Faith-Promoting Rumor
This year, like many years past, we had some great posts. We tend to be pretty inconsistent week to week, with regular life taking over, but every time we think we are going out of business, something else sparks our interest. Reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.
This year we also resolved to quit reading some of the more problematic Mormon blogs and “journals” (or at least to quit publicly commenting on them). There were a handful of frustrating exchanges on other blogs, but overall we were a lot happier simply ignoring the incessant drivel out there. Still, I think it is nice to reflect on some of our greatest hits from this year.
In general, the Book of Mormon was a big theme in our blogging in 2013. RT came out as a doubter of Book of Mormon historicity early in the year. While his conclusions do not represent the blog as a whole, he offered some very insightful observations and may have even broken some new ground on some issues. A few highlights:
The Book of Mormon and the Late War: Direct Literary Dependence?
The Land Northward and the Land of Moron in the Book of Ether
From TT:
Even Christ’s Body has an A**hole
gwesley had a really banner year, including this excellent post on the Book of Mormon and colonization:
jupiterschild returned this year with some great essays, including this one:
Priesthood, Women, and Non-Agency
Mormondeadhead had a great series on the textual history of the Book of Mormon.
I will just link to the multipart series.
BiV also had a great post on the question of authorship and the gold plates:
On the Malleability of the Gold Plates: Mormonism and Modern Biblical Scholarship
Smallaxe had a number of excellent posts about Mormon Studies and apologetics, as well as dealing with issues of doubt. One post stands out for creating an excellent paradigm:
Finally, the Yellow Dart offered some important updates on biblical scholarship:
Israel’s Past Without the Bible
We also had a really excellent series of posts on the 2013 updates to the LDS edition of the scriptures, including a guest post from the illustrious Grant Hardy. The series includes analysis of the Bible Dictionary, Topical Guide, text of the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Abraham. Check the whole thing out!
Happy new year!
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