Informed Saints

Everyone knows where the Hill Cumorah is… right? Joseph Smith received the gold plates from a hill in upstate New York. But is that the same hill where Mormon hid the Nephite records and the Nephites made their last stand in Mormon 6? It's one of the most debated questions in Book of Mormon geography, and the history behind it may surprise you.

In this episode of Informed Saints, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot walk through what the Book of Mormon itself says about Cumorah, trace when the New York hill first came to be called by that name, and look at what the Church has officially said. Along the way they draw on the Joseph Smith Papers, the Church's "Book of Mormon Geography" statement, and the Hill Cumorah issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, including archaeologist John E. Clark's assessment of the site.

Chapters:

0:00 The Hill Cumorah background 

5:35 Is it in New York?

12:00 Assessing the sources 

16:57 What’s from Joseph Smith?

21:21 David Whitmer sources 

25:27 The Church’s position 

28:00 What the BoM says?

35:15 Looking at the archeology 

42:50 Another candidate in Mexico 

47:00 Conclusion - Learning more

===Informed Saints Credits===

Produced by The Ancient America Foundation

Producer: Spencer Clark

Hosts: Stephen Smoot, Neal Rappleye, Jasmin Rappleye

Further Readings:

Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Hill Cumorah issue: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol13/iss1/

"Book of Mormon Geography," Gospel Topics: www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/book-of-mormon-geography

Our Book of Mormon geography episode with Brant Gardner: https://youtu.be/lHEAG87wh9Y

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/hill-cumorah-site-guide/03-curators-notes

https://scripturecentral.org/archive/books/book/introduction-study-book-mormon

https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/MStar/id/27175/

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1844-1845/41

https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/the-cowdery-conundrum-olivers-aborted-attempt-to-describe-joseph-smiths-first-vision-in-1834-and-1835

https://bhroberts.org/records/pWTXhj-mc2Zjf/w_w_phelps_identifies_the_hill_cumorah_as_being_in_new_york

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/9

https://bookofmormonresources.blogspot.com/2016/10/ramahcumorah.html

https://bhroberts.org/records/zrSENb-yN34Vd/heber_c_kimball_recounts_the_cumorah_cave

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Introduction: Where is the Hill Cumorah?
(00:01:08) - Book of Mormon Text: Details About Cumorah
(00:05:37) - Distinguishing the Plates' Location from the Battle Site
(00:06:53) - Origins of the Name 'Cumorah' for the New York Hill
(00:08:51) - Oliver Cowdery's Letter Seven and the Mound Builder Myth
(00:11:45) - Assessing the Reliability of Cowdery and Phelps
(00:16:39) - What Joseph Smith Actually Said About Cumorah
(00:19:17) - Lucy Mack Smith and David Whitmer Accounts
(00:24:28) - Recap of Historical Sources and Timeline
(00:25:14) - The Church's Official Neutral Stance on Geography
(00:27:18) - Does New York Fit the Book of Mormon's Geographic Clues?
(00:31:05) - Moroni's 35 Years and the Cumorah Cave Legends
(00:35:10) - Archaeological Evidence (or Lack Thereof) at the New York Hill
(00:37:55) - The Arrowhead Anecdotes: Critical Evaluation
(00:42:43) - A Mesoamerican Candidate: Cerro El Vigía in Veracruz
(00:46:49) - Closing Thoughts and Respecting Different Views

Most people having a faith crisis are fighting on the branches — polygamy, DNA, the Book of Abraham, race and the priesthood — when the actual problem is buried somewhere underneath. What happens if you go all the way down to the roots and ask why anything exists at all?

Use discount code INFORMED15 for 15% off Walker Wrights Book!

https://fairlatterdaysaints.org/store/product/nourishing-the-roots/

Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Walker Wright, author of Nourishing the Roots: Seeking the Foundations of Latter-day Saint Testimony, published by FAIR. Walker takes a faith crisis apart from the bottom up — existence, intelligibility, morality, consciousness, God, the Resurrection, and the gold plates — and closes with the story of losing his sister at 11 and the years of atheism that followed.

===Informed Saints Credits===

Produced by The Ancient America Foundation

Producer: Spencer Clark

Hosts: Stephen Smoot, Neal Rappleye, Jasmin Rappleye

In this episode:

Elder Uchtdorf's roots-and-branches metaphor, mapped onto the first three temple recommend questions

Why a branch you're struggling with can sometimes just be pruned — and why you still have to face the hard issues eventually

Larry Corbridge's primary vs. secondary questions, and why an organism explains it better than concentric circles

Why no artifact from the ancient Near East or Mesoamerica will move a committed skeptic — and what "lucky guess" really means

Why nothing can predate existence, and what that implies about something self-existent, necessary, and eternal

Laws of nature, why math matches them, and Joseph Smith's revelations on the light of truth that was not created or made

Where objective morality comes from, and why the Holocaust is the test case

Andrew Ferguson on Thomas Nagel: why no materialist actually lives like a materialist

Fine-tuning and Martin Rees's Just Six Numbers — expand slightly faster or slower and there's no you

The multiverse, the inverse gambler's fallacy, and why it's fine-tuning with extra steps

The hard problem of consciousness, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", and how Mind and Cosmos got Nagel ostracized

Philosophical zombies, the China brain, and Alvin Plantinga on other minds and properly basic belief

Eternal intelligence, the mind of man, and the hierarchy of intelligences in Abraham 3

Miracles, divine healings, and what an exorcism implies about a hierarchy of spirits

Are Latter-day Saints materialists? Goodness, truth, beauty, and the telos of eternal progression

The Resurrection as the decisive revelation — Paul's undisputed letters, the Gospels as Greco-Roman biographies, and a crucified messiah nobody expected

Why the eleven witnesses come up in every Christian-atheist debate, and why William Lane Craig and Trent Horn brush past them

Oliver Cowdery's hand in the printer's manuscript, Martin Harris's matter-of-fact language, and how early those sources really are

What kind of person could have written the Book of Mormon — Tolkien after twenty years at Oxford, or a farmhand with a stone in a hat?

John Clark's 1% problem and Matt Roper's work on anachronisms

Why Moroni's promise is a targeted spiritual experience and not Pam feeling God at Chili's

Walker's sister Nicole, the MTC moment that changed everything, and why a faith crisis is like a horror movie

Further Readings:

Use discount code INFORMED15 for 15% off!

https://fairlatterdaysaints.org/store/product/nourishing-the-roots/

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Nourishing the Roots: Seeking the Found
(00:00:37) - Walker on James Bond and the First Vision
(00:01:22) - Describing the Roots of Christianity
(00:04:47) - Like an Organic Plant, Faith Needs Nourishment
(00:07:49) - The Reasons for Why Does Everything Exist?
(00:13:25) - Does Moral Value Exist?
(00:16:16) - Materialism and the Psychopath
(00:20:59) - Doctor Strange on the Multiverse
(00:24:13) - On the Problem of Consciousness
(00:28:41) - Bluey The Bat Is For Real
(00:29:06) - What is Consciousness?
(00:33:24) - Nagel: The Problem of Consciousness
(00:38:15) - The Real Evidence of the Resurrection
(00:42:40) - The Evidence for the Gold Plates
(00:47:08) - Joseph Smith on the Book of Mormon
(00:51:18) - The Book of Mormon: An Experience of Truth
(00:56:54) - In the Elevator With Infinite Truth
(01:00:45) - What Happened to My Faith in the Latter Day Saints
(01:06:23) - Nourishing the Roots: Seeking the Foundations of Latter Day

The first sacrament meeting of the Restoration was held on a Tuesday. Latter-day Saints once drank homemade currant wine from a shared cup, sang hymns one line at a time because half the congregation couldn't read, and listened to music playing during the administration of the sacrament. Almost everything we picture when we say the word "church" is younger than we think.

Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot trace nearly two centuries of change in Latter-day Saint Sabbath worship — from open-air preaching in the Nauvoo grove to the 2026 two-hour block. There is no single standard history of this subject yet, so this episode pulls the thread together from separate histories of the sacrament, the Relief Society, the Sunday School, the Aaronic Priesthood, Primary, and the Young Women — including Justin Bray's work on the early sacrament.

Chapters:

0:00 Intro - Current Church Schedule Changes 

6:16 Sacrament Meeting History

14:22 The Sacrament History

32:12 Relief Society & Youth Program Changes

36:36 Sunday School Changes

42:42 Young Men’s & Women’s

49:00 Age Categories

53:25 Conclusion - Inspired Direction

===Informed Saints Credits===

Produced by The Ancient America Foundation

Producer: Spencer Clark

Hosts: Stephen Smoot, Neal Rappleye, Jasmin Rappleye

Church Changes Bibliography 

“https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/sacrament-meetings?lang=eng,” in Church History Topics. 

“https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/sunday-school?lang=eng,” in Church History Topics. 

“https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/young-women-organizations?lang=eng,” in Church History Topics. 

“https://churchhistorylibrary.churchofjesuschrist.org/guides/young-women-organization?lang=eng,” Church History Library Research Guides. 

“https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/relief-society?lang=eng,” in Church History Topics. 

Janene Wolsey Baadsgaard, “https://www.thechurchnews.com/1999/3/20/23249076/cover-story-sunday-school-grew-from-humble-start/,” Church News (March 20, 1999). 

Justin R. Bray, “https://rsc.byu.edu/you-shall-have-my-word/lords-supper-early-mormonism,” in You Shall Have My Word: Exploring the Text of the Doctrine and Covenants, ed. Scott C. Esplin, Richard O. Cowan, and Rachel Cope (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012), 64–74. 

Justin R. Bray, "https://rsc.byu.edu/sacred-time/sabbath-sacrament-latter-day-saints," in Sacred Time: The Sabbath as a Perpetual Covenant, ed. Gaye Strathearn (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 207–42. 

Rachel Cope, "https://rsc.byu.edu/vol-15-no-3-2014/thoughts-reclaiming-history-relief-society," Religious Educator 15, no. 3 (2014): 91–101. 

William Hartley, https://byustudies.byu.edu/online-book/my-fellow-servants-essays-on-the-history-of-the-priesthood/from-men-to-boys, in My Fellow Servants: Essays on the History of the Priesthood (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2010). 

William Hartley, https://byustudies.byu.edu/online-book/my-fellow-servants-essays-on-the-history-of-the-priesthood/mormon-sundays, in My Fellow Servants: Essays on the History of the Priesthood (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2010). 

Glen M. Leonard, “https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1974/12/125-years-of-the-sunday-classroom?lang=eng,” Ensign (December 1974). 

Janet Peterson, “https://rsc.byu.edu/firm-foundation/young-women-zion-organizational-history,” in David J. Whittaker and Arnold K. Garr, eds., A Firm Foundation: Church Organization and Administration (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2011), 277–94. 

Mary Jane Woodger, “https://rsc.b...

Chapters

(00:00:00) - The Changes to the Church Schedule
(00:01:13) - The Changes to the Church's History
(00:06:05) - Wonders of the First Day
(00:09:39) - Wonders of the First Division on Sunday
(00:14:22) - The Sacrificial Birth
(00:20:03) - The Concerns of Conservative Members About the Sacrament
(00:24:43) - The Sacrament Worship of the Old Church
(00:30:28) - Q&A: The Quaker
(00:32:14) - The Auxiliaries of the Latter Day Church
(00:37:59) - Teachers in the Aaronic Priesthood
(00:44:50) - Primary and Young Women's Program in the Church
(00:50:04) - The Correlation Revolution: When Everything Collapses Under the Church
(00:55:13) - Wonders of the Church

When Israel entered Canaan, the Bible says they were commanded to leave "nothing alive that breathes." Did God really command that — and did it actually happen? The Hebrew word behind the command, herem, tells a far more complicated story than you've heard.

Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot dig into David Calabro's chapter on herem from From Wilderness to Monarchy (Religious Studies Center) — exploring what the word really means, what the archaeology of Jericho, Ai, and Hazor actually shows, and how Latter-day Saints can honestly face divine violence in scripture.

===Informed Saints Credits===

Produced by The Ancient America Foundation

Producer: Spencer Clark

Hosts: Stephen Smoot, Neal Rappleye, Jasmin Rappleye

In this episode:

What herem means — and its surprising connection to "harem" and the Arabic haram

Herem across scripture: Malachi 4, Numbers 21, Deuteronomy 7, and Deuteronomy 20

Four inconsistent herem cases in Joshua: Jericho (Joshua 6), Ai (Joshua 7–8), the southern cities (Joshua 10), and Hazor

What archaeology shows at Jericho, Ai, and Hazor — and why the older conquest model collapsed

Competing theories of Israel's origins: conquest, gradual infiltration, peasant revolt, settling nomads

Ancient war rhetoric: K. Lawson Younger's Ancient Conquest Accounts, the Mesha Stele, the Merneptah Stele, and a royal inscription from Sheba

The moral problem: divine command theory, the wickedness of the Canaanites, Alex O'Connor's critique, and the question of children

Nephi's explanation in 1 Nephi 17:32–35

Latter-day Saint tools: Melchizedek as a prophet in Canaan (JST Genesis 14; Alma 13; D&C 84) — and why Latter-day Saints aren't inerrantists

The divine warrior motif and the violent world ancient Israel actually lived in

Divine violence in restoration scripture and history: Laban, 3 Nephi, and Zion's Camp

Read David Calabro's chapter free on the Religious Studies Center website:

https://rsc.byu.edu/wilderness-monarchy/thou-shalt-utterly-destroy

https://rsc.byu.edu/book/wilderness-monarchy

Subscribe to Informed Saints for more faithful scholarship on the scriptures. Study deeply, believe boldly.

===Discover===

If any of our thoughts resonated with you, consider learning more about the single most influential book in our lives.

https://www.discoverbookofmormon.org/

===Content Disclaimer===

The views expressed represent ours alone and do not necessarily reflect the official position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

#BookOfMormon #LDS #ComeFollowMe #OldTestament #BibleStudy #Herem #Joshua #ConquestOfCanaan #Canaanites #Jericho #BiblicalArchaeology #AncientHistory #Deuteronomy #MeshaStele #MerneptahStele #HebrewBible #LatterDaySaint #ScriptureStudy #Bible #InformedSaints

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Joshua 8:1-2
(00:01:31) - The Book of Joshua: The Conquest of Canaan
(00:05:29) - Israel vs the Land of Canaan
(00:09:29) - The Israelites and the Archeology
(00:14:09) - Joshua's War of Independence
(00:19:22) - The Israelites and the harem
(00:21:13) - The Good News and The Bad News
(00:21:55) - The Problem With Divine Command Theory
(00:27:04) - Leviathan on the Canaanites
(00:32:46) - Mormons on Divine Violence in the Bible

A widely shared chart in an edition of an annotated Book of Mormon claims the characters Joseph Smith copied from the gold plates match an old Native American hieroglyphic script. But when one researcher traced every glyph back to its source, the trail led somewhere no one expected — to the most infamous forger in Latter-day Saint history.

In this episode, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Jerry Grover: an independent Book of Mormon researcher, geologist, and author of a book on the "characters document”. They walk through his new paper, published by the Interpreter Foundation, examining the claimed match between the gold plates characters and Mi'kmaq (Micmac) hieroglyphs.

===Informed Saints Credits===

Produced by The Ancient America Foundation

Producer: Spencer Clark

Hosts: Stephen Smoot, Neal Rappleye, Jasmin Rappleye

In this episode:

• What the "characters document" actually is — and why it isn't the Anthon transcript

• John Whitmer's handwriting, an 1887 photograph, and a New York broadside

• The documented origin of Mi'kmaq hieroglyphics: a 17th-century Catholic priest, birch bark, and Catholic prayers

• Why 10–14 look-alikes out of roughly 4,000 glyphs isn't statistically meaningful

• Mark Hofmann's forged "Anthon transcript" — and how its glyphs ended up in a modern comparison chart

• The Brazil phone call: "Come authenticate our gold plates"

• Wayne May's This Land, the Annotated Book of Mormon, and why citations matter

• A hopeful precedent: the photo that was corrected in an earlier edition

Read Jerry Grover's new paper at interpreterfoundation.org : https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/mikmaq-meldrum-may-and-mark

Further Resources:

bmslr.org

https://bmslr.org/translation-of-the-caractors-document/

www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/appendix-2-document-1-characters-copied-by-john-whitmer-circa-1829-1831/1

ensignpeakfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/The-“Caractors”-Document.pdf

www.plonialmonimormon.com/2019/06/a-review-of-the-annotated-edition-of-the-book-of-mormon-part-2.html

Subscribe for more faithful scholarship on the Book of Mormon and Latter-day Saint history. Study deeply, believe boldly.

===Discover===

If any of our thoughts resonated with you, consider learning more about the single most influential book in our lives.

https://www.discoverbookofmormon.org/

===Content Disclaimer===

The views expressed represent ours alone and do not necessarily reflect the official position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

#BookOfMormon #LDS #LatterDaySaints #ComeFollowMe #Mikmaq #Micmac #AnthonTranscript #CharactersDocument #GoldPlates #JosephSmith #MarkHofmann #ReformedEgyptian #ChurchHistory #BookOfMormonEvidence #InterpreterFoundation #JerryGrover #Nephite #LDSHistory #FaithfulScholarship #InformedSaints

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Is the Micmac Native American Language evidence for the Book of Mormon
(00:04:51) - The Book of Mormon and the Mi' Kmaq Language
(00:09:50) - The Fabricated Anthon Transcript
(00:12:02) - The Authenticity of the Micmac glyphs
(00:16:15) - Presumed Micmac in the Hoffman Forgery