Mob Attack at Carthage Jail
A new narrative telling of the attack that killed Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum, based on recent archaeological surveys and all primary source documents of the event.
Articles
Featured essays and musings on religious studies and history
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Jesus Wrote a Letter? Possibly
Considers the claim by Eusebius that Jesus wrote a letter to Abgar of Edessa and assesses the probability of whether the historical Jesus did write this purported letter.
Should We Accept the Purported Photograph of Joseph Smith as Really Him?
Another purported daguerreotype of Joseph Smith has surfaced. Should we accept this as authentic? Not yet. We’re not nearly there. For most people, the debate will hover around their own threshold of probability and what their eyes tell them. What are the odds that this is Joseph Smith? To…
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Catalog of Doctrine and Covenants Documents
If we treat the Doctrine and Covenants as a broader literary phenomenon within American religious history, corresponding literature expands well beyond present editions of the Doctrine and Covenants. This work of scripture has served the two largest churches within the larger Mormon movement, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day…
Some Quick Thoughts on Netflix’s “Murder among the Mormons”
The new documentary “Murder among the Mormons” launched today on Netflix to quite a lot of promotional muscle and the true-crime fans are turning out in force on the interwebs. I watched the series and generally appreciated, finally, a presentation about the infamous Mark Hofmann that didn’t begin and…
Emergence of the Missionary Department
In the United States, perhaps the most recognizable image of the Latter-day Saint movement is that of the clean-cut, young, cheerful, door-knocking, bike-riding missionary. The church sponsoring these missionaries maintains an enterprise of recruiting, training, and dispatching young adults, retirees, and other volunteers unlike any other institution in the world.…
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Transfiguration
After six days in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus took Peter, James, and John up a “high mountain.” This resembled the significant mountain ascensions recorded in the Hebrew Bible: Moses had ascended a high mountain with a group of seventy elders; Elijah also ascended a mountain with Elisha. These stories were common…
Dialogue with Simon at Caesarea Philippi
After Jesus’s Bread of Life discourse, many disciples were disappointed and walked away. Simon may have spoken for the few disciples who remained when he replied to Jesus’s question, “Will ye also go away?” by saying, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal…
Facing Rejection
According to John, immediately following Jesus’s discourse on the bread of life, many disciples walked away. “This is an hard saying,” they said to each other. When Jesus discerned that these disciples murmured at his teachings, he asked why this offended them. “The words that I speak unto you,…
Discourse on the Bread of Life
Why to Follow Jesus and How to Receive Him
Walking on the Water
The next pericope in our synopsis looks to have originated in the Gospel of Mark and Mark’s version looks to have served as the source for Matthew’s version. By the time this tradition reached the Syriac Christians who produced the Gospel of John in the early second century,…
Detour through Chronology
Taking stock of my study of the four gospels, I’ve basically covered the following pericope sequences: * Prologue and Infancy Narratives (nos. 1–12) * Pre-Ministry (nos. 13–21) * Initial Ministry in Galilee (nos. 22–45) * Sermon on the Mount/Plain (nos. 46–73) * Post-Sermon Miracles (nos. 74–83) * Commissioning of…
Death of John the Baptist and the Feeding of the Multitude
At this point in the story, we’re in Galilee right in the middle of the Galilean phase of Jesus’s overall ministry. Jesus had started the ministry in the northern portion of the region and frequented villages that had synagogues. His paths took him around the lakeshore of Gennesaret…
Four Discourses
The collective narrative of the Four Gospels now moves through a series of travels. Jesus visits Jerusalem, then reunites with the Twelve at Tiberias (or Bethsaida), they land at Gennesaret Village (after the walking on the water incident), and then Jesus makes for Tyre north of the lake on the…
Astounding Deeds, Signs, and Wonders
Synopsis Update: I have finished my Synopsis of the Four Gospels: King James Reader’s Edition! I’m excited to release it under a Creative Commons license, which means you can distribute the PDF and make as many copies as you like (as long as the contents remain unaltered). You…
The Kingdom of God and the First Parables
In his first recorded sermon, Jesus introduced a revolutionary concept that neither Israelites nor Romans had contemplated in the ages of the Old Testament, what he termed the “kingdom of God.” The original texts’ word, basileia, offers us several conceptual translations into English, like the “government” of God, or the…
He Taught Them Many Things by Parables
This far in the Galilean ministry, Jesus appears to have devoted considerable attention to the northern lakeside of Gennesaret, then moved south along the eastern edge of the lake, and then crossed over to the southwestern side. While the Twelve departed for miscellaneous unnamed villages and towns all across the…
She Loved Much
New Provincial Audiences Upon sending the Twelve on their first preaching circuit, Jesus began to preach in their “cities,” according to Matthew, or rather, their polesin. Ever notice the suffix -polis attached to names of cities? This is a Greek civic term for a polity—not just a kind of…
Receptivity and Rejection
Bearings Matthew says that after Jesus had finished speaking with the Twelve, he “departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities,” suggesting that Jesus went alone on a preaching circuit while the Twelve split up into pairs to canvass the Galilean countryside. If we track the places already…
Commissioning of the Twelve
After a series of high-profile miracles throughout the greater Galilean region, the gospel narratives sketch out a commissioning event in which Jesus chose twelve men from among a group of disciples and delivered remarks ahead of dispatching them on a preaching tour. An amalgamated text of Mark 3:13–15,…
Post-Sermon Miracles
Aftermath of the Sermon on the Mount/Plain Moving on from the Sermon on the Mount/Plain, we see the Four Gospels generally narrate a sequence of miracles that all establish the fulfillment of Jesus’s prophetic words in the Nazareth synagogue: his prediction that his hometown neighbors would eventually…