Digital Commons Network^™

Minutes Of The Afternoon Meeting Of The Council Of Fifty, April 11, 1844, Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaaat, Jeffrey D. Mahas

BYU Studies Quarterly

In his essay “Understanding the Council of Fifty and Its Minutes,” on the previous pages in this issue, Ronald K. Esplin overviews the history of the Council of Fifty and the three books in which William Clayton recorded its minutes. He tells what these minutes add to our understanding of Church leaders’ concerns about outreach to American Indians, Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign, and the desire to claim religious liberty. The text presented and annotated below is excerpted from The Joseph Smith Papers, Administrative Records: Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846.

Death Being Swallowed Up In Netzach In The Bible And The Book Of Mormon, David Larsen

BYU Studies Quarterly

One way to read the Book of Mormon is to be attentive to ways in which it comes across as a translated text. Being mindful of this is wise, because all translations—even inspired translations—lose something of the primary language, particularly as meanings shift when words are rendered into the vocabulary or idioms of the target language.

The Cordwainer, Terresa Wellborn

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Brigham Young University Football Program And The Analytics Revolution, Nelson Chung

BYU Studies Quarterly

The Brigham Young University football program is the most visible component of the LDS Church’s flagship school. In 2010, it contracted to ESPN the broadcast of a majority of its games for a reported $800,000 to $1.2 million per home game through 2018. During the 2015 season, its eight games on the ESPN–ABC family of networks reached 14.8 million televisions, an average of 1.9 million each game. In terms of missionary value, the program rivals the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Along with publicity, the Choir has also invited a fair amount of scholarly attention, most notably a study of how its …

A Faithful Band: Moses Mahlangu And The First Soweto Saints, Richard E. Turley Jr., Jeffrey G. Cannon

BYU Studies Quarterly

The faith of the African Saints is legendary, and the story of one man is often repeated to illustrate that faith. Moses Mahlangu waited many years from his introduction to the Book of Mormon sometime in the 1960s until his baptism in 1980. Two significant factors led to his long wait: (1) the laws and attitudes in South Africa affecting race relations and (2) a priesthood restriction of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regarding people of black1 African lineage. Through it all, Mahlangu and several others who had been converted through their reading of the Book of …

The Israelite Roots Of Atonement Terminology, T. Benjamin Spackman

BYU Studies Quarterly

When Latter-day Saints speak of atonement, they use vocabulary drawn from the scriptures, including common verbs like atone, save, and redeem, and the corresponding nouns atonement, savior, salvation, redeemer, and redemption. There are other, perhaps more vivid, words for salvific acts, such as the Book of Mormon references to being “snatched” (Mosiah 27:28–29; Alma 26:17).1 Such rare terms in scripture have not found place in LDS discourse, which tends to use the most common terms related to atonement interchangeably. While they are indeed at some level synonymous, their distinctive meanings gesture toward …

Motives And The Path To Perfection, Lindon J. Robison, David R. Just

BYU Studies Quarterly

Motives and the Desires of Our Hearts

The Mormon Missionary: Who Is That Knocking At My Door?, Robert L. Lively Jr.

BYU Studies Quarterly

Robert L. Lively Jr. is dean emeritus at the University of Maine at Farmington and holds a master’s degree from Yale University Divinity School and a doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Oxford. The following are excerpts from his 2015 book The Mormon Missionary: Who Is That Knocking at My Door?, conceived after inviting missionaries to visit his religion classes and realizing that a non-Mormon had never written a book that tells the story of LDS missionaries. His research for this book involved over 275 interviews with past, present, and future missionaries, including individuals who served in every …

Proselyting On The Rock Of Gibraltar, 1853-1855: The Letters Of Edward Stevenson To The Juvenile Instructor In 1885, Reid L. Neilson

BYU Studies Quarterly

In January 1885, the Mormon Juvenile Instructor magazine ran a short cover story on the history of Gibraltar, known as “the Rock,” the British overseas territory located on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula bordering Spain. While the magazine aimed to educate Latter-day Saints about the cosmopolitan world generally, the Rock did have a noteworthy place in Mormon history. The editor, George Q. Cannon, wrote, “As in the mother country [Great Britain] all religious societies are said to enjoy perfect freedom. Still when Elders Edward Stevenson and N[athan] T. Porter arrived in Gibraltar in March, 1853, to preach ‘Mormonism,’ …

On Fear, Food, And Flight, Elizabeth Brady

BYU Studies Quarterly

I’m having trouble eating.

Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Toward A Better Understanding, M. Scott Bradshaw

BYU Studies Quarterly

Brian C. Hales and Laura H. Hales. Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding.

Draper, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2015.

Way Below The Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled But Not Even Close To Tragic Confessions Of A Real Live Mormon Missionary, Lisa Torcasso Downing

BYU Studies Quarterly

Craig Harline. Way Below the Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled but Not Even Close to Tragic Confessions of a Real Live Mormon Missionary.

Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2014.

Religion Of A Different Color: Race And The Mormon Struggle For Whiteness; For The Cause Of Righteousness: A Global History Of Blacks And Mormonism, 1830-2013, Patrick Q. Mason

BYU Studies Quarterly

W. Paul Reeve. Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Russell W. Stevenson. For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013.

Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2014.

The First Vision: A Harmonization Of 10 Accounts From The Sacred Grove, Kimball Gardner

BYU Studies Quarterly

The First Vision: A Harmonization of 10 Accounts from the Sacred Grove by Matthew B. Christensen (Springville, Utah: Cedar Fort, 2014)

Ancient Temple Worship: Proceedings Of The Expound Symposium, 14 May 2011; Temple Insights: Proceedings Of The Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference: "The Temple On Mount Zion," 22 September 2012

BYU Studies Quarterly

Ancient Temple Worship: Proceedings of the Expound Symposium, 14 May 2011, edited by Matthew B. Brown, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Stephen D. Ricks, and John S. Thompson (Salt Lake City: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014)

Temple Insights: Proceedings of the Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference: “The Temple on Mount Zion,” 22 September 2012, edited by Matthew B. Brown, William J. Hamblin, and David Rolph Seely (Salt Lake City: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014)

The Prophet And The Reformer: The Letters Of Brigham Young And Thomas L. Kane, Alexsandra Foster

BYU Studies Quarterly

The Prophet and the Reformer: The Letters of Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane, edited by Matthew J. Grow and Ronald W. Walker (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)

Front Matter

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

From The Editor, John W. Welch

BYU Studies Quarterly

True to the long-standing character of BYU Studies, this issue contains something exciting and enriching for just about everyone. Looking over this latest issue, I am grateful for the academic quality and faithful integrity of its contents and for the authors who have worked hard to bring this information to you.

Road To Martyrdom: Joseph Smith's Last Legal Cases, Joseph I. Bentley

BYU Studies Quarterly

In 1842, Joseph Smith looked back on the events of his life and said, “Deep water is what I am wont to swim in” (D&C 127:2). This was especially true of his experiences with the law. Starting with his first exposure to the judicial system in 1819, at age thirteen, he spent much of his next twenty-five years of life entangled with legal concerns. The Joseph Smith Papers Project team now can count about 220 cases involving Joseph as plaintiff, defendant, witness, or judge. Of those, approximately fifty were criminal cases capable of taking away his liberty, his resources, or, …

Why And How Did Karl G. Maeser Leave Saxony?: New Documents Offer New Insights, Roger P. Minert

BYU Studies Quarterly

History and family history are frequently characterized by legends and traditions, some of which turn out to be inaccurate under scrutiny. For example, Roger Minert’s great-grandfather was said to have been a professor of modern and classical languages at the University of Cologne in Germany; he knew seven languages. Yet he managed to live as an immigrant farmer in Oregon for twenty years and die without having learned English. Careful research led to the discovery that he was actually the son of a farmer and grandson of a farmer in the town of Wylatkowo in the Prussian province of Posen, …

By Simple Yet Propitious Means: The Art Of Jorge Cocco Santangelo, Herman Du Toit

BYU Studies Quarterly

Inspired devotional art always strives for essential meaning, communicating across the widest range of cultural boundaries. This kind of art has always resisted the vanities of idiosyncratic expression, striving instead to subordinate the artist’s personal virtuosity to the sacral nature of its subject matter. There have been few artists of repute who have achieved this fine balance in their work. Jorge Cocco Santangelo, or “Cocco” as he is known, is one such artist who has devoted his professional career to the creation of art as an expression of his testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. His work recently …

Answering For His Order: Alma's Clash With The Nehors, Matthew Scott Stenson

BYU Studies Quarterly

From the beginning, Lehite culture was richly oral and often divided over the question of authority (see Alma 1–2, 8–14, 30). On one side of the conflict stood the prophets, and on the other side stood “popular” opportunistic figures, wise in their own eyes, who resemble in a general way classical sophists (Alma 1:3; see 2 Ne. 9:28). The classical sophists, some of whom were philosophic pretenders, sought to subvert on occasion the moral authority and epistemological methods of the actual philosophers. In contrast, the Nephite “sophists” (an encompassing term for our purposes that describes a certain kind of proud, …

"To Dress It And To Keep It": Toward A Mormon Theology Of Work, Walker A. Wright

BYU Studies Quarterly

In the controversial film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the protagonist, Brian, finds himself in the market square while being pursued by Roman centurions. In the speakers’ corner of the market, three different prophets are shown attempting to gain an audience with tales of Armageddon. One dust-covered wild man shrieks about “the beast . . . huge and black, and the eyes thereof red with the blood of living creatures, and the whore of Babylon shall ride forth on a three-headed serpent.” Next to him, garbed in red, a more refined preacher boldly pronounces that “the demon shall bear a …

Building Zion: The Material World Of Mormon Settlement, Steven L. Olsen

BYU Studies Quarterly

Thomas Carter. Building Zion: The Material World of Mormon Settlement.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Wandering Realities: The Mormonish Short Fiction Of Steven L. Peck, Scott R. Parkin

BYU Studies Quarterly

Steven L. Peck. Wandering Realities: The Mormonish Short Fiction of Steven L. Peck.

Provo, Utah: Zarahemla Books, 2015.

From Darkness Unto Light: Joseph Smith's Translation And Publication Of The Book Of Mormon, Steven L. Olsen

BYU Studies Quarterly

Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat. From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith's Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon.

Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015.

Salt; Genius Loci, Tyler Chadwick

BYU Studies Quarterly

Susan Elizabeth Howe. Salt.

Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2013.

Lance Larsen. Genius Loci.

Tampa, Fla.: University of Tampa Press, 2013.

Last Laborer: Thoughts And Reflections Of A Black Mormon, Scott R. Parkin

BYU Studies Quarterly

Last Laborer: Thoughts and Reflections of a Black Mormon by Keith N. Hamilton (Salt Lake City: Ammon Works, 2011)

Meine Suche Nach Dem Lebendigen Gott: Gedanken Aus Dem Leben Von F. Enzio Busche, Roger Terry

BYU Studies Quarterly

Meine Suche nach dem lebendigen Gott: Gedanken aus dem Leben von F. Enzio Busche, edited by Tracie A. Lamb, translated by Wolfgang Gebauer (Leipzig: Leipziger Universit tsverlag, 2015)

Full Issue

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.