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To Be Learned Is Good, If One Stays On The Rails, Paul C. Peterson

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

This review essay looks at certain problematical issues in the recently published collection of essays honoring Latter-day Saint historian Richard Lyman Bushman. Problems emerge from the title itself, “To Be Learned is Good,” as a result of the failure to note that the Book of Mormon passage “To be learned is good” is a conditional statement. In addition, since these essays are billed as “Essays on Faith and Scholarship,” it is odd most of them do not touch on this subject at all. I examine four essays in depth, including Adam Miller’s “Christo-Fiction, Mormon Philosophy, and the Virtual Body of …

Wise Or Foolish: Women In Mormon Biblical Narrative Art, Jennifer Champoux

BYU Studies

Visual imagery is an inescapable element of religion. Even those groups that generally avoid figural imagery, such as those in Judaism and Islam, have visual objects with religious significance.1 In fact, as David Morgan, professor of religious studies and art history at Duke University, has argued, it is often the religions that avoid figurative imagery that end up with the richest material culture.2 To some extent, this is true for Mormonism. Although Mormons believe art can beautify a space, visual art is not tied to actual ritual practice. Chapels, for example, where the sacrament ordinance is performed, are built with …

A House Full Of Females: Plural Marriage And Women's Rights In Early Mormonism, 1835-1870, Lowell C. Bennion

BYU Studies

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017.

The Trek East: Mormonism Meets Japan, 1901-1968, Stephen J. Moody

BYU Studies

Shinji Takagi. The Trek East: Mormonism Meets Japan, 1901-1968.

Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016.

End Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Martin Harris Comes To Utah, 1870, Susan Easton Black, Larry C. Porter

BYU Studies

[The following is an excerpt from chapter 14 of the new biography Martin Harris: Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon by Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter. This biography, published by BYU Studies, will be available in October 2018. For further information, see the advertisement on page 208 of this issue.]

Anaranjado, John Alba Cutler

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

"Why Are Your Kids Late To School Today?", Lisa Martin

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Saints At Devil's Gate: Landscapes Along The Mormon Trail, Herman Du Toit

BYU Studies

Laura Allred Hurtado and Bryon C. Andreasen. Saints at Devil's Gate: Landscapes along the Mormon Trail.

Salt Lake City: Church Historian's Press, 2016.

Race And Making Of The Mormon People, Matthew L. Harris

BYU Studies

Max Perry Mueller. Race and the Making of the Mormon People.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

End Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Timing The Translation Of The Book Of Mormon: "Days [And Hours] Never To Be Forgotten", John W. Welch

BYU Studies

This paper aims to stimulate specific thinking about the intense and complex events during which the Book of Mormon was translated in 1829. Encouraged initially by Elder Neal A. Maxwell, and building on my chapter in the second edition of Opening the Heavens, this article strives to be as precise as possible about the timing of the events and progress of the Book of Mormon translation during the months and days it took place. In 1834, Oliver Cowdery wrote, “These were days never to be forgotten—to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, …

Back, Mark D. Bennion

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Elvis Has Left The Library: Identifying Forged Annotations In A Book Of Mormon, Keith A. Erekson

BYU Studies

For nearly three decades, the ghost of Elvis Presley has hung over the historical collections of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1989, a copy of the Book of Mormon was donated that contained marginal annotations purportedly by the “King of Rock and Roll.” Word of the acquisition spread quickly by fireside speakers, classroom teachers, and newspaper columnists. Requests to see and touch the book came repeatedly, so much so that by 2002 the book’s binding had cracked and a digital copy was made for visitors who came each week for a peek. In 2007, an independent …

Jane And Emma, Camlyn Giddins

BYU Studies

Jane and Emma Directed by Chantelle Squires

Excel Entertainment, 2018

Feeding The Flock: The Foundations Of Mormon Thought: Church And Praxis, Mark A. Wrathall

BYU Studies

Feeding the Flock: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Church and Praxis By Terryl L. Givens

New York: Oxford University Press, 2017

The Power Of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy And Cosmology, Dan Belnap

BYU Studies

The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology By Jonathan A. Stapley

New York: Oxford University Press, 2018

Voice Of The Saints In Taiwan, Richard B. Stamps

BYU Studies

Voice of the Saints in Taiwan By Po Nien (Felipe) Chou and Mei Wah Sin (Petra) Chou

Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2017

Pioneer Women Of Arizona, Hannah Charlesworth

BYU Studies

Pioneer Women of Arizona, by Roberta Flake Clayton, Catherine H. Ellis, and David F. Boone, 2d ed. (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017)

Abinadi: He Came Among Them In Disguise, Neal Rappleye

BYU Studies

Abinadi: He Came among Them in Disguise, edited by Shon D. Hopkin (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2018)

From The Editor, John W. Welch

BYU Studies

As we send this issue of BYU Studies Quarterly to press, I find myself reflecting on the influences of many people upon my life. Goodly parents and beloved family members always come at the top of my appreciation list. I recently met with many friends associated with BYU Studies and was filled with overwhelming thankfulness for the many editors, authors, advisors, administrators, readers, and subscribers, who sustain this extraordinary publication. And I feel more profoundly indebted to BYU for its increasingly unusual mission. As President Dallin H. Oaks recently said at a BYU leadership conference, the mandate given to BYU …

Photographs Of The Dedication Of Pioneer Square In Salt Lake City, July 25, 1898, Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Ronald L. Fox

BYU Studies

In July 1898, the Spanish-American War was raging and the people of the United States were remembering the Maine, a US ship that sank after an explosion in the Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898. Nevertheless, the upcoming fifty-first anniversary of the 1847 arrival of the Mormon pioneers in Utah was on the minds of Salt Lake City officials. This anniversary was celebrated off and on beginning in 1849; in the 1897 jubilee year, just a year earlier, the community had “pulled out all the stops.” As city officials considered what might be done in 1898, they focused their attention …

True And Faithful: Joseph Fielding Smith As Mormon Historian And Theologian, Reid L. Neilson, Scott D. Marianno

BYU Studies

Each year hundreds of thousands of visitors to Salt Lake City’s Temple Square make their way to the Church History Museum of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While many of the museum’s exhibits have been rotated over the past three decades, the “Presidents of the Church” gallery, made of individual displays for each previous Church president, is a longstanding exhibit that has generally been refreshed only after a Mormon prophet has died and his artifacts have been added to the chronological display cases. The current museum exhibit commemorating President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876–1972) hangs on the east …

Approaching Completion: The Book Of Mormon Critical Text Project: A Review Of Royal Skousen's Analysis Of Textual Variants Of The Book Of Mormon And The History Of The Text Of The Book Of Mormon: Grammatical Variation, Grant Hardy

BYU Studies

Analysis of Textual Variants

A Plain And Precious Part Restored: An Essay Based On Matthew Bates's The Birth Of The Trinity: Jesus, God, And Spirit In New Testament And Early Christian Interpretations Of The Old Testament, Paul Y. Hoskisson

BYU Studies

Once every ten or twenty years, it seems, a book happens on the scene that promises to dislodge a long-held and often beloved paradigm. It is not that the old paradigm is necessarily abandoned, but rather it makes room for a different, equally valid one. The subtitle of The Birth of the Trinity announced such a shift and to my utmost delight delivered on that promise.

Let Us Reason Together: Essays In Honor Of The Life's Work Of Robert L. Millet, Austin A. Tracy

BYU Studies

J. Spencer Fluhman and Brent L. Top, eds., Let Us Reason Together: Essays in Honor of the Life’s Work of Robert L. Millet (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2016)

Mystery And Dance, Daniel F. Teichert

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Wandering On To Glory, Patrick Moran

BYU Studies

In my suburban town, commuting is a fact of life, every bit as much as sowing and reaping and harvesting probably were for my agrarian forebears. It’s simply a given that work is far away and that a good portion of every day is spent getting there in the morning and then getting back again later on.

The Language Of The Original Text Of The Book Of Mormon, Royal Skousen

BYU Studies

When I began the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project in 1988, my initial goal was to determine the reading of the manuscripts of the Book of Mormon. There are two manuscripts: (1) the original manuscript (referred to as O), the manuscript the scribes wrote down as Joseph Smith dictated the text (the majority of the dictation was done in 1829); and (2) the printer’s manuscript (referred to as P), the copy of O that the scribes produced from August 1829 through January 1830 and took into the Grandin print shop in Palmyra, New York, for typesetting the first edition …

The Rise And Fall Of Portugal's Maritime Empire, A Cautionary Tale?: Forgotten Pioneers Of The Age Of Expansion, Discoverers Of Two-Thirds Of The World For Europe, Ambassadors Of The West, Interpreters Of The East, Who For A Century And A Half Governed The Lands And Controlled The Riches Flowing Into Europe From Africa, Persia, Arabia, India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Oceania, And Half Of South America, Then Lost Much Of Their Empire To Britain, France, And Holland; With Some Comments About Columbus And The Spread Of Christianity, Frederick G. Williams

BYU Studies

In the United States, we automatically think of England as the great maritime nation on whose overseas possessions the sun never set. We also identify Spain as a great maritime power, whose American colonies, especially Mexico and Peru, produced immense wealth for the kingdom. However, we forget, or more likely never knew (because we were never taught), that it was Portugal that invented the ship and developed the maritime technology that allowed for the first open-sea travel during the European Age of Exploration, begun by Portugal in 1415 (fig. 1). It was Portugal that discovered more than two-thirds of the …