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Introducing A Book Of Commandments And Revelations, A Major New Documentary "Discovery", Robert J. Woodford

BYU Studies

This article is one of several in this issue of BYU Studies about the Book of Commandments and Revelations (BCR), a foundational document of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Book of Commandments and Revelations (BCR) is the manuscript collection of revelations Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer took to Missouri in November 1831 from which the Book of Commandments was to be published. Additional revelations were entered into the volume as they were received, and the BCR was also used as one of the sources for the revelations printed in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and …

From Manuscript To Printed Page: An Analysis Of The History Of The Book Of Commandments And Revelations, Robin S. Jensen

BYU Studies

This article is one of several in this issue about the Book of Commandments and Revelations, a foundational document of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Book of Commandments and Revelations (BCR) is a surprisingly unpretentious document, judging by its physical condition. Instead of appearing regal and glorious as would befit its important contents, the Book of Commandments and Revelations looks ragged, worn, and somewhat fragile. But for anyone interested in historical artifacts, the Book of Commandments and Revelations provides a rich experience. This article discusses the physical description and provenance of the BCR—why, how, and when …

Response To The Book Of Commandments And Revelations Presentations, Ronald E. Romig

BYU Studies

This article is one of several in this issue about the Book of Commandments and Revelations, a foundational document of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In this response to the four preceding papers, Ron Romig, the Archivist for the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or RLDS), focuses partly on the provenance of the eight pages John Whitmer removed from the manuscript book that eventually found their way to the archives of the RLDS Church. While RLDS scholars made good use of their BCR manuscript pages, lack of access …

Book Of Mormon Stories That Steph Meyer Tells To Me: Lds Themes In The Twilight Saga And The Host, Jana Riess, Stephenie Meyer

BYU Studies

Publishing professionals call it a phenomenon. In 2008, Little, Brown sold 27.5 million copies of Stephenie Meyer's four vampire novels; the Twilight movie grossed $191 million in domestic box office sales; and Meyer's adult novel, The Host, sold an additional million copies. Publishers Weekly crowed, "A new queen has been crowned." USA Today reported that Meyer was the bestselling author in the world for the year 2008, accounting for one in five of the books sold from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

That's not bad for an author who, as the media incessantly reminds us, is little more than a "Mormon …

Yellow Shirt Riddles, Holly R. Hansen

BYU Studies

The essayist explores various issues surrounding her divorce as a young wife. The most intriguing is the pivotal argument she can't remember. Her brain has somehow blocked the memory of it, so she has to tell the story through the eyes of her ex-sister-in-law. Using images of falling off a snowy mountain, tying quilts, and breaking one of two identical pitchers, she tries to make sense of this life-changing experience.

Full Issue, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Matters Of The Mind: Latter-Day Saint Helps For Mental Health, W. Dean Belnap, Marleen S. Williams, James D. Macarthur, John P. Livingstone

BYU Studies

Mental health continues to be difficult for many people to understand. We seem to grasp physical ailments; bruises and cuts and headaches are pains we all have experienced. More serious health troubles--diabetes, cancer, or the physical pain associated with a broken arm or surgery--are still in the realm of the tactile and thus are fairly easy to grasp conceptually, even by those who have not gone through any such trauma. But when it comes to the realm of mental illnesses--bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or even more common ailments like dysthymia--we may find ourselves scratching our heads. What is the nature of …

The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals, Volume 1: 1832-1839, Dean C. Jessee, James B. Allen, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee, Richard L. Jensen

BYU Studies

Several years ago, when I heard that the Joseph Smith Papers Project was approved for publication, I was delighted for at least two reasons. First, I considered Joseph Smith's papers to be the most valuable resource extant for researching early Latter-day Saint history. Making them available to all would enhance the accuracy of future scholarship. Second, it would be clear that the Church had nothing to hide concerning Joseph Smith. For too long, stories had circulated that the archives were closed, and the Church History Department did not allow access to important documents. The stories were partially true, though scholars …

Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction, John G. Turner, Richard L. Bushman

BYU Studies

Combining history, theology, and contemporary observations, Richard L. Bushman has crafted an engaging introduction to Mormonism, aimed primarily at outsiders to Latter-day Saint traditions and related movements. Anticipating skeptical non-Mormon readers, Bushman centers his book on several fundamental questions, including "How can twenty-first-century Americans believe in a prophet who translated golden plates and claimed constant revelations?" and "How can a religion that runs against the grain of modern secularism evoke such strong loyalties?"

Bushman's latest work may indeed be "very short," but it simultaneously provides eloquent and sophisticated answers to such questions. Although he discusses post-Manifesto polygamists and the movement …

Polygamy On The Pedernales: Lyman Wight's Mormon Villages In Antebellum Texas, 1845 To 1858, Melvin C. Johnson, Ken Driggs

BYU Studies

Polygamy on the Pedernales is about the Mormon settlements in Texas during the 1840s and 1850s, whose primary allegiance was to Lyman Wight. Christened the "Wild Ram of the Mountains" by the New York Sun, Wight was ordained an Apostle by Joseph Smith in 1841. Because he was "charismatic, intensely personal, and often domineering in his dealings with others," writes author Melvin C. Johnson, "the Wild Ram became influential with Joseph Smith." Wight's group broke with Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve, and they pursued Wight's vision of a Latter-day Saint safe haven in Texas, which Wight …

Against The Grain: Christianity And Democracy, War And Peace, George Weigel, Gary P. Gillum

BYU Studies

Deification has been a difficult theological concept for mankind to accept. St. Augustine's doctrine of original sin and the depravity of man helped spur on a deep skepticism to the idea that God's children could become anything like God, let alone progressing to the eventual state of gods or goddesses. Latter-day Saints have often been cautious about broaching the topic of deification around most Catholics and Protestants, for fear that our Christian brethren would brand us as blasphemers and cease any further discussion about Mormonism. But the climate surrounding deification and other doctrines, such as baptism for the dead, seems …

Leonard J. Arrington: A Historian's Life, Thomas G. Alexander, Gary Topping

BYU Studies

Gary Topping, a professor at Salt Lake Community College, has previously published a number of books and articles on Utah environmental history and historians who have lived in Utah. In some ways, Topping's article on Robert Dwyer and his book on historians Bernard DeVoto, Juanita Brooks, Wallace Stegner, Dale Morgan, and Fawn Brodie can be considered precursors to this book.

In other ways, this book is also somewhat of a new foray; unlike most of the other historians Topping has treated, Leonard Arrington was neither a non-Mormon nor a lapsed Mormon. He remained an active Latter-day Saint throughout his life. …

Eliza R. Snow's Poetry, Jill Mulvay Derr, Karen L. Davidson

BYU Studies

As plural wife of two prophets and sister of a third, as an admired leader of women, and as an acknowledged voice of the Saints to the outside world, Eliza R. Snow was as close to the center of formative events and ideas as any woman of early Mormondom. More than her let- ters, discourses, or journals, her poems are comprehensive in their scope and as immediate as snapshots in their depiction of Mormon culture. The more than five hundred poems written by Snow capture the lived Mormonism of the nineteenth century, where revelation and history intersected and Latter-day Saints …

A Book Of Commandments And Revelations: Editorial Introduction To This Special Feature, John W. Welch

BYU Studies

This short piece is the introduction to several articles in this issue of BYU Studies about the Book of Commandments and Revelations, a foundational document of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Book of Commandments was published in 2009 as part of The Joseph Smith Papers. Shortly after arrangements were finalized in May 2009 for the publication of the BCR, a plenary session about it was held at the Mormon History Association (MHA) meeting in Springfield, Illinois, at which the papers in this special feature were presented.

No expense was spared in producing Revelations and Translations: Manuscript …

Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection, And The Mission Of The Church, N. T. Wright, Noel B. Reynolds

BYU Studies

Many Latter-day Saints are showing an increased sympathy for the writings of Anglican bishop N. T. Wright of Durham, England, and others in the Emerging Church tradition. Such LDS interest derives from the movement's emphasis on returning to basic Christian living modeled in the New Testament and adherents' willingness to back away from those churches that have systematic theologies and a seeming addiction to the discourse of power while pursuing their agendas. The Emerging Church is more of a conversation than an organization, and it crosses denominational boundaries around the world. It is characterized by a deep interest in interpreting …

Full Issue, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Enhancing Evolution: Posthumanous Dreams And The Moral Complexity Of Biomedical Aspirations, David L. Paulsen, Clark H. Pinnock

BYU Studies

A noted academic bioethicist and British media pundit with a named chair at the University of Manchester, John Harris has recently given birth to an odd literary child. His latest book, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People, hails from an esteemed university press, but it is informal and tendentious, often jeering at opponents, both popular and academic. Despite his credentials (an Oxford PhD in philosophy, co-editorship of the British Journal of Medical Ethics, a lengthy curriculum vitae), Harris has created a popular polemic better fitted for the entertaining and energetic repartee of the Daily Show with Jon …

Artistry And Aesthetics In Contemporary Mormon And Iranian Film, Travis T. Anderson

BYU Studies

Almost from their inception, cinematic media and technologies have been accepted and appropriated with surprising enthusiasm by Iranians and Mormons alike. Both cultures appear to have embraced cinema as a natural outgrowth of their lively and longstanding appreciation for art and family-oriented entertainment in general. The author finds that the artistic progress and quality of Mormon cinema as of 2009 has thus far, with few exceptions, fallen short of its potential, while Iranian film artists have made an astonishing number of spiritually profound, culturally insightful, and cinematically sophisticated films despite having formidable obstacles. The author encourages Mormon filmmakers to attain …

Mormon Scientist: The Life And Faith Of Henry Eyring, Ned C. Hill, Henry B. Eyring

BYU Studies

Henry Eyring (1901-1981) is undoubtedly the most celebrated scientist produced within the Mormon faith to date. He published over six hundred scientific papers and about a dozen books, and he received almost every prize science has to offer. His theories form the core of modern chemistry. One of his colleagues said, "The contributions of Dr. Henry Eyring touch practically every field of chemical science and technology in a very fundamental manner." Not only was he a brilliant scientist, he was also a man with deep faith in God and in the restoration of the gospel in modern times. This biography …

Doing The Works Of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy, Its Origin, Practice, And Demise. Kingdom In The West: The Mormons And The American Frontier, Volume 9, B. Carmon Hardy, Kathryn M. Daynes

BYU Studies

Joining a significant topic with one of its preeminent scholars is a certain formula for an important book. Such is Doing the Works of Abraham by B. Carmon Hardy. Polygamy shaped nineteenth-century Mormonism's relationship with the remainder of the world, and Hardy has written numerous articles and books on the topic, including Solemn Covenant, named Best Book of the Year for 1992 by the Mormon History Association. The publication of this documentary history of nineteenth-century plural marriage is thus a major event in the ongoing scholarship on the topic.

The subtitle of the book accurately reflects the scope of the …

Romancing The Difference: Kenneth Burke, Bob Jones University, And The Rhetoric Of Religious Fundamentalism, Camille K. Lewis, Brian Jackson

BYU Studies

In February 2000 George W. Bush made an early campaign stop at Bob Jones University, an institution that until that very year had prohibited its students from interracial dating. The school's community had no idea his visit would thrust BJU into the national gaze, making it a scapegoat for public political anxieties. Republicans (like Bush's opponent John McCain), Democrats, and journalists alike jumped into the mix to assault BJU publicly and thereby make Bush guilty by association. Though revisions of the interracial policy had already been in the works, Bob Jones III, president of BJU at the time, went on …

Dynasty Of The Holy Grail: Mormonism's Sacred Bloodline, Jesse D. Hurlbut, Vern G. Swanson

BYU Studies

What do the Virgin Mary, King Arthur, and Joseph Smith have in common? This is one of the questions that Vern Swanson attempts to answer in Dynasty of the Holy Grail: Mormonism's Sacred Bloodline. Swanson, who has been director of the Springville Art Museum in Utah since 1980 and who has published extensively in art historical topics, applies his skills to a different body of material in this impressive, large-format volume of over five hundred pages.

The author refers to his own work as a "scattershot miscellany of random thoughts" (411). While some may find in this statement a self-effacing …

Jesus And The Eyewitnesses: The Gospels As Eyewitness Testimony, Richard Bauckham, Thomas A. Wayment

BYU Studies

Undoubtedly, Professor Richard Bauckham's most recent contribution will add life to an already thriving scholarly discussion on the historical foundations of the New Testament Gospels, particularly the Synoptic Gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Like others who have contributed to this field of study, Bauckham (professor of New Testament studies at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland) sets out to describe the sources used by the authors of the canonical Gospels, and, in doing so, provides a viable theory that has been met by exuberant praise and will certainly encounter significant rebuttals. In his own words, he states:

It is the contention …

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Letters On Mormon Polygamy And Progeny: Eliza R. Snow And Martin Luther Holbrook, 1866–1869, Jill Mulvay Derr, Matthew J. Grow

BYU Studies

Almost from their inception, cinematic media and technologies have been accepted and appropriated with surprising enthusiasm by Iranians and Mormons alike. Both cultures appear to have embraced cinema as a natural outgrowth of their lively and longstanding appreciation for art and family-oriented entertainment in general. The author finds that the artistic progress and quality of Mormon cinema as of 2009 has thus far, with few exceptions, fallen short of its potential, while Iranian film artists have made an astonishing number of spiritually profound, culturally insightful, and cinematically sophisticated films despite having formidable obstacles. The author encourages Mormon filmmakers to attain …

Open And Relational Theology An Evangelical In Dialogue With A Latter-Day Saint, Samuel M. Brown

BYU Studies

Clark H. Pinnock and David L. Paulsen dialogue about open theism and Latter-day Saint theology, examining the convergences and divergences between the two traditions. Open and Relational Theology: A Latter-day Saint in Dialogue with an Evangelical explores beliefs on divine embodiment, spiritual warfare, deification, omniscience and omnipotence of God, divine feminine, theodicy, creation, and pragmatic applications of religion.

Theology And Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability In Late Modernity, Amos Yong, Rosalynde F. Welch

BYU Studies

Amos Yong's Theology and Down Syndrome represents an ambitious attempt by an Evangelical theologian to come to grips with the conditions and conundrums of disability in a contemporary Christian context. The book's nine chapters and formidable bibliography inquire into cognitive disability of all kinds, not, despite its title, narrowly into Down syndrome alone. Yong writes in the dense idiom of critical academic theology and disability studies that may put off some readers, but the text is leavened with epigraphs, personal asides, and case studies that will appeal to most readers.

Yong sets himself three aims in this volume: to edify …

Thomas Farrar Whitley's Mission Photos Of Tonga, 1935–1938, Colleen Whitley

BYU Studies

Thomas Farrar Whitley served an LDS Church mission to Tonga in the late 1930s and documented his experiences there through journaling, correspondence, and photography. The author shares photographs and quotes from Whitley's journal, capturing the Tongan way of life in the 1930s. The article documents the small group of faithful Latter-day Saints and missionaries who established a foothold for the faltering Church in Tonga and created a foundation upon which today's thriving Tongan LDS population could build.

The Thirteenth Apostle: What The Gospel Of Judas Really Says, April D. Deconick, Grant Adamson

BYU Studies

Among the various apocryphal titles mentioned by the early Church fathers is the Gospel of Judas, a Coptic version of which was recently found in Egypt, purportedly taken from a limestone box together with several other texts during an illegal raid of a burial cave in 1978. Before its first publication by the National Geographic Society in 2006, it was apparently sold, stolen, recovered, sold again, then again, frozen, thawed, and repossessed, such that by the time the work of conservation finally began in 2001, the pages of the Gospel of Judas had been broken into numerous pieces, some of …

The Patterns Of Missionary Work And Emigration In Early Victorian Buckinghamshire, England, 1849–1878, Ronald E. Bartholomew

BYU Studies

Latter-day Saint missionaries from America began proselyting in Buckinhamshire, England, in the 1840s and established the first branches of the Church here in 1849, but they did not experience the same dramatic successes their colleagues encountered in other regions of the British Isles.

The Boggs Shooting And Attempted Extradition: Joseph Smith’S Most Famous Case, Morris A. Thurston

BYU Studies

When Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs accused Joseph Smith (founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) of being the mastermind behind his attempted assassination in 1842, Joseph Smith's enemies tried to extradite him to Missouri for trial three times. Each time, Joseph successfully appealed to the laws of the land and exerted self-preserving political influence through the Nauvoo City Council to avoid extradition. This article examines closely the second of the three cases, illuminating how Joseph Smith emerged temporarily victorious but ultimately turned public opinion against himself. The public viewed the Prophet as taking advantage of legal loopholes …