Some resources for addressing tough topics, from the Interpreter Foundation

For a small presentation this evening on behalf of the Interpreter Foundation, the host has asked me to briefly address five topics that have disturbed some Church members:

1)      Joseph Smith and plural marriage.
2)      Joseph’s multiple versions of the First Vision.
3)      The Book of Mormon translation process.
4)      Was the Church intentionally trying to “cover up” certain aspects of Church history?
5)      The Church’s stance regarding LGBTQ.

I thought that it might be useful to prepare a small list calling attention to items that have been published by the Interpreter Foundation that touch upon these subjects.  With the exception of (5), on which we’ve published essentially nothing, I was frankly surprised at how much relevant material we have published.

Below is the preliminary list that I came up with.  The number following each item in parentheses is the number of the volume in which it appeared.  I began to give the URL for each article, but that was too time-consuming for the brief interval open to me, and I figured, anyway, that you could simply copy and paste the author’s name and the article’s title into your browser and thereby find it soon enough:

Joseph Smith and plural marriage.

Brian C. Hales, “Stretching to Find the Negative: Gary Bergera’s Review of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology”  (6)

Andrew C. Smith, “Hagar in LDS Scripture and Thought” (8)

Craig L. Foster, “Separated but not Divorced: The LDS Church’s Uncomfortable Relationship with its Polygamous Past” (10)

Brian C. Hales and Gregory L. Smith, “A Response to Grant Palmer’s ‘Sexual Allegations against Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Polygamy in Nauvoo’” (12)

Craig L. Foster, “An Easier Way to Understanding Joseph Smith’s Polygamy” (15)

Suzanne Long Foster, “Providing a Better Understanding for All Concerning the History of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy” (15)

Gregory L. Smith, “A Welcome Introduction” (15)

Brian C. Hales, “A Response to Denver Snuffer’s Essay on Plural Marriage, Adoption, and the Supposed Falling Away of the Church – Part 1: Ignoring Inconvenient Evidence” (16)

Brian C. Hales, “A Response to Denver Snuffer’s Essay on Plural Marriage, Adoption, and the Supposed Falling Away of the Church – Part 2: Facade or Reality?” (16)

Brian C. Hales, “Dating Joseph Smith’s First Nauvoo Sealings” (20)

Keith Thompson, “Joseph Smith and the Doctrine of Sealing” (21)

Brian C. Hales, “Opportunity Lost” (23)

Allen Wyatt, “Scary Ghost Stories in the Light of Day” (23)

Brian C. Hales, “Joseph Smith: Monogamist or Polygamist?” (25)

Brian J. Baird, “Understanding Jacob’s Teachings about Plural Marriage from a Law of Moses Context” (25)

Craig L. Foster, “Much More than a Plural Marriage Revelation” (29)

Brian C. Hales, “The Case of the Missing Commentary” (29)

Andrew C. Smith, Craig L. Foster, Brian C. Hales, and Gregory L. Smith, “Special Roundtable Discussion: Polygamy”

Joseph’s multiple versions of the First Vision.

Steven C. Harper, “Evaluating Three Arguments Against Joseph Smith’s First Vision” (2)

John A. Tvedtnes, “Variants in the Stories of the First Vision of Joseph Smith and the Apostle Paul” (2)

Neal Rappleye, “Rediscovering the First Vision” (15)

Robert A. Rees, “Looking Deeper into Joseph Smith’s First Vision: Imagery, Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Construction of Memory” (25)

 The Book of Mormon translation process.

Royal Skousen, “Why was one sixth of the 1830 Book of Mormon set from the original manuscript?”  (2)

Roger Nicholson, “The Spectacles, the Stone, the Hat, and the Book: A Twenty-first Century Believer’s View of the Book of Mormon Translation” (5)

Royal Skousen, “The Original Text of the Book of Mormon and its Publication by Yale University Press” (7)

Benjamin L. McGuire,
”The Late War Against the Book of Mormon” (7)

Royal Skousen, “A Brief History of Critical Text Work on the Book of Mormon” (8)

Robert F. Smith, “If There Be Faults, They Be Faults of a Man” (8)

Stanford Carmack, “A Look at Some “Nonstandard” Book of Mormon Grammar”  (11)

Royal Skousen, “Changes in The Book of Mormon”  (11)

Stanford Carmack, “What Command Syntax Tells Us About Book of Mormon Authorship”  (13)

Royal Skousen,”Restoring the Original Text of the Book of Mormon” (14)

Stanford Carmack, “The Implications of Past-Tense Syntax in the Book of Mormon” (14)

Stanford Carmack, “Why the Oxford English Dictionary (and not Webster’s 1828)”  (15)

Stan Spencer, “The Faith to See: Burning in the Bosom and Translating the Book of Mormon in Doctrine and Covenants 9” (18)

Stanford Carmack, “The More Part of the Book of Mormon Is Early Modern English” (18)

Stanford Carmack, “Joseph Smith Read the Words” (18)

Stanford Carmack, “The Case of the {-th} Plural in the Earliest Text (18)

Stanford Carmack, “The Case of Plural Was in the Earliest Text” (18)

Stan Spencer, “Seers and Stones: The Translation of the Book of Mormon as Divine Visions of an Old-Time Seer” (24)

Stanford Carmack, “How Joseph Smith’s Grammar Differed from Book of Mormon Grammar: Evidence from the 1832 History” (25)

Bruce E. Dale, “How Big A Book? Estimating the Total Surface Area of the Book of Mormon Plates” (25)

Stanford Carmack, “Barlow on Book of Mormon Language: An Examination of Some Strained Grammar” (27)

Stanford Carmack, “Is the Book of Mormon a Pseudo-Archaic Text?” (28)

Brian C. Hales, “Changing Critics’ Criticisms of Book of Mormon Changes” (28)

Was the Church intentionally trying to “cover up” certain aspects of Church history?

Allen Wyatt, “An Approach to History” (31)

Davis Bitton, “I Don’t Have a Testimony of the History of the Church” (31)

Daniel C. Peterson, “Research and More Research” (31)

Craig L. Foster, “Assessing the Criticisms of Early-Age Latter-Day Saint Marriages” (31)

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