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

    One online critic of the Church likes to use me in order to illustrate the nadir of Latter-day Saint scientific ignorance — rather analogously to the concept of “absolute zero” or “zero degrees Kelvin,” the minimum temperature possible, at which there is no heat and the movement of fundamental particles is at a minimum.  I’m sure that he’s right to do so; surely nobody online would engage in an unfair caricature on so important a point.  Still, I… Read more

    I’m grateful to Matthew Wheeler for calling two items to my attention that I think some of you will find of interest, as well.  If you can, go the Facebook page of “Abu Ubaidah (Faraz Sabeel Travels).”   Once you’re there, scroll down to his entry for 10:45 AM on 25 March 2020, which begins “Jewish shop keeper in Jerusalem playing Quran, when asked why said this is Gods word it will help us during this Coranavirus.”  … Read more

    “The coronavirus is pushing charities to their limit. Should Congress do more to help?: Some policy experts argue the $2 trillion stimulus package doesn’t do enough for social service organizations”   “Utah unemployment claims skyrocket as coronavirus containment forces massive layoffs”   “Salt Lake City mayor wants state to issue stay-at-home directive — or she will: Not everyone supports idea because of economic pressures”   “Harvard researchers: Social distancing during COVID-19 may have to be turned on and off like… Read more

    Stanford Carmack contributed this week’s new article in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, the constantly growing flagship publication of the Interpreter Foundation:   “Pitfalls of the Ngram Viewer” Abstract: Google’s Ngram Viewer often gives a distorted view of the popularity of cultural/religious phrases during the early 19th century and before. Other larger textual sources can provide a truer picture of relevant usage patterns of various content-rich phrases that occur in the Book of Mormon. Such an approach… Read more

    I’m back to reading Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness, 2d ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).  At the time they wrote the book, both Rosenblum and Kuttner were members of the physics faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz.   In this passage, the now late Professor Rosenblum, the senior of the two, recalls his experience as a much younger man who was studying at Columbia University in… Read more