Demand It in Your Area!

I’m pleased to report that a full video recording of the lectures given on Saturday, 10 August 2024, by Royal Skousen (“The Innovative and Revolutionary Book of Mormon Critical Text Project”) and Stanford Carmack (““The Archaic Language of the Original Book of Mormon”) has now been posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  “The Innovative and Revolutionary Book of Mormon Critical Text Project: Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack: Saturday, August 10, 2024”  The sound at the beginning of the recording is slightly weak, but the quality improves within much less than a minute.

Incidentally, I saw yet another iteration a day or two ago of the common assertion that the Book of Mormon is (clearly!) no more than a sloppy creation from the nineteenth century.  The work of Skousen and Carmack certainly doesn’t count in favor of that unsupported declaration.

It’s possible that the four new and unexpected vacancies on the Interpreter Foundation’s approaching tour of Mesoamerica have already been filled.  I don’t know.  But the first in our series of tour-related lectures is now up online:  Blake Joseph Allen gave an “Interpreter Foundation Book of Mormon Tour Preview.”

I myself will speak this coming Wednesday, 28 August 2024, under the title of “The Importance, and Non-Importance, of Knowing the Geography of the Book of Mormon.”  I will be followed by Kerry Hull, “Maya Writing Systems” (4 September); Brant Gardner, “Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon Side by Side” (11 September); Allen Christenson, “Palenque World Tree” (18 September); and Benjamin Jordan, “Potential Volcanic Activity Related to Events in the Book of Mormon” (25 September).

All of the lectures will be live-streamed and, thereafter, most will be archived and placed on the website of the Interpreter Foundation — which, I’m told, is essentially dead.  (Allen Christenson’s lecture will be live-streamed but not archived thereafter.)

Because our budget for publicity and distribution is relatively limited — we would, I’ll be honest, happily welcome some further donations along this line — advertising for the forthcoming Interpreter Foundation film Six Days in August will (as currently envisioned) be tightly focused, largely on Utah, Idaho, and Arizona.  Otherwise, we will rely to a great extent on word-of-mouth recommendations — which we hope will be positive!  We will also rely on specific requests that the film come to areas where there are people who would like to see it.

If you go to the website for Six Days in August, you will be able there to watch the trailer for the film.  If, though, you look directly to the right of the button marked “View Trailer,” you will notice another button marked “Demand It in Your Area.”

If you click on that button, you will be able to fill out a very brief and simple form requesting that the movie come to a theater near you.  Please do so!  And please encourage your friends, neighbors, and family to do so, as well.  We are and will be paying close attention to submissions via that button.  If two or three or four people in an area request that the film come to their neck of the woods, the chances are good that, in fact, it will.  And the more people who request the film, the merrier.  Theaters want to screen films for which they’re confident of attracting an audience.  Requests from potential theater patrons are powerfully convincing to theater owners.

I’ve never given any systematic attention to the famous “Shroud of Turin,” which some believe to be the burial shroud of Jesus, on which an image of the Savior has been somehow miraculously preserved (perhaps at the very moment of resurrection).  Others hold to be a still-mysterious medieval (or even later) forgery.  I don’t know exactly what to believe about it, and its authenticity or lack of authenticity is not at all pivotal for my faith.

Opinion remains divided, and the pendulum of expert opinion and research results has been swinging back and forth throughout my lifetime.  There is even a specific name for the study of the Shroud: sindonology.  Lately, though, the pendulum seems to have been swinging — in the minds of some, anyway — in the direction of authenticity or, at least, of authentic antiquity:

Newsweek:  “Turin Shroud Study Claims Controversial Cloth Does Date to Time of Jesus”

New York Post:  “Face of Jesus? AI recreates stunning likeness of Shroud of Turin image that many believe to be Christ”

It seems obvious to me that he must have been drawing from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™:  “At G20 Interfaith Forum in Brazil, Elder Soares Says Faith Fosters Healthier Societies: Religion can “provide a filter from … toxic attitudes and declining morals,” the Apostle says”

And here’s another item from the Hitchens File that actually, and utterly without shame, invites you to participate:  “From Despair to Hope: How Meridian Readers Are Changing the Lives of India’s Forgotten Children”

Finally, I share something that should make all right-minded secularist zealots quiver with rage:  “BYU declined tens of millions in COVID relief; other schools struggle as federal funds dry up: All 4 Latter-day Saint schools declined federal pandemic funding. Forbes recently gave A grades to the 3 BYUs in an analysis of private school finances.”  Yet more evidence of financial fraud by the Church, no doubt.  As if more evidence were needed!