I’ve been reading and collecting the Book of Mormon my entire life in one form or another, from the illustrated “Book of Mormon for Beginning Readers” (or whatever it was called in the 1970s) to the official blue copy I handed out as a missionary, to Royal Skousen’s “Earliest Text.” I’ve also collected books written about the Book of Mormon, including much of Skousen’s Critical Text Project. I’ve appreciated being able to learn about the book and read it in these various formats particularly because I don’t usually like reading the same book more than once. This book edited by Grant Hardy gives a fresh new way to read it again, taking the official 2013 text and reformatting it to make for easier reading as well as to more easily identify various aspects, and also adding footnotes and other markers to point out changes gleaned from Skousen’s work, internal consistencies, and other interesting tidbits.
The book begins with the introduction from the 1981 edition “with minor modifications in 2013 (and the substitution of people for men in the third and next-to-last paragraphs),” (page vii) and then has the usual testimonies of three and eight witnesses, but then it also has the testimony of Emma Smith, taken from an interview by Joseph Smith III in 1879. In this, she mentions that Joseph did not have any manuscripts or books, what the plates felt like, that he did it “sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the [seer] stone in it,” (page ix) and that she did not believe her husband capable of composing it by himself.
This is followed by the Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith and Brief Explanation about the Book of Mormon, as you would find in a regular edition, although the Brief Explanation has an explanatory phrase inserted about the Plates of Ether. Then there is a Brief History of the Text, which is used as the editor’s introduction. In this, Hardy recounts the translation, printing, and subsequent editing and printing of the second edition. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition
Scott Gordon is president of FairMormon and as such has been a writer of several articles and a speaker at firesides. He has a master’s degree in Business Administration from Brigham Young University with a bachelor’s in Organizational Communication. He has held many Church callings, including Bishop, and currently serves as the Ward Mission Leader. He is married to Sheri Farnsworth Gordon and has five children.
Scott is the Executive Director of the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology at BYU. Under his leadership the program has been ranked in the top five of all collegiate entrepreneurship programs for each of the past seven years, ranking #2 in 2016. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Omadi, Inc., a venture backed SaaS mobile CRM platform for workforce management, serving the towing/transportation markets. Scott is a long time entrepreneur having co-founded or partnered in building seven companies (harvesting four), including several current ventures. Additionally, he serves on several business and private foundation boards. In 2005, Scott published a significant work, titled Where Have All The Prophets Gone?, a historical, theological book on early Christianity using the Bible, the Pseudepigrapha, the Apocrypha, the Dead Seas Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Library, and all of the extant early Christian writings. In 2014 Scott published his second book, Do the Mormons Have a Leg to Stand On?: a Critical Look at LDS Doctrines in the Light of the Bible and the Teachings of the Early Christian Church. Scott and his wife Marilyn are the parents of 5 married children and they have 15 grandchildren. Scott serves as Stake President of the Provo Utah YSA 4th Stake.
