templestudy.com

MP3 podcasts and Transcriptions of Fireside Discussions on the Temple

Leave a Comment

If you are interested in hearing the fireside discussions on the temple we have been having recently as MP3’s, or audio podcasts, instead of watching the videos, the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR) has asked and received our permission to turn them into sound files for the FAIR podcast.  Each FAIR podcast can be found here.  You can subscribe to the FAIR podcast in iTunes here.  Or use this RSS feed link to download the FAIR podcasts.  They don’t have any of our discussions online yet, but they will be coming.

If you can’t wait for FAIR, and would like to download the MP3 audio of these discussions now, there are a number of websites that will allow you to rip the audio from any YouTube video and download it as an MP3.  Here is a sampling: ListenToYouTube.com, video2mp3.net, vidtomp3.com, youtube-mp3.org, mp3ify.com, fullrip.net, flvto.com, etc.  There are also FireFox addons and Chrome extensions that will add links to the YouTube page directly for you to simply click to download the MP3.

Some readers have also asked if these fireside discussions are available as transcripts. Unfortunately, because these firesides are live off-the-cuff discussions, we don’t have anything written down, and we don’t have the resources to have someone go back through the recordings and make official professional transcripts. However, YouTube lets us download the machine transcribed captions that we can share. They aren’t perfect transcriptions because they were transcribed by a computer, and you won’t know who is talking, but they are something. I hope this helps.

Here are the transcriptions from the last two fireside discussions. Simply click to view them in your browser, or right-click the links and choose “save as” to save the file on your computer and then open the file in your word processor:

Part I – http://templestudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/Part1captions.sbv
Part II – http://templestudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/Part2captions.sbv

The Purposes of TempleStudy.com

11 Comments

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

4 Comments

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.

The Next Temple Fireside Discussion

3 Comments

I have received several comments from people who said they enjoyed the temple fireside discussion we had this past Sunday. If you were not able to watch the discussion, it is available for viewing as a recording from that post.

Our next discussion was tentatively planned for Sunday tomorrow. We have pushed that back to this coming Thursday evening, August 16th, at 7:30pm. This will facilitate some of the panelists in participating with us.

As some of you know we were only able to make it through about three paragraphs of the introduction of Andrew Skinner’s book Temple Worship. I hope to move a bit faster than that through the text, or it will take an eternity to get through the text (which might be fitting, given the subject matter). Our first discussion also ran a little long at 1 hour 38 minutes. We had some technical difficulties that we believe we’ve ironed out. I hope to keep the discussions to around 1 hour, to be considerate of our panelists’ time, and to help more people find the time to watch live or the recording later.

Please let me know if you have any questions. We’ll see you on Thursday.

Reflections on Temple Discussion

30 Comments

Of course many of you know that we had a discussion about the temple this past Sunday on Google Hangouts.  I hope you were able to listen in or watch.  If not, a recording is available.

I’m curious to get your feedback on the fireside discussion.  Some questions in my mind are:

  • Was it helpful to you? In what way?
  • Did you learn new things?  What?
  • Did you enjoy it?  Why?
  • Were you nervous about what might be said?  Did we assuage that fear?
  • What did you think of the length?  Shorter?  Longer?
  • What did you think of the contributors?  (Be nice!)
  • Was the material we addressed accessible and understandable?
  • Did the discussion encourage you to go learn more on your own?
  • Do you believe it is helpful for the Church in general, both for members within the Church to learn about the temple, and for outsiders to gain a greater understanding of our temple traditions? (Ok, that’s a loaded one.)
  • Any concerns? Suggestions? Critiques?

Before I schedule the next one, which might be as soon as this coming Sunday, August 12, I want to get your take on this, so we can improve it or cancel it.  Please take a moment to share with us your thoughts in the comments below.