DiaBLOGue

Scripture, History, and Faith: A Round Table Discussion

April 4, 2018

Participants

Todd Compton: Ph.D., classics, University of California, Los Angeles. Dean, Graduate Studies, Park College, Independence, Missouri; Director, Temple School Center, Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Independence, Missouri. 

Steven Epperson: Assistant Professor of History, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, specializing in American religious history and history of Christian doctrine. 

Mark D. Thomas: Scriptural Studies Editor, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 

Margaret Toscano: Ph.D. candidate, comparative literature, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. 

David P. Wright: Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.

Black Moroni

April 4, 2018

Painted on the wall behind the seats where choir sings 
See the shining figure in a steep green wood 
Angel wears a shirtwaist robe, fabric wing as thin as filament
He looks downslope where Joseph kneels, treasure spread in dirt

A Mosaic for a Religious Counterculture: The Bible in the Book of Mormon

April 4, 2018

Dialogue 29.4 (Winter 1998):59–83
THE BOOK OF MORMON HAS OCCASIONALLY been portrayed as a deficient
first novel. Its characters appear flat and stereotypical; the plots and char￾acters seem to lack moral subtlety; and so on. Should we wonder that to￾day’s high literary circles ignore it?

Life-line

April 4, 2018

Tonight I wear your dress 
like a shell to my most graceless springing. 
The brown velvet shimmers with the folds 
and the tucks hang like loosely gathered wind, 

Silver Footprints

April 4, 2018

Neither masculine nor feminine a powerful 
androgyny like wind surrounding shoulders
of a crowd, drawing in, along, persuasive as scent. 

Alaska Girlhood

April 4, 2018

Eden was a winter 
when gods skated the earth. 
They’d warm themselves by the fires 
that lit the man-high snowbanks