Episode #180: Restoration Scriptures For Orthodox Mormons W/Drew Briney

0:30 You're listening to the Mormon Renegade podcast. Drew, what's going on, man? Too much, as always. Dude, it's a good thing that like you're not having to do this with a feather pen, right? Like I, I, I can only imagine, I could see all, I see all the books you put out and I'm like, you know, just like two people ago, you'd have to write this by it with like a feather, right? And I'm like. Yeah, yeah, I thought about that with CS Lewis and Tolkien. Sometimes I'm like, jeez, typewriter, right, Right. Sounds awful. Dude, I did, I did a podcast on here with Kim Peterson about Hugh Nibley and we all know how how much Hugh Nibley just like like he was really good about his sources, right? But like he I can't imagine having to bookmark that much stuff, right and then have to like just do all that. Like he'd have notes, binders and binders full of resort, you know where he got it.

1:40 And so as he's footnote and stuff. Yeah. He would just have to like, write all that and then type it all out. And I'm like, I mean, and then, you know, research wise, right? We're so blessed with the Internet that we can find so much stuff now. Oh, it speeds things up enormously. It really, really does. I, I remember, you know, 15 years ago, be writing something and every once in a while I'll be like, oh crap, what am I going to do? I'll go visit the library and check it out and see what I can find. You know, Google just wasn't the same. And you know, now you go to Grok 3 and it gives you citations of what pages it went to and everything for you.

2:24 But. Are you using that? Are you using AI yet? Not for my writing. I've, I've used it for a few things just out of curiosity and, you know, try and understand topics a little bit better 'cause there's so much crap out there. I, I, I really like being able to just conglomerate all the sources together. I'm very distrustful of them still because they incorporate a lot of bias of their, the programmers, a lot of bias of the articles they're reading and you know, all this sort of stuff. But it is a nice way to just get good information, you know, And if I'm doing fiction, heck, it's, it's super easy to go on there and say, you know, Max speeds of a great white shark and you know, it tells you everything.

3:08 Hunting speed, normal speed, males versus females, you know, link sizes, speeds, all the stuff you don't need. But it gives you enough information that you can just say, all right, I, I've got that from my store. I didn't get that detail wrong. You know, I, I, I know an author that got shooed out heavily by his, his, his followers because he mentioned a safety on a gun and that particular model didn't have a safety and his, all of his Marine constituents were pissed about it. So, you know, you, you've got somebody constantly checking you out, making sure you get everything right. And so I, I, I obsessed maybe too, too much over that, but especially with, you know, with gospel stuff. So I do find myself, you know, be getting extra stressed about those types of things.

3:56 But a lot of times just a quick Google search will tell you what, what you know, confirm what you thought, you know, even if it's just like, you know, when did this guy get baptized, you know, or, or whatever. Yeah, I, I know I, I made a mistake in apostles on trial. I mentioned one of the brethren is referred to frequently as an apostle by the early brethren and I thought he'd been advanced to the 12th and apparently hadn't, but my source said he had and I had a couple that said he had. So I put it down there and I had a couple people get real upset about it. So every little detail like that, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, I might even have a source of the book, but I'll, I'll still look and I'll check it on on online, make sure.

4:42 Was that date right? You know, was that the, the married name or the premier name or, you know, whatever those details might be. So. But I don't use it for help writing at all or getting. Just kind of for research more than anything else. Yeah, especially lately, like most of the stuff I've been doing lately is is not so much investigative reporting so much as getting back to the originals and getting rid of all the changes that have have been put into the the sources that we are most familiar with. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, I'm pretty distrustful of it too, but for entirely different reasons.

5:24 Because at this point it's kind of starting to make Terminator look like a documentary. And, you know, like, I see, I I see what it's starting to do. And then, you know, Boston robots, robotics come out with some of their stuff and I'm like, yeah, it's. Spooky. We shouldn't. We should, we shouldn't do this. Muska's putting those things out at 10 grand for the base models now. I mean, that's that's affordable for a lot of families. Dude, that's less than a car. Yeah, that's what I mean. I mean, it's not affordable for me. I'm not saying that I wish it was, but yeah, that's so cheap. I mean, when you think about what it can do and what it's, you know, and so you plug it in and just have it make you breakfast every day, what what else can it do? It's pretty amazing for that kind of a price range, Yeah. Yeah, again, like, look, I, I like humanity. I really do.

6:19 I like people, right? However, however, I've seen people do enough stupid stuff that I'm not sure we're ready for robots yet. I, I just think we need to, to, to think this one over. Pump the brakes. At least not intelligent ones. Right, right. Like C3PO or something, or sorry, R2D2. So they're not, you know, they, they don't have much to scare you with. Right, right. Right. Yeah. No, I, I I'm just like when, when? On the other hand, I'll say this, Drew, I'll get even more nervous when we can figure out, you know how. Like now in public restrooms, it's all done by sensor. And half the time it doesn't work, right? You wave your hand under there and it never works. So maybe I'm worrying for nothing, right?

7:00 Go to the same gym. Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well dude, what are we talking about today? You know, I was, I was actually thinking about that. I'm like, shoot, you know what? We've we've talked about doing 3 different podcasts so. I know, I know, it's funny, there almost seems to be a podcast season. I'll be honest with you, like once October hits, things get a little sparse. I always have enough to do. But man, come about this time of year, I've noticed it picks up. I don't know if people just start doing projects and getting ambitious, but this is about the time of year where where I have a lot of people beating down my door. Interesting SO and I can't figure it. Out.

7:40 No idea. Me neither, me neither. Who knew? For me it's every three months or so. It's. Just, I know, well that's 'cause you put out a book about that often. It's incredible. And, and I want to make sure that we talk about them because it's all good stuff. Well, it's, it's, it's, you know, I've, I've in all honesty, I was really enjoying a lot of the stuff I was doing a lot more than I've enjoyed the last couple projects. But that said, I think my last couple projects are the more important things that I've done. They've just been painfully tedious to perform. Yeah, I literally spent and, and, and I don't, I don't, you know, I don't keep super tight track of my time, but I spent roughly 3 months full time just doing punctuation stuff.

8:24 And I can tell you I, I lost five years of my life to that endeavour because it was so painful. I would almost rather dig ditches all day long than then determine if it's semi colon versus a colon makes a difference. But you know, sometimes it does. And it's, it's a really interesting thing to think about and wonder if there was any intentionality there or not, you know, right. I was going to say that's the whole reason I decided to do a podcast and not a blog. It's 'cause I'm. Like, I don't, I don't have a good enough command of punctuation to even make that work, so good on you. So what do you got?

9:06 Well, I think the the last few projects that I've been working on and and a continual project actually that that that we were talking about is, is what we're referring to as the the JSV or Joseph Smith version of scriptures. So should I just kind of give a foundational what that is? And yeah, give a? Foundational thing and then we'll dive in. All right, so I've, I've been wanting to do this for years. And in fact, when I was in the AUB, one of the bishops came to me and said, Drew, you know, we're using this church as scriptures, but the, the, the scriptures tell us that we're supposed to be putting our tithing money to printing scriptures.

9:49 So why are we using these scriptures that somebody else put out that pushes their agenda and their, you know, their stuff when we could have our own versions? And, you know, how much has changed anyways? Like, you know, is it a big difference or a little difference or what? He's just kind of talking to me about it. And I said, you know, I'd love to do a project where we had as if a fundamentalist version of the, the scriptures and, and you know what, what would that look like and so forth. So we talked quite a bit about it. He asked permission for the council. They basically said, forget it. We're not paying for that sort of thing. And so he, he started buying some books for me through I'm, I'm oversimplifying that, but he bought some books for me to kind of help me so I could do it sometime.

10:43 But I said, you know, doing it without funding, I could take 10 years. It's, it's a massive project. And I've already been, you know, this over the last couple years, I've been working on the Joseph Smith or the, sorry, the DNC annotated project and got a couple volumes of that out. But that's a, that's a lot of work to do And, and without, you know, a, a really good fundraiser, you just can't do it fast. You know, I did a fundraiser for the DNC annotated and it was got about roughly 30% of what I needed. And so, you know, it took it from from being a 10 year project to being a four year project or something, maybe 5, I don't know, hopefully only four.

11:26 But it that's, you know, you just you, you can't, you can't do something that big without support. And so I've, I've kind of had it in my mind that I wanted to do this and, and, and for the, for, for the following reasons. And I'll, I'll give it a little bit of my background here as, as I'm, as I'm talking about that, I, I back it. When I was in college, I took the the Joe Smith translation course from Robert J Matthews and interviewed him about it, talked to him about it, underlined and marked the 3410 versus the Joseph changed in the in the old New Testaments. And, you know, went through that whole project and wanted a complete JST wanted to produce 1 at some point in the future.

12:12 Because not only did he make those changes, but in his discourses, he made several more changes. And, you know, we, we have cross references to the DNC and sometimes to the Book of Mormon of some of these scriptures that have alterations or changes that he made somewhere else that, you know, you can compare and contrast. So that had been on my mind for a long time, but then I started realizing, you know, how much, how many changes had been made to the Doctrine Covenants and, and, you know, as a member of the church at the time, I'm like, well, but yeah, it's just grammatical. It doesn't really matter. And, you know, who cares? And, you know, you just kind of go along with the, the, the stream of things and and that's all well and good. But sooner or later I started finding more and more significant changes that were made and got interested in it and also started realizing there are a lot of unpublished revelations of Joseph Smith and trying to remember. I don't want to say it wrong.

13:22 Smoot in Pasantino put out a of the uncanonized revelations earlier this year, which was really discouraging for me because that's part of what the project was about. But at any rate, I was, so I was, I started working on the DNC annotated because I thought that's the most significant. There's some interesting stuff in the Book of Mormon that's been changed. Definitely some interesting stuff in the in the Pearl of Great Price. A lot of that's been written about, so it's a little bit easier to find. But with the DNC, you know, we've got a, there's a Kurt bench that put out the, the, the parallel version of three, the three earliest versions of the DNC book of commitments. But those are parallel.

14:08 And if, if I just want to read scriptures, I'm not going to read a parallel version. If I want to study, I'll do that. But I wanted a version that I could like, read and study, you know what I mean? Like, why do they have to be separate same time? So at any rate, so I started that DNC annotated project and I, I, I love that I learned so much. I probably learned more from doing DNC 76 annotated than anything I've done my whole life gospel study wise. And again, when I did 42 learned in a massive amount, I was shocked how much I learned. Was really, really enjoying that. And then I had a visitor come over to my house. Somebody had never really met before and, and I'll, I'll keep his name quiet for now 'cause I don't know if he'd like the airtime or whatever.

14:55 But anyway, he was just came over to my house. He said, I've heard about you. I've got this thing that I've been interested in doing and I want to know if you'd be interested. And so we talked for a number of hours and he said, you know, I would like to get a, a pure version of the scriptures out and by pure version what he meant. And I'm simplifying the this a little bit now, but by pure version, what he meant was let's get a version that was approved by Joseph Smith that, you know, has modern versification and, and is, is, is clean, you know, clean of errors and that sort of stuff. And I, I had some disagreements with him on some details and, and, and, and, and his partner who is willing to, to, to fund this a little bit. And I say a little bit, I'm not trying to undermine what they did, but it, they, they weren't able to fund it as much as they were hoping and as much as I needed to do it full time. So it's taking extra time to get it done. But when, whenever we talked about these things, I said, look, you know, I ended up just kind of educating the parties involved about some of the things that were going on in the scriptures.

16:08 I was, I was kind of surprised a couple of them didn't know. But I, I, I realized while there's a whole lot of even misunderstanding fundamentalists as to what Joseph actually did in producing the Book of Mormon or what he did in producing the Doctrine Covenants. Explain that real quick. OK, great. So for example, a lot of people are like, well, Joseph did the paragraphs, right? So we can't get rid of the paragraphs. No, he didn't. He had nothing to do with the paragraphs. The paragraphs in the Book of Mormon were done by the printer and he made the decision as where to start. A new paragraph based upon when and it came to pass showed up. OK. And I don't know how many people are remotely aware.

16:50 I wasn't. But as I recall there are 23119 version entries of and it came to pass or versions of it somewhere in the Book of Mormon. So that's how many paragraphs you have inspired, right? Interesting. Can't change that Joseph did it. So that's that's just not true. Personally, I like reading the paragraph format and so did everybody else on the on the committee. But then you don't have the the verses. It doesn't lend well the study right. You can't reference things quickly and. So if I'm, if I'm reading, you know, for instance, this book here by Pasantino and Smoot, sorry, do it backwards. If I'm referencing that book and it's talking about the Book of Mormon, I'm not going to find it in in a lithographic reprint because of the verses. So we wanted to put those in.

17:37 So I said, you know, let's just follow the Christians example on this and put small greyish foot or the, the verses so you could still find them, but they're not intrusive. So we decided to do that. But the next thing is, OK, so Joseph, you know, he, Joseph did punctuation right? And the answer is wrong in the Book of Mormon. We, we have some of, of his handwriting here and there, but not very much. And he had scribes do almost the entire thing. Yeah. The printer's manuscript was entirely copied. I say entirely. It might somebody who knows the the study might be get me on a detail like this. But it was pretty much done by Oliver Cattery.

18:19 He might have had a little bit of help, but. And he made two to three errors per page. And and that's, that's coming from, pardon me getting up here, but I, I think it's worth it. The this book by Skousen, not clean on Skousen, but I think it's probably a Sutter. He he puts a lot of facts in a lot of research into the original manuscript, trying to recreate it, which is great. It did really great scholarships about 30 years of his life's work too. So, you know, guy deserves a medal for spending that much time on the Book of Mormon.

19:00 But you know, it, it doesn't really match what, what I'm trying to do or what, what I'm interested in, but it was a great resource to look at. But he does paragraphing based on just looking at the content like you would as if if you were the author. And, you know, looking at his work, he did a pretty good job. I, I was mostly impressed with how he did it. So for, for our broken Mormon, we followed his paragraphing mostly. There were some exceptions and he doesn't do anything with dialogue as an author. You know, I see, you know, one of the Antichrist talking to the prophet goes back and forth, back and forth. I wanna see a paragraph break, you know, I wanna be able to to say where's that conversation and look and find the conversation.

19:45 So that was one thing that that we changed. And there are several dialogues, a lot more than I, I thought. But you know, now that I've gone through it seems obvious, but you know, you know, we've got dialogue between Nephi and the servant of Laban. We've got Nephi and his brothers, Nephi and his father. We've got dialogue between the the three antichrists and whoever they're with. And you know, dialogue between Morona and the people that he's scalping and that sort of stuff. So, you know, there's, there's several different versions of of dialogue in there. Of course, Christ when he comes to visit is mostly a monologue. So we don't get that so much as a dialogue, but still separated things like that. But. But I was surprised how many people I had to, when talking about it that didn't know the paragraphing wasn't done by Joseph, didn't know punctuation wasn't done by Joseph.

20:36 And further, the punctuation provided a bigger problem. And that's this the the people involved didn't know what they were doing. The the Book of Mormon wasn't awful. And, and, and I, I say that kind of tenderly. It, it wasn't awful. It wasn't good either, but at least it was fairly consistent. It was mostly one guy whose idea of what whatever 19th century punctuation was supposed to be, what it's supposed to look like. And he was fairly consistent. Not really, but pretty consistent. You know, for, for the most part he was pretty consistent. So going through and, and doing punctuation on that was a lot easier than the DNC, where the DNC punctuation done was done by a committee of about 5 different men and they all did different stuff.

21:28 And we don't know, for instance, you know, what, what did the what did the semi colon mean to them back then? I mean, they they used it a lot. What did a like, what did a colon mean to them? They used it a lot. It they used it like a period, we don't really use it like a period now. We try to not use it at all, but it it's got like 5 or 6 or 7 different possibilities of what it's used for depending on how pedantic you want to be about separating ideas and thoughts and so forth. And we don't know what they thought about it because it wasn't standardized. Right. The A period is standard, but they didn't use a period very often. Frankly, they use semi colon in common more than they used a period.

22:10 So when, when, when going through the punctuation, I, I ran into, you know, so it was, it was just the DNC punctuation was just awful. I mean, just to be blunt, it's, it's bad enough that the grammar is rough. It's bad enough that the old English is wrong and incorrect in several instances. It, it's bad enough that you're jumping with verses that that are, are separating things in, in odd places from time to time. But put that all together and then have a committee of five totally different people doing the the editing on it and it really becomes quite a problem. So those those five guys, was that while Joseph was alive or after? He was, Yeah.

22:54 OK. Joseph appointed a committee and it's talked about a little bit in the Doctrine of Covenants itself, but the appointed a committee to go through and and revise the scripture. DNC 57 commands him to revise the scriptures and prepare him for publication. In a private letter to WW Phelps, who was one of the people he wrote and said, you know, I want you to revise it and change stuff, but don't change the sense of it, don't change the meaning. And then he kind of alludes to the curses in the in the Old Testament or, you know, other places he says for, you know, the curse are those who change scriptures, right? So he clearly didn't see grammar as changing it. It just, you know, and even adding something to clarify it wasn't changing it to him.

23:37 Only if you change the sense, which that's a whole rabbit hole. Oh yeah. Well, that's that's kind of a broad that gives somebody a lot of room to do stuff, right? It does. Some good and so. Bad I would imagine. Huh. Some good and some bad I would imagine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and I found a lot of things there where and, and, and we're kind of veering off a little bit, but I think it's helpful to create this foundation. For instance, you know, there are places Joseph Smith, this isn't super well known, I think I mentioned on a previous podcast with you, but Joseph Smith was kind of when, as he was revising the Book of Mormon, he was revising stuff of the D&C. He was getting rid of clunky, hard to read sentences and replacing them with stuff that's easier to understand. And you know, the committee was doing the same thing. So sometimes I might say Joseph did D&C, but we really don't know if it was Joseph of the committee. But there was a pattern that he's trying to make them easier to read and easier to understand. And he was also getting rid of a lot of Old English. He got rid of, I think 43 versions of Andy came to pass, deleted them out of his 1840 edition of the Book of Mormon. So, you know, so you've got all these, all these intentions, but you've got different people doing them. So you might have one person, for instance, in the committee who's from England and who will remain nameless. Maybe there were two of them,

25:10 but they want to correct spelling so that it matches British spelling. So saviours, FSAVIOUR and, you know, favours, FAVOUR and stuff like that. And so they're changing the original manuscripts to have this English spelling for British English. And then somebody else is seeing British English in a previous, you know, book of commandments or something. They're taking it out and making it American English spelling. You know, you've got people literally, there are places where they had a comma. They changed it to a semi colon. It gets reprinted into another edition, gets changed back to a comma. And then, you know, it gets to, you know, to 1835 editions printed. And now they put it a period there.

25:50 And then 1837 comes along, they put a semi colon there. You know, it's just back and forth and we don't know what they were thinking. There's it's not like they're editing and saying, oh, well, I think these sentences are related. They need a semi colon or if they're like, well, I don't really think this is a complete sentence, even though it might be because of some technical reason that was different back then. And so I put a semi colon here because it's not really period. We we just don't know what they were doing. And so as I went through it, the Doctrine Covenants took me twice as long as the entire Book of Mormon, which is longer because they were inconsistent. They each did it their own different way. And so I get used to, you know, a, a section of the Doctrine Covenants to be like, oh, OK, zip through that one. And the next one, I'd be looking at it and thinking, OK, does that colon change the meaning?

26:40 And almost never does it change the meaning. But one of the uses of a colon is to say the second clause or the second part of the sentence, depending on how you want to call it, is clarifying the first. That's kind of like a semi colon, except for it's not saying they're just related. It's saying the second one clarifies the 1st. And so sometimes I, I, I'd look at it and I'm like, well, it doesn't clarify at all. It, it can't be the use, you know, period's good there. Or maybe you should consider a semi colon there, you know, but you have to kind of think through these things. But I I did leave several, probably, I don't know 1520 of them in the DNC because I couldn't decide.

27:23 I don't know if that's what they were using the semi colon for. They're trying to say the second clarifies the 1st, and I can read it that way. Then I would leave it that way. However, sometimes that changes the meaning. Then I would drop a footnote and say the original has a colon. So I left it. It might have been a printer. It might have been somebody who was really sleepy, didn't know what a colon was for. It might just mean, you know, I think there needs to be a break here. That's what a colon's for, right? I don't know. I think so. So that's what they did. We really don't know what it was for. But on the off chance that they knew what they were doing and they did it for that purpose, I left it there. And then a footnote said if I change this to semi colon, this can change the meaning.

28:09 Here's why. If I change it to period, it changed the meaning. Here's why. So the reader can decide, you know, what's correct doctrine. Let me give you an example of this. Oh, shoot, I had it up, but I had to relaunch my computer to get on the zoom. There's an interesting common or well known scripture, I should say the Book of Mormon, that does this. And I'm pulling it up as we speak, but it it'll take me just a minute here. No, you're good. This will give me a chance to ask a few questions here. So one kind of good on you for leaving, given an explanation on why what you found, right In surveying, a lot of times the field work we do is all about collecting evidence, right? Yeah, you meant those sorts of things. And I worked with a guy who was really good and he used to say no one can ever call you a liar by showing what you found. Right.

29:08 And and that is I think a really important principle here that it sounds like you have you, you've incorporated into this. Now my my next question is there was no help at all. There was nothing that you could go back to an equivalent of Webster's 1820 or something like that where you could say OK for the most part, it meant this. Punctuation meant this in this scenario. Yeah. So, so I can do that, but it gets really speculative and it's, it's a bit problematic because first of all, the Book of Mormon was transcribed before 1828 in large part, I actually don't know the date that it was totally finished.

29:49 I should have that memorized, but I don't. So, but you know, but then you've got, well, that's kind of representing maybe a couple decades or not, but the 1828 dictionary was also the kind of the pioneer of, of codifying things. And and so the question is because it was kind of a pioneering work and it was brand new to those brethren. Did they consulted at all? We have no knowledge that they consulted those at all. Did they have the same ideas? Well, certainly the guys from England probably didn't. Well, maybe that's that's not fair to it. You know, it doesn't seem that they would be as likely to be as familiar with it as American would be. And on the other hand, you know, as is it, it's appears to be kind of an effort to codify things. Was it well received?

30:46 Was it, was it something that, yeah, that's exactly what we use it for? Or was it more like, well, that's not how we do it. You know, we guys from New England, we do it differently. And the guys from, you know, South, southern United States do it differently. And you guys are trying to push your northerner perspective on us and we don't like it. Yeah, I don't know how much of that was playing. And that's probably a, a, a very niche book that I've never run across, seen or found, right. That's how it was received. So I think that it requires an awful lot of speculation. Even looking at that. I think the best we can really do is say, you know, we've got 20 rules for a semi colon for for is it for example.

31:33 I don't, I'm just throwing a number out. It's not going to be 20. That's fine, but it's not like there are three. Right. And the chances are of those 8 rules or 10 rules or 20 rules, whatever that is, that incorporates the three that they were using back then too. But which ones were they not using? We, we just we, we don't know because they didn't say we didn't do this. And the only hints that we have of a codified version of it come from a single source that may not have represented what those people were thinking at the time. So it's, it really is left to speculation. It's, it's like that, you know, the spelling, if anything, they didn't seem to have any indicia of, of some sort of codified spelling in the Doctrine of Covenants or in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon's better because it had it went through a printer and he edited it and got it pretty standardized. But there's still some things in there that we wouldn't let float today for spelling wise.

32:35 So at any rate, those leave some challenging holes in our game that we we can't, you know, we know a period means the end of a sentence to us. It probably get to them because they didn't use it that much and every time they did, that's what it meant. But when it comes to a semi colon man, I'm they're, they're just not consistent. I'm like, why isn't there a period here 'cause there's no reason there can't be a period here. And, and it's, you know, are you trying to say these two sentences are, are related because this one starts out with their force. So it kind of tells you it's related just by the word there. You don't need to, what do we call it? The period? It should be good, but you know, second guessing that becomes interpretive as well. And so I, I, I, I took me so long to go through it, partially because, and I can't say this happen every single sentence, but partially because I would stop and I would say, wait, which?

33:30 What's the best punctuation here? I think the cleanest is to use a period. They used a semi colon. Is there any reason that semi colon changes the meaning? And if it does, I leave it. Gotcha. If it's insignificant in minor and only in academics going to ever notice it, then I leave it and I don't footnote it. Gotcha. There are plenty of those because a semi colon functions kind of like a period for most people and they're just not really going to notice. But there are some that did make a difference. I want to share that one with you. I mentioned earlier and now it's kind of a a good time. This is in 2nd Ephite 2 where he says Adam felt that men might be and men are that they might have joy. OK, we've all heard that.

34:17 We're familiar with it. It used a colon there. Adam felt that men might be colon and men are that they might have joy. OK, now, if they had intention behind that it's one of the possibilities is they're trying to say men are that they might have joy modifies and clarifies. Adam fell that men might be so you say OK, well, that's that's simple enough. We it's kind of the point of the the verse that we get it. However, one possible reading, let me emphasize that you don't have to read it that way. One possible reading of this punctuation is that joy comes after this life as a result of the final redemption from the fall. A semi colon here would simply suggest we exist to have joy. That's how everybody interprets it, or at least everybody that I know interprets it.

35:11 And the colon can be read to have that implication as well. But you could read it to say, I think that reason they put a colon there is they're trying to say men are, that they might have joy in the afterlife because that's why he fell, so that after the redemption, we'll have joy. Well, you know, that's a massive theological change in the understanding. One is, and I've heard this a lot among fundamentalists, I'm just supposed to suffer my whole life so that eventually I'll be happy in heaven, right? And we've got some doctrines to teach that suffering is good for us and we need to endure it well, and it's part of our testing and that's what God wants us to do.

35:51 But there, there's, there's this ballooning ideology around that, that life is supposed to suck. We're supposed to be miserable. And part of being miserable is with the promise that it's, it's won't last forever, but we'll be happy later. And that interpretation is rampant with that semi or with that colon. You can, you can read that more clearly. And again, you don't have to, but you can read it more clearly. Whereas if I put a semi colon there, it's not there. It's, it's not there at all. And you know, and the, the semi colon says we're supposed to have joy here, right? That's the, the mainstream LDS perspective is we're supposed to be have joy here, right? So, so to, to heck with all these hard doctrines, we don't want to live.

36:43 We're just not going to, we're not going to, we're not going to accept some of these early doctrines because they don't bring joy, right as plural marriage is the the chief offender there where they talk about that. So, so that supports that reading, which makes it controversial. So it in, I don't read it the the first way. I don't I think suffering is part of our life experience. That's part of what we need to do to grow. That's part of what matures you and makes you ready to become ready for exaltation, all those types of things. I don't think we're supposed to be miserable every day of our lives here and then all of a sudden we'll magically be happy there, right? We're we're going to have the same disposition there as here. So, so I don't personally believe that, but I footnoted it there. And it's a lengthy footnote because it can be read that way. And I think it's significant that it's read that could be read that way.

37:34 And people should be able to look at it and see why is that semi colon there? Or why is it sorry? Why is that colon there? Why not a period? What, what does that mean? And for somebody who's not educated in academia, that might be a rough read for them. And, and, and even if not, I think it's important to, to look and say, I left this punctuation here, even though it's awkward, I left it there because it can be interpreted in this way. I don't personally believe it. I don't say that in footnote. I don't personally believe that. But I'm not going to leave it out because, you know, like, like you're saying earlier, you know, nobody's going to call you a liar if you, if you expose all the evidence. But I just think it's important to read things even if you disagree with him, to see it's there. Right.

38:24 It's it's possible to read it that way. So if I find somebody who believes that, I don't think, oh, you're just a moron, you know, come up with that stupid idea, you can have your mind open and say, oh, yeah, I disagree. But I know where you're coming from. I get it. And Joseph left this mess for us here. And one of us is right and one's wrong. But we both acknowledge and agree at least that we have a, a reasonable reason for disagreement. Sure. So, and there are a couple dozen of those. Sorry. Yeah, there, there are very few of those in the Book of Mormon, probably a dozen in the Doctrine of Covenants. And and I don't always footnote them because they're less significant, right? But I do note them from time to time because I think they're super, super important.

39:11 You know, we've got the DNC 89 comma that messes up the Word of Wisdom and we've got similar, you know, problems in in other scriptures. I don't think there are any famous ones in the Book of Mormon, but that one kind of struck me as one that's very significant, even, like I said, even though I don't agree with it. Is did when, when you were putting this together, was there anything that would have been like commentary contemporary to the time that they were doing it that would have given you like a tip or a, a tell, so to speak, right? So, you know, do you find anything in journals where people are expounding on a certain verse in the Book of Mormon or the revelations that would kind of tip their hand and be like, OK, this is how it was understood in this day, right?

40:04 And did would did that ever factor into any of this? You know, I, I would love to say it did it. It did not. I didn't go into the the journals much and do that. I did a little bit of diving, but not much. And I am intending in, in, in. And so let me kind of backtrack a little bit. I've had two brethren help fund some of this research and anything I put under the name JSV in my publications is is under that umbrella. And ultimately they will be publishing a nice gold gilded edges leather bound or something similar to that through Pioneer Press with Kevin Crout, a version of these scriptures for the JSV.

40:52 Gotcha. So the hope is that we will and their finances will blossom or something. I don't know exactly what all the hopes are, but the hope is I'll later do an academic study version of all of these, which case I'll be going through all the different commentaries I can find on the Doctrine Covenants and on the Book of Mormon and do an annotated version of all of those, which I'm already doing for the DNC. So there's a lot of crossover there. And for those who are following my, my DNC annotated project, I, and I've mentioned this is, is I'm sending out notifications and stuff, but not everybody reads those 'cause maybe they're less excited about them.

41:34 But this whole JSV version of the DNC is the foundation of my future annotated project. So give me a big boost to move forward on that. Although I will have to make some changes for, for, for some details. But that said, oh, shoot, I got so many thoughts. I'm sorry, just wouldn't like circle, I'm like, oh, you're good. So, so delving into the, the, the, the journals and all that sort of stuff for some of those indications. No, I didn't do that study version. We'll see. That said, the Joseph Smith Papers project, which is something that I refer to frequently. It's such a wonderful resource. If I, I wish I could talk to somebody who's in charge of the website and, and help them reorganize it. So it's useful outside of whatever mentality they've got to for the average person to find what you're looking for easily would they can make some massive changes. It would make me really happy.

42:32 But anyway, I used that. I love that. And I did find some stuff about some, some of the historical background. There's a couple really good articles they had both of the on the DNC Book of Mormon that talked about who was doing what and how things happened and, and that sort of stuff. And there's nothing there that really kind of addresses what you're getting at. I, I, I, I, I could point out one item of, of interest that sort of addresses that and, and maybe something you're searching for or not, I'm not sure. So I'll just tell you. So Joseph went to, to Oliver Cattery and said, Hey, I want you to get the baptismal ordinance, the sacrament ordinance put in the duction cabinets.

43:16 So I haven't looked at those entries. And that's stuff a while. It was brought up a number of times in in priest quorum in Missouri a few years ago when I was there. But at at any rate, there's some church history footnotes and stuff that talk a little bit about this. But anyway, so that's, that's what was done. So part of the discussion we had in Missouri was we're saying, well, but the the DNC baptism were verbiage is different than the Book of Mormon verbiage. So, you know, Joseph said, you know, go copy it, but he he didn't copy it. But actually the original manuscript shows that it was the same originally and I can't remember when, and I think it was in the 1835 version that that Oliver County changed it to read how it reads now.

44:08 But the original was directly from the Book of Mormon. Interesting. So so the prayers matched in the DNC and the Book of Mormon at one point. Right. Originally they did, but now they don't. So, and that's a really, really interesting question because, you know, for those I did the whole book changing Ordinances, changing Priesthood, where I talk about this a little bit. But you know, we've got some of us that are very, very dogmatic. You cannot change the ordinance. Is that not changing it to, you know, to change the the verbiage like that? And one answer is apparently Oliver Cattery thought it means the same things. It's just easier to say or you like the verbiage or something.

44:48 I don't know. We have no indication Joseph told him to change it to read like that, which is also a possibility, just not in the record. But at any rate, it is different. But does it make a difference? And because we know the early brethren use the sacrament prayer as a template and did not read it word for word, it's possible they did the same thing with baptismal covenant and maybe cattery when he was revising just that. Oh, this sounds better. So I'll just say it like this. When we don't know, we've got a little bit in the historical record to, to, to guide us a a tiny bit, but not tons. And, and that said, I want to make clear I haven't dug deeply into that rabbit hole.

45:30 That's not something I've done an annotated version on. It's not something that necessitated me footnoting this long church history thing that was outside of the scope of the JSV that I was doing for that section. When I do an annotated version of that section, I'll look into it more deeply. So there may, you know, there may be somebody out there that that wrote the article in 1980. That's like, oh, oh, oh, me, you know, I know exactly what happened here. So, you know, let me know. I'd love to know. I'll put it, I'll put it in my annotated version, but I'm, I'm just disclosing. I haven't personally dug that deeply into it, but it does address kind of what you're talking about that that that does play a difference there. You know, it the, the difference from the Book of Mormon to the Doctrine and covenants, I guess never concerned me a whole bunch.

46:20 And, and maybe I'm wrong and in this in the way I got there right and it was well, the, the Book of Mormon is largely narrative in nature, right? It's telling a story. The Doctrine and Covenants is something that's unique certainly in Christendom, maybe in all of religion, in that it's more of a how to guide, right? You get the sense that Joseph's trying to learn how to make this whole restored church thing work, right? And so going to God and saying, Hey, how do I do this? And so I would expect that as far as functionality like, OK, how do I, how do I give a blessing or how do I do the sacrament or the, OR the baptism or whatever, the Doctrine and Covenants.

47:07 And again, this is just how my brain worked on it. I was always like, well, the Doctrine and covenants would probably be what you'd want to go with there because it's not a narrative and this is it instruction based. Does that make sense? In my off base with it makes sense. I, I know a lot of people would disagree with you and, and, and I'm, I'm kind of in between somewhere on the, on this issue. But you know, Jesus does say this is how you should do it. Well, that's that's a good point too, yes. But the the verbiage does or could be read to signify a very large difference. Jesus is speaking to the 12 in person and says thus shall you baptize having authority given me of Christ right, right.

47:53 It's he just gave him authority. So that's what you're saying. Whereas for the rest of us, when you ordained a priest, you know, you you might be 10132050 generations of priesthood lineage back to Christ, you know, back to Joseph Christ or something. So being commissioned means it's not directly given authority that could. So I've wondered, is that what Oliver Catter was trying to say? You know, until you've had the Savior lay his hands on your head. You say this way, but if he does has the lady's hands on your head, or if he gives it to you in person like you did to the 12 and the third Nephi, then you say having authority given me of Jesus Christ.

48:36 Interesting. I'm not saying that's correct. I'm just saying that's something I've thought about, pondered over and it's been like, you know, what's the proper way? Does it matter? Are we straightening that? Are we overshooting the target or is there something here? And, and so I know that that's a big issue. The other thing is in the is in the Book of Mormon, he says after this manner shall you administer the sacrament? And it tells him specifically how to do it. And some people reading that say there should only be one person administering the sacrament. Some people reading it say you're supposed to take the cup in your hand and hold it when you do the wine. Some say, you know, you break the bread before you bless it in the Book of Mormon.

49:26 And since that's not how it's done, you know, the in the in the New Testament gospels, you have him doing both ways, bless them, break and break them, bless. But the Book of Mormon says this is how you're supposed to do it. He breaks, then he blesses. So some people take that as a very strong beyond narrative. This is the instruction how to do it and quit fighting about it, right? He says there should be no more contentions among you about how to do this. That's also an instruction. So, you know, so some people read the Book of Mormon account is more significant than the DNC for that reason. And at any rate, so I think it's important to be aware of both sides. And for me, I I honestly think that the intention behind it is, is 100 times more important than some of the details because it's some of those instances.

50:16 I think, you know, he's giving us a template and not a rigid word for word. How to do it. I don't know. That's always the case. And even with that belief, every Sunday when I do sacrament with my family, I do it word for word. But so, you know, I'm a part of that's talking theory more than it is talking reality. But you know, as as I've explained to my kids, if it's OK, like Brigham Young in in his generation, they read the sacrament totally different all the time. And if that's OK, that's fine. But if, if I, I don't want to be the one that someday in heaven some guy comes over to my house, I do that.

51:03 He remembers and he does it. He changes stuff and he causes a bunch of trouble later. He's like, well, I got the idea from Drew. I don't want that on my shoulders. So, so I'm like, I'm, I'll, I'll be rigid on this. But as I'm being rigid, I understand the, the purpose behind this. And, and I, I teach that to my kids too, because I, I don't want them getting caught up in traditions. You know, we do too many things by tradition and we don't even know why. We're just like, well, grandpa always did. That was not how you're supposed to do it. You know, I went to a, a Sunday school recently and it was one of the best Sunday schools I've ever been to. I really, really enjoyed it.

51:47 But when they sang after every phrase, they added a beat and at the end of each chorus, you know, full, you know, the finish the song, they added two beats and then they would start the song again. Wow. And and you know, that's, that's no harm, no foul. I mean, there's there's no, there's there's nothing wrong with that. But I was starting to sing in each of those holes and I'm like, oh, oh, oh, back up, dude, I'd do that. You're going to sound really bad in front of, you know, this whole congregation is going to be like, what's his problem? He keeps belting out for no reason. And I, I give that as an example because it's completely innocuous.

52:30 It doesn't matter at all. None of that's ever going to affect anybody's salvation. But we do that sort of stuff a lot and, and we don't notice. And that was my whole point. They don't notice that they're not doing that on purpose. That's just some tradition that involved because they don't have a lot of musicians in their, in their family. And I'm presuming because I've got a degree in music that would have drove me crazy 30 years ago, you know, but that it just evolved because people were shy in the family or they didn't want to start singing 1st. And so the, you know, these spaces just got longer and longer or something, I don't know. But the point is we, we developed traditions without noticing it and without really understanding what we're doing. And I, I think it's, it's important to, to see those distinctions and be careful about them regularly. So, so when I, I teach my kids, I do those types of things. I'm, I'm, I explicitly remind them of things like that a lot for that very reason.

53:34 But yeah, anyway, there's a long winded answer to your question. No, that's, that's OK. And then so the, the format of of these, 'cause I know the LDS church did some work and, and, you know, cross indexing and those sorts of things, will that have some of that in there as well? OK, so the the raw version has no cross references. What it does have are annotations that I inserted and and there are a few different reasons, so I'll I'll explain that and briefly then I'll say why. If I forget that, let me know. So in the Doctrine of Covenants, I footnote anything that was later changed from the original.

54:18 So I say the original read like this and it was changed. And you know, this is what it was in 1844 when Joseph died. Presumably Joseph approved of all the changes made in 1844. Yes, it was published after he died. The vast majority of it was done before he died and you know, not much was changed after he died as far as we could tell. But the, the kind of broad assumption that I, I made was either Joseph delegatory wise authorized people to make changes or he, he micromanaged. There's almost 0 evidence he micromanaged. It looks like he pretty much gave it to the committee and forgot about it for a couple years. You know, he talked to him about it here and there. It's hard for me to imagine the Prophet doing that. I know he's super busy and there were all sorts of complications and problems for him doing that project. So I assume it's somewhere in the middle. And we just don't have a historical record that gives us a good solid understanding what that was. But regardless, I look at it and assume Joseph probably approved this change.

55:27 It was 1840. But if something is significant and changes doctrine or changes how you understand how to do a blessing or whatever, if there's any substantive change at all, I footnote it so you can see the original and what it was changed to. And some of those, and there are hundreds of those. It's, it's not, you know, I, I was really surprised because everybody says all the changes are all grammatical. They don't really matter. Spelling changes and stuff, very few real changes. That's complete BS and it's not true. I have hundreds of changes. In every one of them I consider substantive, meaning it's important to somebody as the change I mentioned earlier with a colon, with men, or that they might have joy. You know that that scripture, that is something that is substantive.

56:24 It makes a difference to somebody. Somebody's going to read that and say, see, I told you this life is all about suffering and maybe I shouldn't pander to that particular 1. I don't know, should be ashamed of myself. But but you know what I mean? Somebody somewhere will find meaning in there and I don't it's not my business to deny them of that reading. That's that's personal to them and I'm not going to be responsible for not disclosing that. So anytime there was a change that I thought a reasonable person could see a difference here and change how they understand this passage, I footnoted it. And some of those are, are minor.

57:05 You know that honest they are, they're they're minor. Some of them are gigantic. You know, they're really, really big. Which which ones were gigantic? I'm curious right? Like. Yeah, So DNC 42, my annotated version, I, I talked to you about this when we, when we did DNC 42, you know, there are entire, this whole verses added and several times there are phrases that are very lengthy that are added. And in, in those changes, most of them are saying, OK, this was an early chapter in the doctor of Kevin's early section. And now we've received a lot more light knowledge and we've added the the high priest quorum and we've changed the structure of how the high council works and you know, all these types of things. And so retroactively they insert those new revelations into the old revelation.

57:58 So instead of it saying go and get 2 elders to adjudicate this, they say go get the high council to adjudicate it or something like that. I see. Those are very big differences. Right. And, and, and, and there, there are lots of those that, that dramatically changes what you do, right. You and I, we're in a fight. We disagree about something, we're pissed off about it. We want to kick each other out of the church. Who do we go to? We go to two elders or we go to high council. I see. You know, if I say 2 elders, you're like, no, scripture says high council. Now what are we going to do, you know, 'cause now we've got to other people have to to agree on that too. I mean, that's that can change everything and significantly with administrative things. One of the more important things I think is, is when, when Joseph asked if somebody in the First presidency is going to be tried, does DNC one O 7 still apply?

58:54 And in one of his unpublished revelations, it says, no, that was when the church was baby. But now that it's bigger, that doesn't make any sense to do it at all. That's not the proper way to to try and remember the First Presidency. And so, you know, some of these administrative changes we could say are insignificant, but they they dramatically impact how people behave in a community of believers. So I footnote every single one of those. I italicize in the Doctrine of Covenants every word that's changed, including if it's a single letter, if, if a plural is changed singular, vice versa, that's footnoted, that's a change.

59:35 And you know, if it, if it could be important, you know, if it's obviously a typo, I don't do it. If it says Joseph and then the revision says Joseph Smith junior and the next revision says Joseph Smith without the junior and then it's reverted to again to say Joe Smith junior. I don't mark any of those. Nobody cares. It doesn't change anything. We know what he meant. We know what was going down here. You know, if it says Oliver changes to Oliver Cattery, I don't footnote those things. That's not substantive change. That's something that you and I know why they did it right. When the Lord's speaking, he says Oliver Joseph Smith thinking that guy sitting right there. But when they publish it 20 years later, somebody's like who's Oliver?

1:00:15 Is that the guy that was excommunicated or somebody else? The other multiple Oliver's. So no, it's Oliver Cattery. So there's there's no change there. So I I ignore things like that, but to to see what those changes are, it's it's readily available in in the JSV version because I italicize all of those changes and I footnote them and and when I do the annotated version, you know it will have all of those same changes made and and acknowledged to the main text itself. Probably the only change I'll make for the annotated versions is I got rid of unorthodox capitalization in the JSV. But I, I do include it and will include it in my annotated version because I think there's strong historical evidence that at least a significant part of the time, upon the time, they use that as emphasis and they're trying to draw attention to that word and that changes the meaning sometimes. Gotcha.

1:01:15 I'll give you an example of that. In Doctrine of Covenant 76, it talks about, you know, becoming gods and so forth. In some of those instances it's capitalized in the original and some it's not. And that appears to be referring to somebody who's exalted versus somebody who's maybe had the second mountains but isn't exalted or something like that. I don't have any specific instances at the top of my head, but I know that there's some discrepancies that are like that. And that's the type of thing that could be interpreted to make a difference if it does or not, or if it was intended or not. But that's, that's, that's a little bit more problematic to do in a version that you're trying to, to produce for kids so forth.

1:02:02 It starts making it look a little bit more messy and more academic. So opted not to include that for the JSV, but I do put it in my kind of big boy version. Gotcha. And then, you know, another and I'm sorry, I'm just peppering you with questions here, but. Oh no, that's what I'm here for. So in in this version going back, Joseph was editing this stuff all the way through right as as he's doing this and and you alluded to this, Joseph didn't strike me as a micromanager. He wasn't someone who just left things alone necessarily, but but he wasn't a micromanager. And so with some of these revisions, how do you know that it was actually Joseph Smith approved versus Joseph just never had a chance to look at it, right? That to me, 'cause, 'cause if, if you're going to call it to JSV, the Joseph Smith version I assume is what it stands. How do you know you can attribute that to Joseph Smith? Right.

1:03:07 OK, great question. I I should have brought that up earlier. Excuse me. So we, we don't know. We honestly don't know from from phrase to phrase to section to section. We don't know. We don't have any record of all recattery sitting down with Joseph and saying, OK, these are the changes I made to DNC 76 and the changes I made to DNC 84. Do you approve of all of these? No such record exists at all, period. Further, I, as I, if I'm recalling correctly, we have less than two sentences in Joseph Smith's handwriting in the DNC of any edits or anything being made. So there could be a strong argument that in fact Joseph didn't approve anything that I've italicized and footnoted in the JSV.

1:03:58 And if, if that's the case, then we need a whole new version. And it's it's very problematic because everything after the original book of commandments was edited by somebody. There were complaints against Oliver Cowdery that he changed too much. And and I believe he complained somebody else did the same thing. And, you know, we've got this statement from Joseph delegating to WWE, Phelps saying don't change the sense of it. And you know, we've got at the at the beginning it says revised and carefully selected by Joseph Smith Junior. Did he say that? Did he agree to that statement?

1:04:40 Did he notice that before it was published? We don't know for sure. It's not there. So I do mention in my introduction of the JSV especially more specifically should say, and this only really matters in the doctrine of covenants. We don't know for absolute positive, but we've got at least DNC 57 commanding him to change the the scriptures. We've got him talking WW Phelps. We know Oliver Cowder was in charge of the changes and made the most and and just with papers project. Just a little historical background on this. It was really interesting. I didn't put in the introductions. It's kind of in the back of my head, but where they basically say this whole manuscript that was, you know, the original stuff that I poured through doesn't appear to have any changes other than what Oliver Carter made himself.

1:05:34 So there's, there's no reason to believe, if I'm recalling these details right. Well, correctly, that Joseph ever saw those. Presumably he did, but maybe he didn't. We don't know if we're positive. That said, I can't imagine those brethren taking it upon themselves to, to just wholesale rewrite everything, not get Joseph's approval and then publish it and then not get trouble for it. I mean, there was an 1835 version. There was a 1837 version. Surely he saw some of those changes and reviewed some of those changes. And in fact, we do have, you know, things that that change back and forth a couple times. So it's, it seems very likely to me that he was involved.

1:06:19 Did he read every word, every detail or not that we, we just can't be certain. And you know that there we there we are. That's that's the problem. That's not true of the Book of Mormon. And there are different types of footnotes for changes in the Book of Mormon. Then I put in the in the DNC and I think that would probably be of interest to a number of the the podcast listeners. So this isn't super well known. It's I believe it's mentioned here. And, and so if I'm looking down for those who are watching the video I'm trying to see, I believe there's a chart in Skousen's 1830 Book of Mormon that he did trying to get back to the very original text, which again, as much as I appreciate what he did, I don't care about the original text so much as what Joseph approved later. Brigham Young said if Joseph would have translated the Book of Mormon 50 times or 500 times, it was all different. It wouldn't matter to him.

1:07:21 All that revelation is based upon specific experiences that the Saints needed and what they were ready to receive. And so if I accept Joseph as a prophet, I also accept it well at at the day of his death, I should say, right? If I accept him that, then I accept that he made these changes on his own accord. Shoot, I swear he had a chart somewhere. Maybe it's in the appendixies. Yeah, here it is. OK. He calls it STEMA for the printed editions. So for those of you looking, this is Book of Mormon, the earliest text by Royal Skousen in one of his appendices can get this backwards. Here he has this graph showing the branches of the different printings of the Book of Mormon.

1:08:17 And looking at that graph, you can see that at different years there were different publications, and different publications use different versions of the earlier Book of Mormon. So if you try to go look at the bottom of this on the right hand of the STEMMA, it's the LDS textual tradition. It goes all the way back to the 1837 version. So the church, members of the of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints do not have the thousands of changes he made in the 1840 version in their lineage here. Now, has somebody gone back and looked at it and traded with it and incorporated some of those? Sure. Is that a four volume book on what happened and how much we how much they put in didn't put in? Has anybody looked at the 1840 version and compared it to the 1981 version or whatever they have now, 2012 or something, and and marked all the substantive changes that came from the 1840 that weren't there earlier?

1:09:18 I don't know, I don't really care. But from what I can see from this, they're missing a lot of those changes. And as I'm going through and doing my own personal studies, I see stuff that looks like it's very different from time to time. Why does it matter? Well, the RLDS used the 1840 version, so they have a different textual traditional. Joseph made thousands of changes to the 1840 Book of Mormon, and a lot of those were trying to simplify the readings and get rid of Old English. That's also what I mentioned earlier. He got rid of 43 versions of and came to pass. Interesting. So I have two different kinds of footnotes in the Book of Mormon that I don't have in the duction covens. 1 version of that is in 1837 Joseph revised and changed the text to read XYZ and he did.

1:10:08 He did those personally. He personally changed stuff. But in 1840, sorry, in 1837, he used the printer's manuscript which included which was Oliver Cowdery's copied version which included two to three errors of page according to Royal Skousen's counting of those mistakes he made copying. Wow, that's a lot of mistakes. It's a. Long mistake. It's a 500 page book, right? So in 1840, Joseph used the original manuscript, not the printer's manuscript for at least some of it. Look likely most of it, we don't know for sure for all of it. So we have some changes. And I believe I've got about 80 footnotes where in 1837 Joseph changed something in the 1840 version doesn't have that change.

1:10:59 Gotcha. So a footnote, and I add that there so you can see what he changed that was missed in his last version. And I also have places where in 1837 and in 1840 he missed a mistake that was in the printer's manuscript, where literally a whole 2 lines of the original printer's manuscript were missed and skipped. And that's a common scrivener's error. You know, as you're reading it, you go to the end of the line and it says Korahor. And then you you write down, you look back up in 2 lines underneath it says Korahor. You think that's where you left off. So you start writing. Gotcha, gotcha. Ungrammatical sentence usually, but that happens all every paragraph in the Book of Mormon so so just got ignored.

1:11:45 But it it seems pretty likely that that was just a mistake. So I footnote these two, you know, and I put it in the Book of Mormon here these two things, but in the footnote says from here to here was missing in both of these versions. Joseph corrected appears to be a Scribner's error. Reader can decide but so those happen. There's there's some significant pieces that are like that, that are that are changed like that. Excuse me. So those are, those are in there where he missed stuff from the original manuscript or, you know, he changed it once. It didn't change it in the other spot. That doesn't happen in the doctrine of covenants. I I go from the later version of the doctrine of covenants. And if it was changed from an earlier, we've got a pretty strong lineage of the change. It's usually pretty obvious that it was changed on purpose. Whereas the Book of Mormon, we've got those printers, manuscript that's got all recovery stakes, every two to three page, two to three a page perpetuated into the 1837 version.

1:12:41 And some of those are pulled out of the 1840 version by using the original. But they missed some of the changes Joseph's made in 1837 that he didn't incorporate in 1840. Now, you could say Joseph rejected the change he earlier made. I think it's more likely he missed it. But I footnote it every single time so the reader can look and say OK, here we, here we go. So to me, and, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Drew, because you're showing your work, so to speak, right? You're showing what you found. This doesn't, this doesn't feel like, and again, correct me if I'm wrong and, and it could just be my misconception of what I'm hearing here, but it doesn't sound like you're going for like this is authoritative. This is how this goes.

1:13:29 You don't have to worry about it or question it any longer. This is how it's supposed to be. It sounds to me more like this is what I found and it's up to you to kind of parse through that. Is that a fair assessment? Interesting. Yeah, it's kind of in between. So here's here's what my original goal was, and here's the goal of the the the team of four of us. But with the with the GSV, what we wanted was a Joseph Smith approved text, something that I honestly believe if the resurrected Joseph came and stood by my shoulder, sat down next to me, he would say that's exactly what I wanted done -1 thing that I think he would say. And that is, but you left some mistakes in there that you knew were mistakes.

1:14:19 Why didn't you fix them? And my answer to that is we wanted an addition that every Restorationist could trust. OK. All right, so I'm not claiming to be the prophet of everybody and you should follow me because I said so. And because that's not what I'm claiming. And that's that's not how I'm perceived. I don't think it's my job to correct everything and say this is what it's supposed to read. That's Joseph's business. And he left it the way he left it. And it does have mistakes.

1:15:00 There are grammatical mistakes and and you know, you could point back to I always forget his name, but the guy who you know got upset and apostatized because he made a grammar mistakes. He said this is straight from God. How dare you, but he tells them to change it. In DNC 57. There's another scripture at 70 something where the Lord says you are aware that if Joseph's it doesn't say quite like this, but we all know that Joseph has bad grammar and you're aware of it. You find out the revelations, but they're still true, right? So I've left those errors and, and, and, and honestly that that's been painful for me. It's really, really hard. You know, when I see something, I'm like, you know, this looks to me, it should have said this, but I don't do that. I'm I just, I have to really restrain myself because what we wanted to be able to do is say, OK, here's the just Smith version.

1:15:56 I'm giving it to the Kingston group. I don't know a lot about the Kingston group. I've, I've only really met a couple people, but I'm saying give it to them. They can look at it and say this was as approved by Joseph and anything that in here that's questionable at all is footnoted. It's italicized and it's noted. So I can see what was going on here. Gotcha. And I can give it to somebody from Centennial Park, and they can disagree on a lot of details of what Joseph approved or what he didn't prove, but they can. It's all right there annotated for them so they can see. And and and then I could go to somebody in mainstream church and when they quote DNC 121 and they say it says let virtue garnish your thoughts.

1:16:40 And ceasingly, yeah, you know, I I don't know that I have any problem with that. But just so you know, that's not what Joseph wrote. It says let's garnish your thoughts. And ceasingly didn't say let's like virtue garnish, just says garnish your thoughts. An interesting tidbit, but that's what Joseph approved. Now I can I say like virtue garnish your thoughts unceasingly is a bad principle. Absolutely not. But that might not be what Joseph had in mind. Garnish your thoughts could just be be a, a, a pensive individual, deep and solemn thoughts can only find them out, he said about the things of God. You know, he could have been trying to suggest that and you can say, well, that's virtuous, but that's not the same as thinking about virtue or, or these types of things. It's a it's an interesting distinction. So this is what Joseph would have approved if he was here in person.

1:17:30 And if there are any mistakes, there are mistakes of men type thing, right? And and surely there are some somewhere that always happens when you publish something, especially if you don't have a team of 50 people on your side going over everything. Excuse me, that that was our purpose. Now in, in that purpose, I'm not saying this is the authoritative tax that Joseph wanted. It's the one he would have approved. That's, that's how I I perceive it. And I think that's very different because he may look and say, Oh, gosh, you know, look at the size of the church. Now, if I were running that, I would revise these five sections massively. On the other hand, he might come and show up in Missouri and say, Gosh, your group's really small.

1:18:19 This, this section doesn't apply cause there's not enough people fill all those positions. This is how you should do it, you know. And so you know, he may have wanted it something a little bit different and want to take share more and it couldn't or whatever. But as far as pure text, what we have at the record, I believe that that what this GSV represents is what he approved and with annotations of all the changes that he made or he authorized to make so that you can see all of those. Gotcha. OK. I'm going to ask another question here and I'm not, I'm not, you know, kind of by the nature of the question, maybe a little bit. Sorry.

1:19:08 No, no, I I'm trying to figure out a I'll screw it. There is no diplomacy. We're just going to roll with it. Punch me, Dave, punch me. Yeah, I'm, I'm not trying to punch you. I'm not necessarily trying to punch anybody. I'm just curious about this. Often times the people who fund these sorts of projects have something in mind they want to see. Did you encounter any of that as this was happening? OK, great question. And, and yeah, we, we debated over some stuff because of that. One of the issues, for instance, is originally they didn't want me to do punctuation, leave the original punctuation. And so I did after a while and that was so hard for me.

1:19:53 I I've now written either an editor of a text or written 26 books as of today. I it's. It's everything I could do to not comma erase a comma. When I'm going through attacks, that's what I do all day, every day for years, right? I mean, well, not all day every day, but you, you got. Like a. Profession right now. And I've been writing books for a long time. I can't stop that hand from ticking a comma and and, and, and, you know, and I'm OCD about that sort of stuff because I want my work to be perfect and whoever will be, and there's always going to be a mistake I'm going to make. And I always get upset at myself about it, but that's my intention is for it to be perfect. And so not checking that grammar, that punctuation was really, really difficult for me.

1:20:46 But I didn't do it. And I didn't do it from section 13 or 14 all the way to about 95 in the Doctrine Covenants. And in the interim, we had some phone calls and there's they're kind of saying make a case Drew, you know, and, and they just they, they almost in, in they even said we almost nostalgically just want what Joseph saw. I want to see what Joseph saw. I'm like lithographic reprint, you know, that's what that is. But if as soon as we're inserting the footnotes and all that sort of stuff, what Joseph didn't do is not necessarily inspired. I mean, I I believe the words of the Book of Mormon are inspired and I do in in other DNC, but I don't believe the grammar is I don't believe the structure is. I don't believe the punctuation is. We have no evidence of those whatsoever. So I even built a little chart and I put at the beginning of each of the GSV to say, what did Joseph contribute and what did he not contribute?

1:21:44 And who did you know where the verses come from? Orson Pratt 1876 Where did punctuation come? Drew Briny 2025 OK, so after we talked about that, that issue and paragraphing was a similar issue. We talked about paragraphing and we, we all agreed to keep paragraphing as the format because that's how they read back then. And it does change how you interpret things because sometimes the, the versification chops it up in a way that you start thinking differently. I I've noticed that years and years ago and, and we all agreed to that. That's how Joseph did it. That's how he would've liked it. We're going to keep it like that, but, and it came to pass is not going to be our bar.

1:22:27 And and again, you know this man, I've never met Royal Skousen. I honor him. I appreciate his scholarship and I appreciate his heart. You know, Clan Skousen is one of the amazing men of our days and this heart and I respect that. He's an honest scholar and that he deems this text very sacred and treated it as such. And so, so we, we used his paragraphing most of the time. And I, I alluded some changes, but there were some other format reasons we did things differently than he did. So we changed those around a little bit. But but you know, that was one of the things that was a bit of a debate. Got you with that one.

1:23:09 I was like, I already did it. And so I'm like, if I'm going to have to go back to redo this, I finished the entire Book of Mormon. I am, I'm doing this after another project because I, I just, I was frustrated, you know, but later as, as things went on, I pointed out things where the grammar, the punctuation was so bad and super inconsistent that it changes meaning sometimes. And that clearly is not right. You know, it's one thing to say, well, the punctuation makes it to where happiness comes after this life or during this life. That's a big deal. But most people probably think that should be this life. And you know that some minority who could think that otherwise and they're stupid and you know, whatever.

1:23:51 Like a lot of people think that way. But there are other places, excuse me, that that, you know, suggest something more like, you know, Lucifer should have been the saviour or something. They're just obviously wrong. And so you just ignore those types of mistakes because they're so blatantly against everything that you read and remotely be anything but a Scrivener error. And, and at any rate, I'm I'm really sensitive about those kinds of decisions. If, if I think there's a slight possibility it's could reasonably reread something differently, I will follow the I'll give somebody benefit of that, even if I totally disagree, like I shared earlier, but there are places where it just, it just doesn't matter.

1:24:36 So at any rate, and and I showed enough of those places where it was just messy that they said, you know, I think you're right. We're, we're being more nostalgic than practical here. We want a version that Joseph would approve, but we also want people to be able to understand and read it and not be sidebarred by all the mistakes. Right. And same thing with spelling that was kind of a keep the original spelling was something we talked about originally too, but it's kind of the same thing. You know, if you look at it, you're like, what word is that? You know, and, and, and, and as I recall, there's once 1 error in one of the versions. I don't remember where it's at, but it it's one of those things that says pray always let's the adversary have power over you as opposed to lest he have power over you unless he.

1:25:22 Yeah, that's that's a big difference. Yeah. And so and and so I'm, I'm just like seeing how a typo can make a big difference like that. You know, we don't want to perpetuate errors like that. You know, that's, that's not our goal here. I mean, yeah, we want it to be as Joseph approved. But if they may may miss things that are so blatant, obvious, do we really want to suggest that that's what the gospel is supposed to be, right? And and and and I footnote, you know, all sorts of things like that, like straight and narrow is originally just STREIT. Is that what he meant? They spelled that wrong everywhere.

1:26:04 Even with nothing to do with the possibility of something being narrow, they still spelled it wrong. So you know what? Leave the original and make a footnote. But you know, some things are just too obvious. I mean, there's nobody that, you know, thinks it's supposed to be the son of dog. It's, it's just, it's fix it. It's going to be distracting to everybody reading it. It needs fixed. So there were some things like that. So ultimately, after literally months of, of talking back and forth, they finally said, OK, go ahead and fix all the punctuation. And the problem with that is after I've done everything else that's out of my head, you know, the sections kind of gone, it's a lot longer to, to go back and change the punctuation. If I, if I did the original comparing side by side of all four to seven, sometimes manuscripts of the changes that were made and I'm marking each of those up when I go through and I'm doing the commas and stuff after I've got all that data in my head, it's in short term memory still. And I'm thinking, OK, this is referring to this, this, this clause is referring back to up here. All those connections that you make when you're deep into a text are there.

1:27:15 So then if I'm putting a semi colon in or comma or whatever, I've got all that available to me without thinking about it, you know, do these two sets connected? Is this clarifying this? I already know it's just there. But if four months pass, if you go back, you have to redo. It's it's way slower and way more painful. I bet, I bet. So, but other than that, no, I don't think there's anything that their their only agenda was we want a pure version. And when I read that or heard that I was like, OK, that that to me means clean, that means perfect, that means error free, you know, but with the original words, you know what Joseph, what Joseph pinned is sacred, unchangeable. What he didn't pinned is pragmatic. Gotcha.

1:28:06 It's. My approach on it and and anyway, we had some some slight disagreements over some of those details, but nothing major. All the stuff we've already covered. Nobody wanted anything except for what honored Joseph as much as possible. And so that was that was the that was the overriding feeling. And at the beginning of the, the beginning of the book, all of them, the ones that say JSV, it says Joseph Smith version. It's it's not really a logo. It's kind of more of a bothered. I can't think of the word, but it's just letters, but they're fancy letters. Gotcha.

1:28:47 Not calligraphy, but it's just a typography or something. Anyway, underneath each of each of those I I put honoring Joseph's revelatory words and edits through clean and accurate Joseph approved text. So that was what we and that was a kind of slogan that everybody agreed with say, but that's the feeling that everybody on the committee had. We want Joseph approved. We want it as clean as possible and and we want to honor what he did. And, and I, I think, you know, that's not to say, you know, maybe or some had some inspired changes or some inspired this or that when he made some changes in the 1876 version, or that, you know, person, somebody in 1921 didn't make a good correction. I might 100% agree with some of the grammatical corrections they made, but the idea was we want a pure Joseph version that doesn't have Drew's taint.

1:29:48 It doesn't have the mainstream church taint. It doesn't have anybody's taint. It's just Joseph's taint. And if there are errors leftover there Joseph's errors. And you know, we can, we can look at them and decide what we want about them. But you know, that's, that's what's there. That said, you know, I did change spelling. I did not change Old Testament or Old English in except for one version that's separate. I did not get rid of that, but occasionally, you know, it, it would set, you know, the word were, was used. It should have been was or something. On very rare occasions I I I corrected things like that because they they really complicated things and there's no way to read it that it would be proper.

1:30:37 Got you. So it wouldn't be, for instance, you know, saying, Oh well, I missed the subject back here. It could have been referring to this secondary noun instead, this primary noun or something or this pronoun or whatever. There's just no way to interpret it except for bad Hick language and it and those were very rare. Those changes though, it, it's just places where it would cause confusion. Maybe somebody be like, what? I just read that wrong and go back and read it and I don't understand. And you know, then they, maybe they remember that the, the, the introduction says they're not changing stuff. There was a. Mistake by Joseph and maybe that helps them. Probably not.

1:31:18 Most people won't read that stuff. So it it just felt like it would actually cause more problem leaving it than taking it out. But again, very few of those and they're they're just like I just said, you know, if it says it were and you're supposed to say it was, you know, they're they're half dozen of those maybe. And that's pretty much it. Gotcha. That said, I did do a modern English version of the Book of Mormon, and that doesn't apply at all to that, right? That's maybe different topic, I don't know. But anyway, well. Well, no, I mean that I think, I think that would all flip fit and flow in here. Is that available now as well? Well, I hope so.

1:31:59 It was supposed to be available. If it's not, it will be very, very soon and I will at least have a digital version on my Pay Hip site and we can get that on your site as well really quickly. But when I submitted it to Amazon, they said this another book has the same name. And so you have to say it's within the public domain. I fundamentally disagree with that on the modern English version because that's not in the public domain. There was no modern English version in 1840, and I made thousands of changes to make it a modern English version, and nobody else has made those same changes. And so the copyright distinctly should be available to me for that. Just like, you know, if I took the original Bible manuscript and published it and then did a different translation of it, you know, the different translation is copyrightable. I didn't go to the rounds with the guys arguing with me about it because they're, you know, they're immediately threatening to take down all books I've ever written. And I'm just like, you know, if somebody steals it, So what? They stole my other work, too.

1:33:08 It's, you know, let, let, let them go for it. I don't think there's a huge niche market for it. I don't expect to make a lot of money for it. So it is what it is. OK. So let me take two things there real quickly. 1 is the JSV paperback, whether it's the Book of Mormon Doctrine of Covenants. So there's a couple different versions of Doctrine of Covenants we haven't talked about yet, but they, they've got some extra materials including those extra revelations. I talked about all of those. If it's in paperback, I pretty, I went to Amazon and said what's the cheapest price I can do this and kept the cheapest price that would allow me to mail it and not lose money. So my profit margin on those is like pretty much zero. It's less than $2.00 on, on all of those. So I did that because we're going to have some fancy versions out, some nice versions. And a lot of people, you know, they don't blink. And I had to spend $200 on a pair of nice scriptures, you know, they're going to use forever. We will have some nice versions of that. But I'm very sensitive to the fact that I'm not the only poor person in the world.

1:34:13 And I know some people have, you know, I've got 15 kids. I know lots of fundamentalists have 20-30 kids. And not all of them are good stewards. And you don't want to buy $100 set of descriptions for them. That's just going to get wrinkled and dropped in the toilet and, you know, put it with a bag of rice and whatever happens with things kids do, right? Right. So I wanted the cheapest version I could possibly do. And frankly, I was kind of upset because I don't know how Amazon calculates their, calculates their pricing, but based on the printing cost, they should have been cheaper still, but they wouldn't let me do any cheaper. So I did that specifically for the like I said, so poor people can afford them and people have lots of kids that don't want to spend a lot of money on the set of scripts could do that.

1:35:00 The the hardback version is different. There's profit margin on those. And that's anyway lots of factors going on there. I've got different people wanting higher prices, different people want lower prices, all that sort of stuff going on with with those. But the intention is to make those a mid grade like the nice version later. That's the mid grade version that most people can afford and be happy for whatever the price is, but but not too cheap either because some of this some some of the we need to recoup some of our cost of production. Right, I understand so. So 2 two things.

1:35:43 One, don't let me forget that the different versions of the of the DNC of the the modern English Book of Mormon. So I decided to do a modern English version of the Book of Mormon for a few reasons. I've it's been on my mind for many years. In my family, if you're 8 years old, you don't get baptized unless you read the Book of Mormon. Now I've had some kids struggle with their reading a little bit. And so we let them listen to the Book of Mormon for some of it or all of it, or, you know, whatever that sort of stuff. But I, it's just been a family standard and I want to make sure they're, they're actually familiar with scriptures and, and not just getting baptized because mom dad said so I want them to, we have a baptismal interview. We sit down with them and talk and ask some questions and make sure that, you know, you teach kids stuff 20 times, they forget it.

1:36:32 Right. So we, we kind of just before they're baptized, we go through and make sure you, they remember all this stuff, You know, what is baptism a symbol of and who, who are we covenanting with? You know, these types of things. And, and some of my kids haven't quite been ready. They've really struggled to read the Book of Mormon. And some of them read through fine, but most of them struggled at times. And I've talked to a lot of other families, especially moms, a lot of many dads are just kind of oblivious, but moms are not oblivious. They're like, my child really struggles with old English. And so I've been wanting to do an easy to read Book of Mormon for the kids for a couple decades now.

1:37:15 And, and there's lots of controversy over it. And it's like, jeez, why is there some so much controversy? You know, I'm a convert to the church, so maybe it's easy for me. I'm like, I've struggled reading at first. I'm like, what the heck is thine self and what is smiting about and you know, and withersoever, like what the heck does that mean? You know, all these different old English words. I was like I had to learn all of them. And because I'm an academic in my heart, it didn't take too long. It wasn't super hard for me and I was a little bit older. But then, you know, you meet people that English was a second language and they're like, man, I struggle English this very hard.

1:37:57 Right. What are they supposed to do? You know, I mean, these types of resources aren't available for them in, in other language, which is meaning, you know, all the footnotes and cross references and Joe Smith's version stuff that I'm doing. So at any rate, as I was doing, doing my spell checking and making sure, you know, I didn't put in two spaces where it should be 1 and that sort of normal stuff I do for my books. As I was doing that, I realized a new method that I could go through and get rid of Old English a lot faster than in the past because I, I tried this years ago. I tried to do some find and replace stuff and it was a disaster. So it's like I can't rely on the computer.

1:38:38 What, how do I do this quickly and efficiently anyway? And I, I found a method and I used it and my, my whole purpose was just to get rid of that stumbling block of the Old English and, and I did. And I also followed Joseph Smith's precedence as it were getting rid of, and it came to pass and all the different derivation. Behold, now it came to pass. Now behold, it came to pass. Now it came to pass and it came to pass. Then behold, whatever, I got rid of all of those 2300 in what? Some odd it took away 10 pages of the Book of Mormon to delete those, but I left three stars with each one so that you you know it's deleted. Gotcha.

1:39:19 And you know, that may not be significant. The way I see that is that is an old Hebrew, Egyptian vestige of their language. It doesn't mean much anything. It means then at most, then this was what happened, then this happened, then this happened. It doesn't give any meaning, behold, besides that. But they, it was so hard to write. They said it was so hard to write that I can't imagine their graving. And it came to pass. Behold, now you know, that's a lot of work. So I, I personally believe they had some sort of little dash or something in Hebrew Egyptian or altered, whether they call it reformed Egyptian, where they just got to do a little dash that says then then they wrote it, but they translated it all this long, you know, gnarly sentence, but it's written in an old English sort of way and it doesn't mean anything. Right.

1:40:16 There are two or three places in the Book of Mormon where you need it and it doesn't make sense without it. I left those, but all the rest of my deleted I put the stars star there and I know that will offends some readers, but Oh well. Your kids will be so much happier not to read 10 pages of it came to pass Gotcha. And I got any rate. So I got rid of all the old English and, you know, and I spot read places and, and double checked, you know, anyway, it's a longer process than just find and replace. You can't, that doesn't work. But neither does it work to do all of it all at once because it, it, it gets complicated. So you have to kind of go through a few times. So I was spot checking stuff and I still found messages of things that I missed because I, I was reading it so much. You're saturated in that language. You don't notice it.

1:41:05 Delete it and get rid of it. You're like, oh, there it is again. You know, I didn't get rid of whoso that's, that's old English. And you know, 4th is one of those. You're like, gosh, that's a modern word too. But do I get rid of the 1900 version or places where it says forth And you know, 'cause you, you literally some, some of those words have 3 or 4 meanings and depending on context, it means something slightly different even in 1828. And, and at any rate, so I didn't want to make too many judgement calls. So sometimes I just say this is a word that meant this and we still use it, but it has maybe some nuance differences. So any rate, I did that for the kids. I, I, I bought immediately as soon as it's like, well, let me change that.

1:41:56 The instant that it is up and available on Amazon, I will buy a couple versions for my younger kids here. And frankly, that's all I'd ever want to use personally because I hate old English. I just so obnoxious. It's it's not helpful. And in 27 years talking to these talking about it, I've only had one argument that was not emotional based, even though they were trying to make rational arguments against it. They really goes comes down to nostalgia or it sounds pretty. And that was a came from Michael Ness, who I talked to recently said, you know, if somebody's looking for word prints to match phrases in the Book of Mormon with the Old Testament or New Testament, that may not notice it if it's a, a modern English, I'm like, absolutely, that's a great point. It's a niche, but it's a it's a great point, you know, but in creating it, my purpose wasn't to replace book of Mormons. It was for kids, English, second language, somebody's new struggles with old English, whatever it is that they would have something they could grab on to read and understand and then graduate later to the real JSV Book of Mormon. And, you know, use that for church and that sort of stuff. And of course, I would never cite it in research, that sort of stuff.

1:43:15 But I know I didn't change the meaning ever. And so I trust it just as much as the, the, the standard one. It just doesn't have all the archaic expressions. Gotcha. The one thing that did make me very angry and I, I'm maybe exaggerating this, but it did make me very angry as I went through it is as I finished and I was rereading, you know, checking for it and stuff is there are places where I did have punctuation based on the Old English. But when you got, once I got rid of it, I was like, oh, I actually didn't need that comma. That was really annoying, but sometimes you know, you, the, the language is so obtuse that when you're looking at it's hard to get grammatical constructs and syntax or whatever and and see precisely where you know the punctuation belongs.

1:44:03 That I mean, you, you get used to it. But anyway, I did see a couple of places where I could see why with the original I had the commas there, but with when I got rid of the Old English it really read better without. Gotcha. Were you at all worried? You know, throughout this process, both in the, in the modern translation as well as as going back to, to, to what you thought was what Joseph would want, right? Were you worried at all about first, 'cause there is a certain beauty to the text, right as it, as it stood, right? Or at least maybe I found beauty in it.

1:44:44 Or were you worried about messing up like any of the chiasmus that was found there? Does that ever happen? Right. Some of the things did that did that ever was that something that you viewed as you were doing your your I don't want to say revisions because that's not the right word, but maybe you're you're corrections. So in the, the standard JSV, the answer is absolutely not because I only did changes that Joseph made. I didn't, I didn't make any effort to do any of that stuff on my own. And, and I personally did think about the chiasms. I've got my personal Book of Mormon. I went through a couple different books on chiasms and I marked all of them.

1:45:25 And some of them I, I believe and, and think they're totally bogus, but you know, I've got all of them marked in mine and I, I appreciate them. So I I thought about that specifically, and I think it's very unlikely that a modern English would get rid of those at all. OK. For example, if I say DI change it to say U, if it says thou, I'll change it to say U. And by the way, I italicized when it was singular the the the the word U. So you could see, much like King James Version did that in a couple instances they where they translated different words to me. God, they italicize some so that you can see this is Yahweh versus Elohim and that sort of stuff.

1:46:07 So anyway, I did that so that those are preserved. So you can see what was singular and what was plural in, in the original, which sometimes was an error and unarguably an error because it, the next sentence contradicts it otherwise. But I, I always use the same word. So I, I can't see that happening that I got, I, I would lose a chiasm. There was one word, I'm trying to remember what it was, but that did get translated two different ways in modern English depending on where is placed. I don't remember if it was when it was became subject to object or object subject or something like that, but it did change.

1:46:52 So there's a slight possibility there. But I, I, I think those common words are useless in cosmic studies. I and I'll give you just an example. There's a book I read. It was a honk and thick book. I mean, we're talking 2 inches back. And it was all the chiasms in the Book of Mormon. This guy got really excited about him and he'd found like 500. And those are the ones that I marked by color in my Book of Mormon so that I can see all the different word choices and stuff, you know, where they're at. And by the way, for any of the listeners, the entire book of almost 36 is chiasmus. And it's so amazing if you get that diagrammed out of very, very interesting stuff.

1:47:35 But at any rate, what I discovered was if it's a common word like God or Jesus or something like that, those don't work very well when you're trying to find a chiasm because that's used a lot. And what I found with this guy, this that's got this book that's two inches thick of chiasms, is he was using a lot of those really common words to find chiasms. And frankly, I think he was finding repetitious words and not chiasms. And so I don't think in transferring to the modern English that any of those would be lost because the, the unique words are not changed. Like, for instance, I didn't get rid of the word smite. I, I, I, I looked through several definitions and I couldn't find one that I could replace it with that didn't require a phrase heavy blow to the body or, you know, and so I just left it there and I footnoted what it meant. And it, it, that shows up like 80 sometimes in the Book of Mormon.

1:48:38 And I footnoted it for about 10 times and said, by now you should have this word learned. So I couldn't do it anymore. But it's kind of one of those things to help kids that become familiar with a an unusual word. But those are the words that are more likely to show up in a chiasm. And I got rid of nothing like that. Most of the Old English really is just the ending ETH or EST and thee, thou thine and ye, you know, and thine self and that sort of stuff. And when you change them in English, they're changed the same. So you don't lose that. So attendeth becomes attends and forsaketh becomes forsakes. And so those are still going to show up in the chiasm. If that's a word that's in a chiasm. Yeah, that's it.

1:49:20 And, and again, I want to emphasize, I didn't do the modern English version to replace the Book of Mormon. I did it for people who struggle with the Old English and and for people like me. I'm familiar with the Old English. I can read it. But if I'm tired and I'm reading my scriptures, I just want to be able to have a relaxing read, you know? Right. Might, might have a deep thought. I might not. And but that's not the point, you know, I, I, I just want to get lost in it. And that was in fact, that was one of the things you mentioned earlier that was there anything that we talked about that was something we all agreed in is we want to make sure that even though there's quite a few footnotes in some of these texts, we want it formatted in such a way that the reader can stay engaged in the scriptures and ignore the footnotes if they want to and not get sidetracked with all that stuff. But just to be able to have a genuine, I'm just having scripture study and reading on my own and asking for revelation.

1:50:19 And this is what I'm using. But you can also use it for cross referencing or talking, you know, looking up something that somebody is isn't a genuine academic article. That won't be true with the study version there. There will be a lots of footnotes. You know, I'm kind of known for being obsessive with footnotes, but you know, you can have 1000 thoughts and you can't put it all on text, so you footnote everything. Right you. Put it all all there. OK? Absolutely. Did she have a question? Yeah. So going back to the DNCI want, I want to spend some time here on this a little bit. I got 2 questions.

1:51:00 First off we talk about being Joseph Smith approved. So will like section 138 be in there? Will the section where Brigham Young lines out how Zion's camp is going to March? Is that good? Yes, OK, thank. You. Because because even though those weren't penned by Joseph Smith, are those things that you could look at and say Joseph would be down with this, right? But yeah, So what? What'd you do there? 135 two that talks about the martyrdom he obviously didn't write. That right, right. And so there's a few sections in there that we know he wouldn't have the opportunity on earth to approve. But what what'd you do with those? Thank you.

1:51:45 I, I totally forgot about that. That's an important question. So they are there and this was actually something that we debated about quite a bit because a lot of Mormon fundamentalists don't accept DNC 138 description. And so we we looked at this and said, well, do we? Do we take it out and, you know, do our our own version like, you know, Denver Snuffer did, you know, but that starts making judgement calls and so forth, unless we only exclude non Joseph revelations and just do it that way. So we thought about that. But at the end of the day, the, the kind of the the vote came out.

1:52:29 There's I think there's three or five sections or something that are like that at the at the very end where basically we just said the vast majority of restorationists have these scriptures. We don't want to renumber things and cause confusion, you know, so we've, it's not like it's like, OK, it ends with Joseph. And then there's Brigham and the others. It it's not like that. It's chopped up a bit. So we'd have to restructure those numberings. So then I might say, oh, I'm reading the Joe Smith version and DNC 135 says this and you're like, wait a second, that's not my DNC 1:35. That's going to create confusion when people are researching and you know, like, for instance, again, I'm reading this book and it quotes DNC 137. I go to mine.

1:53:14 It's not there. I know what's going on. A lot of people are gonna not know what's going on, but somebody else might say why, Why is that not the same? You know, and that's 'cause confusion. So because of that, we opted to keep them and, and, and, and part of the goal with the study version and also with the non, non canonical revelations that are included there. Because of all that, part of the goal also is to be able to say here restorationists, you can see what everybody else is believing too, and what they're they're reading and and have an understanding where they're coming from.

1:53:55 And. You personally don't agree with DNC 138, you think it's Song of Solomon type thing and just cross it out and call it good. But now when somebody sites it, you know you got access to it as well. So let me jump from there to the the non canonical stuff. One of the things that I was personally passionate about years ago is, is and I, I don't know what number I had. I had like 30 revelations Joe Smith that weren't published. And I was like, why is why is the DNC not been amended to include these? You can find answers. You know, you know that some of the stuff he said don't publish that right away. Saints aren't ready for it.

1:54:37 Or maybe that's implied, but you know, he says, you know, include this, but we'll put this in the future version, but not this version. Or, you know, there's there's some vestiges of of thought that way. And I think there's a quote from George Buchanan. I think he's the person that said it, that basically said some of the stuff wasn't published because the Saints weren't ready for it. And so that's why they weren't canonized. But that doesn't mean they're not true type thing. So I've wanted to have that in my DNC for a long time because I don't care if it was canonized or not. If Joseph received it as a revelation and he was a prophet, it's true and it does. I don't care if anybody voted on it or not.

1:55:19 George Buchanan talks about that too. He says the voting process to see if something is Canon is just to see if the Saints will be obedient. Joseph had no belief that his he, he, whether or not his revelations were true, was dependent on a council of people voting on it. That's totally contrary to his prophetic role. He knew better. But the vote was to put the Saints in in a position of accountability before God. That they said, yeah, I sustained that. I agreed. That's that scripture. And if they don't, they're under condemnation. If they do, then they're expected to do it. So to me, I don't care if it's canonized or not as far as the truth of it goes, but I want everything that he revealed. So any rate, I've been compiling that and preparing that for many years.

1:56:07 And I just finished with the DNC and in doing the tedious 2 months of punctuation stuff that I was talking about earlier. And if anybody reads the entire book of Doctrine of Covenants in so many hours and says how'd it take that much longer to punctuate? Remember I was trying to understand, does this clarify this or not? That really takes a lot of time and and. Sometimes, us laymen, we don't need to know how the sausage is made, right? Look, I enjoy a good. I enjoy a good brat. I don't need to know where it's coming from necessarily, right? Just serve me the brat with some sauerkraut. I'm good. It's true. I think a lot of people are like that, but a lot of people too are like, well, Joseph wrote it in sacred. And so it's, it's important to understand what he did and didn't do and how somebody approached fixing that. You know, and I, I, I do tend to be pretty sensitive about that at any rate.

1:57:03 So I spent decades getting all this stuff ready and I'm finally ready to publish it. And I'm like, yes, because OK, so I'm publishing the DNC Lectures on Faith is included publishing lectures on faith with DNC 1 to 138. It's published, it's done. Now I'm going to do the version that adds the non canonized version. And what happens that dude? Comes out with. It all over Facebook and I'm like I don't know who these guys are but I don't want to punch him in the face not really but you know what I mean I. Know I know what you mean. What? No, I've been preparing this for months. Not like they did something, you know? And as it turned out, it's a very different product than what I was trying to produce.

1:57:46 So it's all awesome and I'm super glad. I'm super glad they did it anyways. I, they'll hit an audience. I don't, I don't hit it. So it, it, I'm being facetious and teasing in all those ways, but it's still kind of a big slap in the face. You're like, you know, but that's it. They include, I could get these numbers a little bit off. They're going to be pretty darn close. They include I think 38 major revelations of Joseph Smith and then 4 honorable mentions slash. This might be a revelation of Joseph. So they get 42 total, I think is what they ended up with. I found 65 and then I found 22 more that were hearsay accounts. I included all of them.

1:58:27 So that's 87 as opposed to 42. Now, they did the typical standard mainstream Mormon thing. These are the ones in the Joseph Smith papers. These are the ones that we see in his own handwriting or that somebody received. And we we've got the record of him giving it to him. And that's all well and good. That's great. That's super important stuff. But it doesn't include somebody who says, I was there when Joseph gave this revelation. And this is basically what it said, you know, and, and those those hearsay revelations, those 22 extras that I had, we don't have the original revelation written. We have somebody saying Joseph received this revelation. I was there when he did it.

1:59:13 So those are not as reliable. But I think there's a fundamental problem religiously Speaking of not including it for people to look at. So let me just give you an example. Well of course the only one I can think of is controversial. Give me a non controversial Drew figured out. Dude, you forget where you are. Do the controversial 1. Right, right, right. OK, OK, Zebedee Coltrane says. I was having an argument with, I think it was JP Green. I don't remember. I tend to not care about this topic of discussion all that much anyway. He's arguing with this other elder and they're arguing about whether or not there's a ban on the priesthood against the blacks or not.

2:00:04 So I'm, I'm pretty positive in Zebedee culture because he's controversial for this very topic. But he said we came to to Brother Joseph Intruder's word. This other elder brought up the subject and said Zebedee says this and I say this and they're entitled to the priesthood and Zebedee says they're not. And who's right and who's wrong? And Zebedee culture reports. Joseph bowed his head. Like he, he did that all the time. He just kind of bow his head to receive revelation and he'd look up and give the revelation and he said he bowed his head and he looked up and said, Brother Coltrane is right. They have no entitlement to the priesthood. OK. So lots of reasons that's controversial. I don't want to get in any of them, frankly. And, and I've got one friend who'd probably be mad at me just for including it in the book.

2:00:55 But nonetheless, we have somebody reporting. Joseph received this revelation. This is what he said. So now let's assume, and just for the point of argument for all the listeners here, let's assume that's true. OK, It's hearsay. So I reject it because we don't have the original writing. Now, if that's truth and I just rejected it, what do we know about that? Well, I'm a 12 tells me that that means adversary can take more truth than light knowledge away from me. And I'm damned for not believing the truth. That's a bad thing. Now, let's assume it's false. OK, so Zebedee Coltrane made it up.

2:01:37 He's just a lying stinker, and he's a bad guy, and he made it up because he's racist. Right? Now, if I reject it because it's hearsay, that's good. But in and if I reject it because it's not true, that's at least better because I'm exercising the sermon, I'm praying about it and finding out. But I at least think people deserve to know that Somebody said Joseph said this was a revelation. Now at least I can educatedly look at it, read it and say, Father, is this true? And if it's not, then I can cross it out in my version. And if it is, I can know now have something that I didn't have before, like knowledge I didn't have before. I think it's just as damning to reject truth for whatever reason as it is to accept false things.

2:02:38 They both have eternal consequences if we're talking about moral things and, you know, gossip. And so I include all of them and and and I've got a separate section. OK, that's that's where I was going. I with those. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, I don't know. We, we, we debated a little bit about this, had some had some discussion, but basically what I've done is I've said Joseph Smith #1, Joseph Smith #2, Joseph Smith #3 and ironically the number one is 1. That's debated if Joseph or Oliver Cattery received the original revelation, but I footnote that so but if we have a revelation that's written and we believe it's Joseph's, it just says just Smith 1 to 65.

2:03:22 And so they're there. We've got some source church history or you know, it's quoted. Oh, it's a church history or it's somewhere where we have sorry, I was just actually getting a text from one of the guys that is is me and I thought, oh, shoot, he said Drew, shut up, man. But actually it's totally different topic. Any rate point is so oh, sorry. No, you're good. So it's one through 65 and those are the ones that we're pretty darn sure that he received and wrote and, and you know, we have the, the revelation and so forth. I say that a little bit tongue in cheek because I've got looser standards that way than Smoot and Pasantino and I, I respect what they're doing and why and all that sort of stuff. But I also think if there's a little bit of doubt, fine, Just tell the readers we're not totally positive. You know, somebody said Joseph revealed this to them and they wrote it down, but they could be lying or we don't know for sure, but it we've got the written revelation and this is what they said.

2:04:40 So those things one or number Joseph Smith, one is 65. I've got another 100 revelations of Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wolfram Woodruff, so on. Those will be in future volumes that we'll be doing. That won't be Joseph Smith version, but it will be, you know, I don't know, Restoration version or something. But anyway, those are all separated somewhere else. But then if we have something like I mentioned earlier where somebody says, I asked Joseph about this, he said he received a revelation of this is what it was. That's, you know, that's in the, the hearsay section. And those are numbered, but they, they don't have a big title.

2:05:20 It says Joseph Smith number one. It's just like on the page 123-4567, you know, 22. I see. So you did break it down that would. Yeah. No matter look, no matter what the topic was right because we do have, and This is why Mormon history, it can be so messy, right? Because Joseph didn't just speak to groups at large. He spoke to individuals as well in prophetic terms, right on, on prophetic terms. And so it, it's always hard to sort that stuff out, right, because you don't have multiple guys saying, I heard him say this, right? It's one dude. No matter what the topic is.

2:06:02 There's been stuff I've encountered that I really want to hang my hat on that I just really can't, right? Because it's one dude, one time, it never comes up again. And then I'm like, well, I don't know what to do with this, right? I really want to believe it, but I can't, I can't put 100% confidence in there. So breaking it out into, into different sections, right? Like you were saying, like the hearsay section or however you put it, I think it's absolutely worthwhile. I think that's a good thing. As much as we can have on him, I think is good, even when it may be conflicts with our our view. And then you leave it up to the reader to sort through that.

2:06:45 And. And and allow them to come to their own conclusions. So let me ask you this, with with the DNC, the the JSV version, are you going to include like the four unpublished revelations that maybe weren't received by Joseph, right? Right, so good. That's that's back to where I was saying earlier, make sure I cover the different sections. So I've got one version that's just DNC, which means lectures on faith plus one to 138. That's it. That's all that's what it is. I've got another version that's lectures on faith, DNC 1 to 38 and 87 on published revelations.

2:07:26 Joseph, all those are Joseph Smith version. And you know, we discussed about, you know, 134 or whatever it is through 138 to have some non Joseph text in there. But other than that, everything's Joseph, everything. And you know, when we produce the the triple, which I'm hoping, how about in a couple months? I'm not you're going to do the same thing that we just did with this with the Pearl grape price. When when the triple's done, that will that will be a JSV. It will not include the four hidden revelations and the 100 revelations of the other brethren that are non canonized. That will be a, a different version, probably a study version that I'll, we, we keep saying next year. But I, I don't know if I could pull it off that fast. If it's just the DNC.

2:08:17 Maybe if, if I, if I had more support and more funding, I could get that done in five months. But without, you know, without that happening, somebody that's full time paying my bills. I've got to sell stuff. I've got to I've got to work on marketing and media and they got to do all those other things. So there's just no way to pull that off as so long as I have to make other money, right, I get it. So so we keep saying next year, but you know, maybe it's two or three years. I don't I don't know. We'll we'll see what happens, but in the in the meantime, that's what the version is right now. The future. Yes, I want definitely want AD and C that has all of them.

2:08:57 And then that becomes question. Well, where do you? Stop right? And I, I, I think I, I personally stopped Joseph F Smith and I don't know besides the anyway, I, I don't know of any that are unknown of his. I don't know of any non canonized versions of his. But you know, if we go later than that, when you got the different versions of the Restorationists, Jeez, you've got the entire second book of commandments. You've got Fred Collier's got like 1300 pages of revelations or something. I don't, I don't know exactly, but he's got a lot, you know, those are volumes all by themselves. And then, you know, you've, you've talked to guys like Jeff Foley that, that know all the, all the guys translating different records saying that they're the one mighty and strong or that they're, they've got the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon or whatever, all these other revelations. Those are mini volumes of that.

2:09:55 And it doesn't end. So I I see it ending somewhere around there. Maybe Lorenzo Snow or something. I, I haven't looked in that carefully, but that would be kind of the end of, you know, the where most fundamentalist, except those the 1st 5 or 6 seven brethren, you know, and and I know that's not true for everybody. A lot of people are like it's Joseph and nobody. They're fine. Get you just Smith version. You're happy. Some are like after Brigham it's over or after Wolf of which if it's over, but I think it's still important, you know, is is me talking to somebody in AUB or is you talking to somebody in FLDS or Centennial Park or somebody talking to Kingston's wherever they're different groups end their acceptance of these non canonical revelations.

2:10:44 We still have a lot of, as it were, friends or or associates in the fundamentalist community who believe a lot like 98% of the same things. Right. Also believe in this revelation by Lorenzo Snow. You might not accept right? Or like the 1880 revelation is responsible for the split between Centennial Park and FLDS. So once get accepted, one's not. But it's really helpful to know it's out there and why it's important and how that changed our histories all together. I. Think that's really, really helpful. So that will be a newer volume again, maybe a couple 2-3 years. I don't, I don't know exactly.

2:11:29 I suppose with, without annotating it, I could just do all those non canonized revelations of, of the early prophets or something all by itself. I I just hadn't thought about that till this moment. OK. No, that's good stuff. All right. I got a couple other questions I want to ask to wrap up, but I want to make sure that there's nothing that we glossed over as we've been talking here that you really want to put forward. OK, I don't have anything coming to mind other than this is it's kind of unrelated. I guess it's a little bit unrelated. I've, I've, so I've got a, I've got my own podcast newsletter and I, I talked to people about things like this.

2:12:14 And I'm, I'm my DNC annotated is, is founded on this JSV. That's, that's what I wanted to do in the 1st place. And so now that I've done all the horrible, tedious grunt work of this, now I can do all the fun stuff. So I'm back to doing my annotated stuff as soon as possible. I'm also going to be working on the Pearl, a great price. I've got to balance that out a little bit, which again is a is a partially money issue and partially I've got promises that I'm going to get this done. I want people to feel assured that I'm still working on it and, and I will get their volumes out that I promised. But I right, right now I'm looking at what do I publish next, 132848893 Those are the, the four big ones that kind of get brought up the most when I'm like, what should I do next?

2:13:08 Right. I, I did the entire, just for context, I did the entire DNC 42 on a dinner conversation where one of the guys asked me about it and wanted to know the answer and I didn't have the answer and I didn't know what to do next. So I did DNC 42 for him. Got you. So when it took me like a couple months, so so if any of the readers are interested or or say may I get the DNC 132 done or no, you got to do both of them coming to the priest at 84, get that done or 93 or whatever. I don't know if you got comments on on your stuff, maybe you don't, but you guys text me on face direct message me on Facebook or something and say, Drew, get this done. This is important.

2:13:49 Here's why I'm really responsive to that kind of stuff. I know I've been approached by a few different people saying jump in on this, the polygamy denier debate and, you know, do a talk or do a paper, you know, that sort of stuff. And I haven't decided to jump on that particular bandwagon yet. I think it's real important that I really burn out on that topic. So I, I don't know that I could be a good voice as, as other people could be on that. I feel like I'd be kind of kind of dismissive of those, those arguments, you know, Oh, that doesn't count because this, this, this. I'm like, that's not how history works, sweetheart.

2:14:31 Right, no good, sweetheart. Did you have somebody in mind in particular? Drew. Come on, Drew. Come on, Drew in mind. Come on. Drew, do you have in mind? That's kind of like you had someone in mind. So, so I, I, just, I, I, I, I haven't jumped on that bandwagon, but I am really responsive. If somebody says, you know, we'd really like to see this volume. I, I, I'm right here thinking, OK, I'm going to, I'm going to hit that first. And I'm almost to the point where I'm ready to jump on that. And so if anybody has some input or they're like, you know, maybe not aware of this movement, but we, we got to get this DNC 132 done or something, let me know.

2:15:12 And I'm, I'm open to be responsive about that. Also. I one, one thing that I do want to point out is I would expect possibly in the summer, I would expect that we'll have a triple combination JSV ready for readers, podcasters, whatever listeners that will be published through Pioneer Press, which is Kevin Krautz publishing company. He's been looking for the best deal for many months. If I like text is right. He just got approval for something decided on somebody and that that would be a really nice goal. Gilded pages with the nice looking like a normal set of scriptures, but hopefully one that you can trust and not wonder who changed what, how much who changed this. You know, that's a really common problem with fundamentalists. They're like, well, I kind of believe it, but I'm, I'm always worried about something and that's what we've tried to get rid of.

2:16:18 Any rate, those should be available, I'm hoping by the end of summer. And, but Kevin Kraut's the one you want to keep your eye on. And I don't know if he's got a website that he keeps track of his publications or not. I should probably find out and put one up for him if he doesn't. But regardless, if you're looking for them, he's the man to look for. I will also be talking about it and, you know, probably blogging about it and likely talk about the Perl great price with with you on a future podcast or something. That's, that's where to look for now for, for, for those things. And if anybody has suggestions on reconsider your format or reconsider this or what about, you know, adding this or whatever, I'm open to all the critique.

2:17:03 Our our purpose really is to to have a version all restorationists can trust, all restorationists can feel good about and and we can use to kind of unify us better and and understand each other better with with a set that we can truly hold on to. Perfect. And yeah, anyone can message me and I'll get the message to Drew. Unless it's hate mail. I'm I'll filter that for Drew. I'm used to the hate. Mail. Yeah, no, I'm used to that. I. Get plenty of it too. But well, I I shouldn't say that I actually don't for my religious stuff. Not not hardly at all anymore. But. I I was going to say someday I'm going to publish a book and it's going to be called people have the darndest things to say about Dave, and it's just going to be the most witty hate mail I get right, because I like that right. So all I'm going to say is for those who who like to drop those, you got to step that game up, right? If you want an entry in that book someday, right, step your game up.

2:18:01 You can't be, you can't become. And halfway you're going to insult me. I expect you to be witty and funny. Why you do it? Right. Read some Shakespeare first. Right, absolutely. You know, I expect some highbrow kind of insults coming my way. I don't. To finish up, I got these two questions. OK. What was your biggest take away as you were doing this project? I mean, what was the thing that that you were most either surprised or something that really stuck with you as you were you were going through this process that was there something that kind of an overarching theme as you were doing this as you that you took away from this experience of, of doing this? Yeah, thank you.

2:18:50 In fact, I'm considering a whole book on the topic. So let's let's take your other question first. What is it you hope people that by these scriptures get out of this? Oh, that's, that's a really good question. You know, I, I, I, I, I gave APDF copy to, to one of the guys and he was reading through it and he found that DNC 121 thing that I talked about earlier where it says garnish your thoughts and ceasingly it doesn't say like virtue garnish your thoughts. Those are the, those are the types of, of, of changes that that may or may not be super significant, but we all know the churches made thousands of them and the mainstream LDS church, that's where most everybody's using their scriptures.

2:19:39 And I don't have a beef with their scriptures per SE. I'm not bad mouthing it, it, they needed to change stuff. I mean, if I, if I was in charge of a church and I had a disaster mess like the grammar that's in the Book of Mormon Doctrine Covenants, I'd be talking to somebody about fixing it too. And so I, I don't think that's bad in any way. Whether or not we agree on what they changed, how they changed it is maybe different issue. But we, we, you know, I can, I respect the fact that they did change it and I respect why. But that said, a lot of people really struggle with some of their changes. And I think thousands of people, thousands of restorationists, wonder what they changed.

2:20:29 A lot of people apostatize when they find what was changed. Fundamentalists aren't going to do that. They're going to say, see, told you so, right. But we don't have anything. And that's bothered me for decades. Like, OK, so I'm fundamentalist now, and I believe what the early brethren taught. So where's the Scripture? Oh, we just use the church's version. Well, you guys know they're like thousands and thousands of changes they've made, right? Yeah. But it's not worth our tithing money to to do our own version. Like, what's wrong with these people? I I just could not fathom that.

2:21:10 I'm like, what, you're supporting all these other tidbit projects? I mean, a group ought to be able to throw 50,000 at somebody and say, take 3/4 of a year and do this, you know, or a committee or something. Here's 100,000, get it done. This is the most important thing we could have in our libraries and maybe in all of our spiritual knowledge and and so forth. And we don't even have the interest to create a volume that is as true to the original as possible. I just, I couldn't fathom that. And I was like, what is wrong with us? Where are our priorities? It, it really disgusted me to be honest.

2:21:51 And I just, I just couldn't fathom that. So what I hope people get from this is, is finally here. This is what we needed and should have had 100 years ago when there's first split and that the the fundamentals were first migrating away from the church because they're rejecting plural marriage because of whatever. And, you know, the split happens. We need our own version, our own set that doesn't have the 1890 manifesto in it, but that does have, you know, all these non canonized versions or revelations Joseph in it, Like, why aren't these added? And you know, I just want people to feel like I finally have what I want.

2:22:36 This is this is scripture version I wanted. And to be honest, I'm annoyed that there are a lot of grammatical errors in it, you know, but Joseph left him there. And so I'll just, I'll just skim over those, but I'm glad to have something that I can trust and not wonder about that, which is the same reason I'm doing the TPGS or complete teachings of Joseph Smith with the original sources and annotated what they changed. So you can read what he really taught and not what the early brethren interpreted that he taught or whatever. Same, same idea. I just want everybody to be able to have a version they can trust and say, Oh, well, here's this error and go look at a 1840 lithographic copy that will be, I'm happy to give out for free.

2:23:26 You can get them online and you can compare it and say, oh, Drew, this is different. What happened here, you know, and I could say, oh, shoot, let me look that up. Let me see. 01835 and 37 had this, 40 didn't. I forgot to footnote that it'll be in the next edition. You know, I'm happy to fix stuff like that. So that's what I want people to have is, is, is that opportunity to to have one that they know. All of this was approved by Joseph and here are the changes that he made. And now I can move from there. I can compare to the other versions. And when my friend in the church quotes the scripture, I can look at mine and see if I trust it or not. It's a same or if they've got a valid pointer if something dramatically got changed there.

2:24:11 Like the common DNC 89 says I'm supposed to be a vegetarian. Yeah, that's the biggest heresy of them all. It really is. Anybody who believes you can't eat bacon is just not a good person. Just kidding. I'm just kidding. For those who don't know me, I'm just teasing. OK, So what did I get out of this? That actually I've, I've, I'm planning a book and I, I haven't gotten through it. I've kind of outlined some of it. But what really what this did to me was and, and I, I mean it like that, what this did to me, how this affected me is, is it really pounded into me the process of revelation. You know, this, this the I, I, I mentioned this in the introduction and stuff, you know, there, there Jeremiah in, in, in Jeremiah 17 or something.

2:25:08 I don't know. It's in the, it's in the book. Go find it. He he dictates a revelation that was lost because it was burned. Joseph Smith says I can give you 100 times what's in DNC 76 anytime. Hiram Smith said what if, what if? Emma Burns, DNC 132 says don't worry, I can, I can reproduce that whole section of duction of covenants anytime I want. And and Brigham Young says, I don't think there's ever been a perfect revelation given because God gives revelations to us according to our light, knowledge, our ability and our language, and that changes all the time. Right. So that's why it says if Joseph retranslates the Book of Mormon 100 times, it's always different or 50 times or 500 times, whatever he says it's different same place 50 times every time. It doesn't bother him.

2:26:00 And, and I, I've thought a lot about that in terms of the, the book of Abraham in the use of the Urim and Thummim in the seer stone. You know, a lot of these things I've received and I, I think most listeners can, can, can relate to this and but they just haven't thought about applying it to the prophet. Maybe I've received revelations where I clearly understood part of it, and some of it I'm thinking I wasn't certain about this part. We see that in with Nephi in the Tree of Life where he says the waters were filthy, but father was so busy looking at other things, he didn't notice the filthiness of the water.

2:26:41 But I noticed and that was a big deal. When he's teaching his brothers, he tells him that. So we see a prophet's given a vision, a revelation, and he sees pieces and he misses other pieces. He doesn't comprehend something until later it, it maybe comes to you. And you know, and I've, I've mentioned this to a number of people and one of my favorite people in the world, I mentioned it to him and he's like, Yup, I immediately resonated with him. I said, you know, have you ever given a blessing and you kind of stumble over some words at one point and you give the blessing to somebody, They're talking to you later. They're like, well, what, what, what about this? And you're like, OK, so glad you mentioned that because I had this impression.

2:27:25 I didn't know how to say it and I don't know if I can say it right now either, but this is and you start explaining it and and then you clarify that part of the revelation. So it makes more sense. You might have thought in in that I've had this experience too, where you give a blessing. You think, oh, that was clear as day, the council, but then they misunderstood it, you know, and and then you look, it's the a written revelation. And you're like, oh, well, we both read this differently. And, you know, certainly when Joseph received it, he had a certain understanding and you're right. Now I'm writing or vice versa. He knew what the answer was, but we don't because it's written and he's there to clarify it. And he used a bad grammar or something, you know, because he used to take grammar and that's just who he was. It was just his background.

2:28:16 It's not good or bad. It's just who he was and so in this in this process, you know, is is I'm looking and seeing the changes that Joseph himself made and then undid and then redid sometimes and I haven't looked at this one for a long time. I'll I'll know better next time we we talk because this is in the in the Pearl great price. But you know, he did he he translated or whatever he's writing down. He says in Enoch wept when he's talking to God and then he crosses out and the next version says that God wept and then it crosses out. They both cry and God says tells Enoch quit crying. You know, right.

2:28:59 So wow, that back and forth, you know, he, he, he wrote it down a few different times. Those are contrary accounts of what happened, but maybe not. Maybe just was remembering different details at different times and he finally got it resolved at the end. And that happens too. I mentioned this in a previous podcast where grandpa tells a story and we're like, oh, that was a great story. Grandpa, what happened to this guy after? You know, and he's like, oh, I forgot to mention that. Then he tells that part of the detail that wasn't there before. And some newer historians, quote UN quote, pseudo historians are taking those later accounts and think, oh, you embellish the story, answer the question. And I see revelation a lot the same where Joseph is receiving something, he's explaining it later, he explains it somewhere else better.

2:29:55 DNC 19 seven talks about some scriptures being more expressed or clear than other scriptures. And, and so, you know, I've seen the changes, hundreds and thousands of these I've reviewed where he, he changes a word or two and it's like, oh, he's just trying to make this easier to read. He strikes out the DS and the thines and that sort of stuff and puts you and yours and it reads smoother and it makes a difficult passage smooth. But he doesn't do it everywhere because he doesn't have time I think is what it boils down to. But I, I see all these changes and then other places, you know, he's changing the elders to the high council.

2:30:36 You can see what he's doing. You know, you can look at it and say he's trying to say, OK, the church has changed. Now this revelation is, is good in principle, theory, concept, but in details for administrative stuff, it needs fixed. So fix it. So then when I read Joseph talking to William W Phelps and saying, hey, edit it, correct it, but don't change the sense of it. Now I, I've come to a much deeper appreciation of that. One of the things I, I teach my kids is, is I say, look, when you're first going through and you're in Sunday school, you got a teacher and they're teaching you stuff. They're telling you stories, Learn Noah's ark, learn David and Goliath, learn Jesus and the woman at the well, right. But later you don't care about the story. You care about the message, the, the moral of the story. That's what matters with gospel stuff. And if I'm reading that in the text that that helps me understand it better.

2:31:42 And you know, you can read a lot of revelation, for instance, on you making your calling election made sure. And in DNC 76 it talks about they will have all things given to them. The politics version says they have all of those things given to them. Which is it? Is it that they've received it or it's future? You know, we can look at those things very academically and say Joseph made a mistake or Joseph made an error or this, these types of things. But I, I look at them very, very differently. I can't read that way. I, I can't think in, in this kind of detached critical mode anymore because I don't care about those things. I care about what the truth is and what the revelation was that he taught and what the message is behind it and how I should change my life to live according to that. That's what I care about.

2:32:34 I don't care if there were 7 animals or two of each or seven of each, you know, if there's symbolic value behind that, I can, I can consider that, ponder it. But I don't need to remember that tomorrow when when I've got one of my kids is really upset because a bully is picking on them at school. Doesn't matter, you know? But if I understand the purpose behind it and the, the intent and the sense of it, as Joseph says, that's what really, really matters. And as I was looking in, in reviewing these thousands and thousands and thousands of changes in, in, in considering the commas in the semicolons and all this pedantic stuff that most people are never going to care about it, It really kind of brought home to me the, the whole purpose is what is the meaning of this passage?

2:33:21 And I have to think about that super, super carefully to make sure I don't change it. But the ultimate purpose is to learn the truth behind it. And is, is I was reading that I saw more and more of that. The weakness of Joseph in his language to anybody that studied it super carefully is undeniable. You know, I, I, I, he's one of my biggest heroes and, and favorite people in the history of mankind. But he, he didn't know how to write properly. That wasn't his upbringing. It wasn't what he was there for. I wasn't his gift and it didn't matter. Not even you're familiar with his, all of his guffaws and his thick language.

2:34:03 You know, his weakness. But that doesn't make the revelation not true. That whole concept is saying, you know, look at the intention of what's being said and not all the little picky things of what's being said. That reminds me of one time I was at a meeting in AUB and a number of the people there say things in a in a way that's awkward to an outsider. And when I was first there, I was like, what? But what did they just say? And I turned to a friend. I said, you know, he, he just said this thing that's so doctrinally inaccurate, like what's he thinking? And and they would say, Oh, no, brother, so, and so he's, I know, I know him really well.

2:34:50 What he's trying to say is this. And they'll explain what he was trying to say. And I'm like, oh, I could kind of see that as not what he said really. But I could see I might have intended to say that. You know, I'll take your word for it because you know him really well and I don't. He's a stranger, right? Right. But but their their approach to that listening to a discourse was so different than me. I'm trying to get the meat of the gospel out of it. And they're trying to say what's what's his, what's he really trying to get at? What's the his intention rather than the semantic details? You know, the pedantic little pieces that you can bicker about. Right. And and so I think for me, reading the revelations, reading the Book of Mormon, reading the Bible, I I spent many months studying all the changes in the Bible, not just Joseph's changes, but the the early Christian Church changes. All of all of that is just really pointed to me that God loves thousands of errors in his word to go out among the children men.

2:35:54 And I really think he doesn't care what he's saying is look, you're going to find that contradiction. Jeremiah said the stupidest. What was he thinking? I taught him better. You know. They said this thing that's just off and that's going to make people struggle with what Christ says, you know, thousands of years later when they've got both records and it's going to be a stumbling block for some of them. And he says, I don't care that they're supposed to rely on me. Ask me to clarify, talk to me about it, you know, and and quit use it as a as an opportunity, as springboard to learn more rather than to say, Oh, well, maybe there's this the the documentary hypothesis of somebody revising the scriptures with malintent, which is a a theory about Deuteronomy.

2:36:48 Yeah, I I really think it's, it's just very different than that. He's he's like I I really don't care about a lot of these details. I want errors there so they can see humanity behind the prophet it but but to look to me to find the understanding. And I've I've quoted it before. There's a quote in the gospel of Kylate I truly love. And you know, it's it's because it's rare that I like to emphasize it, not because it's like the foundation of my gospel or something. But in this gospel of Kylate, Christ says do not say something is right or wrong, only right or wrong according to the law.

2:37:29 And his whole point is saying don't, don't judge people on morality stuff only if it's right or wrong according to the law, because they may be operating on a higher law than you and you just don't know. God hasn't given you all the light knowledge. There's more yet to receive. So before you go judging other people for what they're doing, you know, make sure for me first that you're on the higher plane than they are because a lot of times we're not. And just as a simple example of this, you know, if you ask any fundamentalist, what's the higher law, plural marriage or monogamy, they're going to say plural marriage.

2:38:13 You talk to anybody in the mainstream church and they're probably going to say monogamy. And they're both judging each other for being wicked and apostate, apostate or something, You know, and instead of just saying, well, the prophet told me this or the prophet told me that, or my prophet says, your prophet says, you know, we should just be saying, OK, according to the law, you know, polygamy is against the law. It's a misdemeanor. But that's, that's where we stop saying stuff at some level and, and look and say, OK, let me take this to the Lord now and find out who's right about this issue and not to spend my life judging other people.

2:38:53 And, and you know what the, he blessed the sacrament and he, he, he blessed it and then he broke it. But Christ clearly says to break it first and third, Nephi, you know, that's an important issue if I want to live my life properly, but I'm not going to waste anytime judging anybody about that because the intention behind it is contrary to the judgement. And so I, I, I've learned so much about the whole process of revelation at at one point. This is something new. I found out Joseph Smith used the seer stone to receive revelations in the doctrine cabinets. We know that he used it to translate the Book of Mormon. We know that. But when he stopped using it and he just started receiving revelation like just a second brother, we pray, OK, here's revelation. When he started doing that, it was a stumbling block for the Saints.

2:39:45 So how can you be a seer unless you have a seer stone? Interesting. But he's responded and somebody asked him. He said I don't need it anymore. I grew in the principle of a Sorry, I grew in the principle of revelation to the degree I don't need that crutch. Interesting. And so there are these different levels of, of revelation. And I might receive a revelation and try and convey it to you and say it in such a way that it's a stumbling block and you reject it, but it's true. And on the other hand, I might do the same thing to somebody else. They receive a revelation. I'm like, and then and I'm not ready for the second coming. You know, the we, we're so caught up in, in, in these different things, but the process of revelation we're not so familiar with. So we get deceived and we make mistakes. And you know, Joseph talked quite a lot about that because of the mistakes that happened in Kirtland with people getting deceived.

2:40:42 At the end of the day, there's a, a growth in revelation and what you learn and how it works that I think if people understood better, we'd have lost deception, less, less confusion. And at any rate, so on a personal basis, what did I learn? That's what I learned a lot about. I, I, I just completely feel like I'm, I'm much more deeply understand this process of revelation from a prophet's perspective, from God giving information to his prophet's perspective and, and appreciating that more.

2:41:24 I think in the past I've been maybe more frustrated that I, I want the perfect revelation. I want the perfect understanding. I want all of it one spot, right? That's maybe part of my motivation between the, the complete teachings of the Joseph Smith as it came from his mouth and not as it was changed. I want to know from the source, you know, even that's not it's not good enough sometimes. Sometimes you just got to get it straight from God and, and, and learning to understand that process is, is a lifelong thing. Joseph said, I think it's ATP just 149 to 151 somewhere around there where it might be 180. Dang, I really should learn that better.

2:42:05 But he says, you know, when you are thinking about something, you're praying about it, and later you notice ideas coming to your mind and they're growing and and they started pressing things upon you as you notice that you're recognizing that's revelation and then you slowly grow in that principle. People tend to think I received a revelation and hear the words on the page of what the. Revelation was. And and that's, that's the revelation. And I I think that's missing the boat. Those are the words that you received. Yeah, but what was what was the intention behind those words? What's what's the meaning behind it?

2:42:48 I can write down, you know, I have other sheep I have which are not of this fold. This is revelation Jesus gave us. He said other sheep I have. And I wrote it down and put it in my book. I didn't have the sense to ask him who they were. You know, that was his whole intention. He said. Father told me not to tell unless they asked. So I told them other sheep I have. You gonna ask? And they didn't ask, so I didn't tell them. And he's telling this to the Nephites and he just got done telling him he was going to leave to go visit his other sheep still. Did they ask? No. So that they got the words right, but they didn't get the meaning. He's like, I'll tell you who it is. Who wants to know? Nobody. Dang, my other apostles didn't want to know either.

2:43:31 So frustrating. I want to share with you so much more, but you're just not getting the real just of what this is about. And at any rate, so I, I think that, you know, we, we get this idea that the revelation is the words on the page or the, you know, the scriptures, the words on the page and what, how we're supposed to interpret is important. But a lot of times that's kind of missing a lot of the, the message. It's, it's other little details. And, and I'll say this is, is an example, I presume listeners, readers have had similar experiences. And and I'm not touting any specific thing to me, but just as an example, if you ever received a really short revelation, but the significance of those two sentences or, or even I've had one word was so massive and extensive and expansive.

2:44:31 I pondered for days about those two sentences or the one word or the, the, the massive expansive ideas those brought to my mind and that I understood from those words. You know, the spirit speaks to us not just in words, but in emotions and feelings and, and, you know, expanding our mind and so forth and suggesting concepts and ideas and visualizations. Even, you know, we've got very apocalyptic dreams by some of the Old Testament men that are very visual. And all of these things can be shown to us and mean way more than we can express. You know, I at any rate, I think most people can relate to that. And if not, hopefully they'll have the experience. I, I think most good Saints have had the experiences like that and you know, the spouses.

2:45:24 Oh, so you know, you said you received a revelation, what God tell you and he says, well, you know, we're supposed to move to Missouri. That's what the word was. Go to Missouri or something. But then you say, but I understood from that, I had this understanding that our family specifically has a calling there and that we're supposed to meet some people there and get involved in teaching the youth or something. We could, but those weren't the words. That was just understanding that you had why you're supposed to go and and and see when Joseph's receiving a vision like DNC 76, it's so vast and expansive.

2:46:04 How many things were like that? So when I read the rewrite, the poetic rewrite, I, I see Joseph saying, oh, here's a little detail I didn't mention the first time. Here's a little something extra too. And let me throw this in and see if it makes you ponder a little bit, because there's so much more there that he wanted to share and, and didn't feel the Saints were ready for. So excuse me. I, I don't know. I that wasn't the most eloquent series. No, that was great. That happened. No, that was, that was good. I think you know as you've talked. About it. And it's something that I believed for a long time based off of evidence I saw. We're awfully unfair to Joseph Smith in our assumption sometimes.

2:46:49 Yeah, right. Because, you know, as I was a young Mormon just coming into the LDS church, I had this idea that God would impart A revelation to Joseph, and Joseph understood everything about. That revelation? That he just believed, right? And we do not give Joseph Smith the grace to grow as we would require for ourselves, right? We would say, you know, and so when things look like they're contradictions, well, they're not contradictions. It's just he's getting further revelation on the revelation he received previously and that is absolutely part of this revelatory process. It's not often I think you can look in the Restoration. And not see.

2:47:43 Revelation grow upon revelation. And it was true for Joseph. It's true for us. Cut the guy some slack. Yeah, You know, firstly, he used the wrong word, right? Salvation. But he meant exultation, right? Absolutely. So, Drew, dude, you've been a busy man. Good stuff. I can't wait to see this thing. So yeah, I I hope I hope it's it's really well received. One of the guys in in the in. The the, the, the funders, as it were, and he might not care if they share his name. I don't know. I just, I, I tend to be sure people's privacy sometimes, but regardless, you know, he got a copy and he's like, man, I, I don't want to use anything else anymore.

2:48:32 It's just so nice seeing everything there that Joseph did and what his changes were. And let me just look at the raw text itself and ponder from there. And, and kind of it didn't realize how many assumptions he was making, reading different versions and so forth, or how much it bothered him to not know, you know, right. So I'm, I'm hoping it's, it's impactful for the like that for a lot of people. I, I, it's, it's been almost a year of poverty for me doing this project and, and still not charging a lot, like I said on the paperback. So if people are poor, they can get it, They're cheap as as cheap as we can get it. So it's, it's not been a big money, money thing that frankly I kind of needed at the time, but we got supported through the process.

2:49:24 But the, the, the ultimate goal, however, is I, I'm just, I, I would love to see, you know, 50,000 copies burn up and, and, and know that it's, it's being used and received and valued and, and 'cause I, I really do think, you know, even even if you use another set of scriptures as your primary thing right now, 'cause it's got cross references and all that sort of stuff, there's so much value in absolutely the, the original fountain version of it that you can also cross reference and you can also. See what was changed. In at any rate, I I I hope it's I hope it's it's well loved.

2:50:06 That's yeah, no, I'm I'm sure it will be true. I think, I think, you know, we've needed. We've needed our own stuff for a while and as fundamentalist, we've absolutely needed that. And I do think that good things are on the horizon there. So the, the, the triple that's bounded by leather that won't be available to this summer, is that correct? Is that what I remember you saying? Yeah, that's that's our hope. And partly that's dependent on me getting off my Duff and and getting the pro grade. Price out fast and part of that's funding and printing time and that sort of thing. And I, I, we, we don't have a strong timetable, but we're really, really hoping to, to, to get that done as fast as possible. And now that the, all the punctuation stuff is behind me, I think I could put it a lot faster. Good deal.

2:50:59 And then the, the hardback and the soft back is available on Amazon now. Is that correct? Correct. Amazon gave me some grief about the The 87 Revelations paperback. Published separately. They want me to do something they didn't request for me to do on the hardback. So I've got to go make some time there. And there's there's another one that they've got some gripe about that isn't quite out, but I think that's just a digital version. But I think the hardback and paperback are, are pretty much available for everything now and, and, or will be super soon. I do know that if you want the DNC that's got everything that's good hardback, paperback.

2:51:41 You want the Book of Mormon hardback paperback that's good. You want the specialty one that doesn't have Joseph's stuff in it. That's the one I think that has a paperback problem, possibly in the in the 87 by itself, but the one that's just DNC but doesn't have the 87 revelations, I think that one's good in both of those. Sorry, that's probably too much detail. No, no, it's good. All right, folks, go to, go to Amazon or go to. 1830 Mercantile. Dot org and those are those. Are there go go grab them get let we we've needed our own stuff for a while and this is a big part of it is is our own scripture.

2:52:22 So go grab it. You, like you said, even if it's not your primary version, you're going to want something that's closer to the thought the the the fountain, right? The where where the waters aren't so muddy. So go, go get that stuff. Drew, you're I don't know how you do it, dude. I struggle to get a podcast out a week and you're just cranking out books like it's nobody's a business. So well, man, let's let's do it again soon. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Thanks for your. Time Bud talking to. You, Dave. You too, man. Bye. Bye everybody. You're listening to the Mormon Renegade podcast.