Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 1183

“The evidence for Jesus is early and powerful”

    It’s fashionable, in some circles, to maintain not only that Jesus isn’t the Son of God but that he never even existed in the first place.   This is silliness.   Which my Deseret News column for today tries, diplomatically, to suggest:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/86...    

“Who’s afraid of ‘secularism’?”

    Ralph Hancock usefully rejoins the discussion about “secularism” and Mormon studies:   http://www.patheos.com/blogs/soulandc...    

The most intelligent human being, and God

    “I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages [Read More...]

News from the pyramid plateau at Giza

    Jabra Ghneim has brought to my attention this preliminary report of what seems to be a really exciting discovery at the most spectacular archaeological site on earth:   http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-h...   I note with amused satisfaction that the discovery was made — in the venerable tradition of the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls at [Read More...]

Contentment in life

    “If you can look back on your life with contentment, you have one of man’s most precious gifts — a selective memory.” Jim Fiebig, American businessman and writer    

The Qur’an on John the Baptist

  Like me, many readers here are probably now entering into a Sunday School curriculum year focused on the New Testament.  So it might not be inappropriate, today, to share a couple of verses from the Qur’an — there are a number of them — about John the Baptist.  The translation is mine.     [Read More...]

“Commemorating a Covenant”

    A relatively brief article (“Commemorating a Covenant”) in the January/February 2015 issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review summarizes archaeologist William Dever’s final excavation report on his field work at Tel Gezer, which he completed more than forty years ago.  (For a map showing Gezer’s location in north central Israel, see here.)   Such a [Read More...]

New Testament 25

    Matthew 21:12-13 Mark 11:15-17 Luke 19:45-46 John 2:14-22   Some, particularly among Protestant commentators, say that the advent of Jesus and Christianity eliminated the need for a temple.  But Jesus’ righteous zeal for the House of God, which is depicted in all four of the canonical gospels, seems to suggest (along with such passages [Read More...]

“Meet the 100 Most Significant Americans of All Time”

    My Deutsch-sprechender BYU colleague Eric Ringger has kindly drawn my attention to this interesting item:   http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithso...   Please notice who the first and third persons on the list of “Religious Figures” are.   “He called me by name, and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, [Read More...]

“Ether’s Cave”

      Just a reminder of the blog that my friend and former colleague Matt Roper maintains:   http://etherscave.blogspot.com   Check in on it from time to time, and you’ll be rewarded.