Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee have published the definitive account of Joseph Smith’s 1843 encounter with the Kinderhook plates.
Learning from Kinderhook
President Nelson’s Favorite Topics and Statements, Part 4: The Plan of Salvation
For forty years before his call to the Quorum of the Twelve, Russel M. Nelson spent his career as a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon. One aspect of his work that had a profound impact on him was that it “brought…
Pro-Life: A Fiercely Held Moderate Position
The Legal Status of Abortion, Revisited I’ve talked to Terryl Givens (my dad) a few times since his article on abortion for Public Square came out. Both of us are disappointed, but not at all surprised, by some of the…
Machine Translation
Two attitudes about translation are on my mind. One is about Joseph Smith: “Seeing words appear in a seer stone is magic, not translation. Translation is when you have the equivalent text in a foreign language, like Google Translate.” The…
President Nelson’s Favorite Topics and Statements, Part 3: The Family
Throughout my time studying President Nelson’s conference addresses, I observed that one topic that he came back to over and over is families. Whether it be decrying the fragmentation of families, encouraging men to pay more attention to their wives,…
John Turner on Brigham Young
John Turner’s well-known biography Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Harvard University Press, 2012) provides one of the most well-rounded and in-depth look at the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It remains today one of the…
Interpreters, visions and seer stones
The Interpreter has recently published two reviews of William L. Davis’ Visions in a Seer Stone. The two reviews, by Brant Gardner and Brian Hales, exemplify what I think are positive trends in Latter-day Saint contributions to Mormon Studies.
President Nelson’s Favorite Topics and Statements, Part 2: The Church
Last year, the Church released the guidelines by which a committee was evaluating hymns and songs for inclusion in the next hymnbook and children’s songbook and a list of topics they wanted to see more hymns about. What surprised me…
President Nelson’s Favorite Topics and Statements, Part 1: God and Power
This is the beginning of the second part of my analysis of President Russell M. Nelson’s general conference talks, focusing on his favorite topics and statements. In looking at what President Nelson talks about, I tried to take a few…
Perils on every side
Our unhappy political moment has unfortunately corrected a longstanding asymmetry in ideologically-driven exit options.
President Nelson’s Conference Addresses, Part 1: Introductory Comments
A couple years back—not long after President Russell M. Nelson was sustained as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—Elder Neil L. Anderson spoke of a project his wife undertook: While my wife, Kathy, has known President…
Reconsidering the Curse of Ham
In a candid moment in January 1858, an early Church leader named Zerah Pulsipher told his family that: “Most of you are young therefore you have the advantage of me because [yo]u have less Gentile Traditions to over com[e].”[1] This…
“Come, Follow Me” and The Family: A Proclamation to the World
The “Come, Follow Me” manuals for 2021’s course of study are available online now. Looking ahead to the next year, I have been curious to see if they were going to stick strictly to the scriptures related to the history…
The delicious detail of Benjamin Park’s book The Kingdom of Nauvoo
I recently read (okay, listened to) Benjamin Park’s book Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier. Park has produced a rich piece of scholarship with fascinating details about the period, some of them…
Calls to the Quorum of the Twelve: An Analysis
For something relatively out of the blue, I want to take a moment to consider potential future candidates for the Quorum of the Twelve. The Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency are the highest in authority in the…
They’re not wrong
They’re not wrong. Not about everything.
I disagree with their choice of candidate. What they want would have—has had—disastrous results, but that doesn’t mean they’re entirely wrong.
The Rise and Decline of the Angel Moroni
If you were to ask someone what the founding vision of the Restoration was at different points in our history, I suspect that you would get different answers. Certainly, for us today, the First Vision stands out. Throughout much of…
Nephi and the Garden Tower: A Children’s Play
This week’s Come, Follow Me lesson covers the story of Nephi praying on a tower in his garden, drawing a crowd, and revealing facts about the murder of the chief judge that he could only know through revelation. As I…
Thoughts on the Gold Plates
We round out the 10 questions interview series on Joseph Smith’s translation with a discussion between Richard L. Bushman and Kurt Manwaring about the gold plates. We’ve had a good run of interviews with scholars who have worked hard to…
Producing Ancient Scripture: Q&A with Editors Mark Ashurst-McGee and Mike MacKay
Following on Chad’s recent discussions, I’m happy to share another offering in what has become a T&S mini–series on the recent volume Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity (Salt Lake City, UT: The…
Hebrew Studies and the Book of Abraham
We’re continuing our discussion of Joseph Smith’s translations and the recently-released volume Producing Ancient Scripture today, turning to the Book of Abraham in an interview with Matthew Grey. This is a co-post to Kurt Manwaring’s interview with Matthew Grey, where…
Translation and the Adam Clarke Commentary
Kurt Manwaring has continued his interviews focusing on Joseph Smith’s translations with a discussion with Thomas Wayment about the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. In the interview last week, some of the editors of recently-published volume Producing Ancient Scripture…
A Brief Note on Alma and Corianton
Alma the Younger strikes me as one of the sterner of the prophets, which makes sense if you consider his background. I know a few people in my life who have had similar, if less spectacular trajectories. It’s not an…
Joseph Smith’s Studies and Translations
It has been a big year for volumes that discuss Joseph Smith’s translation projects, with contributions ranging from Terryl Givens and Brian Hauglid’s The Pearl of Great Price: Mormonism’s Most Controversial Scripture last October, to William L. Davis’s Visions in…
What I miss about home church—and why I need to go back to sacrament meeting
I’ve heard multiple people say how much they’ve enjoyed the last five months of home church. Studying the scriptures however they want, and worshiping each Sunday as a family? More, please. Now that my ward has resumed meeting, there’s a lot to miss about home church.
Reconsidering the Curse of Cain
Eugene England once shared an experience he had with the prominent Latter-day Saint Church leader, scriptorian, and doctrinaire Joseph Fielding Smith. President Smith had written extensively on the subject of the priesthood and temple ban against individuals of black African…
The Metaphysics of Translation
Understanding the nature of Joseph Smith’s translation efforts is an important part of understanding his ministry and the religions that have emerged from the early Latter Day Saint movement. Whether the Book of Mormon, the Joseph Smith Translation of the…
A Small and Simple Quote
As I’ve been studying the “Come, Follow Me” material lately and talking about it with family, I’ve had a quote from Michael Crichton’s book Jurassic Park come to mind a few times. There are a few statements in this section…
The Wagon Box Prophecy and the Temples
History is a fascinating world to explore, with many twists and turns along the way as we come to understand more about the narratives we have received and how they were formed. Each generation of historians has the opportunity to…
Zerah Pulsipher: A Pioneer Day Reflection
In the movie version of the popular Harry Potter series, a father-figure to the titular character tells Harry that: “The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters [henchmen of the main villain]. We’ve all got both light and…