Mormon Studies Commons^™

Full Issue, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

The Viper On The Hearth, Updated Edition, Mickell J. Summerhays, Terryl L. Givens

BYU Studies

Terryl L. Givens, the well-known Mormon author, is a professor of literature and religion and is the James A. Bostwick Professor of English at the University of Richmond, Virginia. He has authored books such as By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion and The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life.

Many may be familiar with Givens's classic study on Mormon literature entitled The Viper on the Hearth. It is known as one of the most in-depth studies of anti-Mormon literary texts. Givens himself calls this a look at "the long …

Dark Mirrors: Azazel And Satanael In Early Jewish Demonology, Andrei A. Orlov, David J. Larsen

BYU Studies

Andrei A. Orlov, professor of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity at Marquette University, is a highly prolific author and world-renowned scholar who specializes in Christian origins, Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism, and Old Testament pseudepigrapha, including texts such as 2 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Abraham. Among Orlov's many writings are the books The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (TSAJ, 107; Tuebingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), From Apocalypticism to Merkabah Mysticism (SJSJ, 114; Leiden: Brill, 2007), Divine Manifestations in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha (OJC, 2; Piscataway: Gorgias, 2009), and Concealed Writings: Jewish Mysticism in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha (Flaviana; Moscow: Gesharim, 2011).

The present book under review, …

Shifting Borders And A Tattered Passport: Intellectual Journeys Of A Mormon Academic, Roger Terry, Armand L. Mauss

BYU Studies

"When the intellectual history of late-twentieth-century Mormonism is written," begins Richard Bushman in the foreword to this memoir, "Armand Mauss will occupy a preeminent position." For this reason alone, Mauss's reminiscences should be of interest to any serious student of Mormonism.

Mauss takes his title from the following quote by Neal A. Maxwell: "The LDS scholar has his citizenship in the Kingdom, but carries his passport into the professional world--not the other way around." But Mauss's observation that the borders have shifted over time and his passport is tattered reminds us that travel between the Church and the world is …

Premarital Sex In America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, And Think About Marrying; Sex And The Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, And Religion On America's College Campuses, Mark Regnerus, Jeremy Uecker, Donna Freitas, Brian J. Willoughby

BYU Studies

MARK REGNERUS, JEREMY UECKER. Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying. New York City: Oxford University Press, 2011.

DONNA FREITAS. Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses. New York City: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Mark Regnerus (University of Texas) and Jeremy Uecker (Baylor University), both professors of sociology, have previously collaborated on a host of academic papers focused on the dating, marital, and sexual lives of young adults. Regnerus has previously published a book entitled Forbidden Fruit (Oxford University Press, 2007), which explores the sexual lives of …

Talking With Mormons: An Invitation To Evangelicals, David Dominguez, Richard J. Mouw

BYU Studies

As an Evangelical who has resided in Utah County since 1989 and as a law professor at BYU for the past twenty-four years, I read with great interest Richard J. Mouw's latest book, Talking with Mormons: An Invitation to Evangelicals. I was pleased that the author, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, helped me sort out my thoughts on countless conversations with LDS colleagues, students, and neighbors concerning differences in our religious traditions and, even more importantly, provided a structure for more fruitful dialogue. I encourage anyone who cares about building bridges between and among Evangelicals and Mormons to take time …

Henry Burkhardt And Lds Realpolitik In Communist East Germany, Raymond Kuehne, James H. Backman

BYU Studies

The biography of Henry Burkhardt is an inspiring story tied to a group of Church members caught up in the politics of Germany after World War II. Like a young David asked to face a Goliath of repressive national power that caused a fledgling people to fear the political force around them, Burkhardt led faithful Latter-day Saints for four decades in a manner reminiscent of early pioneers like Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Wilford Woodruff. Like each of these early faithful servants, Burkhardt became a leader at a young age, when as a missionary he was called in 1952 …

For The Man In The Red Jacket, Tyler Chadwick

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Design And Construction Of The Great Tabernacle Arches, Elwin C. Robison, W Randall Dixon

BYU Studies

Brigham Young desired to build a place where thousands of Saints could meet and a speaker could be heard. The Great Tabernacle in Salt Lake City was built using trussed arches. The genesis of this type of construction was the lattice truss, patented in 1820. The design was brought to Utah by Henry Grow. Brigham Young hired Grow to design and build a road bridge made of straight wooden lattice trusses over the Jordan River in 1860. Trusses could also be built as arches, and the Tabernacle was built as a long barrel vault with half-arch ends. This design allowed …

Gathering To La'ie, Riley M. Moffat, Jeffrey N. Walker, Fred E. Woods, Steven C. Walker

BYU Studies

I stayed in La'ie last winter, a stone's throw from the temple, which is within easy walking distance of Brigham Young University-Hawaii, which is next door to the Polynesian Cultural Center--all the major landmarks of the town within an easy ten-minute circuit. It is surprising to see how compact a place has earned so expansive a reputation. This book surprised me in the same way. There's a lot going on in this history of the little town--Gathering to La'ie traces how the sleepy village wrought dramatic influence on Hawaii, managed the miracle of melding diverse factions into a united …

The Savior In Kirtland, R Mark Melville, Karl R. Anderson

BYU Studies

Karl Ricks Anderson has lived in Kirtland, Ohio, for more than forty years, and his studies and time there have made him one of the leading authorities on the Kirtland period of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1994, Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles asked Anderson to write about the Christology of Kirtland. The Savior in Kirtland is the final product of Anderson's eighteen-year project.

The book is extensively researched and would appeal to anyone interested in anecdotes from Church history. The research will be helpful to scholars, but the information …

Joseph F. Smith And The Reshaping Of Church Education, Scott C. Esplin

BYU Studies

This article examines the educational background, philosophy, and legacy of Joseph F. Smith and his impact on Church education. It traces the role President Smith played in expanding the Church academies and later facilitating the formation of the current seminary system. It places these changes within the context of the dramatic growth in U.S. public education and the financial challenges faced by the Church and its academies, demonstrating how Smith was shaped by his time and the part he played during a transformative era in Church education.

The Textual Development Of D&C 130:22 And The Embodiment Of The Holy Ghost, Ronald E. Bartholomew

BYU Studies

The unique LDS doctrine of the embodiment of the Holy Ghost has a fascinating history. Ron Bartholomew looks at the text of Doctrine and Covenants 130:

"The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us."

The text went through several stages of development before arriving at its current wording and punctuation. This article details, step by step, the various modifications that were made …

The Closedown Of Lds Iowa Settlements In 1852 That Completed The Nauvoo Exodus And Jampacked The Mormon Trail, William G. Hartley

BYU Studies

After the Mormons were forced out of Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1846, many temporarily settled around Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), Iowa. The first Mormon pioneers founded Salt Lake City in 1847, but five years later, many thousands of Mormons were still in Iowa, trying to collect resources to make the long trek across the Great Plains. They lacked food, wagons, and other supplies they would need.

In 1852, the First Presidency sent Elder Ezra T. Benson to organize the scattered Saints into wagon trains. Benson was successful in sharing the message of urgency in gathering, and most of the Saints made …

The Mormon People: The Making Of An American Faith, Matthew Bowman, Armand L. Mauss

BYU Studies

Matthew Bowman is an up-and-coming young scholar of the generation now rising with the relatively new field of Mormon studies. Having completed his doctorate in American religious history at Georgetown University in 2011, he has nevertheless already been very visible for some time at academic conferences and in periodical literature of both Mormon and American religious histories. He has appeared on various public media sites, electronic and otherwise, as a commentator about Mormons and Mormonism, including discussions of his new book.

This book provides eight solid chapters, a brief introduction, and an even briefer conclusion, followed by four appendices, a …

Fire In The Pasture: Twenty-First Century Mormon Poets, Angela Hallstrom, Tyler Chadwick

BYU Studies

In the foreword to the poetry anthology Fire in the Pasture, poet and BYU English professor Susan Elizabeth Howe explains that a poet's desire is "to make readers see what they did not see before, to offer insight, to create empathy, to provoke thought, or to express beauty, soundness, depth." Editor Tyler Chadwick, a poet and doctoral candidate in English at Idaho State University, has gathered into one substantial volume the work of eighty-two contemporary Mormon poets, and the majority succeed in conjuring the emotional, spiritual, and aesthetic rewards Howe describes.

This anthology is the first major collection of poetry …

Monsters And Mormons: Thirty Tales Of Adventure And Terror, Scott R. Parkin, Wm Morris, Theric Jepson

BYU Studies

Short story anthologies are oddly rare in Mormon literature. We publish plenty of single-author collections, but multi-author anthologies tend to be fewer and further between. As such, they tend to be viewed as manifestos of sorts, snapshots of the current state of the Mormon literary art--at least over the past two decades. From Eugene England's Bright Angels and Familiars through M. Shayne Bell's Washed by a Wave of Wind to Angela Hallstrom's Dispensation, we look to these anthologies as signposts of our collective literary maturity and use them as introductions to notable names that we might not hear of otherwise. …

Just Being There, Dixie L. Partridge

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Home Waters: A Year Of Recompenses On The Provo River, Dennis R. Cutchins, George B. Handley

BYU Studies

Herman Melville begins Moby Dick by noting the way humans seem almost magnetically attracted to water. "There is magic in it," he writes. "Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream." George Handley would, no doubt, agree with this observation. His Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River is a gentle, slow, and deeply thoughtful book built on this special human relationship with water. Handley uses the Provo River as the locus for a series of contemplations on …

Bountiful Harvest: Essays In Honor Of S. Kent Brown, Andrew C. Skinner, Carl W. Griffin, David J. Larsen, D Morgan Davis

BYU Studies

Bountiful Harvest is a collection of essays written and assembled in honor of S. Kent Brown, recently retired professor of ancient scripture and Near Eastern studies at Brigham Young University. An impressive array of colleagues, former students, teachers, admirers, and friends of Professor Brown have contributed to this handsome volume, resulting in twenty-one essays that are a worthy tribute to Brown's legacy. The volume includes an introduction by the editors in well-deserved praise of Brown's career and significant achievements, and also an appendix listing his many published works.

Bountiful Harvest presents something of interest for almost all readers. Although most …

Latter-Day Saint Missionaries Encounter The London Missionary Society In The South Pacific, 1844–1852, Fred E. Woods

BYU Studies

In fall 1843, four Latter-day Saints were called as the first missionaries to the South Pacific. One, Knowlton Hanks, died on the voyage. In May 1844, Addison Pratt began proselytizing on the island of Tubuai, 350 miles south of Tahiti. Benjamin Grouard and Noah Rogers went on to Tahiti, but after a few months they were forced to leave by the French colonizers and went to other islands. Rogers returned to the US in 1845, but Pratt and Grouard remained. On these various islands they encountered missionaries of the London Missionary Society, who had already been preaching in the South …

Certification And Signaling: The Importance Of Markets And What Makes Them Work, J Michael Pinegar

BYU Studies

J. Michael Pinegar examines financial and labor markets in terms of what makes them work efficiently. Information asymmetry between buyers and sellers can result in market failure. Two common ways to reduce information asymmetry are certification and signaling. Certification refers to a reputable third party, who affirms the quality of a product. Signaling refers to costs the seller incurs to convey the quality of the product to potential buyers. The signal might be something like a warranty. Both of these mechanisms facilitate market functioning. Pinegar gave this presentation as the BYU 2013 Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecture.

Enticing The Sacred With Words, John Bennion

BYU Studies

Evoking the sacred with words "is like trying to breathe joy as if it is air or to catch the wind in a butterfly net." In an effort to help the students in his writing classes capture the sacred with words, John Bennion of the BYU English faculty employs unusual methods, taking his students out of the classroom and into the wild, where they confront nature and themselves face to face. Rather than requiring writing that preaches, Bennion encourages expressive or exploratory essaying. His own essay depicts some of the successes his students have experienced.

Parallels Between Psalms 25-31 And The Psalm Of Nephi, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D., D. Bryce Baker

Faculty Publications

Chapter 18 of the 2013 BYU Sperry Symposium volume, "Parallels between Psalms 25-31 and the Psalm of Nephi," by Kenneth L. Alford and D. Bryce Baker, highlights numerous similarities in the structure and language of 2 Nephi 4 (also known as the Psalm of Nephi) to wording found in Psalms 25 to 31 -- opening the possibility that Nephi may have consulted those psalms on the brass plates prior to composing his psalm.

The Lot Smith Cavalry Company: Utah Goes To War, Joseph R. Stuart, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

In this chapter from "Civil War Saints" (2012, published by the Brigham Young University Religious Studies Center and the Deseret Book Company), Joseph R. Stuart and Kenneth L. Alford take a close look at the cavalry unit that was called to military service on April 28, 1862, at President Lincoln’s request. Their ninety-day period of service was the only unit-level active duty military contribution Utah Territory made during the Civil War. An earlier version of this paper, written by a student for the Library Research Grant Program, can be found here.

Civil War Saints: Research Update, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This article, which appeared in the Fall 2013 issue of the "Religious Education Review," discusses additional discoveries regarding Latter-day Saint military service during the American Civil War (since the book "Civil War Saints" was published in 2012).

"The Brave Men, Living And Dead, Who Struggled Here": Utah Veterans And The Gettysburg Reunion Of 1913, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D., Ken Nelson

Faculty Publications

Gettysburg was the defining battle of the American Civil War as Union and CSA soldiers clashed in Pennsylvania. This Utah Historical Quarterly article from Summer 2013 explains how Union and Confederate veterans of the Civil War, who were living in Utah, traveled to and participated in the 1913 50th Anniversary Reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg (which took place July 1-3, 1863). The article also includes lists of the Utah veterans who attended and additionally notes which veterans participated in the battle of Gettysburg.

Using "The Joseph Smith Papers" In The Classroom, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This article discusses how several discoveries made by the research team at the Joseph Smith Papers (josephsmithpapers.org) can be shared in LDS teaching situations, such as seminary, institute, family home evening, and sunday school. Specific examples are shared from D&C 1, 4, 20, 21, 23, 29, 30, 39, 40, 41, 74, 94, 97, 104 and 107. Summary tables also compare section heading information from the 1981 D&C, the 2013 D&C, and the various early Church revelatory books.

Game Theory, The Prisoner's Dilemma, And The Book Of Mormon, Robert F. Schwartz

BYU Studies

Game theory has been applied to a number of disciplines, including economics, law, politics, sociology, and Bible studies, but this article is the first serious attempt to apply it to the Book of Mormon narrative. One particularly important model in game theory is known as the Prisoner's Dilemma, which emphasizes the possibility and benefits of cooperation in the face of conflict. The Book of Mormon account is an almost constant narrative based on conflict, first within the family of Lehi and then between two warring factions that arise from a split in that original Book of Mormon family. These conflicts …