Book of Mormon
John Hamer Interview-Part 1
In January 2010, John Dehlin Interviewed John Hamer on the Succession Crisis following Joseph Smith’s death. I posted part of this a few days ago when I posted about dissolving the First Presidency. One of the things I love was the discussion of the Presiding High Council. JD, “Today we’re going to be discussing a brief history of […]
Was 1978 the Right Year?
The priesthood and temple ban was lifted in a 1978 revelation given to President Spencer W. Kimball and the Twelve Apostles. With Civil Rights being a big issue in the 1960’s, there are many who criticize the church for taking so long in lifting the priesthood ban on black men, and the temple ban on […]
Bill Russell: Pillars of my Faith
John Dehlin of Mormon Stories has a recording of a 1993 Sunstone Symposium. Bill Russell gave a very interesting presentation. I transcribed the entire talk, and wanted to share it with everyone. Bill certainly has an interesting perspective on things. Â He is a past president of the Mormon History Association. The topic was titled Pillars […]
Bill Russell: Nephi is Dangerous
The following comments were recorded at the 1993 Sunstone Symposium. Bill Russell spoke on the recurring theme as Sunstone called “The Pillars of my Faith”. He is a past president of the Mormon History Association. I don’t know who introduced him, but this is what the person said when he introduced Bill Russell. Introduction, “William […]
Friendly Atheist Finds Value in Book of Mormon
Clay Painter of Mormon Expression interviewed Bob Price about his opinions of the Book of Mormon. Not everyone believes the Book of Mormon is a truly divine document, but I found it interesting to hear that Bob finds value in the Book of Mormon, despite his being an atheist. Regarding Mormon Expression, sometimes I find […]
Jana Riess: Truth Doesn't have to be Empirical
Jana Riess has recently published a book called Flunking Sainthood in which she decides to spend 1 month participating in various spiritual rituals. For example, she spent one month fasting from sun up to sun down as a pious Muslim would do during Ramadan (though she picked the month of February because it had the […]
Looking at the Spaulding Manuscript
Soon after the publication of the Book of Mormon, critics believed that Joseph must have plagiarized it from another source. One of the most prominent theories since the 1830’s is the Spaulding (or Spalding) Theory. Briefly, the theory states that Joseph Smith plagiarized (or at least used as a source) an unpublished book written by […]
Debunking the Jockers Study
I really appreciate a comment by Chris Spencer on my previous post Dueling Wordprint Studies. In that post, I had discussed a controversial study completed by Stanford researchers Mathew Jockers, Daniela Witten, and Craig Criddle who concluded that 57% the Book of Mormon was authored by Sidney Rigdon and Solomon Spaulding. (There was an interesting discussion […]
The Wentworth Letter
I posted my initial impressions of the Kindle over at Wheat and Tares. One of the coolest “books” I received at Amazon for free was the Wentworth Letter. For those of you who don’t know, Joseph Smith wrote a history of the church to John Wentworth, the editor of a newspaper called the Chicago Democrat in […]
Mormon Heretic 