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Finding an Early Christian Woman Who Was Lost Centuries Ago

Finding an Early Christian Woman Who Was Lost Centuries Ago

Last updated on: November 9, 2025 at 6:18 pm by Dan Peterson

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Finding an Early Christian Woman Who Was Lost Centuries Ago 2025-11-09T18:18:11-07:00 Dan Peterson

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“The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth,” by Jennie A. Brownscombe (1914); Wikimedia Commons public domain image. Although it was Christians who first celebrated a Thanksgiving festival in America, there is nothing in the concept of Thanksgiving that restricts it to Christians.

The American Thanksgiving holiday is approaching, and it’s appropriate, I believe, to be thinking about it before all the cooking and family gatherings and eating get underway, and before any nasty political arguments break out at the holiday table. Here’s an article that might be helpful in that regard: “‘Thanksgiving, For What?’ For Everything” And here, always worth reading and pondering, is Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving. It was issued from the White House on 3 October 1863, in the midst of the terrible American Civil War — a time in which our country was (trust me on this) even more divided than we currently are. Unusually, since Abraham Lincoln was himself a wonderfully eloquent writer, the text of the proclamation was actually drafted by Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Henry Seward.

This is most definitely NOT a portrait of Lincoln Blumell’s “Eclecte the Lady.” Wrong time and wrong place. But not so VERY far away, and she was Greco-Roman, as “Eclecte” was. Anyway, I’ve always loved the “mummy portraits” from the Egyptian Fayyum. They humanize the ancient residents of the area, who look like people that you might meet today. (One of them, of which I’ve never found a photo since, could easily have been an image of my wife when we were first married.) This girl’s image was created during the Roman period, between about 120 and 150 AD. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

This is a very interesting story, from the Deseret News: “‘Stunning find’: Meet the missing woman in the Bible rediscovered by a BYU researcher: An error in Greek manuscripts erased the name of the only woman to receive a New Testament letter” The professor in question is Lincoln Blumell.

A portion of the Provo, Utah, campus of Brigham Young University by night
(Image from the BYU website)

Of course, I’ve spent much of my life at and around Brigham Young University, so that may account for it — but I really enjoyed this videotaped conversation: “President Oaks and President Holland Discuss 150 Years of Brigham Young University: BYU furthers “the ideals, the teachings and the values of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” the prophet says”

Besides which, the discussion offers a good way to get to know the new president of the Church and the new president of the Twelve just a bit better. And, while we’re at it, here’s some background about the new second counselor in the First Presidency that you might appreciate: “What President Christofferson learned as a young law clerk investigating Watergate: The future apostle had an up-close view of the national scandal as a clerk for Judge Sirica”

Adolf Hitler with Hermann Göring (front left), in Nuremberg in 1928. They are surrounded by members of the Nazi Party’s “Sturmabteilung” (SA), the so-called “stormtroopers” or “brownshirts,” whose principal task was to rough up and intimidate opponents and to provide security at Party rallies. Mr. Hitler would be elected chancellor of Germany in the elections of 1933.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

On Friday night, my wife being indisposed, one of my sons and I attending a showing of the new film Nuremberg. Like Truth and Treason, I recommend it to you — although you won’t exactly leave the theater humming a show tune and feeling an overwhelming urge to dance. And that’s not only because, at one point, the movie shares documentary footage from several of the Nazi concentration camps (including an interview, which I think was probably authentic, with an American prisoner at Mauthausen, the camp in Austria that my father’s unit liberated). Nuremberg stars Russell Crowe (or, anyway, a very rough but much larger facsimile of Russell Crowe) as Hermann Göring, the former Reichsmarschall and second-in-command of the Hitler regime, as well as Rami Malek (a somewhat odd casting choice, in my judgment) and several other familiar faces, and it is set during the postwar trial of surviving Nazi leaders that took place in Nürnberg (Nuremberg), formerly the location of their grandiose former Party rallies.

I would be interested in the opinions of others who see the film. At the end, I thought that it seemed to be implicitly addressing certain elements of current events, including concerns about the growth of shameless public anti-Semitism and the apparent rise (in the view of many) of demagogic populist authoritarianism. I wondered whether this was deliberate or whether it was merely my own imagination. Please don’t be put off by that, though. It’s a good film. But it’s a serious one.

Last night, my wife still being in recovery from surgery, I drove up with three others who had been invited to a beautiful private place in the mountains above the Heber Valley. There, after some excellent food had been provided, we were treated to the screening of a new film short (ten minutes long in the version that was presented to us) about the Cane Creek Massacre (also sometimes called “Tennessee’s Mormon Massacre”) of 10 August 1884, which involved an attack on a Latter-day Saint worship service during which five people lost their lives. It is a curious fact that final work on the film was underway on 28 September 2025, when the recent lethal assault on a Latter-day Saint worship service in Grand Blanc, Michigan, went down.

The Cebu City Philippines Temple. (LDS.org)

Now, though, it’s time to move from the sunny uplands just above in order to mention something negative. It has been drawn from the always depressing Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: Surely you would think that an earthquake and then, not too long thereafter, a typhoon should have been enough. Right? But oh no: Now meddlesome theists somehow feel obligated to show up and make a bad situation still worse! “Church responds to ‘urgent need’ in the Philippines after Typhoon Kalmaegi: Over 7,300 people have taken shelter in Church meetinghouses and leaders have activated emergency response plans”

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