Our hosts continue their discussion with Matt Grow, managing director of the Church History Department. Was Brigham a man of violence? He did use inflammatory rhetoric at times. But interestingly the actual evidence points toward his being a man of peace. And what do we know about whether or not Brigham Young was a racist?

The post Becoming Brigham Episode 5 first appeared on The Interpreter Foundation.

In this episode of Conversations with Interpreter, Thora and Avram speak with John Thompson about his paper from the 2025 Abraham and His Family Conference held at BYU in May 2025. Thompson, an Egyptologist who is a retired teacher for Seminaries and Institutes and a content creator for Scripture Central, discusses the idea that the life of Abraham as described in both Genesis and in the book of Abraham shows a progression in hiscovenant relationship with God. Thompson argues that this relates to Abraham’s almost being sacrificed and then being commanded to sacrifice his own son. Although the scriptures talk about this in terms of the relationship between sons and fathers, the pattern presenting in scripture is part of the experience of everyone on the covenant path.

The post Conversations with Interpreter: Episode 4 first appeared on The Interpreter Foundation.

Abstract: For more than a century, Alma 29 has been read as a direct quotation from the prophet Alma. Yet, unlike every other extended quotation in Mormon’s record, this passage lacks attribution, framing, or transition. This anomaly has gone largely unnoticed because of a chapter break, added in 1879, that masks the continuity of Mormon’s voice from Alma 28 into chapter 29. This paper challenges the traditional attribution and argues that Alma 29 is more likely Mormon’s editorial reflection than Alma’s psalm. While the study focuses on Alma 1–29, the editorial patterns it identifies—Mormon’s consistent use of speaker attribution, narrative framing, and formal introductions to quoted speech—hold true across his entire abridgment. Alma 29, if understood as Alma’s psalm, would stand out as the sole exception, with no introduction to mark a change in speaker. Close attention to verb tense usage, narrative posture, and thematic continuity with Alma 28, together with the prophetic vocabulary Mormon uses elsewhere, suggests that these words reflect Mormon’s own meditation. Attributing Alma 29 to Mormon reframes the chapter as the theological culmination of his editorial design. Mormon situates his record within a prophetic chain stretching from Joseph in Egypt, through Nephi, to his own day. His repeated use of “my brethren” reflects covenant kinship rather than contemporaneity, and his testimony of a “holy calling” reveals a prophet who, even in an age of societal collapse, experienced his own quiet triumph in saving souls.

The post Alma or Mormon? The Voice of Alma 29 first appeared on The Interpreter Foundation.