I’m reading Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter, Martin Harris: Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon (Provo: BYU Studies, 2018).  These notes draw upon it:   Those who are familiar with the story of the recovery of the Book of Mormon know that Lucy Harris, the wife of Martin Harris, became an implacable foe of Joseph Smith’s claims and that her objections to her husband’s involvement with the gold plates and their translation ultimately led to... Read more

    Over the years, I’ve read a great deal about so-called “near-death experiences” (NDEs), which I find both fascinating and, on the whole, believable.  One of the books that I’ve read is by Dr. Penny Sartori.  While working as a nurse in a British hospital for twenty-one years (seventeen of them in intensive care), she became concerned about modern medical treatment of dying patients and began research that would eventually earn her a Ph.D.  In the course of her studies, she became intrigued... Read more

    John 5:1 is so short that I’ll just give you the full text here, in both English and Greek:   “After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.”   Μετὰ ταῦτα ἦν ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων, καὶ ἀνέβη Ἰησοῦς εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα.   I want to concentrate, simply, on the idea of “going up” to Jerusalem.   The city of Jerusalem is situated on a relatively high mountain ridge, with the Mediterranean coast to the... Read more

    New, on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   “Feeding the Multitudes”: A Video Supplement for Come, Follow Me Lesson 13: “Be Not Afraid”   ***   From the track and field website DyeStat:   “Running on Faith — Inside Casey Clinger’s Two-Year Mission to Japan”   ***   We were out to dinner with a number of valued friends and colleagues tonight — fifteen, in total — all gathered for a tardy celebration of the birthday of Professor Louis... Read more

    Back in January 2018, David Grandy, now an emeritus professor of philosophy at Brigham Young University and the author, previously, of books on such topics as Magic, Mystery, and Science: The Occult in Western Civilization (2003), The Speed of Light: Constancy and Cosmos (2009), and Everyday Quantum Reality (2010), dropped off at my office a new, self-published book of his entitled Worlds Without Number: An LDS Perspective on Infinity.   I’ll be down in the San Diego area for several days in April, in connection with... Read more

    While reorganizing books in a part of my library — and, truth be told, while looking for a particular book, though thus far in vain — I came across my copy of F. F. Bruce’s classic New Testament History (New York: Doubleday-Galilee, 1980), and, on a whim, decided to re-read it.  It’s been years and years since I read it and, this being a New Testament year for the curriculum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day... Read more

    This blog’s resident atheist commentator likes to link theists to horrific world-historical violence, as if all or most war and genocide were driven by religion and as if irreligious people and militant atheists had never soiled their hands with such misbehavior and as if even most so-called “wars of religion” weren’t motivated largely or at least to a significant degree by quite this-worldly factors.  The stance is historically ridiculous, of course, and that fact has been pointed out... Read more

    Matthew 9:18-26 Mark 5:21-43 Luke 8:40-56   These passages are interesting, structurally, because of the way in which they enclose an account of the healing of a woman with a hemorrhage (which I’ve already briefly discussed here) within the story of the healing of the daughter of Jairus.   Quite a few years ago, I published a column in the Deseret News on Carl Bloch’s wonderful painting of the moment just before Jesus raised the little girl from the... Read more

    Seven years ago, this blog was still new.  On 23 March 2012, perhaps the worst single day of my life — in what would go on to be the worst year of my life, thus far — I posted the following words:   My dear brother — my only sibling, but, strictly speaking, my half-brother (we didn’t even share last names), though we never thought of ourselves as half-brothers — died of a sudden heart attack just a couple of... Read more

    I don’t know whether I’ve told this story here before.  Probably.  But I occasionally use this blog — sorry! — as a depository for autobiographical fragments, so I’m going to record the episode:   Once, many years ago, when we were visiting Upper Egypt — which, in local parlance, means the southern part of the country, because it’s upstream on the Nile (which flows northward toward the Mediterranean) and also, accordingly, somewhat higher than the northern area of... Read more