More Islands and Atolls
Announcement: Whitney Award Winners 2018 @ Segullah
- The 2018 Whitney Awards winners were announced at the eleventh annual Whitney Awards Gala...
More on the Impact of Hebrew Study on the Kirtland Egyptian Papers: Hurwitz and Some Curiousities in the GAEL @ Mormanity
- One of the many strange things in W.W. Phelps' Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian...
(Tinkering Intensifies) @ Zelophehad's Daughters
- When my sisters and friends started ZD way back during the Hinckley administration, I had...
John Hajicek on the Hidden Sacrifices Behind the Printing of the Book of Mormon @ Mormanity
- One of the really remarkable friends of the Church is John Hajicek (pronounced...
What Would You Attempt to do if You Knew You Could Not Fail? @ Segullah
- Eighteen years ago this month, I finished graduate school. At graduation, one of my...
A Parable @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- A distinguished professor has a son who gets accepted to a prestigious university on the...
Egyptomania and Ohio: Thoughts on a Lecture from Terryl Givens and a Questionable Statement in the Joseph Smith Papers, Vol. 4 @ Mormanity
- In a lecture I heard from Terryl Givens, one of my favorite LDS writers and thinkers, I...
Heaven, Help Us! @ Segullah
- My husband Chris was in the midst of dying – neither of us knowing whether he would...
Gratitude in the time of swim suit season @ Segullah
- Shopping for swim suits is depressing. There is nothing like standing mostly naked under...
Moses Stuart or Joshua Seixas? Exploring the Influence of Hebrew Study on the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language @ Mormanity
- I was intrigued by a statement from John Gee about the apparent influence of Joshua...
What I learned from my mother @ Segullah
- My mom’s atypical. We love to hear the story when she was thrown out of the BYU...
Sights from a Trip to Israel and Jordan @ Mormanity
- One of the advantages of working in China is having long national holidays like the...
If You Only Knew… Another Side of Infertility @ Segullah
- I wanted to start IVF sooner rather than later, and had begun to nag my husband, B about...
In Memoriam: Rachel Held Evans @ Segullah
- Segullah joins the Christian community in mourning the loss of thinker, writer, and...
A Look at Crisis Text Line Data on LGBT Issues and Suicidality @ Zelophehad's Daughters
- Crisis Text Line is a support service for people in crisis. It’s like a suicide...
Geese and Goodness @ Segullah
- I stood in the kitchen of my new (to me) townhouse– all mine, and all alone. It was...
Dwelling in Righteousness with No Poor among Us @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- So, I led a discussion on Sunday using the questions I listed in the last post as a...
The Lost Percent. Early Returning Missionaries. @ Segullah
- I got a text message yesterday asking for prayers for my friend’s missionary daughter....
Two Important, Even Troubling, Clues About Dating from W.W. Phelps' Notebook with Egyptian "Translation" @ Mormanity
- Update, May 3, 2019, and more on May 8, 2019: In yet another frustrating turn as I...
Digging into the Phelps "Translation" of Egyptian: Textual Evidence That Phelps Recognized That Three Lines of Egyptian Yielded About Four Lines of English @ Mormanity
- Update, April 30, 2019: Today I noticed there is another document from Oliver Cowdery...
Praying Like a Mormon @ Zelophehad's Daughters
- I’m in something called Education for Ministry, which is a four-year program run by the...
2018 Whitney Awards Finalists: General Fiction @ Segullah
- The Whitney Awards evolve every year depending on trends in Mormon publishing; this year,...
Joseph Smith and Champollion: Could He Have Known of the Phonetic Nature of Egyptian Before He Began Translating the Book of Abraham? @ Mormanity
- The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799. While Thomas Young and other scholars studied...
John 8 and the Woman Taken in Adultery: A Faith Promoting Fabrication? @ Mormanity
- For years I've had a question mark in my mind over John 8:1-11 with its beautiful and...
Wrong Again, In Part! How I Misunderstood the Plainly Visible Evidence on the W.W. Phelps Letter with Egyptian "Translation" @ Mormanity
- Update, April 23, 2019: Doubly wrong! When I wrote this post earlier today, I was...
Did Joseph's Scribes Think He Translated Paragraphs of Text from a Single Egyptian Character? A View from W.W. Phelps @ Mormanity
- In using the Kirtland Egyptian Papers (KEP) to discredit Joseph's "translation" of the...
And It Was Night @ Zelophehad's Daughters
- “So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was...
The Pure Language Project @ Mormanity
- To understand the strange Kirtland Egyptian Papers, we may need to understand the...
My Hypothesis Overturned: What Typos May Tell Us About the Book of Abraham @ Mormanity
- In my previous post, "The Smoking Gun for Joseph's Translation of the Book of Abraham, or...
One Heart and One Mind @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- The ward I work with on the high council is having ward conference in a couple of weeks,...
The Smoking Gun for Joseph's Translation of the Book of Abraham, or Copied Manuscripts from an Existing Translation? @ Mormanity
- Thanks to the Joseph Smith Papers website and its section on the Book of Abraham, we can...
Puzzling Content in the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar @ Mormanity
- When I first started looking at the Kirtland Egyptian Papers in detail on the Joseph...
A Faith for This Life @ Zelophehad's Daughters
- My decision to convert away from the LDS church was undeniably overdetermined. So many...
Tender Mercies: How the BYU Management Society and a China Moment Turned Gloom into Contentment @ Mormanity
- Monday morning was gloomy. Perhaps my most depressing day over my 8 wonderful years of...
Do the Kirtland Egyptian Papers Prove the Book of Abraham Was Translated from a Handful of Characters? See for Yourself! @ Mormanity
- In a small but highly valuable and colorful book on the Book of Abraham, John Gee's A...
Finally Leaving @ Zelophehad's Daughters
- I still remember a Sunday when I was a young teenager, when the bishop felt impressed to...
Are you ready for four times as much Satan? @ Zelophehad's Daughters
- President Nelson said in Priesthood Session last night that Satan is quadrupling his...
The Elephantine in the Room @ Mormanity
- Location of Elephantine on the Upper Nile, courtesy of Wikipedia's article,...
Some Thoughts on the End of the Exclusion Policy @ Zelophehad's Daughters
- The Church announced today that the exclusion policy of November 2015, which branded...
Prepentance @ Zelophehad's Daughters
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ZD is pleased to share the following press release from the Mormon Newsroom. The...
Maybe We Should Remember the "Hot" Part of the Prohibition on "Hot Drinks" @ Mormanity
- Some recent hot news points to the risks of drinking very hot beverages. A new study...
I Hope They Don’t Call Me on a Mission @ Zelophehad's Daughters
- I have an 18-year-old son who recently started his mission. He’s not going...
Misinformation and Fearmongering @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- Because the Democrats are proposing to actually do something about global warming, health...
My Uninspired "Translation" of the Missing Scroll/Script from the Hauglid-Jensen Presentation @ Mormanity
- While I have expressed disappointment with what was said, or rather, what wasn't said, at...
Friendly Fire from BYU: Opening Old Book of Abraham Wounds Without the First Aid @ Mormanity
- I was pained to receive a message from an LDS member who once had successfully overcome...
On Hiatus until June @ Benjamin the Scribe
- “I confess that I am constantly appalled by the scarcity of my knowledge, and the...
A Surprising Non-LDS Witness of the Plates: Lucy Harris @ Mormanity
- We commonly think of Lucy Harris as a hostile critic who opposed the Church and the Book...
A Hypotized Neighhor or Another Non-LDS Witness of the Gold Plates? @ Mormanity
- Recently I mentioned two unintentional non-LDS witnesses of the Book of Mormon, Michael...
"A Strange Piece of Work" Poorly Explained by a Non-LDS Witness of the Book of Mormon Translation @ Mormanity
- Critics of the Book of Mormon like to dismiss the detailed accounts of Book of Mormon...
Excerpts from Bruder: The Perplexingly Spiritual Life and Not Entirely Unexpected Death of a Mormon Missionary @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- As I mentioned in my last post, BCC Press has recently released a rather unusual mission...
Alma Son of Judah: The Ancient Bar Kokhba Letters from Israel Refute a Popular Argument Against the Authenticity of the Book of Mormon @ Mormanity
- One of the more popular "easy" arguments to dismiss the Book of Mormon is that the name...
Mission Memoir, Ultimate Tourney, and Other Random Stuff @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- It’s been a while since I posted anything. I’ll explain that in a minute, but first a...
Pyrric Victories @ Mormon Metaphysics
- JSTOR on Pyrric victories and the origin of the term.
Jerusalem’s Economy in Second Temple Period @ Mormon Metaphysics
- I’ve always had the assumption that the Jerusalem region was fairly poor — perhaps...
Chris on Religious Evolution @ Mormon Metaphysics
- Chris Goble has an interesting Twitter thread on the emergence of monotheism in axial...
Getting the Blog Back Together @ Mormon Metaphysics
- I’ve been posting regularly at Times and Seasons and plan on continuing with that....
News and updates! @ Benjamin the Scribe
- First, I am actively looking to relocate my blog away from Patheos. I’ve decided...
A Sacrament Meeting Sermon on Forgiveness @ Benjamin the Scribe
- We’re in a new ward, and with the new meeting changes, talks sermons are assigned...
NT Gospel Doctrine Lesson 3: Luke 2, Matthew 2 @ Benjamin the Scribe
- Arvo Pärt’s Nunc Dimittis, the Latin text of Luke 2:29-32, “Now...
NT Gospel Doctrine Lesson 2: Matthew 1, Luke 1 @ Benjamin the Scribe
- Arvo Pärt’s magnificent Magnificat, one of many songs based on the Latin...
Brief NT Introduction and Gospel Doctrine Lesson 1: John 1:1-14, Isa 61:1-3, JST Luke 3:4-11 @ Benjamin the Scribe
- Let’s start the new year by reminding ourselves how little we know, with a brief...
Moth and Rust and Pulmonary Hypertension @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- I’m a big fan of book reviews. We publish them in each issue of BYU Studies Quarterly,...
New Testament Gospel Doctrine Resources, Part 3: Everything Else @ Benjamin the Scribe
- (Post 1, post 2) I’ve decided to gather together my other recommendations into one...
Changing Political Parties @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- As should be clear to anyone who has been reading this blog, I am a Democrat. But I used...
A Reminiscence on a Missionary Christmas @ Benjamin the Scribe
- (Originally posted here.) When the mission president announced to our small group of...
Old Testament Gospel Doctrine Lesson 48: Zechariah, Malachi @ Benjamin the Scribe
- Merry Christmas, all. I hope it’s been a productive year working through the...
Old Testament Gospel Doctrine Lesson 47: Ezra 1–8; Nehemiah 1–2; 4; 6; 8 @ Benjamin the Scribe
- Ezra and Nehemiah originally constituted one book, so it works to treat them together....
"What Is Heaven Like?" @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- In the First Presidency’s Christmas Devotional earlier this month, President Nelson...
The Trouble with Tax Cuts @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- Everybody likes tax cuts. What’s not to like? But there is a proper time for tax cuts,...
The Moral Obligation of Latter-day Saint Voters @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- This year is an important year for Latter-day Saint voters, the large majority of whom...
“Too Frequent Repetition of His Name” @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- In the ongoing discussion regarding President Nelson’s instruction to use the full name...
To the People Defending the Church’s Decision to Ditch the “Mormon” Nickname @ Peculiar People
- First, I want you to know that I respect your decision to call yourself something other...
The Women Who Enable Abusive Men @ Peculiar People
- After the Kavanaugh hearing last Thursday, an image went viral that depicted a row of...
“What Boy Hasn’t Done This in High School?” Brett Kavanaugh and the Rotten Goose Egg Party at Oaklawn Park @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- Failed Florida congressional candidate Gina Sosa is probably looking for a rock to hide...
Joseph, Potiphar’s Wife, and the Truth about False Allegations @ Peculiar People
- In response to multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against Brett Kavanaugh,...
Robert Kirby and Edgy Mormon Men @ Peculiar People
- Like many progressive Mormons, I’ve enjoyed Robert Kirby’s self-deprecating...
To the Men Who Grabbed McKenna Denson and Dragged her away from the Pulpit @ Peculiar People
- To the men who grabbed McKenna Denson without her consent and dragged her away from the...
Why Would a Feminist Keep her Father’s Name? @ Peculiar People
- Back in April I wrote about my experience with software systems and institutions...
The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- By now, Rudy Giuliani’s infamous declaration to NBC’s Chuck Todd (“Truth isn’t...
Mormon: The New Shibboleth @ Peculiar People
- Here’s hoping Lindsey releases a new, revised video: I’m a member of Church...
Sorry to Bother You: The (Human) Body as Technology @ Peculiar People
- This review contains major spoilers for Boots Riley’s 2018 film Sorry to Bother You....
Do Married Mormon Men Understand Consent? @ Peculiar People
- Image obtained through creative commons. I was 28 years old when I got married...
$2,200 for a Screwdriver, and the Military Didn’t Buy It @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- Well, it has been an interesting summer, to say the least. On Memorial Day, I was playing...
Economic Insanity: Chapter 8 (part 2) @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- Competition Restrained by a Higher Good (Part 2)Who Really Believes in Unfettered...
Economic Insanity: Chapter 8 (part 1) @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- Competition Restrained By a Higher Good (Part 1)The fundamental question of management...
Remembering June 9, 1978 @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- In honor of the fortieth anniversary of the announcement of the revelation that ended one...
Economic Insanity: Chapter 7 (part 2) @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- A Nation of Owners (Part 2)The Federal ModelEach responsible citizen in the United States...
Making Ministering Holy @ Peculiar People
- My priesthood lesson prompt was very open-ended: “ministering.” My mind leapt to the...
Economic Insanity: Chapter 7 (part 1) @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- A Nation of Owners (Part 1)Employees are being paid to produce, not to make themselves...
Some Tips on Writing Fake Mormon Newsroom Stories @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- This morning my son emailed me a link to the now infamous fake news story about President...
A Pie-in-the-Sky Blueprint for a New Political Party @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- If I had the time and money (hence, pie in the sky), I would love to start a new...
Explicit and Implicit Doctrines in the Book of Mormon @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- There are doctrines in the Book of Mormon that are taught explicitly, and there are...
The Alternative to Alternative Facts @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- The alternative to alternative facts is, of course, real facts. So, in the interest of...
What Will Combined MP Quorums Mean? @ Small and Simple
- In a shocking announcement during the Priesthood Session of the 2018 March/April General...
Economic Insanity: Chapter 6 (part 2) @ Mormonomics & Mormonethics
- A Nation of Wage Earners (Part 2)The Individual versus the Human ResourceThe fundamental...
How Can Anyone Remain a Mormon in the Face of All the “Facts”? @ Small and Simple
- One of the things that you will see sometimes in anti-Mormon forums is what appears to be...
About That Taylor Christensen Video @ Small and Simple
- There is a video making the Mormon facebook circuit by Taylor Christensen. He starts...
The New York Times Thomas Monson Obituary and Fake News @ Small and Simple
- The president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently died, and the...
Perfect College Football Playoff System: 2017 Version @ Small and Simple
- Several years ago I published to the world the perfect college football playoff system. ...
Moderate Worship Losing Ground @ Mormon Metaphysics
- While it’s not really new news, Sociological Science had an interesting story on how...
Philosophy, Science and Religion: The Divine Hiddenness Argument @ Small and Simple
- The fourth week of the Coursera course on Philosophy, Science and Religion focuses on the...
Philosophy, Science and Religion: Friendly Disagreement, Testimonial Knowledge, and the Importance of Fellowship @ Small and Simple
- The third week of the Coursera course on Philosophy, Science and Religion addresses...
Philosophy, Science and Religion: The Conflict Between Science and Religion @ Small and Simple
- In the second week of the Coursera course on Philosophy, Science and Religion, professor...
Philosophy, Science and Religion: The Mind and The Religious Experience @ Small and Simple
- I am taking an online course through Coursera on Philosophy, Science and Religion. In...
Testimony and the Spiritual Experience @ Small and Simple
- I was raised in the religious tradition of my parents, which happens to be The Church of...
Bows, Arrows & the Book of Mormon @ Mormon Metaphysics
- This is just a “holder” post for a discussion I was having over whether...
Salvation in Mormonism @ Mormon Metaphysics
- Robert at Scriptural Mormonism does a good job discussing the place of grace in “old...
Terryl Givens on Mormons at the Forefront @ Mormon Metaphysics
- Terryl Givens has up an essay at First Things called “Mormons at the Forefront.”...
God and Evolutionary Psychology @ Mormon Metaphysics
- Evolutionary psychology suggests God makes more sense than not. I’m not sure he sees...
PEL on Scientism @ Mormon Metaphysics
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“…[scientism] is contributing to a growing trend on the left, quite as ferocious...
