Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Proselyting On The Rock Of Gibraltar, 1853-1855: The Letters Of Edward Stevenson To The Juvenile Instructor In 1885, Reid L. Neilson

BYU Studies

In January 1885, the Mormon Juvenile Instructor magazine ran a short cover story on the history of Gibraltar, known as “the Rock,” the British overseas territory located on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula bordering Spain. While the magazine aimed to educate Latter-day Saints about the cosmopolitan world generally, the Rock did have a noteworthy place in Mormon history. The editor, George Q. Cannon, wrote, “As in the mother country [Great Britain] all religious societies are said to enjoy perfect freedom. Still when Elders Edward Stevenson and N[athan] T. Porter arrived in Gibraltar in March, 1853, to preach ‘Mormonism,’ …

A Faithful Band: Moses Mahlangu And The First Soweto Saints, Richard E. Turley Jr., Jeffrey G. Cannon

BYU Studies

The faith of the African Saints is legendary, and the story of one man is often repeated to illustrate that faith. Moses Mahlangu waited many years from his introduction to the Book of Mormon sometime in the 1960s until his baptism in 1980. Two significant factors led to his long wait: (1) the laws and attitudes in South Africa affecting race relations and (2) a priesthood restriction of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regarding people of black1 African lineage. Through it all, Mahlangu and several others who had been converted through their reading of the Book of …

Almost A Psalm, About Inheritance, Benjamin Blackhurst

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

From Darkness Unto Light: Joseph Smith's Translation And Publication Of The Book Of Mormon, Steven L. Olsen

BYU Studies

Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat. From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith's Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon.

Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015.

Empathy And The Atonement, Tyler Johnson

BYU Studies

Even as an incurable optimist, I can see the world is often drenched in suffering.

Why And How Did Karl G. Maeser Leave Saxony?: New Documents Offer New Insights, Roger P. Minert

BYU Studies

History and family history are frequently characterized by legends and traditions, some of which turn out to be inaccurate under scrutiny. For example, Roger Minert’s great-grandfather was said to have been a professor of modern and classical languages at the University of Cologne in Germany; he knew seven languages. Yet he managed to live as an immigrant farmer in Oregon for twenty years and die without having learned English. Careful research led to the discovery that he was actually the son of a farmer and grandson of a farmer in the town of Wylatkowo in the Prussian province of Posen, …

An 1860 English-Hopi Vocabulary Written In The Deseret Alphabet, Brian D. Stubbs

BYU Studies

Kenneth R. Beesley and Dirk Elzinga. An 1860 English-Hopi Vocabulary Written in the Deseret Alphabet.

Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Seer Stones, Salamanders, And Early Mormon "Folk Magic" In The Light Of Folklore Studies And Bible Scholarship, Eric A. Eliason

BYU Studies

The 2015 publication of an Ensign article on, and especially photos of, one of Joseph Smith’s seer stones still owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints caused quite a sensation in the blogosphere. Many responses focused on the “weirdness” of the stone and its use, the ostensibly alien nature of this odd relic from the past, so out of place in modern religion, and posited it as a troubling problem in need of explanation. Mormon studies as a discipline has struggled to make sense of seer stones too. These responses are understandable, considering how often communities tend …

The Mormon Missionary: Who Is That Knocking At My Door?, Robert L. Lively Jr.

BYU Studies

Robert L. Lively Jr. is dean emeritus at the University of Maine at Farmington and holds a master’s degree from Yale University Divinity School and a doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Oxford. The following are excerpts from his 2015 book The Mormon Missionary: Who Is That Knocking at My Door?, conceived after inviting missionaries to visit his religion classes and realizing that a non-Mormon had never written a book that tells the story of LDS missionaries. His research for this book involved over 275 interviews with past, present, and future missionaries, including individuals who served in every …

Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Toward A Better Understanding, M. Scott Bradshaw

BYU Studies

Brian C. Hales and Laura H. Hales. Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding.

Draper, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2015.

Religion Of A Different Color: Race And The Mormon Struggle For Whiteness; For The Cause Of Righteousness: A Global History Of Blacks And Mormonism, 1830-2013, Patrick Q. Mason

BYU Studies

W. Paul Reeve. Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Russell W. Stevenson. For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013.

Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2014.

The First Vision: A Harmonization Of 10 Accounts From The Sacred Grove, Kimball Gardner

BYU Studies

The First Vision: A Harmonization of 10 Accounts from the Sacred Grove by Matthew B. Christensen (Springville, Utah: Cedar Fort, 2014)

The Prophet And The Reformer: The Letters Of Brigham Young And Thomas L. Kane, Alexsandra Foster

BYU Studies

The Prophet and the Reformer: The Letters of Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane, edited by Matthew J. Grow and Ronald W. Walker (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Road To Martyrdom: Joseph Smith's Last Legal Cases, Joseph I. Bentley

BYU Studies

In 1842, Joseph Smith looked back on the events of his life and said, “Deep water is what I am wont to swim in” (D&C 127:2). This was especially true of his experiences with the law. Starting with his first exposure to the judicial system in 1819, at age thirteen, he spent much of his next twenty-five years of life entangled with legal concerns. The Joseph Smith Papers Project team now can count about 220 cases involving Joseph as plaintiff, defendant, witness, or judge. Of those, approximately fifty were criminal cases capable of taking away his liberty, his resources, or, …

Visualizing Apostolic Succession, Meilan Jin, Iliesa S. K. Delai, Geoffrey M. Draper

BYU Studies

For years, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has published pictures and other illustrative diagrams to communicate its message. For example, the children's book Book of Mormon Stories includes an illustrative map indicating the possible route of Lehi's family from the Arabian peninsula to the Americas. Seminary students receive bookmarks showing a timeline of peoples and events in the Book of Mormon. More recently, the Church has published a series of "information graphics" (known more commonly as infographics) on its website. Infographics in a visually pleasing manner. The Church's infographics cover a range of topics such as …

Answering For His Order: Alma's Clash With The Nehors, Matthew Scott Stenson

BYU Studies

From the beginning, Lehite culture was richly oral and often divided over the question of authority (see Alma 1–2, 8–14, 30). On one side of the conflict stood the prophets, and on the other side stood “popular” opportunistic figures, wise in their own eyes, who resemble in a general way classical sophists (Alma 1:3; see 2 Ne. 9:28). The classical sophists, some of whom were philosophic pretenders, sought to subvert on occasion the moral authority and epistemological methods of the actual philosophers. In contrast, the Nephite “sophists” (an encompassing term for our purposes that describes a certain kind of proud, …

"To Dress It And To Keep It": Toward A Mormon Theology Of Work, Walker A. Wright

BYU Studies

In the controversial film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the protagonist, Brian, finds himself in the market square while being pursued by Roman centurions. In the speakers’ corner of the market, three different prophets are shown attempting to gain an audience with tales of Armageddon. One dust-covered wild man shrieks about “the beast . . . huge and black, and the eyes thereof red with the blood of living creatures, and the whore of Babylon shall ride forth on a three-headed serpent.” Next to him, garbed in red, a more refined preacher boldly pronounces that “the demon shall bear a …

To Live, Wendy M. Payne

BYU Studies

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”

Emily Dickinson

On Waking, He Makes His Bed, Elizabeth Garcia

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Building Zion: The Material World Of Mormon Settlement, Steven L. Olsen

BYU Studies

Thomas Carter. Building Zion: The Material World of Mormon Settlement.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Salt; Genius Loci, Tyler Chadwick

BYU Studies

Susan Elizabeth Howe. Salt.

Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2013.

Lance Larsen. Genius Loci.

Tampa, Fla.: University of Tampa Press, 2013.

The Oxford Handbook Of Mormonism, Janeen Christensen

BYU Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism, edited by Terryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)

Quds, Bentley Snow

BYU Studies

The part that got me was that I had to take off my Chacos to enter the sanctuary. I was irked at first, drifting at the back of our group—apathetic, iPod on—deliberately detached and not in the mood for ceremonial inconveniences. I looked into the sanctuary’s square, open-air center. The floor, I had to admit, was beautiful—thin blue rivulets streamed deep within white marble—but imagine how many feet had mixed their oils with the dirt that faintly coated it. Red wooden poles lined the edges of the square, rising out of white pedestals to support the red tiles that sloped …

Documents, Volume 1: July 1828-June 1831; Documents, Volume 2: July 1831-January 1833; Documents, Volume 3: February 1833-March 1834, James B. Allen

BYU Studies

Michael Hubbard MacKay, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, editors. Documents, Volume 1: July 1828-June 1831.

Vol. 1 of the Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, Richaard Lyman Bushman, and Matthew J. Grow. Salt Lake City: The Church Historian's Press, 2013.

Matthew C. Godfrey, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, editors. Documents, Volume 2: July 1831-January 1833.

Vol. 2 of the Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, Richard Lyman …

Mormonism And American Politics, J. B. Haws

BYU Studies

Randall Balmer and Jana Riess, eds. Mormonism and American Politics.

New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

Exploring The Explanatory Power Of Semitic And Egyptian In Uto-Aztecan, Dirk Elzinga

BYU Studies

Brian D. Stubbs. Exploring the Explanatory Power of Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan.

Provo, Utah: Grover Publications, 2015.