Best of the Week 6: Academic LDS

Posted on August 18, 2008
Filed Under Religion | 5 Comments

(Whoops, sorry about that old header – my bad) Here’s this week’s “best of” for more academic oriented posts on Mormon topics. I’ve found there’s just so many blogs out there now and most tend to post of fluff (IMO). There are always a few blogs that go after the more technical stuff. But I wanted to centralize things a bit for those of us interested in the more academic stuff. As ever if you feel I missed a great post please post it in the comments.

Ancient History and Scripture

Bryce Haymond has up a great little blog that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. It’s one of my favorite blogs to read. It’s definitely has a more Nibleyesque apologetic vibe to it but I don’t know why the most popular blog aggregator (Mormon Archipelago) has it way down so low. (I can understand why they dropped me down a bit since I often go a long time without any LDS content and the content I have is often technical and oriented towards a more limited audience) Anyway his blog Temple Study is my pick of the week for missed gem. He has up several great posts the last week or so as well.

The “mark” of anointing. A nice little bit of discussion of the notion of a mark (often a tau) given as a sign of anointing. I should note that there’s actually a ton of data on this and the tau symbol in early Christianity isn’t as widely appreciated as it should be. Ditto with the gamma and lamda. (My business partner has binders full of photos and stuff on this – much of his research composed the basis of Stephen Rick’s essay related to the topic from the early 90’s) Now I do think caution is in order – especially too much appeal to Margaret Barker. But it’s a very interesting topic.

He also has up an interesting post on the location of Solomon’s temple. As some have thought for a long time recent evidence points to a place away from the Dome of the Rock.

Jim Faulconer and Joe Spencer have put together a podcast on the upcoming Alma 32 conference.

18th – 20th Century History

JI reposts a nice discussion of David Whitmer and his followers from the archives. The original post is more about Whitmer’s take on Joseph Smith as a fallen prophet. However the discussion in the comments that goes off on a tangent is probably even more interesting.

J. Stapley does his regular summary of what is in this issue of the Journal of Mormon History.

Ardis had up one of my favorite posts of the week with old advertisements for sacrament trays. I suspect most didn’t even know these were ordered by spec by the Church as a whole until fairly recently. (I want to say the 1970’s but I’m not exactly sure)

Life on Gold Plates has up a transcript of Bushman’s introduction to the Joseph Smith and his critics conference. It’s quite interesting.

JI has up an interesting discussion of what the future of Mormon history will be. I think everyone agreed that there’s a lot to be written about 20th century history.

JI had up an interesting post comparing the angelology of Swedenborg and Joseph Smith.

Ardis had up an other post on the history of polynesians in the Utah region.

Science

T&S has an interesting discussion about figuring out risk. The issue is the theology of marriage, global warming and the like. Not properly science but related.

Metadiscussions

Yeah, weird category. But there’s lots of discussions about academics and LDS that probably just don’t belong in the sociology category. Consider for instance FPR’s discussion of criticism and the world of scholarship and the world of religion. The main thrust is how lay people misunderstand academic terms like criticism. So it’s more about the rhetoric.

Philosophy and Theology

“Many more ordinances.” A nice little post by Bryce discussing a talk by Brigham Young on other ordinances such as resurrection. This is a topic that doesn’t get as much theological discussion as it perhaps should. (Perhaps due to the context in which it is usually taught as part of the marriage ordinance) This and a few other talks by Young really ought, I think, contextualize how we view the temple but also how we view progression.

Matt at NCT asks, “why be married” It’s an interesting question when you take a step back and think about it. If one takes a more traditional view of Mormon theology that doesn’t reject most of Brigham Young’s views then it makes a ton of sense. If one does reject Young’s views on things like spirit birth then it becomes much more problematic in my view.

Misc.

I said last week how surprised that many blogs such as Mormon Matters didn’t do Sunstone writeups. Well here’s Mormon Matter’s writeup on Sunstone.

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Comments

5 Responses to “Best of the Week 6: Academic LDS”

Hey! Thank you for your kind compliments of my blog. I greatly appreciate it. I did a follow up on the “mark of anointing” about the tav in Job 31:35 that you might also like here.

Thanks again!

Thanks for the acknowledgements, Clark. Your comments at Keepa are always welcome and useful, and your references here sometimes send me to read a post that hadn’t sounded too interesting when listed in the aggregator.

We didn’t demote you, Clark! We just arranged each row alphabetically.

4 Waldo Johns on August 31st, 2008 5:16 pm

“I should note that there’s actually a ton of data on this and the tau symbol in early Christianity isn’t as widely appreciated as it should be. Ditto with the gamma and lamda. (My business partner has binders full of photos and stuff on this – much of his research composed the basis of Stephen Rick’s essay related to the topic from the early 90’s)”

How about a little more data on this subject. Like where to find this data.
Thanks
Waldo

Thought many of you might be interested in this. There is to be a scholarly discussion of the Mountain Meadows Massacre hosted by John Mack Faragher (Yale), Philip Barlow (USU), and Donald Fixico(ASU) at the SLC Public Library on Sept. 5th. The discussion will focus on the book _Massacre at Mountain Meadows_ by Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, and Glen M. Leonard. Below is more information.

Massacre at Mountain Meadows

A Scholarly Discussion

September 5, 2008, 7pm

Main Auditorium

Salt Lake City Public Library

Free and Open to the Public

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