FAIR

Joseph Smith

Watch the 2020 Interpreter Conference

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Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses

Live Streaming of the Conference
September 18 & 19, 2020

Program and other details available here.

Live streaming times:

  • 7:00 pm MDT, Friday September 18 — Keynote Session
  • 9:00 am MDT, Saturday September 19 — Morning Session
  • 1:00 pm MDT, Saturday September 19 — Afternoon Session

To Submit Questions During the Conference:

NOTE: The live-stream links will no longer be operational once the Conference finishes. We expect videos of the presentations to be available 6-8 weeks afterward. Freely downloadable drafts of the conference proceedings papers will be available within the ‘Book of Moses Bibliography’ at https://interpreterfoundation.org/book-of-moses-bibliography/ shortly after the conference.

Raising the Abrahamic Discourse: An Essay on the Nature of Dialogues About the Book of Abraham

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by Kerry Muhlestein

Cross-posted from The Interpreter Foundation

See also: Scholarly Support for the Book of Abraham

[Kerry Muhlestein also gave a presentation at the recent FairMormon Conference on “Egyptian Papers and the Translation of the Book of Abraham: What Careful Applications of the Evidence Can and Cannot Tell Us.” You can purchase access to watch the full conference here.]

We live in an era of online communications. If you want to reach large numbers of people in quick fashion, then online videos, blogs, memes, and podcasts have become the tool of the moment. These tools are effective at conveying information in an attractive and user-friendly format and in a way that can reach across the globe in mere minutes. Moreover, they are quite convenient for the consumer, which further helps spread the message. They certainly have their place, and do some things very well.

If these online communications have a downside, it is insuring the accuracy of the information they convey. Many are accurate, many are not, and it is difficult to tell which is which. Like news sound bites, such media often seem to lend themselves to simplistic and over-reduced explanations that frequently misrepresent complex matters. Further, somehow they often easily fall into a low level of discourse. This is not true of all them, it really depends on the hosts and forums. Yet too often this is exactly what happens. Some who engage in these electronic venues work very hard to try to provide accurate information at an honorable level of rhetoric, but the forum does not require it and thus many are extremely poor at ensuring a high academic quality of information and sometimes make little to no effort at maintaining the kind of respectful and noble level of discourse that is supposed to be the hallmark of the academic world. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in some podcasts that have recently been released in various venues about the Book of Abraham. [Read more…] about Raising the Abrahamic Discourse: An Essay on the Nature of Dialogues About the Book of Abraham

FAIR Voice Podcast #10: Polygamy and 1 Corinthians 13

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Polygamy is a difficult concept for many to grasp, but Hanna dives into the Hebrew Bible and the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s to understand polygamy in a way that shows how it was not just acceptable– it was ordained and good for the time. She unapologetically explains how God consecrates everything for our good and how polygamy made sense for the time. She, then, dives into 1 Corinthians 13 and expresses love for the idea of love.

Hanna SeariacHanna Seariac is a MA student in Greek and Latin at Brigham Young University. She is writing a book on the history of the priesthood and another one that responds systematically to anti-LDS literature. She works as a research assistant on a biblical commentary and as a producer on a news show. She values Jesus Christ, family, friends, hiking, baking, and really good ice cream.

FAIR Voice Podcast #9: Interview with Chris Blythe on the Terrible Revolution

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Christopher Blythe, a research associate at the Maxwell Institute and co-editor of the Journal of Mormon History, released a new book Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse. In this engaging interview, he discusses with Hanna some of the foundational sources that construct LDS theology on last days prophecies.

Hanna Seariac

Hanna Seariac is a MA student in Greek and Latin at Brigham Young University. She is writing a book on the history of the priesthood and another one that responds systematically to anti-LDS literature. She works as a research assistant on a biblical commentary and as a producer on a news show. She values Jesus Christ, family, friends, hiking, baking, and good ice cream.

FAIR Voice Podcast #8: Sunday Special on Clarke Commentary, Doctrine, and the Sacrament

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Perhaps the mostly highly anticipated article in Producing Ancient Scripture came from Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon regarding Joseph Smith’s use of the Adam Clarke commentary. Since the release of that article, many critics have used this as a way to challenge Joseph Smith’s truth claims. In this podcast, I explain how understanding intertextuality and seeing translation in a broader scope can enable us to view this an expansion of prophetic authority, to borrow an excellent phrase from Wayment. This launches into a brief discussion about what is doctrine and the sacrament. Join us for our next episode where we speak to Christopher Blythe about his latest book!

Hanna Seariac

Hanna Seariac is a MA student in Greek and Latin at Brigham Young University. She is writing a book on the history of the priesthood and another one that responds systematically to anti-LDS literature. She works as a research assistant on a biblical commentary and as a producer on a news show. She values Jesus Christ, family, friends, hiking, baking, and good ice cream.

Q&A with editors of Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity

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Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

This book includes a mixture of scholarship about all of Joseph Smith’s translation projects, including the highly anticipated paper by Thomas A. Wayment and Haley Wilson-Lemmon on the use of the Clarke Commentary in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. We had the opportunity to discuss the book with Michael Hubbard MacKay and Mark Ashurst-McGee. A review of the book will be forthcoming.

Q1: What is the purpose of the book?

Mike and Mark: The book was conceived as an attempt to cover all of the various Joseph Smith translation projects—not only the Book of Mormon and the “New Translation” of the Bible and the Book of Abraham but also the excerpt from the new account of John (D&C 7), the excerpt from the “record of John” (in D&C 93), the Kinderhook plates, and anything else. This had actually never been done before—at least not at this depth. [Read more…] about Q&A with editors of Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity

Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Vol. 10: May – August 1842

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Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

Nauvoo is getting busy. This volume contains 623 pages but covers only a four month timespan. Two of the biggest things that happened were the excommunication of John C. Bennett and rumors of Joseph Smith’s involvement in an assassination attempt on Lilburn W. Boggs. When Bennett left Nauvoo, Joseph became the mayor which made him even busier. For further context, this time period is covered in pages 453 – 477 of Saints, Voume. 1.

This volume features 105 documents out of nearly 400 available for this time period. Other documents are available at the Joseph Smith Papers website. However, as always, the footnotes and editorial information on each document make the book well worth having. Some of the items featured in the book are Nauvoo city scrip signed by Joseph Smith, a poem written by Eliza R. Snow for Joseph Smith, and the only known revelation giving instructions for performing a plural marriage. There are also notes from a number of sermons he gave. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Vol. 10: May – August 1842

FairMormon Conference Podcast #57 – Brian C. Hales, “Supernatural or Supernormal? Scrutinizing Secular Sources for the Book of Mormon”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. (Use coupon SPRING2020 and get the entire conference for $10!)

Brian C. Hales, Supernatural or Supernormal? Scrutinizing Secular Sources for the Book of Mormon

Brian C. Hales is the author or co-author of seven books dealing with plural marriage—most notably the three-volume, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology (Greg Kofford Books, 2013) He and his wife Laura are the current webmasters of JosephSmithsPolygamy.org. Presently, Brian is working on two book-length manuscripts dealing with Joseph Smith’s treasure seeking and the authorship of the Book of Mormon. He served a mission to Venezuela for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and sang with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for fourteen years. Brian is also past president of the Utah Medical Association (2013) and the John Whitmer Historical Association (2015).

Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses

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2020 Interpreter Foundation Conference

 

Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses

September 18-19, 2020
Brigham Young University, Tanner Building, Room 251
(If temporary COVID-19 restrictions preclude gathering on campus, we will hold the conference virtually. For late-breaking news, watch this website.)

Presented by
The Interpreter Foundation
Brigham Young University Department of Ancient Scripture
Book of Mormon Central
FairMormon

Because we believe that the Book of Moses includes authentic history, the possibility of evidence for that belief interests us as scholars. Although the primary intent of Joseph Smith’s translations is to meet the needs of modern readers, not to provide precise matches to texts from other times, we consider significant patterns of resemblance to ancient manuscripts that the Prophet could not have known and of unexpected conformance to conditions imposed by an archaic setting as potential indicators of antiquity that are best explained when the essential element of divine revelation is acknowledged. [Read more…] about Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses

FairMormon Conference Podcast #56 – Matthew C. Godfrey, “Insights from the Joseph Smith Papers into John C. Bennett’s Dismissal from the Church”

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Podcast: Download (85.9MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. (Use coupon SPRING2020 and get the entire conference for $10!)

Matthew C. Godfrey, Insights from the Joseph Smith Papers into John C. Bennett’s Dismissal from the Church

Matthew C. Godfrey is a general editor and the managing historian of the Joseph Smith Papers. He holds a PhD in American and public history from Washington State University. He has contributed to several Joseph Smith Papers volumes, including Documents, Volume 2; Documents, Volume 4; Documents, Volume 7, and the forthcoming Documents, Volume 10, and Documents, Volume 12. He is the author of Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907–1921 (2007), which was a co-winner of the Mormon History Association’s Smith-Petit Award for Best First Book. He is also the co-editor of The Earth Shall Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays in Mormon Environmental History (2019). Matthew has published articles in Agricultural History, The Public Historian, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Journal of Mormon History, BYU Studies Quarterly, Mormon Historical Studies, and various collections of essays. His research interests and expertise include environmental history, business and financial history, and the history of Zion’s Camp.