There is no better way to think of Martin Luther King today than to listen to his own incomparable voice, which, if you choose, you can do here: “5 of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most memorable speeches” His speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington Mall, commonly called “I Have a Dream” because of its rhythmic repetition of that line, is generally reckoned his greatest. I had not realized, though, that that line was ad... Read more
In “‘Hard’ Evidence of Ancient American Horses’ (Part 1),” I began to extract notes from an article about possible Pre-Columbian horses in the Americas that appeared in 2015, surveying the state of the question at that time: Daniel Johnson, “‘Hard’ Evidence of Ancient American Horses,” BYU Studies Quarterly 54/3 (2015): 149-179. I continue with that project, thinking that some might find my notes of interest: Archaeologists note that indigenous New World cultures had no draft animals or beasts of... Read more
Curiously, one of the experiences that I remember clearly from my stay in East Jerusalem during the first half of 1978 was a conversation on a street corner with three or four American evangelical Protestants. I seem to recall that the conversation occurred on a street corner near the American Colony Hotel; they were probably staying there. I don’t know how the conversation began. In the course of it, though, one of the people in the Protestant... Read more
An important and still relatively recent contribution to the literature on the history of the Restoration is Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter, Martin Harris: Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon (Provo: BYU Studies, 2018). Herewith, I begin an effort to write up my notes from reading the book: First, from John W. Welch, in the Foreword: The one constant and dominant theme of this biography is Martin’s unfailing affirmation of what he saw... Read more
On the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Come, Follow Me — Study and Teaching Helps: Lesson 4, January 20-26: 1 Nephi 11-15 Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon Lesson 4 “Armed with Righteousness and with the Power of God” : 1 Nephi 11-15 The Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon Lesson 4, “Armed with Righteousness and with the Power of God,” on 1 Nephi 11-15 involved only one participant, but a really good one — Martin Tanner. This discussion was extracted from... Read more
In “‘Hard’ Evidence of Ancient American Horses’ (Part 1),” I began to extract notes from an article about Pre-Columbian horses in the Americas that appeared in 2015, surveying the state of the question at that time: Daniel Johnson, “‘Hard’ Evidence of Ancient American Horses,” BYU Studies Quarterly 54/3 (2015). I continue with that project, thinking that some might find my notes of interest: It is essential, of course in considering the question, or problem, of the Book of Mormon’s... Read more
In my immediately prior post (“A Prolegomenon to My First Sojourn in the Middle East”), I provided some indication of the reflexively pro-Israeli attitudes with which I grew up. By the time of my first actual visit to the Middle East, however — a 1978 visit that lasted approximately six months — things had changed considerably. For one thing, the Soviet-leaning Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt had died suddenly in 1970 and had been replaced by... Read more
I posted a light item yesterday (“A couple of songs from my first residence in the Middle East”) about my first stay in the Middle East, which occurred way back in the first half of 1978. (That was 42 years ago. Forty-two years! As the saying goes, I didn’t realize that getting old would take so little time.) Anyway, I might as well continue a little bit in that nostalgic and autobiographical vein. I grew up... Read more
Since my teens, I’ve enjoyed and been interested in folk music. And one of the towering figures in the preservation of American folk tunes, a person whose name I ran into over and over again, was the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. You can, if you will, regard this blog entry as a tribute to him and his work. My first stay in the Middle East was six months with a BYU study abroad group in Israel. For roughly the... Read more
Quelle surprise! It’s Friday, and a new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. This one is by Jim Bennett: “’Somebody Wrote It:’ The Book of Mormon’s Missionary Message to a 21st-Century World” Abstract: Nathan Oman’s “Welding Another Link in Wonder’s Chain: The Task of Latter-day Saint Intellectuals in the Church’s Third Century” wisely called for “new language in which to celebrate the Restoration.” That new language can be found in understanding the... Read more
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