ADE Salt Lake Conference -Travel Grant Notice

Any of you who have submitted abstracts probably know this, but here it is anyway.

A limited number of grants will be available to help presenters travel to the ADE’s 33rd annual meeting in Salt Lake City in October. Presentation abstracts of 500 words are due to Carol DeBoer-Langworthy, ADE President-Elect, by 1 April: CDBL (at) Brown dot edu

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JSPP – Introduction of Revelations and Translations Volume 2

News! Release of the JSP Revelations and Translations vol. 2: Published Revelations. The book has scans of Oliver Cowdery’s Book of Commandments

CHL: Cumorah Room
Rick Turley: World of the Book, The Digital World. Decision: publish 20-22 books in JSP, but every bit on digital. JSPP midway between worlds. Goes through planned volumes. Talks about large format of Rev and Trans (sold 32,000 -wow). a new 7×10 version without the images comes out today. Today announcing volume 2- published versions. [Interruptions due to communications problems. Online people can’t hear things. Updates on comments.]

Summer Course June 13-17, 2011. Jonathan Edwards as Pastoral Theologian

Using selected sermons by Edwards, this course, taught by the staff of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale, will highlight themes and lessons in his thought and pastoral experience that can be understood historically and applied contemporaneously. Selections will include classic as well as previously unpublished sermons and supporting materials. See for registration Summer Term at Sterling Divinity Quadrangle.

Is Mormon Theology Pessimistic?

Is Mormon Theology pessimistic? Short answer: Yes.
Generally speaking, Mormons are pretty thoroughly Arminian in their outlook and as a missionary, I was occasionally questioned with some astonishment about my lack of complete salvation-assurance by certain Protestants. But some were on our side of things:

B. H. Roberts and the Salt Lake Ministerial Association (I)

1907 was an interesting year for Mormonism and it marked the beginning of the end for a number of things from 19th century praxis and belief. During the April conference of the Church, a lengthy pronouncement, “Address to the World” was adopted. The Salt Lake Ministerial Association issued a “Review” of the address a few weeks later in which they expressed skepticism regarding some aspects of the pronouncement. Two interesting things about this long forgotten pronouncement are its “new” articles of faith and its discussion of polygamy. Here is some of that pronouncement:

Appreciating Historiography: Jonathan Grimshaw and George A. Smith

Sitting here recovering from a little carving by an MD, I thought I’d express some thanks.

Most Mormons would be ignorant of the position the two men in the post title hold in regard to the ways we appreciate Joseph Smith. By appreciate, I suppose I really mean apprehend, as a body, as a Church. I’ve posted about Grimshaw before, and it is important not to underestimate him, but Smith was a careful supervisor of the work of the Historian’s office of the 1850s in Utah, with his marks being left in sometimes subtle but important ways. While the kind of ultra-careful and transparent work currently taking place with say, the Joseph Smith Papers Project[1] is not in evidence, the staff was diligent, sacrificing personally in many ways to do the work of documenting the rise of the Church, Joseph Smith’s life and the contemporary prospects of the kingdom.

The Value of a Sermon Critical Edition. Part 4.

[Late cross-post from By Common Consent]
[Part 3 is here.]

The terminology used in textual studies has changed as the philosophy of the nature of texts has changed and it also varies depending on the methodological branch being considered. So, I’m going to avoid the technical language as much as I can. Also, I’m leaving out a lot, believing that brevity is the soul of something or other.

The idea of reconstructing a text from fragmentary or variant sources is an old one. In early biblical studies the process of attempting to move from fragments of early manuscripts to an autograph or something near it became known (1885) as “lower criticism.” The idea could be applied to other ancient texts or modern ones. But the study of texts since the 19th century, originally obsessed with the idea of actually rebuilding the autograph, or original text, has changed, methodologies bifurcating in the process.