Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I am your host for today, John Delinn. It is April 8th, 2024 and today we are here to discuss the alleged discovery of golden plates in Saudi Arabia that many

Mormon apologists have sort of seemed to do kind of a victory dance, a celebration dance, suggesting that because these

golden plates were allegedly found, I don't know along what they like to call the Lehigh Trail. Finding these golden plates along quote the Lehi Trail somewhere

in Saudi Arabia suggests that the Book of Mormon is true, that it validates the story, Joseph Smith's story of receiving

golden plates from an angel and you know the Book of Mormon's

historicity and putting Book of Mormon history aside for today, what we're going to be doing is just talking about, you know, are these golden plates authentic or not? Are they forgeries or not? And even if they were, maybe we'll ask the question, we'll answer the question

of whether that they would bolster claims of Book of Mormon historicity,

even if they were true.

I don't know.

But joining us today to help us understand

is the one the only Dan McClellan. Dan tell us about your all your different channels and what you do in your educational background just so people know what scholarly background you bring to this discussion?

Absolutely, uh, first off, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

I thought we were talking about the eclipse today and how it's the end of the world,

but we can do, we can do gold plates too that's okay I did an undergrad in

ancient near Eastern studies at Brigham Young University many many years ago and

then went over to the UK to do a master's degree in Jewish Studies at Oxford,

and then to Canada for another master's degree

at a university and Evangelical University

and just outside a lovely Vancouver,

BC called Trinity Western University, and then I did my PhD in the degree

says theology and religion, that's just because that's the name of the awarding department but I wrote my

dissertation on the cognitive science of religion and the conceptualization of

...