Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 197

Reacting to the recent Islamist terror attacks in France

    When the French middle school teacher Samuel Paty  was murdered on 16 October 2020 in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, beheaded in an act of Islamist terrorism by an eighteeen-year-old Russian-born Chechen refugee named Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov, several people asked me for my response.  After all, I’m an Islamicist.  And Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov’s brutal attack had been motivated, superficially […]

Of Smallpox, Epidemics, Hawaii (or Hawai’i), Latter-day Saints, and the Sandwich

    My wife and I have belonged for many years now to a regular monthly reading group that includes some of our favorite people.  One of them is Lanny Britsch, an emeritus professor in the Department of History at Brigham Young University whose research and teaching have long focused on Asia and the Pacific.  […]

A quirky thought on scientific progress and human exaltation

    At noon today, we had an hour-long closed Zoom call for BYU Middle East Studies faculty and students with Matthew H. Tueller, the ambassador of the United States of America to the Republic of Iraq, and previously, among other assignments, deputy chief of mission in Egypt and ambassador to Kuwait and Yemen.  Matt […]

The theology of C. S. Lewis and the witness of the Whitmer family

    John C. Whitmer was the son of Jacob Whitmer, one of the Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon.  He was also the nephew of David Whitmer, one of the Three Witnesses, and likewise the nephew of Oliver Cowdery, another of the Three Witnesses.  (Oliver had married Elizabeth Ann Whitmer, David and Jacob’s […]

Quantum Physics and Early Death

    Note:  For at least a while, based upon discussion with folks at Patheos, I’ll be experimenting with a new approach to my blogging:  Fewer posts, but longer.  We’ll see how it works.   What follows here is inspired by and indebted to Chapter 5, “Spacetime is Quantum,” in Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What […]

Revision 8.1 “Apostles Rededicate the Holy Land”

    Note:  For at least a while, based upon discussion with folks at Patheos, I’ll be experimenting with a new approach to my blogging:  Fewer posts, but longer.  We’ll see how it works.   When leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints fell to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles after […]

Bob: “There’s light at the end of the tunnel.” Bill: “WHAT tunnel?”

    Fake news!   “New Covid-19 cases reported Friday in the US are the second highest since the pandemic began”   “Another smashed record of positive COVID-19 tests pushes Utah over 101,000 cases: University of Utah Health officials plead for residents to help stem the spread as ICU at 99% capacity”   “Daily coronavirus […]

Revision 6.18 “The United Nations Plan,” plus a bibliography on Latter-day Saints and Islam

    There were serious clashes between Arabs and Jewish settlers throughout the 1920s and 1930s, until the point in 1939 when, hop­ing to gain Arab support against the Axis powers in World War II, the British began to restrict Jewish immigration to the Holy Land. This, in turn, brought an angry and often violent […]

In the Book of Moses, “”Where Did the Names Mahaway and Mahujah Come From?”

    A new item — this one by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Matthew L. Bowen, and Ryan Dahle — appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “Where Did the Names Mahaway and Mahujah Come From? A Response to Colby Townsend’s “Returning to the Sources,” Part 2 of 2 Review of Colby Townsend, “Returning […]

“Revisions in the Analysis of Archaic Language in the Book of Mormon”

    An important new academic discussion has now appeared on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   “Pre-print of ‘Revisions in the Analysis of Archaic Language in the Book of Mormon,'” by Stanford Carmack and Royal Skousen   This is the introductory note that I wrote for it:   In The Nature of the Original […]