- Southern Saint on Church Education Expansion Under Ernest Wilkinson: “Though the Junior College program didn’t work out, there was a silver lining to it. The land that the Church bought in Portland Oregon for a junior college in the Pacific Northwest proved to be the perfect place for the Portland Oregon Temple to be constructed on a few decades later.” Oct 28, 08:30
- on Reading the New Testament on Its Own Terms: A Review of Alex Douglas’s The New Testament for Latter-day Saints: “Well, I haven’t read this and I likely won’t but you won’t convince me by saying “Toward Understanding the New Testament” was a book that “laid essential groundwork.” That is one of the worst books on the NT I have ever had the misfortune to read. Even if you set aside it’s completely skeptical, non-believing stance (it spends way too much time explaining away the miracles), it’s scholarship was 30 years or more out of date when it came out. Despite a handful of references to recent (at the time) scholarship, it was basically a work of pre-1950s New Testament scholarship.” Oct 27, 18:28
- on Latter-day Saint Apologetics Tier List: “Under Book of Mormon complexity, one thing I find compelling is that the drivers of important plot points are sometimes never explained. Fiction writers don’t do that. Zeniff’s effort to recolonize the Land of Nephi was in defiance of the prophetic command given to King Mosiah(1) for the Nephites to leave that land. Nothing goes right for long, even for Alma’s repentant people, until they obey that commandment and return to Zarahemla. This would have been a classic place for some “And thus we see…” commentary from Mormon, but he never says it. Maybe he didn’t want to bring out that the Nephite Church was started among an apostate people. You have to look at the story as a whole and connect it back to previous history to see it. King Mosiah(2) strongly opposes sending anyone to the Land of Nephi to check on the people who went there. Apparently he fears that this will stir up the desire to return (even Captain Moroni is briefly tempted by it). The time when the people demand that he send an expedition is described as the end of a period of peace. When they finally force his hand, he very cleverly puts a descendent of Zarahemla in charge, not a Nephite, even though this is Nephite business. Ammon(1) has no emotional ties to the Land of Nephi and is not at all tempted to stay there. It wouldn’t surprise me if the whole expedition was made up of Mulekites. Mormon dutifully records that Ammon was chosen, but doesn’t say anything about the significance of the choice. Maybe he didn’t recognize it. For a fiction writer, this would have been one of the highlights of Mosiah’s story: how he outmaneuvered his opponents and helped bring all the Nephites home to Zarahemla where they belonged.” Oct 27, 09:50
- on Latter-day Saint Apologetics Tier List: “For the Chiasmus’ and other Hebrew parallel poetry in the Book of Mormon, one of the podcasts I listed to went over where they are found in the Book of Mormon. The common pattern is that they a found where a righteous individual is writing. The letters from the Lamanites don’t have them, the off-the-cuff discussions don’t have them. Going over that just blew my mind.” Oct 27, 09:13
- on The Framework of My Historical Argument about Polygamy: “I understand that with our hundreds of years of utopian experimentation and awareness of things that can go very wrong, we’d read Plato through that lens. I’m just saying that the Josephs (father and son) wouldn’t have looked at such ideas through the legitimate baggage of 20th-century communism. I’m writing on this theme currently, and Zion in Missouri did have a number of restrictions. That bothered some people, like Oliver Cowdery.” Oct 27, 08:20
- on The Framework of My Historical Argument about Polygamy: “You’re both right. Yes, Plato was remarkably feminist, insisting that women should hold all the same offices as men. The second paragraph I quoted refers to this, saying that the officials in charge of childcare will be both men and women. It’s also not too much of an exaggeration to say that women in The Republic are one step away from goods, to be used, deceived, and carefully manipulated by the state. Men are too. Granted, The Republic is not all of Plato’s thinking.” Oct 27, 07:23
- on Latter-day Saint Apologetics Tier List: “I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks the Kinderhook plates are strong evidence for Joseph’s prophethood. If you know metal plates are a fabrication of your imagination, what better way to prove you’re a prophet than “discerning” a plot to entrap you? But if you’ve dealt with metal plates before and expect to find more, wouldn’t you be excited to find them?” Oct 27, 07:09
- on Latter-day Saint Apologetics Tier List: “I’m also ambivalent about chiasmus. I think it’s a good example of the Book of Mormon’s complexity and how aspects of the text can escape notice for 150 years before anyone notices them, but it gets more attention than it deserves. B tier, but overall complexity is an A tier for me. The Book of Mormon has a depth that is hard to explain. I’d put the physicality of the golden plates in the B+/A range. They sound so improbable, but in the contemporary historical documents, their physical reality is hard to wave away. Joseph Smith doesn’t act like someone trying to keep a fiction going, but like someone trying to keep possession of a very real stack of metallic plates. I agree that the Kinderhook Plates belong somewhere near the top. They get treated as a scandal, but they actually point in the opposite direction. As you say, none of this is conclusive, but a lot of it is far weirder than dismissive accounts of early church history depict it.” Oct 27, 05:06
- on Reading the New Testament on Its Own Terms: A Review of Alex Douglas’s The New Testament for Latter-day Saints: “Checking for traps is always a good idea, RLD. Thanks for the engagement.” Oct 26, 14:57
- on Reading the New Testament on Its Own Terms: A Review of Alex Douglas’s The New Testament for Latter-day Saints: “I understand the objections, but I still find it valuable to have someone sharing some of the scholarship who speaks the language of Mormonism. But I also approach any writings with a degree of skepticism, regardless of their faith position and figure that there is more to the story, which might be part why it’s not as big of a deal to me.” Oct 26, 12:08
