Could Joseph Smith Write or Dictate a Well-Worded Letter? LDS Discussions Pt. 67 | Ep. 2089
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.6 ā¢ 5.2K Ratings
šļø 2 December 2025
ā±ļø 137 minutes
šļø Recording | iTunes | RSS
š§¾ļø Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to another episode of our LDS Discussions series! In this episode, we take a detailed, evidence-based look at one of the most repeated claims in Latter-day Saint apologetics: that Joseph Smith was incapable of producing a well-written text āand therefore could not have authored the Book of Mormon.
Drawing from Joseph Smithās three earliest letters (written in 1829-1830), historical context, church manuals, apologetic arguments, and modern scholarship, we critically explore where the evidence leads. We donāt care where you land on the belief spectrum āour is clarity, transparency, and accuracy.
We are joined today by Kolby Reddish and Julia (Nemo couldnāt make it), who walk us through the major claims, the apologetic narratives, and the documents themselves. This is an episode you wonāt want to miss!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition. |
| 0:05.3 | I'm your host, John Dillon. |
| 0:06.9 | Today, we're going to be answering the question, could Joseph Smith have written or dictated |
| 0:14.7 | a well-worded letter? |
| 0:16.9 | And just as a preview for a long, long time, there's always this choice that many believers |
| 0:24.0 | and or apologists and or critics have to navigate. Was Joseph just this dumb, uneducated farm boy |
| 0:30.9 | that basically couldn't even read or write or spell or speak? And so he was so dumb that he could never have produced something as amazing as the Book |
| 0:41.2 | of Mormon or the Book of Abraham. |
| 0:43.1 | Of course, we've covered that a lot in the LDS discussion series. |
| 0:47.0 | But then the flip side of that is, was Joseph actually quite intelligent, quite articulate? |
| 0:54.0 | Maybe he wasn't the best writer, but did he have an amazing |
| 0:57.8 | memory? Was he actually verbally very eloquent? And then with the right scribe, could he actually |
| 1:04.8 | generate really thoughtful, articulate, even elegant and sophisticated prose. |
| 1:13.4 | And where you are on that spectrum is probably going to influence where you come down |
| 1:20.3 | on whether or not Joseph Smith could have been the author of things like the Book of Mormon |
| 1:24.3 | or the Book of Abraham. |
| 1:25.4 | Now, that's my summary of what we're going to be talking about today. I'm going to rely on our co-hosts today to maybe frame it a little bit |
| 1:33.2 | better. But what I will say is, for those who don't know, today's episode is part of a |
| 1:39.4 | multi-episode series called LDS Discussions, where we do our best to objectively look at LDS |
| 1:48.0 | truth claims as panelists using evidence and data trying to take too much emotion or passion |
| 1:55.3 | or even bias out of this. So if this series is best consumed in sequence, I'm thinking we're somewhere in the |
| 2:03.9 | 60s. And so if you want the best experience with the LDS discussion series, and I should say |
... |
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