Mark D. Thomas

Review: The Empty Space between the Walls Joseph M. Spencer. The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record

Review: The New Descartes and the Book of Mormon Earl M. Wunderli. An Imperfect Book: What the Book of Mormon Tells Us about Itself

The Continuing Quest for the Historical Jesus

In 1975 I enrolled in the divinity school at the University of Chicago, where I hoped to earn a Ph.D. under Norman Perrin, a distinguished British New Testament scholar. But a call I made at the same time to the head of the LDS Church Education System in Salt Lake City stopped me cold in my tracks. He told me that if I wanted to teach New Testament for the church I could do so with a Ph.D. in physics or family counseling— anything but a degree in New Testament studies. That attitude has created a vacuum in serious New Testament studies among Latter-day Saints. One way to fill this void is to become a member of the Westar Institute of Sonoma, California, whose goal, among others, is to expose the public to serious biblical scholarship. 

Scripture, History, and Faith: A Round Table Discussion

Participants

Todd Compton: Ph.D., classics, University of California, Los Angeles. Dean, Graduate Studies, Park College, Independence, Missouri; Director, Temple School Center, Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Independence, Missouri. 

Steven Epperson: Assistant Professor of History, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, specializing in American religious history and history of Christian doctrine. 

Mark D. Thomas: Scriptural Studies Editor, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 

Margaret Toscano: Ph.D. candidate, comparative literature, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. 

David P. Wright: Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.

A Mosaic for a Religious Counterculture: The Bible in the Book of Mormon

Dialogue 29.4 (Winter 1998):59–83
THE BOOK OF MORMON HAS OCCASIONALLY been portrayed as a deficient
first novel. Its characters appear flat and stereotypical; the plots and char￾acters seem to lack moral subtlety; and so on. Should we wonder that to￾day’s high literary circles ignore it?

Form Criticism of Joseph Smith’s 1823 Vision of the Angel Moroni

On Balancing Faith in Mormonism with Traditional Biblical Stories: The Noachian Flood Story