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S2E33 · Joseph Smith Polaroid
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Standard of Truth · Season 2 · Episode 33 · 1:15:00

Joseph Smith Polaroid

Gerrit's own book on the Book of Mormon translation printed a picture of Charles Anthon that turned out to be his brother.

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The question ·

How might historians approach authenticating antiquities such as the recently discovered daguerreotype claimed to be of Joseph Smith, or other family heirlooms?

Matthew (listener)

Richard catches up on emails, starting with a missionary who found the podcast in a folder of unapproved audio, which sends the hosts into memories of strict mission music rules. Gerrit answers the missionary's question about reading beyond Rough Stone Rolling, warning against attractive stories like the camel gate and confessing a wrong photo in his own book. More than 40 minutes in, Richard reads the email that gives the episode its title: how do historians judge a newly found daguerreotype said to be Joseph Smith? Gerrit explains provenance, family traditions like John Taylor's watch, and the gap between "could be" and "is," and Richard reads the Church's measured statement that nothing is known about the locket before 1992.

Who comes upJoseph SmithCharles AnthonJohn TaylorWillard RichardsHyrum SmithMark HofmannLouis DaguerreBrigham Young
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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.
Gerrit Hi, thank you for joining us for another episode of the Standard of Truth Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Hello, Gerrit. In this week's podcast, we're gonna catch up on a couple of emails and then talk about a hot topic of the day that a couple emails actually, emailers sent to us. Now, we recorded, Gerrit has a very busy summer schedule, as do I, and so we recorded about, I don't know, eight or nine podcasts back in May or June.
Gerrit Each one worse than the last.
Richard Oh no, there's no question.
Gerrit It was a continual descent.
Richard Well, and so, I mean, essentially the last time we recorded a podcast, it was during the first term of the George W. Bush administration. So it's been quite a while since we've recorded one. And so we've received a whole bunch of emails and we didn't want anyone to feel like we are ignoring them. But there's so many that we received, which is very nice, which is the humble brag way. Oh my gosh, we just have so many people.
Gerrit Oh, it's just a hundred. Yeah, we can't possibly respond to them all.
Richard Ones of emails. Anyway, there's a couple that we wanted to hit specifically. There was one line from one email that I specifically liked where it starts, Mr. Peabody and your faithful boy Sherman. That one made me, thanks, Jeff. That one made me laugh. I assume that I know the roles there. We did get one from a missionary. This one was pretty funny. Hey guys, I'm currently a missionary serving in the Wisconsin Milwaukee Mission. Now, the reason that-
Gerrit This spoke directly to me.
Richard That's right, as a former missionary from the Wisconsin Milwaukee Mission. I stumbled across your podcast in a Google Drive folder of illegally downloaded audio.
Gerrit Let's take a pause right there. He stumbled across our podcast in apparently some bad missionaries. So this missionary's been downloading a bunch of illegal audio to a Google Drive.
Richard That's right.
Gerrit One of the things that was contraband was us.
Richard Well, so this actually, when we read this email, we laughed about it because we talked about the rules around just in how different everything is, a mission now versus missions when we served back in the late 90s. So Gerrit, what were the rules for music and things you could listen to on your mission?
Gerrit So when I was first on my mission, I had two different mission precedents, and it wasn't because I was mission transferred. And the first was incredibly strict on it. You couldn't listen to anything that wasn't actually the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and it had to be hymns that they did. So you couldn't listen to like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Spectacular, because some of those weren't actually hymns in the hymn book. So you could only listen to hymns, and they could only be sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Richard So we could listen to anything Mormon Tabernacle Choir, far more liberal interpretation.
Gerrit Ah, yes, you're listening to the Civil War songs and things like that.
Richard And we could, you know, Man of La Mancha, right, all of them. So, well, he's, yeah, Dream the Impossible Dream, at least that song. So, and then we could also-
Gerrit Which to us was someone opening the door.
Richard It was a tough mission to Wisconsin.
Gerrit Well, when you go on your mission to Wisconsin, as I've said before, going on your mission to Wisconsin is, it's like not going on a mission at all. And that's it. That's the only, that's the end of the comparison. But I'm sure this elder is doing a great job.
Richard And then in December, we were allowed to listen to pre 1965 Christmas music. So we did have, we did have that. Our second mission president allowed some of the EFY stuff and some Janice Cate Perry. That one particular album that was very, very popular in my mission was Brett Raymond, primarily for grownups. So that-
Gerrit Wow, so with my second mission president, the floodgates were opened. The scales fell from our eyes, and we were allowed to listen to essentially any church music that was on a giant approved list. So essentially anything you could buy-
Richard Like EFY stuff, anything you buy single book or desert book.
Gerrit Which of course there wasn't a desert book in Wisconsin, because it was Wisconsin. But the list, you were quickly riding home to mom and dad. Please, I need you to find this. And one of the people-
Richard Please, afterglow, please, for the love of all that's holy, can I get some masters, touch a master's hand?
Gerrit I need some Kurt Bester. I need it in here right now. Where's Jetta's cat, Perry, when you need her? But of course, Michael McClain.
Richard Oh, well sure, Michael McClain's great.
Gerrit Which part is mine. No, I love Michael McClain. Yeah, Michael McClain was a standard. I remember just getting his Garden CD.
Richard Oh, the snake bite.
Gerrit It was like the greatest present I'd ever received. Because when you can only listen to like four songs, getting a fifth song is a big deal.
Richard I remember on P-Days playing Risk and listening to Cumorah's Hill, that Janice Kapp Perry.
Gerrit Yeah, again, so that was life-changing. But I do remember, maybe not quite as fondly as you do, the primarily for grownups.
Richard Okay, so first of all, I absolutely, absolutely loved it. The Give Said the Little Stream, obviously the handcart song.
Gerrit If you haven't heard it, look, he's a very good singer. But it's just, you know when you go and you listen to someone who's gonna sing the national anthem, but they've decided they're gonna turn the national anthem into some kind of version that is no longer discernible as the national anthem.
Richard They're gonna kind of like scat.
Gerrit Yeah, they're gonna come out with it. Bebop a boop, you know, just to kind of, or give it some kind of a drawl that isn't normally there. You know, they go up when they're supposed to go down and down when they're supposed to go up. And you're like, well, when am I supposed to say play ball? I mean, you know, it's bothersome that way. The best way to describe his music was it was as if he was trying to do like some scat, you know, singing with Neil Diamond with the primary children song.
Richard I actually did, I actually.
Gerrit Yeah, yeah, yeah, so he has kind of a little bit of a rasp in there. But far too earnestly. I mean, in the leafy treetops, those birds say good morning, but they don't say good morning. They say good morning. I mean, just a little, yeah, anyway. I don't know why we spent any time on that at all. No one's listening to us now, not even this elder. So I also want to take a little bit of time to discuss the fact that, but maybe you need to keep reading.
Richard I had always wanted to know more about church history, but I really didn't know where to go after reading Rough Stone Rolling. Thank you guys so much for the interesting conversation about church history. You guys are truly my favorite podcast that avoids polygamy like a two-year-old avoids broccoli.
Gerrit Which is a very good description.
Richard That is very good. We're going to get to it. We're going to get to polygamy eventually, season 38. I've been looking for more books on church history, specifically the Brigham Young early Utah period. However, I have no idea how I can tell if a book is a legitimate attempt at academic history or if it's just a biased, incredible attempt to persuade people to think a certain way about the church, either for or against. I would love some help figuring out the difference. Also, do you have any documents from the Joseph Smith Papers that you would recommend someone read? Sincerely, Elder So-and-So.
Gerrit The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Yeah.
Richard Or blessed innocent.
Gerrit Because in the missionary system, there are two separate yet equal branch. So my favorite part about this email is apparently this missionary was tasked with eliminating some what we might call unapproved audio.
Richard Right.
Gerrit Among that folder of unapproved audio was our podcast. So first of all, we are radicals. Second of all.
Richard I can obviously see why this wouldn't be approved for a mission. No, no.
Gerrit Okay, you're right, it wouldn't be. But second of all, the best part about this is the missionary found the audio, listened to it to see what it was, because for all he knew it was the Super Bowl or something. Named Gerrit, whatever. Named Standard of Truth. Oh yeah, that's the Packers, I think. And just listened to all of it. So instead of like, well, I had to listen to all of it just to find out how apostate it really was. And so the person who was tasked with trying to regulate the unapproved audio is now a consumer of the unapproved audio. And this is actually our growth plan for the podcast. We know we can only reach so many of my mom and Rachel's mom.
Richard So we're looking for potential zone leaders or APs or district leaders in the Great Lakes area.
Gerrit We need missionaries that are serving in missions that have a zero success rate to stumble across our audio accidentally, try to eradicate it, but then get tainted with its propaganda.
Richard That's right. We're looking at missionaries in Manitoba, the Dakotas, well, mostly North Dakota, obviously Minnesota.
Gerrit Yeah, Minnesota without saying. The only missionaries who truly understand me and my mission in Wisconsin went to Minnesota. They're the only ones. So the question, though, is a really great question. He's got a couple of questions there. First of all, what do you suggest? I mean, look, Rustle and Rolling was a great book. It still remains still the best biography on Joseph Smith that exists up to this point, but it's also almost 20 years old. I mean, that doesn't sound like very long when you are talking about something like, when was that bridge last replaced? Because in America, it's like 100 years ago. But it's quite a long time when you're talking about historical inquiry, especially for a topic that people care a lot about. And since the time of that biography, there have been two dozen almost Joseph Smith Papers volumes that have been researched, written and published.
Gerrit And so the biography is a great, it still is a fine overview to kind of introduce you to a thing. But part of the problem that happens when we read books is that at least, well, I'll just speak for myself. When I read a book, there are certain things that jump out to me that because they're facts I didn't know, facts that strike me a certain way. And sometimes that fact or that idea is gonna be something that I take away from the book more strongly than anything else because it was such a big deal to me. When I talk about the book to someone else, that might be what I reference. And that's where the danger comes. And even if a book is a good book, that it's an older book. Because what's getting updated is not that Joseph Smith lived. Oh, he did, okay. So that's not gonna get thrown out with the next person's publication. But it's possible that your take on that particular story or that anecdotal story itself might not actually be the way that it was.
Gerrit And so if your primary takeaway from that book is the anecdotal story, well, now we've got a problem. An example of this. Maybe this is a little too close to home for people. Maybe?
Richard No.
Gerrit It's not about your family.
Richard No, no, that's fine.
Gerrit It's about your wife's family.
Richard Oh, no, by all means.
Gerrit It was pretty standard in the Middle Ages to explain away Jesus' seemingly incredibly harsh statement that it's easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle. Yeah, sorry. Sorry. It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Right? Right, that is one of those profound statements that actually causes the apostles to say, well, then who then can be saved? They take it as a very strong statement. But over the course of time, especially people who wanted to be literal with every single thing that Jesus said or did, they were like, wait a minute, if it's literally harder, easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, then, well, the camels can't fit through needles, so therefore no rich people are going to heaven. By the Middle Ages, there was an attempt to try to make it both literal and explainable, right?
Gerrit And that was this tradition that developed, that there actually was in Jerusalem a gate that was too short for the camels that were laden with goods to fit in. So what did the camel have to do? They had to have the camel kneel down, and they had to take all of the goods off the back of the camel, and they had to have the camel crawl through on its knuckles and probably spitting, and then it gets to the other side of inside the gate, and then you'd re-laden the camel again. And that became a very popular explanation for this. Why? Well, because it allows what Jesus is saying to be very literal, right? They called that going through the gate, passing through the eye of the needle, again, in this traditional idea. Well, that allowed what Jesus said to be both literal and also possible, right? It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, not the actual needle that you sew with, but that's the name of it coming into this very small gate, passing through the eye of the needle, ta.
Gerrit Very, very difficult, but it can be done. The problem is, while that story served the purpose of giving rich people hope, I guess that's what... I'm not entirely...
Richard Rich people need more breaks, they need more hope.
Gerrit I feel like in America today, the people who just aren't getting any breaks is rich people. Those are the ones who are like, you know what? When do I get a break? When do I get a break? But anyway, this was so popular that it was included in most biblical commentaries all the way up through the early 20th century. Well, because it's in those commentaries, it is actually reflected in the book Jesus the Christ. Because when James Talmadge is writing Jesus the Christ, he uses biblical commentaries to explain some of the history and archeology of the Bible. Now look, Jesus the Christ is an amazing, amazing book. It is still one of the most powerful things I've ever read. Does that mean that every piece of history that was presented in there is 100% accurate? Now, you'll find some people that would say, of course it is.
Gerrit I mean, he wrote it in the temple. So therefore, every part of it is 100% accurate. But there are many parts of the book where he cites his sources, where Elder Talmud is saying, look, this is where I got this. Well, what happens when the source he's using ends up being incorrect? Now, he's using the best source he can because it's all that exists, but that doesn't mean that it's 100% accurate. And so if my great takeaway from Jesus the Christ wasn't gaining a testimony of Jesus, but my greatest takeaway was, I'll tell you something about what it means for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. It means that a camel crawls on its knuckles, and yet, well, that wasn't ever true. It wasn't true in the Middle Ages when that story was developed. There's no archeological or other written sources declaring that to be the case. And also it doesn't even make a whole lot of sense, right?
Gerrit Yeah, there was a gate to get into Jerusalem that was so small, they couldn't fit camels in, but they never fixed that. They just kept, you know what? Every day, we're crawling camels through here as much as we can. We've got camels lined up all the way back to the 405. Huge bottleneck. You've got camels trying to get on the 101, but then some camels even try to get on the Pacific Coast Highway.
Richard First of all, I served my mission in Southern California. The highway river, that's absolutely hilarious. Oh my gosh, I got stuck on the 95.
Gerrit What's it looking like on the 405? It's not looking good. I don't know what is going on right now in Southern California right now, but I can tell you right now, it doesn't look good on the 101. For the 405. I know right now, if you're listening in Southern, you're not listening in Southern California. We have one missionary listening in Wisconsin illegally. His mission president's gonna find out where to lose that listener. At any rate, the reality is that historians are used to the fact that what has been accepted fact can change over the course of time. Because we get more sources, because we re-examine older sources that have been discarded, things like that. Even theory changes to the point sometimes that it makes us examine things in a completely different way. So while rough stone rolling is still the best biography of Joseph Smith that exists, are there aspects of it that are just not really accurate anymore?
Gerrit Of course there are. I wrote a book on the translation of the Book of Mormon. Well, we have a photo in that book, so that I probably shouldn't tell that, you know. Why would I, why am I using myself as an example?
Richard I don't know, I just used an example, the 95, that goes through DC, not California, so I don't know, I don't know what we're doing at this point.
Gerrit I said the 101.
Richard No, you did, but I served my mission there, and I said 95.
Gerrit Oh, 405, the 405, yeah, it's always-
Richard Or 15, or the 250.
Gerrit Oh, well, the 15, who's messing with the 15? Where are they going? Are they getting on the five? Are they going down to San Diego? What are they doing? I don't know where the commute is.
Richard Well, Menefee, possibly.
Gerrit Okay, well, anyway, in our book on the translation of the Book of Mormon, From Darkness Unto Light, my friend Michael McKay and I, we wrote the book, and then of course they wanted images. Well, one of the people that matters to our book is Charles Anthon, right? I mean, Charles Anthon's a pretty big deal because he's, you know, Martin Harris taking the characters to him. So what did we do? We got permission and used the image of Charles Anthon in the Library of Congress. Seems like that's a fair place to get the image, right? After we did that, after the book was published, another researcher through doing some other research came to the conclusion that that image that we generally hold up as being Charles Anthon is actually a mislabeled image. It's not actually Charles Anthon, it's actually his brother.
Gerrit Yes, go ahead.
Richard Well, sorry.
Gerrit Richard had a very, he had an anticipatory look on his face as if he was about to throw me out of this studio.
Richard Well, no, so just in terms of falsely identifying images, it actually leads us to-
Gerrit Graven images.
Richard It leads us to another email that we received about-
Gerrit Well, let me finish this in a moment.
Richard That's why I stopped myself.
Gerrit Yeah, you stopped. Well, so our book's published now. And so there is a completely inaccurate photo in our book. Exactly, right? So why would I lie? The standard of lies. It's the standard of lies. It's not even the standard of truth. And so again, you asked the question like, well, I don't know Charles Anthon, right?
Richard Charles Anthon's a friend of yours.
Gerrit Yeah, yeah, and you, sir, are no Charles. So we took, and it's the image you've all seen of Charles Anthon because it's in the Library of Congress labeled as Charles Anthon. So every image you ever see published of him is this same image. We took on face value that the Library of Congress image labeled Charles Anthon was in fact Charles Anthon. And apparently not Charles Anthon. So now what, right? That means in our book, if someone were to use it solely for the purpose of what did Charles Anthon look like, well, we just lied to them. Historians, of course, don't see it as a lie, right? We were operating on the basis of the best known knowledge. And look, the book wasn't about images of Charles Anthon. It was about what Charles Anthon said and did as far as the translation was concerned.
Gerrit And we used images to help further that story when I take a name to a face. The problem is the long held, the long accepted outside of Latter-day Saints, just by the historical community at large, the long accepted view of Charles Anthon was incorrectly labeled. So you can't expect any history that you read to be pristine forever. That doesn't mean that there was an evil intent when it was created. Now, part of what your question was, well, how do I know if it's not just some kind of bias or propaganda? Well, first of all, there's a historical book that I recommend reading not right now, unless it's gonna be more off the books sort of stuff. Essentially, what you need is for a missionary to download this book illegally, and then for you to be assigned to eradicate it, and eradicate it with extreme prejudice, obviously, and then you read it. But there's a book called That Great Noble Dream.
Gerrit It's standard reading in a, it's an older book, but it's standard reading in many history PhD programs in the methods class. A methods class when you're taking a PhD course is, well, Richard, how would you describe a methods class?
Richard So at Oklahoma State, what they did is they, we got on a plane in Stillwater and they flew us to Guantanamo. Because it's important that you learn, you take your methods class actually at Guantanamo.
Gerrit So waterboarding is involved. I mean, the methods class is, you know, for any of you who've gone to four year college, does anyone remember their organic chemistry class?
Richard I remember mine.
Gerrit Do you remember how many times you remember taking it?
Richard It was a brutal class.
Gerrit Right. And sometimes in those courses or at BYU, I know it's, I apologize if you happen to be one of the people who teaches this class, but at least among students, the Humanities 101 class is considered incredibly brutal. They feel like, and it's kind of this weeding out process that happens in this first class. So we're gonna grade you super hard, half of you are gonna quit, the other half of you are gonna not even want to be in school anymore. And even though that's both halves, the two people that are left, they'll go on to become great humanitarians, obviously. But that's some more methods class. It teaches you the basics of how to be a historian or how to be a business professor. And it teaches you the methods, the methodologies, the terminologies, how to research what's considered a good source. And that's why this book, The Great and Noble Dream was, the point of that author is the idea of an unbiased history doesn't actually exist, right?
Gerrit We talk about it like, oh, I don't want, I don't want any bias in what I write. We can say that all we want, but it's actually impossible for an author to completely get outside of their biases. And he demonstrates this all the way throughout this book. So what can you do as an author? The best you can do is recognize your biases. Sometimes by recognizing, you can deliberately go, you can deliberately try to address these questions. For instance, I just wrote, again with Mike McKay, we just wrote another book, a four-deseret book, that'll be part of the Let's Talk About series on the translation of the Book of Mormon. And part of what we included in that book in our introduction was the fact that most people don't accept the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. Now that can be kind of harsh for a Latter-day Saint to read it, although we all know it's true, and if you don't, just go watch a Broadway musical, and you'll know that most people don't believe that the Book of Mormon's the word of God.
Richard Or in this particular case, serve a mission in Wisconsin.
Gerrit If you go to Wisconsin, yes.
Richard Not serve a mission, just go there.
Gerrit Yeah, just go there for a day, go there for a Packers game, one that they lose, and then find out, you know. Anyway, the idea that something's completely unbiased is just not, that is not achievable. But you can do some things to ensure that what you're reading is both rigorous and also isn't deliberately taking a faithless position. In the history world, generally, scholars are going to write as agnostics, essentially. They're not going to in any way engage the idea of God, but when you're writing about religion, that kind of matters. The Joseph Smith Papers project was written by, you know, all of that write-up was written by scholars who are all members of the church. But sometimes the criticism of the Joseph Smith Papers project gets from people is that it doesn't say, you know, and then God's anointed seer, Joseph looked upon.
Gerrit It doesn't say that. It says Joseph Smith then looked, right? Instead of the kind of flowery and, you know, testifying language that you get from, say, a church manual, right? If you're reading in a church manual, it will say, you know, the Lord's anointed prophet, Joseph Smith said, right? I mean, and that's natural, because you're in a church service, and you're studying that as a member, as a believer. When you're writing to the academic world, writing to the academic audience, you don't do that. You don't simply include these kind of superlatives and assume that the person reading is the same belief. And so there were actually some members who, you know, early on were upset with, frankly, there's some members of the church now who are still upset with what the Joseph Smith Papers published.
Gerrit And why? Well, because they've been conditioned to think that anything that comes across negatively about the Prophet Joseph Smith must be anti Mormon, must be, must be wrong. I remember reading an email that was sent in by a very angry person who was mad that the Joseph Smith Papers included in it, the fight between Joseph and William Smith that they had in Ohio, that they got in a fist fight. And in fact, William Smith sucker punched Joseph Smith and Joseph and William right back and forth to each other. There were people who were upset that we didn't just not include those letters. Why? Well, because you're painting the Prophet in a bad light, he's getting in a fist fight with his brother. The reality is that Joseph wrote those letters and William Smith wrote those letters and they really did get in a fist fight.
Gerrit And as Joseph was very fond of saying, Joseph said all the time that he wasn't perfect, that he was a sinner. And yet, no matter how many times we hear that, we still say, yeah, but he was perfect though, right? Well, no, he said he was a sinner, but you mean perfect when you say that. No, I mean he continued to sin, but perfect. It's, you know, the old adage, right, is that Catholics believe in the infallibility of the pope, right, meaning the pope literally can't make any mistakes. There's just no Catholics who actually believe that. And that the Latter-day Saints don't believe in the infallibility of a prophet. There's just no Latter-day Saints who actually believe that. So it's kind of this interesting conundrum where, you know, presenting someone's life the way that it is, I mean, nobody's life is going to be free from controversy, nobody's. Everyone right now, take for a moment and think about your worst day.
Gerrit Think about the day that you were furthest from God that you've ever been in your whole life. Now I want you to think, if the only thing your great grandchildren had to know and remember you by was a transcript of that day's events, what would they think about you? How wrong, how narrow, how misguided would their caricature of you be? Because we're not who we are on our worst days. Now similarly, maybe what they have again, since we're doing a thought process, hopefully none of you are driving because you're all asleep. But if you're awake still, I mean, the missionary in Wisconsin, he's awake because what else is he going to do? But think of your best day.
Gerrit Think of the day where you were the closest to Jesus, you feel like you've ever been. What if someone had a transcript of that day? Of that day of your life, and they looked back on it? Wouldn't that also kind of be a caricature? Everything was perfect. All you could think about was Jesus. The reality is, we're kind of both things, right? We're sinners and we're saints. Sometimes we're close to God, and other times we're falling away. We're backsliders, as Methodists would say. And so I think one of the best things you can do, back to answering your question, again, don't ever ask us questions, because by the time I'm able to answer it, it's already another season. And if it's about polygamy, we don't answer it at all. Although I would like to draw your attention to the fact we talked about polygamy kind of.
Richard A little bit.
Gerrit Tangentially. Part of it. It's part of it.
Richard But also we do love your emails. Please continue to send them.
Gerrit Keep sending emails. Yeah, but not about polygamy. I really think the best way to gain a really good understanding of church history is by using those Joseph Smith Papers. Look, you can start off for an overview. Those Saints volumes give you a nice little overview of things that are going on. But for every page in the Saints volume, there's probably a hundred pages of other articles, materials or firsthand sources that were taken to make that account. History is messy, and we all want to be experts in it because it's fun, except for when you're listening to this podcast. But the problem is, it's actually just like every other field in the world. Nobody thinks that they're an expert just because they watched 20 episodes of Chicago Hope.
Gerrit Nobody would think that they're an actual doctor. They might.
Richard Well, not Chicago Hope, like ER possibly.
Gerrit Well, whatever, right? You pick your medical show, right? Even if you're watching, you know.
Richard Chicago Hope.
Gerrit I didn't watch it.
Richard What was that from like 1997?
Gerrit Where did you pick that from? It was what I was watching on my mission. No, I'm just kidding. But we don't, when it comes to things like that, we would not say that we were an expert simply because we liked the thing or we read a lot about it. And so if you really are committed to wanting to know a lot about early church history, wanting to understand it, the actual documents themselves are really hard to replicate. There is a difference between me saying to you, if you read Joseph Smith's early letters, it is very that he could not have written the Book of Mormon with his writing ability. If you read those actual letters, then I don't need to say that to you. Reading those actual letters, you'll come to a very similar conclusion. And so I would recommend, when people say, I really want to just really understand early church history deeply, I would say, take those volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers, you can check them out of your local library, probably find them on eBay cheap, especially if I signed them, and start reading through it, but not just the text, not just the letter that Joseph wrote, read every introduction and every footnote to them.
Gerrit By the time you are done with those, you will know more about those historical events than certainly anyone you know, and you'll have a, it'll be a holistic type of learning. For other, like, biographies, I mean, a great biography of Brigham Young is still, you know, Leonard Arrington's American Moses is great if you're looking at that. Really, it kind of depends on what your topic is, but it's always important to understand that no matter how great a biography is, or a single book is over a topic, the amount of material that's left out is 10 to 20 to 30 thousand times the material that's put in. And that's how books are written. I mean, we know this just from the Book of Mormon, right? Mormon is the great, he's our great historian. Did you, I think Richard researched something.
Richard Chicago Hope.
Gerrit I knew it, I knew it. Why did I say it?
Richard 1994 to 2000, I mean, it went up against the ER, got crushed absolutely by the ER, but still had a pretty decent run of six seasons.
Gerrit That's why I was tired of giving the ER all the hype.
Richard You had a young Mark Harmon that was in it, but obviously Mandy Patinkin.
Gerrit Patinkin?
Richard Patinkin. Inigo Montoya, he was also, he was in Inigo Montoya, right?
Gerrit I hope so at this point.
Richard I'm fairly confident he was. Hold on. Just give me a minute.
Gerrit Yeah, we're going to have to do a little bit more research, but the point being, in order to kind of discern, one of the things you want to do is you want to see whether or not the person who's making the claim has the credentials to make it. If it's simply, I've just read a lot about this, well, then you're probably on an anti-Mormon subreddit or you're on someone's YouTube page that's predicting the end of the world. Because someone's read a lot about it actually doesn't make them an expert. It makes them more informed than you are, but that doesn't make someone an expert, right? I mean, look, if I travel back in time and I get someone from the 1500s and then I bring them to the 19th century, to a doctor in the 19th century, that doesn't mean that that 19th century doctor understands how disease works.
Gerrit Do they understand some things better than the person I grabbed from the 1500s? Yes, they understand that the earth rotates around. I mean, around the sun, right, rather than the other way around. But does that mean that they know everything? No. And I think that's kind of where you're at when it comes to self-proclaimed experts when it comes to church history. Either, honestly, pro or antagonist. I read some things sometimes that are written by very, very well-meaning people, thinking that they're defending the church. But in the process of doing it, they make assertions that just simply aren't true. I don't know how often I'll hear people say, or I'll read in various papers, that people will say things like, well, the reason why God commanded polygamy is there were just so many more women in Utah territory than there were men.
Gerrit And so, you know, and so now the great part about that statement is it provides this kind of practical explanation for polygamy. Well, there's so many more women than there are men, and if we're all supposed to get a temple marriage, well, then the only way some women could get a temple marriage is if they were in a polygamous marriage. That makes sense. Now I know why polygamy was commanded. And it kind of soothes our soul, it makes us feel better about it, and, you know, kind of helps us put polygamy as an issue back up on our issue shelf, and we don't have to worry about it anymore. So it's simple, it's straightforward, and totally false. And that's part of the problem, is that sometimes things that sound good, that sound like a great explanation, the reason why they sound like they're a great explanation is they're actually not a great explanation. They are just something that sounds good. And I'm not saying that anyone who gives that is deliberately trying to deceive. They no doubt heard it from someone who heard it from someone.
Gerrit But you can actually go and look at things like that to determine whether or not it's a good source or not. Now, let me move on to the fact that Richard, as Richard eluded, we wanted to answer a question about an image, not just Chicago Hope.
Richard It was, he did play...
Gerrit For all things Chicago Hope, please turn into the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by Chicago Hope agent.
Richard There are so many medical shows. And of all of the shows, you reference that show.
Gerrit I almost said ER, but then I thought, that's too cliche.
Richard Oh yeah, well Chicago Hope, certainly not that. Congratulations.
Gerrit What if I would have said St. Elmo's Fire?
Richard Well, yeah, we'll wait for Renee to be on a bonus episode. I'm sure she would be very...
Gerrit I could have said MASH.
Richard Yeah, I tried MASH again. I tried listening to it. I hate that show. It is not funny.
Gerrit But you love Brett Raymond.
Richard I do love Brett Raymond. Well, let's just keep moving on. Hello, Gerrit and Richard. So by the way, this is actually going to be the title of this episode, is what we're about to talk about. And we're getting to it, how far in? What are we, 40 minutes? 40 something minutes, that'll be actually the title.
Gerrit Well, we were talking about something else too, about using sources.
Richard But it does go-
Gerrit I like how you belittle everything I've done at this point. I feel like this is a marriage that's about to break up. That was very passive aggressive of you. So how far into the podcast are we? But anyway. Angie's asleep.
Richard So is Becky.
Gerrit Both of our wives are asleep.
Richard So we got that email about the person that talks about watching a YouTube video that's going to get to the thing, the big reveal, whatever. Anyway.
Gerrit Yeah, that's us.
Richard 40 minutes in, we're just- Okay. Hello, Gerrit and Richard. Thank you so much for doing this podcast. I always find it so entertaining, informative and faith building. Gerrit will be surprised to learn that I have in fact listened to every one of your episodes since on a recent podcast. He expressed skepticism that any listener would have reached that milestone.
Gerrit First of all, congratulations, whoever this person is. I feel like they're like an ascetic monk from the early Catholic days that is whipping themselves with a flail and also listening to every podcast. Especially this one.
Richard This one for sure. I'm sure that you saw the news about the recently discovered daguerreotype claimed to be of Joseph Smith. Obviously church historians are cautious at accepting this as a genuine image of the prophet. As most of your focus in this podcast has been on discussing documents, I was wondering if you could take some time and discuss how historians might approach authenticating antiquities such as this one or other family heirlooms or even a bandolier reportedly to have been worn by Willard Richards and Carthage Joe.
Gerrit That is one of the greatest lines ever of our emails. Because according to at least some people, Willard Richards was packing a lot of heat.
Richard Yes. Thanks again for all your work and for what it's worth. As our family resides in Southern California. There we go. The only true mission, Riverside, California. We hope that one day Gerrit is able to fulfill his dream of working at the Mormon Battalion Historic Center. Our upcoming episodes, we are going to talk about the Mormon Battalion.
Gerrit So we're planning this tour to...
Richard We should have mentioned that. 50 minutes in.
Gerrit Well, we like to bury the lead, or in this case, we lead with the bury. We're planning this tour, but it's going to Boston and then Sharon, Vermont, and then the Saratoga battle site, and then to obviously Harmony and Fayette and Palmyra and these other church histories, all the way to Kirtland. But I've often thought, wouldn't it be cool to lead a Mormon battalion tour where you start off where the Mormon battalion is and you travel the route that they traveled? And then I remembered where they traveled. So maybe you could just fly to San Diego and say, here's where they ended up.
Richard I think that's, yeah.
Gerrit That's probably the best. But it is honestly my dream mission. I need someone listening with some authority to make that happen. I need my mom to make that happen.
Richard Rachel's mom. Are you by chance?
Gerrit I'm pretty sure Tanner's a mission president somewhere, I think. I'm not sure. But yeah, we should, while we're talking about some fans, give a shout out to Lisa in Pleasant Grove, who I even got to share a Marco Polo video talking with her about this. She was great. I mean, it's nice to know that there's three or four and even five people vigorously downloading the episodes over and over and over to try and make it get to the numbers that we're at. But yeah, Southern California man, if only. So the question is about the recent image. I've received lots of questions about this. And there's an article that was published by these archivists and historians with the Community of Christ who are making this claim that this recently discovered daguerreotype.
Gerrit A daguerreotype is this essentially an early type of a photograph, let me put it that way, named after Daguerre, who's the person who invents it. So it's very French. I'm sure you would love it, Richard.
Richard Love it so much.
Gerrit Yeah, he's not French Canadian, though, I don't think. So less, so less for you. And the question of what is a Joseph Smith photo is something that has floated around quite a bit. While I was at the Church History Department, we had numerous claims, not just one, not just two. And I was only at the Church History Department for four and a half years before I got hired at BYU. Now, I still work with the Joseph Smith Papers Project, volunteering, you know, writing some of those volumes, even after I got to BYU. But just in that short space of time that I was at the Church History Department, there were several images that came in with people claiming this is actually an image of Joseph Smith. Oh, actually, this is an image of Joseph and Brigham Young together. Oh, actually, this is an image of Joseph, you know, while he's reading the Apocrypha with Belle and the Dragon. I'm just kidding. But the reality is, each time there were people claiming, oh, yeah, this is actually it.
Gerrit And it's understandable. Joseph is the prophet of the restoration. And it's frustrating that we don't actually have an image of his likeness that isn't a painting or a drawing. Right? We have an oil painting. We have, and then many paintings that have been made from that. We have drawings and many drawings that have been made from that, many other paintings from that. But we don't have an actual photograph. We have a death mask that was made from his face, a porcelain mask after he was murdered. And so when these claims to images come up, many members of the church and members of the community of Christ are quick to at least hope that it really is the image. In this case, the person who found this image actually is a direct descendant of Joseph Smith. And this locket that this image is in is something that at least through family tradition has been in the family all the way back to Joseph Smith's time.
Gerrit There's an article that was written by these scholars as they tried to piece together whether or not this could be a particular image of Joseph. And I'll let you read that. That'll be published in the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal. But the question of is it definitively a Joseph Smith image? There's a really big difference. And as my wife says that the real tagline for our podcast should be something, apparently I say this a lot. Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? No. Apparently I say that enough that she thinks that should be on a T-shirt that no one would ever wear. For those of you looking to buy some great Standard of Truth podcast swag, we really should for the tour, anyone who's wearing a Standard of Truth podcast, they get their name in a raffle or something for that. But anyway...
Richard What a terrible raffle.
Gerrit It really is. I'm trying to find ways to make this less appealing. Has this existed? Yeah, no.
Richard It's great. We'll go to all these sites.
Gerrit Now, the downside is we're going to give you shirts that say the Standard of Truth podcast on them, and you'll be required to wear them. It'll be like an FSY only against your will, so actually just like FSY. Anyway, it's very difficult when people are making claims about the definitive nature of a photograph. It's one thing to say, is this image from the time period whereby it could be Joseph Smith? Well, that's something, and they present that in some of their research, that they had a daguerreotype expert come in. Interestingly, though, the daguerreotype expert said, well, this appears to be a kind of later form of daguerreotype, because they start doing these in 1839. And this guy says, well, the earliest this could be is like 1843.
Gerrit So, of course, the ears prick up, and the person's like, oh, 1843, eh? Because Joseph wasn't murdered until 1844. So in their mind, what they hear is, it was done in 1843. When I read a sentence like that, the earliest this could have been done is, what does that mean? That there's a lot of space after that time, right? You actually just narrowed the window in which it could have been done to a very small window, right? Again, does that mean that it's not a Joseph Smith one? No, but that evidence makes it, is not the best evidence to put forward. When you go through what their sources are, what do you have the pros? The pros, this locket that the image was in, was in the possession of Joseph Smith family members. And I think you can actually provenance that, and provenance is the way of saying chain of custody in history terms, right?
Gerrit So what's the provenance of this book that I have from my great great grandfather? It has his name signed in it, and he handed it to his son, who handed it to his son, and handed it to his son, which was my mom's father, and that's how I have it now, right? So there's a chain of custody, and I know that it was his, because he signs it and writes in the front of it. That provenance matters a lot, because people sometimes claim things to be something, not always nefariously, but in the case of people like Mark Hoffman, sometimes very nefariously. And we had some earlier podcasts in which we talk about Mark Hoffman. Those of you who have listened to every episode, you'll know. Those of you who haven't, well, you follow the example of...
Richard Elder so-and-so.
Gerrit No, this was someone else.
Richard This was someone else.
Gerrit Although maybe elder so-and-so.
Richard Matthew. This was Matthew.
Gerrit This is Matthew. Follow the example of Matthew, and I don't mean the one in the Bible, although he's also a good example to follow. And listen to him. So sometimes things are claimed to be things, and there's no nefarious intent at all. For instance, the two scholars of the Community of Christ, which is, for those of you who are wondering, that's the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, changed their name to the Community of Christ. They still retain the rights to and the name of Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So it's the exact same organization. I'm going to say Community of Christ because that's what they prefer to be called. And these scholars of the Community of Christ, there's no nefarious intent on their part at all. One of them is himself a direct descendant of Joseph Smith. I mean, he desperately wants to find an image of his great-great-great-great-grandfather. I mean, so there's nothing nefarious in that claim.
Gerrit There are people who do make nefarious claims, right? When Mark Hoffman wrote the Salamander Letter and purported that it was about Joseph Smith and how he received revelation, that was nefarious. As Hoffman later admitted, it was designed to hurt the church as well as make himself a bunch of money, right? So you actually have a full range of things. You have instances in which people believe that something dates to a certain period of history, and it just doesn't date to that period of history. I remember having a conversation with someone who said, Well, my grandfather fought in the Battle of Nauvoo, and we have the repeating rifle that he used in that battle. And my alarm bells in my head started going off, and I was like, and then, you know, as a historian, you always have to wonder, do I say something?
Gerrit Because what do I know about the repeating rifle that they just described to me? Well, it wasn't invented until 1855. And the Battle of Nauvoo's, you know, in 1846. So I don't know where they got that rifle, but I do know that that rifle didn't take part in the Battle of Nauvoo. Is it an old rifle? Absolutely. Did it take part in the Battle of Nauvoo? It legitimately could not have, because it wasn't invented until after the battle was long since over. So sometimes there are historical markers like that. Someone will say, oh yes, I got this tea set from my grandmother. I brought it over from Russia, and well, underneath it says made in China in 1945.
Gerrit So it maybe not isn't what you said. Did you have an example?
Richard No, I've shared this before about a family menorah that my grandmother gave to me as a gift. And when she told the story of giving it to me, it's very small, looks pretty old. She gave this menorah to me, and she told me that my great grandmother brought it over on a ship when she came from Belarus when she was a young girl all by herself on the ship over to New York. And then we found out after we just looked at the bottom and looked at some of the information that we could find that my great grandmother did actually give it to my grandmother, but she picked it up in the Tel Aviv airport in 1967.
Gerrit So it is still a family heirloom.
Richard And it certainly came from the old country to my grandmother.
Gerrit But just not the way that you had thought.
Richard There was a better chance that that repeating rifle was in the Battle of Nauvoo.
Gerrit Okay, good to know. Well, so the point being here is scholars have to be incredibly careful when it comes to the argument of family tradition alone when it comes to artifacts. And the reason why they have to be is people will sometimes very unintentionally apply ideas to an artifact that then become fact. I mean, it can easily be done that someone says something like, you know, this book is so old, it could have been owned by my great grandfather. And what does the person who heard that say the next time they tell the story? This book was owned by my great grandfather. And then the next person who tells the story, my great grandfather wrote this book. I mean, the reality is that that's how family tradition sometimes goes a little bit far afield. And when it's related to an artifact, it gives the impetus of, oh yes, this is absolute.
Gerrit And yet you're still just basing it off of what someone is saying that they heard someone say. An example of this that might be a little too close to home, obviously, is for a very long time, John Taylor believed that the reason why he didn't die at Carthage, I mean, aside from the fact that him and Joseph were in a gun duel with one another, if you're watching a terrible fake documentary about it. But in the actual events that happened when Joseph was murdered by the mob, John Taylor is shot first. I mean, obviously Hyrum was shot first, but before Joseph was shot, John Taylor was shot as he goes to try to make a leap for the window. And the way he describes it is, as he's shot, he loses all power of motion and he falls on the window sill, and he at least feels himself falling out of the window. But he says, somehow I fell back inside, even though I felt myself falling outside.
Gerrit Later, after the murders, he's going to examine his pocket watch and its face is going to be smashed in. And with the appearance of a dent that he will very naturally think, my pocket watch must have stopped the bullet. And that's probably what knocked me back inside. And so that tradition that John Taylor's pocket watch was shot, and that's what saved his life and knocked him back inside, was something that we told and retold in the church for years. It's cool, it's this miracle that's saving Taylor from going outside, right? And it's not entirely impossible. There are multiple accounts during the American Civil War of soldiers being saved by balls that lodged in sometimes a family Bible that they were carrying off of a pocket watch. Some soldiers who were shot, you know, go to the ground to find that actually hit their metal scabbard of the sword that they had and it didn't actually go into them, but into the scabbard, right?
Gerrit You know, so it knocked them down the force, but didn't actually penetrate them. So there's all kinds of experiences like that. And so is it possible that that's what happened? Sure. Scholars since then have examined the damage to the pocket watch and have concluded that it's very unlikely that it's a musket ball that did this just by the way the dent is. What it seems to be is the force of Taylor landing on the watch on the windowsill, which he describes, you know, losing all power motion, just collapsing essentially. And that's probably what smashed it. But because John Taylor thought that it was a bullet that hit it, of course, that's what he told people. And so there's no nefarious intent from that. It's just what he believed. And it was a very rational belief to have in the chaotic two minutes that those murderers were killing our prophet and our patriarch.
Gerrit The fact that it had the power of tradition, you know, over the course of time, the longer something is traditionally believed, the more powerful that tradition becomes. In the case of this image, this daguerreotype, our biggest problem is we actually don't have a provenantial chain of custody all the way back to when the image was taken. There isn't a photo book published in New York that says, images of great Mormons, by the way, here's Joseph Smith. What I mean by that is you actually don't have any other known photographs to compare this photograph to. What that means is you actually will never get to a 100% certainty. You actually can't. You can't get to that certainty because what are you comparing it against? You're comparing, and they do in their article, they compare it against what other family members look like.
Gerrit Okay, that's, you know, is nice, but that's certainly not definitive. They compare it to, well, look at how it compares to the oil painting that was made of him. Okay, but you can ask anyone who's had their portrait painted, and not everyone is happy with what the results are. So if the portrait isn't perfect, can I really compare a photograph to that portrait and say, oh, yes, this proved that that's actually them, right? Can I, even if I were to verify that the photo was from the time period, there are literally tens of thousands of daguerreotypes that are made in the 1840s and 1850s, many of them without any name demonstrating who they are. How would I know that this image is Joseph as opposed to someone else related to the family?
Gerrit That's part of the problem, is I think that the certitude, it's interesting, they just interviewed one of the authors of this study, and they asked him, what do you think of the response of this? He said, well, I knew we'd get mixed responses, but one of the things I was surprised is just how quickly people accepted what it is that we were saying. And look, he's a great guy. There's no nefarious bone in his body. He is a wonderful man, a great believer in Christ, and of course, someone who really thinks that this is his great-great-great grandfather. I don't know if I said enough right greats there, but you can correct me later. But that doesn't make it definitive. The fact that someone really thinks so, the fact that there's some circumstantial evidence, for instance, they have photos from 1875 in which other Smith family members are wearing this locket. Now, you can't see the image, and you actually can't even be certain that it's the same locket because photos aren't exactly great and people wear different types of jewelry all the time.
Gerrit But it could be. And then, so could that image have been in there? For instance, some of the evidence that they use is the locket looks like it'd be kind of expensive, right? So they say, well, because money was so tight after Joseph was murdered, there's no possible way they would have bought this locket after that. So they must have owned the locket before that because the locket would have been expensive. Now, that's okay reasoning, but it's in no way definitive at all. The reality is people have things given to them all the time. The microphones I am using on this podcast, I cannot afford. Richard certainly can't afford them because he's in PhD school, and we all know what that means. That's right. So what if someone going through my stuff were to say, oh, he must have bought these at a certain time period in his life after he retired because he couldn't have afforded them when he was doing his non-for-profit podcast for which he made no money?
Gerrit Well, they'd be wrong because there's another way that you can get things, and that is people give them to you, right? Again, I'm not saying that that's not possible. Is it possible that that's the case? Of course it's possible, but there is a vast gulf that separates possible and probable, and that gulf is what historians and archivists want to swim in all the time, trying to bridge those gaps. But they have to be incredibly careful that we don't bridge the gap simply because we want to, rather than because we have the evidence. I had this experience myself, and this is not a good example, because I'm not claiming that this image is a Hoffman forgery. No, could it be an image? It could be. But that's actually the strongest, I would say. It's possible as an undated, unknown image that appears to be from the time period, that is kept at least among some family effects, but is only verifiably dated to be among family effects in 1875, right?
Gerrit That it's possible that that image goes all the way back to Nauvoo and that that image is actually Joseph Smith that's actually in the locket. That's possible. But it is not probable. And in fact, it's probably on the lower side of possible, not because there couldn't ever be, because of the incredible number of variables that are in there. Had the image an inscription on the bottom that said, Joseph Smith Jr. 1843, that might help. Even that wouldn't be definitive, because I had an image that said it was Charles Anthon, and it wasn't, even though that's what someone at the Library of Congress inscribed on the bottom of it a hundred years ago. Right? So, the Church, I think, took a much more measured reaction to this, than did your...
Gerrit This is going to be surprising to you. The Church took a more measured reaction than your local Facebook pages did. Richard?
Richard Yes, it did. Every few years, potential donors bring artifacts to the Church History Library for review, including alleged photographs of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Such artifacts are, of course, of great interest to the Church. Though it was not mentioned specifically in the article, Church historians, archivists, and artifact experts were provided by the item's owner and article's authors the opportunity to analyze the locket and photo to review their findings prior to the publication. We concur that the dagurah type and locket were created of the materials and methods appropriate to the 1840s. However, as nothing is definitively known about the locket's history before 1992, we cannot draw a conclusion about who is pictured in the dagurah type. We welcome the recent publication with the image and hope it will prompt the discovery of additional information helpful to determining its authenticity.
Gerrit Right, so what's one of the things they say? Look, the locket can be definitively demonstrated to be of a type that could have been manufactured in the 1840s.
Richard Right, materials and methods appropriate to the 1840s.
Gerrit That's a long ways away from, and by the way the photograph is from that time period, and by the way the photograph is of Joseph Smith, right? Those aren't the same thing. Now, would a locket from the time period be definitive? Actually, it might not be. And that's one of the other problems, is that if the locket was from 1875, someone could put that image that's earlier in it. This is one of the problems when they're dating early Christian writings. You'll date, you know, oh, we did a radiocarbon dating on the Gospel of Judas, and we, you know, it only goes to 250 AD. Well, but every Christian writing that you're looking at is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. It's kind of like if you were to take your triple combination and go do some radiocarbon dating, they'd come back with, yeah, this paper was apparently created in 2014.
Gerrit This certainly doesn't go all the way back to Jesus because the reality of books is that they are reproductions of reproductions of reproductions. So by dating paper, all you can really do is date when that particular version was made, not when the original text was written. All of us have read some William Shakespeare, but that doesn't mean that what we read, we read it in high school or whatever, that doesn't mean that's when William Shakespeare wrote the book, right? It's a copy of a copy of a copy. At any rate, myself personally, I think in part my bias is to be skeptical of claims that are made about images like this, in part because people so badly want it to be Joseph. And the reality is that's kind of outside of the historical method. The historical method is not to start with what I want the answer to be and then find whatever anecdotal evidence I can find that suggests it might be that thing.
Gerrit The historical method is the other way around. What does the evidence point to? And having all avenues open for possibility. And that's the reason why sometimes as historians we're not definitive at all. And we say things all the... We use weasel words like, it's possible, maybe, probably. That's part of it. We do things like that all the time because it's really difficult to be definitive. So is it a photo of Joseph? There are certainly people who think that it is. Do church historians from our church seem to feel that it's overwhelming evidence? Not really, actually. I think all of them would probably say what I'm saying, and that is, is it possible? Sure. But there's a pretty big gap between possible and probable, and an even bigger gap from probable to certain.
Richard And what the church is even saying is that hopefully this will prompt the discovery of additional information that will be helpful in determining its authenticity.
Gerrit Yeah, which means they're not definitively saying it's authentic.
Richard But perhaps there's additional information that could help.
Gerrit Anyway, thank you for joining us, and we look forward to talking with you again next week. Thanks for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

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One of the things that was contraband was us.

GerritBanter

Well, when you go on your mission to Wisconsin, as I've said before, going on your mission to Wisconsin is, it's like not going on a mission at all.

GerritBanter

Because when you can only listen to like four songs, getting a fifth song is a big deal.

GerritBanter

You guys are truly my favorite podcast that avoids polygamy like a two-year-old avoids broccoli.

RichardBanter

We've got camels lined up all the way back to the 405.

GerritBanter

Because we're not who we are on our worst days.

GerritInsight

We're sinners and we're saints.

GerritInsight

There was a better chance that that repeating rifle was in the Battle of Nauvoo.

RichardBanter

But they have to be incredibly careful that we don't bridge the gap simply because we want to, rather than because we have the evidence.

GerritInsight

But there's a pretty big gap between possible and probable, and an even bigger gap from probable to certain.

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More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
Jesus meant a small Jerusalem gate called the Eye of the Needle where camels crawled through.
Polygamy was commanded because there were far more women than men in Utah.
John Taylor's pocket watch stopped a bullet at Carthage.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

To go deep in church history, read the Joseph Smith Papers, including every introduction and footnote.

Nobody is who they are on their worst day, or their best: "We're sinners and we're saints." That's true of Joseph Smith too.

Family tradition can grow in the retelling; "could have been great-grandpa's" becomes "great-grandpa wrote it."

Historians follow the evidence instead of starting with the answer they want; there's a big gap between possible and probable, and a bigger one from probable to certain.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
Recorded in the first Bush administrationIt's been that long since the last session, each episode worse than the last (1:04, 1:12).
Mr. Peabody and ShermanJeff's greeting, and Richard assumes he knows the roles (1:48).
Approved mission musicOnly Tabernacle Choir hymns, then pre-1965 Christmas music, Michael McLean's Garden CD, and Brett Raymond's scat-singing Primary songs (3:18, 6:07, 7:04).
Wisconsin, the hardest missionDream the impossible dream: someone opening the door; go to a Packers game they lose (4:16, 27:34).
The growth planMissionaries in zero-baptism missions find the contraband audio and get converted (10:27, 10:48).
Gerrit vs. Richard's California freewaysCamels backed up on the 405, the 101, the 15 and the 95, which goes through D.C. (18:03, 19:54).
Methods class at GuantanamoOklahoma State flew Richard's cohort there (24:34).
The crack research staffRichard looks up Chicago Hope: 1994 to 2000, crushed by ER, with Mandy Patinkin (37:42, 37:53).
The only true missionSouthern California listeners hope Gerrit gets his dream assignment at the Mormon Battalion center (44:35).
Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? No.Gerrit's wife's proposed T-shirt for the tour raffle nobody wants (49:39, 50:48).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
Read the Joseph Smith Papers volumes with their introductions and footnotes, starting wherever your interest is (35:23).
Read the Community of Christ article on the locket daguerreotype and the church's response (48:25).
Look into the examination of John Taylor's pocket watch from Carthage Jail (59:29).
Find Peter Novick's That Noble Dream on bias in history writing (23:13).
SOT Litner · S2E33.