Digital Commons Network^™

The Place—Or The Tribe—Called Nahom? Nhm As Both A Tribal And Geographic Name In Modern And Ancient Yemen, Neal Rappleye

BYU Studies

For decades, Latter-day Saint scholars have argued that “the place . . . called Nahom” in the Book of Mormon (1 Ne. 16:34) is the Nihm region in Yemen, located northeast of Sanaʿa, west of Maʾrib, and south of the Wadi Jawf. The location fits well both with the directions provided for getting to and from Nahom in the Book of Mormon (1 Ne. 16:13–14, 33; 17:1) and with inscriptions dated to Lehi’s time referring to a person called a nhmyn, translated as “Nihmite,” confirming that the name goes back to the right time period. Publications by Princeton, Oxford, …

“Show Them Unto No Man”: Part 2. The Book Of Moses And The Early Jewish Christian Esoteric Tradition, Barry R. Bickmore

BYU Studies

There can be no question but that the Restoration was in many ways strange for its time and place, and this can make life difficult for anyone attempting to track the history of Latter-day Saint religious beliefs. Its very strangeness makes it difficult for historians who do not believe Joseph Smith’s teachings were divinely inspired to pinpoint plausible, mundane sources of inspiration.

“The Gospel Of Intelligence And Culture”: Literature And Literary Instruction In The Twentieth-Century Mia Curriculum, Michael Austin, Rachel Meibos Helps

BYU Studies

In his journal for April 29, 1888, Bishop Orson F. Whitney recorded a curious meeting that he had with an Apostle. “Had a long conversation in the morning with Apostle Moses Thatcher,” wrote Whitney. “He gave me a blessing and set me apart to deliver a lecture on Sunday, June 3rd next, at the Mutual Improvement Conference in the Tabernacle. My subject is Home Literature. I consented to deliver it, though very busy and overworked, at the request of the Authorities.” This remarkable assignment— he was called and set apart to give a speech in the way men at the …

Boomer Peak Or Gen X Cliff? From Svs To Lbms In Georgia English, Margaret E. L. Renwick, Joseph A. Stanley, Jon Forrest, Lelia Glass

Faculty Publications

The late twentieth century in the United States marks the decline of regional vowel systems like the Northern Cities Shift and the Southern Vowel Shift, replaced by supralocal systems like the Low-Back-Merger Shift.We chart such change in acoustic data from seven generations of White speakers (n = 135) in the Southeastern state of Georgia. We analyze front vowels affected by both the SVS and LBMS (DRESS, TRAP), plus PRICE and FACE, known respectively to monophthongize and centralize in the SVS, and LBMS-implicated LOT/ THOUGHT. The SVS is most advanced among Georgians born in the mid-twentieth century, particularly in FACE-centralization. In …

Surzhyk: Attitudes & Usage Among Ukrainian People, Kateryna Kravchenko, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

What is Surzhyk?

• refers to a range of macaronic (mixed) sociolects of Ukrainian and Russian languages
• originally meant mixing of two different types of flour (wheat and rye), which is considered a lower grade flour
• there is no unifying set of characteristics
• the term is used for norm-breaking, non-obedience to or non-awareness of the rules of the Ukrainian and Russian standard languages
• it is not Russian-accented Ukrainian

In Search Of Founding Era Registers: Automatic Modeling Of Registers From The Corpus Of Founding Era American English, Liina Repo, Brett James Hashimoto, Veronika Laippala

Faculty Publications

Registers are situationally defined text varieties, such as letters, essays, or news articles, that are considered to be one of the most important predictors of linguistic variation. Often historical databases of language lack register information, which could greatly enhance their usability (e.g. Early English Books Online). This article examines register variation in Late Modern English and automatic register identification in historical corpora. We model register variation in the corpus of Founding Era American English (COFEA) and develop machine-learning methods for automatic register identification in COFEA. We also extract and analyze the most significant grammatical characteristics estimated by the classifier for …

Solving The Cherry-Picking Problem In Legislative History Use – A Corpus-Based Approach For Empirical Intentionalist Legal Interpretation Analysis, Brett James Hashimoto, James Heilpern

Faculty Publications

The use of legislative histories under intentionalist/purposivist theories of statutory interpretation is frequently criticized because it can be easily biased (see, e.g., Scheppele, 2012). To date, corpus-based statutory interpretation has relied almost exclusively on textualist theory of legal interpretation. However, corpus linguistic methods are not necessarily bound to any one theory (e.g., Biber & Reppen, 2015). The present study analyses two legislative histories as corpora and compares them against a general corpus of English to determine if interpretative theory makes a meaningful difference in two example cases (Costello v. United States, 2012; Taniguchi v. Kan Saipan Pacific, 2012). Senses of …

Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs In Decision Making: Perception Shifts And Goal Activation Bias Decision Thresholds, Jeff Larson, Guy Hawkins

Faculty Publications

A fundamental aspect of decision making is the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT): slower decisions tend to be more accurate, but because time is a scarce resource people prefer to conclude decisions more quickly. The current research adds to the SAT literature by documenting two previously unrecognized influences on the SAT: perception shifts and goal activation. Decision makers’ perceptions of what constitutes a fast or a slow decision, and what constitutes an accurate or inaccurate decision, are based on prior experience, and these perceptions influence decision speed. Similarly, previous experience in a decision context associates the context with a particular decision goal. …

Life After Death: A Field Experiment With Small Businesses On Information Frictions, Stigma, And Bankruptcy, Shai Bernstein, Emanuele Colonnelli, Mitchell Hoffman

Faculty Publications

In an RCT with US small businesses, we document that a large share of firms are not well-informed about bankruptcy. Many assume that bankruptcy necessarily entails the death of a business and do not know about Chapter 11, where debts are renegotiated so that the business can continue operating. Firms also exhibit bankruptcy-related stigma, believing that bankruptcy is embarrassing, a sign of failure, and a negative signal to employees and customers. Short educational videos that address information or stigma increase knowledge and decrease stigma, both immediately and durably over 4 months. Videos increase reported interest in using Chapter 11 bankruptcy …

"We Have Not Been Allowed The Liberty... To Worship As We Please" Nancy Naomi Tracy And The Denial Of Latter-Day Saint Religious Liberty, Derek Sainsbury

Faculty Publications

This article examines the life of Nancy Naomi Tracy as a lens into the Latter-day Saint struggle for religious liberty in nineteenth-century America. Joining the Church in 1834, Tracy endured repeated persecution—from the Missouri expulsions and the 1838 Mormon War to the federal antipolygamy campaigns of the 1880s—yet actively fought for her faith’s constitutional protections. As the only known female electioneer missionary in Joseph Smith’s 1844 presidential campaign, she embodied the Saints’ bold blend of religious conviction and political engagement. Drawing on Tracy’s three personal reminiscences (1880, 1885, and 1896–99), the study explores how her experiences as a wife, mother, …

The Canonization Of The New Testament, Daniel Becerra

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

By the end of the first century AD, all of the twenty-seven documents that now constitute the New Testament were written and had begun to circulate among early Christians. However, it was not until centuries later that these texts were collectively named as part of the authoritative body of Christian scripture. The process by which this occurred is called “canonization.” The term canon comes from the Greek word kanōn, meaning “measuring rod” or “measuring stick,” and was frequently applied in the ancient church to the collection of texts that informed the beliefs and practices of the Christians who read them.[1] …

War A Good Warfare Understanding Agency In The Plan Of Salvation, Grant Arnold

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

John Calvin (1509–1564) is credited with expanding the concept of predestination. In the third book of his Institutio Christianae Religionis (Institutes of the Christian religion), he claimed that “all are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.”[1] Although Calvin was opining on salvation, his words, of necessity, affected free will. Specifically, if salvation is ordained, then our choices are meaningless because God has already predetermined …

The Divine Mission Of The Prophet Joseph Smith, Kevin W. Pearson

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

My dear young brothers and sisters, Sister Pearson and I are so grateful that you would join us for this special devotional. Thank you for coming. We express our love for you and pray for the influence of the Holy Ghost as we discuss your preparation to serve the Lord as full time missionaries.

"One Like The Son Of Man Came With The Clouds Of Heaven" The Context And Influence Of The Son Of Man Prophecy In Daniel 7, Jared W. Ludlow

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

The title Jesus preferred to use for himself more than any other in the New Testament Gospels was “Son of Man.”[1] Although this phrase can be used in scripture as a simple description of anyone, the equivalent of “human” or “man,” it is also occasionally used as a more specialized title similar to how it is used by Jesus in the Gospels. But why would this simple descriptor be chosen as a majestic title of the Lord? The roots for this title as an exceptional figure seem to be found in a prophecy in Daniel 7, where “one like the …

Training Teachers And Learning To Lead Church Higher Education And The Establishment Of The Church College Of Hawaii, 1957 1961, J. Gordon Daines Iii

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

In early 1921 Elder David O. McKay, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, embarked on a world tour of the foreign missions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints to ascertain the educational needs of the Church. One of his stops in early February was in Hawaii, where he asked local Church leaders what they thought the greatest need of the Hawaiian Mission was. These leaders replied that a Church school was the biggest need. Samuel H. Hurst, a missionary, recorded in his diary that Elder McKay indicated to these leaders that “he would …

Alma’S Cry For Salvation, Matthew L. Bowen

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Arguably the single greatest textual discovery in the Book of Mormon is John W. Welch’s discovery of a chiasm—a literary and rhetorical figure in which words and concepts are presented in a certain order and then presented again in reverse order—spanning the entirety of Alma 36.[1] Although alternative models of this chapter and refinements for Welch’s chiastic model have been proposed,[2] these still see Alma’s remembering and crying out to Jesus Christ as the χ (chi), or structural turning point, of the chiasm: And it came to pass that as I was thus racked with torment, while I was harrowed …

Learning From People Of Other Faiths, Joshua M. Sears

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Among all the religions in the world, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is unique in providing Restoration scripture, apostolic leadership, priesthood keys, the covenants and ordinances constituting the new and everlasting covenant, and a distinctive understanding of the plan of salvation.[1] However, when the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles released the bicentennial proclamation “The Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ” in April 2020, their affirmation of the unique gifts of the Restoration opened by declaring that “God loves His children in every nation of the world.”[2] Implicit in this declaration …

The Martyrdoms Of Ignatius, Polycarp, And Perpetua Windows Into Christian Discipleship In Ancient Rome, Nicholas W. Gentile

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

In January 2023 Elder Clark G. Gilbert, Commissioner of the Church Educational System for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gave a landmark address at the Seminaries and Institutes of Religion Annual Training Broadcast. He invited religious educators to allow five themes from President Russell M. Nelson to guide their teaching of young adults, regardless of the courses they teach. As he explained, “In identifying these themes, we have focused on the prophet’s anchor message, ‘Choices for Eternity.’[1] . . . Each of these themes has been identified through careful review with the CES university presidents, including S&I’s …

The Family Proclamation The Secular And Spiritual Context, Michael A. Goodman, W. Justin Dyer

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Within the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” is arguably one of the most influential documents produced in the last hundred years. Since it was given in 1995, it has been cited more than 250 times in general conference, hangs on the walls of many Latter-day Saint homes, and is presented to leaders throughout the world. Indeed, in the first-ever meeting between a Pope and a President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Russell M. Nelson presented Pope Francis with two items: a Christus statue and a copy of the …

Full Issue

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Seership And World Conferences The Divine Origin And Inception Of The Family Proclamation, Byran B. Korth

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

In recent years, some of the surviving original authors of “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” (namely, President Russell M. Nelson and President Dallin H. Oaks) have felt the need to disclose important details about the line-upon-line revelatory process of the writing and announcement of this historic document.[1] The coming forth of the family proclamation includes the important details regarding not only its writing and announcement [2] but its origin (where it came or originated from) and inception (what initiated the conception and writing). An understanding of this revelatory process is further complemented by an awareness of significant details …

Increasing Our Capacity To Receive Revelation, Jeremiah Duersch

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

From my personal experiences as a religious educator, I have found that many students desire to increase their capacity to receive communication from their Father in Heaven, or, in other words, receive revelation.[1] The expediency of having the ability to help students achieve their desire seems to have heightened after President Russell M. Nelson warned, “In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost. . . . I plead with you to increase your spiritual capacity to receive revelation.”[2]

Full Issue

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

From Heldris De Cornwall’S Le Roman De Silence To Gian Francesco Straparola’S Le Piacevoli Notti. New Insights Into A Significant Reception Process Across Centuries, Languages, And Genres, Albrecht Classen

Quidditas

Although we assume that the thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman romance Roman de Silence by Heldris de Cornwall experienced no reception at all apart from one manuscript containing the text, there is a considerable likelihood that the sixteenth-century Venetian author Gian Francesco Straparola somehow gained access to the medieval text and adapted it for one of the stories contained in his famous collection, Le Piacevoli Notti (1550 and 1553). Even though we cannot yet determine the exact process of reception, the strong similarities between both works go far beyond global archetypal themes. Straparola’s work hence demonstrates that Heldris’s work was known even long …

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Review: Don Argott, Dir. Keep Sweet. 44 Blue Productions, 2021., Stephanie Griswold

Mormon Studies Review

The recent documentary Keep Sweet, directed by Don Argott and produced by Glenn Meehan (not to be confused with the 2022 Netflix documentary Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey), recounts the producer’s experiences meeting members of the historically Fundamentalist Mormon community in Southern Utah known as Short Creek. The film is advertised as “rare access to current FLDS members” from “a producer embedded for over a decade.” The film follows the producer, Meehan, as he meets ex-members and followers of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) and depicts their experiences with the changes in their …

Review: Michael Harold Paulos And Konden Smith Hansen, Eds. The Reed Smoot Hearings: The Investigation Of A Mormon Senator And The Transformation Of An American Religion. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2021., Carter Charles

Mormon Studies Review

Before the clean-shaven and impeccably dressed David Oman McKay, it was Reed Owen Smoot who embodied Latter-day Saints as modern, mainstream, and American. The Reed Smoot Hearings remind us of this pivotal role that Smoot and others, like Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints president Joseph F. Smith, senators Fred E. Dubois and Albert J. Beveridge, and US president Theodore Roosevelt played in both Latter-day Saint and US religious history. The book is a welcome addition to works by Milton Merrill, Harvard Heath, and Kathleen Flake. Michael Harold Paulos and Konden Hansen Smith, editors as well as authors, are …

Full Issue

Mormon Studies Review

No abstract provided.

The Nephite Metaphor Of Life As A Probation: Rethinking Nephi’S Portrayal Of Laman And Lemuel, Noel B. Reynolds

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

Commentaries on Nephi’s first book tend to interpret the fraternal struggles it reports as historical facts that are meant primarily to invite readers’ evaluative responses. While recognizing the historical character of the facts marshalled by Nephi, this paper will argue that the author transposes that history into an allegory meant to inspire his readers in all times and places to abandon prevailing metaphors of life that are focused on the attainment of worldly goods and pleasures. In their place, Nephi offers the revealed metaphor of life as a day of probation taught to him and his father in their great …

"He Is God; And He Is With Them", Matthew L. Bowen

BYU Studies

The prophet Isaiah foretold to Ahaz and the house of David: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14). Latter-day Saints often interpret and teach the “Immanuel” prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 as a simple, straightforward messianic prophecy with a single fulfillment in the birth of Jesus Christ. Most pay little attention to the historical circumstances in which Isaiah gave the prophecy—namely, the Syro-Ephraimite crisis prior to the Assyrian invasion in the eighth century BCE. The idea of a more immediate, contemporary fulfillment …