Some of you might be interested, especially if you live in or around Cache Valley, in this upcoming March event: I hope that I’m not going to be entirely alone up there. *** A bit of a background note for my eventual book on Islam-for-a-Latter-day-Saint-audience: Christianity arrived in what is today known as Turkey very early. The apostle Paul was born within the borders of modern Turkey, as was Timothy, his traveling... Read more
Whenever I can, I’m going to continue to supply you with material for your Christopher Hitchens Memorial “Religion Poisons Everything” File. Here’s an important new piece of evidence illustrating how religion or religious involvement ruins lives: “Does faith make you happier? New research explores links between religion and well-being” *** “BYU one of nation’s highest producers of foreign-language degrees: BYU comes in at No. 3 overall, tops several specific language categories” BYU is the... Read more
An article in the January 2019 issue of Scientific American — “Evolved to Exercise: Unlike our ape cousins, humans require high levels of physical activity to be healthy” — by Herman Pontzer, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, is not only extremely interesting but offers some quite practical implications. Herewith, some notes from it: We share more than 97 percent of our DNA with orangutans, bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas — although, I add for the... Read more
Luke 2:41-52 If the roads were dry and not too terribly congested with other travelers, it was probably a five-day walk from Nazareth southward to Jerusalem. And, of course, the return walk would have taken five days, as well. So, altogether, the journey down and back would have required a week and a half, on top of whatever time was actually spent in Jerusalem itself. So this was a fairly significant undertaking. Moreover, since the route —... Read more
Here’s an interesting suggestion from the ever interesting Jeff Lindsay: “A Subtle Book of Mormon Tribute to Single Mothers?” *** It’s been at least a day since I last proposed an item for your Christopher Hitchens Memorial “Religion Poisons Everything” file, which must by now surely be bursting dangerously at the seams. Feeling guilty about how remiss I’ve been, I now offer you another piece: “JustServe Helping Silicon Slopes Provide 1 Million Meals to... Read more
Notes from the 22 December 2018 print edition of The Economist, from an article entitled “The search for life on Mars: New results suggest there is no methane on Mars: Living organisms are thus less likely”: Most of the methane in Earth’s atmosphere derives from living organisms, so discovering methane in the atmosphere of Mars would be strongly suggestive of Martian life. Alas, though, the preliminary results from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a European spacecraft that has... Read more
Notes from “Voting with their feet: Thousands of Gulf Arabs are abandoning their homeland: Fed up with social restrictions and political repression, Saudis are leading the way,” an article that appeared in the print edition of The Economist for 19 January 2019: According to the refugee agency of the United Nations — formally, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees — 815 citizens of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia applied for asylum in 2017. That’s not... Read more
Matthew 2:13-23 Luke 2:39-40 In the Bible — in the Old Testament, anyway — Egypt is often a threat. But it also figures more than once as a place of sanctuary. On this topic, see S. Kent Brown, “Biblical Egypt: Land of Refuge, Land of Bondage” Ensign (September 1980). Matthew 2:16 cites as prophecy a statement taken from Hosea 11:1: “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” In its original context, it clearly refers to the... Read more
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has issued a new, official Gospel Topics essay on the question of the geographical setting for events in the Book of Mormon: “Book of Mormon Geography” It’s very welcome. *** Not infrequently, I read comments from purportedly liberated ex-Mormons about the glories of churchless Sundays. Instead of attending mind-numbingly dull and repetitious meetings, they claim to spend most of their Sundays skiing, golfing, biking, reading classic... Read more
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New Testament Note 13
Matthew 3:1-6 Mark 1:2-6 Luke 3:1-6 John 1:19-23 Again, I want to stress that the Isaianic prophecy — cited most fully by Luke 3:4-5, but mentioned in all of the gospels — refers to John as the advance guard or herald of a “royal progress,” assigned not to level all of the mountains and valleys of Earth but, speaking figuratively, to prepare the road that the king, the messiah, would travel in order to greet his people... Read more