Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 1099

“Scholars are people, too: attitudes, assumptions, and perspectives”

    Matt Roper provides a couple of very insightful and important statements — from practicing non-LDS archaeologists — that are directly relevant to the ongoing Jenkins/Hamblin exchange:   http://etherscave.blogspot.com/2015/0...    

New Testament 211

    Luke 13:22-30 Compare Matthew 7:13-14, 8:10-12; 19:30; 22-23; 25:10-12, 41   I lean toward universalism.  Not quite all the way, but close.  And not in doctrine — I don’t teach it — but in hope.   I don’t know how things will ultimately end up.  I hope that damnation for almost all will [Read More...]

What may be the oldest Qur’anic text in the world has been identified.

    This is extraordinary.  Very, very exciting:   http://www.bbc.com/news/business-3343...   Thanks to Shereen Emara Salah, Jabra Ghneim, and Christopher Wright for calling it to my attention.  They weren’t mistaken in thinking that I would be extremely interested.    

“I love my wife. My wife is dead.”

    Here’s an extraordinarily touching letter (kindly brought to my attention by Charles Steinman) from what might seem an unlikely source — the staunchly atheistic, fiercely honest, remarkably brilliant Nobel-laureate Caltech physicist Richard Feynman:   http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/02/...   I never met him myself, but, because Caltech wasn’t far from where I grew up, some in [Read More...]

I’m back. Am I back? I think I’m back.

    Those parts of a computer system that you can smash with a hammer, it’s said, are called “hardware.”  Computer programs, which you can only curse at, are called “software.”   You may have noticed that Sic et Non has been having problems for the past eighteen hours or so.  Or, far worse, you may not [Read More...]

Deadline approaching for Interpreter’s Ruth M. Stephens Article Prize

    It’s getting a bit late, but there still might be time, particularly if it’s a matter of submitting an already completed article or finishing an article that’s already underway:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-...   Please take note of this, and bring it to the attention of others.    

A couple of provocative items on women’s issues

    1.   One of the things notably absent from this article by Kate Kelly is any conviction of the truth of Mormon claims, or of the unique value of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Quite the contrary:   http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/2738628...   She seems uninterested in truth claims, or even in what [Read More...]

New Testament 206

    Luke 12:57-59 Compare Matthew 5:25-26   Where they can be avoided, strife and law suits should be avoided.   Did you know that, in the United States, there is one attorney for every 200 adults?   Not to fault lawyers, of course.  I very nearly went into the law myself.  But we are [Read More...]

“And so were the churches established in the faith”

    For the Interpreter Foundation’s 129th scripture roundtable, McKay White, Martin Tanner, Stephen Smoot, and Cassandra Hedelius discuss the scriptures for Gospel Doctrine lesson 31, which are Acts 15-18 and 1-2 Thessalonians:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/scri...    

God’s law, or man’s law?

    I’ve occasionally heard and seen comments to the effect that Muslims can’t be loyal Americans because their first allegiance is to Islam rather than to the United States.   But I would hope that, mutatis mutandis, the same thing can also and always be said of me.   Please don’t get me wrong. [Read More...]