There is an excellent commentary by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, who is Catholic, on the LDS (Mormon) garment. In her article she describes the garment as not dissimilar to the sacred clothing of many religious groups around the world, including Jews, Catholics (Roman and Eastern), Sikhs, Buddhists, Amish, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, and tribal religions. I too once wrote about the sacred undergarment of the Jews, the tallit katan(and its tzitzit). [Read more…]
Welcome to our first fireside discussion at TempleStudy.com! This discussion is taking place with a new innovative tool from Google called Hangouts, and specifically Hangouts on Air. This allows up to ten panelists to take part in a discussion with full video/audio of each participant. The “on air” portion means that it is streamed live to the world, and will be recorded also for later for viewing. It will be streamed live on TempleStudy.com, and wherever else it is embedded. See the original post about the idea.
Andrew C. Skinner is a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University, was dean of Religious Education and the first executive director of BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He holds master’s degrees in Biblical Hebrew and Jewish Studies and a Ph.D. in Near Eastern and European History, specializing in Judaism. He is the author or co-author of over 100 publications.
We will have several great panelists participating in our discussion tonight, including myself, Frederick M. Huchel, Gary N. Anderson, Steve Reed, and Tevya Washburn. I thank them sincerely for participating in tonight’s discussion. Thank you for coming!
Music is a fundamental part of worship, and was even more so anciently than it is today. Before the printed word made the sacred word so accessible to the masses, it was passed on from generation to generation orally. But this was not just the spoken word. In order for the word to be remembered and said the same way over and over again, over decades and centuries, a mnemonic device was employed to facilitate the reciter. This device was music. The sacred word, every word, was put to music.
This can be seen in the way the Bible is written in Hebrew, one of the oldest languages in the world. In Hebrew, particularly the Hebrew Bible, there are cantillation marks that specify how the text should be sung: [Read more…]
