Stephen O. Smoot
Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs, edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-plates-patterns-patriarchs/. For video and audio recording of this conference talk, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2022-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/videos/smoot/.
“The hermeneutical tradition of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bears unmistakable witness to a sustained interest in reading scripture through the perspective of the temple. Both the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price have received this interpretive treatment, with a variety of authors offering useful approaches that discern clear temple themes in Latter-day Saint scriptural texts. That Joseph Smith’s scriptural translations as well as his revelatory outpouring directly influenced the form and content of the temple endowment ceremony as experienced by the Latter-day Saints cannot be doubted. For this reason, the Latter-day Saint canon will continue to be explored for meaningful themes and elements that tie into both ancient and modern temples.”
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About the Interpreter Foundation Book Chapter Reprint Series
The purpose of this reprint series is to make individual chapters from books published by The Interpreter Foundation more accessible to readers. Although in some instances the formatting and pagination may have been changed, the content of this chapter, like others in this reprint series, is identical to what appeared in its original book publication. It has not been updated to incorporate research that has appeared subsequently nor to reflect the current practice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to use the full name of the Church and to avoid terms such as “Mormon” and “LDS.”
