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In which I pose a question to any readers that I might have

In which I pose a question to any readers that I might have

Last updated on: March 23, 2026 at 6:27 pm by Dan Peterson

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In which I pose a question to any readers that I might have 2026-03-23T18:27:49-06:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

It’s a very large and very attractive volume.

I’m pleased to report that a copy of Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Matthew L. Bowen, and John S. Thompson, eds., In God’s Image and Likeness 3: The Family of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar (Orem: Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2026), was delivered to my house on Saturday. The book is both very big and very beautiful.

Amusingly, my Malevolent Stalker, who will soon enter into his second quarter of a century of anonymously denigrating and attacking me and all my works, occasionally likes to dismiss the Interpreter Foundation as nothing more than my personal vanity blog. And he’s completely justified in doing so, provided that one defines a blog as an organization that, among other things, publishes peer-reviewed articles every week, produces large and serious books, sponsors massive scholarly projects, convenes conferences, and creates films and provided that one defines personal as involving scores and scores and scores of people.

Incidentally, Episode 9 (“A Place of Revelation”) of the Interpreter Foundation’s Becoming Brigham miniseries is now up and available for viewing online (“Did Brigham Young have the Gift of Tongues when he first met Joseph Smith?”), as are all eight of the earlier installments: Becoming Brigham, All Episodes.

The Cathedral of Turin, in Italy, where the Shroud is kept (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

I received a note this morning from my Latter-day Saint geneticist friend Dr. Ugo Perego. Some of you will find it of interest:

I had the privilege to take part in a study involving biological samples collected from the Turin Shroud. I find this unique project particularly fascinating on so many levels as it combines my interests in biblical studies, genetics, and microbiology. The preprint of this article is now accessible at the following link:

https://www.biorxiv.org/…/2026.03.19.712852v1.full.pdf

For those of you that are unfamiliar with this important relic in Christian tradition, here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

“The Shroud of Turin is a 14.3-foot by 3.7-foot linen cloth housed in Turin, Italy’s Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, believed by millions to be the burial shroud of Jesus. It displays a faint, negative image of a crucified man with injuries matching biblical accounts (scourging, thorns, spear wound).”

The official 2025 inaugural portrait of President Donald J. Trump

Within minutes of the event on Friday last, President Donald J. Trump posted the following comment on his social media page:

Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!

Let me make my own position clear, which has nothing to do with politics or policy positions: I would object to such a comment whether it had come from Barack Obama, Joe Biden, George W. Bush, or Ronald Reagan. And I would have found it rather graceless even had it followed the execution of a convicted murderer. In Robert Mueller’s case, though, it celebrated the passing of an Ivy League graduate who volunteered to serve as a Marine in Vietnam, where he won the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. A life-long Republican, Mr. Mueller was the longest-serving director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since J. Edgar Hoover, appointed to that and other high federal positions by both Republican and Democratic presidents. Under his leadership, following the 9-11 attacks, the FBI was rebuilt to focus on national security, intelligence-driven operations, and the prevention of terror attacks, rather than just on investigating crimes.

I’m curious to know whether there’s anybody out there among my readers who is willing to defend Mr. Trump’s response to the death of Robert Mueller and, if so, how he or she goes about doing it.

A public domain political map of Iran, also showing the Persian Gulf (and Doha), from the Nations Online Project.

Here, by the way, is an interesting take on the American and Israeli war against Iran. It was recently published in a place where you might not have expected to see it: Dr. Muhanad Seloom, in AlJazeera: “The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why: Every aspect of Iran’s ability to project regional power is being successfully degraded.” Professor Seloom’s article was published about a week ago, but I can’t see any plausible case being made that Iran’s position has become stronger since it appeared.

An empty tomb in Jerusalem dating to the Herodian period. The photograph was taken by my friend and former BYU colleague Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick, and I use it here with his kind permission. Neither of us believes either the Garden Tomb or the Holy Sepulcher to be the right place, so this will have to represent the as-yet unknown site of Christ’s burial and resurrection.

We norteamericanos, at least, typically spend at least a month before the actual holiday hearing and singing Christmas carols. But Easter — arguably the equal in importance to Christmas if not much more important — often gets just one or two hymns on Easter Sunday itself. I want to try to nudge us toward a little longer Christmas season. There’s plenty of great Christmas music to supply our needs.

For today, I choose a familiar Easter hymn performed by a familiar choral ensemble: He Is Risen! | The Tabernacle Choir

He is risen! He is risen!

Tell it out with joyful voice.

He has burst his three days’ prison;

Let the whole wide earth rejoice.

Death is conquered; man is free.

Christ has won the victory.
Come with high and holy hymning;

Chant our Lord’s triumphant lay.

Not one darksome cloud is dimming

Yonder glorious morning ray,

Breaking o’er the purple east,

Symbol of our Easter feast.
He is risen! He is risen!

He hath opened heaven’s gate.

We are free from sin’s dark prison,

Risen to a holier state.

And a brighter Easter beam

On our longing eyes shall stream.

You might not have guessed it from her name, but Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895) was a woman. (Her friends and family apparently knew her as “Fanny.”) She was born in Dublin and died in Derry (or Londonderry), both in Ireland. The chances are pretty good that you’re familiar with other hymns that she wrote alongside He is Risen! such as All Things Bright and Beautiful, There is a green hill far away, and the Christmas carol Once in Royal David’s City.

Her lyrics for He is Risen! were set to music that had been written much earlier by Joachim Neander (1650-1680), a theologian and pastor who is considered the first significant composer of hymns in the German Reformed (i.e., Calvinist) Church, (With He is Risen! his most famous hymn still today is Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehre, or Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation)

While he was living in Düsseldorf, Neander liked to go for inspiration to the nearby valley of the Düssel River. (My wife and I have driven through it ourselves, and it really is pretty.). He would sometimes hold gatherings and services in the valley and give sermons there. After he died, it seems, the valley was named for him: Neander Valley or, in German, Neanderthal — which, in more modern German spelling, is Neandertal. The hominid remains that were later discovered in that valley were named after the place in which they were found: Neanderthal.

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