Ronan James Head

RONAN HEAD {[email protected]} oversees religious education at an Anglican cathedral school in England, leads the Ancient Law Collections Online project (anelaws.byu.edu), and is active in various Mormon studies endeavours.

In The Nephite Courtroom | John W. Welch, The Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon

Articles/Essays – Volume 42, No. 3

John W. Welch’s CV is enough to trigger fatigue in even the most prolific of scholars. As founding director of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), Welch introduced a new generation of Mormon readers to the work of Hugh Nibley and kick-started a renewed vigor in “faithful scholarship.” He serves as editor in chief of BYU Studies and has joined with others to oversee various projects from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism to the Library of Congress conference on Joseph Smith. His publications include work on topics as diverse as the art of Minerva Teichert and biblical law. Welch is particularly famous in Mormon apologetic circles for his discovery of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. All of these activities run parallel to his day job as Robert K. Thomas Professor of Law at BYU.

“An American Enterprise”: An Interview with Massimo Introvigne

Articles/Essays – Volume 44, No. 1

Ronan: How did you become interested in New Religious Movements?

Massimo: I am from a Roman Catholic background but started being interested in other religions at a very early age. I think it was by reading novels from authors like Emilio Salgari who talked about the Middle East and Far East. He wrote a couple of Western novels, but most were in Hindu or Muslim settings. Also Kipling. Of course, I now realize that neither of these authors can be taken as good guides about the real East; but at the age of about seven or eight, I didn’t understand that they were not reliable sources.

Unity and the King James Bible

Articles/Essays – Volume 45, No. 2

The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible (KJV)has been the de facto English LDS Bible since the very beginning of the Restoration. The initial reason for this is simple: The KJV was the Bible of American Protestantism in the nineteenth century and was therefore Joseph Smith’s Bible. For example, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery used an 1828 KJV to begin work on the Inspired Version of the Bible, known by Mormons as the “Joseph Smith Translation” (JST).