I’ll be speaking tomorrow at the Winder West Stake Education Weekend, in Salt Lake City.   Anybody and everybody is welcome.  Here’s the full program (which also includes a concert tonight, Friday):   Winder West Stake Education Weekend, January 17, at 4551 So. 1200 E., Salt Lake City, Utah.: 9:00    Richard Fox (cello, Salt Lake Symphony Orchestra, with Marie Ashton as accompanist)           Elder John H. Groberg, Quorum of the Seventy emeritus (Keynote)… Read more

    My friend Keith Lane, who teaches at the Laie, Hawaii, campus of Brigham Young University, has reminded me of a review essay that he published in the FARMS Review more than a decade ago, but which is highly relevant to certain recent discussions of scripture and its relationship with history.   I recommend it:   http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/15/2/S00003-5176b0ddb28d53Lane.pdf     Of course — be warned! — you need to be prepared for the mean-spirited and narrow-minded viciousness that characterized the FARMS… Read more

    This is a follow-up to something that I posted yesterday:   http://www.wncn.com/story/27857809/duke-university-to-hold-weekly-muslim-prayer-service   I can’t really say that I’m surprised.     Read more

    Matthew 8:16-17; Matthew 4:23 Mark 1:32-39 Luke 4:40-44   Notice, in the records of the sick people who are healed in the evening at Capernaum, that, of the three synoptic accounts — John doesn’t mention the incident — only Matthew says “This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.'”  Such observations (“This was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the mouth of the… Read more

    Kevin Taylor brought this very positive and encouraging item to my attention:   http://www.timesofisrael.com/crime-fighting-london-jews-provide-model-for-muslim-cooperation/   I love stories like this.  May there be more of them!     Read more

    Despite my image in some circles as a heartless and mean-spirited fanatic, I take absolutely no pleasure in anybody’s excommunication.  I won’t feel any pleasure if that’s the result in John Dehlin’s case.   Sometimes, though, the decision of a church council merely certifies a departure from the Church that has already occurred.  And, sometimes, excommunication is a necessary step.   Here are two items from Stephen Smoot that were inspired by the announcement that an ecclesiastical council will… Read more

    I’m only responsible for what I say, not for what others might understand.   That’s an important principle for many of the discussions in which I’m regularly involved.     Read more

    http://www.studioetquoquefide.com/2015/01/breaking-news-lucifer-cast-out-of.html     Read more

    Ryan Campbell found this on a site called The Big Picture and called it to my notice because he thought that I might find it appropriate.   I absolutely do:   Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into… Read more

    Matthew 8:14-15 Mark 1:23-31 Luke 4:38-39   The references in all three of the synoptic gospels to Christ’s healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law (πενθερὰ) tell us one thing for an absolute certainty:  The first pope was married!     Note, incidentally, how directly Jesus goes from the synagogue into Peter’s house.  The two seem to be located very near each other, as, indeed, the traditional site of Peter’s house in Capernaum is located virtually next door to the… Read more