“They thought they knew what they were dismissing”

Last updated on: February 11, 2024 at 3:16 am By Dan Peterson

I return briefly to Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer’s posthumously-published 2008 book Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind, which I recently re-read while flying over the Pacific. And, just to refresh memories, I again cite here the brief bio that appears at the end of that volume: Known as Lisby by her many friends and colleagues, Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer was an internationally known psychoanalyst, researcher, and clinician, the author of groundbreaking papers on female development, clinical... Read more

An Appropriate and Defensible Etymology for “Cumorah”?

Last updated on: February 10, 2024 at 5:51 am By Dan Peterson

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As discomfiting as it certainly is to our critics, the Interpreter Foundation continues to produce materials for the Latter-day Saints and for any who are interested in the Restoration, and to do so at an alarmingly non-glacial pace. Here are the most recent publications from the Foundation: “Second Nephi as a Legal Document,” written by Martin Oman Evans Abstract: Considering conventions of the ancient Near East, 2 Nephi can be understood as a legal document or legal archive. Factors supporting... Read more

Notes on the Origin of New Zealand

Last updated on: February 9, 2024 at 4:44 am By Dan Peterson

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We began the day with almost all of our group taking a multi-hour minibus tour of mostly eastern Sydney, looking at the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the magnificent Sydney Opera House and including really good fish and chips and shrimp, followed by gelato, at Bondi Beach. As I sit down to commence writing this blog entry, we’re just emerging from Sydney’s huge and excellent harbor (harbour?). From our veranda of our cabin, I’m looking southward at the sheer cliffs... Read more

An apology for my travels

Last updated on: February 8, 2024 at 1:32 pm By Dan Peterson

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Amazingly, something new has appeared on the website of the Interpreter Foundation! It is “Conference Talks: Consecration and Sacrilege in Early Rabbinic Judaism” Avram Shannon spoke on “Consecration and Sacrilege in Early Rabbinic Judaism” at the fourth Temple on Mount Zion Conference, held on Saturday, 10 November 2018 in the Tanner Building at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. The presentations were filmed, and both video and audio recordings of each presentation are available. The videos are currently available both... Read more

Of Martin Harris and “Spiritual Eyes”

Last updated on: February 7, 2024 at 1:05 am By Dan Peterson

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Just in case anybody is out there who (a) might be interested and (b) is or will be in the vicinity of Sydney, Australia on the relevant date: It seems that I’m likely to be doing a fireside there on Thursday, 22 February 2024. I’ll try to post confirmation of this in the next few days, with precise time, topic, and so forth, but I think it’s almost certainly going to happen. If so, it will probably be held... Read more

Immanuel Kant, Mark Twain, and Clairvoyance

Last updated on: February 6, 2024 at 5:43 am By Dan Peterson

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On the flight from Honolulu to Sydney, I watched the 2015 film In the Heart of the Sea, about the disastrous final voyage of the Nantucket whaling ship Essex, which served as the inspiration for Herman Melville’s great novel Moby Dick. The movie was a box office bomb. I honestly don’t know why that would be so; I enjoyed it very much (if enjoy is really the right word to use for such a horrifying tale). I also read... Read more

Richard Bushman on witnesses to the Book of Mormon

Last updated on: February 8, 2024 at 6:21 am By Dan Peterson

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Here are some notes about certain of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon — both official and unofficial — that I’ve drawn from the fourth chapter of Richard Lyman Bushman’s book Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023): Emma viewed herself as one who had never left the faith. “I know Mormonism to be the truth; and believe the Church to have been established by divine direction.” She knew she had “been... Read more

Puʻuhonua

Last updated on: February 4, 2024 at 11:48 pm By Dan Peterson

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I sometimes encounter the complaint from some atheists that they don’t even desire immortality because, they say, eternal life would be unendurably boring. I don’t take the complaint very seriously. On any given day, if I were to be told that I could choose between my life ending at midnight, on the one hand, and, on the other, having at least one more day, I would always choose the latter. I would prefer to think of the next day,... Read more

Pre-Columbian contact between South America and New Zealand?

Last updated on: February 3, 2024 at 5:40 pm By Dan Peterson

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The standard view of the origins of the Polynesians, and specifically of the Māori of New Zealand, is that they derive from the Lapita civilization of Melanesia and Micronesia. Here is a passage from Māori History: A Captivating Guide to the History of the Indigenous Polynesian People of New Zealand (2022), apparently written by Matt Clayton, that I found particularly interesting: It seems that for roughly one thousand years, the Lapita people consolidated some of the basic Polynesian cultural... Read more

For Groundhog Day

Last updated on: February 2, 2024 at 9:55 pm By Dan Peterson

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“Temple Themes in the Book of Abraham,” written by Stephen O. Smoot Abstract: The Book of Abraham is replete with temple themes, although not all of them are readily obvious from a surface reading of the text. Temple themes in the book include Abraham seeking to become a high priest, the interplay between theophany and covenant, and Abraham building altars and dedicating sacred space as he sojourns into Canaan. In addition to these, the dramatic opening episode of the... Read more