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“In This Batter’D Caravanserai”, Daniel C. Peterson

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

In the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, based upon verses composed by an eleventh-century Persian mathematician and astronomer, the English Victorian poet Edward FitzGerald eloquently portrays human life in an indifferent, deterministic universe that lacks any evident purpose and is bereft of divine Providence. The poem’s suggested response to such a universe is an unambitious life of hedonism, distraction, and gentle despair. It is curiously modern, and those considering the adoption of anything like its worldview might want to read it, and to think about its implications, very carefully.

A Long And Winding Road, Allen Wyatt

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

Publishing an article in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Faith and Scholarship involves a process of which many people are not aware. I’m sure it is obvious to all that articles don’t just spring from the mind of an author and onto the printed page. In this essay I draw back the curtain just a bit to give readers a glimpse and, hopefully, an understanding of the process.

Withstanding Satan’S Siege Through Christ’S Iron Rod: The Vision Of The Tree Of Life In Context Of Ancient Siege Warfare, Jared Marcum

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

Nothing was more terrifying in the ancient world than a siege. Besiegers disregarded normal conventions of war and either utterly slaughtered or enslaved a city’s residents. Nephi used siege warfare imagery — including fire arrows, blinding, and being led away into captivity — to teach his brothers the importance of holding fast to Christ’s iron rod (see 1 Nephi 15:24). By analyzing this scripture and the vision of the Tree of Life in context of ancient siege warfare, we learn how Satan besieges God’s people, cuts off their access to the Tree of Life, draws them away through scorn, blinds …

“Upon The Wings Of His Spirit”: A Note On Hebrew Rûaḥ And 2 Nephi 4:25, Matthew L. Bowen

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

Nephi, in composing his psalm (2 Nephi 4:15–35), incorporates a poetic idiom from Psalm 18:10 (2 Samuel 22:11) and Psalm 104:3 to describe his participation in a form of divine travel. This experience constituted a part of the vision in which he saw “the things which [his] father saw” in the latter’s dream of the tree of life (see 1 Nephi 11:1–3; 14:29– 30). Nephi’s use of this idiom becomes readily apparent when the range of meaning for the Hebrew word rûaḥ is considered. Nephi’s experience helps our understanding of other scriptural scenes where similar divine travel is described.

The Hamites: The Pre-Restoration Monotheism Of The Children Of Ham In The Book Of Abraham, Adam Stokes

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

This article examines the treatment of several personages identified as Hamites in the Book of Abraham. It proposes that, in contrast to traditional readings of the text, Hamites are featured positively in the Book of Abraham. This is particularly true of the daughters of Onitah and of Pharaoh himself, both of whom are presented as righteous people practicing an early form of monotheism. While I do not claim that the Book of Abraham is completely free of elements possibly deemed to be racially problematic, until now, the positive depiction of the Hamites in the text has largely been overlooked.

“Encircled About Eternally In The Arms Of His Love”: The Divine Embrace As A Thematic Symbol Of Jesus Christ And His Atonement In The Book Of Mormon, Matthew L. Bowen

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

This study builds upon Hugh Nibley’s insightful observation that several Book of Mormon passages reflect “the ritual embrace that consummates the final escape from death in the Egyptian funerary texts and reliefs” as expressing the meaning of Christ’s Atonement. This study further extends Nibley’s observations on Jacob’s “wrestle” as a divine “embrace” to show that Lehi’s, Nephi’s, and their successors’ understanding of the divine embrace is informed by their ancestor’s “wrestle” with a “man” (Genesis 32:24–30) and reconciliation with his brother (Genesis 33:4–10). Examples of the divine embrace language and imagery throughout the Book of Mormon go well beyond what …

Largely Shadow, Short Of Reality, Allen Wyatt

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

Jerald and Sandra Tanner have had a long ministerial career trying to convince people that the truth claims of the Church are wrong. Even though their ministry has closed its doors, Sandra Tanner still gives interviews recounting their adventures in fighting the good fight. This image is burnished by a biography of the Tanners and their ministry written by Ronald V. Huggins. In this review I examine the way in which Huggins approaches his subjects in his book.

Asymmetry In Chiasms, With A Note About Deuteronomy 8 And Alma 36, Stephen Kent Ehat

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

Some students of the Book of Mormon have claimed that chapter 36 of the book of Alma is structured as a chiasm. Some of the proposals depart from perfect symmetry, presenting elements of the suggested chiasm seemingly out of sequence. This has often been pointed to as a weakness in the proposed chiasm or as a problem arising from translation or editorial work, or even as evidence that no real chiasm exists over the text of the chapter. Perhaps, however, asymmetry may be a deliberate feature of ancient chiasmus. Understanding the presence and role of occasional asymmetry or skews, as …

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Discussion Of "Why Can’T I Trade? Exchange Discretion In Calling Halts", Michael S. Drake

Faculty Publications

Liquidity is an important feature of well-functioning capital markets. While many market frictions exist that constrain liquidity, none are as dramatic as trading halts when trading is suspended altogether. Trading halts became a common feature of US securities markets in the aftermath of Black Monday (October 19, 1987). The hope of regulators was that system-wide trading halts, so-called market circuit breakers, would decrease the likelihood of dramatic sell-offs by allowing markets to cool off. Regulators further argued that security-specific trading halts implemented in advance of a material news release could also reduce volatility and help level the playing field between …

Balancing Loyalties: A Behavioral Study On How The Quality Of Supervisor-Subordinate Relationships Affects Whistleblowing Intentions, Jace B. Garrett, Douglas F. Prawitt, Kyle Sopp

Faculty Publications

While high-quality relationships among employees yield many benefits to organizations, they may have unintended consequences for whistleblowing. In a first experiment, we investigate whether high-quality employee-supervisor relationships reduce employees’ willingness to report supervisor wrongdoing through an internal hotline. We also investigate whether the quality of such relationships mitigates the effect of evidence strength on reporting intention. In a second experiment, we test the robustness of the effects of relationship quality and evidence strength on employees’ willingness to report wrongdoing identified in our first experiment, but to an external auditor. We also examine two factors that may mitigate the negative effect …

Napoleon’S Role In The Making Of Modern Switzerland, Jost Auf Der Maur

Swiss American Historical Society Review

The federated and neutral nation state we know today as Switzerland owes its modern origins to Napoleon Bonaparte. When Napoleon came into the world in 1769, the Swiss Confederation was a loose configuration of tiny quarrelsome states. As the contemporary, Johannes Bürkli from Zurich, wrote:

[Switzerland] is a virtually unnoticeable dot on the map of Europe, yet it combines all species of government: despotic, oligarchic, aristocratic, democratic. You can find all of them thrown together here in a nutshell.

Startup Culture: Mlms, Mormons, And Entrepreneurship, Deborah Whitehead

Mormon Studies Review

The 2021 Amazon Prime series LuLaRich (reviewed in this volume) chronicled the meteoric rise and fall of LuLaRoe, a billion-dollar multilevel marketing (MLM) company founded in 2013 by DeAnne and Mark Stidham that specializes in women’s clothing. The series explored the company’s founding, growth, corporate culture, and recruitment and marketing strategies, as well as the particular appeal of the garments themselves. LuLaRoe’s success in the 2010s can be attributed to the convergence of several factors: the growth of social media, the rise of athleisure wear, the economic impact of the 2008 recession, the company’s ability to tap into a large …

Review: Jared Hess And Tyler Measom, Dirs. Murder Among The Mormons. Bbc Studios, 2021., Hillary Kirkham

Mormon Studies Review

The three-part Netflix miniseries Murder Among the Mormons by directors Jared Hess and Tyler Measom is a story about construction— of forged documents and lethal bombs, but also of memory and meaning. The documentary details the story of Mark Hofmann, the master document forger who murdered two individuals as his web of deceptions unraveled. Despite the title, however, the docuseries is not centered on the murders of Hofmann’s victims Steve Christensen and Kathy Sheets; rather, the nearly three-hour docuseries focuses on Hofmann, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ relationship with its past, and Hofmann’s impact on the religious …

The Complications Of People In Diplomacy, Kiner Kwok

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

In the late 18th century and early 19th century, European embassies eagerly interacted with Qing China (1644–1912). In 1792, Lord George Macartney (1737–1806) led the first British mission to Qing China. During this mission, even though Lord Macartney met with the Qianlong emperor (r. 1735–1796), his goal of establishing free trade and diplomatic relations with the Qing court was rejected. A few years later, in 1795, a mission, sent out by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), arrived at the Qing court to congratulate the Qianlong emperor’s 60th anniversary of his governance. Then again, in 1805, a Russian mission, led …

It Takes Two, Jenet Jacob Erickson

BYU Studies

In 2006, Canadian fathering scholar Andrea Doucet shared an illuminating moment from her extensive research with single dads. After a long evening discussing these fathers’ experiences, Doucet asked, “In an ideal world, what resources or supports would you like to see for single fathers?” She expected to hear that they wanted greater social support and societal acceptance, more programs and policies directed at single dads. Instead, after a period of awkward silence, one dad stood and said, “An ideal world would be one with a father and a mother. We’d be lying if we pretended that wasn’t true.” Nods of …

Charity As An Exegetical Principle In The Book Of Mormon, Matthew Scott Stenson

BYU Studies

The eclectic Book of Mormon effectively collapses intellectual and sacred history. Anachronisms have drawn and do currently draw the attention of some Book of Mormon students and researchers. Nicholas J. Frederick, for instance, has written extensively on the presence of New Testament language in the largely pre–Christian Era record. Not all anachronisms are so extensive and involved as those Frederick traces. Some are minor and comparatively unimportant. However, there is a significant and pervasive conceptual anachronism that deserves critical attention. I speak of the primary narrators of the Book of Mormon using faith, hope, and charity (or love) as textual …

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

The Stewardship Of Our First Freedom, Elder Clark G. Gilbert

BYU Studies

When Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spoke at the University of Oxford’s Pembroke College about the impact of religious freedom on public morality, he charged people of faith to be effective stewards of religious freedom. Elder Cook stated, “There is no better demonstration of the great benefits associated with religious liberty than for devoted members of various faiths who feel accountable to God to model principles of integrity, morality, service, and love.” In this sense, our religious freedom stewardship extends not only to society but …

On Gospel Methodology At Brigham Young University, Richard D, Osguthorpe, Justin Collings

BYU Studies

In recent years, both university and Church leaders have placed renewed and welcome emphasis on President Spencer W. Kimball’s “Second Century Address,” one of the central texts in the BYU canon. Of the many stirring ideas in that landmark address, one of the most evocative is President Kimball’s declaration that “gospel methodology, concepts, and insights can help us to do what the world cannot do in its own frame of reference.” Current BYU leaders have reflected on the concept of “gospel methodology,” and at the August 2022 university conference, Academic Vice President C. Shane Reese invited BYU faculty to explore …

Richard Bushman’S Byu Years: The Beginnings Of An Influential Career, J. B. Haws

BYU Studies

The case can be made—and has been made—that Richard Lyman Bushman has been as influential as anyone in his generation in shaping the way that Latter-day Saints think about, write about, and talk about our shared history. His seminal books on Joseph Smith, his essays on historical philosophy, his two decades of mentoring graduate students every summer—all of these have had a real and discernible impact on Church publications and paradigms.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Corpus Of Founding Era American English: Designing A Corpus For Interpreting The United States Constitution, Brett James Hashimoto

Faculty Publications

The original meaning of words or phrases is often in dispute in Founding Era legislation, especially the US Constitution. The Corpus of Founding Era American English (COFEA) accurately provides evidence for the meaning of contested terms during the Founding Era. COFEA consists of 126,394 texts and over 136 million words. This corpus has been and is being used by legal researchers and interpreters in scholarly research as well as various courts, including the Supreme Court. This paper describes the motivation for the creation of COFEA and describes the process of designing and collecting the corpus.

Human Or Ai? Using Digital Behavior To Verify Essay Authorship, David W. Wilson, Parker Burnett, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins

Faculty Publications

Large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI's GPT-4 have transformed natural language processing with their ability to understand context and generate human-like text. This has led to considerable debate, especially in the education sector, where LLMs can enhance learning but also pose challenges to academic integrity. Detecting AIgenerated content (AIGC) is difficult, as existing methods struggle to keep pace with advancements in generation technology. This research proposes a novel approach to AIGC detection in short essays, using digital behavior capture and follow-up questioning to verify text authorship. We executed a controlled experiment as an initial evaluation to test the prototype …

Temples Of The Imagination, Jeffrey Thayne, Nathan Richardson

Interpreter Foundation Books

To the left, you see a temple that resembles those built by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints. However, this temple is not one that has ever been built by the Church—it is an imaginary temple. But what is so interesting about that? We can all close our eyes and imagine in our mind’s eye temples that do not currently exist. Talented artists could then put that to canvas and create a depiction. What is special is that this image

Performance Gaps And Opportunities For Growth: Addressing Remote Learning In Nevada, Anna Dreibelbis-Colquitt

BYU Education & Law Journal

Although education is not a fundamental right under the United States Constitution, it is nonetheless deemed as “perhaps the most important function of state and local governments.” The importance of education is reinforced through the Nevada Constitution. Specifically, Article 11 states that “[t]he legislature shall provide for a uniform system of common schools,” which is seen through the public school system. However, this ‘uniform’ system drastically changed two years ago with the surge in online learning.

Toward A Greater Appreciation Of The Word Adieu In Jacob 7:27, Godfrey J. Ellis

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

The phrase “Brethren, adieu” (Jacob 7:27) has been criticized over the years as an obvious anachronism in the Book of Mormon. That criticism holds no validity whatsoever, as others have pointed out, since many English words have French origins. It’s worth considering, though, a deeper meaning of the word. In French, it carries a nuance of finality — that the separation will last until a reunion following death (à Dieu, or until God). This deeper meaning of adieu appears to have been known by Shakespeare and frontier Americans although the second meaning is not generally recognized by English speakers today. …

How Reconversion Narratives Can Help Us Teach Our Students, Eric D'Evegnée, Sarah D'Evegnée

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

As two English professors, we regard stories as our daily bread. Our love of the complexity of stories and storytellers led us to explore the pattern in the book Faith Is Not Blind[1] and apply it to the everyday lives of people who used it. This pattern of finding “simplicity beyond complexity”[2] takes a metacognitive approach to understanding the development and the nurturing of lifelong faith. In our work at faithisnotblind.org, we’ve interviewed over one hundred people about how their faith has been challenged and how they have responded in ways that preserved their faith. The stories are diverse, thoughtful, …

“How Beautiful Are The Feet” The Use Of Footnotes In General Conference Reports, Scott L. Howell, Jesse Vincent, Lauryn Wilde

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

The usage of footnotes[1] in general conference addresses has surged since 1990, and this trend appears to have started with Elder Russell M. Nelson, then a newly called Apostle. At the time of this writing, he has amassed 1,966 footnotes over ninety-one conference addresses, more than double the footnotes of any other speaker. In recent conferences, all the Apostles (and nearly all other speakers) have used footnotes. We submit that footnotes (particularly the footnotes given by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve) merit increasing attention by religious educators and all who read these reports. Consider an excerpt from …

No Poor Among Them: Poverty And Mormonism’S Trek Toward Secularism, Cristina Rosetti

Mormon Studies Review

Shortly after Warren Jeffs’s arrest and subsequent prosecution, American media bombarded audiences with countless stories of Fundamentalist crime. Screens and papers carried stories about trafficking, violence, and, of course, polygamy. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) became a spectacle of impropriety and abuse. As this happened, people became familiar with accounts of nonviolent crime within the community. Food stamp fraud emerged as a concerning offense associated with the religion, and the mugshot of Lyle Jeffs, brother to prophet Warren, appeared alongside headlines that carefully outlined his involvement in criminal deception. Of the fraud and subsequent arrest, …