Historian of Religion, Science, and Biblical Interpretation
On Dec 18, the Church announced a new section, “Guiding Principles to Help Answer Gospel Questions.” This goes along with the updated “Topics and Questions” which include both the longer and older “Gospel Topics Essays” and the much shorter “Gospel Topics.” This is quite interesting.
I haven’t added these to the Media page yet, but will soon. And more is coming!
These are the most familiar chapters to any Latter-day Saint, and I’ve literally spent weeks on them in Institute classes, going slowly and thoroughly. I’d wager many of us could recite 1 Nephi 1:1 from memory, and a good number of us in our mission language; not from trying to memorize it, just from having read it so much. Familiarity does not necessarily mean understanding, though. The following questions appear unrelated, but are clues to what’s going in in the initial chapters and indeed, all of 1-2 Nephi. And it’s quite different than what people assume.
I’ve plugged Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) before, a great magazine (with pictures!) aimed at laypeople interested in the history, text, interpretation, and archaeology of the Bible. (Notably, there are some LDS in there from time to time!) It’s scholarly but accessible, includes multiple perspectives, and the letters to the editor are illustrative and amusing. Worth subscribing to. Continue reading
This is one of a series of seasonal posts I put up every year.
When the mission president announced to our small group of greenies that I was going to Strasbourg, France’s northeastern border, I shrugged the resigned shrug of a missionary who knew nothing about anywhere but was willing to go wherever. One of the sisters expressed jealousy; Strasbourg, she said, was one of the best cities in the mission.
She was right, and it would not be a good thing. Continue reading
Gustav Doré’s Destruction of Leviathan
Well, the end is upon us. It’s the end of the world/New Testament/year as we know it, and I feel fine.
Today’s chapters… today’s chapters, well. Let’s be blunt. If you pick up a commentary from a believing scholar who has spent his/her entire life studying Revelation, they are likely to admit that no one has any real clue. Just about every passage is disputed in some way by somebody. I am skeptical of the lesson manual’s ability to navigate us through this material, and I’m not about to hold myself out as any expert. Revelation to me is like Isaiah in the Old Testament; I’ve just never really had any particular interest. So, apologies to anyone who came to today’s post looking for the keys to unlock the universe. These chapters contain a lot of things that sound familiar, and a lot of things that sound crazy. Be prepared for lots of potentially crazy comments and wild doctrinal inferences. This is fertile ground, historically speaking, for rampant speculation.
This is one of several posts I will update and repost each year at the appropriate season. This was originally a Sacrament Meeting sermon I preached.
Christmas is a season of generosity, of new beginnings, of babies, family… and ghosts of the past who haunt our lives and our minds. Sometimes they are of our own creating. Remembering them can help us change.
Continue reading
At the opening of BYU’s 2019 Reconciling Evolution workshop—which focuses on biology pedagogy with religious students— Associate Academic Vice-President John Rosenberg represented the University in welcoming the dozens of participants to BYU. He spoke on the pursuit of knowledge, using medieval depictions of Mary, Gabriel, and the Annunciation. I have adapted my notes from his presentation for this post, by permission.
2024 update: With my dissertation focus, I’m aware of a lot of new material that’s come out on the Book of Mormon, and I’ve not been able to touch any of it, really. (There is one exception, which merits some highlighting, below. ) Nevertheless, I hope this list will be useful for some people.
I have written elsewhere that you cannot fully learn from scripture unless you are also actively learning about scripture.The first is the act of a disciple and the second that of a scholar, although in an ideal world, they blur together. So this list includes both kinds of thing, and aimed at different audiences. I’ve got a section for Seminary teachers, for example.
The BoM is really kind of a double-edged sword; on the one hand, people haven’t been writing about it for 2000 years, so the bibliography is a bit more manageable. On the other hand, we tend to assume that because the Book of Mormon is easy to read, it’s easy to understand, and therefore “we don’t really need anything else.” But the Book of Mormon rewards slow, careful, deep reading and teaching.
And of course, this list is all enhancement. I don’t want to imply that if you’re not reading these, somehow you lack all spiritual insight— spiritual in-tune-ness has little to do with Oxford Press— or that you are a clueless chump who knows nothing. I can, however, testify that these books have taught me things and rid me of some of my ignorance. They’re worth reading.
As we read through the two letters of Peter, readers may encounter a famous line, ” one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (2 Pe 3:8). So… let’s talk about that line and the days of Genesis.
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