Papers & Essays
THE CANAANITE CRUCIBLE
March 25, 2026
For centuries, the question of where the ancient Israelites actually came from was a fight between two camps: the biblical text and the archaeologist's spade. The Bible offered a grand narrative-slaves escaping Egypt, forty years in the desert, a promised land seized by force. Archaeology, as it matured through the 20th century, grew increasingly skeptical. But neither side had access to the most intimate evidence available: the DNA of the people themselves. That changed in the 21st century. Paleogenomics-the extraction and sequencing of ancient DNA-has turned what was once a theological and archaeological debate into something that can be tested against biology. The results have been striking, and for anyone attached to the Conquest model, uncomfortable. ORCID iD: 0009-0004-1170-7308
Reassessing the Date of 1 Clement: Implications for Early Christian Belief About Jesus
The dating of early Christian texts directly impacts our understanding of the origins and beliefs of the movement. The First Epistle of Clement, traditionally dated to the late first century (~95 CE), has been argued by a minority of scholars, most notably Richard Carrier, to originate in the 60s CE. This study reassesses both the traditional late-date and the proposed early-date arguments, examining textual, historical, and rhetorical evidence. ORCID: 0009-0004-1170-7308
March 2, 2026
Language, Title, Territory, and Ritual: The Systematic Theological Construction of Early Mormonism
Dec 12, 2025
This essay presents a forensic investigation into the 1832 "Sample of Pure Language" as a functional nomenclature for early Mormon administrative theology. Rather than a mere linguistic restorative effort, the Adamic nomenclature (Awmen, Son Awman, Angls-men) is analyzed as a technical specification for the hierarchical organization of the "Sod" (Divine Council) and its terrestrial manifestation. By correlating the linguistic data of the 1832 fragments with the 1838 administrative developments at Adam-ondi-Ahman, this study argues that Joseph Smith was establishing a standardized protocol—a ritual "syntax"—designed to integrate ecclesiastical governance with a specific geographic and ritual territory. The work utilizes verbatim archival extractions to distinguish institutional "transmission" from theological "innovation." ORCID: 0009-0004-1170-7308
The Authorship of the Pentateuch
November 25, 2025
The authorship of the Pentateuch—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—has long been debated. While tradition attributes these texts to Moses, modern scholarship indicates that the Torah is a composite work assembled over several centuries by multiple authors.
This study synthesizes evidence from source criticism, linguistic analysis, comparative ancient Near Eastern literature, internal textual examination, and manuscript traditions. The Documentary Hypothesis identifies four major sources—Yahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomist (D), and Priestly (P)—whose distinct linguistic, theological, and narrative features reveal independent origins later combined by editors.
Linguistic registers and vocabulary shifts corroborate this multi-period composition. Parallels with Mesopotamian and Canaanite literature demonstrate engagement with broader literary traditions, while internal textual evidence—anachronisms, narrative perspective, legal duplications—and manuscript plurality, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Samaritan Pentateuch, underscore ongoing textual development.
Taken together, these strands support the conclusion that the Pentateuch emerged as a pluriform, composite text rather than a single, unified work authored by Moses.
ORCID iD: 0009-0004-1170-7308
Joseph Smith the 1826 Trial and the Folk Magic Origins of Mormonism
Feb 07, 202
For decades, LDS historians denied that Joseph Smith Jr. ever stood trial for treasure seeking. The denial was not quiet. Hugh Nibley, the Church's most prominent mid-century apologist, went on record declaring that an authentic 1826 court record would be 'the most damning evidence in existence against Joseph Smith.'1 The institutional position held that accounts of the trial were fabrications circulated by enemies of the faith, men like Philastus Hurlbut, who collected anti-Mormon affidavits in the early 1830s. That position is no longer tenable. The modern LDS apologetic organization FAIR now openly acknowledges the Smith family's treasure-seeking activities, framing 'money digging' as a common practice in 19th-century frontier life.2 The concession is accurate as far as it goes. Newspaper accounts from the 1820s confirm that searching for buried treasure with 'mineral stones' was a documented phenomenon across upstate New York and western New England. The problem is the legal dimension, which the normalization argument skirts entirely. New York State law did not treat glass looking as a cultural curiosity. The 1813 statute on disorderly persons specifically targeted those who used supernatural claims to extract money from others, categorizing seer stone divination as a misdemeanor.3 Joseph Smith was not operating in a legal gray area. He was charging fees for supernatural services in a jurisdiction.
ORCID iD: 0009-0004-1170-7308
Were Abraham and Moses Historical
January 8 , 2024
Dust rises over the ancient city of Ur. Towering ziggurats pierce the Mesopotamian sky, their mudbrick faces baking under a relentless sun. Markets pulse with merchants trading textiles and grain while priests tend temples dedicated to a vast pantheon of gods. It is within this deeply polytheistic world that a single figure-Abram-steps forward in biblical tradition, called to abandon everything familiar and walk into the unknown at the behest of one God. Centuries later, another story unfolds along the Nile. A child pulled from the reeds and raised in Pharaoh's palace grows into a man who will confront the most powerful empire of his age. Moses-lawgiver, liberator, the prophet who speaks with God face to face-leads his people through plague, sea, and wilderness to the edge of the Promised Land.
ORCID iD: 0009-0004-1170-7308
Institutional Retreat and Evidentiary Management: The LDS Gospel Topics Essay on DNA and the Book of Mormon
Dec 14, 2024
This study analyzes the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Gospel Topics Essay “Book of Mormon and DNA Studies” as a work of institutional rhetoric rather than scientific inquiry. It argues that the essay functions as a strategy of evidentiary management developed in response to population genetics research demonstrating that Native American ancestry derives overwhelmingly from ancient Siberian and East Asian populations, with no detectable Near Eastern genetic contribution consistent with traditional Book of Mormon claims.
Situating the essay within a 150-year institutional history that treated the Book of Mormon as literal history and Native Americans as its primary descendants, the analysis highlights a series of rhetorical adjustments: the quiet 2006 revision of the Book of Mormon introduction, the reduction of migration narratives, the post-hoc reframing of the text as primarily spiritual, and the selective characterization of scientific consensus as “tentative.” The essay’s core arguments—including population bottlenecks, founder effects, and limited geography models—are evaluated against both the Book of Mormon’s narrative scale and the genetic evidence the essay itself cites.
The study finds these arguments internally inconsistent and insufficient to explain the absence of Near Eastern genetic markers. It further identifies an “epistemological firewall,” articulated by Dallin H. Oaks, which selectively limits the applicability of empirical evidence to preserve doctrinal claims. The analysis concludes that the Gospel Topics Essay does not resolve the evidentiary tension it addresses but instead constructs a framework that maintains institutional commitments while withdrawing or redefining falsifiable historical claims.
The absence of expected genetic signatures is not treated as a problem to be solved but as evidence to be rhetorically managed, illustrating the broader dynamics of institutional response to empirical contradiction.
ORCID iD: 0009-0004-1170-7308
Joseph Smith the 1826 Trial and the Folk Magic Origins of Mormonism
Feb 07, 202
This paper evaluates Stephen O. Smoot’s claim that Joseph Smith’s Joseph Smith Translation (JST) can be meaningfully understood within a Targumic framework. It argues that the comparison fails at the structural level. Targumim operate as translations bound to a primary-language source text (Vorlage), preserving sequence, functioning as secondary accompaniments, and drawing interpretive expansions from within the same textual tradition. The JST meets none of these conditions.
Produced from an English Bible rather than a Hebrew or Greek source, it is not constrained by a governing text and instead functions as an editorial revision that freely reorders, expands, and authorizes its changes through prophetic voice. The paper identifies Joseph Smith—Matthew as a falsifying case, demonstrating that the JST engages in chronological redaction rather than translation. It further argues that the shift to first-person divine narration in JST Genesis represents not a Targumic substitution but a transformation of the text’s authority structure. Likewise, purported “harmonizations” introduce post-biblical theological concepts rather than drawing from the internal resources of the Hebrew canon.
Finally, the paper situates Smoot’s comparison within the broader methodological problem identified by Samuel Sandmel as “parallelomania,” showing that the features cited as Targumic are common across diverse traditions of scriptural interpretation. The study concludes that labeling the JST “Targumic” obscures its distinctive function as a corrective, prophetic revision of scripture rather than a translation or secondary interpretive tradition.
ORCID iD: 0009-0004-1170-7308
