Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 47

An unexpected but pleasant sight at church today

  We attended the middle of three English-language sacrament meetings today in the stake center located adjacent to the Newport Beach California Temple.  It was absolutely packed, and traffic directors had been posted out in the parking lot to help with the crush.  I can only assume, since I’m reliably informed by anonymous online anti-Mormons […]

Think twice before tattooing my name and face on your arm!

  I share here two more of the Interpreter Foundation’s super-short videos about the witnesses to the Book of Mormon plates.  As with the previous short features that I have called to your attention, they have been drawn from the Foundation’s two-part docudrama Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.  The first of them (“Cumulative […]

“A Christ-Gathered Remnant of Joseph”

  Two new articles went up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation today, although — I’ve been on the road all day — I’m somewhat late in calling your attention to them: ““I Shall Gather In”: The Name Joseph, Iterative Divine Action, and the Latter-day Harvest Ingathering of Israel as Themes in 3 Nephi,” […]

“Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection.”

  I’m falling behind in calling these new short Interpreter Foundation videos to your attention, so I will be highlighting not one but two of them today.  The first (“A Witness in High Demand”) features Richard Lambert, the former Assistant United States Attorney who recruited me to serveas an expert witness in the federal prosecution […]

How Brigham Young (and John Taylor) Remembered Joseph

  A new column of mine went up this morning in Meridian Magazine:  “He Was “All He Professed to Be”: How Brigham Young Remembered Joseph” In 1854, to mark the tenth anniversary of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, a portion of the annual April general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of […]

A reflection on the near-assassination of Donald J. Trump

  In the western tradition of historiography or historical writing, there has often been a tendency to focus on outsize individuals, to write history effectively as biography — and not merely in such obvious cases as Plutarch’s famous Parallel Lives of the noble Greeks and Romans and his “lives” of twelve Roman emperors and his […]

A brief report on Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe

  Since the first geological and then archaeological expeditions entered the region known as “Six Grandfathers” (in the original Lakota, Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe) in early March of 4742 CE, heated debates have raged about the three “macrocephalic” rock formations on the mountain’s southeastern face.  And not merely among academics. In fact, controversy surrounds every aspect of […]

A great opportunity is on the way

  Now here’s something to think about, taken from the Jerusalem Post: “Expert claims NASA may have accidentally discovered, killed life on Mars in the 1970s: Astrobiology professor suggests 1970’s NASA mission might have detected and unintentionally extinguished life on Mars.” It seems very likely that my adopted home state of Utah will be chosen […]

18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains of wheat

  New on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  Pre-print of “Jacob’s Temple Journey to Haran and Back,” The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs, written by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and Matthew L. Bowen NOTE: This is a pre-print of a chapter that will appear in The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs, Proceedings of the Seventh Interpreter […]

“Who Holds the Keys?”

  A thoroughly vicious and rage-fueled new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:  “Who Holds the Keys?” written by Daniel C. Peterson Abstract: While, for understandable reasons, Protestant Christendom tends to downplay the question, the more ancient Christian churches have historically placed considerable weight on what is often […]