2025 Abraham and His Family — Presenters

Presenters and Speakers

RoseAnn Benson

RoseAnn Benson is a former adjunct professor of ancient scripture and Church history and doctrine at BYU and also a former adjunct professor at Utah Valley University in community and public health education. She has a PhD from Southern Illinois-Carbondale in community and school health. She has an MA from BYU in ancient Near Eastern Studies and an MS from BYU in exercise sciences. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and academic books in health sciences, ancient Near Eastern studies and Church History. BYU Press and Abilene Christian University press published her manuscript Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith: 19th Century Restorationists.

She has been an NCAA Division I swimming coach. Currently she resides in Florida and is the head age group swimming coach at West Florida Lightning Aquatic. In 2024 she won American Waterski Nationals in Women’s 8 slalom skiing.

Matthew L. Bowen

Matthew L. Bowen was raised in Orem, Utah, and graduated from Brigham Young University. He holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and is currently an associate professor in religious education at Brigham Young University–Hawaii. He is also the author of Name as Key-Word: Collected Essays on Onomastic Wordplay and the Temple in Mormon Scripture (Salt Lake City: Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2018) and Ancient Names in the Book of Mormon: Toward a Deeper Understanding of a Witness of Christ (Salt Lake City: Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2023). With Aaron P. Schade, he is the coauthor of The Book of Moses: From the Ancient of Days to the Latter Days (Provo, UT; Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book, 2021). He and his wife (the former Suzanne Blattberg) are the parents of three children: Zachariah, Nathan, and Adele.

Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (PhD, Cognitive Science, University of Washington) is a Senior Research Scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola, Florida (www.ihmc.us/groups/jbradshaw. His professional writings have explored a wide range of topics in human and machine intelligence (www.jeffreymbradshaw.net). Jeff has been the recipient of several awards and patents and has been an adviser for initiatives in science, defense, space, industry, and academia worldwide. Jeff has written detailed commentaries on the Book of Moses, Genesis, and on temple themes in the scriptures. For Church-related publications, see www.TempleThemes.net.

Jeff was a missionary in France and Belgium from 1975 to 1977, and his family has returned twice to live in France. He and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of four children and sixteen grandchildren. From July 2016-September 2019, Jeff and Kathleen served missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission office and the DR Congo Kinshasa Temple. They currently live in Nampa, Idaho. As a church service missionary for the Church History Department, Jeff is writing histories of temples in Africa, and for Interpreter is documenting selected episodes in the history of the Church in Africa on film (www.NotByBreadAloneFilm.com).

David Calabro

David Calabro is a visiting assistant professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. He holds a PhD in Near Eastern languages and literatures from the University of Chicago. His research deals with issues of culture and religion, including topics such as nonverbal communication, apocryphal literature, and magic. David lives in Provo, Utah. He and his wife Ruth have seven children.

Dan Ellsworth

Dan Ellsworth is a consultant and independent researcher living in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a contributor to Public Square Magazine and Interpreter Journal, and host of the YouTube channel Latter-day Presentations.

John Gee

John Gee is the William (Bill) Gay Research Professor in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University. He has authored more than 150 publications on topics such as ancient scripture, Aramaic, archaeology, Coptic, Egyptian, history, linguistics, Luwian, rhetoric, Sumerian, textual criticism, and published in journals such as Bibliotheca Orientalis, British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar, BYU Studies, Enchoria, Ensign, FARMS Review, Göttinger Miszellen, The International Journal of Levant Studies, Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy, Journal of Academic Perspecitves, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Journal of Egyptian History, Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, Lingua Aegyptia, Review of Biblical Literature, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, Studien zur altägyptischen Kultur, and Interpreter, and by such presses as American University of Cairo Press, Archaeopress, Association Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, E. J. Brill, Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies, Czech Institute of Egyptology, Deseret Book, Franco Cosimo Panini, de Gruyter, Harrassowitz, Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Macmillan, Routledge, Oxford University Press, Peeters, Praeger, Religious Studies Center, and Society of Biblical Literature. He has published five books and has edited eight books and an international multilingual peer-reviewed professional journal. He served twice as a section chair for the Society of Biblical Literature.

Allen Hansen

Allen Hansen is an independent researcher born and raised in northern Israel. He served a mission in Russia, and married Kateryna from Ukraine. They are parents to a daughter. His research interests include the Bible, ancient, medieval and early modern Jewish literature, Book of Mormon translation, and the meeting points between the Church, Judaism, and the history of Israel.

Spencer Kraus

Spencer Kraus graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, modern Hebrew, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. He works with Scripture Central as a researcher and with Lincoln Blumell on topics relating to early Christianity and the New Testament.

Jennifer C. Lane

Jennifer C. Lane is a professor emerita of Religious Education at BYU–Hawaii where she taught for close to twenty years and served as Dean and also Associate Academic Vice President for Curriculum. She received her PhD in Religion from Claremont Graduate University with an emphasis in History of Christianity and her MA and BA from BYU in Ancient Near Eastern Studies and History, respectively. After moving to Provo, Utah in 2021 she held a three-year position as Neal A. Maxwell Research Associate at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Her scholarship focuses on covenants, temples, and living a life of holiness as well as additional studies in Franciscan history and piety. She is the author of Let’s Talk about Temple and Ritual and Finding Christ in the Covenant Path: Ancient Insights for Modern Life.

Daniel C. Peterson

Daniel C. Peterson (PhD, University of California at Los Angeles) is a professor emeritus of Islamic studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University, where he founded the University’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative. He has published and spoken extensively on both Islamic and Latter-day Saint subjects. Formerly chairman of the board of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and an officer, editor, and author for its successor organization, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, his professional work as an Arabist focuses on the Qur’an and on Islamic philosophical theology. He is the author, among other things, of a biography entitled Muhammad: Prophet of God (Eerdmans, 2007). With his wife, he is executive producer of the films Witnesses (2021), Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon (2022), and Six Days in August (2024).

Gary Rendsburg

Gary A. Rendsburg serves as the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair in Jewish History and holds the rank of Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University. His wide-ranging scholarship covers the history, literature, and archaeology of ancient Israel, though he also has developed a second expertise in the medieval Hebrew manuscript tradition. Prof. Rendsburg has visited all the major archaeological sites in Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, plus he has worked in the world’s leading libraries, including the Vatican Library, the Bodleian Library (Oxford), the Cambridge University Library, and the Library of Congress. He has held visiting positions at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Pontifical Biblical Institute (Rome), and the Getty Villa (Los Angeles).

Noel B. Reynolds

Noel Reynolds (PhD, Harvard University) is an emeritus professor of political science at Brigham Young University, where he taught a broad range of courses in legal and political philosophy, American Heritage, and the Book of Mormon. His research and publications are based in these fields and several others, including authorship studies, Mormon history, Christian history and theology, and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Michael D. Rhodes

Stephen D. Ricks

Stephen Ricks is Professor of Hebrew and Cognate Learning at Brigham Young University, where he has been a member of the faculty for nearly 44 years. He is the author or editor of numerous books, book chapters, and articles dealing with Hebrew and ancient Semitic languages, the temple, and the Book of Mormon.

David Seely

David Rolph Seely is professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. He is a member of the international team of scholars that translated the Dead Sea Scrolls and published together with Moshe Weinfeld, the Barkhi Nafshi hymns from Qumran. He has co-authored the books My Father’s House: Temple Worship and Symbolism in the New Testament, Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament and Solomon’s Temple in Myth and History and co-edited Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem. He has also published on Old and New Testament, Book of Mormon and Temple topics.

Jo Ann Seely

Jo Ann H. Seely is Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. She has taught in the Program on Studies in Religion at the University of Michigan, and at the BYU Jerusalem Center. She co-edited with John W. Welch and David R. Seely the volume Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem. Jo Ann has published on various scripture topics in Old Testament, New Testament, and the Book of Mormon.

Avram Shannon

Avram R. Shannon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. He studied at Brigham Young University, the University of Oxford, and The Ohio State University, where he received a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures with Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean. His research centers on the ways in which religious communities deploy scripture in their discourse and formation of identity.

Stephen O. Smoot

Stephen O. Smoot is a doctoral candidate in the department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literature at the Catholic University of America. He previously earned a master’s degree from the University of Toronto in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, with a concentration in Egyptology, and bachelor’s degrees from Brigham Young University in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, with a concentration in Hebrew Bible, and German Studies. He is currently an adjunct instructor of Religious Education at Brigham Young University and a research associate with the B. H. Roberts Foundation.

John S. Thompson

John S. Thompson obtained his BA and MA in Ancient Near Eastern Studies (Hebrew Bible) from BYU and UC Berkeley respectively and completed a PhD in Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania, with a dissertation emphasis on ancient priesthood. He was an employee of the Seminaries & Institutes of Religion for 28 years, most recently as a Coordinator and the Institute Director in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, area. John is now very happy to research and write full time for Scripture Central, a nonprofit organization that focuses on ancient and modern historical-cultural contexts of the Bible, Book of Mormon, and other Latter-day Saint scripture. He is married to Stacey Keller from Orem, Utah, and they have nine children and six grandchildren.

John W. Welch

John W. Welch is the Robert K. Thomas Professor of Law at Brigham Young University and was for 27 years editor-in-chief of BYU Studies. Welch practiced law in Los Angeles with O’Melveny & Myers, at which time he founded the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). From 1988-1991, Welch served as one of the editors for Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of Mormonism. He also has served as the General Editor of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley for 25 years. He organized the bicentennial conference for Joseph Smith at the Library of Congress in 2005 and has served on the executive committee of the Biblical Law Section of the Society of Biblical Literature. He is a co-founder of Scripture Central and serves as the Chair of its Board of Directors.

Welch is among the most prominent pupils of Hugh Nibley, having made several important discoveries and advances regarding biblical studies, LDS scholarship, history, culture, and thought. His publications cover a wide range of topics, including Roman and Jewish laws in the trial of Jesus, the use of biblical laws in colonial America, chiasmus in antiquity, and commentaries on the Sermon on the Mount and King Benjamin’s Speech.

Samuel Zinner

Samuel Zinner (Ph.D. University of Nebraska-Lincoln) is a multidisciplinary researcher and Holocaust scholar who contributed to German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing 1920-1945 (Oxford/NY: Berghahn Books, 2004), which was awarded the American Library Association’s prestigious “Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year Award” for 2005. His books and essays on ancient and modern history and literature have been published internationally in a variety of languages. He has contributed articles to Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Oxford University Press), Religions/Adyan (Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue), and other academic journals. He is currently engaged in researching American indigenous history and culture.

Contents