by Jennifer Roach
Genesis 2:2-3:
2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.
3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
Rest is holy. [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 2 – Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5
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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.
Ben Spackman, Through a Glass, Less Darkly: The 20th Century History of Genesis and Evolution
Ben Spackman is a PhD candidate in American Religious History at Claremont. His dissertation examines the intellectual roots of LDS creationism and evolution in the 20th century. Prior to his work at Claremont, he received a master’s degree and did PhD work in Old Testament languages and literature at the University of Chicago. He is a guest editor of a special edition of BYU Studies dedicated to biological evolution and LDS faith, and writes at BenSpackman.com.
The Come, Follow Me manual poses this question and gives links to articles on the Church’s website about the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible and the Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham. For further information, the following resources are available from FAIR and other trusted sites:
An Introduction to the Book of Abraham – the full text of this book by John Gee is available online for free from the publisher. (Click on the chapter titles to go to the text. You can also download PDF files from within each chapter that include photos and illustrations, which are very helpful.)
YouTube playlist of videos from FAIR on the Book of Abraham
Book of Abraham section of our website with common questions and answers
Book of Moses section of our website with common questions and answers
Interpreter Foundation 2021 Book of Moses Conference videos – Kent P. Jackson’s “How We Got the Joseph Smith Translation, the Book of Moses, and Joseph Smith—Matthew” is a good place to start.
More Come, Follow Me resources here.
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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.
Dan Peterson, The Book of Mormon Witnesses: Sincerity and Reality
The Witnesses film and books by Dan Peterson are available from the FAIR Bookstore.
Daniel C. Peterson (PhD, UCLA) is a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University and founder of the university’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative. He has published and spoken extensively on both Islamic and Mormon subjects. Formerly chairman of the board of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and an officer, editor, and author for its successor organization, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, his professional work as an Arabist focuses on the Qur’an and on Islamic philosophical theology. He is the author, among other things, of a biography entitled Muhammad: Prophet of God (Eerdmans, 2007). Dan currently serves as the president of the Interpreter Foundation.
by Michael R. Ash
Those who have read any of my writings in the past several decades will know that I’ve been a volunteer for FAIR for more than twenty years. I’m an active Latter-day Saint who accepts prophets as the divinely called and authorized agents of Christ’s church on earth. And, like many other believing members, scholars, and LDS-scientists, I also try to think rationally and logically, and I embrace the general conclusions of secular science and “objective” history.
Faith-Crisis
In the more than forty years that I’ve been reading and writing about LDS scholarly issues (including the twenty years I’ve been volunteering for FAIR), I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing the intellectual reasons people leave the faith. Obviously, there are many reasons that people leave the Church, but I’ve always been interested in the historical and scientific issues that unseat some LDS testimonies. [Read more…] about Rethinking Revelation and the Human Element in Scripture
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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.
Rebekah Clark, “The Gospel of Equal Rights”: Latter-day Saint Suffragists, 1870-1920
Rebekah Clark is co-author of the book Thinking Women: A Timeline of Suffrage in Utah and works as a historian for Better Days, a nonprofit public history organization dedicated to expanding education about Utah women’s history. She holds a law degree from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, studied as a visiting student at Harvard Law School, and practiced law in Boston for four years. She graduated with a degree in American History and Literature from Harvard University, where her honors thesis focused on Utah women’s activism in the national suffrage movement. She has worked at the LDS Church History Department and taught as an online adjunct faculty member at BYU-Idaho. Her work has appeared in journals such as the Utah State Historical Quarterly, the Journal of Mormon History, BYU Studies, Pioneer Magazine, and BYU Law Review and in podcasts by the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Church News, What’s Her Name, Zion Art Society, and the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. In addition to her work with Better Days, she currently serves on the board of the Mormon Women’s History Initiative Team. Rebekah lives in Highland with her husband Andrew and their five children.
by Cassandra Hedelius
In September 1995, President Hinckley used a big word. “With so much of sophistry that is passed off as truth, with so much of deception concerning standards and values, with so much of allurement and enticement to take on the slow stain of the world, we have felt to warn and forewarn.” He then presented the new Proclamation to the World. [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 51 – The Family: A Proclamation to the World
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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.
Stephen Smoot, Abraham and the Stranger at Sodom and Gomorrah: Reading the Bible and Navigating LGBT Identity
Stephen O. Smoot is a doctoral student in the department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literature at the Catholic University of America. He previously earned a master’s degree from the University of Toronto in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, with a concentration in Egyptology, and Bachelor’s degrees from Brigham Young University in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, with a concentration in Hebrew Bible, and German Studies. His areas of academic study and research include the Hebrew Bible, ancient Egypt, and Latter-day Saint scripture and history. From 2015 to 2020 Stephen was a research associate with Book of Mormon Central and is currently a research associate with the B. H. Roberts Foundation. Stephen served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in northern New England (the New Hampshire Manchester Mission), which included six months at the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial in Sharon, Vermont.
This biography of Dallin H. Oaks was written by Richard E. Turley, Jr., who has been associated with Oaks throughout most of his (Turley’s) professional life. Turley has served as the Director of the Church History Department (originally selected to work for the department by Oaks), Assistant Church Historian, and Director of Public Affairs. He has previously written or co-written several other books, including Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hoffman Case and Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy.
Dallin Harris Oaks was born August 12, 1932 in Provo, Utah. He got his middle name from his mom’s side of the family, who was descended from a brother of Martin Harris. He grew up in Provo; Twin Falls, Idaho; Payson (where he stayed with his grandparents at times due to the death of his father when he was 7); and Vernal. He came close to dying several times in his childhood, beginning with his birth, with miraculous preservation of his life occurring each time. [Read more…] about Book Review: “In the Hands of the Lord: The Life of Dallin H. Oaks”
by Michael R. Ash
Inspiration and Intellect are two sides of the same coin in how Latter-day Saints believe that God communicates with His children. We know that the Spirit testifies to eternal truths, but we often forget (or neglect) the role that intellect plays in uncovering truth. The late Apostle Hugh B. Brown said, “revelation does not come only through the prophet of God nor only directly from heaven in visions or dreams. Revelation may come in the laboratory, out of the test tube, out of the thinking mind and the inquiring soul, out of search and research and prayer and inspiration.”[i] Likewise, the Lord instructed the Saints to “seek learning… by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). This counsel was repeated several more times in modern revelations (see D&C 11:22, 90:15, 93:53; and 109: 7, 14), and the admonition led Joseph to establish the “School of the Prophets” (D&C 88:127).
The dual-nature or dual-sources for discovering truth presents some challenges, however. The first challenge is that neither source—neither inspiration nor intellect—can provide infallible and inerrant data.
The Challenge of Inspiration [Read more…] about Inspiration, Intellect, and Rethinking Revelation
