Back in November, I launched a series of posts about my one and only trip to Iran: “Iran 1: Arriving in Tehran” Incidentally, I think that I failed to mention, in that first entry, that, despite having arrived in the airport at Tehran around midnight, the sun was rising by the time we had completed the reception, the interviews, the hotel registration, and so forth. And then our meetings began at around 10 AM. Unfortunately,... Read more
It being Friday, a new article appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “Was Adam a Monotheist? A Reflection on Why We Call Abraham Father and Not Adam” Abstract: The three great monotheistic religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all claim Abraham as father and prototypical monotheist. Though Adam is the putative first father in all of these traditions, he is seldom remembered in Judeo-Christian scriptural, apocryphal, or pseudepigraphic texts as an... Read more
Humans always want to know “why.” Especially children. It seems that it’s an inherent part of the human mind. At very young ages, kids ask why something is the way it is. But when an adult answers the question with “because x,” the child will ask “But why x?” And if that adult says “x because y,” the child will ask “But how come y?” And when the adult explains that “y because z,” the child will... Read more
Bill Hamblin and I published the following article in the Deseret News back on 19 October 2013: In late 1997, Brigham Young University Press published a new translation (with the original Arabic text on the facing page) of a volume by the 11th-12th century Islamic thinker al-Ghazali. Titled “The Incoherence of the Philosophers,” it ranks among the most important books ever written in the Islamic world. Many of his faith consider al-Ghazali the second greatest Muslim after... Read more
I grew up fairly near to Pasadena’s California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and typically drove by it, with my parents and then on my own, at least once or twice a month and probably, on average, just about every week. There was, in my mind, a sense of almost mystical awe around the place. Not terribly much further, though it wasn’t part of my neighborhood the way Caltech was, was the famous Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La... Read more
The latest installment of my biweekly “Defending the Faith” column appeared today in both the print and online editions of the Deseret News: “Evil and the recognition of God” That’s a refreshing change from recent (rather unpredictable) publishing history. In any case, several of the people who write in to the Deseret News in order to disagree with every article that I publish wrote in to the Deseret News this time, too, in order to... Read more
On a predominantly atheistic message board that is deeply hostile both to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and to me — I don’t confuse the two, but the personal hostility to me is plainly related to that directed at the Church more generally — I’ve caught distressing glimpses of the online behavior of someone who was once, if not precisely a friend, at least friendly. I’ll call him Sam. I used to run into... Read more
Matthew 8:14-17 Mark 1:29-34 Luke 4:38-41; 7:11-17 Among the four gospels, only Luke recounts the story of Jesus raising the son of the widow of Nain from death. But all three of the synoptic gospels — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — mention the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law (πενθερά). Do you notice something about that story? It’s striking that the first pope, as Peter is traditionally regarded among Roman Catholics, had a mother-in-law. That fact... Read more
Ireland’s Robert Boylan has called our attention to two commentaries on recently-issued Gospel Topics essays from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The first is from Brant Gardner: “A Reaction to the Church’s Recent Essay on Book of Mormon Geography” The second is from Clark Goble: “On the Church Masonry Essay” *** We’ve certainly taken hits. More than a few once-faithful Latter-day Saints have gone missing. All of us know... Read more
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New Testament Notes 90-91
Matthew 8:23-27 Mark 4:35-41 Luke 8:22-25 Compare Matthew 8:18 1. The image of Jesus asleep in the back of the boat, and so soundly asleep that even a turbulent storm doesn’t wake him, is significant. It highlights his humanness. He was physically exhausted. The constant press of crowds, the long and strenuous walks all over Palestine (including substantial changes in elevation), the preaching — all of these took their toll on him. And so did healing. (Recall the... Read more