Saturday’s Temple Conference

Last updated on: November 10, 2020 at 8:33 pm By Dan Peterson

This is a last-minute reminder of the Interpreter Foundation’s imminent next conference. As we commonly do, we offer this to all who are interested The Fifth Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference Saturday, November 7, 2020 Presented by The Interpreter Foundation Brigham Young University College of Humanities Due to the COVID-19 situation, this will be a live-streaming-only conference. The conference is free and open to the public, with no RSVP or entrance fee. Saturday November 7,... Read more

Was the Book of Mormon the product of Joseph Smith’s own thinking?

Last updated on: November 10, 2020 at 8:27 pm By Dan Peterson

A new article — this one by the notoriously vicious and always angry proprietor of Sic et Non hisself, one Daniel Peterson — has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “It Came from Beyond” Abstract: The early Latter-day Saints viewed the Book of Mormon not only as a symbol of Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling but also as the most powerful evidence for that calling. However, perhaps because they were ardent believers in the Bible who had been... Read more

Hagia Sophia, Tenochtitlan, the Incas’ Golden Temple, and Jerusalem’s Temple Mount

Last updated on: November 5, 2020 at 11:07 pm By Dan Peterson

The latest installment of my bi-weekly column has appeared in the Deseret News, and this one is accompanied by some especially nice illustrations: “When a religious building has been repurposed by another faith: From the ancient Aztec in Tenochtitlan, modern Mexico City, to the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, to the Hagia Sophia in Turkey, there are many religious sites that have been repurposed by another faith with a conquering army” ... Read more

A moral argument for the existence of God

Last updated on: November 11, 2020 at 10:11 pm By Dan Peterson

Please note that “The Temple on Mount Zion,” the Fifth Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference — jointly sponsored by the Interpreter Foundation and the Brigham Young University College of Humanities — will be held this coming Saturday, 7 November 2020, and will be streamed online, accessible at no charge: 2020 Temple on Mount Zion Conference *** Also now available from the Interpreter Foundation: Interpreter Radio Show — October 18, 2020 The 18 October 2020 broadcast... Read more

The Book of Mormon: Focus and Coherence

Last updated on: November 5, 2020 at 10:51 pm By Dan Peterson

I’m a bit behind on my self-assigned task of keeping you informed of new publications from the Interpreter Foundation. Yesterday, we were driving back from St. George, and we took our time to do it. We spent some time in the always-glorious Snow Canyon State Park, paid our sobered respect at the various Mountain Meadow Massacre National Memorial sites, and visited with friends in Cedar City. So I’ll try to catch up. Here are the new articles: ... Read more

A vision through the veil, on Maui

Last updated on: November 2, 2020 at 12:47 am By Dan Peterson

We had an enjoyable time last night with our monthly reading group (via Zoom, in our case from St. George), discussing R. Lanier Britsch, Moramona: The Mormons in Hawai’i, 2d ed., updated, revised, and enlarged (Laie, HI: The Jonathan Napela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Studies, Brigham Young University-Hawai’i, 2018), with its author, who is part of our little group. Here’s a wonderful story, already familiar to some of you perhaps (as it was to me), that he... Read more

Revision 8.2 “A further note on the rededication of Palestine”

Last updated on: November 5, 2020 at 11:15 pm By Dan Peterson

I continue my account of a party sent in 1872 by President Brigham Young to rededicate Palestine for the return of the Jews. It included George A. Smith of the First Presidency, Lorenzo Snow and Albert Carrington of the Twelve, and the poet and Relief Society president Eliza R. Snow: Their travels took them to England, Holland, Belgium, France, Bavaria and other parts of Germany, Austria, Russia, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and Syria. The journey was strenuous, but... Read more

Did life reach Earth from beyond the solar system? Has intelligent life made an appearance here yet?

Last updated on: November 1, 2020 at 1:07 am By Dan Peterson

This passage in David Jewitt and Amaya Moro-Martín, “Everything Scientists Know So Far about the First Interstellar Objects Ever Detected: Strange bodies from beyond the solar system have defied predictions,” Scientific American 323/4 (October 2020): 42-49, caught my attention. For one thing, it tacitly acknowledges that the origin of life on earth remains an unsolved mystery. But we should note that the idea of panspermia, or even of directed panspermia, doesn’t ultimately answer the question of how life arose at all;... Read more

An 1865 Vision of a Gathering Place for the Saints in Hawai’i

Last updated on: November 1, 2020 at 11:50 pm By Dan Peterson

Drawing on R. Lanier Britsch, Moramona: The Mormons in Hawai’i, 2d ed., updated, revised, and enlarged (Laie, HI: The Jonathan Napela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Studies, Brigham Young University-Hawai’i, 2018), 131-133: In accordance with the doctrine of the physical gathering that was so prominent a feature of the nineteenth-century Church, early Latter-day Saint leaders in Hawai’i sought a gathering place for its members there. For a while, they settled on the island of Lānaʻi. But... Read more

Reacting to the recent Islamist terror attacks in France

Last updated on: October 31, 2020 at 1:32 am By Dan Peterson

When the French middle school teacher Samuel Paty was murdered on 16 October 2020 in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, beheaded in an act of Islamist terrorism by an eighteeen-year-old Russian-born Chechen refugee named Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov, several people asked me for my response. After all, I’m an Islamicist. And Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov’s brutal attack had been motivated, superficially at least, by a desire to avenge the honor of Islam: In a class on the freedom of religion, Samuel Paty had shown his students... Read more