Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 273

Geology and Third Nephi (10): Cities Burned, Buried, and Drowned (Part Two)

    I press forward with the notes that I’m primarily taking from an article written by my longtime friend Bart Kowallis about the natural catastrophe described in the Book of Mormon as having occurred in the New World at the death of Christ:  Bart J. Kowallis, “In the Thirty and Fourth Year: A Geologist’s […]

A testimonial from William E. McLellin

    William E. McLellin was chosen as one of the Twelve Apostles in 1835, but was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1838.  However, he never abandoned his faith in the Book of Mormon, and one of the pillars of his faith rested upon his early, searching interviews with the […]

Three wonderful passages from Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    Three passages excerpted for my notes from Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, unabridged, translated by Constance Garnett (New York: Signet Classics, Penguin Books, 1980):   Father Zossima to Madame Hohlakov, who has expressed her religious doubts and anguish to him: “[T]here’s no proving it, though you can be convinced of it.” “How?” “By […]

A landmark in the history of medicine

    Many years ago now, with Gerrit Bos, who is now Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at the University of Cologne, in Germany, I launched the publication of a series of “The Medical Works of Moses Maimonides” as part of what was then called the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI), based at Brigham Young […]

I Live to Serve

    On Friday night, we went to dinner with several friends at the Bombay House in Provo, one of Utah Valley’s great culinary treasures.  Most of us had been associated with the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies and its successor, the pre-June-2012 Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, in their heyday. […]

Geology and Third Nephi (9): Cities Burned, Buried, and Drowned (Part One)

    I continue with notes that I’m drawing largely from an article written by my longtime friend Dr. Bart Kowallis, a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geological Sciences at Brigham Young University, about the natural catastrophe described in the Book of Mormon as having occurred in the New World at the death of Christ: […]

We aren’t dead yet.

    Newly available on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   In God’s Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel, Preface and Introduction Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in In God’s Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel (2014) by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and […]

Geology and Third Nephi (8): An Interim Update

    I’ve been sharing notes that I’ve largely drawn from an article written by a longtime friend of mine, Dr. Bart Kowallis, who is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geological Sciences at Brigham Young University, about the natural catastrophe described in the Book of Mormon as having occurred in the New World at […]

“The True Believer”

    Several millennia ago, when I was a teenager babysitting for my brother and my sister-in-law (or something like that), I came across a book on my brother shelves that has stayed with me ever since:  Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, which was originally published in 1951. […]

From the 19th Annual LDS Film Festival

    We had a respectable though not huge audience for our panel discussion earlier this evening at the 19th Annual LDS Film Festival, and I think it went well.  We led off with the video “sampler” that now appears on our Witness film project website, which is made up of mingled footage from our […]