okay I'm excited about this interview with author Jonah Barnes my new friend uh met him for the first time last night and this interview takes place at the studios of the Stick of Joseph and plain and precious publishing I am going through the same publisher that Jonah Barnes just went through for this book he just wrote the key to the Keystone fascinating book it's one of those books you can usually just drive right through because it's such easy reading very funny Jonah is a very funny guy but really really insightful it's one of those books that gives you new eyes as you read the book of Mormon this episode is brought to you by go and do travel I am the official spokesperson for them grateful for that opportunity great company great brand they put together great trips I want to talk to you about the momentum cruises there are two of these coming up early next year the first is January 4th through the 11th that is in the west momentum West that is in Mexico and then in February it is the February 8th to the 15th that is a momentum East Cruise in the Caribbean this is an opportunity to get together with hundreds of Latter-day Saints listen to very edifying presentations just great great spectacular I would say uh talent and to find a lot of new friends and a like a lot of likeminded people so go to Quick media.com CWC media.com scroll up to the top to Quick uh trips and events and then scroll down to momentum cruises here we [Music] go all right welcome to Quick show my name is Greg Matson and I am your host in this episode we brought on Jonah Barnes the author of the key to the Keystone Jonah welcome to the show thank you so much for having me I am psyched that I'm on quick media right now well Greg mson you should be no huge uh this is a bucket list moment for me great that's awesome that's great me too hey this book was really fascinating very excited about this um it was not what I expected at all it is uh a very very not that I didn't think it was insightful but the insights that I got out of this led to so many additional questions what brought you to the realization that the Apocrypha was found throughout the Book of Mormon uh good question so so I had always been kind of I had a job actually I was living in Arizona I had a job where I traveled and um while I was traveling I like what am I going to do on these airplanes and in these hotels for so long away from my family and so I would read apocryphal documents is that something people do is that something people do when they're bored I guess that's what I do when I board and so I would read all these things and I would note oh that's interesting that's in the Book of Mormon and I'd kind of take note and that was cool people have done that work before uh hbi famously did tons of work on these things before and then we started studying The Book of Mormon this year in 2024 and I opened up the Book of Mormon and reading and I and I come across one of those parallels that I recognized but right before it it says I'm reading from the plates of brass or these are the things which have been spoken by the prophets and I'm like that's funny every time I come across one of these parallels it happens to be where the Book of Mormon authors say they're drawing from the BR plates and I thought well that's funny because the brass plates purport to be this ancient you know docu this ancient document that predates 600 BC and we just kind of assume it's the Old Testament but also these apocal documents that have these parallels also claim to be ancient documents that predate 600 BC and I thought are these things like cousins to each other or could there be some of these Apocrypha books on the brass plates and it really put this crazy idea in my head so that's kind of where it comes from is I had these parallels people know about them but then reading in studying The Book of Mormon this year I thought well I'll be darned if they don't all line up with brass plates citations so this is something that I talk about a lot too when I when I think about the brass this is what the Book of Mormon prophets are pulling from yeah they're pulling from the brass plates right and most people think as you just mentioned that this is the Old Testament uhhuh and and I actually go to the point of saying telling everyone it's not the old Testament yep the Old Testament is not necessarily even a part to say that it's we don't know what books are in it yes right right and so I call it also the Stick of Joseph because in my mind as I look at this this is something that was carried down from Joseph of Egypt he may have been the initiator of the placeat then comes down through Joshua comes down and laan ends up as an ephraimite which we hear in secondary uh accounts from church history that Laban was an ephraimite so he's in charge of the brass plates right and so you've got this s of s of Joseph yes that's got josephite traditions in it that's right josephite writings and you make this quote in your book which I found was fascinating you said the Apocrypha aren't simply friends with a book of Mormon they are family right and in my mind what I start thinking is it's the family of Joseph perhaps but talk a little bit more about the brass plates and the Apocrypha maybe being a part of these brass plates so okay so um if you were in a crime scene if you were in in a a crime trial and you said you know we found this glove and it's about this right size for Greg matson's hand the judge would go okay and if you said oh you know we found this bootprint and it looks a lot like his bootprint you'd be like oh okay all right all right but then some guy walks in and says we found his DNA the judge is like oh that's a big deal because that's not something that happens by chance it's that's that's an uncanny match that you found okay the text of the Book of Mormon is like DNA it's a unique document made up of thousands upon thousands of characters in a certain sequence it's like it's like DNA if you look in some of these apocryphal documents you find the DNA of the Book of Mormon if you were racing if you're doing a family uh uh you know what's the show relative Race by the way awesome show relative race great show if you're doing a relative Race episode on the Book of Mormon right there'd be a scene when you know the book of Mormon's like the hosts are like and this is your long lost cousin or whatever and you'd see an apocryphal text wow how are we alike and the eyes would be similar and the nose would be the same and you'd hear phrases full of grace and truth well that's the exact phrase that Lehi uses you you'd hear the fortunate fall well that's what Lehi preaches you'd hear uh you know uh uh the chains of hell and the the captivation of the of the sinners like oh that actually isn't in the Old Testament at all that's in these apocryphal documents and you'd see these things matching up and you start to build this family tree where you say the brass plates bequeathed to the Book of Mormon this unique Heritage of josephite traditions and we see those same her those same themes topics phrases pass down through the Apocrypha now I don't know if that means the Apocrypha were actually on the brass plates I tend to think some of them very literally were um or if they just drew from the same tradition if they're cousins from the same grandfather so as if the brass plates Drew from the Apocrypha yes or the same sources the same sources because some of the things are they're just uncanny you you you you see the the vision of Isaiah and you say this is the exact same vision that Jacob and Nephi and Lehi are getting and and so or or you see uh uh some of the words from The Apocalypse of Elijah talking about the Damned and talking about hiding from God and these these unique phrases and ideas that that are not in the Old Testament they don't exist in the Old Testament but they are in this apocryphal document and in the Book of Mormon where the author says he's drawing from the brass plates you think how did this get here and they must either draw from a common source or it is that source and maybe we have a perverted version of The Apocalypse of Elijah or something like that that's been handed down to us so so follow with me on this so thinking about what Biblical Scholars now think of is how the Old Testament was compiled probably post exilic yes very important post exilic uh and previous to that many would say it was oral tradition and it's put together basically with a deuteronomic uh uh Bend which is two things number one for me is it is a as I call a flattening of the hierarchy which is a loss of plurality with the icon of that plurality being the father and the son okay okay that's flattened it's into just Jehovah right yes and secondarily with the loss of the son then there's a loss of Jesus Christ right right yes so when we think in our minds that the prophets of the Book of Mormon are drawing from the brass plates if we think they're drawing from the Old Testament which they're not yes right then we get an idea that well that's not in the Old Testament exactly right that doesn't make any sense and somebody who would be a Critic of the Book of Mormon would say no that's not in the Old Testament either you must be copying the new testament which doesn't come around till hundreds of years later and they do and this is exactly what they say is they say wait oh uh you know what one example is um when abinadi Aaron uh Alma Mormon they all talk about the sting of death the metaphor that the sting of death will be swallowed up in the Messiah well that's from Paul that's from First Corinthians right and so critics have said ah you're just Joseph forgot which era he was in but where's Paul getting it exactly and there's so many things that you find when you study the Apocrypha John Jude Jesus Paul Peter they were quoting from Lost documents Lost Books something like the brass plate and some of them were that we found in the Apocrypha and some of them sound just like Apocrypha references that abinadi makes that Lehi makes that Nephi makes they're referencing the these lost documents that may have been part of that so so there there's in the loss of the plain and precious things I think of this in two different kind of a binary of the Old Testament and the New Testament in the Old Testament I think definitely there are Lost Books there is a loss of a preaching of Christ you have what you we might call Illusions yes to uh Jesus Christ like the Brazen serpent Etc and most of the Christian world is going to say yeah they're just they kind of had an idea a little bit you know right that you kind of lean toward this and so there are definite literal loss of plain and precious things in the New Testament I think it's a lot more about the philosophies of men that come in and change the meaning of words like one being one God is one right different things like that you get a loss there and I think Nephi's Vision backs this up but can we say then with the Old Testament versus The Brass plates that the Old Testament what we have today with the Old Testament is a loss of plain and precious things and the brass plates from the same time period have the plain and precious things that the brook of Mormon prophets are drawing from that's exactly right I think it's exactly right uh Nephi alludes to this um the the the like you were saying the the New Testament gets mingled with philosophies of and similar it's kind of a different different face of the same coin instead of maybe Greek philosophy it is this deuteronomic philosophy is this flattening of the hierarchy temples aren't temples are important but only our temples important only Jerusalem Temple is the temple no other temples are allowed even beyond that right I mean there's no there's no you hear Messiah twice in the entire Old Testament they're both in the Book of Daniel and and that's it and by the way in the in if you look at the Pras retic it's actually talking about a messiah not even necessarily the Messiah in Daniel 12 but that that's but yeah you're right it's like we're squinting we're going blind trying to read the Messiah into the book That's supposed to be about the Messiah he's the main character of the whole thing it's like remember remember uh was it uh Revenge of the Sith we're talking about we're talking about Star Wars here right now as familiar with all right the Revenge of the Sith all right you meet Count Dooku like an hour and a half in the movie and you're like wait this is the bad guy where the heck has this guy been right anyways back to the topic so it's the same deal it's like you read this million page Old Testament and then all of a sudden this guy shows up and goes and I'm the main character and you're like yeah no wonder they killed you because there's nothing like like there's no indication that that was you and Christians are always straining at the Gat to take some hint of a clue of a poem of a verse to be like oh this is about Jesus and you're like guys Jews read that same verse and they're not phased you know and yet the Book of Mormon comes out screaming out of the gate right out of the gate saying Messiah baptized in Jordan his name will be Jesus he will suffer and die and so many specifics and critics rightfully so criticize and they say wait a minute wait a minute that doesn't sound like 600 BC and you're like yeah it doesn't if the Bible is your standard for what was around in 600 BC yeah so what's interesting then is you also have biblical Scholars I mean these could be mostly they are mostly atheists right and they're saying this is funny they use the same exact fundamental view of solar scura to qualify the Apocrypha yes they do as as whether it's it's it's worthy of being real exactly right be being what it claims to be it's like wait a minute I'm going to take the Canon of the Old Testament and say no this is what they believed so this Apocrypha over here must not be a part of it yeah and there was a guy can't quite remember his name 1829 makes this insane claim where he says that's not the only authority of on the ancient world that there were other people who inherited a Hebrew tradition that were from the near East and they have their own ideas and motifs and philosophies and and Rel and you know flavor of religion there was more out there he says this in 1829 and gets laughed out of the room right and then you see this trickle of documents come in Enoch jasher apoc ocalypse of Moses the Coptic the ethiopic you see these things start coming until it's a flood of apocryphal documents all coming in guess what they all say the Bible's not the only voice there are other Hebrew Traditions coming out of the near East exactly what the Book of Mormon claimed and they're heretical and so Joseph it it actually at the end of the book we I talk about the martyrdom of Jeremiah which by the way is missing from the Canon um but how Joseph never lived to see all all the reinforcements arrive he died holding the Book of Mormon up as the only voice and he saw like a glimpse of Enoch the ethiopic Enoch there were started to be some manuscripts that the book of jasher Moses Samuel 1841 he saw kind of glimpses of these things but the real downpour that comes later hail on the academic picnic okay that comes later he never got to see that and so he dies being laughed at by making these claims which were later Vindicated by all from documents from everywhere from Armenia and Egypt and all these different places saying yeah Joseph was right Joseph was right so we get here you've got the early Saints they are rallying around the Prophet Joseph Smith who has a new book extra biblical book suckle how do I say suckle brought to light and from speaking from the dust of the ground so to speak right and then we start getting these other books MH that speak to us from the dust of the ground and early on with a couple of these there's there's an immense amount of excitement with the Saints yeah there are yes there is they're looking at these and like okay we already know the Book of Mormon is real this is another book they recite that came around so why wouldn't there be other books like this one also outside of the Bible what happened because that Zeal that excitement for those those Works was with the early Saints yeah and now most people today as latterday states have never read a single apocryphal work well I think there's a bad reason for that and there's a good reason for that the bad reason for that is that perhaps um I don't know laziness um that oh we already have the fullness of the Gospel I don't need to read anything else the good reason for that is we already have the fullness of the Gospel so it's kind of like we do have the fullness gospel the the the thesis of the book and what you'll see kind of play out is the story that the apocryphal documents uh the brass plates were passing this Priceless baton that was under threat it's like the child being run being escaping from a burning building the the the the Messiah the Gentiles real repentance Resurrection all these themes that I document in my book were being passed out of the burning building and then Babylon descends and just wipes the place clean and so the the they they serve their purpose and the Book of Mormon does inherit the fullness of the Gospel not because the Book of Mormon is a perfect book that you can you know that that you base everything off of but because it restores prophets it restores the it testifies restores Christ it restores Christ and it says unapologetically it spits in the eye of the the academic uh timelines and says Christ was preached from the very beginning the most important which you think yeah the the most important thing in the history of anything was preached from the start yeah I guess actually that does kind of make more sense than like all of a sudden in 30 ad we make up this Messiah thing like no it it should have always been there so I people people don't study it in the church as much I think because we do have the fullness of the Gospel in the book of romman we do have the words of the modern prophets and that is you know that is in temples and that's what you need that's got that's the fullness of the Gospel but there's so many layers and so many colors and so many new insights you can glean from these things that's what I hope my book will help people see um is that if you tether yourself to the Book of Mormon and in the modern day prophets you can explore these things without fear I think some people are afraid CU there are some Apocrypha that are cray cray they are cray cray sure and so I think they're kind of weirded out by that but if you if you keep Tethered to the restored gospel then you don't have to be afraid and you can explore them when they get crazy you'll recognize it and when they correspond then you can you know adopt that too so you know you think about Lehi saying that we have to go back and get the brass plates understanding the environment that he's in in Jerusalem where they have removed Christ yeah but he knows this he is prophesying of Christ yeah even in first Nephi 1 right away and he knows that Theocratic they are changing the religion they have changed the religion they've lost everything but the brass plates hold the fullness of the gospel and therefore again that's why I think it's important to understand there's the Stick of Judah and there is the Stick of Joseph and the Book of Mormon is simply an additional Branch off of that stick you know of that that the brass plates held right well and I and and I'll I'll I'll amend one thing that you said I actually think if I King for a Day if I that would be a bad idea by the way I if I yeah that'd be a bad idea we'd have like pajama day fourth Sunday all kinds of bad stuff don't make me King for day but if I Were King for day I think I'd rewrite the title of the Book of Mormon I wouldn't say another Testament of Jesus Christ I'd say the original Testament of Jesus Christ because the brass plates predate what those scribes Cobble together in 55530 BC right the The Book of Mormon Traditions were Pur older they were the original things before they got kind of messed up we tend to think of the Bible as this foundation and we put this feather cap we put another layer on top that's the Book of Mormon and hey it's also pretty good and it's like no The Book of Mormon was the foundation it drew from the brass placeat the original Testament the Bible is you know kind of cast out into the Wilderness to fight against the zombie hordes for 2,000 years and then the Book of Mormon comes and to save it we love the Bible we love the Bible but the Bible is not Batman and the Book of Mormon is not Robin The Book of Mormon is Batman and the Bible is Gotham and it's coming to save the Bible it's been doing great work for a long time but the Book of Mormon is the original it didn't just preserve the truth through one apostasy it preserved the truth through two apostasies I don't think we we understand that very well the the true Mission the the scope and breadth of the book of Mormon's Mission so one thing I found very interesting actually I think this is another book that you ought to write uhoh is going back and doing the same thing with the letters of Paul oh okay because you know Paul gets sent off to the Wilderness for three years before he starts preaching he goes out to Arabia or the East and the same place we're told that 80,000 priests leave in the time of the deuteronomists at the time of Lehi that's correct yeah he's probably in my opinion out there learning about the fullness of the Gospel on these original sources right he comes back and then he preaches uh and and and does what he does I was just an Ephesus standing in the theater that he that he preached in or in emphasis it was it was amazing but anyway there there one of the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon is faith hope and charity oh yeah right right faith hope and charity and is actually found throughout the Book of Mormon in different sometimes but uh there we find it and yet that's Paul's words right but it's always been in my mind that they know there is an original source for this but you're stuck on the Old Testament yes well and and because we we think that every time a pro and we do this with the Book of Mormon too that every time a prophet speaks it's the first time anyone said it right that when Lehi says oh a prophet will come in 600 years baptized in Jordan that were like whoa Lehi just received some original you know fresh freshly you know baked uh uh Revelation and he's the first guy to ever say that no he's not that was preached by lots of people it's just it's not in the Old Testament when you have when all you have is that to judge off of then all these statements by New Testament authors seem perfectly original and we know that Paul quoted from Pagan Greek play rights to get as and not not just like incidentally some sometimes the heart of his sermon was taken from a you know Pagan Greek playwright and saying don't didn't they make a great point in having that the heart of his sermon if he did that with Pagan sources then would we be shocked if we found him quoting The Book of Enoch if we found him quoting these apocryphal documents like that would make perfect sense as a matter of fact it would be really weird if a preacher stood up and didn't use any of the foundational documents of his culture to make his point you'd say you're a ter preacher like fold in some kind of something we're familiar with to to to drive the point home it would be stupid if you just were coming up with all of it out of your head okay you're kind of impressive but like give us something that we is familiar to us well exactly it's like okay in the New Testament what is he studying right right what if it's not in the Old Testament what is he St and what is it and for years people just thought he's making it up but now with apocryphal documents we see oh all these guys were reading these texts and we can detect them we can see he's quoting I mean Jesus Christ himself is quoting from The Book of Enoch Jesus Christ it was good enough for him you know Jude John Paul Peter uh they're they're reading these old they're referring to these old texts you know it was part of what of their tradition that they were building off of and ironically the people who love the writings of Paul and Peter and just worship the New Testament have no time for for what they thought was inspired scripture so I've got a question here for you that's uh bring it I don't know if it's answerable or not bring it on Greg I'm not afraid of you Greg so you got you you've got all of these new books that are coming about in the last couple hundred years um we're told that there will be new books yeah that there will be new scripture yeah and and that you know my what I'm trying to allude to here is he's forming a cult right now you see this he is forming a separate church right now live right on this broadcast the you know in in the anciently after Solomon the Kingdom of Israel is is split into two so you've got the southern Kingdom of Judah you've got the northern kingdom of Ephraim right or Joseph even right right the lead tribe is Ephraim of the 10 tribes they split the brass plates come from the northern tribe right okay the Old Testament comes from the southern tribe right okay so are these apocryphal books that have been hidden for so long MH to the West anyway the books or some of the books that are to be revealed in the last days so okay so great question great question so I think so I think so um I think that originally the Lord revealed these things through plates buried in the ground and translated and the Book of Mormon is deliciously perfect it's just it's excellent and it's the fullness of the god gopel and then he says more books are coming and we all expect it's going to be from a hole in the ground James Strang thought it was a hole in the ground right Pretender who wanted to be Joseph Smith 2.0 said I have other plates and they say this we all kind of expected that that's how they were going to come about I personally don't think that's the case I think that it's going to be from cracking open these old documents and realizing oh wow there's other truths in here there's more in here if we read it through the right lens when the book of was first Unearthed it was a tangle of Egyptian glyphs that nobody could read but with the IR Thum Joseph could untangle them it's like Christmas tree lights okay you got a big ball of Christmas tree lights every year okay it gives light but it's useless it's like I don't know I don't I don't want to do with this I don't want to do this the IR Thum helped Joseph untangle that light okay the Apocrypha often feel like a huge tangle of wires and glass and if you do it wrong you're going to get shocked or cut because some of them are crazy okay they're crazy but if we read them through the lens of the Book of Mormon through Joseph Smith's Revelations the temple the pearl of great price the doctrine of covenants the book If you read it through that lens use that as your lens you can untangle the things and you realize this looks like an interpolation or this I don't think it's what they meant but look at this Gem and you can pull out these pieces of light from these documents that's what I've tried to do in this book to show you know to to to show the importance of some of these lost plain and precious truths we have the fullness of the Gospel I don't want anybody to think that like we don't have that we like we we need more because the temple isn't enough or the prophets aren't enough that's not all what I'm saying but there are there's there's there's richer flavors and deeper understanding that are unlocked in these documents if you look through the lens of the restored gospel and so instead of from a hole in the ground it's not from a hole in the ground it's using the lens well actually sorry some of them are very literally from holes in the ground but you the lens is not the IR and thumb them anymore it's the Book of Mormon and so that's what my book has tried to do so let's finish off here with just a couple of your favorite examples in the Book of Mormon of apocryphal sourced content uh okay so when so when second Nephi chapter 2 I think second Nephi chapter 2 is the greatest chapter of scripture ever penned I think it is the most consequential and inspired scripture ever penned and Lehi gives us like one sermon one can you imagine if we had his book Martin but anyways so he gives us like one chapter and it's amazing and in that chapter he primarily it's about the fall Joseph Smith said if you get the beginning right it's easy to stay right but if you get at the beginning wrong and our Christian brothers and sisters have demonstrated if you misunderstand the fall you misunderstand everything Lehi goes back to the fall and he says this Messiah redeemer is going to come why do we need a messiah all right once upon a time there was a tree and we needed and we had agency and we chose to do this and that men might have joy and now we can have posterity and we learn from the bidder and we grow and we choose eternal life or captivity it's this amazing sermon that he gives and there's nothing like it in the Old Testament Adam and Eve are a footnote in the Old Testament they're around for two chapters and they're bumbling idiots in the Old Testament okay whereas in the book of and Jacob even says uh lehi's son he says don't read about these people with contempt he even says this he says don't read about our first parents with contempt the book of venerates Adam and Eve in a completely different way than the Christians Drew from the Old Testament the Old Testament draws from the story of Genesis it's totally wrong in it it's missing so much goodness in in Genesis and in the Apocrypha this is what you also see you see Eve is shrewd she's wise she figures it out and she's like ha if we want to get this knowledge we have to pass through okay and get real Joy H and she and Adam and Eve discuss this and they're like what do we do that is so different than in Genesis but it lines up perfectly with what Lehi was reading and and in my book I I I show if you read what I I line up these apocryphal SE uh uh Source texts and then Lehi is reading you think he's reading from these things he says I'm reading from these things you're like what are what's he talking about and then you read you know the Georgian or the Romanian text of Adam and Eve and you're like oh my gosh this is totally what he was reading and so that's one example is is Eve and the second the third chapter of the book is called redeeming Eve um because she's been so vilified and Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon were completely right she's being wrongly wrongly vilified she should be Vindicated we should honor Eve and the divine feminine these are glorious truths in the gospel and they have pieces of it in the Apocrypha the Apocrypha agree if there was a boxing match the Apocrypha jump in the ring then they look at the Old Testament and they look at the Book of Mormon and they side with the Book of Mormon and every time I bring up these things and they side with the Book of Mormon Satan is another example um Satan is a is a doofus in the Old Testament he's a Rube he shows up for like a verse and he's like maybe you should eat that fruit T he he and sneaks off that's it in the Book of Mormon it won't shut up about Satan Satan's there all the time he's screwing everything up he's tempting everyone he's a personal tempter he shapes his Temptations depending some of them he he lures away and some of them he whispers this and he's this horrible Menace In the Bible the villain is like b or like belar or like Nimrod or the king of the Philistines and you're like where's Satan in all this the Apocrypha guess what agree with the Book of Mormon they come in they say Satan is a bad dude and he's more powerful than you think he's your direct personal temptor he has Army a host of angels with him uh he's he's got a vendetta against mankind it lists all these things that perfectly match up with the book of Mormon's descriptions they disagree with the Old Testament agree with the Book of Mormon and so when you get these additional Witnesses coming out again and again and again and again they all say Joseph was right 1829 that guy you laughed at he was actually totally right so those are a couple examples that's awesome well I've read the book Jonah it's the key to the Keystone I'm going to put the link in the description so you guys can go and grab that go read the book it's fascinating really really interesting and I love things where you get the wool pulled back from your eyes and you're able to look at what you're already reading with brand new eyes and this is one of those examples so thank you so much it's been a real pleasure to be here on quick media with Greg Madson it's just been such a such an honor to be here I love your show I love your show thank you so much for having me uh you give you give The Book of Mormon the respect it deserves and that's actually kind of rare when you talk about the Book of Mormon you give it true respect and it's so rare and I love it so I love your show thank you so much for having me appreciate it thanks Jonah thanks Greg [Music]