New, via the website of the Interpreter Foundation, a fifty-minute audio interview by Stephen Smoot:   “Studying the Book of Mormon with Grant Hardy”   And, of course, Professor Hardy was interviewed during the first hour of the Interpreter Radio Show on 13 January 2019, as well:   https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-january-13-2019/   ***   Something else that you might find helpful:   “Reflections on Come Follow Me 3: “We Have Come to Worship Him” (Matthew 2; Luke 2)”   ***… Read more

    In response to my blog entry of a few days ago on the question “Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?” one reader responds “Definitely not!”   He elaborates:  “In no way can Allah be equated with Elohim and Jehovah. That dog simply does not hunt.”   Actually, though, it’s a pretty good hunting dog:   “‘Allah’ is not pagan term — it means ‘God'”   “The true Godhead,” he explains, “includes two embodied Personages and one as… Read more

    A while ago, in two or three responses to comments on my blog, I referred to my blog’s most prolific atheist respondent in the third . . . um, third “person,” as “it.”  (For the same reason, I’ve once or twice referred to him as a “meat unit” or a “cell colony.”)   The context, as I recall, was a discussion of the nature of consciousness, which he, in truly reductionist-materialist fashion insists on understanding — if, given… Read more

    The 13 January 2019 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show featured Martin Tanner, John Gee, Kevin Christensen, and guest Grant Hardy.  The discussion for the first hour centered on Professor Hardy’s new study edition of the Book of Mormon.  The second hour was devoted to a Come Follow Me roundtable on the lesson for Matthew 3, Mark 1, and Luke 3 (Come, Follow Me Lesson 5).   “Interpreter Radio Show — January 13, 2019”   That audio roundtable — for Come, Follow… Read more

    I published this article in the Deseret News back on 13 May 2010:   The earliest Christians didn’t believe in the New Testament. They couldn’t. It didn’t exist yet.  When Paul praises young Timothy because “from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15), the only “holy scriptures” to which he can be referring are those contained in what… Read more

    New, on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   “There are Many Witnesses to the Birth of Christ: A Video Supplement for Come, Follow Me Lesson 3: We Have Come to Worship Him”   ***   President Russell M. Nelson continues to astound.  He is, for one thing, 94 years old.  And, just two days before his visit to California, his daughter fell victim to cancer.  (He refers to her death in a comment cited in the article.)  I hope that I’ll… Read more

    The January/February 2019 issue of Discover includes a fascinating article by Corey S. Powell entitled “The Constant Fight: Behind the astronomical dispute that’s splitting apart the cosmos.”  I’ll try to summarize it here, briefly — at least, the bottom line.  If you’re interested in understanding the two different approaches to the question, please read the article, which is very clear:   Back in the 1980s, a contentious dispute broke out over the value of the so-called “Hubble constant,”… Read more

    Jay Nordlinger has an appalling but hugely important piece (for those who care about Turkey, and for those who care about human rights) in National Review:   “Whisked Away: The Turkish government and its program of kidnappings”   Some here may have noticed that I’m not a fan of Mr. Donald J. Trump, though there are a number of things that the Trump administration has done of which I strongly approve.  (Should Ruth Bader Ginsburg exit the Supreme Court… Read more

    I offer for your possible interest two passages taken from very different works by two very different thinkers.   The first comes from the essay “Sophic and Mantic,” which can be found in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 10:360-61:   “Some years ago I made a long study of just what objections had been raised against Mormonism in the past. From the beginning it was always the same. Nobody was really worried about polygamy, which was in fact a welcome… Read more

    I have been a fan of J. B. Phillips’s The New Testament in Modern English since I first bought it while in my twenties.  For a glimpse of the reason why I like it, compare Acts 8:18-23 in the King James Version to the Phillips version:   And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay… Read more