark that we know is from a scholarly perspective, not authentic? And it just makes no sense because it would have no place in the Americas regardless. And so that's why you start looking and you go, well, it couldn't have come from, it couldn't have come from God unless God is willing to trick Joseph Smith. And then if it's coming from Joseph Smith, and then you have to answer, like, again, because we're trying to tie these back into earlier episodes, in the 116 pages episode, we're told through revelation that God will not allow Joseph Smith, basically, to be proven false or to be, you know, taken down by Lucy Harris trying to expose him. And yet, again and again and again, he puts things in the scriptures that we know now today in 2022 are not correct. And so then you go, why is God allowing him to be proven a false prophet, um, 200 years later? Get the 116 pages, he puts a stop to it immediately. You would think there'd be consistency there. And again, I know calling him a false prophet is going to be hard for a believer, but I am saying that when he makes these claims that these, these texts are from ancient America, and we can show they weren't even authentic to the biblical text, that that's a, a huge problem that would show that whoever wrote it was pulling from more contemporary sources and not from ancient text.
All right. So what is the apologetic response to this? Do they acknowledge that it's a problem?
Nah, not really. So this is from FairMormon, but they're heavily, uh, leaning off of a Book of Mormon Central article. That's why I'm putting Fair/Book of Mormon Central, just for anyone who's wondering why I'm combining them. It's, it's FairMormon kind of using them as their kind of their their main rebuttal. And so they're they say, "In recent years, several scholars have argued that the text in Mark 16:9-20 is indeed an authentic part of the Gospel of Mark." And I just want to point out, you can always find a few scholars who are going to argue for any position, especially in a situation where you're talking about biblical history, because we're going to have a lot of religions that are going to want to fight for that position because of the fact that if it's not historical, you know, it does create some issues as to why it was added. And it does that mean that the additions were, you know, um, late, you know, kind of like late backfitting of stories. And so, um, I, I, you know, again, to say several scholars have argued, it really ignores the fact that the consensus is saying that's not the case. And I think that's really important to note because they're basically saying, let's, let's listen just to these few people and ignore all of the other people who are working off of a lot of, we said with Bart Ehrman's thing, it's not just, you know, there's there's different reasons. It's the language, it's the fact that there's phrasing that's not authentic, there's there's issues with the way the Greek is written there versus the original part of Mark. And so they're telling you to ignore all of the evidence we have because there might be a few people who are going against the consensus. And I'm not saying you should always ignore people who are going against the consensus. I'm just saying you shouldn't present it as if that means the problem goes away, because it doesn't. It just means that they're giving plausibility. And we're obviously going to go through that here. Anybody with an understanding of how academics and scholarship and science works will realize that that consensus is what you should always go with. You can mention outliers, but it's disingenuous to to number one, not name, uh, the the several scholars, but to cite, uh, anomalies or exceptions within the discipline, especially if they're motivated by by religious motivations to, uh, to be exceptions and to ignore overwhelming consensus. It's just, it's just dishonest. And they, they should know better.
Yeah, and I think they do cite one of the scholars, I think. But, you know, the point is, like I was saying, you know, you can find some scholars who will tell you that the Book of Abraham is actually on a lost scroll, against all the evidence. Or you can tell, you can find some scholars in the church who will tell us, you know, that the Book of Abraham, um, that Joseph Smith got some of it right, when, you know, as you had Dr. Robert Ritner on, he was going through this point by point and showing why it's being misused. And so to find several scholars to go against the consensus still doesn't, it doesn't necessarily answer the problems that come from the consensus. And more importantly, they're citing some scholars here. And as we go through these, these few, um, slides on apologetics, I'm going to kind of point out why they're not actually going to solve the problem for Mormonism. They might be trying to, those scholars might be trying to solve the problem for, for a more mainstream Christian view. But Mormonism, just like we, we've talked about the Adam and Eve and the Tower of Babel and the global flood, they're cementing this down as literal history. And that is when it gets messier than it does for, for more, you know, other Christian religions.
Yeah, and with the Book of Abraham, it's not, it's not just that, you know, the overwhelming consensus of scholars view it differently than the BYU scholars. It's that the Book of Abraham is a laughingstock to the entire discipline. It's, it's ridiculous to the entire field of Egyptology and an insult to, to the discipline of Egyptology outside of BYU.
Yeah, and the apologists should acknowledge that sort of thing when they're, they're trying to cite scholarship, I think.
Well, no, I mean, and we'll, when we get to the Book of Abraham episodes, we'll talk about that. Just because there is, there's a very interesting way that the, the church's two main apologists for the Book of Abraham handle Egyptology. Because when they, when they present peer-reviewed papers to, you know, the greater community of scholars, it's never about the Book of Abraham. It's about, you know, actual Egyptian things. And then they use those credentials and to push Book of Book of Abraham apologetics under the guise of being an expert in Egyptology. And that's where you start to get into kind of using your scholarship to push bad apologetics. And, and, um, and you see that everywhere. But you have to be aware of it when you're doing this. Because in this case, that we're talking about today, there, and we'll go through it, but they're, they're kind of using someone else's argument, just kind of trying to slap it onto Mormonism. But Mormonism has more problems because of the fact that it brings it into another ancient text.
Yeah. All right. So now you're asking, was there a longer ending in the original? Is it the Bible manuscript?
The original manuscript for Mark. And so Fair and/or Book of Mormon Central will say, "It is also significant that several scholars who reject Mark 16:9-20 as part of the original Gospel of Mark nonetheless believe that the long ending pre-existed its attachment to Mark." And again, we're talking about using several scholars to go over the kind of, you know, almost unanimous, um, consensus here. But, you know, one of the things Dr. Bart Ehrman states, as we mentioned earlier, is, "Some scholars agree with the scribes in thinking that 16:8 is too abrupt an ending for a gospel. As I indicated, it is not that these scholars believe the final 12 verses in our later manuscripts were the original ending. They know that's not the case, but they think that possibly the last page of the of Mark's gospel, one in which Jesus actually did meet the disciples in Galilee, was somehow lost, and then all of our copies of the gospel go back to this one truncated manuscript without the last page." And this is really important because this is saying what Book of Mormon Central and FairMormon are saying is, "Some scholars think that there was a longer ending." And my point is this: there might have been a longer ending, but the problem is that is the long ending that ends up in the Book of Mormon. So even if there was an original one that a scribe tried to replace hundreds of years later, Joseph Smith is still using the replacement. He's not, no matter how you want to do this, Joseph Smith is still using an added text. So they're basically kind of throwing a little bit of a smoke screen here by saying that some scholars say there was was a a longer ending originally. And no one, like Dr. Ehrman, says no one's arguing that. What we're saying with Mormonism is Joseph Smith, no matter how you cut it, is still using the ending that is a late edition. And that's the problem.
Okay. And I, I'm sorry, I'm just not super smart about this stuff. So Mark has 16 chapters. Yeah. And we're literally talking about the final verses. So, yeah.
So the final verses of Mark are, it's an abrupt ending. What do you mean? So if you read Mark, um, chapter 16, it ends basically with them being told, you know, "Go and tell no one about what you saw." Right? And so, um, it is a very, um, fairly abrupt ending. I'm gonna read, I'll read the last few verses. So, um, it would end, and it says, um, you know, they, they go and, and they're looking at the tomb, and he says, um, the guy at the tomb says, "He saith unto them, Be not affrighted. Be not afraid. Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified. He is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him as he said unto you." And they went out quickly and fled from the sepulchre. I always say that wrong. Sepulchre. I always get that messed up. Before they trembled and were amazed: neither said they anything to any man; for they were afraid." End. That's it. So it's a really abrupt ending, right?
And so, wait, that's that's verse eight. You just read that. That's where it would end. But it goes through to 20. So nine through 20 is what would be a late edition from a scribe. So nine through 20 is is the part of Mark that scholars say is a late edition. So that's why some scholars will argue that probably was a longer original manuscript because it is a really abrupt ending. And that's also why, as John Hamer pointed out, the authors of Matthew and Luke probably hated it because it's so abrupt. It doesn't really give, you know, the real resurrection story. And so, yeah, it's almost like the verse reboots in the middle. I mean, the chapter reboots in the chapter. And, and, and that's why Jesus is saying, and seven, I'm sorry, this is all just now coming together for me. Yeah, because because in eight, he's saying, "And they went out quickly and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they anything to any man; for they were afraid." And then nine says, "Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, yeah, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene." Okay. I, you, we're repeating what you said earlier, but now it makes. And when you read it, and that's the thing, Mark eight is clearly an end. And then it's almost like in verse nine, it backs up and and gives a new new ending. And that's just, that's like jarring. I never, of course, it is. None of us ever noticed this.
No. And, uh, yeah, and again, that's why, like, um, Bart Ehrman kind of talked about, we talked about earlier, how it's not just the fact that it kind of seems jarring, but the fact that, you know, they took, when they look at the original, uh, Greek, there are some issues that tell you that the writer of 9 through 20 is likely a different person because you're using different words that appear nowhere else in Mark. It's like, if you're writing a book, you're going to use a lot of patterns and in phrases, kind of like, "it came to pass," or we talked about "therefore" and "wherefore," you know, those things, um, in the Book of Mormon. And so those clues tell them that this is a second author. And so what FairMormon and Book of Mormon Central are saying is saying that because it's so abrupt, there are scholars that believe that there might have been addition to that text that was original. And so some scribe down the road was trying to replace it to make it more of a fulfilling gospel to readers. The problem is, Joseph Smith, no matter, no matter how true that might be, is still going to use the late edition that we have today. And that's the problem for Mormonism because Joseph Smith is pulling from, whether or not there was an original lost ending, he's still pulling from a late edition. It doesn't really matter if there was an original ending that got lost because we know what Joseph's pulling from.
Okay. So I, I'm going to ask for your forgiveness, but to explain to me one more time, why, why this question of, "Was there a longer ending in the original manuscript?" Explain one more time why this is so significant.
So basically, what FairMormon is saying here is to say, um, that there are scholars who believe that there was originally an ending that goes beyond verse eight. There. So they're basically saying there was, on a time, there was something else that came after eight. Yeah. And, you know, if you think about, there are, when you talk about documents throughout time, there's gonna be documents where pieces get broken off or lost. And so, just picture this being on a scroll or something, and this piece getting kind of torn off on accident and lost. And they didn't have tons of scrolls back then. So someone uses it for toilet paper, right? Yeah, I mean, but, you know, it happens. And so, yeah, what, what Bart Ehrman is saying in that quote below is to say, no one's really, like, there are a lot of people that would freely admit that there might have been a longer ending originally, but it was lost. And so because it was lost, we can still tell that what we have today is still a late edition. And so Book of Mormon Central and FairMormon are saying, "You don't have to worry about it because some scholars say there was there originally was a longer ending." But that's missing the point that Joseph Smith is still using the later one. Either way, so he's still using the inauthentic one, no matter what might have happened to any original long ending of Mark.
Okay. All right. But I mean, and just, just because I'm really thick, it could be that the, the part that shows up first is the older or the newer, and the part that came later is older or newer, right? Like, we don't know if, if the, the long ending predates or follows.
Correct. Well, the only thing they can tell from the text is to say that the person who wrote nine through, um, 20 is likely a different author because of the, the different wordings he uses. Um, they're different. They're different. And I believe, and now I might be misremembering this a bit, but I believe in 9 through 20, there's also some, some word kind of phrasing that seems to be borrowing from, I think, Matthew as well. And so that's another area where they're kind of saying, like, this is a little bit later of language than Mark was. And, and so it's not just that this could have been like an ending that maybe got lost and reattached. It's because of the fact that they can show that it almost certainly is a different writer altogether. So then whoever did write the original, um, Gospel of Mark, if there was an original ending, the ending should still kind of match that writing style, the phrasings, because this doesn't. It tells us that it's a different, a second author. And in the dating, it's not that it's irrelevant, it's just that even if it's dated to, to like 50 years later or 200 years later, it's still going to be a second author and not original to the gospel. And yet Joseph Smith is pulling it into the Book of Mormon as if it would be.
Yeah. So it's just kind of weird. We've got this Frankenstein book in the New Testament.
Yeah. It's so, it would make no sense that somehow a book that was Frankenstein together is somehow magically appearing on Joseph's peepstone.
Exactly. We would expect whatever came through the peepstone, even if it was somehow miraculously referencing Mark, which makes no sense to begin with, right? You would do so from a consistent, intact manuscript.
Yeah. And so, you know, in theory, if Joseph Smith was was channeling an original manuscript of Mark, at the end, we wouldn't even know it because we wouldn't have it to compare to. But because he's pulling from the late edition, we can see the phrasing are identical. And that's how you know where he's coming from.
Yeah. And so that, that's that's the problem.
Okay. All right. That's weird. Okay. Then FairMormon and Book of Mormon Central continue and say, "Another important detail to keep in mind is that even among those who reject the authenticity of Mark 16:9-20, there is considerable considerable debate about how the Gospel of Mark originally ended." And again, I just want to point out, this is not the problem at all. The problem is that the version that we do have, which is a late edition, is not in the earliest manuscripts, yet ends up in the Book of Mormon, um, that should not have any New Testament material in the first place, let alone what is a later addition to Mark. So this is just again, a distraction to say, "We don't know how it originally ended." But that doesn't matter because even if it ended in a way that was similar, but written completely different, the fact that we have the exact same phrases in the Book of Mormon tells us Joseph Smith was pulling from that late edition. So this is just a smoke screen to keep you from understanding why the problem applies to Mormonism. So they're trying to almost solve a problem for Christianity, except that Joseph Smith expands the issue in the Book of Mormon. And that's what we're trying to figure out here.
Yeah, it's like, it's like a red herring or a smoke screen to take you off the scent of the real problem, which is the pattern of how Mormon apologetics often acts.
That's, I mean, we've been pointing it out. And so it's just like, I said, it's this, this is a shorter episode, obviously, but it's just, it's a problem that's really important because this should not be there. And yet we can kind of see not just the fact that it's there, but also the way the apologetics are working with it, which I think is just as important. And so, um, this is the last part from the FairMormon article that I wanted to talk about. And they just say, "It is important to recognize, however, that even though the English translation of Mormon 9:22-24 was possibly influenced by the King James translation of Mark 16:15-18, Moroni's source was not the Gospel of Mark. Rather, Moroni was drawing on the teachings of Christ recorded among the Nephites. Mormon 9:22. Thus, the authenticity of the words of Jesus in Mormon 9:22-25 is not ultimately dependent on the authenticity of the long ending of Mark. Indeed, belief in the authenticity of these words and the ending of Mark may, on the other hand, benefit from the testimony of the Book of Mormon." And so what they're saying here is almost, it's very circular logic. They're saying the long ending of Mark is true because the Book of Mormon is true. And that's just a really horrible way to look at it. And to argue that the Book of Mormon is not being directly influenced by the King James translation, it's just ridiculous because to say that Moroni's source is not the King James Bible ignores the fact that we can show directly that Joseph Smith is using the King James Bible throughout the entire Book of Mormon. And so to say "possibly" there is just a weasel word that is being thrown in to effectively give some, you know, to try to keep again, keep you off the track of the real problem here. And so on both of these issues, I think they're missing the mark in such a bad way. And as a believer, I think you can kind of read and just kind of go, "Oh yeah, yeah." But when you take away that layer, it's like, "Oh, these are horrible apologetics." Because you're using the Book of Mormon, which we can show as a 19th-century text, to try to give authenticity to the long ending of Mark, which is just a really bad way to do it.
Yeah, and again, we'll reference people to our episode on King James Version and the Book of Mormon and Deutero-Isaiah. But, you know, whether it's the italics that go from Joseph Smith's Bible into the Book of Mormon, or the phraseology, or or plagiarized text, or all the Isaiah in Second Nephi, or the Deutero-Isaiah that shouldn't be there, or the Sermon on the Mount, there's just zero question that Joseph, it is factual that Joseph had his, you know, 17, whatever, 100 version of the King James Bible there in the room, he's reading from it and inserting that text into, uh, what becomes the Book of Mormon. And anyone who tries to say that he was not doing that, these apologists are really deceiving people. It's just, it's just, it's a horrible, it goes against all the evidence we have. And again, we've talked about this in previous episodes, but this idea that you throw out what you don't know in hopes that maybe what we find out is good, is just, you wouldn't, you wouldn't give the space to any other religion. And so if we want to be consistent, you cannot say that all of these, I mean, the Book of Mormon is screaming that it's taking from the King James Bible. So if you want to say Moroni's, um, source was the teachings of Christ, then you have to argue why are there errors from the King James Bible if that's not the source? And that's where, um, obviously their article is going to just completely sidestep that because it's trying to fix one problem while opening up problems elsewhere. And that's what we keep talking about in these episodes. And that's why going through these things the way we're doing is so important. So that once you start seeing these patterns, both from Joseph Smith and apologetics, then when you get to these things, all of a sudden you'll start, you'll start noticing these things before I tell you. In these, like, as we do these episodes down the road, you're going to start picking up on them before I go to the next slide and tell you why I think it's a problem, because you're
Going to be starting to look at it in a more critical way to see the tricks they're doing to try to deflect from these problems and try to make you think they're not going to be an issue for Mormonism because we found a way to make it work elsewhere. Yeah, this is, this is really bad apologetics. It's, it's, it's up there with like, maybe when they said "horse" they meant "taper" kind of thing. It's the type of apologetic that has caused so many people to go from questioning the church to reading Fair Mormon and the Maxwell Institute to feeling like they're being intentionally misled and deceived through dishonest means, which then makes them want to leave the church.
I think it's a fair argument to say that a lot of Mormon apologetics actually accelerates people's disaffection for Mormonism. Which, you think if I hated the church, I would just want to see Fair, you know, I would want to see Fair Mormon succeed with their deceptions. But the truth is, I just want people to know the truth and to be able to think clearly. And that's why Fair Mormon just needs to go away because this is hurting everybody. This stuff's hurting everybody. It does. And, and that's a good segue into the next one, actually, kind of talking about the way apologetics work. So, yeah, um, I have an article on LDSdiscussions.com called "Follow the Footnotes." I'm kind of leaning into that, but this isn't in there. But so, in the article, I've been citing from Book of Mormon Central. Uh, they have a footnote and cited as number 13 that claims Moroni's source in writing this material was not the Gospel of Mark. And when you should go to the footnote, it's not even a source, it's an editorial note that says, "It is unreasonable to believe and there is no evidence that Joseph either opened a Bible to the ending of Mark and read these words or had memorized them and then wove them smoothly into the flow of the translation of Mormon nine."
And this is just a horrible argument because again, yeah, there's no proof. We don't have someone saying Joseph had the Bible open. But textually, we have all sorts of proof that Joseph Smith is using the King James Bible. And I will tell you guys, um, we covered this in the "Book of Mormon How the Book of Mormon Was Composed" episode. If you want to see how Joseph Smith was able to weave text together, watch that episode again. When we talk about the parable of the olive tree, Joseph Smith absolutely weaves his words from the King James Bible into the text. And in that case, he was weaving two different sources into a text, and he was doing it in a way that tells us when he kind of lost track of where he was pulling from. So to say that we have no proof or evidence that he did it is just absolutely, uh, goes against all the evidence we have. And so, you know, again, I don't know how more to, um, we've illustrated this so many times throughout these episodes. And so for Book of Mormon Central to state that is fact, again, it's in a different realm. And it goes from being scholarly to just being trying to, um, you know, Book Mormon Central, there's a lot of, you know, they're not my favorite apologies because they do take a lot of liberties with a lot of their material. But it's just, it does not make any sense.
And then to stick with their reasoning, just for fun, uh, it leaves you with two options. One is that God preserved the gold plates for thousands of years only to give Joseph Smith a revelation from the stone in the hat which matches the King James Bible with translation errors, italics, and late editions included, which is what they're saying. Or two, Joseph would pull these long phrases and verses as he saw fit, which necessitates the use of the King James Bible during the composition of the Book of Mormon, as many of these long passages are nearly identical, as we show above with Mark, and obviously, as we've shown before, with errors and and italics as well. I mean, there's no other way to do this. Yeah.
And I'm just really tired of this, "there is no evidence" argument. Right? They try to do this with polygamy. Brian Hales will say, well, there's no evidence that Joseph Smith had sex with any of his plural wives or any of his underage wives or any of his wives that were married to other men. I'm like, what do they want? A VHS tape? Do they want like, uh, do they want video? Like, what do they want? And there is evidence. There's all these women after Joseph Smith died who, who, who signed sworn affidavits that they had sex with Joseph. In the very deed, there's women who wrote in their journals. And yet apologists want to say there's no evidence. And I just hate this argument. If there's no evidence, well, I will give one thing. I will say is Brian Hales will admit that he had sex with him because he actually has an, um, he runs the Joseph Smith polygamy site, so he does have a page on it. But there are a lot of people who will, a lot of apologists will say there's no proof. And they'll say that the people who are saying he'll say there's no proof of sex with the underage or polyandrous, right? Yeah, he will say that. I think, I think there's one polyandrous one where he says it's kind of like, you could go, you could, there's some like, what I've tried to think of the word, like fragmentary possibility. And, you know, and we'll get into this with polygamy. You know, there's a lot of implications beyond whether or not he actually had sex with the, the two 14-year-old polygamous wives. But, um, you know, I just, I think what we see here is just, they'll state these things as fact in these footnotes. And it's like, it's not a source. And you are going against all evidence to say, to say there's no proof that Joseph Smith didn't use the King James Bible. Just again, it's, it's special pleading to such a degree that it just, it defies any logic. And it would be space that you would never create for anyone else. Like if you were a professor, if whoever wrote this Book of Mormon Central article was a professor, and someone was plagiarizing long passages from another book, and he, that professor figured out, he or she from Book of Mormon Central, they figured it out, and they called the student, and the student looked them in the eye and they said, "You have no proof that I own those books or opened them." Do you think that professor can be like, "You know what? You're right. I'm going to give you an A"? Or do you think they're going to be like, "I don't care. These are there's too many"? You know what I mean? Like, you cannot apply this logic one way in with Mormonism and then then criticize critics for, you know, or criticize any other person for plagiarism. You lose that moral ground forever if you're going to make this claim. And to do so, um, in a way that doesn't present all of the evidence that tells us the opposite is where I get frustrated. Because at least with what I'm doing on the overviews, I'm giving you the links to this. If you want to read more on what they say, the links are on the website. So nobody who's reading my stuff can go away and say, "He's hiding it." Because I'm literally answering it and putting the links to it. Yet on the flip side, they're putting footnotes to make it look scholarly. And then the footnote itself is just basically saying, you know, a statement of fact, which is just not even within the realm of reasonable, um, thought. And so, and again, I don't want to rant too much about apologetics, but yeah, this is why it's a problem. And this is why you have to follow the footnotes and be careful about what you're perceiving as, um, scholarly references, because sometimes they're just not.
No, these are not written. It's just like Richard Bushman once said, that Sunday school is not to educate, it's a ritual. Apologetics, Mormon apologetics is never to find truth. It's to get you to stop thinking, right? It gets you to think there's no problem or to mislead you, uh, to provide you with false information so you arrive at an accurate conclusion. Mormon apologetics is never, never about discerning the truth. Well, I mean, it's about keeping you in the boat, you know? And so, yeah, I mean, that's just the only way it tells you that. All right, so we have, we're done. Let's conclude. What's the concluding slide for this episode?
So, just basically to wrap up, um, the long ending of Mark is not in the earliest manuscripts. And so, while we've mentioned that some scholars debate whether or not there was an original ending, the overwhelming consensus is that whatever ending might have existed is not what we have in the Bible today. And so that is again, that's the huge, um, differentiation between kind of the apologetic response of what I'm trying to to portray is that Joseph Smith using New Testament materials anachronistic by itself. But then using text in the Book of Mormon that we know one way or the other was a late addition, it kind of elevates that problem to a whole new level. And we've illustrated throughout these overviews that these problems continually point to the author of the Book of Mormon being someone in the 1820s that's relying on a 19th century view of the Bible and Christianity. And those clues and those fingerprints are telling us not just who wrote the Book of Mormon, how they produced it, where they're pulling material from, and how we can date the text. And the long ending of Mark, obviously, is not a modern text. It was added a couple hundred years after, after the original Gospel of Mark was, was probably penned down. But the fact is, these are fingerprints that tell us whoever wrote the Book of Mormon did not know this kind of biblical scholarship, believed it to be literal history. And so when you add all of the, the overviews we talked about, we're just in a situation where, as I've said before, not only could the Book of Mormon not have been written before the 1820s, but no one else but Joseph could have written it. And here, this just shows us that it cannot be ancient or historical because it's putting into the words of ancient prophets, um, material that was just simply not authentic to the Bible and would have never been accessible by anyone in the Americas.
Yeah, and just think back to the episodes you've already watched, the witnesses to the creation of the Book of Mormon. Think of the tight and loose translation episode. Well, and the golden plates episode. We're told that golden plates were preserved and given to Joseph. We're told that he had his stone and a hat, and it was telling him word for word, you know, what should be written down to the scribes. It makes no sense that that, um, an imperfect Bible of a specific edition would be channeled through that stone in the hat. What if you go with Occam's Razor? What makes much more sense is that Joseph had his Bible sitting next to him. And because there was a sheet between him, potentially, or he's on the stairs or whatever, he's accessing that Bible and then reading that. And that's why those passages in the Bible, along with the italics and and everything else, that's why it's appearing in the Book of Mormon. Yeah, Occam's Razor, uh, you, you decide. But I, you know, I think you've made a great case here today. So thank you, Mike.
Thanks so much. All right, um, so what's next? What's next, Mike? I'm trying to think what we've got next on this list here. We've got, um, I believe Deuteronomy next. And that one's going to be a good one because it really is a similar issue to this where we're talking about material that was a later edition, um, that is going to appear in the Book of Mormon when it would have no ability to be in there. And so these are areas where scholars can now date some of these biblical texts. And again, these might not be huge problems for people who have more of a general belief in the Bible because Joseph Smith is going to build off it. With the Book of Mormon, it becomes a massive problem. And so, you know, as we talked about in our first, you know, kind of overview with Adam and Eve, these areas of biblical scholarship, a lot of times you might kind of glaze over a bit like, why does this matter for Mormonism? But it actually undercuts the historicity of Mormonism before you even get into any uniquely Mormon things. And that's why they're so important to, to kind of try to piece out together, you know, kind of topic by topic.
Yeah, and I have to say, just objectively speaking, every episode we've done so far has, has been a smoking gun as far as I'm concerned. Um, I've been impressed with every episode that it, it, um, it was a, every episode has been a big deal. And as soon as Deuteronomy Isaiah is one of the biggest deals for, for so many people. It's up there with the Book of Abraham. And then we immediately are going to start First Vision and the priesthood restoration, the Word of Wisdom, Kinderhook plates, yeah, changes to Doctrine and Covenants. We've got so many amazing episodes to come. So I'm super excited.
Mike, I am too. It'll be fun. You stay healthy. Uh, you know, watch out when you're walking on the sidewalk. Like, uh, you stay healthy and safe, Mike, because we, we want to make it all the way through.
Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me again. All right, thanks so much. Thanks everybody. And, uh, thanks again to everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast. Again, this episode is, can be, uh, the, the text for what inspired this episode can be found at LDSdiscussions.com. Mark, we have the show notes in the description of this episode, as well as time codes. So if you don't like our commentary, you can always go to YouTube, watch on YouTube, and then skip to the parts, uh, that you want to skip to and skip over our commentary. But many of you have given us the feedback that you want commentary, you want analysis, and that's what you're valuing about these episodes. So continue to give us your feedback at MormonStories@gmail.com. You can also comment on YouTube or on Facebook or on the blog. And, um, most importantly, share this stuff, uh, with anyone you think might benefit. And most importantly, finally, we, um, we need your financial support to keep this going. So please go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button right now, and become a monthly donor. And not only will we continue this series with your support, but will provide this series to future generations so that people can have informed consent and engage Mormonism or not, at whatever level they want to, having been given all the facts. Thanks, everybody. Stay tuned for another episode of Mormon Stories in the coming, uh, days, weeks, and months.