If you’re new here, you may want to sign up for email alerts or subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for reading!
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. [...]
A few days ago I wrote about a post I read over at Lehi’s Library which quoted a paper by Kevin Christensen in which he referenced Margaret Barker. The subject was the use of the Hebrew word/letter tau or tav, translated as “mark” in Ezekiel 9:4-6, and what it meant in Ezekiel’s day, and what [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
(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 [...]
(Continued from Part 3)
Some more tidbits of information from Wells’ The Oxford Degree Ceremonies that might interest you:
The oath or charge to “observe the ’statutes, privileges, customs and liberties’ of his university” and the accompanying affirmation “Do fidem” (”I swear”) are most likely over 700 years old, and initially were important to keep a unity [...]
As I was researching for the posts on the ankh, I came across some information which was interesting, describing the Egyptian concept of “time” and “eternity.” These concepts almost seem repetitive and redundant to our modern way of thinking, but to the Egyptians each of these terms represented something concrete and distinct, and both were [...]
(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:
(Continued from Part 1, which has been updated)
As I mentioned in Part 1, the more interesting aspects of the Egyptian ankh are not necessarily what it means standing alone, but how the Egyptians used it in their texts and illustrations.
There are three principal ways that the Egyptians used the ankh symbol, by itself, in their [...]
Egypt figures a central role in the religion of the ancient Near East, where much of our canon of scripture owes its narrative and existence to this locale. Even the Book of Mormon tells us it was written in “reformed Egyptian” (Mormon 9:32). The most interesting aspect, to me, is the adoption into Egypt of [...]
In response to a comment by Rick on my post “Consecrate = ‘A Filled Hand’ in Hebrew” I did some searching to see if I could find any commentary or studies of palm up/palm down symbolism in scholarship or art. What I found was interesting. The palm up/palm down posture has a significant place [...]
One of our readers, Dr. Kathy Larsen, pointed out a scripture yesterday that intrigued me. It is Leviticus 21:10:
And he that is the high priest among his brethren, upon whose head the anointing oil was poured, and that is consecrated to put on the garments, shall not uncover his head, nor rend his clothes;
There [...]
Some of our critics have been quick to contend that our modern temples and practices have no relationship whatever to the temples of ancient Israel. This is a quick judgment indeed. If one is willing to open their eyes that they may hear, and their ears that they may see, then many marvelous [...]
(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 [...]
One of the criticisms leveled at the LDS (Mormon) practice of temple worship is the seemingly dissimilar forms of the ordinances when compared with those found practiced by ancient Israelites in the Bible. It is true that the forms of the ordinances and sacrifices are different, but their meaning and symbolism remain the same. [...]
Mormons wear sacred undergarments as part of our religious worship. I thought it might be good today to take a look at a well-known religious tradition, Judaism, and the very similar practice that they have, like us, of wearing certain sacred clothing. I, for one, highly respect the Jews’ practice of this in [...]
Hugh Nibley had a fascination with the Hopi Indian tribes of northeastern Arizona. He believed that the Hopi captured something about life that the rest of the world had missed. Their culture, traditions, and ceremonies were stable and permanent. They did not look to the conveniences of the day, and yet had [...]
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
