We enjoyed dinner last night with a former student of mine (during the intensive Arabic program that I directed in Jerusalem back in January through May or so of 1993) and his wife and family.  They live in Ma‘adi, south of Cairo, about two blocks from where my wife and I lived when we were here in Egypt just after our marriage.  He heads up the Egyptian operations of a significant company and is serving as the president... Read more

    While we waited for the other members of our tour group to arrive — they’ve gradually been coming in all day today and will continue to land into the early hours of tomorrow — we’ve enjoyed ourselves.   Last night, my wife and I had a really good teppanyaki dinner with the four members of the tour (that we know of) who had already arrived.  Two were with us in Alexandria and two more arrived last night from... Read more

    We at Interpreter are gearing up to be useful — or, at least, to try to be –during the approaching 2019 curriculum year of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It is, as I’m assuming you’re already aware, destined to be a very different year for members of the Sunday School classes of the Church.  So try this:   “Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me New Testament Lesson 1″   ***   The latest installment of Dr. Jeffrey Mark... Read more

    It’s good to be back in Cairo.  My wife and I spent the first four years of our married life living just south of the city, so it’s always at least slightly emotional for us to return to our first shared home.  We’re really pleased, too, that one of our sons will be joining us here in slightly more than thirty hours, along with the rest of the tour group that we’ll be accompanying.  He hasn’t been here... Read more

    I know.  I know.  Christmas is over.   But I still have some good stuff that’s related to Christmas that I want to share.  So here are three such items:   Jonah Goldberg — if you ponder his name for a while, you’ll begin to suspect that he may not be a Bolivian Catholic — offers up a stimulating and sometimes really funny little essay on   “The War on Christmas”   And I also really, really like... Read more

    Bill Hamblin and I published the column below on 19 December 2016, in the Deseret News:   Ezekiel 34:2-6 records a message given to that ancient Hebrew prophet: “Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed... Read more

    A Catholic scholar and priest — a convert from Anglicanism who had first converted to Anglicanism from fundamentalist Protestantism — makes an interesting brief argument:   “Yes, Jesus Really Existed and He Was Born on December 25”   I have no doubt whatever about the historical existence of Jesus, but I confess to remaining unpersuaded that 25 December is his actual birthday.   ***   Here’s a short piece from a prolific Catholic scholar and writer:   “Stephen... Read more

    Please take just a minute to watch a video made for today, from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:   “Watch: Church Shares Beautiful Christmas Video, ‘He Was Born for You'”   ***   Here’s an interesting bit of history that’s relevant to this very day:   “How Joseph Smith Spent His Last Christmas”   ***   I share with you, as a variant of the story of Christmas, the New International Version rendering of John... Read more

    One of the most illustrious institutions of antiquity was the Great Library of Alexandria, which, in turn, was part of a larger research institution — something like a university — called the Mouseion.  (It took its name from the nine Muses, the goddesses of arts and letters and music, to whom it was dedicated.  At its height, it may have held as many as 400,000 scrolls, which would perhaps be equivalent to about 100,000 modern books — a... Read more

    Bill Hamblin and I published the following article in the Deseret News on 22 December 2017:   The English word “Christmas” — “Christ’s mass” — reveals the holiday’s Catholic origin. With the coming of the Protestant Reformation, though, many Catholic practices and traditions were rejected or at least abandoned. How did Christmas survive the Protestant purge? In some places, it nearly didn’t. At first, it faced relatively few challenges in England. When the Anglican Church split with Rome... Read more