BYU Studies
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In the 130 years since the word “folklore” was coined, folklorists have been trying unsuccessfully to decide what the word means. I shall not solve the problem here. Yet if we are to do business with each other, we must come to some common understanding of terms. Briefly, I consider folklore to be the unofficial part of our culture. When a Sunday School teacher reads to his class from an approved lesson manual, he is giving them what the Correlation Committee at least would call official religion; but when he illustrates the lesson with an account of the Three Nephites which he learned from his mother, he is giving them unofficial religion. Folklore, then, is that part of our culture that is passed through time and space by the process of oral transmission(by hearing and repeating) rather than by institutionalized means of learning or by the mass media.

Reprinted from Church History 30, no. 2 (1961): 131–54; and included in Mormonism and Early Christianity, The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 4. 168–208. William A. Clebsch, in his “History and Salvation: An Essay in Distinctions,” published in a collection of essays entitled The Study of Religion in Colleges and Universities, edited by Paul Ramsey and John F. Wilson (Princeton University Press, 1970): 40–72, commented on Nibley’s arguments for the apostasy in “The Passing of the Church” as follows: “During the early 1960’s there arose in the pages of Church History a brief but in retrospect fascinating argument, which I will trace briefly. The argument not only revolved around the question of the continuity of the Christian church but also involved a more fundamental question about the very survival of the church through its early history. On the basis of his study of patristic writings, Hugh Nibley scored all church historians since Eusebius for describing rather than questioning the survival of the church through the early centuries. That Nibley took a Mormon’s viewpoint on the nascent Christian movement does not make any easier the defense of its identity and continuity against his attack.”
Nibley presents forty arguments for the apostasy in an examination of the expectation of early Christian writers of the fading of the Church. Professor Hans J. Hillerbrand wrote a letter protesting Nibley’s thesis because, among other reasons, of the possibility that, if widely accepted, it would logically preclude his continuing to teach what he understood to be “Church history.” See Hillerbrand, “The Passing of the Church: Two Comments on a Strange Theme,” Church History 30, no. 3 (December 1961):481–2; and a response to Hillerbrand by Robert M. Grant, “The Passing of the Church: Comments on Two Comments on a Strange Theme,” Church History 30, no. 3 (December 1961):482–3.

This anthology is the first to present the full range of Brazilian poetic creativity and beauty in English translation. English editions of modernist and contemporary poets exist, most notably An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry, edited by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil, and the more recent Other Shores: 13 Emerging Brazilian Poets, by Ricardo Corona and Charles A. Perrone. Until now, however, no volume has assembled the works of the great poets of Brazil’s earlier periods-those who wrote according to the baroque, neoclassical, romantic, Parnassian, and symbolist styles that were sequentially popular from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.

There are twenty-seven poets represented in this bilingual anthology and over 130 poems; these range from the sixteenth century to the present but with the bulk coming from the twentieth century. There is also a broad range of topics and political points of view, as well as a diversity of racial and cultural ethnicity represented among the poets. But whether they were native African, Portuguese-born, or mestizo, the principle guiding criterion for their inclusion is their poems’ inherent literary value.

Portugal has enjoyed three major poetic ages of universal stature and interest: (1) the medieval era, with a large body of verse known as cantigas (canticles or songs) written by King Dinis and some 152 other troubadours; (2) the sixteenth century with such luminaries as Gil Vicente, court playwright and poet, and Luis de Camoes, the most celebrated poet in the Portuguese language and author of the epic poem The Lusiads; and (3) the twentieth century, where there are numerous writers of unquestioned merit headed by the renowned Fernando Pessoa. These three poetic moments also enjoyed excellence in prose. Attention is called to the medieval chronicles of Fernao Lopes and, from the sixteenth century, the Perigrination of Fernao Mendes Pinto, and the so-called shipwreck literature, which can properly be called a genre invented by the Portuguese. Undoubtedly the best-known novelist of the twentieth century is Jose Saramago, the first writer in Portuguese to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have become increasingly aware that the restoration of the gospel did not occur in a vacuum inhabited only by Joseph Smith. Numerous individuals were involved, both as forerunners and as disseminators of newly restored or revealed principles. And not all of those involved were members of the Church. It is not necessary, however, to rely exclusively on the “great minds,” the strongest voices (like Wordsworth or Milton), to find elements in strong parallel with LDS doctrine. Other poets, often less well known, less widely accepted critically, were equally convinced of such doctrinal points as a preexistence and of an apostasy and the need for a restoration. One of the most fascinating is the “minor” poet Henry Vaughan.

Includes pictures of the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri and letter of sale given to the Church by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art on 27 November 1967.
Written on 27 November 1967. Reprinted in Studies of the Books of Moses and Abraham, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book.
Some 10 pages of this item consist of questions and answers.

Referring to ancient and long-lost scripture that Joseph Smith restored, Wilford Woodruff declared it to be part of “the rich treasures that are revealed unto us in the last days.” One such treasure is Moses chapter 1, a scriptural jewel we have hardly begun to appreciate but whose luster has become more apparent in light of various ancient texts and traditions that have emerged since Joseph Smith’s day. So striking are the parallels as to recall Joseph’s own prophecy that “the world will prove Joseph Smith a true prophet by circumstantial evidence.”

Few verses in the Bible have produced as much debate and commentary as Psalm 22:16: “For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.” The discussions center on the last character (reading right to left) of the Hebrew וראכ (“pierced/dug”), assumed to be the word from which the Septuagint Greek ὢρυξαν (“they have pierced”) was translated—assumed because the original Hebrew texts from which the Septuagint was translated are no longer extant. If the last character of the Hebrew word was a waw ()ו, as the Greek seems to indicate, then the translation “pierced” is tenable. But a later Hebrew text called the Masoretic text has a yod (×™) instead of a waw (ו), making the word יראכ, which translated into English reads “like a lion my hands and my feet.” Thus, two divergent possibilities have existed side by side for centuries, causing much speculation and debate. The controversy has often been heated, with large variations in modern translations into English, as evidenced by a brief survey of some important Bible translations.

Because by far the greatest portion of the Book of Mormon is narrative—though admittedly in several different ways—other literary modes embedded in the narrative flow are less obvious and consequently less easily identified and read in terms of their own unique generic conventions. One such passage occurs in the fourth chapter of 2 Nephi, verses 16 though 35, a passage that is often referred to as the “Psalm of Nephi,” at least since Sidney Sperry provided this formulation in his commentary on the Book of Mormon. The question to be discussed with reference to these verses is not whether they are a psalm in the biblical sense of the term but rather the nature and extent of their poetic qualities and some of the most central interpretive implications inextricably connected with their lyricism.

In 1848 James Brady, a poor Irishman living in Scotland, was baptized into the LDS church. Five years later he still was well acquainted with poverty but with the help of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund was able to heed Church counsel to flee “Babylon” and emigrate to America. En route to “Zion,” while in St. Louis, Missouri, he wrote to friends in Scotland, recalling the tight financial circumstances surrounding his departure: “When I left Glasgow I had 5 shillings and I gave 3[shillings] and sixpence in Liverpool for the harp of zion.” His grand sum of five shillings at departure would have equaled about one dollar and twenty-five cents in United States money, yet he paid, seemingly squandered, more than two-thirds of his total savings to buy a single volume of poetry! What influences acted upon destitute Brady and thousands of other poor LDS Saints, causing them to lay out scarce and needed savings to purchase a single book of poems? Early Mormon leaders placed such a high value on poetic expression of the principles of the restored gospel that Church funds were used to pay for the publication and distribution costs of the first book of LDS poetry. By purchasing the Harp of Zion, James Brady was participating in both a material and spiritual activity that would, he was assured, aid his eternal salvation.