1.  Can you tell us a bit about the background to this book? What inspired you to begin this type of project? Were there any prior works that were a critical influence for you? What sort of process did you go through to write the book? What were the biggest challenges in writing it?

Understanding the Book of Mormon is a sequel to an earlier project, The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition, which was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2003. As I was reformatting the text in the manner of modern biblical translations (with paragraphs, topical headings, poetic stanzas, quotation marks, indented documents, and so forth), I came to a better understanding of how the Book of Mormon is structured, and particularly the crucial role played by the major narrators. Reading in context, with an eye toward the editing of the narrators, uncovered interpretive layers and nuances that seemed to make the Book of Mormon a much more interesting work than many have assumed, both inside and outside the Church. So in a sense, Understanding the Book of Mormon is a set of field notes on the Reader’s Edition. (I was pleased by Rosalynde Welch’s observation that the Reader’s Edition is the more important of the two books. I agree. The particular arguments in Understanding will always be subject to debate and revision, but the Reader’s Edition could be a starting point for a new generation of Book of Mormon scholarship.)

In addition, it seemed to me that a narrative-based approach might offer some common ground between insiders and outsiders. Regardless of whether one views Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni as ancient prophet/historians or as fictional characters invented by Joseph Smith, they are presented in the Book of Mormon as playing a crucial role in selecting and shaping its contents. Too often, believers and critics alike get so wound up in trying to prove or disprove historicity that they cite  a few verses and then almost immediately get sidetracked by ancient Near Eastern or nineteenth-century parallels. As a result they end up not really reading the text at all. Similarly, a great deal of what passes for commentary from faithful Latter-day Saints is little more than paraphrase, with regular references to conference talks and gospel principles. None of these approaches lend themselves to careful, comprehensive readings. I myself am a believer who accepts the existence of ancient Nephites, but I’m not offended or threatened by those who see things differently, and indeed I think that there is much to learn from astute readers of any religious persuasion (or lack thereof). In many ways, I wish that outsiders would take the Book of Mormon more seriously as fiction, and that Latter-day Saints would take it more seriously as history.

My models in this endeavor were Robert Alter and Meir Sternberg, who analyze the Hebrew Bible from a narrative perspective while at the same time acknowledging the contributions made by historical-critical scholarship. It is probably not coincidental that they are both Jewish. Over the last half century, Latter-day Saints have come under the sway of evangelical or even fundamentalist Protestants in the way that we approach scripture. I’m not sure that this is a positive development, and it certainly does not seem to be a necessary part of being true to our tradition (whatever Joseph Smith may have been, he was not a fundamentalist). I have often asked myself, Why can’t Mormons be more like Jews?

As for writing Understanding itself, it was more a matter of rewriting. I would start with a few ideas from my own reading and from conversations with my wife Heather, who is a much better reader than I am, and then I would write a quick draft that would then be the subject of weeks, if not months of additional conversations (Heather is a gifted editor as well). The most difficult chapter was the one on Third Nephi, which went through eight complete revisions before I finally got something we were satisfied with. As might be expected in a book that concentrates on formal analysis, the form of Understanding was important to me. I wanted something that would lead readers through the main events and characters of the Book of Mormon from 1 Nephi to Moroni, as well as something that focused on the narrators, where every chapter also introduced and illustrated some specific, representative literary technique.

2.  Tell us about your relationship with Oxford? What sort of a process did you go through to get this book published?

The process of getting a book published with Oxford is the same as with any other academic press. After the manuscript was finished I sent a proposal to the religion editor at Oxford (OUP was the first press I contacted, largely because they had recently published Terryl Givens’ By the Hand of Mormon), and she was interested enough to ask to see the entire manuscript, which she  then sent to outside readers who are experts in the field. The readers’ reports were mixed, as they often are, with there being some concern that I was simply assuming historicity, which would make the work more devotional than academic. I think that it is possible to bracket the historicity question, at least temporarily, and I believe there are strong arguments on both sides— indeed, if I weren’t LDS, I would most certainly regard the Book of Mormon as religious fiction, or as a fascinating, modern example of pseudepigrapha—but somehow that didn’t come through as I intended. So I rewrote the manuscript yet again, deleting passages that might be misinterpreted and adding more parallel examples from fictional works that bear some similarity to the Book of Mormon. Oxford sent the revised manuscript to additional readers, including non-Mormons, and they were quite positive in their assessments, so contracts were signed, copyediting commenced, and the printing presses started to roll.

3.  Have you been disappointed, encouraged, or neither by your book’s reception?

The book’s reception is still unfolding. More than disappointment or encouragement, I have felt surprise that my work hasn’t attracted more attention, particularly from Latter-day Saint sources. After all, this is the first academic book on the contents of the Book of Mormon, and Oxford is not a marginal press. I would have thought that Mormons would have been more engaged with a text they hold sacred, which many read from nearly every day. I do understand that reviews often take a while to appear in print, but Understanding the Book of Mormon was released more than a year and a half ago and there still have not been many formal responses—a few book notices, on-line reviews from Blair Holmes and Rosalynde Welch, a Dialogue review by Julie M. Smith (the last two were recently reprinted in Times and Seasons), and a review by Terryl Givens in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. But nothing substantive in Sunstone, BYU Studies, or in any of the publications of the Maxwell Institute. I expect that full reviews from BYU will appear eventually, but I’m puzzled by the slow pace. Most authors would rather be criticized than ignored, and I tried to give readers plenty to talk about.

There have been two particularly interesting responses from non-Mormons. The first was a review in the on-line magazine Slate by Alan Wolfe, a highly-respected commentator on the contemporary American religious scene. My analysis persuaded Wolfe that the Book of Mormon does have a complicated, coherent structure, and in fact he went back to the text to give it another try. In the end, he still didn’t see it as having much literary merit, but I was delighted that my work had encouraged him to take a fresh look. I did not expect to convince everyone, though I was hoping to make easy, off-hand dismissals of the Book of Mormon less academically respectable. The other unexpected response has come from the Community of Christ. Last month I was invited to give a presentation in Nauvoo at a meeting of Midwestern leaders, including two of their apostles, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that nearly everyone in attendance—some fifty people—had read my book. It appears that there are many in that Restorationist denomination who are looking for ways to better utilize the Book of Mormon as scripture, while still acknowledging the serious historical problems of the text. I was thrilled that they were willing to reach out to a Latter-day Saint for advice on the Book of Mormon, and I would be quite pleased if they found my literary approach useful in better understanding a scripture that we have in common.

4.  Much in our reviews focused on your attempt to write to two audiences and fruitfully bring them together in exploring the Book of Mormon. Tell us what it is that you’re most hopeful that the Mormon audience will take from this book. What is your main message (and any subsidiary ones you want to mention) to the faithful?

I’m not sure that my approach will bring together insiders and outsiders when they explore the Book of Mormon—our interpretations of what the book ultimately means and where it comes from will always be far apart. But it seems to me that it should be possible to come to some agreement on how the book is structured, on what is says, and what it claims for itself. And I would hope that all readers, regardless of why they come to the text, would be able to agree that despite the awkward diction and repetitions, the book is not nonsense. It shows evidence of careful composition, for instance in the chronological flashbacks and the smooth handling of the frequent but irregular notices of the beginnings and endings of years of the judges. That is simply in the text, objectively.

For Latter-day Saints, I hope that my work will encourage them to see the Book of Mormon as more than just a sign of Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling. The contents matter as much as the book’s mere existence. Too often we don’t really read the Book of Mormon, preferring instead to skim it for proof-texts of principles that we know from elsewhere. Yet it seems incredibly important to me that the book was written as narrative rather than as a collection of propositional truths like Gospel Principles. Close readings, within the book’s multi-layered, thick contexts, often reveal lessons and insights that can help us become more Christ-like, even after we have been converted by Moroni’s promise. I try to apply a critical, questioning mode of reading that, while staying within the parameters of the narrative, allow us to identify and interpret connections, seams, and disjunctions. Indeed, this is along the lines of the way that historians read texts, and I often wish that Latter-day Saints treated figures from the Book of Mormon as if they were real individuals, with distinctive personalities and concerns, who struggle to articulate their ideas persuasively, and who develop over time. Instead, we too often claim the book as history and then read it as inspirational myth. I would also like Mormons to understand the important ways in which the Book of Mormon is not like the Bible (which may well increase our appreciation for both).

5.  Tell us why you think non-Mormons ought to be interested in this book. If you’re not interested in evangelizing them, what, beyond mere trivia, will the kind of close reading you put on display do for them? Why should they care?

This question comes up regularly and I’m always a bit puzzled by it. People who ask why anyone would care about a religious tradition that is not their own probably need to get out a little more. The Book of Mormon is one of the most significant books in American religious history and in recent world scripture. But this is not to jump up and down and insist that everyone should pay attention to us. The real question is, How interested are you in other religions and philosophies? Have you ever read the Qur’an? Why? Can you name half a dozen books from the Apocrypha? Are you interested in studies of the Daodejing or the Yoga Sutra? Have you ever wondered what the appeal was of Tibetan treasure texts? Are you excited about the other volumes in the Princeton’s “Lives of Great Religious Books” series? (I mean besides the forthcoming one on the Book of Mormon, written by the non-Mormon scholar Paul Gutjahr). If not, then you have no business asking people to care about your book, unless you are targeting them as potential converts. But those who are curious about the varieties of religious experience will at some point or other be interested in the Book of Mormon, and we have not made it easy for them. Simply put, the book is not easy to read or appreciate, particularly in the official, double-columned, verse-by-verse format.

In academics, there is a long tradition of monographs on significant texts that are easier to read than the texts themselves. For instance, I’m reading Spinoza’s Ethics right now, but only because I have already read a couple of studies that convinced me the book is worth my time and that explained its organization, main ideas, and significance. In the past, there has not been a detailed, academic introduction to the contents of the Book of Mormon. I’m afraid that our scripture will generally be a tough slog for those who do not already accept it as revelation, but people who make it all the way through Understanding will come away knowing the Book of Mormon better than many Latter-day Saints do. There will always be scholars of US history, or religious studies, or sacred texts, or American literature who would like to know about the Book of Mormon, or who at least feel an obligation to have some basic understanding of it. My book will give them access to what might otherwise be an opaque, bewildering text. By the same token, if there were some insider who could explain the Bahá’í scriptures to me, I would be most grateful; I’m always interested in the best, most persuasive readings that believers can come up with. (By the way, there has been some terrific work done lately on the Sikh’s Adi Granth, which is the most successful new scripture of the last few centuries, as measured by the number of adherents. The Book of Mormon comes in second.)

6.  Over the course of the week much was said about the modern subjectivity that your reading imparts to the three main editors (see particularly Rosalynde’s critique here). Can we really expect ancient subjects whose worlds are so very different than our own to have left such a coherent and familiar picture of who they were, their motives, goals, and stylistic elements? And doesn’t your answer to this question directly bear on the historicity debate?

Rosalynde’s review highlighted a new, significant critique of my narrator-based analysis, for which I’m grateful, but before I respond to her specific objection, let me make a few general comments. I was somewhat surprised (but then again, not really), by how much of the discussion in the essays and comments about my book at Times & Seasons were concerned with historicity.

This is the way that Latter-day Saints and their critics primarily approach the Book of Mormon, and it can be hard to imagine doing anything else. But I don’t think this is a burning issue for most academics—for them the book is obviously fiction, which doesn’t make it any less interesting. Try to imagine things from the other side.

For example, I think that the Mahabharata is a fascinating epic of great cultural, philosophical, and religious significance. I have read books about its textual history, its complex organization, and its themes. Yet there are some Hindus to whom it is of paramount importance whether the war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas actually happened, or whether Krishna was or was not an actual historical figure. You can follow their arguments about dating the war based on astronomical references or about the significance of finding the submerged city of Dwarka in the 1980s, but such issues don’t matter much to me. While it can be intriguing to see how believers try to adapt their faith to the challenges of modernity, the reality of Hindu gods is not really a live option for me at this point, and the evidences put forward don’t even come close to what it would take to persuade me to take such claims seriously. (From the outside, a lot of Mormon apologetics looks something like this. I am deeply interested in the epic, but arguments about its historicity seem peripheral, parochial, or even a little silly. So I believe that it is possible to decouple close literary analysis from the question of ancient Nephites. Don’t get me wrong; taking historical contexts into consideration is one important way to read scripture (it does make a difference whether you view the Book of Mormon as a product of the ancient world or nineteenth century), but it’s not the only way to read, or even the most fruitful way. Perhaps Mormon scholars need to spend more time with their colleagues in religious studies departments.

The Book of Mormon presents a problem for religiously neutral readings though, because it was written by dictation, one time through, over the course of just three months. So any complex coherence can be taken as evidence of divine intervention rather than human composition. Latter-day Saints are very quick to jump to the conclusion that “Joseph Smith could not have written this.” But that wasn’t the point of my book, and I don’t think that arguments based on complexity are particularly compelling to outsiders. Could Joseph Smith have kept the lineage of Jaredite kings straight in both Ether 1 and then in reverse order in chapters 6-11? Perhaps, if he had worked things out beforehand and then used a mnemonic memory palace to be able to recall them forwards and backwards, but in any case, there are all kinds of astonishing human achievements in music, or math, or athletics that seem completely beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. That doesn’t prove that Mozart or Ramanujan or Michael Jordan had divine assistance. I was sincere when I talked about bracketing the issue of historicity, and I deliberately tried to leave respectful space for various ideas about origins of the Book of Mormon.

Rosalynde takes up the question of historicity, but from the opposite end. To her, my reconstruction of the narrators makes them seem too modern for an ancient work. I’m sympathetic with this. I have often wondered if the Book of Mormon just isn’t strange enough to be an ancient text.  Again, such subjective judgments are hardly conclusive, but the plainness of the book could be a point against its historicity. Rosalynde makes a much more specific argument, about the distinctively modern self-consciousness and self-presentation of the narrators. There are several possible responses. The first is to point to a few ancient authors who do appear to write from a coherent sense of self—people like Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Sima Qian. Modern minds, and even autobiographical perspectives, did not absolutely begin with Augustine or Rousseau. (The point here is not simply first-person narration; it’s more a matter of having motivations, notions of autonomy, a sense of audience, and a feel for how one is positioned within a literary tradition— all of which must be intelligible to moderns; see Ben Huff’s essay.) Second, I could acknowledge James Olsen’s suggestion (comment #13) that perhaps I have read modern sensibilities into my interpretations of Book of Mormon narrators. It’s quite possible, though there is always a delicate balance in reading old texts (we are still talking about historicity, right?) between recognizing the real differences between how moderns and ancients mentally construct the world and their own identities—what aspects are mutable, what counts as evidence, what sorts of assumptions go unquestioned—and concerns that are universal across time and space, without which, there would be no chance of cross-cultural communication. It would be odd, in most cultures, that Nephi talks incessantly about his descendants but never about his own children, particularly the sons that presumably would succeed him as king. Or third, I could argue that perhaps Nephi and his prophetic successors were rather unique—that their implicit canon (the brass plates), their conversations with the Lord, and their sense of writing for readers many centuries in the future gave them a subjective sensibility that was quite distinct from other ancient authors.

In the end, I suspect that it is the Nephites’ religious assumptions that seem the most suspiciously modern, and perhaps the most satisfying answer for believers is to assume that this is a function of the translation, or of posthumous editing by narrators working on the other side of the veil, or that it is the result of extraordinary revelation. All of these are supernatural explanations that I would not expect outsiders to take seriously, but as for me, I actually believe in angels and translation by seer stones. Rosalynde’s question makes me want to read the Book of Mormon through again, looking for evidence of how the narrators think about the world and their place within it. It could be the subject of a whole book.

BYU Linguistics professor Mark Davies has released his Corpus of LDS General Conference Talks, a database containing General Conference talks since 1850 (some 10,000 talks and 24 million words) along with robust tools for searching and analyzing how the language in the talks has changed over time. This corpus, or collection of texts, is just the latest of several that Davies has made available to researchers, including his 400 million word Corpus of Historical American English and his 410 million word Corpus of Contemporary American English.

This is much more than just a long word processing document and better than average search tools that allow you to find every time the word “green” appears. The texts in this corpus includes much more information than just words. The texts are dated and have been analyzed to identify the part of speech of each word. And the search tools are much more sophisticated than those you will find in any word processor. Users can search not just for a word, but for its synonyms also, essentially allowing users to search for a concept instead of just a word (searching for “sin” and its synonyms also finds evil, wickedness, iniquity, crime, transgression, immorality, transgress, err, wrongdoing, lapse, debauchery, depravity, turpitude, misdemeanor and misdeed).

Best of all, users can look at the frequency of these words and concepts over time, learning, for example, that the concept of “sin” was mentioned twice as often as it is now in the 1850s, and 50% more through the 1880s, before falling to a level 20% lower than now in the early 1900s. The concept was again a popular topic int eh 1960s and 1970s (50% more than now) before dropping back down again.

Late last fall Google introduced a tool with some of these capabilities, drawing a few posts here on the bloggernacle about how it could be used for Mormon Studies (see J. Max Wilson’s post at Millennial Star and my own on a still unexplained Mormon literary mystery on A Motley Vision). We were then unaware that Davies already had a tool that provided the same information and allowed more sophisticated searches. While not as large as Google Books, which includes 500 billion words, the tools in Davies’ smaller (400 million words) Corpus of Historical American English are much more sophisticated, and Davies argues that, at least for researchers, his corpus is more useful.

Unfortunately, the interface for using Davies’ corpus isn’t as easy to use as Google’s—mainly because it is so much more sophisticated. It is hard to make more complex tools easy to use—sophistication comes at a price. Davies’ system also doesn’t give the nice graphs that Googlelabs’  project provides. However, its easy to take the data from Davies’ corpus and copy it into a spreadsheet, where any spreadsheet jockey worth his salt can produce very nice graphs.

But perhaps most importantly, Davies’ General Conference corpus has one overriding advantage over any other—it is limited to just Conference talks. Searching on Google Books’ ngrams viewer or even on Davies own Corpus of Historical American English tells you about overall use of words and concepts—it gives you an idea of how the culture as a whole used language. The General Conference corpus helps us understand the word use of a much smaller group of people—LDS general authorities. That restriction alone makes this corpus extremely useful to Mormon Studies.

Of course, this also begs the question “what other corpora could be useful to Mormon Studies?” Off the top of my head it should be possible to put together corpora for things like the text of Mormon periodicals, Mormon missionary diaries (from BYU’s collection), the Deseret News and even the collection of contemporary Mormon texts we call the bloggernacle. I wonder what we could learn if we were able to analyze these corpora also?

Changes in the Book of Mormon

© 2009 by Royal Skousen

1. What is the critical text project of the Book of Mormon?

From the beginning, the two goals of the critical text project have been (1) to recover the original English-language text of the Book of Mormon, and (2) to determine the history of the text (namely, how it has changed over time). There are two basic kinds of changes in the history of the text: (a) accidental errors in the transmission of the text, and (b) the editing out of nonstandard English. I began the critical text project in 1988 and have been working full time on it since then.

2. What has been published thus far?

In 2001 the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), now a part of Brigham Young University (BYU) and a division of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, published the first two volumes of the critical text, namely:

(a)                The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Extant Text

564 pages (including 41 pages of introduction and 16 pages of black-and-white ultraviolet and color photographs of fragments)

(b)               The Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Entire Text in Two Parts

1000 pages (bound in two parts, including 36 pages of introduction and 8 pages of color photographs of the manuscript)

These two volumes present an exact reproduction in typescript of the extant portions of the two manuscripts (about 28 percent of the original manuscript and all but three lines of the printer’s manuscript).

A year later FARMS/BYU published a history of the project, the result of a symposium held at BYU:

(c)                Uncovering the Original Text of the Book of Mormon: History and Findings of the Critical Text Project (edited by M. Gerald Bradford and Alison V.P. Coutts).

This 76-page document includes articles by me on the history of this project and the systematic nature of the original English-language text of the Book of Mormon. It also includes articles by Robert Espinosa on the Wilford Wood fragments of the original manuscript, Ron Romig on the printer’s manuscript, and Larry Draper on the printed editions of the Book of Mormon.

From 2004 through 2009 FARMS published Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, volume 4 of the critical text, in six parts (each one appearing at the end of the summer):

(d)               Part One: Title Page, Witness Statements, 1 Nephi 1  2 Nephi 10

[published in August 2004; 658 pages, covering 14 percent of the text]

(e)        Part Two: 2 Nephi 11- Mosiah 16

[published in August 2005; 716 pages, covering 18 percent of the text]

(f)         Part Three: Mosiah 17- Alma 20

[published in August 2006; 686 pages, covering 16 percent of the text]

(g)        Part Four: Alma 21- 55

[published in September 2007; 700 pages, covering 17 percent of the text]

(h)        Part Five: Alma 56 – 3 Nephi 18

[published in August 2008; 730 pages, covering 19 percent of the text]

(i)         Part Six: 3 Nephi 19 – Moroni 10; Addenda

[published in August 2009; 638 pages, covering 16 percent of the text]

The addenda at the end of part 6 contains additional items of analysis, including a few reversals of previous textual decisions.

All of the above items (a through i) are available for purchase from the BYU Bookstore (FARMS now distributes their books through the BYU Bookstore). These books can also be ordered through other bookstores and website distributors.

In addition to these works, in August 2009 Yale University Press published The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text. The following is the promotional information that Yale released for the book:

First published in 1830, the Book of Mormon is the authoritative scripture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Over the past twenty-one years, Royal Skousen has pored over Joseph Smith’s original manuscripts and identified more than 2,000 textual errors in the 1830 edition. Although most of these discrepancies stem from inadvertent errors in copying and typesetting the text, the Yale edition contains about 600 corrections that have never appeared in any standard edition of the Book of Mormon, and about 250 of them affect the text’s meaning. Citing the earliest sources available, Skousen corrects the text in a work of remarkable dedication that will be a landmark in American religious scholarship.

Completely redesigned and typeset by nationally award-winning typographer Jonathan Saltzman, this new edition has been reformatted in sense-lines, making the text much more logical and pleasurable to read. Featuring a lucid introduction by historian Grant Hardy, the Yale edition serves not only as the most accurate version of the Book of Mormon ever published but also as an illuminating entryway into a vital religious tradition.

Grant Hardy, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, provides the following summary in his introduction to the Yale edition:

Royal Skousen has single-handedly brought the textual analysis of the Book of Mormon to a professional level on part with the finest classical and biblical scholarship. This volume is the culmination of his labors, and it is the most textually significant edition since Joseph Smith’s work was first published in 1830. It takes us back to the original manuscript (as best we can reconstruct it) and sometimes beyond, to the very words as they were first dictated by Joseph Smith.

Also included in the Yale edition is my own preface and an appendix listing over 700 significant changes in the history of the text.

The Yale edition presents the reconstructed original text in a clear-text format, without explanatory intervention. Unlike modern editions of the Book of Mormon that have added chapter summaries, scriptural cross-references, dates, and footnotes, this edition consists solely of the words dictated by Joseph Smith in 1828-29, as far as they can be established through standard methods of textual criticism. Later emendations by scribes, editors, and even Joseph Smith himself have been omitted, except for those that appear to restore original readings.

Anyone opening this volume will immediately be struck by the sense-lines format of the Book of Mormon text – that is, the way the lines of the text are broken up according to phrases and clauses. Joseph Smith dictated the book to scribes who wrote down his words. His dictation did not indicate punctuation, sentence structure, or paragraphing. These he left, ultimately, to the discretion of the printer. Consequently, the Yale edition constitutes a scholarly effort to present to the reader a dictated rather than a written text. To that end, I have decided to adopt the sense-line format. I make no claim that the sense-lines adopted in The Earliest Text represent Joseph’s actual dictation breaks, but the first verbalization of the text would have sounded something like the result of reading the sense-lines out loud.

The text of the Yale edition is a consolidation of the decisions made in the six parts of volume 4 of the critical text project, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon. Over the course of the six parts, including the addenda at the end of part 6, I have analyzed 5,280 cases of variation (or potential variation). The resulting text published by Yale University Press can be briefly characterized as follows:

2,241 differences between The Earliest Text and the standard printed edition

Cases of grammatical variation are discussed only once; volume 3 of the critical text (see below) will provide a complete discussion of grammatical changes.

606 readings that have never appeared in any standard printed edition:

216 are found only in the original manuscript, O

187 are found in only the printer’s manuscript, P (in these cases O is not extant)

88 are found in both O and P

2 are found in copies of the title page

113 are conjectural emendations

256 readings that either make a difference in meaning or change the spelling of a name

As might be suspected, none of these differences make a fundamental change in the message or doctrine of the book, but they make a difference when translating the Book of Mormon

131 readings that make the Book of Mormon text more consistent in phraseology or usage

34 readings that restore a unique phrase or word choice to the text

Here is a brief numerical summary of the results for part 1 of volume 4 (from the title page through 2 Nephi 10):

773 cases of variation (or potential variation) analyzed

419 differences between the critical text and the standard text

156 readings that have never appeared in any standard printed edition:

95 in O only; 6 in P only (in cases where O is not extant); 38 in both O and P;

2 in the 1829 copyright certificates; 15 conjectured readings

75 readings that make a difference that would show up in translation

51 readings that make the Book of Mormon more consistent in phraseology or usage

14 readings that restore a unique phrase or word choice to the text

Here are some of the changes that are recommended in part 1 of volume 4:

Current reading (or equivalent)
Revised reading

1 Nephi 7:5            Ishmael and also his household
Ishmael and also his whole household

1 Nephi 7:17          my faith which is in thee
my faith which is in me

1 Nephi 8:27          towards those which had came at
towards those which had came up

1 Nephi 8:31          multitudes feeling their way
multitudes pressing their way

1 Nephi 10:10        take away the sins of the world
take away the sin of the world

1 Nephi 10:19        in these times
in this time

1 Nephi 11:36        the pride of the world and it fell
the pride of the world

1 Nephi 12:18        the word of the justice of the eternal God
the sword of the justice of the eternal God

1 Nephi 13:24        the gospel of the Lord
the gospel of the Lamb

1 Nephi 13:32        state of awful blindness
state of awful wickedness

1 Nephi 14:13        did gather together multitudes
did gather together in multitudes

1 Nephi 14:28        the things which I saw and heard
the things which I saw

1 Nephi 15:16        they shall be remembered again
they shall be numbered again

1 Nephi 15:35        the devil is the preparator of it
the devil is the proprietor of it

1 Nephi 15:36        the wicked are rejected from the righteous
the wicked are separated from the righteous

1 Nephi 17:3          he did provide means for us
he did provide ways and means for us

1 Nephi 17:41        he sent fiery flying serpents
he sent flying fiery serpents

1 Nephi 17:53        I will shock them
I will shake them

1 Nephi 19:2          the genealogy of his fathers
the genealogy of his forefathers

1 Nephi 19:4          what they should do
that they should do

1 Nephi 19:10        according to the words of Zenock
according to the words of Zenoch

1 Nephi 20:1          or out of the waters of baptism
<omitted>

1 Nephi 22:8          unto the being nourished by the Gentiles
unto the being nursed by the Gentiles

1 Nephi 22:12        the lands of their inheritance
the lands of their first inheritance

2 Nephi 1:5            the Lord hath covenanted this land unto me
the Lord hath consecrated this land unto me

2 Nephi 2:11          neither holiness nor misery
neither happiness nor misery

2 Nephi 3:18          I will raise up unto the fruit of thy loins
I will raise up one unto the fruit of thy loins

2 Nephi 3:20          their cry shall go
their cry shall go forth

2 Nephi 4:5            in the way that ye should go
in the right way that ye should go

2 Nephi 4:26          the Lord … hath visited men
the Lord … hath visited me

2 Nephi 9:13          deliver up the body of the righteous
deliver up the bodies of the righteous

We get the following results for part 2 of volume 4 (from 2 Nephi 11 through Mosiah 16); note that for most of this part of the text, the original manuscript is not extant, which has lessened the number of proposed changes:

897 cases of variation (or potential variation) analyzed

387 differences between the critical text and the standard text

66 readings that have never appeared in any standard printed edition:

2 in O only; 34 in P only (in cases where O is not extant); 5 in both O and P;

25 conjectured readings

23 readings that make a difference that would show up in translation

13 readings that make the Book of Mormon more consistent in phraseology or usage

5 readings that restore a unique phrase or word choice to the text

Here are some of the changes discussed in part 2 of volume 4:

Current reading (or equivalent)
Revised reading

2 Nephi 20:2          to turn away the needy
to turn aside the needy

2 Nephi 20:10        my hand hath founded the kingdom of the idols
my hand hath found the kingdom of the idols

2 Nephi 20:13        and I have moved the borders of the people
and I have removed the borders of the people

2 Nephi 20:29        Ramath is afraid
Ramah is afraid

2 Nephi 24:19        the remnant of those that are slain
the raiment of those that are slain

2 Nephi 24:25        I will bring the Assyrian in my land
I will break the Assyrian in my land

2 Nephi 26:9          the Son of righteousness shall appear
the Sun of righteousness shall appear

2 Nephi 28:23        and death and hell and the devil

and the devil

2 Nephi 30:6          they shall be a pure and a delightsome people
they shall be a white and a delightsome people

2 Nephi 30:18        I make an end of my sayings
I must make an end of my sayings

Jacob 5:8                I take away many of these … branches
I will take away many of these … branches

Jacob 5:13              in the nethermost part of my vineyard
in the nethermost parts of my vineyard

Jacob 5:19              to the nethermost part of the vineyard
to the nethermost parts of the vineyard

Jacob 5:20              the master
the master of the vineyard

Jacob 5:45              a part thereof brought forth wild fruit
the other part thereof brought forth wild fruit

Jacob 5:46              these I had hoped to preserve
these I had hope to preserve

Jacob 5:74              the Lord had preserved unto himself
the good the Lord had preserved unto himself

Jacob 5:75              [ye] have brought unto me again the natural fruit
it hath brought unto me again the natural fruit

Jacob 6:13              I shall meet you before the pleasing bar of God
I shall meet you before the pleading bar of God

Enos 1:3                 and the words which …
and I remembered the words which …

Enos 1:20               with a short skin girdle about their loins
with a short skin girded about their loins

Enos 1:24               between the Nephites and Lamanites
between the Nephites and the Lamanites

W of M 1:5            I chose these things to finish my record
I choose these things to finish my record

Mosiah 3:19          unless he yieldeth to the enticings of the Holy Spirit
but if he yieldeth to the enticings of the Holy Spirit

Mosiah 4:30          and observe the commandments of God
and observe to keep the commandments of God

Mosiah 7:20          that he has brought us into bondage
that has brought us into bondage

Mosiah 8:17          things which are past
things which have passed

Mosiah 9:14          to take off their flocks
to take of their flocks

Mosiah 10:5          and work and work all manner of fine linen
and work all manner of fine linen

Mosiah 15:24        and these are those who have part …
and there are those who have part …

For part 3 of volume 4 (from Mosiah 17 through Alma 20), the results are quite similar to part 2, especially since so little of the original manuscript is extant for this part of the text:

898 cases of variation (or potential variation) analyzed

360 differences between the critical text and the standard text

82 readings that have never appeared in any standard printed edition:

0 in O only; 58 in P only (in cases where O is not extant); 3 in both O and P;

21 conjectured readings

28 readings that make a difference that would show up in translation

17 readings that make the Book of Mormon more consistent in phraseology or usage

5 readings that restore a unique phrase or word choice to the text

Here are some of the more significant changes proposed for the text in part 3 of volume 4:

Current reading (or equivalent)
Revised reading

Mosiah 17:10        yea and I will suffer even until death
yea and I will suffer even unto death

Mosiah 17:13        and scourged his skin with fagots
and scorched his skin with fagots

Mosiah 19:24        after they had ended the ceremony
after they had ended the sermon

Mosiah 21:28        king Mosiah had a gift from God
king Benjamin had a gift from God

Mosiah 25:2          which was a descendant of Mulek
which was a descendant of Muloch

Mosiah 25:6          [omit]

and his brethren and all their afflictions
and he also read the account of Ammon

Mosiah 26:9          Alma did not know concerning them
Alma did know concerning them

but there were many witnesses against them
for there were many witnesses against them

Mosiah 26:23        it is I that granteth … unto the end a place
it is I that granteth … in the end a place

Mosiah 27:30        but now that they may foresee that …
but now I know that they may foresee that …

Mosiah 28:4          suffering much and fearing
and suffering much fearing

Mosiah 29:42        Alma was appointed to be the first chief judge
Alma was appointed to be the chief judge

Alma 1:24               they were remembered no more among the people
they were numbered no more among the people

Alma 2:30               to save and preserve this people
to save and protect this people

Alma 3:5                 save it were skin which was girded about their loins
save it were a skin which was girded about their loins

Alma 5:1                 Alma began to deliver the word of God
Alma began to declare the word of God

Alma 5:35               and ye shall not be hewn down
and ye shall not be cut down

Alma 10:2               I am the son of Giddonah
I am the son of Gidanah

Alma 10:5               his mysteries and his marvelous powers
his mysteries and his miraculous powers

Alma 11:2               or be stripped or be cast out
or be striped or be cast out

Alma 11:6               an ezrom of silver
an ezrum of silver

Alma 11:16             a shiblum is a half of a shiblon
a shilum is a half of a shiblon

Alma 11:21             and this Zeezrom began to question Amulek
and thus Zeezrom began to question Amulek

Alma 11:44             and shall be brought … before the bar of Christ
and all shall be brought … before the bar of Christ

Alma 12:14             for our words will condemn us
for our works will condemn us

Alma 17:1               he met with the sons of Mosiah
he met the sons of Mosiah

Alma 17:26             which was called the water of Sebus
which was called the waters of Sebus

Alma 17:31             we will preserve the flocks unto the king
we will restore the flocks unto the king

Alma 18:25             and he answered and said unto him
and he answered unto him

Alma 19:30             she clasped her hands
she clapped her hands

The results for part 4 of volume 4 are like those of part 1 since the original manuscript is basically extant for Alma 21-55:

995 cases of variation (or potential variation) analyzed

422 differences between the critical text and the standard text

150 readings that have never appeared in any standard printed edition:

93 in O only; 12 in P only (in cases where O is not extant); 28 in both O and P;

17 conjectured readings

56 readings that make a difference that would show up in translation

16 readings that make the Book of Mormon more consistent in phraseology or usage

4 readings that restore a unique phrase or word choice to the text

Here are some of the more significant changes proposed for the text in part 4 of volume 4:

Current reading (or equivalent)
Revised reading

Alma 24:5               they came forth to the land of Midian
they came forth to the land of Middoni

Alma 24:20             for the purpose of destroying the king
for the purpose of dethroning the king

Alma 27:27             they were among the people of Nephi
they were numbered among the people of Nephi

Alma 29:11             and by this did establish his church
and by them did establish his church

Alma 31:35             and many of them are our brethren
and many of them are our near brethren

Alma 32:2               success among the poor class of people
success among the poorer class of the people

Alma 33:21             that ye might be healed
that ye might behold

Alma 39:13             and that wrong which ye have done
and repair that wrong which ye have done

Alma 41:5               the one raised to happiness
the one restored to happiness

Alma 42:2               yea he drew out the man
yea he drove out the man

Alma 42:16             except there were a punishment (which also was
except there were a punishment (which also was

as eternal as the life of the soul should be affixed affixed
as eternal as the life of the soul) should be, affixed

Alma 43:6               they were all Amlicites and Zoramites
they were all of the Amlicites and the Zoramites

Alma 43:14             now those descendants were as numerous
now those dissenters were as numerous

Alma 43:38             by their swords and the loss of blood
by their wounds and the loss of blood

Alma 43:45             for their rites of worship and their church
for their rights of worship and their church

Alma 44:8               we will not suffer ourselves to take an oath unto you
we will suffer ourselves to make an oath unto you

Alma 44:13             saying unto them with a loud voice,  saying   …
crying unto them with a loud voice, saying …

Alma 46:34             he had power according to his will
he had power to do according to his will

Alma 47:13             if he would make him Amalickiah a second leader
if he would make him Amalickiah the second leader

Alma 48:8               banks of earth round about to enclose his armies
banks of earth round about to encircle his armies

Alma 48:21             in the latter end of the nineteenth year yea
in the latter end of the nineteenth year

Alma 49:5               in preparing their places of security
in repairing their places of security

Alma 49:28             because of his matchless power
because of his miraculous power

Alma 51:7               and also many of the people of liberty
and also among the people of liberty

Alma 51:15             desiring that he should read it
desiring that he should heed it

Alma 51:26             many cities : the city of Nephihah
many cities : the city of Moroni

Alma 53:6               in the land of Nephi
in the land of the Nephites

Alma 54:13             we have only sought to defend ourselves
we have only sought to defend our lives

Alma 54:24             and behold now I am a bold Lamanite
and behold I am now a bold Lamanite

The results for part 5 of volume 4 are in many respects quite different from other parts of the text since both P and the 1830 edition are firsthand copies of O for much of the text for this part; O is also extant for parts of the text, which helps in reconstructing the original text:

906 cases of variation (or potential variation) analyzed

349 differences between the critical text and the standard text

100 readings that have never appeared in any standard printed edition:

25 in O only; 50 in P only (in cases where O is not extant); 13 in both O and P;

12 conjectured readings

27 readings that make a difference that would show up in translation

17 readings that make the Book of Mormon more consistent in phraseology or usage

2 readings that restore a unique phrase or word choice to the text

Here are some of the more significant changes proposed for the text in part 5 of volume 4:

Current reading (or equivalent)       Revised reading

Alma 56:10             because of the numerority of their forces
because of the enormity of their forces

Alma 56:19             but thus were we preserved
but thus were we favored

Alma 56:37             and as we suppose it was their intent
and as we supposed that it was their intent

Alma 56:48             we do not doubt our mothers knew it
we do not doubt; our mothers knew

Alma 57:32             they did rise up in rebellion
they did raise up in rebellion

Alma 58:2               they were so much more numerous
they were so exceeding more numerous

Alma 58:4               to the governor of our land
to the great governor of our land

Alma 58:33             behold we trust in our God who …
behold we trust that it is our God who …

Alma 59:8               they came even and joined the army
they came over and joined the army

Alma 59:9               than to retake it from them
<omit>

Helaman 1:9           they sent forth one Kishkumen
they sent forth one Kishcumen

Helaman 1:29         and thus he did and he did head them
and thus he did head them

Helaman 2:4           for there was one Gadianton
for there was one Gaddianton

Helaman 3:3           in the forty and sixth yea there were …
in the forty and sixth year there were …

Helaman 4:12         and deserting away
and dissenting away

Helaman 4:25         exceedingly more numerous
more exceeding numerous

Helaman 6:20         every means in their power
every means whatsoever was in their power

Helaman 6:21         the more part of the Nephites
the more parts of the Nephites

Helaman 7:10         the garden gate which led by the highway
the garden gate which was by the highway

Helaman 7:16         how could ye have given way
how could ye have given away

Helaman 8:11         the waters … parted hither and thither
the waters … departed hither and thither

Helaman 8:19         even since the days of Abraham
ever since the days of Abraham

Helaman 8:20         and also Ezias and also Isaiah
and also Ezaias and also Isaiah

Helaman 9:36         that I Nephi know nothing concerning …
that I Nephi knew nothing concerning …

Helaman 12:15       for surely it is the earth that moveth
for sure it is the earth that moveth

Helaman 12:22       and woe unto him to whom he shall say this
and woe unto whom he shall say this

Helaman 14:5         there shall a new star arise
there shall be a new star arise

Helaman 16:3         when they saw that they could not …
when they saw this, that they could not …

Helaman 16:11       and these were the conditions
and thus were the conditions

3 Nephi 2:18          they did come forth
they did come forth again

3 Nephi 4:28          they did fell the tree to the earth
they did fall the tree to the earth

3 Nephi 5:9            a shorter but true account
a more short but a true account

3 Nephi 7:3            and thus they became tribes
and thus there became tribes

3 Nephi 9:9            the people of the king of Jacob
the people of the king Jacob

3 Nephi 9:21          I have come unto the world
I have come into the world

3 Nephi 10:4  <omit>
O ye people of the house of Israel

3 Nephi 11:0          Jesus Christ did show himself
Jesus Christ sheweth himself

3 Nephi 11:8          and behold they saw a Man
and behold they saw a man

3 Nephi 14:4          let me pull the mote out of thine eye
let me pull out the mote out of thine eye

3 Nephi 16:6          the Holy Ghost which witnesses unto them
the Holy Ghost which witness unto them

3 Nephi 16:15        but if they will not turn unto me
but if they will not return unto me

3 Nephi 16:17        and then the words … shall be fulfilled
and when the words … shall be fulfilled

3 Nephi 17:5          and beheld they were in tears
and behold they were in tears

3 Nephi 18:13        the gates of hell is ready, open to receive them
the gates of hell is already open to receive them

3 Nephi 18:16        I have set an example for you
I have set an example before you

3 Nephi 18:34        which hath been among you
which hath been among you beforetimes

Finally, in August 2009 the last part of volume 4 was published, with the following statistical summary of the analysis:

811 cases of variation (or potential variation) analyzed

304 differences between the critical text and the standard text

52 readings that have never appeared in any standard printed edition:

1 in O only; 27 in P only (in cases where O is not extant); 1 in both O and P;

23 conjectured readings

47 readings that make a difference that would show up in translation

17 readings that make the Book of Mormon more consistent in phraseology or usage

4 readings that restore a unique phrase or word choice to the text

These results are much like those for parts 2 and 3 since O is generally not extant for the last part of the Book of Mormon text. Here are some of the more significant changes proposed for the text in part 6 of volume 4:

Current  reading (or equivalent)
Revised reading

3 Nephi 21:9          and there shall be among them those
and there shall be many among them

3 Nephi 21:16        and I will cut off witchcrafts out of thy land
and I will cut off witchcrafts out of thy hand

3 Nephi 22:4          and shalt not remember the reproach of thy youth
<omit>

3 Nephi 22:17        every tongue that shall revile against thee
every tongue that shall rise against thee

3 Nephi 25:2          the Son of righteousness arise
the Sun of righteousness arise

3 Nephi 28:3          blessed are ye because ye desired this thing
blessed are ye because ye desire this thing

3 Nephi 28:36        I knew not whether they were cleansed
I knew not whether they were changed

4 Nephi 1:27          there were many churches which professed to know the Christ
there were churches which professed to know the Christ
Mormon 2:4           we did come to the city of Angola
we did come to the city of Angolah

Mormon 4:14         many prisoners both women and children

many prisoners of women and of children

Mormon 6:14         and Jeneum had fallen with his ten thousand
and Joneum had fallen with his ten thousand

Mormon 6:15         and a few which had deserted over unto the Lamanites
and a few which had dissented over unto the Lamanites

Mormon 8:9           save it be the Lamanites and robbers
save it be Lamanites and robbers

Mormon 8:10         and whether they be upon the face of the land no man knoweth
and whither they be upon the face of the land no man knoweth

Mormon 8:28         leaders of churches and teachers shall rise
leaders of churches and teachers shall be lifted up

Ether 1:34               Jared his brother said unto him
therefore Jared his brother said unto him

Ether 1:41               and gather together … thy families
and gather together … thy family

Ether 1:43               and thus I will do unto thee
and this I will do unto thee

Ether 2:11               until the fullness come
until the fullness be come

Ether 2:13               and they dwelt in tents and dwelt in tents
and they dwelt in tents

Ether 2:14             at the end of four years
at the end of the four years

Ether 2:25               for ye cannot cross this great deep
for how be it / ye cannot cross this great deep

Ether 3:1                 he did carry them in his hands upon the top
he did carry them in his hands up on the top

Ether 3:18               and all this that this man knew that …
and all this because that this man knew that …

Ether 4:1                 and for this cause did king Mosiah keep them
and for this cause did king Benjamin keep them

Ether 6:5                 there should be a furious wind blow
there should a furious wind blow

Ether 8:24               or woe be unto it
for woe be unto it

Ether 9:2                 which did not seek his destruction
which were not or which did not seek his destruction

Ether 9:22               yea and he even saw the Son of righteousness
yea and he even saw the Sun of righteousness

Ether 11:4               and Shiblom reigned in his stead
and Shiblon reigned in his stead

Ether 12:2               for he could not be restrained
for he could not be constrained

Ether 12:4               which hope cometh of faith maketh an anchor
which hope cometh of faith and maketh an anchor

Ether 13:31             and there was none to restrain them
and there was none to constrain them

Ether 14:2 and of his wives and children
and they of his wife and children

Ether 14:12             he fled to the borders upon the seashore
he fled to the borders by the seashore

Ether 14:17             and he did slay both women and children
and he did slay both men women and children

Ether 14:28             the valley of Shurr was near the hill Comnor
the valley of Shurr was near the hill Comron

Moroni 7:16           and to persuade to believe in Christ
and persuadeth to believe in Christ

Moroni 7:26           and by faith they become the sons of God
and by faith they became the sons of God

Moroni 9:24           many of our brethren have deserted over
many of our brethren have dissented over

Moroni 9:24           and many more will also desert over unto them
and many more will also dissent over unto them

Moroni 10:34         before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah
before the pleading bar of the great Jehovah

3. What other volumes will be published as part of this project?

(a) Volume 3, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon

In this third volume, I will discuss each step in the transmission of the text, including Joseph Smith’s dictating of the text and his scribes’ writing it down (the original manuscript), their copying of the text into the printer’s manuscript, the typesetting of the first (1830) edition, and the publishing of 19 significant editions since then (the 1837 and 1840 under Joseph Smith’s direction, plus 12 more within the LDS textual tradition, and 5 within the RLDS textual tradition). This volume will examine some of the important issues regarding how Joseph Smith translated and what kind of text was revealed to him. Each edition will also be examined in terms of its editing history. Each type of grammatical editing will be thoroughly described in this volume. There will also be a lined-up comparison between the biblical quotations from the King James Bible and the corresponding Book of Mormon passages.

In 2002 I decided that I could not produce volume 3 without first determining what the original text was. For that reason, volume 4 has been published first – and also in parts, so that the reading public will have time to examine the textual analysis in manageable segments.

(b) Volume 5, A Complete Electronic Collation of the Book of Mormon

This last volume will be available in an electronic format. A few printed copies of the collation will be prepared for archival purposes. In this volume, the entire text for both manuscripts and the 20 editions is lined up and compared, with every difference specified – not only word and phrase differences, but also punctuation, capitalization, spelling, paragraphing, versification, and so forth. The differences will be categorized and can be searched in terms of the type of change. I am planning to make this electronic collation available at the same time volume 3 is published.

4. What are some of the major findings of this project?

(a) The original manuscript supports the hypothesis that the text was given to Joseph Smith word for word and that he could see the spelling of the names (in support of what witnesses of the translation process claimed about Joseph’s translation – namely, that he spelled out the Book of Mormon names, at least when the name first appeared).

(b) The original text is much more consistent and systematic in expression than has ever been realized.

(c) There are a number of errors in the text that have never been corrected in any LDS or RLDS edition, although none of them fundamentally alter the text.

(d) There are occasional errors in the original manuscript itself (see, for instance, the reading “Ishmael and also his hole hole” in 1 Nephi 7:5); errors could enter the text from its very earliest transmission; many of the errors in the original manuscript show that this manuscript was written down from oral dictation.

(e) Errors in the printer’s manuscript clearly show that this manuscript was produced by visual copying from another text, not by oral dictation.

(f) Joseph Smith’s editing for the second and third editions (1837 and 1840) represents human editing, not a revealed revision of the text.

(g) The original text includes unique kinds of expression that appear to be uncharacteristic of English in any time and place; some of these expressions are Hebraistic in nature.

(h) The early transmission of the Book of Mormon text does not in general support the traditional assumptions of textual criticism – namely, the assumptions that the transmitted text tends to remove difficult readings and lengthen the text; instead, the early transmission of the Book of Mormon text tends to introduce more difficult readings and to omit words and phrases.

(i) The vocabulary of the Book of Mormon text appears to derive from the 1500s and the 1600s, not from the 1800s.

This last finding is quite remarkable. Lexical evidence suggests that the original text contained a number of expressions and words with meanings that were lost from the English language by 1700, including the following (with the date of their last citation in the Oxford English Dictionary given in parentheses):

to require ‘to request’ (1665)

Enos 1:18 reads “thy fathers have also required of me this thing”

[Ezra 8:22: “for I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way”]

sermon ‘talk, discourse, speech’ (1594) [conjectural emendation]

Mosiah 19:24 should read “after they had ended the sermon”

(not the current reading “after they had ended the ceremony”)

to cast arrows ‘to shoot arrows’ (1609)

Alma 49:4 reads “the Lamanites could not cast their stones and their arrows at them”

[Proverbs 26:18: “as a mad man who casteth firebrands arrows and death”]

to counsel ‘to counsel with’ (1547)

Alma 37:37 originally read “counsel the Lord in all thy doings”

[similarly in Alma 39:10]

but if ‘unless’ (1596)

Mosiah 3:19 originally read “for the natural man is an enemy to God …

and will be forever and ever but if he yieldeth to the enticings of the Holy Spirit”

to depart ‘to part’ (1677)

Helaman 8:11 originally read “to smite upon the waters of the Red Sea

and they departed hither and thither”

extinct: in reference to an individual’s death (1675)

Alma 44:7 reads “and inflect the wounds of death in your bodies

that ye may become extinct” [similarly in several other places]

the pleading bar of God (not in the Oxford English Dictionary, but three early 1600 citations have been found, including one in a legal context) [conjectural emendation]

Jacob 6:13 should read “until I shall meet you before the pleading bar of God”, not “the pleasing bar of God” [similarly in Moroni 10:34]

As noted, only two of these instances of archaic vocabulary (dating from Early Modern English) are found in the 1611 King James Bible.

5. What have been the most significant events in the history of this project?

Besides the actual publishing of the volumes of the critical text themselves, there are two events that stand out:

(a) April 1991: two weeks spent in Independence, Missouri, making a careful examination of my transcript of the printer’s manuscript against the actual manuscript, with the assistance of my wife, Sirkku, and Ron Romig, archivist for the Community of Christ (then the RLDS Church).

(b) October 1991: three weeks working with Robert Espinosa and his fellow conservators at the BYU library on fragments of the original manuscript owned by the Wilford Wood family of Bountiful, Utah; these fragments were photographed in ultraviolet light by David Hawkinson and constitute about two percent of the original manuscript.

6. What has been your relationship with the LDS and RLDS Churches in this project?

This project began as an independent scholarly project, and I have made sure by legal agreements that this independence has been preserved. Since the beginning of this project (in 1988) the LDS Historical Department has provided full access to ultraviolet photographs of the original manuscript and has allowed me to directly examine the original manuscript as well as their enormous library of Book of Mormon editions. Without their cooperation, this project would never have been possible. Similarly, archivist Ron Romig, church historian Richard Howard (now retired), and the leadership of the Community of Christ (formerly the RLDS Church) have also been fully cooperative in providing access to the printer’s manuscript as well as an enlarged photocopy of that manuscript, plus their large collection of Book of Mormon editions.

In 1994 the LDS Church Scriptures Committee requested that I provide information about my findings on the text. For the next four to five years, this information was conveyed to the Scriptures Committee. Prior to submitting this information, however, the Church, BYU, and I signed a legally binding letter of understanding guaranteeing the independence of the critical text project, with these two important provisos: (1) I would hold the copyright to the critical text, and (2) I would exercise complete control over the content of the critical text, including my interpretations and analyses of the text.

The critical text project is a scholarly one and has not received any ecclesiastical approval or endorsement. The transcripts and the textual interpretations represent my own scholarly work, with peer review from a number of scholars (especially David Calabro, a graduate student in Hebrew studies at the University of Chicago). I have received no explicit response regarding any of my interpretations or suggestions for changes from the Church Scriptures Committee. The Church committee has had full access to my findings and is free to use them (or not use them) as they wish.

I have also retained the right to legally extend this freedom to use the results of the critical text project to anyone wishing to create their own single reading of the Book of Mormon text, including the Community of Christ and other churches as well as publishing firms interested in producing a noncritical edition of the Book of Mormon.

7. Will any of these changes appear in subsequent LDS editions of the Book of Mormon?

I do not know the answer to this question. The Church will decide for itself what changes, if any, will be implemented. The Church has never engaged in a public discussion of such changes or the arguments for making (or not making) those changes. On the other hand, this scholarly critical text project promotes public discussion and, when done properly, establishes an on-going process and allows others to contribute. For instance, as part of this project, I have requested anyone who has any suggestions for emendations to the text or questions about problematic readings to send them to me. Thus far I have received over a hundred suggestions for change – and about thirty percent of these have led to emendations in the text. Surprisingly, most of these emendations have come not from scholars but from regular members of the Church – readers of the Book of Mormon who are simply striving to understand the text. Such an open request for participation has significantly improved the findings of this project.

One important fact that I realized early on in this project is that the original text is not fully recoverable by scholarly means. Only 28 percent of the Book of Mormon text is extant in the original manuscript. Over half of the new readings that have never appeared in any standard printed edition derive from readings in the original manuscript. Oliver Cowdery averaged about three textual changes per manuscript page as he copied from the original manuscript into the printer’s manuscript. The clear majority of these changes would be unrecoverable if those portions of the original manuscript were not extant. In most cases we have no clue that there is even an error in the current text unless the original manuscript tells us so. Given that the majority of the original manuscript is no longer extant, we will be unable to fully recover the original text by human means. And even the extant portions of the original manuscript probably have errors that we are unaware of. The only way that the original text could be fully restored would be if the Lord chose to reveal it again. Such is definitely not within the purview of this scholarly project.

One valuable aspect of this public, scholarly discussion of the text is that later changes in the text could be made by the Church without engendering the typical complaint that the Church is making changes for political reasons. Note, in particular, the uproar over the 1981 change in 2 Nephi 30:6 from “a white and a delightsome people” to “a pure and a delightsome people”. The change was first implemented in the 1840 edition; Joseph Smith’s motivation for making that change was based on quite something else, as I argue in part 2 of volume 4 under 2 Nephi 30:6. An independent public discussion in a scholarly context will avoid having the Church take abuse for making alterations to the text.

8. Does this project have an apologetic purpose? In other words, is one of its purposes to defend the Book of Mormon against detractors?

My task, as I have always seen it, is to recover the original English-language text to the extent scholarly and academic analysis will allow. I have therefore restricted my discussion to the text per se and have completely avoided discussions of whether there are practices found among the cultures of the world (including the Americas) in support of particular readings. Nor have I engaged in any discussion of external evidences for the Book of Mormon, including questions of geography, genetics, and archaeology.

My initial endeavor as editor of the critical text project was to produce a detailed transcription of the original and printer’s manuscripts. And right from the beginning, I discovered errors that had crept into the text as Oliver Cowdery and the other scribes produced the printer’s manuscript from the original manuscript. Within a year or so I recognized that I would not be able to completely recover the original text by scholarly methods. Yet at the same time, I began to see considerable evidence for the traditional interpretation that witnesses of the translation process claimed: (1) the text was given word for word, (2) Book of Mormon names were frequently spelled out the first time they occurred in the text, and (3) during dictation there was no rewriting of the text except to correct errors in taking down the dictation. Joseph Smith was literally reading off an already composed English-language text. The evidence in the manuscripts and in the language of the text itself supports the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon was a precisely determined text. I do not consider this conclusion apologetic, but instead as one demanded by the evidence.

The opposing viewpoint, that Joseph Smith got ideas and he translated them into his own English, cannot be supported by the manuscript and textual evidence. The only substantive argument for this alternative view has been the nonstandard nature of the text, with its implication that God would never speak ungrammatical English, so the nonstandard usage must be the result of Joseph Smith putting the ideas he received into his own language. Yet with the recent finding that the original vocabulary of the text appears to be dated from the 1500s and 1600s (not the 1800s), we now need to consider the possibility that the ungrammaticality of the original text may also date from that earlier period of time, not necessarily from Joseph’s own time and place. Joseph Smith is not the author of the Book of Mormon, nor is he actually the translator. Instead, he was the revelator: through him the Lord revealed the English-language text (by means of the interpreters, later called the Urim and Thummim, and the seer stone). Such a view is consistent, I believe, with Joseph’s use elsewhere of the verb translate to mean ‘transmit’ and the noun translation to mean ‘transmission’ (as in the eighth Article of Faith).

I should also point out that my personal testimony of the Book of Mormon is not dependent upon my work on this project. The Book of Mormon stands on its own and is ultimately not dependent on how that text may vary in printed editions or in the manuscripts. Moroni promised that the Lord will give a testimony of the book to the prayerful reader – irrespective of any infelicities and errors in the text (which Moroni recognized could be there, as he himself noted in the last sentence on the title page of the Book of Mormon). I received my own personal witness of this book long before I ever began work on this project. I have never needed to prove to myself that the text is from the Lord. Nor have errors in the text ever prevented the Spirit from bearing witness that the book is the Lord’s.

My own personal witness of this book dates from 1979, when I was reading the book during a time of difficulty. I was reading the words that king Lamoni’s queen expresses as she comes out of her state of unconsciousness:

Alma 19:29-30 (original text)

she arose and stood upon her feet and cried with a loud voice saying

O blessed Jesus who has saved me from an awful hell

O blessed God have mercy on this people

and when she had said this she clapped her hands being filled with joy

speaking many words which were not understood

As I was reading this passage, the Spirit witnessed to me, “This really happened.” What is interesting about this passage is that I didn’t actually read “she clapped her hands” (the reading based on the printer’s manuscript), but instead I read “she clasped her hands” (the reading found in the 1830 edition as well as in all LDS editions). Now I do not take this personal witness as evidence that I should reject the earliest reading, clapped. It simply means that the Lord witnesses the truthfulness of this book irrespective of the minor errors that may have crept in. I know of no error that changes any doctrine or the basic account of the text. There is no error, awkward expression, or ungrammaticality in any of the printed editions of the book that will prevent the honest reader from gaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon.

9. So why should we be interested in recovering the original English-language text of the Book of Mormon?

The major thrust of this project is oriented towards scholars, not the lay readers of the book. There is no reason to restore in the current standard text the nonstandard language and the non-English Hebraisms that were largely eliminated by Joseph Smith himself in his editing of the text for the second (1837) edition. On the other hand, many of the word and phrase changes proposed by the critical text project (such as those listed under question 2 above) make the text much more systematic and consistent. The Church (especially in its 1920 and 1981 editions) has sought to print an accurate text, including the restoration of original readings (providing the language itself is standard English).

From a scholarly perspective, restoring the original text provides new ways of viewing the Book of Mormon text. By studying the language of the text, I have seen much that confirms my personal testimony of the book as well as what early witnesses of the translation were able to observe.

10. Won’t changing the text prove embarrassing for some commentaries and interpretations by church leaders and scholars?

I do not think this is much of a problem. There are so few examples where restoring an original reading will cause difficulties for previous commentary. In virtually every case, the original text will reinforce and make gospel principles even clearer. As an example, there is the passage in Alma 39:13 where Alma tells his son Corianton (in the current text) to “return unto them [the Zoramites] and acknowledge your faults and that wrong which ye have done”. Yet the original text read here “return unto them and acknowledge your faults and repair that wrong which ye have done”. The original text emphasizes that repentance involves more than saying “I’m sorry”: it requires us to do all we can to make restitution for our sins. This doctrine is, of course, supported by other passages in the Book of Mormon (see, for instance, Helaman 5:17).

One place where the original reading will lead to some revision of commentary deals with the parenthetical phrase that Joseph Smith added to the 1840 edition in 1 Nephi 20:1, which explains that the phrase “the waters of Judah” means ‘the waters of baptism’. The 1920 edition removed the parentheses that Joseph had placed around the extra phrase “or out of the waters of baptism”, which has subsequently led some church writers to interpret the additional phraseology as part of the original Isaiah text, with a few writers even accusing ancient Jewish scribes as having purposely removed a clear Old Testament reference to baptism from the book of Isaiah!

11. Would it be worth doing textual criticism for the translations of the English-language Book of Mormon into other languages?

Yes. In fact, I can think of one very specific aspect that could be of tremendous benefit to my own project – namely, the question of how translators have dealt with problematic passages. Their solutions may suggest possible conjectural emendations for the English-language text. As an example, consider the English-language reading for Mosiah 17:13: “they took him and bound him and scourged his skin with fagots yea even unto death”. This passage literally states that Abinadi was whipped to death with bundles of sticks. I have conjectured that the word scourged here is a mishearing for scorched, the verb used in the next verse (Mosiah 17:14) to refer to Abinadi’s death by fire (“and now when the flames began to scorch him”). And some foreign language translators have also realized that the text intends to say that Abinadi was burnt to death and have therefore substituted for scourged a verb that is equivalent to burning rather than whipping. Some students in my class on textual criticism have involved themselves in projects of this sort, but their work has been limited to a few languages and only to checking whether the English-language conjectures proposed in this project can be found in any of the translations. It would undoubtedly be worthwhile checking the other side of the coin: Are there readings in the translations that suggest conjectures for the English-language text?

12. What role has your theory of Analogical Modeling played in the Book of Mormon project?

Analogical Modeling (AM) is a theory of language that I have worked on since the 1970s. The traditional method for describing language has been in terms of rules, but in Analogical Modeling there are no rules, only examples (instances) of past behavior that a speaker uses to understand and produce language. AM is actually a general theory of description that uses both nearest neighbors and not-so-near neighbors (under certain well-defined conditions of homogeneity) to predict behavior.

AM has been implicitly used in many aspects of the critical text project, particularly in finding instances of usage for testing the reliability of readings. One important characteristic of the Book of Mormon – one that is very helpful in establishing the text – is the size of the book (584 pages of canonical text in the 1830 edition). The specific language of the text is sufficiently repeated throughout the book so that there are usually enough exemplars to make a reasoned analysis for any given expression or phrase. It has not, in my opinion, been fully appreciated how huge a scriptural text the Book of Mormon is and what an advantage that is in analyzing and establishing its text.

In distinction to the findings of computerized stylistic analyses of the Book of Mormon text, I have found that many expressions, phrases, and words extend throughout the text, such as the term pleading bar by both Jacob and Moroni (in Jacob 6:13 and Moroni 10:34) or the precise expression “yea even the sword of the justice of the eternal God” by both Nephi and Moroni (in 1 Nephi 12:18 and Ether 8:23). Sometimes Jacob uses expressions that are unique to him (at least in the original text), such as “the commands of God”. As many readers have recognized, every time Jacob starts to speak or write, his flowing style is almost immediately distinguishable from his brother Nephi’s complex syntax – and it doesn’t take a statistical analysis of function words within passages of five thousand words to figure this out!

As a result of my work in AM, I have continually attempted to look for exemplars that might be responsible for creating errors in the Book of Mormon text. As an example, in 2 Nephi 20:29 all the printed editions as well as the printer’s manuscript read Ramath instead of the Ramah found in Isaiah 10:29 (the original manuscript is not extant for this passage). A number of scholars have noted that Ramath would have been the earlier Hebrew form for Ramah and have therefore claimed that the Book of Mormon text here maintains the earlier Hebrew name for this place, thus showing that the Book of Mormon text was translated from a more ancient version of the book of Isaiah. What has not been noticed in all of this discussion is that within the Book of Mormon quotation for Isaiah 2-14 (found in 2 Nephi 12-24), a number of names are misspelled in the printer’s manuscript. The 1830 typesetter corrected all of these misspellings by reference to his own King James Bible – except for the case of Ramath. And for each of these misspelled names there is an analogical source for the misspelling – either a nearby word in the Isaiah quotation or a common English word or biblical name:

In the case of Ramath, we find Hamath earlier in the same chapter (2 Nephi 20:9). Another influence that would have led Oliver Cowdery to write Ramath instead of the correct Ramah would have been the name Aiath, found in the immediately preceding verse (2 Nephi 20:28). In fact, these two earlier occurrences of names ending in -ath could have readily misled the 1830 typesetter into thinking that he didn’t need to check his King James Bible for the spelling Ramath.

Three AM books have been published and are all available, two authored by me and one edited by me and colleagues:

(a) Analogical Modeling of Language (Kluwer: Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1989)

(b) Analogy and Structure (Kluwer: Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1992)

(c) Analogical Modeling: An Exemplar-Based Approach to Language, edited by Royal Skousen, Deryle Lonsdale, and Dilworth B. Parkinson (John Benjamins: Amsterdam, 2002)

These books are rather technical. For a general introduction to AM, see my article “Analogical Modeling: Exemplars, Rules, and Quantum Computing”, Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (Berkeley, California: Berkeley Linguistics Society, 2003), pages 425-39. A preprint version of this paper is available from our research group’s AM website: <http://humanities.byu.edu/am/>.

Let’s start with our hypothetical person. She is intelligent and motivated, has very little background in Mormon studies, and wants to begin. She has access to libraries and the internet, and has some (but not unlimited) time to find sources. She has a total budget of $100 for the year. (She may be able to find an additional $100 next year; or maybe not. Don’t depend on it.) She has no Mormon studies books or other materials at present.

How can she get the most bang for her buck? Should she subscribe to Sunstone and Dialogue right away? How about BYU Studies? Should she drop by Sam Weller’s or Benchmark and spend it all on inexpensive used books — and if so, which ones exactly? Are there any immediate must-haves? (RSR? Shipps? Quinn? Angel and the Beehive? Mormonism in Transition? Prince?)

Which of these resources, if any, can she find for free online? Should she look at CD-Rom resources? Are there any that are easy (or not easy) to find through libraries? Should she go to symposia? (Which?)

Overall, how do you advise our Mormon studies newbie to spend her first (and perhaps only) $100? Please reply in one or two paragraphs. Your reply, along with others that I receive, will be posted on blog (with attribution).

I asked severl well-versed people for their thoughts, and received some very helpful responses. This is what they told me:

Ardis Parshall, independent Mormon historian and researcher extraordinaire; proprietress, Keepapitchinin:

My answer assumes that she really does want to explore Mormon Studies and not merely assemble an impressive shelf collection.

Since she has access to libraries, she should subscribe to none of the journals; she should read the journals at the library. Journals will help her keep current with ongoing discussions and very rare new discoveries — but no one year’s worth of any one journal, or all the journals together, will give her any useful depth or background in Mormon Studies. Nor should she be in any rush to buy books, as long as she does have access to a good library (presumably with good interlibrary loan access). She should start reading the books Mauss recommends, and back issues of journals, and the other materials that such a reading list leads her to depending on how her interests begin to form. When she discovers by repeated returns to the same book, or by the frustration of having to wait until Monday when the library reopens in order to check that half-remembered idea, then she’ll know where to invest her limited funds.

Rather, she should hang onto her $100, and dispense it a dollar or two at a time in photocopies and printouts of articles and chapters that she responds to in her initial reading, and that she knows she will want to return to again and again, or that seem so challenging or so essential that she can’t do without them. This way she’ll build a file of materials that are really valuable, skipping the puff and the background that fill up most books and all journals. She should also buy a good notebook and pen, and keep a reading log with complete bibliographic citations and brief notes on every Mormon studies item she reads. *That* will be more helpful and more impressive than any collection of books.

Mary Ellen Robertson, symposium coordinator, Sunstone

My forays into Mormon Studies began when I discovered a gently used copy of Claudia Bushman’s anthology, Mormon Sisters, at a used bookstore in Logan, UT. I’ve spent a lot more than $100 on my library in the years since! And I was enough of a dweeb to ask for the Encyclopedia of Mormonism for Christmas one year.

My recommendations would be:

Get a feel for which topics in Mormon Studies are of the most interest. Theology? Scriptural studies? Women’s studies? Sociology of Religion? Church history? Biography? It will help to narrow the scope of the search.
Before spending any money, browse at libraries, used bookstores, and online to see where foundational sources are available. [If you're in the Intermountain West, moving sales, garage sales, and Deseret Industries can be great sources for books].
Search the Sunstone archives at www.sunstonemagazine.com. Most of the content is free. Issues 1-147 of Sunstone magazine have been digitized and scanned into our online database, as well as thousands of audio files from past symposiums. Audio content older than 4 years is free to download. It’s a wealth of information about Mormon Studies that you can load into an iPod, mp3 player, or computer and take with you anywhere.

I’ll let the other contributors weigh in on what to purchase for one’s budding Mormon Studies library. Anthologies give a lot of bang for the buck–Mormon Sisters, Sister Saints, Contemporary Mormonism, and Women and Authority come to mind.

J. Stapley, awesome blog-ninja of By Common Consent and Splendid Sun:

Fortunately, the back issues of JMH, Dialogue and BYU Studies are available for free online.  I would do a selected reading of the must read back catalogue, and target the $100 elsewhere.  A list of must read articles would be a fun excercise.  A while back I posted a list of four books (http://bycommonconsent.com/2008/06/17/four-books-about-mormonism-redux/).  Those only add up to $80 (depending on how much you pay for Alexander’s volume), so I would add RSR for a total of five:

The Democratization of American Christianity
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints
Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930
Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball

As I mentioned in that post, I think this list has a lot of weaknesses. Reading a diary of an early Mormon has a great impact on our perceptions of these people and their lived religion – perhaps the diaries of Patty Sessions, Helen Mar Kimball Whitney or Charles Ora Card would be a good place to start. It can be slow going, but it is definitely worth it. Two things that get somewhat short-shrifted are Women and Mormon cosmology. Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society, really is a great starting place for the Relief Society.

Armand Mauss, Sociologist and author of All Abraham’s Children

You don’t say whether or not your hypothetical newbie has a college education or LDS upbringing. Assuming that she has both, here would be my recommendation for spending $100 :

1) Get a copy of the latest (1992) edition of Allen & Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints(maybe still $10, but at least it should be available in a decent library). Read that first — twice.

2) Get personal copies of the DVDs for the back-issues of Dialogue and the Journal of Mormon History. Read first the book reviews from all the back-issues starting with perhaps 1980. Make a list of the books that seem the most comprehensive in their coverage of (a) the period from 1880 on and (b) the seemingly most important issues in LDS history and culture (polygamy, women’s roles, race relations, historicity of LDS scriptures, doctrinal development, etc.). Use that list to build a personal bibliography.

3) Get a library card (or college library privileges) at a large institutional library and start reading the books on one’s personal bibliography in whatever order most keeps the appetite whetted. During the reading of any book, check the indexes on the two DVDs to see what articles have been written on related subjects, and read those. Also, select the Search function on the current Sunstone website to look for other articles related to the book currently being read.

All of that can be done for $100 or less, assuming one has a decent computer. Spend at least 20 hours a week in this enterprise, and in a year you will be more knowledgeable about LDS history and culture than 90% of the Saints and their leaders. After that, go back to LDS apologetic literature, including selected works produced under the auspices of the Maxwell Institute, plus BYU Studies. At that point, our hypothetical newbie will be in a better position to recognize which apologetic works will stand scrutiny and which ones won’t.

Anyway, that’s what I would suggest, given the limitations you placed on our hypothetical situation and newbie.

David King Landrith, President, Fawn Brodie Appreciation Society (New England Chapter), founder, Mormon Mentality:

Saints without Halos, by Leonard Arrington & Davis Bitton

Neither Black nor White, by Lester Bush and Armand Mauss

Dialogues with Myself, by Eugene England

Faithful History, ed. George Smith

Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon, by Dan Vogel

“The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844” by D. Michael Quinn

“The King Follet Sermon: A Newly Amalgamated Text” by Stan Larson

$13.57 The Mountain Meadows Massacre, by Juanita Brooks

For those unburdened by a legal background, Reynolds v. United States was the 1879 Supreme Court case in which the justices held that plural marriage was not protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Because it was the first case to ever construe the religion clauses directly, Reynolds is a fairly standard part of the con law cannon in American law schools. The case itself was pivotal in Mormon history, helping to usher in The Raid of the 1880s, which ultimately forced the church to abandon polygamy. Almost immediately after the case came down, however, George Q. Cannon, then Utah’s Territorial Delegate in Washington D.C., went to work in the Library of Congress, penning an elaborate response to the court’s reasoning. The result was The Review.

Cannon’s Review is in many ways a remarkable document. Coming out as it did between the time of the Reynolds decision and the Court’s disposition of the petition for rehearing, Cannon prepared it in a relatively short period ­ no more than a few months ­ during which time he was busy with other duties. Nevertheless it evidences a great deal of research and careful thought. Cannons sources range from Blackstone (three separate American editions were consulted) to Justinian and St. Ambrose. He may well have had help in preparing it, most likely from either Thomas Kane, his long time political ally and confidant, George Biddle, the Philadelphia attorney retained by the Church to argue the case before the justices, or Benjamin Sheeks, the Church’s local attorney in Salt Lake City. Regardless of whether or not Cannon had help, the pamphlet shows a surprising familiarity with American constitutional history, theoretical jurisprudence, and criminal law. In short, of the contemporary Mormon writings on the Reynolds decision, Cannon’s Review is far and away the most legally and philosophically sophisticated. It deserves a better place than it has received in the historical literature on late nineteenth Mormonism.

England, for one. The question occurred to me after I linked Eugene England’s essay “On Fidelity, Polygamy, and Celestial Marriage” for about the tenth time in a blog comment. That essay does a great job of pointing out problems with polygamy and debunking pro-polygamy arguments. It has lots of breadth, and while it doesn’t examine some of these questions in great detail, and makes a few unwarranted assertions, it nonetheless is a must for the blogger’s short list.

Lester Bush’s Dialogue article about the development of the Negro doctrine is also a must. Rather than the Dialogue link, though, I typically cite to the Signature books link for Neither White Nor Black, because it contains great added resources — the entire book is available for free online.

Both of these give a lot of basic and important information on topics which come up often and which are widely misunderstood. As a result, they’re very useful as actual citations in the fast-paced, broad-ranging, often shallowly-supported world of blogging.

At this point, I’ll kick it over to readers. Which article(s) should be third on the list? Buerger on Adam-God (do bloggers _care_ about that?), or on priesthood? Quinn on post-Manifesto polygamy? Jeffery on Evolution? Levi on Mormon erotica? Have I misjudged on one or both of my first two suggestions?

What do people think?

[Future installations to address other periodicals.]

Here are my own top five:

Newell & Avery, Mormon Enigma (Illinois). Outstanding Emma biography, and in many ways a fascinating recasting of the restoration story through the eyes of a prominent woman.
Claudia Bushman, Mormon Sisters (Emmeline Press). A collection of essays exploring the roles and stories of nineteenth-century Mormon women in Utah.
Derr, Cannon, and Beecher, Women of Covenant (Deseret). The history of the Relief Society, and of the many women involved.
Hanks, Women and Authority (Signature). Provocative essays on a variety of topics, including Heavenly Mother and women and the priesthood.
Godfrey, Godfrey and Derr, Women’s Voices. (Deseret). Essays about women’s roles and stories in LDS history.

There are many other interesting books that didn’t make my top five; it was quite close, in some cases. Some of the other books on the topic include:

Burgess-Olsen, Sister Saints. (BYU Press). Biographical essays about a variety of women in early church history.
Beecher & Anderson, Sisters in Spirit (Illinois). Essays about Mormon women in Mormon culture, such as expectations of marriage, motherhood, and spirituality.
Compton, In Sacred Loneliness. (Signature). Biographies of Joseph Smith’s plural wives.
Bradley, Pedestals and Podiums. (Signature). Discussion of the Equal Rights Amendment movement and countermovement in Utah.
Pearson, Daughters of Light (Trilogy). Citations to early documentation of exercise women in the early church exercising spiritual gifts.
Bradford, Mormon Women Speak. (Olympus). Personal essays from a number of LDS women.
Madsen and Oman, Sisters and Little Saints (Deseret). History of the Primary.
Allred, God the Mother. (Signature). Collection of Allred’s essays on Heavenly Mother doctrine, September Six, and other topics.
Cannon, As a Woman Thinketh. (Bookcraft). Collection of short essays by LDS women on life and finding peace in the church.
Corcoran, Multiply and Replenish (Signature). Collection of essays about Mormon attitudes towards sexuality.
Van Waggoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Signature).
Beecher, The Personal Writings of Eliza Roxcy Snow (USU Press).
Beecher, Eliza and her Sisters. (Aspen). Collection of essays about Eliza R. Snow.
Arrington & Madsen, Mothers of the Prophets (Deseret). Biographical sketches.
Smith & Thatcher, Heroines of the Restoration (Bookcraft). Biographical sketches.

Okay, enough from me. What are your own favorite texts in Mormon feminism?

The Spring 2006 issue of the MSSA’s Newsletter lists the proposed (still tentative, of course) chapters of the book:

1. Lynn England, “Thomas O’Dea: The New Spirit and Science of Mormon Studies.�
2. Douglas Davies, “Mastery and Mystery.�
3. O. Kendall White, Jr., “Thomas O’Dea on Mormon Intellectual Life.�
4. Melvyn Hammarberg, “Thomas O’Dea’s The Mormons: The Revitalization Movement.�
5. Danny L. Jorgensen, “Mormonism and Modernity: Thomas F. O’Dea’s Mormons.�
6. Terryl Givens, “On O’Dea’s Treatment of the Book of Mormon.�
7. Armand Mauss, “From Near-Nation to Worldwide Religion.�
8. Loren Marks and Brent D. Beal, “Preserving Peculiarity as a People: Mormon Distinctiveness in Values and Internal Structure.�
9. Timothy B. Smith, “Health and Wellbeing among Mormons: A Review of Recent Research.�
10. Armand Mauss, “O’Dea and the Race Issue in Mormonism.�
11. Melvyn Hammarberg, “LDS Sexual Ethics as a Source of Strain within Mormonism.�
12. Rick Phillips, “The Two Churches of Mormonism.�
13. Carrie Miles, “Conflicts Inherent in LDS ‘Family Ideals Versus Equality of Women.’�
14. Janet Bennion, “Mormon Women’s Issues in the 21st Century.�
15. Susan Ellis, “The Voices of Mormon Women.�
16. David G. Stewart, Jr., “Growth of the LDS Church: Retention, Internationalization, and Contextualization.�
17. Sarah Busse Spencer, “Mormons and Globalization in the 21st Century.�
18. David Clark Knowlton, “Go Ye to All the World: The LDS Church and the Organization of International Society.�
19. Henri Gooren, “The Mormons of the World: The Meaning of LDS Membership in Central America.�
20. Timothy Smith and Lynn Wilder, “Strangers and Foreigners: Toward the Integration of Cultures in an International Church.�
21. Barry Balleck and Michael Nielson, “Mormons and War.�

Is there anything in the book that is not listed but that you’d like to see included? Which chapter sounds most interesting? Which do you think will add the most to the book? Which do you think will have the most to say about the strengths or weaknesses of O’Dea’s book?

Sociologist O’Dea is amazingly insightful for a non-LDS, and his text is still recommended reading for social scientists who study Mormonism. In 1966, Leonard Arrington stated that O’Dea’s works “offer unquestionably the best ‘outside’ view of Mormon thought and practice now available.”

But instead of reviewing his book here, I want us to engage his analysis. (See Michaelson, Dialogue, 1978, for an earlier assessment.) In particular, the last substantive chapter of his book lists ten potential sources of strain and conflict that the LDS Church could face in the then near future. I will list them below with some corresponding quotes (I’ve tried to be as representative as possible given space constraints) of O’Dea’s analysis. I’ll add my own comments later.

My questions to you:
Q1 Of what he identified, which do you think have turned out to be sources of strain and conflict since 1957? Which didn’t?
Q2 What did he leave off the list?
Q3 Of the sources he identified, which do you think still are sources of strain and conflict in the Church today?
Q4 Overall, how would you rate O’Dea’s list and assessments?

——————-

(1) THE MORMON ENCOUNTER WITH SECULAR THOUGHT. “Mormonism, which a hundred years ago began with such high hopes for education as a solution to the problems of mankind, finds itself today with uneasy intellectuals in Zion itself. They have followed the admonition of their prophet and sought wisdom, but the result of their quest has placed them in opposition to many of his most important doctrines.” (240)

(2) RATIONALITY VS. CHARISMA. “[T]he emphasis upon charismatic phenomena in popular Mormonism is considerable. Such an attitude offers obstacles to the beliefs and loyalties of the more rationalistic…” (242)

(3) AUTHORITY AND OBEDIENCE VS. DEMOCRACY AND INDIVIDUALISM. “In terms of church government, there has resulted a democracy of participation within the context of hierarchical organization and authoritarian operation. … [I]t remains a potential source of strain…” (243)

(4) CONSENT VS. COERCION. “Government and leadership have been a source of strain in Mormon history, as shown by the apostasy and grumbling that accompanied all Mormon efforts.” (245)

(5) PLURAL MARRIAGE AND CHANGE OF DOCTRINE. “The continuation of this proscribed tradition is a considerable embarrassment to the church and to those middle-class Mormons who desire respectability…” (249)

(6) FAMILY IDEALS VS. EQUALITY OF WOMEN. “This apparent contradiction in doctrinal emphasis [patriarchal family and equality of women and men] has been a source of strain in the past, but, since the abandonment of polygamy, it has become unimportant.” (250)

(7) PROGRESS VS. AGRARIANISM. “The carry-over of agrarianism from country to city conditions resulted in a conflict between the orientation to progress accepted by the Mormons, but hardly possible today without industry, and the preference for agriculture and agrarian ideology that has come to characterize the Mormon outlook.” (253)

(8) POLITICAL CONSERVATISM VS. SOCIAL IDEALISM. “Mormon social values play but little part in aiding the church in its confrontation with the gentile world today. The conflict between social idealism born of Mormon beliefs and political conservatism remains a real one.” (255)

(9) PATRIOTISM VS. PARTICULARISM. “The Mormon will engage in cooperative enterprises within the Church while he pursues laissez faire methods in the secular sphere. … [O]ne wonders whether or not it will divide the Mormon psyche.” (255)

(10) BELIEF VS. ENVIRONMENT. “Since many Mormons do not like to leave the Mormon region, this necessity to move is a source of dissatisfaction. … There is some indication that migration can lead to apostasy and thereby create further problems for the Church.” (257)