Summary
2002 FAIR Conference
The 4th annual Mormon Apologetics Conference sponsored by FAIR (The Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research) Conference was held in August 2002 at Utah Valley State College (now Utah Valley University) in Orem, Utah.
*Note: the actual schedule from the 2002 FAIR Conference isn’t available, so speakers are listed in alphabetical rather than chronological order.
Russell Y. Anderson
The 1826 Trial of Joseph Smith
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Michael R. Ash
The Impact of Mormon Critics on LDS Scholarship
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Bio
Michael R. Ash is a veteran staff member of the FAIR, former weekly columnist for the Mormon Times, and current columnist for Meridian Magazine. He has presented at six of the past fourteen FAIR Conferences and has written more than 200 articles defending the faith. He has been published in the FARMS Review, Sunstone, Dialogue, and the Ensign, and appears in the FAIR DVDs on the Book of Abraham as well as one addressing DNA and the Book of Mormon. Michael is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony In the Face of Criticism and Doubt and his second book, Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith. Michael and his wife Christine live in Ogden and are the parents of three daughters and the grandparents of six.
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Roger D. Cook is an instructor in the Philosophy Department at Brigham Young University and is pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Utah. He specializes in ancient philosophy and Near Eastern studies, philosophy of religion, epistemology, and apocalyptic Judaism and its contributions to Jewish Christianity.
Roger has served as a bishop and on the Stake High Council in the Salt Lake City area.
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Brant A. Gardner (M.A. State University of New York Albany) is the author of Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon and The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon, both published through Greg Kofford Books. He has contributed articles to Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl and Symbol and Meaning Beyond the Closed Community.
Tim B. Heaton
Dealing with Demographics
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Bio
Dr. Tim B. Heaton holds a Camilla Kimball chair in the Department of Sociology at Brigham Young University. His research focuses on demographic trends in the family. Research in the United States and Indonesia has focused on trends in and determinants of marital dissolution. He has examined the relationship between family characteristics and children’s health in Latin America.
Renee Olson
Dispelling the Black Myth
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Daniel C. Peterson
The Protean Joseph Smith
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A native of southern California, Daniel C. Peterson received a bachelor’s degree in Greek and philosophy from Brigham Young University (BYU) and, after several years of study in Jerusalem and Cairo, earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Peterson is a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU, where he has taught Arabic language and literature at all levels, Islamic philosophy, Islamic culture and civilization, Islamic religion, the Qur’an, the introductory and senior “capstone” courses for Middle Eastern Studies majors, and various other occasional specialized classes. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on Islamic and Latter-day Saint topics–including a biography entitled Muhammad: Prophet of God (Eerdmans, 2007)—and has lectured across the United States, in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and at various Islamic universities in the Near East and Asia. He served in the Switzerland Zürich Mission (1972-1974), and, for approximately eight years, on the Gospel Doctrine writing committee for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also presided for a time as the bishop of a singles ward adjacent to Utah Valley University. Dr. Peterson is married to the former Deborah Stephens, of Lakewood, Colorado, and they are the parents of three sons.
Royal Skousen
Changes in the Book of Mormon
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Bio
Royal Skousen is Professor of Linguistics and English Language at Brigham Young University. In 1972 he received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He has published four books on linguistic theory, including three on exemplar-based linguistics: Analogical Modeling of Language (1989), Analogy and Structure (1992), and Analogical Modeling: An Exemplar-Based Approach to Language (2002). He has also taught at the University of Illinois, the University of Texas, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Tampere in Finland as a Fulbright lecturer. In 2001 he was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute in the Netherlands. More recently, he has published on the quantum computing of analogical modeling, notably “Quantum Analogical Modeling” (2005) and “Quantum Analogical Modeling with Homogeneous Pointers” (2010), both available at www.arXiv.org.
Since 1988 Skousen has been the editor of the Book of Mormon critical text project. In 2001 he published the first two volumes of the project, namely, typographical facsimiles for the original and printer’s manuscripts of the Book of Mormon. From 2004 through 2009 he published the six books that make up volume 4 of the critical text, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon. This work represents the central task of the Critical Text Project, to restore by scholarly means the original text of the Book of Mormon, to the extent possible. In 2009, using the results of volume 4, Skousen published with Yale University Press the culmination of his critical text work, The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text. He is currently writing volume 3 of the critical text, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon. The third part of that volume, covering the grammatical editing of the Book of Mormon, has now been written and typeset. The first two parts—one dealing with the history of the manuscripts and the editions and the other with the nature of the original text—are in preparation. The entire volume, it is planned, will be available in about three years.
John A. Tvedtnes
The Mistakes of Men: Can the Scriptures be Error-Free?
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Bio
John A. Tvedtnes was a senior resident scholar with the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University, where he worked full-time beginning in 1995 after many years of teaching and research in the U.S. and Israel. He earned degrees in anthropology, linguistics, and Middle East studies (Hebrew) at the University of Utah, and pursued additional graduate work in Egyptian and Semitic languages at the University of California, Berkeley, and at universities in Israel.
He taught biblical Hebrew, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and Middle Eastern history at the University of Utah, Brigham Young University, and the BYU Jerusalem Center, where he lived and worked from 1971 to 1979. He also lectured internationally, including at the University of Haifa, Brandeis University, and for professional associations such as the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the World Union of Jewish Studies.
The author of ten books and more than 300 articles, Tvedtnes published with institutions such as the Magnes Press of the Hebrew University, the Pontifical Biblical Institute, and the Journal of Near Eastern Studies. His wide-ranging scholarship bridged linguistics, archaeology, and scripture studies, with particular emphasis on the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and ancient Near Eastern texts.
Speakers
Russell Anderson, Michael R. Ash, Roger Cook, Brant Gardner, Tim Heaton, Renee Olson, Dan Peterson, Royal Skousen, John Tvedtnes
Topics
The 1826 Trial of Joseph Smith, The Impact of Mormon Critics on LDS Scholarship, Christ, the Firstfruits of Theosis, The Gadianton Robbers in Mormon’s Theological History: Their Structural Role and Plausible Identification, Dealing with Demographics, Dispelling the Black Myth, The Protean Joseph Smith, Changes in the Book of Mormon, The Mistakes of Men: Can the Scriptures be Error-Free?
John Taylor Award
Each year, FAIR awards the John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award to a volunteer who made meritorious contributions to FAIR’s mission and outstanding personal efforts in helping defend The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In 2002, the John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award recipient was Allen Wyatt.