richard bushman

Hugh Nibley Weekly Lecture Series Beginning Tonight at BYU

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Dr. Richard Bushman

The Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies and the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), in conjunction with Religious Education and the Harold B. Lee library, are hosting a weekly lecture series that begins tonight, January 14th, 2010, at 7:00pm, and extends through Winter Semester 2010 on Thursday evenings in the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium at BYU.

This lecture series is in honor of the 100th anniversary of Hugh Nibley’s birth this year.  Hugh Nibley was born on March 27, 1910.

The presenters at these lectures will include Richard Bushman, Robert Millet, Terry Ball, Daniel Peterson, Zina Petersen, Ann Madsen, Alex Nibley, Bert Wilson, John Welch, Marilyn Arnold, Eric Huntsman, and Gaballa Ali Gaballa.

Tonight’s lecture is by Richard Bushman, biographer of Joseph Smith (Rough Stone Rolling), and an editor of the Joseph Smith Papers Project.  His topic is “Nibley and Joseph Smith.”  Next week’s lecture, January 21st, will be by Robert Millet who will present on “Nibley and the Church.”

I’m looking forward to these lectures.  Hugh Nibley catapulted LDS scholarship and apologetics into a new dimension, and his work will affect many generations of Latter-day Saints to come.  His work on the temple has particularly influenced me, and many others I know.

Update 1/15/10: The lecture was wonderful last night.  And there’s good news!  There were three cameras there filming it, which I think they will continue for the series, which means that they are planning on putting it all on TV or making it available somehow for later viewing (perhaps online).  They also gave the rest of the series schedule of lectures:

  • 14 Jan – “Nibley and Joseph Smith” – Richard Bushman
  • 21 Jan – “Nibley and the Church” – Robert Millet
  • 28 Jan – “Nibley’s Early Education” – Zina Petersen
  • 4 Feb – “Nibley as Apologist” – Daniel Peterson
  • 11 Feb – “Nibley and the environment” – Terry Ball
  • 18 Feb – “Graduate School through BYU” – Alex Nibley
  • 25 Feb – “Nibley on the Bible” – Ann Madsen
  • 4 Mar – “Folklore on Nibley” – Bert Wilson
  • 11 Mar – “The Lasting Legacies of Hugh W. Nibley” – John W. Welch
  • 18 Mar – “Nibley and Classical Scholarship” – Eric Huntsman
  • 25 Mar – “Nibley on the Book of Mormon” – Marilyn Arnold
  • 1 Apr – “Nibley the Mentor” – Wilfred Griggs
  • 8 Apr – “Nibley, Egyptology & the Book of Abraham” – TBA

These lectures will all be held in the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium (Level 1) at 7:00pm.  This is a great lineup!  If you plan on coming to these lectures, make sure you come early to get a seat, as the room was filled to overflowing last night.

Is TempleStudy.com slowing down?

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You may have wondered where I’ve been lately.  I haven’t posted any substantial posts over the last few days.  But, no need to worry.  I have assigned myself a fairly large side project that I believe will be of worth to researchers, historians, students, and anyone wanting to learn more about the prophet Joseph Smith, and the historical beginnings of the LDS Church and Mormonism.  It will be a small extension of Richard Bushman’s landmark biography of the prophet, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.  Anyone who has read Bushman’s biography I think will be particularly appreciative of it.  I don’t want to go into too many details now, but just wanted to let you know my posting will probably be minimal until I finish this project, which I hope I’ll be able to do before the FAIR Conference on August 7-8, which I am excited to attend.  That might be an unrealistic goal for its scope, but I’m attempting it.  Once I’m done, the results will be accessible here at TempleStudy.com.  In the meantime, there might be some posts in the archive that you might not have seen yet.

Stay tuned…

School of the Prophets as a Temple Precursor

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The School of the Prophets was held in an upper room of the Whitney Store in Kirtland, OhioI 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 hints and shadows of the pending promises and revelations of an endowment of power from on high.  The School of the Prophets was preparing the Church for the temple.

I’m reading Dr. Richard Bushman’s excellent biography, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, and this impressed me when I read the following about the revelation of D&C 88 and the organization of this school: [Read more…]

“You Don’t Speak About the Temple” Says Bushman

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Dr. Richard BushmanI have just recently begun reading Dr. Richard Bushman’s prominent Rough Stone Rolling biography of the prophet Joseph Smith. I have found it very insightful and excellent, and I’m sure I will share things here that relate to the temple as I come upon them in the book.

This morning, I read a Deseret News article this morning which reported on a talk that Dr. Bushman gave at Weber State University on March 5th. One of the main subjects that Bushman spoke about is Mormonism’s acceptance in America, and the troubles which surround that acceptance. One of those troubles stems from the LDS practice of keeping the temple secret. The report states:

“It is true that we are in a sense secret,” Bushman said. “It will be difficult to remove the suspicions when there is a certain fact to it.”

Bushman said he doesn’t like when Mormons say the temple is not secret, that it is sacred.

“It is secret,” he said. But he appreciates how excellent Mormons are at creating sacred spaces.

“Those temple spaces are just different from the rest of the world,” Bushman said after watching people walk silently with arms folded through the Manhattan Temple before it was dedicated. The process to be able to go into a Mormon temple evolves around keeping it sacred and at the same time, secret.

“Important as anything,” Bushman said, “is you don’t speak about the temple, even to those who go to the temple.”

[Read more…]