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).
The Name Of The Lord,
2022
Brigham Young University
The Name Of The Lord, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
On two occasions in the Book of Abraham, the Lord reveals to Abraham his true name: Jehovah. The first incident was when Abraham had a “vision of the Almighty,” wherein “the angel of [the Lord’s] presence” rescued him from being sacrificed in Ur of the Chaldees and made early allusions to a future covenant relationship (Abr. 1:15). “And his voice was unto me: Abraham, Abraham, behold, my name is Jehovah, and I have heard thee, and have come down to deliver thee, and to take thee away from thy father’s house, and from all thy kinsfolk, into a strange …
Kolob, The Governing One,
2022
Brigham Young University
Kolob, The Governing One, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
One of the more memorable contributions of the Book of Abraham is its depiction of Kolob (Abr. 3:3–4, 9, 16; Facsimile 2, fig. 1). According to the Book of Abraham, Kolob is characterized by the following.
The Foreordination Of Abraham,
2022
Brigham Young University
The Foreordination Of Abraham, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
One of the most important doctrinal teachings in the Book of Abraham is that of the premortal existence of humankind and the foreordination of many “noble and great ones” to be God’s “rulers” (Abr. 3:22–28). Abraham himself was singled out as one who was divinely preordained to a great mission. “Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones; and God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: …
The Son Of Man,
2022
Brigham Young University
The Son Of Man, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
In the Book of Abraham’s divine-council scene, God proposes to send a redemptive emissary to ensure that those premortal intelligences or spirits who entered their second estate and faithfully did “all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them” would have “glory added upon their heads for ever and ever” (Abr. 3:25–26). When the Lord asked whom he should send to be this emissary, “one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first” (v. 27). This …
The Fall Of Lucifer,
2022
Brigham Young University
The Fall Of Lucifer, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
Similar to what is depicted in other books of Latter-day Saint scripture (for example Moses 4:1–4), the Book of Abraham’s depiction of the premortal council includes a brief mention of the fall of Lucifer. As readers encounter at the end of chapter 3 of the Book of Abraham, Lucifer’s fall from the divine council was an act of rebellion because he was not selected to carry out God’s plan of salvation.
Creation From Chaos,
2022
Brigham Young University
Creation From Chaos, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
Traditional Christianity teaches that God created the universe ex nihilo, or “out of nothing.” As explained by one scholar, “the most widely accepted theistic explanation of initial creation is the theory that God created the universe from absolutely nothing. . . . Most major theologians in Christian history—for example, Irenaeus, Augustine, Catherine of Sienna, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, Karl Barth, and Paul Tilich—believed that God initially created the universe from absolutely nothing. . . . Many influential Christians throughout history have affirmed the theory.”
Chiasmus In The Book Of Abraham,
2022
Brigham Young University
Chiasmus In The Book Of Abraham, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
Chiasmus, or inverted parallelism, is “a two-part [literary] structure or system in which the second half is a mirror image of the first, [that is,] where the first term recurs last, and the last first.” Most Latter-day Saints who know about chiasmus have probably heard about its presence in the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Chiasmus, however, also appears in the Book of Abraham. For instance, the opening verses of the Book of Abraham contains a chiasm highlighting Abraham’s right to priesthood.
The Ancient Egyptian View Of Abraham,
2022
Brigham Young University
The Ancient Egyptian View Of Abraham, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
Some might ask how likely it would have been for the ancient Egyptians to have known anything about the biblical figure Abraham. In fact, evidence survives today indicating that stories about Abraham were known to the ancient Egyptians as early as the time of the composition of the Joseph Smith Papyri (ca. 330–30 BC).
