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Religion & Spirituality

Informed Saints

Informed Saints

The podcast where you can learn about everything from polygamy to gold plates. Hosted by Stephen Smoot, Neal Rappleye, and Jasmin Rappleye.

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  • 26 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 45 min
  • English

Episodes 26

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  • S1 · E37
    June 7 · 28 min

    Joseph Smith's 1843 Vision Most Latter-day Saints Have Never Heard

    In April 1843, Joseph Smith stood on the Nauvoo temple grounds and described a vision he had received: he had seen the resurrected dead take each other by the hand and embrace one another, reuniting families across the veil. Most Latter-day Saints know that handclasps carry sacred significance in temple worship — but very few know that this exact motif runs through the entire ancient world, from the Hebrew Bible to early Christianity to Byzantine art to Egyptian temple ritual. In this episode,

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  • S1 · E36
    May 24 · 1 hr 14 min

    Mesoamerica vs. The Heartland: The Book of Mormon Geography Debate

    Where did the Book of Mormon actually take place? It's one of the most divisive internal debates among Latter-day Saints — and one of the most misunderstood. In this episode, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Brant Gardner — author of the six-volume Second Witness commentary on the Book of Mormon and one of the most widely published Book of Mormon scholars working today — to lay out the methodological, archaeological, anthropological, and textual case for Mesoameri

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  • S1 · E35
    May 17 · 23 min

    Abinadi Was Right | Stunning Evidence From Two Ancient Worlds

    What is the "east wind" in the Book of Mormon? Why would it have struck terror into King Noah's people? On the surface, Abinadi's warning that the people would "reap the east wind which bringeth immediate destruction" (Mosiah 7:31) sounds almost forgettable. But this detail turns out to be one of the most quietly powerful pieces of evidence for the Book of Mormon's ancient origins. In this episode, Jasmin, Neal, and Stephen unpack a fascinating paper by BYU professor Kerry Hull titled "An East

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  • S1 · E34
    May 10 · 35 min

    The Brazen Serpent: The Weirdest Symbol in the Bible — EXPLAINED

    Why on earth would looking at a bronze snake on a pole heal someone bitten by a serpent? It's one of the strangest stories in the Old Testament and most readers move past it without a second thought. But ancient Near Eastern artifacts, Israelite seals, and details preserved in the Book of Mormon reveal that the Brazen Serpent (the Nehushtan of Numbers 21) was anything but arbitrary. It was the perfect symbol and Nephi knew exactly why. ===Informed Saints Credits=== Produced by The Ancient Amer

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  • S1 · E33
    May 3 · 37 min

    Linguist Finds 1,650 Hebrew Words Hidden in Ancient American Languages

    What if the strongest evidence for the Book of Mormon isn't archaeological but linguistic? In this episode of Informed Saints, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Brian Stubbs, a respected Uto-Aztecan linguist whose foundational comparative dictionary of the language family was praised as a "monumental contribution" by Kenneth Hill in the International Journal of American Linguistics. After decades of work, Stubbs has documented more than 1,650 cognate sets connectin

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  • S1 · E33
    April 26 · 40 min

    Egyptologists Got Facsimile 3 WRONG (New Research Reveals Why)

    Is Facsimile 3 of the Book of Abraham really just a standard Egyptian funerary scene, as critics often claim? New research suggests the answer is far more complicated and far more interesting. In this episode of Informed Saints, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Quinten Barney, whose master's thesis at BYU represents the most thorough comparative study of Facsimile 3 ever conducted. Barney has examined every known copy of the Book of Breathings (only 33 exist in th

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Showing 21–26 of 26 episodes