When two very similar stories–very similiar, that is, except that one is about a man and another is about a woman–are found in a Gospel, they are called a gender pair. While gender pairs occur in all the gospels, they are particularly prominent in Luke: Read More

About two weeks ago I went to the University of Richmond to do some research on Mormon history. Thanks to Terryl Givens, Richmond has acquired a set of the Selected Collections DVDs that were released a while ago by the Church Archives. Hence, I found myself in a library carrel in Virginia reading Orson Hyde’s handwritten 1834 minutes for the Kirtland High Council. Read More

Kaimi wanted the rest of the story. Read More

It looks like a coffee table book but it reads like top-notch scholarship. . . . Read More

Actually, goodbye first. Read More

In a discussion at the ExII blog on the Church’s recent decision renovate downtown Salt Lake, a commenter named Dave justified his support of the Church’s position this way: Read More

October. Growing up the month meant, above all, sand and water. The leaves turned; we packed the station wagon with coolers and towels and kites and puzzles; we drove out of the city, past Mt. Rainier, through woods, and toward the coast. Read More

Yesterday was the first day of Sukkot, the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles, or Festival of Booths; the holiday continues for seven days, during which observant Jews will build and take some of their meals in, perhaps even sleep in, a sukkah, a small home within (or outside) their home. Read More

Upon seeing this title, my husband asked, “Was that the ancient Hebrew equivalent of Better Homes and Gardens?” Read More

The premise for the new Day in the Life series at Feminist Mormon Housewives is simple: Selected contributors (guests and regulars) write about their daily routines. The beauty comes from seeing how a series of diverse and differently situated women negotiate the often mundane challenges of life and of lived Mormonism. Kudos to Lisa and her cohorts for putting together this series, and to the participants for the bravery and frankness that allows us to peek into their routines and see pieces of our own lives — fears, joys, burdens, hopes — mirrored back at us. Read More

At first blush, the Joseph Smith Translation for Mark 14:8 doesn’t appear to do anything: Read More

A question that keeps coming back to me: does God write? Read More

This post is not two months early. It’s two weeks late. Around here, Christmas cookies and candy and multiple varieties of Stollen have been available in grocery stores since the last week of September, and the local hypermarket has a whole aisle devoted to Christmas decorations. Read More

Julio stood behind the blue door, waiting. Blanca stood there too. Read More

Do you ever have one of those odd moments when you are seeing something unfamiliar and suddenly it becomes extremely familiar? Or perhaps you see something very familiar but it suddenly reminds you of something equally familiar but totally different? I had one of those experiences today. Read More

I’ve been thinking about President Packer’s Sunday talk–mostly centered on the idea that we have nothing to apologize for in LDS history and should proudly defend our heroic, pioneering past. Read More

Contact between religions is a lot like contact between languages. One way for two language communities to interact is through invasion. Read More

Some of our readers may have felt like this cartoon when Dave Landrith’s last blog met a(n un?)timely demise. Fortunately for those readers, Dave has now made like this cartoon — the resemblance is uncanny, really — and started a new party blog. Fellow inmates travelers include a random John, John F., annegb, danithew, and Proud Daughter of Eve. The blog’s tagline suggests that it is written by peculiar people; truer words, I am relatively sure, were never spoken. Also, it looks really spiffy. Welcome (back) the bloggernacle, folks! Read More

My daughter loves to play on the hardwood floor next to the stone hearth behind the wooden rocking chair. She is one. I keep on thinking this is an accident waiting to happen and tend to move the chair, spread the toys away from the hearth, and sit down beside her just in case. Read More

It’s been great to have Seraphine as a guest blogger these past few weeks. Her posts have covered a variety of topics and have never been uninteresting; I suspect that her posts on feminism will continue to draw readers and commenters for some time to come. (All of Seraphine’s T&S posts are available here.) For now, though, Seraphine returns to the garden from whence we borrowed her, the always-interesting Zelophehad’s Daughters; readers who enjoyed Seraphine’s posts here are advised to look for more over at ZD. Read More

An amazing documentary premiered on byu.tv today between sessions of conference. Read More

I have been thinking all weekend about Russell’s post attacking the Mormon legislators who voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The post was a rant. Russell is disgusted and outraged, but there was more to the post than that. Russell didn’t simply think that the Mormon legislators were wrong. He thought that they had betrayed their Mormoness at some deep level. I’m trying to figure out whether or not there is any value in what Russell has done. Read More

“[L]iterature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear, and, save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null, and negligible and non-existent. On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February� –-Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill Read More

My childhood was split between northern Virginia, outside of DC, and the international community in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I went to high school at The Cate School near Santa Barbara, CA. I met Kristine during a year at MIT, took a great class on scripture study from Jim at BYU, and just missed Melissa in the Japan Tokyo South Mission, finishing my service a little before she arrived. I met Adam at the University of Notre Dame and completed my PhD in Philosophy there in 2006. I specialized in ethics and wrote my dissertation on happiness and friendship in neo-Aristotelian… Read More