Category: Scriptures

  • What Does My Lack of Personal Trials Say About Me?

    I’ve been thinking long and hard about what I should talk about in my inaugural post on this blog.  Quite honestly, when I agreed to do a stint as a guest blogger, I thought it would be pretty easy.  But, lately, it seems that all my Mormonism-related thoughts have been trite and meaningless.  For example,…

  • Breathing the Breath of God

    Genesis (2:7) says that God breathed life into Adam’s nostrils. Is our life a portion of God’s? Jesus quoted a Psalm (82:6) that said, “Ye are gods,” when confronted about his claims to divinity. Mormons are usually not so bold, but there is certainly an element in our tradition that states that humans are children…

  • Dow 6,000

    One of the things people find odd about Mormons is our claim to be led by a prophet.

  • Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah at BYU

    This looks like the sort of conference that makes me sad at times that I don’t live in Utah:

  • Faith and Healing

    “And again, it shall come to pass that he that hath faith in me to be healed, and is not appointed unto death, shall be healed. He who hath faith to see shall see. He who hath faith to hear shall hear. The lame who hath faith to leap shall leap.” (D&C 42:48-51)  

  • Genesis and Geology: A Dialogue

    Genesis and Geology

  • Getting over Nibley

    Of late I have been thinking of late about how to read Mormon scriptures.  In particular, I have been working on some passages in the Book of Mormon on legal interpretation and thinking about how best to approach these sections.  By and large, it seems to me that there have been three basic models of how to…

  • Elijah and the Sealing Power

    I’ve been thinking about this week’s Relief Society lesson.

  • Commentary on 1 Ne. 17, concluded

    Continuing part 1 , part 2, and part 3. Nephi’s response to his brothers directly attacks their understanding of Moses’s significance.

  • Commentary on 1 Nephi 17, pt. 3

    Continuing part 1 and part 2. Laman and Lemuel offer up their gloss on the story of Moses in verse 22 and in so doing model a particular type of scriptural and legal interpretation.  They say: And we know that the people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they…

  • Commentary on 1 Nephi 17, pt. 2

    Laman and Lemuel make their appearance in chapter 17 in verse 17, where they say:

  • Commentary on 1 Nephi 17, pt. 1

    This is the first of a series of posts in which I will be offering some commentary on 1 Nephi 17. Why that particular chapter you ask? The answer is that I believe that chapter 17 is setting forth a method of scriptural interpretation that proved to be very important both for the Book of…

  • The TRUTH about the Book of Mormon pronouncing guide EXPOSED

    The Mormon Church does not want even its own members to know how to pronounce Shimnilom

  • The Slaughter of the Innocents

    After the wise men came, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

  • Relics

    The Book of Mormon is a reliquary in prose. In some extensive sections and at some critical moments, what drives the narrative is the question: how did a set of golden plates, a steel sword, a ball of curious workmanship, a breastplate, and two translucent stones end up inside a stone box buried in a…

  • Bones

    One of the subterranean threads running throughout the Book of Mormon is the mystery of whose bones are heaped upon the land northward.

  • The Canonization of the Book of Mormon?

    Penguin Books has just published a “Penguin Classics” edition of the Book of Mormon edited by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp. Penguin Classics, of course, are the paperback editions of literary staples like Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. They are printed and marketed largely as texts for college classes. The assumption is that a text included in…

  • M Gets a Joke

    A while back our household sat down to watch an episode of Monk. We like Monk because not only is it funny, it’s also sad and tender and offers good – sometimes very good – cultural satire. As I fed M she kept turning her head to look at the TV, watching whatever it is…

  • The War Chapters

    And a great sleep did come over the land; yea, verily, there was much dozing and nodding of heads in all of the sabbath schools.

  • Revelation 3:1-13

    Previous posts in this series are here.

  • Revelation 2:12-29

    Previous post in this series here.

  • Reading Psalm 137 as a Microcosm of Discipleship

    Psalm 137 is one of those wonderful and paradoxical passages of scripture that contains within itself a universe.

  • Jesus Said . . .

    I’m reading a commentary on Psalms and in the section on the authorship of the Psalms, the writer has this to say:

  • Korihor and the United States Reports

    Let’s read the Book of Mormon as a commentary on American constitutional law and vice versa. Alma 30:7-10 reads:

  • Moral Hazard in the Scriptures

    For those hoping to find more economics in their scripture study…

  • Egyptian Brass Plates and a naming contest

    If this is common knowledge I completely missed it. So I post this in memory of all those who also slept through indecent chunks of early morning Seminary.

  • Women Who Know

    … grow tomatoes in their home garden, and lots of them. Men who know grow them, too.

  • Amazon’s take on the Book of Mormon

    Amazon.com has an algorithm for noting the “Statistically Improbably Phrases” in any given book. The idea is to look for word combinations that are uncommon generally but common in the book in the hope that this provides potential buyers some insight into what the book is about. Here are the ones for the Doubleday edition…

  • Joseph and Moses

    Most are acquainted with the passage in D&C 130 where God gives a fascinating response to Joseph’s query about the Second Coming:

  • We Did It

    We’ve finally read the entire Book of Mormon as a family, all of us (those that can read, anyway) taking turns verse by verse. It only took us four and a half years, and we’re ready to do it again.