It was not only in the divinely revealed ordinances of the temple that frankincense played a central role. Incense was an important part of the worship of other deities as well,[1] and it had other functions besides worship in the strictest sense. In Israel, incense helped to purify from the plague, and it may have been thought to have a sanitary influence in places of slaughter and sacrifice.[2] Certainly its aroma must have been preferable to the smell... Read more

      Stephen Smoot, who (perhaps as an excuse to come in from the perpetually bone-chilling cold outside) is pursuing graduate studies in Egyptology at the University of Nome, Alaska, the University of Toronto, offers an early take on Dr. John Gee’s forthcoming volume An Introduction to the Book of Abraham:   “Book Review: An Introduction to the Book of Abraham”   I was pleased, by the way, to have Dr. Gee drop by this afternoon at the conclusion of my... Read more

    A bit more from Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes, A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016):   “Consider gravity.  Newton described gravity with his famous ‘inverse square’ law:  any two masses attract each other, with a force that decreases with the square of the distance.  Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is a more accurate and more difficult improvement on Newton’s theory.  In both theories, a quantity known as Newton’s gravitational constant appears,... Read more

    First, an article in the Deseret News about the new Lee Groberg/Mark Goodman film:   “Old Joseph Smith PBS documentary remade into new docudrama depicting ‘American Prophet’s’ polarizing life”   ***   I’m in a reminiscing vein, so I thought that I might tell about another early experience with Hugh Nibley.   I started off at BYU as a mathematics major.  But I soon realized that, while I admired mathematicians and mathematics, this wasn’t my particular strength and it wasn’t... Read more

    Still plodding along:   Frankincense is a fragrant gum resin consisting of small white chunks and beads that can easily be ground into a powder. When burned, this powder gives off a pleasant odor like that of balsam. The resin, milky white in color, was probably produced in the central district of Hadramawt, along the Indian Ocean coast of southern Arabia. From there, it was exported to Palestine and other parts of the Mediterranean world. The caravan routes... Read more

    But, first, two quite distinct but related items from the religious liberty front:   “Will Barronelle’s faith cost her everything?”   “I’m a T-Shirt Maker With Gay Customers and Gay Employees. I Still Was Sued.”   ***   Compare and contrast these stories:   “Special Needs, Special Love”   “A Moral Duty to Abort”   ***   Darn.  Somebody brought this 2005 article to my attention earlier today, and I failed to make a note of who it was.... Read more

    Continuing with some passages from Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes, A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016):   “Our models are mixtures of well-tested theories, reasonable assumptions and guesses; as Richard Feynman [d. 1988; 1965 Nobel laureate in physics] noted, ‘it is not unscientific to make a guess.’  Science happens when we ask the Universe whether we guessed right.  Otherwise, the experimenter is doing little more than stamp collecting, and the theorist... Read more

    My wife is currently doing some study of Thomas Jefferson, and particularly of his religious views and the so-called “Jefferson Bible.”  (She just returned on Friday from a trip out to, among other things, the Smithsonian Institution, where Jefferson’s Bible resides, and to Monticello.)  She brings the following passage to my attention, from an 11 April 1823 letter that Jefferson wrote to John Adams:   DEAR SIR, — The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in... Read more

    Drawn from Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes, A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016):   In 1973, the Australian cosmologist Brandon Carter delivered a now-famous address in Warsaw in which he spoke of what he called the “Weak Anthropic Principle.”  “We must be prepared,” he said, “to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers.”... Read more