Review of Jennifer C. Lane, Finding Christ in the Covenant Path: Ancient Insights for Modern Life, (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University / Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2020). 188 pages. Hardcover, $29.99.

Abstract: In the first half of her book, Lane takes us on a tour of ancient worlds by introducing us to ancient words, such as bĕrît (covenant), gā’al (redemption), pānîm (presence of the Lord), and so forth, while deftly weaving linguistic and historical insights with personal narratives that ground these insights in the practical affairs of day-to-day living. In the second half of the book, Lane takes us on a tour of medieval art and images, centering on how art has been used to portray the Savior and His mission. Throughout the entire book, Lane centers the attention of the reader on Christ, inviting us to take upon ourselves His image and likeness and to more fully appreciate the images crafted of Him by artists of prior centuries.

Fifteen years ago, as an undergraduate, I sat in class as a psychology professor at Brigham Young University — now a dear colleague and coauthor — demonstrated that the way some Latter-day Saints teach and understand the concept of covenant can be (at times) impoverished. We often treat covenants in transactional terms, he argued, as if they were a particular kind of contract. In the way some Latter-day Saints talk about covenants, we keep God’s commandments in exchange for goods and services (like salvation).

This way of thinking about covenants can inadvertently shift how we think of core family relationships, since if we think of marriage as a kind of contract, we implicitly embrace an egoistic, instrumental understanding [Page 308]of marriage. We come to treat the Other in our marriage as a means to an end, rather than as an end in and of itself. The same thing can happen when we understand our relationship with God in similar terms. We can start to see our relationship with the divine as a sort of vending machine, dispensing blessings to us with the right configuration of button-pushes (in this case, acts of devotion or obedience).

In that psychology course many years ago, Edwin Gantt opened my mind to a new way of thinking about covenants. And I have never seen that new understanding of covenants more expertly articulated than it is in the second chapter of Finding Christ In the Covenant Path: Ancient Insights for Modern Life, by Jennifer C. Lane. This book promises and delivers a host of insights from ancient sources and worldviews to aid our modern efforts to embrace and live the covenant path.

Lane undertakes to strengthen our faith and commitment by challenging some of our modern preconceptions in light of alternatives found in more ancient languages and ways of thinking. Like a fish in water, we often do not see the ways in which modern assumptions shape our thoughts and behaviors and especially our interpretations of scripture. Lane invites us to see the ways in which our faith and discipleship flow forth from their ancient roots and origins. Our most sacred texts come alive when we can read them while stepping into the worldview assumptions of those who wrote them (and for whom they were originally written).

In the first half of the book, Lane takes us on a tour of ancient worlds by introducing us to ancient words, such as bĕrît (covenant), gā’al (redemption), pānîm (presence of the Lord), and so forth, while deftly weaving these linguistic and historical insights with personal narratives that ground these insights in the practical affairs of day-to-day living. Each of these chapters yielded pages of personal and spiritual reflection as I journaled my own journey through these concepts and ideas. Above and below are just a small sampling of the sorts of reflections prompted by each and every p...

Abstract: In sermons and writings, Jacob twice quotes the prophecy of Isaiah 11:11 (“the Lord [ʾădōnāy] shall set his hand again [yôsîp] the second time to gather the remnant of his people”). In 2 Nephi 6:14 and Jacob 6:2, Jacob uses Isaiah 11:11 as a lens through which he interprets much lengthier prophetic texts that detail the restoration, redemption, and gathering of Israel: namely, Isaiah 49:22–52:2 and Zenos’s Allegory of the Olive Trees (Jacob 5). In using Isaiah 11:11 in 2 Nephi 6:14, Jacob, consistent with the teaching of his father Lehi (2 Nephi 2:6), identifies ʾădōnāy (“the Lord”) in Isaiah 11:11 as “the Messiah” and the one who will “set himself again the second time to recover” his people (both Israel and the righteous Gentiles who “believe in him”) and “manifest himself unto them in great glory.” This recovery and restoration will be so thoroughgoing as to include the resurrection of the dead (see 2 Nephi 9:1–2, 12–13). In Jacob 6:2, Jacob equates the image of the Lord “set[ting] his hand again [yôsîp] the second time to recover his people” (Isaiah 11:11) to the Lord of the vineyard’s “labor[ing] in” and “nourish[ing] again” the vineyard to “bring forth again” (cf. Hebrew yôsîp) the natural fruit (Jacob 5:29–33, 51–77) into the vineyard. All of this suggests that Jacob saw Isaiah 49:22–52:2 and Zenos’s allegory (Jacob 5) as telling essentially the same story. For Jacob, the prophetic declaration of Isaiah 11:11 concisely summed up this story, describing divine initiative and iterative action to “recover” or gather Israel in terms of the verb yôsîp. Jacob, foresaw this the divine action as being accomplished through the “servant” and “servants” in Isaiah 49–52, “servants” analogous to those described by Zenos in his allegory. For Jacob, the idiomatic use of yôsîp in Isaiah 11:11 as he quotes it in 2 Nephi 6:14 and Jacob 6:2 and as repeated throughout Zenos’s allegory (Jacob 5) reinforces the patriarch Joseph’s statement preserved in 2 Nephi 3 that this figure would be a “Joseph” (yôsēp).

[Page 288]Nephi regarded the prophecy of Isaiah 11:11 (“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again [yôsîp] the second time to recover the remnant of his people … ”)1 as having transcendent covenant significance. He recognized that the Lord’s “set[ting] his hand again” — literally, “add[ing] his hand” — to gather the “remnant” of Israel “the second time” would signal his “commenc[ing]” the work to fulfill all of the covenants of the Father for the final time.2

Beyond his wholesale quotation of Isaiah 11 in 2 Nephi 21, Nephi quotes Isaiah 11:11 in two additional Gezera Shawa-type3 juxtapositions with quotations of Isaiah 29:14 (“Therefore, behold, I will proceed [yôsīp] to do a marvellous work among this people,” see 2 Nephi 25:17, 21; 2 Nephi 29:1) on the basis of the use of the verb yôsîp/yôsīp in both passages

Abstract: In this essay John Gee draws a connection between the Egyptian “Book of the Temple” and the book of Exodus, both in structure and topic, describing the temple from the inside out. Gee concludes that both probably go back to a common source older than either of them.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See John Gee, “Edfu and Exodus,” in Temple Insights: Proceedings of the Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference, “The Temple on Mount Zion,” 22 September 2012, ed. William J. Hamblin and David Rolph Seely (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2014), 67–82. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/temple-insights/.]

Matthew Brown wrote many books on a variety of topics,1 but the one topic that held his interest and to which he kept returning was the temple. He invited me to give this paper only a couple of days before his untimely passing.

Exodus

The first Israelite temple was the portable temple in the wilderness, better known as the tabernacle, whose description is provided in the book of Exodus. This description begins in the twenty-fifth chapter and runs through the twenty-eighth chapter.2 It first describes the ark of the covenant3 — a portable shrine carried on staves by priests (see Exodus [Page 272]25:10–22)4 — followed by the table for the shewbread (see Exodus 25:23–30),5 the lampstand (see Exodus 25:31–40),6 the curtains (see Exodus 26:1–7), their coverings (see Exodus 26:7–14), the boards (see Exodus 26:15–30),7 the veil (see Exodus 26:31–32),8 and the arrangement of the holy of holies (see Exodus 26:33–37). Next the altar is described (see Exodus 27:1–8), followed by a description of the courtyard (see Exodus 27:9–19). Finally, the garments of the priests are described (see Exodus 28:1–43).

A number of features of the description of the tabernacle compare with Egypt. These include the “gilded wooden frames socketed together and covered with curtains,” a description that “was based directly on long-established Egyptian technology.”

Review of Chiasmus: The State of the Art, edited by John W. Welch and Donald W. Parry (Provo, UT: BYU Studies and Book of Mormon Central, 2020). 358 pages. $24.68, paperback.

Abstract: This collection of essays represents the latest scholarship on chiasmus. They were selected from papers delivered at an academic conference at Brigham Young University in 2017. Articles reflect both “the state of the art” and the state of the technique in chiastic studies.

In the academic world, readers are published collections of articles that represent the breadth, depth, variety, and history of the best scholarship on a given theme. Readers may reflect the current nature of scholarly understanding or indicate a turning point in the intellectual interest in a subject. They often supplement textbooks as principal sources in undergraduate lower or upper division courses.

This new collection of essays edited by Jack Welch and Donald Parry is an academic reader in multiple senses:

* It introduces students of all ages and experience levels to the latest research in chiastic studies as manifest in a variety of ancient literary sources, including the Hebrew Bible (six articles), Christian Bible (two articles), Book of Mormon (one article), and Mayan texts (one article). In addition, Professor Welch himself illustrates the comparative value of chiasmus in analyzing several homicide narratives in the Bible and Book of Mormon.

* [Page 266]It complements and updates the standard and still valuable collection of articles on chiastic studies published four decades earlier, also edited by Professor Welch.1

* It offers an operational definition of this ancient literary convention and considers its rhetorical value for writers, redactors, editors, readers, and critics.

* It includes an extended bibliography of published works on chiasmus.

But this volume is much more than an academic reader. Collectively, these essays are also a statement of respect for Professor Welch, who recently retired as one of the leading international contributors to this scholarly tradition and who introduced chiastic studies to Latter-day Saint scholars a half century ago after he had discovered the traditional Hebrew literary convention used throughout the text of the Book of Mormon.2 Scholarly studies of the Book of Mormon have not been the same since. The event that gave rise to this “state of the art” publication was an academic conference at Brigham Young University in August 2017.3 This celebration brought together dozens of scholars and clerics to reflect on this standard but not uncontroversial literary convention of (primarily) the ancient Near East.

Those who are more than a little familiar with this convention recognize chiasmus as a specialized and complex expression of parallelism, an even more ubiquitous literary convention of biblical Hebrew.

Abstract: The first 450 years of Nephite history are dominated by two main threads: the ethno-political tension between Nephites and Lamanites and religious tension between adherents of rival theologies. These rival Nephite theologies are a Mantic theology that affirms the existence of Christ and a Sophic theology that denies Christ. The origin of both narrative threads lies in the Old World: the first in conflicts between Nephi and Laman, the second in Lehi’s rejection of King Josiah’s theological and political reforms. This article focuses on these interrelated conflicts. It suggests that Zoram, Laman, Lemuel, Sherem, and the Zeniffites were Deuteronomist followers of Josiah. The small plates give an account of how their Deuteronomist theology gradually supplanted the gospel of Christ. As the small plates close, their last author, Amaleki, artfully confronts his readers with a life-defining choice: having read the Book of Mormon thus far, will you remain, metaphorically, with the prophets in Zarahemla and embrace the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, or will you return to the land of Nephi and the theology you believed and the life you lived before you read the Book of Mormon?

The first 450 years of Nephite history in the Book of Mormon narrative are dominated by two main threads: the ethno-political tension between Nephites and Lamanites and religious tension between adherents of rival Nephite theologies. One of these theologies affirms the existence of Christ. The other denies Christ. The origin of both narrative threads lies in the Old World: the first in conflicts between Nephi and Laman, the second in Lehi’s rejection of King Josiah’s theological and political reforms. Having been born around the same time as Lehi, Josiah lived from 649 to 609 bc and reigned for 31 of his 40 years. He was king when Laman, Lemuel, Sam, and Nephi were born and probably when Laman and Lemuel came of age. His policies and actions were surely salient in [Page 218]the life of Lehi and all his family while they lived in Jerusalem. However, the Book of Mormon suggests that his policies and actions were largely not supported by Lehi, Nephi, and Jacob.1 Others who accompanied Lehi on his migration, including Laman and Lemuel, apparently did accept the reforms, thus bringing this Old World theological rivalry with them to the Promised Land. This rivalry reverberates throughout the history recorded in the small plates of Nephi and into the Book of Mosiah as a contest between competing Sophic and Mantic theological traditions.2

Josiah’s Reforms

Josiah’s theological and political reforms began at age 18, when Shaphan the scribe gave him the Book of the Law (Torah) discovered by Hilkiah the high priest during a renovation of Solomon’s temple. This book,

Abstract: Fifteen months after the Church of Christ’s inception in April 1830, Joseph Smith received a revelation indicating that Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, was to be the “center-place” of Zion and a “spot for a temple is lying westward, upon a lot that is not far from the court-house.” Dedication of this spot for the millennial temple soon followed on August 3, 1831, by Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon. A building sketch was prepared in Kirtland, Ohio, and sent to church leaders in Independence in June 1833. Smith also forwarded his plat for the City of Zion, showing 24 temples at its center and giving an explanation for their use. Tragically, the church was driven en masse out of Jackson County only months later. Reclaiming the original Partridge purchase in December 1831, known as the Temple Lot, became an early driving force for the membership of the church. A physical effort to reclaim the saints’ land and possessions in Jackson County was organized in 1834 by Joseph Smith and became known as “Zion’s Camp.” After traveling 900 miles and poised on the north bank of the Missouri River looking toward Jackson County, Smith’s two hundred armed men were unable to proceed for various reasons. While contemplating what to do, given the reality of their situation, Smith received a revelation to “wait for a little season, for the redemption of Zion.” That poignant phrase — “the redemption of Zion” — became a tenet of the church thereafter. In the years following the martyrdom and the subsequent “scattering of the saints,” three independent expressions of the Restoration returned to Independence to reclaim or redeem the Temple Lot in fulfillment of latter-day scripture. This essay examines their historical efforts.

[Page 146][Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See R. Jean Addams, “The Past and Future of the Temple Lot in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri,” in Proceedings of the Fifth Interpreter Foundation Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference, 7 November 2020, ed. Stephen D. Ricks and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Temple on Mount Zion 6 (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2021), in preparation. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-past-present-and-future/.]

Wherefore, this is the land of promise, and the place for the city of Zion … the place which is now called Independence is the center place; and a spot for the temple is lying westward, upon a lot which is not far from the courthouse (Doctrine and Covenants 57:2–3, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints edition, hereafter LDS Doctrine and Covenants; cf. Doctrine and Covenants 57:1b–d, Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints edition, hereafter RLDS Doctrine and Covenants).1

[Page 147]Prior to the first Mormon missionaries arriving in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, in January 1831, the Lord orchestrated, over time, a series of events to prepare the Millennial Temple Lot. These events enabled a legal representative of his recently restored church,

Abstract: We tend to have big events and a full month celebrating Christmas, but here we are in a very Christian church that has come to almost ignore the events of the crucifixion and the resurrection. The Last Supper and the events that followed it are the important events of the season. With some planning and creativity, we can immerse ourselves in a Resurrection Month by thinking about the gift of life and promise for the future that we have been given, reading the old scriptures, and reliving the life and times of our elder brother and great teacher.

I welcome this opportunity to say something about our Easter commemorations. The title of my essay, however, does not include that E-word, one I try to avoid. Instead, for my purposes, I will use the title Resurrection Month, two words that more clearly describe what I want to talk about.

We live in New York City and have been incarcerated, shut down, closed off, whatever, since March 11, 2020. When the interruption occurred, I had been about to begin a month-long commemoration in our New York City Latter-day Saint ward of the spring holiday commonly known as Easter.

I had a long series of wonderful Easters while growing up in San Francisco. I loved the beautiful music, of going to church with all its gorgeous flowers, and our beautiful sisters in their smart hats. My own family’s celebrations included the stylish outfits my mother created annually for her four daughters — suits and coats and dresses resulting from months of consideration and planning and my mother’s spectacular skill. And there were her wonderful Easter-themed layer cakes with coconut dyed green to look like grass, bunches of flowers made of colored icing, little nests of jellybeans, little mirrors that became ponds with ducks swimming on them. The cakes were delicious to eat, too. Those were wonderful Easters.

[Page 138]These activities commemorated the coming of spring and were named after a fertility goddess for whom holiday events were celebrated each April back into antiquity. That Easter, now featuring bunnies, eggs, and chicks, was the first traditional celebration in the spring. The celebration of the Passover when many Jews commemorate their flight from Egypt with annual Seder feasts was later layered on the spring tradition. The third and most recent chronological event added to the above two was the Last Supper, the suffering and the crucifixion of Jesus that preceded the resurrection which built, according to the New Testament, on the traditional Passover meal. Jesus gave it a new meaning by using it to prepare his disciples for his death. He identified the bread as his body and the wine as his blood, soon to be sacrificed and shed.

For many of us, this Last Supper, celebrated by Jesus and his disciples, and the events that followed it, are the important events of the season. The early Christians are said to have celebrated this meal to commemorate Jesus’s death and subsequent resurrection, although the records are scanty. All of this goes way back, and I may well have some of it wrong.

We now measure time from the birth of Jesus Christ — anno Domini, in the year of our Lord — but that dating system was not even devised until 525 by Dionysius Exiguus of Scythia Minor and was not widely used until after 800 when the Anglo-Saxon historian Saint, the venerable Bede, used the dating system in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which he completed in ad 731.

The venerable Bede, who first wrote specifically and historically of these events, notes in his Reckoning of Time that Ēosturmōnaþ, an old English word translated in Bede’s time as “Paschal month,” was named after the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre, in whose honor April feasts were celebrated. Bede is the source for the etymology of the word Easter, which is a “moveable feast” computed from a lu...

Abstract: Jeffrey M. Bradshaw compares Moses’ tabernacle and Noah’s ark, and then identifies the story of Noah as a temple related drama, drawing of temple mysticism and symbols. After examining structural similarities between ark and tabernacle and bringing into the discussion further information about the Mesopotamian flood story, he shows how Noah’s ark is a beginning of a new creation, pointing out the central point of Day One in the Noah story. When Noah leaves the ark, they find themselves in a garden, not unlike the Garden of Eden in the way the Bible speaks about it. A covenant is established in signs and tokens. Noah is the new Adam. This is then followed by a fall/Judgement scene story, even though it is Ham who is judged, not Noah. In accordance with mostly non-Mormon sources quoted, Bradshaw points out how Noah was not in “his” tent, but in the tent of the Shekhina, the presence of God, how being drunk was seen by the ancients as a synonym to “being caught up in a vision of God,” and how his “nakedness” was rather referring to garments God had made for Adam and Eve.

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[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, “The Ark and the Tent: Temple Symbolism in the Story of Noah,” in Temple Insights: Proceedings of the Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference, “The Temple on Mount Zion,” 22 September 2012, ed. William J. Hamblin and David Rolph Seely (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2014), [Page 94]25–66. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/temple-insights/.]

It has long been recognized that the story of Noah recapitulates the Genesis accounts of the Creation, the Garden, and the Fall of Adam and Eve. What has been generally underappreciated by modern scholarship, however, is the nature and depth of the relationship between all these stories and the liturgy and layout of temples, not only in Israel but also throughout the ancient Near East. And this relationship goes two ways. Not only have accounts of primeval history been included as a significant part of ancient temple worship, but also, in striking abundance, themes echoing temple architecture, furnishings, ritual, and covenants have been deeply woven into scripture itself.

In this chapter I will outline some of the rich temple themes in the biblical account of the great flood, highlighting how the scriptural descriptions of the structure and function of the ark and the tent within the story of Noah anticipate the design and purpose of the later tabernacle of Moses.

Structural Similarities Between the Ark and the Tabernacle

It is significant that, apart from the tabernacle of Moses1 and the temple of Solomon,2 Noah’s ark is the only man-made structure mentioned in the Bible whose design was directly revealed by God.3

Like the tabernacle, Noah’s ark “was designed as a temple.”

Abstract: Over 30 years ago, Noel Reynolds compared matching non-Biblical phrases in the Book of Moses and Book of Mormon. Based on this analysis, Reynolds proposed a possible connection between the Book of Moses and hypothetical material on the brass plates that may have influenced some Book of Mormon authors. Reynolds’s work, “The Brass Plates Version of Genesis,” provided potentially plausible explanations for additional relationships between the Book of Moses and Book of Mormon that arose in two later Jeff Lindsay studies: one on the Book of Mormon account of Lehi1’s trail and another on the Book of Mormon’s intriguing use of the ancient theme of rising from the dust. The additional findings and connections presented here strengthen the original case Reynolds made for the ancient roots of the Book of Moses, roots that could have extended to the brass plates and then on to the Book of Mormon. Critics might dismiss such connections by asserting that Joseph merely drew from the Book of Mormon when drafting the Book of Moses; however, this view overlooks significant evidence indicating that the direction of dependence is the other way around. In light of the combined evidence now available, it is time to reconsider Reynolds’s original proposal and recognize the possibility that the Book of Moses is more deeply rooted in antiquity that many have recognized in the past.

[Page 2][Editor’s Note: This article is based on a presentation by Reynolds and Lindsay made at the Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses Conference, Provo, Utah, Sept. 18–19, 2020, presented by The Interpreter Foundation, Brigham Young University Department of Ancient Scripture, Book of Mormon Central, and FairMormon. A more detailed version, along with an edited transcript of the question-and-answer session that followed the presentation, can be found in the forthcoming conference proceedings.]

Research in recent decades shows the Book of Moses to be more than Joseph Smith’s alleged reworking of Genesis based on his personal views, his nineteenth-century environment, or some prophetic imagination. These advances include:

* Glimpses into apparent ancient wordplays that are still detectable behind the English translation,1 including a wordplay on the name of Moses that could not have been logically crafted based on the extant scholarship of Joseph’s day.2

* Surprising parallels to ancient records associated with Enoch, even including specific names such as Mahujah that Joseph either could not have had access to or, in some cases, most likely did not have access to.3

* Evidence from the tools of biblical and literary criticism that the text of Moses 1 has the character...

Abstract: This paper examines the testimonies of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon— not only the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses, but many others who experienced and testified of the reality of the Book of Mormon plates. Together, these testimonies offer impressive support for the claims of Joseph Smith regarding the Book of Mormon and, thus, the Restoration. The variety and complexity of their collective testimony makes finding a single, alternative, non-divine explanation for the witness experiences challenging, indeed.

[Editor’s Note: A very similar version of this essay was delivered as an address at the annual FairMormon Conference in August 2020.]

While listening to a recorded lecture a few months ago, I heard an Evangelical apologist make an observation along roughly the following lines: “Some Christians,” he said, “are too easily talked out of their faith because they had never been talked into it in the first place.” I wish that I could give credit to my source, but I no longer recall his name. However, I’ve been reflecting on that comment since then.

Now, I do not believe that we are very likely to remain in any deep life-altering commitment — whether religious, or romantic, or of any other kind — merely because we’ve been “talked into” doing so. Still, I think that there is something noteworthy in the comment, something pointing to an area in which we Latter-day Saints could do better. (That’s one of the reasons I believe so strongly in the importance of The Interpreter Foundation and why I see value in its sister-organizations, Book of Mormon Central and FAIR.)

We, as a people, tend to focus on experiential support for our beliefs. We seek and value “spiritual experiences,” and we try to help others seek and receive them — in sacrament meetings, firesides, girls’ [Page viii]camps, handcart treks, and a host of other such ventures. This is all well and good, and I enthusiastically support such things. Indeed, our fundamental missionary approach is to lead people to test the promise of Moroni 10:4–5 in order to receive their own individual, personal testimonies as a result of the feelings they receive.

But I am absolutely convinced that we should not neglect a more cognitive support for our faith — one that is intellectually or rationally based.

Commitment to religion should not rely merely upon emotional satisfaction, as important and essential as such fulfillment may be; our moods fluctuate and our emotions are inconstant. We also should be able to articulate reasons in support of our faith. Doing so is in no way a detraction from the importance of spiritual conviction. It may, in fact, be a way of piquing the interest of outsiders who may then be led to develop their own Spirit-infused faith.

“Be ready always,” says 1 Peter 3:15, “to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.” “In your hearts,” says the English Standard Version1 of that same verse, “honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.”

The Greek word that the ESV renders as defense and that the King James Bible translates as answer is apologia, from which we derive our words apologist and apologetics. This suggests that apologetics, in at least some form, may well have an entirely necessary role within the lives of Latter-day Saints and especially in the lives of Latter-day Saints who seek to share the Gospel with others.

The Savior himself was willing to provide evidence for rational belief.