The Interpreter Foundation celebrated its sixth birthday last evening with about eighty-five volunteers and guests.  The centerpiece of the evening — apart from the extravagantly delicious grilled meats prepared by Bruce Webster — was a report by Dr. Jeffrey Mark Bradshaw (one of Interpreter’s vice presidents) and his wife Kathleen of their recently-completed service as missionaries in Kinshasa, The Democratic Republic of the Congo.   There’s much to be celebrated.  As of Friday, for instance, we’ve published at... Read more

    Several people have asked me recently whether I’m going to be leading another tour to Israel.  The answer is Yes.  I will be leading another tour to Israel in early May 2019.  I’ve led such tours at least once annually every year for . . . I dunno.  Maybe about ten years now.   However, those who are interested in going with me should know that I’m not scheduled to lead such a tour in 2020.  For various... Read more

    “In the last few years astronomy has come together so that we’re now able to tell a coherent story [of how the universe began]. . . .  This story does not contradict God, but instead enlarges [the idea of] God.” Joel Primack, Fellow of the American Physical Society, Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He studies dark matter, particle astrophysics, cosmology and quantum field theory.   ***   “When I tell a young person:... Read more

    There was a period of several years when Brigham Young University stood, in an important sense, in the forefront of work on classical Islamic philosophy and science, thanks to a project dreamed up by a BYU faculty member notorious for his perpetually seething hatred of non-Mormon religions (and, for that matter, of pretty much everything and everybody else) and his unashamedly shoddy pseudo-scholarship, which left him both an international academic nonentity and, rather mysteriously at the same time,... Read more

    I’m very pleased that the first copies of the Interpreter Foundation’s newest book — Matthew L. Bowen, Name as Key-Word: Collected Essays on Onomastic Wordplay and the Temple in Mormon Scripture (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2018) — have arrived from the press.  It will be a few days or weeks before they’re generally available for sale, though some arrived in time for people at the just-concluded FairMormon conference, but this is good news.  And it’s a significant book.... Read more

    John was silent for a few minutes. Then he began again: “But how do you know there is no Landlord?” “Christopher Columbus, Galileo, the earth is round, invention of printing, gunpowder!” exclaimed Mr. Enlightenment in such a loud voice that the pony shied. “I beg your pardon,” said John. “Eh?” said Mr. Enlightenment. “I didn’t quite understand,” said John. “Why, it’s as plain as a pikestaff,” said the other. “Your people in Puritania believe in the Landlord because... Read more

    Another gratifying interview this morning, with Professor John Turner of George Mason University.  He is a gracious and articulate man; his students are lucky to have him.   Our interview with Professor Turner is part of a very conscious and deliberate effort to make our film project about the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon a serious work that will tell its story frankly and intelligently.  Dr. Turner, not a Latter-day Saint, is a highly informed scholar of... Read more

    Aristotle famously distinguished four types of causation: efficient causation, material causation, formal causation, and final causation.   The difference between them can be illustrated very easily with reference to, say, Michelangelo’s well-known statue of the young David of the Old Testament, about to fight the giant Goliath.   Let’s take the material cause first.  In this particular case, it’s the Carrara marble of which the statue is made.  (Yes, yes.  Just to reassure you Greek philosophy buffs, I... Read more

    “I beheld with my eyes. And handled with my hands the gold plates from which it was translated. I also beheld the Interpreters.”  (Oliver Cowdery) Quoted in Reuben Miller, Diary (October 21, 1848), quoted in Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling: A Cultural Biography of Mormonism’s Founder (New York City: Vintage, 2007), 78.   “I personally heard him [David Whitmer] state in Jan. 1876 in his own house . . . in most positive language, that he did truly see in broad... Read more