Digital Commons Network^™

Missourian Efforts To Extradite Joseph Smith And The Ethics Of Governor Thomas Reynolds Of Missouri, A. Keith Thompson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

This is the second of two articles discussing Missouri’s requisitions to extradite Joseph Smith to face criminal charges and the Prophet’s recourse to English habeas corpus practice to defend himself. In the first article, the author discussed the English nature of pre-Civil War habeas corpus practice in America and the anachronistic modern idea that the Nauvoo Municipal Court did not have jurisdiction to consider interstate habeas corpus matters. In this article, he analyzes the conduct of Governor T homas Reynolds in the matter of Missouri’s requisitions for the extradition of Joseph Smith in light of 1840s legal ethics in America. …

Book Reviews, John Christopher Thomas, Reviewer, Joseph M. Spencer

Journal of Book of Mormon Studies

The unique role and function of the book of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon has rightly been of interest to a variety of readers, both scholarly and popular. A quick review of a portion of the literature reveals something of its ongoing appeal. For the most part, these studies have focused on explaining the reason for the extensive quotations of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon and/ or offering a rationale for the numerous differences between the text(s) of Isaiah cited in the Book of Mormon and the text(s) of lsaiah found in a variety of other places including …

Full Issue

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Word Baptize In The Book Of Mormon, John Hilton Iii

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The word baptize appears 119 times in the Book of Mormon; three speakers (Jesus Christ, Mormon, and Nephi) account for 87% of all of these usages. Each of these individuals have distinctive patterns in how they use the word baptize, indicating that each speaker has his own unique voice. When one accounts for the fact that Christ says relatively fewer words than Mormon, it is evident that per 1,000 words spoken, Jesus Christ uses the word baptize more than any other speaker in the Book of Mormon. This finding holds true for Christ’s words both in and outside of 3 …

Peace In The Holy Land, Shirley S. Ricks

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Living in the Holy Land as a Palestinian Latter-day Saint has created unique challenges and perspective for Sahar Qumsiyeh. In order to attend church meetings in Jerusalem from her home near Bethlehem, Sahar was required to travel under unsafe and stressful circumstances for hours through military checkpoints to cover the few miles’ distance (as the crow f lies). Sahar’s story, Peace for a Palestinian, varies dramatically from our own and reminds us that true discipleship requires sacrifice, which in turn brings blessings.

On Being The Sons Of Moses And Aaron: Another Look At Interpreting The Oath And Covenant Of The Priesthood, Mark Hamstead

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Section 84 of the Doctrine and Covenants contains what is commonly known by Latter-day Saints as the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood. Priesthood leaders in the church are expected to teach and explain this Oath and Covenant to prospective Melchizedek Priesthood holders. However, the meanings of phrases within the Oath and Covenant are not well understood. For example: What does it mean to become the sons of Moses and Aaron? In what sense are bodies renewed? Are the promised blessings just for holders of the priesthood or for others as well? This paper discusses several ways that phrases in …

The Case Of The Missing Commentary, Brian C. Hales

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The first published commentary on Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 is a lengthy volume with much material that deals directly with the revelation as well as extended discussions that go well beyond Joseph Smith’s dictated text. Much of the included material has been previously published, although several new historical items are presented, including a detailed examination of the provenance of the revelation. An apparent weakness of the book involves key themes mentioned in the revelation but minimized or otherwise ignored in this extended commentary. Examples include the possible meanings of the “law” (v. 6), importance of sealing authority (vv. 7‒20), …

The Interpreter Foundation And An Apostolic Charge, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

In April 2006, Dallin H. Oaks, in unpublished remarks at the naming of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship (as the successor to FARMS), reminded listeners that “this institute belongs to God.” On November 10, 2018, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland (also in unpublished remarks, titled “The Maxwell Legacy of the 21st Century”) renewed that commitment: the Institute should be “as faithful as eternal truth, and as bright as the light of truth that is in us.” This is, likewise, the vision of T he Interpreter Foundation, in contrast to Latter-day Saint “academic ventures” at some universities. It should …

Full Issue

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

“By Small Means”: Rethinking The Liahona, Timothy Gervais, John L. Joyce

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The Liahona’s faith-based functionality and miraculous appearance have often been viewed as incongruous with natural law. This paper attempts to reconcile the Liahona to scientific law by displaying similarities between its apparent mechanisms and ancient navigation instruments called astrolabes. It further suggests the Liahona may have been a wedding dowry Ishmael provided to Lehi’s family. The paper displays the integral connection Nephi had to the Liahona’s functionality and how this connection more clearly explains the lack of faith displayed by Nephi’s band during the journey than traditional conceptions of its faith-based functionality.

Playing To An Audience: A Review Of Revelatory Events, Kevin Christensen

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Ann Taves’s book offers a comparative look at the origins of three groups, among them Mormonism. While she does not address the issue of competing explanations by each group about their origins or how to best navigate among them in terms that are not self-referential, that crucial circumstance is modeled by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. So I, too, have a pattern that applies to my arguments just as much it does to those offered by Professor Taves. Where her book attempts to solve the puzzle of Joseph Smith, my review offers a test of her rules …

“Swearing By Their Everlasting Maker”: Some Notes On Paanchi And Giddianhi, Matthew L. Bowen

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

This brief article explores Paanchi and Giddianhi as names evidencing the Egyptian onomastic element –anchi/anhi/ʿnḫ(i) and the potential literary significance of these two names in the context of Mormon’s narrative detailing the formation of the oath-bound secret combinations sworn with oath-formulae upon one’s “life” (cf. Egyptian ʿnḫ, “life”; “live”; “swear an oath [by one’s life]”). It also explores the implications for Mormon’s telling of Nephite history during his own time.

Pushing Through Life’S Pilgrimage Together, Mauro Properzi

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Walking for 500 miles in a foreign country through heat, arduous terrain, and many inconveniences is difficult enough. Add to the equation a man in a wheelchair, and the task appears impossible. The solution? Determination, humility, humor, faith, love, and someone, or many, who give you a push. I’ll Push You is a true story and parable for life that will give readers hope and encouragement.

Approaching Abinadi, Stephen O. Smoot

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The recently released Abinadi: He Came Among Them in Disguise, a new book from Brigham Young University’s Book of Mormon Academy, offers readers multidisciplinary approaches to Mosiah 11–17 that highlight the literary, historical, and doctrinal richness of the story of Abinadi. Students and scholars of the Book of Mormon are sure to benefit greatly from this new volume.

A Valuable Book For The Increasingly International Church, Jeff Lindsay

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

As the Church expands among the many nations, peoples, and tongues of the earth, new challenges arise that require the organization and the members of the Church to better meet the needs of the peoples in various nations and to cope with the specific challenges that may exist there. In this article I review a valuable book that can help in that expanding effort.

Abinadi: A Minor Prophet, A Major Contributor, Andrew C. Smith

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The new edited volume Abinadi: He Came Among Them in Disguise, from the Book of Mormon Academy, is a valuable contribution to Book of Mormon studies. It should find a wide audience and stimulate greater and deeper thinking about the pivotal contributions of Abinadi to the Book of Mormon. It should, however, not be considered the end of the conversation. This review discusses the volume’s importance within Book of Mormon scholarship generally. It also highlights certain valuable contributions from each of the authors, and points out places where more can be said and deeper analysis is needed.

“And The Meek Also Shall Increase”: The Verb Yāsap In Isaiah 29 And Nephi’S Prophetic Allusions To The Name Joseph In 2 Nephi 25–30, Matthew L. Bowen

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Beyond his autobiographic use of Joseph’s name and biography, Nephi also considered the name Joseph to have long-term prophetic value. As a Semitic/Hebrew name, Joseph derives from the verb yāsap (to “add,” “increase,” “proceed to do something,” “do something again,” and to “do something more”), thus meaning “may he [God] add,” “may he increase,” or “may he do more/ again.” Several of the prophecies of Isaiah, in which Nephi’s soul delighted and for which he offers extensive interpretation, prominently employ forms of yāsap in describing iterative and restorative divine action (e.g., Isaiah 11:11; 26:15; 29:14; cf. 52:1). The prophecy of …

To Be Learned Is Good, If One Stays On The Rails, Paul C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

This review essay looks at certain problematical issues in the recently published collection of essays honoring Latter-day Saint historian Richard Lyman Bushman. Problems emerge from the title itself, “To Be Learned is Good,” as a result of the failure to note that the Book of Mormon passage “To be learned is good” is a conditional statement. In addition, since these essays are billed as “Essays on Faith and Scholarship,” it is odd most of them do not touch on this subject at all. I examine four essays in depth, including Adam Miller’s “Christo-Fiction, Mormon Philosophy, and the Virtual Body of …

“They Shall No More Be Confounded”: Moroni’S Wordplay On Joseph In Ether 13:1-13 And Moroni 10:31, Matthew L. Bowen

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

In two related prophecies, Moroni employs an apparent wordplay on the name Joseph in terms of the Hebrew idiom (lōʾ) yôsîp … ʿôd (+ verbal component), as preserved in the phrases “they shall no more be confounded” (Ether 13:8) and “that thou mayest no more be confounded” (Moroni 10:31). That phraseology enjoyed a long currency within Nephite prophecy (e.g., 1 Nephi 14:2, 15:20), ultimately having its source in Isaiah’s prophecies regarding Jerusalem/Zion (see, for example, Isaiah 51:22; 52:1– 2; 54:2–4). Ether and Moroni’s prophecy in Ether 13 that the Old Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem would “no more be confounded” …

Marjorie Newton’S Account Of The Faith Of The Māori Saints: A Critical Appraisal, Louis Midgley

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Marjorie Newton’s Mormon and Maori is a version of her 1998 thesis in which she rejects key elements of the Māori Latter day Saint historical narrative. This contrasts with her earlier, faith affirming Tiki and Temple. In Mormon and Maori Newton targets what she sees as Māori/missionary mythology. She has written for different audiences; one was for secular religious studies scholars, while the other was for faithful Saints. Midgley rejects Newton’s claim that a Mormon American cultural imperialism requires Māori to abandon noble elements of their culture. Faithful Saints are liberated from the soul-destroying behavior that results from the loss …

Et Incarnatus Est: The Imperative For Book Of Mormon Historicity, Stephen O. Smoot

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Some have come to insist that the Book of Mormon should be read as inspired fiction, which is to say that readers, including Latter-day Saints, should abandon any belief in the Book of Mormon as an authentic ancient text and instead should see it as an inspired frontier novel written by Joseph Smith that may act as scripture for those who follow his teachings. T his paper provides reasoning to reject this proposition as not only logically incoherent but also theologically impotent.1 It raises the objection that this position fundamentally undercuts the credibility of Joseph Smith. The Prophet’s direct claims …

Johannine Christology Through The Lens Of Three Of Its Dialogues, Gaye Strathearn

Faculty Publications

In comparison with the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Gospel of John has a very different interpretive lens through which it answers the age-old question “Who is Jesus?” The Gospel itself identifies its purpose: “These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31). While many individuals in the Synoptic Gospels declare Jesus to be the Son of God, there are very few accounts of Jesus himself declaring so until the latter part of his ministry. In this respect, …

Wise Or Foolish: Women In Mormon Biblical Narrative Art, Jennifer Champoux

BYU Studies

Visual imagery is an inescapable element of religion. Even those groups that generally avoid figural imagery, such as those in Judaism and Islam, have visual objects with religious significance.1 In fact, as David Morgan, professor of religious studies and art history at Duke University, has argued, it is often the religions that avoid figurative imagery that end up with the richest material culture.2 To some extent, this is true for Mormonism. Although Mormons believe art can beautify a space, visual art is not tied to actual ritual practice. Chapels, for example, where the sacrament ordinance is performed, are built with …

End Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Martin Harris Comes To Utah, 1870, Susan Easton Black, Larry C. Porter

BYU Studies

[The following is an excerpt from chapter 14 of the new biography Martin Harris: Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon by Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter. This biography, published by BYU Studies, will be available in October 2018. For further information, see the advertisement on page 208 of this issue.]

Timing The Translation Of The Book Of Mormon: "Days [And Hours] Never To Be Forgotten", John W. Welch

BYU Studies

This paper aims to stimulate specific thinking about the intense and complex events during which the Book of Mormon was translated in 1829. Encouraged initially by Elder Neal A. Maxwell, and building on my chapter in the second edition of Opening the Heavens, this article strives to be as precise as possible about the timing of the events and progress of the Book of Mormon translation during the months and days it took place. In 1834, Oliver Cowdery wrote, “These were days never to be forgotten—to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, …

The Power Of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy And Cosmology, Dan Belnap

BYU Studies

The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology By Jonathan A. Stapley

New York: Oxford University Press, 2018

Voice Of The Saints In Taiwan, Richard B. Stamps

BYU Studies

Voice of the Saints in Taiwan By Po Nien (Felipe) Chou and Mei Wah Sin (Petra) Chou

Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2017

Pioneer Women Of Arizona, Hannah Charlesworth

BYU Studies

Pioneer Women of Arizona, by Roberta Flake Clayton, Catherine H. Ellis, and David F. Boone, 2d ed. (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017)

Abinadi: He Came Among Them In Disguise, Neal Rappleye

BYU Studies

Abinadi: He Came among Them in Disguise, edited by Shon D. Hopkin (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2018)