I have said here on multiple occasions that, owing to the concerns expressed by some former donors to the Interpreter Foundation, I no longer hold any political opinions and that I’m not even aware who the president is, nor when she is going to need to campaign toward earning her second (or it is her third?) five-year term. But perhaps I should be clearer: I hold no partisan political opinions. I won’t even admit whether I’m a Whig... Read more
Astoundingly, two new articles went up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: ““I Will Come to You”: An Investigation of Early Christian Beliefs about Post-Ascension Visitations of the Risen Jesus,” written by Timothy Gervais Abstract: While later Creedal Christians have come to view “the Ascension” recorded in the first chapter of Acts as a conclusive corporeal appearance of the Resurrected Lord, earliest Christians do not appear to have conceived of this appearance as “final” in any... Read more
With three of our friends, my wife and I formed a tiny book group a couple of years ago, or thereabouts. We meet roughly once a month, though a little bit irregularly, for dinner and conversation. Our book for tonight is Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. (It’s too bad, by the way, that Dickens will probably never write the sequel, No Expectations: Mr. Pip Goes to Egypt.) I’m trying to recall whether I’ve ever actually read Great Expectations... Read more
Dr. Lynn Johnson has kindly called my attention to an article that appeared in yesterday’s Epoch Times: “Depressed Woman Dies on Operating Table, Sees Heaven and Future Events, Returns to Life a New Person.” It’s a good example, and a pretty representative one, of a near-death experience, and I want to call attention to certain aspects of it: At twenty-one, Tricia Barker was depressed and suicidal. In fact, she attempted suicide. But she woke up, still quite... Read more
This presentation, which was delivered by Camille Stilson Williams on Saturday, 12 March 2016, at 2016’s Second Interpreter Science & Mormonism Symposium: “Body, Brain, Mind, and Spirit,” has just gone up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Conference Talks: Veiled in Flesh: An LDS Perspective on the Body” I was very quickly aware of the news when, remarkably, the skeletal remains of King Richard III of England were found under a “car park” — in... Read more
Today marks the 179th anniversary of the assassination of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his elder brother Hyrum by a mob in Carthage, Illinois. They were, ostensibly, in the custody and under the protection of the state. The British-born John Taylor, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the future third president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was grievously wounded during the attack. During visits to Carthage and, sixteen... Read more
First, though: The discussants for the 18 June 2023 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show were Bruce Webster, Kris Frederickson, and Robert Boylan. During the two-hour program, they discussed Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 29, the Restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood, the Mormon History Association Conference, and the Religious Freedom Annual Review. Their conversation has now been archived, freed from commercial and other interruptions, and made available to you at your convenience and free of charge. The... Read more
The latest iteration of the script for our next theatrical film, Six Days in August, arrived earlier today. The film will focus on the succession of the Twelve to leadership of the Church after the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith on 27 June 1844. My wife and I look forward very much to reading it through. We’re on track, I think, to commence initial filming sometime in August. Which sets me to thinking about the relationship between... Read more
I was otherwise occupied yesterday, so I failed to note the appearance of two new articles on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: ““They Shall Be Scattered Again”: Some Notes on JST Genesis 50:24–25, 33–35” was written by Matthew L. Bowen. Abstract: This article examines the extension of the etiological wordplay on the name Joseph (in terms of the Hebrew verbs ʾāsap and yāsap), recurrent in the canonical text of Genesis, into the JST Genesis 50 text, where Joseph learns about and... Read more
For a long time, I thought of the history of England, Scotland, and Wales as their history, the history of a foreign country or countries. And, of course, in a very real and obvious sense it is the history of foreign places, relative to me. In another sense, though, it is my own history. Elements of my maternal family lines first appeared in the New World in the late 1600s; most are much more recent than that. In... Read more
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