Jesus' Family

Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Professor Richard LeDuc explore the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the life and teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith. They examine the original historical sources and provide context for events of the past. They approach the history of the Church with faith, expertise and humor.

Gerrit Hi, welcome to 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 going to talk a little bit about Mary, as it's January, past Christmas. No one's clamoring for it.

Gerrit We like to be right in line with what people are thinking.

Richard Only 11 shopping months till Christmas. So, but before we jump into that, we wanted to read from the Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag.

Gerrit Wow, that is a lot of names.

Richard It is a lot of names. She was the first postmaster from Draper, and is the great, great, possibly great grandmother, we don't know how many greats, of a listener, Damien. Who is Damien? Damien's a listener of ours, who's a marketing professional that pretended to take an interest in my dissertation topic.

Gerrit I see, so that's why we're reading his email?

Richard Yeah, you bet, and we're gonna...

Gerrit We get dozens, or we get tens, we get four or five emails, and many of them we just don't have time to read, but this one, we did have time.

Richard You bet, all you have to do is pretend to have a slight interest in what it is that I'm spending my life writing about, and read your email.

Gerrit Everyone listening to the email, everyone listening to the podcast.

Richard No, no, no, everyone listening to the email.

Gerrit Everyone listening to the podcast should know that Richard is the arbiter of the email bag. So if you want to get on the air, you got to appeal to his business sensibilities.

Richard Yes, he talks about how self-deprecating we are in the email. He gives us just heaps on the praise, but says he would go on with more praise, but he knows how self-deprecating we are and that we would do well in an Olympic vent if it was called a self-deprecathon.

Gerrit A deprecathon, you know what? We're really bad at doing that.

Richard Yeah, you know what? I don't think we do very well.

Gerrit We're not very good at reading your email.

Richard Well, it's a made up word. Anyway, he's very nice. He goes on to give us a lot of different advice in terms of what we could or should do for, in terms of newsletters and different things on the premium side of the podcast. And then he also gave us two links to a song about James K. Polk and Tippa Canoe and Tyler too.

Gerrit Very helpful.

Richard It was very nice of him and Damien. Thank you very much.

Gerrit Clearly an engaged listener.

Richard That's right. First of all, this is another email. You recently-

Gerrit From a different listener.

Richard From a different listener. It's important to break those up.

Gerrit So we have two listeners tops, at least two. First of all- With Damien and then Damien's second email account that he created and sent this other email. Yeah, we're at someone else.

Richard That's right. Let's see. First of all, you recently claimed that you have no listeners in Parawan. While I do not live in Parawan, I live in Cedar City. And I happen to know that there are several people in Parawan who have at least started an episode and certainly not finished. However, this is tangential to my real question. My son and I both listen and love your podcast. I thought I would get my son a subscription to your premium content. Oh, how did this email make its way into being read?

Gerrit It's very interesting.

Richard Interesting content to encourage him and then accidentally slip and get another one for me. So my wife tells me I can ignore her even more. However, I try as I might, I cannot find the actual way to sign up. When I clicked subscribe, I was taken to an Apple website and could not find a way to sign up there. I couldn't find a sign up for premium or something like that. Link, please help me figure out so you can take my money.

Gerrit Okay, so you're going to give him that description. I mean, he's referencing the premium content we have on the Standard of Truth podcast productions. It really kind of depends on how people are accessing the podcast, where they're going to be able to find that premium.

Richard Yes. So this has been a little bit of a learning curve.

Gerrit So we don't have a professional person to figure that out.

Richard Oh, it's obvious.

Gerrit Well, so I mean, Chris is joking around, help me figure out how you can take my money. The problem is until we have Chris' money, we can't hire someone to figure out how to help take his money. It really is a paradox.

Richard It really is. So there's a couple of things. If I could bore everyone and waste your time with this a little bit. So Apple is actually is pretty easy. It should be set up now. If you subscribe via Apple, there is a premium link just below that main picture there. You'll have everything will be coming in to that. Some is for subscription, the free stuff that comes out on Thursday. So we have an episode that drops on Mondays. That's the premium episode. And then we've got the free one that you're listening to now that comes out.

Gerrit They've already stopped listening to it.

Richard It comes out on Thursdays.

Gerrit When he says on Apple, what he means is the Apple Podcast app. If you're listening to this podcast through the podcast app, which if you have an Apple and you are not doing that.

Richard What are you doing?

Gerrit You know what? What's wrong with you? Give Richard an email and he'll help you set up the Apple Podcast.

Richard Where is it running IT support?

Gerrit Well, so it really works really well if you have the Apple Podcast app, if you have an iPhone. Now the problem is of course we are well aware that there are some of our listeners who do not have an Apple phone. And so what are they going to do?

Richard So if you've got a Pixel 2 and you're trying to...

Gerrit If you've got a Motorola foot phone from the late nineties.

Richard Yeah, an ESPN Razor phone. What? So it's a little bit more difficult. So, uh, Apple should be pretty straightforward now. It was a little bit of a mess, but it should be pretty straightforward if you listening to the podcast app. If you're listening on an Android device, you can subscribe to the premium content on Spotify.

Gerrit Right. So Android, uh, obviously supplies to many different devices. Some people listen on Audible. Some people listen on Amazon Prime. I mean, you can tell Google Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean.

Richard There's a lot of different things on the Android that people use. And you can listen to those on, um, I mean, you can do that on Apple as well. But so, uh, for, out of all of the different options, the easiest one to be able to do this on is Spotify. So if you are an Android user, so you might have been listening to, we actually have a lot of people, uh, that listen to it on Spotify. And we had to pull all of the episodes off of Spotify and go through a different way to be able to get both premium and free at the same time.

Gerrit So if you're listening on Spotify or were, and you can't find the podcast anymore, had to like reboot. So you need to just actually just type in my name for now, and that will pull it up. Right.

Richard So we'll make that really easy.

Gerrit That's drgerrit.com, D-I-R-K. There's not a whole lot of them. Yeah.

Richard D-I-R-K-M-A-A-T.

Gerrit So if you're an Android user, or you don't want to use your iPhone or whatever for it, then you need to go through Spotify to get to the premium content. If you're an Apple user, each episode that drops should give you an option. If it's a premium content, just by clicking on it, should give you an option of subscribing from that premium.

Richard And it would be, Spotify is almost as easy as the Apple one. So that's why we chose that one. So anyway, a little complicated. We certainly understand that we really made a mess of the whole thing.

Gerrit Well, and we're all so well aware that the vast majority of you listening, whether you're in Parowan or not, aren't planning to listen to any of the premium content. So-

Richard Well, you see what the episodes are labeled and you're like, no, I don't think these guys understand what premium means.

Gerrit The great inversion, what is this? I'm doing meteorological stuff? No, it's about colonial settlement. You'll like it. You'll love it.

Richard That's right. And so the crinkling leaves episodes or holy places from our past, as it's officially called, I think we started with Harmony, and that's going to be a multi-parter there. We really talked about Joseph and Emma and them being able to meet one another. And then coming out soon will be us, Joseph Smith and the Restoration, where we do kind of in a chronological order, except that we start with the great apostasy. So we're not going to get to Joseph until August.

Gerrit Where to start? But we kind of found ourselves saying, well, I guess Paul. Yeah, I mean, and that, you know, that's the most logical place.

Richard That is true.

Gerrit We also still have a couple of spots left on the Standard of Truth tour this June, June 5th through the 11th. And the information of that is on the website. We would love to have some people sign up and join us. Already it's going to be a lot of fun. I mean, my mom is going and, you know, Rachel's mom is going. I mean, talk about two people you've been waiting your whole life to meet. And now you're going to get the chance to meet her. Anyway, we just really appreciate, whether you come on the tour, whether you are able to subscribe to the premium content, whether you stop listening after this, we're grateful that anyone listens at all. I mean, we do get emails from people where they share with us that some of the things that we've shared have really touched their hearts. And frankly, that's why we're doing this. We are just trying to throw some starfish back, is what we always say. So thank you so much.

Richard So there is an end to Chris's email here. So he is a doctor and professor, I assume at SUU.

Gerrit Probably in some kind of legitimate field. Yeah, I'm in the social sciences, so not really.

Richard As a second and less financially driven question, I am a scientist and as I like to tell people, I usually find that science strengthens my testimony. Despite what many people say about the conflict between science and religion, this leads me to believe in the church for two reasons, both because of the testimony of the Holy Spirit and because it is the most logical way to explain everything from evolution to the Fermi paradox. I assume that a similar thing has happened to you in history and perhaps business, but I would be curious to hear your experiences. I did respond to Chris' email because business obviously has strengthened my testimony. I responded with, I would like to confirm that my understanding of brokerage theory's impact on overcoming the liability of newness in relation to improved conversion ratios and early stage sales processes of SaaS startups has increased my testimony of the restored gospel. Gerrit, history's done the same for you?

Gerrit I don't know that in the way of SaaS startups has, but I think that the point that Chris makes is great, and that is that obviously it's only through the Holy Spirit that you can gain a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I mean, no matter how much you try to prove the gospel, I mean, you will eventually get to a place where you don't actually have an answer. Even if you know the answer to literally everything, even if you are that gospel doctrine teacher who knows the answer to everything, every single question that anyone has ever brought up, you will eventually get to that question we brought up before where you won't be able to answer it. And that is, how does the atonement work? Right, you can say that it works. You can express a faith in it. But we don't understand how it works. We know that it works. You can't prove the resurrection.

Gerrit That's not provable. It's not scientific. It's certainly not historical, but it's true. And, you know, as a question, I actually get asked a lot. I mean, maybe as often as Richard gets asked that about, you know, marketing startups, people say, you know, have you read things that have made you kind of doubt your testimony? And I think the implication is that if only you've read enough things, then that would cause you to no longer believe. And it really is, Chris. I mean, from my perspective, it really is the opposite. I find that when people are struggling with their faith because of some event or topic from the church history past, the understanding they have of that topic is usually very, very limited. And because it's very limited, they're not entirely sure how to interpret it, how to incorporate it into their worldview. Instead, the deeper someone gets into that topic, the more nuance they understand.

Gerrit And for me, your classic easy throwaway anti-Mormon line is like, yeah, Joseph Smith's just a liar about everything, right? Or as Richard prefers, my favorite anti-Mormon voice is something like, yes, well, you know, Joseph Smith, he's lying about everything. Where it's kind of like...

Richard Real raspy, 30 years of smoking.

Gerrit Yeah, I figure that, well, the 30 years like, well, you know, Joseph Smith told me that, yeah, that kind of thing. And the idea behind it, those claims is, oh, I can prove that he's like, it's really the opposite. I think it's actually really difficult to actually read everything Joseph Smith wrote and said, and conclude that he is deliberately deceiving anyone. Now, that doesn't mean he's always telling everyone everything that's going on. I mean, he's a normal human. He's not running around screaming every thought that's on his head. But that he really believes he's a prophet called by God. There are very few historians, non-Latter-day Saint historians, who would argue that Joseph Smith is not a sincere believer. And you'll notice that when people attack Joseph Smith, that's the denominator they go to. That Joseph Smith made everything up from the beginning.

Gerrit And the weird part about that is, that is not what historians say. So the same person who's going to say to you, oh, you just haven't really studied, you haven't really read, if only you knew what I know, claiming that they're being academic, that same person is going to make the most unacademic claim that anyone could make about our church's history, namely that Joseph Smith deliberately deceived everyone from the beginning. You don't find historians saying that. What do historians say? Joseph Smith really seemed to believe that God was speaking to him. Now, and then because historians are atheists, they would say, of course he isn't. God doesn't speak to anyone because God doesn't exist. But I agree with your sentiment there, Chris, that I'm not a scientist, so you could school me in all things science. My dad was a nuclear engineer, and so he was always very disappointed that I was born.

Gerrit But I know really my math scores were, I mean, look, I got A's in school in math, but I had to like work for it. I'm assuming that Chris like didn't even show up and just took the final exams.

Richard Did you attend the prep academy in Shelly?

Gerrit Yeah, there are a lot of private charter schools in Shelly, Idaho. They're called potato sellers. There's really no place there. But I mean, I agree with Chris even on the science part. I mean, for traditional Christians, we have to, they have to come to terms with the belief that literally nothing existed but God. Period. Not just there was nothing in space but God, there was no space, and there was no time that God created even that.

Richard I was a biology undergrad and took OCAM.

Gerrit And you'll notice he's not a dentist now.

Richard Or any sort of science professor.

Gerrit What does that suggest to you?

Richard Simple things is like the law of conservation of matter. We don't have to put that on the shelf so that I have some sort of faith or religious belief. I can both, actually, my religion also teaches in something very similar.

Gerrit Yeah, and not everything will translate perfectly or easily. I mean, obviously, if you talk to a scientist, they will say, once the body is dead, the body is dead, and it can't come back to life. But yet Jesus did. So not everything's a perfect translation, but with some of the larger things, it actually does bring some comfort. I mean, it makes more sense that matter has always existed. And it makes more sense scientifically. And thankfully, as a Latter-day Saint, it makes more sense religiously, because that's what Joseph Smith revealed. So I love that question, and hopefully we didn't spend too much time on that. But I find it, frankly, a little bit offensive when people cavalierly say to me or to others, if only you knew more, if only you knew what I knew, then you wouldn't believe. And that's fundamentally wrong for two reasons. One, the person who says that usually doesn't actually know as much as they are claiming to know.

Gerrit Two, faith comes from the Holy Spirit. You don't even have to have the ability to read, to believe. You don't have to have the ability to do anything other than hear the Word and have the Holy Spirit work on you. That's where faith comes from. And so when someone argues that faith wouldn't exist with greater knowledge, I just fundamentally disagree with that. So anyway, shall we proceed to the next?

Richard Let's carry on. So Gerrit, you wanted to talk about, we read a couple of things on the Facebooks that you wanted to use as a jumping off point.

Gerrit Yeah, and because I actually got this question from several people over the course of the past, you know, the Christmassy time, we're not that far removed from it. I'm talking about it like Christmas was like seven months ago, but it just feels like that when you're a parent because you're trying to clean up wrapping paper and bows for the next 10 weeks. And a few people posted this thing that was going around on the internet, and I just thought, and because I had a couple of people reach out to me and ask a question about it, I thought, well, maybe we'll talk about this a little bit on the podcast. Maybe other people had this question. And this post was about Mary, the mother of Jesus. And I'm just going to read part of it. I'm not going to read all of it, but you're going to be able to get the gist of it, right? It's that time of year that we talk about Mary a lot, but what about Mary's mother? Someone had to raise Mary to find favor with God. Someone had to raise Mary to treasure purity. Someone had to raise Mary to honor Joseph.

Gerrit Someone had to raise Mary to know the voice of the Lord, even though they were living in the silent years. Mary's mother, we don't know what her life looked like. All we know is she raised the mother of Christ. She raised a daughter highly favored of the Lord. She raised a daughter to fear the Lord when the Lord was silent. This is what we know. Mary's mother didn't have an encounter with an angel telling her to raise Mary carefully because of how the Lord was going to use her. Mary's mother chose to raise Mary wisely so that the Lord could use her. Mary's mother didn't have an encounter with an angel telling her to honor her husband because Mary would need to honor Joseph when he told her to travel the Bethlehem while she was great with child. When he told her to flee Herod's wrath before it came to pass in the middle of the night, Mary's mother just honored her husband and obeyed and submitted him because she knew that that's what she was called to do. So, you know, there's a little bit more, but the idea behind this is, you know, let's take a deeper contemplative look on this.

Gerrit One thing that's immediately obvious as you read this post is that the writer of it is not Catholic. Well, because almost everything that's listed in there is something that Catholics not only believe they have an answer for, but they have a very long tradition of. And that is, we've talked about Mary's mother before. Remember we talked about the Immaculate Conception. You probably weren't listening for that podcast.

Richard They were not.

Gerrit In Parowan or Cedar City or. Wherever. Wherever. No one was listening. We talked about the fact that we often confuse the Immaculate Conception with the idea that Jesus was conceived through the Holy Spirit. But the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception actually makes reference to Mary. That's why Mary has the special status that she has. That everyone is born with original sin. Everyone is born with a sin nature. And the miracle is that somehow Mary was not born in sin. She was free from original sin. The only person since Adam and Eve decided they'd try the fruit that was born without original sin. And therefore, Jesus, even in his humanity, which again is both 100% human and 100% God, in a way that the math professors out there will wonder, I don't think you understand what 100% means, that even in his humanity, Jesus didn't actually partake of the original sin nature.

Gerrit Because that original sin wasn't passed on by Mary. That belief in the immaculate conception emanates from the fact that Mary herself was born miraculously. And whoever posted the Facebook meme and passed it, it has a beautiful sentiment to it, kind of to encourage parents, hey, you don't know the impact you're having. It's a kind idea behind it. But the reality is there's a billion Christians in the world who would have gotten that and said, what are you talking about? We do believe an angel appeared to Anne. In fact, Catholic tradition, it's very interesting, Catholic tradition about St. Anne, so Anne is reputed to be the mother of Mary. You'll notice that the word Anne isn't anywhere, well, in that regard, as Mary's mother is not in the Bible. So where do we get this idea that it's Anne? It actually, the tradition stems from a non-canonical gospel. So a non-canonical gospel, and I've talked about this before, there are lots of early Christian documents that are circulating in the third and fourth and fifth century.

Gerrit It's not until Jerome that the Bible, as the canon we have it today, is included and the other books are excluded. There are some books that were used as scripture and preached from the pulpit for years, for decades that were eventually taken out of the canon. One is called The Shepherd of Hermes. I'm guessing that most of you haven't read The Shepherd of Hermes lately, right? Well, what's it about? It's about this shepherd who has this vision and dream. It's taken out of the canon not because they decide that it's not true, that it's not orthodox, but because when they're forming the canon, one of their basis is, is it written by an apostle or one of their companions? Well, Hermes doesn't claim to be an apostle or one of their companions, and so that is a basis for taking it out. So there are actually quite a few of these non-canonical gospels. Now, some of them are not included in the canon, in the Bible, the books, and the New Testament, because the early church fathers see them as heretical.

Gerrit They either don't know who the author is, or the words that are in them, they don't like, right? That's not what we believe. And frankly, there are a lot of those things that are circulating. We talked in our premium podcast, when we talked about the apostasy, one of the things we referenced was the fact that Paul is really laboring in, if you read his letters, you read the New Testament, the problem isn't that just everyone's doing exactly what Paul says. You know, he's not writing I Corinthians 15, trying to convince the Corinthians that resurrection exists, because everyone all believes in the resurrection. These Christians who've already been baptized, people who've already embraced the Gospel, don't believe in the resurrection. Now that seems crazy to us, because the resurrection is so fundamental to Christian theology today. But Paul is laboring under this problem of Christians who are believing wrong things about Jesus.

Gerrit So what would happen is other people would claim that they also had authoritative writings, either from the apostles. If you were a Christian living in the ancient world, and you had something about Jesus that you wanted people to believe, the easiest way to get a hearing was to say, oh yeah, James wrote that. And then it might get more of a hearing. And we actually see this all throughout the early Christian times. There's different books that in some places are accepted as absolutely true, absolutely from the apostles and other books that aren't at all. In this case, it's very interesting because this book is never deemed canonical. It's never added to the scripture, but the story that's in it becomes the basis of the entire tradition surrounding Jesus' mother Mary and Mary's parents, who are Joachim or however you say it, and Anne.

Gerrit So let's take a minute and read a little bit of that story. Now this story comes from what is known as the Infancy Gospel of James. Now you'll quickly search through your New Testament, or at least sing the song to yourself in your head that you learned in seminary, and realize that while there is a book of James, that you don't remember it being called the Infancy Gospel of James. Well, this is one of those non-canonical books that circulated that tried to fill in the gaps. It's interesting, whoever posted the meme on Facebook, one of the things that I think drove them posting it was, I'll bet no one's ever thought of this before. Well, we know that Jesus was a great man. What do you think he was like as a child? Or we know that Mary was the mother of Jesus, but what do you think Mary's mother was like? It's safe to say that over the 2000 years of Christendom, any pithy little thoughts that we've had about missing parts of our understanding of Jesus' life and his ancestry, people have not only thought about those things, they've actually tried to write about those things.

Gerrit There's an entire genre of Christian literature, non-canonical Christian literature, that is dedicated to where did Jesus go during the three days between his death and his resurrection. We get a little bit of something from Peter, right, that he went, that he goes and preaches to those souls that were in prison, right? So you get a little bit of that. And this idea of Jesus harrowing hell, the harrowing of hell is Jesus going to hell and preaching to the sinners. You have multiple gospels that arise to explain that. In the early Christian world, everyone knows because anyone who's ever tried to teach about Jesus' life, any of you who have ever had the great misfortune of being a gospel doctrine teacher with its New Testament year, so some of you who are listening, or actually probably not listening anymore, but it is that year. It is that year. You thought, you know what I'm going to do? You know what no one ever really talks about?

Gerrit They don't really talk about what was Jesus like? He was like a teenager. I mean, what was he like as a kid? Before he started his ministry, what was he like? Well, most of the time, when it comes to Biblical history, the reason why you don't hear a whole lot about that something is there's nothing there. And what do we have? We have Jesus is born as a baby, and the child grew and waxed strong, grew in favor and wisdom of God and men. And we know that when he's older, he's out preaching at these days, talking and teaching the people at the temple, his parents leave him there, and that's it. So there's this giant gap. What is going on for most of Jesus' 33 years of life? What's going on for the first 30 years? Well, that void gets filled by these non-canonical gospels. Now, when I say they're non-canonical, what I mean is there isn't a scholar in the world that believes that James actually wrote this gospel.

Gerrit When they call it the Infancy Gospel of James, they don't mean that James was an infant when he wrote it. What they mean is it's about Christ. It's about Jesus' boyhood. It's about the early years. That's what an Infancy Gospel is. Well, in that Infancy Gospel, we have this entire story surrounding Joachim and Mary. I'm going to read just a little bit of it. Anne? Anne, regarding Mary. Yes, this is where Mary comes from. So I'll read just a little bit of it. Now, let me just make a very big disclaimer. This is not scripture.

Richard We don't believe this.

Gerrit It's not even scripture in the Catholic Church, which believes this story, but doesn't believe that the book is scripture. You know, I'll occasionally see people post things from these Gnostic gospels, from these non-canonical gospels, as if like, you know what? I'm going to be studying the New Testament this year, but you know what I'm really going to be studying? The Gospel of Thomas. I mean, look, I agree. Everyone should read all these early Christian, you know, they're very interesting, and they at least give you an idea of what early Christians thought was important in their worship of Jesus. It reflects their views of the time, much like, you know, someone who's bearing a testimony in France is going to bear testimony of things slightly differently than someone bearing testimony in Congo, right? There'll be some things that are very similar, but if they relate experiences of their conversion, their life, there'll be differences as well. So you do get a sense of what is being taught by various Christian groups in the second and third and fourth century.

Gerrit That is not to say that those things are accurate. I mean, at the very least, the overwhelming reality of the infancy gospel of James is that someone is lying in the creation of it, right? Because James isn't really the one who wrote it. But they attributed it to James in order to get a hearing. And that's why I'm always very suspect when we try to be definitive about something we get from a non-canonical gospel. Because the very fact that the gospel of Mary exists is in and of itself starting with something that is not factually accurate. It's a claim that, and we're not even sure which Mary, some will say it's Mary the Mother of the Lord, some will say it's Mary Magdalene, that that gospel is attributed to her.

Gerrit No scholar actually believes that she wrote it, that it appeared many, many years later as people try to fill in the gaps of essentially all of Jesus' followers. You can't find a follower of Jesus that's mentioned in the Bible, that doesn't have some kind of non-canonical writing that comes up. Even Paul's missionary companions end up having their own gospels eventually written. Like the gospel of Barnabas. My guess is you haven't been running around going, what happened to Barnabas? And it's a good thing too, especially for Richard, because the gospel of Barnabas is incredibly anti-Semitic.

Richard You know what?

Gerrit Guess what Richard's getting for Christmas? But it demonstrates how this early anti-Semitism was formed in the early Christian church. So it's very interesting, but we really need to draw a delineation between things that are interesting about Christian tradition and history and things that are scripture. And sometimes people, they let those kind of run over one another. And why does that matter? Well, because if the reason why you believe a certain thing is because you read it in the Gospel of Thomas, and that's literally the only place you've ever read it, but you're certain that that's absolutely true, well, you are taking something that's not considered scripture and you're turning it into scripture for yourself. So as I read this, now that was a pretty long caveat. I think next time I'll just say, just so everyone knows, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Gerrit Okay? And here we go.

Richard It is funny you say that though. I occasionally join Gerrit as he teaches at the BYU, and he mentioned that several times during his class today.

Gerrit That I had a testimony?

Richard You guys know I have a testimony, right? And now let's talk about this thing.

Gerrit Well, because one of the things I did in my class is I try to demonstrate to them I don't know how to say this, how terrible anti-Mormon arguments are. But most students don't go to a BYU religion class expecting their professor to say, let's find out this claim about Martin Harris. And the point of it is to demonstrate, look, this is a bad argument made from a bad source, and you need to learn how to recognize good sources. You need to learn how to say, like our listener a few weeks ago who said, who said, I now don't trust anything anymore. That's not the point. I want you to trust Jesus. I want you to trust the prophet. I want you to trust the church. But if someone is just making a random historical claim, let's take it all with a grain of salt. Show me the document. And then show me why that document should be privileged over the other documents that I have. And not just because I think so or because I feel like it or because it was part of the anti-Mormon subreddit I was on, but because it's actually the best document.

Gerrit In this case, I don't know how accurate any of the Infancy Gospel of James is. It was something written and circulated years after Jesus' life. It's hundreds of years after Jesus' life that we get our earliest copy of this. Does that mean that it might have some truth in some kind of tradition? Maybe. But it's not canonical. It is not scripture. And I don't even know where it originates. I do know that whoever slapped a name on there claimed to be someone that they weren't. Now, maybe the original writer didn't do that, and someone on down the line did it. I don't know how any of that works. But I have you all hanging, wondering, what does this actually say? This is Infancy Gospel of James. Now, Joachim was very grieved, and he went to the twelve tribes of the people, saying to himself, I'll look in the history of the twelve tribes of Israel to see whether or not I'm the only one who hasn't had a child in Israel.

Gerrit So you start off with Joachim and Anne. They aren't able to have a child. Now, this is going to sound like a pretty familiar rhetorical device in the Bible. It appears that there's occasions that people aren't able to have a child, right? And just telling you that, what do you think will end up happening?

Richard They're going to have a child.

Gerrit Any time. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. Well, I think we already said that Mary exists, but I'm the only one who hasn't had a child. And he searched and he found that all the just people in Israel had raised children.

Richard All the just ones.

Gerrit I really hope this isn't canonical. You see what I'm saying, right? The conclusion that this author is presenting is, righteous people all have children. Now, that's obviously not true. You can see the problem of buying hook, line and sinker some of these non-canonical stories.

Richard I love that when we started this podcast, and this is obviously season three, we were trashing people that were writing stuff in the 1830s, 40s. Now we're like, you know what? We're going to trash people that wrote stuff in the 300s.

Gerrit Yeah, we're moving the bar. What I really want to get back to is Xenophon and maybe Artaxerxes. If we can get back to some of their writings, I feel like plenty of the elder, that's coming. That's coming for sure. We'll eventually cover all the early Christian fathers. I think maybe we'll do that in season 39, since we'll have lost all of our listenership. We talked about polygamy. At any rate, you'll notice the reason why you have to kind of be careful with the, you have to just be careful with buying at Hook, Line and Sinker. Obviously, our church teaches that people who are righteous still sometimes don't have children, but that God will somehow make it up to them in the next life.

Richard See prosperity theology. Parts one, two and three.

Gerrit Go see all of our prosperity theology once. And Joachim was quite grieved, and he didn't go to his wife, but gave himself to the wilderness, to the wilderness, and he pitched his tent there. And Joachim fasted 40 days and 40 nights, saying to himself, I won't go down for food or drink until the Lord my God considers me. Prayers will be my food and drink. So it's kind of poetic that way.

Richard That is good. I will say that going out into the wilderness for, you know, two fortnights will impact your ability to have children.

Gerrit Well, to conceive at the very least.

Richard At the very least.

Gerrit I mean, although for me, you know, since I hate camping so much.

Richard At the very least.

Gerrit I mean, although for me, you know, since I hate camping so much.

Richard So much.

Gerrit Yeah, for me, the 40 days in the wilderness would have been about 40 minutes. And then like, where's the RV? So now the next part here. Now his wife, Anna mourned and lamented for two reasons. She said, I lament that I am a widow and that I don't have a child. Now she's thinking that Joachim's, well, he went away in the wilderness. So she's thinking he's dead. Now the great day of the Lord was approaching and her servant, Juthine said to her, how long are you going to humiliate your soul? Look at the great day that the Lord that has approached and it's not right for you to grieve. But take hit this headband, which is the leader of the workplace gave me. It's not right for me to wear it since I'm your servant and it has a royal mark. And Anna said, get away from me. There's an exclamation point in the version I'm reading. Look, these are all translations from a Greek. And I don't speak Greek. Just everything I say sounds like Greek because it's so jargony and unintelligible.

Richard So much.

Gerrit Yeah, for me, the 40 days in the wilderness would have been about 40 minutes. And then like, where's the RV? So now the next part here. Now his wife, Anna mourned and lamented for two reasons. She said, I lament that I am a widow and that I don't have a child. Now she's thinking that Joachim's, well, he went away in the wilderness. So she's thinking he's dead. Now the great day of the Lord was approaching and her servant, Juthine said to her, how long are you going to humiliate your soul? Look at the great day that the Lord that has approached and it's not right for you to grieve. But take hit this headband, which is the leader of the workplace gave me. It's not right for me to wear it since I'm your servant and it has a royal mark. And Anna said, get away from me. There's an exclamation point in the version I'm reading. Look, these are all translations from a Greek. And I don't speak Greek. Just everything I say sounds like Greek because it's so jargony and unintelligible.

Gerrit But it does have an exclamation point. So I'm trying to read it with the...

Richard Well, what we know from St. Anna is that she was always yelling.

Gerrit No, just it was a constant yell. Yeah. She said, get away from me. I won't do this. The Lord God has greatly humiliated me. Maybe a trickster gave this to you and you've come to get me to share in your sin. And the servant said, why should I curse you since you haven't heard my voice? The Lord God has made your womb infertile to give you no fruit in Israel. And Anna was very grieved. Sounds like you should be firing that servant. And removed her garment of mourning and washed her head and put on her wedding garment. And about the ninth hour, she went down into her garden to walk around. She saw a laurel tree and she sat down under it. And after resting, she petitioned the Lord, she said, God of my ancestors, bless me and hear my prayers as you blessed our mother Sarah and gave her a son, Isaac. A little bit of foreshadowing there. Anna looked intently to heaven and saw a nest of sparrows in the laurel tree. And Anna lamented to herself saying, woe is me, who gave birth to me?

Gerrit What womb bore me? I was born as a curse before the people of Israel and have been despised. They have mocked me and banished me from the temple of the Lord my God. She goes on like this. I won't read all of it, you know, just essentially saying in a pretty similar fashion, honestly, to Joe, you know, that things are pretty awful and things are pretty terrible. And, you know, I'm essentially cursed. She ends off with her woe is me by saying, woe is me, what am I like? I'm not like this earth because the earth produces her fruits when it's time and blesses you, Lord. That's pretty depressing, honestly. Well, in the very next chapter, and look, an angel of the Lord stood by saying to her, Anna, Anna, the Lord has heard your prayer. You'll conceive and give birth and your offspring will be spoken of through the whole world. And Anna said, as the Lord God lives, whether I give birth to a boy or a girl, I will bring it as a gift to the Lord, my God, and it will minister to him all the days of his life.

Gerrit And it will minister to him all the days of its life. And look, two angels, two angels, so we start with one angel, then we go to two. Two angels came, saying to her, look, Joachim, your husband, is coming with his flocks. For an angel, the Lord had gone down to Joachim, saying, Joachim, Joachim, the Lord God has heard your prayer, go down from here. Look, your wife Anna has conceived in her womb. Now again, the miraculous nature of this, right? Where was Joachim?

Richard Camping.

Gerrit Camp, well, and as we all know, camping is terrible, right? So he's gone. She's lamenting the fact that she can't have a child. And while he's gone, she's able to have a child. Well, to conceive. And the Lord God has heard your prayer. Go down from here and look. Your wife Anna has conceived in her womb. And immediately Joachim went down and called the shepherd, saying to them, bring here to me ten lambs without spot or blemish, and the ten lambs will be for the Lord God. And bring me twelve tender calves for the priests and the elders, and a hundred male goats for all the people. So Joachim is about to throw a pretty big party. So this is the tradition. And again, you can find all kinds of Catholic art that actually shows Saint Anne. She's considered a saint. And we talked about in a previous episode that one of the greatest ironies of all Christendom is that Martin Luther decides to join a monastery, decides to become a monk because of the story of Saint Anne.

Gerrit Why does this matter? Because this actually leads into another question that probably some people will be discussing. I know that a person in my ward actually reached out and asked a question via text, asked me about the siblings of Jesus. And this is a very related topic. The Bible says that Jesus has siblings. In fact, it's actually said pretty negatively, right? Because when Jesus is preaching, what do they say? They say, well, this is not the carpenter's son Joseph, Joseph the carpenter's son. You know, are his brothers not with us? Are his sisters not with us? This idea that, well, Jesus can't be the Messiah. We know his family, right? How could he possibly be the Messiah? And an extension of this idea of Mary being pure is something that is carried on in Catholic theology to the point where the argument is made that Mary never had any other children.

Gerrit She not only never conceived or had any relations or knowledge with Joseph before Jesus, she never had any relations after Jesus. She was always pure. And you know what's interesting? In early Protestant thought, that is exactly what even the early reformers said. Martin Luther was steeped in the tradition of Anne and Mary being holy. So even though his movement will eventually move away from worshipping through Mary, in the initial stages of his writing, he's still talking about Mary being a virgin for the rest of her life. But over the course of time, that's going to change. So now, what's the Catholic argument? The Catholic argument is that, yes, it talks about siblings, but they are all step-siblings. That, yes, it says Jesus has brothers, but they are from Joseph's first marriage.

Gerrit That Joseph is a much older man. In fact, they want to depict him as being essentially elderly and only marrying Mary as a kind of a caretaker thing, as a social responsibility, not in any way romantically. And that he brought these other children into the marriage. There are other theologians who argue, well, it says siblings, it says brothers and sisters, but what it means is spiritual brothers and sisters. Or even further, some have argued, okay, that Greek word can mean cousin. It can mean relation. It doesn't have to mean actual literal brother and sister. The Protestant world, and so the question that this sister asked me was, well, what do we think about it? What's the Latter-day Saint teaching on it? You will find that there's, Joseph Smith never really approaches this doctrine. Now he does in the New Testament translation of the Bible, he does go over that portion that talks about Jesus having siblings, and he doesn't make any changes.

Gerrit Now that's not definitive though. Sometimes we think that that's definitive. Well, if Joseph Smith didn't make the change to the New Testament, then that proves that there was never any more light and knowledge on that topic. Well, we know that's not the case, because after Joseph went through John, he then received a revelation, which is D&C 93, that expanded on the Gospel of John. And the things that are in D&C 93 aren't in the Joseph Smith translation of John, because revelation is a continual process. So when Joseph receives the revelation of the Joseph Smith translation, that's different than the revelation that he will later receive. You can't expect Joseph to know things before God reveals them. At any rate, this would not have been a question that Joseph would have been asking. By Joseph Smith's time, the entire Protestant world thought that one of the great Catholic heresies was claiming that Mary should be, that prayer should be sent through Mary to Jesus because she had this special process.

Gerrit The Protestant world rejected that and said, no, Mary was a human just like every other human. Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit and without sin. But Mary got married afterwards. It kind of reflects one of the great changes that happened with Protestant theologians is you couldn't be a monk or a bishop or a priest and get married or a nun. And one of the first things Martin Luther does is get married. They throw that out as something that's not biblical. Martin Luther is going to say, unless the Bible specifically says this, we're not going to do it. Now, tradition had arisen over time, and you actually can find a lot of this tradition in these non-canonical gospels, that you actually still see some of it in Christianity today. That being chaste is actually superior to marriage.

Gerrit That it's better to marry than to burn. Well, Paul says that, and that's where that's coming from. Paul is saying, I would that you all remain unmarried even as I. If you're unmarried, if you have not a wife, seek not a wife. If you have a wife, seek not to be loose. But that tradition develops over the course of time until it is actually seen that the most holy person is only married to Jesus. They can't, because if you're married, you couldn't possibly devote your life to Jesus. Now, when I say that's tradition, it obviously is, right? Because what does Paul say about bishops? That they should be the husband of one wife, right? So clearly Paul does not think that bishops have to be celibate. If they are, you know, he doesn't want them apparently to be polygamists, not in the Roman Empire, because it's illegal, but that marriage is allowed. That tradition is going to develop to the point where the idea is that anyone having sexual relations, even inside a marriage, can't possibly be as holy as someone totally devoted to Jesus.

Gerrit And that's why it matters with Mary. Well, Mary can't ever have had any relations of any kind with with Joseph, because if she did, then she wouldn't be as pure and holy. Protestants are going to reject this idea. They're going to say, well, that's not what the Bible says. And a lot of this comes from biblical literalism. The Bible says what? And Joseph took her and knew her not until she brought forth her firstborn son. So if you're being a biblical literalist, what does that mean? Until. Why didn't it just say Joseph knew her not forever and ever and ever? Right. And if you're being a biblical literalist and it says that Judas is the brother of Jesus, well, I guess he's the brother of... How do I know whether or not Jesus has a brother? The Bible says he has a brother.

Gerrit So instead of some kind of verbal gymnastics to claim that it's actually a cousin that he's calling his brother, well, he just has a brother. And Protestants don't have a problem with that because there is no innate sinfulness in marital relations among married people. Right. I'm not saying Catholics think that there is. They see marriage as a sacrament, of course. They see it as holy. But they see their most holy people, nuns, bishops and priests, the Pope, that they don't participate in any carnal relations, married or otherwise, because that's a distraction from the holiness of being married to Christ, essentially. So that's another question that might come up as you're doing your Come Follow Me study. And you'll find that there is a long Catholic tradition trying to defend the fact that Mary literally had no other kids.

Gerrit I know the Bible said she had other kids, but she didn't, and she wouldn't, because it's a really good example of both sides making their argument on the basis of what they want to believe. What do Catholics want to believe? They want to believe that Mary is an intercessory to praying to Jesus, that she has this holy special position, not just holy because she's the mother of Jesus, but literally different than every other person who's ever lived. Protestants reject that. Protestants believe that marriage is allowed and that clergy can get married, and even really holy people can get married. And so they view all of those scriptures from their perspective. And so it's an interesting thing that probably wasn't very interesting for people listening. I mean, maybe.

Richard I doubt it.

Gerrit Okay.

Richard So you can't use any of this in your Sunday school lesson, and none of it's true, but here's what.

Gerrit I want people to understand where that tradition comes from.

Richard I actually do think it's interesting to help to gain greater context of Protestant and Catholicism and where they would line up on this particular issue, and as it relates to where we line up.

Gerrit Yeah, I mean, so as I said, the question isn't really asked. I mean, in Joseph Smith's world, the assumption of literally everyone would be that Jesus literally has brothers and sisters, obviously half brothers and sisters, because they're all just from Mary, right? And Jesus' father is God. But the Protestant assumption is anyone who doesn't think that Jesus has literal brothers and sisters is a papist, you know, following the Roman pontiff. The Church does, I mean, at least tacitly endorse the idea that Jesus had siblings. Again, I'm not saying that that's definitive in any way. But when you go to the guide to the Scriptures under James, Brother of the Lord, it's actually titled that, and as it reads, and this is on churchofjesuschrist.org, in the New Testament, James, a brother of the Lord, and then it quotes Galatians 1.19, where Paul says, But the other apostles saw none, save James the Lord's brother.

Gerrit And then, of course, both Mark 6.3 and Matthew 13.55.56 talk about the fact that Jesus has siblings. Because the people who are saying, This can't be the Messiah, they say, Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his brethren James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence has this man all these sayings? So in their contempt, listing off how mortal Jesus really is, they give us a nice insight into the fact that part of the reason why they think he's so mortal is he has siblings. Now, of course, a Catholic will argue, well, yeah, he has siblings, they're just not in any way related in. They're all step siblings. But that doesn't seem to be the way that it's being used. Now, is that possible? I suppose it's possible. But at least for us, it seems that we at least tacitly endorse the idea that he has literal brothers and sisters. And again, probably not super essential to your salvation, especially given the fact that we believe that we're all brothers and sisters of Jesus, something that would really upset any Protestant who's listening right now.

Gerrit That the fact that we, as we've talked about in previous podcasts, that we have as one of the defining aspects of our religion that we believe we're the same type of being that Jesus is. He is far more exalted than us, he is far greater than us, but that he is literally our brother, is something that makes us all heretics in the eyes of whether you're a Protestant or a Catholic. So I think all the way around, Latter-day Saints have a different view on who Jesus is as a person. Not so much because we don't buy in wholesale to the Chalcedonian creed, but because we believe that we are in any way like him, and not just because we're mortal, but that we have a potential divinity dwelling within us the same way, at least as the same type of being that Jesus or our Heavenly Father was.

Gerrit And that's always going to stand out as the biggest theological difference. We don't so much think that God and Jesus are different than what others think they are. It really stems down to what we believe about ourselves, that we aren't just mere creations of God. But as you study the New Testament this year, there will be lots of ways. I should incidentally say, in early Christian tradition, one of the non-canonical books and certainly a Gnostic heresy that was attributed to an apostle is the Gospel of the Acts of Thomas. Now, we all know Thomas because we love to quote him, right? Except I thrust my hand into his side, right? I won't believe that doubting Thomas, that whole idea. Well, the Acts of Thomas claim that Thomas, of course, in Hebrew means twin. Well, who was Thomas a twin of? The whole point of the Acts of Thomas is that Jesus and Thomas are twins.

Gerrit So does Jesus have a sibling? Well, in that Gospel, it's literally the entire point. That not only is Thomas Jesus' twin, he looks exactly like him. In fact, he looks so much like him that the way that Thomas goes on his mission to India is that Jesus says, you need to go on a mission to India. And Thomas is like, I'm not going to India. You could go to India. I'm not going to India. So Jesus goes over to a slave trader and sells himself to the slave trader and then disappears and the slave trader looking around sees Thomas and is like, oh, what are you doing? Because they look exactly the same and Thomas gets sold as a slave to India where he preaches the Gospel. We could really have a whole podcast on that. Isn't it gangs of fun? But that at least demonstrates that in this relatively early, non-canonical Gospel, not only do they maintain that Jesus had siblings, but that if Thomas is Jesus' twin, that she literally gave birth to two children at roughly the same time.

Gerrit And so there's a reason why that's not considered canonical. I do think it's important that you note, as we study the New Testament, you will find people posting various things online, and we just want to make sure that we trust but verify, right? You want to learn what it is that early Christians had to think, but we especially want to learn what it is the Prophet Joseph Smith had to say, and what it is our current prophets and apostles have to say. And maybe this is all just minutia, and maybe it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I think that that's certainly part of the case, because what really matters is that Jesus died for us, that we have the ability to be not only exalted and to become like him, but that we will all be resurrected, and that all of our loved ones will live again. That's the great message of the New Testament. And yeah, we'll find pithy little sayings to insert or little interesting things to talk about.

Gerrit I almost told Richard, we almost talked about the wise men.

Richard I wanted to.

Gerrit I wanted to talk about the wise men. We might still do that, but probably not. But I think while we learn all these interesting little tidbits, which are helpful, it is just always to it's always good to reground ourselves. And why is it that we believe for me? I believe because I believe Joseph Smith saw Jesus. That's why I believe I believe in the New Testament because I believe Joseph Smith saw Jesus. So I'm not actually trusting just the canonical Gospels or even the non canonical ones. I'm trusting that Joseph Smith saw Jesus multiple times and bore his testimony of it. So, thank you so much for joining us.

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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Transcript

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Damien, listener email

Chris from Cedar City, listener email

Viral social media post about Mary's mother

The Shepherd of Hermas (said on air as "Hermes")

1 Corinthians 15

1 Peter 3:19

Luke 2:40, 52

Gospel of Barnabas

Infancy Gospel of James

Infancy Gospel of James, Anna's lament and the angel

D&C 93

1 Corinthians 7:9, 27

1 Timothy 3:2

Matthew 1:25

Guide to the Scriptures, "James, Brother of the Lord" (churchofjesuschrist.org)

Galatians 1:19

Mark 6:3; Matthew 13:55-56

Acts of Thomas

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What does Richard say about the timing of an episode on Mary?

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