A Combinatorial Approach to the Golden Plates, etc.

Last updated on: June 20, 2025 at 7:06 pm By Dan Peterson

The Interpreter Foundation’s bizarre obsession with Brigham Young — it’s all Brigham, all the time, right? — unabashedly continues with the Foundation’s latest publications, which were made available today: I’ve been looking forward to the appearance of this article since Josh Coates first told me that he was working on it: “A Combinatorial Approach to Modeling All Possible Golden Plates”: Abstract: Historical reports containing information about the properties of the golden plates provide upper and lower bounds for calculating... Read more

There is no room for anti-Semitism in the Church. Period.

Last updated on: June 19, 2025 at 10:14 pm By Dan Peterson

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The Interpreter Foundation’s weirdly obsessive fixation on Brigham Young continues to be unashamedly displayed in these materials that have recently been posted on its website: The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs: “How Luke’s Gospel Portrays Jesus as the Exodus or Way of the Temple,” written by John S. Thompson: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs, edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw. For more information,... Read more

Out of Liberty

Last updated on: June 18, 2025 at 8:22 pm By Dan Peterson

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Here’s a little interview with me (not quite forty-two minutes long) on Keystone that some at least might find of interest: “LDS scholar: The Book of Mormon witnesses are DANGEROUS” The witnesses of the Book of Mormon “golden plates” either lied, were tricked, or were telling the truth. In this episode, David sits down with long-time scholar Daniel C. Peterson to talk about the different theories, and whether or not they align with the available evidence. We began the... Read more

From Jackson County

Last updated on: June 17, 2025 at 9:53 pm By Dan Peterson

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Arriving here in Missouri today, I’ve thought of the hymn “Adam-ondi-Ahman,” written by William W. Phelps and included in the first Latter-day Saint hymnbook in 1835. But I’m thinking of it very specifically in my favorite recording of it, which I have at home on vinyl but cannot find online. That recording is by Marvin Payne, and his lyrics, if I recall them correctly, differ just a little bit from those of Brother Phelps. Here’s how I remember them:... Read more

“We said hello at the same time that we said goodbye.”

Last updated on: June 16, 2025 at 11:14 pm By Dan Peterson

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I realize that I posted a melancholy blog entry about her just a few days ago, so I apologize for returning to her again so soon. But the previous entry marked her birthday and this one commemorates the day of her death. Her life was that brief. I maintain a blog for many reasons. One of them is purely personal: It’s a kind of journal for me, and, even more particularly, it’s a way of remembering things, and especially... Read more

Can we know what he looked like?

Last updated on: June 16, 2025 at 2:25 pm By Dan Peterson

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The authors of the Bible, even across the centuries of its composition and the very different languages in which it was written, share a large number of distinctive traits. Among those, curiously, is a striking lack of interest in describing the principal figures in its narratives. Can you deduce from the New Testament gospels what Jesus looked like? Do Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell us whether he was short or tall? Do they even tell us whether or... Read more

Is our reasoning ability overdeveloped? A biological error?

Last updated on: June 15, 2025 at 8:24 pm By Dan Peterson

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Some readers here may recall that, in fits and starts, I’ve been working very occasionally on a massive project — planned to result, if it ever results in anything at all, in four or five sizable volumes — for which my working title has long been The Reasonable Leap into Light: An Argument for Skeptics. It is designed to argue, in a painstaking cumulative case, that it is rational to accept the claims of, first, theism; then, second, of... Read more

“Records, Writing, and Language”

Last updated on: June 14, 2025 at 6:42 pm By Dan Peterson

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This new piece went up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Interpreting Interpreter: (Non-)Anachronisms – Writing,” written by Kyler Rasmussen: This post is a summary of the article “Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms — Chapter 7: Records, Writing, and Language” by Matthew Roper in Volume 65 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the Interpreting Interpreter articles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series... Read more

She would have been eleven years old today

Last updated on: June 13, 2025 at 7:24 pm By Dan Peterson

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For quite a number of years, I wrote a regular weekly column for the Deseret News. (Every other week, I also co-wrote another, separate, column for the Deseret News with my late, lamented friend Bill Hamblin.) I published this particular column in the News very nearly eleven years ago. Under the circumstances, it was all that I could do. Our firstborn grandchild would have been eleven today. I can’t help but think of all of the experiences with her... Read more

A blog entry for Friday the Thirteenth

Last updated on: June 13, 2025 at 7:34 pm By Dan Peterson

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These two new articles went up online today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms, Chapter 7, “Records, Writing, and Language,” written by Matthew Roper [Editor’s Note: We are pleased to present chapter 7 from a book entitled Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms. It is presented in serialized form in this volume of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.] ““Get Thou Up... Read more