By Mogget
I am Mogget the Exegete and, as I have already exercised due diligence in the Quadrennial Varmint Detection and Selection Exercise, it’s time to prepare for the Day.
First, I’d like to introduce the newest member of my household:
Is she pretty, or what? That’s the SA 1911 EMP. My CC should be coming in soon, too. It’ll make an unusual, if not unique, fashion statement in RS, or it would if anyone were to see it. But we gotta be mindful of what the first “C” is for, eh!
And notice the JHP there on the left. Who would have thought that the single greatest need in my storage might be another 200 rounds of Hydrashock, just in case the 2nd Amendment becomes a casualty of the messianic woes, so to speak?
So anyway, to the point of this post. Have you noticed that gun shops are doing a booming business these days, even as the rest of the economy appears to be shrinking a bit? It’s probably the right time for one of those EBRs before they’re all bought up. What are your suggestions? Should my purchase be adjusted for the results of the Varmit Detection and Selection Exercise? Can you think of an EBR that might really, really, be irritating to any duly selected Varmit? Or hey! How about a suppressor? Heheh. Always wanted one of those…
By Nitsav
Though I understand about market forces and entertainment, the realities of the academic marketplace never fail to induce a groan and eye-roll.
And if you’ve never seen it before, PhD Comics is great, even though it’s science-oriented and I’m in humanities.
By Chris Henrichsen
Because it is the right thing to do.
3 Nephi Chapter 6:
4 And they began again to prosper and to wax great; and the twenty and sixth and seventh years passed away, and there was great order in the land; and they had formed their laws according to equity and justice.
5 And now there was nothing in all the land to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression.
7 And it came to pass that there were many cities built anew, and there were many old cities repaired.
8 And there were many highways cast up, and many roads made, which led from city to city, and from land to land, and from place to place.
9 And thus passed away the twenty and eighth year, and the people had continual peace.
Sounds much like the United States since World War II.
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By Secco
Substantial effort is expended to harmonize conflicting texts, such as the Harmony of the Gospels in our Bible Dictionary, Creation account harmonizations, investigations of whether Matthew or Luke got the ordering of the temptations “correct,” and so on. But what if the writers of scripture deliberately put in ambiguities? We have some evidence for this; Joseph Smith, in his revisions, seems to have left differing versions (e.g., Luke 3 versus Isaiah 40, creation accounts in Moses versus Abraham, incomplete harmonization of all events in the Gospels, and so on). Maybe some of these were just that he didn’t have time to finish, but there are passages that he seemed to be comfortable with explicit differing accounts.
It seems possible that these apparent contradictions and ambiguities might actually be there on purpose, and in fact may not even be meant to be resolved. If so, what might the message of such ambiguities be?
Perhaps one message is that life is ambiguous, that in many cases there is not one definite answer, no one-size-fits-all explanation or even historically accurate account. But I’m not reveling in or embracing ambiguity per se; I’m not arguing directly for a Rashomon effect; but rather that the differences might be suggestions to us that we should be looking beyond the superficial. Certainly the differing Creation accounts each have rich symbolic interpretations that I benefit from and would not want to do without. Might Mormon culture, with its firm sense of certainty, be missing a key point of the scriptures?
By TT
Genealogy is central to Mormon practice and identity. Coincidentally, genealogy is central to postmodern philosophy in the strain from Nietzsche to Foucault . This coincidence leads us to examine the relationship between these two understandings of genealogy. They are not as unrelated as they might initially appear.
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By TT
Paul’s bitter dispute with Peter and James poses a problem for thinking about LDS notions of authority because it puts into tension church authority and moral and doctrinal issues. When true doctrine and church leadership are in conflict, how are we to make a choice between them? When our sense of what is moral conflicts with our leaders’ sense of what is moral, what are we supposed to do? Paul found himself in exactly this situation, and had to make a choice between his own sense of what was right and the views of his leaders who had been commissioned directly by Christ to take care of the church.
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By smallaxe
I’m being serious here, and trying not to be cynical. We hear so much about “Correlation” in the ‘nacle, but I honestly have no idea who these people are, how they’re chosen, and how the group functions. My hunch is that most of us are in the same boat. Perhaps my/our ignorance works well from our perspective because it’s easier to be critical of an organization/committee that is impersonal, and has an ambiguous relationship within the structure of authority of the Church. Perhaps this ignorance also works well from the perspective of the Committee because they can do what they do in a “granite tower” of sorts without having to deal with the larger body of saints.
In all seriousness though, does anyone have any insight into this committee? Who is on it? How does one come to be a part of it? What is the structure of the committee? How do they decide what material is fit and what material is unfit for the Church?
Perhaps there have been posts on this in the past that would be helpful?
By TT
The Gospel of Philip from the Nag Hammadi corpus contains some important passages about a kind of celestial marriage in the “bridal chamber.” It is not uncommon for Latter-day Saints to appeal to this text as evidence for a kind of parallel to Mormon notions of eternal marriage found in ancient Christianity. I hope to show that such a reading of this text is mistaken, and that appeals to the Gospel of Philip to butress Mormon apologetic aims are an example of the problem that much apologetic work faces, that of decontextualizing ancient material to produce systematic misreadings. Rather than an approval of a particular kind of ritual marriage that unites a mortal husband and wife together for eternity, the bridal chamber is best understood as BYU Prof. Gaye Strathern’s dissertation, “The Valentinian Bridal Chamber,” argues, “within the context of an ascetic lifestyle where the body and its passions were renounced in favor of a higher spiritual lifestyle” (i).
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By David Clark
One of the better bible blogs is Alan Lenzi’s Bible and Ancient Near East. He is also the featured interviewee at biblioblogs this month. I encourage you to read the whole thing.
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By TT
In the 1990’s, I recall a strong movement against a pernicious offense in church education. The spiritual twinkie was soundly criticized as a useless item of spiritual nourishment, bringing only temporary satisfaction, but failing to build a solid diet. (It is likely that such discourse persists today, but I am not in those circles, so I speak here in the past tense). Like the the milk before meat metaphor, the twinkie came to occupy a particular kind of spiritual nourishment that was seen as neither preparatory, nor advanced, but somehow negative. This kind of spiritual junk food described, well, faith-promoting rumors, false stories, non-scripturally based teachings, etc.
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By TT
This weekend Bill Maher’s movie Religulous will be released. I plan to see it. The title is a neologism combining “religious” and “ridiculous,” and gives you some sense of the tone the film will take. The trailer’s soundtrack is “Crazy” by Knarles Barkley. Of course, I haven’t seen it yet since no one has, but I’ve seen him appear on the talk show circuit promoting the movie. I have also seen the trailer, as well as years of Bill Maher on HBO and his appearances on other talk shows. (His website disbeliefnet.com features the South Park episode about Mormons, incorrectly labeled “John Smith.”)
Maher has been a voice with the New Atheists long before they were new, and his fiery brand of anti-religious sentiment literally is the fulfillment of the concerns of right-leaning and moderate people about the indignant anti-religiousness of certain aspects of the Left. He is the worst nightmare of the Right as Sarah Palin is the worst nightmare of the Left. The film’s agenda is not really that subtle, and with the clips that I have seen I feel comfortable making some preliminary assessments of the quality of the work. I am unimpressed.
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