Renowned historian Richard Lyman Bushman presents a vibrant history of the objects that gave birth to a new religion. According to Joseph Smith, in September of 1823 an angel appeared to him and directed him to a hill near his home. Buried there Smith found a box containing a stack of thin metal sheets, gold in color, about six inches wide, eight inches long, piled six or so inches high, bound together by large rings, and covered with what appeared to be ancient engravings. Exactly four years later, the angel allowed Smith to take the plates and instructed him to translate them into English. When the text was published, a new religion was born. The plates have had a long and active life, and the question of their reality has hovered over them from the beginning. Months before the Book of Mormon was published, newspapers began reporting on the discovery of a "Golden Bible." Within a few years over a hundred articles had appeared. Critics denounced Smith as a charlatan for claiming to have a wondrous object that he refused to show, while believers countered by pointing to witnesses who said they saw the plates. Two hundred years later the mystery of the gold plates remains. In this book renowned historian of Mormonism Richard Lyman Bushman offers a cultural history of the gold plates. Bushman examines how the plates have been imagined by both believers and critics--and by treasure-seekers, novelists, artists, scholars, and others--from Smith's first encounter with them to the present. Why have they been remembered, and how have they been used? And why do they remain objects of fascination to this day? By examining these questions, Bushman sheds new light on Mormon history and on the role of enchantment in the modern world.

Just as a growing interest in millennialism at the turn of this century has rejuvenated religious debate and questions concerning the fate of the world, so did Mormonism develop from millennial enthusiasm early in the nineteenth century. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and a provocative, even controversial figure in history, declared that he had been given the authority to restore the true church in the latter days. The primary source of Smith's latter-day revelation is The Book of Mormon, and to fully understand his role as the founder of the Mormon faith, one must also understand The Book of Mormon and how it came to be. Unfortunately, the literature about Joseph Smith and The Book of Mormon is permeated with contradiction and controversy. In the first edition of this impressive work, David Persuitte provided a significant amount of revealing biographical information about Smith that resolved many of the controversies concerning his character. He also presented an extensive comparative analysis positing that the probable conceptual source for The Book of Mormon was a book entitled View of the Hebrews; or the Tribes of Israel in America, which was written by an early New England minister named Ethan Smith. Now in an expanded and revised second edition incorporating many new findings relating to the origin of The Book of Mormon, Mr. Persuitte's book continues to shed much new light on the path Joseph Smith took toward founding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

This manual is a resource to help seminary teachers prepare lessons from the Doctrines and Covenants and Church history. It provides 160 lessons that contain teaching suggestions, doctrines and principles, and scripture mastery helps for daily seminary classes. It also contains 32 lessons for weekly home-study classes that correspond to the Doctrine and Covenants and Church History Study Guide for Home-Study Seminary Students.

In the first part of A Brilliant Deceit and Other Essays, the author offers fresh evidence to support a thesis put forward by the famous New Testament scholar Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) that the disciples of Jesus perpetrated a resurrection hoax. That evidence is presented in a series of short essays that contain references to overlapping observations made by Reimarus. The second part of the book isolates socio-religious trajectories in ancient Israelite religion. The author’s fundamental findings challenge the widespread notion that ancient Israel was a homogeneous culture united under the worship of the high god Yahweh Sabaoth. Instead, he argues that the Old Testament traditions are not the product of one people but two, originally and distinctly worshipping the high gods El and Yahweh. Dr. Barré received his doctorate in religion from Vanderbilt University in 1986. His writings have been published in such scholarly journals as the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vetus Testamentum, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentlische Wissenschaft, and the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. He has contributed articles to the Mercer Dictionary of the Bible and his dissertation was published under the title, The Rhetoric of Political Persuasion: The Narrative Artistry and Political Intentions of 2 Kings 9-11.

Contains hundreds of learned and pithy answers to questions submitted to Quora by the general public on the following subjects: Anthropology, Egyptology, Bible, Judaism, Mormonism, general religion, higher education, politics, etc.

This is volume 24 of Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture published by The Interpreter Foundation. It contains articles on a variety of topics including: "Looking Back, Almost Five Years On," "Deuteronomy 17:14–20 as Criteria for Book of Mormon Kingship," "Meeting Zoram," "Seers and Stones: The Translation of the Book of Mormon as Divine Visions of an Old-Time Seer," "Bare Record: The Nephite Archivist, The Record of Records, and the Book of Mormon Provenance," and "'By the Blood Ye Are Sanctified': The Symbolic, Salvific, Interrelated, Additive, Retrospective, and Anticipatory Nature of the Ordinances of Spiritual Rebirth in John 3 and Moses 6."

Step-families deal with many unique issues related to their own children, their step-children, their spouses, and even ex-spouses. Some of the concerns may lead to depression and anxiety, and, in worst-case scenarios, suicide. In Neither Root nor Branch, author Mary Jane Grange helps blended families deal with their often challenging situation to live a happy, fulfilling existence. She provides affordable solutions for dealing with depression and anxiety. Using her experiences has a nurse and a step-parent, Grange relies on scriptures to help step-families co-exist peacefully without the use of drugs, alcohol, medications, or divorce. I am a step parent. I could not keep up the pace that was set for my family. I realized I was in something over my head. I was in something that mere mortals could not correct. I decided to be more conscientious about reading my scriptures. Instead of letting the word of God lie hidden in my heart or dormant on my end tables, I decided to look for the laws of depression. I found them in the scriptures. I found the pace that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ created for us in this world.