Ashley Pun Eveson

When we open the three single-chapter books of Enos, Jarom, and Omni, what we notice first is how short they are. After the beginning account of Enos’s wrestle before God, narrative time accelerates dramatically and we see big swaths of history speed past in just a few verses.

In Jacob 5, Jacob transcribes onto the plates the words of an extrabiblical prophet named Zenos. As elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, Jacob assumes his immediate audience and his later readers are already familiar with Zenos.

For years, BYU has diverted its food waste from landfills to produce its own mulch, a combination of table scraps, leaf litter, grass clippings, and wood chips. And for years, we’ve spread that mulch in tree rings, flower beds, and hillsides.

This collection of new artworks was commissioned for "Approaching the Tree: Interpreting 1 Nephi 8." Published by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University, this book is an invitation to view again one of the Book of Mormon's best-known texts. From the fresh interactions of an array of artists and scholars from Angola to Portugal and BYU to Oxford, the theological significance of Lehi's dream emerges anew. Together these able guides show, once again, both book and dream to be rich and deep, and worthy of repeated reflection. "Approaching the Tree: Interpreting 1 Neph 8" is co-edited by Jennifer Champoux, Benjamin Keogh, and Joseph M. Spencer.

Congratulations to Laurie Maffly-Kipp—a visiting scholar at the Maxwell Institute in 2019 and 2023—on her appointment as the Richard Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Virginia!

The writings of Jacob, Lehi and Sariah’s “first-born in the wilderness,” are charged with a peculiar energy. His words skitter across waves of anxious responsibility, into troughs of grim prophecy and admonishment, through eddies of aching and tender compassion.

Easter is soon upon us. A comely season, no matter the weather. A time of promise and hope, of renewal and imminent or arrived beauty. Whatever can T.S. Eliot have been thinking when he decreed April the cruelest month?

"Whatever our particular fields of scholarship, the real test is individual discipleship, not scholarship. But how good it is when these two can company together, blending meekness with brightness and articulateness with righteousness." –Elder Neal A. Maxwell

This artwork and its accompanying caption were created by Meranda Brodowski, a student artist and designer at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Meranda is from California and has worked at the Maxwell Institute since January. She is a Fine Arts Major at Brigham Young University, with an emphasis in technology. She strives to create inspiring artwork that represents her faith and testimony.