In this genuinely weird time of lock-downs and social distancing, rising unemployment and wildly fluctuating markets, we’re rightly most concerned about the lives that the coronavirus contagion threatens.  But there are other victims, including those whose social and mental health have been put at risk by the countermeasures that we’re all taking.   And charities, too, are suffering.  As donors see their wealth shrinking, they are understandably less inclined to contribute to charitable causes — and especially to… Read more

    As Messala said to Ben Hur, “It goes on, Judah.  It goes on.”  Here are two new items that have appeared today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   In God’s Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel: Genesis 7: The Flood Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in In God’s Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel (2014) by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and David J…. Read more

    Here are a couple of additional passages that I’ve marked in Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness, 2d ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011):   The first is about Albert Einstein:   [B]ack in 1935 he had startled the developers of quantum theory by pointing out that the theory required an observation at one place to instantaneously influence what happened far away without involving any physical force.  He derided this as… Read more

    Here are two new items that are available via the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   “Teachings and Testimony of the First Vision: President Hinckley Comments on Joseph Smith’s and the Church’s Critics”: Part 19 of a Series Compiled by Dennis B. Horne   “Interpreter Radio Show — March 22, 2020” An archived recording of the 22 March 2020 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show — shorn of commercial and other interruptions — is available at no charge at the… Read more

    Barring unforeseen mishap, I’ll be on the Interpreter Radio Show tonight (Sunday night) with Martin Tanner, between 7 PM and 9 PM.  During the second hour of the program, we’ll be discussing Mosiah 7-10.  One of the topics that I hope to address very briefly will be the reference in Mosiah 7:31 to a destructive “east wind.”   I discussed this subject in a column for the print edition of the Deseret News and the online edition of… Read more

    I continue to use my blog as an incentive to myself to type up notes from my reading and, therefore, as an inducement and aid to my own more formal (i.e., non-blog) writing.  In fact, I plan to do so more in the future than I have in the past.  (I have lots of projects in the works!)  I hope that these notes will be of interest to you as I share them.   In this entry, I… Read more

    Back in early 2016, I saw the then-new film Risen.  My wife never did — she was traveling at the time — and she still hasn’t.  But I would still like her to do so; I would like to discuss it with her.  And I myself want to see it again.   Those who see the film and who are familiar with the story of Christ’s death and resurrection (just about everybody here, I expect) will instantly recognize that Risen… Read more

    I offer here some additional notes from Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter, Martin Harris: Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon (Provo: BYU Studies, 2018).   Martin Harris arrived in Kirtland, Ohio, on 12 March 1831 for a relatively brief visit there, bringing with him a large number of copies of the Book of Mormon as Joseph Smith had requested him to do.  Reacting to that visit, Eber D. Howe, the editor of The Telegraph (whose offices were in… Read more