I have heard it said: “In the Catholic Church they say that the Pope is infallible, but no one believes it. In the Mormon Church they say that the prophet is fallible, but no one believes it.” I was reminded repeatedly of a prophet’s fallibility as I read Brigham Young: American Moses by Leonard J. Arrington. While detractors tend to exploit this fallibility and the faithful tend to excuse it, both will have to admit that Brigham Young was an exceptional and effective leader. After reading this book I am more convinced than ever that Young was the only person who could have lead his people away from the mobocrats in the midwest and created the Mormon empire in the desolate Great Basin. This is probably the most even handed biography of the second president of the LDS church out there.
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Books I Can Remember that I’ve Read (In no particular order)
I'm only counting text books if I read the entire thing.
I'm counting books that I read more than half of but stopped because I couldn't stomach it (Lolita) or hated (Moby Dick). I'm not counting books that are mostly pictures (The Cat in the Hat) although they are still some of my favorite books. I'm counting books twice if I read them in English and in Spanish. Also, I have not counted all the Bathroom Readers, mostly because I'm ashamed of how much time I spend on the pot. I've read almost all of them though.
***** - I really liked
**** - I liked
*** - OK
** - I didn’t like
* - It sucked.
1. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald****
2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce**
3. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen****
4. Walden - Henry David Thoreau**
5. Claudius the God - Robert Graves*****
6. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez***
7. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess****
8. As I Lay Dying -William Faulkner***
9. Animal Farm - George Orwell****
10. The Book of Mormon - Written by the Hand of Mormon. Translated by Joseph Smith Jr.*****
11. The Holy Bible - King James Version*****
12. The Doctrine and Covenants - Joseph Smith, others****
13. The Pearl of Great Price - Moses, Abraham, Joseph Smith****
14. Travels with Charley (In Search of America) - John Steinbeck****
15. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Bad Beginning - Lemony Snicket***
16. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Reptile Room - Lemony Snicket***
17. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Wide Window - Lemony Snicket***
18. Les Liaisons Dagereuses - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos****
19. Tom Sawyer Abroad - Samuel Clemens***
20. The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey****
21. The Hero With a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell***
22. The Faith of a Scientist - Henry Eyring****
23. The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell****
24. What are People For - Wendell Berry***
25. The Miracle of Forgiveness - Spencer W. Kimball****
26. The Greatest Salesman in the World - Og Mandino***
27. 1984 - George Orwell****
28. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Samuel Clemens*****
29. On the Road - Jack Keroac****
30. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens****
31. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller****
32. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra****
33. Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe***
34. Deliverance - James Dickey****
35. The Best of Edward Abbey***
36. Rosaura a las Diez - Marco Denevi****
37. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow****
38. Tom Sawyer Detective - Samuel Clemens***
39. The Iliad -Homer****
40. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkein*****
41. Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky***
42. The Double - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky***
43. The Trial -Franz Kafka***
44. Moby Dick - Herman Melville**
45. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison***
46. Principles of Surgery Companion Handbook - Schartz, Shires, Spencer*
47. Standing for Something - Gordon B. Hinckley***
48. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis*****
49. The Sound and the Fury -William Faulkner**
50. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck****
51. Slaughter House-Five - Kurt Vonnegut****
52. Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald****
53. Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry**
54. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer -Samuel Clemens*****
55. Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler*****
56. The Call of the Wild - Jack London****
57. Kim - Rudyard Kipling***
58. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens****
59. Howards End - E.M. Forster****
60. Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence***
61. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad***
62. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -Robert M. Pirsig****
63. The Stranger - Albus Camus****
64. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf***
65. The Lonely Men - Louis L’Amour***
66. Sacred Clowns - Tony Hillerman***
67. The Covenant - James A. Michener****
68. Prentice Alvin - Orson Scott Card****
69. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy -Douglas Adams****
70. The Quick and the Dead - Louis L’Amour***
71. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*****
72. The Gift of the Jews - Thomas Cahill****
73. The Last Battle - C.S. Lewis****
74. The Christ Commission - Og Mandin****
75. Ender’s Game -Orson Scott Card*****
76. People of Darkness - Tony Hillerman****
77. The Horse and His Boy - C.S. Lewis****
78. The Silver Chair - C.S. Lewis****
79. Memory of Earth - Orson Scott Card***
80. The Odyssey - Homer****
81. The Source - James A. Michener*****
82. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger****
83. The Story of England - Christopher Hibbert****
84. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway****
85. The Changed Man - Orson Scott Card****
86. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl****
87. El Milagro del Perdon -Spencer W. Kimball****
88. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley****
89. A Marvelous Work and a Wonder - LeGrand Richards****
90. A Treasury of Classical Mythology - A.R. Hope Moncrieff****
91. The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien****
92. Pure Drivel - Steve Martin***
93. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens****
94. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens****
95. Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone - J.K. Rowling*****
96. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling*****
97. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban -J.K. Rowling*****
98. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire -J.K. Rowling*****
99. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling*****
100. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling*****
101. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling*****
102. The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis*****
103. The Magician's Nephew - C.S. Lewis*****
104. Out of the Silent Planet - C.S. Lewis****
105. Prince Caspian - C.S. Lewis*****
106. The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader - C.S. Lewis*****
107. Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis****
108. That Hideous Strength - C.S. Lewis****
109. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway***
110. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov**
111. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley****
112. I Claudius - Robert Graves*****
113. Anthem - Ann Rand***
114. Lord of the Flies - William Golding****
115. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner***
116. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad***
117. Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein****
118. A Room With a View - E.M. Forster****
119. Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad***
120. Citizen of the Galaxy - Robert Heinlein****
121. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesley****
122. Tunnel in the Sky - Robert Heinlein****
123. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum****
124. Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card****
125. Xenocide - Orson Scott Card****
126. Songmaster - Orson Scott Card**
127. Saints - Orson Scott Card****
128. Red Prophet - Orson Scott Card****
129. Cruel Shoes - Steve Martin***
130. The Great Brain - John Dennis Fitzgerald****
131. Me and My Little Brain - John Dennis Fitzgerald****
132. Jesus the Christ - James Talmage*****
133. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas****
134. Dracula - Bram Stoker****
135. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown***
136. Angels and Demons - Dan Brown****
137. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - Gregory Maguire****
138. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - Roald Dahl**
139. How the Irish Saved Civilization - Thomas Cahill***
140. Fundamentals of Family Medicine - Robert B. Taylor***
141. Medical Physiology - Rodney A Rhoades and George A Tanner**
142. D'aulaires Book of Greek Myths - Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aurlaire****
143. El Libro De Mormon - Un Relato Escrito por la Mano de Mormon. Traducido de las Planchas por Jose Smith, Hijo*****
144. Generation X - Douglas Coupland***
145. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe****
146. Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice****
147. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde****
148. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen****
149. History of the English-Speaking Peoples - Winston Churchhill****
150. A Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking - Barbara Bates**
151. Complete History of the World - Richard Overy****
152. The American Religion - Harold Bloom***
153. The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck****
154. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote****
155. A Rumor of War - Philip Caputo****
156. Religion in the New World - Richard E. Wentz***
157. The Moon Is Down - John Steinbeck****
158. The Pearl - John Steinbeck****
159. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck****
160. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - John le Carré****
161. The Education of Little Tree - Forrest Carter*****
162. The Chosen - Chaim Potok****
163. The Work and the Glory, Pilar of Fire - Gerald N. Lund*****
164. The Work and the Glory, Like a Fire if Burning - Gerald N. Lund*****
165. The Work and the Glory, Truth will Prevail - Gerald N. Lund*****
166. The Work and the Glory, Thy Gold Refine - Gerald N. Lund*****
167. The Work and the Glory, A Season of Joy - Gerald N. Lund*****
168. Stepen King On Writing, A memoir of the Craft - Stephen King***
169. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris****
170. Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited, The Evidence for Ancient Origins - Edited by Noel B. Reynolds. **** (March '08)
171. The Millionaire Next Door - Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko****
172. Naked Ape : A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal - Desmond Morris****
173. Johnny Tremain - Esther Forbes****
174. Mormons and Masons, Setting the Record Straight - Gilbert W. Scharffs* (March '08)
175. San Manuel Bueno, mártir - Miguel de Unamuno****
176. Critiquing the Critics of Joseph Smith - Hartt Wixom**** (March '08)
177. Mormon Country - Wallace Stegner****
178. The House of God - Samuel Shem**
179. The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler****(March '08)
180. The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel**** (April '08)
181. Religions of the World - A Latter-day Saint View - Spencer J. Palmer, Rober R. Keller, Dong Sull Choi, James A. Toronto****
182. Julius Caesar - William Shakespear****
183. Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare****
184. Hamlet - William Shakespeare****
185. Macbeth - William Shakespeare****
186. One Minute Answers to Anti-Mormon Questions - Stephen W. Gibson*** (May '08)
187. Jay's Journal - Beatrice Sparks**
188. Blueprints in Obstetrics and Gynecology - Tamara L. Callahan, Aaron B Caughey and Linda J Heffner***
189. Clinical Microbiology Made Rediculously Simple - Mark Galdwin and Bill Trattler****
190. Prescription for the Boards USMLE Step 2 - Radhika Breaden, Charyl Denenberg, Kate Feibusch, Stephen Gomperts***
191. The Instant Exam Review for the USMLE Step 3 - Joel s. Goldberg**
192. Appleton & Lang's Review of Pediatrics - Martin I. Lorin**
193. Pathology - Arthur S. Schneider and Philip A Szanto**
194. Internal Medicine - Edward D. Frohlich**
195. The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers - J.R.R. Tolkien****
196. The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien****
198. The Mountain Meadows Massacre - Juanita Brooks****
198. A Thief of Time - Tony Hillerman****
199. Naked Pictures of Famous People - Jon Stewart**
200. La Casa de Bernarda Alba - Federico García Lorca***
201. Why Things Are and Why Things Aren't - Joel Achenbach****
202. Why Things Are - Joel Achenbach****
203. Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? And Other Imponderables - David Feldman****
204. First Aid for the Family Medicine Boards - Tao Le, Christine Dehlendorf, Michael Mendoza, and Cynthria Ohata*** (May '08)
205. Why Don't Cat's Like to Swim - David Feldman****
206. The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer**** (June '08)
207. Encounters with the Archdruid - John McPhee***
208. Desert Solitaire - Edward Abby***
209. Family Medicine Board Review - Robert L. Bratton, MD*** (July '08)
210. View of the Hebrews - Ethan Smith** (August '08)
211. A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle****
212. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens****
213. The Book of Mormon and DNA Resarch - Edited by Daniel C. Petersen**** (Sept '08)
214. The Great Divorce - C.S. Lewis**** (Sept '08)
215. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson**** (Sept '08)
216. The Great Angel - A Study of Israel's Second God - Margaret Barker**** (Sept '08)
217. The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne**** (Sept,08)
218. The Scarlett Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne**** (Oct, '08)
219. Twilight - Stephanie Meyer** (Oct, '08)
220. Sophie's Choice - William Styron*** (Nov, '08)
221. Revolt of 2100 - Robert Heinlein****
222. Farnham's Freehold - Robert Heinlein****
223. Between Planets - Robert Heinlein****
224. The Giver - Lois Lowry****(Nov, '08)
225. History of Joseph Smith by His Mother Lucy Mack Smith****
226. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein** (Nov, '08)
227. Joseph Smith - Rough Stone Rolling - Richard Lyman Bushman**** (Dec, '08)
228. The Work and the Glory - Praise to the Man - Gerald N. Lund**** (Dec, '08)
229. Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass - The Art of Telling Tales about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young - Hugh Nibley****(Dec, '08)
230. The Happy Prince and Other Tales - Oscar Wilde***(Dec, '08)
231. The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J.K. Rowling****(Dec, '08)
232. A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes*** (Dec, '08)
233. Celsus on the True Doctrine - A Discourse Against the Christians - translated by R. Joseph Hoffmann**** (Jan, '09)
234. Brigham Young: American Moses - Leonard J. Arrington**** (Jan, '09)
Visitors
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Celsus On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians. (A Mormon Perspective)
(Rough Draft. Help me out if you find any typos or bad English.)
Celsus On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians
I just finished reading a translation of Celsus On the True Doctrine this month. Celsus was a Greek philosopher who lived in the second century; a time when the Christian Church was still small, but becoming more visible in the Roman world. Celsus was just one of several writers of anti-Christian polemics in this era. However, most of these works were burned by early Christian emperors in the third century. Celsus’s writings were preserved in the Christian apologetic work Contra Celsum. I read Celsus not to rehash the counter arguments already laid out over a millennium ago in Contra Celsum, but to compare early anti-Christian writings with contemporary anti-Mormon works. Although I expected to find some similarities, I was surprised to find the arguments against the Christians over 1800 years ago are almost identical to those used by both religious and secular critics of Mormonism today.
The translation I read by Joseph Hoffmann begins with a chapter on anti-Christian polemics before Celsus. It contains some of the extraordinary claims and rumors against the Christians from the first and second century. “Rumors of Christian excesses were widespread throughout Asia Minor and were doubtless linked to the popular mind with the nocturnal forest rites of the Bacchae....These rites were thought to include drunkenness, the defilement of women, promiscuous intercourse, and assorted other debaucheries...they occasionally sacrificed and ate their young and indulged in ritual incest at their love banquets.” One Marcus Cornelius Fronto (100-166?) even described some of these rites in detail: “A young baby is covered over with flour, the object being to deceive the unwary. It is then served before the person to be admitted to the rites. The recruit is urged to inflict blows unto it [which] appear to be harmless because of the covering of flour. Thus the baby is killed with wounds that remain unseen and concealed. It is the blood of this infant—I shudder to mention it–it is this blood that they lick with thirsty lips; the limbs they distribute eagerly; this is the victim by which they seal the covenant.” He goes on: “On a special day they gather in a feast with all their children, sisters, mothers—all sexes and ages. There, flushed with the banquet after such feasting and drinking, they begin to burn with incestuous passions.....in the shameless dark and with the unspeakable lust they copulate in random unions, all being equally guilty of incest, some by deed but everyone by complicity.” Doesn’t that sound like every Christian mass you have ever attended? Reading this reminded me of the exaggerated stories of lust involving polygamy in the early church. (The actual lives of my tame, prudish, homely, Victorian, polygamist ancestors is almost to bland to relate.) I’m also reminded of the warning I received from a non-Mormon friend when I was in high school, of the sex and Satan worshipping that I would encounter when I went through the temple the first time. (I’m sorry to disappoint you Deuce Everhart, but what happens in the temple is actually pretty boring.)
We can conjecture from these examples the willingness of the pagans in the first and second centuries to believe anything shocking about the hated Christians, no matter how outrageous. I once had a work acquaintance try to convince me that if a Mormon got behind on his tithing the church would repossess his car. No evidence I presented to the contrary could change his mind.
We also see here the tendency to characterise the activities of any remotely related splinter group or deviant members as the norm for all Christians. Let’s not forget how Under the Banner of Heaven warns us that your Mormon neighbors might try to kill you or how the confused press coverage of the FLDS church would have you believe Mormons all want to have sex with your 13 year old daughter.
Celsus begins his treatise with this statement: “the cult of Christ is a secret society whose members huddle together in corners for fear of being brought to trial and punishment.” I don’t want to spend too much time on Celsus calling the Christian church a “cult”. The Greek word probably did not have the same negative connotations that it does in modern English. However, anyone who wishes to dismiss the LDS church as a “cult” would do well to remember that the early Christians would have met anyone’s definition of a cult. After all, they were a small religious group with a charismatic leader who taught radical doctrines. I am impatient with anyone who calls Mormonism a cult who fails to see that any belief system can be categorized as a cult by those who don’t agree with it. As far as I am concerned, calling Mormons cultists is nothing more than childish name calling.
The accusation of secrecy among the early Christians is one Mormons are familiar with also. Granted, not all of Mormonism’s most sacred rituals are open to the general public. I’m afraid no amount of reassurance will convince those who are determined to believe the worst about us that there is nothing sinister in this secrecy. Also, Celsus tells us why the Christians were secretive - “for fear of being brought to trial and punishment.” Through the last two centuries Mormonism has been accused of being a clannish and closed society. Although I do not excuse this behavior among Mormons where it truly exists (although, again, I think it is exaggerated), one must understand that it originates, at least partially, from the open persecution and social ostracization of the LDS Church.
Celsus goes on to tell us why he is writing his book. “For this reason I have undertaken to compose a treatise for their [the Christian’s] edification, so that they can see for themselves the true character of the doctrines they have chosen to embrace and the true sources of their opinions.” In other words, he is writing it for the Christians' own good. There may never have been an anti-Mormon book written that does not begin with an introduction almost identical to that of Celsus. In fact, Hugh Nibley’s Rule # 5 in How to Write an Anti-Mormon Book (A Handbook for Beginners) is “Proclaim your love for the Mormon people.” Nibley then gives the example from Ann Eliza Young’s book Wife No. 19 which begins, “I feel that I must pay this tribute to the Mormon people. Naturally, they were a law-abiding, peace-loving, intensely religious people.” But then she goes on to say, “Mormonism is entitled to no mercy; it invites fire and the sword. The American people must therefore continue their holy crusade against this antichristian system.” Apparently it does not bother Ms. Young that the victims of this “fire and sword” would be the very Mormon people for whom she has just proclaimed her love. This is typical of every anti-Mormon book, tract or video I have ever read or seen. Their disclaimer is always something like, “before I sarcastically mock the Mormon’s most sacredly held beliefs, I want them to know that I am doing it out of love. And by the way, I understand what you believe better than you do.”
Celsus spends a good portion of his book pointing out how unoriginal the stories behind Christianity are. “This doctrine [the Christian doctrine] has been held not only by the sages among the Jews, but by the wise men of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Indians, Persians, Odrysians, Samothracians, and Eleusinians. The Galactophagi of Homer, the Druids of Gaul and even the Getae (for example) believe doctrines very close to those believed by the Jews – indeed, before the Jews. Linus, Musaeus, Orpheus, Pherecydes, Zoroaster the Persian, and Pythagoras understood these doctrines, and their opinions were recorded in books which are still to be consulted.” The argument here is that since the teachings of Christians (and the Jews) have parallels in paganism, the Christian myths must be plagiarisms and untrue. This argument has been repeated by critics of the Book of Mormon. Fawn Brodie’s theory that Joseph Smith got the idea for the Book of Mormon from View of the Hebrews follows this argument. Other critics point out parallelisms between the Book of Mormon and the Bible (the conversion of Alma the Younger to the conversion of Saul is one example). But parallelism does not necessarily mean plagiarism. Hugh Nibley notes, “of recent years, literary studies have shown parallels not to be the exception but the rule in the world of creative writing, and it is well known that great inventions and scientific discoveries have a way of appearing at about the same time in separate places......The fact that two theories or books present parallelisms, no matter how striking, may imply a common source, but it certainly does not in itself prove that the one is derived from the other.” In fact, just because I can see striking parallels between Celsus and every anti-Mormon work I have every encountered does not prove that they used Celsus as a source.
Celsus uses rumors of Jesus’s bad character and background to undermine his religion. To a hypothetically present Jesus he asks: “Is it not true, good sir, that you fabricated the story of your birth from a virgin to quiet rumors about the true and unsavory circumstances of your origins? Is it not the case that far from being born in royal David’s city of Bethlehem, you were born in a poor country town, and of a woman who earned her living by spinning? Is it not the case that when her deceit was discovered, to wit, that she was pregnant by a Roman Soldier named Panthera she was driven away by her husband– the carpenter– and convicted of adultery? Indeed, is it not so that in her disgrace, wandering far from home, she gave birth to a male child in silence and humiliation? What more? Is it not so that you hired yourself out as a workman in Egypt, learned magical crafts, and gained something of a name for yourself which now you flaunt among your kinsmen?” The rumors that Jesus was actually the illegitimate child of a Roman soldier and that he learned magic and healing tricks while in Egypt, by which he later fooled his countrymen, apparently came from people in his own home town of Nazareth. How similar are these unfounded rumors to the affidavits of the Smith family’s unfriendly neighbors in Palmyra, NY, collected by the ex-Mormon H.P. Hurlbut and propagated by the anti-Mormon Eber D. Howe in Mormonism Unvailed. These quotes, all of questionable reliability, are included in almost every anti-Mormon "history" of Joseph Smith even today.
An obvious similarity in Celsus’s attack on Christianity and contemporary evangelical attacks on Mormonism is his representation of the doctrine of the virgin birth. He says, “a beautiful woman must his mother have been, that this Most High God should want to have intercourse with her!” I am reminded of the cartoon in the anti-Mormon mockumentary The God Makers showing God the Father coming to earth in a spaceship, knocking on Mary’s door, giving her a flirtatious look and being invited inside. Ed Decker is guilty of the exact same misrepresentation as Celsus. To take a sacred belief that neither Mormons nor traditional Christians claim to fully understand and present it in such a crude manner is not only unfair, it is unseemly.
On the evidence for Christ's resurrection, Celsus questions the reliability of the witnesses. Of Mary Magdalene and the others who claimed to have seen the resurrected Christ he says, “A hysterical woman, as you admit - and perhaps one other person - both deluded by his sorcery or else so wrenched with grief as his failure that they hallucinated him risen from the dead by a sort of wishful thinking.....Just as possible, these deluded women wanted to impress the others—who had already the good sense to have abandoned him—by spreading their hallucinations about as ‘visions.’” How similar is this attack to those on the reliability of the three witnesses of the Golden Plates (none of whom ever denied having seen the plates with their own eyes and having handled them, although all of them at one time or other left the fellowship of the Church).
Celsus also notes the inconsistencies in the accounts of the resurrection in the Gospels. Critics also attack the different accounts of the First Vision as proof that it never happened. This, although only one account was actually given by Joseph Smith himself. Closer scrutiny shows that there are no true inconsistencies in the accounts of the resurrection or the first vision. (But that’s another whole paper.)
Throughout On the True Doctrine, Celsus likes to characterize the Christians as ignorant and poor. “Their [the Christians'] injunctions are like this: ‘Let no one educated, no one wise, no one sensible draw near. For these abilities are thought by us to be evils. But as for anyone ignorant, anyone stupid, anyone uneducated, anyone childish, let him come boldly.’ By the fact that they themselves admit that these people are worthy of their god, they show that they want and are able to convince only the foolish, dishonorable and stupid, and only slaves, women and little children.” We cannot deny that many of the converts to Mormonism have been the humble, poor and uneducated. While on his mission to England Brigham Young wrote to Joseph Smith: “Almost without exception it is the poor that receive the gospel.” However, when people actually get to know LDS individuals they are often surprised by their sophistication. As General John B. Clark (cursed be his name) prepared to expel the Mormons from Missouri he told them: “I am sorry, gentlemen to see a great number of apparently intelligent men found in the situation that you are; and oh! That I could invoke that Great Spirit, the unknown God, to rest upon you, and make you sufficiently intelligent to break the chain of superstition, and liberate you from those fetters of fanaticism....that you no longer worship a man.” During the most recent Republican presidential primary campaign some were perplexed by Mitt Romney, an obviously intelligent man (graduating first in his class at Harvard business and law school) who apparently believed the mumbo-jumbo of Mormonism. Some pundits went so far as to speculate that Romney must not truly believe it; he was just pretending to believe to appear respectable and consistent. I don’t know what is more insulting, to be told that you are stupid for holding your cherished beliefs or to be accused of not really believing them at all.
Another common attack by anti-Mormons is that Mormons worship a “different god” from traditional Christians and that they are not truly monotheistic. Celsus used this argument against the Christians also. “Further, for all their exclusiveness about the highest god, do not the Jews [and Christians] also worship angels......Christians proclaim they have the same god as do the Jews, others insist that there is another god higher than the creator-god and opposed to him. And some Christians teach that the Son came from this higher god. Still others admit of a third god.....Now, if the Christians worshiped only one God they might have reason on their side. But as a matter of fact they worship a man who appeared only recently. They do not consider what they are doing a breach of monotheism; rather, they think it perfectly consistent to worship the great God and to worship his servant as God.” In other words, the Christian God is a different God from that of the Jews and Christians, in believing in angels and the Trinity, are essentially polytheistic. (For more on the apparent belief in the plurality of gods among the early Jews and Christians see The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God by Margaret Barker.)
And speaking of the nature of God, one of the most interesting passages in On the True Doctrine involves the corporality of God. “The Christians say that God has hands, a mouth, and a voice; they are always proclaiming that ‘God said this’ or ‘God spoke.’ ‘The heavens declare the work of his hands,’ they say. I can only comment that such a God is no god at all, for God has neither hands, mouth, nor voice, nor any characteristics of which we know. And they say that God made man in his own image, failing to realize that God is not at all like a man, nor vice versa; God resembles no form know to us. They say that God has form, namely the form of the Logos, who became flesh in Jesus Christ. But we know that God is without shape, without color. They say that God moved above the waters he created–but we know that it is contrary to the nature of god to move. Their absurd doctrines even contain reference to God walking about in the garden he created for man; and the speak of him being angry, jealous, moved to repentance, sorry, sleepy – in short, as being in every respect more a man than a God. They have not read Plato, who teaches us in the Republic that God (the Good) does not even participate in being...this God of the philosophers is himself the underivable, the unnameable; he cannot be reached by reason.” Apparently at the time of Celsus it was common knowledge that Christians [and Jews] believed in a God with body, parts and passions - an Exalted Man. Ironically, traditional Christians have adopted a god that is identical to the “god of the philosophers” described by Celsus above, and now claim that Mormons are not true Christians because they don’t believe in this unfathomable creature.
Finally, Celsus questions Christians’ place in society: “If they [Christians] persist in refusing to worship the various gods who preside over the day-to-day activities of life [the pagan gods of Rome], then they should not be permitted to live until marriageable age; they should not be permitted to marry, to have children, nor to do anything else over which a god presides.” What rights Mormons should have in American society has always been hotly debated. Should the people of Missouri and Illinois have been forced to live near the odd and dangerous Mormons? Should Reed Smoot have been seated in the Senate? Is any Mormon fit to hold the office of the Presidency of the United States? Should Mormons be allowed to be politically active on moral issues like Proposition 8?
This book report ended up being much longer than I anticipated. I will conclude by saying that anyone who chooses to attack Mormonism, either religiously or secularly, should watch themselves closely for hypocrisy. Also, any Mormon should feel in good company when they are persecuted for their beliefs, for thus they did persecute the Christians of old. Things seemed to turn out O.K. for them, and I predict they will for us also. (Oh, except the Christians that were thrown to the lions - things didn’t turn out great for them. And those Mormons at Haun’s Mill and Far West - they weren’t too lucky either.)
Celsus On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians
I just finished reading a translation of Celsus On the True Doctrine this month. Celsus was a Greek philosopher who lived in the second century; a time when the Christian Church was still small, but becoming more visible in the Roman world. Celsus was just one of several writers of anti-Christian polemics in this era. However, most of these works were burned by early Christian emperors in the third century. Celsus’s writings were preserved in the Christian apologetic work Contra Celsum. I read Celsus not to rehash the counter arguments already laid out over a millennium ago in Contra Celsum, but to compare early anti-Christian writings with contemporary anti-Mormon works. Although I expected to find some similarities, I was surprised to find the arguments against the Christians over 1800 years ago are almost identical to those used by both religious and secular critics of Mormonism today.
The translation I read by Joseph Hoffmann begins with a chapter on anti-Christian polemics before Celsus. It contains some of the extraordinary claims and rumors against the Christians from the first and second century. “Rumors of Christian excesses were widespread throughout Asia Minor and were doubtless linked to the popular mind with the nocturnal forest rites of the Bacchae....These rites were thought to include drunkenness, the defilement of women, promiscuous intercourse, and assorted other debaucheries...they occasionally sacrificed and ate their young and indulged in ritual incest at their love banquets.” One Marcus Cornelius Fronto (100-166?) even described some of these rites in detail: “A young baby is covered over with flour, the object being to deceive the unwary. It is then served before the person to be admitted to the rites. The recruit is urged to inflict blows unto it [which] appear to be harmless because of the covering of flour. Thus the baby is killed with wounds that remain unseen and concealed. It is the blood of this infant—I shudder to mention it–it is this blood that they lick with thirsty lips; the limbs they distribute eagerly; this is the victim by which they seal the covenant.” He goes on: “On a special day they gather in a feast with all their children, sisters, mothers—all sexes and ages. There, flushed with the banquet after such feasting and drinking, they begin to burn with incestuous passions.....in the shameless dark and with the unspeakable lust they copulate in random unions, all being equally guilty of incest, some by deed but everyone by complicity.” Doesn’t that sound like every Christian mass you have ever attended? Reading this reminded me of the exaggerated stories of lust involving polygamy in the early church. (The actual lives of my tame, prudish, homely, Victorian, polygamist ancestors is almost to bland to relate.) I’m also reminded of the warning I received from a non-Mormon friend when I was in high school, of the sex and Satan worshipping that I would encounter when I went through the temple the first time. (I’m sorry to disappoint you Deuce Everhart, but what happens in the temple is actually pretty boring.)
We can conjecture from these examples the willingness of the pagans in the first and second centuries to believe anything shocking about the hated Christians, no matter how outrageous. I once had a work acquaintance try to convince me that if a Mormon got behind on his tithing the church would repossess his car. No evidence I presented to the contrary could change his mind.
We also see here the tendency to characterise the activities of any remotely related splinter group or deviant members as the norm for all Christians. Let’s not forget how Under the Banner of Heaven warns us that your Mormon neighbors might try to kill you or how the confused press coverage of the FLDS church would have you believe Mormons all want to have sex with your 13 year old daughter.
Celsus begins his treatise with this statement: “the cult of Christ is a secret society whose members huddle together in corners for fear of being brought to trial and punishment.” I don’t want to spend too much time on Celsus calling the Christian church a “cult”. The Greek word probably did not have the same negative connotations that it does in modern English. However, anyone who wishes to dismiss the LDS church as a “cult” would do well to remember that the early Christians would have met anyone’s definition of a cult. After all, they were a small religious group with a charismatic leader who taught radical doctrines. I am impatient with anyone who calls Mormonism a cult who fails to see that any belief system can be categorized as a cult by those who don’t agree with it. As far as I am concerned, calling Mormons cultists is nothing more than childish name calling.
The accusation of secrecy among the early Christians is one Mormons are familiar with also. Granted, not all of Mormonism’s most sacred rituals are open to the general public. I’m afraid no amount of reassurance will convince those who are determined to believe the worst about us that there is nothing sinister in this secrecy. Also, Celsus tells us why the Christians were secretive - “for fear of being brought to trial and punishment.” Through the last two centuries Mormonism has been accused of being a clannish and closed society. Although I do not excuse this behavior among Mormons where it truly exists (although, again, I think it is exaggerated), one must understand that it originates, at least partially, from the open persecution and social ostracization of the LDS Church.
Celsus goes on to tell us why he is writing his book. “For this reason I have undertaken to compose a treatise for their [the Christian’s] edification, so that they can see for themselves the true character of the doctrines they have chosen to embrace and the true sources of their opinions.” In other words, he is writing it for the Christians' own good. There may never have been an anti-Mormon book written that does not begin with an introduction almost identical to that of Celsus. In fact, Hugh Nibley’s Rule # 5 in How to Write an Anti-Mormon Book (A Handbook for Beginners) is “Proclaim your love for the Mormon people.” Nibley then gives the example from Ann Eliza Young’s book Wife No. 19 which begins, “I feel that I must pay this tribute to the Mormon people. Naturally, they were a law-abiding, peace-loving, intensely religious people.” But then she goes on to say, “Mormonism is entitled to no mercy; it invites fire and the sword. The American people must therefore continue their holy crusade against this antichristian system.” Apparently it does not bother Ms. Young that the victims of this “fire and sword” would be the very Mormon people for whom she has just proclaimed her love. This is typical of every anti-Mormon book, tract or video I have ever read or seen. Their disclaimer is always something like, “before I sarcastically mock the Mormon’s most sacredly held beliefs, I want them to know that I am doing it out of love. And by the way, I understand what you believe better than you do.”
Celsus spends a good portion of his book pointing out how unoriginal the stories behind Christianity are. “This doctrine [the Christian doctrine] has been held not only by the sages among the Jews, but by the wise men of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Indians, Persians, Odrysians, Samothracians, and Eleusinians. The Galactophagi of Homer, the Druids of Gaul and even the Getae (for example) believe doctrines very close to those believed by the Jews – indeed, before the Jews. Linus, Musaeus, Orpheus, Pherecydes, Zoroaster the Persian, and Pythagoras understood these doctrines, and their opinions were recorded in books which are still to be consulted.” The argument here is that since the teachings of Christians (and the Jews) have parallels in paganism, the Christian myths must be plagiarisms and untrue. This argument has been repeated by critics of the Book of Mormon. Fawn Brodie’s theory that Joseph Smith got the idea for the Book of Mormon from View of the Hebrews follows this argument. Other critics point out parallelisms between the Book of Mormon and the Bible (the conversion of Alma the Younger to the conversion of Saul is one example). But parallelism does not necessarily mean plagiarism. Hugh Nibley notes, “of recent years, literary studies have shown parallels not to be the exception but the rule in the world of creative writing, and it is well known that great inventions and scientific discoveries have a way of appearing at about the same time in separate places......The fact that two theories or books present parallelisms, no matter how striking, may imply a common source, but it certainly does not in itself prove that the one is derived from the other.” In fact, just because I can see striking parallels between Celsus and every anti-Mormon work I have every encountered does not prove that they used Celsus as a source.
Celsus uses rumors of Jesus’s bad character and background to undermine his religion. To a hypothetically present Jesus he asks: “Is it not true, good sir, that you fabricated the story of your birth from a virgin to quiet rumors about the true and unsavory circumstances of your origins? Is it not the case that far from being born in royal David’s city of Bethlehem, you were born in a poor country town, and of a woman who earned her living by spinning? Is it not the case that when her deceit was discovered, to wit, that she was pregnant by a Roman Soldier named Panthera she was driven away by her husband– the carpenter– and convicted of adultery? Indeed, is it not so that in her disgrace, wandering far from home, she gave birth to a male child in silence and humiliation? What more? Is it not so that you hired yourself out as a workman in Egypt, learned magical crafts, and gained something of a name for yourself which now you flaunt among your kinsmen?” The rumors that Jesus was actually the illegitimate child of a Roman soldier and that he learned magic and healing tricks while in Egypt, by which he later fooled his countrymen, apparently came from people in his own home town of Nazareth. How similar are these unfounded rumors to the affidavits of the Smith family’s unfriendly neighbors in Palmyra, NY, collected by the ex-Mormon H.P. Hurlbut and propagated by the anti-Mormon Eber D. Howe in Mormonism Unvailed. These quotes, all of questionable reliability, are included in almost every anti-Mormon "history" of Joseph Smith even today.
An obvious similarity in Celsus’s attack on Christianity and contemporary evangelical attacks on Mormonism is his representation of the doctrine of the virgin birth. He says, “a beautiful woman must his mother have been, that this Most High God should want to have intercourse with her!” I am reminded of the cartoon in the anti-Mormon mockumentary The God Makers showing God the Father coming to earth in a spaceship, knocking on Mary’s door, giving her a flirtatious look and being invited inside. Ed Decker is guilty of the exact same misrepresentation as Celsus. To take a sacred belief that neither Mormons nor traditional Christians claim to fully understand and present it in such a crude manner is not only unfair, it is unseemly.
On the evidence for Christ's resurrection, Celsus questions the reliability of the witnesses. Of Mary Magdalene and the others who claimed to have seen the resurrected Christ he says, “A hysterical woman, as you admit - and perhaps one other person - both deluded by his sorcery or else so wrenched with grief as his failure that they hallucinated him risen from the dead by a sort of wishful thinking.....Just as possible, these deluded women wanted to impress the others—who had already the good sense to have abandoned him—by spreading their hallucinations about as ‘visions.’” How similar is this attack to those on the reliability of the three witnesses of the Golden Plates (none of whom ever denied having seen the plates with their own eyes and having handled them, although all of them at one time or other left the fellowship of the Church).
Celsus also notes the inconsistencies in the accounts of the resurrection in the Gospels. Critics also attack the different accounts of the First Vision as proof that it never happened. This, although only one account was actually given by Joseph Smith himself. Closer scrutiny shows that there are no true inconsistencies in the accounts of the resurrection or the first vision. (But that’s another whole paper.)
Throughout On the True Doctrine, Celsus likes to characterize the Christians as ignorant and poor. “Their [the Christians'] injunctions are like this: ‘Let no one educated, no one wise, no one sensible draw near. For these abilities are thought by us to be evils. But as for anyone ignorant, anyone stupid, anyone uneducated, anyone childish, let him come boldly.’ By the fact that they themselves admit that these people are worthy of their god, they show that they want and are able to convince only the foolish, dishonorable and stupid, and only slaves, women and little children.” We cannot deny that many of the converts to Mormonism have been the humble, poor and uneducated. While on his mission to England Brigham Young wrote to Joseph Smith: “Almost without exception it is the poor that receive the gospel.” However, when people actually get to know LDS individuals they are often surprised by their sophistication. As General John B. Clark (cursed be his name) prepared to expel the Mormons from Missouri he told them: “I am sorry, gentlemen to see a great number of apparently intelligent men found in the situation that you are; and oh! That I could invoke that Great Spirit, the unknown God, to rest upon you, and make you sufficiently intelligent to break the chain of superstition, and liberate you from those fetters of fanaticism....that you no longer worship a man.” During the most recent Republican presidential primary campaign some were perplexed by Mitt Romney, an obviously intelligent man (graduating first in his class at Harvard business and law school) who apparently believed the mumbo-jumbo of Mormonism. Some pundits went so far as to speculate that Romney must not truly believe it; he was just pretending to believe to appear respectable and consistent. I don’t know what is more insulting, to be told that you are stupid for holding your cherished beliefs or to be accused of not really believing them at all.
Another common attack by anti-Mormons is that Mormons worship a “different god” from traditional Christians and that they are not truly monotheistic. Celsus used this argument against the Christians also. “Further, for all their exclusiveness about the highest god, do not the Jews [and Christians] also worship angels......Christians proclaim they have the same god as do the Jews, others insist that there is another god higher than the creator-god and opposed to him. And some Christians teach that the Son came from this higher god. Still others admit of a third god.....Now, if the Christians worshiped only one God they might have reason on their side. But as a matter of fact they worship a man who appeared only recently. They do not consider what they are doing a breach of monotheism; rather, they think it perfectly consistent to worship the great God and to worship his servant as God.” In other words, the Christian God is a different God from that of the Jews and Christians, in believing in angels and the Trinity, are essentially polytheistic. (For more on the apparent belief in the plurality of gods among the early Jews and Christians see The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God by Margaret Barker.)
And speaking of the nature of God, one of the most interesting passages in On the True Doctrine involves the corporality of God. “The Christians say that God has hands, a mouth, and a voice; they are always proclaiming that ‘God said this’ or ‘God spoke.’ ‘The heavens declare the work of his hands,’ they say. I can only comment that such a God is no god at all, for God has neither hands, mouth, nor voice, nor any characteristics of which we know. And they say that God made man in his own image, failing to realize that God is not at all like a man, nor vice versa; God resembles no form know to us. They say that God has form, namely the form of the Logos, who became flesh in Jesus Christ. But we know that God is without shape, without color. They say that God moved above the waters he created–but we know that it is contrary to the nature of god to move. Their absurd doctrines even contain reference to God walking about in the garden he created for man; and the speak of him being angry, jealous, moved to repentance, sorry, sleepy – in short, as being in every respect more a man than a God. They have not read Plato, who teaches us in the Republic that God (the Good) does not even participate in being...this God of the philosophers is himself the underivable, the unnameable; he cannot be reached by reason.” Apparently at the time of Celsus it was common knowledge that Christians [and Jews] believed in a God with body, parts and passions - an Exalted Man. Ironically, traditional Christians have adopted a god that is identical to the “god of the philosophers” described by Celsus above, and now claim that Mormons are not true Christians because they don’t believe in this unfathomable creature.
Finally, Celsus questions Christians’ place in society: “If they [Christians] persist in refusing to worship the various gods who preside over the day-to-day activities of life [the pagan gods of Rome], then they should not be permitted to live until marriageable age; they should not be permitted to marry, to have children, nor to do anything else over which a god presides.” What rights Mormons should have in American society has always been hotly debated. Should the people of Missouri and Illinois have been forced to live near the odd and dangerous Mormons? Should Reed Smoot have been seated in the Senate? Is any Mormon fit to hold the office of the Presidency of the United States? Should Mormons be allowed to be politically active on moral issues like Proposition 8?
This book report ended up being much longer than I anticipated. I will conclude by saying that anyone who chooses to attack Mormonism, either religiously or secularly, should watch themselves closely for hypocrisy. Also, any Mormon should feel in good company when they are persecuted for their beliefs, for thus they did persecute the Christians of old. Things seemed to turn out O.K. for them, and I predict they will for us also. (Oh, except the Christians that were thrown to the lions - things didn’t turn out great for them. And those Mormons at Haun’s Mill and Far West - they weren’t too lucky either.)
Thursday, January 1, 2009
A High Wind in Jamaica
You can tell A High Wind in Jamaica was written back when people took Freudianism seriously. The children in this tale are animalistic little Ids even before they are captured by the pirates. I don’t believe that young children are so devoid of attachments and innate morals that they would so quickly forget the love of their parents, endear themselves to a bunch of pirates, and murder in cold blood if given the chance. At least my kids aren’t the monsters Richard Hughes describes (although maybe I should sleep with one eye open and keep the kitchen knifes where they can’t get them). I wouldn’t go out of my way for this book. As far as novels about the cynical and savage descent of unsupervised children, I prefer The Lord of the Flies.
Tales of Beedle the Bard was OK. Obviously not as good as Harry Potter. At least the money I spent on it went to a good cause.
I also read The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde this last week. I got it to read to my daughter, but I don't think she would like it much. I wonder if the little boys Oscar Wilde used to hang out with liked these stories.
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Books I Can Remember that I’ve Read (In no particular order)
I'm only counting text books if I read the entire thing.
I'm counting books that I read more than half of but stopped because I couldn't stomach it (Lolita) or hated (Moby Dick). I'm not counting books that are mostly pictures (The Cat in the Hat) although they are still some of my favorite books. I'm counting books twice if I read them in English and in Spanish. Also, I have not counted all the Bathroom Readers, mostly because I'm ashamed of how much time I spend on the pot. I've read almost all of them though.
***** - I really liked
**** - I liked
*** - OK
** - I didn’t like
* - It sucked.
1. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald****
2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce**
3. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen****
4. Walden - Henry David Thoreau**
5. Claudius the God - Robert Graves*****
6. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez***
7. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess****
8. As I Lay Dying -William Faulkner***
9. Animal Farm - George Orwell****
10. The Book of Mormon - Written by the Hand of Mormon. Translated by Joseph Smith Jr.*****
11. The Holy Bible - King James Version*****
12. The Doctrine and Covenants - Joseph Smith, others****
13. The Pearl of Great Price - Moses, Abraham, Joseph Smith****
14. Travels with Charley (In Search of America) - John Steinbeck****
15. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Bad Beginning - Lemony Snicket***
16. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Reptile Room - Lemony Snicket***
17. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Wide Window - Lemony Snicket***
18. Les Liaisons Dagereuses - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos****
19. Tom Sawyer Abroad - Samuel Clemens***
20. The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey****
21. The Hero With a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell***
22. The Faith of a Scientist - Henry Eyring****
23. The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell****
24. What are People For - Wendell Berry***
25. The Miracle of Forgiveness - Spencer W. Kimball****
26. The Greatest Salesman in the World - Og Mandino***
27. 1984 - George Orwell****
28. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Samuel Clemens*****
29. On the Road - Jack Keroac****
30. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens****
31. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller****
32. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra****
33. Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe***
34. Deliverance - James Dickey****
35. The Best of Edward Abbey***
36. Rosaura a las Diez - Marco Denevi****
37. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow****
38. Tom Sawyer Detective - Samuel Clemens***
39. The Iliad -Homer****
40. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkein*****
41. Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky***
42. The Double - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky***
43. The Trial -Franz Kafka***
44. Moby Dick - Herman Melville**
45. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison***
46. Principles of Surgery Companion Handbook - Schartz, Shires, Spencer*
47. Standing for Something - Gordon B. Hinckley***
48. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis*****
49. The Sound and the Fury -William Faulkner**
50. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck****
51. Slaughter House-Five - Kurt Vonnegut****
52. Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald****
53. Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry**
54. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer -Samuel Clemens*****
55. Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler*****
56. The Call of the Wild - Jack London****
57. Kim - Rudyard Kipling***
58. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens****
59. Howards End - E.M. Forster****
60. Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence***
61. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad***
62. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -Robert M. Pirsig****
63. The Stranger - Albus Camus****
64. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf***
65. The Lonely Men - Louis L’Amour***
66. Sacred Clowns - Tony Hillerman***
67. The Covenant - James A. Michener****
68. Prentice Alvin - Orson Scott Card****
69. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy -Douglas Adams****
70. The Quick and the Dead - Louis L’Amour***
71. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*****
72. The Gift of the Jews - Thomas Cahill****
73. The Last Battle - C.S. Lewis****
74. The Christ Commission - Og Mandin****
75. Ender’s Game -Orson Scott Card*****
76. People of Darkness - Tony Hillerman****
77. The Horse and His Boy - C.S. Lewis****
78. The Silver Chair - C.S. Lewis****
79. Memory of Earth - Orson Scott Card***
80. The Odyssey - Homer****
81. The Source - James A. Michener*****
82. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger****
83. The Story of England - Christopher Hibbert****
84. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway****
85. The Changed Man - Orson Scott Card****
86. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl****
87. El Milagro del Perdon -Spencer W. Kimball****
88. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley****
89. A Marvelous Work and a Wonder - LeGrand Richards****
90. A Treasury of Classical Mythology - A.R. Hope Moncrieff****
91. The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien****
92. Pure Drivel - Steve Martin***
93. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens****
94. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens****
95. Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone - J.K. Rowling*****
96. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling*****
97. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban -J.K. Rowling*****
98. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire -J.K. Rowling*****
99. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling*****
100. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling*****
101. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling*****
102. The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis*****
103. The Magician's Nephew - C.S. Lewis*****
104. Out of the Silent Planet - C.S. Lewis****
105. Prince Caspian - C.S. Lewis*****
106. The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader - C.S. Lewis*****
107. Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis****
108. That Hideous Strength - C.S. Lewis****
109. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway***
110. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov**
111. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley****
112. I Claudius - Robert Graves*****
113. Anthem - Ann Rand***
114. Lord of the Flies - William Golding****
115. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner***
116. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad***
117. Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein****
118. A Room With a View - E.M. Forster****
119. Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad***
120. Citizen of the Galaxy - Robert Heinlein****
121. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesley****
122. Tunnel in the Sky - Robert Heinlein****
123. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum****
124. Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card****
125. Xenocide - Orson Scott Card****
126. Songmaster - Orson Scott Card**
127. Saints - Orson Scott Card****
128. Red Prophet - Orson Scott Card****
129. Cruel Shoes - Steve Martin***
130. The Great Brain - John Dennis Fitzgerald****
131. Me and My Little Brain - John Dennis Fitzgerald****
132. Jesus the Christ - James Talmage*****
133. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas****
134. Dracula - Bram Stoker****
135. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown***
136. Angels and Demons - Dan Brown****
137. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - Gregory Maguire****
138. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - Roald Dahl**
139. How the Irish Saved Civilization - Thomas Cahill***
140. Fundamentals of Family Medicine - Robert B. Taylor***
141. Medical Physiology - Rodney A Rhoades and George A Tanner**
142. D'aulaires Book of Greek Myths - Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aurlaire****
143. El Libro De Mormon - Un Relato Escrito por la Mano de Mormon. Traducido de las Planchas por Jose Smith, Hijo*****
144. Generation X - Douglas Coupland***
145. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe****
146. Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice****
147. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde****
148. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen****
149. History of the English-Speaking Peoples - Winston Churchhill****
150. A Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking - Barbara Bates**
151. Complete History of the World - Richard Overy****
152. The American Religion - Harold Bloom***
153. The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck****
154. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote****
155. A Rumor of War - Philip Caputo****
156. Religion in the New World - Richard E. Wentz***
157. The Moon Is Down - John Steinbeck****
158. The Pearl - John Steinbeck****
159. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck****
160. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - John le Carré****
161. The Education of Little Tree - Forrest Carter*****
162. The Chosen - Chaim Potok****
163. The Work and the Glory, Pilar of Fire - Gerald N. Lund*****
164. The Work and the Glory, Like a Fire if Burning - Gerald N. Lund*****
165. The Work and the Glory, Truth will Prevail - Gerald N. Lund*****
166. The Work and the Glory, Thy Gold Refine - Gerald N. Lund*****
167. The Work and the Glory, A Season of Joy - Gerald N. Lund*****
168. Stepen King On Writing, A memoir of the Craft - Stephen King***
169. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris****
170. Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited, The Evidence for Ancient Origins - Edited by Noel B. Reynolds. **** (March '08)
171. The Millionaire Next Door - Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko****
172. Naked Ape : A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal - Desmond Morris****
173. Johnny Tremain - Esther Forbes****
174. Mormons and Masons, Setting the Record Straight - Gilbert W. Scharffs* (March '08)
175. San Manuel Bueno, mártir - Miguel de Unamuno****
176. Critiquing the Critics of Joseph Smith - Hartt Wixom**** (March '08)
177. Mormon Country - Wallace Stegner****
178. The House of God - Samuel Shem**
179. The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler****(March '08)
180. The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel**** (April '08)
181. Religions of the World - A Latter-day Saint View - Spencer J. Palmer, Rober R. Keller, Dong Sull Choi, James A. Toronto****
182. Julius Caesar - William Shakespear****
183. Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare****
184. Hamlet - William Shakespeare****
185. Macbeth - William Shakespeare****
186. One Minute Answers to Anti-Mormon Questions - Stephen W. Gibson*** (May '08)
187. Jay's Journal - Beatrice Sparks**
188. Blueprints in Obstetrics and Gynecology - Tamara L. Callahan, Aaron B Caughey and Linda J Heffner***
189. Clinical Microbiology Made Rediculously Simple - Mark Galdwin and Bill Trattler****
190. Prescription for the Boards USMLE Step 2 - Radhika Breaden, Charyl Denenberg, Kate Feibusch, Stephen Gomperts***
191. The Instant Exam Review for the USMLE Step 3 - Joel s. Goldberg**
192. Appleton & Lang's Review of Pediatrics - Martin I. Lorin**
193. Pathology - Arthur S. Schneider and Philip A Szanto**
194. Internal Medicine - Edward D. Frohlich**
195. The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers - J.R.R. Tolkien****
196. The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien****
198. The Mountain Meadows Massacre - Juanita Brooks****
198. A Thief of Time - Tony Hillerman****
199. Naked Pictures of Famous People - Jon Stewart**
200. La Casa de Bernarda Alba - Federico García Lorca***
201. Why Things Are and Why Things Aren't - Joel Achenbach****
202. Why Things Are - Joel Achenbach****
203. Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? And Other Imponderables - David Feldman****
204. First Aid for the Family Medicine Boards - Tao Le, Christine Dehlendorf, Michael Mendoza, and Cynthria Ohata*** (May '08)
205. Why Don't Cat's Like to Swim - David Feldman****
206. The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer**** (June '08)
207. Encounters with the Archdruid - John McPhee***
208. Desert Solitaire - Edward Abby***
209. Family Medicine Board Review - Robert L. Bratton, MD*** (July '08)
210. View of the Hebrews - Ethan Smith** (August '08)
211. A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle****
212. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens****
213. The Book of Mormon and DNA Resarch - Edited by Daniel C. Petersen**** (Sept '08)
214. The Great Divorce - C.S. Lewis**** (Sept '08)
215. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson**** (Sept '08)
216. The Great Angel - A Study of Israel's Second God - Margaret Barker**** (Sept '08)
217. The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne**** (Sept,08)
218. The Scarlett Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne**** (Oct, '08)
219. Twilight - Stephanie Meyer** (Oct, '08)
220. Sophie's Choice - William Styron*** (Nov, '08)
221. Revolt of 2100 - Robert Heinlein****
222. Farnham's Freehold - Robert Heinlein****
223. Between Planets - Robert Heinlein****
224. The Giver - Lois Lowry****(Nov, '08)
225. History of Joseph Smith by His Mother Lucy Mack Smith****
226. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein** (Nov, '08)
227. Joseph Smith - Rough Stone Rolling - Richard Lyman Bushman**** (Dec, '08)
228. The Work and the Glory - Praise to the Man - Gerald N. Lund**** (Dec, '08)
229. Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass - The Art of Telling Tales about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young - Hugh Nibley****(Dec, '08)
230. The Happy Prince and Other Tales - Oscar Wilde***(Dec, '08)
231. The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J.K. Rowling****(Dec, '08)
232. A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes*** (Dec, '08)
233. Celsus on the True Doctrine - A Discourse Against the Christians - translated by R. Joseph Hoffmann**** (Jan, '09)
Tales of Beedle the Bard was OK. Obviously not as good as Harry Potter. At least the money I spent on it went to a good cause.
I also read The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde this last week. I got it to read to my daughter, but I don't think she would like it much. I wonder if the little boys Oscar Wilde used to hang out with liked these stories.
==========================================================
Books I Can Remember that I’ve Read (In no particular order)
I'm only counting text books if I read the entire thing.
I'm counting books that I read more than half of but stopped because I couldn't stomach it (Lolita) or hated (Moby Dick). I'm not counting books that are mostly pictures (The Cat in the Hat) although they are still some of my favorite books. I'm counting books twice if I read them in English and in Spanish. Also, I have not counted all the Bathroom Readers, mostly because I'm ashamed of how much time I spend on the pot. I've read almost all of them though.
***** - I really liked
**** - I liked
*** - OK
** - I didn’t like
* - It sucked.
1. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald****
2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce**
3. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen****
4. Walden - Henry David Thoreau**
5. Claudius the God - Robert Graves*****
6. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez***
7. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess****
8. As I Lay Dying -William Faulkner***
9. Animal Farm - George Orwell****
10. The Book of Mormon - Written by the Hand of Mormon. Translated by Joseph Smith Jr.*****
11. The Holy Bible - King James Version*****
12. The Doctrine and Covenants - Joseph Smith, others****
13. The Pearl of Great Price - Moses, Abraham, Joseph Smith****
14. Travels with Charley (In Search of America) - John Steinbeck****
15. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Bad Beginning - Lemony Snicket***
16. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Reptile Room - Lemony Snicket***
17. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Wide Window - Lemony Snicket***
18. Les Liaisons Dagereuses - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos****
19. Tom Sawyer Abroad - Samuel Clemens***
20. The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey****
21. The Hero With a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell***
22. The Faith of a Scientist - Henry Eyring****
23. The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell****
24. What are People For - Wendell Berry***
25. The Miracle of Forgiveness - Spencer W. Kimball****
26. The Greatest Salesman in the World - Og Mandino***
27. 1984 - George Orwell****
28. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Samuel Clemens*****
29. On the Road - Jack Keroac****
30. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens****
31. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller****
32. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra****
33. Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe***
34. Deliverance - James Dickey****
35. The Best of Edward Abbey***
36. Rosaura a las Diez - Marco Denevi****
37. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow****
38. Tom Sawyer Detective - Samuel Clemens***
39. The Iliad -Homer****
40. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkein*****
41. Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky***
42. The Double - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky***
43. The Trial -Franz Kafka***
44. Moby Dick - Herman Melville**
45. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison***
46. Principles of Surgery Companion Handbook - Schartz, Shires, Spencer*
47. Standing for Something - Gordon B. Hinckley***
48. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis*****
49. The Sound and the Fury -William Faulkner**
50. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck****
51. Slaughter House-Five - Kurt Vonnegut****
52. Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald****
53. Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry**
54. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer -Samuel Clemens*****
55. Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler*****
56. The Call of the Wild - Jack London****
57. Kim - Rudyard Kipling***
58. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens****
59. Howards End - E.M. Forster****
60. Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence***
61. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad***
62. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -Robert M. Pirsig****
63. The Stranger - Albus Camus****
64. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf***
65. The Lonely Men - Louis L’Amour***
66. Sacred Clowns - Tony Hillerman***
67. The Covenant - James A. Michener****
68. Prentice Alvin - Orson Scott Card****
69. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy -Douglas Adams****
70. The Quick and the Dead - Louis L’Amour***
71. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*****
72. The Gift of the Jews - Thomas Cahill****
73. The Last Battle - C.S. Lewis****
74. The Christ Commission - Og Mandin****
75. Ender’s Game -Orson Scott Card*****
76. People of Darkness - Tony Hillerman****
77. The Horse and His Boy - C.S. Lewis****
78. The Silver Chair - C.S. Lewis****
79. Memory of Earth - Orson Scott Card***
80. The Odyssey - Homer****
81. The Source - James A. Michener*****
82. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger****
83. The Story of England - Christopher Hibbert****
84. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway****
85. The Changed Man - Orson Scott Card****
86. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl****
87. El Milagro del Perdon -Spencer W. Kimball****
88. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley****
89. A Marvelous Work and a Wonder - LeGrand Richards****
90. A Treasury of Classical Mythology - A.R. Hope Moncrieff****
91. The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien****
92. Pure Drivel - Steve Martin***
93. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens****
94. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens****
95. Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone - J.K. Rowling*****
96. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling*****
97. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban -J.K. Rowling*****
98. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire -J.K. Rowling*****
99. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling*****
100. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling*****
101. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling*****
102. The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis*****
103. The Magician's Nephew - C.S. Lewis*****
104. Out of the Silent Planet - C.S. Lewis****
105. Prince Caspian - C.S. Lewis*****
106. The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader - C.S. Lewis*****
107. Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis****
108. That Hideous Strength - C.S. Lewis****
109. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway***
110. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov**
111. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley****
112. I Claudius - Robert Graves*****
113. Anthem - Ann Rand***
114. Lord of the Flies - William Golding****
115. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner***
116. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad***
117. Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein****
118. A Room With a View - E.M. Forster****
119. Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad***
120. Citizen of the Galaxy - Robert Heinlein****
121. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesley****
122. Tunnel in the Sky - Robert Heinlein****
123. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum****
124. Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card****
125. Xenocide - Orson Scott Card****
126. Songmaster - Orson Scott Card**
127. Saints - Orson Scott Card****
128. Red Prophet - Orson Scott Card****
129. Cruel Shoes - Steve Martin***
130. The Great Brain - John Dennis Fitzgerald****
131. Me and My Little Brain - John Dennis Fitzgerald****
132. Jesus the Christ - James Talmage*****
133. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas****
134. Dracula - Bram Stoker****
135. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown***
136. Angels and Demons - Dan Brown****
137. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - Gregory Maguire****
138. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - Roald Dahl**
139. How the Irish Saved Civilization - Thomas Cahill***
140. Fundamentals of Family Medicine - Robert B. Taylor***
141. Medical Physiology - Rodney A Rhoades and George A Tanner**
142. D'aulaires Book of Greek Myths - Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aurlaire****
143. El Libro De Mormon - Un Relato Escrito por la Mano de Mormon. Traducido de las Planchas por Jose Smith, Hijo*****
144. Generation X - Douglas Coupland***
145. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe****
146. Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice****
147. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde****
148. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen****
149. History of the English-Speaking Peoples - Winston Churchhill****
150. A Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking - Barbara Bates**
151. Complete History of the World - Richard Overy****
152. The American Religion - Harold Bloom***
153. The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck****
154. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote****
155. A Rumor of War - Philip Caputo****
156. Religion in the New World - Richard E. Wentz***
157. The Moon Is Down - John Steinbeck****
158. The Pearl - John Steinbeck****
159. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck****
160. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - John le Carré****
161. The Education of Little Tree - Forrest Carter*****
162. The Chosen - Chaim Potok****
163. The Work and the Glory, Pilar of Fire - Gerald N. Lund*****
164. The Work and the Glory, Like a Fire if Burning - Gerald N. Lund*****
165. The Work and the Glory, Truth will Prevail - Gerald N. Lund*****
166. The Work and the Glory, Thy Gold Refine - Gerald N. Lund*****
167. The Work and the Glory, A Season of Joy - Gerald N. Lund*****
168. Stepen King On Writing, A memoir of the Craft - Stephen King***
169. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris****
170. Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited, The Evidence for Ancient Origins - Edited by Noel B. Reynolds. **** (March '08)
171. The Millionaire Next Door - Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko****
172. Naked Ape : A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal - Desmond Morris****
173. Johnny Tremain - Esther Forbes****
174. Mormons and Masons, Setting the Record Straight - Gilbert W. Scharffs* (March '08)
175. San Manuel Bueno, mártir - Miguel de Unamuno****
176. Critiquing the Critics of Joseph Smith - Hartt Wixom**** (March '08)
177. Mormon Country - Wallace Stegner****
178. The House of God - Samuel Shem**
179. The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler****(March '08)
180. The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel**** (April '08)
181. Religions of the World - A Latter-day Saint View - Spencer J. Palmer, Rober R. Keller, Dong Sull Choi, James A. Toronto****
182. Julius Caesar - William Shakespear****
183. Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare****
184. Hamlet - William Shakespeare****
185. Macbeth - William Shakespeare****
186. One Minute Answers to Anti-Mormon Questions - Stephen W. Gibson*** (May '08)
187. Jay's Journal - Beatrice Sparks**
188. Blueprints in Obstetrics and Gynecology - Tamara L. Callahan, Aaron B Caughey and Linda J Heffner***
189. Clinical Microbiology Made Rediculously Simple - Mark Galdwin and Bill Trattler****
190. Prescription for the Boards USMLE Step 2 - Radhika Breaden, Charyl Denenberg, Kate Feibusch, Stephen Gomperts***
191. The Instant Exam Review for the USMLE Step 3 - Joel s. Goldberg**
192. Appleton & Lang's Review of Pediatrics - Martin I. Lorin**
193. Pathology - Arthur S. Schneider and Philip A Szanto**
194. Internal Medicine - Edward D. Frohlich**
195. The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers - J.R.R. Tolkien****
196. The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien****
198. The Mountain Meadows Massacre - Juanita Brooks****
198. A Thief of Time - Tony Hillerman****
199. Naked Pictures of Famous People - Jon Stewart**
200. La Casa de Bernarda Alba - Federico García Lorca***
201. Why Things Are and Why Things Aren't - Joel Achenbach****
202. Why Things Are - Joel Achenbach****
203. Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? And Other Imponderables - David Feldman****
204. First Aid for the Family Medicine Boards - Tao Le, Christine Dehlendorf, Michael Mendoza, and Cynthria Ohata*** (May '08)
205. Why Don't Cat's Like to Swim - David Feldman****
206. The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer**** (June '08)
207. Encounters with the Archdruid - John McPhee***
208. Desert Solitaire - Edward Abby***
209. Family Medicine Board Review - Robert L. Bratton, MD*** (July '08)
210. View of the Hebrews - Ethan Smith** (August '08)
211. A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle****
212. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens****
213. The Book of Mormon and DNA Resarch - Edited by Daniel C. Petersen**** (Sept '08)
214. The Great Divorce - C.S. Lewis**** (Sept '08)
215. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson**** (Sept '08)
216. The Great Angel - A Study of Israel's Second God - Margaret Barker**** (Sept '08)
217. The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne**** (Sept,08)
218. The Scarlett Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne**** (Oct, '08)
219. Twilight - Stephanie Meyer** (Oct, '08)
220. Sophie's Choice - William Styron*** (Nov, '08)
221. Revolt of 2100 - Robert Heinlein****
222. Farnham's Freehold - Robert Heinlein****
223. Between Planets - Robert Heinlein****
224. The Giver - Lois Lowry****(Nov, '08)
225. History of Joseph Smith by His Mother Lucy Mack Smith****
226. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein** (Nov, '08)
227. Joseph Smith - Rough Stone Rolling - Richard Lyman Bushman**** (Dec, '08)
228. The Work and the Glory - Praise to the Man - Gerald N. Lund**** (Dec, '08)
229. Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass - The Art of Telling Tales about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young - Hugh Nibley****(Dec, '08)
230. The Happy Prince and Other Tales - Oscar Wilde***(Dec, '08)
231. The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J.K. Rowling****(Dec, '08)
232. A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes*** (Dec, '08)
233. Celsus on the True Doctrine - A Discourse Against the Christians - translated by R. Joseph Hoffmann**** (Jan, '09)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Trying to play an AC/DC song on the ukulele while babysitting
Over on Facebook an old friend from high school wrote on his status update, "I wonder how many kids got real guitars for Christmas," and I said, "my daughter go a ukulele," and he said, "I don't think they're going to make Ukulele Guitar Hero anytime soon," and I said, "You can rock on a ukulele. I even play an AC/DC song. I should record it and post it." He said, "you should totally do that." So here I am, embarrassing myself on the internet because some guy I haven't seen in 20 years dared me to. See how much I've matured since Jr. High. I could have kept practicing until it sounded better, but I'm afraid this is probably as good as it will get.
(you'll have to pause the music on the right to hear this good)
By the way, Whitney did get 2 cookies and it probably spoiled her dinner.
Also, no matter what you think of how I play and sing "You Shook Me All Night Long", I still sound better than Celine Dion's cover. She super sucks.
(you'll have to pause the music on the right to hear this good)
By the way, Whitney did get 2 cookies and it probably spoiled her dinner.
Also, no matter what you think of how I play and sing "You Shook Me All Night Long", I still sound better than Celine Dion's cover. She super sucks.
Monday, December 29, 2008
7 Wonders of the Book of Mormon
I read this article in the Deseret News a few months ago. I'm just saving it here if I need it sometime.
7 Wonders of the Book of Mormon
7 Wonders of the Book of Mormon
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Book of Mormon Lesson 48 - "Come unto Christ"
Rough draft
Book of Mormon Lesson 48
“Come unto Christ”
I. Introduction
A. Since this is the last Book of Mormon lesson and this will be my last gospel doctrine lesson (I’m being released this week) I would like to say how much I have appreciated the opportunity to be your instructor. I have been a Sunday School teacher for almost 4 years, 1 ½ for the teenagers and 2 ½ as gospel doctrine teacher. So I got to go through all the standard works. When they first called me to be the gospel doctrine teacher I felt more nervous and inadequate than with any calling I have every had except when I first went on my mission. After all, we have seminary and institute teacher in our ward and people who are much older and wiser than me, and I was supposed to expound on the scriptures to them.
B. My grandfather died last month. He was 90 years old. He had been a bishop, stake president, a mission president and a patriarch. But the calling he liked to tell his kids and grandkids about was when he was the basketball couch for his ward. When he was called to this calling he literally knew nothing about basketball - he had never played in his life. He went down to the library to read about it and to learn some plays. He did his best and, with the help of some very good players, his ward won the Mesa city championships, the state championship, and got to go to Salt Lake City for the Church championship where they came in second (they must have lost to Lithuania). The guys on his team, who are grandparents themselves now, many of whom attended his funeral, still affectionately called him couch (not bishop or president). He told us this story to remind us that we should never turn down a calling and we should always magnify our calling.
C. I have learned more from teaching gospel doctrine than in any calling I have ever had except being a missionary. Nothing motivates me more to study than the fear of getting up in front of people like this.
D. Today we will be finishing the Book of Mormon. Once again we will see that in the last few chapters of the Book of Mormon Moroni chooses to talk about the basic and important principles of the gospel - faith, hope, charity, baptism.
II. Doing good for the right reasons.
A. Moroni quotes his father in chapter 7.
B. Read Moroni 7:3-4.
1. He is speaking to the “peaceable followers of Christ” who had “sufficient hope by which [to] enter into the rest of the Lord.”
2. What does it mean to be a “peaceable follower of Christ”?
3. What does it mean to have enough hope to “enter into the rest fo the Lord”?
4. Joseph F. Smith said: “The ancient prophets speak of ‘entering into God’s rest’; what does it mean? To my mind, it means entering into the knowledge and love of God, having faith in his purpose and in his plan, to such an extent that we know we are right, and that we are not hunting for something else, we are not disturbed by every wind of doctrine, or by the cunning and craftiness of men who lie in wait to deceive.”
C. Read Moroni 7:5-9
1. Why is the motivation for doing good important? Are there people who do good thing for the wrong reason?
2. President Marion G. Romney said: “About a quarter of a century ago Sister Romney and I moved into a ward in which they were just beginning to build a meetinghouse. The size of the contribution the bishop thought I ought to contribute rather staggered me. I thought it was at least twice as much as he should have asked. However, I had just been called to a rather high Church position, so I said, ‘Well, I will pay it, bishop, but I will have to pay it in installments because I don’t have the money.’ And so I began to pay. And I paid and paid until I was down to about the last three payments, when, as is my habit, I was reading The Book of Mormon, and came to the scripture which said: ‘...if a man...giveth a gift...grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God.’ This shocked me because I was out about a thousand dollars. Well, I went on and paid the three installments I had promised to pay, and then paid several more installments to convince the Lord that I had done it with the right attitude.”
3. How can we purify our motives for doing good?
a. One suggestion is to “give until if feels good.”
III. Judging good from evil.
A. Read Moroni 7:12-15
1. How can we know if something is good or if something is evil?
a. Does ______ invite me to love and serve God? Is_____ inspired of God. Does ____ inviteth and enticeth to do good continually.
2. What are some examples of the world judging “that which is evil to be of God, or that which is good and of God to be of the Devil.”
B. Read Moroni 7:16-17
1. Why is it often hard to distinguish good from evil? One reason is that Satan cannot create anything good or pleasurable by himself. He can only corrupt and pervert what God has created. So what Satan temps us with in some ways has an element of corrupted good. Satan is a great deceiver.
2. In C.S. Lewis’s book The Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape sends advice to his fellow demon Wormwood on how to tempt a certain human subject. He speaks of one of the advantages “the Enemy” (God) has over them. “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.”
C. I would argue that the ability to distinguish good from evil and to recognize when the world is calling evil good and good evil is one of the most important skills (or blessings) we can develop in this life.
D. This is also one of the ways I know the Book of Mormon is of God. I have read it dozens of times now, and it always “enticety [me] to do good, and to love God, and to serve him....and to believe in Christ.”
E. I had an institute teacher in college who told us how one summer he and his brother, both seminary teachers at the time, prepared to teach the Book of Mormon the following year. They decided to read the entire Book of Mormon in about a 2 week period. They got up early every morning, went to the seminary building, and spent half the day just reading the Book of Mormon straight through. One day as they were leaving the building he turned to his brother and said, “You know, I have no desire to do any evil right now.” That is the kind of gift we have in the Book of Mormon - something that takes away our desire to do evil.
IV. Faith, hope and charity.
A. Mormon next explains the importance of having faith, hope and charity and how we cannot have any one of them without having the other two.
B. Read Moroni 7:39-44.
1. In order to have faith in Christ you must have hope that his atonement can save us. In order to have hope in Christ you must also have faith in the atonement. In order to have either you must become “meek and lowly in heart” which is to say, to have charity.
2. Bruce R. McConkie said: “As used in the revelations, hope is the desire of faithful people to gain eternal salvation in the kingdom of God hereafter....Faith and hope are inseparable. Hope enables us to have faith in the first instance then because of faith that hope increases until salvation is gained.”
C. Read Moroni 7:45-47.
1. Compare 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.
2. Mormon is obviously quoting Paul here. Paul wrote this over 300 years before Mormon. How did he have access to it on the other side of the world? Would God deny his holy prophet access to his inspired word anywhere or any time?
3. Charity is perhaps the most important attribute we can develop in this life.
4. How can we obtain charity? Read Moroni 7:48. Pry for it.
V. Baptism of little children.
A. In a letter to his son Moroni we learn that 400 years after Christ the Christians in America were having some of the same confusions that Christians in the old world were having.
1. Read Moroni 8:4-6
2. About what were they having disputations? Infant baptism.
B. Read Moroni 8:7-15
1. Why don’t infants need baptism.
2. With infant baptism we are putting the cart before the horse. For baptism to be meaningful one must first repent. To be able to repent you must first be able to understand right from wrong.
3. Claiming that baptism is necessary for the salvation of infants is claiming that God is not merciful.
4. In some ways infant baptism is just one of the manifestations of the corruption of Christ’s Gospel that says that we are in no way responsible for our actions or our salvation (Calvinism).
5. Brigham Young said: “It gives me exceedingly great joy to understand, that every child that has been taken from this mortality to the spiritual world, from the day that mother Eve bore her first child to this time, is an heir to the celestial Kingdom and glory of God...”
a. What does this mean? How many children have died without reaching the age of accountability? Some have estimated that it is about 50% of all the people who have ever lived. That’s a lot of people who are automatically going to the Celestial Kingdom. Maybe those of us who have survived are the ones who really needed to be tested.
VI. Moroni’s Promise.
A. When we think of Moroni’s promise we usually think only of Moroni 10:4 which says: “And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true” Basically, read and pray and you’ll know if it’s true. But you have to read just before and after this verse to realize that there is more to it than that.
B. Read Moroni 10:3.
1. “Read these things.” We need to read the whole Book of Mormon.
2. “Remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men.” Why is this important. It is important to keep in mind not only what we read in the Book of Mormon but the mercies of God we learn of in the other scriptures, from history, and from our own life.
3. “Ponder it in your hearts.” He is talking not just about the Book of Mormon but of all the mercies of the Lord.
C. Read Moroni 10:4
4. “Ask God....if these things are not true.” Pray.
5. Have a “sincere heart.” What does this mean. Are there those who attempt to study the Book of Mormon academically without a sincere heart.
6. “With real intent.”
7. “Having faith in Christ.”
D. Read Moroni 10:6
8. Know that “whatsoever thing is good is just and true.” Anyone reading the Book of Mormon will have a hard time saying that it teaches people to be evil. It teaches us to do good, so it is “just and true.”
E. Read Moroni 10:7.
9. “Deny not the power of God.”
a. I have told the story of my old seminary teacher who helped me gain my testimony of the Book of Mormon but later apostatized from the church and is now very active in the organization Post-Mormonism. He told me that he has had ex-students come to him and testify to him that if he would just read the Book of Mormon and pray about it he would know it was true again. He tells them, “I’ve already tried that and I still don’t believe it.” But he did know. I know he knew because I remember how he testified to me. What he is doing now is “[denying] the power of God.”
F. Read Moroni 10:8
10. If we agree that the Book of Mormon is good, and therefore just and true, we should recognize it as a gift of God. “Deny not the gifts of God.”
G. Read Moroni 10:18
11. “Remember that every good gift cometh of Christ.” The Book of Mormon is a good gift —> it comes from Christ.
F. Read Moroni 10:27.
12. “Remember these things [the Book of Mormon].” It is not enough just to read it through once. We need to study it enough to remember it.
G. Read Moroni 10:30
13. “Come unto Christ.” It is ultimately when we have come unto Christ and have partaken of his salvation that we will be blessed with a testimony of the Book of Mormon. When one sees how the Book of Mormon testifies of the atonement of Jesus Christ and helps one gain a testimony of Jesus Christ they will know it is true.
VII. Conclusion
A. Joseph Fielding Smith said: “No member of this Church can stand approved in the presence of God who has not seriously and carefully read the Book of Mormon.”
B. Ezra Taft Benson said: “The Book of Mormon is studied in our Sunday School and seminary classes every fourth year. This four-year pattern, however, must not be followed by Church member in their personal and family study. We need to read daily from the pages of the book that will get a man ‘nearer to God by abiding by its percepts, than by any other book’.
C. He also said: “Every Latter-day Saint should make the study of this book a lifetime pursuit.”
Book of Mormon Lesson 48
“Come unto Christ”
I. Introduction
A. Since this is the last Book of Mormon lesson and this will be my last gospel doctrine lesson (I’m being released this week) I would like to say how much I have appreciated the opportunity to be your instructor. I have been a Sunday School teacher for almost 4 years, 1 ½ for the teenagers and 2 ½ as gospel doctrine teacher. So I got to go through all the standard works. When they first called me to be the gospel doctrine teacher I felt more nervous and inadequate than with any calling I have every had except when I first went on my mission. After all, we have seminary and institute teacher in our ward and people who are much older and wiser than me, and I was supposed to expound on the scriptures to them.
B. My grandfather died last month. He was 90 years old. He had been a bishop, stake president, a mission president and a patriarch. But the calling he liked to tell his kids and grandkids about was when he was the basketball couch for his ward. When he was called to this calling he literally knew nothing about basketball - he had never played in his life. He went down to the library to read about it and to learn some plays. He did his best and, with the help of some very good players, his ward won the Mesa city championships, the state championship, and got to go to Salt Lake City for the Church championship where they came in second (they must have lost to Lithuania). The guys on his team, who are grandparents themselves now, many of whom attended his funeral, still affectionately called him couch (not bishop or president). He told us this story to remind us that we should never turn down a calling and we should always magnify our calling.
C. I have learned more from teaching gospel doctrine than in any calling I have ever had except being a missionary. Nothing motivates me more to study than the fear of getting up in front of people like this.
D. Today we will be finishing the Book of Mormon. Once again we will see that in the last few chapters of the Book of Mormon Moroni chooses to talk about the basic and important principles of the gospel - faith, hope, charity, baptism.
II. Doing good for the right reasons.
A. Moroni quotes his father in chapter 7.
B. Read Moroni 7:3-4.
1. He is speaking to the “peaceable followers of Christ” who had “sufficient hope by which [to] enter into the rest of the Lord.”
2. What does it mean to be a “peaceable follower of Christ”?
3. What does it mean to have enough hope to “enter into the rest fo the Lord”?
4. Joseph F. Smith said: “The ancient prophets speak of ‘entering into God’s rest’; what does it mean? To my mind, it means entering into the knowledge and love of God, having faith in his purpose and in his plan, to such an extent that we know we are right, and that we are not hunting for something else, we are not disturbed by every wind of doctrine, or by the cunning and craftiness of men who lie in wait to deceive.”
C. Read Moroni 7:5-9
1. Why is the motivation for doing good important? Are there people who do good thing for the wrong reason?
2. President Marion G. Romney said: “About a quarter of a century ago Sister Romney and I moved into a ward in which they were just beginning to build a meetinghouse. The size of the contribution the bishop thought I ought to contribute rather staggered me. I thought it was at least twice as much as he should have asked. However, I had just been called to a rather high Church position, so I said, ‘Well, I will pay it, bishop, but I will have to pay it in installments because I don’t have the money.’ And so I began to pay. And I paid and paid until I was down to about the last three payments, when, as is my habit, I was reading The Book of Mormon, and came to the scripture which said: ‘...if a man...giveth a gift...grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God.’ This shocked me because I was out about a thousand dollars. Well, I went on and paid the three installments I had promised to pay, and then paid several more installments to convince the Lord that I had done it with the right attitude.”
3. How can we purify our motives for doing good?
a. One suggestion is to “give until if feels good.”
III. Judging good from evil.
A. Read Moroni 7:12-15
1. How can we know if something is good or if something is evil?
a. Does ______ invite me to love and serve God? Is_____ inspired of God. Does ____ inviteth and enticeth to do good continually.
2. What are some examples of the world judging “that which is evil to be of God, or that which is good and of God to be of the Devil.”
B. Read Moroni 7:16-17
1. Why is it often hard to distinguish good from evil? One reason is that Satan cannot create anything good or pleasurable by himself. He can only corrupt and pervert what God has created. So what Satan temps us with in some ways has an element of corrupted good. Satan is a great deceiver.
2. In C.S. Lewis’s book The Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape sends advice to his fellow demon Wormwood on how to tempt a certain human subject. He speaks of one of the advantages “the Enemy” (God) has over them. “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.”
C. I would argue that the ability to distinguish good from evil and to recognize when the world is calling evil good and good evil is one of the most important skills (or blessings) we can develop in this life.
D. This is also one of the ways I know the Book of Mormon is of God. I have read it dozens of times now, and it always “enticety [me] to do good, and to love God, and to serve him....and to believe in Christ.”
E. I had an institute teacher in college who told us how one summer he and his brother, both seminary teachers at the time, prepared to teach the Book of Mormon the following year. They decided to read the entire Book of Mormon in about a 2 week period. They got up early every morning, went to the seminary building, and spent half the day just reading the Book of Mormon straight through. One day as they were leaving the building he turned to his brother and said, “You know, I have no desire to do any evil right now.” That is the kind of gift we have in the Book of Mormon - something that takes away our desire to do evil.
IV. Faith, hope and charity.
A. Mormon next explains the importance of having faith, hope and charity and how we cannot have any one of them without having the other two.
B. Read Moroni 7:39-44.
1. In order to have faith in Christ you must have hope that his atonement can save us. In order to have hope in Christ you must also have faith in the atonement. In order to have either you must become “meek and lowly in heart” which is to say, to have charity.
2. Bruce R. McConkie said: “As used in the revelations, hope is the desire of faithful people to gain eternal salvation in the kingdom of God hereafter....Faith and hope are inseparable. Hope enables us to have faith in the first instance then because of faith that hope increases until salvation is gained.”
C. Read Moroni 7:45-47.
1. Compare 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.
2. Mormon is obviously quoting Paul here. Paul wrote this over 300 years before Mormon. How did he have access to it on the other side of the world? Would God deny his holy prophet access to his inspired word anywhere or any time?
3. Charity is perhaps the most important attribute we can develop in this life.
4. How can we obtain charity? Read Moroni 7:48. Pry for it.
V. Baptism of little children.
A. In a letter to his son Moroni we learn that 400 years after Christ the Christians in America were having some of the same confusions that Christians in the old world were having.
1. Read Moroni 8:4-6
2. About what were they having disputations? Infant baptism.
B. Read Moroni 8:7-15
1. Why don’t infants need baptism.
2. With infant baptism we are putting the cart before the horse. For baptism to be meaningful one must first repent. To be able to repent you must first be able to understand right from wrong.
3. Claiming that baptism is necessary for the salvation of infants is claiming that God is not merciful.
4. In some ways infant baptism is just one of the manifestations of the corruption of Christ’s Gospel that says that we are in no way responsible for our actions or our salvation (Calvinism).
5. Brigham Young said: “It gives me exceedingly great joy to understand, that every child that has been taken from this mortality to the spiritual world, from the day that mother Eve bore her first child to this time, is an heir to the celestial Kingdom and glory of God...”
a. What does this mean? How many children have died without reaching the age of accountability? Some have estimated that it is about 50% of all the people who have ever lived. That’s a lot of people who are automatically going to the Celestial Kingdom. Maybe those of us who have survived are the ones who really needed to be tested.
VI. Moroni’s Promise.
A. When we think of Moroni’s promise we usually think only of Moroni 10:4 which says: “And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true” Basically, read and pray and you’ll know if it’s true. But you have to read just before and after this verse to realize that there is more to it than that.
B. Read Moroni 10:3.
1. “Read these things.” We need to read the whole Book of Mormon.
2. “Remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men.” Why is this important. It is important to keep in mind not only what we read in the Book of Mormon but the mercies of God we learn of in the other scriptures, from history, and from our own life.
3. “Ponder it in your hearts.” He is talking not just about the Book of Mormon but of all the mercies of the Lord.
C. Read Moroni 10:4
4. “Ask God....if these things are not true.” Pray.
5. Have a “sincere heart.” What does this mean. Are there those who attempt to study the Book of Mormon academically without a sincere heart.
6. “With real intent.”
7. “Having faith in Christ.”
D. Read Moroni 10:6
8. Know that “whatsoever thing is good is just and true.” Anyone reading the Book of Mormon will have a hard time saying that it teaches people to be evil. It teaches us to do good, so it is “just and true.”
E. Read Moroni 10:7.
9. “Deny not the power of God.”
a. I have told the story of my old seminary teacher who helped me gain my testimony of the Book of Mormon but later apostatized from the church and is now very active in the organization Post-Mormonism. He told me that he has had ex-students come to him and testify to him that if he would just read the Book of Mormon and pray about it he would know it was true again. He tells them, “I’ve already tried that and I still don’t believe it.” But he did know. I know he knew because I remember how he testified to me. What he is doing now is “[denying] the power of God.”
F. Read Moroni 10:8
10. If we agree that the Book of Mormon is good, and therefore just and true, we should recognize it as a gift of God. “Deny not the gifts of God.”
G. Read Moroni 10:18
11. “Remember that every good gift cometh of Christ.” The Book of Mormon is a good gift —> it comes from Christ.
F. Read Moroni 10:27.
12. “Remember these things [the Book of Mormon].” It is not enough just to read it through once. We need to study it enough to remember it.
G. Read Moroni 10:30
13. “Come unto Christ.” It is ultimately when we have come unto Christ and have partaken of his salvation that we will be blessed with a testimony of the Book of Mormon. When one sees how the Book of Mormon testifies of the atonement of Jesus Christ and helps one gain a testimony of Jesus Christ they will know it is true.
VII. Conclusion
A. Joseph Fielding Smith said: “No member of this Church can stand approved in the presence of God who has not seriously and carefully read the Book of Mormon.”
B. Ezra Taft Benson said: “The Book of Mormon is studied in our Sunday School and seminary classes every fourth year. This four-year pattern, however, must not be followed by Church member in their personal and family study. We need to read daily from the pages of the book that will get a man ‘nearer to God by abiding by its percepts, than by any other book’.
C. He also said: “Every Latter-day Saint should make the study of this book a lifetime pursuit.”
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