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Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Fashion Or Proof? A Challenge For Pacific Anthropology, A. Keith Thompson

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

This article is a call to Pacific anthropologists to write the story of the origin of mankind in the Pacific a bit larger and perhaps to look scientifically for additional explanations. Is it possible that the early diffusionists may have gotten some things right, albeit for the wrong reasons?

The Sibling Scandals Of The Resurrection, Daniel C. Peterson

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

I’ve recently picked Stephen T. Davis’s Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection up again.1 It’s an impressive book that had a pivotal effect on my thinking when it first appeared. Davis, the Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College in California, argues that “Christians are within their intellectual rights in believing that Jesus was raised from the dead.”2 “The thesis of the book,” he explains, “is that the two central Christian resurrection claims — namely, that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead and that we will all be raised from the dead — are defensible …

Reason, Experience, And The Existence Of God, Daniel C. Peterson

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

Both reason and experience are essential to religious life, which should be neither completely irrational nor entirely cerebral. But surely, of the two, the experience of direct and convincing revelation would and should trump academic debate, and most obviously so for its recipient. The Interpreter Foundation was established in the conviction that reasoned discussion and analysis necessarily have a place in faithful discipleship, but also in the confidence that divine revelation has genuinely occurred. The role of reason, accordingly, is a helpful one. It serves an important ancillary function. However, it does not supplant experience with God and the divine …

“War Of Words And Tumult Of Opinions”: The Battle For Joseph Smith’S Words In Book Of Mormon Geography, Neal Rappleye

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

Review of John L. Lund. Joseph Smith and the Geography of the Book of Mormon. The Communications Company, 2012. 209 pp. + xviii, including index.

In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it? –Joseph Smith Jr.1

A Look At Some “Nonstandard” Book Of Mormon Grammar, Stanford Carmack

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

Much of the earliest Book of Mormon language which has been regarded as nonstandard through the years is not. Furthermore, when 150 years’ worth of emendations are stripped away,1 the grammar presents extensive evidence of its Early Modern English character, independent in many cases from the King James Bible. This paper argues that this character stems from its divine translation.

The Māori Stairway To Heaven, Louis Midgley

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

Jason Hartley’s book manifests a passion for alleviating the problem of Māori surging into the prisons of Aotearoa/New Zealand2 by restoring their old, traditional religious ethos and the social control that hinges on the recovery of the old belief that they are potentially noble children of God. In setting out his own disappointing discovery of the roots of both a growing problem and what he believes is the solution, he describes how he came to learn the arcane moral teachings, or old stories, that once buttressed Māori social order. For Latter-day Saints, he also demonstrates that for some Māori, despite …

Job: An Lds Reading, Mack C. Stirling

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

In response to questions arising within God, Job, described as blameless and upright, is thrust from idyllic circumstances into a dark realm of bitter experience. Three “ friends” unwittingly press Satan’s case, attempting to convince Job to admit guilt. Job, however, holds on, searching for God’s face and progressing toward a transformed understanding of God and man, which is brought to strongest expression in four great revelatory insights received by Job. Finally, Job commits himself to God and man with self-imprecating oaths. After withstanding a final challenge from Elihu/Satan, Job speaks with God at the veil and enters God’s presence. …

Is Decrypting The Genetic Legacy Of America’S Indigenous Populations Key To The Historicity Of The Book Of Mormon?, Ugo A. Perego, Jayne E. Ekins

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

The Book of Mormon claims to be an ancient record containing a summary of a now-disappeared civilization that once lived in the American continent but originated in the Middle East. DNA studies focusing on the ancient migration of world populations support a North-East Asian origin of modern Native American populations arriving through the now-submerged land bridge that once connected Siberia to Alaska during the last Ice Age, approximately 15,000 years ago. The apparent discrepancy between the Book of Mormon narrative and the published genetic data must be addressed in lieu of generally accepted population genetic principles that are efficient in …

Axes Mundi: Ritual Complexes In Mesoamerica And The Book Of Mormon, Mark Alan Wright

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

Places are made sacred through manifestations of the divine or ritual activity. The occurrence of a theophany or hierophany or the performance of particular rituals can conceptually transform a place into an axis mundi, or the center of the world. A variety of such axes mundi are known from the archaeological record of Mesoamerica and the text of the Book of Mormon. I compare and contrast several distinctive types of such ritual complexes from Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon and argue that they served functionally and ideologically similar purposes.

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

“Zion” And “Jerusalem” As Lady Wisdom In Moses 7 And Nephi’S Tree Of Life Vision, Samuel Zinner

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

T he essay traces lines of continuity between ancient middle eastern traditions of Asherah in her various later Jewish, Christian, and Mormon forms. Especially relevant in Jewish texts are Lady Wisdom (Proverbs 8; Sirach 24; Baruch 3-4), Daughter of Zion (Lamentations; Isaiah); Lady Zion and Mother Jerusalem (4 Ezra), Binah in kabbalah etc. The divine feminine in the Jewish-Christian texts Odes of Solomon 19 and Shepherd of Hermas is examined, as well as in Pauline Christian texts, namely, the Letter to the Galatians and the writings of Irenaeus (Against Heresies and Apostolic Preaching). Dependence of Hermas on the Parables of …

A Response To Grant Palmer’S “Sexual Allegations Against Joseph Smith And The Beginnings Of Polygamy In Nauvoo”, Brian C. Hales, Gregory L. Smith

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

Grant H. Palmer, former LDS seminary instructor turned critic, has recently posted an essay, “Sexual Allegations against Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Polygamy in Nauvoo,” on MormonThink.com. In it, Palmer isolates ten in teractions between women and Joseph Smith that Palmer alleges were inappropriate and, “have at least some plausibility of being true.” In this paper, Palmer’s analysis of these ten interactions is reviewed, revealing how poorly Palmer has represented the his torical data by advancing factual inaccuracies, quoting sources without establishing their credibility, ignoring contradictory evi dences, and manifesting superficial research techniques that fail to account for the …

On The Fringe: China's Disability Laws Through The Lens Of The Traditional Culture, Brandon Christensen

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Explosive economic growth over the last two decades has dramatically increased China’s standard of living and given rise to a rapidly growing middle class. Political reform, however, has been slow to follow with decades-old legal restrictions on civil liberties still firmly in place. Among China’s underdeveloped civil protections is the right for people with disabilities to enjoy freedom from popular and institutional prejudice in language or action, especially when seeking employment. Recent revisions of China’s disability laws provide increased employment protections, but latent prejudicial language and traditional stereotypes in the law suggest these revisions may not reach the core objective …

"Saving Christianity": The Nephite Fulfillment Of Jesus's Eschatological Prophecies, Heather Hardy

Journal of Book of Mormon Studies

No abstract provided.

Textual And Comparative Explorations In 1 & 2 Enoch, Samuel Zinner

Interpreter Foundation Books

My beloved late father introduced me as a child to the mysterious Ethiopic Book of Enoch. My father was of mixed ancestry, his mother being of Native American and English-Scottish descent, while his father was a Protestant Volga German who observed Saturday Sabbath rather than Sunday, and perhaps not surprisingly his ancestors were Ashkenazi Jews who in the high Middle Ages had been forced to convert to the Christian faith under pain of death. My father had a fundamentally indigenous soul, so much so that even his Christianity, like that of his mother, was of a fundamentally indigenous character. Although …

In God's Image And Likeness 2 Enoch, Noah, And The Tower Of Babel, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, David J. Larsen

Interpreter Foundation Books

As I neared completion of the first volume of In God’s Image and Likeness in 2009, I had a chance to discuss the project with my former mission president, Virgil J. Parker. Grateful for the lasting influence President and Sister Parker have had on my life and still being in awe of the great store of practical and spiritual knowledge they have accumulated over decades of learning and service, I was thrilled when Virgil told me that the Moses was his favorite book of scripture. When I asked him what part he liked best, he spoke without hesitation, “The story …

Buddhism As Caricature: China And The Legitimation Of Natural Religion In The Enlightenment, Jeffery D. Burson

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Europe was unusually familiar with the ancient civilizations of East Asia, but however familiar China may have seemed, European missionaries and those who utilized and subverted their accounts in the literature of the eighteenth century made sense of China through their own hermeneutical lenses. David Porter's work Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europeargues that Jesuit missionaries and Enlightenment philosophers imposed upon China their Eurocentric quest for "representational legitimacy;' which Porter defines as "the presence of an originary wellspring of meaning that gives rise to a succession of grounded signifiers in which the living image of the origin …

''A Dreadful Phenomenon At The Birches": Grace, Nature, And Industry In The Ministry And Writings Of John Fletcher Of Madeley, Peter S. Forsaith

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

n the morning of Thursday, May 27, 1773, the evangelical Vicar of Madeley, Shropshire, the Reverend John Fletcher, went with throngs of other curious onlookers to view the dramatic scene of a landslip that had occurred in the early hours on the edge of his parish, at a location known locally as "the Birches." Meeting several of his parishioners there, he announced that he would return the following evening to preach a sermon on this "Dreadful Phenomenon:' He took for his text "If the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up ... …

On A Dawning Era For The Book Of Mormon, Joseph M. Spencer

Mormon Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Sorting Out The Sources In Scripture, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

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

To date, LDS scholars have largely ignored the important but rather complex questions about how primary sources may have been authored and combined to form the Bible as we have it today. David Bokovoy’s book, one of a projected series of volumes on the authorship of the Old Testament, is intended to rectify this deficiency, bringing the results of scholarship in Higher Criticism into greater visibility within the LDS community. Though readers may not agree in every respect with the book’s analysis and results, particularly with its characterization of the Books of Moses and Abraham as “inspired pseudepigrapha,” Bokovoy has …

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Joseph Smith's Polygamy, Brian C. Hales, M. Scott Bradshaw

BYU Studies

In this three-volume set, author Brian Hales presents an exhaustive study of plural marriage as practiced and introduced by Joseph Smith. This work is the product of five years of effort undertaken with the assistance of researcher Don Bradley. With nearly 1,500 pages of combined text, not counting the index, Hales's volumes are ambitious by any measure and are impressive for their sheer scope, attention to detail, and thorough consideration of all available sources. Hales has aspired to publish a work that includes as many accounts regarding Joseph's plural marriage as can be found, whether friendly, antagonistic, or otherwise. He …

Rejecting The Mother Tongue, Kellianne Coltrin

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Reformatted/Re-Fleshed, Kylan Rice

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Validity Of Can‐Do Statements In Retrospective (Then‐Now) Self‐Assessment, N. Anthony Brown, Dan Dewey, Troy L. Cox

Faculty Publications

In this study, the authors evaluated the strengths and limitations of a self assessment based on ACTFL Can‐Do statements (ACTFL, 2013) as a tool for measuring linguistic gains over an internship abroad in Russia. They assessed its reliability, determined how its items mapped with the ACTFL scale, and measured the degree to which students’ self‐evaluations matched oral proficiency interview (OPI) test results (i.e., predictive validity). Data revealed a high level of reliability. Furthermore, self assessment items ascended in the order of difficulty expected (i.e., Superior items were the most difficult, followed by Advanced), but differences between the means for items …

Lenguaje Y Memoria, Madeleine Read

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Does Measuring L2 Utterance Fluency Equal Measuring Overall L2 Proficiency? Evidence From Five Languages, Wendy Baker-Smemoe, Dan Dewey, Jennifer Brown, Rob A. Martinsen

Faculty Publications

The current study examined the relationship between overall second language (L2) proficiency and utterance fluency measures for several L2s in order to determine whether utterance measures can be used to predict L2 proficiency. The study measured the speech rate, number of hesitations, number and length of pauses, number and length of runs, and number of false starts using excerpts from 126 ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) spoken by 86 participants. Forty of the participants provided pre‐ and post‐OPI speech samples, which also allowed examination of changes over time. All 86 participants were native English speakers who spoke L2 French, German, …

Measures Of Written Linguistic Accuracy: Questions Of Reliability, Validity, And Practicality, Troy L. Cox, Norman W. Evans, K. James Hartshorn, Teresa Martin De Jel

Faculty Publications

Determining linguistic improvement in L2 writing requires a precise measure of linguistic accuracy. Although numerous metrics of linguistic accuracy have been used in L2 research, Wigglesworth and Foster (2008) proposed a new kind of measure—a weighted clause ratio—based on the adequacy of the writer’s conveyed meaning. This paper evaluates the validity of this metric and compares it to two of the most similar measures of linguistic accuracy currently in use: the error-free T-unit ratio and the error-free clause ratio. The data collected and analyzed in this study were drawn from over 350 writing samples generated by 81 ESL writers whose …

Applying Insights From Behavioral Economics To Policy Design, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

The premise of this article is that an understanding of psychology and other social science disciplines can inform the effectiveness of the economic tools traditionally deployed in carrying out the functions of government, which include remedying market failures, redistributing income, and collecting tax revenue. An understanding of psychology can also lead to the development of different policy tools that better motivate desired behavior change or that are more cost-effective than traditional policy tools. The article outlines a framework for thinking about the psychology of behavior change in the context of market failures. It then describes the research on the effects …