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Virginia Commonwealth University Courses [2020], Virginia Commonwealth University

VCU Bulletins

Listing of courses for the 2020-2021 year.

Contradictory Theories On Divine Infinity, Sydira Shapiro

Celebrating Writers and Writing in our Communities

No abstract provided.

Immortal Combat: Iconoclasm And The Hebrew Bible, Albert L. Mcclure

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Biblical iconoclasm is any biblical text that describes the disruption of religious observances by physical violence against cult materials. This can include removing cult objects from their appointed places, god-napping divine bodies, outright destruction, cult reform, etc. Biblical iconoclasm, understood this way, is one component of the Hebrew Bible’s iconic politics. Other components of biblical iconic politics – like Idol Parodies, Bildersverbot, and aniconism – have been well studied in the past thirty years. Biblical iconoclasm has not shared the popularity of its collaborators in this respect. This dissertation is necessary because no extended study of iconoclasm in the Hebrew …

Windows Into The Unseen The Power Of Metaphor As Revealed By Paul Ricoeur And Moses Maimonides, Claire E. Molk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ambiguous language haunts countless fields of human inquiry. The solution to its confounding nature has repeatedly been to reduce language to its face-value, launching an endless search for the right meaning. This paper aims to examine two thinkers who reveal language to be a more complicated matter. Paul Ricoeur and Moses Maimonides demonstrate the importance of language’s complexity through close examinations of metaphor. While we find different understandings of metaphor, reflecting different metaphysics within each author’s study, both Ricoeur and Maimonides contribute to the notion that language’s complexity is not to be eliminated through literal readings, but engaged to open …

Cc: Connecticut College Magazine, Winter 2020, Connecticut College

Alumni News/Connecticut College Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Loss Of Baptist Identity: How The Loss Of The Baptist Name Impacts Theological Identity, Josiah O. Hoagland

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the United States, many Baptist churches have been following a recent trend of dropping “Baptist” from the church title. Research has shown that with the rise of post-denominationalism, there is a loss of identity in Baptist churches. This study explores the effects of dropping the name Baptist from a church’s title and its perceived impact on the theological identity of the church. This study includes a literature review analyzing the current body of literature on Baptist identity. Six Converge North Central Baptist churches were studied, three with a Baptist name and three without, using church surveys and interviews with …

A Multiple Case Study: Participative Decision-Making In Four Black Indiana Churches, Michael S. Johnson

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research study looked at factors in participative decision-making that would balance congregational polity and pastoral authority. A multiple-case study was conducted with four Black Baptist churches in central Indiana. Fifteen participants were interviewed across cases and organizational documents were analyzed. Four themes emerged. They included effectiveness, unified involvement, decision parameters, and trusted leadership. Effectiveness related to support for a decision. Unified Involvement was about members’ sense of belonging. Parameters involved areas where certain groups had discretion in decision-making. Lastly, trusted leadership pertained to the calling of a pastor and the confidence members placed in that calling.

Gchr 2020 - A Year Not To Be Forgotten, Leonard And Shirley Goldstein Center For Human Rights - University Of Nebraska At Omaha

GCHR Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

If there was ever a year to be dispatched early and forgotten, 2020 may be the one. Almost unimaginable twelve months ago, the novel coronavirus pandemic has transformed our lives. This “Year in Review” that I write to you as Executive Director of the Leonard and Shirley Goldstein Center for Human Rights, is soaked in human tragedy. Almost two million people are confirmed dead across the globe from Covid-19. In the United States we are approaching 350,000 deaths. As Wall Street soars, suffering disproportionally affects the most vulnerable amongst us – the elderly and the poor. Human Rights issues abound. …

Multiplicity: An Editors’ Introduction, Quincy D. Newell, Benjamin E. Park

Mormon Studies Review

When J. Spencer Fluhman introduced the new Mormon Studies Review six years ago, he articulated a “guiding principle for the Review: friendship.” As Fluhman put it, “In our hope to meaningfully connect minds across space, time, and ideological and religious spectra, the Review aspires to a very Mormon ideal indeed.”1 We’d like to believe that over the last six years, the Mormon Studies Review has lived up to this aspiration, and that it has demonstrated that friendship is an excellent way to cultivate the field of critical inquiry we call Mormon studies, regardless of participants’ religious identities or institutional commitments.

Excavating A Monumental Stepped Stone Structure At Khirbat Ataruz: The 2016-17 Season Of Fieldwork In Field G, Chang-Ho Ji, Aaron Schade

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This paper presents the results of the 2016–2017 excavations of Field G at Khirbat Ataruz, an area corresponding to the southeast slope of the site that includes a large-scale stepped stone structure. According to our preliminary assessment, the remains would have been stairs ascending the eastern side of the site, which provided an access system to the Iron IIA temple on the acropolis. At the top of the steps, we have what may at some point have been a plaza paved with flat paving stones, possibly contemporaneous with the temple on the acropolis. Field G also includes Moabite architectural remains …

Sensationalism: A One-Sided Perspective, Susan Easton Black

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

While Benjamin Park shows promise as a writer and historian, his book, Kingdom of Nauvoo, opts for poorly sourced sensationalism instead of illuminating the joy of Nauvoo’s true history.

Four Idolatrous Gods In The Book Of Abraham, John Gee

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

Although unknown as deities in Joseph Smith’s day, the names of four associated idolatrous gods (Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, and Korash) mentioned in the Book of Abraham are attested anciently. Two of them are known to have connections with the practices attributed to them in the Book of Abraham. The odds of Joseph Smith guessing the names correctly is astronomical.

Formed In And Called From The Womb, Dana M. Pike

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

Drawing on his deep knowledge of biblical Hebrew, Dana Pike gives us a close reading of Jeremiah 1:5, the most important Old Testament verse relating to the Latter-day Saint understanding of premortal existence of human spirits and the foreordination of prophets to their appointed callings. He shows that the plain sense of this verse cannot be easily dismissed: first, and consistent with Latter-day Saint understanding, God knew Jeremiah before he was conceived and that afterward, in a second phase that transpired in the womb, he was, “according to the Israelite perspective preserved in the Bible,” appointed to become a prophet.

John W. Welch: A Personal Reminiscence, Stephen E. Robinson

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

In these glimpses of the early private life of a very public figure, Stephen E. Robinson provides a portrait that will enable readers to see how the child became father to the man.

Where Did The Names Mahaway And Mahujah Come From? A Response To Colby Townsend’S “Returning To The Sources,” Part 2 Of 2, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Matthew L. Bowen, Ryan Dahle

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

In the present article, Part 2 of 2 of a set of articles supporting Colby Townsend’s efforts to raise awareness of the importance of textual criticism, we focus on his argument that Joseph Smith created the Book of Moses names Mahijah and Mahujah after seeing a table of name variants in the Hebrew text of Genesis 4:18 in a Bible commentary written by Adam Clarke. While we are not averse in principle to the general possibility that Joseph Smith may have relied on study aids as part of his translation of the Bible, we discuss why in this case such …

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Theories And Assumptions: A Review Of William L. Davis’S Visions In A Seer Stone, Brian C. Hales

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

Within the genre of Book of Mormon studies, William L. Davis’s Visions in a Seer Stone presents readers with an innovative message that reports how Joseph Smith was able to produce the words of the Book of Mormon without supernatural assistance. Using oral performance skills that Smith ostensibly gained prior to 1829, his three-month “prodigious flow of verbal art and narrative creation” (7) became the Book of Mormon. Davis’s theory describes a two-part literary pattern in the Book of Mormon where summary outlines (called “heads) in the text are consistently expanded in subsequent sections of the narrative. Termed “laying down …

Notes On Mormonism And The Trinity, Daniel C. Peterson

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

With “awe, humility, and circumspection,” Daniel C. Peterson provides a useful summary and discussion of Latter-day Saint beliefs as they relate to traditional Christian conceptions of the Trinity. In particular, his discussions reveals the many nuances of the questions raised, including the precise nature of the unity of the three persons of the Godhead and how the overall conception relates to doctrines of salvation and practical discipleship, which continued to be a controversial issue in both the Eastern and Western Churches for centuries. Peterson argues that the Latter-day Saint doctrine affirms both biblical precedents and, to a degree, some modern …

“I Of Myself Am A Wicked Man”: Some Notes On Allusion And Textual Dependency In Omni 1:1-2, Matthew L. Bowen

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

Omni greatly revered his ancestors and their personal accounts on the small plates of Nephi. A close examination of Omni’s brief autobiography (Omni 1:1–3) evidences borrowing from all four of his predecessors’ writings. Moreover, his self-description, “I of myself am a wicked man,” constitutes far more than a confession of religious dereliction. That self-assessment alludes to Nephi’s autobiographical wordplay on his name in terms “good” and “having been born of goodly parents” and his grandfather Enos’s similarly self-referential wordplay in describing his own father Jacob as a “just man.” Omni’s name most likely represents a hypocoristic form of a longer …

Textual Criticism And The Book Of Moses: A Response To Colby Townsend’S “Returning To The Sources,” Part 1 Of 2, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Ryan Dahle

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

Textual criticism tries by a variety of methods to understand the “original” or “best” wording of a document that may exist in multiple, conflicting versions or where the manuscripts are confusing or difficult to read. The present article, Part 1 of a two-part series by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and Ryan Dahle, commends Colby Townsend’s efforts to raise awareness of the importance of textual criticism, while differing on some interpretations. Among the differences discussed is the question of whether it is better to read Moses 7:28 as it was dictated in Old Testament 1 version of the Joseph Smith Translation manuscript …

“Dialogical Offense:” A Postcolonial Womanist Deconstruction Of The Colonial Experience Of African American Women Through U.S. Institutional Apparatus Known As Criminal Justice Policy, April Michelle Woodson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Black female experience in the United States is a colonized existence. This project’s analysis is specific to the North American U.S. geographic space and is not a diasporic project. Black women suffered from the greatest increase in the percentage of inmates incarcerated for drug offenses in the 1980’s and 1990’s which is the period of criminal justice policy formation and implementation on which this project is focused.

This project is uniquely situated in the overlap between womanist ethics and postcolonial feminist imagination and extends scholarship in both discourses by showing that there is an interwoven line between the colonial-to-contemporary …

Notes On Book Of Mormon Heads, Stephen O. Smoot

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

This paper looks at the two types of heads used in the Book of Mormon. It argues against a recent theory that these heads served as mnemonic cues that enabled Joseph Smith to extemporaneously compose and dictate the text. Instead, it argues that the function and form of heads in the Book of Mormon finds ancient precedent in Egyptian literary culture and scribal practice. A brief addendum on the ancient precedent for the chapter breaks in the original text of the Book of Mormon is also provided.

“A Prophet Like Moses” (Deuteronomy 18:15–18) In The Book Of Mormon, The Bible, And The Dead Sea Scrolls, David R. Seely

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

David Seely provides a wide-ranging survey of interpretations of the prophecy in Deuteronomy 18:15–18 concerning “a prophet like unto Moses.” He examines relevant passages in the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and the Dead Sea Scrolls and shows how the prophecy has been fulfilled by Jesus Christ and others, continuing with Joseph Smith’s role in the Restoration and onward to the present day.

Missing Words: King James Bible Italics, The Translation Of The Book Of Mormon, And Joseph Smith As An Unlearned Reader And Editor Of A Visioned Text, Stan Spencer

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

Chapters from Isaiah quoted in the Book of Mormon use the King James Bible as a base text yet frequently vary from it in minor ways, particularly in the earliest text of the Book of Mormon. A disproportionate number of these variants are due to the omission or replacement of words italicized in the KJV. Many of the minor variants were eliminated by the printer for the 1830 edition or by Joseph Smith himself for the 1837 edition, but others remain. Some of the minor variants are easily explained as errors of dictation, transcription, or copying, but others are not …

Temporal Mercies And Eternal Being: Using The Science Of Time To Understand God’S Nature And Our Own, Jared R. Stenson

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

How does God relate to time? How do we? Modern science and revelation offer distinctive and fascinating perspectives to these questions. Specifically, the physical mechanisms underlying time have doctrinal parallels, they appear to be operative at the Fall, and they correlate with several phenomena that make God’s mercy possible.

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

“God Hath Taken Away His Plainness”: Some Notes On Jacob 4:14, Revelation, Canon, Covenant, And Law, Matthew L. Bowen

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

This article examines Jacob’s statement “God hath taken away his plainness from [the Jews]” (Jacob 4:14) as one of several scriptural texts employing language that revolves around the Deuteronomic canon formulae (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32 [13:1]; cf. Revelation 22:18‒19). It further examines the textual dependency of Jacob 4:13‒14 on Nephi’s earlier writings, 1 Nephi 13 and 2 Nephi 25 in particular. The three texts in the Hebrew Bible that use the verb bʾr (Deuteronomy 1:5; 27:8; Habakkuk 2:2) — each having covenant and “law” implications — all shed light on what Nephi and Jacob may have meant when they described “plain” …

Faith, Hope, And Charity: The “Three Principal Rounds” Of The Ladder Of Heavenly Ascent1, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

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

This chapter argues that “the scriptural triad of faith, hope, and charity should be understood as something more than a general set of personal attributes that must be developed in order for disciples to become like Christ. Instead, as part of the ‘guarded tradition of the Apostle’ [Paul] that is transmitted to readers in 1 Corinthians and elsewhere in scripture, these terms have been used to describe a distinct progression of ‘stages in a Christian’s earthly experience.’ The three stages that correlate to faith, hope, and charity were described by Joseph Smith as the ‘three principal rounds’ of a ladder …

The Visions Of Moses And Joseph Smith’S Bible Translation, Kent P. Jackson

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

This contribution focuses on the earliest and one of the most significant chapters of the Book of Moses: Moses 1, sometimes called the “Visions of Moses.” Kent Jackson summarizes the sources available relating to the production of this chapter, illuminating obscure corners of its often misunderstood background with his extensive knowledge of the history, manuscripts, and significance of the Joseph Smith Translation.

The Theology Of C. S. Lewis: A Latter-Day Saint Perspective, Robert L. Millet

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

In this essay, Robert Millet describes the work and impact of C. S. Lewis as it pertains to the Latter-day Saints. He explores possible reasons why Church leaders have felt comfortable quoting Lewis in General Conference more than any other non-Latter-day Saint writer and provides a substantial list of the subjects for which his writings have had special appeal to the Saints. While acknowledging Lewis’ personal faults and the obvious points of difference between his faith and our own, Millet concludes with an expression of gratitude for his “lasting lessons and his noble legacy.”