Jamie123

Do you have 3 different fountain pens one for each colour? Or do you wash it out between colours? Or are you actually using a tablet? I found my old fountain pen today (the one that used to leak all over my fingers) and I washed it out with boiling water to "deep-clean" it. Stupid idea - it melted. So lesson of the day: don't clean your pen with boiling water.

Perhaps we ought to slide that last item back since its happening concurrently with events in Zarahemla.

That was the impression I got too - though the fact that they still call it "the Land of Nephi" shows they had long memories! P.S. Though now I think about it, many places in the US are named after the native people who once lived there: Manhattan, Utah, Arkansas, Minnisota, Dakota...

I think when we've finished Alma (which won't be for ages - it's huge!) I'll update the chronology I posted a few weeks back, and you could tell me what I've got right and wrong?

This is another obvious question which I could probably answer myself with a bit of thumbing around, but why does 17:18 say that Ammon was "chief among them" when Aaron was presumably there too? (It says in Mosiah 29:3 that Aaron had gone up to the land of Nephi* - so presumably he and Ammon were together before the brothers all separated.) *Calling it the land of Nephi seems odd too - considering the it was primarily the land of the Lamanites. Though I daresay the Nephites maintained a nominal claim to it. (Rather like English continued to claim France long after the French had won it back!)

I'm going to have to read this book again I think, after after we finish. So much fine detail, and people with same/similar names!

Please forgive the stupid question, but I've forgotten. Is this the same Ammon who appeared in the book of Mosiah? Or is it a different Ammon.

Indeed not! But it's hard to dissociate "cutting off arms" with this scene! For one thing, I think you're right about the force needed to cut off an arm. Graham Chapman makes it look so effortless! I feel sorry for Graham Chapman. He was very funny, but he didn't have a happy life, and he died young. He was a severe alcoholic. He never touched a drop for the last 12 years of his life, but the damage was already done.

You could say he "disarmed" the Lamanites! *laughs like a drain at his own joke* I couldn't read this part without thinking of something else: P.S. I've got another one: he "rendered them 'armless"! 😁

It's certainly the case with that one! I can't think of any other examples though...

Maybe it was just certain people I hung out with who used the term

That's interesting - other LDSs have told me the same thing at different times. I wonder if I would enjoy Church of England movies (if there were such a thing!) At least the closest I can think of is The Vicar of Dibley - which is a TV show, not a movie. I find that quite funny, but it's not really "insider humour". It's more how a non-churchgoing person would imagine church goings-on.

Yup - she's either a time-traveler, or else she lives in an alternate world in which every important historical event happened within one lifetime! I used to wonder if next week we'd see her at Waterloo, or at the crossing of the Delaware, or helping the Wright Brothers get off the ground!

It makes me think of the movie The Errand of Angels. The main character, having got on really well with her first missionary companion, is given a new one - Sister Keller - who is totally different. She initially thinks that Sister Keller has a screw loose, but eventually learns that her seemingly strange behaviour is down to her having been rejected by her family on joining the Church. Amulek doesn't seem to have had such problems though - at least not yet! (It's early days.) Yes, Latter-day Saint movies are one of my secret vices. My favourite is One Good Man - which I must have seen about 20 times. I'll get around to writing something about it some day. The funniest - in a dark way - is Baptists at Our Barbecue. (Some of the humour is not unlike Fawlty Towers.) God's Army is quite amusing too, though it's debatable if that is really an LDS movie, as the guy responsible for it is ex-LDS. I ought to mention Charly too. That was the first LDS movie I saw. It's pretty much Shadowlands meets Love Story. I totally love Heather Beers!

OK, Gabrielle! It pays to be accurate about these things! 😁 By the way, Xena and Gabrielle had their fair share of Biblical adventures - helping David to kill Goliath, and giving their donkey to Mary and Joseph on their way to Bethlehem. A pity they never made it to America though...

That may be the official lingo, but people do sometimes refer to senior/junior missionary pairs (not necessarily Latter-day saints) as "Batmans* and Robins". I always thought it was rather a good analogy - unless of course you think it's offensive, in which case I won't use it. *Correct plural of Batman: Batmans? or Batmen?

I was wrong - he appears once more in Acts 15, where he addresses the council at Jerusalem.

From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!

I'm still thinking about the implications of this. I don't know what to say, other than that I'd probably have been Amulek, not Alma. Amulek is to Alma what Barnabus is to Paul. (And Robin is to Batman, Watson is to Holmes, Sancho is to Don Quixote and Gabriella is to Xena.) (And Penfold is to Danger Mouse.)

If I remember rightly, that's the last mention of Peter in Acts. It says he went away "somewhere else" and that's it. Of course we know he ended up in Rome where he became bishop and was eventually crucified ("Quo vadis, Domine?") but none of that is recorded in Acts. The original of that is in the National Gallery here in London. Peter's wide eyes are amazing. He really looks terrified.

Hebrews 7 is important here too.

This is mostly new to me. I'll need to set aside some time to study it.

For what it's worth, many traditional Christians - or at least those who concern themselves with such matters (which isn't many) will tell you that there was only ever one priest "of the order of Melchizedek" and that was Christ himself. Some even suggest that Melchizedek was Christ - what they call a "Christophany" - an appearance of Christ prior to the incarnation. I still think the placement of the story is odd. My theory is that Moses (or whoever wrote Genesis) realized too late that he should have included it. He wrote it out on a separate sheet and inserted it between the page which ended with verse 17 and the page which begins with verse 21. Later when it was copied (maybe onto a scroll) the scribe just wrote it all out as a continuous text. (All speculation of course and maybe not v. important.)

Maybe you need to do a Wikipedia edit! (Though be warned, if you want your edits to stay, you'll be committing yourself to a lifelong edit-war with whoever wrote the current version!) And yes by all means link it please! I'd be interested to see.

Interesting - according to Wikipedia the book of Jasher is a "lost book" although there are forgeries around claiming to be it.