Tag Archives: scholar

“Temples and Ritual in Antiquity” SANE Symposium at BYU

If you’re new here, you may want to sign up for email alerts or subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for reading!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 [...]

The “Mark” of Anointing

A few days ago I read a post by James over at his superb blog, Lehi’s Library, entitled, “Looking Beyond the Mark: Insights from Margaret Barker.”  In it, James refers to an excellent article by Kevin Christensen who talks about the Deuteronomist de-Christianizing of the Old Testament and Josiah’s reforms.  I thought he made some [...]

Margaret Barker Interview - Part 7b (Temple in the Modern World)

“We have to try to get through the filter of the later editing… But deep down, there was something there.  I’m mean this [the temple] is a cultural icon, it’s shaped our pictures of the garden of Eden, it’s shaped our pictures of what it is to be a human being.  Because Adam is the [...]

Margaret Barker Interview - Part 7a (Location of the Temple)

“…the building of the Second Temple involved leveling a new site… I mean, as far as I can see, the Zachariah prophesies about the mountain becoming a plain and building all that sort of thing, they are implying that a new mountaintop site is to be used for the rebuilt temple. That suggests to [...]

Margaret Barker Interview - Part 6 (Seeing the Face of God)

“The original purpose of the temple pilgrimage, was that you went to the temple to see the face of the Lord. Yea? In the old calendars ‘each of your males will see the face of the Lord’… By the time you’re reading the Masoretic texts as we have now, ‘each of your [...]

Margaret Barker Interview - Part 5 (Social Implications)

“… the Old Testament describes idolatry as the work of human hands.  So if you worship the work of human hands, the political system, economics, anything like that, that is idolatry.  The consequence of idolatry, according to the commandments, is that the third and fourth generation suffer from their iniquity.”  —Margaret Barker
“A single parent is [...]

Margaret Barker Interview - Part 4 (Environmentalism and the Temple)

Book on Christianity and environmentalism due out by November 2010.
“…is it profitable, is it viable, is this a business proposition? When business propositions have got us into a bit of a mess. There’s got to be other ways of discourse. And the awful thing is, because religion has been so sidelined in [...]

Margaret Barker Interview - Part 3b (Christmas)

“It’s things like that, you know, reading through Matthew as well, all sorts of things, there’s such many stories, and when you stop and read them, you think, ‘Oh, my goodness!’  You know.  ‘I’ve been looking at that for fifty years, and it just never dawned on me what I was reading.’  It is amazing.” [...]

Margaret Barker Interview - Part 3a (Christmas)

Book entitled “Christmas: The Original Story” due to be released in September 2008.
“It’s a lovely early [Christmas] icon, because it shows the three wise men coming, dressed as three high priests.” —Margaret Barker
“Those three gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, the old tradition was, that Adam, the original high priest, the angels had given him those [...]

Margaret Barker Interview - Part 2 (Temple Studies)

“It’s very interesting, isn’t it? There’s something called the SBL [Society of Biblical Literature] that’s existed all this time with nothing about the central theme of the Bible, which is the temple. I mean, that should make everyone stop and rub their eyes in amazement, I think. But here we are.” —Margaret [...]

William Hamblin Video Interview with Margaret Barker - Part 1

I just received an email from Dr. William Hamblin who is currently studying at a seminar in Oxford, England, and he said he had the unique opportunity to have a lunch today with Methodist scholar Margaret Barker about her intriguing and in-depth research into temple studies.  Barker graciously permitted him to film the conversation, and [...]

The Joseph Smith Papers Volume 1 Available for Pre-Order!

“The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals, Vol. 1: 1832-1839″ is available for pre-ordering at Deseret Book.  The description reads:
“The Joseph Smith Papers project is the single most significant historical project of our generation.”  —Elder Marlin K. Jensen, LDS Church Historian
Joseph Smith is known to history as the founder and first prophet of The Church of Jesus [...]

Hugh Nibley: The Faith of an Observer

If you have not been able to tell, one of my top role models and mentors is Dr. Hugh Winder Nibley, former BYU professor and highly esteemed LDS scholar.  He was and is still considered the foremost LDS scholar and apologist of this century, and perhaps of all time.  And he was a genius.  Once [...]

Two New Temple Books by Nibley & Madsen

As someone recently quipped, “I’m so glad Nibley’s not letting a little thing like being dead slow down his publishing schedule!”
Another volume in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley series is being officially released on August 6, 2008 (it’s already available in Deseret Book stores).  This volume will be the third volume published since Hugh [...]

New TempleStudy.com Store!

I’ve built an online store for TempleStudy.com using Amazon.com, and today is its grand opening!  I did this primarily for three reasons:

Readily available Temple-related Products:  All the products that I’ve been able to find that have to do with LDS temples or ancient temples from Amazon.com I have individually selected and gathered together, sorted, and [...]

Temple imagery in “Gabriel’s Revelation” Discovery

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 [...]

Service on Earth & Worship of God

The account of the garden of Eden in Genesis is a very interesting story indeed.  We learn much about the experiences of our first parents and their interactions with God.  It was a very intimate relationship, one in which God walked and talked with Adam and Eve in the garden (Gen. 3:8).
When Adam was first [...]

John Gee (June 19) and Avraham Gileadi (June 26)

There are a couple good firesides/lectures coming up, for those of you who are in the Salt Lake/Provo area.
First off, there will be a lecture given by John Gee this Thursday, June 19th, at 7:00pm at the Olivewood Bookstore in Provo (3330 N. University Ave., Suite C).  He will be speaking about the message of [...]

Heavenly Ascents - A New Blog by David Larsen

Our long-time reader and commenter at TempleStudy, David J. Larsen, has begun a terrific blog - “Heavenly Ascents.” David received his BA from BYU in Near Eastern Studies in 2001, and is a current graduate student in Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, studying under Dr. Andrei Orlov who is a prominent Enoch [...]

King Benjamin and the Temple

The other article that impressed me from the latest Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 16/2 (2007), was Donald W. Parry’s “Service and Temple in King Benjamin’s Speech.” Why did it impress me? Because it related subjects in the Book of Mormon to the temple, something that we haven’t seen a lot of [...]