Welcome

Hello. I'm Mark Bailey, the person you might know as the blogger behind "Left Handed Rants", now with over 300 entries, which comments mainly on politics and sports.
This new blog, "People in Scripture", has a very different purpose. I'm not so much trying to find converts as to suggest how people who lived anciently felt and acted, especially regarding matters of spirituality. I must also include a disclaimer. Though a lifelong active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I am writing without the church's approval or cooperation. I am solely responsible for all content. Mormon teachings can be clarified by local members or through LDS.org. Questions are welcome there, and treated with respect.
But this blog owes its approach to E. M. Blaiklock, a classical scholar from New Zealand who published a volume entitled "Today's Handbook of Bible Characters" in 1979. I found it at the public library about ten years ago and ended up checking it out more than once, and now own a copy.
What impressed me most about Dr. Blaiklock's approach was, first, that he saw ancient people as the same as people today. This simple approach helped him in another, second, way. He helped the reader see the scene of the scriptural incident he was describing. This technique helps the reader understand old characters, I believe, in new ways.
My entries will follow a similar format, though with shorter entries. I will also include less well-known characters (to most Christians) from the Book of Mormon and, to a lesser extent, The Doctrine and Covenants, a record of revelations given to Joseph Smith, the man Mormons credit with following God's command to restore Jesus' church in the early part of the nineteenth century. I will identify all the scriptural passages, but plan no chronological or alphabetical order. I sat down one day recently to see how many entries I might comfortably expect, and came up with about fifty. I hope someone enjoys them.