1. Percival Everett, James (Knopf Doubleday, 2024), 23.

2. Everett, James, 21.

3. Everett, James, 22.

4. American Dictionary of the English Language, Webster’s Dictionary 1828, under “translate,” https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/translate.

5. “Welcome to Our World,” by Chris Rice, track 4 on Deep Enough to Dream, Rocketown Records released on June 3, 1997.

6. Oxford English Dictionary, under “rhetoric (noun1),” senses 1.a, 4.a, accessed February 10, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1485006821.

7. Online Etymology Dictionary, under “persuasion (n.),” updated April 15, 2020, https://www.etymonline.com/word/persuasion.

8. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (University of California Press, 1969), 21, emphasis original.

9. Burke, Rhetoric of Motives, 21.

10. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What Is Scripture? A Comparative Approach (Fortress Press, 1993; 2005), ix, 17.

11. Huston Smith, The World’s Religions (Harper San Francisco, 1991), 5.

12. Smith, What Is Scripture?, 18.

13. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, “The Study of Religion and the Study of the Bible,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 39, no. 2 (1971): 131–40.

14. Smith, “Study of Religion,” 132.

15. Smith, “Study of Religion,” 133.

16. Smith, “Study of Religion,” 133.

17. Smith, “Study of Religion,” 139.

18. Smith, What Is Scripture?, 4.

19. Smith, “Study of Religion,” 135.

20. Smith, “Study of Religion,” 134.

21. “Letter to Israel Daniel Rupp, 5 June 1844,” in Brett D. Dowdle, Adam H. Petty, J. Chase Kirkham, Elizabeth A. Kuehn, David W. Grua, and Matthew C. Godfrey, eds., Documents, Volume 15: 16 May–28 June 1844, Joseph Smith Papers (Church Historian’s Press, 2023), 128–29.

22. Smith, “Study of Religion,” 133.