1342: Did B.H. Roberts Lose His Testimony of the Book of Mormon?
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2020
⏱️ 220 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As many of you will recall, Shannon Caldwell Montez joined us on Mormon Stories Podcast in July, 2020 to tell us her own story, as well as to tell us the story of B.H. Roberts - the LDS Church historian 
and General Authority who was tasked to answer problems about Book of Mormon historicity, only to lose his testimony of the Book of Mormon as a historical document.
During the B.H. Roberts episode we learned about a series of all-day meetings B.H. Roberts had in January, 1922 with the LDS Church First Presidency, Quorum of 12 Apostles, and the Quorum of 70 to discuss these Book of Mormon problems in-depth. Ultimately, Shannon shows in her thesis that the LDS church leadership was both unprepared and unwilling to address the problems Roberts presented - resulting in much disappointment and frustration for Roberts.
In this follow-up interview with Shannon, we review evidence addressing the question as to whether or not Mormon General Authority and church historian B.H. Roberts lost his testimony of the Book of Mormon as a historical document.
Resources Mentioned in the Podcast Include:
- Shannon's Thesis: The Secret Mormon Meetings of 1922
- B.H. Roberts and the Book of Mormon by Thomas G. Alexander in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought
- B.H. Roberts's Studies of the Book of Mormon by Brigham D. Madsen in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought
- "Is There Any Way to Escape These Difficulties?": The Book of Mormon Studies of B.H. Roberts by George D. Smith in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.
- Mr. Couch and Elder Roberts, by Richard F. Keeler in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.
- View of the Hebrews by Mormon Handbook
- Remembering B.H. Roberts by Sterling M. McMurrin in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.
- Defending the Keystone: An Overview of the Arguments For and Against View of the Hebrews as a Possible Source for the Book of Mormon by Madison U Sowell in Sunstone Magazine
- MormonThink B.H. Roberts Quotes
- B.H. Roberts' Secret Manuscript by Jerald and Sandra Tanner
- Terryl Givens Misrepresents B.H. Roberts by Rollo Tomasi
- B.H. Roberts Book Stirs Controversy by Ron Bitton in Sunstone Magazine
- The Works of B.H. Roberts on Project Gutenberg
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host |
| 0:15.3 | John Delin. It is August 28th, 2020 and we could not be more excited today to bring you a new |
| 0:25.3 | episode of Mormon Stories podcast just to give you a little bit of background. Last month, |
| 0:29.7 | I think it was in July. I had on the podcast Shannon called Wilmonte's. Shannon was raised in the |
| 0:37.8 | LDS church, was living the Mormon dream. I say that in quotes got married, had lots of kids and |
| 0:45.0 | decided to go back to school to get her master's degree in history and she decided to study BH |
| 0:50.2 | Roberts. And while she was studying BH Roberts, she learned all sorts of really cool things that |
| 0:56.4 | not only were important for the historical record and for us, but also she started to question her |
| 1:04.2 | Orthodox Mormon faith. So we did two major sit downs with Shannon. And in those sit downs, we talked |
| 1:12.7 | about her story and it's an amazing story and I recommend that you all go back and listen to it. |
| 1:18.8 | And then the second thing that we did was we had Shannon give us an overview of the life of |
| 1:24.6 | BH Roberts. And BH Roberts is a really important figure in Mormonism for so many reasons and we're |
| 1:30.2 | going to be covering that a little bit again today. But basically that episode was called the rise |
| 1:34.9 | and fall of BH Roberts. After that episode, there were some Mormon apologists, specifically Steven |
| 1:42.5 | Smute, who responded and kind of did the typical Mormon apologist attack at hominem sort of thing, |
| 1:51.0 | were they attacked me, they attacked Mormon stories, they attacked Shannon, they attacked Shannon |
| 1:55.0 | scholarship. And the basic attack really was a straw man. It was basically saying that we were |
| 2:02.1 | wrong in the podcast by claiming that BH Roberts lost his testimony in Mormonism. And I don't |
| 2:07.6 | think that was ever the claim of either me or Shannon. What the episode tried to discuss was it was |
| 2:13.4 | basically discussing the rise and fall of BH Roberts. And then it was basically touching on the idea |
| 2:19.4 | that that eventually BH Roberts lost his faith in Book of Mormon historicity. And because |
| 2:26.3 | that was challenged by Steven Smute, what we've decided that we want to do today is go into depth |
... |
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