
One nice thing about reading the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon together is that it lets us expand our mental geography of Zion into a full cartographic plane.
Within the Book of Mormon, 3rd and 4th Nephi are arguably some of the most important portions of the book, with their focus on the in-person ministry of Jesus Christ among the children of Lehi and what followed because of…
What were the three witnesses promised and what did they claim to experience? The basics of answering this question seems obvious—they saw the gold plates and other artifacts related to them. What is less apparent is how the Three Witnesses…
It’s become something of a communis opinio doctorum that Joseph Smith didn’t make use of the gold plates while translating the Book of Mormon.
For the past few years, I’ve tried to take some time each year to focus in on a specific subject related to the section of scriptures covered in Sunday School. Last year, for example, I tried to scratch the surface…
Let it be said first off that I am a last days cynic. It’s not that I think many current ideas of apocalypticism are weird (I mean, I don’t just think they’re weird). I just really hate them. This is…
Terryl Givens—one of the foremost Latter-day Saint authors, theologians, and apologists of our time—recently penned a short volume on 2nd Nephi as part of the brief theological introductions to the Book of Mormon series the Maxwell Institute has been publishing…
The scriptures are replete with examples telling us to seek out personal revelation and use scriptural precedent and principles to guide our decisions. Anyone who has sincerely tried to do this over an extended period of time knows that it…
This week’s Come, Follow Me lesson covers the story of Nephi praying on a tower in his garden, drawing a crowd, and revealing facts about the murder of the chief judge that he could only know through revelation. As I…
Imagining the Book of Mormon as a complex work reflecting numerous steps of compilation and abridgment helps explain some curious features of the encounter with Sherem in Jacob 7.
Thinking of the Book of Mormon as the result of a series of textual accretions and combinations might help make sense of how curiously overdetermined the account of Nephite origins is.
Is philological deliberation useful for studying the Book of Mormon? Is it even permitted?
Why is 3 Nephi, which records the central event in the history of Nephite salvation and destruction, located between Helaman and 4 Nephi?
If you trace the history of a text from earlier manuscripts to later ones, it’s not unusual for the text to be extended in various ways.