[This guest post from Joshua Sears is a follow-up to my last post on the new Institute manual. Joshua is a graduate student in Hebrew Bible and serves as the mission leader in his Texas ward. This post is adapted from an email to fellow members of his ward council.] The problem To understand the importance … Read more
Some time ago I blogged about a new seminary manual on the Doctrine and Covenants released by the Church. The manual is significant because it includes discussions of sensitive topics related to Church history, such as the multiple accounts of the First Vision, the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the Utah War, the history of plural … Read more
Carlfred Broderick (1932–1999) The Latter-day Saint psychologist and family therapist Carlfred Broderick shared the following thought on Joseph Smith in his 1996 volume My Parents Married on a Dare: And Other Favorite Essays on Life. I am impressed with the enormous amount of scholarship that has, in recent years, provided us with a far more textured … Read more
The Internet is pretty cool. With the right Internet connection, I can speak to somebody in China or Brazil in real time. I can watch my favorite TV shows and movies whenever I want. I can play video games with people all across the world. I can order food, download music, look at pictures of … Read more
“Eastern Orthodox icon depicting the First Council of Nicaea” (Source) The legendary Geza Vermes (of blessed memory) has an amusing thought in his introduction to the 1992 volume Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism: A Parallel History of Their Origins and Early Development. An anecdote recorded in the Babylonian Talmud (Menahot 29b) portrays Moses as seeking permission from … Read more
Sound advice. The Latter-day Saint historian and theologian Philip Barlow has what he calls his “Ten Commandments for LDS students attempting to balance faith and learning while at college.” They are: 1. “Seek truth, seek good, and bind them together” 2. “Do not disparage the intellect” 3. “Understand that reason is not the only avenue … Read more
The historical Jesus? I am currently making my way through Reza Aslan‘s recent volume Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Rather than offering a review his book (I instead direct the reader’s attention to the reviews offered by Stephen Prothero, Stuart Kelly, Craig A. Evans, Greg Carey, and Allan Nadler), I wanted to call attention … Read more
Pictured: yours truly wearing his beloved jacket, in the presence of one D. Vader and one S. Trooper. Last week I visited my family in Idaho. The evening I arrived, my parents and I went out to dinner to celebrate our reunion and to catch up on things. Everything went great. The next morning I … Read more
From the archaeologists Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley, in their 1992 volume Re-Constructing Archeology: Theory and Practice. Archaeology, we contend, is an interpretative practice, an active intervention engaging in a critical process of theoretical labor relating the past and present. It is entirely misleading to pose the problem of understanding and explaining the past in … Read more
One of the first exercises I was given when I began learning Greek was to practice my pronunciation by reading aloud the opening lines of Plato’s Apology of Socrates. How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that they almost made me forget who I was—so persuasively … Read more
Over at his blog Scriptural Mormonism, Robert Boylan has a brief post exploring Genesis 20:13. The verse in question reads: וַיְהִ֞י כַּאֲשֶׁ֧ר הִתְע֣וּ אֹתִ֗י אֱלֹהִים֮ מִבֵּ֣ית אָבִי֒ וָאֹמַ֣ר לָ֔הּ זֶ֣ה חַסְדֵּ֔ךְ אֲשֶׁ֥ר תַּעֲשִׂ֖י עִמָּדִ֑י אֶ֤ל כָּל־הַמָּקֹום֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר נָבֹ֣וא שָׁ֔מָּה אִמְרִי־לִ֖י אָחִ֥י הֽוּא׃ And when the gods caused me to wander from my father’s house, I … Read more
The biblical scholar Avigdor Horovitz wrote a brief email to Henrik Johnsson back in 1999 with some insightful advice on how to best study the Bible in its ancient Near Eastern context. Below is an image of the email exchange and my transcription. I got my hands on a copy of this exchange at some point … Read more
Reza Aslan (1972–). There are those who will call [No god but God] an apology [for Islam], but that is hardly a bad thing. An apology is a defense, and there is no higher calling than to defend one’s faith, especially from ignorance and hate, and thus help shape the story of that faith. (Reza … Read more