*** Intercontinental flights aren’t the ideal platform for blogging, so I’m afraid that I’m a bit late with these notifications. Still, I hope that you’ll enjoy them. They certainly haven’t gone out of date since yesterday: “Rich Vein or Fools Gold?” by Morgan Deane Review of Patrick Q. Mason and J. David Pulsipher, Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to an Age of Conflict (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021).... Read more
*** Under the Banner of Heaven continues to enjoy its fifteen minutes of fame, so here are another couple of interesting reads on the subject: “What ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ gets right — and wrong — about Mormons” I don’t agree with everything in the interview. I do, however, like this article in the Wall Street Journal: “About Those ‘Dangerous’ Mormons . . . The creator of Hulu’s ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’... Read more
*** We bade farewell to our tour group this evening. It always seems that the time has been just a bit too short, and this tour was no exception. I hope that they had a good time, that their knowledge and understanding of some of the scriptural stories and the history of the land have been deepened, and that their faith has increased. I haven’t blogged much about our time here over the past few days, but... Read more
*** Here’s a new piece from the weekly Interpreter Radio Show: Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me Old Testament Lesson 20: “Rebel Not Ye against the Lord, Neither Fear” Numbers 11–14, 20–24 The Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me Old Testament Lesson 20, “Rebel Not Ye against the Lord, Neither Fear” on Numbers 11–14, 20–24, featured Neal Rappleye, Jasmin Rappleye, and Hales Swift. That roundtable has now been extracted from the 3 April 2022 broadcast of the Interpreter... Read more
*** As mentioned in an article from the Times of Israel, this is a weighty issue that recently drew attention here in Jerusalem: “Why do the Utah Jazz, in the Mormon capital, play ‘Hava Nagila’ after wins? Use of centuries-old Jewish folk tune to celebrate NBA victories draws confusion, support and accusations of cultural appropriation from spectators” And here’s another divisive issue out of Jerusalem. This one involves a Russian Orthodox church — though not... Read more
*** I’m a bit delinquent on reporting this, since my schedule here in Israel doesn’t lend itself especially well to regular blogging, but . . . The second of the Interpreter Foundation’s short-feature “reels” — produced in connection with the overall “Witnesses” film project — has now appeared online. It runs to slightly more than nine minutes in length: “Martin Harris, Witness” Martin Harris was one of the earliest supporters of Joseph Smith and the Church. And... Read more
*** Curiously, I still haven’t read the entirety of Alexander Kinglake’s 1844 book Eothen; or Traces of travel brought home from the East. But one particular passage — a fictional conversation between an English visitor and an Ottoman (Osmanli) pasha by means of a somewhat manic-depressive dragoman (an early form of travel guide and translator) — has always struck me as hilarious. Maybe one has to have spent time in the Middle East to fully appreciate it, but... Read more
*** My daily schedule here in Israel is not exactly well-aligned with the publishing schedule of the Utah-based Interpreter Foundation. But I do what I can, when I can. Right now, for example, I’m calling your attention to an article by Kyler Rasmussen that went up on Friday: “Interpreting Interpreter: Commissions and Conversions” This post is a summary of the article “Alma’s Prophetic Commissioning Type Scene” by Alan Goff in Volume 51 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day... Read more
*** Unsurprisingly, it being Friday, a new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “Alma’s Prophetic Commissioning Type Scene,” by Alan Goff Abstract: The story often referred to as Alma’s conversion narrative is too often interpreted as a simplistic plagiarism of Paul’s conversion-to-Christianity story in the book of Acts. Both the New and Old Testaments appropriate an ancient narrative genre called the prophetic commissioning story. Paul’s and Alma’s commissioning narratives hearken back... Read more
*** Over on the Peterson Obsession Board, one or two of the usual suspects are wondering exactly who it is that pays for all my traveling. One of them declares, as if he actually has the faintest idea of what he is talking about, that my travels are paid for by The Church — cue lightning, thunder, and the terrified neighing of horses — because, of course, I earned lots and lots of cash as a... Read more
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