I published this column in the Deseret News back on 3 December 2015:   One way of explaining the Book of Mormon, if Joseph Smith’s own explanation is rejected, is to regard it as merely the product of Joseph’s subjective imagination — whether that imagination is judged to have been sincerely deceived or, for whatever motives, deceptive and dishonest. The historical evidence, though, seems lethal to such theories. And it’s instructive to note that, while modern skeptics commonly... Read more

    Our flight out of Cairo to Paris was delayed by about twelve hours, so we were able to spend an extra night in Egypt and then — our connections having all been broken — were obliged (quelle horreur!) to spend a night in Paris.   We used that extra night rather well, if I must say so myself.   Along with our son and two friends who were caught in the same situation, we hired a van and... Read more

    I published this article in the Deseret News on 29 October 2015:   Few, if any, medicines cure every patient. Even the best pharmaceuticals can sometimes cause harm, hence the obligatory warnings. One in 7 flu vaccinations leads to coughing, abdominal pain or nausea. One in a hundred causes fever. But this scarcely means that vaccinations are without value. So, too, with “apologetics,” arguments marshaled to defend a (typically religious) position. Few arguments will convince everybody — otherwise,... Read more

    Bill Hamblin and I published this column in the Deseret News on 11 May 2018:   From Neolithic times, if not earlier, humans have buried revered ancestors and leaders in monumental tombs that could serve as sites for pilgrimage. In part, this was an attempt for oral cultures to remember the blessed dead. Parents could take children on a pilgrimage, visiting the tombs of their ancestors, while telling the stories of their great-grandparents. A classic example from the... Read more

    Sigh.  Once again, I see the confident assertion that the Church has been funding the Interpreter Foundation and FairMormon for years.  Denying this claim dozens of times seems to make no dent in the self-assurance with which some continue to advance it.   I don’t like fundraising very much.  I certainly wouldn’t do it, just for fun, if the Church were covering our budget!   ***   While we were at Saqqara, a number of us went into... Read more

    As it has been wont to do every single week for nearly 6.5 years, Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture has published a new article on a Friday:   “‘Come unto Me’ as a Technical Gospel Term”   Abstract: The Book of Mormon repeatedly outlines a six-part definition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but most writers within the book refer to only two or three of them at a time in a biblical rhetorical device called merismus. Throughout the scriptures, the term “come... Read more

    I found out just last night that — contrary to what I had heard before — there are still some spaces available on the “Exotic Egypt” tour that Hany Tawfik and I will be leading from 9 May through 16 May 2019.   I hope that some of you will consider coming along.  This country is inexhaustibly interesting.   ***   I’m trying to catch up with my account of what we’ve been doing.   On Thursday, 3... Read more

    The most recent installment of the joint Hamblin/Peterson Deseret News column has appeared:   “The lotus flower is more than a simple water lily”   ***   The Interpreter Foundation is trying to make itself useful for this 2019 New Testament curriculum year in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:   Here is an Interpreter Radio (audio) Roundtable — featuring Martin Tanner and Bruce Webster as panelists — for Come, Follow Me New Testament Lesson 2, “Be It unto Me... Read more

    For some odd reason, Egypt is on my mind at the moment.  So here’s a Deseret News column that I published back in May 2018:   As I write, I’m sitting atop the Giza Plateau near Cairo, where the most famous of Egypt’s roughly 80 pyramids have watched over the Nile Valley for nearly 5,000 years. It seems an appropriate place to think about the Book of Abraham. First published in English in 1842, the Book of Abraham has been an... Read more

    I have received several requests to comment on recent changes to Latter-day Saint temple rituals.  I’m holding off from doing so for several reasons.   The first and perhaps most obvious of them is that, while I’ve visited a considerable number of temples over the past week or two, none of them appears to have been affected by those recent changes.  In fact, no rituals have been performed in any of them for at least fourteen hundred years... Read more