Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Forerunner, Merrijane Rice

BYU Studies

As Isaiah foretold, you will be the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Clear a path for the Lord! Level a highway through this wasteland!

Green Things, Sarah Dunster

BYU Studies

Faith, they say, is a seed that grows. It swells, and as a mother I can say that things inside swelling are not always pleasant. But what sort of growing is always pleasant?

January Night, Susan Jeffers

BYU Studies

Once the snow has fallen, moonlight becomes superfluous.

A Preparatory Redemption: Reading Alma 12–13, Charles Harrell

BYU Studies

A Preparatory Redemption: Reading Alma 12–13 is a collection of essays written by eight scholars as part of the summer 2016 Mormon Theology Seminar, hosted by the Maxwell Institute, to explore the theological significance of Alma’s sermon to the people of Ammonihah, in Alma 12:19–13:20. Few passages of scripture have intrigued me over the years as much as these, so I personally looked forward with great anticipation for this volume to be released.

Mary Whitmer And Moroni, Robert T. Pack

BYU Studies

In June 1829, the Peter Whitmer family welcomed Joseph and Emma Smith and Oliver Cowdery to board at their home in Fayette, New York. They had been brought up from Pennsylvania so that Joseph and Oliver could continue the translation and dictation of the Book of Mormon from the golden plates without persecution. The Whitmer family was then living in a small rural log home bursting at the seams with their large family. These three new visitors placed an additional burden upon the mother, Mary Whitmer, who was responsible for their care. Shortly after their arrival, a “strange person” visited …

Your Sister In The Gospel: The Life Of Jane Manning James, A Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon, Carter Charles

BYU Studies

Biographer Quincy D. Newell admits that she approaches the story of Jane Manning James (1820–1908), one of the first black members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “for what it tells us about religion and race in nineteenth-century America” (4–5) and because it is a “history of Mormonism from below” (135). Such a story, she argues, “demonstrates how a focus on temple rituals and priesthood,” though always central to Latter-day Saints, “blinds us to the everyday lived religion of thousands of nineteenth-century Mormons” (135). Beyond participating in the project of recovering the ethnically diverse past of the …

The Lucky, Chelsea Bagley Dyreng

BYU Studies

I heard the rumors.

Something was going around at school. Also at church. They said it attacks like lightning and leaves you feeling like a grenade exploded inside your body. The one mercy of the ordeal is that it lasts for only twenty-four hours.

The New Testament: A Translation For Latter-Day Saints: A Study Bible, Philip L. Barlow

BYU Studies

Thomas Wayment, classics professor at Brigham Young University, has earned a reputation as one of the most capable and reliable Latter-day Saint scholars of the New Testament and the ancient classical world in which Christianity arose. Educated at the Claremont Graduate School of Religion, Wayment generally addresses Latter-day Saint audiences, whose faith he shares. His writing includes credible work on New Testament manuscript traditions, Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible, and the historical lives of Jesus and Paul. Wayment has now accomplished his most ambitious project to date: a fresh translation, based on the best available Greek manuscripts, of the …

Bible Culture And Authority In The Early United States, Kent P. Jackson

BYU Studies

In his introduction to Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States, author Seth Perry of Princeton University writes of “a shared set of symbols, types, behaviors, and vocabulary” that derive from or were influenced by the King James Bible (2). The book discusses the interaction of this shared set with early American society, asserting that the Bible and biblical language were resources that individuals in the nineteenth century used to create legitimacy—that is, authority in their relationships with others. Scripturalization is the term Perry employs to describe how people, language, rhetoric, and other aspects of society obtained …

Lot Smith: Mormon Pioneer And American Frontiersman, Hannah Charlesworth

BYU Studies

This extensive biography of prominent pioneer and Latter-day Saint Lot Smith was written by mother-daughter team Carmen R. Smith and Talana S. Hooper. Both have had previous interest and experience in writing history: Carmen Smith was awarded the Utah Historical Quarterly Editor’s Choice for her 1978 report on the rediscovery of the Mormon Battalion’s Lost Well, and Talana Hooper has published several family histories and compiled and edited a history of the people of Central, Arizona.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Life Beyond The Grave: Christian Interfaith Perspectives, Alec Joseph Harding

BYU Studies

As suggested in the title, Life beyond the Graveis a compilation of perspectives about the afterlife from a range of Christian denominations. The book’s contents were taken from a 2016 academic conference hosted at Brigham Young University. Titled “Beyond the Grave: Christian Interfaith Perspectives,” the ecumenical conference was designed to build understanding among Christian groups. Editor Robert L. Millet noted on the conference, “There has been no effort whatsoever to ignore theological differences between the various traditions, nor was it ever expected that a presenter compromise in the slightest what he or she holds to be true. . . …

At Least In Heaven There’S Food., Jared Pearce

BYU Studies

She was building bread when the building was bombed, a fighter jet or gasoline tank, kneaded to a flat cake.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

End Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

The History Of The Name Of The Savior’S Church, K, Shane Goodwin

BYU Studies

Few periods in our Church history were more fraught with trial and tension than late 1837 and early 1838. There was a warrant for Joseph Smith’s arrest in Kirtland, Ohio, due to practices related to the Kirtland Safety Society. Key leaders were dissenting and questioning Joseph’s fitness to remain their prophet and president, leading to the painful release and later excommunication of top leadership in Missouri. An ever-tightening grip of poverty and indebtedness plagued the Saints, many of whom were beginning to migrate into Caldwell and Daviess Counties.

Naturalistic Explanations Of The Origin Of The Book Of Mormon, Brian C. Hales

BYU Studies

In early 1830, an unknown farmer in upstate New York burst upon the world’s book-publishing scene. The Book of Mormon rolled off the Grandin Press in Palmyra, New York, with Joseph Smith listed as “author and proprietor” on the title page. That same year, a few other authors produced new titles, including The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck by Mary Shelley, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron by Thomas Moore, and Six Sermons on the Study of the Holy Scriptures by Samuel Lee. If grouped with books classified as “fiction” in 1830, the Book of Mormon may have been the longest, …

First Argument, Darlene Young

BYU Studies

An ache like a seed caught in teeth, acrid aftertaste of unripe fruit; astonishment. That is not what I meant.

Alexander Campbell And Joseph Smith: Nineteenth-Century Restorationists, Alison Palmer

BYU Studies

RoseAnn Benson’s latest book, Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith, examines and compares two of the most prominent restorationist leaders in nineteenth-century America. On this subject, Latter-day Saints are likely most familiar with the conflict between the two men and their movements. Early Latter-day Saint Sidney Rigdon, for instance, was one of several individuals who defected from Campbell’s Disciples of Christ and joined what became The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And Campbell later published a treatise, “Delusions,” against Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Though these facts are relatively well known among Latter-day Saints, that story …

The Nauvoo Music And Concert Hall, Darrell Babidge

BYU Studies

On many an evening in 1845, anyone near the corner of Woodruff and Young Streets in Nauvoo, Illinois, would have heard music coming from the newly constructed Music and Concert Hall (fig. 1). The following year, the music making abruptly stopped as thousands of Nauvoo residents fled from mob violence, abandoned the city, and began their journey westward to the Great Salt Lake. Today on the same corner is an empty grassy area where children often play. This article seeks to tell the history of the Nauvoo Music and Concert Hall. This hall points to the lifeblood of music and …

The Office Of Church Recorder, Keith A. Erekson

BYU Studies

Elder Steven E. Snow served as the Church Historian and Recorder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from August 1, 2012, to July 31, 2019. During this time, he oversaw significant developments in the work of Church history, from record keeping to publishing to developing historic sites and exhibits. Two years into his tenure, I joined the Church History Department as director of the Church History Library. One of my assignments in this role eventually involved participating in ongoing discussions about the office of Church Recorder. Over the years, there had been much discussion about the role …

Burning The Couch: Some Stories Of Grace, Robbie Taggart

BYU Studies

One day when I was a snarling baffled holy teenager, four friends and I found a lonely-looking couch on the side of the road. It had a sign on it that said, “Free.” Our minds immediately began to scroll through the brilliant possibilities presented by such a couch, such a gift. Someone thought we could hike it to our favorite camping spot up the mountain and sit upon it amid the trees and weeds and clouds and birdsong and rejoice in the incongruity of it all. But the thought of mountain snails and mildew sharing our couch led us in …

Salt Lake School Of The Prophets, Hannah Charlesworth

BYU Studies

In 1833, Joseph Smith established the first School of the Prophets in Kirtland, Ohio. The school was a place where men in the Church of Christ, founded by Smith in 1830, met to learn about spiritual and secular matters and to prepare for missionary work. During these meetings, Joseph Smith saw many visions and received revelation. The Kirtland school ended in 1837, but thirty years later, Brigham Young revived the School of the Prophets in Utah. This school was called the Salt Lake School of the Prophets and is the main subject of Devery Anderson’s new book Salt Lake School …

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Sex And Death On The Western Emigrant Trail: The Biology Of Three American Tragedies, Melvin L. Bashore

BYU Studies

Who would be more likely to survive in a wilderness setting, beset by starvation and extreme cold? Women or men? Single individuals or families? Would age make a difference? In Sex and Death on the Western Emigrant Trail, Donald Grayson looks at who died and who lived in three mid-nineteenth-century emigrant groups. An emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Washington, Grayson began looking at patterns of death in the Donner Party, publishing his findings in 1990 and 1993. Curious if those same patterns of death were manifest in another emigrant group, Grayson began looking at the 1856 …

Voice From The Dust, Darren Parry

BYU Studies

Darren Parry is the chairman of the Northwest Band Tribal Council of the Shoshone Nation. On November 8, 2018, at Brigham Young University, he presented this talk for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies.

He is working to create the Boa Ogoi [Big River] Cultural Interpretive Center, an educational center that will share the story of the Bear River Massacre. On January 29, 1863, the U.S. Army attacked the Shoshone encamped at the Bear River, near present-day Preston, Idaho, and slaughtered 250 to 500 Shoshone people, including women and children. Public reports of this massacre were officially given by …

She Will Find What Is Lost: Brian Kershisnik’S Artistic Response To The Problem Of Human Suffering, Cris Baird

BYU Studies

In March 2014, my wife, Janae, and I purchased Brian Kershisnik’s masterpiece She Will Find What Is Lost and immediately loaned it to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for display in the Church’s Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.1 In this essay, I tell the story of how we came to own the painting, what it means to us, and why I believe the painting has a spiritually important and universally applicable message.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Is Not This Real?, Joseph M. Spencer

BYU Studies

Latter-day Saints often take Korihor, the infamous Nephite anti-Christ, to be a fool, someone perhaps rightly struck dumb for stupidly demanding signs when he knew better. After all, he self-contradictorily trusted “an angel” who told him that “there is no God” (Alma 30:53). One popular commentary remarks: “Wickedness does not promote rational thought!”

Rod Tip Up!, Clark S. Monson

BYU Studies

The figure of a well-known and beloved fisherman is missing from the Provo River. When I turn off U.S. Highway 189 in Provo Canyon, Utah, and cross the bridge to enter Vivian Park, I look upstream and downstream for him, but he isn’t there. A few feet past the bridge, I cross a familiar double bump in the road—the tracks of the Heber Valley Railroad—but no person I might see walking along the weathered railroad ties walks with a stride I recognize. Sometimes I see numerous fishermen on the river, but they’re outfitted in modern gear—GORE-TEX waders, rubber mesh nets, …