“When I was young, I admired clever people.  Now that I am old, I admire kind people.” Abraham Joshua Heschel     Read more

    http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/new-presiding-bishopric-causse-davies-waddell   Another predictably bland Utah guy, he was born in Bordeaux, France — which is, apparently, not too far from Paris, Idaho.  (I’m an American, so my geographical knowledge is a bit shaky.)     Read more

    Last week, Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture published two articles.   This week, only one article has appeared:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-return-of-rhetorical-analysis-to-bible-studies/   This dramatic 50% decrease in the number of articles produced — in the course of just a week! — is mistakable evidence, I think, that, after a run of 168 consecutive Fridays of uninterrupted publishing, the Interpreter Foundation is shortly to die its long-prophesied death.   Or something like that.     Read more

    Here’s a curious story, kindly brought to my attention by Doug Ealy   http://www.ilovethebookofmormon.org/2015/10/08/presidentmonson/   I didn’t see it.  But then, I didn’t see anything connected with it at all; I was in transit in New York City at the time, and was hearing only the audio.   Many, of course, will dismiss this child’s apparent account.  Some will mock and deride it.  (That’s what they do.)   I don’t know whether the account is accurate, or whether... Read more

    No.     Read more

    Visiting Israel and Jordan will change the way you read the scriptures, and the way you understand the news:   http://www.cruiselady.com/tours/?sname=187   And it hardly matters whether I’m a good tour leader or not.  The sites are so good that even I lack the power to ruin them.     Read more

    Well, we do:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/books/   And there are more in the pipeline.   They’re pretty good, and they make excellent gifts.   Buy twelve of them!     Read more

    Owing to my teaching schedule, I was able to attend only two sessions of today’s meetings of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology.  (I’ll do better tomorrow and Saturday.)   Fortunately, they were both very good.  Precisely the kind of presentations that I hope for from SMPT.   The first, a plenary session in the early afternoon, was Noel Reynolds’s “All the Learning of My Father: A Rhetorical Analysis of Nephi’s Writings and Its Theological Implications.”  That was the very... Read more

    “The more I heard his sayings and saw his doings,” Daniel D. McArthur reminisced about Joseph Smith, “the more I was convinced that he had of a truth seen God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, and also the holy angels of God. I cannot call to mind that I ever had a doubt enter my heart, since I first heard the gospel preached, which was in the spring of 1832, as to his being a true... Read more

    Elder D. Todd Christofferson, of the Council of the Twelve, recorded his own conference talk in Spanish for the conference just completed:   http://www.standard.net/Faith/2015/10/07/Mormon-apostle-D-Todd-Christofferson-does-Spanish-translation-for-own-general-conference-talk   I think it was a nice touch.  He wanted the Saints in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Saints elsewhere to hear him in his own voice.     Read more