I adore Don Bradley. His scholarship is precise, his efforts are extensive, and he has been generous to me personally. Don is currently completing his Master’s Degree at USU.

Today’s LDS Perspectives podcast allows us to hear from Don Bradley regarding his work on Joseph Smith’s translation efforts and what we can know about the contents of the lost 116 pages (or more accurately, the lost pages that contained information corresponding to the first 116 pages in the original Book of Mormon as published).

I’ll come back later and expand this post to include pretty pictures and stuff, but for now, go to LDS Perspectives and listen to Don.

http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2018/01/31/lost-116-pages-book-mormon/

Kurt Manwaring and respected Egyptologist John Gee sat down to talk about the Book of Abraham in an interview posted on Kurt’s website today. Kurt has allowed us to cross post a portion of that interview here at M*.

John Gee is author of An Introduction to the Book of Abraham. Gee is Mormon and shares his thoughts and experiences regarding the intersection of faith and scholarship. (Image of John Gee courtesy of BYU Religious Studies Center)

Kurt Manwaring: Welcome. Before we begin, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you first got interested in Egyptology?

John Gee: I had never heard of Egyptology until I got to college. My freshman year, my brother and I stumbled across a book in the bookstore on learning hieroglyphs. There were two copies and so we each got one. I read it and got interested in the subject. He read it and went into something more useful.

Kurt Manwaring: What role did your Mormon faith play during the pursuit of your doctorate at Yale? Did it ever cause problems or open doors?

John Gee: In certain cases, being a faithful Latter-day Saint opened doors. More often it has caused problems.

For example, when I first got to Yale, it took me a while but I finally found a place to stay. After about a week, the fellow who owned the apartment, one of the Yale faculty, found out I was a Latter-day Saint and kicked me out for that reason.

A couple of weeks later I got a letter. Just before going to Yale I had participated at an international conference. My paper was decently received but the letter was from the editors of the proceedings volume rejecting my paper on the grounds that I was a member of the Church.

Such attitudes are still prevalent in academia and I still encounter them with some frequency.

Years ago, Elder [Neal A.] Maxwell warned that “the Saints—meaning you and I—must not make the mistake of assuming the existence of any truce between the forces of Satan and God. To believe so, . . . is a very great delusion, and a very common one.”

Given my own experience and Elder Maxwell’s warning, I do not think this kind of thing is going to go away.

Kurt Manwaring: Did you work with Hugh Nibley? How would you describe him to those today who do not know who he is? Continue reading →

Lot and his family fled Gomorrah based on a belief that it was a rotten place that God would destroy.

Various moderns have fled the LDS Church because they believe it is a rotten place (though it’s not always clear they think there is a God who cares to exact revenge on the Church, often taking up that task themselves).

One of the stories the disaffected love to tell is how rotten Joseph Smith was, portraying him as an abusive sexual addict. Given today’s headlines, one can only imagine such disaffected folks consider Joseph in the same class as abusers such as Harvey Weinstein and Dr. Larry Nassar.

(If you don’t know who Weinstein and Nassar are, you are possibly living in a cave and probably aren’t reading this anyway.)

The most effective arrow in this quiver has been the story spun around Josephine Lyon, daughter of Sylvia Sessions Lyon.

But I assert that the detractors have their story wrong. Now that I’ve had a chance to visit the Special Collections at the Family History Library, my conjecture has flesh. Continue reading →

Conjecture may now cease.

Click to View the Broadcast and News Conference. If the video indicates it is 2:41:57 long, you’ll want to drag the slider to about 0:53:00 to skip to the beginning of the Broadcast. Similarly, you’ll then want to drag the slider to about 1:53:00 to skip to the beginning of the News Conference.

The Quorum of the Apostles met and unanimously agreed to reorganize the First Presidency. President Russell M. Nelson was selected to be the President of the Church and was set apart on January 14.

President Nelson’s counselors are Elder Dallin H. Oaks and Elder Henry B. Eyring. Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf has returned to his place in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and has reportedly already been loaded up with awesome assignments for which he is uniquely qualified.

During the News Conference, the first question out of the block was how the new presidency will come down on LGBT issues. The response reflected the Presidency’s intent to support God’s commandments.

Peggy Fletcher Stack asked about the presidency’s composition (now all white men from America) and specifically indicated an interest in how women would be represented. The answer discussed how it is not possible to reflect all nations and attributes in a group, added to the fact that it is the leadership in all the world that really matters. Critics will likely hone in on the focus on the discussion of women as mothers, while neglecting to point out that the first row of leaders listening to the press conference was filled with women.

Another question asked about the challenges Millennials are having with Church history. The members of the Presidency talked about how all but Christ have made mistakes, and emphasizing the transparency associated with the Joseph Smith Papers Project. They also said that the Millennials they associate with are doing great, while emphasizing that when these young folk marry, they will be uniquely strengthened. “For neither is the man without the woman nor the woman without the man in the Lord.”

A question came in from overseas asking about the calamities in different nations. The Presidency expressed their concern about the difficulties that have hit, talking about certain difficulties that are ongoing at this moment.

There’s a famous scene in the movie, The Incredibles, where a young boy is asked what he’s waiting for. The boy says:

“I don’t know. Something amazing, I guess.”

Some of us were wondering if we would see something that would surprise us, and in that sense, there was nothing amazing. But I loved that there was a pre-News Conference Broadcast for members, and I loved that we are reminded of the stability of an orderly progression. In hindsight, I am amazed that we have had the privilege of several years of care from Elder Uchtdorf long before we might have expected to see him in such a senior position. This gave us the chance to see the maturation of an apostle from relatively new to seasoned. And I am jealous of those who will get to more directly benefit from his unique gifts for the next several years.

The Quorum of the Apostles and the First Presidency did not delay announcement of today’s news by attempting to conflate today’s announcement with the calling of the two apostles needed to fill out the Quorum of Apostles. Easter weekend will be General Conference, and we can anticipate that new apostles will be announced at that time.

LDS Perspectives will be switching to bi-weekly podcasts in 2018. In this inaugural podcast for 2018, Dr. Grua talks about the conflicts in Missouri during the 1830s, which Dr. Grua indicates is well known in American history as an unusually violent decade throughout the nation.

Website link
There is no online transcript for this episode.

Dr. David Grua talks about February 1838–August 1839. This was a tumultuous period in the life of Joseph Smith and the history of the church, marked by internal dissent, the abandonment of Kirtland, Ohio, as church headquarters, the outbreak of violence with anti-Mormons in Missouri, the emergence of the Danite Society, the Missouri–Mormon War, Governor Lilburn W. Boggs’s infamous “extermination order,” Joseph Smith’s imprisonment in Liberty, Missouri, and the exodus and relocation of the Saints to Illinois.

Dr. Grua estimates Missourians killed roughly 40 Mormons during this era. While there was violence on the part of both Mormons and non-Mormons, the Northern (e.g., Mormon) style of violence was against property and considered personal injury sacrosanct. The Southern (e.g., non-Mormon) style of violence included murder and rape in addition to destruction of property.

This was also a time characterized by spiritual outpourings and revelation, with the Prophet dictating D&C 115–120, writing the letters that included D&C 121–123, and delivering several doctrinally-rich discourses to the Twelve Apostles as they prepared for their mission to England. Taunalyn and David review this history in detail and the documents published in the volume.
David also discusses his “Joseph Smith’s Missouri Prison Letters and the Mormon Textual Community,” an essay that will be published in Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources in February 2018 from Oxford University Press.

David W. Grua holds a Ph.D. in American History from Texas Christian University and an M.A. and B.A. from Brigham Young University. He is the author of Surviving Wounded Knee: The Lakotas and the Politics of Memory (Oxford, 2016) and was awarded the Robert M. Utley Prize from the Western History Association.