Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Eve The Ezer: Minerva Teichert Award Winner 2021, Kayla Becknuss

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Thank You Letter, Dana Lovell

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Empty Belly Home, Maryn J. Rolfson

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

The Political Legacy Of Māori Women And Beyond, Taylor Johnston

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Sketch Of A Photo Of Noemie Schmidt, Alexander Schofield

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

The Giver, Harriet Norcross

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

One Clear Voice, Celisa Fullmer

Inscape

We were lucky to even be there. Beating diligently overhead, the sun penetrated the plains with a dry heat, contending with gusts of Albertan wind in periodic spats. It whipped at our ponytails and howled in our eyes, yanking the moisture straight out of their blurred corners. It quarreled with the truck’s engine, drowning out its mechanical protests and hurling grasshoppers toward the windshield.

“The Lord God Will Proceed”: Nephi’S Wordplay In 1 Nephi 22:8–12 And The Abrahamic Covenant, Matthew L. Bowen

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

Nephi quotes or alludes to four distinct Old Testament passages — Genesis 22:18; Isaiah 29:14; Isaiah 49:22–23; and Isaiah 52:10 — twice each in 1 Nephi 22:6, 8–12. These four texts form the basis of his description of how the Lord would bring to pass the complete fulfillment of the promises in the Abrahamic covenant for the salvation of the human family. These texts’ shared use of the Hebrew word gôyim (“nations” [> kindreds], “Gentiles”) provides the lexical basis for Nephi’s quotation and interpretation of these texts in light of each other. Nephi uses these texts to prophesy that the …

Honoring Joseph’S Theophany Two Centuries Later, Spencer Kraus

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

In the year 2020, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints celebrated the 200th anniversary of the First Vision of the Prophet Joseph Smith. As a part of honoring that seminal moment in the Church’s history, the Church History Symposium focused on the context, place, and meaning of the First Vision. Selected papers from the conference have been published in Joseph Smith and his First Vision: Context, Place, and Meaning, edited by Alexander L. Baugh, Steven C. Harper, Brent M. Rogers, and Benjamin C. Pykles, offering new insights and research into Joseph Smith’s theophany in the Sacred …

“We Might Have Enjoyed Our Possessions And The Land Of Our Inheritance”: Hebrew Yrš And 1 Nephi 17:21, Matthew L. Bowen

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

The verbal expression “we might have enjoyed,” as used in a complaint that Nephi attributes to his brothers, “we might have enjoyed our possessions and the land of our inheritance” (1 Nephi 17:21), reflects a use of the Hebrew verb yrš in its progressive aspect, “to enjoy possession of.” This meaning is evident in several passages in the Hebrew Bible, and perhaps most visibly in the KJV translation of Numbers 36:8 (“And every daughter, that possesseth [Hebrew yōrešet] an inheritance [naḥălâ] in any tribe of the children of Israel, shall be wife unto one of the family of the tribe …

An Unfortunate Approach To Joseph Smith’S Translation Of Ancient Scripture, Spencer Kraus

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

This is the first of two papers that explore Jonathan Neville’s two latest books regarding the translation of the Book of Mormon. Neville has long argued that Joseph Smith did not use a seer stone during the translation of the Book of Mormon, and he has more recently expanded his historical revisionism to dismiss the multitude of historical sources that include the use of a seer stone. Neville’s “Demonstration Hypothesis” is explored in A Man That Can Translate, arguing that Joseph recited a memorized text from Isaiah rather than translate Isaiah from the Book of Mormon record. This hypothesis, meant …

Hannah’S Adversity And Peninnah’S Redemption, Loren Spendlove

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

Most biblical students are familiar with the story of Hannah, who after years of barrenness, finally gave birth to the prophet Samuel. Some will remember her adversary, Peninnah, who allegedly tormented Hannah to tears. My objective in this article is to reclaim Peninnah’s good name by reinterpreting the passage found in 1 Samuel 1:6.

“For Their Good Have I Written Them”: The Onomastic Allusivity And Literary Function Of 2 Nephi 25:8, Matthew L. Bowen

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

Nephi’s writings exhibit a distinctive focus on “good” and divine “goodness,” reflecting the meaning of Nephi’s Egyptian name (derived from nfr) meaning “good,” “goodly,” “fine,” or “fair.” Beyond the inclusio playing on his own name in terms of “good” and “goodness” (1 Nephi 1:1; 2 Nephi 33:3–4, 10, 12), he uses a similar inclusio (2 Nephi 5:30–31; 25:7–8) to frame and demarcate a smaller portion of his personal record in which he incorporated a substantial portion of the prophecies of Isaiah (2 Nephi 6–24). This smaller inclusio frames the Isaianic material as having been incorporated into Nephi’s “good” writings on …

A Research Note: Continuing Exploration And Research In Oman, Warren P. Aston

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

The significance of the ongoing studies into the potential location of the Old World “Bountiful,” which Nephi reminds us was “prepared of the Lord” (1 Nephi 17:5), and is documented in great detail by him, can hardly be overstated. Bountiful’s resources had to be truly substantial and unique to enable the Lehites to recover from years of land travel from Jerusalem and to build a ship capable of reaching the New World. Exploration and scientific studies of the Dhofar region of southern Oman, the only section of the Arabian coast containing the feature Nephi describes, continue to the present. Here …

Review: Christopher James Blythe. Terrible Revolution: Latter-Day Saints And The American Apocalypse. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020., Matthew Avery Sutton

Mormon Studies Review

For too long, many scholars have argued that Christian groups obsessed with a coming apocalypse are so other-worldly focused that they have little impact on the politics or cultures around them. Those scholars are wrong. Rather than fostering a sense of indifference regarding the coming of an inevitable end of days, apocalypse-obsessed Christians have used their beliefs as a call to battle rather than a justification for withdrawal. God, they insist, has given them much to do and very little time in which to do it. Positive that Jesus is coming soon, they have sought converts and engaged directly and …

Review: Michael Hubbard Mackay, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee, And Brian M. Hauglid, Eds. Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’S Translation Projects In The Development Of Mormon Christianity. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2020., Sonia Hazard

Mormon Studies Review

Joseph Smith was, among much else, a translator. One of the most distinctive qualities of early Mormonism is that saving knowledge came not only from revelations—though Smith received plenty of those— but also through texts from the ancient past. In order to be useable as scripture, those texts required translation, and Smith tackled the office of translator with relish. What did translation mean for Smith and early Saints?

The editors of Producing Ancient Scripture—Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid—set out to answer that question with a comprehensive treatment of Smith’s translations, and they delivered. Among the seventeen …

Review: Miles Harvey. The King Of Confidence: A Tale Of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, And The Murder Of An American Monarch. New York: Little, Brown And Company, 2020., Amy Derogatis

Mormon Studies Review

A little over a year ago I was in the Clarke Historical Library in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, sifting through documents with librarian John T. Fierst to answer a nagging question regarding the provenance of a remarkable daguerreotype. As we were musing about the limits of what could be known about this material object, he happened to mention that another person who was finishing a book about James Jesse Strang had recently visited and looked at the photograph. Like any other academic hearing about scholarly competition, my heart froze, and out of my dry mouth I managed to croak, “Oh, really, …

Review: Thomas G. Alexander. Brigham Young And The Expansion Of The Mormon Faith. Norman: University Of Oklahoma Press, 2019., Nicole Kirk

Mormon Studies Review

In Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith, Thomas G. Alexander delivers a new study of the second prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as an account of Young’s leadership of the Mormon migration and settlement in the Intermountain West. A part of the Oklahoma University Press’s Western Biography series, the collection employs the genre of biography to illuminate the history of the American West. Written by leading scholars for a general audience, the series excludes notes. The Western Biography series has included a wide range of figures, from Annie Oakley, Billy …

Review: Mary Ella Engel. Praying With One Eye Open: Mormons And Murder In Nineteenth-Century Appalachian Georgia. Athens: University Of Georgia Press, 2019., Jonathan David Hepworth

Mormon Studies Review

Tucked away on a mountainous road north of Atlanta is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ only historic property in the state of Georgia: the reputed field where missionary Joseph Standing was shot and killed. Standing’s companion (and later president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles) Rudger Clawson witnessed the murder, and narrowly escaped with his life. The 1879 incident has been the subject of numerous articles and book chapters, including one in a children’s book and a cameo in the second volume of Saints, the new multivolume history of the Latter-day Saints, but books on the …

Review: Ann Chamberlin. Clogs And Shawls: Mormons, Moorlands, And The Search For Zion. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2019., Alison Halford

Mormon Studies Review

Despite the oldest continuous Mormon congregations being in Britain, when recruiting for my study on British Mormon women, I found few British Latter-day Saint families that went beyond fifth-generation members. The institutional Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may have stopped the systemic dismantling of wards and branches through migration to Utah by the turn of the twentieth century, but the consequences of asset-stripping British congregations were still felt by some of those women who were part of a multi-generational Latter-day Saint family. For them, there was a residual resentment that their female relatives who converted and remained in …

Review: Matthew L. Harris. Watchman On The Tower: Ezra Taft Benson And The Making Of The Mormon Right. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2020., Carmen Celestini

Mormon Studies Review

Ezra Taft Benson, to those of us who study the joint impact of overlapping belief systems of religion and conspiracy theories on politics, personifies the implications of these beliefs not only within his lifetime but within contemporary times as well. In Watchman on the Tower, Matthew L. Harris provides insight into Benson and his thinking. Using Benson’s personal correspondence, speeches, and public writings, Harris creates an image of a man significantly influenced by his faith and his life experiences.

End Matter

Mormon Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Mormon Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Mormon Studies Review

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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

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 …

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. …

Review: Terryl Givens. Mormonism (Or The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints): What Everyone Needs To Know. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020., Jill Peterfeso

Mormon Studies Review

Terryl Givens’s new book Mormonism (Or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): What Everyone Needs to Know is a resource guide that seeks to explain the LDS Church’s history, beliefs, and practices, and in so doing clarifies items of confusion and controversy. The book is organized into topic-driven chapters (such as “History,” “Polygamy,” “Organization,” and “Conflicts and Challenges”), which unfold in a question-and-answer format. The questions Givens tackles range from predictable (“Why did the Latter-day Saints practice polygamy?” “What is the church’s relationship to Christianity?”) to unexpected (“What do Latter-day Saint scriptures teach about peace and war?” “Does …

Review: David Walker. Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, And The Corporate Spirit Of The West. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press, 2019., Emily Ogden

Mormon Studies Review

David Walker’s Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West tells the riveting story of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints won the battle not only to define what the railroad would mean in Utah but also to locate the junction and stations that would have a definitive impact on development near the Great Salt Lake. Through well-executed bureaucratic maneuvers, Brigham Young and other church leaders secured the construction of a railroad infrastructure that they calculated would best serve church interests.

Honoring Creative Women: Minerva Teichert Award Winner 2021, Ally Christiansen

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Adolescent Girls' Mental Health, Amanda Hardy

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.