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A candle inside the Holy Sepulcher. My pic.

Come Follow Me: Jacob 1-4

April 1, 2024 /
A candle inside the Holy Sepulcher

A candle inside Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulcher

Jacob marks a distinct and important break of sorts in the Book of Mormon. Why? Unlike Nephi, Jacob did not grow up in Jerusalem. Born in a wilderness, the first eight or so years of his life were spent… we don’t know. Maybe in captivity, maybe in the desert, definitely under duress and hardship. Point is, everything Jacob knows about and his attitudes towards Jerusalem, Jews, Hebrew, etc. he has learned directly from his family (and whatever peoples they have encountered along the way); he hasn’t seen any of it first hand. It’s a socio-cultural-linguistic founder effect.

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Joseph Fielding Smith, 2 Nephi 2:22, and “Death Before the Fall” in Church History

February 4, 2024 /

As many of my readers may know, President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876-1972) considered evolution not just incorrect, but devilish; he believed scripture taught a young earth, with no death of any kind anywhere before the fall of Adam c. 4000 BC.  His key scriptural evidence was 2 Nephi 2:22-25, which he cited dozens of times in books, articles, and private letters.  I want to explore and document a few related questions here.

  1. Does Smith’s understanding of this passage represent a clear and historically consistent Church position?
  2. Does Smith, in essence, overclaim?

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Come Follow Me: 1 Nephi 13-14

January 20, 2024 /

For those of you who are new to the blog (and the stats suggest there are a few), check out my suggested reading list on the Book of Mormon.

Nephi’s vision seems at times to border on the genre called apocalyptic [link to all my posts and podcasts talking about genre]. Apocalypses came up recently in my first post on Revelation. The genre is important to recognize, because understanding the genre determines how we understand the information presented. Continue reading

President Smith in 1910

The New “Answering Gospel Questions,” Part 2: Historical Background

January 7, 2024 /

To understand why some of us see these new guidelines as so significant, we need to cover some intellectual and religious history which will allow you to “read between the lines” more. And please note, I’m under time constraints and very much in stark “historian mode” here; I have not taken the time to render this more devotional; suffice to say, one can— as I do— believe fully in biblical and LDS prophets while rejecting the fundamentalist constructs often attached to them. 

Part 1: Introduction

Almost from the beginning, Latter-day Saints have operated on two loose competing paradigms of knowledge and “the world.” (I wrote a well-received paper on this for a conference in 2017; see  here for more details, including the unrevised draft.)

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