Category: Scholarship
A Slow Learner, But a Fast Liar: Meet ChatGPT, the Smart Research Tool Willing to Make Up Quotations
After being disappointed with the blatant political biases of ChatGPT, as discussed in my previous post about my efforts to examine issues related to abortion and race, I remained hopeful…
Can We Have an Honest Chat About Abortion and Race? Not With ChatGPT
Curious about the knowledge of the impressive new Artificial Intelligence tool, ChatGPT, I started my day with a question about abortion and race. This tool, now owned by…
An Overlooked Example of the Book of Mormon’s Surprising Use of Book of Moses Material
While Noel Reynolds and I felt like we had pretty well mined all the relevant connections between the Book of Moses and the Book of Mormon when we published our list of nearly 100 connections, there’s an important one that we missed. Missing the connection may have been easy to do since the related Book of Mormon verse uses different wording that succinctly summarizes a longer Book of Moses passage, and at first glance appears to just be referring to a familiar story from Genesis. This connection involves Satan’s influencing Cain to slay Abel in Helaman 6:27 and Moses 5:25.
A Key Book to Understand Nahom and Bountiful is Now Free Online: Warren Aston’s Lehi and Sariah in Arabia
A thorough and valuable book on Lehi’s Trail and the Arabian Peninsula evidence for the Book of Mormon is now available free online, thanks to the generosity of the author,…
Joshua Berman’s Ani Maamin: An Orthodox Jewish Scholar Provides Help in Keeping the Faith in the Face of Secular Bible Scholarship
During a recent trip to Atlanta, my wife and I connected two of our Latter-day Saint friends with dear Jewish friends there. Among the many topics of the evening, we…
A Tough Question: What’s the Single Most Impressive Evidence for the Book of Mormon?
A critic recently asked me a tough question: what’s the single most impressive piece of evidence for the Book of Mormon? I think he wasn’t looking for evidence that might change open his mind, but perhaps was looking to simplify his goal of attacking the Book of Mormon. But for those who really want to understand more, what evidence is most important and impressive? Here I offer a few thoughts and several possibilities for the “one best” issue to consider.
Finding Michael: Coping with the Improved Search Engine in the Gospel Library App and the Church Website
The home page of ChurchofJesusChrist.org, the generally very useful and professional website for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, currently touts the improved search feature in the Gospel Library app. However, if you’re trying to use it for research in the scriptures, there are some serious gaps that need to be understood. I’ve made multiple efforts over the past few weeks to point these problems out to the IT team responsible for the app, but I think they have been swamped with the roll out, so I’ve only received standardized responses so far. Until the bugs are recognized and fixed, users need to be aware of what can go wrong. There are some major gaps that can lead you to miss the things you are searching for. Any scholarly work requiring accurate search results may be impaired.
Nahom/NHM: Only a Tribe, Not a Place?
Executive summary: Discoveries from the Arabian Peninsula supporting the existence of a place called Nahom (see 1 Nephi 16:34) face recent criticism for only showing that the NHM tribal name…
Watch the 2022 FAIR Conference for Free!
Watch the 2022 FAIR Conference for free! Formerly the FAIR Mormon Conference, the FAIR Conference features many outstanding Latter-day Saint scholars and authors who share insights on many important topics…
The “Arise from the Dust” Theme and the Unity of Isaiah
In my exploration of the “arise from the dust” theme in the Book of Mormon, published in several articles for Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day saint Faith and Scholarship (see “Arise from the Dust,” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and “Strong Like Unto Moses”) and the topic of my 2018 presentation at the FAIR Latter-day Saints Conference, I noted that passages from Isaiah 49 and Isaiah 52 play an important role in the Book of Mormon. Both involve the theme of dust….
