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Yesterday Dr. Victor Ludlow presented an address about covenants at BYU Education Week. It was reported on by Sean Walker at BYU NewsNet, from which I reference the elements below.
In his presentation Dr. [...]
David Larsen posted a great notice over at Heavenly Ascents of the upcoming “Temples and Ritual in Antiquity” Symposium that will be held at BYU on November 7th, 2008. It is being presented by the Students of the Ancient Near East (SANE), and will have both students and top scholars presenting papers on the temple [...]
One of our readers, RBiddulph, recently pointed me to a quote by Harold Bloom, a well-known literary and cultural critic who is currently a Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, who once said this about Joseph Smith:
I can only attribute to his genius or daemons his uncanny recovery of elements in ancient Jewish [...]
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 Baptism by Wolfred N. Cote. I looked up these references and they were intriguing in describing an early Christian practice of face [...]
As most people know, it is a tradition in many parts of the world to bake up a birthday cake for a friend or family member celebrating a birthday. Typically this cake is decorated nicely and topped with birthday candles, one for every year of the celebrant’s life. When the time comes to eat the [...]
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 [...]
I think many times our culture produces preconceptions or stereotypes about words, images, cultures, forms, meanings, etc., that may not actually be true. I have found this to be the case with the word mysticism. Oft times I think we associate this word with gypsies, palm readers, fortune tellers, monks, or other so-called strange or [...]
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:
I was thinking yesterday that there might be more to the common saying “asking for her hand in marriage.” Doing a few searches and I found that some believe it comes from a medieval ritual known as handfasting. Today it has been adopted by certain Neopagan groups as part of their engagement or marriage rituals, [...]
(Continued from Part 3)
In the last parts of our series on the Egyptian hieroglyph of the ankh, and other related symbols, I’d like to look at where these symbols are found on the extant portions of the Joseph Smith Papyri, related documents, and the facsimiles of the Book of Abraham, to see if Joseph Smith [...]
The University of Oxford in Oxford, England is “the oldest university in the English-speaking world”. It is also one of the “world’s leading academic institutions”. Its history dates back to the 11th century CE, and its Christian ties are evident from its crest which reads “The Lord is my Light” in Latin. When an argument [...]
(Continued from Part 2)
The ankh symbol appears frequently with several other hieroglyphics in certain formulas and invocations that immediately call our attention. These are wedja, seneb, djed, & was.
This table summarizes the different possible explanations for these hieroglyphics that I have been able to find:
I had contemplated entitling this post “A Change in Temple Sacrifice Following Christ,” but since today is Father’s Day, I thought this title was more appropriate.
From the time they left Jerusalem until the time of Christ’s ministry among his descendants in the Americas 600 years later, Lehi and his family offered sacrifice and burnt offerings [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I hadn’t made this connection before, but it seems to jump out at me now like red ink. I knew that the School of the Prophets was a select group of brethren who participated in an effort to prepare themselves for the missionary work, but it also had a much more spiritual side with [...]
In connection with yesterday’s post about early Christian purification ordinances, isn’t it interesting that we find very similar practices in the new world, among those whose culture, beliefs, traditions, history, and religion seem so different to a superficial eye? The Hopi Native Americans have a vast array of rituals, ceremonies, customs, dances, rites, and [...]
There is an interesting passage, of many, in Matthew Brown’s study of the temple, The Gate of Heaven, that caught my attention with regard to ancient crowns:
It is not known exactly what type of crown was worn by the Israelite kings, but we do know that the high priest of the temple wore a crown [...]
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 [...]
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