Introduction Quote #1

This is beyond disingenuous.

Notice that Jim doesn't offer his readers any more details. You know, important details like that William Clayton was Joseph Smith's trusted and authorized personal secretary and scribe as well as very close friend and confidant who was with Joseph Smith that day on May 1, 1843 when they were introduced to the Kinderhook Plates. Joseph's authorized and trusted personal secretary and scribe William Clayton was acting on behalf of Joseph Smith when he recorded Joseph's partial translation of the Kinderhook Plates in the journal that day.

William Clayton was not only with Joseph that day at the Smith's home but Clayton officiated the marriage and sealing of Joseph Smith to his seventeen-year-old polygamous wife, Lucy Walker, that day as well. Source: Mormon polygamy apologist Brian Hales' website.

James B. Allen, Assistant Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1972-1979 wrote this:

"A month before his martyrdom, the Prophet Joseph Smith remarked, “For the last three years...I have kept several good, faithful, and efficient clerks in constant employ; they have accompanied me everywhere, and carefully kept my history, and they have written down what I have done, where I have been, and what I have said.”[1] One of those clerks was twenty-nine-year-old William Clayton.

William Clayton is an obscure figure to many Latter-day Saints, as are most of Joseph Smith’s clerks and scribes. If his name is recognized at all, it is likely due to his authorship of one of Mormonism’s most beloved hymns, “Come, Come, Ye Saints,” or perhaps his remarkable pioneer journal. Yet if not for Clayton and many people like him, we would have practically no recorded history of the early church."
- William Clayton and the Records of Church History, James B. Allen, BYU Religious Studies Center - emphasis added

In the same above-mentioned article, Assistant Church Historian James B. Allen wrote (with emphasis added):

"On June 29, all the work of the Prophet’s office was turned over to Clayton, as Richards had to travel east. Then, on September 3, Joseph called him in and said, “Brother Clayton I want you to take care of the records and papers, and from this time I appoint you Temple Recorder, and when I have any revelations to write, you shall write them.” [5] The assignment must have been deeply satisfying to the twenty-eight-year old Clayton, who had been an ardent, unquestioning disciple of the Prophet since they first met and would continue to be so throughout his life. With this assignment, he [Clayton] would be in the almost constant company of Joseph Smith.

The closeness that existed between the two men was indicated by a note sent by the Prophet about a month after Clayton was appointed temple recorder. Clayton had previously asked for permission to do something (the nature of which is unknown), and on October 7—the same day Joseph temporarily left Nauvoo to escape from Missourians on their way to capture him—Joseph hurriedly wrote a curious but heartwarming response:

Brother Clayton

Dear Sir

I received your Short note I reply in Short be shure you are right and then go ahead David Crocket like and now Johnathan what shall I write more only that I am well and am your best Friend

Joseph Smith to William Clayton

or David

or his mark

——X—— [6]

Clayton undoubtedly felt honored to have their friendship compared to that of David and Jonathan. Like Jonathan of old, he would do anything for this modern David.

Funny how you didn't get all these pertinent details from Jim, huh?

No one, including the LDS Church, questioned William Clayton's competency, integrity or journal entry on this topic until after 1980 when science exposed the Kinderhook Plates as a 19th-century fraud. The Church's apologetic August 1981 Ensign article is an example of this. James B. Allen's above-mentioned post-1980 article where he attempts to separate Joseph Smith from the Kinderhook Plates fraud is also an example of this.

Prior to 1980, as demonstrated in the above timeline, Clayton's journal record of the Prophet's partial translation of the Kinderhook Plates was celebrated and paraded to the members for over a century. Clayton's journal excerpts were foundational in the LDS Church's claims and narrative in boosting Joseph's "gift" of translating ancient records by pointing to the Kinderhook Plates.

Only in 1981, after science demolished and debunked the LDS Church's Kinderhook Plates claims and narrative, did the LDS Church and its historians begin to do a complete 180 reversal and start throwing Joseph's close friend, confidant, secretary and scribe William Clayton under the bus.

Mormon Church throwing trusted scribe William Clayton under the bus

The LDS Church and B.H. Roberts treated Joseph's secretary and scribe William Clayton's journal excerpt recording Joseph's partial translation of the Kinderhook Plates as a first-person account because it was effectively a first-person account as William Clayton was personally authorized and instructed, as Joseph's direct appointed personal secretary and scribe, to record his words and revelations on his behalf as he spoke them. Indeed, Joseph Smith himself gave William Clayton this explicit duty and charge:

"...when I have any revelations to write, you shall write them."

The above CES Letter statement stands correct despite Jim's disingenuous attempts to obfuscate and mislead his readers that these weren't Joseph Smith's words and they were written by some random dude in some random journal that wasn't Joseph Smith's.

Introduction Quote #2

Welcome to Jim's Kinderhook Plates section where Jim begins with his asinine and misleading modus operandi "jErEmY dIdN't rEaD tHe sOuRcE!" attack.

Apparently in Jim Bennett's universe, rejection of certain claims presented in an apologetic Church article means a person hasn't read the apologetic article. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I read the damn article, Jim. I read my sources. I just reject the LDS Church's post-1980-oh-shit-we-got-destroyed-by-science-hurry-and-throw-William-Clayton-under-the-bus-to-protect-Joseph-from-a-damning-fraud bullshit apologetics and 180-reversal.

I find it hilarious that, after the previous box answer where Jim misleads his readers by omitting important pertinent details about William Clayton and why he matters, that Jim is now attacking me for supposedly not providing context.

Jim, I'm not in error here. The LDS Church and its apologists are by contradicting historical evidence and the inescapable reality that William Clayton, as the authorized scribe and secretary of Joseph Smith, wrote a firsthand account of Joseph's partial translation of the fake Kinderhook Plates. I simply reject the LDS Church's 180-reversal and apologetics attempting to throw trusted scribe and secretary William Clayton under the bus in a desperate attempt to distance Joseph from the damning fraud.

I've already gone over this in the previous box answer but the context that Jim isn't giving his readers here is that this 1981 LDS Ensign article came out only after science had debunked the Kinderhook Plates in 1980. This article is a propaganda / apologetic piece attempting to distance and shield Joseph Smith from the damning Kinderhook Plates fraud by throwing his trusted scribe and secretary William Clayton under the bus.

The LDS Church from the 1840s to 1980 pointed to William Clayton's journal excerpt as the first person. B.H. Roberts put it as the first person in the History of the Church. The Church paraded and celebrated the Kinderhook Plates and it was Clayton's journal excerpt that was foundational in the Church's narrative of the Kinderhook Plates being additional evidence of Joseph's "gift" of translating ancient records. Seriously, it's all there in the above Timeline. Go look at it.

1840s - 1980 LDS Church:

Joseph Smith did a partial translation of the Kinderhook Plates! Joseph said:

"The plates were submitted to the Prophet, and speaking of them in his journal, under date of May 1, 1843, he says: 'I have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the Ruler of heaven and earth.'"
- Improvement Era. Vol. VII. March 1904. No. 5.

Post-1980-Science-Debunking-Kinderhook-Plates LDS Church:

Uhh...these weren't Joseph Smith's words. It was in some dude's journal. We have no idea where Clayton got these crazy ideas from.

"Although this account appears to be the writing of Joseph Smith, it is actually an excerpt from a journal of William Clayton...Where the ideas written by William Clayton originated is unknown."

So, I'm in good company with a 140-year LDS Church track record. The CES Letter statement stands correct. Just because the Church did a "oh shit" 180-reversal and damage control apologetic / propaganda piece in August 1981, in response to science debunking it, by throwing Clayton under the bus, does not invalidate or diminish the validity, truthfulness and accuracy of Clayton's integrity, competency and journals.

Indeed, to question William Clayton, his integrity, his competency of recording the prophet's words and his writings is to cause catastrophic and irreparable destruction and damage to the Church's history; especially of its Nauvoo history as Clayton's writings are the backbone of Church history in Nauvoo.

"Joseph did not translate" falsehood

Oh, look...FAIR debunking Jim's Jim Bennett Mormonism®:

"The quote by William Clayton is indeed accurate: Joseph Smith did attempt to translate a portion of the Kinderhook Plates."

- FAIR, Joseph Smith and the Kinderhook Plates

Jim is just 100% wrong here and is grossly misleading his readers.

Even Don Bradley, the very source that Jim and FAIR point to, as the foundation of their entire Kinderhook Plates apologetics and defense, disagrees with Jim:

"He did provide a bit of translation. Despite the attempts to deny this by Stanley Kimball and others, the evidence points decidedly in that direction. William Clayton did not acquire his information about Joseph and the Kinderhook plates from the rumor mill. Clayton was Joseph's personal secretary, and a man as much in his confidence as any at the time. He dined with Joseph at the Mansion House, examined the plates while there, and traced one of them on the reverse of the page where he recorded his journal entry for the day, including this regarding the plates, 'Brother Joseph has translated a portion of them, and says they contain...'

But, apologist that I am, I have uncovered the method of translation employed by Joseph Smith--it was not claimed to be revelatory. This finding confirms a hypothesis set out by Mark Ashurst-McGee at the 1996 MHA; and Mark and I may yet publish a collaborative paper on this. I'm not going to spill the beans here; but the evidence is quite definite--Joseph did produce a putative translation, but did so through 'secular' means, and not as a prophet."

- Don Bradley comment on MormonDialogue.org, April 19, 2007

Don then goes even further later in the discussion board:

Mormons who knew of the Kinderhook plates believed them to be genuine before Stanley Kimball had the surviving plate tested and it was shown to be a 19th-century production. Indeed, one can find LDS writers, I believe including Orson Pratt and B. H. Roberts, who defended the authenticity of the plates on the grounds that Joseph Smith translated from them.

It was only when they appeared to be fraudulent that Latter-day Saints began propounding the view that Joseph Smith must not have translated from them. However, the evidence from the Nauvoo period uniformly indicates that Joseph Smith began translating the Kinderhook plates. Those writing that Joseph had begun such a translation include nobodies with very distant connections with Joseph Smith--you know, like Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor. Taylor even promised readers of the Times and Seasons, in a specially published broadside including facsimiles of the plates, that the translation would be published as soon as it was complete. As both an apostle and the publisher of the T&S broadside on the Kinderhook plates, Taylor was in a particularly privileged position to have the "inside scoop" on the plates and their reception by the prophet. If Joseph rejected the plates and had not begun translating, then his closest associates and those who should have been most in the know were badly misinformed. Not only that, but Joseph Smith was apparently content to have people believe he was translating this fake, since, despite his close involvement with the Times and Seasons, he didn't have them print any correction or retraction.

And this doesn't even take into account the evidence provided by Joseph Smith's personal secretary William Clayton. Clayton's diary reveals that he was privy to even shockingly intimate details about Joseph and Emma's 1843 troubles over plural marriage, and Clayton's biographer James B. Allen has opined that Clayton was as much in Joseph's confidence as anyone during the relevant period. Clayton not only records that Joseph had translated a portion of them, but states specifically what information he had received through the translation, reports it casually as "Brother Joseph says"--just as he reports the other things Joseph Smith told him directly, and does so on the same evening that he spends time at the Mansion House dining with Joseph, examining the plates, and tracing one of the plates onto this same journal page where he reports what "Brother Joseph said" the plates contained. In light of the intimacy of Clayton's relationship to Joseph, and of Joseph's presence with Clayton while he examined and traced the plates, shouldn't the presumption be that Clayton's journal entry that night more likely reflects firsthand information than absolutely false street rumor? If William Clayton wasn't in a position to know Joseph Smith's views on the Kinderhook plates, who was? Clayton surely had a more direct pipeline to the source than do apologists of over a century and a half later. And so did Taylor and Pratt. And we know they are wrong because...?

Ah, yes, we should also examine the testimonies that Joseph rejected the Kinderhook plates or did not translate from them. Here they are: [blank]

Pretty impressive, huh? [sarcasm]

The evidence so decidedly favors Joseph Smith having translated from the Kinderhook plates that is laughable how many have deceived themselves, or allowed others to deceive them, into believing he did not.

Recognizing the weight of the evidence for translation, my friend Mark Ashurst-McGee, who now works for the church on the Joseph Smith Papers project, developed the hypothesis that Joseph Smith attempted, not a revelatory translation, but a secular one. Mark identified evidence that Joseph Smith looked for Hebrew characters on the plates. Frankly, I doubted Mark's hypothesis. But I later independently identified the source Joseph Smith employed in performing his translation of the Kinderhook plates.

Even without this source, I find the evidence for Joseph Smith's attempt to translate the Kinderhook plates overwhelming. But I think the source nails it down with certainty, and also gets Joseph Smith off the hook of having received false revelation on the contents of fake plates.

- Don Bradley comment on MormonDialogue.org, April 19, 2007

"Joseph Smith...wrote nothing about them [Kinderhook Plates]"

Joseph didn't write anything because he didn't need to. This was precisely what he hired William Clayton to do for him. He specifically authorized and tasked his trusted and close friend, confidant, personal secretary and personal scribe William Clayton for the sole purpose of writing his words, translations and revelations on his personal behalf:

"A month before his martyrdom, the Prophet Joseph Smith remarked, “For the last three years...I have kept several good, faithful, and efficient clerks in constant employ; they have accompanied me everywhere, and carefully kept my history, and they have written down what I have done, where I have been, and what I have said.”[1] One of those clerks was twenty-nine-year-old William Clayton."

"Brother Clayton...when I have any revelations to write, you shall write them."

- William Clayton and the Records of Church History, James B. Allen, BYU Religious Studies Center

For Jim to make the claim that Joseph "wrote nothing about them" while omitting the very pertinent and key information that he had a freaking scribe hired for that very specific purpose is beyond misleading.

The fake Kinderhook Plates and Joseph's partial translation of them is damning. The Kinderhook Plates are a direct challenge to Joseph Smith's and the LDS Church's narrative that he was a translator of ancient records.

Jim's Jim Bennett Mormonism® apologetic attempts of painting the Kinderhook Plates as a nothingburger that Joseph Smith had nothing to do with is 100% misleading and false. Even FAIR and Don Bradley, that Jim uses as sources, contradict him.

The Kinderhook Plates are not the "weakest section of the entire CES Letter". The Book of Mormon geographical maps are, which I address and resolve in the Book of Mormon section. It is my position that the Kinderhook Plates fake partial translation is among the strongest sections of the CES Letter as it is among the most damning challenges - right behind the Book of Abraham - to Joseph Smith and his claims of being a translator of ancient records.

Jim hilariously throws shade on scholar Richard Bushman

This one made me laugh. Here we see amateur apologist Jim Bennett attempting to shade and debunk respected LDS scholar and historian Richard Bushman himself with a "nOt rEaLLY" followed by fictitious words and a fictitious summary that isn't even in the #27 Footnote that Jim is misleading his readers as stating.

Here's a picture of the above direct CES Letter quote from Richard Bushman in his Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling book on page 490:

And here's a picture of Bushman's related Footnote #27 in Rough Stone Rolling on page 653:

Notice that Bushman's Footnote #27 says nothing like what Jim is interpolating and claiming that it says. It simply states:

"JS, Journal, May 7, 1843, in APR, 376; Clayton, Journal, May 1, 1843. Clayton's date of May 1 conflicts with Richards's date of May 7. B.H. Roberts was still defending the plates' authenticity when he edited The History of the Church. See HC, 5;378-79. On the history of the plates, see Kimball, "Kinderhook Plates," 66-74; Ashurst-McGee, "Kinderhook Plates."

I don't know what book Jim got his #27 "footnote" from but it isn't from Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling book.

The above CES Letter quote from Richard Bushman's book stands correct. Jim is just totally and completely wrong.

Notice how Jim constructs his words. Jim starts out with "Not really" and then proceeds to talk about something entirely different and irrelevant than what the above CES Letter quote of what Richard Bushman is saying. Jim doesn't support his "not really" claim with actual evidences and sources like I do in the above Timeline demonstrating and proving Bushman's exact point: “Church historians continued to insist on the authenticity of the Kinderhook Plates until 1980 when an examination conducted by the Chicago Historical Society, possessor of one plate, proved it was a nineteenth-century creation.”

Jim's third and last sentence is misleading. Just look at the above Timeline. Seriously, go through it and you'll see how laughable and incorrect Jim's Jim Bennett Mormonism® opinion is. Finally, no one is arguing or claiming or talking here about "recent historical defenses"...except Jim with his bizarre strawman.

Six Kinderhook Plates Facsimiles

Jim's misleading MormonInfographics plagiarism attack

There goes Jim again with his completely and totally incorrect and baseless assumptions.

Oh, look...the creator of these infographics and MormonInfographics.com debunking Jim Bennett:

Source

Jim...I'm friends with the guy behind MormonInfographics.com. I used his infographics in the previous editions of the CES Letter. In 2017, I came out with the first paperback print version of the CES Letter. This involved interior book design, formatting and layout logistics for a 6x9 book that made including the original infographics unreadable and impossible to include.

I reached out to the guy behind MormonInfographics.com in 2017 before the paperback book design and explained the situation to him. I asked for his permission and blessing to redesign the infographics so that they would fit better with the newly printed book layout. He not only gave me his full permission but also his full support. There's no plagiarism here (except in your imagination). I didn't steal anything (except in your imagination).

The only "egregious" thing going on here is your incorrect ASSumptions and fake scandal attempt here to make me look dishonest, sloppy and nefarious.

As for the infographic that Jim is implying is incorrect and filled with problems?

FairMormon (FAIR), that Jim plagiarized his Kinderhook Plates apologetics from, debunks Jim:

"The graphic is correct."

-FairMormon (FAIR), Source: FAIR's website

Throwing William Clayton under the bus

Mormon Church throwing trusted scribe William Clayton under the bus

"The problem here is that William Clayton was incorrect."

Oh, look...Jim's own source FAIR debunking him and his Jim Bennett Mormonism®:

"The quote by William Clayton is indeed accurate: Joseph Smith did attempt to translate a portion of the Kinderhook Plates."

- FAIR, Joseph Smith and the Kinderhook Plates

No, Jim. The problem is that you are misrepresenting William Clayton, his authority, his position, his writings and his relationship and proximity to Joseph Smith.

It wasn't until after science debunked the Kinderhook Plates and the Church's narrative about it in 1980 that the Church and its defenders went into "oh shit" mode and started throwing William Clayton (and his record of Joseph Smith's partial translation of the fake plates) under the bus in a desperate attempt to separate their founding prophet from the fraud. Jim is just the latest continuation of this dishonest apologetic tradition.

I've already discussed and debunked Jim's above claims here and here.

Even Don Bradley and FAIR (as mentioned above), that Jim uses as foundational sources for his Kinderhook Plates apologetics, are facepalming here:

"He did provide a bit of translation. Despite the attempts to deny this by Stanley Kimball and others, the evidence points decidedly in that direction. William Clayton did not acquire his information about Joseph and the Kinderhook plates from the rumor mill. Clayton was Joseph's personal secretary, and a man as much in his confidence as any at the time. He dined with Joseph at the Mansion House, examined the plates while there, and traced one of them on the reverse of the page where he recorded his journal entry for the day, including this regarding the plates, 'Brother Joseph has translated a portion of them, and says they contain...'

- Don Bradley comment on MormonDialogue.org, April 19, 2007

Don then goes even further later in the discussion board:

Mormons who knew of the Kinderhook plates believed them to be genuine before Stanley Kimball had the surviving plate tested and it was shown to be a 19th-century production. Indeed, one can find LDS writers, I believe including Orson Pratt and B. H. Roberts, who defended the authenticity of the plates on the grounds that Joseph Smith translated from them.

It was only when they appeared to be fraudulent that Latter-day Saints began propounding the view that Joseph Smith must not have translated from them. However, the evidence from the Nauvoo period uniformly indicates that Joseph Smith began translating the Kinderhook plates. Those writing that Joseph had begun such a translation include nobodies with very distant connections with Joseph Smith--you know, like Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor. Taylor even promised readers of the Times and Seasons, in a specially published broadside including facsimiles of the plates, that the translation would be published as soon as it was complete. As both an apostle and the publisher of the T&S broadside on the Kinderhook plates, Taylor was in a particularly privileged position to have the "inside scoop" on the plates and their reception by the prophet. If Joseph rejected the plates and had not begun translating, then his closest associates and those who should have been most in the know were badly misinformed. Not only that, but Joseph Smith was apparently content to have people believe he was translating this fake, since, despite his close involvement with the Times and Seasons, he didn't have them print any correction or retraction.

And this doesn't even take into account the evidence provided by Joseph Smith's personal secretary William Clayton. Clayton's diary reveals that he was privy to even shockingly intimate details about Joseph and Emma's 1843 troubles over plural marriage, and Clayton's biographer James B. Allen has opined that Clayton was as much in Joseph's confidence as anyone during the relevant period. Clayton not only records that Joseph had translated a portion of them, but states specifically what information he had received through the translation, reports it casually as "Brother Joseph says"--just as he reports the other things Joseph Smith told him directly, and does so on the same evening that he spends time at the Mansion House dining with Joseph, examining the plates, and tracing one of the plates onto this same journal page where he reports what "Brother Joseph said" the plates contained. In light of the intimacy of Clayton's relationship to Joseph, and of Joseph's presence with Clayton while he examined and traced the plates, shouldn't the presumption be that Clayton's journal entry that night more likely reflects firsthand information than absolutely false street rumor? If William Clayton wasn't in a position to know Joseph Smith's views on the Kinderhook plates, who was? Clayton surely had a more direct pipeline to the source than do apologists of over a century and a half later. And so did Taylor and Pratt. And we know they are wrong because...?

Ah, yes, we should also examine the testimonies that Joseph rejected the Kinderhook plates or did not translate from them. Here they are: [blank]

Pretty impressive, huh? [sarcasm]

The evidence so decidedly favors Joseph Smith having translated from the Kinderhook plates that is laughable how many have deceived themselves, or allowed others to deceive them, into believing he did not.

Recognizing the weight of the evidence for translation, my friend Mark Ashurst-McGee, who now works for the church on the Joseph Smith Papers project, developed the hypothesis that Joseph Smith attempted, not a revelatory translation, but a secular one. Mark identified evidence that Joseph Smith looked for Hebrew characters on the plates. Frankly, I doubted Mark's hypothesis. But I later independently identified the source Joseph Smith employed in performing his translation of the Kinderhook plates.

Even without this source, I find the evidence for Joseph Smith's attempt to translate the Kinderhook plates overwhelming. But I think the source nails it down with certainty, and also gets Joseph Smith off the hook of having received false revelation on the contents of fake plates.

- Don Bradley comment on MormonDialogue.org, April 19, 2007

Which is it, Jim? Clayton was "incorrect" or Clayton was correct but here's our apologetic theories on how Joseph offered a "secular" translation of the fake Kinderhook Plates to match William Clayton's written record?

I'm on the same page as FAIR and Don Bradley here in our agreement that scribe William Clayton's record is accurate and legitimate. The only one here who is shitting on beloved and respected William Clayton - and his competency and integrity - is none other than Jim Bennett.

"jErEmY dIDn"t rEaD tHe sOuRce"

Apparently in Jim Bennett's universe, rejection of certain apologetic claims presented in an apologetic Church article means a person hasn't read the apologetic article. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I read the damn article, Jim. I read my sources. I just reject the LDS Church's post-1980-oh-shit-we-got-destroyed-by-science bullshit apologetic 180-reversal attempts of throwing trusted scribe and secretary William Clayton under the bus to separate its founding prophet from a damning fraud.

I've already discussed and debunked Jim's above claims here and here.

My CES Letter statement pointing to official LDS sources of Joseph Smith's partial translation of the fake Kinderhook Plates stands correct.

"Secular" translation nonsense

Jim is not very clear here on what FAIR's and Don Bradley's apologetics and assertions are. Let me pull content over from my 2013 Kinderhook Plates Debunking FairMormon section that Jim ignores and doesn't disclose to his readers:

This is a graphic from FAIR's website, which explains visually, Don Bradley's and their apologetics on how Joseph may have done a "secular" translation of the fake Kinderhook Plates in their attempts to match William Clayton's accurate record (which Clayton record Jim incorrectly says is wrong):

It blows my mind that FairMormon is using the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL) as support for their new theory for the Kinderhook Plates.

For decades, Mormon apologists have tried to discredit and diminish the GAEL due to its damage to Joseph’s Book of Abraham translation claims. They blamed Joseph’s scribes for the GAEL, claimed it had little influence on Joseph, and did everything they could to distance the Prophet from the GAEL; especially since we can now read Egyptian and even more especially after the Book of Abraham papyri were rediscovered in 1966. The papyri contain the same hieroglyphic characters that are also included in the GAEL, which establishes that the Book of Abraham was translated using both the papyri and the GAEL. The reason why Mormon apologists tried to distance the Prophet from the GAEL is because the GAEL is, according to every respectable LDS and non-LDS Egyptologist who studied it, pure gibberish nonsense. None of them will defend or rationalize the GAEL.

Let’s take a look at the character FairMormon claims Joseph translated and which he felt compelled to announce that the fake plates “contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and that he received his Kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth.”

Use the above image with this for context. Here's the image that Jim shares with us, based on Don Bradley's claims, that came from the Kinderhook Plate that Joseph saw and partially translated from:

Alright...notice how different the character on the Kinderhook Plates looks versus how the character in the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL) looks:

Well, that's a problem. So, what does Don and FAIR do? They "deconstruct" it...

Egyptian hieroglyphics do not translate into paragraphs. The above boat shaped figure does not translate into an entire sentence or paragraph. In fact, a boat shaped hieroglyphic such as the one above represents only two consonants in the Egyptian language: “nb”

Anyone who seriously thinks that a single Egyptian hieroglyphic, let alone one which represents two consonants, translates into:

Ha e Oop Hah - honor by birth, kingly power by the line of Pharaoh, possession by birth; one who reigns upon his throne universally…possessor of heaven and earth and of the blessings of the earth

…either does not understand the Egyptian language or is deliberately making stuff up. They do not understand how its phonology (consonants, vowels, phonotactics), grammar (nouns, verbs, adjectives), and syntax works.

Mormon apologist, Hugh B. Nibley, concurs:

One needs no knowledge of Egyptian to point out that a dot and two strokes can hardly contain the full message of an English paragraph of a hundred words or more. – Meaning of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers

While I applaud FAIR and Don Bradley for reversing decades of Mormon apologetics by finally acknowledging that Joseph Smith did indeed translate a portion of the Kinderhook Plates, it is a stretch – to say the least – that this “deconstructed” character legitimizes or validates the situation. It’s a stretch to push an unsubstantiated theory that Joseph simply did a “secular” translation and therefore he’s off the hook.

Even if FAIR's / Don's / Jim's theory is true and Joseph did a "secular" translation of the plates based on a character that somewhat resembles (only after a bit of deconstructing) a character in the GAEL, the secular-translation argument is simply unbelievable. There is no evidence that Joseph Smith considered the Kinderhook Plates translation a secular translation. Moreover, there is no precedent for Joseph Smith claiming to have made secular translations of events relating to ancient Biblical or Book of Mormon history. Joseph Smith never caveated his translations by saying that they were secular only, and it is unreasonable to have expected him to do so. Indeed, such a caveat clearly would have been important enough for Joseph’s personal scribe William Clayton to note when he recorded the description of Joseph Smith’s translation.

Contrary to thinking Joseph Smith’s translation was secular, Joseph's apostles, the Times and Season and the LDS Church for the next 140 years - until science debunked and revealed the Kinderhook Plates hoax in 1980 - trumpeted the Kinderhook Plates translation as evidence of Joseph Smith’s divine ability to translate ancient documents.

Moreover, the GAEL does not account for the assertion that the dead person with whom the plates were found was also the author. This assertion must have come from some other source. Where? Some other secular source?

Joseph was simply off the mark. He got it wrong. If Joseph can be so wrong about a 19th-century hoax while claiming it’s ancient and that it’s so-and-so who was descended from so-and-so, how do we know that Joseph didn’t likewise make stuff up with the keystone Book of Mormon? The Book of Abraham?

At the end of the day? The Kinderhook Plates is a 19th-century hoax, the GAEL is gibberish nonsense, and Joseph not only mistranslated the fake plates but he legitimized the hoax as an ancient record…all while failing to discern the hoax and fraud.

In other words, Joseph did not merely say that the Kinderhook plates were authentic; he went much further than that – he described their contents.

Like the Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith failed the test as a translator.

---

In my 2013 back-and-forth with FAIR, FAIR attempted to go even further in making Joseph's partial translation of the fake Kinderhook Plates purely a "secular" translation:

2013 FAIR:

An eyewitness stated that Joseph compared the Kinderhook plates with the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar. The translation produced supports this. He did not attempt to translate using his "gift of translation."

This is incorrect. Here is the rest of the quote of the May 30th, 1843 New York Herald article which FairMormon omits from their readers in their graphic:

“The plates were evidently brass, and are covered on both sides with hyerogliphics [sic]. They were brought up and shown to Joseph Smith. He compared them in my presence with his Egyptian alphabet, which he took from the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated, and they are evidently the same characters.”

- The New York Herald, May 30, 1843

Well, isn’t that interesting? It's clear why FairMormon omitted the last part of the sentence from their graphic.

This quote from the New York Herald was posted by an anonymous “Gentile.” It is the equivalent of today’s anonymous blog post comment. This anonymous quote is FairMormon’s linch-pin for their new Kinderhook Plates theory.

FairMormon wants you to believe that this “non-Mormon” Gentile is incorrect in stating that the “hyerogliphics” were taken “from the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated”. FairMormon says that this non-Mormon was mistaken and that he really meant the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL) instead.

In other words, this Gentile may very well have been talking about the Book of Mormon “Caractors” but we’re going to change and reinterpret his statement to have meant the GAEL in order to make our new Kinderhook Plates theory work.

Indeed, the key piece of the puzzle here that FairMormon is not presenting to their readers is the Charles Anthon transcript (“Caractors” document below). Joseph copied several lines of Egyptian hieroglyphics from the gold plates, which as the story goes, Martin Harris took to New York to present to Charles Anthon for his opinion on the authenticity of the characters and the translation.

Here is the document that represents the Book of Mormon characters on the gold plates:

Book of Mormon Witness David Whitmer, who once owned the document, said it was this text that Martin Harris showed to Charles Anthon. Encyclopedia of Mormonism continues:

However, this claim remains uncertain because the transcript does not correspond with Anthon’s assertion that the manuscript he saw was arranged in vertical columns. Even if the document is not the original, it almost certainly represents characters either copied from the plates in Joseph Smith’s possession or copied from the document carried by Harris. Twice in late 1844, after the Prophet’s martyrdom, portions of these symbols were published as characters that Joseph Smith had copied from the gold plates – once in broadside and once in the December 21 issue of the Mormon newspaper The Prophet.

Joseph had a copy of the Book of Mormon “Caractors” which he was showing off to others in Nauvoo around the time of the Kinderhook Plates. One person whom Joseph showed the above “Caractors” to was Reverend George Moore. Moore wrote in his dairy:

Called on the Prophet Joseph Smith. His carriage was at the door and he was about going away, but he received me very kindly, asked me into his house. I remained about 10 minutes. He was very communicative. We conversed about the golden plates, which he professes to have dug up and translated into the Book of Mormon...He showed me some specimens of the hieroglyphics, such as, he says were on the gold plates... – Diary of George Moore, Tuesday, December 20, 1842, p.105-105

So, why does this matter? It matters because Joseph Smith was parading around and showing others the Egyptian hieroglyphics he copied off the gold plates around the same time as the discovery of the Kinderhook Plates. This is consistent with the New York Herald’s non-Mormon’s account of “which he took from the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated, and they are evidently the same characters,” which refers to Joseph’s copy of the hieroglyphics from the gold plates.

FairMormon's reinterpretation of this non-Mormon’s words to mean the GAEL when the non-Mormon’s “which he took from the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated” clearly refers to the Anthon transcript – or Joseph’s own personal document which he copied the hieroglyphics from the gold plates – is unfounded. The reason why FairMormon is insisting that this non-Mormon referred to the GAEL is because their reinterpretation of the quote is the required linch-pin for FairMormon’s new Kinderhook Plates theory.

As for FairMormon’s “deconstruction” of the hieroglyphic from the Kinderhook Plates? We can play this game too using the Anthon transcript.

Allow me to do some of my own “deconstructing”:

Moreover, if Joseph can still make the claim that he translated – without the “gift of translation” (whatever that means) – what does this say about Joseph’s integrity? About his claim of being a translator of ancient documents? About his modus operandi of translating? About the Book of Mormon? About the Book of Abraham?

The GAEL is nonsense. The Kinderhook Plates are fake. There is no indication that Joseph believed anything other than that both were legitimate and real. Why then should we believe Joseph? What credibility does Joseph have for his claims?

Blah, blah, blah...the end!

"No more about the Kinderhook Plates"

Wrong.

We have evidence that the Saints were looking forward to a translation of the Kinderhook Plates after May 1st. See above Timeline.

Secondly? It was just the beginning of a 140+ year love affair between the LDS Church and the Kinderhook Plates. All those "prophets, seers, and revelators" during that time didn't get a nudge or hint from the Mormon god to get the fetch away from the fake Kinderhook Plates because it was going to bite the Church's ass in 1980.

But, to be fair, the Mormon god wasn't bothering to tell his prophets that slavery is wrong, racism is wrong, sexism is wrong, polygamy is wrong and God's name is not "Adam" either.

"no translation, nothing"

Wrong.

Joseph legitimized the fake plates by providing not only a partial translation of the fake plates but by describing their contents as well.

Even FAIR and Don Bradley, that Jim uses as foundational sources, are facepalming hard over there.

"It’s almost as if, after that single moment of excitement, Joseph quickly realized someone was pulling his leg, and he moved on to other things."

This absurdity made me laugh. I can just picture how Jim pictures Joseph Smith's made up response in his fantasy world:

The reality though? Joseph never repudiated or denounced or exposed the fake Kinderhook Plates. He never told his scribe William Clayton to correct or clarify. He never put out a newspaper editorial detailing how the plates are fake while clarifying his "secular" translation in a "moment of excitement" as Jim is trying to get us to believe.

In fact, evidence shows that the Church was still excited about the Kinderhook Plates and an upcoming translation weeks and months after Joseph Smith's partial May 1st translation. See the above Timeline.

We don't know if Joseph was ever going to do a complete translation because he died just a little over a year later. Further, there was a Book of Joseph in another scroll that was purchased with the Book of Abraham that was never translated. LDSDiscussions.com speculates:

One last point on this topic is that Joseph Smith also claimed to have the Book of Joseph in another scroll that was purchased with the Book of Abraham, but never was able to translate it before his death. It could just be that Joseph Smith did not have time to tackle the Kinderhook Plates given that at this point he was constantly running from the law, married to dozens of women, and having to hold together a lot of issues within the church.

"The end."

I love how you add "The end" as if it's a pretty bow you place on top of your steaming pile of bullshit that somehow makes it all legitimate. It's more accurately:

But...but it's not gibberish!

"It isn’t gibberish. Gibberish is defined as 'unintelligible or meaningless speech or writing.' What Joseph wrote was both intelligible and meaningful, whether or not it was an accurate translation."

I'm just going to put these right here for your consideration. You decide if the following is gibberish or "intelligible and meaningful":

Source

Source

"'Gibberish' might refer to nonsense syllables that Kevin Mathie, your single Egyptological expert with only musical theatre training, might put into a singalong in the latest version of Saturday’s Voyeur. Regardless, just summarizing your previous charges doesn’t make them any truer."

I've debunked Jim's above bullshit misleading ad hominem nonsense in the Book of Abraham section.

2021 Jim Bennett isn't even willing to defend the Book of Abraham anymore:

"I fully recognize that the Book of Abraham, intellectually, is probably the strongest argument against the Church. I'm not willing to leave the Church over it for reasons I've outlined in our discussions. There's no question that there are real challenges there and real problems there that I don't think the Church - we - have come to terms with."

-Jim Bennett, January 2021, Mormon Stories Episode 5

2021 Jim on the Book of Abraham

Not one non-LDS Egyptologist backs Book of Abraham

I break this up and debunk individually below. But before doing so, here's the statement from none other than the LDS Church itself on the Book of Abraham via its Gospel Topics essay:

“Some evidence suggests that Joseph studied the characters on the Egyptian papyri and attempted to learn the Egyptian language. His history reports that, in July 1835, he was “continually engaged in translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham, and arranging a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients.” This “grammar,” as it was called, consisted of columns of hieroglyphic characters followed by English translations recorded in a large notebook by Joseph’s scribe, William W. Phelps. Another manuscript, written by Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, has Egyptian characters followed by explanations. Neither the rules nor the translations in the grammar book correspond to those recognized by Egyptologists today.” “None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham’s name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham. Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham.” “Scholars have identified the papyrus fragments as parts of standard funerary texts that were deposited with mummified bodies. These fragments date to between the third century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., long after Abraham lived.”

- Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham, LDS Church, Gospel Topics Essay, July 8, 2014

Did you get that? “None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham’s name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham. Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham.”

"And there is barely one non-LDS Egyptologist who has bothered to investigate Joseph’s Book of Abraham, its claims, or Joseph’s translations."

"Barely one"? lol...WTF?

That "barely one" that Jim is referring to is the Dr. Robert Ritner. Guess who was a student of Dr. Robert Ritner? The LDS Church's most prominent Egyptologist, John Gee. Unlike 2018 Jim, 2021 Jim gives Dr. Ritner the respect he deserves in his 2021 Mormon Stories interview.

It's not "barely one", Jim. As demonstrated throughout my Debunkings that you blatantly ignore and conceal from your readers, I point to numerous non-LDS Egyptologists (including below) who concur that the Book of Abraham and Joseph's claims about it are nonsense. Further, in that linked article by Stephen E. Thompson (that I talk about in the next box) that you claim "jErEmY dIdN't rEaD" (but which you admit you yourself didn't even read)? Several references to non-LDS Egyptologists' rejection of the Book of Abraham.

How can Jim possibly know what non-LDS Egyptologists have and have not "bothered to investigate the Book of Abraham"? Was he the personal secretary of every single non-LDS Egyptologist? Does he know what they studied and investigated every minute of every day of their lives? How can Jim possibly know this let alone make such an absurd claim?

Just the numerous quotes from non-LDS Egyptologists / scholars below alone annihilate Jim's absurd claims. Indeed, as Professor Manuelian, PhD, at Harvard below wrote:

"I am one of those who believe that the facsimiles have no bearing on Joseph Smith’s translations and are instead common Egyptian funerary texts. I am not personally aware of any professional Egyptologists who feel differently."

"Despite your quotes from three long-debunked 19th Century dudes who never saw the Joseph Smith papyri, you have Robert Ritner. That’s it."

Notice how Jim words and conditions his deception: "never saw the Joseph Smith papyri". Jim does this because he knows that the so-called "debunked 19th Century dudes" (ad hominem since they were respected Egyptologists and no, they weren't "debunked") weren't talking about the papyri...they were referring to the facsimiles. They didn't need the papyri because the facsimiles are in the Book of Abraham itself along with Joseph's line-by-line "translations" and Egyptological claims of the facsimiles.

There is a reason why Jim carefully words and conditions his bullshit ad hominem attack around the papyri instead of the facsimiles that are in the Book of Abraham itself.

In 2013, LDS member Zachary Lien contacted a number of university professors, including Egyptologists, and asked them for their professional opinions on the Book of Abraham and Joseph Smith's / the LDS Church's claims about it. Below are statements from experts in the field of Egyptology regarding the claims of the Book of Abraham:

“Dear Zachary,

Thank you for this email. I am one of those who believe that the facsimiles have no bearing on Joseph Smith’s translations and are instead common Egyptian funerary texts. I am not personally aware of any professional Egyptologists who feel differently.

With best wishes,
Peter Manuelian.”

- Peter Der Manuelian – Professor of Egyptology and Director, Harvard Semitic Museum, Harvard University. PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago.

Hi Zachary,

It's good to hear from you and I’m happy to help you out. Just as background I am an Egyptologist and I am also someone who has a close friend and colleague (a historian) who is Mormon but who does not necessarily believe everything the elders tell him. As it happens I suspect that I know, too, who the “notable PhD’s” the members of your church are referring to.

I am not an expert on LDS but I do understand that there is a longstanding connection with Egyptology based on a papyrus the Church holds. There are two Egyptolologists from Brigham Young University who are also members of the church and who often act to promote and defend the Church’s teachings in the academic realm, but with little success in changing minds I suspect.

I am not myself a believer and I am highly skeptical of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham. I would also agree with the mainstream Egyptological view that the Joseph Smith Papyrus is simply a Roman era set of Egyptian papyri with various Ancient Egyptian texts including sections of a “Book of the Dead” and another known as the “book of breathing”. There is no connection between these texts and any aspect of Christianity or Judaism. Outside of Mormon scholars, there is not any recognition of or belief in a “reformed egyptian” script or language. The photos of so called “reformed Egyptian” documents that I have seen do not resemble genuine Egyptian scripts of any kind from any period of Egypt’s long pharaonic history including both hieroglyphic forms or the more cursive forms known as hieratic and demotic. They look like a modern person’s attempt at making cryptogramatic symbols of a modernly invented secret code in that they resemble nonsense “letters” of an alphabet rather than pictorial symbols like hieroglyphs or even the much more varied and differently shaped ligatures of hieratic or demotic Egyptian cursive writing.

There is simply no evidence that the Smith Papyri are anything more than mainstream Egyptologists have identified them as being– namely typical pharaonic funerary papyri from the last centuries of pagan civilization in Egypt. Despite years of study at BYU, no one has duplicated Smith’s “readings” of the papyri as the “book of Abraham” which strongly suggests it is a fictional invention of his imagination. This is not necessarily to say that he didn’t believe himself what he told to others. Who knows? People are as capable of deceiving themselves as they are of others.

A good rule of thumb in judging such matters is that “Extraordinary claims should have extraordinary evidence” so, when they haul up the actual body or capture a live plesiosaurus in Loch Ness in Scotland then I will believe in the Lock Ness Monster. I desperately wanted to believe in it when I was 12 but after reading a 300 page book on it from the library with some fuzzy pictures and invented drawings i came to realize that there was no evidence for such a creature. Sale of antiquities was very common in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Given that– unless you believe it to be a “miracle”– how likely is it that someone like Smith who knew nothing about Egyptology per se, would just happen to buy the “right” papyri that happened to have this “lost book” of scripture? It strikes anyone who does not already believe the truth of it, or who wants to believe the truth of it, as being highly unlikely.

Of course, people often want to believe the highly improbable and can be easily swayed to believe in fantastic or miraculous claims. This is often how new religions spread. Simply by being old, religions can often become accepted as being “fact” or “true” in part because so many people have believed them for so long. I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any further questions.

Best wishes,
Peter Brand

- Peter Brand – Professor of Ancient History and Egyptology, PhD in Ancient Egyptian Language and Literature from the University of Toronto

“The Book of Abraham and Reformed Egyptian: In 1835 Joseph Smith purchased Egyptian papyri from a traveling mummy exhibit and revealed that they were the writings of the prophet of Abraham. Today, these facsimiles have caused considerable controversy. Many Egyptologists have noted that the facsimiles have no bearing on Joseph Smith’s translations and are instead common Egyptian funerary texts from the first century B.C.”

I echo the sentiments of the Egyptologists.

- Salima Ikram – Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, PhD in Egyptology and Museum Studies from the University of Cambridge.

Here are additional statements from Egyptologists and experts in the field of Egyptology regarding the Book of Abraham:

“The Book of Abraham, it is hardly necessary to say, is a pure fabrication. Cuts 1 and 3 are inaccurate copies of well known scenes on funeral papyri, and cut 2 is a copy of one of the magical discs which in the late Egyptian period were placed under the heads of mummies. There were about forty of these latter known in museums and they are all very similar in character. Joseph Smith’s interpretation of these cuts is a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end. Egyptian characters can now be read almost as easily as Greek, and five minutes’ study in an Egyptian gallery of any museum should be enough to convince any educated man."

- Arthur Mace – Assistant Curator for the Department of Egyptian Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

"It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith’s impudent fraud. The facsimile from the Book of Abraham No. 2 is an ordinary hypocephalus, but the hieroglyphics upon it have been copied so ignorantly that hardly one of them is correct. I need scarcely say that Kolob, &c., are unknown to the Egyptian language. Smith has turned the goddess into a king and Osiris into Abraham."

- A. H. Sayce – Oxford University

"They are copies of Egyptian subjects of which I have seen dozens of examples. They are centuries later than Abraham. The attempts to guess a meaning for them in the professed explanations are too absurd to be noticed. It may be safely said that there is not one single word that is true in these explanations."

Flinders Petrie – London University

"It will be seen, then, that if Joseph Smith could read ancient Egyptian writing, his ability to do so had no connection with the decipherment of hieroglyphics by European scholars. The three facsimiles in question represent equipment which will be and has been found in unnumbered thousands of Egyptian graves. The point, then, is that in publishing these facsimiles of Egyptian documents as part of an unique revelation to Abraham, Joseph Smith was attributing to Abraham not three unique documents of which no other copies exist, but was attributing to Abraham a series of documents which were the common property of a whole nation of people who employed them in every human burial, which they prepared. The “problem” is if I accept that the Book of Abraham merely “originated” with the scrolls and is not an actual translation then I also have to try and accept that God and Joseph decided to fool me into believing a true scripture by telling me it was a translation when it was not a translation. I stewed in that “God is an occasional liar for my benefit” paradigm for a few years. Certainly, many LDS folks go through a similar process.

The ultimate cognitive dissonance here is that either God lies to convince me his scripture is true or Joseph lies. I decided that Joseph lied, even if the gospel he promoted is “good,” even if the Church has a good influence on peoples lives, I was not going to believe in a God that lies to me to bolster his claims; therefore, I conclude that Joseph was a fraud. I hope the true believers in the Church understand that folks like me are not against them. I sincerely hope the brethren find a way to navigate this human disaster that maintains many of the positive, unique aspects of LDS culture. They should’ve started dealing honestly with this issues a hundred years ago. Instead, we received “lying for the lord” for 100 years and now we receive obfuscating for the lord. I suppose I’ll call that an improvement, but we deserve better."

- James H. Breasted – Haskell Oriental Museum, University of Chicago

"None of these, either human or divine, who helped in Joseph Smith’s translation, had any conception of the most commonplace Egyptian Characters."

- Samuel A. B. Mercer – Hibbard collection of Egyptian Reproductions at the Western Theological Seminary

2021 Jim Bennett isn't even willing to defend the Book of Abraham anymore:

"I fully recognize that the Book of Abraham, intellectually, is probably the strongest argument against the Church. I'm not willing to leave the Church over it for reasons I've outlined in our discussions. There's no question that there are real challenges there and real problems there that I don't think the Church - we - have come to terms with."

-Jim Bennett, January 2021, Mormon Stories Episode 5

2021 Jim on the Book of Abraham

Judge for yourself on the merits and strengths of Jim's apologetics/claims on the Book of Abraham in the Book of Abraham section.

LDS Egyptologists acknowledge Book of Abraham problems

Oh, look...there's Jim's favorite "jErEmY dIdN't rEaD tHe sOuRcE" ad hominem attack again. As usual, Jim is wrong and full of shit.

This one is actually hilarious because Jim is accusing me of not reading a source that he himself hasn't read (per his above admission). Projecting much, Jim?

Jim, if you had actually read the source - like I have - you would have noticed that LDS Egyptologist and author Stephen E. Thompson references and points to another LDS Egyptologist by the name of Michael D. Rhodes.

If you had read the article and source - like I have - you would have noticed this statement in the conclusion on the last page:

"If one accepts that Joseph Smith was using the facsimiles in a fashion which was not consonant with their original purpose,78..."

When you look down to Footnote #78, you read:

78. As does Rhodes [LDS Egyptologist Michael D. Rhodes], in "Facsimiles from the Book of Abraham," 136.

In other words? LDS Egyptologist Stephen E. Thompson is pointing to his fellow LDS Egyptologist Michael D. Rhodes (oh my god...this makes "LDS Egyptologist" plural...just like I wrote it as in the CES Letter) has acknowledged that Joseph Smith has used the facsimiles in a way that is not "consonant [in harmony or agreement with] with the original purpose" of the facsimiles.

LDS Egyptologist Michael D. Rhodes is also the Egyptologist that contradicts Joseph's facsimile "translation" and claims:

Source

Here's LDS Egyptologist Michael D. Rhodes acknowledging that the papyri does not match the Book of Abraham (separate quotes in same talk):

"We translated the text [the papyri aka Book of Breathings]. My most recent book is a translation and commentary of that text. It doesn't mention Abraham; there is no Book of Abraham in there. How do we reconcile that with the fact that Facsimile 1 is right there at the beginning of it? In fact, Facsimile 3, although we don't have the original of that, would have come at the end of the text of the Book of Breathings.

Indeed, the fragments we do have contain no mention of Abraham, but they are only fragments, and that's a key point here. We only have a tiny bit of all of the papyri that Joseph Smith had. (We can come up with percentages if we want.) The key point is, we only have fragments of the actual Book of Breathings. There are probably 40 to 50 percent of the total text of the Book of Breathings I found on the papyri. Whether there were other texts on the papyri we don't know, because we don't have all of the papyrus. There is no reason why a copy of the Book of Abraham couldn’t have been on there. To say that there couldn’t have been is simply an argument from silence, and not good scholarship."

"How about the fact that it can be reliably dated to the second century B.C., rather than 2,000 B.C., the assumed date of Abraham? They made a big deal about the fact that, in the introduction there, it says, “written by his own hand” upon papyrus. That’s simply indicating the authorship of the original book, you know, like I can take a copy of Harry Potter and say, “This is written by J. K. Rowling.” That doesn’t mean she wrote that one I am holding in my hand. It is simply a copy of an original text. All this says is that it was originally authored by Abraham, and what we have is a copy, and not the original one penned by him previously."

"That brings us to what I call the 'facsimiles problem.' Facsimiles one and three, that are now associated with the Book of Abraham, are the beginning and ending of the text of the Book of Breathings on this particular papyrus. Facsimile number two was totally elsewhere, and had no relationship even with the Book of Breathings, but was a separate document. Why are they associated with this ancient pagan text, when somehow, there is a relationship with Abraham?"

LDS Egyptologist Rhodes is admitting to the serious problem of the papyri not mentioning Abraham and that there's no Book of Abraham in there. Rhodes then attempts to do damage control by presenting his unsupported and ultimately debunked apologetics of the "Lost Scroll Theory" (among other apologetics), which Jim also tries to use in his "Reply", including here in the Kinderhook Plates section. I've debunked the "Lost Scroll Theory" here.

Jim, you're going to love LDS Egyptologist Michael D. Rhodes. Here's my favorite apologetics and quote from him offering his apologetics and explanation on why the papyri (Book of Breathings) doesn't match the Book of Abraham:

The video claims that some of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers are the actual documents that Joseph Smith used in the translation process. This is on the basis of the fact that you have passages from the Book of Abraham and hieroglyphic characters that are demonstrably from the Book of Breathings there. The problem with that is, as Hugh Nibley and others have definitely shown, that the English text was written in first, in a different ink, and that the characters were copied afterwards. In many cases, the characters actually overlap the original English text. So what we have here is not the process of translation, but clearly someone trying to match up Joseph Smith’s translation with some characters on the papyri. It seems to be the unsuccessful attempt of some of the brethren to figure out how Joseph Smith did what he did, so that it’s not the translation process at all.

Would you look at that? Nibley, Rhodes, John Gee and other Mormon apologists are doing something similar to what Jim has done here in the Kinderhook Plates section: throw Joseph's trusted scribes under the bus.

Except, they're both throwing scribes under the bus for different reasons:

Rhodes & Gang are throwing the scribes under the bus to separate Joseph Smith from the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL) (also called "Kirtland Egyptian Papers) to desperately try to separate Joseph Smith from the Book of Abraham fraud.

Jim Bennett tries to protect Joseph Smith from the Kinderhook Plates fraud by throwing scribe William Clayton under the bus while Don Bradley / FAIR / Jim hilariously contradict Rhodes & Gang by validating and legitimizing the very same GAEL that Rhodes & Gang are trying to invalidate and delegitimize!

The above CES Letter statement stands correct. Jim is just 100% wrong about everything including his bullshit ad hominem "jErEmY dIdN't rEaD tHe sOuRcE!" attack on a source that Jim hilariously hasn't even read himself. But this sure didn't stop Jim from issuing his baseless attack on me and my integrity.

An important side note:

One of the LDS Church's foremost Book of Abraham scholars, Professor Brian M. Hauglid, who dedicated his professional life to the Book of Abraham and who closely worked with the LDS Church's most prominent Egyptologist, John Gee, came out in 2018 expressing his changed views on the Book of Abraham and apologetics surrounding it:

"For the record, I no longer hold the views that have been quoted from my 2010 book in these videos. I have moved on from my days as an “outrageous” apologist. In fact, I’m no longer interested or involved in apologetics in any way. I wholeheartedly agree with Dan‘s excellent assessment of the Abraham/Egyptian documents in these videos. I now reject a missing Abraham manuscript. I agree that two of the Abraham manuscripts were simultaneously dictated. I agree that the Egyptian papers were used to produce the BoA. I agree that only Abr. 1:1-2:18 were produced in 1835 and that Abr. 2:19-5:21 were produced in Nauvoo. And on and on. I no longer agree with Gee or Mulhestein. I find their apologetic “scholarship” on the BoA abhorrent. One can find that I’ve changed my mind in my recent and forthcoming publications. The most recent JSP Revelations and Translation vol. 4, The Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts (now on the shelves) is much more open to Dan’s thinking on the origin of the Book of Abraham. My friend Brent Metcalfe can attest to my transformative journey."

- Brian M. Hauglid

2021 Jim Bennett talks about Brian Hauglid's paradigm shift and how this affected him and his own views on the Book of Abraham (see timestamp mark 0:30):

2021 Jim on the Book of Abraham

Joseph's translator claim is testable

We have the papyri and facsimiles originals along with the GAEL (Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language) that Joseph used to translate the Book of Abraham despite Jim's attempts to peddle the "Lost Scroll Theory", which has been debunked. See also Jim Bennett Book of Abraham section and Debunking FairMormon Book of Abraham section.

We have the facsimiles and a Kinderhook Plate (that was scientifically tested in 1980 and also concluded to be the same plate examined by Joseph Smith) along with Joseph's partial translation of the Kinderhook Plates, which Jim's own sources, Don Bradley and FAIR, admit is Joseph's translation of the fake plates.

As for the Book of Mormon...is Jim actually claiming here that we have the original for the Book of Mormon? He can activate the rock in the hat to show the words on the rock? He has the gold plates with the "Reformed Egyptian" written on them? We'd all love to see!

Debunked "Lost Scroll Theory"

Jim is completely and totally wrong here.

What Jim is peddling is the debunked "Lost Scroll Theory". LDSDiscussions.com has a great brief summary:

Because of the Chicago fire, we only have some fragments of the original papyri, so the idea is that the Book of Abraham is actually on parts of the scroll forever lost in the fire. This is the common response from Hugh Nibley and currently John Gee and Kerry Muehlstein.

Why it doesn’t work:

1. We have the manuscripts of the Book of Abraham, and both show the Egyptian symbols being translated for each section which match perfectly and in order with the papyrus fragment that was recovered.

2. The Book of Abraham (Abraham 1:12-14) itself clearly tells us that the facsimiles and Book of Abraham are on the same scroll, so there is no chance of a “lost” scroll.

3. Due to damage on the scroll used for the Book of Abraham, you can use math to determine the length of the overall scroll upon being unrolled. This study was published in Dialogue, and shows that the Book of Abraham text would need at least 511cm to fit in the scroll's interior, but at most there would be no more than 56cm missing. There is not enough room to fit even 1/10th of the Book of Abraham text in the missing interior of the scroll, let alone the book as published by Joseph.

4. The references to the long/lost scroll theory come from second and third hand stories told 50-60 years later. In fact, the one Hugh Nibley unearthed was something that his uncle claimed to have heard from Joseph Smith’s nephew George A. Smith when he was just five years old – Nibley heard the story 63 years later.

The following excellent video clearly demonstrates how absurd and false Jim's (and Mormon apologetics) claims and apologetics on the Book of Abraham are:

The Joseph Smith Papyri (Book of Abraham)

The above CES Letter statement stands correct.

Failed the test with Kinderhook Plates

Jim a few seconds ago: "Here's how Joseph did a 'secular' translation of the Kinderhook Plates using the GAEL."

Jim now: "No translation! Your assertion is demonstrably false."

You're wrong, Jim. Joseph did a partial translation of the fake plates. Even your sources and apologist buddies are cringing hard over there.

The above CES Letter statement stands correct.

With this track record...why believe Book of Mormon?

See my debunkings in the Book of Mormon Translation and Book of Mormon sections to decide for yourself on whether or not it's "an incontrovertible witness to the miracle of its own creation" and whether or not I "laid a finger on it".

So, in light of the demonstrable frauds of the Book of Abraham and the Kinderhook Plates...Jim's defense for the Book of Mormon being legit is that it "came first" (what does that even mean and why does it matter?) and a biased opinion (Jim was indoctrinated since birth to believe this) that it's "an incontrovertible witness to the miracle of its own creation"?

"Translated with a rock in a hat"

See Book of Mormon Translation.

Revised purpose for gold plates: prop for the witnesses

Compare Jim's flowery apologetics of the plates to what LDS scholar and historian Richard Bushman actually says:

“I will begin by saying that we still have pictures on our Ward bulletin boards of Joseph Smith with the Gold Plates in front of him. That has become an irksome point and I think it is something the church should pay attention to. Because anyone who studies the history knows that is not what happened. There is no church historian who says that is what happened and yet it is being propagated by the church and it feeds into the notion that the church is trying to cover up embarrassing episodes and is sort of prettifying its own history.

So, I think we ought to just stop that immediately. I am not sure we need a lot of pictures in our chapels of Joseph looking into his hat, but we certainly should tell our children that is how it worked... It’s weird. It’s a weird picture. It implies it’s like darkening a room when we show slides. It implies that there is an image appearing in that stone and the light would make it more difficult to see that image. So, that implies a translation that’s a reading and so gives us a little clue about the whole translation process. It also raises the strange question, ‘What in the world are the plates for? Why do we need them on the table if they are just wrapped up into a cloth while he looks into a seer stone?’”

– RICHARD BUSHMAN, LDS SCHOLAR, HISTORIAN, PATRIARCH
FAIRMORMON PODCAST, EPISODE 3: RICHARD L. BUSHMAN P.1, 47:251 - emphasis added

Richard Bushman, in a December 31, 2020 Salt Lake Tribune interview (emphasis added):

Reporter:
Have you changed your mind over the years about any of the church’s founding events?

Richard Bushman:
In terms of the particulars — the overall story about the First Vision, gold plates, translation and a set of revelations to form a church — my view remains pretty much the way it was. But I do think about some things differently.

The Book of Mormon is a problem right now. It’s so baffling to so many that Joseph was not even looking at the gold plates [to translate them]. And there’s so much in the Book of Mormon that comes out of the 19th century that there’s a question of whether or not the text is an exact transcription of Nephi’s and Mormon’s words, or if it has been reshaped by inspiration to be more suitable for us, a kind of an expansion or elucidation of the Nephite record for our times. I have no idea how that might have worked or whether that’s true. But there are just too many scholars now, faithful church scholars, who find 19th-century material in that text. That remains a little bit of a mystery, just how it came to be.

In a private June 12, 2016 fireside, Mr. Bushman concedes that "the dominant narrative is not true; it can't be sustained.":

Gone are the days where the narrative for the gold plates was that they were for the purpose of translating the Book of Mormon. Now? "The plates were useful as a prop for the witnesses."

All that damn work of cutting Laban's head off, etching and carving Reformed Egyptian onto gold plates and the serious hassles of abridging the plates were all done so that gullible 19th-century treasure digging family and friends of Joseph's, with magic worldviews, could "see" them.

Mark Twain joked about the absurdity of having the Smith family and the Whitmer family as majority "witnesses":

Source

We discuss the problems with the witnesses in the Witnesses section of the CES Letter and here in the Debunkings.

Jim misunderstands rock in hat as a presentism problem

It's not about weirdness, Jim (although it's batshit crazy). It's not about presentism. It's about folk magic, occultism and fraud.

It's about the Pandora's Box that this opens up in revealing just how awash and steep Mormonism's origins are in 19th-century-rural-New-England-folk-magic-occultism.

It's about how all of this destroys the founding narratives of the Church's origins and of the Book of Mormon.

I go over all of this in deeper detail in the Book of Mormon Translation section.

Joey's security blankie

In other words, this folk magic device that Joseph used to defraud his customers with, according to Jim, was a security blankie for little boy Joey (who was 23.5-years-old in 1829 during "translation") to feel better.

See Book of Mormon Translation section to learn more of this absurdity.

Why buy a third car from a man who sold you two clunkers?

The above is the full CES Letter quote. Jim responds to each above individual sentence below:

No translation of Kinderhook Plates

I've already debunked this here.

Book of Abraham: proven a fraud

Yeah...about that, 2018 Jim...you might want to have a nice chat with 2021 Jim:

"I fully recognize that the Book of Abraham, intellectually, is probably the strongest argument against the Church. I'm not willing to leave the Church over it for reasons I've outlined in our discussions. There's no question that there are real challenges there and real problems there that I don't think the Church - we - have come to terms with."

-Jim Bennett, January 2021, Mormon Stories Episode 5

2021 Jim on the Book of Abraham

2021 Jim Bennett isn't even willing to defend the Book of Abraham anymore.

Judge for yourself on the merits and strengths of Jim's apologetics/claims on the Book of Abraham in the Book of Abraham section.

Kinderhook Plates: found to be a hoax.

Jim is just wrong here. Even FAIR and Don Bradley, Jim's foundational sources for his Kinderhook Plates apologetics, are facepalming and cringing over there.

I've already debunked and addressed Jim's false and misleading "Joseph didn't try to translate the Kinderhook Plates" claim here.

Book of Mormon: only original we don't have

We have the papyri and facsimiles originals along with the GAEL (Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language) that Joseph used to translate the Book of Abraham despite Jim's attempts to peddle the "Lost Scroll Theory", which has been debunked. See also Jim Bennett Book of Abraham section and Debunking FairMormon Book of Abraham section.

We have the facsimiles and a Kinderhook Plate (that was scientifically tested in 1980 and also concluded to be the same plate examined by Joseph Smith) along with Joseph's partial translation of the Kinderhook Plates, which Jim's own sources, Don Bradley and FAIR, admit is Joseph's translation of the fake plates.

As for the Book of Mormon...is Jim actually claiming here that we have the original for the Book of Mormon? He can activate the rock in the hat to show the words on the rock? He has the gold plates with the "Reformed Egyptian" written on them? We'd all love to see!

"I'm sure he was only wrong on two out of three"

Jim is 100% wrong and incorrect here. See previous box answer.

Jim claims that I "misrepresent" the facts on the Kinderhook Plates but Jim is the one peddling falsehoods like that William Clayon was incorrect and that Joseph didn't attempt to translate the fake Kinderhook Plates when both of these lies have been debunked by Jim's very own source, Don Bradley, in the very same article that Jim links to for his readers. See Kinderhook Plates: found to be a hoax section.

I'm not doing the misrepresenting here, Jim. You are.

Jim's false "plagiarized" graphics attack

You've demonstrated that your arguments and claims are so weak that you have to resort to fake scandals, ad hominem and fake "infographics plagiarism" to distract your readers from the core problems, questions and issues of the LDS Church's truth crisis.

As I've already outlined in the above Jim's misleading MormonInfographics plagiarism attack section, you don't know what you're talking about because you've arrived at completely false conclusions based on completely false assumptions.

Like the MormonInfographics creator, I received permission from the creator of this meme to reformat it to fit my interior layout needs for a 6x9 paperback book.

The creator of these memes, Just Another Apostate, has given me full permission to use their work in the CES Letter as needed without attribution:

How is it "plagiarism" or "theft" when all of the creators of the infographics and memes are friends of mine that I've known as far back as 2013 who have both not only given me their full permissions but also their blessings to do with their work as I saw fit?

The only "egregious" thing going on here is Jim's false, misleading and incorrect assumptions and fake scandals specifically designed to distract people while denigrating me and my integrity to them.

Order of clunkers

Read the graphic again, Jim. There's nowhere where we call the Book of Mormon the "third clunker". This is your misleading strawman and mischaracterization of what we're saying.

All we're pointing out is that Joseph Smith gave us two clunkers: the Book of Abraham and the Kinderhook Plates while asking the question of what this means for Joseph's other product - the Book of Mormon.

The one who is misrepresenting here is Jim with his strawmen and mischaracterization of what the graphic actually says.

This isn't a claim about order, Jim. You're the one here who is attempting to obfuscate the issue by claiming it's about order (as if it matters). It's simply a question about the integrity and credibility of the translator and the translator's claims when the originals of two of the three products he produced are blatant frauds.

The question and argument that's being raised here is that 2 of the 3 "translated" products have been demonstrably proven to be false/fake/a hoax. What does a 2/3 track record of fraud mean for the remaining 1/3 claim and record?

Why should we trust the record of a man with a history of defrauding people (treasure digging, Kirtland Banking scandal, lying to Emma and the Saints about polygamy/polyandry, multiple conflicting first vision accounts, Priesthood restoration backdating, Book of Abraham, Kinderhook Plates, Zelph the white Lamanite, etc.) on his translator claims when 2 of the 3 "translated" products he produced are proven frauds?

Rather than confront this issue and core argument, Jim goes off on a stupid "bUt i dOn'T lIkE hOw YoU oRdErEd iT iN tHe mEmE!" rant.

But I'll bite here about your "oRdEr sUcKs!" complaint. In the 21st-century, you're sitting at the Mormon Truth Claims table as an investigator. You have it all laid out on the table. You want to test Joseph Smith's claims of being a translator of ancient records and documents.

You pull the relevant material in front of you. The Book of Abraham. Kinderhook Plates. The Book of Mormon. It doesn't matter which came first, second or last. Why? Because you're not judging it by order. You're judging it by the source material that is available to make a judgment and conclusion on each individual claim of being a translation of ancient origins.

Since we have the source material for the Book of Abraham and the Kinderhook Plates, we evaluate these two claims first.

Since we do not have the original source material for the Book of Mormon (the claimed "reformed egyptian" golden plates or activated brown stone with the words appearing), we cannot compare this to the source material like we can compare with the Book of Abraham and the Kinderhook Plates.

The order doesn't matter. The available source materials matter. The fact that 2/3 of Joseph's "translated" products are frauds matter. Joseph's modus operandi, patterns, integrity and credibility (and lack thereof) matter.

CES Letter cLuNkErS

This demonstrates that you just don't get it, Jim.

What you don't get, Jim, is that I wrote nothing in the CES Letter about the Book of Mormon's origin and how it was authored and manufactured. It is not my argument that Joseph "stole" or "directly plagiarized" from these sources. Only you're doing that with your bullshit strawmen and misrepresentation of my statements.

All I've demonstrated is that the "ancient" Book of Mormon contains fingerprints and signatures of modern / 19th-century works and influences that should not be present in the "ancient" book. It's anachronistic. Even you admit that the Book of Mormon contains anachronisms.

Book of Mormon Anachronisms

I go over each one of the above items in the Book of Mormon section to demonstrate how Jim is obfuscating and misrepresenting the issues.

I'm demonstrating and conveying the same point and conclusion that Richard Bushman and other LDS scholars have also arrived at:

"The Book of Mormon is a problem right now. It’s so baffling to so many that Joseph was not even looking at the gold plates [to translate them]. And there’s so much in the Book of Mormon that comes out of the 19th century that there’s a question of whether or not the text is an exact transcription of Nephi’s and Mormon’s words, or if it has been reshaped by inspiration to be more suitable for us, a kind of an expansion or elucidation of the Nephite record for our times. I have no idea how that might have worked or whether that’s true. But there are just too many scholars now, faithful church scholars, who find 19th-century material in that text. That remains a little bit of a mystery, just how it came to be."

-Richard Bushman, December 31, 2020 Salt Lake Tribune interview

"Joseph Smith was very eclectic. He drew upon ideas from all over, including Masonic ritual."

-Richard Bushman, LDS scholar, Reddit Ask Me Anything, 12/06/13

All I'm pointing to in the CES Letter is the milieu of influences documented in the time of the Book of Mormon's creation that are similar to the Book of Mormon's language, phrasing, theology, themes and claims.

"cLuNkErS jUsT kEeP oN cOmIn'"

"why should your readers buy any of the clunkers from sources you haven’t read?"

I've demonstrated and debunked over and over throughout my rebuttals that your "jErEmY dIdN'T rEaD tHe sOuRcE" attacks you keep using against me are bullshit. Below is a list of examples of what you've claimed are sources I didn't read and my direct debunkings showing you're just 100% wrong in your misleading attacks.

"Or the sources that don’t mean what you say they mean?"

The problem isn't that I didn't read the sources (I have) or that they "dOn'T mEaN wHat jErEmy sAys tHeY mEaN" (they do). The problem is that you are using this dishonest and misleading apologetic card to skirt and bypass the issues, questions and arguments while activating a more subtle backdoor ad hominem against me to create a fake, nefarious, deceptive and clueless Jeremy who didn't do his homework.

This is a card that apologists often play with critics by attempting to distract from the argument by turning the tables and accusing the critic of "not having read the source" or "taking the source out of context".

The following are perfect examples of how you misuse this backdoor ad hominem attack against me (links link to debunkings):

Elder Packer's immoral counsel. You claim I didn't read the talk (I did) to wiggle your apostle out of dishonesty.

Elder Oaks' immoral counsel. You claim I didn't read the talk (I did) to wiggle your apostle out of dishonesty.

Neil Andersen Nothingburger "scandal". You claim I didn't read or understand the talk (I did) to wiggle your apostle out of dishonesty.

August 1981 Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax Ensign article. You claim I didn't read this when I did. I just reject the Church's post-1980-debunked-by-science bullshit apologetics of throwing William Clayton under the bus.

LDS Egyptologists acknowledge Book of Abraham problems. This one is actually hilarious. You attack me by claiming I didn't read this source while admitting at the same time that you haven't even read this source that you're claiming that I didn't read. Not only have I read this source...I used this very same source to debunk your bullshit claims in this very same section.

"Or the graphics you plagiarize without giving attribution?"

I've already debunked your misleading and completely incorrect assumptions here and here.

"With the CES Letter, the clunkers just keep on comin'."