Nahom: The Strongest Evidence for the Book of Mormon? - LDS Discussions w/ Kolby Reddish | Ep. 2080
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2025
⏱️ 107 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is Nahom really the strongest evidence for the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon? In this episode, we take a deep dive into noe of the most cited archaeological “proofs” of the Book of Mormon -the discovery of altars inscribed with the letters NHM in Yemen.
John Dehlin and attorney and former clerk from the Idaho Supreme Court, Kolby Reddish examine what the text of the Book of Mormon actually says about Nahom, where it’s supposed to be located, and whether the archaeological evidence matches up. Along the way, we look at how apologists, scholars, and critics have each interpreted this find -and what it really says about the historicity of the Book of Mormon.
We also examine whether or not Joseph Smith could have known about Nahom (or Nehem) from maps or Biblical references, and how issues like confirmation bias and faith-based reasoning play into the debate.
This conversation aims to be evidence-based, thoughtful, and respectful -seeking understanding amid polarization in the Mormon and ex-Mormon communities.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast. I'm your host for today, |
| 0:04.4 | John DeLinn. It is October 10th, 2025. And today we bring to you another in our series |
| 0:11.6 | referred to as LDS discussions. Many of you will know if you've been following Mormon stories |
| 0:17.9 | at any length over the past several years that we began |
| 0:21.1 | several years ago a series called LDS Discussions with a man named Mike who has a website |
| 0:28.0 | called LDS Discussions.com where he spent many years doing comprehensive analysis of LDS |
| 0:36.1 | truth claims. You can find his essays at LDS |
| 0:40.6 | Discussions.com, but we were able to convince him to do, I don't know, 40, 50, 60 episodes |
| 0:46.7 | where we discussed at length LDS Church truth claims from an evidence-based as objective of a point of view as we could. |
| 0:57.2 | So this is going to be another in that series. |
| 1:00.4 | We recommend that that series be enjoyed sequentially. |
| 1:05.2 | 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 playlist on the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel, or you can go to Spotify |
| 1:14.0 | to the LDS Discussions podcast there, or wherever you want, and you can enjoy this series sequentially. |
| 1:21.1 | Today, we're going to be discussing a particular apologetic argument made in favor of Book of Mormon historicity. |
| 1:31.8 | The argument, we're just going to call it Nahom. |
| 1:34.9 | For those of you who have been following Mormon apologetics for a while, you'll know what we're |
| 1:39.3 | talking about, but for many who don't, this is an argument about whether or not Joseph Smith in the 1800s |
| 1:47.0 | was able, through spiritual means, able to identify specific areas. |
| 1:54.3 | I'm going to say in the Middle East that he couldn't have known about in 1829 that archaeology or anthropology or history has since somewhat |
| 2:06.6 | demonstrated or validated. |
| 2:08.0 | That's the question is, is this Nahom question something that sort of shows that Joseph |
| 2:14.1 | Smith was translating an ancient record and that he knew stuff he couldn't have known |
... |
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