Nahom – The Strongest Evidence for the Book of Mormon?

Welcome and Episode Introduction

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host for today, John Dehlin. It is October 10, 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 LDSDiscussions.com where he spent many years doing comprehensive analysis of LDS Church truth claims.

John Dehlin 0:38 You can find his essays at LDSDiscussions.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 point of view as we could.

John Dehlin 0:57 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 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 Nahom. 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 archeology or anthropology or history has since somewhat demonstrated or validated?

John Dehlin 2:08 That's the question is, is this Nahom 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, Kolby. You'll have probably a much better summary of what we're going to be talking about today, but it's all about Book of Mormon truth and Book of Mormon historicity, obviously. We have Kolby 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, where without Nemo. So we're giving Nemo a bit of a break or a vacation today.

John Dehlin 2:47 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. Kolby, anything you want to say so far in response to or additive to my intro?

Kolby Reddish 3:06 Well, I'll just give people a moment to shed their tears about Nemo and Julia not being here. 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 Nahom.

Why Nahom Matters for Book of Mormon Historicity

Kolby Reddish 3:21 To me, Nahum is interesting because it really gets to the heart of Book of Mormon historicity issues. And I know there's an increasing move in the church amongst some nuanced apologists to really say, does the Book of Mormon need to be historical?

Kolby Reddish 3:38 In my view, the Book of Mormon does, at least for me. I understand people are going to weigh these things differently, but for me, 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, 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 seer stones, 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.

Kolby Reddish 4:17 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.

John Dehlin 4:27 Yeah. And with that, let me just, 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, 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 lately in the past few months, I've been feeling drawn more towards peace building, peacemaking, more towards bridge building. And so 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've been wondering, is it even appropriate to challenge or to discuss a church leader or a certain church's truth claims when there's religious associated violence?

John Dehlin 5:48 And I've thought through it a bit and what I've decided is as long as the discussion 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 Dehlin, 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.

John Dehlin 6:32 Today for me, the question is how viable or not viable is the Nahom 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 Nahom a good argument or not? And we're going to try and do it in a respectful way. Kolby, what would you add or take away from that, from your perspective?

Kolby Reddish 7:04 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 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.

Kolby Reddish 7:40 When I have like really great relationships with people in my life who continue to be active, who are in significant callings like in bishoprics. 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 a lack of charity or out of any, you know, animus 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.

Kolby Reddish 8:20 Like if we can just validate those people or help those people understand their non believing friends and family. To me, that's one 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, 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.

Kolby Reddish 8:50 They need to read and study a whole lot and just show themselves a whole lot of charity. And the truth is, 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 me, this presentation is just, these are certain claims that have been made.

Kolby Reddish 9:14 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?

Setting the Scene: Lehi's Journey in First Nephi

John Dehlin 9:31 All right, let's get into it. So there's going to be a lot of viewers and listeners that have no idea what Nahom even is or what we're talking about. So why don't we have you take it away, give us that introduction?

Kolby Reddish 9:45 Yeah, if you'll go to that first slide, I prepared like a brief introduction kind of to the Book of First Nephi, where Nahom 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 Book of First Nephi. And the Book of First Nephi tells the story of Lehi, who was a prophet In Jerusalem around 600 BCE, who leads his family into the wilderness, including his son Nephi.

Kolby Reddish 10:17 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 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 slide there, for people who are looking at the slides, I actually snipped this from the Joseph Smith Papers Project. This is an orig. This is a photo of the original manuscript of First Nephi as it was dictated by Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin 11:05 All right, so yeah, the Book of Mormon starts with the family of Lehi with his sons, Nephi, Laman, Lemuel and several others wives. 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?

Guest 11:43 Correct.

Kolby Reddish 11:44 And before they reach that, that shore point which the Book of Mormons narrative calls bountiful, where they do build a boat and make a journey over to America, right before that in the narrative, they encounter this place called Nahom. I think if you'll go to the next slide, I maybe have an introduction on.

John Dehlin 12:03 Okay, there it is.

Kolby Reddish 12:03 Where it is. Yeah. So this is in the book of Mormons, First Nephi, 1634. So one brief introduction to this I'd give further is that the Book of Mormon involves 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.

Kolby Reddish 12:42 This other, 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 that the brothers Laman and Lemuel, 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.

Kolby Reddish 13:21 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 told by their father to go back to get Ishmael and his daughters.

John Dehlin 13:33 So no murmuring for wives. Yeah, murmuring for the. For scriptures, basically. Who wants to read scriptures when you're. We assumed they were teenagers or young men, right?

Kolby Reddish 13:43 Yeah, yeah. And so it's in the context of that story that these, you know, the brothers have gone and they've obtained Ishmael 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 Arabian desert. Ishmael, 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.

John Dehlin 14:12 All right, here it goes.

The Nahom Reference and the NHM Altars

Kolby Reddish 14:14 Yeah. So first, Nephi, 1634, is where we find this reference to this place called Nahum, it says. And it came to pass that Ishmael died and was buried in the place which was called Nahom. And it came to pass that the daughters of Ishmael did mourn exceedingly because of the loss of their father and because of their afflictions in the wilderness. And they did murmur against my father, I think, because of the many journeys or something like that. The point being here that this is where the Book of Mormon's narrative mentions, this place called Nahom. And so while they're journeying from Jerusalem to this land, bountiful will they. Where they build the ship on the coastline to journey to America. That's where we're supposed to find this land called Nahum.

John Dehlin 14:55 And so, Kolby, 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, Laman, Lemuel, this family really existed. They really left Jerusalem around 600 B.C. they really wandered around the desert for five or eight years.

John Dehlin 15:16 They really arrived at some ocean shore, and that that ocean shore was really named Nihome at the time. That's option one. Right. And then option two is that Joseph Smith, 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 his own ideas or fiction or Bible fan fiction or whatever. And as he's just coming up with the story about Lehi and Nephi and Laman and Lemuel, 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.

John Dehlin 15:59 But if he did that, then it's either either he found some old history book that had the name Nahom in it on a shore somewhere, or he just pulled it out of his own brain and just made it up.

John Dehlin 16:15 But, you know, you know, 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?

Kolby Reddish 16:26 Yes. I think those are our two alternatives. It's worth noting that Nahom itself isn't the shoreline. So the shoreline is. The shoreline site is called Bountiful. In the narratives text, it's Nahum that's actually kind of in the middle of the desert, although it does say it's near the borders of the Red Sea. Sea. So we'll talk about what the book.

John Dehlin 16:43 Okay, okay.

Kolby Reddish 16:44 Where we should find it.

John Dehlin 16:45 Where the ship was built.

Kolby Reddish 16:47 Yes. Nahum 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, in a minute. But that's basically where there's this eastward turn. And they then go to Bountiful where they build the ship.

John Dehlin 17:02 Okay, that's. That's helpful. Sorry for that. I'm looking at these kind of with fresh eyes, and so I'll be learning a lot.

Kolby Reddish 17:10 No, and. And I like that you presented the two alternatives, because I think it's worth noting that 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 Vogel, who I think is the foremost expert on Joseph Smith. I do not believe that Joseph Smith was, 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.

Kolby Reddish 17:47 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?

Kolby Reddish 18:22 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.

Kolby Reddish 18:35 This is actually one of the apologists that originally brought this Nahum 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 Lehigh'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?

John Dehlin 19:08 Yeah. It says, quote, the issue of where Nahom was located is basically settled on the basis of three inscriptions dated to the time of Lehi and Sariah. The location of Nahom almost certainly lay in the area near Wadi Jaffa, a large valley in northwest Yemen. The inscriptions appear on small votive altars given to the Baran Temple near Marib by a certain Bicythar of the tribe of Nim. Man, that almost sounds like Gerard Tolkien.

Kolby Reddish 19:48 Yeah, or Harry Potter. I'm trying to get you to cast a spell here. No, thank you for reading that. So that's S. Camp 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 historicity. He's saying that they think they've settled where this site, Nahom, is supposed to be because they found three altars that include that name or they include the name of that region.

Kolby Reddish 20:16 And we'll get into more detail about what's actually on those altars. But basically there is a site where there are three altars that have three consonants in a row. NHM so Hebrew and South Arabic, both languages that we'll talk about today. Hebrew is supposedly the language that Lehi and Nephi and Ishmael would have spoken because they were Jews from Jerusalem.

Kolby Reddish 20:38 These altars that are found at this site in Yemen, again, it's near Mareeb, are actually in South 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 alters 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?

John Dehlin 21:05 Yeah, just, just I like to kind of 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. One is that he says the issue is basically settled, like that just not really knowing anything about any of this.

John Dehlin 21:25 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 non LDS scientific community all agree.

John Dehlin 21:53 And I am going to bet, I would be willing to bet all my life savings that whatever Skent Brown is asserting here is not agreed to by the broader, you know, Middle Eastern archaeologic and anthropologic communities. And so I'm just going to call 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. So for those who don't know about the history 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 was called the foundation of Ancient Research and Mormon Studies or something to that effect.

John Dehlin 22:53 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, buttressing their perceptions of Mormon Church truth claims 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, and John GE and people like that, 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 papyri and then the rest of the Egyptology community laughs and says this is ridiculous and it's not scientific.

John Dehlin 23:50 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.

Kolby Reddish 24:02 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 I did look it up and S. Camp 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. S. Kent 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 Near Eastern studies, so I'm sure that's where he developed the interest and has some training and expertise. But he's not an archeology professor yet is willing to say something like this site's finding basically settles it. I agree with your evaluation.

John Dehlin 24:54 And I'll just say one last thing, is that just because I am not saying that just because a professor is for 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. That I'm just. What I am asserting is they need to also be supported by the broader scientific community for those assertions to actually have weight for me. And historically, whether it's Dan Peterson or others, 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.

John Dehlin 25:48 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 academic community. I've now been a dead taper. So should we go to the next slide?

Kolby Reddish 26:13 Perfect. Yes. So this is actually a photo or two photos of several of these altars. So you can see there. I actually pulled this photo, I think originally from Scripture Central where they kind of show here are the actual altars at this temple site in or near Mareeb in Yemen. And you can see it's got those three characters highlighted there. And it's actually south Arabic, like Hebrew reads generally right to left, not left to right. So whatever apologists 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.

John Dehlin 27:08 So clear 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, well that's really close to Nahum. But somebody actually altered that photo.

Kolby Reddish 27:24 Yeah, someone made that glow. It'd be real impressive if the glow was original. I'll say that for sure. Yeah.

John Dehlin 27:30 Okay. Okay. All right, that's cool.

Kolby Reddish 27:32 Move to the next slide.

John Dehlin 27:33 Next slide. Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 27:35 So here's another really renowned apologist in the Mormon studies space, Terrell Givens. In his book by the Hand of the American Scripture that Launched a New World religion, 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.

John Dehlin 28:15 Yeah, it sounds like so far, unless you're cherry picking, they're basically saying case closed, you know, this is proof or this is convincing, compelling evidence.

Guest 28:26 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 28:26 And I think I have an example from one more apologist, Neil Rapley. Yes, Neil Rapley said so he helps run and as 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 apologists positions by just looking at this and seeing if it actually does amount to legitimate historical evidence or archeological evidence for a historical Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 29:08 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

Kolby Reddish 29:19 compelling and that it can build faith. Yeah. So I Think he still recognizes that. 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.

John Dehlin 29:32 All right, and now we come to an inconvenient faith in Jim Bennett, I'm guessing.

Kolby Reddish 29:36 Oh, yes, I did include a quote from my. Our. Our mutual friend Jim Bennett. And he was actually good enough to allow me to question him about this, this little snippet that he said about Nahom. But I think this is the way. Yeah, let me introduce you 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 Nahome, and that's why I included this one.

John Dehlin 30:05 And you want to tell people what this comes from? What's in.

Kolby Reddish 30:08 Well, you were involved in it. John, why don't you introduce.

John Dehlin 30:11 Okay, yeah. So my friend Bob, Robert Reynolds, he's the brother of Imagine Dragons lead singer Dan Reynolds. He's the manager of the Killers rock group. He's a good friend. He was sad to see so many people losing their faith in the church. He loves the church. He wants people to stay if they can.

John Dehlin 30:35 And he believes that there needed to be better dialogue, both about an open discussion of the challenges to the church's truth claims and validity, but also better visibility to the arguments against the challenges to the Church of 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 Runnels Bill Real.

John Dehlin 31:15 They did involve several critics in the documentary, along with a mountain of believing apologists. So anyway, this is from episode two of the Book of Mormon in a Community of Faith. And 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.

Kolby Reddish 31:49 So completely agree.

John Dehlin 31:50 And then Jim Bennett at 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 to CES director that Jeremy Runnels wrote challenging the Mormon Church of Truth Claims. So Jim Bennett is a pretty well known apologist who has written a response To Jeremy Runnels, 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 thank you for everyone's patience. All right, so we roll the clip.

Kolby Reddish 32:25 Yep.

John Dehlin 32:26 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 Nahom, 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. Pretty conclusive.

Kolby Reddish 32:52 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 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.

Mapping the Route: Does the Geography Fit?

Kolby Reddish 33:21 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. This camp of people stayed at. So there's the value Valley of Lemuel. There's a camp they.

Kolby Reddish 33:42 There's a site that they camp out called Shazer, a place where Nephi breaks his bow, called the Camp of the Broken Bow. All of these things are along the. The. The eastern. The eastern coast of the Red Sea in Arabia. And you can see at the bottom of that, 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 Nahum, 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 slide.

John Dehlin 34:22 Let me just ask you a question, Kolby. 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 American based Book of Mormon geography.

Kolby Reddish 34:37 Right.

John Dehlin 34:38 So I'm just dying to know who created this map or if we even know.

Kolby Reddish 34:41 Yep, great question.

John Dehlin 34:42 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.

Kolby Reddish 34:53 That's because it is a huge stretch. But this map was created by Scripture Central. So the apologists we featured earlier, Neil Rapley and his wife, I think they're heavily involved in the Scripture Central website, Apologetics Institute, that, that has created a lot of these, both the images and then some of the maps that we're going to use today.

John Dehlin 35:14 Because the Book of Mormon doesn't contain any native maps. Right.

Kolby Reddish 35:18 The only site on this entire map that we actually know where it is, aside from the geography, like the geographical features like the mountains and the sea, is Jerusalem.

John Dehlin 35:28 Right.

Kolby Reddish 35:28 All of the rest of these are kind of, I don't want to say apologetic invention to, in a way that seems like I'm castigating 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 they're even choosing the

John Dehlin 35:47 Arabian Peninsula as where all this travel is taking place. In theory, you know, they could have traveled in different directions. I don't know. Like, 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.

Kolby Reddish 36:09 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 Nahum, isn't 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.

John Dehlin 36:29 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.

Kolby Reddish 36:48 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 1634. That's where Ishmael dies and is buried in this site Nahom in First 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.

Kolby Reddish 37:17 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 Nahom that they turn eastward, or it's after they've reached Nahum that they turn eastward. So if we look at the rest of 1 Nephi 16 before this eastward turn, which is after Nahom, 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 Nahum is only in the right place if you don't pay attention to what the book actually says.

John Dehlin 38:01 Did you create a map of what based on the text, where things should actually be?

Kolby Reddish 38:07 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 Nahom 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.

Kolby Reddish 38:28 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's saying. In other words, if Nahum 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?

John Dehlin 39:01 Yeah. So it says in the borders near the Red Sea.

Kolby Reddish 39:06 Right.

John Dehlin 39:07 And you're saying 150 miles from.

Kolby Reddish 39:11 From the sea is where this site is.

John Dehlin 39:16 It doesn't qualify as in the borders near the Red Sea. Is that what you're saying? In the borders?

Kolby Reddish 39:23 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 other map, that's 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, Nahom and the Red Sea.

Kolby Reddish 40:08 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?

John Dehlin 40:27 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 south, southeast, they could have seen the sea. And at some point they just went east enough to where they couldn't see it anymore. 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 are away.

Kolby Reddish 41:11 Yeah.

John Dehlin 41:12 To qualify as the words in the borders near the Red Sea.

Kolby Reddish 41:20 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 miles separated from the Red Sea, I don't know, maybe the Liahona, which was the magic ball and compass that Lehigh and his family received, maybe it had like a nearest, nearest body of water setting, John. And that's how they knew they were near the Red Sea. I don't know.

John Dehlin 41:51 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 rapalized map or whoever it was, laid over this top of topography map so we could kind of see the mountain range that they would have had to traverse to get to Nahom. In other words, I'd love to see where alleged Nahom is on this, on this Map given this massive mountain range in the south.

Kolby Reddish 42:24 Yeah, I think it would be. It's kind of hard to describe without like pulling up a clicker or something, but.

John Dehlin 42:30 Well, here's my mouse. So I've got my mouse.

Kolby Reddish 42:32 If you'll go a little to the east, I think Nahom is about in that location right now, where you're at. Yeah. Probably even a little bit further to the east and maybe a little bit further south. So that's here. Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin 42:47 I mean, yeah, so 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 100 miles before we got to Nahom.

Kolby Reddish 43:09 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.

John Dehlin 43:43 Where there's water. It's always going to be where there's water, not where there's mountainous desert.

Kolby Reddish 43:48 Exactly, Exactly.

John Dehlin 43:50 All right.

Kolby Reddish 43:51 One of the other challenges was 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 Nahum issue. And I'd encourage people to read the entirety of that page 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 Nahom site is there was an ancient tribal region of the Nihm tribe or the Nim tribe. So this ancient people.

Kolby Reddish 44:30 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 northeast of Sanaa, generally west of Mareeb. Now, remember Mareeb, or near Mareeb, right outside Mareeb 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 site is along the southern border of the Wadi Jof. The tribal territory covers about 5,000 square kilometers, about 1931 square miles. Early maps from the 18th and 19th centuries include the region usually spelled Nehem or Nem, and indicate that it may have been slightly larger at that time.

Kolby Reddish 45:19 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 Nim name. And so here's how these things connect. So on this map, I've pointed out where Mareeb is, which is further to the east about, about 25, maybe 30 miles from this, from this Nim region. And it's worth noting that this Nim region that we're talking about, this 1900 square miles, is roughly the same size of Utah County.

Kolby Reddish 46:03 So the county where Provo and Orem 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 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.

Kolby Reddish 46:47 This isn't one specific burial site that these apologists are pointing to at this point. They're pointing to an entire region and claiming that this entire region may be the Nahom that's described in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 47:03 Yeah, and I really wish we need to get, you know, we need to do. We need to find Nah home's equivalent of a Michael Coe or Robert Rittner, you know, somebody that knows, you know, Arab peninsula history from 2000 years back, because my understanding is Islam arose around 600 A.D. and so we're talking about 1200 years between the departure, the alleged departure of Lehi, his family from Jerusalem, and the rise of Islam. So when they say this region had the name Nehem prior to the rise of Islam, a lot of stuff could have happened between the rise of of Islam and the alleged departure of this family.

John Dehlin 47:57 We would really need a historian to go, oh yeah, 600 B.C. this region was totally called Nehem, or we might find out that it wasn't called that at all, that 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 whatever special knowledge they do or don't have, but with the expressed motivation to buttress faith.

Kolby Reddish 48:37 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 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.

Kolby Reddish 49:23 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 Sabians 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, buttress 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.

John Dehlin 50:07 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 Bering Strait and you know, ultimately from Asia, because DNA 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?

Kolby Reddish 50:47 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 Eskent Brown, this site is called the Buran Temple, and it is a Sabaean temple near Mareeb, Yemen. So this Sabian, or this word, Sabian, this is the people that are also recorded as being part of the biblical narrative called the. Like the Queen of Sheba comes from this same people.

The Sabean Civilization and the Marib Temple

Kolby Reddish 51:24 Okay. And this Baran temple is actually known as the Throne of Bilquis, which was one of their. 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, Almaqua, who was one of their, I think was the supreme.

Kolby Reddish 51:55 The supreme God in their pantheon was this figure, Almaqua. Remember that Jim Bennett and other apologists. I don't mean to pick on Jim, he's a great friend. I'm just taking his argument for what it is. They represent this site as being a burial site because for it to be Nahom, where the Ishmael was buried of the Book of Mormon, it must be a burial site for it to be a meaningful hit. This Buran Temple is not a burial site at all. Instead, it's a religious temple that has wall inscriptions. Would you mind reading the significance of those wall inscriptions here on the slide, John?

John Dehlin 52:32 It says an extensive archive of events experienced by the Sabaean state since the first millennium BCE was inscribed on the walls, which made researchers realize that the temple was also a documentation center for the Sabaean state. According to some researchers, the walls of the temple were covered by bronze plates that contained 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 statues and censors and

Kolby Reddish 53:16 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 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 Sabians, 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 Saba, was established between 1800 BCE and was the leading South Arabian power for much of the first millennium BCE 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 Marib and Sira.

Kolby Reddish 54:11 Its people, the Sabeans, expanded from a regional base to control parts of modern Yemen and even exerted influence across the Red Sea in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Around 600 BC the population of Mereb 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.

Kolby Reddish 54:52 When I was. So I grew up in Idaho, and I still live in Boise today. And when I was a kid, I remember taking our first trips to, like, Temple Square and Salt Lake and seeing, like, real skyscrapers for the first time, because I grew up outside a.

Kolby Reddish 55:08 Outside Boise, in a suburb of Boise. 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 Saban 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.

John Dehlin 56:03 Okay. All right, that makes sense. Should we go to the next slide?

Kolby Reddish 56:10 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.

Examining the NHM Inscriptions Up Close

John Dehlin 56:19 All right, let's read them.

Kolby Reddish 56:22 So according to Brown, there were three altars containing the consonants nhm at the site of the ruined temple at of Buran and Marie Biemon, 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 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.

Kolby Reddish 57:00 I have them transliterated there 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, Beathar son of Saudum, son of Nawum, the Nihamite has dedicated to Almaqua, the person Ferryat by Attar and by Omakwa and by Dot diat Hayyam and by Yadil and by the Mahdi Carib. 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?

John Dehlin 57:54 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.

Kolby Reddish 58:10 Absolutely.

John Dehlin 58:11 So if somebody's a Ni. And I'm just. This is the first time I've seen this slide. But just to say someone's a Nimite doesn't necessarily mean there's a city or even a region named Nehem. 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.

Kolby Reddish 58:34 Exactly. And in fact, because apologists often represent these altars at being in the place of the Nahum. 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 Nehemite actually really suggests that that site cannot be the Nahom, because people don't refer to me in Boise as Kolby, the Boisean. Right. Especially when we're living in a time with much 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.

John Dehlin 59:17 So, yeah, when you're in Utah, we might say that guy from Boise.

Kolby Reddish 59:21 Yes.

John Dehlin 59:22 But when you're in Boise, you're just all from Boise, and you're not going to refer to each other as Boiseites.

Kolby Reddish 59:28 Yes, we prefer spuds. Potatoes are famous. I don't know. That's a bad potato joke.

John Dehlin 59:35 Okay, so now I get what you're saying. Yeah, it's. It's suggesting that if there is not just Nehemite people, but a Nehemite location, Nehemiah location, it's going to be elsewhere.

Kolby Reddish 59:50 Exactly. It's not exactly. It's not here. And to Scripture Central's credit, you know, when we looked at their map where they had the Nim region on it, they. They do recognize that. They point out where Mareeb is, and I. I drew attention to where the. 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. Okay.

John Dehlin 1:00:20 Tell me if this is it or a different one.

Kolby Reddish 1:00:22 One forward.

John Dehlin 1:00:24 One forward. Okay. Here.

Kolby Reddish 1:00:25 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 that the red arrow right there outside Mareeb? And again, it's approximate because it's outside Mareeb by a few miles, but you can see we're at least 25 miles from this Nim region that now they're pointing to.

John Dehlin 1:00:45 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 1:00:46 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 letters that nhm that people can see in the transliterated first line at the end of the first line on the right.

John Dehlin 1:01:10 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 1:01:12 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, you know, their patrilineal line, and then it's got a dedication to this God that's present at this temple and the Sheban beliefs, this Almaqua, as well as the people that, you know, are accompanying the rest of this rest of this donation and why it's important to these people now this is something that I can obviously recognize the Ilmaqua as the God, but I don't fully understand all of the significance of this to the the people who would have donated this nite.

Kolby Reddish 1:01:55 And that's because very little is known them. 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.

John Dehlin 1:02:13 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

Kolby Reddish 1:02:26 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. Now when we go back to that idea of looking at these different, 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 Bible fan fiction. There's all sorts of different theories that we could use. One argument that's been presented by Neil Rapley is that, you know, well, maybe Joseph Smith was able to find this name Nahum on old maps. So I pulled a clip where he kind of talks about this.

John Dehlin 1:03:11 All right, let's roll, roll the clip.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 1:03:15 How do you address the criticism that

Video Clip 1 1:03:17 Joseph Smith could have simply found the name Nahum and old maps?

Video Clip 1 1:03:21 That's a wonderful could have.

Video Clip 1 1:03:22 Did he?

Video Clip 1 1:03:23 To date, to my knowledge, the closest anyone has been able to put one of those maps to Joseph smith is about 320 miles. And there's no evidence that Joseph Smith made an a heretofore unknown 320 mile 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.

Video Clip 1 1:03:53 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. It wouldn't be 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.

John Dehlin 1:04:16 I mean, I've got all sorts of strong opinions about that video clip. It's the first time I've seen it.

Kolby Reddish 1:04:21 Yeah, hit me with some of them.

John Dehlin 1:04:23 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 did obtain a PhD, 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 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 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.

John Dehlin 1:05:10 But unless he's got either publications in peer reviewed scholarly journals or 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, 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.

John Dehlin 1:05:48 It's a bunch of amateurs who aren't ancient, you know, Middle east scholars who haven't vetted their theories through peer review speaking 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.

John Dehlin 1:06:17 Who knows where Joseph Smith got the name Nahom 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.

John Dehlin 1:06:35 And it could just be a coincidence that Joseph happened to pick a name where on some random, you know, wall or altar somewhere, a couple of those letters happen to reappear. Coincidences happen all the time. 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 Nahom or a word that had nhm in it from a couple thousand years ago. We don't need any of that. It could literally just be a coincidence.

Kolby Reddish 1:07:15 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 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:07:51 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 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. 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 and a hat than it is that Joseph Smith may have taken a trip to a library several hundred miles away, or the Joseph Smith may have heard about this Nahom region or this Nihem region from someone else that was traveling through his lifetime.

Kolby Reddish 1:08:47 To me, that's just so ridiculous. Like, as a matter of the law of parsimony, or this idea of Occam's 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 Nahom 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 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:09:26 It's like, but the could have on the other side, until so many more assumptions and so many more huge claims that can't be evidenced in any type of way. Yeah, yeah.

Pre-1830 Maps and Other Sources for Nahom

John Dehlin 1:09:40 Okay.

Kolby Reddish 1:09:41 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 Nahom or the Nehem region. So you can see that in starting in 1751, de Anvil's map, we do have it recorded there in the 1771 map by Carsten Niebuhr. We also have that one included. And I think there's one more slide that shows additionals, John, if you'll go forward.

John Dehlin 1:10:14 Okay.

Kolby Reddish 1:10:16 We also have it in a 1768 map, a 1794 map by one of the original authors, 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 in those early years in. Or I want to say the late years in the 1820s, versus 10 maps that would not have contained the region Nahom or Nahim.

John Dehlin 1:10:47 Okay, so what you're saying is that Julia and. Or you and. Or others have indeed found maps that that name, that region that Joseph Smith would have likely had access to.

Kolby Reddish 1:11:02 Yes. And in fact, I've pulled up the 1794 map by Niebuhr 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 they're circled in pen. We've got the Nahim region. It's very small. So I zoomed in even further. You can see it there highlighted in yellow. N, E, H. So kind of in

John Dehlin 1:11:31 the top, topish left above an X, it says Nehem.

Kolby Reddish 1:11:36 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 on this map and the distance between Nehemiah and the sea. You can see there's a huge distance.

John Dehlin 1:11:51 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 1:11:52 About 150 miles inland.

John Dehlin 1:11:55 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:12:10 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:12:11 For me it could just be a coincidence that. 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 Nahom. 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:12:45 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. All of a sudden, I can't remember the name, the canal in New York that they were connected to.

John Dehlin 1:13:23 The Erie Canal.

Kolby Reddish 1:13:24 The Erie Canal. The Erie Canal was a huge project that brought together people from that entire region to work on it. And I think there was an exchange of information there that 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 Erie 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 demonstrate that Joseph Smith checked out the book. Again, when we go back to just the simple idea of Occam'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 two is more likely, it is far more likely that Joseph Smith heard about the second hand or somehow access this map in a way that we don't.

Kolby Reddish 1:14:33 Or one of the other maps. Right. There were seven maps that had this that would have been available to him while he was dictating the Book of Mormon. So I just wanted to note that. But another potential source for, as you said, just potential coincidence here.

Kolby Reddish 1:14:49 And I like. I like what you said, John, about potential coincidence and how oftentimes it's overlooked. I had this experience last year where I really wanted to reread 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 happenstance, 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:15:33 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:15:49 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 Joseph Smith this name. Will you pull up that next slide for us, John?

John Dehlin 1:16:03 All right, next slide.

Kolby Reddish 1:16:07 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, Nahum, as these altars, is the book Nahum in the Bible. So we know that, as 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 burned over district at the time of the second Great Awakening. And it's worth noting, especially because work Kolby Townsend has done on and Tom Weymouth, someone I worked for at byu, they've done on the use Joseph Smith's potential use of the Adam Clark biblical commentaries.

Kolby Reddish 1:16:46 It's worth noting that Adam Clark points out in the, in his commentary on the Book of Nahum that nahum signifies comforter. This is another piece of the Nahom narrative and its connection with mourning or the word morning in Hebrew that apologists point to to say, you know, Nephi was engaged in this kind of like wordplay 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 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?

John Dehlin 1:17:29 Yeah, I mean, I'll be. 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 Bible translation, the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, and even again in possibly in some of the content of the Book of Mormon, it's pretty hard to argue that Joseph Smith didn't have either access to the Adam Clark Commentary or access to the information found within the Adam Clark Commentary. And so 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.

John Dehlin 1:18:29 You know, then it just completely. If, if you're telling me that the word nahum or nahum or nakam, because we know that what, there weren't vowels in Hebrew, is that right?

Kolby Reddish 1:18:42 Yep. Both Hebrew and South Arabic, which those altars are actually in.

John Dehlin 1:18:46 Yeah. If. If we know that N, H, and M words, words that are allegedly ancient, that include nh and 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 nahom 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:19:20 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 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 vowel from this book that's in the Bible, it seems much more likely that that's the route than that this is the actual historical nahum, as these apologists have claimed.

Kolby Reddish 1:19:52 So this slide just helps reiterate that Joseph Smith had access to a Bible because we know that Oliver Cowdery 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 Cowdery. And you can see it there again, Nahum, comforter, penitent. And so the same link that these apologists are making with this Nahom site or a similar link, I guess I should say, of it being a sight to mourn based on the Hebrew.

Kolby Reddish 1:20:31 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.

John Dehlin 1:20:43 Okay, so that's even. Yeah, that's even more devastating than the previous slide. If.

Kolby Reddish 1:20:47 Exactly.

John Dehlin 1:20:48 If a word like Nahom 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 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 Nahom 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.

John Dehlin 1:21:35 We don't need a photo of Joseph looking at a map that says Nahom holding a specific version of a Bible. All we have to. All we have to know is, you know what's more likely? That an angel gave golden plates to Joseph Smith, and with the Urimum Thummim, with the plates not in the room, he produced a text that included the word Nahom that miraculously tied to an alleged place in Saudi Arabia. That's option one.

John Dehlin 1:22:07 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 Nahom either from the Bible or from the Adam Clark Commentary or a map that he had access to, or he just heard the word Nahom 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.

John Dehlin 1:22:49 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 is in Scripture. It can't transform your life. I'm just saying the Nahum argument, to me feels eviscerated by today's presentation in terms of the word Nahum appearing in the Book of Mormon being somehow miraculous. 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:23:29 Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And I think this goes hand in hand 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 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 Nahom 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, because it can't bring value to people's lives, that faith doesn't play a role in people's lives.

Problems With the Nahom Evidence for Historicity

Kolby Reddish 1:24:04 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 Sheman people.

Kolby Reddish 1:24:34 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 not really being fully honest about that.

Kolby Reddish 1:25:14 It's actually from 400 years before the time. 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 record keeping function for the she been state.

Kolby Reddish 1:25:43 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 consonants on those altars that are considered a hit.

Kolby Reddish 1:26:00 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 Lehigh. And it ignores that not just one book, the Nahum book that we talked about John, but ignores that there are three words in the Bible that share these same three sequence of vowels. Nahaim, Nihum and Nahum. All of those are right in the Bible that we know that Joseph Smith had access to. So when we come back to 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:27:08 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 or the problems that are required to be overcome to view the Book of Mormon as a historical narrative.

John Dehlin 1:27:38 Yeah, well, I think you make a compelling case. 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, this chiasmus argument is an example.

John Dehlin 1:27:58 Where we have is in the 20th century science 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, you know, a lack of a geography that's detectable, whether it's the anachronisms found in the Book of Mormon, whether it's the, you know, the problems with Joseph Smith's narratives around the creation of the Book of Mormon and its translation of the stone and the hat. The 19th century represented this massive assault on the credibility of the Book of Mormon as a historical document. All the forgeries, deutero, Isaiah, all the instances 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 an ancient text.

John Dehlin 1:29:07 And so what we have is we have apologists in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, not mysteriously, you know, financed by the LDS Church at the church's university, BYU. And we're talking Hugh Nibley, Jack Welch, Dan Peterson, lots of others.

John Dehlin 1:29:27 They're all desperately trying to figure out evidence for the Book of Mormon. We've got Thomas Stewart Ferguson, John Sorenson. We've got this big, long, multi decade 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.

John Dehlin 1:29:58 And so when Jack Welch, you know, learns about chiasm, chiasmus as being 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.

John Dehlin 1:30:20 But the problem with that is that the Bible's full of chiasmus. And so if Joseph Smith was marinating in 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 chiasmus or a chiasm structure when he generates certain portions of the Book of Mormon text.

John Dehlin 1:30:56 So Jack Welch might say chiasm's a hit. Chiasm 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.

John Dehlin 1:31:15 He's searching for parallels. And if you search for coincidences, if you're looking for a license plate that says Alabama and everywhere you're driving down the road, is that, is that a license plate for Alabama? Is that a license plate for Alabama?

John Dehlin 1:31:33 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 way to describe this idea, this unscientific idea of parallelomania, right, where you're just desperately trying to find any parallel that you can. And I think if you're looking objectively at this Nahom 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.

John Dehlin 1:32:28 And then if you can find it in the, in our geographical area anywhere remotely, you know, that could fit plausibly an approximate estimate of where the Book of Mormon claims Nahum actually appeared. There's a decent chance you're going to find something that you can then draw a parallel to. But is that a miracle or is that just looking for an Alabama license plate hard enough to eventually find one? Probably not a miracle.

John Dehlin 1:33:05 So then when you add to that maps that had the word Nahom or something similar, the Bible that had the word Nahom in it or something similar, the Adam Clark commentary that had the word Nahum in it or something similar.

John Dehlin 1:33:21 It's, it's, it's not that. That's why I, I hate to be disrespectful, but, like, for me, the Nahum argument is ridiculous. It's laughable, it's unworthy of scholarship, it's unworthy of serious academics. And again, the best evidence to that is you will not find a non Mormon, non byu, non LDS scholar that's like, whoa, we got to take the Book of Mormon more seriously because it has the word Nahom in it somewhere in the Arabian Peninsula 600 years before Christ.

John Dehlin 1:34:04 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 that's why this fits up there with tapirs as possible, you know, explanations for the word horse appearing in the Book of Mormon or as Formica or shale or whatever, being what Joseph Smith meant when he wrote steel. You know, it just, it's just, it's embarrassing and it's beneath the dignity of someone that calls themselves a scholar and an academic, in my opinion.

Parallelomania and Final Conclusions

Kolby Reddish 1:34:56 Well, and I agree with everything you just said, and to your point of parallelomania, there's this quote that Sasha Sagan, Carl Sagan's daughter, attributes to Carl in her book for Small Creatures such as we. And we actually have it like a framed little nice family home evening version up above our mantle, above the tv of this phrase, which is she. She records this story of her father telling her, it is dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true. 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 tenuous connections.

Kolby Reddish 1:35:42 Like one data point that I didn't even include from Scripture Central's presentation from Neil Rapley is he's actually focused on a gravestone, a stele that has the name Ishmael inscribed on it. It's not at that NAHOM 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 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 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 Ishmael in this general gigantic region from thousands and thousands of years ago.

Kolby Reddish 1:36:34 And it's truly just unremarkable when we're looking at this stuff like critical thinkers, and we're keeping that the message from Sagan 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 chiasmus? I think that's another great example. And it's worth noting that the apologists are silent when there's chiasmus found in the Doctrine and 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 chiasmus 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:37:19 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.

John Dehlin 1:37:56 Yeah. And what I'd say is, if any church apologist or BYU scholar wants to claim nah Home 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, you know, archaeological or historical community arrive at a consensus around that parallel find being in any way miraculous, or even accurate, for that matter.

Kolby Reddish 1:38:43 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 right where the Book of Mormon says it should be. And that's simply not true.

John Dehlin 1:39:12 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 there's no way Joseph Smith could have come up with that name. Of course, 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

Kolby Reddish 1:39:34 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.

John Dehlin 1:39:44 Yeah. Yeah. All right, Kolby. Well, yeah, I think this was a really important episode. I think I wanted to make sure Mormon stories had at least one episode on Nahom. 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.

Closing Thoughts and Farewell

John Dehlin 1:40:12 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 Kolby and I could do the job. We actually did a shorter episode than we normally do.

John Dehlin 1:40:28 You could tell us whether our tone was better or worse in terms of trying to be objective and neutral, whether you like the length and whether it was okay to not have Nemo here for this one. But we really do welcome your faith and.

John Dehlin 1:40:43 Sorry, we really, we really welcome your feedback. And also, I just want to remind people, 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.

John Dehlin 1:41:12 But if you go to YouTube, the Mormon Stories channel, you can find the LDS discussions playlist there. You can go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts and you can just search LDS Discussions and all the episodes will be there in sequence. And you could also go to our Mormon Stories podcast on Spotify and you can search for LDS Discussions and all the episodes should show up there as well. So, yeah, please check it out and we think you'll find it valuable and we hope to do more in the, in the coming months. And Kolby, it'd be fun if you could be a part of it. Maybe we'll have. Maybe we'll have other people involved as well. Yeah. So any, any final words, Kolby?

Kolby Reddish 1:42:04 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. 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 Boise. 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:42:33 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.

Kolby Reddish 1:43:08 So I'm not even going to tell him. We'll just see if he listens to this down the road and gets excited about it. But thank you for having me on today and thank you for all you do 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.

John Dehlin 1:43:30 Thanks, Kolby. Thank you so much. And now that I'm remembering it, some of you will remember we've had Ganesh cherry in on Mormon Stories in the past. He's also expressed interest in maybe contributing to the LDS Discussions canon. So that's. If y'. All. If y' all really like Ganesh and would like to see him maybe on a team with. With Kolby and. Or with Nemo and. Or with Julia or whatever, you know, we, we wanna. 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. We don't want to, you know, we wanna, 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, Kolby, you're the best. Keep up the good work.

Kolby Reddish 1:44:22 Thanks, John.

John Dehlin 1:44:23 All right, and thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories, everybody. Obviously, we will be paying Kolby for his effort. We pay Julia to help with the research here, and obviously we need to keep the lights on and pay the rest of our staff. So these types of episodes exist due to the generosity of our donors on Mormon Stories.

John Dehlin 1:44:46 So if you are a donor to Mormon Stories and Yehovah 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 MormonStories.org donate and click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor 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, with Second Class Saints, like the Sandra Tanner series that we've done, and just like our regular old long form episodes that we do on Mormon Stories podcast. So thanks for your donations.

John Dehlin 1:45:25 If you support us. If you don't, please consider becoming a monthly donor@mormonstories.org donate be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Let us know if you liked our tone today. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast and LDS discussions. Take care everybody.

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