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Identity In Christ: Who We Become When We Are With Christ, Felix Cortez Nov 2023

Identity In Christ: Who We Become When We Are With Christ, Felix Cortez

Faculty Publications

I am in Christ when the only way in which others can understand me is by understanding my relationship with Him.


Judaism, Trevan Hatch Jan 2019

Judaism, Trevan Hatch

Faculty Publications

The hostile motivations and painful feelings associated with jealousy and envy have earned these emotions a negative reputation in cultures and religions around the world. However, despite their sometimes destructive motivations, these emotions can also prompt actions that are ultimately beneficial for the experiencer. For example, jealousy can inspire the strengthening of a relationship, while envy can be a catalyst for self-improvement (Henniger and Harris 2014).


Messianism And Jewish Messiahs In The New Testament Period, Trevan Hatch Jan 2019

Messianism And Jewish Messiahs In The New Testament Period, Trevan Hatch

Faculty Publications

The terms Messiah and Christ are widely used today and are employed almost exclusively by Christians in reference to Jesus. Modern Christians, including Latter-day Saints, associate a litany of notions, implications, and expectations with these titles. Messiah, or mashiach in Hebrew, is synonymous with Christ, or christos in Greek, both meaning “one who is anointed” (with oil). What, however, were the deeper meanings and implications of these terms in Jesus’s day? How did Jews in the first centuries BC and AD interpret Old Testament passages regarding a messiah, and what were their expectations of a future messiah? When some of …


Born Again With Trump: The Portrayal Of Evangelicals In The Media, Eun-Young Julia Kim Jan 2019

Born Again With Trump: The Portrayal Of Evangelicals In The Media, Eun-Young Julia Kim

Faculty Publications

Since Trump’s ascendancy in American politics and his subsequent election, a number of articles have surfaced in the media trying to explain evangelical voters’ support of Trump. This paper analyzes common descriptions and conceptions of evangelicals by identifying recurring descriptions of evangelicals in 110 online articles published in a two-and-a-half-year period surrounding Trump’s presidential campaign and election. The results indicate that the answer to the question as to why evangelicals support Trump resides not so much in their theology, but in their aspirations for America and assumptions of what America should be like. This paper argues that it is crucial …


Calvin S. Smith: 'Utah’S Fighting Chaplain', Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D. Oct 2018

Calvin S. Smith: 'Utah’S Fighting Chaplain', Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This article shares the World War I experiences of Chaplain Calvin S. Smith, son of Latter-day Saint Church President Joseph F. Smith. From 1910-1913 he served as a missionary from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Chaplain Smith was one of three Latter-day Saint chaplains who served in WWI. After commissioning, he reported for service to Camp Lewis, Washington. He saw extensive combat during three major offensives: St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne, and Lys-Scheldt with service in France and Belgium. He was wounded twice. This article portrays the daily combat life of an American division chaplain, burial duty, support operations, …


Making Ritual Strange: The Temple Cult As The Foundation For Tannaitic Discourse On Idolatry, Avram R. Shannon Jan 2017

Making Ritual Strange: The Temple Cult As The Foundation For Tannaitic Discourse On Idolatry, Avram R. Shannon

Faculty Publications

This article examines the Tannaitic conception of the worship of avodah zarah. The term is commonly translated as “idolatry,”but the definition of what constitutes worship of avodah zarah, in m. Sanh. 7:6, is based on a more nuanced notion than simply worship of foreign gods. For the Sages of the Mishnah, worship of avodah zarah involved misuse of objects and rituals associated with the Temple cult, which constituted a betrayal of covenantal loyalty. This means that although the rabbinic laws against the worship of avodah zarah were based on the biblical prohibitions against worshiping other gods, the actual …


Old Testament Costume Resource Guide, Rory R. Scanlon Nov 2015

Old Testament Costume Resource Guide, Rory R. Scanlon

Faculty Publications

This report offers visual costume research support for artists working on Old Testament Bible projects, with an historical overview of Mesopotamia and how to understand its historical clothing pieces, an annotated listing of the best research sources, a list of garment and fabric terms for the 4000 BC to 0 AD period, and sample sketches from historical artifacts to suggest how to interpret the original research images the artist will encounter.


Book Of Mormon Costume Resource Guide, Rory R. Scanlon Nov 2015

Book Of Mormon Costume Resource Guide, Rory R. Scanlon

Faculty Publications

This report offers visual costume research support for artists working on Book of Mormon projects, with an historical overview of Mesoamerica and how to understand its historical clothing pieces, an annotated listing of the best research sources, a list of garment and fabric terms for the 2000 BC to 600 AD period, and sample sketches from historical artifacts to suggest how to interpret the original research images the artist will encounter.


Bar Mitzvahs And Bat Mitzvahs, Trevan Hatch, Loren Marks Jan 2014

Bar Mitzvahs And Bat Mitzvahs, Trevan Hatch, Loren Marks

Faculty Publications

A bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, meaning "son/ daughter of the commandment" in Aramaic, refers a Jewish series of rituals performed by adolescent males at age 13 and females at age 12. The ceremony of becoming bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah is not required by Jewish law but is held sacred. The ceremony consists of, among other things, leading part of a worship service and reading the sacred text in front of the assembly. This paramount event in the life of a Jewish youth has evolved over the centuries, but the origins of the ritual date back as early as …


Islam, Zahra Alghafli, Trevan Hatch, Loren Marks Jan 2014

Islam, Zahra Alghafli, Trevan Hatch, Loren Marks

Faculty Publications

Islam, meaning peace or submission, is a major world religion founded by the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century c.e. Muslims (literally “ones who submit”) number more than 1 billion, approximately one-fifth of the world’s population. Because of the perceived negative portrayal of Islam in the media, particularly in the United States and other Western countries, Muslim organizations have begun to stress that traditional and moderate Islam—which is observed by a large majority of the global Muslim population—is family-centered and nonviolent.


Sharia Law, Trevan Hatch Jan 2014

Sharia Law, Trevan Hatch

Faculty Publications

Sharia is the Islamic legal code that serves as an ethical, practical, and religious guide for practicing Muslims. Sharia has been variously translated from Arabic as "the way," "the correcting path," or literally "the path leading to the watering place." Sharia has Sunni and Shia variations as well as different schools of jurisprudence within those traditions, but all sharia is rooter in the Qur'an (or Koran, the primary sacred text of Islam) and the lived example of the Prophet Muhammad, as discussed in the hadith (a body of traditions concerning the Prophet Muhammad's life and revelations). these two sources are …


Judaism And Orthodox Judaism, Loren Marks, Trevan Hatch Jan 2014

Judaism And Orthodox Judaism, Loren Marks, Trevan Hatch

Faculty Publications

The Term Jew, which began as a tribal name and later became a national title, today refers to many things: an ethnic group a philosophy, a religion (Judaism), a tradition, or a way of life. Although Jews have comprised a relatively small portion of the world population, over the last 3,000 years the sacred tects and monotheistic tradition of the Jewish people have been foundational in Western civilization. The Jews, while suffering some of the greatest persecutions of any group in recorded history


Reasonable Conversions: Susanna Rowan's Mentoria And Conversion Narratives For Young Readers, Karen Roggenkamp Apr 2011

Reasonable Conversions: Susanna Rowan's Mentoria And Conversion Narratives For Young Readers, Karen Roggenkamp

Faculty Publications

Though not well known, Rowson's Mentoria-a curious conglomeration of thematically-related pieces from multiple genres, including the essay, epistolary novel, conduct book, and fairy tale-offers particularly fertile ground for thinking about the nexus between eighteenth-century didactic books and earlier works for young readers.2 At the heart of Mentoria is a series of letters describing girls who yield, with dire and frequently deadly consequences, to the passionate pleas of male suitors.3 Fallen women populate Rowson's world, and scholars have traditionally read Mentoria within the familiar bounds of the eighteenth-century seduction novel.4 However, Rowson's creation transforms the older tradition of didactic, child-centered conversion …


Will The World End In 2012? A Survival Guide To Maya Prophecies, Felix H. Cortez Jan 2011

Will The World End In 2012? A Survival Guide To Maya Prophecies, Felix H. Cortez

Faculty Publications

During the decade of the 1960s a Maya Monument was found in El Tortuguero, Tabasco, Mexico, in which reference was made to the end of the thirteenth calendric cycle on 4 Ahaw 3 Unii, or December 21, 2012. The reference is important because it points to the end of an impressively long Maya calendric cycle of 5,126 years, which is also the winter solstice. This reference and the well-known Maya interest in astronomical phenomena and prophecies has spurred wide speculations and claims that the Maya prophesied the end of the world as we know it towards the end of 2012. …


"Levantine Thinking In Egypt" The Footprint Of Intellectual Influence, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2011

"Levantine Thinking In Egypt" The Footprint Of Intellectual Influence, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

Upon examination of material and textual remains, there is a great deal of evidence for more contact with the Levant than many have supposed. This contact took the form of both Eyptians in the Levant and Asiatics in Egypt. Futhermore, the Shipwrecked Sailor bears hallmarks of Levantine literature. This famous tale may thus say something significant about Egyptian/Levantine relations. It seems to attest to intellectual influence flowing into Egypt from the Levant.


Guidance Through God-Given Dreams, Bruce Bauer Jan 2010

Guidance Through God-Given Dreams, Bruce Bauer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Egyptian Papyri And The Book Of Abraham: Some Questions And Answers, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2010

Egyptian Papyri And The Book Of Abraham: Some Questions And Answers, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

In 1835 Joseph Smith began translating some ancient Egyptian papyri that he had obtained from an exhibitor passing through Kirtland, Ohio. He soon announced, “Much to our joy [we] found that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham.” While we do not know how much the Prophet translated, we do know that some of his translation was published in serial form and eventually canonized as the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. For nearly one hundred years, it was thought that all these papyri had eventually made their way to the Wood Museum in Chicago, …


Teaching Egyptian History: Some Discipline-Specific Pedagogical Notes, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2009

Teaching Egyptian History: Some Discipline-Specific Pedagogical Notes, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

This paper was originally given at the professional workshop In Search of Egypt's Past: Problems and Perspectives of the Historiography of Ancient Egypt; A North American workshop at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, inaugurating the Journal of Egyptian History, April 23-24, 2008, most of the remaining papers of which will appear in Fascicle 2 of this journal. While many Egyptologists teach Egyptian history, we often fail to carefully conceive of just what this means. Teaching history is more than conveying facts about a time period, it is also teaching how to analyze and (re)construct history. Our classes may often …


Ruth, Redemption, Covenant, And Christ, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2009

Ruth, Redemption, Covenant, And Christ, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

The book of Ruth is one of the most loved stories of the Old Testament. Yet sometimes it remains just that: a story from which some readers gain little in the way of doctrine or application. We identify with the story because the principal actors are neither kings nor prophets but the average people of a typical village. There are neither mighty warriors nor great conflicts, but there are intense struggles for surviving life's difficulties and genuine battles with grief. We love the story because it is so well told, because it has characters we can identify with, because it …


Encircling Astronomy And The Egyptians: An Approach To Abraham 3, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2009

Encircling Astronomy And The Egyptians: An Approach To Abraham 3, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

Abraham 3 is one of the most enigmatic sections of the Pearl of Great Price. Teacher and student together sense there is something more to the text than the meaning they are drawing out of it. Each thorough exploration gently nudges another layer of understanding from the text, but we always feel we have unraveled only the smallest portion of what it has to offer. Though I do not pretend to have a great key to unlock this revelation, I believe there are some apperceptive principles that cast light on Abraham's night vision.


One Continuous Flow: Revelations Surrounding The New Translation, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2008

One Continuous Flow: Revelations Surrounding The New Translation, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

We often underestimate both the complexity and continuity of Joseph Smith's revelatory life. His visions rolled, he said, "like an overflowing surge before [his] mind." Now that they have been compartmentalized into different sections, chapters, and books, we tend to compartmentalize them in our minds. Such a practice, however, limits our ability to see how powerful and continuous this "overflowing surge" really was.


Royal Executions: Evidence Bearing On The Subject Of Sanctioned Killing In The Middle Kingdom, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2008

Royal Executions: Evidence Bearing On The Subject Of Sanctioned Killing In The Middle Kingdom, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

The pages of this journal, and other publications, have seen disagreement in the past regarding the methods of and reasons for sanctioned killing in Ancient Egypt. Some of this disagreement stems from having looked at large expanses of time without regard to change, and to arbitrarily imposed limitations. By looking at a larger corpus of evidence and restricting the examination to a specific period of time, this paper establishes that the Middle Kingdom engaged in a number of methods of sanctioned killing for more reasons than has often been supposed.


Empty Threats? How Egyptians' Self-Ontology Should Affect The Way We Read Many Texts, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2007

Empty Threats? How Egyptians' Self-Ontology Should Affect The Way We Read Many Texts, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

Egyptologists have typically divided texts into those that dealt with the divine and those that treated the mundane. This false dichotomy is not one that the Egyptians themselves would have imposed. They saw themselves as mortal beings that interacted with the divine realm and the afterlife. The texts they created reflect this understanding, and thus we are greatly hampered when we insist that the language of a decree, threat formula, or other texts, must refer to either the mundane or the supernatural, but not both. There is ample evidence that the Egyptians often intended specific wording to invoke multiple realms, …


Approaching Understandings In The Book Of Abraham, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2006

Approaching Understandings In The Book Of Abraham, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

The Book of Abraham is replete with important and rich doctrines for Latter-day Saints. The existence of papyri connected with the Book of Abraham furthers interest in this volume of scripture. While much research has been conducted into the doctrines and also the origins of the Book of Abraham, clearly much more remains to be done.


Insights Available As We Approach The Original Text, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2006

Insights Available As We Approach The Original Text, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

What excites me most about Royal Skousen's Analysis of Textual Variants,Part One: 1 Nephi 1 2 Nephi 10 (hereafter Analysis) is what it says about Latter-day Saints' commitment to the scriptures in general and to the Book of Mormon specifically. This volume, like others in the series published to date, bespeaks our desire to know, as accurately as possible, what the text actually says. We understand that even those with the best intentions sometimes introduce mistakes into the most sacred and important texts. Skousen demonstrates that he and others value the Book of Mormon so much that meticulous and intense …


From Clay Tablets To Canon: The Story Of The Formation Of Scripture, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2006

From Clay Tablets To Canon: The Story Of The Formation Of Scripture, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

Presented at the 35th Sperry Symposium. The Sidney B. Sperry Symposium is sponsored by Brigham Young University Religious Education and the Church Educational System. It is difficult for us, in the age of information, to appreciate the impact of both the sweeping movements and technical advances that allowed for the creation of the canonized book we call the Bible. We live in a time when we regularly turn to written documents for the "final word", and we take for granted an astounding volume of written works and easy access to them. Indeed, it has been argued that U.S. culture has …


The Book Of Breathings In Its Place, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2005

The Book Of Breathings In Its Place, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

Michael D. Rhodes's publication on the Hor Book of Breathings is an unusual book in many ways. It is a scholarly Egyptological work, dealing with an understudied type of text from an understudied era of Egyptian history, appearing in the midst of a series that has been dedicated to the exploration of a book considered to be scripture by the Latter-day Saints. Additionally, it deals with what many have incorrectly considered to be a text that can be used to test the revelatory ability of the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints.


Binding With Heraldic Plants, Kerry M. Muhlestein Sep 2004

Binding With Heraldic Plants, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

Binding prisoners is a pictorial icon which spans the entire length of ancient Egyptian history; therefore various aspects of this image have received scholarly treatment from time to time. One sub-motif which has received little attention is the image of binding prisoners, seemingly exclusively foreign prisoners, with the heraldic plants.


European Views Of Egyptian Magic And Mystery: A Cultural Context For The Magic Flute, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2004

European Views Of Egyptian Magic And Mystery: A Cultural Context For The Magic Flute, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and librettist Emanuel Schikaneder lived and created during the height of eighteenth-century interest in and fascination with Egypt. The Magic Flute's Egyptian setting would therefore evoke in their contemporaneous audience notions of a distant land with an exotic and magical culture. The numerous Egyptian elements of the work are representative of its era and are situated near the end of a continuum of European thought about ancient Egypt before the solid foundation of modern day Egyptology had been laid.


Prelude To The Pearl: Sweeping Events Leading To The Discovery Of The Joseph Smith Papyri, Kerry M. Muhlestein Jan 2004

Prelude To The Pearl: Sweeping Events Leading To The Discovery Of The Joseph Smith Papyri, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

In a general presentation, Elder John A. Widtsoe of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught that "throughout all the ages of history the hand of God has overruled the actions of mankind, that nothing is done except as the Lord may use it for the accomplishment of his mighty purposes. The things accomplished by humanity become in the end God's accomplishments, as he makes use of them in working out his infinite purposes. Even the great movements of nations and armies often serve to accomplish the workings of the Lord, such as when the empire of Assyria rose to …