Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, August 2024

Erekson, Keith A. and Grow, Matthew J. (2024) “Assuming Stewardship: Notes on the Recent Transfer from Community of Christ,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 1, Article 2.

On March 5, 2024, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Community of Christ jointly announced that “the responsibility and ownership for the Kirtland Temple (fig. 1), several historic buildings in Nauvoo, and various manuscripts and artifacts” had “officially transferred” between the two churches. In the joint statement of announcement, President Russell M. Nelson observed, “We are deeply honored to assume the stewardship of these sacred places, documents, and artifacts. We thank our friends at Community of Christ for their great care and cooperation in preserving these historical treasures thus far. We are committed to doing the same.” For Latter-day Saints, the transaction involves materials that relate to significant events and people in the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, including places visited by heavenly messengers and sites of revelation and divine instruction. Collectively, these materials bear witness that the Redeemer invites us to come unto him, receive the ordinances of salvation, and gain enduring joy.

Schaeffer-Bullock, Kelly N. (2024) “Rediscovering Zoram: The Chief Na?ar of the Commander of the Fortress,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 1, Article 3.

There are several prominent figures in the opening chapters of the Book of Mormon whose roles, responsibilities, and titles may have eluded the modern reader. As more is learned about ancient Israelite laws, customs, and culture through archaeological successes and academic research, previous biblical scholarship is reworked, refined, or totally redesigned. So too with academic scholarship on the Book of Mormon. The way readers understand the central figures in the opening chapters of the Book of Mormon must be regularly reassessed as additional information is obtained. There is still a great deal more to discover about the people who played such a central role in the establishment of a new nation. Recent discoveries and scholarship may shed light on a man to whom very few verses are dedicated but whose legacy cannot be ignored: Zoram.

Sears, Joshua M. (2024) “From Biology Major to Religion Professor: Personal Reflections on Evolution,”BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 1, Article 4.

When I arrived at Brigham Young University as an excited freshman, my plan was to major in biology. I had really enjoyed biology in high school and scored a perfect 5 on the AP exam, so I figured this was something I could be good at. That first year I took courses in general biology, biodiversity, chemistry, and physical science.

Bushman, Richard Lyman (2024) “Translation and the World Order,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 1, Article 5.

Joseph Smith published three books he called translations: his masterwork, the Book of Mormon, translated from gold plates when he was twenty-four and published in March 1830; the eight chapters of the book of Moses based on Genesis in the Bible, begun in June 1830 and completed by February of the following year; and the book of Abraham, translated from scrolls that the Church purchased from Michael Chandler in 1835 and published in 1842. It is hard to think of any prophetic figure in religious history who relied as extensively on translations to spread his message as did Joseph Smith.

Wacker, Grant (2024) “On the Road with Richard Bushman,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 1, Article 6.

Richard Bushman invited me to respond to his essay, given my long-standing interest in the Protestant encounter with world religions. With this very short essay of my own, I am pleased to offer a few words of appreciation and thoughts about further inquiries.

Bushman, Richard Lyman (2024) “Response to Grant Wacker,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 1, Article 7.

As so often happens when Latter-day Saint historians discuss Joseph Smith with their non-LDS compatriots, Grant Wacker wants to welcome Joseph Smith into the company of American prophets, while I insist that Smith is bizarre, strange, and other. Wacker sees Smith as a recognizable figure on the American religious landscape; I see him as an outlander notably because he presented himself initially as a translator. I admit it had never occurred to me to think of Pentecostal speakers in tongues as translators, but of course they were. It seemed a natural connection to Wacker, who is deeply conversant in Pentecostal culture. I stress the differences: Joseph Smith had an actual text he was translating (so he said); he told the history of an ancient people who wrote on the plates; his translation became a book of scripture equal with the Bible. Does that set him apart or not?

Faulconer, James E. (2024) “Can God Truly Forget My Sins?: Christian Temporality and the Possibility of Repentance,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 1, Article 8.

When we think about repentance, we face a conundrum. On one hand, we are promised new life. As Paul says, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). On the other hand, the repentant person remains the same person that he or she was. In the younger Alma’s case, he is the person who “had murdered many of [God’s] children, or rather led them away unto destruction” (Alma 36:14). How can Alma be both a new person and the person who led many to destruction? We are told that God will no longer remember our sins, as in passages such as Doctrine and Covenants 58:42 (“Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more”) and Jeremiah 31:34 (“I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more”). Such scriptures imply that God no longer remembers the previous Alma, but how is that possible? We often deal with this question by assuming that God’s forgetting should be understood metaphorically. After all, our all-knowing God cannot forget anything and still be all-knowing. Contrary to that usual assumption, I argue that God can, in fact, forget sin.

Matson, Joshua M. (2024) “Decoding the Self-Tracking Symbols of Wilford Woodruff’s Journals,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 1, Article 9.

Wilford Woodruff’s journals have been celebrated as one of the greatest textual records of the Restoration. A prominent, yet almost entirely unexplored, component of Woodruff’s journals is his creating, implementing, and consistently drawing symbols and pictures alongside his near-daily autobiographical record. Within his fifteen-volume journal spanning more than a sixty-year period, Woodruff drew approximately nine thousand images. The first of these symbols appears in an entry dated March 23, 1837, and the final image is drawn on March 19, 1897. These images can be divided into two groups. The first are unique illustrations that appear erratically throughout the journals and seem to be a visual representation of a single event being described on a specific date. These account for approximately one thousand of the total drawings. The second group consists of eighteen symbols that Woodruff employs repeatedly in his record. These drawings, which I will refer to as self-tracking symbols, appear approximately eight thousand times, each within a predictable context throughout Woodruff’s journals.

Uriona, T. J. (2024) “The Curse of the Covenant: The Deuteronomic Curses in the Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 2, Article 2.

The ancient Near East had a rich and well-developed covenant tradition that helped to define the relationships between covenant parties. Much like modern contracts, which tend to follow a conventional construction, there is within the ancient Near East tradition a prominent covenant construction known as the suzerain-vassal treaty. Covenant treaties of this type stipulated the conditions of loyalty between a lord or suzerain to the vassal or subject. A major feature of this type of treaty was the promise of blessings as well as the threat of curses. The blessings and curses ensured covenant fidelity and maintained the social and political relationships between covenant parties. It is this covenant type that seems to underlie the covenant God made with Israel under Moses’s leadership (see Ex. 20–24). This is exemplified in the utterance, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life” (Deut. 30:19).

Nielson, Rex P. (2024) ““They’re Just Rehearsing”: Gospel Methodology and the Humanities,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 2, Article 3.

As BYU approaches the fiftieth anniversary of President Spencer W. Kimball’s landmark speech “The Second Century of Brigham Young University,” Church and university leaders continue to revisit this prophetic talk while reflecting upon the educational mission and potential of Brigham Young University. One notable phrase from President Kimball’s discourse that has gained currency at the university points to a potential difference between the educational efforts of BYU and the work of other universities: “Gospel methodology, concepts, and insights can help us to do what the world cannot do in its own frame of reference.”

Warburton, Brian A. (2024) “A Forensic and Historical Look at John Taylor’s Watch: Evidence of Divine Mercy,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 2, Article 4.

In June 2023, the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced the public availability of forensic and historical research recently completed on the pocket watch of John Taylor. Taylor, an Apostle of the Church at the time, was present when Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed by a mob in the Hancock County Jail in Carthage, Illinois, on June 27, 1844. During the attack, Taylor was shot four times, and his watch was damaged. This artifact has long held a special place in the hearts of many members of the Church as a physical link to the last moments of the lives of the Prophet Joseph and Hyrum, the patriarch to the Church.

Frederick, Nicholas J. and Spencer, Joseph M. (2024) “It’s Not the End of the World; It’s Just the Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation in the Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 2, Article 5.

Among the Book of Mormon’s most remarkable characteristics is its consistent interaction with the Bible. The Bible haunts this book, showing up in subtle allusions and type scenes as well as direct quotations both short and long. Further, the Book of Mormon explicitly reflects on the Bible’s historical origins, canonical shape, and scriptural destiny. As has long been recognized, the Book of Mormon’s most sustained interest is in the book of Isaiah. But at least one other biblical focus deserves detailed notice because it has a place of some privilege in the Book of Mormon: the book of Revelation. Indeed, it stands alone among New Testament books as one that early Book of Mormon authors specifically knew in advance would exist and that later Book of Mormon authors looked back on as existing already. Other potential New Testament sources (like most potential Old Testament sources) exist more spectrally, hovering around the Book of Mormon, influencing its language and composition in translated form. The book of Revelation or the Apocalypse, on the other hand, is explicitly referred to in the Book of Mormon as a text, deserving of attention as such.

Lavender, Jordan (2024) “Jesus and the Torah in Matthew Beyond Replacement Theology,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 2, Article 6.

The book of Matthew is a first-century Jewish text that reflects the debates and concerns of Second Temple Judaism, a period of Jewish religious practice lasting from the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in the sixth century BC to its destruction by Roman forces in AD 70. The Gospel of Matthew’s position on the observance of the Torah, or Jewish law, has been the subject of scholarly debate, with some claiming that Matthew advocates for the observance of Jewish law and others arguing that the Gospel proposes abandoning the observance of Jewish law. This paper follows the scholars in the former camp, who claim Matthew believed that Jewish law was still in force, even if the legal conclusions presented in the Gospel differ from protorabbinic legal practice. This paper further posits that the Gospel of Matthew reflects the intrasectarian debates within Second Temple Judaism rather than the supersessionism characteristic of second-century Christianismos. The Gospel of Matthew’s antagonism toward certain Jewish groups and traditions, especially the Pharisees, was similar to the ways in which other Jewish groups of the time expressed their identities as distinct sects.

Turley, Richard E. Jr. (2024) “Lessons We Can Learn from the Mountain Meadows Massacre,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 2, Article 7.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 has been called the worst incident in Utah, Latter-day Saint, and northwest Arkansas history. I don’t remember the first time I heard about it, but I coauthored my first publication about the atrocity more than thirty years ago, an article on the subject published in a multivolume encyclopedia set issued by Macmillan Publishing Company of New York in 1992.

Gee, John (2024) “Ten Views on the Falling Away,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 2, Article 8.

Latter-day Saints have long known about the falling away or Apostasy of Christianity from the Church established by Jesus Christ. The two terms both come from 2 Thessalonians 2:3. Falling away is the expression used by the King James translators to render the Greek word apostasia, which came into English as a loan word: apostasy. The terms are thus synonyms for the same thing. The term apostasia was a later form of the classical term apostasis and a more intense form of the term stasis, all of which mean “dissension,” “revolt,” or “rebellion.” The Septuagintuses both the terms apostasia and apostasis to translate the Hebrew word ma?al as “disloyalty, infidelity, fraud (KJV: falsehood, grievously, sore, transgression, trespass),” mered as “rebellion (KJV: rebellion),” beliyya?al as “uselessness, wickedness (KJV: Belial, evil, naughty, ungodly, wicked),” and mešûb?h as “falling away, apostasy (KJV: backsliding, turning away).”

Olsen, Steven L. (2024) “Liberty Jail: Seedbed for Eternal Temple Blessings,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 2, Article 9.

The difficult Missouri winter of 1838–39 exacerbated an emerging existential crisis for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its founding prophet, Joseph Smith. Latter-day Saints were being driven from their homes and killed by armed militias who justified their aggression with the “extermination order” of Governor Lilburn W. Boggs. This forced evacuation also dispossessed the Latter-day Saints of their “land of promise” and “center place of Zion”—the capital of their millennial utopia that was named for the primordial patriarch Enoch’s “City of Holiness,” whose inhabitants’ righteousness was sufficient, according to Joseph’s visions, to effect its translation into heaven, where it became God’s “abode forever.”

Noorda, Rachel. “Salvation and sweet rolls: an examination of Mormon diet books.” Fat Studies (2024): 1-16.

Religious diet books highlight the overlap between religious and diet cultures. This article examines the intersection of Mormonism, diet culture, and fatphobia through an analysis of Mormon diet books published between 1990 and 2015. The study explores how Mormon diet books leverage the Word of Wisdom (the LDS health code) to promote weight loss and reinforce religious obedience. By framing dietary compliance as a spiritual mandate, these texts link physical health and body size to moral and spiritual worthiness. This conflation of body and spirit, rooted in Mormon theology, amplifies fatphobia by promoting thinness as a sign of obedience and spiritual strength. The article employs content analysis to identify themes of obedience and missionary work within these diet books. It argues that while these books purport to offer health guidance, they ultimately propagate a problematic narrative that equates thinness with spiritual success and moral superiority. The study highlights the broader implications of such narratives, emphasizing how they contribute to fatphobia and impact individual and community perceptions of body size and health within Mormon culture.

Lefevor, G. Tyler, and Samuel J. Skidmore. “How Can Sexual and Gender Minority Latter-day Saints Resolve Identity Conflict and Improve Their Mental Health? Results from a 2-4 Year Longitudinal Study.” Behavior Therapy (2024).

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) clients who are raised in conservative religious traditions often find themselves caught between competing narratives about how to best improve mental health and resolve conflict between their sexual/gender and religious identities. In an effort to guide these individuals and the therapists who serve them, we present longitudinal data from 359 sexual and gender minority individuals raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (i.e., SGM Latter-day Saints). These data, gathered at baseline in 2020 or 2022 and then again two and/or four years later in 2022 and/or 2024, answers the question, “what can I do today that is most likely to yield positive mental health and conflict resolution in the future?” All analyses were pre-registered prior to data collection of the most recent longitudinal wave. Bivariate analyses between baseline variables and depression/conflict resolution in 2024 suggest that (a) self-compassion, (b) social support, (c) authentic religious engagement, (d) reduced internalized homonegativity, (e) outness, and (f) seeing masturbation as more acceptable were all related to subsequent alleviated depression or enhanced conflict resolution. Regression analyses conducted separately for conflict resolution and depression suggest that only self-compassion, internalized homonegativity, and authentic religious engagement emerged as indicators of subsequent depression or conflict resolution. These findings suggest that the most important actions SGM individuals can take today to have better mental health and less conflict in 2 or 4 years include developing compassionate stances toward themselves, reducing stigmatizing views of themselves, and engaging authentically with their faith (if applicable).