I recently turned 25 and realized that there are a lot of things that I don’t know about that I would like to know more about. One of them is fiction. I rarely, rarely read fiction. Part of the reason is that I feel guilty reading fiction, like I am cheating on my non-fiction partner. I say to myself, “If I am going to be reading, I should be reading non-fiction.” However, like any good 19th c. Mormon knows, there is enough of me to go around. So I am looking for you all to set me up by recommending a few books in each of the following categories:
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Archaeology, History, and Scripture Part 3: The Historicity Question
In previous posts in this series I have danced around the historicity question. In this post I will tackle this head on. The best advice I can give believers who are beginning to judge what is historical in scripture and what is not is the following (and yes I mean to yell this). YOU ARE TOO BIASED TO BE A GOOD JUDGE OF WHAT IS HISTORICAL AND WHAT IS NOT. You would do much better to focus on finding the best historical context in which to place the events and stories found in the scriptures. When you start to become uncomfortable about some of the answers you find, congratulations, you are now unbiased enough to start answering the historicity question. In fact, by that point, you will implicitly understand how to answer the historicity question and I won’t have to explain it to you.
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A Review of Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons
What follows is my review of the film <a href="http://www.untoldstoryofblackmormons.com/"Nobody Knows, The Untold Story of Black Mormons. I have divided it into three sections. The first section, “Review,” is just that, my review of the movie. I think it is important to separate reviewing the movie that was actually made, as opposed to one I expected or hoped for. The only critiques that matter are the ones in the “Review” section. The other two sections, “What I was expecting” and “What I would like to see but probably never will” should not be taken as criticism of the movie. The other sections represent my thoughts. Since my thoughts were not part of the movie making process, they don’t count as a review. Margaret Young and Darius Gray made a beautiful movie with a beautiful vision, and that’s what I hope to get across in the review proper.
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My FPR/FMH Father’s Day
I like to think of FPR and FMH as the polar opposites of the bloggernacle. Continue reading “My FPR/FMH Father’s Day”
Did Man or God Create Woman? Feminist Interpretations of the Story of Eve and Adam
Did Adam or God Create Eve?
Perhaps no text has influenced current gender roles and concepts of sexuality in Western culture more than the biblical Yahwist (J) account of creation found in Genesis 2-3. [1] Continue reading “Did Man or God Create Woman? Feminist Interpretations of the Story of Eve and Adam”
Archaeology, History, and Scripture Part 2: The Four Schools of Old Testament Historicity
In my previous post I mentioned that there are four major schools of thought when it comes to how much of the Old Testament is historical. By schools of thought I am describing approximate ranges of thought, not fixed positions.
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Archaeology, History, and Scripture
I’ve been trying to think of a way of introducing a series of posts I plan on writing. However, all of the introductions I have started writing have come off sounding incredibly stupid. So, I’ll just start out by saying that I have been thinking about archaeology, history, and the scriptures and I plan on writing a few posts about it.
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Guest Blogger: Chris H.
Chris H. has agreed to guest blog with us. Chris was previously a permablogger at FPR before starting his own blog at Approaching Justice. We look forward to his contributions.
Clearing up the Mystificationalizationalism of FPR
It has come to my attention that some of our dear readers are somewhat mystified by what we at FPR are doing. While we are by no means a unified group, approaching texts and problems from a variety of approaches, I think that there are a few things that one must know to properly understand what we are doing. I invite my fellow bloggers to add any items they feel needs to be said.
In my view, all you have to know, besides Ugaritic, Akkadian, Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic, Japanese, Chinese (ancient and modern), Greek, Latin, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and some middle-Persian, is the historical critical method (and its critiques), exegetical theory, text criticism, hermeneutics, intertexual theory, gender studies, practice theory, ritual theory, historicism, and the history of each of these disciplines. Oh, I almost forgot, and Mormon Studies. It really is not that hard, and meant to be accessible to all! I hope that clears it up. Continue reading “Clearing up the Mystificationalizationalism of FPR”