For reasons that will shortly be obvious, I’m amassing a few notes for myself about various Peruvian subjects.  I make no claim whatever to any scholarly originality; they’re entirely derivative from online sources.  But I thought that I would share what I’ve learned:   The simple and familiar potato has a fascinating history.   It seems to have been initially domesticated somewhere in the area of modern southern Peru and the very far northwest of Bolivia—in other words,... Read more

    Just this morning, I received the latest quarterly AmazonSmile donation notification for the Interpreter Foundation. I’m happy to say that Interpreter recently received a quarterly donation — for, I believe, the period January-March 2019 —  of $270.08 from AmazonSmile, all of it owing to customers shopping at smile.amazon.com.   Now, obviously, this isn’t a huge amount.  We’re plainly not in the same league as the Red Cross, the Sierra Club, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the American Cancer Society.  Our... Read more

    An announcement and a link on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   “DNA Helps Solve a Historical Question about Joseph Smith”   ***   I liked the short videos that accompany these stories:   From Japan:  “At Global Faith Forum, Apostle Shares Seven Ways Religions Can Help Society Prosper: Elder Gong and Sister Eubank share Latter-day Saint perspectives on promoting peace, strengthening human dignity and caring for the planet”   This one may prove to be quite significant:... Read more

    I think it appropriate to share, again, a column that I first published in the 9 February 2012 edition of the Deseret News:   Decades ago, I attended a gathering where the late Stanley Kimball, a professor of history at Southern Illinois University and president of the Mormon History Association, spoke. His remarks have stuck in my mind ever since. (If anybody out there knows where a written version of the speech can be found, I would be... Read more

    I served for almost a decade on the Gospel Doctrine Writing Committee of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  For those who may be unaware, that’s the committee that generates at least the first drafts for the adult Sunday School curriculum of the Church.  I would need to look up the exact dates, but my service lasted from just after the middle of the 1980s to the mid-1990s.   When I was first called to serve... Read more

    I would like to call your attention to an article whose lead author, Dr. Ugo Perego, is a personal friend who has also appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scripture:   Ugo A. Perego, Martin Bodner, Alessandro Raveane, Scott R. Woodward, Francesco Montinarod, Walther Parson, and Alessandro Achilli, “Resolving a 150-year-old paternity case in Mormon history using DTC autosomal DNA testing of distant relatives,” FSI Genetics 42 (September 2019): 1-7.   Highlights We propose... Read more

    I’ve seen a number of comments in two or three places, and have received several emails, pronouncing me a liar, a shameless and deliberate deceiver, because of my position regarding Joseph Smith’s 1832 account of the First Vision.  (For that position, see my recent posts “On the supposed scandal of multiple First Vision accounts” and “Once more, on the First Vision.”)   Such accusations may or may not speak eloquently about those leveling them.  They say nothing whatever... Read more

    I just arrived this afternoon from Tel Aviv and Paris, and have, frankly, spent too much time since then in a state of profound but very pleasant unconsciousness.  But it seems that I’m under vigorous attack somewhere as having lied (in the 31 May 2018 Deseret News column that I just now reposted) about accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision.   In the demonology of certain critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — especially... Read more