Religious Education Commons^™

Last Laborer: Thoughts And Reflections Of A Black Mormon, Scott R. Parkin

BYU Studies

Last Laborer: Thoughts and Reflections of a Black Mormon by Keith N. Hamilton (Salt Lake City: Ammon Works, 2011)

By Simple Yet Propitious Means: The Art Of Jorge Cocco Santangelo, Herman Du Toit

BYU Studies

Inspired devotional art always strives for essential meaning, communicating across the widest range of cultural boundaries. This kind of art has always resisted the vanities of idiosyncratic expression, striving instead to subordinate the artist’s personal virtuosity to the sacral nature of its subject matter. There have been few artists of repute who have achieved this fine balance in their work. Jorge Cocco Santangelo, or “Cocco” as he is known, is one such artist who has devoted his professional career to the creation of art as an expression of his testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. His work recently …

The Time It Takes To Age, Rebecca Smylie

BYU Studies

We moved to Africa for my husband’s job, and those first months in Dakar, Senegal, were hard. We had a newborn and were sleep deprived. The antimalarials gave me bad dreams. We were living out of suitcases, we found dead birds in the back bedroom, and our three-year-old couldn’t seem to stop crying. Increasingly, we heard her fighting with a row of new imaginary friends, who were more often than not consigned to time out in the “bird room.” How would I survive two years?

Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, Camille S. Williams

BYU Studies

Joanna Brooks, Rachel Hunt Steenblik, and Hannah Wheelwright, eds. Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Becoming Divine: An Introduction To Deification In Western Culture, Daniel C. Peterson

BYU Studies

M. David Litwa. Becoming Divine: An Introduction to Deification in Western Culture.

Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2013.

From The Editor, John W. Welch

BYU Studies

True to the long-standing character of BYU Studies, this issue contains something exciting and enriching for just about everyone. Looking over this latest issue, I am grateful for the academic quality and faithful integrity of its contents and for the authors who have worked hard to bring this information to you.

Silent Wednesday, Mark Bennion

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

First Principles And Ordinances: The Fourth Article Of Faith In Light Of The Temple, Eric Samuelsen

BYU Studies

Samuel M. Brown, First Principles and Ordinances: The Fourth Article of Faith in Light of the Temple (Provo, Utah: Neal A. Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University, 2014).

The Civil War Years In Utah: The Kingdom Of God And The Territory That Did Not Fight, Kenneth L. Alford

BYU Studies

John Gary Maxwell. The Civil War Years in Utah: The Kingdom of God and the Territory That Did Not Fight.

Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016.

Joseph Smith And Egyptian Artifacts: A Model For Evaluating The Prophetic Nature Of The Prophet's Ideas About The Ancient World, Kerry Muhlestein

BYU Studies

Joseph Smith’s collection of Egyptian antiquities has been the point of much interest, both in his day and ours. Among those things that piqued great attention during the Prophet’s lifetime, and continue to do so today, are his explanations of the drawings (known as vignettes when referring to ancient Egyptian literature) on the papyri he possessed and the connections he made between the papyri, mummies, and biblical characters. While we have few statements directly from Joseph Smith himself, there are a number of accounts from people who heard either first- or secondhand the Prophet’s ideas about his collection of antiquities …

Schooling The Prophet: How The Book Of Mormon Influenced Joseph Smith And The Early Restoration, Mark L. Staker

BYU Studies

Gerald E. Smith. Schooling the Prophet: How the Book of Mormon Influenced Joseph Smith and the Early Restoration.

Provo, Utah: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, BYU, 2016.

The New Testament Made Harder: Scripture Study Questions, James E. Faulconer

Maxwell Institute Publications

Latter-day Saint philosopher James E. Faulconer’s Made Harder series raises many more questions than it answers. And that is precisely the point. Faulconer wrote The New Testament Made Harder on the premise that scripture study is only as good as the questions we bring to the endeavor. While many scriptural guides provide useful chapter synopses, timelines, memorizable bullet-points, or shortcuts, this book consists almost entirely of challenging questions (with occasional commentary for clarity’s sake) because, in Faulconer’s experience, questions themselves are the key to reflective and deep scripture study. This book is intended to make reading harder—and therefore fresher—by …

Planted: Belief And Belonging In An Age Of Doubt, Patrick Q. Mason

Maxwell Institute Publications

For all its beneficial advances, our secular age has also weakened some people’s ties to religious belief and affiliation. Latter-day Saints have not been immune to this trend. In recent years, many faithful Church members have encountered challenging aspects of Church history, belief, or practice. Feeling isolated, alienated, or misled, some struggle to stay. Some simply leave. Many search for a reliable and faithful place to work through their questions.

You can find such a place in Patrick Q. Mason’s Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt. This book gives people who struggle with questions—and people who …

From The Editor, John W. Welch

BYU Studies

The motto on the title page in each issue of BYU Studies Quarterly reads: "Involving readers in the Latter-day Saint academic experience." As this issue goes to press and to you, our readers, all over the world, I am excited about all that our experienced authors bring to you. How do their articles and other materials involve you in an LDS academic experience?

Two Challenges Facing Brigham Young University As A Religiously Affiliated University, Kevin J. Worthen

BYU Studies

The following message is adapted from remarks given by BYU President Kevin J Worthen at the annual BYU Studies Academy Meeting on March 28, 2015.

A Narrative Approach To The Joseph Smith Translation Of The Synoptic Gospels, Jared W. Ludlow

BYU Studies

One of the first projects Joseph Smith undertook after the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in April 1830 was a translation of the Bible. Although it was not a typical translation from original Greek or Hebrew manuscripts, the project was often called a “translation” nonetheless. The Joseph Smith Translation, or JST as it is often called, was referred to by the Lord in the Doctrine and Covenants as “the new translation of my holy word” (D&C 124:89). At the top of the manuscript of the revision of Matthew, it reads, “A translation of the New …

Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour And Object-Oriented Theology, Brent J. Schmidt

BYU Studies

Adam S. Miller. Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-Oriented Theology.

Perspectives in Continental Philosophy Series.

New York: Fordham University Press, 2013.

Discovering A Surgical First: Russell M. Nelson And Tricuspid Valve Annuloplasty, Austin A. Robinson, Curtis T. Hunter

BYU Studies

In an April 2003 general conference address, Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles recounted an experience of receiving sudden inspiration on how to perform surgery during his medical career. The epiphanic image that came to the young surgeon in 1960 led to the repair of a previously inoperable valve defect in the heart of E. L., a Latter-day Saint stake patriarch. As a novel surgical approach, the case is remarkable. However, Nelson did not publish a report of the experience in the medical literature at the time, and, as a result, its place in surgical …

Between Materialism And The Metaphysics Of Eternity: A Reply To Joseph M. Spencer's Review Of Responsibility Of Reason, Ralph C. Hancock

BYU Studies

BYU Studies strives to involve readers in the LDS academic experience. In that spirit, we offer this scholarly exchange between Ralph C. Hancock and Joseph M. Spencer based on Spencer’s “Goodness and Truth: An Essay on Ralph Hancock’s The Responsibility of Reason,” found in BYU Studies Quarterly 53, no. 4 (2014): 61–73.

John Milton, Joseph Smith, And The Book Of Mormon, Robert A. Rees

BYU Studies

In my Introduction to Mormonism class at Graduate Theological Union in 2013, among other topics we discussed the Book of Mormon and its possible provenances. The assignments for the class included my article “Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the American Renaissance,” in which I compare Joseph Smith with his illustrious contemporaries Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman in terms of their respective literary imagination, talent, authorial maturity, education, cultural milieu, knowledge base, and intellectual sophistication. In that article, I attempted to demonstrate that each of these authors enjoyed a much greater …

The Temple, A Holy School

BYU Studies

The Education in Zion Gallery in BYU’s Joseph F. Smith Building houses two murals, standing nearly twenty feet tall. One is of the Kirtland Temple and the other depicts Brigham Young Academy. It is not by accident that these murals face each other, for both represent houses of learning and the importance of the sacrifice involved in educating the whole soul.

Beholding The Tree Of Life: A Rabbinic Approach To The Book Of Mormon, Richard Dilworth Rust

BYU Studies

Bradley J. Kramer. Beholding the Tree of Life: A Rabbinic Approach to the Book of Mormon.

Draper, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2014.

The Journey Of A People: The Era Of Restoration, 1820 To 1844; The Journey Of A People: The Era Of Reorganization, 1844 To 1946, Alonzo L. Gaskill

BYU Studies

Mark A. Scherer. The Journey of a People: The Era of Restoration, 1820 to 1844.

Independence, Mo.: Community of Christ Seminary Press, 2013.

Mark A. Scherer. The Journey of a People: The Era of Reorganization, 1844 to 1946.

Independence, Mo.: Community of Christ Seminary Press, 2013.

Blue, Cindy Gritton

BYU Studies

Air—so tantalizingly close—remained painfully out of reach as I stared frantically up through the serene blueness of the swimming pool water. Such a beautiful color that blue was. Vivid and as permanently etched into my memory as thinking out what I would yell as soon as my head (hopefully) broke the surface of it one more time, because I knew I could only do it once more, knew it was a miracle I’d surfaced twice already, that after this next time, blue would turn to black and after that, I would not be walking home. “LET GO!” I screamed and …

The Prophets Have Spoken, But What Did They Say?: Examining The Differences Between George D. Watt's Original Shorthand Notes And The Sermons Published In The Journal Of Discourses, Gerrit Dirkmaat, Lajean Purcell Carruth

BYU Studies

On a summer day in August of 1867, Brigham Young delivered a powerful sermon to the residents of Tooele, Utah. He urged the assembled Saints to more faithfully live the principles of the Word of Wisdom and cease their attempts to parse out the words of the revelation, seeking a loophole. Young responded directly to such thinking, telling the congregation:

Many try to excuse themselves because tea and coffee are not mentioned, arguing that it refers to hot drinks only. What did we drink hot when that Word of Wisdom was given? Tea and coffee. It definitely refers to that …

Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness And The Concept Of Apostasy, Gerrit Van Dyk

BYU Studies

Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy, edited by Miranda Wilcox and John D. Young (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

The Alexandrian Epitomes Of Galen, Volume 1: On The Medical Sects For Beginners; The Small Art Of Medicine; On The Elements According To The Opinion Of Hippocrates, Galen, John Walbridge, Translator

Maxwell Institute Publications

The second-century physician and philosopher Galen is not known for brevity. Although his writings on medicine are famously verbose and numerous, for centuries they constituted much of the standard syllabi for medical students. About fourteen hundred years ago, one or possibly several professors put together a series of epitomes of Galen’s work. In contrast to Galen’s rambling and argumentative style, these epitomes present the material dryly but clearly, offering systematic categorizations of concepts, symptoms, diseases, and organs. Originally written in Greek, The Alexandrian Epitomes of Galen can also be found in Arabic and Hebrew translations, and the epitomes have had …

Minerva Teichert's The Seduction Of Corianton, Herman Du Toit

BYU Studies

A previously unknown oil sketch by Minerva Teichert (1888–1976), the pioneering LDS woman artist, was recently acquired by an art collector when it came up for sale in Salt Lake City. This small painting depicts the temptation of Corianton, who was the son of Alma the Younger in the Book of Mormon; it captures the moment spoken of in Alma’s words to his wayward son: “Thou didst do that which was grievous unto me; for thou didst forsake the ministry, and did go over into the land of Siron among the borders of the Lamanites, after the harlot Isabel. Yea, …

Reaching The Nations: International Church Growth Almanac, Eric Eliason

BYU Studies

Reaching the Nations: International Church Growth Almanac, 2014 Edition, Volume I: The Americas, Oceana, and Europe and Reaching the Nations: International Church Growth Almanac, 2014 Edition, Volume II: Asia and Africa, by David G. Stewart Jr. and Matthew Martinich (Henderson, Nev.: Cumorah Foundation, 2013).