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From the staff of Book of Mormon Central and the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s Jeffrey Mark Bradshaw:<\/p>\n
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\u201cBook of Moses Essays #32: Moses 1 in Its Ancient Context: The Two-Part Pattern of Heavenly and Ritual Ascent (Moses 1)\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I think that this allegorical spoof of orthodox Darwinian evolutionary doctrine, which can be found in\u00a0David Berlinski,\u00a0<\/span>The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays<\/em>, edited by David Klinghoffer (Seattle: Center for Science and Culture, Discovery Institute, 2009), 63-64, is absolutely hilarious.\u00a0 As you read it, think of the idea that one kind of biological organism gives rise to another kind on the basis of random genetic mutations or copying errors, which are policed and constrained, of course, by the environmentally-imposed limitation of survival to the fittest and best adapted.\u00a0 Berlinski\u2019s allegory, of course, omits the principle of \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d and confines itself to random mutations.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I suspect that I may have particularly enjoyed the parable not only because I\u2019m a fan of the great Jorge Luis Borges<\/a> (1899-1986)\u00a0 but because, rather curiously and largely owing to sheer dumb luck, I was able to meet him briefly when he visited Brigham Young University shortly before my mission.\u00a0 Dr. Berlinski has captured the peculiar style of Borges quite well, I think:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Imagine this story being told to me by Jorge Luis Borges one evening in a Buenos Aires caf\u00e9.<\/span><\/p>\n His voice dry and infinitely ironic, the aging, nearly blind literary master observes that \u201cthe Ulysses,<\/em>\u201d mistakenly attributed to the Irishman James Joyce, is in fact derived from \u201cthe Quixote<\/em>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I raise my eyebrows.<\/span><\/p>\n Borges pauses to sip discreetly at the bitter coffee our waiter has placed in front of him, guiding his hands to the saucer.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe details of the remarkable series of events in question may be found at the University of Leiden,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cThey were conveyed to me by the Freemason Alejandro Ferri in Montevideo.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Borges wipes his thin lips with a linen handkerchief that he has withdrawn from his breast pocket.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAs you know,\u201d he continues, \u201cthe original handwritten text of the Quixote<\/em> was given to an order of French Cistercians in the autumn of 1576.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I hold up my hand to signify to our waiter that no further service is needed.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCuriously enough, for none of the brothers could read Spanish, the Order was charged by the Papal Nuncio, Hoyo dos Monterrey (a man of great refinement and implacable will), with the responsibility for copying the Quixote<\/em>, the printing press having then gained no currency in the wilderness of what is now known as the department of Auvergne.\u00a0 Unable to speak or read Spanish, a language they not unreasonably detested, the brothers copied the Quixote<\/em> over and over again, re-creating the text but, of course, compromising it as well, and so inadvertently discovering the true nature of authorship.\u00a0 Thus they created Fernando Lor\u2019s Los Hombres d\u2019Estado<\/em> in 1585 by means of a singular series of copying errors, and then in 1564 Juan Luis Samorza\u2019s remarkable epistolary novel Por Favor<\/em> by the same means, and then in 1685, the errors having accumulated sufficiently to change Spanish into French, Moli\u00e8re\u2019s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme<\/em>, their copying continuous and indefatigable, the work handed down from generation to generation as a sacred but secret trust, so that in time the brothers of the monastery, known only to members of the Bourbon house and, rumor has it, the Englishman and psychic Conan Doyle, copied into creation Stendahl\u2019s The Red and the Black<\/em> and Flaubert\u2019s Madame Bovary<\/em>, and then as a result of a particularly significant series of errors, in which French changed into Russian, Tolstoy\u2019s The Death of Ivan Ilyich<\/em> and Anna Karenina<\/em>.\u00a0 Late in the last decade of the nineteenth century there suddenly emerged, in English, Oscar Wilde\u2019s The Importance of Being Earnest<\/em>, and then the brothers, their numbers reduced by an infectious disease of mysterious origin, finally copied the Ulysses<\/em> into creation in 1902, the manuscript lying neglected for almost thirteen years and then mysteriously making its way to Paris in 1915, just months before the British attack on the Somme, a circumstance whose significance remains to be determined.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I sit there, amazed at what Borges has recounted.\u00a0 \u201cIs it your understanding, then,\u201d I ask, \u201cthat every<\/em> novel in the West was created in this way?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOf course,\u201d replies Borges imperturbably.\u00a0 Then he adds: \u201cAlthough every novel is derived directly from another novel, there is really only one novel, the Quixote<\/em>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I like this very much:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFormer Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton volunteer to get coronavirus vaccine publicly to prove it\u2019s safe\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeter,\u201d over at the invaluable Neville-Neville Land<\/em> blog, has a bit of fun with the quasi-schismatic pretensions of Mr. Jonathan Neville, who seems to have undertaken a kind of personal vendetta against those who don\u2019t accept his theories regarding the precise GPS coordinates of places and events in the Book of Mormon:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Russell M. Nelson, SITH intellectual\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a piece from\u00a0the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMissionaries volunteer 10K-plus hours to help feed the San Jose community\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I very much enjoyed this article by Gayle Boyd, who was once, rather briefly, a member of my ward congregation.\u00a0 It also comes from the Hitchens File<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n