“He expected the temple to be more beautiful on the inside than it was…” Just a few days prior to me and my wife taking our five daughters to the new Gilbert, Arizona temple, I sat for lunch with an LDS … Continue reading
Armand L. Mauss, The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. 257 pages. The thesis of Armand Mauss’ The Angel and The Beehive is centered on the response of The Church of Jesus Christ … Continue reading
Review of David Bokovoy, Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis – Deuteronomy (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2014). As Darwin’s concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection has become central to modern evolutionary theory, so…historical criticism provides the foundation for … Continue reading
[read part 2 here] Just as earlier stories were used to fashion the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a later story in the Old Testament borrowed the Sodom story as a template – using sexuality to shame a group of … Continue reading
When new presidents are inaugurated, they traditionally lay their hand on the Bible for their swearing-in. Occasionally, as in the cases of Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy, the Bibles are left closed. Usually, however, they are opened—either to a … Continue reading
In a previous post, I proposed the Sodom and Gomorrah story was carefully constructed to parallel the story of the Lord telling Abraham and Sarah that despite their age, they would be able to conceive a child. The thwarted sexual … Continue reading
When asked to substitute-teach a gospel doctrine lesson a few years ago, I discovered unexpected parallels between the Sodom and Gomorrah story and some of the stories preceding it. Upon further examination, I came to the realization that the story … Continue reading