Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Guilty By Association: Race And Religion In George Romney's 1968 Presidential Campaign, Matthew K. Steen Iii

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In 1966, Republican Governor George W. Romney of Michigan was considered by many in his party, and among Democrats, to be a front runner for the 1968 presidential election. By March 1968, however, Romney dropped out of the race due to a lack of popular support. Several factors contributed to his unsuccessful campaign. Foremost was his wavering position on U.S. involvement in Vietnam coupled with his general lack of knowledge of foreign affairs. To a lesser degree, Romney's membership in The Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gave him a negative image in the press. Because the Church denied its …

Apotheosis Of The State And The Decline Of Civilization: A Systems Approach, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Humanity is undergoing a second Axial Age. The first, as described by Karl Jaspers, brought transcendence into the vision and self-understanding of humans and the world. The rise of secularism and “Death of God” is dissolving and fragmenting that transcendence — a vital subsystem of the civilization system. Economy, knowledge and government comprise three additional subsystems and have coalesced to form the modern sovereign state, diminishing the traditional place of religion, art and philosophy in civilizations. An example of a state lacking common institutions of transcendence was the Mongol empire. Ruling Russia for a quarter millennium, its state form was …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Byu Today Publishes Article On Critical Text Project

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The May 1992 issue of BYU Today carried a very good summary of the project that Royal Skousen, professor of English at BYU, is conducting to produce a critical text of the Book of Mormon. The main purposes of this project are to establish the original English language text of the Book of Mormon, to the extent that it can be discovered, and to determine the history of the text-in particular, the changes that the text has undergone, both editorial and accidental.

Review Does It Again--Offers Careful Analyses, And Pulls No Punches

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

F.A.RMS. has published the fourth volume of its annual Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, edited by Daniel C. Peterson.

The Mything Link: Why Sacred Storytelling Is A Key Human Survival Strategy, Ken Baskin

Comparative Civilizations Review

For several decades, societies across the globe have faced a real existential threat with challenges such as global warming. Yet no one in the elite has been able to do anything to improve conditions. We seem to be trapped in the kind of situation that Einstein described when he discussed problems that can’t be solved with the logic that created them.

Buber The Radical Egalitarian And Buber And Psychology, Kenneth Feigenbaum

Comparative Civilizations Review

My first iteration for this paper was to present Martin Buber in the context of radical politics in Germany and to focus upon his relationship to the anarchist Gustav Landauer. After a brief search, I found too few sources that were easily accessible from here in the United States, so as part of this presentation I situate Buber in the radical politics extant mostly during his time in Germany and in Berlin. I focus here on Buber’s psychology but include several intellectual side trips visiting aspects of Buber’s philosophy and his politics. I cannot separate them in discussing Buber and …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Journal Devoted To Questions Of Ancient Transoceanic Contacts

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Academia has often ignored controversial evidence of early cultural contact between the Old and New Worlds. Pre-Columbiana: A Journal of Long-Distance Contacts brings attention to rigorous scholarship supporting diffusionist claims while meeting the demands of scholarly and scientific objectivity. Developed by Stephen C. Jett, a geography professor at the University of California, Davis, the interdisciplinary journal offers studies that have been reviewed by a panel of scholars that includes John L. Sorenson, a BYU emeritus professor of anthropology and FARMS associate who has published widely on the subject.

New Festschrift Explores Scripture And Ancient World

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

When Richard L. Anderson retired from the Religious Education faculty at Brigham Young · University in 1996, the Department of Religious Education and FARMS agreed to sponsor a Festschrift (a compilation of essays written in honor of an individual) that would commemorate his distinguished academic career. The positive response from Anderson's friends and colleagues who wished to contribute to the publication has resulted in two volumes of scholarly articles.

Evidence Surveyed For Book Of Mormon Authenticity, Old World-New World Contacts

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Two recent magazine articles on topics of interest in Book of Mormon studies are available from FARMS as reprints (see the order form).

The first article, "Mounting Evidence for the Book of Mormon," by Daniel C. Peterson, appeared in the January 2000 issue of the Ensign magazine. The article explains the role of Book of Mormon scholarship, notes the tremendous surge in publications of that kind in recent years, and highlights secondary evidence that supports the book's claim to ancient origins and inspired translation.

Langland, Father Of American Literatures, John M. Bowers

Quidditas

Geoffrey Chaucer’s position as “father of English literature” has been steadily challenged in recent years. This paper both proposes and interrogates the other fourteenth-century English poet William Langland’s possible claims as the origin for the Puritan tradition of New England and, hence, the later traditions of American literatures—in the plural. We know that the first copy of his satirical, theological dream-vision Piers Plowman arrived in New England in 1630 with the father of Anne Bradstreet, and as a result any patriarchal genealogy is already problematic because the first author in the American family-tree was a woman. Rather than the linearity …

Book Censorship In Post-Tiananmen China (1989-2019), Yuwu Song

Journal of East Asian Libraries

Abstract: Censorship has become more prevalent in Chinese cultural and social life since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Modern commentary on Chinese censorship focuses on news media and Internet, but neglects print books, which is part of a broader crackdown on dissent. To fill this gap, the project aims to map the contours of book censorship in China during the past 30 years. The emphasis is on the Chinese authorities’ increasing attempts to dominate people’s minds under Xi Jinping, who ascended to power as the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012. The project reveals different levels of …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lecture Report

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

On 10 October 2003, Father Columba Stewart presented an Institute-sponsored lecture at BYU titled “The Practices of Egyptian Monastic Prayer: Desert, Cell, and Community.” Fr. Stewart is a Benedictine monk of St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota, where he is professor of theology at St. John’s School of Theology and teaches monastic studies. He is also the interim director of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, which is working closely with the Institute on its manuscript preservation projects in the Middle East and Ethiopia.

Temples Everywhere, Hugh W. Nibley

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Those of us who saw the recent television documentary American Prophet: The Story of Joseph Smith may have noticed an interesting defect in the script, namely, that it was Hamlet with Hamlet left out. It was as if one were to produce the life of Shakespeare with charming views of Stratford-upon-Avon, country school, the poaching story, marriage to Anne Hatha-way, showbiz in London, and respectable retirement without bothering to mention that our leading character gave the world the greatest treasury of dramatic art in existence. Or a life of Bach with his niggardly brother-guardian, his early poverty, his odd jobs …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dss Library Wins Ala Choice Award

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Each year in January, Choice magazine recognizes a short list of the best academic titles from among the 7,000 or so reviewed in the previous year. Among the winners of the January 2008 awards is BYU’s Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Library, which was produced by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and published by Brill Academic Press. This electronic database contains searchable texts of all of the published non-biblical scrolls. High resolution images of the scrolls and a complete English translation accompany the texts. The latest version of the database, published at the end of 2006, is the …

Scripture Update: El Niño And Lehi’S Voyage Revisited, Warren P. Aston

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

In recent years several scholars have drawn the attention of Latter-day Saints to the phenomenon popularly known as “El Niño.”1 In 1990 David L. Clark highlighted the fact that a mechanism was now known to science that would permit, periodically, easterly sea travel across the Pacific, the direction Lehi’s party is understood to have traveled.2 ENSO, the more formal acronym for this phenomenon, comes from El Niño (the Christ child) and Southern Oscillation, referring to the fact that the changes commence in the southern Pacific Ocean. The intermittent ENSO effect creates an easterly equatorial current running counter to the prevailing …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Inscribed Gold Plate Fits Book Of Mormon Pattern, John A. Tvedtnes

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

An inscribed gold plate 2.2 centimeters in length has been uncovered in a third-century ad Jewish burial. The burial, that of a young child, is located in a Roman cemetery in Halbturn, Austria. The news was released by archaeologists at the University of Vienna’s Institute of Prehistory and Early History.

Mesoamerican “Cimeters” In Book Of Mormon Times, Matthew Roper

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The Book of Mormon first mentions a weapon called a cimeter during the time of Enos (some time between about 544 and 421 bc). Speaking of his people’s Lamanite enemies, Enos says, “their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax” (Enos 1:20). Later, in the first and second centuries bc, the weapon was part of the armory of both Nephites and Lamanites in addition to swords and other weapons (Mosiah 9:16; 10:8; Alma 2:12; 43:18, 20, 37; 60:2; Helaman 1:14).

Indices Of The Comparative Civilizations Review, No. 1-83

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Michel Danino. The Lost River: On The Trail Of The Sarasvati, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

When early civilizations were listed back at the beginning of the modern discipline that constitutes the comparative study of civilizations, one of the greatest of them all was yet essentially unknown. It was only about a century ago that information was brought forward on the possible existence of this most interesting, extensive, and influential Bronze Age civilization, the Indus River Valley Civilization.

Full Issue

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

At The Intersection Of Scribal Training And Theological Profundity: Chiasm As An Editorial Technique In The Primeval History And Deuteronomy, Bernard M. Levinson

BYU Studies Quarterly

There can be little doubt that ancient Near Eastern scribes, including those in ancient Israel, were well-trained in a wide range of technical devices associated with the composition, copying, transmission, editing, collation, revision, reworking, and interpretation of texts.1 My focus in the present study will be on one of the most interesting of these devices, the literary chiasm, in which textual content is ordered in an ABC::CʹBʹAʹ chiastic, or “x-shaped,” pattern. In many cases, once this pattern is recognized within a chapter or literary unit, an ostensibly haphazard or difficult to follow textual sequence gains a sense of order, as …

The First Vision As A Prehistory Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Kathleen Flake

BYU Studies Quarterly

Most scholarly attention to the First Vision is dedicated to determining whether it happened or whether whatever happened is reliably described in the few primary accounts we have of it. My interests lie in a different direction. I am interested in the First Vision accounts insofar as they tell us something about religion, not about history, and not least because my wager is that this story, as a story, exceeds the limits of history, especially when it becomes understood as scripture. Which is to say, I want to better understand the work done by this story among the members of …

Readers: An Invitation To A Continuing Debate, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

The organization was created in 1961, with a conference held at Salzburg, Austria. Scholars gathered there under the auspices of UNESCO for six days in October. Among those present were Pitirim Sorokin and Arnold Toynbee. The topics included the definition of the word “civilization,” problems in the analysis of complex cultures, civilizational encounters in the past, the Orient vs. the Occident, problems of universal history, theories of historiography, and the role of the social sciences and the humanities in globalization.

The Fayoum, The Seila Pyramid, Fag El-Gamous And Its Nearby Cities: A Background, Kerry Muhlestein, Cannon Fairbairn, Ronald Harris

Faculty Publications

Because the excavations discussed in this volume take place in the Fayoum, and cover a time period that spans from the Old Kingdom through the Byzantine era, many readers will find it helpful to understand the history, geography, and geology of the Fayoum. Here we provide a brief outline of those subjects. This is not intended to present new information or be a definitive discussion. Rather, it is aimed at contextualizing the rest of the material presented in this volume, and thus making all of its information more accessible. The Fag el-Gamous cemetery and the Seila Pyramid are located on …

Meteorological Time In Dorothy Wordsworth's Rydal Journal, Amanda Ann Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis deals with Dorothy Wordsworth's Rydal Journal, a journal written between 1824 and 1835, when Dorothy Wordsworth was between ages 53 and 64. The most interesting entries in the Rydal Journal include descriptions of William's political views, famous callers at Rydal Mount, church sermons Dorothy heard, books she was reading, and her relationships and correspondence with many friends and family members. In terms of structure, Dorothy's journal entries are generally quite similar over the eleven years of these volumes. Perhaps most strikingly, the vast majority begin with a record of the day's weather. Sometimes, she broadly outlines the …