Cold Harbor and a Warm Farewell

November 17, 2023 By Dan Peterson

Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Largely Shadow, Short of Reality,” written by Allen Wyatt Review of Ronald V. Huggins, Lighthouse: Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Despised and Beloved Critics of Mormonism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2022). 392 pages. $39.95 (hardback), $24.95 (paperback). Abstract: Jerald and Sandra Tanner have had a long ministerial career trying to convince people that that the truth claims of the Church are wrong. Even though their ministry has closed its... Read more

Welcoming a former infidel

November 16, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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These new items have gone up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Not By Bread Alone: “A Place of Peace in War-Torn Goma”: Blog Post #2 For more information on the “Not by Bread Alone: Stories of the Saints in Africa” series, go to https://notbybreadalonefilm.com/en/ For more information in French, go to https://notbybreadalonefilm.com/fr/ To see all of our posts about The Church in Africa, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/africa/ Conference Talks: Prayer with Uplifted Hands, presented by Stephen D.... Read more

Of Nuance

November 16, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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Why do I pay attention to the Peterson Obsession Board? My nickname for it explains the reason. I look in on the POB several times each week because, on a daily basis for something like the past fifteen years — in other words, for however long it has existed — I have been a regular target there and, arguably, the single principal target, for criticism, mockery, and, yes, character assassination and defamation. It’s the only anti-Mormon website... Read more

We have been very fortunate

November 14, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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First of all, I want to thank the readers of this blog, who continue to read it, or at least to summon it up on their computer screens, despite my manifold (and manifest) incapacities. I read a couple of appraisals of myself online this morning that indirectly illustrate just how charitable and forgiving you are. According to one of those appraisals, which wasn’t making any particular effort to be kind, I’m immature, stupid, and entirely without class. According... Read more

Brigham Young, homicidal tyrant and bully?

November 13, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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The passing of President M. Russell Ballard of the Twelve represents the departure of a long-familiar figure from Church leadership. He had been a General Authority since 1976 (nearly half a century), and an apostle for thirty-eight years, since 1985. With his death, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland becomes the senior apostle within the Quorum. But Elder Holland’s health still appears to be poor, and that may mean that effective leadership of the Twelve will fall to Elder Dieter... Read more

Some thoughts on reading about Brigham Young

November 12, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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On a message board where harshly negative reviews of the Interpreter Foundation’s as-yet uncompleted film project Six Days in August have been pouring in by the dozens, appraisals of Brigham Young have also been abundant. Brigham was, it seems, not a decent man. Indeed, he was a frightening bully and a murderous tyrant. One earnest soul even offers a reading list of contemporary nineteenth-century perspectives on President Young in order to support such judgments — contemporary sources, of... Read more

God, Fathers, and Families

November 11, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Preview Video of “Not by Bread Alone: Stories of the Saints in Africa I found this article unusually interesting: “It’s Not Politics: Fatherhood Decline Causing Rise of Religious Nones” It reminded me of a column that I originally wrote for the Provo Daily Herald back on 14 April 2000: A widespread assumption, especially among intellectuals, holds that belief in God derives from irrational, immature needs and wishes,... Read more

The Jerusalem that Lehi Left

November 10, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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Up new, today, on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: ““Encircled About Eternally in the Arms of His Love”: The Divine Embrace as a Thematic Symbol of Jesus Christ and His Atonement in the Book of Mormon,” written by Matthew L. Bowen Abstract: This study builds upon Hugh Nibley’s insightful observation that several Book of Mormon passages reflect “the ritual embrace that consummates the final escape from death in the Egyptian funerary texts and reliefs” as expressing the... Read more

A note on the politics of archaeology

November 9, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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“Enthroning the Daughter of Zion: The Coronation Motif of Isaiah 60-62,” in The Temple: Ancient and Restored, written by Carli J. Anderson Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Ancient and Restored, Proceedings of the Second Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference “The Temple on Mount Zion,” 25 October 2014 (2016) edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Donald W. Parry. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-ancient-and-restored/. For the time... Read more

“The Man in the Arena,” or “Citizenship in a Republic”

November 9, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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Up yesterday on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Conference Talks: The Messianic Sacred, Not Secret: The Son as a Hidden Name in the Gospel of Mark, originally presented by Jasmin Gimenez Rappleye on Saturday, 7 November 2020, at the Interpreter Foundation’s 2020 Temple on Mount Zion Conference The “Messianic Secret” theory proposes that Jesus Christ forbids demons and followers from revealing who he is for an enigmatic reason. While the findings of the original theory have largely... Read more