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How did early Latter-day Saints read the Book of Mormon? And how did that book, which the Prophet Joseph Smith called 'the most correct of any book on earth' and 'the keystone of our religion,' help Latter-day Saints make sense of their lives? In this episode of the Maxwell Institute Podcast, Dr. Janiece Johnson, a Willes Center Research Fellow at the Institute, shares from her research into early Latter-day Saint readings of the Book of Mormon.

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Joseph Smith left a lot of documents behind when he died in 1844, from the mundane to the intriguing. Some of the more puzzling documents deal with a book of scripture in the Latter-day Saint canon called the Book of Abraham. Said to be translated from ancient papyrus, the scripture broadens the story of the Hebrew Bible's figure of Abraham.

As Latter-day Saints focus this year on the New Testament we'll bring you insights to ponder from past episodes of the Maxwell Institute Podcast. This MIPodcast Moment is from Julie Smith, from her interview about the New Testament gospels. Listen or read the transcript here. BLAIR HODGES: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John offer related but distinctive pictures of Jesus. Sometimes we tend to lump them all together, overlooking their unique approaches. In your academic and devotional studies of the New Testament have you ever noticed something new that seemed to contradict something you thought you had to believe as a Latter-day Saint? Julie M. SmithJULIE M. SMITH: I’ll give you an example that’s fairly recent. I’ve been thinking about the nature of Jesus, particularly how he is portrayed in the Gospel of Mark. In Mark he is really mortal. He’s really, really mortal. Not an omnipotent and omniscient God yet, but a mortal.It’s in some ways a marvelous thing to realize that he is still our Savior despite the fact that, for example, it takes him two tries to heal a blind man (Mark 8:22-26), or that in Mark 5—and this is the story where Jesus casts out the demons and they go in the swine and the swine are drowned—the way Mark writes it—he does it really subtly—but Jesus says, “Come out of him,” and they don’t right away. It looks like the assumption there is Jesus thought there was one demon, and it’s not until he realizes that there’s more than one that they come out. Julie M. Smith spoke about her book 'Search, Ponder, and Pray' on the Maxwell Institute Podcast. More recently she published a book on the gospel of Mark in the BYU New Testament Commentary.These things are maybe a little different than a traditional Latter-day Saint reading where we assume Jesus knows absolutely everything, does everything right the first time, he’s omniscient, omnipotent. I don’t know that that’s Mark portrayal of him. I think in some ways, though, this is a marvelous way to portray the Savior. I’m really glad it’s one of our four portraits, our four gospels, because I think it provides us—as very limited and very fallen mortals—maybe a better guide, a better example of how to deal with those imperfect bits of our mortal nature than if Jesus had been presented as getting everything right on the first try, always knowing exactly what to do perfectly.So this is something I’m still working through, but I find Mark’s portrait very, very compelling. It’s something to think about. It’s maybe a little different than how we normally talk about it.HODGES: It’s also interesting to take those types of observations and compare them to restoration scripture. What came to mind is section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants where Christ is said to advance 'from grace to grace'—SMITH: Yeah, this is an interesting thought, grace to grace, portrayal of him as growing, and the example it provides to us. And we’re very comfortable with the idea that Jesus didn’t need baptism, but did that as an example to us. I don’t know that we’ve often applied that same thought to other stories, and thought 'here is a mortal Savior providing us with an example of what happens if you don’t get it right on the first try,' and showing us how to negotiate those sorts of situations from his own life. I think there may be a similarity there that’s worth thinking about. “MIPodcast Moments” are interesting extracts from the Maxwell Institute Podcast. See our growing list of transcripts here.

For over ten years the Maxwell Institute has been happily nestled in its little building down the hill on the south side of campus, across from the duck pond on 8th North.We're really going to miss those ducks.We're thrilled to announce today that BYU's Board of Trustees announced it is relocating the Institute to a brand new campus building which will stand where the Faculty Office Building has long stood on the west side of campus, up the hill, adjacent to the beautiful Joseph F. Smith Building. Construction begins in early 2019 with expected completion of the new facility in spring 2020.'In that new space,' said Institute executive director Spencer Fluhman, 'the Institute will be poised for a significant campus role long into the future. Close to our colleagues in the Humanities and Religious Education and near the BYU Library and other important campus locales related to our work, the Institute will bring interested campus members together more easily and more regularly to pursue disciple-scholarship together. Our new space itself will reflect in its very design our new mission and priorities.'The Institute's new space in the West View Building will better accommodate small lectures, weekly brown bag sessions, faculty gatherings, advisory board sessions, student mentoring, the research of our resident and visiting disciple-scholars, and all the other Institute happenings. (It'll be the new home of the Maxwell Institute Podcast, for example.)In the meantime, the Institute won't quite be like Israel in the wilderness; by this December we'll be stationed in a nice corner of the Clyde Building.More updates to come! Computer engineers and artists have scrupulously labored to create this digital rendering of the Institute's future BYU home: the West View Building.