Sic Et Non

  I return, yet again, to BYU Studies Quarterly 61/4 (2022), which is a special issue of the regular quarterly publication BYU Studies.  It was created by four faithful Latter-day Saint Egyptologists — Stephen O. Smoot (Ph.D. candidate, Catholic University of America), John Gee (Ph.D., Yale University), Kerry Muhlestein (Ph.D., University of California at Los […]

  What am I grateful for today?  I’m grateful that I have grandchildren, and that my wife and I have the wherewithal to visit them where they live (e.g., in Virginia and in Mexico), and that three generations of our family will be together in our house throughout December and the Christmas season.  And that […]

  I’ve been busy enough with the Unbearable Cuteness of Being and other distractions here that I’ve neglected mentioning an article of mine that appeared in Meridian Magazine roughly a week ago:  “The Challenges and Triumphs of Biblical Archaeology.”  I think that it may possibly rank as not quite the worst thing ever published. I’ve […]

    I encourage you to watch and to share the eighteen-minute video that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prepared a few years ago for the Christmas season.  It is called The Christ Child, and it is, in my opinion, very, very well done:  The Christ Child: A Nativity Story.  Hard-hearted Scandinavian […]

    I share some takeaways here from an article that I’ve just read in BYU Studies Quarterly:  John Hilton III, Jesse Vincent, and Rachel Harper, ““Last at the Cross”: Teachings about Christ’s Crucifixion in the Woman’s Exponent, the Relief Society Magazine, and the Young Woman’s Journal,” BYU Studies Quarterly 61/3 (2022): 31-58. The Woman’s […]

    The other day, I set up an online Facebook fundraiser for the Interpreter Foundation.  It’s at https://www.facebook.com/donate/1022507169072678/. I have to confess that, at least so far, it’s not doing as well this year as in previous years, probably (at least in part) because, for the first time, they’re taking a slice out of […]

    Two new articles appeared today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Asymmetry in Chiasms, With a Note About Deuteronomy 8 and Alma 36,” written by Stephen Kent Ehat Abstract: Some students of the Book of Mormon have claimed that chapter 36 of the book of Alma is structured as a chiasm. Some […]

    Today, the most concentrated amount of sheer cuteness in this region spent substantial time in a swimming pool alongside the beach.  We were privileged to be there, as well.     Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  “The Temple: Ancient and Restored: Psalm 24 and the Two YHWHs at the […]

    For a while this afternoon, one of the world’s densest concentrations of sheer cuteness was out on the Sea of Cortez (also known as the Gulf of California), bobbing on a small boat that was completely made of transparent plexiglass.  We were also privileged to be on that boat.  We saw lots and […]

    Last night, my wife and I attended the open house for the new Orem Utah Temple.  When it is dedicated, it will be our temple.  So I was pleased to see how pretty it is on the interior.  Particularly its carpets and its stained glass windows.  I’ve been disappointed at being unable to […]

    As Christmas approaches, and as your indecisive tension mounts about what you ought to give to your spouse, your children, your parents, your cousins, your neighbors, your pickle ball partners, the mailman, your ministering brother and sister, those to whom you minister, your congressperson, and random passersby, the Interpreter Foundation can help.  Choose […]

    In case you haven’t seen or read it yet:  “The First Presidency’s 2023 Christmas Message.”  And please note that the annual annual First Presidency Christmas devotional broadcast is scheduled for a week from today, on Sunday, 3 December 2023.  And then, of course, there’s this:  “Temple Square Offering Christmas Experiences for 2023 Season: Lights […]

    While we were in Virginia recently, we not only took the time to visit some Civil War battlefields but to take family members to Jamestown — the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, famously associated with Pocahontas — out by Williamsburg, and, in the other direction, to Carter Mountain, near Charlottesville.  In […]

    I hope that you and yours had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday (where applicable). Over the past couple of days, the following note was sent out to the Interpreter Foundation’s email lists and went up on the Foundation’s websites: We are approaching Giving Tuesday and the month of December, when the hearts of many […]

    Happy Thanksgiving! Both of these columns appeared in the Deseret News in connection with Thanksgiving 2019.  Although I have a few more of these, they are (mercifully) the last of the Thanksgiving-themed columns that I intend to resurrect here this year:     As we in the United States approach the national Thanksgiving […]

    Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  “Conference Talks: From Temple to Church: Defining Sacred Space in the Near East,“ presented by David Calabro on Saturday, 7 November 2020, as part of the Interpreter Foundation’s 2020 Temple on Mount Zion Conference: “In this paper, I propose to revisit the question posed […]

    Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  Interpreter Radio Show — November 5, 2023 Spencer Kraus, Martin Tanner, Brent Schmidt, and Hales Swift were the discussants for the 5 November 2023 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show. They discussed Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 49, criticizing Church leaders, upcoming conferences, […]

    I’m finally finding a few stolen moments in which to begin reading Richard Lyman Bushman’s newest book, Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), and here is a chain of related passages from it that I would like to share with you: As his [Joseph Smith’s] account made […]

    You might justly view yesterday’s blog entry here as a full-length installment from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™.  In a very real sense, that is exactly what it was, and I hope that you’ll take the opportunity not only to buy something yourself but to call the opportunity to […]

    As you’ve probably noticed — I’ve scarcely been subtle or coy about it! — we are in the process of making a theatrical movie under the title of Six Days in August, and I’m urgently seeking additional funds for the completion of that venture, for which the actual filming is now approximately 82% […]