Historian of Religion, Science, and Biblical Interpretation
We LDS often say “endowment means a gift.” Yes, but that is both incomplete and not even the main or most important part! As it turns out, “endow” has several hundred years of financial/property/donation/gift ideas behind it, so it’s not surprising to hear that kind of meaning applied to the temple ordinances. This, however, is the tip of a very large iceberg, and all the interesting stuff is below the surface.
Few Latter-day Saints, I think, know that May 4 is a significant day in LDS liturgical history. (This is reposted from last year.) Continue reading
Now that we’re getting into the desert Exodus narrative, we’re going to encounter what scholars call “legal sections” of scripture, that is, the details of the Law of Moses. I’m not interested in these so much as I am in the way the Israelites entered into the law, by covenant. So, let’s talk about these a bit more from an ancient Near Eastern perspective Continue reading
See here and here for parts 1 and 2
Some Latter-day Saints, including some General Authorities like Joseph Fielding Smith, have tried to resolve apparent discrepancies between scripture and science on the age of the earth by asserting that “we don’t know how long Adam and Eve were in the garden.” The implication is that the while the earth went on existing, potentially for millions or billions of years, Adam and Eve remained effectively in stasis in the garden planted eastward in Eden.
I see three arguments against this view.
These chapters are the violent dénoument of the Ammonihah story. Grant Hardy cogently points out how this story with Alma/Amulek parallels an earlier story with Abinadi. Continue reading
Red brick store in Nauvoo, where the first endowments were done on May 4, 1842.
Edit: I’ve added this syllabus to the main menu at left, and simplified the url for easy access, to http://BenSpackman.com/syllabus
May 4th holds significance in LDS history: it’s the day Joseph Smith introduced temple ordinances in the upper room of the red brick store in 1842. The temple ties together a number of questions, like: Continue reading
Elder Bednar in General Conference talked about the spread of temples throughout the world, as well as doubling the number of available languages of the presentation of temple ordinances. This got me thinking again about something I think about from time to time: the state of our collective temple knowledge and how it affects our temple experience.
Since I have a lot of links below, let me summarize with these three bullet points. Continue reading
It’s been a remarkably good Monday morning. Chilly, but I scored a $72 long-sleeve Merino wool bike jersey for $18 recently, and so went out for a 24-mile ride in 40 degree weather.
Chilaquiles!
Made myself chilaquiles afterwards. Bit of a foodie here. (This has been rewritten afterwards, since it was an announcement.)
Remnants of the Jerusalem temple
BYU has published a short piece by Judge Thomas Griffiths, called “Imagination and the Temple.” Continue reading
My 2019 FAIRMormon Conference presentation is up now, here. There’s a lot in the footnotes as well.
The takeaway is this: Many LDS have unsustainably fundamentalist assumptions about the nature of revelation, prophets, and scripture. The conflict these cause sometimes leads to a loss of faith, instead of recognizing and reexamining the assumptions. Continue reading
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