Category: Book of Mormon
Guest Post from Brian Stubbs: A Response to Chris Rogers’ “A Review of the Afro-Asiatic: Uto-Aztecan Proposal” in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies
I’m pleased to offer an important guest post from Brian Stubbs, one of the world’s leading experts in Uto-Aztecan languages and a scholar whom I deeply respect for his insights…
Ifs, Ands, or Buts: A Reminder on the Origins of the Book of Mormon
In a past Maxwell Institute publication, Daniel Peterson made a great point about the nature of the language in the Book of Mormon that seems to defy theories of Joseph…
John Hajicek on the Hidden Sacrifices Behind the Printing of the Book of Mormon
One of the really remarkable friends of the Church is John Hajicek (pronounced “high-check,” I believe). John is an expert in documents and LDS history with vast resources of knowledge…
Sights from a Trip to Israel and Jordan
One of the advantages of working in China is having long national holidays like the Chinese New Year, making it easier to take interesting trips to other lands. There’s a…
Puzzling Content in the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar
When I first started looking at the Kirtland Egyptian Papers in detail on the Joseph Smith Papers site, I was immediately struck by the surprisingly specific and narrowly focused content…
The Elephantine in the Room
Location of Elephantine on the Upper Nile, courtesy of Wikipedia’s article, “Elephantine.” Over 2,400 years ago there was an active community of Jewish immigrants living on the island of Elephantine…
A Surprising Non-LDS Witness of the Plates: Lucy Harris
We commonly think of Lucy Harris as a hostile critic who opposed the Church and the Book of Mormon and may have been the cause for the disappearance of the…
A Hypotized Neighhor or Another Non-LDS Witness of the Gold Plates?
Recently I mentioned two unintentional non-LDS witnesses of the Book of Mormon, Michael B. Morse, the non-LDS man who saw Joseph’s translation process underway a number of times, and Josiah…
“A Strange Piece of Work” Poorly Explained by a Non-LDS Witness of the Book of Mormon Translation
Critics of the Book of Mormon like to dismiss the detailed accounts of Book of Mormon witnesses by saying it’s simply impossible to know today what really went on back…
Alma Son of Judah: The Ancient Bar Kokhba Letters from Israel Refute a Popular Argument Against the Authenticity of the Book of Mormon
One of the more popular “easy” arguments to dismiss the Book of Mormon is that the name Alma is a woman’s name. Many critics have pointed out that it’s a…