I’m still thinking about yesterday’s murderous attack on that synagogue in Poway, California. (See “Sadness for Poway.”) I think it worth pointing out that, so far as I can recall, only one scriptural text in the world — the Book of Mormon –contains an explicit denunciation of anti-Semitism. That forceful denunciation comes in the context of an extended passage in 2 Nephi 29 that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commonly and... Read more
John 10:22-39 Compare Luke 4:29-30 I published an extended analysis of part of this passage an appallingly large number of years ago: “‘Ye Are Gods’: Psalm 82 and John 10 as Witnesses to the Divine Nature of Humankind” Much more recently, Daniel McClellan published an article in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship that’s somewhat critical of my position: “Psalm 82 in Contemporary Latter-day Saint Tradition” I actually think that... Read more
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was involved in an interfaith event in Poway, California, near San Diego, that was organized under the auspices of the Poway California Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in connection with its fortieth birthday: “11-13 April in Poway, California” The event was extremely well done. Christians, Muslims, and Jews participated in it. For the full-size replica of the Tabernacle of Moses, which temporarily stood adjacent... Read more
One traditional way of addressing the question of the origin of life on Earth has long been simply to throw time at it. If enough time elapses, so the thinking vaguely went, virtually anything can happen. So it must have. Case closed. Move along. There’s nothing to see here. But, as the article below indicates, life arose really, really, really early on our planet: “Life May Have Evolved Before Earth Finished Forming: The first organisms may... Read more
A characteristic argument advanced by the great C. S. Lewis, and one that I find persuasive, runs roughly as follows (in the summary offered by Professor Peter Kreeft of Boston College in his book The Shadow-Lands of C. S. Lewis: The Man Behind the Movie: Selections from the Writings of C. S. Lewis [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994], 71): If we have an innate, natural desire for X. there must be an X. We have an innate,... Read more
Here’s a very nice article about a synagogue from late antiquity that’s located just to the northwest of the Sea of Galilee: “Tile Tales from Galilee: With a depiction of Jonah, the tower of Babel, Noah’s ark, and other stories, a mosaic discovery by BYU researchers gives insight into ancient Jewish art and worship.” *** Alert visitors to Egypt will have noticed this phenomenon, but they may wonder how to explain it: “Why do so... Read more
Here’s the background for this blog entry: “Romney on Mueller report: I am ‘sickened’ by ‘dishonesty and misdirection’ of President Trump” Predictably, of course, Mr. Trump didn’t take Mr. Romney’s comment very well: “Trump lashes out at Romney” Rudy Giuliani, once widely respected as “America’s mayor” for his response to the 9/11 terror attacks and now a shameless shill for Donald Trump no matter what, continues to embarrass himself and to trash his own historical... Read more
I’m reliably informed, by a number of people who don’t know me but who serve as my spokesmen online (they’re all men, so far as I’m aware), that I’m a young-earth creationist. So the only possible explanation for my enthusiasm for such finds as this one from a while back must be that I’m simply too stupid to realize that 125-million-year-old dinosaur fossils don’t fit very neatly with my dogmatic conviction that the Earth is only six thousand... Read more
I had forgotten that this lecture was available online, and only came across it again just now by sheer coincidence. The sound quality isn’t quite ideal, but it’s not altogether terrible, either. Each recording is about an hour long. I call attention to it here not only because there might be somebody, somewhere, who will find it of at least slight interest, but also for my own base autobiographical agenda: Daniel Peterson – Muslims & Mormons, part... Read more
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New Testament Note 256
Matthew 20:1-16 Compare Matthew 19:30; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30 1. Many people reject the idea of “deathbed repentance” or “deathbed conversion” I don’t. The problem with “deathbed repentance,” as it’s often considered, is that it isn’t really repentance at all. It’s the cynical, insincere, self-interested calculation — not infrequently a miscalculation, I think — that one can sin right up until the end and then, when death is imminent, apologize rather insincerely and get... Read more