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Interpreter offers an Annual Print Subscription, and Temple Studies

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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:

BYU Studies Articles on the Temple

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byu_studies

BYU Studies

John W. Welch, Editor in Chief of BYU Studies, has informed me of a comprehensive list of articles dealing with the temple that have been published in the journal BYU Studies over the years. This is a fantastic collection of LDS scholarship on the temple, dealing with a wide variety of temple-related topics, including book reviews, with direct links to the articles on the BYU Studies website.

After clicking on the links below, you can click on the “Download Article/PDF: FREE” link on the right-hand side to download, read, and print a PDF of each article. The majority of these articles are free to download and read, but a few recently published articles might have a small price attached (BYU Studies subscribers can log in to the website to read these articles also for free).

The list is in alphabetical order by title. [Read more…]

Death Before the Fall? First Impressions

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Omo 1 skull remains, considered the oldest Homo sapiens fossils discovered, scientists date to 200,000 years old

Omo 1 skull remains, considered the oldest Homo sapiens fossils discovered, scientists date to 200,000 years old

This is a follow-up to “The Age of the Earth” post, although I suppose that one was really laying the groundwork for this one.  This is where everything comes to a head (like the one shown here).  Was there death before the Fall of Adam and Eve?  It is a very delicate question, because there are very strong feelings on many sides of the issue, some of which may have tremendous gospel implications as well.  So here we will tread lightly, and attempt to not make any dogmatic conclusions.  I’m not sure I have any besides.  These are simply some first impressions on the subject.  Because that is the case, we will ask more questions here than we attempt to answer in any substantial way.

This is a point of presumed doctrine in LDS belief that causes consternation for many members.  Similar to the age of the Earth question, it causes cognitive dissonance for some, insofar that some even lose their faith in the Church, and even leave the Church.  I perceive that this should not be.  There are answers, even if preliminary, to most of these difficult questions.  It should also be noted that questions such as these are not necessarily central to the gospel, nor to our salvation, but they do affect some people’s ability to function in the Church because of the cognitive dissonance it causes them.

The belief, as I introduced above, is that there was no death before the Fall of Adam and Eve.  No death, period.  On the other hand, the world and its legions of scientists of all stripes inform us that there were dinosaurs, dating back 230 million years, with bones scattered in all parts of the world (one of the largest caches is located right here in Vernal, Utah).  There were trilobites, perhaps the most common fossil, dating back 526 million years (again, one of the richest quarries is just west of Delta, Utah, where you can actually “farm” for trilobites to take home.)  There were ancient forests, plant life, zooplankton, and algae, dating back millions of year, which helped give us the crude oil that powers much of our world today.  There are even bones of hominids that used stone tools that most scientists concur died a couple million years ago.  Indeed, there are even bones of anatomically modern humans that have been dated to up to 200,000 years old (see the image above). [Read more…]

The Purposes of TempleStudy.com

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Recently I’ve had an interesting, yet somewhat disheartening, discussion wherein a reader of this website questioned my motives, goals, reasoning, and aspirations.  If you’d like to browse it, you may begin here.

Let it be known far and wide that my desire is that I might, in the smallest measure, be an instrument in the hands of the Lord to bring about His purposes in righteousness.  Ultimately, that is all.  Appendages to this might be found here.

Fireside Discussion Part III on Wednesday Evening

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We are planning our third fireside discussion at TempleStudy.com using Google Hangouts on Air, live online, for tomorrow night, Wednesday, August 22nd, at 7:30pm (get reminded by Google+ here).  Our discussion last week was great; we discussed the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes, Qumran, the Temple Scroll, Jacob at Bethel and the symbolism of Jacob’s Ladder, and some thoughts from Elder Carlos E. Asay.  We should have a great chat this week too, with Professor William J. Hamblin leading the discussion.

In these discussions we talk about the history, principles, and reasons for the LDS temple, and temple worship antecedents in antiquity. Springboarding the discussion will be Andrew Skinner’s book, Temple Worship (chapter 1), which is also available as an ebook for Kindle.  If you would like to be a contributor, or “panelist,” in our discussion, and you have a webcam (or have an iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad or Android), please let me know.  Otherwise you can simply watch the discussion as it takes place here at TempleStudy.com, on the Google+ event page, or the recording later which will be here at TempleStudy.com or on YouTube.