Mormon Studies Commons^™

Visualizing Apostolic Succession, Meilan Jin, Iliesa S. K. Delai, Geoffrey M. Draper

BYU Studies

For years, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has published pictures and other illustrative diagrams to communicate its message. For example, the children's book Book of Mormon Stories includes an illustrative map indicating the possible route of Lehi's family from the Arabian peninsula to the Americas. Seminary students receive bookmarks showing a timeline of peoples and events in the Book of Mormon. More recently, the Church has published a series of "information graphics" (known more commonly as infographics) on its website. Infographics in a visually pleasing manner. The Church's infographics cover a range of topics such as …

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

BYU Studies

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

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 …

To Live, Wendy M. Payne

BYU Studies

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”

Emily Dickinson

On Waking, He Makes His Bed, Elizabeth Garcia

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

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

BYU Studies

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

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Salt; Genius Loci, Tyler Chadwick

BYU Studies

Susan Elizabeth Howe. Salt.

Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2013.

Lance Larsen. Genius Loci.

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

The Oxford Handbook Of Mormonism, Janeen Christensen

BYU Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism, edited by Terryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)

Quds, Bentley Snow

BYU Studies

The part that got me was that I had to take off my Chacos to enter the sanctuary. I was irked at first, drifting at the back of our group—apathetic, iPod on—deliberately detached and not in the mood for ceremonial inconveniences. I looked into the sanctuary’s square, open-air center. The floor, I had to admit, was beautiful—thin blue rivulets streamed deep within white marble—but imagine how many feet had mixed their oils with the dirt that faintly coated it. Red wooden poles lined the edges of the square, rising out of white pedestals to support the red tiles that sloped …

Documents, Volume 1: July 1828-June 1831; Documents, Volume 2: July 1831-January 1833; Documents, Volume 3: February 1833-March 1834, James B. Allen

BYU Studies

Michael Hubbard MacKay, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, editors. Documents, Volume 1: July 1828-June 1831.

Vol. 1 of the Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, Richaard Lyman Bushman, and Matthew J. Grow. Salt Lake City: The Church Historian's Press, 2013.

Matthew C. Godfrey, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, editors. Documents, Volume 2: July 1831-January 1833.

Vol. 2 of the Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, Richard Lyman …

Mormonism And American Politics, J. B. Haws

BYU Studies

Randall Balmer and Jana Riess, eds. Mormonism and American Politics.

New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

Exploring The Explanatory Power Of Semitic And Egyptian In Uto-Aztecan, Dirk Elzinga

BYU Studies

Brian D. Stubbs. Exploring the Explanatory Power of Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan.

Provo, Utah: Grover Publications, 2015.

A Faded Legacy: Amy Brown Lyman And Mormon Women's Activism, 1872-1959, Lisa Olsen Tait

BYU Studies

Dave Hall. A Faded Legacy: Amy Brown Lyman and Mormon Women's Activism, 1872-1959.

Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 2015.

Chicano While Mormon: Activism, War, And Keeping The Faith, Jorge Iber

BYU Studies

Ignacio M. Garcia. Chicano While Mormon: Activism, War, and Keeping the Faith.

Madison, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015.

Sublime Physick, Darlene Young

BYU Studies

Patrick Madden. Sublime Physick.

Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016.

Psalms Of Nauvoo: Early Mormon Poetry, Gerrit Van Dyk

BYU Studies

Hal Robert Boyd and Susan Easton Black, eds., Psalms of Nauvoo: Early Mormon Poetry (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2015)

A Missionary's Story: The Letters And Journals Of Adolf Haag, Mormon Missionary To Switzerland And Palestine, 1892, Bridget Edwards

BYU Studies

Larry W. Draper and Kent P. Jackson, eds., A Missionary’s Story: The Letters and Journals of Adolf Haag, Mormon Missionary to Switzerland and Palestine, 1892 (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 2015)

End Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Joseph Smith's First Vision And A Culture Of Spiritual Manifestations, Trevan Hatch

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this chapter is not to recount and analyze Joseph Smith's First Vision, as others have already attempted that several times. Rather, it is to juxtapose the First Vision with accounts of other visionaries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and to discuss the religious atmosphere in which these visionaries lived.