Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 151

A Loss and a Gap

    ***   I was saddened, just now, to learn of the death of V. Garth Norman last week.  He was a dedicated pioneer of modern Latter-day Saint scholarship on Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon.  More personally, he offered more than once to take me on a tour of the Parowan Gap in […]

“One of the most singular instances of this type”

    ***   I share here one of the many striking accounts contained in Marlene Bateman Sullivan, Gone into Heaven: Near-Death Experiences in Early Church History (Springville UT: CFI, 2013):   Marriner W. Merrill (1832-1906) — who served as both the first president of the Logan Utah Temple (1884-1906) and as an apostle (1889-1906) […]

Big Battalions and Beautiful Babies

    ***   In our sacrament meeting this morning — today is fast and testimony Sunday — one of those who bore testimony read a quotation that struck me deeply.  Happily, owing to the wonders of modern technology, I was able to find it within just a few seconds.  I located it as quoted […]

An important note for December

    ***   I want to let it be known that I’ve finally set up a year-end Facebook fundraiser for the Interpreter Foundation on my main Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/daniel.peter...).  I’m late doing it this year because I was in Egypt and effectively without internet access for much of the time that I was there.  […]

“Recent Discoveries and Advances Published by ‘Interpreter,’ Part 1”

    ***   You might enjoy and profit from this nice summation by Jeff Lindsay, who is one of the vice presidents of the Interpreter Foundation and a co-editor of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   Recent Discoveries and Advances Published by Interpreter, Part 1   ***   This looks interesting: […]

“The Word of the Lord as a Metonym for Christ”

    ***   A new article — this one by Loren Blake Spendlove — went up two or three hours ago in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “The Word of the Lord as a Metonym for Christ” Abstract: The word of the Lord and the word of God are common […]

A Christmas gift recommendation and a book notice

    ***   As Christmas draws nigh, there’s at least one holiday gift that I can recommend to you with complete enthusiasm:  The Interpreter Foundation’s Witnesses theatrical film is now available on both DVD and Blu-ray:   Witnesses   If you or someone you know didn’t get a chance to watch the movie in […]

Coming right up to the edge of politics

    ***   I’ve seen little or nothing of the Real Housewives franchise.  But, based upon the far-too-much that I’ve read about it, I’m certainly not a fan, not least because it glamorizes crassness, shallowness, and lack of charity.  That said, the newest expansion of the empire, The Real House Wives of Capitol Hill, […]

Fantasia on a Theme from Cellular Biology

    ***   When I get too sleepy to read while I’m inflight on international trips, which I usually start sleepy because of packing but also because of long lists of last-minute things to do, I watch movies.  It’s a good opportunity to catch up on movies that I haven’t seen and to review […]

Egyptological

    ***   Another of Kyler Rasmussen’s Bayesian essays has appeared on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   “Estimating the Evidence Episode 22: On the Book of Abraham” [Editor’s Note: This is the twenty-second in a series of 23 essays summarizing and evaluating Book of Mormon-related evidence from a Bayesian statistical perspective. See […]