Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast.

I'm your host, John DeLin.

We are knee deep or waist deep in this amazing series.

We've been doing on Mormon Stories podcast, looping in our dear friend, Mike, from the LDS

discussions.com website where we are exploring Mormon truth claims and for those who are

just finding this episode disjointed from the others.

We've talked about golden plates.

We've talked about book of Mormon translation.

We've talked about Joseph Smith's treasure digging.

We've talked about 116 lost pages.

Wherever you are in the process, we'll be talking about book of it.

We'll be talking about Noah's flood, the Tower of Babel, Adam and Eve.

All of these things are really important issues that have really important implications

for the Mormon Church's truth claims.

Today, the topic that we're going to be covering is Joseph Smith's surrounding influences

in the Book of Mormon or another way to say that is, what information or experiences

or news stories or literature was Joseph Smith exposed to that if Joseph Smith was the

actual author of the Book of Mormon, if it wasn't a translation of ancient records as

we cover in the translation episode, if it wasn't that, then where did Joseph Smith

get the material that created the Book of Mormon?

That's what today's episode is about.

You can go to the essay at ldsdiscussions.com slash influences for an exhaustive lengthy

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