Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 145

“The veneer of civilization is frighteningly thin”

    ***   I’m pleased to announce that the first portion of the Interpreter Foundation’s forthcoming two-part docudrama, Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, has been selected for screening at the 21st annual LDS Film Festival, which is scheduled for early March.   This year’s festival will be held at the SCERA Center […]

Places

    ***   For something that I’m writing, I read a 2016 article today entitled “Living and Traveling in the Arab and Moslem Worlds” that was written by my longtime BYU colleague Professor Chad F. Emmett, of the Department of Geography at Brigham Young University: Chad F. Emmett, “Living and Traveling in the Arab […]

“The spiritual power and influence of this gospel”

    ***   During a relatively recent conversation, the question of modern revelation came up.  At one point, the discussion turned to the 1978 revelation on priesthood that was received by President Spencer W. Kimball in conjunction with his two counselors and almost all of the then Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.  And that […]

“And each land was called earth”

    ***   Over in the largely atheist angry ex-Mormon region that I sometimes call the Peterson Obsession Board, one commenter has demanded that he be shown an atheist suicide bomber.  (Plainly, he assumes that there are none.)  I’m happy to suggest some reading for him:   “Polemical atheist crusader, meet the facts about […]

A Nobel laureate’s late return to faith

    ***   Several times each year, some atheist or other triumphantly flings in my face the fact that most members of the elite National Academy of Sciences aren’t religious.   In this context, I was interested some time back to learn a bit about Richard Smalley, formerly the Hackerman Professor of Chemistry as […]

Memento mori

    ***   I don’t know whether this makes me peculiar or not — in any case, other facets of my character and personality are probably more than sufficient to do that without the need of adding anything else into the mix — but I often enjoy funerals.  At the same time, especially when […]

More Linguistic Evidence Suggesting that Joseph Smith Didn’t Write the Book of Mormon

    ***   A new article appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “A Comparison of the Book of Mormon’s Subordinate That Usage,” by Stanford Carmack Abstract: This paper compares the Book of Mormon’s subordinate that usage with what is found in the King James Bible, pseudo-archaic writings, and the greater textual […]

Inventing History

    ***   Exactly a year ago today, a group of patriotic tourists who hoped only to make America great again decided to visit the seat of our federal government, the Capitol of the United States, in order to look around and, in some cases, to express their concern about the massive election fraud […]

From the Ancient of Days to the Latter Days

    ***   I’m really excited to see the brand new book by Aaron P. Schade and Matthew L. Bowen, The Book of Moses: From the Ancient of Days to the Latter Days.  Keep your eye out for it.  Aaron, who earned his doctorate in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations from the University of […]

Man Mountain Dean

    ***   As I was watching the CBS 60 Minutes special about the “Ritchie Boys” — please see my previous post — my attention was caught at about the 11:30 mark by a photograph of a former professional wrestler whose name was given as Frank Leavitt (1891-1953).  He was a veteran of World […]