scholar

Upcoming Sperry Symposium Focuses on the Temple

2 Comments
sperry-symposium

Click to see the flyer with schedule

The 42nd Annual Sidney B. Sperry Symposium this year will be focused on the topic of the temple, specifically “Ascending the Mountain of the Lord: Temple, Praise, and Worship in the Old Testament.”  It will be held on Saturday, October 26, 2013, in the Joseph Smith Building (JSB) auditorium and adjacent buildings at BYU in Provo, Utah.  Admission is free, and no registration required.  It is open to the general public.

Below is a comprehensive list of all the scholars presenting and their topics.  It is a smorgasbord of fantastic scholarship that will be presented on the temple.  There will be seven concurrent sessions going on, so you’ll need to pick and choose very carefully which presentations to attend.  Fortunately, many of the papers will be published. [Read more…]

Interpreter offers an Annual Print Subscription, and Temple Studies

4 Comments

copies-fannedThose of you who like to read materials in hard print, or even if you just like to keep a print copy in your home library, The Interpreter Foundation has announced that they are now offering an annual print subscription to its journal, Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture. I serve on the Executive Board of the foundation, and I can attest to the quality of the Board, the authors, and of the publications. There is fantastic new scholarship being published on the Church, the Gospel, Church history, the temple, the Book of Mormon, ancient religion, and all things Mormonism, and Interpreter is a great place to find it.

For $35 annually you can receive paperback copies of all volumes of the journal. That is a fantastic deal when you consider that the foundation is producing four or five volumes annually, or about 1000-1250 pages in a year. There is no royalty or markup of that price; it covers cost of printing and shipping only.

If you are interested in temple materials only, there have been a number of great articles related to the temple that have already been published in the journal, and it is a recurring theme. These have included the following to date:

Temple Studies Bibliography Now Online

6 Comments

One of the presentations at the conference “Mormonism and the Temple” in Logan last month was by Danel W. Bachman, who presented the culmination of a project that he has been working on for the past six years.  It is the compilation of a very extensive bibliography on temple studies.  Other temple bibliographies have been published in the past (which are listed at the beginning of this compilation), and this bibliography sought to build on those while adding many more references to materials related to the temple.  As a result, this draft contains roughly 7,000 entries that pertain to temple studies.  And it is now online, at the Academy for Temple Studies website.

This is a great new project that will help researchers, scholars, students, and followers of temple studies find more resources on the subject, and related topics.  As you might imagine, this is a living project, and references will be added and pruned over time.  There will also be investigation into new bibliography technologies that might be utilized to better format, distribute, collaborate on, cite, and otherwise use the information.  All of these efforts will significantly aid scholarship in the field of temple studies.

See the new temple studies bibliography online.

Hugh Nibley’s Biography Now Available as E-Book

1 Comment
Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life

Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life

For those of you who haven’t read the biography Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life, written by Boyd Jay Petersen, I highly recommend it.  It is a fascinating read into the life of one the greatest scholars of the LDS Church.  And it is now available as an e-book for reading on your iPad, Kindle, Nook, or other e-reader, for only $9.99.  See the links below:

Apple iBookstore
Amazon Kindle
Barnes & Noble Nook 

Living The Law Of Consecration – Part 4: What is Tithing?

10 Comments

(Continued from Part 3)

This is a continuation of a series of posts that I started a few years ago.  Of course, it could easily fit within the series very recent posts on the same subject of the law of consecration, including Hugh Nibley quotes from Approaching Zion, “Are we required to live the law of consecration, now?“, and Mormon Channel Episodes On The Law Of Consecration And The United Order.

In this post we will examine this question – “What is tithing?”

This seems to be a pretty basic question, with a Primary answer.  We all know what tithing is, right?  I mean, even the etymology of the word tithe itself, coming from the Old English teoþa or even earlier to the Hebrew tithes in Malachi 3:8 (ma`aser or מַעֲשֵׂר, or an even earlier root `asar or עֶשֶׂר meaning “ten”), means a “tenth” part.  What could be more simple?  This seems to be a commandment that we could easily say we keep or do not keep.  We either give a tenth part of our income annually, or we don’t.  Is there any more to it?

The truth of the matter is that everything we think we know about tithing is most likely wrong.  This could come as a shock to some, but when you get right down to what tithing is, as revealed by the Lord through the prophet Joseph Smith in this dispensation, it is not what we commonly think it is.  Personally, I think this is unfortunate, because we do not know what the Lord revealed and commanded, and if we are thus ignorant, how do we expect to be able to follow His word?  What does the Lord say?  What do our scriptures teach? [Read more…]