Two more! These also will be added to my media page, when I have time.
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Two new video interviews: Spanish, and Mormonism with the Murph
I haven’t added these to the Media page yet, but will soon. And more is coming!
Canaanite Santa Claus, Handel’s Messiah, and the Real St. Nicholas
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
A Missionary Reminiscence on Christmas in Western Europe
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
Come Follow Me: Revelation 5-6, 19-22
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.
2 Peter and the Days of Genesis
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.
Phoenix Fireside, November 5. Reading Scripture as a Disciple and a Scholar: How Disciple-Scholarship Can Build Faith
Update 11-01-2023: Barring technical issues, this will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube!
Nov 5 at 7Pm in Phoenix, I will give a fireside on “Reading Scripture as a Disciple and a Scholar: How Disciple-Scholarship Can Build Faith.” I’ll discuss the different goals and methods of these ways of reading, and offer some good examples from scripture of what reading as a scholar can get us, and also… how to read like a scholar while NOT being a scholar 🙂
You can download a flier here with more details and address.
Hope to see you there.
The Prayer of Ezra (chapter 9) and humility
Ezra lived in the Israelite “post-apocalyptic” period. The glorious kingdom was gone, the city of Jerusalem and its Temple destroyed, the Davidic line lost, God’s chosen people had been hauled to Babylon, and only a small remnant returned to try to rebuild the Temple. Ezra believed that these events were to due Israelite infidelity to the covenants they had made. Setting aside what those commandments were, Ezra’s prayer in chapter 9 strikes me as a model of how we should come before the Lord “with fear and trembling.” Continue reading
Announcements: FAIR Conference, the Holy Land, and Logos
A few quick announcements:
Tales from the Archive: William Berrett on Scholarship in 1958
William E. “Ed” Berrett (1902-1993) figures prominently in 20th century LDS education history. He taught seminary, wrote manuals for the Church and served on the General Sunday school board, briefly became assistant US attorney in Alaska before opening his own practice in Salt Lake, and then returned to Church service. He became a BYU Religion professor, served as vice-president of BYU and CES, and eventually head of Seminaries, Institutes, and Church colleges (excluding BYU.)
On July 11, 1958, President Berrett gave an address to Seminary and Institute faculty at BYU, titled “Scholarship.” It’s quite surprising, in some ways. Below, some excerpts.
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