“Or are my feelings more the difference between a guy who’s read a lot the last 15 years and is in his late 30’s versus a guy being exposed to faithful intellectual study for the first time in college.”

I’d say you hit 80% of the nail on the head. Finding out that other intelligent, faithful members share similar ideas on BOM geography, evolution, scriptures, etc. — well, you can’t get more exciting than that.

Another 10% is probably tied up with the “low hanging fruit” theory. FARMS initially compiled and published research gathered from decades of effort. A great deal of what they had to say had been published before, but never in any single, readily accessible form – it stands to reason that we can’t expect them to reproduce on a year-to-year basis the same flood of material that their early efforts managed to bring to light. – (though I do think there have been some pretty exciting new developments.)

But I think, at least in my case, the last 10% of the ennui might not be the fault of FARMS failing to produce new research as it is that the reader is having a hard time digesting some of the new research.

Recent papers really get into the minutia of a subject, and if it doesn’t happen to be a topic to which I have some previous interest or knowledge, I sometimes have to work pretty hard to understand what the author is getting at. I’ve also noticed that some of the authors now publishing – while undoubtedly knowledgeable experts in their fields, are not necessarily the world’s most entertaining writers. (It is, at times, not unlike slogging through medical journal articles back in college.)

That may not be the case for you, it may all still be as mentally accessible as chiastic structure was to me when I first discovered FARMS, and every one of the writers may be just as engaging as Midgley or Peterson. But just in case the minutia approach is also a problem for you, I can recommend going after that high-hanging fruit. It might not be as good as the first few bites you took from the tree, those were, after all, bites taken on a empty stomach, but they are pretty filling nontheless.

LeIsle

Do you have links to any other stimulating conversations on Psalm 82?

Secondly, have you authored a book, sitting somewhere on one of those tables?

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/reviewvolume.php?volume=19&number=1

Let the feasting begin.

Kevin Christensen
Pittsburgh, PA

I’m not interested in post-modernism per se, I don’t mind a belief in Truth, but i’m not immediately persuaded that even Truth provides the full scope of meaning.

If I can get a break in my schedule, I’m hoping to submit the Kirtland paper to a general religious studies/religious history journal in the next month or so. It will thus not be available online. See you at Sunstone (though because of work schedule I sadly may not be able to stay for any more than my own talk)

Sam, I think I know what you mean by “I think it’s time to end ghettoization and particularism in Mormon Studies, bring it out into dialogue with broader currents in a more rigorous way.”

I find the sentiment intriguing, and I’m assuming your recent articles are examples of this, but could you develop the thought a little here? (if you want to tell me to wait and listen to your Kirtland Papers presentation next week, that’s fine)

His documentary work is excellent.

Perhaps the prior work has now left room for people to start publishing work that doesn’t attempt to decide whether Mormonism is true (leaving that to personal faith) but instead tries to figure out what it means.

Like you I just haven’t heard of much in his recent work. Of course as I said I’ve not read the book (yet).