![\"Where](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/12\/800px-Canterbury_Cathedral_02.jpg\")
<\/a>Margaret Barker was granted a doctorate by specific decree of the Archbishop of Canterbury.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Conditions for posting online haven\u2019t been ideal in my case over the past several hours, so I apologize for my tardiness in drawing attention to these two new articles from the Interpreter Foundation:<\/p>\n
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\u201cTwenty Years After \u201cParadigms Regained,\u201d Part 2: Responding to Margaret Barker\u2019s Critics and Why Her Work Should Matter to Latter-day Saints,\u201d<\/a> written by Kevin Christensen<\/a><\/p>\n Abstract:\u00a0<\/strong>Here I\u00a0address specific criticisms of Margaret Barker\u2019s work. First, I\u00a0set the stage by discussing Thomas Kuhn\u2019s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as a\u00a0map and compass for navigating this kind of controversy. I\u00a0show how his observations cast light on debates about Jesus in the Gospel of John, which in turn resemble present debates. In this context, I\u00a0then consider some notable criticisms of Barker\u2019s work as \u201cnot mainstream\u201d and consider an instructive appreciation of Barker by Father John McDade in his \u201cLife of Jesus Research.\u201d I\u00a0then respond in detail to a\u00a0recent BYU Studies essay that was critical of Barker\u2019s work.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cInterpreting\u00a0Interpreter<\/em>: Responding to Barker\u2019s Critics,\u201d<\/a> written by Kyler Rasmussen<\/a><\/p>\n This post is a summary of the article \u201cTwenty Years After \u201cParadigms Regained,\u201d Part 2: Responding to Margaret Barker\u2019s Critics and Why Her Work Should Matter to Latter-day Saints<\/a>\u201d by Kevin Christensen in Volume 55 of\u00a0Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship<\/em>.\u00a0 An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter<\/em>\u00a0series is available at\u00a0https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Takeaway:<\/strong> Christensen responds to a set of critiques arrayed against the work of Margaret Barker and the use of her work by Latter-Day Saints, arguing that she is often dismissed\u2014not because of the weakness of her ideas\u2013but because they fail to align with the prevailing historical paradigm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n We took our friends for malasadas<\/a> in Lahaina this afternoon, and then up to the venerable Lahainaluna school<\/a> above the town.\u00a0 Lahainaluna was established in 1831, and one of its first students was Jonatana Napela<\/a> (1813-1879), the Native Hawaiian attorney, judge, and early Latter-day Saint convert who helped George Q. Cannon to translate the Book of Mormon into the Hawaiian language.\u00a0 Thereafter, just before heading to the airport at Kahului, we drove up to visit the tiny old Latter-day Saint chapel in the Kula district, on the lower slope of Haleakal\u0101.\u00a0<\/em> It is, in my view, a holy place, closely linked to, among others, George Q. Cannon and the very young missionary Joseph F. Smith, and I\u2019ve tried to drop by the chapel every time I\u2019ve been on Maui.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In 1920 and 1921, Elder David O. McKay, who had been serving as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles since 1906, undertook an assigned around-the-world tour on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> in company with Hugh J. Cannon.\u00a0 His experience on the tour would later serve Elder McKay well during his own tenure as president of the Church from 1951 until his death in 1970.<\/p>\n At one point, Elder McKay and his party were on Maui.\u00a0 The group included not only Hugh Cannon (a son of the late George Q. Cannon, who had served as a counselor to four Church presidents), the Hawaiian mission president E. Wesley Smith (a son of Church president Joseph F. Smith, who had just died on 19 November 1918), Elder Samuel H. Hurst, and a Hawaiian elder named David Kailimai.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve already indicated, George Q. Cannon had been one of the original Latter-day Saint missionaries in Hawaii, and, with Jonatana Napela, had translated the Book of Mormon into Hawaiian.\u00a0 Joseph F. Smith had also served as a young missionary in the earliest years of the Hawaiian mission.\u00a0 Both George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith had learned fluent Hawaiian and had become unusually close for their entire lives to the Hawaiian people.<\/p>\n While on Maui, Elder McKay\u2019s group visited Pulehu, in the Kula district on the lower slope of the great volcano Haleakala, where, in 1851, George Q. Cannon had baptized his very first converts and organized the first Hawaiian branch of the Church.\u00a0 This was sacred ground to Elder McKay and the others \u2014 and, as one Latter-day Saint family told me one Sunday afternoon on the Pulehu chapel grounds, it remains sacred to many Church members there still today.\u00a0 (Some, I\u2019m told, hope that a small temple will someday be built on Maui, and that, if so, it will be built at Pulehu.\u00a0 For various reasons, I don\u2019t expect that.\u00a0 But it would be very nice.)<\/p>\n E. Wesley Smith recalled an event at Pulehu as follows:<\/p>\n While there Elder McKay felt impressed with a desire to offer a prayer to the Lord in the spirit of thanksgiving for the privilege they had of being there, and for the many . . . who had embraced the Gospel.\u00a0 We bowed in prayer, Elder McKay being mouth.\u00a0 It was a moment never to be forgotten, for indeed the spot is sacred.\u00a0 Elder McKay said, \u201cI feel certain that President Cannon and President Joseph F. Smith are near for the veil was very thin.\u201d\u00a0 Elder [Hugh J.] Cannon was deeply impressed, and with tears filling his eyes and in a choked voice said, \u201cThere was no veil.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The group told about their experience to a group of Latter-day Saints in the Wailuku chapel later that night, 8 February 1921.\u00a0 One of those in attendance in that meeting, J. Pia Cockett, recorded what he heard in a notebook:<\/p>\n While he [Elder McKay] was praying, the Hawaiian Elder [David Kailimai] was privileged to see in a vision two hands clasped in the form of greeting.\u00a0 He thought Cannon and Hurst were shaking hands.\u00a0 He opened his eyes and saw they were apart.\u00a0 He closed his eyes again and after the prayer he told what he had seen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It was at that point that Elder McKay made the statement quoted above, about\u00a0Presidents George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith being near and the veil being very thin.<\/p>\n For many years, J. Pia Cockett was under the impression that the clasped hands that Elder Kailimai had seen in vision were those of George Q. Cannon and his son Hugh.\u00a0 In 1936, however, when President McKay \u2014 who, by that time, was second counselor in the First Presidency of the Church \u2014 was back in Hawai\u2019i on a return visit, Brother Cockett recalled the story in President McKay\u2019s presence and President McKay corrected him, saying, \u201cThose hands were the hands of the two fathers, George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith, in the presence of the two sons, Hugh J. Cannon and E. Wesley Smith.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And now, finally, I provide you with a harrowing quintet of outrages against all decency that I\u2019ve recently drawn from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u00a9:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n FanNation<\/em>:\u00a0 \u201cVikings defensive tackle Khyiris Tonga is on a mission:\u00a0The Vikings defensive tackle is emerging as a key piece \u2014 but he wouldn\u2019t be here at all if not for a family and a mission that shaped his life.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n glassdoor<\/em>:\u00a0 \u201cBest Places to Work 2023\u201d<\/a> (see number 23)<\/p>\n Higher Ed Dive<\/em>:\u00a0 \u201cReligious colleges should lean into their identities, leaders say: At an ACE event, faith-based colleges discussed problems dogging higher ed \u2014 like accessibility and completion \u2014 in a religious context.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Billboard<\/em>:\u00a0 \u201cYoungBoy Never Broke Again Is Considering a Mormon Baptism:\u00a0In a new Billboard cover story, the rapper discusses his time spent with Mormon missionaries.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph by \u2014 I\u2019m not making this up, but am in fact required to cite it in precisely this way \u2014 \u201cHotboxers at English Wikipedia\u201d)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n