In the March 5, 2026 episode of The Interpreter Insights Podcast, our host Terry Hutchinson and his guest Brent Schmidt discuss BYU’s New Testament Commentary series, which Brent has been involved in.

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We tend to think of Brigham Young as the stern-faced old man from the few existing photos. But what was he like during his formative years? Our hosts explore this question, and Camrey interviews Susan Easton Black to get the historian's perspective on the young Brigham.

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In this episode, Avram and Thora interview Matthew L. Bowen, a professor of Religious Education from Brigham Young University-Hawaii. Bowen has published numerous studies on ancient wordplay in the Book of Mormon. Bowen discusses his study recently published in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship which explores Mormon’s use of the Hebrew root ḥayil/ḥêl, a root that has a wide range of meanings, including “wealth,” “abundance,” and “army.” Bowen argues that Mormon deploys this in a variety of ways in his portrayal of the people of Helam in Mosiah 23, providing new perspectives on the idea of prosperity in the Book of Mormon. Building off of Bowen’s paper, this episode talks about how this helps us better understand other ancient aspects of Nephite culture like orality and the centrality of the Exodus narrative.

The post Conversations with Interpreter Episode 5: Matthew Bowen, “Naming and Narrative Irony in Mosiah 23” first appeared on The Interpreter Foundation.

Review of Patrick Q. Mason and J. David Pulsipher, Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to an Age of Conflict (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021). 290 pages. $19.99 (paperback).

Abstract: Proclaim Peace is a very timely and serious engagement with questions of peace. Consisting of roughly equal parts challenging scriptural exegesis, well-documented historical research, and earnest social activism, it may be taken as exemplary of current LDS academic opinion and institutional action on the interface between religion and politics. This work compels us to consider a critical question: Do we interpret the core meaning of peace as a temporal project of seeking justice? Or do we understand, contextualize, and moderate our passion for temporal justice relative to a promise of eternal peace? If we are intent on unifying heaven and earth, we should be careful from which direction we are working.

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Abstract: God didn’t “set a mark” on Cain. Instead, he gave Cain a sign. The unfortunate translation of Genesis 4:15 in the King James Bible (KJV) has been the source of much misunderstanding over the years. This article is about the English words that the King James translators chose in Genesis 4:15 and the Hebrew words from which they are translated. It shows that the renderings of the words in that verse are inconsistent with how the KJV treats the same words and grammatical features in other passages. The result is a translation that cannot be justified from the Hebrew Bible.

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In the February 26, 2026 episode of The Interpreter Insights Podcast, our host Terry Hutchinson and his guest John Thompson discuss John's new book Abraham and His Family in Scripture, History, and Tradition, coedited with Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Matthew L. Bowen, and David R. Seely, and his article “‘Being of that Lineage’: Generational Curses and Inheritance in the Book of Abraham” from Volume 54 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.

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Our hosts continue their discussion with Matt Grow, managing director of the Church History Department. Was Brigham a man of violence? He did use inflammatory rhetoric at times. But interestingly the actual evidence points toward his being a man of peace. And what do we know about whether or not Brigham Young was a racist?

The post Becoming Brigham Episode 5 first appeared on The Interpreter Foundation.

In this episode of Conversations with Interpreter, Thora and Avram speak with John Thompson about his paper from the 2025 Abraham and His Family Conference held at BYU in May 2025. Thompson, an Egyptologist who is a retired teacher for Seminaries and Institutes and a content creator for Scripture Central, discusses the idea that the life of Abraham as described in both Genesis and in the book of Abraham shows a progression in hiscovenant relationship with God. Thompson argues that this relates to Abraham’s almost being sacrificed and then being commanded to sacrifice his own son. Although the scriptures talk about this in terms of the relationship between sons and fathers, the pattern presenting in scripture is part of the experience of everyone on the covenant path.

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Abstract: For more than a century, Alma 29 has been read as a direct quotation from the prophet Alma. Yet, unlike every other extended quotation in Mormon’s record, this passage lacks attribution, framing, or transition. This anomaly has gone largely unnoticed because of a chapter break, added in 1879, that masks the continuity of Mormon’s voice from Alma 28 into chapter 29. This paper challenges the traditional attribution and argues that Alma 29 is more likely Mormon’s editorial reflection than Alma’s psalm. While the study focuses on Alma 1–29, the editorial patterns it identifies—Mormon’s consistent use of speaker attribution, narrative framing, and formal introductions to quoted speech—hold true across his entire abridgment. Alma 29, if understood as Alma’s psalm, would stand out as the sole exception, with no introduction to mark a change in speaker. Close attention to verb tense usage, narrative posture, and thematic continuity with Alma 28, together with the prophetic vocabulary Mormon uses elsewhere, suggests that these words reflect Mormon’s own meditation. Attributing Alma 29 to Mormon reframes the chapter as the theological culmination of his editorial design. Mormon situates his record within a prophetic chain stretching from Joseph in Egypt, through Nephi, to his own day. His repeated use of “my brethren” reflects covenant kinship rather than contemporaneity, and his testimony of a “holy calling” reveals a prophet who, even in an age of societal collapse, experienced his own quiet triumph in saving souls.

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In the February 19, 2026 episode of The Interpreter Insights Podcast, our host Martin Tanner describes how Mark Smith, PhD, Harvard researcher, now a professor at NYU, in his book The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient Israel, demonstrates ancient Israel, and early books of the Bible describe God (YHWH) as a divine human. This looks like Joseph Smith's descriptions of God in his accounts of the First Vision.

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