![\"Piercy](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/02\/nauvoo-temple-ruins-lithograph-212425-2.jpg\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
The Latter-day Saints had been driven from Nauvoo, Illinois, just six years before, after the murder of Joseph Smith by mob.\u00a0 In their heyday, Nauvoo had been roughly the same size as Chicago.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here are links to a few articles in a previous volume of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship<\/em> that you might have missed:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Daniel C. Peterson, \u201cIt Came from Beyond\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Abstract:<\/strong>\u00a0The early Latter-day Saints viewed the Book of Mormon not only as a\u00a0symbol of Joseph\u00a0Smith\u2019s prophetic calling but also as the most powerful evidence\u00a0<\/em>for\u00a0that calling. However, perhaps because they were ardent believers in the Bible who had been formed in a\u00a0distinctly Bible-drenched culture and perhaps also because many of them had come to the Book of Mormon relatively late in their lives, they tended to quote from the Nephite record only rarely. Surprisingly, this was the case even for Joseph\u00a0Smith himself \u2014 which can be taken as a\u00a0sign that he didn\u2019t write the book.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Richard E. Bennett, \u201cA Uni-Dimensional Picture of a Multi-Faceted Nauvoo Community\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Review of Benjamin\u00a0E.\u00a0Park,\u00a0Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a\u00a0Religious Empire on the American Frontier<\/em>\u00a0(New York City: Liveright Publishing, 2020). 336 pages. $28.95 (hardback).<\/span><\/p>\n Abstract:<\/strong>\u00a0Benjamin Park recently wrote a\u00a0substantive revisionist history of Nauvoo, Illinois, the one-time Church capital under the leadership of Joseph\u00a0Smith, Jr. This article serves as a\u00a0critical review of Park\u2019s work. Congratulating the author for placing this well-known Latter-day Saint story within the larger Jacksonian American democratic context, as well as for utilizing a\u00a0great many primary sources hardly used before, Richard Bennett in this critical review assesses both the strengths and the weaknesses of this important new book. While complimenting Park for his significant contributions on politics, women, and race in Nauvoo, Bennett nonetheless finds much to criticize in what he sees as a\u00a0unidimensional, highly political study that disregards many previous studies of Nauvoo and fails to address many other critically important facets of the city\u2019s life and history from its inception in 1839 until the Saints\u2019 departure in 1846.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Kent P. Jackson, \u201cSome Notes on Joseph Smith and Adam Clarke\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Abstract:<\/strong>\u00a0Authors of two recent articles believe they have found evidence that Joseph Smith, in preparing his revision of the Bible, drew ideas from a contemporary Bible commentary by British scholar Adam Clarke. The evidence, however, does not bear out this claim. I believe that none of the examples they provide can be traced to Clarke\u2019s commentary, and almost all of them can be explained easily by other means. The authors do not look at their examples within the broader context of the revisions Joseph Smith made to the Bible, and thus they misinterpret them. Some of the revisions they attribute to Clarke are ones that Joseph Smith had made repeatedly before he arrived at the passages where they believe he got ideas from Clarke. In addition, there is a mountain of material in Clarke that is not reflected in the Joseph Smith Translation, and there is a mountain of material in the Joseph Smith Translation that cannot be explained by reference to Clarke. The few overlaps that do exist are vague, superficial, and coincidental.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Paul Y. Hoskisson, \u201cJanus Parallelism: Speculation on a Possible Poetic Wordplay in the Book of Mormon\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Abstract:<\/strong>\u00a0In this article, Paul Hoskisson discusses the question of whether Janus parallelism, a sophisticated literary form found in the Hebrew Bible and elsewhere in manuscripts of the ancient Near East, might also be detected in the Book of Mormon. Because the Book of Mormon exists only in translation, answering this question is not a simple matter. Hoskisson makes the case that 1 Nephi 18:16 may provide the first plausible example of Janus parallelism in the Book of Mormon.<\/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 Paul Hoskisson, \u201cJanus Parallelism: Speculation on a Possible Poetic Wordplay in the Book of Mormon,\u201d in\u00a0\u201cTo Seek the Law of the Lord\u201d: Essays in Honor of John W. Welch,<\/em>\u00a0ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson and Daniel C. Peterson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2017), 151\u201360. Further information at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/books\/to-seek-the-law-of-the-lord-essays-in-honor-of-john-w-welch-2\/.]<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Matthew L. Bowen, \u201c\u201cI of Myself Am a Wicked Man\u201d: Some Notes on Allusion and Textual Dependency in Omni 1:1-2\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Abstract:<\/strong>\u00a0Omni greatly revered his ancestors and their personal accounts on the small plates of Nephi. A close examination of Omni\u2019s brief autobiography (Omni 1:1\u20133) evidences borrowing from all four of his predecessors\u2019 writings. Moreover, his self-description, \u201cI of myself am a wicked man,\u201d constitutes far more than a confession of religious dereliction. That self-assessment alludes to Nephi\u2019s autobiographical wordplay on his name in terms \u201cgood\u201d and \u201chaving been born of goodly parents\u201d and his grandfather Enos\u2019s similarly self-referential wordplay in describing his own father Jacob as a \u201cjust man.\u201d Omni\u2019s name most likely represents a hypocoristic form of a longer theophoric name,\u00a0<\/em>*\u02beomn\u00eeyy\u0101h\u00fb\u00a0(from the root\u00a0<\/em>*\u02bemn), meaning \u201cYahweh is [the object of] my faith\u201d or \u201cYahweh is my guardian [or, nursing father],\u201d but could also be heard or understood as a gentilic, \u201cfaithful one\u201d or \u201ctrustworthy one.\u201d These observations have implications for Omni\u2019s stated defense of his people the Nephites (traditionally, the \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cfair ones\u201d) against the Lamanites, those who had dwindled in \u201cunbelief\u201d (cf. Hebrew\u00a0<\/em>l\u014d\u02be-\u02be\u0113mun). In the end, Omni\u2019s description of himself as \u201ca wicked man\u201d should be viewed in the context of his reverence for \u201cgoodly\u201d and \u201cjust\u201d ancestors and brought into balance with those sacred trusts in which he did prove faithful: preserving his people, his genealogy, and the small plates themselves.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n