{"id":86989,"date":"2020-07-27T12:14:14","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T18:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=86989"},"modified":"2020-07-30T22:37:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T04:37:27","slug":"nephite-daykeepers-ritual-specialists-in-mesoamerica-and-the-book-of-mormon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/07\/nephite-daykeepers-ritual-specialists-in-mesoamerica-and-the-book-of-mormon.html","title":{"rendered":"“Nephite Daykeepers: Ritual Specialists in Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Where<\/a>
A Wikimedia Commons public domain map of Maya domains in Mesoamerica<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

New on the website of the Interpreter Foundation, a piece by Mark Alan Wright:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNephite Daykeepers: Ritual Specialists in Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Abstract:<\/strong>\u00a0Mark Alan Wright describes a common type of ritual specialist among the Maya called a \u201cdaykeeper.\u201d He discusses similarities and differences with descriptions of ritual specialists in the Book of Mormon, including those who used the Urim and Thummim, performed rituals of healing, experienced near-death episodes at the inauguration of their calling, kept track of calendars, mastered astronomy, and invoked God to bring rain. He finds several intriguing similarities, but also differences \u2014 the most important one being that the Nephites understood that the people to do all these things came from the God of Israel rather than the local pantheon.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

[Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0<\/strong>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.<\/span><\/p>\n

See Mark Alan Wright, \u201cNephite Daykeepers: Ritual Specialists in Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon,\u201d in\u00a0Ancient Temple Worship: Proceedings of The Expound Symposium 14 May 2011,<\/em>\u00a0ed. Matthew B. Brown, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Stephen D. Ricks, and John S. Thompson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2014), 243\u201358. Further information at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/books\/ancient-temple-worship\/.]<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If I were to put together a list of my ten favorite hymns, or even of my top twenty-five, \u201cHave I Done Any Good?\u201d wouldn\u2019t make the cut.\u00a0 A handful of my critics would \u2014 trust me on this \u2014 have a ready explanation:\u00a0 I don\u2019t do any good, and I hate those who do.\u00a0 (Seriously.\u00a0 One of them in particular has been posting such things, anonymously of course, almost every day for the past fifteen years.\u00a0 I\u2019m not making this up.)\u00a0 However, I can\u2019t give any better reason than that one for my failure to like the song, so maybe they\u2019re right.\u00a0 Anyway, several years after it first appeared, I finally saw a music video of \u201cHave I Done Any Good?\u201d by Alex Boy\u00e9 and Carmen Rasmusen Herbert that I quite enjoyed.\u00a0 You might want to take a look:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHave I Done Any Good? Official Music Video ft. Alex Boye & Carmen Rasmusen Herbert\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Carmen Rasmusen Herbert, incidentally, was the narrator or host for the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s first venture into filmmaking,\u00a0Robert Cundick: A Sacred Service of Music<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em> If you haven\u2019t seen it yet, I hope that you\u2019ll find time at some point to watch it.\u00a0 It\u2019s twenty-five minutes long.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Breckenridge, Colorado<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 New on the website of the Interpreter Foundation, a piece by Mark Alan Wright: \u00a0 \u201cNephite Daykeepers: Ritual Specialists in Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon\u201d Abstract:\u00a0Mark Alan Wright describes a common type of ritual specialist among the Maya called a \u201cdaykeeper.\u201d He discusses similarities and differences with descriptions of ritual specialists in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56,623,1809,14138,1812,1815,14141,14144,210,213,277,283,788,5142,13546,14147],"class_list":["post-86989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-of-mormon","tag-calendar","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-daykeeper","tag-latter-day-saints","tag-lds","tag-mark-alan-wright","tag-mark-wright","tag-maya","tag-mayan","tag-mesoamerica","tag-mesoamerican-archaeology","tag-mormon","tag-nephite","tag-ritual","tag-specialists"],"yoast_head":"\n"Nephite Daykeepers: Ritual Specialists in Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    New on the website of the Interpreter Foundation, a piece by Mark Alan Wright:   "Nephite Daykeepers: Ritual Specialists in Mesoamerica\" 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