*** It’s Friday! Accordingly, two new articles — both of them from authors with strong ties to Canada (whence the flimsy rationale for the photograph that I’ve chosen above) — appeared just a few minutes ago in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “Experiential Knowledge and the Covenantal Relationship in Alma 7,” by Godfrey J. Ellis Abstract: A favorite scripture of many faithful saints is Alma 7 where it describes how the Savior came to... Read more
*** I came across a little piece online yesterday in which a rabbi declared that Christianized Passover meals or seders are anti-Semitic. It got me to thinking, and I’m afraid that I’m going to disagree with him. Full disclosure: I myself have led perhaps half a dozen such Christianized seders, though probably not for at least five years or so. And I will say that — despite the eager accusations of a small handful of people... Read more
*** I’m pleased to report that, probably on 25 June this year and barring unforeseen circumstances, I’ll be one of the speakers at the Joseph & Polly Knight 2022 Family Reunion . The meeting will largely, I’m told, also be available online, but it will be held at the East Millcreek Stake Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. I’m looking forward to it. *** Despite my tardiness and neglect, these items on the website of... Read more
*** I received an email earlier this morning from my friend Royal Skousen, letting me know that 10 May 2022, slightly more than a month from now, has been set by Amazon.com as the shipping date for the second edition of The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, which is published by Yale University Press. I’m pretty excited about this. My first edition of The Earliest Text has been a very useful tool and resource, as... Read more
*** Until just a few weeks ago, I didn’t know that my blog posts can be (and often are) ranked on a one-to-five-star system that’s built into the platform. When people post comments here, they’re invited and provided an opportunity to choose a rating. (Whether they can do so with every comment on a post or merely once per post, I don’t yet know.) But I simply hadn’t noticed. And, even when it was called to my... Read more
*** As we begin to pivot from our overall “Witnesses” film project — which isn’t quite finished, but is nearing completion — to our new undertaking, “Six Days in August,” I find myself thinking very much about a remarkable recording of President Wilford Woodruff. I distinctly remember how remarkably thrilled I was, probably around 1976, when I first encountered it in a flexible plastic LP record format that had, as I recall, been distributed with one... Read more
*** I’ve been pleased to see short thirty-second ads running on KSL-Television for the Interpreter Foundation docudrama Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon. (I believe that eight of them will have been aired this weekend, altogether.) Undaunted will go public on 24 May 2022, somewhat less than two months from now. *** From a testimony of Elizabeth Brotherton Pratt (1817-1897), an English convert to Mormonism who emigrated to Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1841, as it... Read more
*** Among the most interesting living writers on religion and science is the Israeli-American Gerald L. Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew who earned his B.Sc., his M.Sc., and his Ph.D. in nuclear physics and in earth and planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He teaches currently at the College of Jewish Studies, in Jerusalem. Here, from his book God According to God: A Scientist Discovers We’ve Been Wrong About God All Along (New York: HarperOne,... Read more
*** A new article by the indefatigable Matthew L. Bowen has just appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: ““The Messenger of Salvation”: The Messenger-Message Christology of D&C 93:8 and Its Implications for Latter-day Saint Missionary Work and Temple Worship” Abstract: Several of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s earliest revelations, beginning with Moroni’s appearance in 1823, quote the prophecy of Malachi 3:1 with the Lord “suddenly com[ing] to his temple” as “messenger of the covenant.”... Read more
*** From the Best-Laid Plans Department: I gave a lecture last night up at the Jordan Events Center on the life of the Reformer Martin Luther. It was occasioned by the fact that, in June, I’ll be accompanying a tour to Germany in connection with the Oberammergau Passion Play. Thanks to my wife, I had some really good images put together to illustrate Luther’s biography and times. Thanks to the on-site computer, the PowerPoint presentation didn’t work. ... Read more
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