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Full-Text Articles in Mormon Studies

Introduction, Donald W. Parry, John W. Welch May 2020

Introduction, Donald W. Parry, John W. Welch

BYU Studies

This book comprises fourteen of the papers presented at “Chiasmus: An Open Conference on the State of the Art,” held at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, on August 15–16, 2017. That date marked the fiftieth anniversary of events in Germany and Austria which soon grew into the publication of Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981), edited by John W. Welch. Generated forty years ago, that widely-cited volume with a preface by David Noel Freedman featured contributions by authors including Yehuda T. Radday, Jonah Frankel, Bezael Porten, Wilford G. E. Watson, John W. Welch, and Robert F. Smith, …

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Chiastic Structuring Of The Genesis Flood Story: The Art Of Using Chiasm As An Effective Compositional Tool For Combining Earlier Chiastic Narratives, Steven R. Scott May 2020

Chiastic Structuring Of The Genesis Flood Story: The Art Of Using Chiasm As An Effective Compositional Tool For Combining Earlier Chiastic Narratives, Steven R. Scott

BYU Studies

The story of the flood is perhaps one of the best-known stories of the Bible, and its chiastic nature has long been recognized by scholars, most prominently by Yehuda T. Radday and Gordon Wenham.1 These scholars’ theses will briefly be discussed before proceeding to a detailed analysis of the text, which will demonstrate that the biblical flood story is two chiasms combined—one by author “J” and another by author “P.”

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Chiasmus In The Text Of Isaiah: Mt Isaiah Versus The Great Isaiah Scroll (1qisaa), Donald W. Parry May 2020

Chiasmus In The Text Of Isaiah: Mt Isaiah Versus The Great Isaiah Scroll (1qisaa), Donald W. Parry

BYU Studies

The Isaiah scrolls are significant finds, signaling one of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century. The Qumran caves, located near the northwestern area of the Dead Sea, yielded twenty-one copies of the book of Isaiah—two from cave 1, eighteen from cave 4, and one from cave 5. An additional copy (making a total of twenty-two copies) of Isaiah was discovered south of Qumran in a cave at Wadi Murabba‘at. Scholars have labeled these scrolls as follows: 1QIsaa, 1QIsab (1Q8), 4QIsaa-r (4Q55–4Q69b), and 5QIsa (5Q3). All twenty-two copies of Isaiah are written in Hebrew. …

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Chiastic Structuring Of Large Texts: 2 Nephi As A Case Study, Noel B. Reynolds May 2020

Chiastic Structuring Of Large Texts: 2 Nephi As A Case Study, Noel B. Reynolds

BYU Studies

In 1967, John W. Welch was serving as a missionary in Germany and noticed a scholar’s explanation of chiasmus as a rhetorical structure that recurs in various parts of the Bible. While the penchant for parallelism that characterized Old Testament writers was widely recognized by that time, the discovery that reverse parallelism was also commonly used by New Testament writers was relatively recent and not yet widely accepted. Welch was no ordinary missionary in terms of his scholarly and scriptural preparation, and he immediately saw the possibility that Nephi and his successors may have been familiar with that rhetorical pattern …

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Chiasmus Criteria In Review, Neal Rappleye May 2020

Chiasmus Criteria In Review, Neal Rappleye

BYU Studies

As in all academic fields, the discipline of chiastic studies has had to grapple with persistent questions related to method. Understanding how these questions have been dealt with in the past is critical in knowing how to proceed in the future. In that spirit, I offer a historical review of the criteria or standards scholars have used to judge the merits of chiastic proposals. Of course, space ensures this will be far from comprehensive, and I make no pretensions of being able to resolve the issues that have plagued the study of chiasmus for the last seventy-five years. In reviewing …

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Truth Or Cherry Picking: A Statistical Approach To Chiastic Intentionality, Boyd R. Edwards May 2020

Truth Or Cherry Picking: A Statistical Approach To Chiastic Intentionality, Boyd R. Edwards

BYU Studies

Chiasmus is an ancient inverted-parallel literary form that states a number of literary elements and then restates these elements in reverse order. For example, Matt 10:39 is a simple two-element chiasm:

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Jesus And The Roman Centurion (Matthew 8:5–13), H. Douglas Buckwalter May 2020

Jesus And The Roman Centurion (Matthew 8:5–13), H. Douglas Buckwalter

BYU Studies

At the time I was doing my post-graduate work in New Testament studies at Kings College at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, my wife gave birth to our second child, a son. Under the National Healthcare System that was provided, we were periodically visited at home by a district nurse. As our son grew a little older, she began to bring colored toy blocks for him to play with. At first, she would randomly pick out any colored block, say a blue block, and see if he could associate color and pick out the same colored block. In time …

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Full Issue May 2020

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

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Exegesis Or Eisegesis: Does Chiastic Analysis Help Us To Understand Leviticus 20?, Jonathan Burnside May 2020

Exegesis Or Eisegesis: Does Chiastic Analysis Help Us To Understand Leviticus 20?, Jonathan Burnside

BYU Studies

Chiastic studies have been vulnerable, on occasion, over the past fifty years to the charge that their existence may be more a matter of eisegesis rather than exegesis. This paper contends that it is possible to have objective, textual grounds for the existence of a chiasmus which can, in turn, be key to exegesis. In particular, it proposes that chiastic analysis helps us to understand the complexities of Lev 20 and, furthermore, that this text should be held up as an example of a well-developed chiasmus in biblical law.1 Towards the end of the paper I speculate on some …

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Front Matter May 2020

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

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Chiasmus In The Book Of Genesis, Gary A. Rendsburg May 2020

Chiasmus In The Book Of Genesis, Gary A. Rendsburg

BYU Studies

Since I have published a detailed discussion on the subject announced in the title of this article, the present essay will provide only a summary of my earlier work, with ample key illustrations. My earlier treatment may be found in chapters 2, 3, and 5 of my book The Redaction of Genesis (1st ed., 1986; 2d ed., 2014).1 As indicated, in what follows, I rehearse that material here, though for the sake of simplicity, I do not footnote each individual discussion.

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Mirrored Poeticity: Chiastic Structuring In Mayan Languages, Kerry Hull May 2020

Mirrored Poeticity: Chiastic Structuring In Mayan Languages, Kerry Hull

BYU Studies

The last quarter century has seen a marked shift in Maya hieroglyphic studies in recognition of the presence of poetic language in the script. Poetics in indigenous Mesoamerican tradition is based primarily upon the principle of parallelism, most often in the form of coupleted discourse. Chiasmus, a rhetorical feature fully dependent upon parallelism, was one such poetic device used by ancient Maya scribes and colonial period indigenous authors, and it is still found among modern ritual specialists in some Maya communities. In this study, I explore the use and forms of chiasmus over time among various Maya groups and languages. …

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The Roles Of Words, Phrases, And Ideas In Macro-Chiasms, Stephen Kent Ehat May 2020

The Roles Of Words, Phrases, And Ideas In Macro-Chiasms, Stephen Kent Ehat

BYU Studies

What roles do words, phrases, and ideas play in large-scale chiasms and in the analysis of their form? Just as words and phrases play different roles in language generally, so too they may play different roles in their contributions to chiastic forms. In the analysis of the criteria used in evaluating a text for the presence of phrase-based chiasms and conceptual, idea-based chiasms, the analyst may see different roles played by words and phrases, depending on whether the pattern is a word-based or clause-based chiasm or a conceptual, idea-based chiasm. Analysis of texts in light of the general criteria …

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Lay Latitude: Latter-Day Saint Women's Agency In Northwest Arkansas, Andrew Tompkins May 2020

Lay Latitude: Latter-Day Saint Women's Agency In Northwest Arkansas, Andrew Tompkins

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The question of women’s agency in gender-traditional religions has been the subject of much scholarly attention over the past four decades, but little research has been done focusing specifically on Latter-day Saint women and their identities and roles within the structure and practice of the Church. In popular media representations, Latter-Day Saint women are often depicted as submissive or surviving, either powerless pawns or resistant warriors. However, many Latter-day Saint women find fulfillment and empowerment within and because of, rather than outside or in spite of, the institutional Church. In this thesis, I explore women’s agency in Northwest Arkansas’ Greendale …

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Prophetic Authority: Democratic Hierarchy And Teh Mormon Priesthood, Michael Hubbard Mackay Apr 2020

Prophetic Authority: Democratic Hierarchy And Teh Mormon Priesthood, Michael Hubbard Mackay

Books

No abstract provided.

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Front Matter Apr 2020

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

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The First Vision As A Prehistory Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Kathleen Flake Apr 2020

The First Vision As A Prehistory Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Kathleen Flake

BYU Studies

Most scholarly attention to the First Vision is dedicated to determining whether it happened or whether whatever happened is reliably described in the few primary accounts we have of it. My interests lie in a different direction. I am interested in the First Vision accounts insofar as they tell us something about religion, not about history, and not least because my wager is that this story, as a story, exceeds the limits of history, especially when it becomes understood as scripture. Which is to say, I want to better understand the work done by this story among the members of …

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Raising The Stakes: How Joseph Smith’S First Vision Became All Or Nothing, Steven C. Harper Apr 2020

Raising The Stakes: How Joseph Smith’S First Vision Became All Or Nothing, Steven C. Harper

BYU Studies

Joseph Smith (1805–1844) inhabited a visionary world and belonged to a visionary family.1 At about age twelve, he began to worry about his soul and started searching the Bible. As he compared the scriptures to the Christian denominations where he lived in western New York State, he found discord. For two or three years, he worried about “the darkness which pervaded the minds of mankind.” He became “exceedingly distressed” and “convicted” of his sins, a problem compounded by his inability to find any “society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new …

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The First Vision And The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Elder Legrand R. Curtis Jr. Apr 2020

The First Vision And The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Elder Legrand R. Curtis Jr.

BYU Studies

I am grateful for the opportunity to be here with you. As was mentioned, I am the Church Historian and Recorder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In our Church, that position is an ecclesiastical calling. While I oversee the Church History Department—which is filled with trained historians, librarians, archivists, and other professionals— my own training is as a lawyer, and prior to being called to full-time church service as a General Authority, I practiced law for several years. My service as a General Authority has included being in the presidency of the Church’s Africa West Area …

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The First Vision Of Joseph Smith Jr.: 200 Years On, Richard E. Bennett Apr 2020

The First Vision Of Joseph Smith Jr.: 200 Years On, Richard E. Bennett

BYU Studies

This special issue of BYU Studies Quarterly features the proceedings of a conference held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of Joseph Smith’s First Vision. In presenting slightly modified transcripts of the papers delivered at this conference, we hope BYU Studies Quarterly readers will gain insights into both this experience of Joseph Smith’s and the various ways scholars have come to view it.

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“Wissenschaft Des” Mormonism: Jewish Studies As A Framework For Exploring Mormon Studies, Trevan Hatch Apr 2020

“Wissenschaft Des” Mormonism: Jewish Studies As A Framework For Exploring Mormon Studies, Trevan Hatch

Faculty Publications

Recently, a significant amount of attention has been directed at the who, what, where, and how of Mormon studies. For example, since 2009, at least six major forums, comprising sixty-two essays and presentations (with dozens of other stand-alone pieces appearing in other venues), were dedicated to discussing the nature and future of Mormon studies as an academic field. Many of these essays discuss the definitions, challenges, opportunities, research gaps, sources, and disciplines of Mormon studies from a variety of angles. Some are highly nuanced treatments of particular aspects of Mormon studies, and others are more general. This article presents the …

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Church And The Fourth Estate, William L. Blizek Feb 2020

Church And The Fourth Estate, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Church and the Fourth Estate (2020) directed by Brian Knappenburger.

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Recovering The World Of The Bible, Dana M. Pike Feb 2020

Recovering The World Of The Bible, Dana M. Pike

Faculty Publications

The pillar of light that fell upon Joseph Smith in the woods near Palmyra, New York, in the spring of 1820 ushered in a new dispensation of the gospel.1 But that light, which shone “above the brightness of the sun” (Joseph Smith–History 1:16), did not just enlighten the world as far as religion is concerned. The light emanating from the pillar in which the Father and Son stood symbolically represents the latter-day, divine illumination of many aspects of life on this earth—past, present, and future.

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Israelite Inscriptions From The Time Of Jeremiah And Lehi, Dana M. Pike Feb 2020

Israelite Inscriptions From The Time Of Jeremiah And Lehi, Dana M. Pike

Faculty Publications

The greater the number of sources the better when investigating the history and culture of people in antiquity. Narrative and prophetic texts in the Bible and 1 Nephi have great value in helping us understand the milieu in which Jeremiah and Lehi received and fulfilled their prophetic missions, but these records are not our only documentary sources. A number of Israelite inscriptions dating to the period of 640–586 b.c., the general time of Jeremiah and Lehi, provide additional glimpses into this pivotal and primarily tragic period in Israelite history.

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Subject Vertical File, Mcgarvey Ice Jan 2020

Subject Vertical File, Mcgarvey Ice

Center for Restoration Studies Vertical Files Finding Aids

No abstract provided.

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Are We Not All Beggars?, Michelle Forstrom Jan 2020

Are We Not All Beggars?, Michelle Forstrom

The Restored Gospel and Applied Christianity: Student Essays in Honor of President David O. McKay

Michelle describes how her brother in law’s stroke and her home’s foreclosure helped King Benjamin’s words “Are we not all beggars?” from the Book of Mormon became especially poignant for her.

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Multiplicity: An Editors’ Introduction, Quincy D. Newell, Benjamin E. Park Jan 2020

Multiplicity: An Editors’ Introduction, Quincy D. Newell, Benjamin E. Park

Mormon Studies Review

When J. Spencer Fluhman introduced the new Mormon Studies Review six years ago, he articulated a “guiding principle for the Review: friendship.” As Fluhman put it, “In our hope to meaningfully connect minds across space, time, and ideological and religious spectra, the Review aspires to a very Mormon ideal indeed.”1 We’d like to believe that over the last six years, the Mormon Studies Review has lived up to this aspiration, and that it has demonstrated that friendship is an excellent way to cultivate the field of critical inquiry we call Mormon studies, regardless of participants’ religious identities or institutional commitments.

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Seek Ye Words Of Wisdom, Stephen D. Ricks, Donald W. Parry, Gaye Strathearn, Shon D. Hopkin Jan 2020

Seek Ye Words Of Wisdom, Stephen D. Ricks, Donald W. Parry, Gaye Strathearn, Shon D. Hopkin

Interpreter Foundation Books

Stephen David Ricks is a professor of Hebrew and cognate learning in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University (BYU), where he has taught for almost four decades (1981–). It was at BYU, in a freshman Book of Mormon class, that he first met Shirley Smith. Four years later, after they had both served German- speaking missions (Stephen in Switzerland and Shirley in Southern Germany), they were married in the Provo Utah Temple in 1974. They are now the proud parents of six children—three girls and three boys, all of whom are married—and have twenty …

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Review: E. Marshall Brooks. Disenchanted Lives: Apostasy And Ex-Mormonism Among The Latter-Day Saints. New Brunswick, Nj: Rutgers University Press, 2018., Sara M. Patterson Jan 2020

Review: E. Marshall Brooks. Disenchanted Lives: Apostasy And Ex-Mormonism Among The Latter-Day Saints. New Brunswick, Nj: Rutgers University Press, 2018., Sara M. Patterson

Mormon Studies Review

In a February 1990 newsletter from the Southern California chapter of Saints Alive in Jesus/Ex-Mormons for Jesus, an anonymous author wrote: I am currently a Mormon who is searching for answers. So far, my studies have led me to have serious doubts about Mormonism, however, I am so fearful and emotionally distraught over leaving the religion that it’s sometimes difficult for me to think rationally. I have been a member for 25 years (I am now 34) and I have 4 children who are very involved in LDS activities. All my friends (most of them anyway) are members and my …

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Review: Seth Perry. Bible Culture And Authority In The Early United States. Princeton, Nj: Princeton University Press, 2018., Candy Guther Brown Jan 2020

Review: Seth Perry. Bible Culture And Authority In The Early United States. Princeton, Nj: Princeton University Press, 2018., Candy Guther Brown

Mormon Studies Review

The Bible in America and American bibles have generated substantial scholarly interest. In writing about early American bible culture, Seth Perry has stepped onto well-trodden ground. The field has been cleared and ploughed by many important studies, including Paul Gutjahr’s American Bible and Book of Mormon, David Nord’s Faith in Reading, Candy Brown’s Word in the World, John Fea’s Bible Cause, Mark Noll’s In the Beginning Was the Word, and Lincoln Mullen’s America’s Public Bible.1 Perry builds on this scholarship (citing all but Brown in the bibliography) and contributes novel insights, but Bible Culture’s findings are not radically disruptive. Readers …

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