![Rembrandt, \"Jeremiah Lamenting\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/01\/472px-Rembrandt_-_Jeremiah_lamenting.jpg\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
I\u2019m eleven hours off of my normal time zone and have been almost completely without internet access for the past couple of days or so. \u00a0I apologize for being late in calling these new items from the Interpreter Foundation to your notice, but I had little alternative. \u00a0They went up on Thursday and Friday:<\/p>\n
\u201cJeremiah \u201cthe Prophet,\u201d\u201d<\/a> written by Loren Blake Spendlove<\/a><\/p>\n Abstract: <\/strong>This article, which focuses on the role of Jeremiah as a prophet, is based on a study of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint. It also analyzes references to Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon and connects those references to current scholarly research on the book of Jeremiah. Consistent with the general consensus among biblical scholars today, as well as Nephi1<\/sub>\u2019s own references to Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon, the author proposes that even though Jeremiah embodied the office of a prophet, he was not recognized as being \u201camong the prophets\u201d during his lifetime. This is a subtle yet significant difference. If this view is correct, it would further substantiate the alignment between the Book of Mormon and contemporary scholarly perspectives on the historical reception of Jeremiah\u2019s identity as a prophet in antiquity.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cInterpreting Interpreter: Jeremiah\u2019s Prophetic Title,\u201d<\/a> written by Kyler Rasmussen<\/a><\/p>\n This post is a summary of the article \u201cJeremiah \u2018the Prophet\u2019<\/a>\u201d by Loren Spendlove in Volume 64 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship<\/em>. All of the Interpreting Interpreter<\/em>articles may be seen at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/category\/summaries\/<\/a>. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter<\/em> series is available at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n A video introduction to this Interpreter article is now available on all of our social media channels, including on YouTube at https:\/\/youtube.com\/shorts\/El4SP5Ndlic<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Takeaway:<\/strong> Spendlove argues, based on evidence from the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls, that Jeremiah was not initially listed as \u201camong the prophets\u201d by his contemporaries, a fact that\u2019s reflected in how he\u2019s referred to by Nephi in the Book of Mormon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs: \u201c<\/em>The Cosmic Temple of Divine Names: Sapiential, Nomistic, and Numerical Properties,\u201d<\/a> written by Samuel Zinner:<\/p>\n Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs<\/em>, edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw. For more information, go to https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/books\/the-temple-plates-patterns-patriarchs\/<\/a>. For video and audio recording of this conference talk, go to https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/conferences\/2022-temple-on-mount-zion-conference\/videos\/zinner\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAs Alexandra Grund documents, the typical ancient Near Eastern creation story tends to end with the establishment of a divine temple, in which the king is crowned as a symbol of bringing cosmic order out of chaos.1 By contrast, Genesis\u2019s first creation story reaches its apex with the establishment of the divine Sabbath.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We flew roughly north northeast last night, mostly across Iran, over Bandar Abbas, Kerman, Rafsanjan, and Mashhad. \u00a0I\u2019m not sure, but we may also have passed over the northwestern corner of Afghanistan. \u00a0(If so, that would surprise me just a tiny bit.) \u00a0Then we passed over Bukhara and on to Samarkand, traveling by air a small part of the ancient Silk Road. \u00a0Unfortunately, all was dark (except, of course, for the occasional lights of urban sprawl).<\/p>\n My first impression of Samarkand \u2014 at 4 AM, still pitch black \u2014 was of a surprisingly clean and orderly city with well-kept streets and, at frequent intervals, beautiful decorative arrangements of lights along the major boulevard that we mostly followed. \u00a0Those arrangements were in patterns that were familiar to me from what I know of the regional Islamicate artistic and architectural tradition \u2014 which, of course, echoes in multiple elegant but refracted ways the broader design elements of Islamicate art from India to Spain. \u00a0Literally so: The repeated geometric design on the marble floor of our hotel\u2019s large atrium is a very familiar one that I\u2019ve often pointed out to students as appearing in both the Alhambra in Andalusia and on the grounds of India\u2019s Taj Mahal. \u00a0It was already fun for me, also, to see elements of Islamicate civilization reflected in the street signs and markers on the way in to the hotel \u2014 familiar and yet somewhat unfamiliar. \u00a0There was, for instance, a sign indicating the direction of the Markaz<\/em> \u2014 an Arabic term for the \u201c(presumably city) center,\u201d but adopted here into Roman letters and Uzbek. \u00a0And sometimes the Arabic loanwords were rendered in Cyrillic. \u00a0(Russian is still widely spoken here, after years of Soviet occupation.) \u00a0There was also a pointer toward Hadarat Kidr<\/em>, meaning something like \u201cHis Excellency the Green [One]\u201d or \u201cHis Presence the Green [One],\u201d which is almost certainly a reference, in turn, to something that must be connected with common Islamic legends about the Prophet Elijah. \u00a0(I need to find out what the specific reference here in Samarkand might be.)<\/p>\n The conference for which I\u2019ve come actually begins tomorrow \u2014 some of our people are still on their way here \u2014 so we did an afternoon tour of some of the principal sights of Samarkand. \u00a0I\u2019ve read and even sometimes taught about them for many years, so it was gratifying finally to actually see them.<\/p>\n First, we spent a fair amount of time at the G\u016br-i Am\u012br, the \u00a0mausoleum of the Turkic conqueror Timur (who is often known the West as Tamerlane). \u00a0I\u2019ve noticed that Timur, who founded the large but relatively short-lived Timurid Empire, is treated as a hero here. \u00a0(There is, for example, a larger than life-sized statue of an enthrone Timur located in a park within easy walking distance of our hotel.) \u00a0In my opinion, though, Timur is another of those who are called \u201cx<\/em> the Great\u201d who don\u2019t really deserve that title. \u00a0A few weeks ago, I was roundly attacked as a racist and a white supremacist over on the Peterson Obsession Board for having expressed reservations here about applying the title the Great<\/em> to the Hawaiian king, unifier, and conqueror Kamehameha I, who killed many hundreds pr thousands of people in order make himself ruler over all of the islands. \u00a0While we were under the dome of the G\u016br-i Am\u012br, listening to our guide praise Timur, one of the Iranian scholars with whom we\u2019re meeting leaned over to me and whispered \u201cHe was a horrible person, you know.\u201d \u00a0I couldn\u2019t agree more. \u00a0He was a brilliant conqueror, but he was brutal and cruel even by the standards of highly successful ancient and medieval warlords. \u00a0Pathologically so, in my judgment.<\/p>\n Babur, who founded the Mughal dynasty in India,\u00a0 was a descendent of Timur. \u00a0Unsurprisingly, in that light, the design of G\u016br-i Am\u012br has plain echoes in the architecture of later Mughal tombs (e.g., the Gardens of Babur, the Tomb of Humayun, and, most famously, Shah Jahan\u2019s incomparable Taj Mahal.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>