Good evening. This is Radio Free Mormon. In tonight, Joe, we're going to talk about a very,

very important and significant episode in Mormon history and in BYU history. Back in 1993,

we all know about the September 6, i.e. those six professors and researchers and scholars who

were excommunicated from the Mormon church because

they went into researching things that they weren't supposed to go researching into.

Often overlooked in this discussion is a seventh individual who was a professor at BYU,

who was fired from his position at BYU after 10 years and excommunicated in the very

same time period. It wasn't September of 1993 that he got excommunicated so he doesn't get

included often in these discussions. But his name is David Wright, Professor David P. Wright,

who was a professor, I believe, of ancient scripture at

BYU, who was hired in 1984, fired in 1994, and then subsequently moved across the country to

the other coast, became a professor at the very much esteemed Brandeis University.

And while he was a professor there, the church caught up with him and excommunicated him in 1994.

Not long after, actually within a year of September of 1993, David P. Wright is a person that we're

going to want to talk about this evening. Let me tell you a little bit about David P. Wright and his

background.

First off, as to his scholarship and biography page at Brandeis University,

it tells us that he is there, a professor emeritus, of Bible, and the ancient near east.

And you can see some of his honors there that are listed,

the National Resource Fellowship for Arabic and Hebrew,

Holbright Scholar Research Award in Israel, and a Marver and Shiva-Bernstein faculty fellowship in 1994 and 1995.

We can also see that the subjects he taught were biblical studies, ancient near east language and

...