Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Subtle Hebraic Features In The Book Of Mormon, Amanda Colleen Brown

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

Donald W. Parry combines a lifetime of insights about the Old Testament and Book of Mormon into one volume. Written for a nonacademic audience, this book provides a glimpse into some of the Book of Mormon’s literary complexities that originate from Hebrew grammar and style.

Working Out Salvation History In The Book Of Mormon Politeia With Fear And Trembling, Alan Goff

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

The Maxwell Institute for the Study of Religion has released another book in its series The Book of Mormon: Brief Theological Introductions. This book by James E. Faulconer more than ably engages five core elements of the book of Mosiah, exploring their theological implications. Faulconer puzzles through confusing passages and elements: why is the book rearranged so that it isn’t in chronological order? What might King Benjamin mean when he refers to the nothingness of humans? And what might Abinadi mean when he declares that Christ is both the Father and the Son? The most interesting parts of the introduction …

The Book Of Mormon As A Resurrected Book And A Type Of Christ, George L. Mitton

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

This essay emphasizes the remarkable participation of the Book of Mormon in the gospel symbolism of death and resurrection. It explains how the Book of Mormon itself may be seen as a resurrected book, witnessing Christ’s resurrection in a remarkable way.

Moses 6–7 And The Book Of Giants: Remarkable Witnesses Of Enoch’S Ministry, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

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

The Book of Giants (BG), an Enoch text found in 1948 among the Dead Sea Scrolls, includes a priceless trove of stories about the ancient prophet and his contemporaries, including unique elements relevant to the Book of Moses Enoch account. Hugh Nibley was the first to discover in the BG a rare personal name that corresponds to the only named character in the Book of Moses besides Enoch himself, a finding that some non-Latterday Saint Enoch scholars considered significant. Since Nibley’s passing, the growth of new scholarship on ancient Enoch texts has continued unabated. While Nibley’s pioneering research compared the …

Supporting Literacy And Comprehension In Religious Education, Stephen A. Nelson

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Imagine the following scenario unfolding in a seminary classroom: The assigned scripture block that day is James chapter 1, and the instructor is anxious to facilitate a meaningful discussion focusing on verses 5 and 6. To help his students identify the principle “God generously gives wisdom to those who ask of him in faith,” he writes the following question on the board: “What did James advise his readers to do to find answers to their questions?”[1] After a compelling readiness activity, the teacher invites a young man to read James 1:5–6 aloud while the rest of the class follows along …

Review: Jake Johnson. Mormons, Musical Theater, And Belonging In America. Urbana: University Of Illinois Press, 2019., Amanda Beardsley

Mormon Studies Review

Jake Johnson opens his book Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America from the relatively vulnerable subject position of his relationship to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As Johnson explains, he was a former member of both the LDS Church and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (now the Community of Christ), but no longer subscribes to either faith. This personal detail about his background may be startling, but it immediately lends a unique authorial voice and point of view to his book, which, in turn, discusses the centrality of voice and theatricality in …

Mormon Performance/Performing Mormonism: At The Intersection Of Mormon, Theatre, And Performance Studies, Megan Sanborn Jones

Mormon Studies Review

The Nauvoo Dramatic Association was founded in 1844 to respond to a growing demand for culture and entertainment in the booming young Illinois city. Organized by Joseph Smith, the company was directed by Thomas A. Lyne, a recent convert and professional actor from Philadelphia. The first offering of the society was advertised for performance in the newly dedicated Masonic Hall on April 24, 1844. All were invited to attend Pizarro, or The Death of Rolla, a “rational amusement with usefulness.”1 While the performance was postponed until April 26, 1844, due to heavy rains, the wait did not lessen the positive …

Packages, Erin Goulding

Inscape

I got a package today.

It's Not About The Gloves, Miriam Arce

Inscape

No abstract provided.

Inheritance, Abby Thatcher

Inscape

I can’t write about beauty. I’ve written four different opening lines, ones about beauty being a beast, or my hatred of photographs of myself, or the Maybelline counter in Macy’s in eighth grade where my mother took me to become beautiful. The sentences stumble over themselves. I have so much to say, but I feel too much, and the words choke upon entry, tumbling headlong into the white void. I hear my seventh-grade locker partner and the woman in Georgia who both told me I had hair on my neck—haven’t you heard of tweezers?—and my mother’s words each …

The Sin Of Certainty, Tyler Slade

Inscape

I’ve always thought that cathedrals were far too ominous to be a place of worship. But maybe that was the whole point—to scare you into confession. Somehow, despite the seemingly endless expanse of stained glass dominating those cold stone walls, there’s a lack of natural light, creating a space permeated by shadows only intermittently intercepted by flickering candlelight. It seems that true appreciation for God’s work entails blocking it out completely with this vast, gray monument that makes me so claustrophobic. I feel heavier here, small in my place among the pews, but maybe this is because I am being …

The Birthplace Of Saint Wulfthryth: An Unexamined Reference In Cambridge University Library Additional 2604, Jessica C. Brown

Quidditas

Cambridge University Library Additional 2604 is a fifteenth-century miscellany that is largely comprised of East Anglian and Kentish saints’ lives. It also includes a vita of Saint Edith-the patron saint of the convent at Wilton in Wessex. This vita names the birthplace of Edith’s mother, St. Wulfthryth, as ‘Lesing’ in Kent. I suggest that this unique reference may come from a desire to firmly connect Edith’s mother as well as Edith herself to a Kentish heritage.

Delno C. West Award Winner

Quidditas

The West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the West Award for 2021

Catherine Loomis

Rochester Institute of Technology

Giving The Book Of Ether Its Proper Due, Brant Gardner

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

Illuminating the Jaredite Record collects ten papers by different Book of Mormon scholars. This is the second publication from the Book of Mormon Academy at Brigham Young University, a collection of scholars interested in the Book of Mormon. As with the first volume, the authors approach the text from different perspectives and thereby illuminate different aspects of the text.

Contributors To This Issue

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Little Denmark In Nebraska, David Hendee

The Bridge

No charming Old World architecture. No Main Street decorated with Danish flags flapping in the breeze. No annual ethnic festival celebrating Danish roots. And it can’t be found on a map. But a small cluster of farms and ranches carved out of the prairie by Danish immigrants in sparsely settled western Nebraska in the late nineteenth century has maintained its identity as “Little Denmark” long after the homesteaders and their families assimilated into American culture. This obscure and remote Little Denmark was founded, flourished, and faded in the shadows of other Nebraska communities with vibrant Danish populations and institutions— Blair, …

Danes In Kenmare, North Dakota, Bertel Schou

The Bridge

The town of Kenmare, in Denmark Township in the northern part of Ward County, North Dakota, is famous for its Danish windmill, one of only three in the United States (the other two are in Elk Horn, Iowa and Solvang, California). The mill, with its gears of hand-hewn maple, was built eleven miles north of Kenmare by a Danish immigrant named Christian C. Jensen in 1902 and was in daily operation until 1918. It was transported into the center of Kenmare in 1958, restored in 1961, and moved to its current location on downtown Park Square in 1965. It doesn’t …

Book Review: Christopher I. Beckwith. The Tibetan Empire In Central Asia, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia was brought into being by polyglot polymath philologist MacArthur Fellowship recipient and stupefyingly wide-ranging medieval Central Asian civilizations-ist scholar Christopher I. Beckwith as the "first detailed narrative history of the Tibetan Empire in Central Asia written in any language" (vii). By 1993, Princeton University Press had released a 4th printing/1st paperback edition (with a new afterword by Beckwith), suggesting a widening readership for what some might regard as a rarified subject.

Jennifer E. Sessions. By Sword And Plow: France And The Conquest Of Algeria, Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue, And Jacob Tatsitsa. Kamerun! Une Guerre Cachée De La Françafrique (1948-1971), Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue, And Jacob Tatsitsa. La Guerre Du Cameroun: L’Invention De La Françafrique 1948-1971, Leland Conley Barrows

Comparative Civilizations Review

The legacy of the colonial period continues to weigh on France. Recently, President Emmanuel Macron called for the creation of a “Memories and Truth Commission” to lay to rest the lingering questions, bitterness, and controversies surrounding the French occupation of Algeria, the independence war, and the country’s accession to independence. Questions regarding the brutality of French colonial conquests and colonial rule in tropical Africa are also being raised. Immigration from Algeria and other formerly French territories is provoking controversy as is also the fact that France has the largest Muslim population of any European country. Many French citizens, particularly those …

The Danite Constitution And Theories Of Democratic Justice In Frontier America, Benjamin E. Park

BYU Studies

Most modern Americans define liberty as the freedom to do things: freedom to speak, freedom to congregate, freedom to vote, freedom to worship. That is, we define it in proactive terms. But in early America, many citizens were just as likely to define liberty as freedom from things: freedom not to be taxed without representation, freedom not to be unjustly imprisoned, or freedom not to be oppressed. In other words, they defined it in preventive terms. And among Americans in the 1830s, per- haps the most poignant political discussion concerned the freedom to not be forcibly removed from the land …

Remnant Or Replacement? Outlining A Possible Apostasy Narrative, Nicholas J. Frederick, Joseph M. Spencer

BYU Studies

Since early in the twentieth century, it has been common for Latter- day Saints to speak of a “Great Apostasy” that occurred in the centuries following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Such a general apostasy has been viewed as providing the basic motivation for the Restoration, begun in earnest with Joseph Smith’s First Vision in 1820. The traditional apostasy narrative has centered on the argument that the church founded by Jesus Christ once possessed the same organization, doctrine, and authority restored in the nineteenth century but that, over time, these crucial components were either lost or corrupted. It …

Gospel Ethics, Hinckley A. Jones-Sanpei

BYU Studies

Unavoidable ethical and moral decisions permeate our lives. From the personal (how we treat our family members and the people we interact with) to the political (what we do about the increasing number of mass shootings in our country and refugees at our borders or how we behave during a worldwide pandemic), our decisions have moral and ethical implications that reveal our priorities and values. Traditional approaches to ethics and economic policymaking emphasize isolated rational individuals and their direct interactions with other self-sufficient, rational individuals. Yet at different points in our lives, all of us are dependent on others—some we …

Signs Of The Times: Racism, Tribalism, And Disinformation Before The Comings Of Christ, Luke Drake

BYU Studies

Each of the major narrators/compilers of the Book of Mormon evince varying degrees of understanding that their work is destined for modern readers who would face a set of modern concerns.² This essay suggests that Mormon’s editorial hand—on display both in the redaction of the words of Samuel the Lamanite and in the narration of the events surrounding Samuel’s ministry—can be understood to address pressing issues faced by latter-day readers: specifically, the perils posed by racism, “tribalism,” and disinformation.

Wake Up And Dream, Eva Koleva Timothy

BYU Studies

The cover piece, Star Stretching, was inspired by a favorite saying of my mission president, Elder Ronald Rasband: “It is better to aim for the stars and drag your feet in the treetops than to aim for the treetops and drag your feet in the mud.”

My Stepdad Was A Bank Robber, Billy Wilson

BYU Studies

I remember standing on the back porch of our rental in Meadow Vista, California—the steady gurgles of a running creek in the backyard, the faint smell of dry firewood in the cardboard box behind me. Dad (the con- tract killer, not the bank robber) wore a tank top and jeans with the pant legs cut into very short shorts. He was six foot two, an anomaly in our lineage of shorter men. I don’t recall him ever yelling at me, and he was naturally amicable, but he did raise his voice on occasion and could crack granite with his eyes. …

Aguas Vivas, Thea Jo Buell

BYU Studies

"So, was there anything you just couldn’t find there?” I asked the newly returned missionary. He had been home from Guatemala for a few months, and I would be leaving for the same country soon.

He looked puzzled at my question and thought for several seconds before answering. “Balloons,” he said.

His Body Breaks, James Goldberg

BYU Studies

His body breaks long before he hangs on the cross.

All Things Sing Praise, Susan Elizabeth Howe

BYU Studies

The anteater’s tongue licking praise in the tunnels of the termite mound.

The alpaca spitting praise, olé!

Serrano peppers’ praise in perspiration.

Plastic praise: the Taj Mahal, a million interlocking Lego blocks.

Bayou, Pamela J. Hamblin

BYU Studies

Slowly the rain plays thin strings, plucking.

Life And Times Of John Pierce Hawley: A Mormon Ulysses Of The American West, Adam Oliver Stokes

BYU Studies

In recent years there has been a growing effort to expand the definition of “Mormonism” within Mormon studies. “Mormonism,” in twenty-first-century scholarship, refers not only to the largest organization in the restoration tradition—namely, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Utah—but also to other branches and movements within the restoration tradition. Joseph Smith’s movement includes the Reorganized Church (RLDS, now known as the Com- munity of Christ), the Bickertonite church (Church of Jesus Christ), the Strangite church, and the Elijah Message church, among others. In large part, this expanded understanding of what qualifies as “Mormon” has come …