The Interpreter Foundation Podcast

Presented at:

2014 Temple on Mount Zion ConferenceSaturday, October 25, 2014https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2014-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/

Conference Proceedings:

The Temple: Ancient and Restored at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-ancient-and-restored/

Listen to an audio recording of this talk:

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In the March 26 Come, Follow Me segment of the Interpreter Radio Show, our host Martin Tanner discusses New Testament lesson 17, “What Shall I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?” on Matthew 18 and Luke 10.

You can listen to or download the New Testament in Context segment of the March 26 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. It will also be included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast). The other segments of the March 26 radio show can be accessed at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-march-26-2023.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com. Call in to 801-254-1640 with your questions and comments during the live show.

 

Original air date: March 26, 2023. This recording has been edited to remove commercial breaks.

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

Abstract: It is natural to wonder how the day on which Jesus was crucified could come to be known as Good Friday. In this exploration of the topic, John Welch examines the many events which occurred on that fateful day and the meaning they have for us today.

[Editor’s Note: This article is based on a talk delivered on Good Friday, April 2, 2021, to the German Missions Reunion in Salt Lake City. It has been lightly edited for publication.]

Today happens to be an auspicious day, Good Friday, the Friday before Easter Sunday. It is a suitable time to reflect on the trial, the cross, and the death of Jesus.

Karfreitag is the German name for Good Friday. The word kar means klage (mourning), kummer (worry), and trauer (sorrow). For Catholics it is a solemn day of fasting, which traditionally means that people eat fish on that day, but it also means they avoid alcohol, even beer. In Germany, this day is also known as Stiller Freitag (quiet Friday). Some German states restrict it as a day of silence, when certain types of noisy activities, such as concerts or dances, are legally banned. This name echoes the “Stille Nacht” (Silent Night) of Jesus’s birth 33 years earlier, but now that word draws our attention to Jesus’s voluntarily stilling his mortal body, even as he once stilled the storm on the Sea of Galilee.

Consider for a few moments all that happened during those particular 24 hours of that day. On the Jewish calendar, as one should note, the day began when the sun went down the evening before. So Good Friday actually began with the Last Supper, with the Lord’s beautiful [Page 2]words in John 13–17, and continued with the Lord’s cosmic conflict in Gethsemane and then with Judas’s betrayal and Jesus’s arrest. All that then led to Golgotha, to the cross, to his yielding up of his spirit, to the earthquakes, to placing Jesus’s body in the tomb, and to his breaking down the gates of Hell. All of that was accomplished within those 24 fateful and fruitful hours. It was indeed a terribly Good Friday!

Although many things happened that day, and all of them were crucially important, in most Christian minds, attention focuses primarily on the Cross. As you will remember, in Germany depictions of the crucifixion were almost everywhere — on monuments, on shrines beside most country roads, and on the tops of alpine peaks. Sometimes, as in the Catholic style, the depiction was of the dead, crucified body of Christ on the cross. Other times it was in the plain Protestant mode of showing the empty cross, which emphasizes that his body is no longer here, for he is risen.

Seeing all these kinds of crosses in Germany made a deep impression on me as a young missionary in the 1960s in Bayern, in Bamberg and Berchtesgaden. I learned there to revere the unpleasantries of the cross as a part of my Latter-day Saint faith.

I have come to appreciate that, as Latter-day Saints, we, of all people, don’t need to choose theologically between Gethsemane or Golgotha. We don’t need to opt between Jesus’s bleeding from every pore, or his bleeding from the wounds in his hands, feet, and side. I like to think of it this way: Jesus overcame spiritual death in the darkness of Gethsemane, while he vanquished physical death in broad daylight on the cross. Both, working together, were necessary.

People sometimes wonder why Latter-day Saints don’t usually wear crosses, as many Christians do. Might a good answer be that, while we don’t outwardly wear crosses, we do bear holy marks of the crucifixion in the tokens of our temple covenants? By keeping those covenants, we inwardly reverence the cross and strive to always remember Christ crucified.

While teaching, in law-school courses at Brigham Young University in Provo, for 40 years various topics on Jewish, Greek, and Roman laws in the New Testament, many things have impressed me about the trials and execution of Jesus. Above all,

Presented at:

2014 Temple on Mount Zion ConferenceSaturday, October 25, 2014https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2014-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/

Conference Proceedings:

The Temple: Ancient and Restored at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-ancient-and-restored/

Listen to an audio recording of this talk:

  Download audio recording

 

 

In the March 19 Come, Follow Me segment of the Interpreter Radio Show, our hosts Bruce Webster, Kris Frederickson, and Martin Tanner discuss New Testament lesson 16, “Thou Art the Christ” on Matthew 15–17 and Mark 7–9.

You can listen to or download the New Testament in Context segment of the March 19 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. It will also be included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast). The other segments of the March 19 radio show can be accessed at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-march-19-2023.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com. Call in to 801-254-1640 with your questions and comments during the live show.

 

Original air date: March 19, 2023. This recording has been edited to remove commercial breaks.

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

 

In this episode of The Interpreter Radio Show, our host is Martin Tanner. You can listen to or download the March 26th broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. These audio tracks are also included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast).

The “New Testament in Context” portion of this show, for the Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 17, “What Shall I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?”, on Matthew 18 and Luke 10 will be posted on Tuesday, April 11.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

Original air date: March 26, 2023. These recording have been edited to remove commercial breaks.

Restoration Advocacy: Responses to the critics of the Book of Abraham, and reasons why it is a true translation by the “Gift and Power of God.”

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

Abstract: Do defenders of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ see themselves as fighting a desperate rearguard battle against the evidence, hoping to save at least a faint shred of credibility for its claims? Hardly. But, at the same time, we don’t pretend to be able to prove those claims beyond any possibility of doubt. Such a prospect, we think, was never God’s intent. “For now we see through a glass, darkly,” as the prophet and apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:12. “Now [we] know in part.” That is an important part of the plan. There is abundant evidence to justify discipleship, but there can also be plausible-seeming grounds, if one prefers, for rejecting it.

Every once in a while, I read hostile statements online about the mindset of Latter-day Saint apologists. Some critics claim, for instance, that we’re in it for the money, perhaps even drawing highly lucrative personal incomes for our apologetics from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That allegation is scarcely worthy of response, since it’s offered without so much as a nod in the direction of genuine supporting data and since it is, in fact, flatly contradicted by the evidence. My wife and I, for example, are (admittedly rather insignificant) donors to The Interpreter Foundation, and the leaders and authors for Interpreter, along with almost everybody else who makes the organization function, are unpaid volunteers.

What I’ll discuss here, though, is the assertion that the self-conceived task of Latter-day Saint apologists is to persuade members of the Church to hold on and, most importantly, to continue paying tithing, in the face of overwhelming proof that Joseph Smith’s prophetic ministry was transparently fraudulent. Our mission, as we ourselves supposedly view it when we’re being candid, is to convince gullible followers a slight chance may still exist that, despite all the evidence, the claims of the Restoration might nevertheless possibly, perhaps, maybe not be false.

[Page viii]Whenever I come across this supposed bit of mindreading, I find myself thinking of a brief but famous scene from the 1994 movie Dumb and Dumber. In it, Jim Carrey plays “Lloyd Christmas” and “Mary Swanson” is portrayed by Lauren Holly:

Lloyd Christmas: “I want to ask you a question, straight out, flat out, and I want you to give me the honest answer. What do you think the chances are of a guy like you and a girl like me ending up together?”

Mary Swanson: “Well, Lloyd, that’s difficult to say. We really don’t…”

Lloyd Christmas: “Hit me with it! Just give it to me straight! I came a long way just to see you, Mary, just … The least you can do is level with me. What are my chances?”

Mary Swanson: “Not good.”

[The background soundtrack music suddenly stops.]

Lloyd Christmas: [He gulps, his mouth twitching.] “You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?”

Mary Swanson: “I’d say more like one out of a million.”

Lloyd Christmas: [Long pause while he processes what he’s heard.] “So you’re telling me there’s a chance. Yeah!”

Lloyd Christmas is a laughable dimwit who is only loosely connected to reality, and I suspect that the critics to whom I’ve referred above think of Latter-day Saint apologists in rather the same way — at least when they’re feeling charitable. (Unlike us, though, Lloyd is well-meaning and likeable, and not flatly mendacious.) And his enthusiasm for odds of 0.0001% that his wooing of Mary Swanson will succeed is obviously offered up as ridiculous. Which it absolutely is.

But I can say with certainty when speaking for myself, and with considerable confidence when speaking for my friends and associates, that we don’t view the likelihood of the Gospel’s being true as merely one in a hundred, let alone as one in a million. This isn’t even remotely the way we see the “state of the question.”

From here on, I’ll speak in the first-person singular,

Presented at:

2014 Temple on Mount Zion ConferenceSaturday, October 25, 2014https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2014-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/

Conference Proceedings:

The Temple: Ancient and Restored at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-ancient-and-restored/

Listen to an audio recording of this talk:

  Download audio recording

 

 

In the March 12 Come, Follow Me segment of the Interpreter Radio Show, our hosts Terry Hutchinson, John Gee, and Kevin Christensen discuss New Testament lesson 15, “O Grave, Where Is Thy Victory?” on Easter.

You can listen to or download the New Testament in Context segment of the March 12 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. It will also be included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast). The other segments of the January 8 radio show can be accessed at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-march-12-2023.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com. Call in to 801-254-1640 with your questions and comments during the live show.

 

Original air date: March 12, 2023. This recording has been edited to remove commercial breaks.

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

Review of Daniel Becerra, Amy Easton-Flake, Nicholas J. Frederick, and Joseph M. Spencer, Book of Mormon Studies: An Introduction and Guide (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2022). 184 pages. $19.99 (hardback), $15.99 (paperback).

Abstract: Book of Mormon Studies: An Introduction and Guide by four Brigham Young University religion professors reviews the field of Book of Mormon studies from the late nineteenth century to the current day. After the historical review of the field, the authors lay out a research agenda for the twenty-first century that, by and large, moves on from the Book of Mormon historicity question that so engaged twentieth-century scholars. This review examines the authors’ claims and demonstrates that the scope of the book is not as broad as it could or should be. Absent perspectives, blind spots, incomplete twenty-first–century research trends, and a discussion of research tools should have been included in the book but were not included. This review ends with a discussion of “the gatekeeper problem” in Book of Mormon studies.

Daniel Becerra, Amy Easton-Flake, Nicholas J. Frederick, and Joseph M. Spencer, all professors of religion at Brigham Young University, have put together an impressive book, a history of Book of Mormon studies entitled Book of Mormon Studies: An Introduction and Guide.1 The volume is positioned for and targeted to three different types [Page 298]of readers. The first reader segment consists of “believing Latter-day Saints — especially young ones — who are interested in contributing to Book of Mormon scholarship” (p. 5). The second segment is “the many Latter-day Saints who … want to deepen their private study of the Book of Mormon without any ambitions about producing new scholarship” (p. 5). For this segment, the authors hope the book will aid in navigating a growing corpus of Book of Mormon scholarship and help them discover the best of what has been produced. Finally, “and most delicately,” as the authors say, “we write for non-Latter-day Saint scholars (and nonscholars) who have some interest in the Book of Mormon and might appreciate some guidance in navigating a field that’s so deeply shaped by the concerns of believing readers” (p. 6).

Brief Overview

Book of Mormon Studies has an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion. Most helpful for both seasoned and new Book of Mormon scholars is the annotated bibliography at the end of the book. In the following sections I provide a brief overview of the content of the book before offering a brief critique and summing up.

Chapter 1

The first chapter provides a history of the field of Book of Mormon studies, covering approximately 120 years of scholarship, from Orson Pratt’s restructuring of the Book of Mormon into chapters and verses in 1879 to roughly the end of the twentieth century. Serious students of the Book of Mormon such as the aforementioned Orson Pratt, James E. Talmage, B.H. Roberts, George Reynolds, Janne M. Sjödahl, Roy A. West, William E. Berrett, and Milton R. Hunter each produced works that pushed the serious study of the Book of Mormon forward. The first scholars trained in a relevant discipline — Hugh W. Nibley, Sidney B. Sperry, and M. Wells Jakeman — arrived on the scene in the late 1940s and helped to found the nascent field of Book of Mormon studies. The chapter details the contributions of each of these scholars, including the tough questions they began tackling after the publication of No Man Knows My History by Fawn McKay Brodie.

These three scholars (Nibley, Sperry, and Jakeman) dominated the world of Book of Mormon studi...