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Joseph Smith as a Creative Interpreter of the Bible

My involvement in biblical studies has also awakened in me an interest in other holy books. In the 1970s, I had the opportunity to do some work on the Qur’an, a fascinating combination of things familiar and unfamiliar for a biblical scholar. I had a vague hunch that, in a somewhat similar way, the Book of Mormon might make exciting reading, but a contact with that book and its study came about quite accidentally.

Letters to the Editor

George D. Smith, George D. Smith Responds
Emily Parker Updegraff, Unapproachable Nature

Hidden Treasures

Shortly after my family and I moved to Bloomington, Indiana, three years ago, my six-year-old son invited a neighbor boy over to play. The neighbor asked if they could go geode hunting in the wooded creek behind our house. I did not know what geodes were or what kind of artillery might be required to hunt them, but I sent the boys out with my blessing, hoping they could not get into too much trouble. A little while later, I saw them staggering out of the woods, splattered with mud and clay. They were carrying a heavy rounded rock, which they dumped unceremoniously on the porch. 

Characters to Care About | Jonathan Langford, No Going Back

Google “gay” and “Mormon” these days, and you’ll be flung— headfirst—into a veritable deluge of vitriol and sanctimony. Of course, it didn’t start with California’s Proposition 8. No, that river’s path pushes back, through the…

Re-Creating the Bible | William C. Bishop, B. G. Christensen, Samantha Larsen Hastings, Sarah Jenkins, Eric W. Jepson, Ryan McIlvain, Danny Nelson, and Arwen Taylor, The Fob Bible

Lately the Bible has been getting a bum rap. Christopher Hitchens calls it “a nightmare”and blames it for much of humanity’s suffering—everything from sexism to genocide. At the same time, literalist approaches to the Bible have produced narrow theology and tendentious, unscientific speculation.

Eternal Misfit

For some reason I can’t explain, I know Saint Peter won’t call my name.  Coldplay[1] Some of the functions in the celestial body will not appear in the terrestrial body, neither in the telestial body, and…