Category: Scholarship
Update on Horses in the Book of Mormon
One of the toughest challenges for the Book of Mormon is the issue of horses. At first glance, it’s a simple case for rejecting the book. The Book of Mormon…
Some Resources for the Puzzling Facsimile 3 of the Book of Abraham
Latter-day Saints interested in the Pearl of Great Price have much to be excited about thanks to recent scholarship giving us many more insights into the significance and meaning of…
John Gee’s Introduction to the Book of Abraham: A Lifetime of Book of Abraham Scholarship Distilled into a Valuable Book for a Broad Audience
It was a pleasure to read John Gee’s recently published An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and BYU Religious Studies Center,…
A Rookie Mistake in Forging an Ancient Document
Biblical Archaeology Review just shared an interesting story on a purportedly ancient Jewish document. As reported in October 2016, a papyrus mentioning the city of “Jerusalem,” “the king,” and “jars…
Fifty Years of Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon: The Story of Its Discovery
One of my favorite stories from the world of Book of Mormon studies is the discovery of chiasmus in the text by a young missionary serving in Germany. Fifty years…
Elder Holland on LDS Apologetics
Recent weeks have been interesting for the unofficial, highly heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory cluster of so-called “LDS apologists.” I fall into that motley group. In fact, I was doing LDS…
FairMormon 2017 Conference, Day Two
Day two of the FairMormon 2017 Conference offered another series of outstanding speakers with messages covering a broad spectrum of topics. (See also my summary of day one.) Ben Spackman…
Unncessary Attacks, Part 2: In Defense of Grant Hardy
My previous post responded to Duane Boyce’s critique of some modern LDS scholars who pointed to the fallibility of human leaders in the Church in ways that Boyce felt were…
David and the Psalms in the Book of Mormon: Weakness or Strength?
Overview A 2016 graduate thesis from Kyle Beshears at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “Davidic References in the Book of Mormon as Evidence Against its Historicity,” proposes an intriguing new…
Evidence At Last: The Many Aspects of John Lloyd Stephens’ Work That Strengthened Mormons in the 1840s
A delightful trend in modern Book of Mormon criticism today is to scour books, articles, and maps for information that hypothetically could have aided Joseph Smith in fabricating many of…
