Was Joseph Smith Credible?

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host for today, John Delin. It is October 10th, 2025 and today we bring to you another in our series referred to as LDS discussions. Many of you will know if you've been following Mormon stories at any length over the past several years that we began several years ago a series called LDS discussions with a man named Mike who has a website called LDS discussions.com where he spent many years doing comprehensive analysis of LDS church truth claims. You can find his essays at ldsdisussions.com. But we were able to convince him to do, I don't know, 40, 50, 60 episodes where we discussed at length LDS church truth claims from an evidence-based as objective of a of a point of view as we could. So, this is this is going to be another in that series. We recommend that that series be enjoyed sequentially. So, you can go to the LDS discussions playlist on the Mormon Stories podcast YouTube channel or you can go uh to Spotify to the LDS discussions podcast there or wherever you want and you can enjoy the series sequentially. Today, we're going to be discussing a particular apologetic argument made in favor of Book of Mormon historicity. The argument, we're just going to call it Nahome. For those of you who have been following Mormon apologetics for a while, you'll know what we're talking about. But for many who don't, this is an argument about whether or not Joseph Smith in the 1800s was able through spiritual means able to identify specific areas, I'm going to say in the Middle East that he couldn't have known about in 1829 that archaeology or or anthropology or history has since somewhat demonstrated or validated. That's the question is is this Nahome question something that sort of shows that Joseph Smith was translating an ancient record and that he knew stuff he couldn't have known in 1829. That's my summary. Colby, you'll have probably a much better summary of what we're going to be talking about today. But um it's all about Book of Mormon truth and Book of Mormon historicity. Obviously, we have Colobby Reddish joining us today on this episode of LDS Discussions. I will say it's the first time we've had an LDS discussions episode, I believe, without Nemo. So, we're giving Nemo uh a bit of a break or a vacation today. He's been super busy and he wasn't available this week. So, we're doing it without Nemo and even without Julia. But, I think we are going to have a great discussion. Colobby, anything you want to say so far in response to or additive to my intro? Well, I'll just give people a moment to uh shed their tears about Nemo and Julia not being here. Um, no, I've I've really appreciated this entire series. I've listened to the entirety of it, and I'm glad that you've asked me to do an episode on Nahome. Um, I to me, Nahome is interesting because it really gets to the heart of Book of Mormon historicity issues. And um I know there's a increasing move in the church um amongst some nuanced apologists to really say does the Book of Mormon need to be historical? Um in my view, the Book of Mormon does, at least for me, I I understand people are going to weigh these things differently, but for me, the Book of Mormon does need to be historical to believe in it because it makes very specific claims about the way reality works, about specific sites, um both in the Old World and the New World. And it in fact incorporates artifacts in the narrative into the overarching kind of Mormon narrative. Both the plates, the sear stones, um the angel Moroni, these are all things that according to Joseph Smith literally happened to him. And so I do believe that you cannot separate historicity claims for the Book of Mormon from the truth of that book overall. Though I would recognize the book itself gives a different test for what is true. But that's that's basically what we're going to be focusing on today is historicity of the Book of Mormon. >> Yeah. And with that, let me just um and I know you're I think you're going to agree with what I'm about to say. in the recent times in October of 2025, September October time frame, we've seen uh you know almost unparalleled polarization and animosity, not just politically, but I would even add the way that the Mormon and ex Mormon internet has progressed over the past several years. I think we've seen more polarization and animosity, not just politically, but also religiously within Mormonism. And so [snorts] lately, in the past few months, I've been feeling drawn more towards peace building, uh, peacemaking, more towards bridge building. And so I I wasn't even sure I wanted to keep doing the LDS discussion series or even the John Turner series with Joseph Smith just because in a time where there's actually religiously associated violence. I'm, you know, I've been wondering like is it even appropriate to challenge or to discuss uh a church leader or a certain church's truth claims when um when there's religious associated violence. And I've thought through it a bit and what I've decided is as long as the discussion is is evidence-based and respectful. And if it's not done with the intent of let's just say in this case convincing people not to believe in something they hold sacred then I think I at least want to try to do it. And so I just want to say at the outset while we're going to be talking about Book of Mormon historicity today, I can say I John Dyn have no desire to take people's faith in the Book of Mormon away to tear down faith in the Book of Mormon. I'm not trying to say today that I think the Book of Mormon is, you know, a fraud or anything today. For me, the question is is how viable or not viable is the Nahome argument as a support for Book of Mormon historicity? Whether or not you believe in the Book of Mormon, see it as sacred, find spiritual or temporal value in it, I am in full personal support of that. It's just is Nahome a good argument or not? And we're going to try and do it in a respectful way. Colobby, what would you add or take away from that from your perspective? >> Yeah. No, I completely agree with everything you just said, John. I don't think going through and evaluating the claims that have been made by certain apologists is coming, at least for me and for you on this episode, from a place of unkindness or out of any hatred for the church or for people who continue to believe be believing members. I mean, it's one of the weirdest things when you kind of enter into the space and you have a lot of people say things about you. That's something I I know you've talked about before. I'm kind of new to experiencing that, but it's often surprising the way your motivations are represented by people who don't know you when I have like really great relationships with people in my life who continue to be active, who are in significant callings like in Bishop Ricks. And so to me, evaluating the claims that certain apologists have made about this site and what it means for Book of Mormon historicity isn't coming from a place of um a lack of charity or out of any, you know, animist towards the Mormon people or the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith, anything like that. To me, it's it can also be very useful for believing members to listen to the perspective of people like us simply so that they can understand why maybe some people in their family no longer believe in the church's truth claims. Like if we can just validate those people or help those people understand their non-believing friends and family to me that's one um valuable piece out of this this entire LDS discussion series is just helping people understand why there are some people who cannot continue to believe in the church's truth claims and like you I'm one that always says that um you know if people are in the midst of their faith crisis they need to take it slowly they need to be very patient with themselves they need to read and study a whole lot and just show themselves a whole lot of charity. And the truth is I and I think you've said this before too. I have never once in hundreds of people who've reached out to me individually encouraged anyone to leave the church because I don't believe that's a decision I can make for anyone. I've never done that with what people should believe about the Book of Mormon. For for me, this presentation is just these are certain claims that have been made. Here's here's my best attempt to truthfully and honestly evaluate the claims that have been made and add some additional information and then it's in the eye of the beholder. People who listen to this can then decide, do I think that evidence is significant enough to believe in a historical Book of Mormon or is there maybe more to this story? >> All right, let's get into it. Um, so there's going to be a lot of viewers and listeners that have no idea what Nahome even is or what we're talking about. So why don't we have you take it away? Give us that introduction. >> Yeah, if you'll go to that first slide, I I prepared like a brief introduction kind of to the book of First Nephi where Nahome is incorporated into the story for those, you know, I know a lot of your listeners are never Mormons. And so I think this kind of overview of the Book of Mormon, even if they've listened to an overview before, will be helpful. So the Book of Mormon opens with the B book of First Nephi. And the book of First Nephi tells the story of Lehi, who was a prophet in Jerusalem around 600 B.CE. who leads his family into the wilderness, including his son Nephi. That's who the book is named for. And so Lehi is warned about the city's impending destruction by an angel of the Lord. And this book is written in the voice of his son Nephi and recounts their struggles to secure sacred records, their journey through the Arabian desert, and their eventual ver voyage across the ocean to a new promised land here in America. So along the way, the book explores themes of faith, obedience, conflict, and divine deliverance and establish the theological and narrative foundation for the rest of the Book of Mormon. on the right hand side slide there for people who are looking at the slides. I actually snipped this from the Joseph Smith papers project. This is an this is a photo of the original manuscript of first Nephi as it was dictated uh by Joseph Smith. >> All right. So yeah, the Book of Mormon starts with the family of Lehi with his sons Nephi, Layman, Lemu, and several others wives. Um, it's this big group of people leaving Jerusalem around 600 BC >> and they have to figure out how to travel from Jerusalem in 600 BC to America. >> And before they build a boat, right, they have to wander through the desert. And after wandering through the desert, they get to someplace on a shore and build a boat according to the Book of Mormon. Is that right? >> Correct. And before they reach that that shore point, which the Book of Mormon's narrative calls Bountiful, uh where they do build a boat and make a a journey over to America, um right before that in the narrative, they encounter this place called Nahome. I think if you'll go to the next slide, I maybe have an introduction on. >> Okay, there it is. >> Where it is. Yeah. So, this is in the Book of Mormons, First Nephi 16:34. So, one brief introduction to this I'd give further is that the Book of Mormon involves um Lehi and his company journeying back and forth to Jerusalem from the from the wilderness. And so, they journey back in one instance to get the brass plates, which is basically like all the scriptures up to, you know, Isaiah or Jeremiah, basically the prophet at the time. And the another journey that they take back is to obtain wives and to gather the um this other uh I want to say friend of Lehi's named Ishmael. So Ishmael had, you know, a family and a bunch of daughters in Jerusalem. And basically Lehi receives this direction that his sons need to travel back and to go gather Ishmael and his family from Jerusalem and have them come join Lehi and his company in the wilderness. It's worth noting, and maybe this is just kind of funny, um, that the brothers, uh, Layman and Lemu, who are Nephi's two older brothers, that murmur exceedingly, I think is the phrase that the Book of Mormon uses all of the time, to talk about how they're real downers on this journey and on Lehi's calling as a prophet. Those brothers complain an awful lot when they're directed to go back to Jerusalem to get the brass plates. And for some reason, they don't complain at all when they're uh told by their father to go back to get Ishmael and his daughters. So, >> no murmuring for wives. >> Yeah. >> Murmuring for the for for scriptures basically. Who wants to read scriptures when you're a we assume they were teenagers or young men, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. And so it it's in the context of that story that these, you know, the brothers have gone and they've obtained Ishmael and and gathered Ishmael and his family. They've taken wives from Ishmael's daughters. And as they're journeying in this wilderness, which is a rather lengthy journey, I think the the narrative basically records like a period of like eight years that they're journeying in this uh Arabian desert. Ishmamail, the father of that second family, dies. And it's at that point in the narrative, if you'll pull that scripture back up, I'll read it for us. >> All right, here it goes. >> Yeah. So, First Nephi 16:34 is where we find this reference to this place called Nahm. says, "And it came to pass that Ishmael died and was buried in the place which was called Nahome. And it came to pass that the daughters of Ishmael did mourn exceedingly because of their lo loss of their father and because of their afflictions in the in the wilderness and they did murmur against my father, I think because of the many journeys or something like that. Uh the point being here that this is where the Book of Mormon's narrative mentions this place called Nahome. And so while they're journeying from Jerusalem to this land, Baniful, where they where they build the ship on the coastline to journey to America, that's where we're supposed to find this land called Nahome. >> And so Colby, tell me if I've got it right that that we can now imagine two scenarios. There's one scenario where, you know, Lehi, Nephi, Layman, Lemule, this family really existed. They really left Jerusalem around 600 BC. they really wandered around the desert for five or eight years, they really arrived at some ocean shore and that that ocean shore was really named knee home at the time. >> That's option one, right? And then option two is that Joseph Smith um you know, the Book of Mormon probably wasn't a translation. The Golden Plates probably didn't exist. Joseph Smith was just writing, we'll call it, uh, his own ideas or fiction or Bible fanfiction or whatever. And as he's just coming up with the story about Ne Lehi and and Nephi, Layman, and Lemu, he had to think of a name of some place when these characters get to the shore and he just comes up with the name on his own. Um but if he did that um then it's either either he found some old history book that had the name Nahome in it on a shore somewhere or he just pulled it out of his own brain and just made it up. But you know uh you know one one it's an actual historical event and the other Joseph Smith's either making it up or finding it in some source text. Right. Ye. Yes, I think those are our two alternatives. It's worth noting that Nahome itself isn't the shoreline. So, the shoreline is the shoreline site is called Bountiful in the narratives text. It's Nahm that's actually kind of in the middle of the desert. Although it does say it's near the borders of the Red Sea. So, we'll talk about what the book >> Okay. Okay. >> where we should find it. >> Where the ship was built. >> Yes. Nahome is not where the ship was built. It's actually the point that they they come to in the narrative in the middle of the desert where then they turn eastward. the narrative says, and we'll talk about this in a little bit greater detail in a minute, but that's basically where there's this eastward turn and they then go to Bountiful where they build the ship. >> Okay, got it. That's that's helpful. Sorry for that. I I'm looking at these points kind of with fresh eyes and so I'll be learning a lot. >> No, and and I like that you presented the two alternatives because I think it's worth noting that um my personal take on Joseph Smith informed in part because of the the book from John G. Turner, which I have read, and also the work of Dan Bogle, who I think is the foremost expert on Joseph Smith. I do not believe that Joseph Smith was um when I say lying, I don't believe that Joseph Smith knew necessarily that he was misleading people in the narrative he was writing about the Book of Mormon. I instead take this view that Joseph Smith thought he was inspired to do a work to bring people to Christ. But that doesn't necessarily mean that everything he said then can be taken at face value. And that's kind of the fa the space that I find myself in when it comes to Joseph Smith and the scriptures that come from Joseph Smith. So >> I think our exercise today is really to look at those two alternatives and say which is more likely. I understand that there are people who use faith to fill in that gap and I don't have any intention to take that away from them. This is just kind of using basic epistemology and critical thinking and saying do does the evidence that we see actually match up with the claims especially the claims made by apologists and I think that's kind of the next series in our slide is showing or in our slideshow is showing basically what certain apologists have said although it might have an overview of the maps first. Okay, perfect. >> Yep. This is it. So this is um this is actually one of the apologists that originally brought this Nahome issue to light. His name is S. Kent Brown and if I if I remember correctly, I think he was a BYU professor, but I might have to check on that. What I do know is that he wrote this article, New Light from Arabia on Lehi's Trail, which was included in a work by Dan Peterson, Jack Welch, and Don Perry called Evidences and Echo, I'm sorry, Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon in 2002. And he said, would you mind reading that quote actually, John? Yeah, it says, quote, "The issue of where Nahome was located is basically settled on the basis of three inscriptions dated to the time of Lehi and Sariah. The location of Nahome almost certainly lay in the area near Wadi Joff, a large valley in northwest Yemen. The inscriptions appear on small votive altars given to the Baron temple near Marib by a certain bathar of the tribe of Nim. Man, that almost sounds like Jerr Tolken. >> Yeah. Or Harry Potter. I'm trying to get you to cast a spell here. Um, no, thank you for reading that. So, that's Escantamp Brown and you can see that he's saying you can see the significance of this if you're a Mormon apologist, right? or if you're someone who's interested in the question of Book of Mormon histo row, NHM. So, Hebrew and South Arabic, both languages that we'll talk about today, Hebrew is supposedly the language that um Lehi and Nephi and Ishmael would have spoken because they were Jews from Jerusalem. Um these altars that are found at this site in Yemen, again, it's nearb Arabic, but the consonants basically match, right? So, you can see the significance of this in the way that Kent Brown has explained it. If we found three altars that have NHM and they're in roughly the right place, you can see why Mormon apologists are going to think that's a significant find. Do you have anything to add on that, John? >> Yeah, just just I I like to kind of uh take each slide to kind of do my own thinking with each slide. And in this case, >> there are a couple things that are of note. What is it? He says the issue is basically settled like that just not really knowing anything about any of this. That feels like a pretty strong statement to make >> because if you know if we're moving out of the realm of faith and we're moving into the realm of like archaeology and science, I would say something's only settled or even basically settled when the overwhelming consensus of the broader nonldds scientific community all agree. And I am going to bet I would be willing to bet all my life savings that whatever Ask Kent Brown is asserting here is not agreed to by the broader uh you know Middle Eastern uh archaeologic and and anthropologic communities. And so I'm just going to call um respectful question to this idea that he's going to tell us that anything is basically settled outside of BYU, which was the second point I was going to mention. And so for those who don't know about the history of of Mormon apologetics and BYU before the Maxwell Institute existed, which is the current center for I guess whatever is left of Mormon apologetics these days out of BYU >> before the Maxwell Institute existed, farms existed, which is was called the foundation of ancient research and Mormon studies or something to that effect. But it was basically BYU professors and I don't know, amateur scholars who would write a bunch of articles claiming to be scientific or academic or scholarly um butressing their perceptions of Mormon church truth claims uh without going through academic rigorous peer review of the broader scientific community. So when you've heard us talk about the book of Abraham and Carrie Milstein and John Gee >> and and people like that um you know that's the type of stuff we're talking about stuff where paid church paid BYU scholars would all agree that you know there's consensus around some interpretation of the book of Abraham Papyrie and then the rest of the Egyptology community laughs and says this is ridiculous and it's not scientific. So, I don't mean I don't say this to be disrespectful at all. I'm just saying that's my reaction to this slide based on how I understand science and academia academia work. >> Yeah. And it's worth noting. So, I appreciate all of that and I'm really disappointed that I'm not going to get your life savings at the end of today's episode, John, based on that bet. But, um, I did look it up and Sent Brown was a BYU professor. I believe that to be the case, but I wanted to confirm. It's worth noting that like you just said, we are talking about archaeological claims, claims of ancient archaeology. ESC Brown isn't an archaeology professor. He's a professor at BYU in the ancient scripture department. So, we're already having someone basically talking outside their specific area of expertise. I will note he had a minor in Neareastern studies. So I'm sure that's where he developed the interest and has some training and expertise, but he's not an archaeology professor yet is willing to say something like this site's finding basically settles it. I I agree with your evaluation. And I'll just say one last thing is is that just bec I am not saying that just because a professor is from BYU, they can't have an opinion or draw a conclusion that is valid. I absolutely believe there are plenty of really good scholars and professors at BYU that can make valid scholarly conclusions even around church truth claims. I'm just that what I am asserting is is they they need to also be supported by the broader scientific community for those assertions to actually have weight for me. [clears throat] >> And historically, whether it's Dan Peterson or or others, they they'll make assertions that don't have the backing of the broader scientific community. And the articles that they write don't have go through rigorous external double blind peer review. And that's that's what I'm questioning. Not whether they can be good professors and come up with true conclusions. They're not discredited just because they're on the church's payroll and just because they're BYU professors. They're discredited if they're not vetting their positions in the broader non-religious secular uh academic community. I've now beat a dead uh taper. So, should we go to the next slide? >> Perfect. Yes. So, this is actually a photo um or two photos of several of these altars. So, you can see there I actually pulled this uh photo I think originally from Scripture Central where they kind of show here are the actual altars at this temple site in or near Maribb in Yemen. And you can see it's got those uh three characters highlighted there. And it's actually South Arabic like Hebrew reads generally right to left, not left to right. So whatever apologist put this, you know, the NHM next to that, it actually should be backwards. And in fact, I looked it up to confirm the altars are right to left. So this is the the altars or two of the three altars that they're talking about as being the significant find for archaeological archaeological evidence of the Book of Mormon in the Old World. there that NHM is is digitally enhanced. It's >> correct. >> So it Okay, because that actually looks compelling. Like when I see NHM, I'm like, wow, that's really close to Nahm Nahm. But somebody actually altered that photo. >> Yeah, someone made that glow. It'd be real impressive if the glow was original. I'll say that for [laughter] sure. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Okay. All right. That's cool. >> Move to the next slide. >> Okay. Next slide. Yeah. So, here's another um really renowned apologist in the Mormon studies space, uh Terrell Given. In his book, By the Hand of Mormon, the American Scripture that launched a new world religion, uh also from 2002, he wrote that these altars inscriptions constitute the first actual archaeological evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon. So maybe to come back to how we opened. I don't think we're being uncharitable to just evaluate what these apologists have said about these altars, their significance to the question of Book of Mormon historicity for people who care about that question and evaluating whether we think this is actual evidence of a historical Book of Mormon. >> Yeah, it sounds like so far, unless you're cherrypicking, they're basically saying, "Case closed, you know, this is proof >> or this is convincing, compelling evidence." Yeah. And I think I have an example from one more apologist, Neil Rapley. >> Yes. >> Neil Rapley said, um, so he helps run and is a researcher for Scripture Central. He said, "When all the pieces are brought together, the name, the location, the antiquity attested in several inscriptions, the bountiful inlet and the turn eastward, it creates a compelling context for this portion of Nephi's account in southern Arabia, which in turn can build faith that the Book of Mormon is an authentic historical document." So, I really included these snippets just to say we are not straw manning these apologist positions by just looking at this and seeing if it actually does amount to legitimate historical evidence or archaeological evidence for a historical Book of Mormon. >> And I'll just say of the three, I like Neil's comment the best because he's not saying case closed or there's consensus or that it's evidence. >> He's just saying that to him it's compelling >> and that it can build faith. Yeah. So, I think he still recognizes that if someone's going to reach this conclusion about the Book of Mormon, they still need to input faith, which I appreciate that epistemological humility. >> All right. And now we come to an inconvenient faith in Jim Bennett, I'm guessing. >> Oh, yes. I did include a a quote from my our our mutual friend Jim Bennett, and he was actually good enough to allow me to question him about this uh this little snippet that he said about Nahol. But I think this is the way Yeah, let me introduce it really quickly. I think the way Jim is going to describe it is the way most people who've heard of Nahome before are going to have captured the significance of this find of Nahm and that's why I included this one. >> And do you want to tell people what this comes from? What's >> Well, you were involved in it. John, why don't you introduce? >> Okay. Yeah. So, my friend Bob Robert Reynolds, he's the brother of Imagine Dragons lead singer uh Dan Reynolds. He's the manager of the Killers Rock group. He's a good friend. He um he he was sad to see so many people losing their faith in the church. He loves the church. He wants uh people to stay if they can. and he believes that there needed to be better dialogue both about an open discussion of of the challenges to the church's truth claims and validity but also better visibility to the arguments um against uh the challenges to the church's truth claims. So, we created a documentary, a YouTube documentary. It's like nine parts, I think, maybe 20 or 30 minutes each part, but it's basically called An Inconvenient Faith. And episode two of An Inconvenient Faith is on the Book of Mormon, and I participated in it. Sandra Tanner did, Jeremy Reynolds, Bill Real, he they did involve several critics um in the in the documentary along with a mountain of of believing apologists. So anyway, this is from episode two of the Book of Mormon and In Community of Faith. >> And I, by the way, for the record, I think it's a really important series or documentary because never before have faithful scholars been willing to really appear in a in any type of show or program with critics of the church. So for the Mormon church, it's groundbreaking for that reason alone. So >> completely agree. And then Jim Bennett, the guy who's about to speak, is the son of the late US Senator Bob Bennett. He wrote a book responding to the CES letter, letter letter to CES director that Jeremy Reynolds wrote uh challenging the Mormon Church of Truth claims. So Jim Bennett has is a pretty well-known apologist who who has written a response to Jeremy Reynolds CES letter. All right, that's enough background and I only give that to the people that are joining us without any of the context. We like to make sure everybody is on the same page. So, thanks for your patience. All right, so we roll the clip. >> Yep. >> All righty. Here we go. Because there are things in the Book of Mormon that can't be easily explained away. There's an ancient burial site that's mentioned in First Nephi called Nihong that wasn't known when the Book of Mormon was published and yet has since been discovered exactly where the Book of Mormon said it would be. >> Okay. Well, you know, that sounds pretty uh pretty conclusive. So I Yeah. And I included that because that's the significance that most people who've heard about this issue and have kind of received the apologetics secondhand are going to attribute to the site that it's exactly in the place where the Book of Mormon said it should be and that it's a burial site. I want people to keep that in mind, that framing in mind as we move through the rest of the slides because we're going to look at both of those claims um in here just a minute. So let's start with whether this is right where the Book of Mormon says it should be as Jim said. Um, so you can see here we've got Jerusalem at the top of the map and we've got the Red Sea over on the left side of the map on the western side. You can see several different points that the Book of Mormon says that these uh this camp of people stayed at. So there's the Valley Valley of Lemu. There's a camp they there's a site that they camp out at called Shazer, a place where Nephi breaks his bow called the camp of the broken bow. All of these things are on along the the the eastern the eastern coast of the Red Sea in Arabia. And you can see at the bottom of that um bottom of this map, we've got Nahome and we've got then over to the east this site Bountiful where they do build the ship. It's worth noting that there this site Nahome that the apologists are pointing to is about 125 to 150 miles inland from the Red Sea. And I don't want to foreshadow too hard. So, let's just go ahead and move to the next. >> Let me just ask you a question, Colobby. That that map, >> like I'm not used to Book of Mormon maps being specific because to this day, they've never really been able to nail down any credible Americanbased Book of Mormon geography, right? >> So, I'm just dying to know who created this map or if we even know. >> Yep. Great question. This was >> listing names from the Book of Mormon. the distances and then tying them specifically to the Arabian Peninsula is already feeling like a stretch to me. >> That's because it is a huge stretch. [laughter] But this map was created by Scripture Central. So, the apologist we featured earlier, Neil Rapley and his wife. I think they're heavily involved in the Scripture Central uh website, Apologetics Institute, that that has created a lot of these uh both the images and then some of the maps that we're going to use today >> because the Book of Mormon doesn't contain any native [clears throat] maps. Right. >> Correct. The only site on this entire map that we actually know where it is, aside from the geog like the geographical features like the mountains and the sea is Jerusalem, right? All of the rest of these are kind of >> I don't want to say apologetic um invention to in a way that seems like I'm cascading that. I'm saying they're they're taking like approximate travel days and approximate travel directions and they're kind of guessing for for better or worse where these >> even choosing the Arabian Peninsula as where all all this travel is taking place. In theory, you know, they could have traveled in different directions. I don't know. Like um I'm just I I'm just noting that. Yeah. This this is a this is imagination on the part of Neil and Jasmine or whoever created this map. >> Yeah. And the big thing I want people to see here is again to keep in mind what Jim said and what most apologists would represent this as being that this site Nahome is in exactly where the Book of Mormon said it would be. And I want to note that site is about 150 miles inland from the Red Sea. And we'll see the significance of that as we move to this next slide. >> Okay. Okay. And again, Jerusalem is the only city Joseph Smith would have known, you know, from the Bible, he would have known there was a city called Jerusalem. And, you know, from there, he would have been either making stuff up or this is actual history. All right, let's go to the next slide. >> Yeah. So, let's look at what the Book of Mormon actually says about where this site would be. So, we've already talked about First Nephi 16:34. That's where Ishmael dies and is buried in this site. Nahome in 1 Nephi 17:1, so at the beginning of the very next chapter, it says, "And it came to pass that we did again take our journey in the wilderness, and we did travel nearly eastward from that time forth." So, I want to pause on this bullet point and just talk about th this is important because the folks are journeying as we look at this next bullet point down the borders of the Red Sea and it's at Nahome that they turn eastward or it's after they've reached Nahome that they turn eastward. So, if we look at the rest of First Nephi 16 before this eastward turn, which is after Nahm, right? It says, "And we did go forth again in the wilderness, following the same direction, keeping in the most fertile parts of the wilderness, which were in the borders near the Red Sea." So, what this means to me is that the purported location of Nahm is only in the right place if you don't pay attention to what the book actually says. >> Did you create Did you create a map of what based on the text where things should actually be? Well, if you just go back to the last map. Let's talk about that for a second. So, it says that it's after Nahome that they have this eastward turn and before that time they're journeying in the borders by the shore of the Red Sea or by the Red Sea. That's what it says, right? That they're keeping to the fertile parts of the wilderness near the Red Sea. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't call 150 miles inland from the Red Sea, which is where this site is. And this is again where there's this eastward turn. I wouldn't call that accurate for what the Book of Mormon is saying. In other words, if Nahm were where it's supposed to be, it shouldn't be 150 miles inland from the Red Sea. It should be right near the Red Sea or near the borders of the Red Sea like it like the book actually says. Does that make sense? >> Yeah. So, it says in the borders near the Red Sea, >> right? >> And you're saying 150 miles from from the sea >> is where this site is. And >> it doesn't qualify as in the borders near the Red Sea. Is that what you're saying? In the borders. >> That's what I would I mean, that's what I would say. I know that there's an apologetic argument that the word border there should mean like in the mountains near the Red Sea, but even that I I don't understand how Nephi, let's think of it this way. If this is an actual record of Nephi, he's basically keeping this journal as they're journeying. How does Nephi know they're near the Red Sea when he's 150 miles inland? And if you'll move to that that uh other map that's uh the the next map actually after the next slide, you can see the topography on this map. And what you can see is one of the reasons that they're not journeying right near the Red Sea is because of this huge mountain range between this site Nahome and the Red Sea. So, I'm not sure how Nephi in this narrative would have known they were near the Red Sea when they're 150 miles inland and between that 150 miles, we have a huge mountain range between them and the sea. >> Does that make sense? Help contextualize that. >> Yeah. So, I'm switching between the topography map, the second map, and the original one. I mean, I guess in theory, if they start up north and they're traveling down, they could know that they're traveling along a sea because at different points journeying southsoutheast, they could have seen the sea and at some point they just went east enough to where they couldn't see it anymore. Um, and plus if they're on a high elevation, maybe they can see down to the sea. I'm just trying to think. I'm not trying to undermine your theory. I'm just trying to think through it. But your view is >> that far away. >> Yeah. >> To qualify as the words in the borders near the Red Sea. >> That's what I would say. I would just say at the very least >> at the very least it's a little bit more complicated than saying it's exactly in the place where the Book of Mormon said it would be. We're talking about quite a journey of quite some distance. And if we're 150 mi separated from the Red Sea, I don't know, maybe the Leona, which was the magic uh ball and compass that Lehi and his family received, maybe it had like a nearest uh nearest body of water setting, John, and that's how they knew they were near the Red Sea. I don't know. I almost wish we could have, if I'm if I'm showing this map again, >> I almost wish we had kind of like their, you know, the Rapaliz map or whoever it was laid over this top top topography map >> so we could kind of see the mountain range that they would have had to traverse to get to Nahome. In other words, I'd love to see where alleged Nahome is on this on this map given this massive mountain range in the south. >> Yeah, I think it would be it's kind of hard to describe without like pulling up a clicker or something, but >> Well, here's my mouse. So, I've got my mouse. >> If you'll go a little to the east, I think Nahome is about in that location right >> where you're at. Yeah, probably even a little bit further to the east and maybe a little bit further south >> here. >> Yeah, exactly. >> I mean, yeah. So, I'll I'll make it big. And if you're saying it's around here, you would expect in the text some sort of discussion. We had to traverse this super nasty mountain range for hundreds of miles or for over a hundred miles before we got to Nahome. Right. >> Exactly. It's also worth noting It's also worth noting too that the book said more than just they were near the borders of the Red Sea. It said that they're doing this so that they can stay in the most fertile parts of the wilderness. Obviously, this is a current topographical map, but folks who are watching this are going to see there there isn't any indication that there's anything but desert and mountains here, right? It's very brown. It's very dry. So, that's one of the other reasons that I feel like where we would expect fertile landscape is near the sea. >> Water. Where there's water. It's always going to be where there's water, not >> where there's mountainous desert. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> All right. One of the other challenges with saying this isn't exactly the right place is these apologists are now looking to nim and this map as well as this text that's on the screen again come from scriptural central's page where they're talking about nahome issue and I'd encourage people to read the entirety of that page um so that they have a full feeling for all of the arguments that are presented there but I'm pulling the things that we're talking about and what they're pointing to now to say this is this Nahome site right is um there was an ancient tribal region of the NIHM tribe or the Nim tribe. So this ancient people. So I'll go ahead and read what Scripture Central says about this region. They say the Nim region is the homeland of the Nim tribe located about 30 miles norththeast of Sa generally west of Maribb. Now remember Marie or near Marie, right outside Marb is where we have the location of the temple with these three altars that have this NHM inscription on it. So they continue and say that that um that site is along the southern border of the Wadi Jelf. The tribal territory covers about 5,000 km about 1931 square miles. Early maps from the 18th and 19th centuries include the region, usually spelled Nhem or NM, and indicate that it may have been slightly larger at that time. Sources from the early Islamic period indicate that the Nim tribe has been in the same general location since before the rise of Islam, although their exact tribal boundaries have fluctuated over time. Throughout much of its documented history, the region itself, in addition to those who occupied it, have been known by the name by the Nim name. And so here's how these things connect. So on this map, I've pointed out where MIB is, which is further to the east, about about 25 maybe 30 miles from this um from this NIM region. And it's worth noting that this NIM region that we're talking about, this 1,900 square miles is roughly the same size of Utah County. So the county where Provo and Oram fall, that is also about a 2,000 square mile county. So the region that we're talking about here is pretty large and it's near where this uh temple is where they found these altars. So my point in talking about how this gets a little bit more complicated than saying, "Oh, this is in the exact right place is now that we're talking about a region, an entire region, and we're talking about an entire region that's the same size as Utah County, it's just important contextual information to help people realize this isn't like one specific burial site, and we'll talk more about that in just a second. This isn't one specific burial site that these apologists are are pointing to at this point. They're pointing to an entire region and claiming that this entire region may be the Nahome that's described in the Book of Mormon. >> Yeah. And I really wish we need to get uh you know what we need to do? We need to find Nahol's equivalent of a Michael Co or Robert Rittner. M >> you know, somebody that knows, you know, uh Arab Peninsula history from 2,000 years back because um my understanding is Islam arose around 600 AD. >> Mhm. And so we're talking about 1,200 years between the the the departure the alleged departure of Lehi and his family from Jerusalem and uh the rise of Islam. So when they say this region had the name Nahim prior to the rise of Islam, a lot of stuff could have happened between the the the rise of of uh Islam and the alleged departure of this family. We would really need a historian to go, "Oh yeah, 600 BC, this region was totally called Nheim." Or we might find out that it wasn't called that at all, that it was called something totally different or that they used a totally different language at the time. Like that's that's where that's why you need peer-reviewed external scientific consensus to confirm claims like this. But we're basically reading stuff that BYU paid apologists are writing with with whatever special knowledge they do or don't have, but with the with the expressed motivation to buttress faith. Right. >> Right. And it's worth noting I did actually reach out to professors who are basically experts in the people who lived in this region. I haven't heard back from any of them yet, but in part it's kind of because it's kind of because kind of like you um revealed when you were interviewing Dr. Robert Rittner, people who are like legitimate experts in these fields that Mormonism touches on, and I don't mean this to be denigrating at all, but like this is almost nonsensical to them. And so to spend like their academic time evaluating the claims of like this quirky American religion like like you just said, the people who specialize in the history of this area tend to study the rise of early Islam. They also study just this entire region because it has its own interesting history to teach us. And I actually think that's one of the things about these apologetics that offend me the most. It's the same with the book of Abraham stuff is these people, the people who lived in this region, this Nim people and the Sebians that we'll talk about here in just a minute, they had their own history that these apologists feel no qualms about erasing and incorporating into their Mormon mythology to make it like you said, but faith. And I think when we actually try and learn about these people and about these regions purely to learn about them, it's like absolutely fatal to viewing these things as connecting to a historical Book of Mormon. >> Yeah. It's like when you go to an actual never LDS Native American, if you were to say to them, "Hey, did you know your skin's dark because your ancestors a couple thousand years ago were wicked? And by the way, your ancestors were named Nephi and Lehi." They'll be like, "We know our genealogy. We know our tribal history. And by the way, we know that we come through the bearing straight and you know, ultimately from Asia because DNA and and all sorts of other evidence makes that really clear. Stop imposing this weird Book of Mormon history >> on my people. It's offensive." Right. >> Yeah. And I think that right there is a perfect jumping off point to now talk about this site where they actually found these altars because I think this is where it really comes together and we start to understand how problematic some of these apologetics are. If you'll pull up that next slide talk about the site. >> So as you read from esc Brown this site is called the Bon Temple and it is a Sabbian temple near Maribb Yemen. So this Sabian or this word Sabian, this is the people that are also recorded as uh being part of the biblical narrative called the like the queen of Sheba comes from this same people. Okay. And this Bon temple is actually known as the throne of Bilquis which was one of their uh the members of their pantheon and it dates back to the 10th century BCE. So already we're separated by about 400 years from what the Book of Mormon's narrative is talking about 600 BC. And this was actually built in the 10th century BCE. And it was dedicated to their god Al-Makqua who was one of their I I think was the supreme uh the supreme god in their pantheon was this figure Alakqua. Remember that Jim Bennett and other apologists I don't mean to pick on Jim. He's a great friend. Uh, I'm just taking his argument for what it is. They represent this site as being a burial site because for it to be Nahome, where the Ishmael was buried of the Book of Mormon, it must be a burial site for it to be a meaningful hit. This Bon Temple is not a burial site at all. Instead, it's a temp a religious temple that has wall inscriptions. Would you mind reading the significance of those wall inscriptions here on the slide, John? It says, "An extensive archive of events experienced by the Sebian states since the first millennium BCE was inscribed on the walls, which made researchers realized that the temple was also a documentation center for the Sibian state. According to some researchers, the walls of the temple were covered by bronze plates that contain writings and diverse motifs. However, these writings were removed and only the bronze nails on the walls remain. Inside the temple, one can find the gifts of visitors that were given to God such as uh statues and sensors >> and I would add and altars. So those altars when it was talking about when Kent Brown's piece was talking about how these altars are votive altars, this is one such gift that someone is bringing to this god. And and when we actually look at the inscriptions, we can see that really quickly. Is that what our next slide is? Is actually dealing with the inscriptions on the altars. Oh, this is a brief introduction to the Sabian just so that people can get a full context here for these people and like we said for their history. So the kingdom of Sheba or Sabah was established between 1,800 B.CE and was the leading south Arabian power for much of the first millennium B.CE. Culturally, the kingdom gained legendary status through the biblical and Quranic stories of the Queen of Sheba, which reinforced Saba's reputation as the cradle of South Arabian civilization. Centered in Maribb and Siro, its people, the Sabians, expanded from a regional base to control parts of modern Yemen and even exerted influence across the Red Sea in Itria and Ethiopia. Around 600 BC, the population of Marie is estimated to have been between 40,000 and 50,000 people. At the same time, Jerusalem had a population of roughly half this amount. What this means to me is that the Book of Mormon in Nephi's account makes no mention of them passing by or burying Ishmael supposedly in this place that was much larger than Jerusalem. So if you'll take that off the screen, let's just talk about that for a second. When I was So I grew up in Idaho and I still live in Boisee today. And when I was a kid, I remember taking our first trips to like Temple Square and and Salt Lake and seeing like real skyscrapers for the first time cuz I grew up outside a uh outside boyisey in a suburb of Boisey, right? So, we don't have a lot of skyscrapers where I live and we especially didn't back in the early 90s. And I remember going to Salt Lake and just like having these memories of looking up outside the car window and looking up as far as I could see and not seeing them. And what I want people to recognize here is to recognize how odd it would be if this is the Nahome as the apologists are claiming of the Book of Mormon. How odd would it be that the narrative doesn't mention that they're passing by a town that's twice the size of Jerusalem, twice as large as this huge population center that they're coming from. And it makes absolutely no mention of these Sabian people, of their religion, of running into any of these people, of the population centers that they're passing by. It makes absolutely no mention of this. >> Okay. All right. That makes sense. Should we go to the next slide? >> Yeah. I just think that's important context for then understanding these inscriptions that are actually on the altars. So if you'll pull up that next slide, we can read those together. >> All right, let's read them. >> So according to Brown, there were three altars containing the consonants NHM at the site of the ruin temple at of Bon and Marib Yemen. This site that we've been talking about and I guess it's worth noting since we called that out earlier, those three altars have been subject to the type of peer review and the inscriptions on these altars have been subject to the type of peer review that you're talking about, John. So this is something that doesn't just come from Brown. This is something most archae archaeologists would accept as being true that these inscriptions are on these altars at this temple in Marib. Each of the three altars contains essentially identical inscriptions. I have them transliterated there uh from the south Arabic script and then I have them translated. I will spare you having to read the inscription and I'll go ahead and do it myself. So there's four lines of text and it says Bathar son of Saodum son of Naum the Nhemite has dedicated to Al-Makqua the person Friat by Atar and by Makwa and by Dat Hayam and by Yadil and by the Mi Karib. I am sure I absolutely butchered that. But as you look at the inscriptions in detail, John, is it surprising to you that none of the apologists have presented the full inscriptions on these altars? And what significance do you make as you look at the full inscription in detail? >> I mean, yeah. So it's not one thing that I'm noticing and I I may not get it all but it's so it's talking about a people not necessarily a location. >> Absolutely. >> So if somebody's a Nhemite and I'm just this is the first time I've seen this slide but just to say someone's a Nite doesn't necessarily mean there's a city or even a region named Nahheim. Now it, you know, it might a Jordanian lives near Jordan. An Israelite lives near Israel, but it certainly doesn't mention a place per se. >> Exactly. And in fact, because apologists often represent these altars at being in the place of the Nahome, right, the burial site in the exact right place. I think it's worth noting that the fact that it says these altars were donated by the Nahhemite actually really suggests that that site cannot be the Nahome because people don't refer to me in Boisey as Kobby the Boyceian right especially when we're living in a time with much lower lower population including someone's tribal name or their region name whatever you want to say actually indicates that they're outside of that region not that they're at that site but that they're actually outside of it. So >> when you're in Utah, we might say that guy from Boise. >> Yes. >> But when you're in Boise, you're just all from Boise and you're not going to refer to each other as Boiseites. >> Yes. We prefer spuds. [laughter] Potatoes are famous. I don't know. That's a bad potato joke. >> Okay. So that's Okay. So now I get what you're saying. Yeah. It's it's suggesting that if there is not just Nhemite people but a Nhemite loca Nhem location, it's going to be elsewhere. >> Exactly. It's not here. >> Is here. >> Exactly. It's not here. And to Scripture Central's credit, you know, when we looked at their map where they had um the Nim region on it, they they do recognize that. They point out where Marie is. And I I drew attention to where the uh the altars are actually found on that same map. If you want to pull that one up just so people can recontextualize. I think it's um >> Okay. >> 12. >> Uh tell me if this is it or a different one. >> One forward. >> One forward. Okay. Here. Yeah. >> Yeah. This one right here. Just so people can get a feel for it. So where we're talking about where this temple site is is at the red arrow right there outside Maribb and again it's approximate because it's outside Marib by a few miles but you can see we're at least 25 miles from this nim region that now now they're they're pointing to. >> Yeah. I think the other significance for me when we look at the actual inscriptions is I think it's odd that we never hear about the full inscription in the way this apologetic is offered. We often hear that it's in the exact right place that it has the exact right uh letters that NHM that people can see in the transliterated first line at the end of the first line on the right. >> Yeah. But it's just interesting to note how much more text is here that it involves, you know, that person, their father, their father, so their grandfather. So it's got like their entire um, you know, their patrineal line. And then it's got a dedication to this god that's present at this temple in the sheban beliefs this alakqua as well as the people that you know are accompanying the rest of this um rest of this donation and why it's important to these people. Now, this is something that I can obviously recognize the Il Makqua as the god. Um, but I don't fully understand all of the significance of this to the the people who would have donated this Nite. And that's because very little is known about them. Um, but it's just worth noting that these apologists are focusing on three letters out of four full lines of text and attributing a lot of significance to those three letters while ignoring the rest of those four lines of text. in my view. >> Yeah. And I have thoughts on what I'll call what I've come to understand as parallelism, but maybe you address that. So, I'm going to hold off until the end to see if you talk about parallelism before I >> I think that'll go really well with my kind of concluding thoughts, which is what problems do we have to overlook to consider this a significant hit? Because I think you're right. >> Yeah. Now, when we go back to that idea of looking at these different u like these two different hypotheses, right, that Joseph Smith really was translating an ancient record from ancient Jews that were in the Arabian Peninsula versus maybe Joseph Smith made some stuff up. Maybe it was uh Bible fanfiction. There's all sorts of different theories that we could use. One argument that's been presented uh by Neil Rapley is that you know well maybe Joseph Smith was able to find this name Nahome on old maps. So I pulled a clip where he kind of talks about this. >> All right let's roll roll the clip. >> How do you address the criticism that Joseph Smith could have simply found the name Nahm in old maps? >> That's a wonderful could have. Did he? To date, to my knowledge, the closest anyone has been able to put one of those maps to Joseph Smith is about 320 mi. And there's no evidence that Joseph Smith made an a here to for unknown 320 mi trip to go look at some old obscure map. But there's another side of this that I think gets overlooked a lot, and it's that those maps don't really give you very much here. They give you a name. But what was the response that critics had when we first found this name and started talking about it? Oh, you don't have evidence. It goes back to 600 BC. Okay. Well, Joseph Smith would have had no way to know it goes back to 600 BC. And now we do. There's just also the fact that those maps would not have been able to tell you about Bountiful eastward from Nahome. They wouldn't have been able to tell you about the trade routes that lead there and out and follow Lehi's trail pretty closely. When you look at the totality of the evidence for Lehi's Arabian journey, those maps don't do very much for you. >> I mean, I've got all sorts of strong opinions about that video clip. That's the first time I've seen it. >> Yeah. Hit me with some of them. >> Well, I mean, I'm just And again, this is not with the spirit of wanting to be negative or critical. >> Like, as you know, I I did obtain a PhD, uh, so I know a little bit about how academia works. The level of swagger or confidence or hubris that he has is not what I'm used to in the in the scholarly academic community because number one he's literally on the church's payroll and number two at this conference which I'm sure is the fair Mormon conference he's literally surrounded only by people who agree with him >> and many of them who are also on the church's payroll or who are believers and are all invested in wanting his narrative to be true, but unless he's got either publications in in peer-reviewed scholarly journals or not never LDS reputable scholars there in the room with him, he's speaking way too confidently for the assumptions that he's making there. He's speaking to a home crowd where everybody is is desperate to hear uh you know any explanation they can find that buttresses their belief in the Book of Mormon. So it's like red meat and but it's not scholarly. What he's doing there is not in any way scholarship. It's it's a bunch of amateurs who aren't ancient, you know, uh, Middle East scholars who haven't vetted their theories through peerreview, speaking uh, theories to to a friendly audience right there. That's that that's a problem. But then also, he's speaking with just so much theoretical speculation. >> Mhm. Um, who knows where Joseph Smith got the name Nahome and who knows what he did or didn't know, but just the fact that no one has been able to produce a book that could have been a possible source doesn't really prove anything to me. Um, and it could just be a coincidence that Joseph happened to pick a name where on some random uh, you know, wall or altar somewhere, a couple of those letters happen to reappear. It coincidences happen all the time. >> So, we don't need any of that garbage he was talking about. We don't need a book in Joseph's bookshelf that had a name Nahome or a word that had NH&M in it from two a couple thousand years ago. We don't need any of that. It could literally just be a coincidence. >> Absolutely. And the funny thing is we're actually going to look at a book we definitely know that Joseph Smith had that had a very similar name, actually multiple similar names in it. But I I agree with everything you just said. The other thing I think that's very interesting, and I see this from so many of these apologists, and again, this is not attempting to be uh uncharitable, it's just when we're engaged in this type of like critical thinking exercise, and we're entertaining different competing hypotheses. It's so crazy to me that he starts that clip with saying, "Well, that's an awful nice could have," I think is what he says, right? That's an awful nice could have. Let's see if there's actual evidence for it. And the thing that's so ridiculous about that to me is the alternative that he's talking about involves like these huge sap supernatural claims including the appearance of multiple angels, the Book of Mormon being translated through a stone inside of a hat. And he's acting like what I see it as is a form of selective skepticism. He's being so skeptical that Joseph it's he's saying basically in effect that it's more likely that Joseph Smith really saw an angel and that he really translated an ancient record through a stone in a hat than it is that Joseph Smith may have taken a trip to a library several hundred miles away or that Joseph Smith may have heard about this Nahome region or this Nim region from someone else that was traveling through his lifetime. To me, that's just so ridiculous. Like, as a matter of law of parsimony or this idea of a razor, the simplest explanation most often being the correct one, it's ludicrous to act like those two things are even roughly equivalent. It is much more likely, like you said, that Joseph Smith coincidentally landed on the name Nahome, or that he heard about it in some way than it is to bring in all of these supernatural metaphysical claims that people do have to uh basically believe if they want to believe in a historical Book of Mormon. So, it's so weird to me for him to say, "Well, that's an awful nice could have." It's like, but the could have on the other side into so many more assumptions and so many more huge claims that can't be evidenced in any type of way. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> What I've compiled here, actually Julia helped compile this, is here are a bunch of maps that would have been available in Joseph Smith's day and whether they do or do not include Nahome or the Nhem region. So you can see that in starting in 1751 de Anvil's map, we do have it uh recorded there in the 1771 map by Carsten Neber. We also have that one included. And I think there's one more slide that shows additionals. John, if you'll go forward. >> Okay. We also have it in a 1768 map, a 1794 map by one of the original authors. Uh an 1804 map, an 1812 map, and an 1813 map. In total, that means there were seven maps that would have been available to Joseph Smith in 18 basically while he was dictating the Book of Mormon um in those early years in or I want to say the late years in the 1820s. uh versus 10 maps that would not have contained the region Nahome or Nahim. >> Okay. So, what you're saying is that Julia and or you andor others have indeed found maps that that name that region that Joseph Smith would have likely had access to. >> Yes. And in fact, I've pulled up the 1794 map by Neber to kind of show people how this would have looked. So there's a map of Arabia. This is the 1794 map like I said. And then I zoom in a little bit further in the next two slides to show. So that's the entire region. And you can see there circled in pen. We've got the Nheim region. It's very small. So I zoomed in even further. You can see it there highlighted in yellow. Ne. >> So kind of in the top topish left above an X it says Nam. Mhm. What you can also see here, John, to your question earlier about the mountain range is you can see the mountain range to the west of Nehem's huge distance. Yeah. Like about 150 miles inland. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. No, that's yeah, that's I mean that's really that that feels kind of devastating to that argument that there's no way Joseph Smith could have had access to these maps. I mean, and the truth is we don't know. >> Yeah. >> And I for me it could just be a coincidence, but but this this kind of is potentially devastating to the idea that this is inspiration, right? that this is there's no way that Joseph Smith could have ever come up with Nahome. It's like, yeah, there's a way. We can't we don't we don't have a photo of him holding this map, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility that at the library or at a friend's house or a family member's house or in his own home, there was some book or something with this map in it. Well, and to that point, one of the things I think is important for people to understand is we're not like claiming that Joseph Smith necessarily saw this map. It's important to understand that ideas are passed around amongst people like there are people who understand references in books that they've never read because they've heard those references secondhand. Right? This is basically the idea of meme theory that we pass on cultural ideas over time. And it's important to note that for Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith and his family were connected to the um all of a sudden I can't remember the the name, the canal in New York that they were connected to. >> Oh, the Eerie Canal. >> The Eerie Canal. The Eerie Canal was a huge project that brought together people from that entire region to work on it. And I think there was a an exchange of information there that um when we're looking at what Joseph Smith may have had access to or may have heard secondhand, I think it's important to note that that Eerie Canal project, which was really right in Joseph Smith's family's backyard, may have exposed him to a lot more ideas than these apologists seem to assume that we need to like demonstrate that Joseph Smith checked out the book. Again, when we go back to just like the simple idea of AAM's razor, what's more likely that Joseph Smith had or heard or heard from a family member about this region, which we know for a fact were in maps that were in his general region, or all of the things that you have to believe to believe in the divine historicity of the Book of Mormon, you have to believe in so many claims on that opposite side that if we're just looking at this and saying, "Which of these is more likely. It is far more likely that Joseph Smith heard about this secondhand or somehow access this map in a way that we don't or or one of the other maps, right? There were seven maps that had this that would have been available to him while he was uh dictating the Book of Mormon. So, I just wanted to note that. But another potential source for, as you said, just potential coincidence here. Um and I like I like what you said, John, about potential coincidence and how oftenimes it's overlooked. I had this experience last year where I really wanted to reread uh George Orwell's 1984 and I sat down on I think it was a Saturday. Sat down on a Saturday and started reading 1984 and read it in one day because it's a pretty quick read. And I was surprised to find that as I sat down to read 1984, the book itself opens on a particular day. I think it's April 8th if I remember correctly. I had just by happen stance sat down to read 1984 on April 8th. So like as I'm flipping through the pages, I'm sitting there going, "Oh, I just happened to pick up this book on the exact day that the book itself opens." Just to your point that there are these coincidences, there are these moments of synchronicity. They don't mean anything objective about reality. It doesn't mean that 1984 is, you know, quote unquote true because I picked it up and decided to read it on the day that it opens in the book. But to go along with this idea that maybe this is potentially just a coincidence, it's worth noting that there are also books in the Bible that may have given J Joseph Smith this name. Will you pull up that next slide for us, John? >> All right, next slide. So one of the books of the Bible that has you know the same three letters the same three consonants in common with this site Nahome as these altars is the book Nahome in the Bible. So we know that as uh Joseph Smith's 1832 first vision account makes clear Joseph began a serious study of the Bible at age 12. He was right there in the burnedover district at the time of the second great awakening. And it's worth noting especially because work Kobe Townsend has done on uh and uh Tom Wement, someone I worked for at BYU, they've done on the use Joseph Smith's potential use of the Adam Clark biblical commentaries. It's worth noting that Adam Clark points out in the uh in his commentary on the book of Nahome that Nahome signifies comforter. This is another piece of the Nahome narrative and its connection with um mourning or the word mourning in Hebrew that Apoll just point to to say you know Nephi was engaged in this kind of like word play amongst these different languages. But it's just worth noting that if we're looking at again what is more likely is it more likely that J Joseph Smith changed one letter from a biblical book in naming a place or that he really did you know get this place through some divine help or assistance? What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean I'll be I I may be saying stuff that's repetitive or that people already know, but I mean we know it's been pretty clearly demonstrated that at least for Joseph Smith's uh Bible, you know, Bible translation, the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible and and even again in um you know, possibly in some of the content of the Book of Mormon, it's it's pretty hard to argue that Joseph Smith didn't have either access to the Adam uh Clark commentary or access to the information found within [clears throat] >> the Adam Clark commentary. And so the in my mind the Adam Clark commentary is so closely tied and I think I've even heard some people say that that Joseph Smith or at least close associates of his are known to have had a copy of the Adam Clark commentary. Mhm. >> You know, then it just completely if if you're telling me that the word nahome or nah or nakum uh because we know that what there weren't vowels in Hebrew, is that right? >> Yep. Both Hebrew and South Arabic, which those altars are actually in? >> Yeah. If if we know that NH&M words that are allegedly ancient that include NH&M are found in the Adam Clark commentary, then I would say anybody who claims that it's a miracle that Joseph Smith came up with the word Nahome just hasn't been paying attention or is not being fully honest >> because we know that the Adam Clark commentary is likely a source, very likely a source that Joseph Smith drew from. That's my my read. >> Yeah, I agree with you completely. And I think if we're and we know I mean just the fact that this is one of the books of the Bible, we can even set aside the Adam Clark Bible and commentary piece of it for a second, the additional detail and just say like if he was just looking for the name and he just selected a name and changed one vow uh from this book that's in the Bible, it seems very it seems much more likely that that's the route than that this is the actual historical Nahome as these apologists have claimed. So, this slide just helps reiterate that Joseph Smith had access to a Bible because we know that Oliver Cry purchased him one just a few months before the Book of Mormon or I'm sorry, a few months after the Book of Mormon was completed. And so, we know that in there in the book in the Bible that he had access to, there was a list of names and meanings at the back of that Bible. But this information was readily available before this book was purchased for Joseph by Oliver Cowry. And you can see it there again. Nahome comforter penitant. And so this same link that these apologists are making with this Nahome site or a similar link I guess I should say of it being a site to mourn based on the Hebrew the Hebrew word for mourning. You can see the a very similar connection here with just a book that's in the Bible. All you really need to have Joseph Smith to have access to is a Bible which we know he had access to. >> Okay. So that's even Yeah, that's even more devastating than the previous slide. If >> exactly >> if if a word like Nahome or NHM whatever can be found in a Bible that we knew Joseph had within a few months or while he was you know producing a final version of the Book of Mormon. Um it it takes it out of the realm of miraculous to I don't know something likely or probable but certainly not face value evidentiary or miraculous right there's no way there's no way the inclusion of the name Nahome in the Book of Mormon is miraculous given that it was in the Bible and it was in the Adam Clark commentary and it was in maps that that Joseph likely could have had access to. >> We don't need a photo of Joseph looking at a map that says Nahome holding a specific version of a Bible. All we have to all we have to know is you know what's more likely that that uh an angel gave golden plates to Joseph Smith and with a yamum thumbum with the plates not in the room he produced a text that included the word nahome that miraculously tied to an alleged place in you know Saud Saudi Arabia. That's option one. That's a lot of miracles there. And we've already addressed those issues in multiple episodes. There's all sorts of issues with that narrative that you would need to watch the other episodes of LDS discussions to really understand why there are a lot of problems with that narrative. That's one option. Or another option is that Joseph Smith got the name Nahome either from the Bible or from the Adam Clark commentary or a map that that he had access to or he just heard the word Nahome from other people who were reading the Bible or reading the Adam Clark commentary or talking about the Middle East or had access to maps at the time. The latter is infinitely more probable and likely in my mind than the former. And again, that's not to say the Book of Mormon isn't divine. It isn't scripture. It can't transform your life. I'm just saying the Nahome argument to me feels eviscerated by by today's presentation in terms of the word Nahm appearing in the Book of Mormon being somehow miraculous. It's it's pedestrian. It's obvious that it likely came from one of these sources or something drawing from one of these sources or something drawing from the same thing that these sources are drawing from. >> Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more and I think this goes handinhand with just a great jumping off point with my concluding slide and then we can talk a little bit more about any details you want to. But what I put this slide together for is because I know there's this is a lot of information um and people might want to digest it a little bit. So, here's my reminder of all the problems you would have to overlook to view Nahome as significant evidence for a historical Book of Mormon. I agree with everything you just said. That's not to say that the Book of Mormon can't be meaningful, even if it's not historical. It can't bring value to people's lives, that faith doesn't play a role in people's lives. But if we're talking about historical Book of Mormon, here's what you have to ignore. You have to ignore that the site they point to, these apologists point to, is about 150 miles from where the text of the Book of Mormon says it should be, which is near the coast, near the Red Sea. It's 150 miles from that Red Sea. You have to also ignore that these altars are found at a temple that's dedicated to the moon and sun god from this ancient Yemeni she. So set that aside for just a second and say why would they be burying why would they be burying Ishmael at the god at the temple to a god from a completely different religion which is my third point. This temple involved the religious practices of an entirely different religion that's being completely ignored by these apologists and trying to co-opt it for their narratives. this temple's construction where they found this altars dates to 400 years before the Book of Mormon's narrative would have them passing through it. So obviously it could have still existed, but it's just worth noting that when they say it's at the exact right time, they're they're not really being fully honest about that. It's actually from 400 years before the time. It's this is I think one of the most important parts, which is that this temple's use had no relation to its use in the narrative. And what I mean by that is the narrative is very specific in the Book of Mormon that they buried Ishmael in this site. This site is not a burial place. It isn't. It just simply isn't. It was a temple that also served as a recordkeeping function for the Sheban state. It's worth noting again when we looked at the inscriptions in detail that these apologists are counting three out of the 36 consonants. If you think about that as a percentage, that's less than 5% of the continents on those altars that are considered a hit. It's worth noting that the altars inscriptions aren't referencing a place at all, but the association of the tribe of the individual that had donated the altars. It's also worth noting that the inscription is in South Arabic, not Hebrew, which would have been the language spoken by Ishmael, Nephi, and Lehi. And it ignores that not just one book, the Nahim book that we talked about John, but ignores that there are three words in the Bible that share these same three sequence of vows. Nahhem, na nah, and Nahim. All of those are right in the Bible that we know that Joseph Smith had access to. So when we come back to the the big picture here, the big picture is again to me, what is more likely? And when we look at all of these problems that we have to ignore that these apologists usually don't say anything about when they're saying that this is in the exact right place at the exact right time and it serves the right function. You can just see that this is purported to be some of the strongest or the strongest archaeological evidence of the Book of Mormon having a historical narrative. And I just simply do not see how this is impressive to anyone. When I look at the reality of the evidence, I don't see how this is convincing or appealing when we're talking about Book of Mormon historicity. And that's before we get to all the other issues that you just highlighted, the LDS discussion series talks about with uh or the the the problems that are required to be overcome to view the Book of Mormon as a historical narrative. Yeah. Well, I think you make a compelling case. I I uh I should have read up on the art there's some articles in dialogue. Maybe we can resurrect them and do an episode on parallelism and how it's been discussed. But in my memory like uh this kayasmus argument is is an example where you know what what we have is what we have is in the 20th century science um meticulously rendering the Book of Mormon as a problematic historical document. So whether it's DNA, you know, discoveries about the DNA of Native Americans coming from Asia, whether it's um, you know, a lack of a geography that's detectable, whether it's the anacronisms found in the Book of Mormon, whether it's the um, you know, the problems with Joseph Smith's um, you know, narratives around the creation of the Book of Mormon and its translation and the Stone of the Hat, the 19th century represented this massive assault on the credibility ility of the Book of Mormon as a historical document, all the forgeries, Deuter of the New Testament, >> the version of the New Testament that Joseph had access to miraculously reappearing. All the things that we've covered in this LDS discussions episode, we've got the Book of Mormon under assault as a 19 as a as a as as an ancient text. And so what we have is we have apologists in the 1960s,7s and 80s, not mysteriously, you know, financed by the LDS church at the church's university BYU. And we're talking Hugh Nibbi, Jack Welch, Dan Peterson, lots of others. They're all desperately trying to to figure out evidence for the Book of Mormon. We've got Thomas Stewart Ferguson. We've >> got John Sorenson. We've got this big long multi-deade history of people saying, "Help. The Book of Mormon's under assault. How do we prove it's true?" And so they're just hunting for any parallels they can find between the Book of Mormon and ancient antiquity in the Middle East. And that's why farms was created. Um, and so when Jack Welch, uh, you know, learns about kayazm, kayasmus as being a what, a narrative structure from a couple thousand years ago, and then he happens to find it in the Book of Mormon. That's a parallel in his mind that seems significant. >> But the problem with that is is that the Bible's full of of kayasmus. And so if Joseph Smith was marinating in, you know, biblical study for a decade or two and he's literally adopting King James English and even Bible related stories as he's creating the Book of Mormon, it is not unthinkable that he would adopt a kayazmus or a kayazm structure when he generates certain portions of the Book of Mormon text. So Jack Welch might say, "Kayazm's a hit. KayaM is an ancient, you know, literary structure that appears anciently and appears in the Book of Mormon. There's a hit. It's a parallel." Well, really what he's doing is he's trying to find parallels. Um he's searching for parallels. And if you search for coincidences, I if you're looking for a license plate that says Alabama and everywhere you're driving down the road, is that a is that a license plate for Alabama? Is that a license plate for Alabama? If you're looking hard enough, you're certainly going to find a a parallel more frequently than if you're not even paying attention to license plates at all. you probably will never see a license plate for Alabama unless you're looking for one if you're driving around in Utah. And you know, that's a really crude um way to describe this idea, this unscientific idea of parallel mania, right? >> Where you're just desperately trying to find any parallel that you can. And I think I think if if you're looking objectively at this Nahome issue, the fact that you're just searching up and down the Arabian Peninsula, tombs, walls, writings, manuscripts, anything for the letters NHM to appear together and then if you can find it in a in a geog geographical area anywhere remotely you know, that could fit plausibly an approximate estimate of where the Book of Mormon claims Nahm actually appeared. There's a decent chance you're going to find something that that you can then draw a parallel to. >> But is that is that a miracle or is that just looking for an Alabama license plate hard enough to eventually find one? probably not a miracle. So then when you add to that maps that had the word Nahome or something similar, the Bible that had the word Nahome in it or something similar, the Adam Clark commentary that had the word Nahome in it or something similar, it's it's it's not that that's why I I hate to be disrespectful, but like for me the Nahome argument is ridiculous. It's laughable. Um, it's it's it's it's unworthy of of scholarship. It's it's unworthy of serious academics. And again, the best evidence to that is you will not find a non- Mormon, nonBYU, nonLDDS scholar that's like, whoa, we got to take the Book of Mormon more seriously because it has the word Nahome in it somewhere in the Arabian Pen Peninsula 600 years before Christ. So like, whoa. Hey, hey, ancient, you know, Middle East experts. Hey everybody, like take this book seriously. You won't find one literally one person. And if you do, you dig deeply, he's probably somewhere on the church's payroll or in some way trying to curry favor for the church. And and that's why this fits up there with with tapers as possible, you know, explanations for the word horse appearing in the Book of Mormon or as >> for Micah or shale or whatever being what Joseph Smith meant when he wrote steel. You know, it just it it it's just it's it's embarrassing and it's beneath the dignity of someone that calls themsself a scholar and an academic in my opinion. Well, and I agree with everything you just said. And to your point of parallel mania, um there's this quote that uh Sasha Sean, Carl Sean's daughter, attributes to Carl uh in her book for small creatures such as We. And we actually have a like a framed little nice uh family home evening version up above our mantle above the TV uh of this phrase which is she she records this uh story of her father telling her it is dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be tr to be true. And I think that's what we see so often with this apologetic scholarship is that they're so focused on validating what they already believe to be true that it leads them to make some really problematic arguments and some really um tenuous connections. One data point that I didn't even include from Scripture Central's presentation from Neil Neil Rapley is he's actually focused on a gravestone a stellle that has the name Ishmael inscribed on it. It's not at that Nahome site. It's just like near that general region and they don't even know exactly where this gravestone was recovered from. But one of the reasons I didn't include it is not is because it's pure it's it's it's seriously not worth addressing. Like Ishmael is also a name that's featured in the Bible, right? Isaac's Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael. Like they were uh relatives that are recorded in the biblical narrative. And these apologists act like it's an interesting find that they found a gravestone of someone named Ishmamail in this general gigantic region from thousands and thousands of years ago. And it's truly just unremarkable when we're looking at this stuff like critical thinkers and we're keeping that that message from Sean in mind. That's where we have to entertain this idea that like what if I'm wrong? Like how legitimate is this connection that I'm seeing to the comments you made about um kayasmus? I think that's another great example and it's worth noting that the apologists are silent when there's uh kayasmus found in the doctrine in covenants. So what that means is that maybe that's just what Joseph Smith thought scripture sounded like even though he didn't know what kayasmus was. He didn't know the name for it. But it doesn't mean that he doesn't know that pattern of speaking where you tell someone something and then tell them basically in a similar way what you've already told them. That's also just a very common way of speaking, especially when you're dictating like he was doing for the Book of Mormon. So, I would agree with you. I think as I've looked at this issue, it's one that's perplexed me simply because apologists so often represent this as being strong evidence, one of the strongest pieces of evidence for a historical Book of Mormon. And I think when you go through and you actually look at what legitimate scholars who are accepted in their field say about this site, about these people, about this region, about this real history, it really does not line up with what the Book of Mormon claims for that region. And I think it's as simple as that. >> Yeah. And and what I'd say is if any church apologist or BYU scholar wants to claim nahome is a significant find, find one credible Middle Eastern archaeologist or historian who establishes that that's a credible parallel to find or a miraculous parallel to find, let alone have the entire where uh you know archaeological or historical community arrive at a consensus around that uh parallel uh find being in any way miraculous or even accurate for that matter. And if they can't do that, I wish they would just be a little bit more careful about how they represent these things because their scholarship or for what passes for scholarship gets recycled and recycled. And so we can see how in the minds of people who've heard about this, like believing Mormons who've heard about this, they do look at it the way that it was represented on an inconvenient faith, which is that it's in the exact right place, that it's a burial mount, and that it's it's uh right where the Book of Mormon says it should be. And that's simply not true. and that there's no way Joseph could have had, you know, come up with that name. >> I mean, that's the big thing. The big thing is that that there's no way Joseph Smith could have come up with that name. >> Of course, that I think we know many ways he could have come up with that name. >> That are a lot more plausible than an angel delivered golden plates that he translated with a rock and a hat. >> And that that angel wouldn't then tell him down the road, "Wash your hands before you eat." It's just truly ludicrous when we think about all of this stuff together. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> All right, Colby. Well, uh, yeah, I think this was a, uh, a really important episode. I think I wanted to make sure Mormon Stories had at least one episode on Nahome. I find your argument to be very compelling. I'm proud to have it both part of Mormon Stories and the LDS discussions library. I'm curious to know those who are big fans of LDS discussions how you enjoyed today's episode. It didn't have, you know, a panel of four. We love Nemo. We hope to have him on again, but in this case, I felt like uh Colby and I could do the job. We actually did a shorter episode than we normally do. Um, you could tell us whether our tone was better or worse in terms of trying to be objective and uh neutral, whether you like the length, and uh whether it was okay to not have Nemo here for this one. But we really do welcome your faith. And uh uh sorry, we really we really welcome your feedback. And also I just want to remind people uh if you're just joining us in isolation, the LDS discussion series is by far one of the top three most important things I've done with Mormon stories according to so many people that I talked to in 2025. So this series is best consumed in sequence starting from the beginning. There's something like 65ish episodes. Um but if you go to uh YouTube, the Mormon Stories channel, you can find the LDS discussions um playlist there. You can go to uh Spotify or Apple podcasts and you can just search LDS discussions and all the episodes will be there in sequence. And you can also go to our Mormon stories podcast on uh Spotify and you can search for LDS discussions and all the episodes should show up there as well. So, uh, yeah, please check it out and we think you'll find it valuable and we hope to do more um in the in the coming months and Colby, it'd be fun if you could be a part of it. Maybe we'll have um maybe we'll have other people involved uh as well. Uh um yeah. So, any any final words, Colobby? No, I you know my approach when it comes to stuff like this if we do do future episodes is I really just like to look at the claims that have been made and evaluate them. Um I that's what I do for work for people who don't know. I guess I didn't even introduce myself. I'm an attorney. I'm a practicing attorney in Boyisey. So that's that's one of the things I bring to the table is just looking at claims and evaluating them based on the evidence. And I try and be, you know, as kind in tone as I can and try and just be as objective as I can in evaluating those things. Obviously, everyone has their biases, but I try and be very open and honest about mine. And also, I'm very willing to feedback if there are pieces about this that I missed, but I took it right from the words of the apologist and feel like we've just evaluated those claims. I'd also echo what you said, John, that I think this series is one of the most important things, not this episode in particular, but this series is one of the most important things you've ever done on Mormon Stories because it does allow people to start piecing together the context. In fact, my dad, who's, you know, doesn't listen to many podcasts, the only thing he's ever listened to is the entire LDS discussion series. So, I'm not even going to tell him. We'll just see if he listens to this down the road and uh gets excited about it. But thank you for having me on today and thank you for all you do uh in this community and for people who are struggling with their faith or who can no longer make it work. I think it's very important work and I appreciate all of the things you do and I know it comes at great personal sacrifice. So, thank you. >> Thanks, Colobby. Thank you so much. Um and now that I'm remembering it, some of you will remember we've had Ganesha uh cherry on Mormon stories in the past. He's also expressed interest in maybe contributing to the LDS discussions uh cannon. So that's if y'all if y'all really like Ganesh and would like to see him maybe on a team with with uh Colby and or with Nemo and or with Julia or whatever, you know, we we want to we we want to stay true to the LDS discussions brand. We don't want to dilute it. We don't want to pollute it, but we don't want to um you know, we want to we want to honor Mike, the amazing LDS discussions, Mike, and his great work. So, please give us your feedback if you think today met the standard and if you want to see us continuing the series. All right, Colby, you're the best. Keep up the good work. >> Thanks, >> All right. And uh thanks for joining us today on Warmer Stories, everybody. Obviously, um we will be paying Colby for his effort. We pay Julia to help with the research here. Um and uh obviously we need uh to keep the lights on and pay the rest of our staff. So uh these types of episodes exist uh due to the generosity of our donors on Mormon Stories. Um so if you are a donor to Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation, thank you. If you're not a donor and you value this type of content and want to see it continue, all you got to do is go to mormantories.org/donate org/donate and uh click on the donate button, become a monthly donor and um and we'll keep providing you with this series and others like it, like the John Turner series with Joseph Smith, like the Matt Harris series, uh with um Secondass Saints, uh like the Sandra Tanner series that we've done, and just like our regular old long long form episodes that we do on Mormon Stories podcast. So, thanks for your donations if you support us. If you don't, please consider becoming a monthly donor at mormontories.org/donate. Uh, be good to each other, be kind to each other, let us know if you liked our tone today. Uh, be good to each other, be kind on each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast and LDS Discussions. Take care, everybody.