Lost Book of Gad the Seer FOUND? Ancient Copper Plates & Hebrew Prophecy in India feat. Jeff Lindsay

Jeff Lindsay and Greg discuss the scholarship on the lost Book of Gad The Seer. Jeff has been studying this story and the book for several years.

A Jewish colony in India claims descent from the tribe of MANASSEH—and says they preserved a lost Old Testament book engraved on copper. Could this be the real ‘Words of Gad the Seer’?

And, is the Book of Moses the Genesis of the Brass Plates. New scholarship suggests it is.

To donate to the translation of Meir Bar Ilan's book click here - https://interpreterfoundation.org/foundation/donate/

Jeff Lindsay's Article - https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-words-of-gad-the-seer-an-apparently-ancient-text-with-intriguing-origins-and-content/

 Raw Transcript

according to Alexander Hamilton they brought with them biblical records also
some apocryphal text and other manuscripts including a document called
words of God the Seir he talked about these Jews and said that they claimed to be descendants of Manasseh and they kept
records in Hebrew on brass on copper plates and they had come from afar
this is one of those really exciting things that if this is real there's a lot of evidence that it is this is a
lost Old Testament book gad the seer who was a prophet during the time of King
David the Old Testament talks about the book but it's nowhere to be found some Book of Mormon things that come up here
as well that are very interesting watch till the end and we even bring in the Pearl of Great Price now this episode is
brought to you by Gospel on the Nile we have several trips coming up we have October and November in 2025 and then
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here's the interview all right welcome to Quick Show my name is Greg Matson and I am your host in this episode we've brought on Jeff Lindsay LDS scholar and
working on a very interesting topic he's been publishing in the interpreter foundation on the book of Gad the Seer
jeff welcome to the show thank you it's a pleasure to be here really excited to talk about this this I love talking
about lost text these things are so intriguing you kind of get this I don't know scriptural uh uh Indiana Jones
feeling you know when you're looking at these types of things this kind of exploration but uh give us a brief overview to start with of what you're
working on here and a background about this possibly preserved lost Old
Testament book of Gad the Seer sure i stumbled into this kind of accidentally
i I on my blog which used to be called Mormanity now it's a rise from the dust
rise from the dust.com i had a post a while back a couple years ago on some of the copper plates that have been found
in India and India has a surprising history very lot of diverse cultures and
traditions but there's a uh in southern India southwestern India there's this
interesting current of copper plates being used to engrave special documents
like treaties with the king or land rights or rights granted to certain peoples and a couple of plates from this
area i took p has pictures of them and posted them talked about them and one of the commenters on this on this post uh
pointed me to interesting story from Alexander Hamilton not the US statesman
but a sailor a British sailor who wrote a book back around 17 I think it was
around 1744 when he published his his works and he claimed to have met met up with the uh a Jewish colony in in the uh
coast of Malabar uh in in the city of Coochin C O C H I N India and he's
talked about these Jews and said that they claimed to be descendants of Manasseh and they kept records in Hebrew
on brass on copper plates and they had come from afar and the this colony today
is known as the black Jews there were two groups of Jews in this area the white Jews and the black Jews and the
the black Jews are the ones who came there earlier and had mingled with the people and so their their skin color was
was darker than the more recent Jew u im immigrants that came to to India so they
had two different groups and they had older traditions some different ways and they also had Can I ask you real quick i
just want to insert well that first group you're talking about is thought of possibly as having uh immigrated from
the northern kingdom perhaps at the time of the Assyrian takeover is that correct yes yes according according to Alexander
Hamilton and a couple of the people that that met with them their traditions hold that they fled um probably before the
time of Lehi and Nephi and they u maybe they fled the north fled the northern kingdom and that they went to Yemen so
they fled south and we know that a number of Jews uh from from time to time
fled Israel when there was danger and went to Yemen or of course many other places um these
Jews supposedly went to Yemen according to the traditions went to Yemen and stayed there for a number of years maybe
several centuries before they were forced to flee and while in Yemen they according to Alexander Hamilton they
brought with them biblical records also some apocryphal text and other
manuscripts including a document called words of Gad the Seir and so that was
published in his book about his travels in the East Indies or to East India and
uh kind of sat there for a long time the idea that there was a document related to words of gadasier in this Jewish
colony um almost a century later really 70 years later Claudius Buchanan and
another another sailor I believe went to that area met with these Jews uh the
black Jews of Kachchan and found that heard that they had manuscripts and
records he didn't talk about the copper plates in written in Hebrew but he
learned that they had u manuscripts and he was able to acquire or purchase some of these some documents there was some
suspicion that wasn't a fair deal and so forth but he brought some of these documents back and pro sold them or gave
them to the University of Cambridge in England so the beginning of the 19th century we have this manuscript called
the words of Gadesir the Hebrew manuscript from a Jewish colony um that
according to their history dated back to the ancient kingdom of the northern
kingdom perhaps tribe of Manasseh and brought with them records biblical
records that they had preserved in in some way or some form over the centuries fascinating story very intriguing um
hard to know exactly how accurate it is because some of this is certainly secondhand and this colony by the way if
you go there is is dwindling there's very very few members left um it's it's just difficult keeping a an that that
religion and tradition going in the modern days but they have made an important contribution in having at
least preserved some manuscripts that we now have in University of Cambridge well so it it was there and this manuscript
in Hebrew was published in several different languages including Hebrew French I think Portuguese Italian a
number of languages and uh over over the following century but it still got
almost no attention in in in the West or in biblical scholarship and a key part
of this was a significant Jewish scholar Solomon
Shear went uh got a hold of this manuscript from the University of Cambridge and wrote a wrote a paper on
it wrote a paper discussing a number of manuscripts and he mentioned words of Gadisir gave it just one page of
treatment and in his treatment he said yeah this looks like it's a modern forgery by modern I mean medieval ages
he did he said it's from the medieval ages because it has some words dealing with astronomy that are probably from
Greek traditions that would certainly be long after biblical times and um so he
said it's really he kind of dismissed the book and other authors saw that and
kind of regurgitated that so everybody kind of concluded oh there's nothing to see here just a another modern late
medieval forgery or medieval forgery that you know no big deal it wasn't
until um maybe 30 years ago that a significant Jewish scholar of
pseudapigraphal documents and other other Hebrew manuscripts um got a hold of this and said "Hey I think there's
something here." This was Professor Mayer Barlan from BIU not to be confused
with BYU it's Bar Elan University in Israel and it's named after his
grandfather who was a significant uh student and scholar of the of the Talmud
and played a significant role in the establishment of Israel as a nation so he was uh very very famed person and
they named a university after him and northern Jerusalem there's a street named after him a lot of things are named after Mayer Barilang that was the
grandfather of this professor well Professor Barilan who was actually born in New York and then went and lived uh
lived in Israel has has been uh doing just some really fascinating work when
he saw this manuscript he looked at it read it and noted a number of things
seemed to not fit the story of being a medieval forgery um and he gave he wrote
a letter an article for the Journal of Biblical Literature very nice peer-reviewed journal and he gave 10
reasons why he thought this was an authentic ancient document not going all the way back to David according to the
Bible Gad was David's Seir that's second 2 Samuel
24:11 mentions Gad the prophet being David's Seir and most many Latter-day
Saints are familiar with the verse in Chronicles um that talks about I think it's uh 1 Chronicles 29:19 or 29:29 2929
that mentions a number of lost books and these lost books are really interesting and one of those is words of God the
Seir which has the acts of David so David is associated with this prophet named Gad the Seir and he was a prophet
we read in the Old Testament like to be very blunt he would not who's not afraid to Well yeah that's the thing about this
is it's not just some book that might be mentioned like we hear of Joshua for example it it's he is also mentioned Gad
the seer is mentioned and there's an event with him and David where there is a vision and Gad is actually kind of
standing between the Lord and David receiving the information and then actually telling David what to do he's
also around in in in for Samuel where he's telling David where to go as he's hiding from Saul so this is a real
character of the Old Testament yes we've got a reference to the book uh that he has written and yet there's no book yes
and so even though there's you know there's always a risk some modern text
purporting to be an ancient text there's so many fakes Christian language yeah and there is yeah there's some Christian
language that for example it talks about the lamb of God which as we all know comes from John right in the New
Testament the lamb of God um we'll come back to that in just a moment but Mayor Barilan saw this read it and said "While
it's possible that modern scribes copying it or editing it or whatever may
have used some more modern language to describe astronomical terms that made this seem like it had some late
astronomy as opposed to early early astronomy." Um while that could
certainly have happened modern edits he said the bulk of the book the essence has a feel that is very different than a
medieval forgery and he gave 10 reasons why he thought this book needs to be considered ancient and by ancient he
means back to the apocalyptic era which is roughly 250 BC to maybe 150 AD and
apocalyptic documents are characterized by having maybe a big end days kind of a
scene uh where you have judgment and great miracles and learn about heaven
and similar to the book of revelation which is a classic apocalyptic theophony the theophony yes and that may be the
case i will just point out that as latter-day saints we also get some hints
that those apocalyptic themes can be perhaps more ancient book of Moses for
example Enoch as a seer the things he sees and experiences uh could very well
fit into that classification some of Nephi's revelations have that apocalyptic feel to it and even Isaiah
uh around Isaiah like was 24 to 27 those chapters mid Isaiah there are some
apocalyptic themes so I would just suggest that even if this does seem like an apocalyptic text it doesn't
necessarily limit it to that modern era about 2,000 years ago but that's where
Mayer Barilan feels like it fits best and so that's that's still ancient still fascinating um but as he examines it he
gives several reasons why he feels this is authentic and the first reason just
caught me by just totally by surprise he said he said you know this book has
something very unusual there are two entire chapters in this book that are simply lifted from the Bible psalms 144
and 145 they're just regurgitated no apologies no no uh sources given just
here we are there's there's some text as if it belonged in this book so this kind of so-called plagiarism he said this is
something that nobody in the modern era would do it would obviously uh
jeopardize the authenticity of your book it would be ridiculous you'd be mocked no one does that in the modern times but
that was common in the biblical days and he said "This is an unusual feature that
argues against modern plagiarism because modern authors don't beh including the
Middle Ages don't behave that way." But that was what went on all the time we see Isaiah 2 and in M in Micah 4 for
example um all sorts of quotations without bothering to say oh now I'm quoting from Isaiah now I'm quoting from
Jeremiah just they used other people's biblical writings freely that's
characteristic of the Bible days that's a fascinating argument for Latter-day Saints because one of the top arguments
against Book of Mormon authenticity you're just plagiarizing the Bible look Nephi just boom suddenly quotes whole
chapters of of Isaiah it's ridiculous well it is for us and it was from Joseph
Smith's day but it wasn't in Bible days that's I find that really ironic yeah
that's really interesting he had he had a number of other things but there he this good good analysis in journal of
biblical literature u variety of points based on content on style and themes on language uh for example the term El
Shadai is used which is a very ancient term not used in more in more recent
biblical writings and it these these theme themes are used in a way that that really fits and makes sense
now Jeeoff this just going back to this so this was a manuscript that was it wasn't just who who who
found it who discovered it and I mean are they using it at that
time how old is the manuscript that we have because obviously it must have been copied down many times it was on it was
on Yeah it was on it was on like a form of a paper so this was not on brass plates not not so it had to have
probably been written and rewritten many times to be kept over the centuries and it's attributed to Claudius Buchanan who
who wrote about it in 1811 he's the guy who brought several manuscripts back to
and gave them to or sold them to University of Cambridge in England where they where they still are and so it was
uh we can ascribe it to him we don't know the actual scribe who wrote this uh
document and and I don't know if it's been um carbon dated to know how old this particular manuscript was but prior
to you know certainly prior to 1744 when Alexander Hamilton was talking about it
in the manuscript that they had uh yeah that's that's very interesting
you may wish to know also it it's now available the translation there's three translations on the market it's really a
very short book 14 chapters five just a little over 5,000 words this is Mayer Barilan's translation that really
brought it to the attention of the world and now some others have come out um small book like this you see how thin it
is uh it's double space so it's not real
tight small amount of text 5,000 which is like a long kind of a And where do we find where do we find that you can get
it on on Amazon for example um I give I give links to places where you can get
this there's also a couple others that I don't like nearly as well um here here's one for example Ken Johnson and it's a
nice book but it's kind of written from an evangelical perspective with a lot of added text and headers kind of forcing a
narrative that uh might not exactly fit um I don't like that the thing I'm
excited about if if other Latter-day Saints are interested in this uh I've got maybe a possible way to help bayer
Barilad in addition to this short translation to English has prepared also a critical text and this is his real
masterpiece this is the significant work that we need to think about unfortunately it's only available in
Hebrew so this is words of Gadesir is the title in Hebrew and it's a
magnificent book is it devim is that the He calls it devim yeah yeah yes yes the
the those words and the um it's got it's interesting you know maps and analysis
and it goes through you know chapter by chapter analyzing things it has some interesting paintings that relate to the
apocalyptic themes or or various themes and visions that Gadier has and analysis
including some modern archaeology there's a section here where of course it just has the Hebrew the original Hebrew text but he gets has all sorts of
analysis of the Hebrew words relationship to other text uh related scholarship some archaeological findings
that might relate to some of the themes words concepts symbols that are being used and this is uh from people that
have read it that understand it it's it's a it's a great work of scholarship
and my my pet project at the interpretive foundation so I I was editor for the for the journal or
executive editor for the journal for a number of years i uh stepped down back in about September of last year because
needed you know life was getting in the way of all that but I'm still on the board as as a vice president and a
project that I'm hoping to see come to fruition is to have this book translated
into English and published by interpreter we have another significant uh biblical related uh group we're
working with right now as as a potential joint project uh just pending review of the book by their Hebrew scholars but if
this works out um we're really excited about the prospects of turning this into an English translation that will give us
access to this uh several decades of scholarship that may Barilan has put into understanding
this really amazing text and uh people would like to help out I I do need to
come up with some donations to help with the with the translation we've got some funding but uh still looking for some
donations to help with the translation and the final publishing but uh it's not not not a very high Let's see if we can
help you with that on on this episode here i was going to say something that's really interesting you know you bring up
the fact that you know you've got these these Christian terms uh some some astronomy that's a little bit from seems
to be from a different age book of Abra has some connections perhaps yeah yeah definitely probably some connections
there but it's it's interesting because these texts that are apocryphal or apocalyptic often times are they're it's
they're rejected from both sides from both Christianity and from from Judaism
because the Jews say "Well these are too Christian we don't want anything to do with it." And the Christians say "Well this is too Jewish we we don't want
anything to do with it this doesn't sound like the New Testament." And and yet you can say the exact same thing about the Book of Mormon right is it's
it's very Jewish in a sense but it's extremely Christian and and so this this
place where it kind of rides between the two sides here that always piques my
interest when I hear that i always think to myself wait a minute here that that
might speak more truth to me than anything else um that's a really great point um in the
when I when I ran into this book I did a review for in the inter um interpreter
journal of latter-day saint faith and scholarship and it was published 2022 and let me just pull up the title of
that it's called the words of Gadesir an apparently ancient text with intriguing origins and content and as I go over the
story and kind of summarize the 14 chapters and they're very different each chapter is is quite um it's not like
there's one steady theme going through here but I I talk about some of the terminology like Elshadai jealous Lord
Lord of Hosts in verse 30 of the text that really is a very ancient Jewish
concept of God and points to the divine council and that could point again to ancient origins related to you know for
example our book of Moses our book of Moses um and there's a number of themes
in there like uh judgment with like three different classifications although it's not the same as as the you
know so forth plan of salvation but very interesting and there are themes about
mercy and the first chapter starts off with what seems like oh my goodness some really Christian themes the lamb of God
there's this vision of a of a divine being is called the lamb and he's carrying a lamb on his should on his
shoulders that's this the divine lamb that is associated with sacrifice but the lamb carries out sacrifice um on
behalf of others for on the behalf of the souls of the righteous and so forth and this theme of the lamb of god is so
intriguing um after my book review came out uh Mayer Barilan saw it and he was
just very gracious and he approached the interpreter foundation and said hey I'd be happy to write if you wouldn't mind
for I'd be happy to write an article on the heavenly lamb because he feels it's a really fascinating theme himself and
he has now published that he gave this is again it's a peer-reviewed journal and it went went through what he thought
was a surprisingly rigorous peer review all the details that he had to attend to and the reference check in and
everything but this was just published a few weeks ago in 2025 and so we have
this uh really noted Jewish scholar not Latter-day Saint Mayer Barilan uh
writing the article entitled the heavenly lamb sacrifices on the heavenly altar and the song of the lamb and to me
it's a it's a very touching article as he describes these this scene in the in
the first few verses of words of gad the seir where we have references to a heavenly altar a heavenly lamb
sacrifices being made on behalf of of the righteous and there are there's a
concept that could even relate to our our practice of of the prayer role on the altar where
we're bringing people's names to the altar uh for um for heaven to consider
imploring heaven to bless them and the text the way it's written in words of gadiser talks about sacrifices of the
souls of the pious being made on the heavenly altar um but I think we can
read that as sacrifices in the sense of our prayers are are sacrifices up to heaven or the yearning for others can be
considered as sacrifices not that the righteous have been yanked up to an altar and slain but something well you
have you have the altar of incense which is very similar also there's nothing slain there but you've got that is an altar of prayer essentially yes yes so
this he writes this article about the heavenly lamb how the heavenly lamb um
performs sacrifices and praises the lamb and he explores the idea that this many
many people will assume this is Christian that comes from John but actually John may be borrowing a Jewish
concept that predated him and he as he evaluates the the um he re-evaluates the
date as he writes this article of book of gad the words of gadier and concludes
that it's likely to have been written before the revelation of John and that
John may have been borrowing a theme he also notes that there are other Jewish texts and John Welch has noted this some
of his writings that there's a text a Jewish text that predates uh John uh the
the testament of the 12 patriarchs and there's a portion in there that makes reference to the lamb of God and so it's
not from Christianity that we have now a couple of instances where we could see this concept being used in in a he in
Hebrew and Jewish text before Christianity and that's assuming words
of God the seir may predate Christianity but lamb of God is a is a sacred concept
and the way Nephi uses it now to me if Joseph Smith were just making up the Book of Mormon and we have Nephi sharing
things from 600 years for the coming of Christ i I think he I would be hesitant
to just blatantly use the term lamb of God yeah this isn't going to go over very well
yeah yeah and yet here we have the lamb of God in words of Gad the Seir with in
a way that resonates I I would argue that it resonates with with Nephi's writings in fact I was really touched by
his article and I wrote a companion a little piece of commentary uh to go with his article on why I felt Latter-day
Saints might wish to pay attention to Mayer Barlan's paper on the lamb of God
and um there are some there are some fascinating issues going on there that
show some potential overlap and I I also noted that Moses chapter 7 has
interesting echoes with this uh the early portions of words of God the seir
chapter one for example there's there's a complaint of the lamb the lamb in
chapter one of words of god the seir complains about the impurity on earth and this is echoed by a man perhaps
representing god uh who's dressed in linen accompanying the lamb and we also
have a similar saying the the earth itself speaks in verse 48 of Moses 7
about the wickedness of the earth when will I be freed from this wickedness and have peace and so forth this the
complaint of impurity or wickedness uh from the earth versus from the lamb of god both there uh in both texts we have
a yearning for cleansing from filthiness uh in Moses 7 as well as the lamb the
lamb shepherd expressing this desire for purity there are themes of grace sacrifice expeation purification in the
in Moses 7 and similar things in words of Gadier um we have references to
keeping grace and purity being driven out with the aid of the lamb and the lambs takes the pure and he brings a
peace offering sacrifice before Elshadai and um all these interesting themes the
lamb being associated with bringing purity and and redemption the re so
there there are echoes that I would encourage Latter- Day Saints to explore and I give more details in that article
yeah and I want to just just a small tangent here i know that you have been working on also studying Moses and the Book of
Mormon the Book of Moses and the Book of Mormon and looking at a comparison i think it at one point I think I remember you saying something to the effect of
there are or maybe it was null that uh maybe you found a hundred different
words or phrases that were in the Book of Moses not in the Bible but are in the Book of Mormon yeah if I could briefly
mention that because it does it does have relationship to understanding words of Gadier due to its potential
connections to words of Moses um the to me this has been I I've just been
delighted studying words of God this year and the con the study of the the story of the these Jews and their
connection and these ancient documents and the the how how it has touched and transformed the life of this wonderful
Jewish scholar i just love this man Mayer Barilan i can't wait to meet him not met him physically but we just corresponded i just have so much respect
for him and the struggles he's going through as he faces missiles hitting his neighborhood from time to time and oh
just so keep him in your prayers but this wonderful man and that's part of why I want to see his book get translated to English because it just
deserves it but um this wonderful man so touched by this ancient document and how
it has touched me and given me interest in more interest in the book of Moses as as fascinating as that is I think the
most exciting thing to hit me in the past couple years in my just explorations in the scriptures um
started with I keep this really try to keep this short but No that's okay i I love this stuff so so go ahead couple
years ago I was uh working on an article kind of a rebuttal to a um a a
Latter-day Saint who was kind of what some people might call a c cultural Latter- Day Saint and felt like ah the
scriptures don't take don't take them too seriously book of Mormon Joseph Smith made it up that kind of thing and
so he he had he had written that um you could tell the Book of Mormon couldn't be true because it talks about the
Exodus and like 1 Nephi 4:2 he cited specifically Nephi tells his brethren
"Let's be strong like Moses uh who led the Israelites across the the sea." And
he said "Really?" Now the whole story of the Exodus he said that came later after the Persian exile and they kind of made
all this up to give some gravitas to their history and scholars have already figured this out that could there was no
such thing i really took objection to that i mean certainly there are scholars who say that but there are very fine
biblical scholars who who brought forth significant evidence for the antiquity of the Exodus whatever it was however it
happened but they there was an escape from Egypt they brought with them Egyptian words and knowledge that dates
back to that period and there's all sorts of great things that good scholars have done but so and I'm I'm responding to him trying to cite some of this but
as I deal dig into first Nephi 4:2 it strikes me that this is kind of a strange verse Nephi is telling his
brothers be strong like Moses And yet when you read about Moses in the Old Testament the word strong is never
associated with him in fact when they have this big battle he's got to hold up his staff and maybe it weighed 10 lbs 15
pounds I don't know but he needs to get two people to stand by his side to help him hold this up for a prolonged time
certainly not easy but it's not like he was some kind of really you know buff person left hundreds of pounds he was
getting on age and he was not strong but the word strong is used with Pharaoh it's used with various enemies it's used
with the hand of the Lord it's used with various prophets but not Moses so I was thinking Nephi seems to be referring to
something that his brothers would obviously recognize but I can't find that in the Bible i wonder where that
came from and shortly after that I ran into this article at that time just I
ran into an article by N reynolds and it was called the brass plates version of Genesis that's now been it was from a
book that was hard to get and it's since been republished by interpreter just last year I think to make it easier or
maybe two years ago to make it easier for people to access a fascinating article he did a computer study of of
the language in the Book of Moses compared it to the Book of Mormon and it was just trying to explore possible intertextuality but to his surprise he
found lots of words where that were that were unique that weren't found in the Old Testament or the New Testament or
excuse me the Bible that weren't standard KGB words uh with some exceptions but that and he also noted
that these similarities this language seem to have a one-way
direction of influence now the direction of influence if you're thinking in a naturalistic way if there's
interextuality between these two texts it's pretty easy to know how that happened joseph Smith wrote the Book of
Mormon got familiar with Book of Mormon text whether you think it was divine or Joseph Smith made it up the text was
from his work in the 18 1829 wrapped up then and then later about a year later
he starts doing the Book of Moses all those nice Book of Mormon terms fresh in his head some of them pop out get reused
regurgitated so you expect there to be some flow of Book of Mormon language into the Book of Moses sure what
astonished Null Reynolds was he saw in several cases clear evidence that the
flow of influence went the other way as if Book of Mormon writers were
referencing a motherload of more detailed information somewhere else that we should be familiar with and one
really dramatic case occurs in First Nephi 16:48 this is where Nephi's brother brothers are getting really
rebellious they're not working or helping him and in fact they're they're making complaints about him and Layman
complains Nephi you you're you're just really an evil guy he's saying "You're you're blinding us you're deceiving us
you're trying to lead us away to be captive to your crazy ideas and and uh that's why we don't like you." And Nephi
writes all that down well what's really interesting is in Moses 4:4 which is related to the Genesis story and and
related to Genesis 3 uh we get a lot more information about Satan is just kind of a very not even mentioned just
the serpent in Genesis 3 but get we're learning about Satan in Moses 4 and
Satan is described as this evil very evil person who um does the very things
that layman accuses Nephi of he blinds us he deceives us he's the father of lies who wants to lead us away captive
at at his will and this description has been reworked by layman to accuse Nephi
and when we when we see that he doesn't come out and say "You're satanic." But the implication in using that language
is "Ni you're satanic you're evil that's why we're justified in opposing you and
maybe even killing you because you are discernment of the evil one." That
complaint so ironic is written down by by Nephi and by understanding the
intertextuality we see an illusion being made to something to to a text that
Joseph Smith wouldn't produce for over a year and this is a fascinating thing
there are many cases where the book of Moses serves as the motherload of information for terms like secret
combinations and all the stuff related to the oaths and covenants and satanic conspiracies and were secret works of
darkness but also many other things in involving Christ and salvation and revelation well null found 33 elements
and when I ran into First Nephi 4:2 and was puzzled over it and I saw that
article from Nephi I said "Wow that's an interesting from null Reynolds." I saw no Reynolds article i said "I wonder
what if wouldn't it be cool if Nephi were actually referring to something on
a" and and and know null's thesis was there might be something on the in the on the brass plates that was like our
modern book of Moses maybe in the version of Genesis on the brass plates might have more complete information so
he hypothesized that the brass plates may have had a brass plates version of the book of Moses and he called it the
brass plates version of Genesis and uh 33 examples he had some of which had
one-way influence so looked like he was alluding to something he hadn't written yet of Joseph Smith was the author and
that's really hard to do so I said I what if and as I open up Moses one and
by the time I got to the end of Moses one I had found three cases where strength was associated with with Moses
but especially I believe it was verse 25 where the Lord tells Moses I will make you stronger than many waters and he
will lead the people across those waters that looks like the verse that Nephi was alluding to in First Nephi 4:2 there's
the backstory the Lord promising Moses I will make you strong stronger than many
waters and so let's be strong well in that case then Jeff they're there they're they're both sides are are are
referencing the same work because if you're saying that layman is is is referencing things that are said in
Moses about Satan and using those words to apply them to Nephi then Nephi is
retorting with let us be strong like unto Moses so they're both going from the same overall story that retort came
first but what's what's interesting uh I didn't get to this part until recently this art this article I've published
several articles on this right now I've collaborated with null I reached out to null Reynolds and we started collaborating we did a we did a couple
of papers we did a presentation at a fair conference uh well this was some of this was first introduced in a fair
conference uh presentation a couple years ago uh actually three or four years ago but uh through collaboration
with null Reynolds and just continuing uh examining different verses right now
we are at almost 150 I think the official numbers 146 examples of
language in the book of Moses that is found in related context in often in
informative or meaningful ways and sometimes in weak ways not all of it solid i I'll admit that but some gives
where and in many cases many cases what's in the Book of Moses provides the
backstory that gives meaning and context and added nuance to what the Book of Mormon is doing that's very difficult to
write a book where you have all these illusions to things that haven't been written yet to stories that haven't been
crafted yet because the Book of Moses came after the Book of Mormon so the
some of these I I I I just love like this encounter of Alma and Amu in and with the at Ammoniah Ammoniah some of
the language they use and just like oh my goodness there's real subtle knife twisting going on when you realize the
illusions being pulled from this book of Moses that hadn't been written as Joseph dictated this from a hat wow so I I
really it's gotten it's been really fascinating to me and what was really interesting this my the latest work in
response to some questions others have asked um if this was if this was random
you know it's just Joseph sharing common language from his environment and just spitting it out you would expect it to
be scattered through the Book of Mormon pretty randomly and what we see instead is a
very strong pattern where the number of illusions per chapter or per book or
however you want to do it there's a few different mathematical ways of doing this i've got some charts that'll be published um Nephi was the master nephi
had very high concentration of references to book of Moses themes and concepts and his brother Jacob also and
Lehi when he's speaking in in Second Nephi 1 boy he's just zinger zinger zinger all sorts of things coming out of
Lehi jacob and Nephi and then it kind of drops off and when we get into Messiah
for example like like you hit the record of Zenith zilch there's nothing in this whole story going on until Benadai
starts speaking and and dealing with scripture and and themes of Christ and salvation then he's got suddenly there's
a burst going on and Alma when he's preaching Alma was another great student
of the brass plates because he refers to them many times in his in his teaching and Alma's Alma's quotations are often
thick with references but Nephi has the highest concentration very closely followed by Jacob and then you get down
to like Omni low really low what's really surprising Mormon who we knew ran
into them and and and they influenced him um but he has his writings have
actually fairly low compared to Nephi like half as as frequent use or reference to to Book of Moses themes but
this the the mathematical distribution of references to the book of Moses has a
tells another story that that makes sense it's consistent with who knew the brass plates who wasn't that familiar
with it who didn't know them at all and it just fits it's really fascinating yeah and that goes back also to another
work that null's been working on and that that is the DNA of of the scribal schools between Manasseh and Judah
because when you go through that you see that there are really two different lines of scripture
that uh are unfolding before us and and we are heirs to the Judahite scribal
school that probably began much later and and that's what we have in the Old Testament and yet the Manasse
scribal school Lehi brings the brass plates which is different it's got different things and so you have to ask
yourself as far as the lamb of God goes was this more of a title and something that was introduced in a Manassi
tradition under Joseph as as a term for
Christ and and and if if the black Jews had a Manassite
heritage as was uh uh shared with uh Alexander Hamilton the the the naval the
naval uh uh was he a naval officer i don't know but he Yes yes he was then then you say okay well maybe that would
come down with gad the seer and this is terminology that would be found more in that Josephite
tradition right ephraimite Manassite tradition as compared to a Judite
tradition in there it's interesting also you know because I'm think I'm thinking about this as you're talking and you know in in First Nephi
11 you have the angelic host that comes down talks to Nephi and explains to him
what the tree of life is about and that is where he brings up the angel
the angelic host brings up the lamb of God I believe first there and and so
you've got the lamb of God and then he goes on to give him not only an explanation of the tree of life but this
apocalyptic uh uh well this prophecy of his own people of the
Gentiles of the nations here in in the Americas and then at the end he
says "Well here's where you have to stop i'm going to show you the rest but you can't write any more of
this." So you've got this lamb of God theme coming through Nephi's vision and
then he says "Stop here." And then you get he says "The rest of this will be
produced by my servant John." I think he says "Servant John." Yes yes well John continues it on with the lamb of God
lamb of God yes that's really interesting and and in all that it's it's good to note that one of the other
very ancient from my point of view ancient references to the lamb to the lamb uh or implicitly lamb of God is in
Moses 7:47 which refers to the lamb slain before the foundation of the world
and as a reference to Christ so the lamb Christ as the lamb was on the brass
plates if if something like the book of Moses was on there and in saying that by the way there's in in this whole issue
of intertextuality many times we don't stop and talk about the miraculous gift
of translation because the interextuality we see that null and I see as we look at the Book of Moses the
Book of Mormon is largely only possible because the trans the choice of words
used in translation signals that there's there's something there and that's one of to me is one of the beauties people have
complained about how the Book of Mormon has all these words from the Bible so much intertextuality even from the New
Even from the New Testament but that intertextuality is a gift I think that helps us see connections that might have
been hard to see before and I feel personally is a is a gift provided in
the miraculous translation process in terms of what words were chosen in English to be given to Joseph Smith to
translate i know that's somewhat controversial because it implies a a pretty strict translation or a not
Joseph Smith composing everything in his own heart and mind but that the English
words were given i don't know if you've had if you had have had many dis much discussions with Stanford Carmarmac or
Royal Scousin about some of the new okay there's some very interesting um
arguments that that that suggest Joseph really when he used the yeran thumbum or
the translators that he saw the English text that he was to to give and some
people take offense at that and the reason is doctrine of covenants 979 says he had to study it out in his heart and
mind Right but there's a great paper by Stan Spencer in interpreter on the on
the studying it out that that whole topic from a few years ago which I feel is one of the most important papers that
the interpreter has published stan Spencer's analysis explores carefully
the language of doctrine of covenants 9 to address the antecedent of it in study
it out in your own mind and he explores this like four different angles and it all works together that what that
passage is really telling us is not that it is how to translate an unknown script
in an unknown of an unknown language by staring at it and getting impressions and guessing does this mean tree no how
about arvar no uh boiled eggs no keep guessing until you get it burning in your bosom that would take quite a long
time to translate with that that kind of a method rather the it is the question of whether or not it was right for
Oliver to translate and that is so important because the I I feel many people have
made an an easy to make error in assuming that Doctrine of Covenants 97-9
is telling us the mechanics of how Joseph translated and his article leaves
me convinced that's not what's what's going on it's excellent analysis some of the best I've seen and I feel that's
compelling so Joseph if we assume that Joseph was seeing the words um he still
need to be spiritually in tune it still was not you know a trivial process but he was able to see get get revelation
and give accurately transcribed words if those words if he was making up words
from his own impressions and guesses or whatever time after time these words wouldn't match the Book of Mormon is
amazing for its consistency there are phrases and concepts used throughout um
that signal connections between the Book of Mormon as well as connections to other texts like Old Testament even New
Testament Book of Moses and in my opinion the 150 roughly 150 parallels
that provide significant meaning and clue to guide readers on the meanings of these this intertextuality between the
Book of Moses and Book of Mormon required conscious choice of whoever
provided the English words God or someone he appointed how it was done we don't know but there was it looks like
there was a deliberate choice to maintain markers to show this phrase
this phrase they're the same do you see the connection and those connections unfold numerous stories and insights
that can deepen our appreciation for the scriptures so to me it's an incredible miracle that that the Book of Mormon
could be dictated with all the internal consistency it has yet with different styles and agendas from the different
authors that show different people were involved and now you get to the Book of Mormon given a year later the Book of
Moses excuse me started a year later and we get stories that provide stories and
words and language that provides the backstory and the source that these illusions were pointing to the whole
time that's mindblowing and to me it provides it provides an easy to see
fundamental argument for the divinity of both texts at the same time which is really strange but if I'm wrong I I'd
like someone to help me see that because it's No that's fascinating something now with a professor professor Mayer mayor
back to Gadier sorry for that yes back to G the seir on this as he's going through this i mean you've had I'm
guessing some discussions with him it sounds like Yes um what is his explanation for the lamb of God being
that phrase being in there yeah he he feels that that was a u so we have
sacrifices an important theme in the Bible and there the the the Jews
especially in the I think he might argue in the apocalyptic era had visions and the concept of heaven and great judgment
and other things coming forth and the idea of a divine being represented by a
lamb there are ties to sacrifice and lamb throughout the Old Testament um it
is it is a it is a fitting way to describe the you know love of God and
mercy and grace and so forth that can that can fit an ancient uh ancient
Jewish view now I don't mean to be putting words in his mouth here but let me just let me just uh quote from his
paper um pull that up the heavenly lamb okay so let me just read from the the
abstract that might help give some thoughts so this is mayor Barilan and the heavenly lamb sacrifices on the
heavenly altar and the song of the lamb which is also a really meaningful part of this paper uh the symb symbolic image
of the lamb of god is well known in the new testament and the testaments of the 12 patriarchs and and as I recall it was
the tribe of Joseph where that that that occurred back to your point um I I
believe that's right but I've got to check okay this image derives from the old testament later adopted by early
Christians words of Gad the Seir is an apocalyptic pseudapig pseudapigriphal
book written in pseudo biblical Hebrew from a manuscript copied in the 18th
century after over 33 years of investigation that's his lifetime work
really many aspects of this recently discovered text are coming to light there are more than 20 similarities
between this largely unknown book and the book of Revelation though one was written by a Jewish man who became
Christian and the other by a non-rebinic Jew this old yet newly discovered book
will be presented briefly and the concept of the heavenly altar and the song of the lamb will be discussed some
esoteric traditions uh pseudapig pseudapig pseudepographic rabbitic and
halic literature will be presented concerning what is sacrificed on the heavenly altar or goes up to god giving
the heavenly world a new look the relationship of the song of the lamb to Revelation 15:3 and Jewish liturgy is
also explored and he sees in Revelation 15:3 it echoes back an echo to Moses and
the Exodus and s the song of the lamb of course the lamb was an important part of
that Exodus escape and ancient Jewish all sacrifice and worship of the
Lord and also Jewish liturgy so he sees uh ancient roots from the Old Testament
that can account for this as a legitimate Jewish theme and he explores
some interesting a lot of interesting work this is a very nice piece of scholarship digs into both words of Gadier but also the uh Babylonian Talmud
and other Jewish literature as he explores these these sacrifices their association with the lamb um offerings
of or for souls and the pious michael plays a role also in both of course
Daniel Revelation and words of Gad the Seir there's a lot of connections
between these texts that need to be considered which is why I am so anxious to get the English translation of his
critical edition which I think will give us even further insight into some of these but I would encourage your your
audience to please read his beautiful article uh the heavenly lamb sacrifices
on the heavenly altar and the song of the lamb at interpreter foundation in the journal of latter in interpreter a
journal of latter-day saint faith and scholarship we've had a number of nonldds scholars provide uh really
fascinating works for us um this may be my favorite i'm really touched by his
kindness in doing this he was writing this and editing this at a time of great
tragedy in Israel of mourning and even ongoing attacks and so his courage in
making this possible for us courage and generosity just deeply deeply touched me yeah well that's wonderful it's great to
find those kind of relationships over those you know over those bridges so to speak well we'll make sure and we put in
the uh links to the articles to the book uh is there anything else you wanted to
get in there before we uh we end the interview um Book of Mormon is true is it it is
amazing there's It's I'm just honestly stunned by how sometimes a small lead a
small clue that troubles you or raises a question when you explore it you find oh
my goodness look at all these incredible new insights that that
that come and I think many people have experienced that i see words of God the
Seir as a potential cousin to the Book of Mormon and to our scriptures i don't
I'm not saying it is scripture but it is a fascinating text that that deserves to be studied there are things we can learn
about Michael and the great archangel that relate to some latter day themes the importance of pur purity um the way
David speaks to his assembled people in his farewell words to you know similar
to Moses he he uh stands on a pulpit as giving his farewell message to his people to bring them to God and and
strengthen the covenant that has echoes with King Messiah also um David even
teaches the concept of free agency in was verses 184 and 1885 of words of
Gandere and we have other things comparisons to this the law compar
comparing the law to a seed faith to a tree that has echoes with Book of Mormon
um three outcomes on the day of judgment a lot of things for Latter- Day Saints to think about and then I think
especially the treatment of the lamb of God and also read the beautiful section on the song of the lamb and its
reference to liturgy and exodus themes in Mayer Barlon's work so I I I I love
this stuff and I thank you so much for having interest in this and giving me a chance to share some of my favorite uh
topics of late no I know the audience is going to enjoy this quite a bit now Jeeoff I have followed you for I don't
know how I want to say decades how long did when did you start Mormonity whoa i think it was about 1994
yeah I came in right about that time early really really soon after that i was I was following you very early on
especially I knew I had a reader the book of Abraham and and whatnot so uh so I've known of you for a long time so I'm
really glad to be able to finally get you on the show and where can people find you now uh rise from the
dust.com um I also publish still have some works in uh coming forth in
interpreter journal of latterday saint faith and scholarship uh you contact me by email
jeffjfflindsay.com if you have questions i try to answer it's hard to get too much email but happy to try great jeff
thanks so much for your time really appreciate it fascinating topic thank you and thanks for you just do such incredible work here and so such a great
diversity of and significant themes and a lot of fun thank you for appreciate it and audience one more thing if you have
an interest in this if this strikes your imagination and says hey this is fascinating we're going to put a link
you down there also so you can get a hold of Jeff and see if you you are interested in donating to uh to this cause so thanks Jeff and it would be
through interpreter foundation very good okay thanks so much bye-bye heat heat