If you’re new here, you may want to sign up for email alerts or subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for reading!
I came across some references to early Christian ritual vestments this morning in Matthew Brown’s The Gate of Heaven. He cited The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation by Edward Yarnold, and The Archæology of [...]
The scholarly world is aflutter over the latest discovery of a 3-foot tall tablet being called “Gabriel’s Revelation,” “Hazon Gabriel,” or the “Vision of Gabriel.” It contains 87 lines of Hebrew text written in ink on stone, and has been dated to the first century BCE. The tablet was found near the Dead Sea in [...]
Someone recently asked me the following:
Perhaps you can explain how a person who finds the [temple experience] to be … troubling should express those feelings.
This was my reply, with additional edits:
An ancient cave discovered under one of the world’s oldest churches in Rihab, Jordan, may be a site of the earliest Christian worship to ever be found. Archaeologists have dated the cave to between 33 A.D. and 70 A.D.
The Associated Press reports that the Rihab Center for Archaeological Studies says that this cave “shows evidence [...]
(Continued from Part 1)
To continue our discussion on whether God may dwell in temples on earth, and whether there exists a need for further temples after Christ, we might look again to the Bible to see if God dwelled in those sacred edifices which He commanded to be built in ancient times.
The first example that [...]
A respectful evangelical protestant reader of TempleStudy.com has asked this question:
Paul tells us in the sermon at Mars Hill that the Lord does not “dwell in houses built by hands” (Acts 17:24-25, Stephen echoes this in ch 7 of the same book) but rather that the Holy Spirit of God dwells in us; that is, [...]
I was driving in my car on Saturday listening to a radio program called “The Other Side” with Steve Godfrey. Steve believes himself to be a psychic medium, someone through whom people can connect with loved ones who have passed on to the “other side.” I do not deny the possibility of communicating [...]
(Continued from Part 2)
Another early Christian evidence for the practice of baptism for the dead is from texts that reference the practice among a group known as the Marcionites. This group was a separate Christian body from the Church of Rome, who followed the teachings of Marcion (ca. 110-160) as their spiritual leader (sometimes [...]
(Continued from Part 1)
Some of the best studies of the early Christian practice of baptism for the dead have come from Hugh Nibley and John A. Tvedtnes. Both of these LDS scholars have written extensively on the topic. I hope to analyze some of their excellent work and provide examples of the practice [...]
In a letter dated April 5th, and reported by the Catholic News Service on May 2nd, the Vatican issued an order to all Catholic dioceses throughout the world to not give genealogical information in parish registers to Latter-day Saints in an effort to “block posthumous rebaptisms” of LDS ancestors. The Vatican Congregation for the [...]
The Testament of Levi is one of the books in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and is an apocryphal and pseudopigraphal work so we do not know its original author or source. The Testament of Levi, as we have it today, was composed in its final form in the second century B.C. [...]
I was first introduced to Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures by Hugh Nibley in his phenomenal work The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri. Cyril of Jerusalem is a prominent early Christian theologian, and is considered a saint by many. His most famous writings are set of twenty-three catechetical lectures which he delivered around 347 [...]
A group of researchers has just begun a two-week excavation at the well-known Stonehenge site in England in an attempt to discover, once and for all, the meaning behind the mysterious ruins. According to current scientific dating, Stonehenge dates back to about 3000 B.C., but it has perplexed archaeologists for years as to the [...]
For the last few decades Brigham Young University has been involved in the excavation and study of ancient ruins and tombs in the Fayum region of Egypt, particularly in the Fag El Gamous cemetery. Some of the remains there have been noted as early Christian. One of the reports of these findings was [...]
For those who may have missed it the first time when this blog was in its infancy, have a look over at at the 6-part series I posted entitled “The Genesis of the Round Dance.” I’d like to get your take on the paper. I didn’t receive much commentary the first time round. (No pun [...]
I have a certain affinity or appreciation for Eastern Orthodox Christianity, having visited Ukraine two years ago where I had the opportunity to visit many of the beautiful cathedrals all across the country. I found many of the practices, architecture, and artifacts of the faith to be intriguing from an LDS standpoint, showing parallels to [...]
The word orant, or latin orans, is a noun form of the verb orare, to pray, and describes an early mode of prayer practiced by the first Christians. From Wikipedia we read:
Orant is a type of gesture during prayer in which the hands are raised, set apart, and the palms face outward. It was [...]
An exhibition back in 2000 at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, which was curated by Yael Israeli and David Mevorah, shows artifacts from the early years of the Christian church. The exhibition was entitled “The Cradle of Christianity“:
The exhibition attempts to synthesize the literary sources with finds that have been excavated in this country, particularly [...]
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
