Just a Nice Old Man who Tells Stories?

A couple of months ago I heard one of these Mormon Studies scholars refer to President Thomas S. Monson as "a nice old man who tells stories" but went on to complain that his messages had no importance. This seems to me at least a debatable proposition. So, I have assembled some of President Monson's messages over the last year and a half.

I plead with parents and leaders of our youth to help them stand firm for truth and righteousness. Help open wide to their view the gates of learning, of understanding, and of service in the kingdom of God. Build within them strength to resist the temptations of the world. Give them the will to walk in virtue and faith, to be prayerful, and to look to heaven as their constant anchor. (First Presidency Message August 2015)

Let us take most seriously the callings, the responsibilities, and the duties which come with the priesthood we hold.(General Conference April 2015)

Before you put yourself and your priesthood in jeopardy by venturing into places or participating in activities which are not worthy of you or of that priesthood, pause to consider the consequences. Remember who you are and what God expects you to become. You are a child of promise. You are a man of might. You are a son of God. (General Conference April 2016)

My brothers and sisters, in our lives we will have temptations; we will have trials and challenges. As we go to the temple, as we remember the covenants we make there, we will be better able to overcome those temptations and to bear our trials. (General Conference April 2015)

There is yet time this year to extend the helping hand, the loving heart, and the willing spirit—in other words, to follow the example set by our Savior and to serve as He would have us serve. (First Presidency Message December 2015)

To be an example of faith means that we trust in the Lord and in His word. It means that we possess and that we nourish the beliefs that will guide our thoughts and our actions. Our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in our Heavenly Father will influence all that we do. Amidst the confusion of our age, the conflicts of conscience, and the turmoil of daily living, an abiding faith becomes an anchor to our lives. Remember that faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other. I reiterate what we have been told repeatedly—that in order to gain and to keep the faith we need, it is essential that we read and study and ponder the scriptures. Communication with our Heavenly Father through prayer is vital. We cannot afford to neglect these things, for the adversary and his hosts are relentlessly seeking for a chink in our armor, a lapse in our faithfulness. (General Conference October 2015)

May we choose to build up within ourselves a great and powerful faith which will be our most effective defense against the designs of the adversary—a real faith, the kind of faith which will sustain us and will bolster our desire to choose the right. Without such faith, we go nowhere. With it, we can accomplish our goals. (General Conference April 2016)

In the Church, the goal of gospel teaching is not to pour information into the minds of God’s children, whether at home, in the classroom, or in the mission field. It is not to show how much the parent, teacher, or missionary knows. Nor is it merely to increase knowledge about the Savior and His Church.

The basic goal of teaching is to help the sons and daughters of Heavenly Father return to His presence and enjoy eternal life with Him. To do this, gospel teaching must encourage them along the path of daily discipleship and sacred covenants. The aim is to inspire individuals to think about, feel about, and then do something about living gospel principles. The objective is to develop faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and to become converted to His gospel. (First Presidency Message March 2016)

Disregard for the commandments has opened the way for what I consider to be the plagues of our day. They include the plague of permissiveness, the plague of pornography, the plague of drugs, the plague of immorality, and the plague of abortion, to name just a few. The scriptures tell us that the adversary is “the founder of all these things.” We know that he is “the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men.”

I plead with you to avoid anything that will deprive you of your happiness here in mortality and eternal life in the world to come. With his deceptions and lies, the adversary will lead you down a slippery slope to your destruction if you allow him to do so. You will likely be on that slippery slope before you even realize that there is no way to stop. You have heard the messages of the adversary. He cunningly calls: Just this once won’t matter; everyone is doing it; don’t be old-fashioned; times have changed; it can’t hurt anyone; your life is yours to live. The adversary knows us, and he knows the temptations which will be difficult for us to ignore. How vital it is that we exercise constant vigilance in order to avoid giving in to such lies and temptations.

Great courage will be required as we remain faithful and true amid the ever-increasing pressures and insidious influences with which we are surrounded and which distort the truth, tear down the good and the decent, and attempt to substitute the man-made philosophies of the world. If the commandments had been written by man, then to change them by inclination or legislation or by any other means would be the prerogative of man. The commandments, however, were God-given. Using our agency, we can set them aside. We cannot, however, change them, just as we cannot change the consequences which come from disobeying and breaking them.(General Conference October 2015)

Some find it difficult to withstand the mocking and unsavory remarks of foolish ones who ridicule chastity, honesty, and obedience to God’s commands. The world has ever belittled adherence to principle. When Noah was instructed to build an ark, the foolish populace looked at the cloudless sky and then scoffed and jeered—until the rain came.

On the American continent long centuries ago, people doubted, disputed, and disobeyed until the fire consumed Zarahemla, the earth covered Moronihah, and the water engulfed Moroni. Jeering, mocking, ribaldry, and sin were no more. They had been replaced by sullen silence, dense darkness. The patience of God had expired, His timetable fulfilled. (First Presidency Message July 2016)

We will all face fear, experience ridicule, and meet opposition. Let us—all of us—have the courage to defy the consensus, the courage to stand for principle. Courage, not compromise, brings the smile of God’s approval. . . .

[May] you have the courage to stand firm for truth and righteousness. Because the trend in society today is away from the values and principles the Lord has given us, you will almost certainly be called upon to defend that which you believe. Unless the roots of your testimony are firmly planted, it will be difficult for you to withstand the ridicule of those who challenge your faith. (First Presidency Message April 2015)

In these messages, we find specific counsel and, in some cases, repeated warnings. Many of these themes were repeated by President Uchtdorf this morning. Now I understand that some of these counsels will not be popular in certain quarters. Some, for example, might want to impress others with their learning and might be offended that President Monson has pointed out that theirs is an inferior goal. They might wish to dismiss him as a nice old man who just tells stories. Yes, he tells stories, but he does much more than just that. To me his counsel is wise and deserves to be heeded.

Today's Quote

From Russell M. Nelson, "Protect the Spiritual Power Line" (October 1984):

"Learning can be misused! A sharp mind, misdirected, can cut into that line of spiritual power. Some 'learned' souls delight in leading others astray, all in the so-called name of learning. Years later their victims may realize that they have climbed their ladder of learning, only to find it leaning against the wrong wall."

Today's Quote

I witnessed something yesterday that reminded me of a quote by Peter Novick:

"There is nothing more tedious than the spectacle of disgruntled authors complaining that they have been misrepresented or, even worse, whimpering that they have been misunderstood. Academic authors, above all others, should be immunized from such concerns, after years of seeing the versions of our lectures we get back in blue books at the end of the term."

(Peter Novick, "My Correct Views on Everything," American Historical Review 96/3 (1991): 699.)

I have often thought I have been misunderstood. Sometimes I have even felt deliberately misunderstood. When that occurs I often remember this quote.

Alas, authors who pretend to be academic but never teach classes have no such immunization. Such immunization also avails nothing to narcissists.

A Metaphor for Apostasy

Psalm 73 in the Septuagint (where it is numbered Psalm 72) contains an unusual metaphor for apostasy:

οτι ιδου οι μακρυνοντες εαυτους απο σου απολουνται εξωλεθρευσας παντα τον πορνευοντα απο σου

For behold those who remove themselves from thee are lost; thou shalt destroy all those who fornicate from thee (Psalm 72:27 LXX).

This is actually a fairly close translation of the Hebrew. In the minds of the ancient Israelites immorality and apostasy are closely linked (see also Hosea).

The Bitter Cup

In Matthew 26:39 Jesus said:

Πάτερ μου, εἰ δυνατόν ἐστιν, παρελθάτω ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ τὸ ποτήριον τοῦτο πλὴν οὐχ ὡς ἐγὼ θέλω ἀλλ’ ὡς σύ.

The King James translation gives this as:

O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

Because the cup is mentioned by Jesus, the expression is familiar, but where does the cup come from? Cups do figure into the Passover ceremony but not in such a way that it makes sense in the way that Jesus uses it.

The same term, cup (ποτήριον), shows up in Psalm 74:9 (Psalm 75:8 in the KJV):

ὅτι ποτήριον ἐν χειρὶ κυρίου οἴνου ἀκράτου πλῆρες κεράσματος καὶ ἔκλινεν ἐκ τούτου εἰς τοῦτο πλὴν ὁ τρυγίας αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἐξεκενώθη πίονται πάντες οἱ ἁμαρτωλοὶ τῆς γῆς

For a cup of undiluted wine is in the Lord's hand, full of mixture and he tips it from this to this but its dregs will not be poured out, all the sinners of the earth shall drink them.

So the reference to drinking the cup seems to refer back to the cup that the Psalmist sang about, the cup of the wrath of God directed at sinners.

An Ad for Addicts

Just in case you, or someone you know, is addicted to Ethiopia's most famous food, you can watch this video here.

One of the more interesting things to me is that this particular delicacy was mainly used by Muslims through the Middle Ages:

At one time coffee was consumed by Oromos and Muslims only. The clergy condemned the use of coffee. However, at a later date coffe won the palates and hearts of even the strictest of the priesthood.

Coffee did not become an intrinsic part of Ethiopian culture until the 1880s when Menelik [II, Emperor of Ethiopia from 1889 to 1913] himself drank it. At that time the Egyptian Bishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abune Matewos [bishop from 1881 to 1926], dismissed the clergy's contention that it was a Muslim drink.

(Daniel J. Mesfin, Exotic Ethiopian Cooking [Falls Church, VA: Ethiopian Cookbook Enterprises, 1993], p. xxvii.)

Abune Matewos, was born and educated in Egypt. He may not have understood the local Ethiopian Christian aversion to coffee; he certainly did not share it.

Why was coffee a Muslim drink. One of the main reasons was that coffee did not contain alcohol (like beer or wine) and so you could not get drunk from it, it required boiling so it killed the germs in the water, and it had its own chemicals with neurological side effects.

So coffee has always been prohibited by some Christian sect or other throughout its entire history.

Some Belated Kudos

I just noticed that my friend, Gary Gillum, is on the advisory board for Oxford Biblical Studies Online. That is great news. I have known Gary about thirty years. He is a wonderful man with an encyclopedic knowledge of a wide range of subjects. He has quietly produced a wide variety of good work. I remember as an undergraduate extensively using two bibliographic works that he had prepared. I am glad that even though Gary has retired that he is still productive. What a coup for Oxford to get him involved in this project!

Jürgen von Beckerath (1920-2016)

This came in from Angelika Lohnwasser:

Prof. em. Dr. Jürgen von Beckerath, 1920-2016

Am 26.6.2016 verstarb in seinem Haus in Schlehdorf/Bayern der frühere Direktor des Instituts für Ägyptologie und Koptologie der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Prof. Dr. Jürgen von Beckerath im Alter von 96 Jahren. Er war der zweite Vertreter der Ägyptologie in Münster und amtierte von 1970 bis 1985. Seine Karriere verlief nach früher „klassischem“ Muster: Promotion in München 1948, 1952 Reisestipendium nach Ägypten (als erster deutscher Wissenschaftler nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg), 1955 Stipendium der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, später Assistent am Ägyptischen Museum in München, 1958 Lehrauftrag für Ägyptologie in München, Habilitation ebendort 1963, 1966/67 Associate Professor an der Columbia University in New York, 1970 Ruf nach Münster als Nachfolger von Walther Wolf. Chronologie und Geschichte des Alten Ägypten waren seine hauptsächlichen Forschungsschwerpunkte. Neben zahlreichen einschlägigen Artikeln (der letzte aus dem Jahre 2003) gehören drei Bücher zu seinen wichtigsten Veröffentlichungen: Untersuchungen zur politischen Geschichte der Zweiten Zwischenzeit in Ägypten (Habilitationsschrift), 1965; die beiden folgenden sind Handbücher geworden: Chronologie des pharaonischen Ägypten. Die Zeitbestimmung der ägyptischen Geschichte von der Vorzeit bis 332 v. Chr., 1997; Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen, 1984, 1999.

 I have found von Beckerath's Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen extremely useful (I was using it just yesterday).

I would like to highlight an article of von Beckerath's which I have found extremely helpful. Jürgen von Beckerath, "Die Lesung von "Regierungsjahr": ein neuer Vorschlag," Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 95/2 (1969): 88-91. In this article von Beckerath establishes that the reading of the regnal year group is ḥsbt, not ḥ3t-zp or rnpt-zp. This reading was confirmed in Kaul-Theodor Zauzich, "Das topographische Onomastikon im P. Kairo 31169," Göttinger Miszellen 99 (1987): 83-91.

It was also von Beckerath who pointed out that we really have no evidence that the Egyptians knew about the Sothic cycle before the Ptolemaic period.

It has been at least a decade since von Beckerath was active in the field, but he made some important contributions.

A Lutheran on the Trinity

Hans Fiene is a Lutheran pastor in Illinois. I am disappointed with his anti-Mormon tendencies but I appreciate his thoughtfulness. In this video, however, he makes a point that I have often heard my friend, Lou Midgley, make:

You cannot make a popular explanation of the Christian Trinity of the creeds without falling into heresy. 

From my perspective, the formulations of the creeds tend to be incoherent gibberish, and I appreciate a good Lutheran pastor being able to articulate this. Perhaps there is some common ground we can build on.

How Many Books in a Preexilic Israelite Personal Library?

So how many books did the typical preexilic Israelite own? By books, we mean literary works or works of knowledge, not things like tax receipts and property deeds.

If I had to guess, I think that it would be pretty safe to say that the mode was zero. That means that a majority of ancient Israelites could not read and did not personally own any books. But some percentage of ancient Israelites could read. Some percentage of them did own literary texts or works of knowledge. Again, the absolute percentage need not be large, but chances are that if you were privileged enough to read, you probably wanted to possess something to read.

Unfortunately, we cannot answer that question, but we can get some idea by looking at ownership of literary works in the Neo-Assyrian empire. SAA VII 49-51 are three lists of tablets owned by various individuals in the Neo-Assyrian empire. The texts are somewhat fragmentary, but they typically list the works and how many tablets in the work, and a summary of the number of tablets accompanied by the name of the individual. Taking the entries where the total number of tablets owned is more or less intact in all of the texts, we get the following list (in ascending order by tablet):

• Aplaya owned 1 tablet


• Mushezib-Nabu owned 1 tablet


• Tabni owned 2 tablets


• Nabu-balassu-iqbi owned [x]+2 tablets


• Nabu-shum-[. . .] owned [1]5 tablets


• Assur-mukin-pale'a owned [1]8 tablets


• Shamash-eriba owned 28 tablets


• Nabu-shakin-shulmi owned [x]+37 tablets


• [...] owned 100+[x] tablets


• Arraba owned 185 tablets


• Nabu-nadin-apli owned 188 tablets


• Nabu-[. . .] owned 435 tablets

What is interesting about this list is the spread. About a third of those who owned tablets owned only one or two. About a third of them more than dozen tablets. About a third owned more than a hundred tablets. Remember these are literary texts or works of knowledge (the ancient equivalent of scientific literature). The average of those whose numbers are completely intact is 120 tablets.

I would expect ancient Israelite personal libraries to show a similar spread. Some would only own a work or two. Some would have several. What is somewhat surprising is that multiple individuals had extensive libraries, the equivalent of dozens of scrolls. We should suppose that ancient Israel would be the same.

It would be nicer to have a larger sample size. It would be nice if we had equivalent lists from Israel. But based on the information we do have, highly literate individuals with large libraries are known from pre-exilic Israelite times.

More on the Gospel of Jesus's Wife Forgery

Apparently Karen King, who introduced the papyrus fragment of the Gospel of Jesus's Wife has admitted that the document is probably a forgery.

I noted evidence for it as a forgery four years ago. Interesting that the forger seems to have been an Egyptology student at one time.

Some Perils of Mathematical Modeling

Mathematical models can be great. They do, however, have some limitations. Suppose, for example, that you are trying to predict some data that you suspect has some mathematical relationship and you want to know the future behavior. A mathematical model might be useful to predict the future results of the data. Your predictive abilities will only be as good as the model (or formula) that you are using. Presumably, if your model accounts for past data, it should work for future data as well. We'll keep this fairly simple.

Lets say that you start with an initial condition and it starts at zero. The next data point to come out is a one. So at x = 0, y = 0 and x=1, y=1. This gives us a nice formula: x = y. We are ready to predict the future. Our guess is that when x = 2, y =2. Our graph of the function looks like this:

This provides nice steady increase. If it is a graph of your investments, you will not be getting rich very quick, but you might not be getting poor either. If it is global temperatures, it might cause some concern. If it is crop yields per square meter, then it is steady and predictable.

But when x =2 comes out, it turns out that y = 0. Our prediction was off by 2. Our graph comparing our prediction with actual results looks like this:

This looks like a simple problem to fix. We simply change our equation to y = -x^2 + 2x. This equation also works for the first three values. Our graph comparing our prediction with actual results now looks like this:

Those curves are pretty close. We seem to be on the right track. Let's expand our prediction graph and predict what is going to happen in the future:

We predict that the next point on the graph will be -3. It looks as though the graph is going increasingly downward. If this is your return on investment, then it looks like you better get out of the market now. If this is global temperatures, then stock up on winter clothes.

In fact, the next point is -1. Again, we are off by 2. Out graph comparing our prediction with actual results looks like this:

This is a not so easy fix. We change our equation to y = (x^3)/3 - 2x^2 + 8x/3. This gives us the following graph:

This is not exact but it is close. If we look down the road, we can predict the following:

So if this is our investments, we should just ride it out because things look better down the road. If it is global temperatures, then hang on because things will get a lot hotter really quick.

When the next number comes in, it comes in as 0, exactly as our model predicted:

Surely, we are on the right track.

The next number, however, comes in as 1 rather then the 5 our model predicted.

Something is wrong again. If we look at our various model graphs, we can see that they end up going all over the place:

Clearly, while each of these graphs works for a bit, they all fail in the end. They all end up flying off on a tangent. This is even more clear when we look at the long term trajectories:

All of these graphs were based on the actual data, but they differ markedly in their projections (all of which turn out to be wrong in the long term). Remember that the extreme models accounted for almost the same range of data, but after a point made widely divergent predictions.

So, one take away is that the models, at some point, break down. We could make the models much more complicated and account for the first twenty points but they would then still go wildly wrong. The general point would remain. If you are looking at a fluctuating phenomenon and suddenly your model becomes monotonically increasing or decreasing (that is, it stops fluctuating) then that is the point where your model probably has broken down.

Herbert Donner (1930-2016)

This bit of sad news comes via Jack Sasson who got it from Wolfgang Zwickel, the authors are listed at the bottom:


Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. h.c. Herbert Donner (1930-2016)

Am 28. April 2016 verstarb Prof. Dr. theol. Dr. phil. Dr. h.c. Herbert Donner im Alter von 86 Jahren in Kiel. Mit ihm verliert die Theologische Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel einen ihrer profiliertesten Vertreter und einen international renommierten Wissenschaftler. Von 1980 bis zu seiner Emeritierung war er hier ordentlicher Professor für Altes Testament und Biblische Archäologie und amtierte zwischen 1985 und 1987 auch als Dekan der Fakultät. Zuvor hatte er seit 1963 als Professor für Altes Testament und Palästinakunde in Göttingen und seit 1968 in Tübingen gelehrt und geforscht.

Donner hatte in Leipzig eine umfassende theologische und altorientalistische Ausbildung erhalten und war dort mit einer Arbeit über die Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichte der eisenzeitlichen Kleinstaaten Israel und Juda zuerst zum Dr. theol., dann mit einer Arbeit über die keilschriftlichen Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungsurkunden des nordsyrischen Stadtstaates Alalah (Tell Açana) zum Dr. phil. promoviert worden. 1958 verließ er die Deutsche Demokratische Republik und habilitierte sich in Göttingen mit einer Arbeit über die Stellung der klassischen Propheten des 8. Jahrhunderts v.Chr. zur Außenpolitik der Könige von Israel und Juda. 1965 organisierte er die Finanzierung der Restaurierung der byzantinischen Mosaik-Landkarte in Madeba / Jordanien und wurde dafür - zusammen mit den beiden Restauratoren - vom griechisch-orthodoxen Patriarchen von Jerusalem zum "Ritter des Ordens der orthodoxen Kreuzträger vom Heiligen Grabe" ernannt.

In Kiel leitete er seit 1983 auch über seine Emeritierung hinaus bis ins Jahr 2010 die von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft finanzierte Gesenius-Forschungsstelle, deren Ziel es war, das "Hebräische und aramäische Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament von Wilhelm Gesenius" vollständig neu zu bearbeiten. Das Wörterbuch erschien zwischen 1987 und 2012 in sieben Lieferungen. 2013 konnte der Herausgeber zu seiner Freude das Erscheinen der einbändigen Studienausgabe erleben. Mit dem Wörterbuch leistete er einen grundlegenden Beitrag zur hebräischen Lexikographie. Seine zweibändige "Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in Grundzügen", inzwischen in der 4. Auflage erschienen, gehört für die meisten Studierenden zur Pflichtlektüre, und vielen ist auch die Übersetzung der griechischen und lateinischen Pilgerberichte aus dem 4.-7. Jahrhundert ins Deutsche eine willkommene Arbeitsgrundlage. In seiner Eigenschaft als Vorsitzender des 1877 gegründeten Deutschen Vereins zur Erforschung Palästinas förderte er zwischen 1974 und 1992 entsprechende Untersuchungen und Publikationen. Die allgemeine Wertschätzung seiner Person kam auch darin zum Ausdruck, dass er nicht nur ordentliches Mitglied der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, korrespondierendes Mitglied der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft der J.-W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt und des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts war, sondern im Jahr 2000 mit dem Dr. theol. h.c. der Theologischen Fakultät der Universität Leipzig ausgezeichnet und zum Ehrenmitglied des Deutschen Vereins zur Erforschung Palästinas ernannt wurde. Seine Veröffentlichungen zeichnen sich durch umfassende Kenntnisse, nüchterne Urteile und einen unprätentiösen und klaren Stil aus. Seine ungewöhnlich vielfältige und ertragreiche wissenschaftliche Arbeit zur Geschichte und Kultur des antiken Palästinas ist mit ihm nun ans Ende gekommen.

Die Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel und ihre Theologische Fakultät werden sein Andenken in Ehren halten.

Ulrich Hübner,
Direktor des Instituts für Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft und Biblische Archäologie,
Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
Markus Saur,
Dekan der Theologischen Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel


The last conference paper I presented relied heavily on one of the standard reference compendiums that  Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. h.c. Donner produced, Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften. I would like to thank him for his good work. I am sorry that I was never able to do so in person.

Robert Bennett

Senator Bennett passed away today. That is sad.

I chanced to meet Senator Bennett a few years ago, after he had left office. It was a brief meeting. He was very gracious. I thanked him for his years of service. I told him that I thought he had been rather poorly treated by his party the way he was forced to leave office. He told me that it was one of the best things that could have happened to him. It allowed him to spend more time with his grandchildren. True to his word, he then excused himself to attend to his grandchildren. I admire someone (especially a politician) who can make his deeds match his words.

Congratulations

Congratulations to Nathan Hawks. I know Nathan and am very pleased to see him garner this recognition.

Ancient Israelites More Literate Than We Thought

This news item in the New York Times argues that ancient Israelites were more literate than previously thought. We went through this all last year. I pointed out that:

• the Hebrew Bible notes its historical sources, 


• when those sources survive, they end up being accurately represented as sources,


• epigraphic sources indicate that Israelite scribes kept annals, 


• the epipgraphic finds from ancient Israel indicates widespread Israelite scribes (with a number now noted for the eleventh century)


• the epigraphic finds indicate a professional and literate scribal class,


• the epigraphic finds enable a rough calculation of the amount of literary material in the country,

This all serves to indicate that scribes and scribal activity in ancient Israel was greater than some biblical scholars would like it to be, and all this while not requiring literacy to be as widespread as the New York Times claims. Will some people believe it now that the New York Times says it?

What This Year’s Early Easter Date Tell Us about Early Christianity

The bright moon this morning provoked a conversation in which my daughter asked a telling question that reveals a lot about early Christianity.

The date of Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. This year, the Vernal Equinox was March 20 (it is often on March 21). The full moon was March 23. The Sunday following is March 27. So we have an early Easter this year.

There is a logic to the date of Easter. Jesus was crucified on Passover, which is the fourteenth of Nissan, which is the month of spring (hence the Vernal Equinox). Nissan, like other months of the Jewish calendar, is a lunar month starting on the new moon. The fourteenth is thus the date of the full moon. The Resurrection was the Sunday following the crucifixion. 

On the calendar that we use, the Roman calendar, the date of Eastern changes from year to year. My daughters question was: “Didn’t they record the date of the Resurrection?”

The answer is that that they did, but they recorded it in the Jewish calendar, not the Roman calendar. The earliest Christians were all Jews or converts from Judaism. It was only later that the Christians started accepting converts from Gentiles, such as Greeks and Romans. So the early Christians recorded the date of the Resurrection according to the date on the Jewish lunar calendar, not the Roman solar calendar.

Starting in the second century, there was a controversy in Christianity between those that wanted to celebrate Easter on the 14th of Nissan (following the gospel of John) and those who wanted to celebrate it on Sunday and so the Sunday following (following the gospel of Matthew). The Easter controversy was not ostensibly settled until the fourth century.

There are only two Christian Holy Days that follow a Jewish calendar, that thus go back to the earliest period of Christian history. Both commemorate the Resurrection. Those Holy Days are Easter, and the Lord’s Day (Sunday). All the other Christian Holy Days follow the Roman calendar (including Christmas) and are thus later.

So, what we learn about early Christianity is that the Resurrection was the only event commemorated; it was memorialized in two Holy Days, Easter and the Lord’s Day. The dates of these events were recorded in the Jewish calendar, which was the one that the earliest Christians used.

Upcoming Forum

Tomorrow's forum at BYU will feature Professor Christian Smith of Notre Dame speaking at the BYU Marriott Center at 11 am. Those who have paid much attention to this blog will know that I have a high opinion of his work and have cited it many times. Over on the book list, seven of his works have two star ratings (out of three) and one has the rare three star rating. It will thus come as no surprise that I highly recommend attending the forum.

Randall Jones (1939-2016)

A couple of weeks ago I was looking in the library for a particular sort of book to replace one that I had years ago but had lost. I finally located one on the library shelf and when I checked it out was surprised and pleased to find that Randy Jones was one of the co-authors. He had served as my bishop for a few months, although I did not know him that well since I worked mainly with one of his counselors.

I was sad to discover today that he passed away last week. My condolences to his family. We will miss him.

Same Data, Different Questions

In his recent book, Rodney Stark makes the following observation:

Contrary to stereotypes of Muslims as ardent worshippers, their numbers have been reduced almost as greatly as those for Christians when the data are limited to weekly attenders.

(Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Faith [Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2015], 15.)

This comes from the way that Stark is framing his question. What he is looking at is, if you took all the people who attend religious services during the week, what percentage of them belong to which religion. If that is the question you are asking then a typical worshiper is more likely to be Christian (39%) than Muslim (31%).

But there is another way at looking at the question. Instead of asking, "What percentage of the world's weekly worshipers belong to various religions?" we could ask, "What percentage of various religions are weekly worshiper?" That is a different question and Stark provides (on pp. 14-15 of his book) the information to answer it. Here in descending order are the percentages of adherents to different religions worldwide who worship weekly:

• Hinduism     66%
• Muslims     64%
• Christians     52%
• Others     50%
• Buddhists     28%
• Jews     24%
• Secular     2%

This does not invalidate Stark's argument. It is just using the same information to ask a different question. What it shows is that there is a basis for the stereotype, since on any given week almost 2 out of 3 Muslims will attend mosque, whereas just over 1 out of 2 Christians will attend church. That is a statistically significant difference.

Incidentally, I have no idea whether Latter-day Saints would be classified as Christians or Others in this study. I would be curious to know what the specific Latter-day Saint number were, but given the geographic variation that probably exists they would be no particular help to any particular congregation. And, given the magnitude of people we are talking about in the study, whatever the Latter-day Saint numbers are, they would make a negligible difference on Stark's overall numbers.

What really impresses me are the Hindu numbers. So what are Hindus doing right? (Since we do not know what Latter-day Saint numbers are, we do not know what we may or may not be doing right compared to Hindus, but clearly Hindus are doing something right, and so are Muslims.)

A Plug for BYU?

Brigham Young University gets a plug from an unlikely source on its diversity, of all things. (I do not endorse the crudeness in the title; the article itself I did not find crude.)

A New Book on the Old Kingdom

I received in the mail today the first volume of the new series, Harvard Egyptological Studies: Towards a New History for the Egyptian Old Kingdom: Perspectives on the Pyramid Age, ed. Peter Der Manuelian and Thomas Schneider (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2015). As expected from Brill publications, the book is beautifully produced.

I do have an essay in the volume ("Did the Old Kingdom Collapse? A New View of the First Intermediate Period" pp. 60-75) but I wanted to highlight two other contributions in the volume.

Miroslav Bárta ("Ancient Egyptian History as an Example of Punctuated Equilibrium: An Outline" pp. 1-17) counters the idea that the Old Kingdom was a static place. He depicts it as having times of stability punctuated by major periods of change. In other words, history actually occurred.

My late friend, Harold Hays ("The Entextualization of the Pyramid Texts and the Religious History of the Old Kingdom" pp. 200-226), takes on the theory of the democratization of the afterlife. Mark Smith, Harco Willems, and others, including myself, have pointed to major problems in the theory and it is great to have Harold's contribution to add to the growing list of refutations of it.

There are several other good essays in the collection that I might recommend another time. I am only disappointed that, for whatever reasons, Ann Roth's and Manfred Bietak's contributions to the conference did not appear in the volume.

Paying Hidden Costs

A thirty second sound bite on the radio news this morning announced that the Utah National Parks Council of the Boy Scouts of America is laying some people off as donations are down and they cannot afford to employ the people anymore. I have not been able to find confirmation for this tidbit elsewhere, but the rest of this post is based on the assumption that the information is correct.

This is sad for those laid off. I am sure that at least some (and perhaps all) of those who will be laid off sincerely worked for the good of the boys.

On the other hand, this was entirely predictable. No one wants to support an organization that abandons its principles and betrays its constituents.

Unfortunately, my observations about this sort of situation is that those who caused it are never the ones to suffer the ill effects. They will be lauded and praised for how they led the organization through difficult times and given a golden parachute instead of being sacked for their abandonment of principle or betrayal.

Apologetics for Not Doing Apologetics

Yesterday at Utah Valley University there was a panel discussion on Mormon apologetics. The panelists were Brian Hauglid, Ralph Hancock, Brian Birch, Julie Smith, and Ben Park. Each had ten minutes to make their case and then there was an hour-long discussion. Here are some brief summaries of the arguments (losing most of the detail to perhaps the point of caricature--sorry, I do not mean to be inaccurate, just brief).

Brian Hauglid summarized Stephen Cowan's classification of Evangelical apologists but did not deal with how this classification system might apply to Mormon apologetics or which Latter-day Saint scholars might fit in which classification if it did apply. He argued that apologetics should not be a full-contact sport. He said that apologetics ought to be done in such a fashion that no one got their feelings hurt.

Ralph Hancock argued that apologetics meant defending one's beliefs using arguments. Thus everyone does apologetics for their own opinions. He argued that irony and satire have a legitimate place in apologetics and that it was generally best to be straightforward in presenting one's arguments.

Brian Birch applauded the Maxwell Institute's abandonment of defending the Church. He reiterated a claim that he has made elsewhere that apologetics of any sort could only have a chair at the academic table if it bowed to scholarship. He claimed that no satire or irony ought to be used in academic arguments and put forward the academy as a model of being humble and charitable. He voiced his opinion that apologetics was not really ready for the rough and tumble of scholarship.

Julie Smith thought that apologetics was most appropriate for missionaries and seminary teachers. She thought apologetics was dangerous because it fossilized the status quo and made women collateral damage. She wanted more numbered lists. She voiced her opinion that the next frontier in Mormon apologetics would be the Bible.

Ben Park thought that there should be a wall between apologetics and Mormon Studies. Maintaining a wall between the two would, he claimed, make better apologetics and better scholarship. For him Leonard Arrington and Eugene England were his heroes because they used the latest scholarly fads in their work. Mormon Studies was, however, better because it sheds the insider focus in the study of Mormonism.

The panel was big on generalities and short on specifics. This was most clearly apparent when an actual apologist asked them about how they might respond to a hypothetical sister in Parowan who might be troubled by things she had read. None of the panel betrayed the least indication of ever having done such a thing. It was like witnessing a bunch of arm-chair quarterbacks who had never set foot on a football field discussing what a professional team ought to do. To extend the metaphor and grossly oversimplify the arguments: Hauglid seem to be arguing that the best way for a team to win was to play touch football. Hancock was arguing that the team should actually play football since they were engaged in a match whether they wanted to or not. Birch seemed to argue that one team should only be allowed on the field if it was not allowed to score any points. Smith seemed to think that the best strategy was for the coach to provide the players with a numbered list of all possible plays without any guidance on which ones were likely to work in a particular situation. Park seem to think that there should be a wall between the football team and the stadium to keep the team out of the stadium. Which of these would you rather have coaching your team?

On Supposed Tips for LDS Graduate Students

A recent blog post over on the ironically named "Faith Promoting Rumor" blog purports to give advice to prospective graduate students in "in Religious Studies (broadly conceived), the Ancient Near East, Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Early Christian Lit., Late Antique, Patristics, etc." This has caused some concern in certain quarters, though perhaps not for the reasons someone might think. I have a few comments to make in general and some on the specific recommendations made.

In the first place, the recommendations are made by someone who writes anonymously, apparently with no qualifications whatsoever. How would she know what a graduate school is looking for? Has she even been to graduate school? Anonymous recommendations on the internet should have no credibility. If someone is not willing to sign their real name to something, why should anyone trust it?

There are some clear indications that the author of the blog post does not know what she is talking about. Thus it is the product of some ignorant ideological biases.

I write this post as someone who successfully was admitted to graduate school, successfully completed graduate school and has successfully gotten a job in academia, who advises prospective graduate students, who has sat on graduate degree committees and on committees that award graduate school funding, and who has actually talks with people who are involved in graduate school admissions.

Committees are not monolithic entities. They are composed of individuals who come to the committee with their own ideas, qualifications, and biases. All it may take is one wrong person to change the entire committee. For example, I once sat on a committee where one individual insisted that money be given to a candidate who did not even meet the minimal qualifications for it. Sometimes success or failure is simply a matter of who is sitting on the committee.

1. The first piece of advice is to avoid Studia Antiqua. Studia Antiqua is a student journal. The papers are usually suggested by professors who thought that the paper was promising. The papers are peer reviewed and authors work with a faculty mentor and a faculty editor to get the paper ready for publication. Our anonymous author thinks that this is a bad thing, saying: "I would avoid it." After all, who needs intensive help on your writing or experience with the academic publication process? I looked through the past issues of Studia Antiqua and see that many of the students who published in its pages in the past not only made it into graduate school but now have academic jobs. Obviously, this is the kind of thing that our anonymous author wants to avoid.


2. The second and third pieces of advice deals with being a professor's research assistant or co-authoring a paper with a professor. "Avoid this," our anonymous author advises. I have not had many research assistants but half of them made it into top graduate programs. If that is a consequence that you want to avoid, please do so.


3. See point two.


4. The fourth piece of advice has to do with starting a personal blog. Don't do this. If you need any reasons not to do it, look no further than our anonymous blog author. I have seen many graduate students sink their careers with blogs.


5. The fifth point advises students against working with FAIR or Interpreter. Our anonymous author advises: "DO NOT DO THIS." Actually, FAIR prefers to work with people who already have finished their schooling, like Michael Otterson, Richard Bushman, Terryl Givens, and so on. Surely that must be disreputable company. The last graduate student I knew of to publish with Interpreter just got a tenure-track job. If you do not want that to happen to you, then by all means avoid Interpreter and FAIR. There are publications that will seriously damage your job prospects. I have known individuals whose involvement with Sunstone and Dialogue have cost them jobs that otherwise they would have gotten.


6. The last piece of advice has to do with accepting jobs on academic projects. Our anonymous adviser says, "DO NOT DO THIS unless you really, really need the job." Well, yes, someday you probably will need the job. I am reminded of a certain non-Mormon academic who really, really needed the job. She took a job doing research on one of these Mormon projects. Later she got a job at a certain Ivy League school and now runs one of the top graduate programs in the country. Going to "work with [Mormon apologists] on their latest project on something that only deals with LDS matters" certainly hurt her job prospects.

So our anonymous author advises:

Listen, friends, we know that you want to help your faith community, we know that these various opportunities and venues are incredibly enticing (and let’s be honest, flattering), but if you are applying or will be applying to grad school, you simply must watch out for number one. You are number one. Not the big name apologist, not the security of your faith community (it will be just fine!), not anyone else but you.

There is a word for this attitude, and it is selfish. What does it profit someone if they gain their degree and lose their soul? If personal integrity and your covenants mean nothing to you, you can follow the advice of someone who not only will not even sign her own name to her opinions, but will not even take her own advice. This individual is well-meaning but not necessarily well-informed. Somehow people who don't follow her advice have managed to get into graduate school, to earn degrees, and get jobs, sometimes precisely because they did not follow her advice.

More on Parental Effects on Youth Religiosity

About a year ago, Richard Petts used the National Survey of Youth and Religion to study the effects of family structure on youth religiosity. Along the way, he found some interesting things about things that parents do that help their youth retain their religion. He published this in the journal Sociology of Religion but my page numbers will refer to the online publication.

In his first hypothesis test (pp. 13-14), he found that the most significant positive impact on the religiosity of youth was parental religiosity (1.10). The second most significant positive impact was if their parent was a Mormon (0.64). The third most positive impact was if their parent was a conservative Protestant (0.61). The most negative impacts were if the parents were cohabiting, that is living together without being married (-0.39), if the parent was single without ever being married (-0.35), or if the parents owned their own home (-0.34).

In his third hypothesis test (pp. 13-14), Petts found that besides parental religiosity, the most important things were "family religious practices" (0.84) which meant: "Youth are considered to engage in religious practices with their family if they had prayed together with their family in the past year and talked with their family about religious things at least once a week" (pp. 8-9). In a Latter-day Saint context that would include family prayer and family home evening.

Petts also tested for religious salience, that is, how important religion is for the youth (pp. 16-17). The most important positive factors were: Parental religiosity (0.61), if the parent is a conservative Protestant ( 0.48), and if the parent is a Mormon (0.46). The three most detrimental things were having a single parent who had never married (-0.24), living in a step family (-0.20), and having a child who is a different race from their parent (-0.17).

When Petts tested for things that make youth feel close to God, the most important thing was family religious practices (0.36) while the most detrimental thing was divorce (-0.28).

Here are some of Petts's conclusions:

Although there were a few exceptions, family structure generally did not have a direct influence on youth religious outcomes. (p. 19)

Parental religiosity was a strong predictor of youth religiosity; youth were less likely to be religious when raised by parents with low levels of religiosity and vice versa. (p. 19)

Overall, religious transmission in nontraditional families appears to be less effective for religious participation and religious salience among youth, and these differences are most pronounced at higher levels of parental religiosity. That is, youth raised in nontraditional families with highly religious parents have lower levels of religious participation and religious salience than those raised by highly religious married parents. (p. 22)

Consistency in religious affiliation among family members and engaging in religious behavior as a family are important in predicting youth religiosity. (p. 23)

So, the take away for parents who want to keep their children in the faith:

1. Set a positive example by participating yourself.


2. Marry your spouse.


3. Stay married.


4. Hold family prayer.


5. Hold family home evening.

I'm sure I must have heard this somewhere before.

Why You Might Not Want to "Upgrade" to Windows 10

When we bought our last family computer, I did some research and decided on a system that used Windows 8.1 because I would get the following features:

• Each child could have their own account.


• The accounts could be local, without each child having to register with some big corporation that would be collecting data on their every move.


• Parents could control when children got on the computer.


• Individual children could have specific time limits when they could use the computer and the computer would be keeping track of the time so there would be no arguing that what seemed like five minutes was really an hour.


• There were options for limiting websites and downloads.


• Parents can get weekly reports on how much time children have been on the computer and what they have been doing.


• Parents can override certain functions on a case by case basis.

These features and others are lumped together into something called "Family Safety." I have recommended them to many parents, and do so again.

Recently I upgraded to Windows 10 for one of my computers and it fixed one of the recurring glitches I had been having. That was well done. Windows 10 also has a much better start menu than Windows 8.1. There are other improvements, but I have not really noticed them yet.

This experience led me to upgrade to Windows 10 on the family computer. That was a huge mistake. Every reason for which I got a Windows 8.1 computer instantly vanished. Windows 10 converted all the family safety accounts into regular accounts with no possibility of converting them back to family safety accounts. No controls or limitations of any sort could be put on the accounts.

Windows 10 still offers something it calls "family safety" but in a form which makes me feel anything but safe.

In Windows 10 to create any sort of account (temporary, local, family) you have to register with Microsoft so that they can collect the following information on you and your kids and anyone else who uses your computer (and I quote from Microsoft's own (lack of) privacy statements):

• "your first and last name, email address, postal address, phone number, and other similar contact data."


• "passwords, password hints, and similar security information"


• "demographic data . . . such as your age, gender, country and preferred language"


• "your interests and favorites, such as the teams you follow, . . . the stocks you track, . . . or the favorite cities your add to a weather app. In addition to those you explicitly provide, your interests and favorites may also be inferred ro derived from other data we collect"


• "payment data . . . if you make purchases, such as your payment instrument number (such as a credit card number), and the security code associated with your payment instrument."


• "usage data . . . such as the features you used, the items you purchase, the web pages you visit, the search terms you enter . . . you device, including IP address, device identifiers, regional and language settings, and data about the network, operating system, browser or other software you use."


• "your contacts and relationships."


• "your locations, which can be precise or imprecise . . . Global Position System (GPS) data, as well as data identifying nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots, . . . your IP address . . . city or postal code"


• "content of your files and communications . . . your documents, photos, music or video . . . subject line and body of an email, text or other content of an instant message, audio and video recording of a video message, and audio recording and transcript of a voice message you receive or a text message you dictate"

Additionally, Microsoft says that they "also obtain data from third parties (including other companies)" about you.

This, of course, is precisely why a parent might want to create a local account and not register their children with Microsoft data collection.

Supposedly, by registering your children with Microsoft on every device you use the same controls will apply across the board to all devices running Microsoft. I can see some advantages to this but also some disadvantages. I can see reasons why a parent might want to have different devices have different settings. Perhaps you want your child doing their homework between the time they get home and when the family eats dinner and so want the computer available at that time, and you will let them play the X-box only after dinner on the assumption that their homework is done. In that case you would want different settings for different devices.

So there are some legitimate concerns why parents might not want to upgrade to Windows 10.

What if, like I did, you made the mistake of upgrading?

You can downgrade back to Windows 8.1 if it has been less than a month since you upgraded.

Simply click on the Start menu

Go to "Settings" (which is in the bottom left-hand corner and has the gear icon next to it). Then go to "Update & Security" which is in the lower right of the menu options. Then go to "Recovery" which is the fourth option down on the left-hand side. Then select the option "Go back to Windows 8.1". It took less time than upgrading to Windows 10. I did have to reenter wireless router passwords but all my family's accounts and old family safety settings were still there.

When you downgrade, Microsoft will ask for feedback about why you want to downgrade. I listed some of my concerns about the lack of real Family Safety in Windows 10.

Is it hypocritical for a parent to track her children's computer activities and complain when Microsoft does it? Possibly. But there are some key differences. (1) Parents have a responsibility to train their children in how to use tools (including computers) responsibly; Microsoft does not. (2) Parents are only tracking their own children, not everyone's children. (3) Parents need not use all the tracking tools; they can be customized to the child and the situation but one never knows if Microsoft is using the tracking tools or how.

It is nice that Microsoft is at least pretending to provide tools of some sort to parents, but who will protect your kids from Microsoft?

Read This, Not That!

Richard Bushman's discussion of the Book of Mormon in Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism was really good. Surprisingly, his discussion of the Book of Mormon in Rough Stone Rolling was as weak as the one in Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism was strong.

Now, however, there is something better. The best discussion of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon is now Michael MacKay and Gerrit Dirkmaat's From Darkness unto Light published this year. If you are reading Rough Stone Rolling, skip the section on the Book of Mormon and read this instead. (Skip what Bushman says about the Book of Abraham too.)

If you think you know how the Book of Mormon was translated, you should read MacKay and Dirkmaat because you find out all kinds of things that you did not know.

One Less Worry

I was comforted by this thought from Elder Russell M. Nelson reflecting on the calling of apostles:

You look at a university or a big business where there’s a vacancy. A search committee works hard to find suitable successors. They do well but it’s always a worry. Here, it is not a worry. You know the work of the Lord will be done by His servants.

Thank heavens that the calling of apostles is done by the Lord instead of a university committee.