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The Women’S Ordination Movement In The Reorganized Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints: Historical And Sociological Perspectives, Nancy Ross, David J. Howlett, Zoe Kruse Jan 2022

The Women’S Ordination Movement In The Reorganized Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints: Historical And Sociological Perspectives, Nancy Ross, David J. Howlett, Zoe Kruse

Mormon Studies Review

In The Angel and the Beehive, sociologist Armand Mauss chronicled how leaders and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS/Mormon) made changes to fit into White Evangelical American society in the twentieth century, a process that Mauss described as assimilation.1 In parallel to the LDS story but unanalyzed by Mauss, the leadership of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church/Community of Christ) invested in a similar “assimilative” process, but drew closer to mainline Protestant norms, including ideas about expanding women’s roles in the church and in society. These competing trajectories pushed …

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Contradiction Among Essentialism: How Some Mormon Fundamentalists Do Gender, Jennifer Huss Basquiat-Jones Jan 2022

Contradiction Among Essentialism: How Some Mormon Fundamentalists Do Gender, Jennifer Huss Basquiat-Jones

Mormon Studies Review

Gender is eternal, at least from the perspective and teachings of most Mormon traditions. Whether mainstream or fundamentalist, Mormonism teaches that gender is a fixed characteristic that predates earthly existence and follows us into the afterlife. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints codified this belief in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” a 1995 document likely authored by Latter-day Saint lawyers and designed to thwart same-sex marriage advancements in Hawaii and elsewhere.3 Whether received by divine revelation or responding to perceived secular need, this proclamation reiterates key components of Latter-day Saint doctrine related to gender and family. …

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Adolescent Girls' Mental Health, Amanda Hardy Jan 2022

Adolescent Girls' Mental Health, Amanda Hardy

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

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"Yours For The Indian Cause": Zitkala-Sa's Expansion Of Indigenous Rights Through Female Correspondence, Maya Brimhall Jan 2022

"Yours For The Indian Cause": Zitkala-Sa's Expansion Of Indigenous Rights Through Female Correspondence, Maya Brimhall

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

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The Last Nephite Scribes, Noel B. Reynolds Jan 2022

The Last Nephite Scribes, Noel B. Reynolds

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

In an earlier paper, I concluded that Lehi and Nephi were highly trained Josephite scribes and were associated with an official Jerusalem scribal school that preserved ancient Manassite traditions. There they acquired advanced writing skills and classical Hebrew and Egyptian, which would become the scriptural languages of the Nephite peoples. These they maintained in the new promised land and passed on from generation to generation through the entire thousand-year Nephite dispensation, even though the Nephite language itself would naturally evolve. Evidence of how they did this surfaces repeatedly throughout the Book of Mormon. T he following paper documents how both …

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Lehi And Nephi As Trained Manassite Scribes, Noel B. Reynolds Jan 2022

Lehi And Nephi As Trained Manassite Scribes, Noel B. Reynolds

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

This paper brings together contemporary Ancient Near East scholarship in several fields to construct an updated starting point for interpretation of the teachings of the Book of Mormon. It assembles findings from studies of ancient scribal culture, historical linguistics and epigraphy, Hebrew rhetoric, and the history and archaeology of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant, together with the traditions of ancient Israel to construct a contextualized perspective for understanding Lehi, Nephi, and their scribal training as they would have been understood by their contemporaries. Lehi and Nephi are shown to be the beneficiaries of the most advanced scribal training available in …

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“Unto The Taking Away Of Their Stumbling Blocks”: The Taking Away And Keeping Back Of Plain And Precious Things And Their Restoration In 1 Nephi 13–15, Matthew L. Bowen Jan 2022

“Unto The Taking Away Of Their Stumbling Blocks”: The Taking Away And Keeping Back Of Plain And Precious Things And Their Restoration In 1 Nephi 13–15, Matthew L. Bowen

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

In the latter part (1 Nephi 13–14) of his vision of the tree of life (1 Nephi 11–14), Nephi is shown the unauthorized human diminution of scripture and the gospel by the Gentile “great and abominable church” — that plain and precious things/words, teachings, and covenants were “taken away” or otherwise “kept back” from the texts that became the Bible and how people lived out its teachings. He also saw how the Lord would act to restore those lost words, teachings, and covenants among the Gentiles “unto the taking away of their stumbling blocks” (1 Nephi 14:1). The iterative language …

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“But That Thou Wouldst Clear My Way Before Me”: A Note On The Personal And Emotional Rendering Of An Ancient Idiom In 2 Nephi 4:33, Matthew L. Bowen Jan 2022

“But That Thou Wouldst Clear My Way Before Me”: A Note On The Personal And Emotional Rendering Of An Ancient Idiom In 2 Nephi 4:33, Matthew L. Bowen

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

The biblical Hebrew collocation pinnâ derek or pannû derek (cf. Egyptian Ἰr wꜣ.t [n]), often rendered “prepare the way” or “prepare a way” in English, is an evident stylistic feature of Nephi’s writings. The most basic meaning of this idiom is “clear my way,” which is how it is rendered in 2 Nephi 4:33. Zenos’s use of “prepare the way” (Jacob 5:61, 64) in the context of “clear[ing] away” bad branches also reflects this most basic meaning.

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Full Issue Jan 2022

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

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An Unexpected Case For An Anthropomorphic God, Daniel C. Peterson Jan 2022

An Unexpected Case For An Anthropomorphic God, Daniel C. Peterson

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

Given the knowledge of the corporeal, embodied nature of God that the Prophet Joseph Smith received in his 1820 First Vision, Latter-day Saints have argued from their earliest days that the Bible is most accurately understood as teaching precisely the same thing — that God has a body and that humans are literally created in his physical image. Now, a new book from an unlikely (and quite unintentional) ally makes a strong case for our position. It is a book that will both gratify Latter-day Saints and, at some points, offend them. In any event, readers of Interpreter should be …

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Jonathan Edwards’S Unique Role In An Imagined Church History, Spencer Kraus Jan 2022

Jonathan Edwards’S Unique Role In An Imagined Church History, Spencer Kraus

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

This is the second of two papers reviewing Jonathan Neville’s latest books on the translation of the Book of Mormon. In Infinite Goodness, Neville claims that Joseph Smith’s vocabulary and translation of the Book of Mormon were deeply influenced by the famous Protestant minister Jonathan Edwards. Neville cites various words or ideas that he believes originate with Edwards as the original source for the Book of Mormon’s language. However, most of Neville’s findings regarding Edwards and other non-biblical sources are superficial and weak, and many of his findings have a more plausible common source: the language used by the King …

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Modern Near East Archaeology And The Brass Plates, Noel B. Reynolds Jan 2022

Modern Near East Archaeology And The Brass Plates, Noel B. Reynolds

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

Contemporary Palestinian archaeology has produced two major threats to traditional interpretations of the history of ancient Israel. The first threat, which derives from scientific discomfort with the exodus story as an explanation for the sudden population expansion in southern Palestine at the beginning of the Iron Age (c. 1200 bce), has led to a wide variety of theories about how these Israelites could have been drawn from existing populations in the general area. This challenge is answerable in ways that preserve the exodus account, which is fundamental to the Book of Mormon as well as the Bible. The second threat …

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“This Great Mystery”: Gathering Still Other Sheep Through The New Covenant Of Peace, Matthew Scott Stenson Jan 2022

“This Great Mystery”: Gathering Still Other Sheep Through The New Covenant Of Peace, Matthew Scott Stenson

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

The Book of Mormon sheds light on a “great mystery” located in John 10:16 (D&C 10:64). In this paper, using a comparative method that traces intersecting pastoral imagery, I argue that John 10:16–18 (as opposed to merely John 10:16) not only refers to Jesus’s visit to the Lehites in Bountiful and the lost tribes of Israel (the standard LDS view), but that it has a scripturally warranted covenant-connection to the emergence and dissemination of the Nephite record. Specifically, the Book of Mormon, according to the Good Shepherd (3 Nephi 15:12–16:20), effectively serves as his recognizable voice to the inhabitants of …

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Nephi’S Small Plates: A Rhetorical Analysis, Noel B. Reynolds Jan 2022

Nephi’S Small Plates: A Rhetorical Analysis, Noel B. Reynolds

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

In previous and pending publications I have proposed interpretations of various features of Nephi’s writings. In this paper I undertake a comprehensive discussion of the seven passages in which Nephi and his successor Jacob explain the difference between the large and the small plates and describe the divinely mandated profile for each. While most readers of the Book of Mormon have been satisfied with the simple distinction between the large plates in which the large plates are a comprehensive historical record of the Nephite experience and the small plates are a record of selected spiritual experiences, including revelations and prophecies, …

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Alma’S Prophetic Commissioning Type Scene, Alan Goff Jan 2022

Alma’S Prophetic Commissioning Type Scene, Alan Goff

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

The story often referred to as Alma’s conversion narrative is too often interpreted as a simplistic plagiarism of Paul’s conversion-to- Christianity story in the book of Acts. Both the New and Old Testaments appropriate an ancient narrative genre called the prophetic commissioning story. Paul’s and Alma’s commissioning narratives hearken back to this literary genre, and to refer to either as pilfered is to misunderstand not just these individual narratives but the larger approach Hebraic writers used in composing biblical and Book of Mormon narrative. To the modern mind the similarity in stories triggers explanations involving plagiarism and theft from earlier …

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Khor Rori: A Maritime Resources-Based Candidate For Nephi’S Harbor, George D. Potter Jan 2022

Khor Rori: A Maritime Resources-Based Candidate For Nephi’S Harbor, George D. Potter

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

Khor Rori, which forms the mouth of Wadi (Valley) Darbat, is the largest inlet along the Dhofar coast of southern Arabia. The khor was excavated into a harbor by the erosive action of the river that flows through Wadi Darbat. In ancient times, Khor Rori was the only harbor in the Dhofar Region that could accommodate large sailing ships. The first colonizers of Khor Rori, who arrived around the ninth century bc, must have realized that this particular khor, because of its morphology, was an ideal natural port for trading their frankincense with other seafaring nations. Because Khor Rori has …

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“The Messenger Of Salvation”: The Messenger-Message Christology Of D&C 93:8 And Its Implications For Latter-Day Saint Missionary Work And Temple Worship, Matthew L. Bowen Jan 2022

“The Messenger Of Salvation”: The Messenger-Message Christology Of D&C 93:8 And Its Implications For Latter-Day Saint Missionary Work And Temple Worship, Matthew L. Bowen

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

Several of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s earliest revelations, beginning with Moroni’s appearance in 1823, quote the prophecy of Malachi 3:1 with the Lord “suddenly com[ing] to his temple” as “messenger of the covenant.” Malachi 3:1 and its quoted iterations in 3 Nephi 24:1; Doctrine and Covenants 36:8; 42:36; 133:2 not only impressed upon Joseph and early Church members the urgency of building a temple to which the Lord could come, but also presented him as the messenger of the Father’s restored covenant. Malachi’s prophecy concords with the restored portion of the “fulness of the record of John” and its “messenger” …

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Contending Without Contention, Daniel C. Peterson Jan 2022

Contending Without Contention, Daniel C. Peterson

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

“Think not,” said the Savior at Matthew 10:34, “that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” And this has in fact been the case — too often literally, but certainly figuratively. In the Old Testament, the Lord accurately foretold the situation that we commonly see: “I will take you one of a city,” he explained, “and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion” (Jeremiah 3:14). Unfortunately, those who aren’t so “taken” are often not entirely happy with the beliefs and practices of those who are. “Suppose …

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An Elegant Book On Gifts, Gifting, And Remembering, Louis Midgley Jan 2022

An Elegant Book On Gifts, Gifting, And Remembering, Louis Midgley

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

David Holland, the youngest son of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, is the John Bartlett Professor of New England Church History at Harvard Divinity School. Consistent with his training and focus, Holland has approached Moroni as an historian. Hence, despite the subtitle to this series about books in the Book of Mormon, Holland has done neither systematic nor dogmatic theology in his contribution.

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Full Issue Jan 2022

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

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“Can You Suppose That The Lord Will Spare You?”: Moroni’S Charged Rhetoric In Alma 60:30–32, Matthew L. Bowen Jan 2022

“Can You Suppose That The Lord Will Spare You?”: Moroni’S Charged Rhetoric In Alma 60:30–32, Matthew L. Bowen

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

Under the duress of a lengthy war, and prompted by recent Lamanite military successes, as well as incensed at the government’s failure to resupply Helaman’s armies with provisions and to send men to reinforce the city Nephihah, Moroni sent a second scathing letter to the leaders of the Nephite nation in the Nephite capital city Zarahemla. As other scholars have noted, the name Zarahemla likely denotes “seed of compassion” or “seed of sparing.” In this article, I propose that Moroni’s rhetoric in the letter includes an acerbic word-irony involving the meaning of Zarahemla perhaps achieved in terms of the Hebrew …

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Rich Vein Or Fools Gold?, Morgan Deane Jan 2022

Rich Vein Or Fools Gold?, Morgan Deane

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

Proclaim Peace is the first full-length volume discussing nonviolent theology in Latter-day Saint thought. It seeks to provide a new understanding of Restoration texts that aligns Mormon thought with modern pacifist traditions. Unfortunately, the book suffers from methodology issues that include an overly creative reading of some scriptures to support pacifist theories and the minimization of others’ theories. The book fails to interact with just-war ethics in meaningful ways that could enhance their ethic of peace. As a result, the book is longer than other pacifist texts but suffers from the same problems as previous entries in talking past those …

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The Queer Philosophies Of Men Mingled With Scripture, Daniel Ortner Jan 2022

The Queer Philosophies Of Men Mingled With Scripture, Daniel Ortner

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

Blaire Ostler attempts to show how “Mormon theology is inherently queer” and may be expanded to be fully “inclusive” of LGBTQ+ members. Unfortunately, Ostler conflates God’s love with indulgence for behavior that he has described as sinful. She offers a pantheistic/panentheistic conception of deity that collapses any differences between men and women in sharp contrast to the Latter-day Saint understanding that men and women are complementary and require one another for exaltation and eternal life. Many of this book’s arguments are sophistry and the philosophies of men mingled with scripture. None of it is compatible with revealed truth contained in …

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What Did The Interpreters (Urim And Thummim) Look Like?, Stan Spencer Jan 2022

What Did The Interpreters (Urim And Thummim) Look Like?, Stan Spencer

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

The interpreters were a pair of seer stones used by Book of Mormon prophets and provided to Joseph Smith for translating the Nephite record. Martin Harris described them as two white, marble- like stones that could be looked into when placed in a hat. Joseph Smith described them as spectacles with which he could read the record and later as two transparent stones set in the rim of a bow. Others described them as smooth stones, diamonds, or glasses. Reconciling these various descriptions and determining the actual appearance of the interpreters requires an assessment of the credibility of each source …

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Could Joseph Smith Have Drawn On Ancient Manuscripts When He Translated The Story Of Enoch?: Recent Updates On A Persistent Question, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Ryan Dahle Jan 2022

Could Joseph Smith Have Drawn On Ancient Manuscripts When He Translated The Story Of Enoch?: Recent Updates On A Persistent Question, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Ryan Dahle

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

In this article, we offer a general critique of scholarship that has argued for Joseph Smith’s reliance on 1 Enoch or other ancient pseudepigrapha for the Enoch chapters in the Book of Moses. Our findings highlight the continued difficulties of scholars to sustain such arguments credibly. Following this general critique, we describe the current state of research relating to what Salvatore Cirillo took to be the strongest similarity between Joseph Smith’s chapters on Enoch and the Qumran Book of Giants — namely the resemblance between the name Mahawai in the Book of Giants and Mahujah/Mahijah in Joseph Smith’s Enoch account. …

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Overwriting Ether: Moroni’S Transfiguration Of Jaredite Scripture, David J. Larsen Jan 2022

Overwriting Ether: Moroni’S Transfiguration Of Jaredite Scripture, David J. Larsen

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

The Book of Ether is a sometimes-overlooked gem of a text within the Book of Mormon, a history within a history that deserves careful and innovative investigation. Rosalynde Frandsen Welch offers such with a novel perspective in her entry in the Maxwell Institute’s series of “brief theological introductions” to the books within the Book of Mormon. The principal focus of Welch’s analysis is on issues concerning Moroni’s editorial purposes, how he interacts with his source text, and the ethics of his agenda for his abridgment of the Jaredite record. She critiques what she sees as Moroni’s lack of interest in …

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Scary Character And Setting Vignettes, Melissa Heaton Jan 2022

Scary Character And Setting Vignettes, Melissa Heaton

The Utah English Journal

Most students know how to write stories, but their stories are often void of description and life. Instead of my students writing whole narratives, I have them focus their mental binoculars by writing snippets of stories that I call Scary Character and Setting Vignettes.

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Xinjiang: Uyghur Nationalism And Prc Economic Ambitions In The Region, Erin Kitchens Wong Jan 2022

Xinjiang: Uyghur Nationalism And Prc Economic Ambitions In The Region, Erin Kitchens Wong

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has maintained a long and strenuous history of relations with its western-most province of Xinjiang (Xīnjiāng, 新疆). Relations with ethnic minorities in the region have been significantly influenced by changes in both domestic and foreign policy. Since the founding of the new Chinese state under Mao Zedong, the Uyghur (Wéiwú’ěr, 维吾尔) population of Xinjiang have seen vicious swings to and from radical domestic policy.

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The Developing Global Crisis And Survival Of Human Civilizations, Michael M. Andregg Ph.D. Jan 2022

The Developing Global Crisis And Survival Of Human Civilizations, Michael M. Andregg Ph.D.

Comparative Civilizations Review

For over thirty years, we have used a phrase “the Developing Global Crisis” to identify a cluster of recurring causal factors of chaos that are especially difficult to deal with. These are: population pressure (not simply growth), corruptions of governance (hard to study in democracies much less in police-states), authoritarian political systems, and militant religions. The West has failed to control these recurring causes of chaos, often by imperial patterns of behavior instead of more enlightened governance. Civilizational scholars in Japan might be able to find better solutions to these problems for Asia and the world if they try hard. …

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The Russian Sphinx: Contemplating Danilevsky’S Enigmatic Magnum Opus Russia And Europe, Vlad Alalykin-Izvekov Jan 2022

The Russian Sphinx: Contemplating Danilevsky’S Enigmatic Magnum Opus Russia And Europe, Vlad Alalykin-Izvekov

Comparative Civilizations Review

The relations between Russia and the West have never been particularly easygoing or unambiguous, and, presently, they are yet again at an all-time low. The way to better understand, as well as to successfully communicate and cooperate with another society is through learning about evolution (and revolutions) of their (as well as one’s own) history and culture. Are there any important sources in the Russian cultural heritage that could illuminate these ages-old problems, tendencies, and trends? The year 2021 marks 150 years since publication of Nikolay Danilevsky's book Russia and Europe (1871), while the next one, the year 2022, denotes …

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