Transcription
Good evening, everybody. Radio Free Mormon here, broadcasting behind enemy lines. Tonight's episode is kayasmus. Case closed. RFM episode 417.
Now, pretty much everybody who's in Mormon apologetics knows what a kayasmus is. Let's put it briefly here. It's an ancient literary structure. It's a way of organizing information. And it's a way of organizing information that is supposed to make it easier to remember later on because there's a certain amount of duplication that goes on in a kayastic structure. We'll get to exactly what that is here in a minute or two.
But as an apologist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which I was for over a decade, the presence of kayasmus in the Book of Mormon is one of the strongest evidences that apologists have to put forward that the Book of Mormon is true. And the question I'm going to ask tonight is, is kayasmus limited to the Book of Mormon, or is it found in other places? Is it found in other places that are not even purported to be ancient? And specifically, is kayasmus found in the Radio Free Mormon podcast show? That's the question we're going to be looking at tonight.
Because if kayasmus is present in my podcast, it means not only am I ancient, and there may be some truth in that, but also that I am an ancient Hebrew. Well, I am not really ancient, at least not thousands of years ancient, nor am I a Hebrew. And yet, if, as I'm going to demonstrate, kayasmus shows up in my podcast and I'm not ancient or Hebrew, maybe arguing that the presence of kayasmus in the Book of Mormon proves that it is ancient and Hebrew is a bit premature.
Okay, so here is the title slide. Kayasmus, case closed. Now, here is a diagram of what kayasmus looks like. Basically, it's a sentence that has an A1, a B1. These are elements. These are words. These are unique concepts within the kayasmus. A1, B1, C1, D1. And then it backs its way out. D2, C2, B2, A2. That's a kayastic structure. Even though the person who made this graphic, who is not myself, wrote "kastic structure." There should be a T there, I believe. Kayastic structure. But that's what it looks like in its most basic form.
And it's important to know that this structure in the Book of Mormon was found back in 1967, I think it was, by John Welch, who was serving a mission to Germany at the time. He's actually a missionary. He goes to a lecture, he learns about kayazm and how it's present in the Bible. Comes back to his apartment, goes to sleep, I think, wakes up in the morning, looks at his Book of Mormon, and the first thing he's looking at is Mosaiah chapter 5, if I'm remembering this correctly, and he sees a kayastic structure in the Book of Mormon.
Well, the rest is history because he starts seeing more and more kayazms in the Book of Mormon, which is, of course, very exciting to him because as a Mormon missionary, this represents to him proof that the Book of Mormon really is what it claims to be, or what Joseph Smith claimed it to be as well, which is an ancient record written by Hebrews who came to the Americas from the Old World around 600 BCE.
Once this was published, everybody is looking for kayazms in the Book of Mormon. And believe it or not, everybody's finding them, me included. And I'll tell you about that story a little bit later as well. So kayazm becomes a really, really important evidence for the Book of Mormon. So much so that back in the mid-1980s, when the Mark Hoffman scandal was breaking open and everybody was feeling their testimony being shaken, including students at the University of Texas at Austin, where I was attending at the time. I had a friend of mine whose name was Larry. He was a graduate student in mathematics, so very smart guy, but he was very concerned about it. I was concerned about it. I remember standing with him in the foyer of the Institute building in Austin, Texas, while all this was going on and looking at each other very scared. And he said to me, "Well, there's still kayazm in the Book of Mormon, isn't there?" And I said, "Yeah, there is." So we're grasping at these straws. We don't consider them straws at the time. We consider them to be life preservers that we're grasping in order to keep from sinking under the sea of what's going on with Mark Hoffman. Mark Hoffman, of course, having done some incredible forgeries which shown an unexpected light on Mormon history and then ended up blowing up two people in order to cover his tracks.
But I tell you that story in order to show you how important kayazm was to me, and I'm sure to many other people. In fact, it continues to be very important to podcasters because there are a plethora of podcasts from faithful Mormons putting forward kayasmus as the evidence that I used to believe it was. Here's one. This is from a podcast called Discover the Book of Mormon, and it's titled "Studying New Evidence Found in the Book of Mormon: New Discovery in the Book of Mosaiah." Now, this came out just relatively recently. It had 27,000 views after it was up for 8 days. And what it does is it suggests that the entire book of Mosaiah is itself a kayastic structure.
Now, this isn't the first time I have heard this idea. And I think that advertising it as a new discovery may have been overstating things a bit. You can go on to the internet and you can find these kayastic structures of the book of Mosiah which were already in existence at the time that podcast came out. And there is the idea behind it. Now you can see all the different elements that lead up to the middle and then all of the different elements leading out of the middle and going backward. So that's the kayastic structure. This is an entire book in the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mosiah. So they have it big like this. They have it small like the first one that was found. We'll get to that one here in a second, too. But kayasms has taken over the creative imagination of Mormon apologists, and this is an example of it.
Here is another podcast called "How Much Could Joseph Smith Have Known About Kayasmus?" from Scripture Central. Here's one, "Evidences of the Book of Mormon: Hebrewisms." That's from Book of Mormon Central. Here's another podcast called "Evidences for the Book of Mormon." And this one is about kayasmus. Here's another one. "Does Hebrew Kayasmus Authenticate the Book of Mormon?" Now, I think their answer is going to be yes. Unfortunately, after today's episode, your answer is probably going to be no, like mine is. And this has been disappointing for me. Let me just be frank with you. This was a huge evidence for the Book of Mormon as far as I was concerned for many decades. And I've had to relatively recently turn my eye upon them from a critical point of view. And as I do so, I start finding out why these evidences, these kayasmas structures in the Book of Mormon are not as impressive as I had once thought. In fact, they're relatively meaningless. And after today, you're going to see that if kayasma shows up in the transcripts of Radio Free Mormon podcasts when I'm just riffing to you, then maybe they don't mean that much when they show up in the Book of Mormon.
Here's another one. "Why is the Presence of Kayasmus in the Book of Mormon Significant?" Do you see it's everywhere on the internet? Now, here is an attempt by somebody to diagram a kayasmus in Alma chapter 41. This has to do with the word restoration. And you can see that they use green highlight for the word, and it appears at the beginning and at the end. They use blue highlight for restoration, which appears at the beginning and then at these several points there in the second half. And they use yellow for "oh my son."
Now, this is an interesting structure, I've got to tell you. I have to point out a few things to you because sometimes what I think I've been guilty of is being so overwhelmed by the structure and by such a desire to believe it's there that I have tended to overlook the problems with the proposed kayastic structures. And I'm just going to bring up something to you at this point. Notice the yellow. There are two yellow highlights, and they are on "my son." "My son" at the beginning and "my son" in the middle. Now, what would we expect to have if this were, in fact, the kayasmus? Well, we'd expect to have "my son" also at the end, or at least at the end. In fact, that's where it should be, at the very bottom, in order to balance the "my son" at the beginning. There isn't one at the bottom. There's one in the middle, but not at the bottom, which is not really reflective of a kayastic structure. And yet they highlight it anyway because it looks more impressive if you highlight things that are similar within this structure, even if they aren't really indicative of a true kayasmus. And there are all sorts of reasons that apologists have for these things not being exact. But regardless of their reasons and excuses, the fact is that this is not as exact as they would probably like it to be. What it demonstrates on the part of apologists is a penchant for fudging the facts on these kinds of kayasmas. They don't always have to. There are some that are really nice, very exact, very elegant, if I can use that word. And this has some of that in it, but "my son" is a problem because it appears at the beginning and the middle, but not at the end.
This one is from Mosiah 5:10-12. And I believe this is the one that Jack Welch found first on his mission the morning after attending that lecture. This is a very nice kayasmus. It's in the Book of Mormon. And let's spend just a little bit of time with it because it also shows you what a kayasmus is supposed to look like. So the very first part of this structure involves the name of Christ. "And now it shall come to pass that whosoever shall not take upon him the name of Christ." Right? And then the bottom of it has "the name by which he shall call you." Okay. So there's this name at the beginning and at the end that is proposed to be the beginning and the end of the kayazm, which should be identical or at least similar. The next step, the B step, right? That first one's A, the next one's B. Must be called by some other name that pairs with "voice by which he shall be called." Second from the bottom, the C step. "Therefore, he findeth himself on the left hand of God." And then the C-step at the bottom, three, "that ye are not found on the left hand of God, but that ye hear and know the voice," etc. But it's the "left hand of God" that is being paired up. The D step. "For and I would that you should remember also that this is the name that I should give unto you" that pairs up with "for the bottom." "I say unto you, I would that you should remember to retain the name written always in your hearts." So that's a pretty good pairing. The E step, or five N, "that should never be blotted out." And then it matches up with "5N from the bottom, that the name be not blotted out of your hearts." Okay, so we see "blotted out" in both of those.
Now we get to the center part of this kayazm where it talks about "transgression except it be through transgression." And then immediately after it, it says, "Therefore take heed that ye do not transgress." That's the centerpiece of the kayazm, which is itself a parallelism between "transgression" and "transgress." So this is a very nice kayastic structure that's found in the Book of Mormon. Once again, the question is, does it prove that the Book of Mormon is actually ancient? Does it prove the Book of Mormon is true? And should it be considered as evidence in that regard?
All right. Now, this is the granddaddy of them all. This is the kayazm that was discovered in Alma chapter 36. Alma 36 is where Alma's talking to one of his sons and describing to his son the experience, the conversion experience that Alma himself had when he was a young man going about and speaking ill of the Lord's church and trying to tear down faith and everything, and the angel appeared to him. So Jack Welch has found this, and this is really, really impressive. You can see how impressive it is. You can see all of the elements that line up. The very structure itself is designed to cause wonder in the soul of the believing Mormon.
The problem is, the problem is is that when you start looking at this more closely, you see that it really isn't as impressive as you might otherwise think. And in fact, KBY Reddish and I addressed this very cayazm in one of our episodes on the Light on Truth Letter. And through doing that and looking at other scholarship and other scholars who talked about this proposed kayazm, I was unfortunately forced to conclude that even this amazing kayazm is not everything that it's cracked up to be. And here's the episode where we talked about this in addition to other things. It was titled, "Do Linguistics Prove the Book of Mormon True?" And that's where we are reviewing chapter 3 of Austin 5's Light on Truth Letter. I would suggest that if you're interested in this subject, that you go there because I don't want to repeat the information that we talked about there. I just refer you to it for further information.
What this show is about is looking to see if there is kayazm and kayastic structures in Radio Free Mormon. And if so, what does that mean about me? Does that make me an ancient Hebrew who came to the Americas from the Old World 600 BCE? Probably not. But we'll see if it's there. We haven't established that yet.
Now, there were two things I wanted to bring up here that were mentioned in the show. The death knell, the death knell to the idea that kayastic structures in the Book of Mormon are proof that it is ancient and written by ancient Hebrews is delivered by none other than the Doctrine and Covenants itself. Because not only does the Book of Mormon have kayastic structures in it, the Doctrine and Covenants has kayastic structures in it. What's the problem with that? Well, simply put, if kayazm in the Book of Mormon means that the Book of Mormon was written by ancient Hebrews, then what are we to say of kayastic structures in the Doctrine and Covenants? If it proves ancient Hebrew authorship in the Book of Mormon, then it must prove ancient Hebrew authorship of the Doctrine and Covenants. That's the problem because we know that the Doctrine and Covenants was not written by ancient Hebrews. Therefore, kayazm in the Book of Mormon cannot be used for proof of ancient Hebrew authorship unless you're going to be consistent and use it to prove the same thing with the Doctrine and Covenants.
And this is a picture of a book that was given over to studying that very thing. The presence of kayasmus in the Doctrine and Covenants. It's called "Language of the Lord: New Discoveries of Kayazma in the Doctrine and Covenants" by H. Clay Gorton. Now, he's a faithful member of the church. I'm sure he thought this was a great idea, and he didn't realize, I suppose, that while he is assembling kastic structures in the Doctrine and Covenants, he's completely undermining any evidentiary value they have for ancient authorship in the Book of Mormon.
The other one was this, because this is from John Taylor's book, Third President of the Church. He wrote a book. It's somewhat famous. It used to be more famous than it is now. It's called "Mediation and Atonement." And there was a kayazm in there. There probably a lot of kayazms in there, but here's one. Okay, this is John Taylor writing. He's not ancient. He's not a Hebrew. And yet he's writing this kayastic structure. And you can see it here. A. "And as he in his own person." Bore the sins of all. C. "And atoned for them." D. "By the sacrifice of himself." E. The center of the kayasmus. "So there came upon him the weight and agony of ages and generations." Now, E again, sub E. "The indescribable agony consequent upon this great." You can see "agony" is in both of those sentences, the E and the sub E. Now we go to sub D, "sacrificial." You see that matches the D above. Sub C, "atonement where in he." And that matches C above, which talks about "atoned." Sub B, "bore the sins of the world." That matches the B above. And finally, sub A, "suffered in his own person the consequences." And that matches with A above, "and as he in his own person." So you can see this is a really elegant and nice kayastic structure. What's it doing in a book written in the 19th century by John Taylor is the question. Well, it's quite easy to understand if we don't insist that every time we see a kayazm, it means it's written by ancient Hebrews, because this obviously is not, anymore than the Doctrine and Covenants was. The interesting part is that the Doctrine and Covenants is written largely as the words of the Lord. This is just the words of John Taylor. And yet there is this very nice kayazm in his book, Mediation and Atonement. How on earth did it get there?
Okay. Now I want to talk to you about how it was that I discovered the kayazan Alma chapter 36. Remember that granddaddy of them all, that huge long structure? I discovered that. I know I said John Welch discovered it. There may be some truth in it. Maybe he discovered it before I did. Actually, he did. But this was 1989, and I had taken the bar exam in July of 1989 in Tacoma, Washington, at the Tacoma Dome. But now I'm back home in Texas, and I'm waiting for the results of the bar exam, which take months to get out. They didn't get out until October. In the meantime, I'm trying to keep myself busy. I've got a job. I'm also spending a lot of time with the Book of Mormon as I usually do. And as I'm reading Alma chapter 36 one evening, I start realizing that there's a kayastic structure in it. The first part is similar to the very end part of this chapter, and then I started working my way backward, and I'm getting all these pieces of paper and covering them with scribbles and diagrams, and I'm getting more and more excited as I'm discovering the kayazm in Alma chapter 36. It was a remarkable feeling to think that I had discovered this. I did discover it. Unfortunately, as it turned out, I wasn't the first. John Welch had discovered this long before. But still, it's an exciting process to go through.
And what was also exciting is that a number of years later, in 2002, which is 23 years ago, right now I'm recording this on September 18th, 2025. So that is 23 years ago. Oh my gosh. But anyway, I was in contact with John Welch, and I had some ideas about the kayastic structure in Alma 36 that he discovered that might tweak it and make it a little bit better. So I went and I dug out and blew the dust off this file, which is titled "Jack Welch." And I went into it and I found all these emails that I had saved between me and Jack Welch discussing different ideas about the Book of Mormon and different Hebrew structures in the Book of Mormon, and also kayazm in the Book of Mormon.
Now, let me tell you what it was that I suggested to him, and he thought this was a great idea, by the way. I think it was too. But as you're listening to this, think about this question: Does the presence of kayazm in Alma 36 have more to do with Alma 36, or more to do with the creative minds who are trying to find kayazm in Alma 36? The human mind is a pattern-seeking and pattern-making device. In other words, we can find patterns in things where there really are no patterns. An example is finding faces in clouds. There is no face in the cloud, but we can see faces in the clouds because our brain is designed to find patterns in things, even where there are no real patterns, such as in clouds. And I'm going to say it, such as in Alma 36.
So let's go ahead and put this back on the stage. This is that kayastic structure from Alma 36. And I want to say a couple of things about this. First of all, if you notice going down from the very top, we have a very even and nice series of elements in the kayastic structure. But see what happens coming back out of the structure? Okay, as we're moving out of the structure, we go down, we go down, we go down, and hang on a second, because all of a sudden, after verse 27, something gets indented. You see how it's indented? It says verse 28, "and raise me up at the last day." The reason that's indented is because it is not actually set off by another line in the first half of the kayazm that is in the same position relative to the other elements coming out of the kayazm. That's why it has to be indented. So this is already an indication that this is not exactly a kayazm. It's not a perfect kayazm. And when you start seeing things like this, in other words, when the author who's trying to show you there is a kayazm there has to admit that there's an element that's out of place, then we've got a problem because there's probably other elements in it that may be out of place that the author is able to hide better than this particular element. In other words, if this element's out of place down there at the bottom, you know, there's no way the author could massage that to make it fit. So that's one of the problems.
But another one of the problems is that these are not evenly spaced. In other words, each element is not evenly spaced throughout Alma 36. There are some of these elements that are represented by entire passages. And the main culprit on this one is coming down in the first half of this kayazm. The first part is in verse one. The second part is in verse one. The third element is in verse two. The fourth element is in verse two. And then you get to three, three, and three, and three. So four elements in verse three, then four. And then all of a sudden, wait a second, the next element is represented not by one verse, but it's by verses 6-9. So 6, 7, 8, 9. That's four verses, and they're pretty long in the Book of Mormon compared to the Bible. As you might recall, four verses now have to stand for one element in this kayazm, even though four elements have been found in one verse prior to this. And that's one of the problems. And one of the places where you can start suspecting some funny business is going on.
But at the time, back in 2002, I'm trying to help John Welch out with this. So here's the deal. This is the idea I came up with. Now, this is Alma 36. It's verse 22. So this is on the back end of the kayasmus. All right? Where it talks about "yea, me thought I saw, even as our father Lehi saw, God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels, in the attitude of singing and praising their God. Yea, and my soul did long to be there." Now, that does not make it into any part of this kayastic structure, at least as it's outlined in this particular diagram. There's nothing about angels in there. And the reason why, as I talked to John, is because he could find nothing to offset or balance the angels in the second half of this kayastic structure in the first half of the kayastic structure.
And what I suggested to John Welch in this email was, yeah, there's no mention of plural angels in the first half of this kayastic structure, but there are three references to one angel in the first half of this kayastic structure. And in fact, they are found in these verses 6 through 9. The verses that we were talking about before. So here is what it is on the back half. This one I talked to you about about the "numberless concourses of angels." That's the main part of this verse in verse 22, and how it relates to the first half of this kayazm where it says in verse 5, "Now behold, I say unto you, if I had not been born of God, I should not have known these things; but God hath, by the mouth of his holy angel." Remember, there was one angel that appeared to him, and you can see here I have them circled and highlighted yellow, the mentions of the "holy angel." This is the angel that appeared to Alma and knocked him senseless, and he ended up being converted, converted as a result of the experience, which he is now sharing to his son in this, this chapter, chapter 36 of Alma. So you can see the three mentions of the "holy angel." There's the "holy angel" mentioned once in verse 5. The "holy angel" is mentioned again in verse 6. And the angel, same angel, mentioned again in verse 8. So there's three angels in the first half. And I suggested to him that this balanced out the kayastic structure, and also you were using more of the text in Alma 36 in your kayastic structure, which strengthens it. So I think that John was pretty excited about that. I'm not sure it ever got included in any of these other kinds of things you'll find on the internet. I looked for one that had angels in it, did not find it, but I think that's an excellent addition to the kayastic structure.
I say these things to you to help you understand that I have been immersed in kayastic studies for many, many decades. And I know a kayazm when I see one. Okay? I've diagrammed them. I've read other people's diagrams. I was all into kayazm at one point in my apologetic career, and as I say, recently I have had to look at them again with new eyes and find the results not as faith-affirming as I once did.
Okay. So how did I come up with this subject to analyze my own podcasts? Right? Through the presence of kayazm. Well, the first thing to note is that I have started to notice this for a number of months, if not years, now. In fact, if you follow me when I'm on the show with Bill Reel, there have been at least five times, I think, in the last year or two, where I've been speaking and then I stop and I say, "And that's a kayazm, which means what I say is true." So I am explaining some concept right to Bill, and I get done explaining it, and then I play it back in my mind, and I realize I did a kayastic structure on that, and then I identify it as a kayazm, and of course, then I follow through with what a Mormon apologist would say, which is that the presence of kayazm, if it makes the Book of Mormon true, then if I'm saying it, it makes it true as well. And I had noticed this, like I said, about five, maybe six times, a handful of times in the past year or two.
Now, when I did this most recent episode of Radio Free Mormon, which is about the text of the Book of Mormon, and it's about comparing how the Book of Mormon in Moroni chapter 7 uses and incorporates 1 Corinthians 13 and the idea of spiritual gifts. I think it's a really exciting episode, at least for me. But when I was watching this episode when it premiered and participating in the live chat, and that was just last Saturday. I'm participating in the live chat, and all of a sudden I see the same thing again. I hear that I am engaging in a kind of kayastic structure.
By the way, let me also tell you that in ancient Hebrew writings, such as Isaiah, there are lots of parallelism, which means a concept will be stated in one way, and then immediately underneath it, that concept will be stated again. That's a parallelism. Very common in Isaiah, very common in ancient Hebrew writing, as well as other cultures. A kayazm is the same kind of thing with a difference. It's a parallelism, except that the second parallel line is reversed. It's inverted. And so sometimes kayazm is called an inverted parallelism. So there are parallelisms and inverted parallelisms. And there's a bunch of other kinds of Hebrew structures that get thrown in that Mormon apologists know about and that can be argued to be present in the Book of Mormon, even if the actual exact kayastic structure is not there.
So here is that episode playing, and while I'm watching it and listening to what I'm saying, I realize that I did another kayazm. And here's what I wrote in the live chat. It's circled in yellow. "I just did an ABBA argument." Now, the ABAB, that's the parallelism. But when it goes AB, and then the third part is BA, now it's made an inverted parallelism. You see that's how it is diagrammed. So I did one parallelism and then a kayasmus, an inverted parallelism, while I was speaking. And what I wrote was, "I just did an ABBA BA argument while dictating without notes, which means I'm an ancient Hebrew apparently."
So once I had identified that, what I did was I went back into the podcast. I found my comment so I could locate where it was that I had done this. I found a segment of the podcast. I'm not doing the entire podcast, okay? I found a segment which was six minutes long, and then I thought, let me see if I can recover this and find this pattern again so that I can present it to the audience so I can show you that kayazm really is in Radio Free Mormon. And that six-minute segment is from 30:03 to 36:38 in that podcast episode. So what I'm going to do with this particular segment of six minutes is I'm going to play it at 1.5 speed. Give it a listen. If you're not really paying that much attention to the structure of what I'm saying, if you're listening to the point I'm making, it's easy to overlook the structure that's going on behind the surface. And what I'm going to try and do after I play this is go into the structure that's behind this six-minute segment. So first off, let me play this, and let me play it at 1.5 speed for your listening convenience.
Mormon. Okay. So having established the importance of spiritual gifts to the author of the Book of Mormon, let's look at how it uses 1 Corinthians 13 in Moroni chapter 7. Although the list of spiritual gifts is given in 1 Corinthians 12, the following chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, uses language that has traditionally been used to argue that spiritual gifts would diminish and fade away, and all that would be left is faith, hope, and charity. I remember this from my days as an apologist for the church. This was a a regular chestnut that those who believe that spiritual gifts did not continue use this passage from 1 Corinthians 13:8-10, by the way, in order to support their cause. And those who believe that spiritual gifts do continue typically go to the long ending of Mark to make their case. The main scriptures indicating spiritual gifts will cease are in 1 Corinthians 13:10, which states that prophecies will fail, tongues will cease, and knowledge will pass away when completeness comes. Now, this is a different translation than the King James version. It says, "when that which is perfect is come." So, "when completeness comes" is a different translation of the Greek there. This completeness, or "that which is perfect." This completeness is often interpreted as the completion of the New Testament canon, marking the end of the need for those revelatory gifts. And if you've done any apologetic work as a Mormon, you know that this is the argument that is made based upon this passage. Right? If you are a member of a church or you have the belief that spiritual gifts do not exist anymore, these are the verses you go to to make your case. On the other hand, as I said, if you do believe that spiritual gifts continue to operate and function, then you go to the longing of Mark in order to say, "Checkmate, 1 Corinthians 13." And there's a couple of quotes from 1 Corinthians 13:10 to establish the point: "Prophecies, they will fail. Tongues, they will cease. Knowledge, it will vanish away." "For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when completeness comes, what is in part disappears." And so the common response from those who believe that spiritual gifts continue to exist has to do with when, when are they going to cease to exist? Right? Those who are against spiritual gifts believe that the completeness came when the New Testament was done. So no more spiritual gifts after that. And those who believe that spiritual gifts should continue think that the second coming of Christ is when completeness comes, and therefore the gifts should continue up until he comes again, not just until the New Testament was completed. And of course, the belief that spiritual gifts have ceased is called cessationism. Right? It always has to have a name. Cessationism is the belief that the spiritual gifts have ceased. And this passage in 1 Corinthians 13 is used to make the case. So, given that one, the author of the Book of Mormon insists that spiritual gifts will not pass away but are an essential indicator of salvation. We're have two now. 1 Corinthians 13 contains the one passage traditionally used to argue against the continuance of spiritual gifts. The question becomes, what does Moroni 7 do with this problematic passage from 1 Corinthians 13 while it is borrowing from it? That is the question I pose. And that is where we have the fascinating answer. It is omitted. It is taken out of the Bible. It is glossed over. And actually, it makes sense because how does the author of the Book of Mormon and the author of the sermon, who has just made the point, as we quoted earlier in Moroni chapter 7, that if you have spiritual gifts, you are saved, and if you don't have spiritual gifts, you are not saved? How does the author of that sermon then quote from 1 Corinthians 13:8-10, which has traditionally been used to argue the opposite? And as I say, it is omitted. Let me show you how it's put in 1 Corinthians 13. Okay, going from 7 through 13. And this is the entire passage: "All things believeth, all things hopeth, all things endureth, all things." I'm coming at that point into it because on the next slide I'm going to go to Moroni chapter 7:45, and I'm going to go from the point in that passage where it is quoting from 1 Corinthians 13 and begin with the part where it's quoting, "believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." That's why I start there. But it continues in verse 8: "Charity never faileth. But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." Okay, so having read that passage, let's see what Moroni chapter 7 does with it. And as I say, it omits it. Chapter 7:45, beginning with "believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing." Now, that expression is taken from 1 Corinthians 13:2. So he has to go back earlier in 1 Corinthians 13 for that expression. But then he goes on, "for charity never faileth." That's from 1 Corinthians 13:8. "Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail." See, it puts in the "all things must fail," but it doesn't describe what those "all things" are, as it does in 1 Corinthians 13. And it is at this point that the passage about spiritual gifts ceasing is omitted. Verse 40. Okay, so that was six minutes at 1.5 speed. And it probably sounded like what I usually talk about when I'm on Radio Free Mormon, right? So, I'm talking about 1 Corinthians 13 and how it's used in Moroni chapter 7. And that's just six minutes. Okay? I didn't do the whole thing. I'm doing six minutes. It was the place where I saw myself engaged in sort of a kayastic structure and sort of a parallelistic structure, and I announced it in the live chat.
Now, what I did after that was I came back, I found the place, I played you the audio, I then took the transcript of the audio, and then I moved it over to a Word document. I took out all the timestamps and I assembled it together. Now, I did not change any of the words. I did not change any of the order of the words. This is a clean transcript of that segment of the podcast. And here it is. Is let me take myself out of this window so you can see it just a little bit better. I'm not going to go through every word. I already made you listen to that six minutes of me from last week, but that has all the words in it that I spoke in that six-minute segment. So, let me go ahead and do this with it, and let me scroll down. It's really just two pages, as it turns out. And here you go down from 30:04. This is RFM kayasmus from RFM 4:16, where I talked about my research on Moroni 7 and 1 Corinthians 13. And here you go from 30:04:04. I say, "Okay, so having established the importance of spiritual gifts." And it goes down, and it goes down. This is just the transcript that I cleaned up. Once again, when I say cleaned up, I mean I did not delete words and I did not change the order of words. But when it goes to a transcript, you have to sometimes change spelling, add a lot of punctuation, things like that. So there's the end of it, right? There's the end of that passage. It is just two pages long.
Then the next thing I did was I took a highlighter and I went over and highlighted with different colors different subject matters in that six-minute segment of transcript. Now, what I had intended on doing at the outset was just making two colors, one with yellow and one with blue. It got a little bit more involved than that, as it turned out. But the yellow marker was going to be when I'm talking about 1 Corinthians 13 and the argument that spiritual gifts would cease. And the blue is going to be when I'm talking about the opposite argument, the one I'm contrasting with that, that is represented in the long ending of Mark, which is that spiritual gifts will continue until Christ comes again. And I think that that was probably what it was. That was that simple kayastic structure I noted in the live chat. Let me show you what that ended up looking like.
You see, there is once again, I'll take myself off the screen, or I'll put myself down here at least. There you go. So here we have the exact same transcript, but now highlighted. And you can see the yellow and the blue. And the first yellow is 1 Corinthians, and the first blue is Moroni chapter 7. And then there's more yellow as I'm talking about 1 Corinthians. And then there's blue, and then there's yellow again. And you'll see how it continues throughout. Now, also notice this. Now I start having to come up with new colors, like purple, because this is something different than the other two things I was talking about. And then I have to use more colors. A shade of olive green. Then there is maroon. You can see that. Then there's a different shade of blue. Now I've got green in there. A bright green. Now the olive green again. The bright green again. Some more yellow. Some bright green. Some bright green at the end. And it is completed at that point.
Okay. So once I took and highlighted it, then I had to go back and I had to arrange it. I had to structure it. Once again, not changing any of the words, but structuring it so you could see the patterns that end up being involved in my own podcast with my own words, where I'm not trying to make any kind of parallelistic structure. I'm not trying to make any kind of kayastic structure. I'm just talking and riffing and trying to get my point across to you. And when you're talking, or at least when I'm talking, trying to get my point across to somebody involves a certain degree of repetition, involves a certain degree of looking at things from different angles, hopefully in order to get my point across in a way that's understandable to you. And it turns out that when I do that, and then I go through all this work of finding out the words from a transcript and then highlight it and then structure it, when I go through all that work, I end up seeing clear as day a lot of different structures, including kayastic structures in this six-minute segment. And I have little doubt that I would find similar structures in other segments of transcripts of Radio Free Mormon. But this is the one that we're using right now.
So, let's see what it looks like when it's highlighted and structured. All right, let's put it up here on the screen. We'll try and make it as big as possible there. Now, notice what it is that you begin to be seeing here. These are the same words, the same highlights, but now they're structured. And we start seeing different structures that look like these kayastic structures that apologists put forward to prove the Book of Mormon is true and ancient and written by Hebrews. So there we have a structure. You can see it goes A, B, C, and then D. D is the middle of this kayastic structure, which we find in my transcript. The D part is "an apologist for the church." And notice I make that gray. Now, my goal is not to read through the entire transcript of what I just said, but to give you an indication of what it is that it looks like. So, let me go here and show you this kayastic structure. It goes A, B, C, D, C, B, A. The first part is 1 Corinthians. That's the part that has the segment that has been used to argue the spiritual gifts will cease. Moroni chapter 7 is where 1 Corinthians is used in such a way as to get rid of that because the Book of Mormon insists that spiritual gifts will continue until Jesus comes again. Contrary to this common interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13, that's why they're in different colors. And that's why it goes to C, which is 1 Corinthians 13 again, uses language that has traditionally been used to argue that spiritual gifts would diminish, etc. And then we go to D, which is "I remember this from my days as an apologist for the church." Now, sub C, once again, talks about 1 Corinthians. You can see that "those who believe that spiritual gifts did not continue use this passage from 1 Corinthians." See, that matches with C above. Sub B is "and those who believe that spiritual gifts do continue typically go to the long ending of Mark to make their case." That's the same idea as in Moroni 7. And then finally, sub A, once again yellow, "the main scriptures indicating spiritual gifts will cease are in 1 Corinthians 13," and so forth. So you can see that is a legitimate and rather artful kayastic structure in the Radio Free Mormon transcript. One that I was not aware of at all as I was speaking, and yet one which I naturally used in order to try and convey my point.
Now it continues, though. Now notice this part. Okay. Here we have A. Now, this is a different translation than B. The King James version, sub B, it says, "because that" it refers back to the King James version. So it gets a parallel line of sub B's. C. "When that which is perfect is come." And then D. "So when completeness comes is a different translation." So translation goes back to sub A, sub B, of the Greek there. Different translation of the Greek there, going back to the King James version, and the fact that we're translating the New Testament from Greek. This completeness, that's sub D, you see it matches with the completeness up there in the original D. This completeness, sub C, or "that which is perfect." See that goes back to the perfect. And C, "this completeness." I repeated it again. Another sub D is "often interpreted as." And the interpret goes back to the translation. So that's a sub A, actually. D, "the completion of." Once again, we have a completion.
So we've got another D, the New Testament canon that goes back to B, which is the King James version. And finally, E, marking the end of the need for those revelatory gifts.
And then I say, and if you've done any apologetic work as a Mormon, well, look, that's gray. I color that in a highlight of gray because it matches with the centerpiece of the first chiasm in which I'm talking about I remember my days as an apologist for the church, which is a match for apologetic work as a Mormon. You can see how this is played and how dang impressive this can actually look if you just spend the time, which apologists do with the Book of Mormon, in order to break it down, to look at it, to put it in structures, and to highlight it, and you're off and running. And I am sure that if Mormon apologists or RadioFree Mormon apologists wanted to prove that I was actually an ancient Hebrew, they could go through all my transcripts and they could find at least as many triadic structures and Hebrew structures in my transcripts as there are in the Book of Mormon, and maybe some that are even better.
So, here's another interesting structure. And notice it's not perfect, but remember that other one that I showed that was for the Book of Mormon that was not perfect. See, it doesn't make any difference as long as you can show enough structure. It's impressive to the Mormon mind. Now, once again, this is all the language, all the words from that transcript, and it continues.
So, here we go into another small, simple, but chiasmic structure. Yellow A. If you are a member of a church or you have the belief that spiritual gifts do not exist anymore, right? Remember that's the yellow. Then it goes to blue B. On the other hand, as I said, if you do believe that spiritual gifts continue to operate and function. And then A, and there's a couple of quotes from 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 to establish the point: prophecies, they will fail; tongues, they will cease. And that is a match to the first above.
And now, once again, without losing any words, we go into another chiasmic structure in my transcript. A. And so the common response from those who believe B that spiritual gifts C continue to exist D has to do with when sub D, when are they going sub C to cease to exist, right? Sub B, those who are against spiritual gifts. Sub A, believe it's a perfect chiasmic structure from RadioFree Mormon with a number of elements that are quite specific and quite specific and obviously reiterated in a reverse order. What I'm trying to get at is that anciently, Hebrews or Greeks or Romans, you see, it wasn't just the Hebrews who had chiasmus. It's found in many ancient cultures. They could sit down, they could write all this stuff out laboriously and figure it out rather easily, and then come back in on it with a sub A, sub B, sub C, all that stuff, right? That's one way to create chiasmus. What I'm trying to get across is that when we speak to each other, we frequently use chiasmic structures in order to communicate verbally. And this is an exercise using six minutes of my podcast put into a transcript to prove the point. So there's that interesting chiasmus.
And then, without skipping a beat, it goes right into this next chiasmus. A. That the completeness came when the New Testament was done. So no more spiritual gifts after that. B. And those who believe that spiritual gifts should continue think that C, the second coming of Christ is when completeness comes. That's D. Completeness comes. Now sub D, and therefore the gifts should continue sub C up until he comes again. That's the second coming. And then finally A, not just until the New Testament was completed. Now you may notice in this that there's no sub B. It's not represented coming out of it, which is an indication, as I said before in that chiasmus regarding the Book of Mormon, that you have to look at that and be very careful because when you see things like that, it's an indication that this chiasmus is more in the mind's eye, perhaps, than it was in the author's mind when they were writing it. So that's something to be aware of. All right.
And you'll also notice that that D in the middle of this D, completeness comes, and the sub D, and therefore the gifts should continue, is not an exact match either. If you look at the apologists and the stuff they do with the Book of Mormon, you'll find that all over the place. Here's another chiasmus which is led into right after this one. And of course, A, the belief that spiritual gifts have ceased. B, is called cessationism. That's a really unusual word for B. B is called cessationism, right? C. It always has to have a name. That's the center point. Have a name. Sub B. Cessationism is C, cessationism gets repeated. Sub B, cessation is sub A, the belief that the spiritual gifts have ceased. Now, I'm going to read that again because it's short, it's brief, and it's a wonderful chiasmic structure which happens all the time, at least when I'm talking, and apparently when Joseph Smith was talking too. And of course, the belief that spiritual gifts have ceased is called cessationism, right? It always has to have a name. Cessationism is the belief that the spiritual gifts have ceased. That's how I talk. That's how I communicate. That's how I try and get a point across so that people will understand what I'm saying. It involves a certain degree of repetition. And guess what else? It's a chiasmus.
Oh, there's more. So, let me put this next segment up here which has an interesting structure. A is about the passage in 1 Corinthians. B is about Moroni chapter 7 and insisting that spiritual gifts will not pass away. Then we go back to A, which talks about 1 Corinthians 13 again. Then we go to C, which is the question becomes. Then we go back to B, which talks about Moroni chapter 7. Then we go back to sub A, 1 Corinthians 13. Then we go to sub C. That is the question I pose. See, there's the question again. And now we go to D, and that is where we have the fascinating answer. Sub D, it is omitted. Okay, it is omitted. It is taken out of the Bible. It is glossed over. So now the sub D becomes its own element, which is going to be repeated twice more in the same six-minute transcript.
Then I say, and actually, it makes sense. Now look at this because how does the author of the Book of Mormon and the author of the sermon? See, that's A and sub A. Then B is back to Moroni chapter 7. Then we go to another A, which is how does the author of that sermon. See, there are three mentions of authors right there, and they get an olive green highlight. Then quote from 1 Corinthians 13, that's C, yellow. Then D, and as I say, it is omitted. Notice that that corresponds to the D above. It is omitted. It's in the light green above. And now it's being carried over into this new structure. And as I say, it is omitted. Then it goes to yellow. It goes to blue at the center with E. I'm coming at that point into it because on the next slide I'm going to go to Moroni 7:45 and then sub E. And I'm going to go from the point in that passage where it is quoting from sub C, 1 Corinthians 13. It's in yellow. And then there's a huge part that's in yellow because I'm actually quoting from 1 Corinthians 13. So all of that is in yellow. And then finally, we get to B, sub B, which is in light blue, which talks about Moroni chapter 7, which that's what the light blue is for. And then finally, we get to sub D, which says, "And as I say, it omits it." See, three mentions of omission. You have the one here. You have the one here, and you have the one here, the first time. So there's three mentions of it. By the way, this is something that's in the eye of the beholder. Another person might come to this and structure it in a different way. They might structure it smaller. They might structure it bigger. They might structure the entire podcast as a chiasmus. Sort of like people have gone to the entire book of Mosiah and structured it as a chiasmus. It is all quite possible to be done with my podcast, and I'm guessing with lots of other podcasts as well.
And here's the last part of that transcript where you can see it goes to sub B in the light blue. It goes to the yellow. We've got C and a sub C there. And then we've got several sub B's which are interspersed with C's that are yellow. Oh, and there's a fourth one. I forgot about this. There's another sub D. And it is at this point that the passage about spiritual gifts ceasing is omitted. So there's actually four times that this D shows up about something being omitted. The first time is up here where it says it is omitted. It is taken out of the Bible. It is glossed over. Then here is another D. And as I say, it is omitted. Here's another D. And as I say, it omits it. And finally, and it is at this point that the passage about spiritual gifts ceasing is omitted. You see, we repeat ourselves when we're trying to get across a point. I repeat myself, other people repeat themselves. And apparently, Joseph Smith, when he was dictating the Book of Mormon, repeated himself. So, this is really the basis, I think, for chiasmic structures in the Book of Mormon. It's the same basis for chiasmic structures in RadioFree Mormon.
So, I hope you found that interesting. I tried to make it fun because I know it can become dry. But I think this is a very, very important episode because what I'm demonstrating is that the chiasms that are in the Book of Mormon are the same kind of chiasms that are in RadioFree Mormon. And if chiasms in the Book of Mormon prove that it is of ancient Hebrew origin, then what are we to say about the chiasms that I have demonstrated exist in the RadioFree Mormon podcast?
Earlier this year, I did an episode about how I beat the Book of Mormon challenge by dictating more words in less time than Joseph Smith did in dictating the Book of Mormon. That's always one of the big apologetic arguments, of course, is how could anybody have dictated a book in this short of time? Well, if you're going to say that about Joseph Smith, then you're going to have to say about it even more about RadioFree Mormon because once again, I dictated more words by a lot than Joseph Smith did in a lesser amount of time. But now, not only have I beat that Book of Mormon challenge, I have also demonstrated that not only can I dictate as many words as the Book of Mormon in a lesser amount of time, but also in what I dictate are found chiasmic structures, even complex, beautiful chiasmic structures, just as can be found in the Book of Mormon.
This is another slide from another believing site. There's a sacred pattern hidden in the Book of Mormon. It's called Chiasmus. Well, there's a sacred pattern hidden in RadioFree Mormon, too, and I've just exposed it to you, but it's the same thing. It's Chiasmus, baby. And RadioFree Mormon has got it in spades. So, all you apologists out there, I want to put you on notice. Don't tell me anymore about Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon as an evidence for its truth. Okay? Because if you're going to maintain that position, then you're also going to have to say that everything that I say here at RadioFree Mormon is true because I've got chiasmus in my podcast as well.
Thanks to everybody who has donated and gone to RadioFreeMormon.org and made a donation. If you haven't done that, please do that now. Just go to RadioFreeMormon.org, click the donate button, make a donation. $5 a month is all I ask. If you can make a regular monthly continuing contribution, that is optimal for scheduling and budgeting purposes for Bill Reel and the good people at Mormon Discussions. Well, that is about all for tonight. I hope you like the episode. Leave a comment below. Please hit like. Please hit subscribe. Let me know what you think of the episode and whether you think I have demonstrated that there is chiasmus in RadioFree Mormon and what you think of that fact. Okay? I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say. Once again, chiasmus is one of the long-standing strongest arguments that apologists have used for the ancientness and truth of the Book of Mormon. And tonight, I think I've exploded that argument in Technicolor. Let me know if you agree. That's about all for tonight. Thanks for joining me. Until next time, this is RadioFree Mormon signing off the air. Heat. Heat. Heat.
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