In Memoriam, Orrin Glenn Hatch (1934-2022),
2022
Brigham Young University
In Memoriam, Orrin Glenn Hatch (1934-2022)
BYU Studies
At the passing of Senator Orrin G. Hatch on April 23, 2022, BYU Studies joins in honoring this outstanding public servant, who has been called “the most important Utah politician since Brigham Young.” Senator Hatch served seven terms in the United States Senate (1977 to 2019), the longest period in office of any Republican. During his tenure, he presided over three major Senate committees: Labor and Human Resources, Judiciary, and Finance. In 2017, he also was elected to the position of president pro tempore of the Senate.
Gold, Silver, And Grain,
2022
Brigham Young University
Gold, Silver, And Grain, Shinji Takagi
BYU Studies
In this paper, I discuss, from the perspective of a monetary economist, the operational aspects of the system of fixed prices for gold, silver, and all kinds of grain described in the Book of Mormon (Alma 11:3–19), based on internal evidence, economic logic, and historical precedents from antiquity. Previous authors have noted several unique features of the Nephite system, which was purportedly created by king Mosiah in the early first century BC. For example, John Welch, approaching the system strictly as one of weights and measures, argued that, in this otherwise binary system (in which denomination increases by a multiple …
Oracles Of God,
2022
Brigham Young University
Oracles Of God, Ryan S. Gardner
BYU Studies
When President Russell M. Nelson read the “Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: A Bicentennial Proclamation” at the 190th annual general conference on April 5, 2020, several articles appeared explaining this newest proclamation in the context of its predecessors. These articles revealed that these historically and spiritually valuable documents were not readily accessible in a single digital repository.
Covenant Language In Biblical Religions And The Book Of Mormon,
2022
Brigham Young University
Covenant Language In Biblical Religions And The Book Of Mormon, Noel B. Reynolds
BYU Studies
Because twenty-first-century public discourse in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seems to feature the language of covenant more and more often, it may be helpful to step back and reexamine the scriptural and historical backgrounds for covenant theology and terminology. When the Restoration took shape in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was dependent primarily on the language of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible and contemporary Protestant teachings for a context in which to interpret the language of Joseph Smith’s revelations and the Book of Mormon. After two centuries of modern linguistic …
Sally In Three Worlds: An Indian Captive In The House Of Brigham Young, By Virginia Kerns (Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2021),
2022
Brigham Young University
Sally In Three Worlds: An Indian Captive In The House Of Brigham Young, By Virginia Kerns (Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2021), Julia Harrison
BYU Studies
In Sally in Three Worlds: An Indian Captive in the House of Brigham Young, Virginia Kerns relates the story of the settlement of Utah through the life of Sally, a Pahvant Ute woman who lived in Brigham Young’s household. On its surface, the book is a narrative of the life of one woman, but Kerns argues that “a single life can illuminate an entire cultural and social world, or reveal an unremarked but vital part of the human story.”
A New Witness To The World, By Robert A. Rees (Salt Lake City: By Common Consent Press, 2020),
2022
Brigham Young University
A New Witness To The World, By Robert A. Rees (Salt Lake City: By Common Consent Press, 2020), Lane Welch
BYU Studies
This book provides a series of essays that analyze and contextualize the text of the Book of Mormon while providing Professor Rees’s faithful perspective on the text. Though each essay stands on its own as a separate work, the later essays, handling the context of Joseph Smith’s work as a nineteenth-century American writer, do reference and build off one another. These later essays handle the backgrounds and processes of various American writers contemporary to Joseph Smith, providing an effective survey of the literary milieu into which the Book of Mormon first entered; the earlier essays are more focused on the …
An Experiential Pathway To Conversion,
2022
Brigham Young University
An Experiential Pathway To Conversion, Robert K. Christensen, Matthew D. Wride, Neil R. Lundberg
BYU Studies
Joseph Smith’s formal education did not extend beyond the third grade. His life did not extend beyond the final years of his thirties. The person he became and his work in restoring the gospel of Jesus Christ, however, extend into eternity. John Taylor observed that “Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.”
Sacred Space,
2022
Brigham Young University
Sacred Space, Jacqueline Price
BYU Studies
My painting is about how an ordinary space can be made sacred when we invite the heavenly and earthly realms to align more closely. As a young woman reading her scriptures looks up towards heaven for inspiration, light and the Spirit of God fall upon her, and a connection is made.
Gethsemane,
2022
Brigham Young University
Gethsemane, Darlene Young
BYU Studies
I want to tell the story. But— there is no approaching this, strange crux of everything.
Holy Places,
2022
Brigham Young University
Holy Places, Merrijane Rice
BYU Studies
I watch the sunset from the corner of Country Mill and Western Drive and note how rooflines echo Frary Peak on Antelope Island—bent pyramids black against the sky and rimmed with light like glowing magma.
Seeing,
2022
Brigham Young University
Seeing, Dave Nielsen
BYU Studies
Grandpa Lewis is losing his sight. None of us knows what he can or can’t see.
Terrible Revolution: Latter-Day Saints And The American Apocalypse By Christopher James Blythe,
2022
Brigham Young University
Terrible Revolution: Latter-Day Saints And The American Apocalypse By Christopher James Blythe, Tona Hangen
BYU Studies
When a costume-clad man wielded a Captain Moroni “title of liberty” flag at the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021, it was a notable reminder that revolutionary end-times ideology has a long and evocative presence in the culture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and adjacent religions. Christopher Blythe’s timely and wide-ranging book explores these themes across time, geography, and even denominational boundaries. He defines apocalypticism both as a distinct Jewish- Christian scriptural literary form found in Hebrew and Christian texts and malleable perfectionist ideology embracing “catastrophic millennialism,” to borrow Catherine Wessinger’s coinage. In brief, apocalyptic rhetoric …
Joseph Smith For President: The Prophet, The Assassins, And The Fight For American Religious Freedom By Spender Mcbride,
2022
Brigham Young University
Joseph Smith For President: The Prophet, The Assassins, And The Fight For American Religious Freedom By Spender Mcbride, Jordan T. Watkins
BYU Studies
In Joseph Smith for President, Spencer McBride provides an illuminating and reader-friendly account of Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign. McBride, who is a scholar of American religious and political history and an associate managing historian of the Joseph Smith Papers Project, firmly situates the early history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints within antebellum contexts. In doing so, he contributes to a body of scholarship that examines the early Saints’ experiences in ways that shed light on and correct assumptions about American historical developments. In one recent example, which addresses some of the same themes, Benjamin E. …
Mormon Studies: A Critical History By Ronald Helfrich Jr.,
2022
Brigham Young University
Mormon Studies: A Critical History By Ronald Helfrich Jr., Roger Terry
BYU Studies
This short but dense critical history of Mormon studies is unique in several ways. First, author Ronald Helfrich Jr. is a self-described “Gentile” scholar who spent “probably far too many years,” including a year as a visiting professor in the Department of Sociology at Brigham Young University, researching and writing this history. Second, the book is surprisingly thorough. I have been the editorial director at BYU Studies for the past sixteen years and thought I had a fairly decent grasp of Mormon studies, past and present, but Helfrich repeatedly describes the work of historians and other scholars with whom I …
End Matter,
2022
Brigham Young University
Front Matter,
2022
Brigham Young University
How Did Joseph Smith Translate The Book Of Abraham,
2022
Brigham Young University
How Did Joseph Smith Translate The Book Of Abraham, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
Multiple sources associated with the coming forth of the Book of Abraham spoke of Joseph Smith “translating” the text from the papyri he acquired. The Prophet himself used this language to describe his own activity with the text. For example, an entry in his journal under the date November 19, 1835, indicates the Prophet “spent the day in translating” the Egyptian records. In an unpublished editorial that was apparently meant to be printed in the March 1, 1842, issue of the Times and Seasons (the issue that saw the publication of the first installment of the Book of Abraham), Joseph …
Abraham And Idrimi,
2022
Brigham Young University
Abraham And Idrimi, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
The Book of Abraham narrates the life of the biblical patriarch in a first-person autobiographical voice. The book begins: “In the land of the Chaldeans, at the residence of my fathers, I, Abraham, saw that it was needful for me to obtain another place of residence” (Abr. 1:1). This first-person voice continues throughout the text as if Abraham himself was writing.
The Blood Of The Canaanites,
2022
Brigham Young University
The Blood Of The Canaanites, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
The first chapter of the Book of Abraham contains a short detail about the ancestry of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt: “Now this king of Egypt was a descendant from the loins of Ham, and was a partaker of the blood of the Canaanites by birth. From this descent sprang all the Egyptians, and thus the blood of the Canaanites was preserved in the land” (Abr. 1:21–22). Although he was a righteous man who “judged his people wisely and justly all his days” (v. 26), Pharaoh could not lay claim to any priesthood authority because of his ancestry (v. 27). …
Zeptah And Egyptes,
2022
Brigham Young University
Zeptah And Egyptes, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
The Book of Abraham describes how “the land of Egypt [was] first discovered by a woman, who was the daughter of Ham, and the daughter of Egyptus” (Abr. 1:23). This woman “discovered the land [when] it was under water, who afterward settled her sons in it; and thus, from Ham, sprang that race which preserved the curse in the land.” Thereafter “the first government of Egypt was established by Pharaoh, the eldest son of Egyptus, the daughter of Ham” (vv. 24–25).
