Our unhappy political moment has unfortunately corrected a longstanding asymmetry in ideologically-driven exit options.
Author: Jonathan Green
Jonathan Green has been described as a scholar of German, master of trivia, and academic vagabond. He is an instructor of German in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of North Dakota. His books include Printing and Prophecy: Prognostication and Media Change, 1450– 1550 (2011), and The Strange and Terrible Visions of Wilhelm Friess: Paths of Prophecy in Reformation Europe (2014).
They’re not wrong
They’re not wrong. Not about everything.
I disagree with their choice of candidate. What they want would have—has had—disastrous results, but that doesn’t mean they’re entirely wrong.
What I miss about home church—and why I need to go back to sacrament meeting
I’ve heard multiple people say how much they’ve enjoyed the last five months of home church. Studying the scriptures however they want, and worshiping each Sunday as a family? More, please. Now that my ward has resumed meeting, there’s a lot to miss about home church.
“By his own admission”: a one-footnote review
John Hammond’s Quest for the New Jerusalem: A Mormon Generation Sagastates that Sidney Rigdon, “by his own admission, ‘made up’ religious experiences in his youth,” which seems like something worth looking into.
Notes on Book of Mormon Philology. Vb4. The utility of philology: Jacob and Sherem
Imagining the Book of Mormon as a complex work reflecting numerous steps of compilation and abridgment helps explain some curious features of the encounter with Sherem in Jacob 7.
Notes on Book of Mormon Philology. Vb2-3. The utility of philology: Nephite origins
Thinking of the Book of Mormon as the result of a series of textual accretions and combinations might help make sense of how curiously overdetermined the account of Nephite origins is.
Notes on Book of Mormon Philology. V.The permissibility and utility of philology for studying the Book of Mormon
Is philological deliberation useful for studying the Book of Mormon? Is it even permitted?
Notes on Book of Mormon Philology. IV. The Puzzle of 3 Nephi
Why is 3 Nephi, which records the central event in the history of Nephite salvation and destruction, located between Helaman and 4 Nephi?
Notes on Book of Mormon Philology. IIIc. The source structure of the Book of Mormon
If you trace the history of a text from earlier manuscripts to later ones, it’s not unusual for the text to be extended in various ways.
Notes on Book of Mormon Philology. IIIb. The material culture of Nephite literacy
The material culture of Nephite literacy is the one aspect of Nephite civilization about which we have any kind of historical evidence.
Notes on Book of Mormon Philology. IIIb note 1. A note on the uniformity of the Golden Plates
Mark Ashurst-McGee asks about the uniformity of the Golden Plates in eyewitness accounts, even though they contain both Mormon’s abridgement and Nephi’s small plates, and this is in fact genuinely weird.
Notes on Book of Mormon Philology. IIIa. Nephite literacy
Unless someone gets lucky with a spade or a metal detector, the full extent of Mormon’s sources will remain unknown. To keep even tentative answers on the side of plausibility rather than fantasy, how we think about Mormon’s sources should be informed by any information we have about Nephite literacy and textual culture.
Notes on Book of Mormon philology. II. What did Mormon know?
The logical place for a philological approach to the Book of Mormon to begin is with Mormon, its eponymous editor, and his sources. How much did Mormon know about the Nephites, and what kind of records did he have to work with?
Notes on Book of Mormon philology. The philological instinct
When I look at recent studies of the Book of Mormon, the biggest deficit I see is the lack of instinct for philology.
Quodlibet: Vaccination
Whereas disease, as now with COVID-19, causes death to many and harm to many more, and worsens poverty and hunger even among those it does not strike directly, and causes fear in those who await infection and its consequences, and inflicts sorrow and grief on those who lose family and beloved friends; while Jesus, in His atoning mercy
The Church under Quarantine: SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis seems to be something business majors learn their first semester. I’ve never been a business major, but it seems like a reasonable way to start thinking about what the church is facing in these virus-invested times of unknown duration.
Notes on the Book of Abraham
I’m only a translator in the sense that people keep paying me to translate things for them.
Home church (part 1/x). Pandemics for kids
They say novel Coronavirus disease is easier on kids, but I’m not sure that’s the case.
The Crux of Historicity
For all their differences, the essential and irreducible historical dilemma of the Old Testament, New Testament, and Book of Mormon is very much the same.
Times and Seasons Welcomes (back) Steve Smith
To update what Craig wrote in 2010: Times and Seasons is happy to welcome as a guest blogger Steve Smith, who teaches and writes mainly about religious freedom, constitutional law, and jurisprudence. His most recent book is Pagans and Christians in the City (Eerdmans, 2018). Steve graduated from BYU in 1976 before studying law at Yale, and he has taught at various law schools including Notre Dame, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan (as a visiting professor), Virginia (as a visitor), and the University of San Diego, where he is currently employed. Steve’s wife Merina also attended BYU, and they have five children. Somehow we have convinced Steve to share some more of his thoughts with us. Welcome, Steve.
Pagans and Christians in the City (2/2)
Don’t bring immanent evidence to a transcendent argument.
“Should Mormons use Medicaid?”
Yes. Should historians write about current events? Maybe not. But when they do, they shouldn’t do it like this.
Devotion
Do not ascribe to fear or compulsion what can be best explained by love.
Notes on Revelation
When I teach Revelation 1-11 to my youth Sunday School class, I’ll probably start off by saying something about gasoline.
Pagans and Christians in the City (1/2)
Steven Smith (who has occasionally favored us with comments here at T&S) is not the first to describe our current cultural moment as a new conflict between pagans and Christians. As Smith describes at length in Pagans and Christians in the City, others, on both sides of the divide, have done so using the same language. Smith does argue quite convincingly, however, that this new conflict of pagan vs. Christian is not merely an apt metaphor, but a sober description of the American religious landscape.
Scouting for Life
I don’t know if a complete break with Scouting was necessary. I would have been content if the church had only eliminated Cub Scouts and the Eagle Scout rank.
Worst General Conference posts, ranked
General Conference begins in two days. I’m looking forward to it, but not as much to the online responses.
Voir dire
Voir dire, from Norman French, is pronounced “jury selection” by normal people, but I had always stayed one step ahead of the law and never seen it first hand.
Remembering Clark Goble
This hit my inbox this afternoon: In case you hadn’t heard, Clark Goble just passed away from a stroke.
This has all happened before
Over at the Interpreter, Nate Oman asks an important question. How will the church explain its relevance to a new generation that is less interested in the narratives that have served the church well in the past? Or as he puts it, what will be the “new language in which to celebrate the Restoration”?