“Overwriting Ether: Moroni’s Transfiguration of Jaredite Scripture”

Last updated on: February 25, 2022 at 1:16 pm By Dan Peterson

*** A new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “Overwriting Ether: Moroni’s Transfiguration of Jaredite Scripture,” by David J. Larsen Review of Rosalynde Frandsen Welch, Ether: A Brief Theological Introduction (Provo, UT: The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2020). 128 pages. $9.95 (paperback). Abstract: The Book of Ether is a sometimes-overlooked gem of a text within the Book of Mormon, a history within a history that deserves careful and innovative investigation. Rosalynde Frandsen Welch offers such with a novel perspective... Read more

“Under the Banner of Heaven”

Last updated on: February 25, 2022 at 10:13 am By Dan Peterson

*** Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should be aware that they are about to be front and center yet again in a not-insignificant pop-cultural event, a seven-part Hulu television mini-series entitled Under the Banner of Heaven that will air this coming spring. It’s scarcely the first such event — think, among many others, of Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet (1887), which marked the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and... Read more

It’s been, astoundingly, nearly thirty years . . .

Last updated on: February 24, 2022 at 9:59 pm By Dan Peterson

*** Back in the first half of 1993, I led a small contingent of fairly advanced undergraduate students of Arabic to East Jerusalem for an intensive five-month language program there. (We also visited Egypt and Jordan.) One of those students, who has been teaching at Cornell University for quite a few years now, contacted me a few days ago, saying that he and his wife and kids would be in Utah for a few days and... Read more

Of Atheistic “Brights” and Religious “Dims”

Last updated on: February 24, 2022 at 10:05 pm By Dan Peterson

*** First of all, I hope that you’re having a happy 22/02/22. However, I’m going to leave the festive celebrations of the day for a moment and move on to other pressing matters. I’m a bit late in mentioning it, but my latest article for Meridian Magazine went up yesterday: “There is More to Know About Isaac” It was inspired by a General Conference address that was given by the late Elder A. Theodore... Read more

Of Victims and Psychics

Last updated on: February 21, 2022 at 12:58 pm By Dan Peterson

*** The invaluable Jeff Lindsay has posted an interesting item on his blog regarding the portion of the Book of Mormon that is set in ancient Arabia: “An Update on Maps of the Arabian Peninsula Showing Nahom-related Names” *** Some time back, I was deleting some old computer files when I came across a curious item. I’m not quite sure where it came from, nor who wrote it nor when, but it’s addressed to... Read more

Picture yourself in a boat on a river. Somebody calls you. You answer quite slowly.

Last updated on: February 21, 2022 at 10:37 am By Dan Peterson

*** Back in 2005, I was invited to write a little mini-essay for the Church’s official website. Here it is: “Everyone Else Makes Such Lonely Heavens” I thought of it because of a complaint against the Church that I saw recently, and that I’ve come across several times over the past few years. I find it exceedingly odd. Roughly, it goes like this: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to... Read more

Science, Eyewitness Testimony, and God

Last updated on: February 20, 2022 at 10:49 pm By Dan Peterson

*** Marking a milestone in the history of the Interpreter Foundation, we published a blog entry today with an invited note from Dr. Matthew Bowen, of Brigham Young University — Hawaii: “500 Weeks of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship” *** I’ve still been going through past blog entries, culling out items that I think might be useful for current or future writing projects. Here’s one of them: In August... Read more

Spreading the Word

Last updated on: February 19, 2022 at 2:29 pm By Dan Peterson

*** The Interpreter Foundation published several new items yesterday and today. I thought that you should know: “Interpreting Interpreter: Enjoying Inherited Possessions” This post is a summary of the article ““We Might Have Enjoyed Our Possessions and the Land of Our Inheritance”: Hebrew yrš and 1 Nephi 17:21” by Matthew L. Bowen in Volume 50 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. The full article can be read at https://interpreterfoundation.org/we-might-have-enjoyed-our-possessions-and-the-land-of-our-inheritance-hebrew-yrs-and-1-nephi-1721/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series is... Read more

An endless smörgåsbord, or a hurried sack lunch?

Last updated on: February 17, 2022 at 12:58 pm By Dan Peterson

*** I’m continuing the theme of my blog entry from yesterday, “Our only hope for full flowering”: In my remarks at the 2017 FairMormon conference, one of my comments concerned the fact that none of us achieve our full potential in this life. In fact — and, for this point, I used the tragic story of Ludwig van Beethoven as an illustration — many of us die sadly young, undernourished, uneducated, impoverished, and/or ill, coming nowhere near... Read more

Our only hope for full flowering

Last updated on: February 16, 2022 at 2:53 pm By Dan Peterson

*** I continue to be struck by a quotation from then-Elder Russell M. Nelson that was, I believe, cited in the September 2014 issue of the Ensign. Back in 1992, he wrote: We were born to die and we die to live. As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven. This is one of the great arguments for the desirability of life after death. Not for the truth of the... Read more