“You heard that hundreds of years ago, in the pre-existence!”

Last updated on: March 7, 2021 at 10:14 pm By Dan Peterson

Der Bernertempel — The first modern temple on the European continent was this one, the Bern Switzerland Temple (actually located in Zollikofen), which was dedicated in September 1955, by President David O. McKay. Our friend and her late husband served as temple missionaries here, and she considered that service one of the great experiences of her life.

***

I spent part of this morning and this afternoon involved in the funeral for a French sister (born in Marseilles, in January 1928). Having converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in immediately postwar France at the age of nineteen — she was baptized during the month of December, in the Mediterranean Sea — she came to the United States in 1952, where she met her husband in California. She was a member of our ward for many years.

Her funeral was a simple graveside service, but I was privileged to act as one of the pallbearers and to dedicate her grave.

The musical pieces that were offered at the service were, as it happens, a pair that I would really like to have performed at my own funeral.

The first was an instrumental version of “Going Home.” a melody drawn from Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (From the New World) that is often graced with lyrics that I love deeply:

Going home, going home
I am going home
Quiet like, some still day
I am going home

It’s not far, just close by
Through an open door
Work all done, care laid by
Never fear no more

Mother’s there expecting me
Father’s waiting too
Lots of faces gathered there
All the friends I knew

I’m just going home

No more fear, no more pain
No more stumbling by the way
No more longing for the day
Going to run no more

Morning star light the way
Restless dreams all gone
Shadows gone, break of day
Real life has begun

There’s no break, there’s no end
Just living on
Wide awake, with a smile
Going on and on, going on and on

Going home, going home
I am going home
Shadows gone, break of day
Real life has begun

I’m just going home

The Norwegian singer Sissel (Sissel Kyrkjebø) has a very nice recording of “Going Home” here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ_2Xbvb0rQ

The second was a vocal rendition of “Be Still, My Soul,” with words by the Scottish lyricist Jane Borthwick (1813-1897), inspired by those of the German hymn writer Katharina von Schlegel (b. 1697) and set to music by the great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). (The a capella boys’ choir Libera performs it beautifully here; please listen through to the end.) These are the lyrics as they are given in the Latter-day Saint hymnal and as they were sung today at the cemetery:

Be still, my soul: The Lord is on thy side;

With patience bear thy cross of grief or pain.

Leave to thy God to order and provide;

In ev’ry change he faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul: Thy best, thy heav’nly Friend

Thru thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
Be still, my soul: Thy God doth undertake

To guide the future as he has the past.

Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;

All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be still, my soul: The waves and winds still know

His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.
Be still, my soul: The hour is hast’ning on

When we shall be forever with the Lord,

When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,

Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.

Be still, my soul: When change and tears are past,

All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

My wife also delivered some brief remarks, and one of the stories that she told from our friend’s handwritten autobiography struck me so much that I’m going to share it here:

When she first heard of the “Mormons,” the very first thing that Jeanne was told about them was polygamy. She was appalled. But something about them intrigued her nonetheless when she saw the missionaries. So, although neither she nor her friends at the time were particularly religious, they invited the elders to teach them a lesson. But she wasn’t very impressed at the beginning, because the missionaries hadn’t come to what she calls in her memoir “their ‘special’ belief.”

Then something strange happened. As the missionaries unfolded “The Plan of Salvation,” I told myself, “I have heard that before!” and yet I knew it could not be. . . . I searched and I searched in my mind. . . . While the missionaries were talking to the other girls, I thought with all my strength and then the truth exploded in my mind. “You heard that hundreds of years ago, in the pre-existence!” The absolute truth of this statement made me want to jump up for joy! But of course, of course, that’s where it was! I had to hold onto the arms of the chair to stop myself from shouting, “But it’s true, it’s TRUE!” Then another strange and wonderful thing happened. My spirit left my body and I found myself in a very large room, like the veil room in the Los Angeles Temple, all white, white carpet, white walls, and two steps before me leading to the largest veil I had ever seen. The cloth of the veil was very thin. I could sense a light behind it. I was wondering where I was and what was I doing there when suddenly I heard the rending of the cloth as if the veil was torn by an invisible hand and as the veil flew open I saw an immense ocean of high waves rolling towards me, except that the waves were not made of water, but were made of lights of different intensities. Instinctively I raised my arms above my head, not because of fear, but more because of awe. All this was so strange and so unexpected and when the waves engulfed me, the joy I felt was so exquisite that it cannot be described because it was not of this earth. And at that moment it was made clear to me that God lived and the Church was true. Many people search for years for the truth and it was all given to me in one night.

***

On a discordant but necessary note:

I’ve just been alerted to a claim being made online that, as a result of a pair of critical reviews of The Joseph Smith Papers, Revelations and Translations, Volume 4: Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts, eds. Robin Scott Jensen and Brian M. Hauglid (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2018) that were published by the Interpreter Foundation back in 2019– the two reviews in question are Jeff Lindsay’s “A Precious Resource with Some Gaps” and John Gee’s “The Joseph Smith Papers Project Stumbles” — John Gee and I were summoned to the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City, where unidentified Church leaders “yelled” at us because of our offense.

This claim is misleading in important ways.

It is true that certain people connected with the Historical Department of the Church were not happy about those two critical reviews — who loves to be negatively reviewed? — and it is true that John Gee and I met (entirely willingly) with a couple of the principal figures in the Joseph Smith Papers project to talk about the reviews.

But the meeting took place in the Church Historical Library, not in the Church Office Building. No leaders of the Church were involved (assuming that, by “Church leaders,” General Authorities of the Church are intended). And there was absolutely no “yelling.” It was an entirely civil conversation, conducted entirely in conversational tones of voice. One misunderstanding that needed to be clarified was that the criticisms in the two reviews were directed solely at certain aspects of that fourth volume, not at the entire volume, and certainly not at the Joseph Smith Papers project as a whole (let alone at the Church or at its leaders).

In the wake of the misleading account to which I’ve just responded, my Malevolent Stalker has come forward (anonymously, of course) to volunteer the supposed fact that this isn’t the first time that I’ve been rebuked by the Brethren.

However, as a matter of fact, I have never been rebuked or chastised by any General Authority of the Church, nor by any combination of General Authorities. Never.

I hope that’s clear enough.

“Māori Seers and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand”

Last updated on: March 1, 2021 at 3:38 pm By Dan Peterson

Waitangi, Bay of Islands — In honor of Louis Midgley, a view of one of his favorite places: the Bay of Islands, as seen from Waitangi, on the North Island of New Zealand

***

New today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:

Robert Joseph, “The Lord Will Not Forget Them! Māori Seers and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand”

Abstract: This essay demonstrates that the key prophetic matakite dreams and visions of at least the nine nineteenth-century East Coast Māori seers appear to have been (and should continue to be) fulfilled surprisingly by the coming of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to New Zealand. There are lessons for current and future Latter-day Saint leaders and missionaries to reflect on this little-known history on the nineteenth-century Māori conversions to the restored Church.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See Robert Joseph, “The Lord Will Not Forget Them! Māori Seers and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand,” in Remembrance and Return: Essays in Honor of Louis C. Midgley, ed. Ted Vaggalis and Daniel C. Peterson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2021), 323–68. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/remembrance-and-return/.]

***

Here are a few more items from a past issue of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:

Daniel C. Peterson, “Reason, Experience, and the Existence of God”

Abstract: Both reason and experience are essential to religious life, which should be neither completely irrational nor entirely cerebral. But surely, of the two, the experience of direct and convincing revelation would and should trump academic debate, and most obviously so for its recipient. The Interpreter Foundation was established in the conviction that reasoned discussion and analysis necessarily have a place in faithful discipleship, but also in the confidence that divine revelation has genuinely occurred. The role of reason, accordingly, is a helpful one. It serves an important ancillary function. However, it does not supplant experience with God and the divine and must never imagine that it can. Academic scholarship can refine and clarify ideas, correct assumptions, defend truth claims, generate insights, and deepen understanding, but, while human inquiry sometimes creates openings for revelation, it will never replace direct divine communication. Interpreter knows its place.

Brant A. Gardner, “The Book with the Unintentionally Self-Referential Title”

Review of Earl M. Wunderli, An Imperfect Book: What the Book of Mormon Tells Us about Itself (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2013), 328pp + Appendices, Maps, and Index.

Earl M. Wunderli has written a book that works through the reasons he fell out of belief in the Book of Mormon. These are combined with issues that he has added to his original reasons. His presentation is clearly intended to suggest that what he found compelling will also be compelling to other readers. Should it? This review looks at how his arguments are constructed: his methodology, the logic of the analysis, and the way he uses his sources. Although he argues that it is the Book of Mormon that is the imperfect book, his construction of the arguments makes that designation ironic.

Robert A. Rees, “Inattentional Blindness: Seeing and Not Seeing The Book of Mormon”

Review of Earl M. Wunderli, An Imperfect Book: What the Book of Mormon Tells Us about Itself (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2013), 328pp + Appendices, Maps, and Index.

Earl Wunderli, an attorney who has made a lifelong study of the Book of Mormon, concludes that the book is a product of Joseph Smith’s mind and imagination. In doing so, Wunderli marshals evidence and presents his argument as if he were an attorney defending a client in court. Unfortunately, Wunderli’s case suffers from the same weaknesses and limitations of other naturalist criticism in that it exaggerates Joseph Smith’s intellectual and cultural background and compositional skills while ignoring the Book of Mormon’s deep structure, narrative complexity, and often intricate rhetorical patterns.

Benjamin L. McGuire, “Nephi: A Postmodernist Reading”

Authors inevitably make assumptions about their readers as they write. Readers likewise make assumptions about authors and their intentions as they read. Using a postmodern framing, this essay illustrates how a close reading of the text of 1 and 2 Nephi can offer insight into the writing strategies of its author. This reading reveals how Nephi differentiates between his writing as an expression of his own intentions and desires, and the text as the product of divine instruction written for a “purpose I know not.” In order to help his audience understand the text in this context, Nephi as the author interacts with his audience through his rhetorical strategy, pointing towards his own intentions, and offering reading strategies to help them discover God’s purposes in the text.

Mark Alan Wright, “Axes Mundi: Ritual Complexes in Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon”

Places are made sacred through manifestations of the divine or ritual activity. The occurrence of a theophany or hierophany or the performance of particular rituals can conceptually transform a place into an axis mundi, or the center of the world. A variety of such axes mundi are known from the archaeological record of Mesoamerica and the text of the Book of Mormon. I compare and contrast several distinctive types of such ritual complexes from Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon and argue that they served functionally and ideologically similar purposes.

Louis C. Midgley, “The Māori Stairway to Heaven”

A review of Jason Hartley. Ngā Mahi: The Things We Need to Do; The Pathway of the Stars. n.p.: Xlibris, 2013. 264 pp., no index. $23.00AUD (softcover).¹

Jason Hartley’s book manifests a passion for alleviating the problem of Māori surging into the prisons of Aotearoa/New Zealand² by restoring their old, traditional religious ethos and the social control that hinges on the recovery of the old belief that they are potentially noble children of God. In setting out his own disappointing discovery of the roots of both a growing problem and what he believes is the solution, he describes how he came to learn the arcane moral teachings, or old stories, that once buttressed Māori social order. For Latter-day Saints, he also demonstrates that for some Māori, despite much degradation, the Heavens are still open, just as they were when Latter-day Saint missionaries first encountered a people prepared for them and their message by their own seers, thus also implicitly challenging recent efforts to downplay or explain away the old stories as mere embellishments, wishful thinking, or an implausible founding mythology.

***

An obsessive anonymous online critic (my Mini-Stalker, as I’ve come to think of him) suggested yesterday that Witnesses won first prize in the ” Feature Film” category at the LDS Film Festival on Saturday night because Kels Goodman, the Festival’s director, is a brother of Mark Goodman, our film’s director.

But that poor critic doesn’t know the half of it. It’s not just Kels and Mark. The Goodman siblings are a remarkable bunch altogether: Kels, Mark, Benny, John, Len, Nelson, and Saul.

However — believable though it may seem at first glance — it isn’t true that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is an eighth sibling. That would be imaginative fiction. (Come to think of it, it would be rather like the notion that Kels Goodman and Mark Goodman are brothers.)

Revision 8.15. Looking Forward to a Glorious and Peaceful Future for the Middle East

Last updated on: February 8, 2021 at 1:38 pm By Dan Peterson

NASA Egypt and Sinai — Against the barren desert of northeastern Africa, the fertile valley of the Nile River runs northward through Egypt. In this image, the city of Cairo can be seen as a gray smudge where the river widens into its broad fan-shaped delta. Other cities are dotted across the green landscape, giving it a speckled appearance. Where the Nile empties into the Mediterranean Sea (top) the waters are swirling with color, likely a mixture of sediment, organic matter, and possibly marine plant life. Farther west, the bright blue color of the water is likely less-organically rich sediment, perhaps sand. East of the delta lies the arid Sinai Peninsula, whose pointed tip is home to rugged mountains, some as high as 8,600 feet. The lattice work of pale lines marks the paths of ephemeral rivers. The Sinai Peninsula intrudes into the Red Sea. Farther east are Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. At top right is the disputed territory of the West Bank.
(Wikimedia Commons NASA public domain image)

But, first:

Book of Moses Essays #41: Moses 1 in Its Ancient Context: Moses in the Presence of God (Moses 1:31, chapters 2-4)

***

And this:

A couple of days ago, I posted an entry that was partly about anti-Semitism. (Even the funny little pseudo-documentary video to which I linked in that entry originally ended by blithely — and satirically — blaming the loss of the RMS Titanic on “the Jews”; that obviously unserious accusation has clearly since been edited out.) My blog entry caught the attention of my Malevolent Stalker, who has been anonymously maligning me online every week and most days for the better part of the past two decades. One of his favorite tropes over that period has been to insinuate that I’m an anti-Semite — probably because, as he well knows, the charge of anti-Semitism, if it can be made to stick, is justly viewed as one of the most destructive and damaging accusations in the rhetorical arsenal. So, of course, with the stunning lack of intellectual integrity that has been characteristic of his behavior from its earliest months, he has seized upon my recent blog entry criticizing anti-Semitism as being, itself, anti-Semitic.

Among other things, he suggests that the joke that I quoted about supposed Jewish responsibility for the sinking of the Titanic is an anti-Semitic joke. In fact, though, it’s a Jewish joke — a Jewish joke that has often been posted on Jewish websites and on websites critical of anti-Semitism (as, for example, here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here).

While he plays his bizarre games, though, my concerns grow at what seems to be an international resurgence of anti-Jewish bigotry:

“The Flames of Anti-Semitism Are Growing Higher, Fueled by Both the Left and Right: 2020 was a terrible year for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and attacks on Jews. 2021 promises to be worse.”

My father very explicitly and deliberately raised me with a loathing of anti-Semitism and, even, with a commitment to opposing it. I take his charge very seriously.

***

Carrying on with my book revisions, opening with a reference to the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict:

There is no such thing, in this terribly complex matter, as “the Lord’s side.” Neither side is without sin, and neither side is without just cause. As a Church, we must attempt to steer a neutral course between the various factions. As Latter-day Saints, we must hóld ourselves and everyone who would seek our support to the standards of justice and charity that the gospel mandates. It is only after a purging and a cleansing that Israel will be truly worthy of all the blessings that the Lord is willing to grant. “Then shall Jerusalem be holy.”[1]

In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even everyone that is written among the living in Jerusalem: When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning.[2]

The Lord’s justice and mercy extend to all peoples of the earth. Every human individual of every race is his child and the object of his love. Our task as individuals is to emulate that divine love. Our mission as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to work toward the day when all the nations “shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.”[3]

The prophet Isaiah foretold such a time, when the example of God’s people would draw all the world’s attention and make many from all nations desire to know more of what the Saints have.

And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.[4]

The prophet Micah gives almost precisely the same words, but then adds,

But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it. For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.[5]

As the prophets have consistently taught, there will be differences of religious opinion on the earth even during the Millennium. What will be missing at that day is the hostility and the lack of respect that too often characterizes our relationships with those who disagree with us now. If we are serious about working for the establishment of Zion, we will do all we can to drive those characteristics out of our lives.

There is common ground between us, the Jews, and the Muslims. We should seek both to identify it and to build upon it. Indeed, we may have a special calling and responsibility to do so. “A cabinet minister of Egypt once told me,” Elder Hunter recalled, “that if a bridge is ever built between Christianity and Islam it must be built by the Mormon Church.””[6] We also have common enemies. Materialism and immorality are denounced from the pulpit of the Conference Center and the Tabernacle just as they are denounced by Muslim observers of the West. We both seek to build a society that will be pleasing to God. We Latter-day Saints call it Zion, a name that currently has offensive connotations for Muslims. But what we mean by “Zion” is something that they would not find nearly so offensive. It is a society that would embody many of the deepest values of the Qur’an, including care of orphans, widows, and the poor; worship of the one God; a religion that permeates all aspects of life and serves as the basis for our commercial, cultural, and social activities; and a desire to please God by action, by faith, and works.

So long as we are separated from the Muslims by a wall of mutual incomprehension, and by a mutual hostility that has been centuries in construction, so long as we mistrust each other’s motives, we will find it very hard to communicate any of the things that matter most to us. Generations of Christian missionaries have testified to the difficulty of bringing Muslims to an acceptance of the divinity of Christ. When once we have established that basis of mutual respect and mutual sympathy, however, I am convinced that it will be possible to share the gospel with Muslims. It may take a very long time to do so, but “the worth of souls is great” and abundantly merits our investment. Furthermore, the Lord promises success in that venture. Someday, he says, his blessings will rest upon Egypt and Iraq, as well as upon Israel. The three nations, no more divided by the violent political hatreds that have crippled the region for centuries, will be united in God’s service. And, most astonishing of all, a temple will someday stand on the banks of the Nile.

In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, and a great one, and he shall deliver them. And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day, and shall do sacrifice and oblation; yea, they shall vow a vow unto the Lord, and perform it. And the Lord shall smite Egypt: he shall smite and heal it: and they shall return even to the Lord, and he shall be intreated of them, and shall heal them. In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: Whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.[7]

This is a remarkable prospect. It will take all our ability, all our learning, all our sensitivity, all our devotion and commitment to make it come true. But, with the blessing of God, someday it most surely will.

[1] Joel 3:17.

[2] Isaiah 4:2-4.

[3] Zechariah 14:16.

[4] Isaiah 2:2-4.

[5] Micah 4:4-5.

[6] Hunter, “All Are Alike Unto God,” 74.

[7] Isaiah 19:19-25.

And thus endeth the draft of my book revision as it currently stands. But there is much more to be done.

“Fantasy and Reality in the Translation of the Book of Abraham”

Last updated on: January 30, 2021 at 12:28 am By Dan Peterson

A view of Syene or Aswan — Few places are more “Egyptian” to me than Aswan, in Upper Egypt. Please join John Gee and me there in November of this year.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)

I’m pleased to announce that yet another new article — this one by John Gee — has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:

“Fantasy and Reality in the Translation of the Book of Abraham”

Abstract: The volume editors of The Joseph Smith Papers Revelations and Translations: Volume 4 propose a theory of translation of the Book of Abraham that is at odds with the documents they publish and with other documents and editorial comments published in the other volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. Two key elements of their proposal are the idea of simultaneous dictation of Book of Abraham Manuscripts in the handwritings of Frederick G. Williams and Warren Parrish, and Joseph Smith’s use of the so-called Alphabet and Grammar. An examination of these theories in the light of the documents published in the Joseph Smith Papers shows that neither of these theories is historically tenable. The chronology the volume editors propose for the translation of the Book of Abraham creates more problems than it solves. A different chronology is proposed. Unfortunately, the analysis shows that the theory of translation of the Book of Abraham adopted by the Joseph Smith Papers volume editors is highly flawed.

***

And here are two new items from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File©:

“How the Church Is Helping Vulnerable Women and Children in Utah: Latter-day Saint Charities donates to the Children’s Justice Center and the Young Women’s Christian Association”

“‘English Connect’ Course Unites Family on their Path to Self-Reliance”

***

You might enjoy this item, which was brought to my notice by the estimable Irish Latter-day Saint Robert Boylan:

“Jeffrey R. Holland on the Importance of the Book of Mormon in an Interview with Andrew Teal”

He also called my attention to this short passage:

“Joseph F. Merrill (1868-1952) on the Definition of “Faith””

Since Elder Merrill (a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1931 until his death in 1952) compares faith in religious matters to faith in scientific matters, I think that it might be worthy of note that he held a doctorate in physics from Johns Hopkins University. In other words, he seems to have had some actual acquaintance with science.

***

I found this essay by Interpreter’s own Jeff Lindsay quite touching:

“The Fox at My Door”

***

I would like to share with you, in its entirety, an important anonymous essay that I received this morning:

you’re a twisted lyin cultist propaganda pimp who dont give a whit bout truth….liar legacy of a vxx weak minded coward. people like you otta get the boot ya bloated parasite.

It’s possible, even likely, that I’ve missed one or more of the vitally significant contributions made by the modestly self-concealed gentleman and scholar who sent it to me. But this is the 639th such composition that I have on file, dating back to 4 August 2012. Taken together they provide a remarkable glimpse into the mind of one of the great moral leaders and one of the deepest thinkers of our time. Their themes have been extremely consistent over the past roughly eight and a half years; their length and their verbal expression have varied remarkably little. They’re all quite plainly the products of the same incisive brain, unmistakably written by someone who is associated with the predominantly atheistic ex-Latter-day Saint message board established some years ago by one Dr. Shades. (He must be very proud.) That is where my Malevolent Stalker holds court, although this person himself — while driven by the same unmistakable charity and love — seems too different in rhetorical style to actually be my Malevolent Stalker.

***

Once again, I share links to some past articles from an early volume of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. I hope that you’ll enjoy them, or that you’ll enjoy them again:

Terryl L. Givens, “Letter to a Doubter”

William J. Hamblin, “The Sôd of YHWH and the Endowment”

Abstract: In the Hebrew Bible, the Sôd of God was a council of celestial beings who consulted with God, learned His sôd/secret plan, and then fulfilled that plan. This paper argues that the LDS endowment is, in part, a ritual reenactment of the sôd, where the participants observe the sôd/council of God, learn the sôd/secret plan of God, and covenant to fulfill that plan.

Stephen D. Ricks, “Some Notes on Book of Mormon Names: The Book of Mormon as an Ancient Document: Proper Names as a Test Case”

Abstract: This study considers the Book of Mormon personal names Josh, Nahom, and Alma as test cases for the Book of Mormon as an historically authentic ancient document.

Benjamin L. McGuire, “Josiah’s Reform: An Introduction”

William J. Hamblin, “Vindicating Josiah”

For an introduction, see Benjamin L. McGuire, “Josiah’s Reform: An Introduction.”
For a counterpoint, see Kevin Christensen, “Prophets and Kings in Lehi’s Jerusalem and Margaret Barker’s Temple Theology”

Abstract: Margaret Barker has written a number of fascinating books on ancient Israelite and Christian temple theology. One of her main arguments is that the temple reforms of Josiah corrupted the pristine original Israelite temple theology. Josiah’s reforms were therefore, in some sense, an apostasy. According to Barker, early Christianity is based on the pristine, original pre-Josiah form of temple theology. This paper argues that Josiah’s reforms were a necessary correction to contemporary corruption of the Israelite temple rituals and theologies, and that the type of temple apostasy Barker describes is more likely associated with the Hasmoneans.

Kevin Christensen, “Prophets and Kings in Lehi’s Jerusalem and Margaret Barker’s Temple Theology”

For an introduction, see Benjamin L. McGuire, “Josiah’s Reform: An Introduction.”
For a counterpoint, see William J. Hamblin, “Vindicating Josiah.”

Abstract: King Josiah’s reign has come under increasing focus for its importance to the formation of the Hebrew Bible, and for its proximity to the ministry of important prophets such as Jeremiah and Lehi. Whereas the canonical accounts and conventional scholarship have seen Josiah portrayed as the ideal king, Margaret Barker argues Josiah’s reform was hostile to the temple. This essay offers a counterpoint to Professor Hamblin’s “Vindicating Josiah” essay, offering arguments that the Book of Mormon and Barker’s views and sources support one another.

Ghost Stories, Richard Dawkins, Christmas, and Other Related Matters

Last updated on: December 23, 2020 at 12:15 pm By Dan Peterson

A Botticelli Nativity — A Nativity by the great Sandro Botticelli
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I call to your attention two new items that have been posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:

Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me Doctrine and Covenants Lesson 1 “Hearken, O Ye People” (D&C 1)

This is an Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me Doctrine and Covenants Lesson 1, “Hearken, O Ye People,” on D&C 1. The panelists for it were Steve Densley, Matthew Bowen, and Mark Johnson. This roundtable was extracted, freed from commercial and other interruptions, from the 22 November 2020 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show. The complete show may be heard at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-november-22-2020/. The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

Also, from Jonn Claybaugh: “Doctrine and Covenants Study and Teaching Helps — Lesson 1”

***

“Saints Unscripted” has produced another good little video that deserves wide circulation:

“Were the Book of Mormon witnesses lying, tricked, or telling the truth?”

***

For several years, one of my sons wrote occasional articles for the Deseret News, along with Peterson père. Here’s an interesting and seasonally appropriate article from Peterson fils that appeared in 2010:

“Telling ghost stories is a lost tradition on Christmas Eve”

***

I share with you, as a variant of the story of Christmas, the New International Version rendering of John 1:1-14. I choose this passage, and a possibly unfamiliar translation of it, in an effort to see the story of the birth of Christ from a slightly different angle than is provided by the familiar Lukan narrative:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

I think it’s important that we not make Christmas merely about the birth of a little baby. Little babies are born every day. Lots of them. But this wasn’t merely a tiny infant. This was (and is) the Lord of the Universe, the King of Kings, who voluntarily lay his glory by.

***

In an ecumenical spirit, I would also like to wish a very merry though very secular Christmas to my zealously atheistic readers. As a gift, I offer a pair of inspiring quotations from two important writers in the modern atheist canon:

That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built. (Bertrand Russell, “The Free Man’s Worship” [1903])

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. (Richard Dawkins)

***

In good time for Christmas — which, of course, is itself an example of the baleful effects of religious belief upon human societies and culture — here are some choice new specimens from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File:

“Latter-day Saints Around the World: Country Newsroom Websites, December 17, 2020”

“More than 200 New York Pantries Receive Food Donations from Latter-day Saints in 2020: Citation by Governor Cuomo recognizes Church, its bicentennial history and contributions in the state”

“Church Members and Missionaries Aid in Cyclone Cleanup: Evacuees shelter in Church meetinghouses”

“Church and the Salvation Army Team Up to Feed the Hungry: A $1 million donation will help more than 150 communities throughout the United States”

“Church donates $1 million to support Salvation Army efforts as food needs build: The funds will support food distribution in more than 150 locations throughout the United States during the holidays”

“A Lifeline of Hope and Connection — The Church’s Prison Ministry Impacts Lives of Incarcerated: Victor Robinson, who spent 21 years incarcerated, now thanks God for his second chance with a family and a belief in Jesus Christ’s Atonement”

***

Finally, if this story doesn’t touch your heart — be sure to watch the short video that accompanies the article — you may want to consult a cardiologist. If, instead, it leaves you bitter and angry, you may well be my Malevolent Stalker:

“Watch: Country singer surprises Utah teen with a brand-new car: Russell Dickerson teamed up with Chevrolet to gift the 17-year-old a 2021 Chevrolet Traverse, outfitted for her specific needs.”

Brief Theological Introductions, the “Witnesses” Movie Trailer, and a Tender Mercy

Last updated on: November 30, 2020 at 3:00 pm By Dan Peterson

An actor and an illuminated tree — Nephi’s vision, as depicted in 2011 at the long-running but soon-to-conclude annual Hill Cumorah Pageant in New York. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Two substantial new book reviews appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.

One is by Ralph Hancock:

“Nephi’s Obsession, Or, How to Talk with Nephi about God”

Review of Joseph M. Spencer, 1 Nephi: A Brief Theological Introduction (Provo, UT: The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2020). 146 pages. $9.99 (paperback).

Abstract: Joseph Spencer’s intimate familiarity with the Book of Mormon text, based upon years of close textual study and informed by a well- developed theological sensibility, is in full evidence in this lead-off volume in Neal A. Maxwell Institute’s new series of books on the various books of the Book of Mormon. Leaving to prophets and apostles the responsibility for “declaring official doctrine,” this new series approaches the book with the tools of the “scholarly practice” of theology. In Spencer’s case at least, his practice is understood to be (1) informed by an emphasis on grace that is skeptical of claims of personal righteousness and (2) very much engaged with contemporary moral and social issues grounded in a fundamental concern for “equality.” Accordingly, Spencer’s reading is much more interested in “what God is doing in history with what we call the Abrahamic covenant” than with the more popular (non-scholarly) concerns of “everyday faithful living;” it is also more interested in Nephi’s “realistic” and “mature” regret over his youthful over-boldness than in his confident statements of righteous faith. In the end, Spencer’s extremely careful but theologically tendentious reading alerts us very skillfully to certain features of Nephi’s imperfect humanity but reveals a consistent preoccupation with any possible faults in the prophet that might be extracted from an ingenious reading of the text. Finally, concerning women in the Book of Mormon, Spencer again expertly raises provocative questions about barely heard female voices but is too eager to frame these questions from the standpoint of the “modern sensibility” of “sexual egalitarianism.”

The other is by Jeff Lindsay:

“An Intelligent, Thoughtful Work on One of the Richest Portions of the Book of Mormon”

Review of Terryl Givens, 2nd Nephi: A Brief Theological Introduction (Provo, UT: The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2020). 124 pages. $9.95 (paperback).

Abstract: Terryl Givens’s well-written and enjoyable book does much to equip readers of the Book of Mormon with new tools to appreciate the riches of a text often viewed as the most difficult part of the Book of Mormon. Givens helps us recognize Nephi’s sorrow over Jerusalem and his passionate hope and joy centered in the Messiah, Jesus Christ. He helps us understand the weightier matters that Nephi focuses on to encourage us to accept the covenants of the Lord and to be part of Zion. Readers will better respect 2 Nephi as a vital part of the Restoration with content critically important for our day.

***

As should be obvious, my Malevolent Stalker is absolutely correct in his claimed perception that production at the Interpreter Foundation is rapidly running out of steam. Here’s another example of our ever-accelerating descent toward extinction, taken from a note written by the man who is working on distribution for the Foundation’s upcoming release of the theatrical film Witnesses:

Megaplex has given us incredibly prominent placement for the poster and the trailer. It will not only be in front of The Forgotten Carols as the last trailer before the film starts. It will also be in the rotation of their hallway digital posters cases and their hallway digital trailer monitors.

For now, Megaplex Theatres have an exclusive placement for the Witnesses movie trailer and for a first look at the Witnesses publicity poster in their hallways and lobbies. My understanding is that The Forgotten Carols has been playing in theaters for something like a week — along with our trailer and our Witnesses poster — and that it’s doing well. Some of you, in fact, may be headed out to theaters tonight or tomorrow to see The Forgotten Carols. If you are (I cannot), would you please return and report?

Here is a complete list of of the Megaplex Theatres in which you can currently see The Forgotten Carols (and, evidently, the Witnesses trailer and poster):

https://forgottencarols.com/tickets/

***

And here’s an important new item from the intrepid reporters of the Babylon Bee that was brought to my attention, I believe, by Doug Ealy:

“Atheists Launch No Lives Matter Movement”

***

Not everything is entirely rosy, however. I now know of at least three people who have declared their refusal to contribute to the completely non-political Interpreter Foundation for reasons that are directly or indirectly connected to my objectionable political views. And I’ve just read a comment elsewhere online that describes me not only as “delusional” but as a literally evil and sociopathic “monster.” I’m almost tempted to conclude from such responses that not everybody is a fan.

***

Again, though, let’s conclude on a good note. A very good note. I don’t personally use the term very often, but I would certainly describe this moving account as what Elder David A. Bednar, in the first fully prepared General Conference address that he delivered after his call to the Quorum of the Twelve, famously called a “tender mercy.” (See “The Tender Mercies of the Lord.”) Since that exceptionally well-received speech, the term has become justly popular among Latter-day Saints.

Incidentally, I was told by a very well placed source quite a few years ago that President Gordon B. Hinckley, through whom Elder Bednar’s call to the apostleship came, took great satisfaction from the speech and the enthusiastic reaction to it among members of the Church. He had extended the apostolic call to a comparatively young and relatively unknown man who had not previously served as a General Authority, putting him, among other things, on the path to a potential Church presidency. That conference talk and the Saints’ response to it was a confirmation, in President Hinckley’s mind, that his inspiration had been correct.

But back to the story:

It was related the other day by my friend Joseph Green — I’ve known him almost all of his life, since we first met him when he was a young boy in Cairo, as “Joey” — who is the son of our dear late friend Arnie Green (see my blog entry (“Arnold H. Green [1940-2019]” and my more recent entry “Family, Temple, and Eternal Life”) and Arnie’s wife, Lani, also a dear and treasured friend. This is a family that we have loved for almost the entirety of our own married life, so the story, which Joey shared (I assume) in response to President Russell M. Nelson’s invitation to us all to #GiveThanks, meant a lot to me when I read it:

I’m grateful for my father’s scriptures. I inherited them after his passing, and I keep them in my office at work. One day I was reading Doctrine & Covenants 3 on my tablet and considering the Lord’s anger at Joseph for repeatedly asking him for permission to give the manuscript of the Book of Mormon (the 116 pages) to Martin Harris. Specifically, I was wondering why Joseph’s repeated request was met with anger while Abraham’s repeated bargaining with God over the inhabitants of Sodom (Genesis 18) was not. What was the difference? Suddenly I missed my father terribly. This was the kind of thing we would often discuss, and I felt this new gap in my life intensely.

And so because I was thinking about him, I pulled his scriptures off my bookshelf and turned to D&C 3 to read it with his set. Maybe I could channel his perspective by holding something that belonged to him. Up at the top of the page he had written a question: Why is Joseph’s bargaining here different from Abraham’s bargaining with God over the inhabitants of Sodom? He had then jotted some notes on the side margin and underlined some of the words in D&C 3 that gave me a few clues on what he was thinking. And just like that I felt I was having a conversation with him again. Different than I expected, and perhaps not the same as in the flesh, but very, very important to me.

“The Visions of Moses and Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation”

Last updated on: October 14, 2020 at 12:00 am By Dan Peterson

UMich campus — On the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where Kent Jackson received his doctorate
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)

A new article, this one by Professor Kent P. Jackson, has been posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation. It will eventually appear in a volume of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:

“The Visions of Moses and Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation”

Abstract: This contribution focuses on the earliest and one of the most significant chapters of the Book of Moses: Moses 1, sometimes called the “Visions of Moses.” Kent Jackson summarizes the sources available relating to the production of this chapter, illuminating obscure corners of its often misunderstood background with his extensive knowledge of the history, manuscripts, and significance of the Joseph Smith Translation.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See Kent P. Jackson, “The Visions of Moses and Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation,” in “To Seek the Law of the Lord”: Essays in Honor of John W. Welch, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson and Daniel C. Peterson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2017), 161–70. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/to-seek-the-law-of-the-lord-essays-in-honor-of-john-w-welch-2/.]

***

And here’s a new item that has just appeared on the painfully necessary Neville-Neville Land blog:

“Jonathan Neville and reductionist history”

***

Robert Boylan’s invaluable blog, “Scriptural Mormonism,” called my attention to this significant article by Brian Hales:

““Denying the Undeniable”: Examining Early Mormon Polygamy Renunciations”

***

Finally, I have a question for the tax professionals out there. I realize that we all have a long time to go until 15 April, but it never hurts, I think, to begin making notes and assembling materials and tracking things for Tax Day. So here’s my question:

I have several folks — my Malevolent Stalker; his epigone, the Mini-Stalker; and perhaps three or four others — whose lives and daily activities revolve, to a considerable degree, around me. Without me, they would seem to have little or no purpose. There would be no meaning to their lives. I am their raison d’être. And this has been so, in the Malevolent Stalker’s deeply affecting case, for something on the order of a decade and a half. Can I claim them as dependents? The Internal Revenue Service is both rather inscrutable and famously unforgiving, so I need advice and counsel. Thanks in advance!

“Turning Gems Into Dirt”

Last updated on: October 4, 2020 at 10:06 pm By Dan Peterson

Felucca on the Nile — A felucca on the River Nile at sunset. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph by Ian Pudsley.). We took many such rides on the Nile — it was, for example, a Cairo Branch tradition to load every member onto one or two large boats for Easter sunrise gatherings — and we still love to include such an evening cruise for guests on our tours to Egypt.

Up today, on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:

Book of Moses Insights #23: Enoch, the Prophet and Seer: Enoch’s Prophecy of the Tribes (Moses 7:5–11, 22)

***

Two recent items from Jeff Lindsay:

“Turning Gems into Dirt: The Case for Adam Clarke as a Source for the “Inspired Translation” of the Bible”

“No, B.H. Roberts Did Not Abandon Belief in the Book of Mormon”

***

Last weekend, my wife and I enjoyed an outdoor, physically-distanced, partially potluck dinner in the backyard of the widow of our good friend and former branch president in Cairo, my eventual colleague on the faculty at Brigham Young University (on whom, see “Arnold H. Green [1940-2019]” and “Bidding Farewell to Arnie Green”). Also there, with their wives and a daughter, were my former mentor, colleague, and department chair Dil Parkinson, now retired, and Joey Green, Arnie and Lani’s son, who was a very young boy when we first met him in Egypt and who has somehow managed to combine a passion for jazz guitar and the novels of Jane Austen with a highly successful and still unfolding career in the military. (See “Joseph Green: Fully Committed.”)

We had a very enjoyable time, not only eating and reminiscing but, well, discussing such subjects as film adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels and Dil’s challenging work on a not yet complete new translation of the Book of Mormon into Arabic.

A couple of weeks ago, the anonymous perennial detractor whom I’ve dubbed my “Mini-Stalker” was shedding his usual crocodile tears about my sad hate- and anger-driven career, which has brought such shame on my church and my university. His specific theme, this time, was my ever-accelerating descent into obscurity. irrelevance, and loneliness. There can be no doubt that he’s right, of course, and that my depressing fate is richly merited and entirely just. Still, I take comfort and satisfaction in the fact that I’ll be accompanied to my solitary and disgraced exile by such good friends.

***

I hope that you enjoyed General Conference today as much as I did. I’m looking forward to the Sunday sessions.

“Why the ‘COVID-19 killed only 6%’ argument is wrong”

Last updated on: September 6, 2020 at 12:18 am By Dan Peterson

We were there, not long ago. — Cape Foulweather, on the Oregon coast, received its name in 1778 from Captain James Cook. In this photograph, it doesn’t appear to merit the title, but things can change. Crowding and “social distancing” are not major problems in places such as this.

I’ve been encountering the claim, of late, that the Centers for Disease Control have finally been forced to admit that they’ve grossly inflated the death toll caused by the coronavirus “hoax” — the phony “scamdemic,” as one person put it. This is not only wrong, it’s dangerously wrong. If it’s taken as true, it will likely lead many Americans into risky behavior that will kill people — if not themselves, then others around them.

“Orac” is the blogging pseudonym of David Gorski, M.D., Ph.D. Here’s what he has to say on the topic:

“The “only 6%” gambit: The latest viral COVID-19 disinformation: While Orac’s been away, there’s arisen a new bit of COVID-19 disinformation that deceptively claims that “only 6%” of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were really due to coronavirus. It turns out that this is QAnon disinformation.”

And if you need other sources on the matter, here’s a representative sampling:

“Viral claim that only 6% of COVID-19 deaths were caused by the virus is flat-out wrong: This stat points to people who didn’t have any underlying conditions or complications.”

“Why the ‘COVID-19 killed only 6%’ argument is wrong: Many people who have died of COVID-19 may have been closer to death than the rest of us, but the fact is the virus killed them before their time.”

“CDC Did Not ‘Admit Only 6%’ of Recorded Deaths from COVID-19”

“Coronavirus: The US has not reduced its Covid-19 death toll to 6% of total”

This is serious, folks:

“IHME model predicts 410,000 Americans could die of COVID-19 by the end of the year if people don’t continue to wear masks – as health experts warn Labor Day will determine how prevalent the virus is in the fall”

***

This is far less serious. But I have some personal experience with it that I thought I would briefly share:

“Travel shaming — another plague of 2020”

“The Critical Points: Travel shaming is here — and it’s a problem”

“Traveling was once social currency. Now it might get you shamed.”

My wife and I are fanatical theater-goers. (That’s scarcely surprising: She was a theater major.). But we’ve canceled all of our season theater tickets. Even where plays were being staged, we concluded that we just didn’t want to be among such crowds. Where we haven’t had major trips canceled on us, we’ve canceled them ourselves. We stay almost entirely at home. We wear masks when we go out. We haven’t seen our children and grandchildren who live in the eastern United States and in Latin America for months, except via computer. (This is extremely distressing to my wife.)

We’re particularly concerned, not only that we not contract COVID-19 ourselves but that we not in any way risk transmitting the coronavirus to my wife’s father, who is quite healthy for his age but who is well into his mid-nineties.

Still, we did, for quite specific reasons that I will not outline here, take two substantial trips this past summer, one to Colorado and one to the Oregon coast.

(My most implacable critics will demand to know those reasons, of course. They somehow seem to imagine that they’ve earned the right to audit my personal finances and to subject me to an invasive public moral colonoscopy and, absent such examinations, to pronounce me guilty. I don’t grant them that right. And the guilty verdict is a foregone conclusion in any event.)

We stayed in lodgings that had been — we inquired into this — meticulously cleaned. We ate almost entirely in our lodgings, but occasionally bought drive-through food from restaurants. Our visits, in our own automobile, were almost entirely to wild and unpopulated places in the Rockies and along the Pacific Ocean. We went to Rocky Mountain National Park and to Dinosaur National Monument, complying with all masking and distancing regulations, gaining access only subject to careful limits and control by the National Park Service. We wore masks. We washed our hands frequently. We carried hand sanitizer with us and in our car, and we used it often.

This angered my most obsessive online critics, nonetheless. (Big surprise!) They pronounced me selfish, arrogant, hypocritical, and indifferent to the suffering and possible death of those upon whom my baneful shadow might fall. On several occasions, one of them labeled me a “murderer.” My Malevolent Stalker, unusually candid about the judgment of me that has inspired him to devote daily time to condemning me for the past fifteen years, declared me “human garbage.”

Some people are rather strange.

Revision 4.2 “Can the Qur’an Be Translated?” (Plus a Note on Religious Bigotry and Me)

Last updated on: August 22, 2020 at 5:11 pm By Dan Peterson

Surat al-Kahf ms. — From a late-16th-century manuscript of the Qur’an’s Surat al-Kahf (“Sura of the Cave”)
Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph

This Muslim emphasis on the words and style of the Arabic Qur’an was vividly illustrated for me once on a trip, many years ago now, to Cyprus. That island, of course, is divided between Christian Greeks and Muslim Turks. I found myself, one day, driving with my wife and others in the Turkish part of the island. It occurred to me that I ought to buy a Turkish translation of the Qur’an while I was there and use it to try to improve my understanding of that language. So I went into a small village bookstore that seemed likely and, after a while, emerged with what I thought was a Turkish Qur’an. I climbed into the car and, as we drove away, removed the wrapper and began to leaf through my new book. I was amazed at how much I could understand. Although it was in Roman letters (the alphabet that modern Turkish uses), it contained an astonishing number of Arabic words. In fact, once I was used to seeing them in my own alphabet, I realized that every single word in the book was Arabic! “What on earth?” I thought. For a few seconds, I was a bit upset. I had asked for a Turkish Qur’an, but had ended up only with a bizarre version of the familiar Arabic original. Then I realized that this was actually something quite important. This was the Arabic Qur’an put into letters that a Turkish Muslim could read; it would enable him to recite the Qur’an in its original language with something like the accurate sounds. He probably wouldn’t understand much of it, because if he knew Arabic he would be able to read it in the Arabic alphabet. (We would never produce such a volume in Mormonism. Can you imagine a Chinese transliteration of the Book of Mormon? Not a translation, mind you, but simply a rendering of the English sounds into Chinese characters so that uncomprehending members of the Church in Taiwan and Hong Kong could sound out English phrases like “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents”? It’s inconceivable.)

Muslims are virtually unanimous in insisting that the Qur’an cannot be translated. One devout English convert to Islam, a man who ended up with the improbable name of Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, put it this way in the foreword to his translation of the Muslims’ holy book:

The Koran cannot be translated. That is the belief of old-fashioned Sheykhs and the view of the present writer. The Book is here rendered almost literally and every effort has been made to choose befitting language. But the result is not the Glorious Koran, that inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy. It is only an attempt to present the meaning of the Koran—and peradventure something of the charm—in English. It can never take the place of the Koran in Arabic, nor was it meant to do so.[1]

It was on the basis of such reasoning that Pickthall chose to call his translation, not “The Koran,” but The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. Other translators, such as the illustrious A. J. Arberry, have shown similar modesty in denying that what they have produced in English is actually the Qur’an. (Arberry’s version is The Koran Interpreted.) Instead, what they have given us, they say, is merely the basic meaning of the text. The intoxicating magic of the book’s language, its “poetry,” its powerful emotional impact, cannot be conveyed across the language frontier. In the Muslim view, there is saving value in reciting the actual words of God, spoken to Muhammad. And those words were in Arabic, not in English or Turkish or any other language. That is why a Turkish Muslim might value the book I found as a way of entering into the language of God himself, where meaning is only a fraction of the divine power.

[1] Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, translator, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (New York: New American Library, n.d.), vii. Some of my own observations on the literary quality of the Qur’an appear in my “Editor’s Introduction: By What Measure Shall We Mete?” in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 2 (1990): vii-xxvi.

***

The new academic year is about to begin, an odder one than any of us have ever experienced, and I’m scheduled to teach three courses, on (1) the religion of Islam, (2) the humanities of Islam, and (3) classical Arabic literature. I’ve been teaching such subjects, and writing and speaking on them, for decades.

In that light, it’s bizarre but true to form that my Malevolent Stalker is once again publicly claiming (and that at least some of his chorus of gullible groupies are singing harmony with him) that I characteristically denigrate and demean the religious faith of others, that I hold non-Latter-day Saint religious beliefs and religious believers in resentful disrespect, and that I even hope to inflict “pain” (his word) on those who don’t share my religious beliefs.

The sheer hateful dishonesty of his accusation is breathtaking. And it is dishonest. My Malevolent Stalker has been on a crusade against me for roughly fifteen years. Among other things, he follows this blog obsessively, every day, looking for material that he can weaponize against me — and mines IRS records looking for dirt on me, and pores over my little son’s Amazon wish lists from years back, and combs through obscure blogs looking for mentions of me, and probably examines the trash in my garbage cans during the middle of the night — so he’s definitely aware of such entries as this one, from 19 June 2020:

“My sorry career as a religious bigot”

The truth is not in him.