This is an open thread for participants and streaming listeners to comment on FAIR conference presentations on Friday, 8 August 2008.
Today’s speaker lineup:
- Ron Esplin (“The Joseph Smith Papers”)
- Matthew Brown (“The Israelite Temple and the Early Christians”)
- Newell Bringhurst and Craig Foster (“The White Horse Prophecy: Myth vs. Reality”)
- Scott Gordon (“Online Apologetics”)
- Brian Hauglid (“The Book of Abraham”)
- Brant Gardner (“Second Witness: The Book of Mormon”)
- Daniel Peterson (“Humble Apologetics”)
We look forward to your comments!
I am liveblogging this session also at TempleStudy.com, if you want to see the notes I’m taking throughout. It’s been fun to see others pop in and comment too, such as Dr. Bill Hamblin from Oxford.
The Joseph Smith Papers project is quite exciting. I’m looking forward to the first volumes coming out. It is fascinating that the total project will comprise 30 volumes and 15,000 to 20,000 pages.
-Allen
Great notes, Bryce. Thanks for the terrific coverage!
Blair is also continuing his liveblogging over on Life On Gold Plates.
Did anyone catch the name of the conference at BYU on November 7 (that Matt Brown spoke of)?
It is a symposium of the organization Students of the Ancient Near East (SANE) at BYU on “Temple and Ritual in Antiquity.” It is scheduled for November 7th at BYU. You can see who will be presenting here.
For more information, contact Dan McClellan at byu_sane (AT) yahoo (DOT) com.
Excellent conference. Spectacular.
I enjoyed the conference. I am a first time attendee although I have lurked on the LDS-Fair site almost since the beginning. I will come again.
I greatly enjoyed Ron Esplin’s presentation on the JS Papers. I look forward to the first volume on the “Revelations”.
Matthew Brown’s presentation was masterful. I learned a great deal about Temple practice among the Israelites and was facinated by the parallels between the king’s annointings and the Temple initiation as shown in Revelations although I shouldn’t have been. I would love to sit in the Celestial Room with him and see some of the things he sees in our Temple worship.
I laughed when Craig Foster noted that the White Horse Prophecy was spread from missionary to missionary. That was true for everyone sitting on our row. Maybe someone should put a mimeographed copy of their presentation in a missionary apartment so it can get passed around for the next 40 years.
I thought Scott Gordon, Brian Hauglid and Daniel Peterson had a lot of overlap in their presentations. I kept wishing Brian would address what they were seeing in the Abraham project and that Daniel would talk about his Islamic projects. I love “state of the studies” presentations. Thanks to Scott for bringing his two guests to witness for apologetics.
I look forward to “Nobody Knows” becoming available. I will buy a copy for my library. It was very moving.
My favorite presentation of the day was Brant Gardner’s. I had never thought of the book Mormon intended us to receive versus the book we have. I am grateful for people who are skilled in textual studies who can show me insights I would never even think to look for otherwise. That was a recurring thought as I listened to many of the scholars over the two days. I am thrilled that with all the intellectual powder being burnt in study that the meta message is still that Jesus is the Messiah, the annointed one. While he dodged the question, I think that parallelistic patterns would have to fit better with Mormon’s chapter breaks since his commentary usually was in the next chapter. The poems would stand out more. It would be an interesting study for someone like D Parry.
I had a great time at the Conference. Thanks so much to everyone and all the work you put in. I made a brief comment about the conference on our blog here.