Sic Et Non

      ***   At least two of my very favorite people, both of them faithful and productive Latter-day Saint scholars and both of them wonderfully kind friends who have had a tremendous impact for good on my life, earned their doctorates here in Providence, Rhode Island, at Brown University.  And, for whatever little […]

    This new installment of Kyler Rasmussen’s Bayesian explorations went up earlier today on the Interpreter Foundation’s blog:   “Estimating the Evidence Episode 11: On Imprinted Words”   ***   As may be evident, I’ve been on the road in New England — and I mean really on the road — for the past […]

    ***   Up this morning in Brattleboro, we first drove out to see Naulakha, the house that the British writer Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) built in 1893 for his American wife and where the Kiplings lived from 1893 until 1896.  (They left it partially because of an unfortunate family dispute with an unpleasant and […]

    ***   My father would have been 108 years old today.  He died at the end of June, in 2003.   I still miss him very much.  I think about him every day.  Certain sights always, invariably, remind me of him.  There are many things that I would like to tell him, many […]

    ***   On Saturday, en route from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, we stopped off at Sharon, Vermont, at the birthplace of the Prophet Joseph Smith.  Although I had visited all of the other major eastern Church historical sites multiple times, I had never previously gone up to Sharon.  (It’s a bit of a geographical […]

    ***   I was curious to learn the origin of the name Smugglers’ Notch.   It turns out that notch, in the parlance of New Hampshire’s White Mountains and presumably also, is a term for a deep, narrow, mountain pass.  (Hence the name of the electorally famous Dixville Notch, about which we hear […]

    ***   As many, many others have over the past couple of days, I’ve been thinking about the 9-11 attacks and, even more so, about their victims.  So many lives snuffed out.  So much pain and sorrow.  My friend Anne Palmieri shared the words below on her Facebook page.  They’re familiar; we all […]

    ***   New today, on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   Book of Moses Essays #72: The Two Ways (Moses 5): Adam, Eve, and the New and Everlasting Covenant (Moses 5:4–6)   ***   We watched the Tabernacle Choir’s  commemorative special on the victims of the September 11th attacks this morning, and […]

    ***   A new article, by Jeff Lindsay, went up earlier today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “Book of Abraham Polemics: Dan Vogel’s Broad Critique of the Defense of the Book of Abraham” Review of Dan Vogel, Book of Abraham Apologetics: A Review and Critique (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, […]

    ***   I’ve been quite busy today, and I haven’t been at my computer very much.  Here, though, are links to five articles that you might find of interest and that were published in a prior issue of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   William J. Hamblin, “The Sôd […]

    ***   I return to a subject that I raised in my immediately previous blog entry — namely, the seemingly increasing tendency for some members of the Church to put their political ideologies ahead of their loyalty to the prophets and apostles who lead the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I […]

    ***   You may perhaps be aware of the controversy that has recently raged around Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, of the Council of the Twelve.  Last night, Tuesday night, this article by Yr Obd’t Servant went up in Meridian Magazine:   “Elder Holland: What They Heard is Not What He Said”   I […]

    ***   A new article by Richard O. Cowan appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “Latter-day Houses of the Lord: Developments in Their Design and Function” Abstract: This essay traces the modern-day usage and understanding of temples from the Kirtland Temple to Nauvoo and the Salt Lake Temple. […]

    ***   Here are a few additional passages that I marked during my reading of Derek R. Sainsbury’s Storming the Nation: The Unknown Contributions of Joseph Smith’s Political Missionaries (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2020).  Please note that such stories as these do not constitute the primary or even secondary focus […]

    I read Derek R. Sainsbury’s Storming the Nation: The Unknown Contributions of Joseph Smith’s Political Missionaries (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2020) today.  Here are some random passages that I marked during my reading:   Most Americans do not know that Joseph Smith ran for president of the United States.  Almost […]

    ***   I’m told that DVDs of the Interpreter Foundation’s dramatic film, Witnesses, are beginning to appear in local Deseret Book outlets, but I haven’t yet managed to visit a Deseret Bookstore to check.  Can anybody out there confirm the report?   ***   This new item went up today on the website […]

    ***   Here are links to a few articles that might interest you from a prior volume of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   L. Michael Morales, “The Tabernacle: Mountain of God in the Cultus of Israel” Abstract: In this article, Michael Morales considers how the building of the Tabernacle […]

    ***   A new article — this one by Paul Y. Hoskisson — appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “Additional Janus Parallels in the Book of Mormon” Abstract: A little more than 40 years ago, Cyrus Gordon discovered and described for the first time an ancient literary technique […]

    ***   We’ve now moved on to the second phase for the Witnesses dramatic film:   Witnesses: Now on Blu-Ray and DVD   And we’re well into the next phases of the overall Witnesses project:   The docudrama, Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, is currently undergoing color correction. I spent the […]

    ***   This new essay from Kyler Rasmussen went up on Wednesday on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   “Estimating the Evidence Episode 9: On Too-Olde English”   I’m late with this blog entry because I’ve been traveling all day.  I only got home just now after flying from San Diego and […]