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Third Nephi: An Incomparable Scripture— Proceedings Of A Willes Center Symposium

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The personal appearance of Jesus Christ as recorded in the book of 3 Nephi constitutes the narrative and spiritual climax of the Book of Mormon. Although the sacred account repeats and reinforces many of the Savior’s Old World teachings, many aspects of his New World ministry have no parallel elsewhere in scripture. In this light, Third Nephi: An Incomparable Scripture is a fitting title for a new book published by the Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book.

Joseph Bonyata Hired As Director Of Production

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

We are pleased to announce that we have recently hired Joseph Bonyata as our director of publication production. Joe started his career in book publishing at Fortress Press in Minneapolis, a leading publisher in biblical studies and theology. As managing editor at Fortress, Joe was responsible for over 60 new titles a year and oversaw the digital publication of the 55 volumes of Martin Luther’s Works, as well as a new translation of the foundational book of Lutheranism, The Book of Concord. Joe also headed the team that initially developed fortresspress.com. After Fortress, he published books on “planes, trains, and …

A New Beginning For The Mormon Studies Review

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship is continually striving to align its work with the academy’s highest objectives and standards, as befits an organized research unit at Brigham Young University. Our areas of en- deavor include the study of LDS scripture and other religious texts and related fields of reli- gious scholarship, including the burgeoning field of Mormon studies.

Moses Maimonides’ On Hemorrhoids And The History Of Textual Reception, D. Morgan Davis

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

There are unpleasant topics, and then there are Unpleasant Topics. The latest volume to appear in the Medical Works of Moses Maimonides, On Hemorrhoids, seems the perfect occasion to modestly avert our attention from the actual subject of the book and consider instead the question of its reception. When referring to the reception history of an antique text, scholars have in mind the journey the text has taken. During its long life, what paths have a given text traveled, so to speak? By this we mean not just where has a given physical document turned up, but also where and …

What’S In A Name? Mormon—Part 2, Paul Y. Hoskisson

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

In part 1 of my discussion of the name Mormon, I presented the evidence that Joseph Smith did not originally write the letter published over his signature in the 1843 Times and Seasons, but that he made some corrections to the letter William W. Phelps had composed and then gave his approval to have it published. I also mentioned the fact that B. H. Roberts left most of the letter out of his History of the Church because he believed the full letter was “based on inaccurate premises and was offensively pedantic."

Maxwell Institute Summer Seminar: “The Gold Plates As Cultural Artifact”, Richard Lyman Bushman

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

For six weeks this past summer, eight scholars from all over the United States and from Eu- rope met daily in the Maxwell Institute library to discuss and research the topic “The Cultural History of the Gold Plates.” They were the lat- est rendition of a seminar that has met every summer since 1997 under the direction of Richard Bushman, with the aid of Terryl Givens and Claudia Bushman, to explore as- pects of Mormon culture.

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Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

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What’S In A Name? Mormon—Part 1, Paul Y. Hoskisson

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Despite sporadic attempts to sideline the name Mormon in favor of “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter­day Saints,” it continues to be used as the most ubiquitous moniker for the Church. Members of the Church are known as “Mormons.” It appears in the title of the keystone publication of the Restoration, The Book of Mormon. Within the book bearing this name, Mormon is, firstof all, the name of the waters in the forest of Mormon (Mosiah 18:8; Alma 5:3) in the land of Mormon (Mosiah 18:30). Of course, Mormon is also the name of the military leader who abridged …

Volume Honors Professor’S Legacy Of Scholarship, Faith, Paul Y. Hoskisson

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Bountiful Harvest: Essays in Honor of S. Kent Brown compiles recent studies by two dozen scholars who respect Professor Brown and his scholar­ ship and whose own research in this Festschrift is worthy of its honoree. A recognized expert on early Christian literature and history and a past director of Ancient Studies at BYU, Brown has devoted his career not only to expanding the scholarly literature in his field but also to building the faith of believers through more popular works such as his literary/historical study of the Book of Mormon entitled From Jerusalem to Zarahemla and the seven­-part TV …

Alan Ashton Delivers Annual Neal A. Maxwell Lecture, Paul Y. Hoskisson

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Testifying of the purifying power of Christ in an address entitled “Oh How Surely Christ Sanc­ tifies His Own,” Alan C. Ashton, cofounder of WordPerfect Corporation and Thanksgiving Point, gave the seventh annual Neal A. Maxwell Lecture on April 12, 2012.

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Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

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Nibley Fellows, 2011–2012

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Each year the Maxwell Institute awards Nibley Fellowships to LDS students pursuing graduate degrees (usually PhDs) in fields of study directly related to the work of the Institute—primarily work on the Bible, the Book of Mormon, early Christianity, and the ancient Near East.

What’S In A Name? Sebus, Paul Y. Hoskisson

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

When I first began studying Book of Mormon proper names more than 30 years ago, the name Sebus appeared to present a Gordian knot. Hebrew words, like other Semitic words in gen- eral, are most often built on a structure of three different consonants. This language feature emphasizes the consonants and their sequence and order. The problem with Sebus is that its first and third consonants, /s/ and /s/, are the same— something that is extremely rare in any Semitic language. That being the case, for a long time I shelved any attempt to etymologize Sebus.

Books To Build Faith, Daniel C. Peterson

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

I am sometimes contacted by people who are expe- riencing doubts about the claims of Mormonism or whose spouse or father or daughter has lost faith. I always ask what the specific issues might be, and I then try to address those or to locate colleagues or printed resources that might help resolve their concerns.

Deep Learning: A Teacher's Playbook To Facilitate Multiple Approaches Of Student Learning That Utilize Deep Learning Principles, Darin D. Griffith

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the Ernst and Sara Lane Volgenau College of Education at Morehead State University by Darin D. Griffith on May 2, 2022.

The Mission, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Mission (2022), directed by Tania Anderson.

Postcolonialism And The Missionary Experience In The Book Of Mormon, Diana Witt

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

In their irreverent 2011 musical, The Book of Mormon, writer-composers Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and Robert Lopez satirize the work of Mormon missionaries. This paper analyzes the musical's book and lyrics, its cultural context and reception, and postcolonial scholarship. The paper argues that while The Book of Mormon operates as a postcolonialist text by critiquing cultural hegemony, it also reinforces stereotypes and practices present in colonization like othering and cultural colonialism.

Mormon Women And Polygamy: Creating A Better Future With The Past, Mia Seegmiller

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

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Review: Christopher James Blythe. Terrible Revolution: Latter-Day Saints And The American Apocalypse. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020., Matthew Avery Sutton

Mormon Studies Review

For too long, many scholars have argued that Christian groups obsessed with a coming apocalypse are so other-worldly focused that they have little impact on the politics or cultures around them. Those scholars are wrong. Rather than fostering a sense of indifference regarding the coming of an inevitable end of days, apocalypse-obsessed Christians have used their beliefs as a call to battle rather than a justification for withdrawal. God, they insist, has given them much to do and very little time in which to do it. Positive that Jesus is coming soon, they have sought converts and engaged directly and …

Review: Michael Hubbard Mackay, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee, And Brian M. Hauglid, Eds. Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’S Translation Projects In The Development Of Mormon Christianity. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2020., Sonia Hazard

Mormon Studies Review

Joseph Smith was, among much else, a translator. One of the most distinctive qualities of early Mormonism is that saving knowledge came not only from revelations—though Smith received plenty of those— but also through texts from the ancient past. In order to be useable as scripture, those texts required translation, and Smith tackled the office of translator with relish. What did translation mean for Smith and early Saints?

The editors of Producing Ancient Scripture—Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid—set out to answer that question with a comprehensive treatment of Smith’s translations, and they delivered. Among the seventeen …

Review: Miles Harvey. The King Of Confidence: A Tale Of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, And The Murder Of An American Monarch. New York: Little, Brown And Company, 2020., Amy Derogatis

Mormon Studies Review

A little over a year ago I was in the Clarke Historical Library in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, sifting through documents with librarian John T. Fierst to answer a nagging question regarding the provenance of a remarkable daguerreotype. As we were musing about the limits of what could be known about this material object, he happened to mention that another person who was finishing a book about James Jesse Strang had recently visited and looked at the photograph. Like any other academic hearing about scholarly competition, my heart froze, and out of my dry mouth I managed to croak, “Oh, really, …

Review: Thomas G. Alexander. Brigham Young And The Expansion Of The Mormon Faith. Norman: University Of Oklahoma Press, 2019., Nicole Kirk

Mormon Studies Review

In Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith, Thomas G. Alexander delivers a new study of the second prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as an account of Young’s leadership of the Mormon migration and settlement in the Intermountain West. A part of the Oklahoma University Press’s Western Biography series, the collection employs the genre of biography to illuminate the history of the American West. Written by leading scholars for a general audience, the series excludes notes. The Western Biography series has included a wide range of figures, from Annie Oakley, Billy …

Review: Mary Ella Engel. Praying With One Eye Open: Mormons And Murder In Nineteenth-Century Appalachian Georgia. Athens: University Of Georgia Press, 2019., Jonathan David Hepworth

Mormon Studies Review

Tucked away on a mountainous road north of Atlanta is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ only historic property in the state of Georgia: the reputed field where missionary Joseph Standing was shot and killed. Standing’s companion (and later president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles) Rudger Clawson witnessed the murder, and narrowly escaped with his life. The 1879 incident has been the subject of numerous articles and book chapters, including one in a children’s book and a cameo in the second volume of Saints, the new multivolume history of the Latter-day Saints, but books on the …

Review: Ann Chamberlin. Clogs And Shawls: Mormons, Moorlands, And The Search For Zion. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2019., Alison Halford

Mormon Studies Review

Despite the oldest continuous Mormon congregations being in Britain, when recruiting for my study on British Mormon women, I found few British Latter-day Saint families that went beyond fifth-generation members. The institutional Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may have stopped the systemic dismantling of wards and branches through migration to Utah by the turn of the twentieth century, but the consequences of asset-stripping British congregations were still felt by some of those women who were part of a multi-generational Latter-day Saint family. For them, there was a residual resentment that their female relatives who converted and remained in …

Review: Matthew L. Harris. Watchman On The Tower: Ezra Taft Benson And The Making Of The Mormon Right. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2020., Carmen Celestini

Mormon Studies Review

Ezra Taft Benson, to those of us who study the joint impact of overlapping belief systems of religion and conspiracy theories on politics, personifies the implications of these beliefs not only within his lifetime but within contemporary times as well. In Watchman on the Tower, Matthew L. Harris provides insight into Benson and his thinking. Using Benson’s personal correspondence, speeches, and public writings, Harris creates an image of a man significantly influenced by his faith and his life experiences.

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Mormon Studies Review

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The Women’S Ordination Movement In The Reorganized Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints: Historical And Sociological Perspectives, Nancy Ross, David J. Howlett, Zoe Kruse

Mormon Studies Review

In The Angel and the Beehive, sociologist Armand Mauss chronicled how leaders and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS/Mormon) made changes to fit into White Evangelical American society in the twentieth century, a process that Mauss described as assimilation.1 In parallel to the LDS story but unanalyzed by Mauss, the leadership of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church/Community of Christ) invested in a similar “assimilative” process, but drew closer to mainline Protestant norms, including ideas about expanding women’s roles in the church and in society. These competing trajectories pushed …

Contradiction Among Essentialism: How Some Mormon Fundamentalists Do Gender, Jennifer Huss Basquiat-Jones

Mormon Studies Review

Gender is eternal, at least from the perspective and teachings of most Mormon traditions. Whether mainstream or fundamentalist, Mormonism teaches that gender is a fixed characteristic that predates earthly existence and follows us into the afterlife. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints codified this belief in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” a 1995 document likely authored by Latter-day Saint lawyers and designed to thwart same-sex marriage advancements in Hawaii and elsewhere.3 Whether received by divine revelation or responding to perceived secular need, this proclamation reiterates key components of Latter-day Saint doctrine related to gender and family. …