The Book of Mormon culture is found to be strikingly similar to that of the Middle East. An Arab Latter-day Saint tells his experience with the Book of Mormon and how he is able to relate to the stories within its pages because of his cultural origins. Among the congruities discussed are the structure of the family, the concept of taking oaths, the behavior of women, and the danger of the desert. Together, these points demonstrate the worth of the Book of Mormon and show how each reader is able to draw from his or her own cultural background in order to infer different messages.

The discovery in Jerusalem of two inscribed silver strips, dating from the seventh century BC, support the Book of Mormon claim of writing on metal plates.

Michael D. Coogan identifies the silver plates found in a Jerusalem burial site as one of the ten most significant finds for biblical archaeology because “they are our earliest witness to the text of the Bible.”

A three-foot sword excavated at Vered Jericho, likely dating to 620 BC, lends credence to the description of the sword of Laban in the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon mentions synagogues in twenty-five passages. An important resource that may help us understand what the Book of Mormon means by the word synagogue is the body of research on biblical synagogues. This is especially true of research related to the years prior to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, which began in 586 BC, since this is the time period when Lehi left Jerusalem. We would expect, therefore, that the nature of biblical synagogues before the captivity would have greatly influenced the concept of the synagogue that Lehi and his family took with them to the New World. In this article, William J. Adams Jr. details the historical development, nature, and cultural function of synagogues of the biblical era and relates them to the history, form, and religious function of synagogues in the New World.

Review of Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon, vol. 3, Alma through Helaman (1991), by Joseph Fielding McConkie and Robert L. Millet.

Review of Grant H. Palmer. An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins.

Assistant Church Historian James B. Allen shares his remarks that he made at Davis Bitton’s funeral on Bitton’s scholarly work.

Review of “Scripture” (1988), by Norman L. Geisler

Alma’s distinctive use of the word state in the Book of Mormon is present in his unique concentration of state, his tendency to reword with state, and his treatment of a shared topic involving state.

Review of John Sanders. No Other Name: An Investigation into the Destiny of the Unevangelized. and Review of Gabriel Fackre, Ronald H. Nash, and John Sanders. What about Those Who Have Never Heard? Three Views on the Destiny of the Unevangelized.

Review of My First Scripture Stories (1994), by Sherrie Johnson, illustrated by Tyler Lybbert

Review of A Most Convincing Witness: Reasons Why the Book of Mormon Is the True Word of God (1990), by Randall K. Mehew.

Over the last several decades, scholarly discussion on the textual world of the Second Temple has been shifting. Ideas about texts and the development of the biblical canon began to be reshaped by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which altered previously established ideas about the configuration of a prebiblical canon. Investigation of those and other texts made it apparent that the structure of the biblical canon was still fluid at a much later date than was originally thought. These new scholarly analyses are redefining the timelines and ideas about the early shape of the biblical text and its elasticity. Such developments have been particularly intriguing for Latter-day Saints because they have generated new ways of thinking about the historic limits of text and canon. In her new book, Eva Mroczek takes the discussion a step further and in a direction that will resonate well within the Mormon scholarly community. Her aim is to identify the “literary imagination” of Jewish antiquity or, in other words, the ways in which ancient writers and scribes conceived of their own textual world. Although she is not the first to point out the anachronistic difficulties that can plague modern scholars in their approach to texts from antiquity, she is one of the first to try to re-create a vision of an original literary mindset from the ancient texts themselves. Her study culls texts from antiquity for clues about the ways in which ancient communities thought about literature, text, authorship, and canon.

Personal reminiscences about Sidney B. Sperry.

Review of The Book of Mormon: The Keystone Scripture (1988), edited by Paul R. Cheesman and assisted by S. Kent Brown and Charles D. Tate Jr.

Skeptics have misused some historical sources as they attempt to reverse the Eight Witnesses’ statements about their physical contact with the Book of Mormon plates. The Eight Witnesses speak of viewing the plates themselves with unobstructed vision. They left 10 specific statements of handling the plates. This article provides an overview of the statements and experiences of the Eight Witnesses and the arguments of their critics, both then and now. Their unequivocal testimonies resist revisionists’ attempts to portray their experience as mere illusion or deception.

Richard Anderson gives an overview of the secular and divine functions of witnesses and refers to the anticipation surrounding the revelatory calling of witnesses to view the plates. He describes the circumstances of their calling, details aspects of their lives, comments on their character traits, and answers several typical questions of skeptics. Anderson emphasizes that these witnesses were true to their testimonies.

Review of “A Rhetorical Approach to the Book of Mormon: Rediscovering Nephite Sacramental Language” (1993), by Mark D. Thomas.

Oliver Cowdery’s records border on scripture. His supplementary testimonies are of the same eyewitness quality as the Joseph Smith references that have entered the standard works. Much of Cowdery’s thinking and writing was modified and polished to a scriptural level by Joseph Smith.

This Annual Neal A. Maxwell Lecture was given at Brigham Young University on 20 March 2009. Anderson respects both the Savior, Jesus Christ, and Joseph Smith, seer and revelator. He lays a foundation for the four Gospels and their historical authenticity. He notes the abundance of materials available about Joseph Smith and details his First Vision, the accounts of the Book of Mormon witnesses, sacred influences in Joseph’s life, and the significance of the events at Carthage.

Review of In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (1997), by Todd M. Compton

This second of two volumes of essays honoring Hugh Nibley includes scholarly papers based on what the authors have learned from Nibley. Nearly every major subject that Dr. Nibley has encompassed in his vast learning and scholarly production is represented here by at least one article. Topics include the sacrament covenant in Third Nephi, the Lamanite view of Book of Mormon history, external evidences of the Book of Mormon, proper names in the Book of Mormon, the brass plates version of Genesis, the composition of Lehi’s family, ancient burials of metal documents in stone boxes, repentance as rethinking, Mormon history’s encounter with secular modernity, and Judaism in the 20th century.
A study of how history is typically written and the similarities with how the Book of Mormon is written.

Review of Joseph Smith's New York Reputation Reexamined (1990), by Rodger I. Anderson.

Personal reminiscences about Sidney B. Sperry.

Personal reminiscences about Sidney B. Sperry.

Over the last twenty years, various objective author-attribution techniques have been applied to the English Book of Mormon in order to shed light on the question of multiple authorship of Book of Mormon texts. Two methods, one based on rates of use of noncontextual words and one based on word-pattern ratios, measure patterns consistent with multiple authorship in the Book of Mormon. Another method, based on vocabulary-richness measures, suggests that only one author is involved. These apparently contradictory results are reconciled by showing that for texts of known authorship, the method based on vocabulary-richness measures is not as powerful in discerning differences among authors as are the other methods, especially for works translated into English by a single translator.

Almost every summer since 1935, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has staged a pageant at the Hill Cumorah. This article starts with the history of the pageant from its beginnings in the 1920s as a Cumorah Conference of the Eastern States Mission convened by mission president B. H. Roberts and held at the Smith Family Farm. Details about the pageant’s move to the Hill Cumorah as well as scripts, directors, music, costumes, props, set design, lighting, and choreography are included. The author concludes with the details of retiring the original script after 50 years of use and of the challenges of producing and revitalizing the new pageant while maintaining its purpose as a missionary tool.

The fifth annual Neal A. Maxwell lecture was presented by Marilyn Arnold on March 10, 2011, at Brigham Young University. Arnold (PhD, University of Wisconsin--Madison) is emeritus professor of English at Brigham Young University. She describes how her love of literary scholarship meshed with her developing views of Christian discipleship as she discovered literary richness in the Book of Mormon. The lecture was sponsored by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

Review of The Book of Mormon and Other Hidden Books: “Out of the Darkness unto Light” (2000), by John A. Tvedtnes

Literary analysis provides useful tools in the study of sacred texts, including the Book of Mormon. For the author, three transforming events that enhanced her study of the Book of Mormon included reading the book in earnest as a complex and masterful literary text, the entrance of the Spirit into her study of the book, and a prayerful desire to experience the great change of heart described by King Benjamin and Alma. Nephi begins his record with sincerity and honesty and serves notice that he intends to prepare a true record. The opposition between Nephi and his brothers Laman and Lemuel illustrates well Lehi’s teachings on the necessity of opposition in all things. More subtly, the reader notes a contrast between the characters and personalities of Nephi and Jacob. Jacob is portrayed as an empathetic and compassionate person who was tutored by exile and isolation.

On 25 March 2010, in the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium, Brigham Young University, Marilyn Arnold presented this lecture as part of a series honoring Hugh W. Nibley on the 100th anniversary of his birth (27 March 2010).
In this lecture commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of Hugh Nibley’s birth, Arnold paints a picture of him by discussing not only his scholarship but also his very unique, and often humorous, writing and speaking styles and his consistent jabs at academia. According to Arnold, who read everything Nibley had written on the Book of Mormon, Nibley was never more eloquent or serious than when he defended that book. Often, Arnold notes, his defenses and other writings are illuminated by literary devices, including the use of parable, epistle, and Platonic dialogue.

In the Book of Mormon, two records (a large engraved stone and twenty-four gold plates) contain the story of an ancient civilization known as the Jaredites. There appears to be evidence of an unpublished third record that provides more information on this people and on the history of the world. When the brother of Jared received a vision of Jesus Christ, he was taught many things but was instructed not to share them with the world until the time of his death. The author proposes that the brother of Jared did, in fact, write those things down shortly before his death and then buried them, along with the interpreting stones, to be revealed to the world according to the timing of the Lord.

Review of Latter-day Commentary on the Book of Mormon: Insights from Prophets, Church Leaders, and Scholars (1999), by K. Douglas Bassett

Review of Manifestations Mysteries Revealed: An Account of Bible Truth and the Book of Mormon Prophecies (2000), by Embaya Melekin

Review of Book of Mormon Reference Library (1995), by Deseret Book; Book of Mormon Studybase (1995), by Bookcraft; and LDS Collectors Library 1995 Edition (1995), by Infobases

This article addresses the origins of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and discusses whether the Saints believed Moroni to be an angel or merely a treasure guardian.

Review of Grant H. Palmer. An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins.

A summary of the scriptural and historical evidences concerning the Arabian Bountiful, with an evaluation of all possible coastal locations on the Arabian peninsula based upon exploratory fieldwork by the authors in the Sultanate of Oman and the Republic of Yemen from 1984 to 1990. The study concludes that an objective and precise identification of Bountiful with a present-day location is now feasible and introduces data on physical traces revealing very early human involvement at the site.

An early version of this paper was presented October 17, 1986, at the 35th Annual Symposium on the Archaeology of the Scriptures, sponsored by the Society of Early Historic Archaeology at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Based upon field research by the authors in the Republic of Yemen 1984 - 1990, it was revised January 1991.

Utilizing techniques adapted from literary criticism, this paper investigates the narrative structure of the Book of Mormon, particularly the relationship between Nephi’s first-person account and Mormon’s third-person abridgment. A comparison of the order and relative prominence of material from 1 Nephi 12 with the content of Mormon’s historical record reveals that Mormon may have intentionally patterned the structure of his narrative after Nephi’s prophetic vision—a conclusion hinted at by Mormon himself in his editorial comments. With this understanding, readers of the Book of Mormon can see how Mormon’s sometimes unusual editorial decisions are actually guided by an overarching desire to show that Nephi’s prophecies have been dramatically and literally fulfilled in the history of his people.

A summary of the scriptural and historical evidences concerning the Arabian Bountiful, with an evaluation of all possible coastal locations on the Arabian peninsula based upon exploratory fieldwork by the authors in the Sultanate of Oman and the Republic of Yemen from 1984 to 1990. The study concludes that an objective and precise identification of Bountiful with a present-day location is now feasible and introduces data on physical traces revealing very early human involvement at the site.

According to the Book of Mormon, a land named “Bountiful” was a fertile site on the Arabian Peninsula with timber, fresh water, and ore where Nephi built a ship to carry Lehi’s group to the New World. In the seemingly barren land of the southern Arabian peninsula, a site that appears to correspond to the description in Nephi’s record has been identified on the remote southern coast of the country of Oman. Kharfot may not be the exact location of Bountiful, but its discovery does show that a place matching the criteria for Bountiful does exist.

Scholars have presented and defended different viewpoints concerning the Lehite journey and the location of Nephi’s Bountiful. Aston explains that some of these arguments contain factual errors, such as claims regarding fertility and timber for Nephi’s ship and a lack of accounting for all possibilities. Discrepancies in theories and differences in opinion do not lessen the worth of all that has been found in Arabia and the supported theories, but acknowledging the sometimes contrary data will aid the search for the best candidate for Nephi’s Bountiful.

Review of Discovering Lehi: New Evidence of Lehi and Nephi in Arabia (1996), by Lynn M. and Hope A. Hilton

Ancient altars in Yemen bear the inscription Nihm, a variant of the word Nahom. According to the Book of Mormon, one of the travelers in Lehi’s group, Ishmael, was buried at a place called Nahom. Because the altar has been dated to about the sixth or seventh century BC (the time of Lehi’s journey), it is plausible that the Nihm referred to on the altar could be the same place written about in the Book of Mormon. This article discusses the discovery site, the appearance of the altars, and the process of dating the altars, as well as the place-name Nahom in its Book of Mormon setting.

An early version of this paper was presented October 17, 1986, at the 35th Annual Symposium on the Archaeology of the Scriptures, sponsored by the Society of Early Historic Archaeology at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Based upon field research by the authors in the Republic of Yemen 1984 - 1990, it was revised January 1991.

Eyewitnesses to the Book of Mormon plates described in consistent terms the rings that bound the gold plates into a single volume. The rings were three in number and apparently made of the same material as the plates themselves. While our attention naturally focuses on the plates and the translation of the text engraved upon them, the rings may offer another subtle but telling confirmation of the record’s ancient origin.

In recent years several scholars have drawn the attention of Latter-day Saints to the phenomenon popularly known as “El Niño.”1 In 1990 David L. Clark highlighted the fact that a mechanism was now known to science that would permit, periodically, easterly sea travel across the Pacific, the direction Lehi’s party is understood to have traveled.2 ENSO, the more formal acronym for this phenomenon, comes from El Niño (the Christ child) and Southern Oscillation, referring to the fact that the changes commence in the southern Pacific Ocean. The intermittent ENSO effect creates an easterly equatorial current running counter to the prevailing westerly direction of Pacific currents and winds. The winds can even blow in reverse, thus not only allowing but encouraging sea travel to the western coast of the Americas.

Typology is one of those words whose meaning shifts dramatically with the position of its user. For religious believers studying the scriptures, typology is a mode of history-the belief that certain events and people should be understood as both fully historical and fully allegorical at the same time. To the unbeliever (or the believer in different things), typology is a mode of rhetoric-a connecting strategy that writers use to create retroactive links between otherwise unrelated stories or that readers use to infer connections between otherwise unconnected things. Those in the first group see the repetition of key narrative elements from the Old Testament to the New Testament-say, birth narratives in which both Moses and Jesus escape from an infanticidal massacre ordered by a despot-as a fundamental part of how sacred history works ( see Exodus 1:22 and Matthew 2:16-18).

This paper looks closely and critically at how the Nephite prophets dealt with the records of the Jaredites as the text of the Book of Mormon itself presents these dealings. 1 It questions unspoken assumptions that often pervade discussions of these records and of how record keepers from King Mosiah2 to Moroni managed them. It asks, for example, whether Mormon could realistically have taken on the task of preparing the abridgment of Jaredite history found in the book of Ether. It also challenges the idea that Moroni wrote the book of Ether only because Mormon did not have time to do so, suggesting instead that Moroni’s role in preserving the Jaredite legacy was his own unique commission from the Lord. These questions are part of my appeal for a fundamental reconsideration of the roles played by the key actors who handled the Jaredite records.

Review of “Scripture” (1988), by Norman L. Geisler

Review of In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (1997), by Todd M. Compton

Aspects of the three days of darkness following the three-hour period of intense destruction described principally in 3 Nephi include: (1) the strange absence of rain among the destructive mechanisms described; (2) the source of the intense lightning, which seems to be unaccompanied by rain; (3) a mechanism to account for the inundation of the cities of Onihah, Mocum, and Jerusalem, which were not among the cities which “sunk in the depths of the sea”; and (4) the absence in the histories of contemporary European and Asiatic civilizations of corresponding events, which are repeatedly characterized in 3 Nephi as affecting “the face of the whole earth.”

A critique of Warren Aston’s “Identifying Our Best Candidate for Nephi’s Bountiful,” published in volume 17/1–2 of the Journal of the Book of Mormon and Restoration Scripture.

Hugh Nibley cared deeply about creation and was passionate about our stewardship over the earth. His arguments in defense of the environment were informed by the disciplines he knew best: history, philosophy, and theology. From his study, research, and reasoning, Nibley drew several principles that seem to have directed his thoughts and crafted his sense of environmental stewardship. Four of these principles are discussed in this paper: (1) humankind has a divine mandate to properly care for creation; (2) humankind’s spiritual health and environmental heath are linked; (3) creation obeys, reverences, and provides for humankind, as humankind righteously cares for creation; and (4) humankind should not sacrifice environmental health for temporal wealth.
A review of Hugh Nibley’s thoughts and writings on the environment.

In February 1998, five Brigham Young University professors spent more than a week together in southern Oman to collect data for future research projects in the area, which seems to correspond to the end of Lehi’s trail in the Old World. Future research must be performed in a professional manner and seek to reconstruct that part of the world in 600 BC. Botanical, archaeological, chronological, mineralogical, geological, and inscriptional studies in the area would depend on acquiring sponsors in Oman and on the availability of resources.

Review of The Allegory of the Olive Tree: The Olive, the Bible, and Jacob 5 (1994), edited by Stephen D. Ricks and John W. Welch.

Review of “A Word to Our Mormon Friends” (1998)

Review of John W. Welch. The Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon.

A follow-up on a previous article on enallage provides further strength for a pattern of a speech to a prophet in which later verses seem to be addressed to both the prophet and his posterity by use of the plural ye.

Review of Grant Hardy, ed. The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition.

Thomas W. Brookbank long ago suggested that enallage, meaning the substitution of the singular for the plural or vice versa for rhetorical effect, is present in the Book of Mormon. Enallage does appear to exist as a prominent, meaningful rhetorical figure in the Bible, but its presence in the Book of Mormon is more difficult to demonstrate given the pronominal variation found in the Book of Mormon, a factor that Brookbank did not account for in his study. Nevertheless, a careful reading of contextual and verbal clues reveals that enallage does indeed appear to exist in some passages in the Book of Mormon. An awareness of this usage is important for a full understanding of such passages.

Review of Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Eric D. Huntsman, and Thomas A. Wayment. Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament; An Illustrated Reference for Latter-day Saints.

Review of John W. Welch and Erick B. Carlson, eds. Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820-1844.

Review of Donald W. Parry. Harmonizing Isaiah: Combining Ancient Sources.

In Alma 24 we read of the courage of the people of Anti- Nephi-Lehi, Lamanites who had converted to the Lord. Their king pleaded with them, “Let us stain our swords no more with the blood of our brethren” (Alma 24:12). So great was their faith that they covenanted never to take up arms again and buried their weapons of war. When the unconverted Lamanites came against them, the Anti-Nephi- Lehies, rather than resist their attackers, prostrated themselves on the ground to pray and allowed their brethren to slay them.

Review of “Does the Book of Mormon Reflect an Ancient Near Eastern Background?” (2002), by Thomas J. Finley, and “Rendering Fiction: Translation, Pseudotranslation, and the Book of Mormon” (2002), by David J. Shepherd.

Many easily recognizable Hebrew words and names can be found in the Book of Abraham. One name that hasn’t had a concrete meaning attached to it, however, is Elkenah. In this article, Barney addresses whether Elkenah is a person, place, or name; what its possible linguistic structures are; and what it might mean. Most importantly, Barney links Elkenah with the Canaanite god El and the attending cult—a cult that practiced human sacrifice. This has significant ramifications for the Book of Abraham, which has been criticized for its inclusion of human sacrifice. Assuming a northern location for the city Ur and taking Elkenah as the Canaanite El resolve the issue of child sacrifice in the Book of Abraham.

Hebrew poetry is based on various patterns of parallelism. Parallel lines are in turn created by the use of parallel words, that is, pairs of words bearing generally synonymous or antithetic meanings. Since the 1930s, scholars have come to realize that many of these “word pairs” were used repeatedly in a formulaic fashion as the basic building blocks of different parallel lines. The Book of Mormon reflects numerous parallel structures, including synonymous parallelism, antithetic parallelism, and chiasmus. As word pairs are a function of parallelism, the presence of such parallel structures in the Book of Mormon suggests the possible presence of word pairs within those structures. This article catalogs the use of forty word pairs that occur in parallel collocations both in the Book of Mormon and in Hebrew poetry.

Royal Skousen’s work on his Book of Mormon critical text project demonstrates that he is an able textual critic who employs sound judgment and proven methods to uncover the original text of the Book of Mormon. In many cases, these decisions seem counterintuitive to untrained readers, but Skousen correctly applies the principle that a more awkward reading is most likely original. He also shows his ability to make conjectural emendations for which no direct textual evidence is available. In every case, Skousen clearly lays out his reasoning so that readers who disagree with his inferences can examine the evidence for themselves to reach their own conclusions. This paper goes on to speculate that Skousen’s work may in time bring the LDS and RLDS editions of the Book of Mormon closer together textually. In the end, the critical text project is a superb work of scholarship on par with the standard works of biblical textual criticism.

Review of The Book of Mormon and Other Hidden Books: “Out of Darkness unto Light” (2000), by John A. Tvedtnes

Review of Frank F. Judd Jr. and Gaye Strathearn, eds. Sperry Symposium Classics: The New Testament. and Review of Kent P. Jackson and Frank F. Judd Jr., eds. How the New Testament Came to Be: The 35th Annual Brigham Young University Sidney B. Sperry Symposium.

The Joseph Smith Papyri have been a hot topic among scholars, especially since the resurfacing of fragments of the collection in the late 1960s. The facsimiles in particular have received much attention in scholarly circles, especially in relation to their accompanying explanations given by Joseph Smith. This article contributes evidence of the accuracy of Smith’s explanations, despite his lack of knowledge concerning Egyptology. Specifically, this article discusses the relationship between “ the idolatrous god of pharaoh” in Facsimile 1 with the Egyptian crocodile god, Sobek (also known as Sebek, Sobk, and Suchos), and his connection to the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Amenemhet III. Evidence both from historical texts and from archaeology demonstrates the important role Sobek played in the Fayyum region during the reign of Amenemhet III. Sobek was thus a likely candidate for the “ idolatrous god of pharaoh” of Facsimile 1 in the Book of Abraham.

Review of “Book of Mormon Christology” (1993), by Melodie Moench Charles.

Review of Book of Mormon: Wide-Margin Edition (1987), by Eldin Ricks.

In the spring and summer of 1838, the presidency of the Seventy in Kirtland organized Kirtland Camp to assist many of the poorer Church members living in Ohio to relocate to northern Missouri, a trek of more than eight hundred miles. Comprised of over five hundred individuals, including families, Kirtland Camp was the first Mormon company organized to assist in the migration of the Latter-day Saints in the history of the Church.

This article discusses possible explanations regarding the procedures Joseph Smith and his associates used in mounting the Joseph Smith Papyri fragments and their reasons for doing so. The backing materials, some of which contain drawings of a temple plan and plat sketches of northeastern Ohio townships, provide a valuable historical artifact that helps historians answer questions associated with the papyri. The dimensions, gluing techniques, and cutting patterns of the backing paper and papyri also help explain the mounting process, as does an examination of the handwriting on the backing paper. Careful analysis suggests that a portion of the backing material came from several sheets of paper glued together to make a large sheet on which plans for a temple were drawn. Historical evidence suggests that in late 1837 or early 1838, pieces of papyri were glued to this and other papers and cut into smaller pieces, some of which were put under glass to preserve the papyrus fragments from further deterioration.

In The Ransom of the Soul, Peter Brown explores how early Christians conceptualized the relationship between wealth and the afterlife. He limits his study primarily to the writings of Christian authors living in the Latin West between 250 and 650 ce and traces the evolution of the idea that “heaven and earth could be joined by money” in such a way as to affect the fate of souls after death (p. ix). Brown situates these developing discourses within their socioeconomic context and asks, How, when, and why did variations occur? How long did they take? And to what extent do they represent departures from previously established Christian or non-Christian religious systems? He argues that gradual changes in the social and economic context of the Western church were “reflected in changes in Christian representations of the other world and in the religious practices connected with the death and afterlife of Christian believers” (p. ix).

Review of The Grand Design: America from Columbus to Zion (1992), by E. Douglas Clark.

Review of A Standard unto My People (1990), by Robert E. Hales and Sandra L. Hales.

Review of Tennis Shoes among the Nephites: A Novel (1989), by Chris Heimerdinger.

Bell reviews the following books about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon: Susan Easton Black and Charles D. Tate Jr.’s edited volume Joseph Smith: The Prophet, the Man; Scot Facer Proctor and Maurine Jensen Proctor’s edition of The Revised and Enhanced History of Joseph Smith by His Mother; John W. Welch and Stephen D. Ricks’s edited volume King Benjamin’s Speech: “That Ye May Learn Wisdom”; and Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch’s edited volume Isaiah in the Book of Mormon.

For the Nephites, the sixteenth year of the reign of the judges was tremendously difficult. The arrival of the people of Ammon, in itself an incredible disruption of Nephite society, precipitated a battle, which Mormon describes as a “tremendous battle; yea, even such an one as never had been known among all the people in the land from the time Lehi left Jerusalem’’ (Alma 28:2). The dead, we are told, were not counted due to their enormous number. These events compounded the pre-existing struggles that resulted from the sociopolitical fallout from the reforms of Mosiah. Though Alma 30:5 suggests that all is well in Zarahemla during the seventeenth year of the reign of the judges, the events of the next year and half, the eighteenth year, belie this peace. Within this span, the Nephites exploded in two separate, but related, political conflagrations: (1) the secession of the inhabitants of Antionum from the greater Nephite community, and (2) the civil war spearheaded by Amalickiah. But prior to both of these events came Korihor.

Because clothing has a social function by which we define ourselves in relation to others, the rites of investiture and divestiture are often used within a given community as the individual moves from one social environment to another. These two rites can be used to examine the social progression of Adam and Eve via the fall, the symbolic movement from the mortal sphere to the divine sphere as represented with the veil, as well as the Christ-like nature of Tabitha who, like Christ himself, clothed others, thus giving them meaning and place within the community of believers.

Within the corpus of psalms in the Hebrew Bible is a group known as the communal laments. Characterized by their use of the first person common plural pronoun, some type of calamity experienced by the community, and a petition to God, these psalms incorporate similar imagery, terminology, and structure. This study explores these psalms and suggests that they relate closely to the Hittite treaty-covenant formula found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, yet differ in that they reflect an ongoing covenantal relationship rather than the establishment of such. Thus, these psalms enphasize Israel’s expectation that God, as the senior covenantal party, will fulfill his covenantal obligations if Israel remained worthy. These psalms, therefore, are representative of the unique relationship that Israel had with her God, a relationship reflected in Latter-day Saint theology as well.

At the time Jacob gave his speech in 2 Nephi 6–10, the Nephites had already been driven from two lands of inheritance and felt an ongoing concern of being cut off from God’s promises. Belnap illustrates that Jacob’s speech answers these concerns through emphasizing and expounding on the covenantal relationship made possible by God acting as the Divine Warrior. Jacob quotes Isaiah passages in his discourse and in some instances makes his own additions to emphasize important aspects. He illustrates how the Divine Warrior provides the hardships, knowledge, and power for an individual to become a divine warrior, and he discusses the Divine Warrior’s defeat over the monster of Death. The promises made by the Divine Warrior can provide hope and assurance to all.

To complement the premiere issue of Studies in the Bible and Antiquity, which will be sent to our subscribers, we asked Dan Belnap, whose article appears in the first issue, to briefly expand part of his topic for Insights.

Two critics evaluate the book By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion. Raish opines that Givens’s book effectively explains why a person might accept the Book of Mormon and facilitates a reader’s desire to better understand the Book of Mormon. Bennett adds that Givens approaches his discussion of the Book of Mormon as a scholar, resulting in a more accepting readership. Givens also studies the Book of Mormon with respect to its role in promoting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a worldwide religion.

This paper probes the theories of the origin of the American Indian up to the time of the translation and publication of the Book of Mormon. It covers some three hundred years of development, looking at many different theories, including the predominant theory of the lost tribes of Israel, which was in decline among most leading scientific observers in the early nineteenth century. The paper covers new ground in showing that Professor Samuel L. Mitchill, formerly of Columbia College, had concluded that two main groups of people once dominated the Americas—the Tartars of northern Asia and the Australasians of the Polynesian islands. Furthermore, they fought one another for many years, culminating in great battles of extermination in what later became upstate New York. This New York theory has much in common with the Book of Mormon. While visiting Professor Charles Anthon in New York in 1828, Martin Harris also met with Mitchill, an encounter that lent support to Harris’s work on the Book of Mormon.

Review of Matthew J. Grow. “Liberty to the Downtrodden”: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer.

Review of Duwayne R. Anderson. Farewell to Eden: Coming to Terms with Mormonism and Science.

In this statement, the First Presidency requests that the Book of Mormon not be rewritten into familiar or modern English because of “risks that this process may introduce doctrinal errors or obscure evidence of its ancient origin.”

Letters praising the Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture and responding to articles published therein.

Ancient Near Eastern treaties and Old Testament covenants exhibit many of the same literary elements. Of particular interest is the use of the Hebrew word y?da? ,“to know,” when it signifies “to enter into a binding agreement.” The use of this word in both treaties and scriptures supports the notion that prophets spoke of holy covenants using language that framed responsibilities between God and his people in legal terms. The Book of Mormon usage of to know reflects similar intent. This article discusses the background of the word to know, compares treaties with covenants, discusses to know in connection with ancient Near Eastern treaties and biblical covenants, and assesses to know in Book of Mormon covenants.

The Zoramites’ transformation from quiescent dissidents to aggressive enemies of their former brethren and mother culture is a powerful study of human nature. The Book of Mormon does not delineate the reasons that the Zoramites separated themselves from the larger population at Zarahemla, but they obviously felt a great deal of animosity toward their former brethren. Perhaps they had been marginalized in Nephite society because of their ethnicity. They constructed a culture that deliberately differed in many ways from that at Zarahemla, and they expelled all who were converted by Alma. Because of their extreme hatred of the Nephites, the Zoramites ultimately joined with the Lamanites as fierce enemies of the Nephites.

Ernst Benz originally presented this paper at the Eranos conference held in Ascona, Switzerland, in 1969. (See the publisher’s Web site at www.daimon.ch for more information about these annual Eranos conferences and for listings of Eranos yearbooks.) Ernst Benz’s collected Eranos lectures are found in his book Urbild und Abbild: Der Mensch und die mythische Welt (Leiden: Brill, 1974). This essay is on pages 475–508. The astute reader will pick up some of Benz’s misconceptions about Latter-day Saint beliefs.

The Book of Helaman is a segment of the Book of Mormon whose study is both imperative and complicated in underappreciated ways. The imperative behind the book of Helaman’s study lies in the text’s significance for the self-conception of the Book of Mormon as well as its mythmaking function for the early Saints in their imaginative mapping of the American West. Like the Book of Mormon, Helaman traffics in buried texts that disclose signs and covenants and makes explicit the latent Lamanite frame that undergirds the Book of Mormon as a whole. It presents, as well, the Book of Mormon’s most robust account of secret combinations-a group that then entranced the text’s earliest readers to such a degree that they used this characterization to imbue their landscape with religious significance, describing the mountains surrounding the Salt Lake Valley as “the abode of the spirits of Gadianton robbers.” To understand the Book of Mormon’s sense of itself as a material artifact, to clarify the theological status of the Lamanites, and to explore the way the Book of Mormon helped sculpt a sense of place for early Latter-day Saints, close attention to the book of Helaman is an unavoidable prerequisite.

This paper puts 3 Nephi 1 in conversation with Helaman 14 in order to argue for a complex relationship between temporality and the fulfillment of prophecy. In addition to echoing Matthew 5:17–18 in order to place a structural emphasis on fulfillment, 3 Nephi 1 portrays a series of Nephite misunderstandings about the nature of time and fulfillment that are then counteracted by the cosmic signs of Samuel the Lamanite. What Samuel’s signs ultimately show is that fulfillment of prophecy is best understood as the beginning of a new era rather than as a conclusion, and that this temporal reorientation makes repentance possible. After discussing how Samuel’s signs implicitly correct Nephite temporality, the paper concludes with a brief reflection on the implications for the Book of Mormon as a whole, arguing that the Book of Mormon is intended to function as a sign that likewise orients readers to a new experience of time.

Luke 1:5-25 shares several themes and type-scenes in common with other biblical narratives, and yet one major allusion has often been overlooked: its connection with Isaiah 6:1-8. Like the first chapter of Luke, Isaiah 6 is also a prophetic call narrative that takes place in the temple, involves and angelic encounter, and explores the themes of silence and language. Despite the centrality of the temple in Israelite theology, temple epiphanies are surprisingly uncommon in the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore, in no other biblical texts does the recipient of the vision encounter an angel specifically at the temple’s altar. Where Zechariah is struck dumb, Isaiah also finds himself unable to speak and must have his language cleansed prior to his prophetic task. Because these are the only two texts in the Bible that share these convergences, it is clear that Luke intentionally alluded to Isaiah 6:1-8 in crafting the opening of his narrative. This allusion helps inform his audience about Jewish theology, sets John the Baptist apart as a prophetic figure, and introduces Luke’s later use of Isaiah 6:9-10 in Luke-Acts.

Alma 13:3 is occasionally cited by LDS commentators as evidence for the doctrine of premortal foreordination—an interpretation that unfortunately overlooks a key feature of the organization and terminology of Alma 13. This brief note begins to sort out this and other interpretive complexities by proposing that Alma 13:3b–9 be read as a clarifying expansion of Alma 13:3a.

Berrett discusses point by point reasons why an ancient burial complex at Khirbet Beit Lei, sometimes called “Lehi’s cave,” is unlikely to have Book of Mormon connections. Brown describes a carved altar inscribed to the tribe Nihm discovered in the southwest Arabian peninsula (Yemen)—this location may be the place Nahom where Nephi’s father-in-law, Ishmael, was buried, according to the Book of Mormon record. The characters on the Anthon transcript reportedly taken by Martin Harris to New York to show to Professor Charles Anthon bear resemblance to characters on two Mexican seals made of baked clay. Szink identifies another possible Semitic source for the name Alma in the tablets of Ebla uncovered in Syria.

A cave southwest of Jerusalem caught the attention of several Latter-day Saint observers in the early 1960s. Graffiti in the cave seemed to portray themes or scenes related to the Book of Mormon, and some thought that the cave might have been the place described in the Book of Mormon as “the cavity of rock.” LaMar Berrett points out problems that weaken the likelihood that this is the case. Two scholarly articles on the cave are included.

Review of Pope Fictions: Answers to 30 Myths and Misconceptions about the Papacy (1999), by Patrick Madrid

Review of “Christ” (1998), by Ron Rhodes

Review of Paul Owen. “Monotheism, Mormonism, and the New Testament Witness.” In The New Mormon Challenge: Responding to the Latest Defenses of a Fast-Growing Movement.

Review of When Mormons Call: Answering Mormon Missionaries at Your Door (1999), and Inside Mormonism: What Mormons Really Believe (1999), by Isaiah Bennett

Review of Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism (1996), by Guy G. Stroumsa

Brigham Henry Roberts, a Book of Mormon scholar in the early twentieth century, was a pioneer in his field. He conducted research regarding the culture and the geography of the Book of Mormon peoples in an attempt to determine the setting of the Book of Mormon. His extensive work in this area has significantly influenced the progress of Book of Mormon research. Roberts also enthusiastically defended the book when others criticized it. He was able to do so effectively because of his study of and familiarity with the Book of Mormon. Roberts did, however, have a few limitations, the most detrimental being his unfounded assumption that “the narrow neck of land” in the Book of Mormon is the Isthmus of Panama. Yet, Roberts’s pioneering efforts remain today a crucial catalyst to modern analytical studies of the Book of Mormon.

Review of New Approaches to the Book of Mormon: Explorations in Critical Methodology (1993), edited by Brent Lee Metcalfe.

Review of Grant H. Palmer. An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins.

Review of Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet (1888; 1986), by George Q. Cannon

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR), Sandy, Utah, 5 August 2004 (see www.fair-lds.org). Used by permission. Also published in Meridian Magazine Online (see www.ldsmag.com). Used by permission. Copyright 2004 Davis Bitton.

Review of “Anti-Intellectualism in Mormon History” (1966), by Davis Bitton

This multidisciplinary volume of essays was written by colleagues and former students of John L. Sorenson as a tribute to his lifetime of contributions to our understanding of Book of Mormon and anthropological scholarship. The contributing authors present their original research findings on such diverse topics as nineteenth-century Mormon funeral sermons, the question of Nephite kingship, the Isaiah commentaries in the Book of Mormon, early Mormon publishing efforts in the Pacific Mission, and evidences of transoceanic diffusion in pre-Columbian times.

Davis Bitton provides a few guidelines to help readers determine whether a given text is anti-Mormon and to explain how readers should approach such texts.

Susan Easton Black discusses insights into the nature and mission of Jesus Christ that can be gained by examining the 101 names the Book of Mormon uses to describe him, such as Lord, Messiah, and Eternal Judge. She describes the book’s focus on the atonement and bears powerful testimony of its effects in her life and in the lives of others.

Review of Converted to Christ through the Book of Mormon (1989), edited by Eugene England.

The news media often characterizes some detractors of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as “Mormon intellectuals” and presents them to the public as the thinking Mormons who know the inside story of the church. In this rush to produce controversial news, an obvious truth has been overlooked—that the LDS intellectual and academic communities are composed of strong believers in the Prophet Joseph Smith’s revelations and solid supporters of LDS Church leadership. Only at the fringes is there noticeable dissent.
Readers of Expressions of Faith will discover a marvelous, uncoached unity in these testimonies of LDS scholars. Although most of the 24 contributors are persons of substantial learning, none base their beliefs in scholarly insights. Rather, all point to an inner conviction that has come through life experience and God’s gift. As they explain, these testimonies enlighten their entire lives, including their scholarly endeavors. None feel conflict between the canons of scholarship and religious belief, but rather find the two mutually reinforcing and even necessary.
This unique book aims to strengthen people’s faith by precept and example as they pursue their own efforts to know the Lord and to understand his love and dealings with humankind.

Lehi’s dream of the tree of life, recorded in 1 Nephi 8, was a familial dream as father Lehi was primarily concerned for the eternal salvation of his posterity. Susan Easton Black discusses Lehi’s role as patriarch in his family—his counsel and leadership, his love for his family, and his heartache for Laman and Lemuel who chose not to partake of the fruit—and compares his life with that of Joseph Smith Sr.

The familiar narrative of how Martin Harris mortgaged his farm to pay the printing cost of the first five thousand copies of the Book of Mormon overlooks details that make possible a fuller appreciation of his key role in the restoration of the gospel. Financially and otherwise, Harris was uniquely situated to secure the publisher’s note and relieve the financial tension that imperiled the book’s publication. Details of his family background, land ownership, business enterprises, and generosity are reviewed. Despite his pattern of vacillating in his religious commitments, his loss of 116 pages of translated manuscript, his exposure to public ridicule, and his fracturing marriage, Harris proved willing and able to honor the mortgage agreement and the Lord’s directives to him in Doctrine and Covenants, section 19. He did so at great personal cost when all attempts to recoup the publication costs failed and the shared financial responsibility unexpectedly fell solely on him. The view is expressed that Harris was raised up by the Lord to assist the Prophet Joseph Smith by securing and then personally financing the first publication of the Restoration.

Martin Harris, one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, was the only witness to join the Saints in Utah. This journey was commenced only after missionaries passed through Kirtland for decades and attempted to convince Harris to make the journey to the Salt Lake Valley. Although each missionary over the course of decades was unsuccessful in his attempts to convince the impoverished, lonely Harris to go to Utah, each was spiritually renewed through the ever-present testimony of the witness of the Book of Mormon and “custodian” of the Kirtland Temple. This is the testimony Harris spread even as he traveled to Utah after a former acquaintance of his finally convinced him to make the trip at the age of eighty-seven. Finally in Utah, Harris enjoyed again the blessings of the church and continued to pronounce, even until he died, his powerful testimony of the Book of Mormon.

This FARMS preliminary paper was presented at the symposium “Pioneers of the Restoration” on 8 March 1997.

This past summer Brigham Young University, in collaboration with the American Society of Papyrologists (ASP), hosted the Seventh International Papyrology Summer Institute (June 20– July 29, 2011). The ASP began hosting these institutes in 2003 and plans to continue through 2015. The objective of the seminar is to teach participants how to read and use papyri and to provide them with the kind of practical experience that would enable them to make productive use of papyrus texts in their own research. Fields of study include Classics, ancient history, Egyptology, archaeology, ancient religions, and biblical studies.

This article renders a text-critical comparison of the King James New Testament and select modern translations of the New Testament. Specifically, it surveys twenty-two passages in the King James New Testament that have been omitted in most modern translations. The article then clarifies and explains why these verses have been omitted and asks whether such omissions ought to be accepted. While this study demonstrates that in most cases the readings in the King James Version are inferior in a text-critical sense and that they likely represent interpolations into the biblical text, there are a few cases where the King James Version might preserve a better reading. This article also argues that even though the King James Version may be inferior on a text-critical level, when compared to certain modern translations, we can still use it with profit if we are aware of its deficiencies.

THE BooK OF MORMON presented itself as a history of previously unidentified New World civilizations with origins in the ancient Near East. To defend its claims of historicity, believers pointed to the work’s correspondence with the Bible and their own spiritual witnesses. They also insisted that, independent of their supernatural access to this ancient world, archaeological discoveries had authenticated and would continue to authenticate the book’s historical claims. This article documents the all-but-forgotten Latter-day Saint use of Codex Boturini-a sixteenth-century Mesoamerican codex depicting the Mexica (i.e., Aztec) migration from their mythical homeland Atzlan to Tenochtitlan, the seat of the empire’s government-as physical evidence for Book of Mormon history. In the perspective of these Saints, the pictorial manuscript was an independent record of the Book of Mormon. For decades, Mormons published images from Codex Boturini (or described them) alongside commentary that translated the pictographs through a Mormon lens.

Letters praising the Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture and responding to articles published therein.

Lehi’s exodus to the promised land is only the first of a series of exoduses occurring throughout the Book of Mormon. Indeed, Lehi’s exodus becomes mere precedent for later flights into the wilderness by Nephi, Mosiah, Alma1, Limhi, and the Anti-Nephi-Lehies. For the Nephites, continuing exodus is not merely historical fact. Understanding the biblical exodus as a type and shadow, the Nephites come to see their wandering as a metaphor of their spiritual condition. Thus, even centuries after Lehi’s arrival in the promised land, Nephite prophets recognize their status as “wanderers in a strange land” (Alma 13:23). As did Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Nephites also looked beyond their temporal land of promise “for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:10).

Review of Joel P. Kramer and Scott R. Johnson. The Bible vs. the Book of Mormon.

This essay analyzes examples of poetry in the Hebrew Bible and the Book of Mormon that do not conform to the standards to which prose is typically confined. Each of these poems contains a syntactic device that scholars have come to identify by the term enallage (Greek for “interchange”). Rather than being a case of textual corruption or blatant error, the grammatical variance attested in these passages provides a poetic articulation of a progression from distance to proximity.

Genesis 27 is a story that depicts a series of ancient ritual performances. The narrative recounts the time when Jacob, the son of Isaac, received his father’s blessing by means of an act of deception. As an account that contains explicit examples of performances designed to set the activities apart from other less sacred occurrences, the blessing story in Genesis 27 contains features of what scholars refer to as \"ritualization\" in narrative. Ritualization can be defined as actions designed to distinguish and privilege what is being done in comparison to other, usually more commonplace, activities. Ritualization can assist those of a lesser status in accomplishing their objectives that stand in opposition to the desires of the powerful. When read as ritualization in narrative, Genesis 27 can be interpreted as an account that portrays the use of ancient temple and sacrificial imagery in order to secure a sacred blessing.

In defense of the historicity—the historical actuality—of scriptures embraced by Latter-day Saints, several BYU and Institute scholars have contributed to a collection of essays published recently by BYU’s Religious Studies Center. Edited by Paul Y. Hoskisson, Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures contains 11 essays that explore this topic.

Few literary genres from the ancient world stand out so prominently as the Near Eastern vassal treaty. Scholars have shown that these political contracts formed between vassal kings and suzerain provided the conceptual background for the book of Deuteronomy. “The assumption is that Israel conceived of its relation to Yahweh as that of subject peoples to a world king and that they expressed this relationship in the concepts and formulas of the suzerainty treaty.”

This article illustrates that for Latter-day Saints, the Book of Mormon can function as an interpretive guide to Isaiah’s writings. The analysis explores some ways in which the Book of Mormon can aid in identifying textual meaning in the story of Isaiah’s prophetic commission, especially on the topic of Christ and covenants. Lehi’s call narrative in the Book of Mormon shares much in common with Isaiah 6. Based on analogy with Lehi’s comparable dream, LDS readers can connect the seraph that interacts personally with Isaiah to Jesus Christ—that is, the Being with great luster who descends out of heaven to meet with the Book of Mormon prophet.

One of the most important contributions of biblical scholarship since the time of Joseph Smith has been the recognition and analysis of editorial activity in the Old Testament. Like the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Mormon is a compilation of several literary sources produced under the auspices of ancient editors or redactors. Significantly, one of the primary signs of editorial activity in the Old Testament, a technique known as repetitive resumption, is also attested in the Book of Mormon.

Alma 32 is a learned text on the topic of faith. The account incorporates creation imagery from the opening chapters of Genesis. Alma’s sermon follows a theological pattern in the Hebrew Bible where creation is used to encourage audiences to exercise faith in the present by considering the primordial past.Alma compares the “word of God” unto a seed, telling his audience that they are to be involved with “planting.” Thus, Alma’s sermon combines the two distinct creation views in the Genesis narratives, for God speaks the divine word in order to create in Genesis 1, and he plants seeds and trees to create his garden paradise in Genesis 2–3. By invoking the miracle of creation in the past into a present context of seed growth and recreation, Alma encourages his readers to fulfill the measure of their own creation by experimenting upon the divine word. Obtaining the type of faith Alma describes is therefore the very purpose of human existence, and it has been from the beginning.

Review of Michael S. Helser. “You've Seen One Elohim, You've Seen Them All? A Critique of Mormonism's Apologetic Use of Psalm 82.”

More than ten years ago, Stephen Ricks and John Tvedtnes presented a case for interpreting the Book of Mormon proper noun Zarahemla as a Hebraic construct meaning “seed of compassion” or “child of grace, pity, or compassion.” The authors theorized: It may be that the Mulekite leader was given that name because his ancestor had been rescued when the other sons of King Zedekiah were slain during the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. [See Mosiah 25:2.] To subsequent Nephite generations, it may have even suggested the deliverance of their own ancestors from Jerusalem prior to its destruction or the anticipation of Christ’s coming.

After nearly three-quarters of a century, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sought to reestablish its presence in the Palmyra area by sending Willard W. Bean and his family to live in the newly acquired Joseph Smith Sr. home in Manchester, New York. Bean soon discovered he had a difficult task set before him because Joseph Smith and Mormonism were held in derision in Palmyra. During the twenty-four years that the Bean family lived in the home, they overcame ostracization through cultivating friendships and preaching the gospel. Willard Bean was instrumental in the acquisition of additional properties of historical significance, including the Hill Cumorah. He restored and improved the Hill Cumorah and nearby acreage. Having completed their assignment to make friends for the church in Palmyra and to build up the church there, the Beans were released from their mission in 1939.

Select bibliography of LDS research on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Thanks to the work of Hugh Nibley, Paul Hoskisson, Terrence Szink, and others, the plausibility of Alma as a Semitic name is no longer an issue. Hoskisson has noted that “Alma” derives from the root ‘lm (< *ǵlm) with the meaning “youth” or “lad,” corroborating Nibley’s earlier suggestion that “Alma” means “young man” (cf. Hebrew ‘elem,עלם). Significantly, “Alma” occurs for the first time in the Book of Mormon text as follows: “But there was one among them whose name was Alma, he also being a descendant of Nephi. And he was a young man, and he believed the words which Abinadi had spoken” (Mosiah 17:2; emphasis in all scriptural citations is mine). This first occurrence of “Alma” is juxtaposed with a description matching the etymological meaning of the name, suggesting an underlying wordplay: Alma (‘lm’) was an ‘elem. A play on words sharing a common root is a literary technique known as polyptoton.

Royal sonship is a key theme of Mosiah 1–6, including King Benjamin’s seminal address at the temple in Zarahemla (Mosiah 2–5) on the occasion of his son Mosiah’s enthronement. Benjamin, however, caps this covenant sermon, not with an assertion of his son’s royal status and privileges, but with a radical declaration of his people’s royal rebirth (or adoption) as “ the children of Christ, his sons and his daughters” (Mosiah 5:7) and their potential enthronement at God’s “ right hand” (5:9). Similar to rhetorical wordplay involving proper names found in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and other ancient texts, Benjamin’s juxtaposition of “sons”/“daughters” and the “right hand” constitutes a deliberate wordplay on his own name, traditionally taken to mean “son of the right hand.” The name of Christ, rather than Benjamin’s own name, is given to all his people as a new name—a “throne” name. However, he warns them against refusing to take upon them this throne name and thus being found “on the left hand of God” (5:10), a warning that also constitutes an allusion to his name. Benjamin’s ultimate hope is for his people’s royal, divine sonship/daughterhood to be eternally “sealed.”

In explaining the prophecies of Isaiah in which his soul delighted, Nephi sets up an intriguing wordplay on the name Joseph. On several occasions he combines segments of Isaiah 11:11 and Isaiah 29:14 to foretell the gathering and restoration of Israel at the time of the coming forth of additional scripture. The most discernible reason for Nephi’s interpretation of these two specific texts in the light of each other is their shared use of the Hebrew verb yāsap, which literally means “to add” but can have the more developed senses to “continue” or “proceed to do” something and “to do again.” This verb is also the source of the name Joseph, which means “may He [the Lord] add,” “He shall add,” or “He has added.” Rachel, the mother of the patriarch Joseph, is said to have explained the giving of this name to her son with that basic sense in mind: “And she called his name Joseph [yôsēp], and said, The Lord shall add [yōsēp] to me another son” (Genesis 30:24; emphasis in all scriptural citations is mine). Thus when Nephi combined these two prophecies together through their common use of yāsap, he was also using a wordplay on the name Joseph both to remind us that it was the seed of Joseph that would be gathered and to foretell the involvement of another Joseph, Joseph Smith, in the gathering and in the coming forth of scripture.

An earlier Insights article noted a possible wordplay in the first verse of the Book of Mormon that provides internal textual evidence that the name Nephi derives from the Egyptian word nfr. While nfr denotes “good, fine, goodly” of quality, it also signifies “beautiful, fair” of appearance. Assuming that at least some senses of the Egyptian word passed into Nephite language and culture, this second sense of nfr may have influenced Nephite self-perception. Several Book of Mormon passages evidence the affiliation.

The New Testament records that Jesus’s disciples \"worshiped\" him during several postresurrection theophanies. To understand the disciples’ actions on these sacred occasions, it is necessary to understand the rite of proskynesis as observed in ancient Israel (particularly in the Jerusalem temple) and in the surrounding cultures and cults of the ancient Near East. When scripture uses terms rendered \"worship,\" proskynesis (concrete, hierarchical prostrations of an inferior to a superior rather than just abstract veneration) is almost always intended. Literally a \"kissing in the presence [of]\" a superior being, proskynesis acknowledges the recipient’s divinity and the giver’s submissive humility. Proskynesis was also a sublime and supreme expression of love. As John foresaw, the God who was \"apprehended\" in the Jerusalem temple with proskynesis will be acknowledged not as a pseudo-divine Caesar or Herod but as universal Sovereign by the numberless hosts of those he redeems. Proskynesis, then, is a (disciple’s) means of actualizing eschatological reality and Jesus’s unrivaled position in that reality.

Latter-day Saint scholars Hugh W. Nibley and John A. Tvedtnes have discussed at length how a staff, rod, and sword came to be commonly identified with the word of God in the ancient Near East.¹The evidence they cite from the Bible, the earliest Hebrew commentators, modern biblical scholarship, and elsewhere affirms Nephi’s unambiguous assertion that the “word of God” is a “rod.”

In his analysis of Mosiah 1:2–6 and 1 Nephi 1:1–4, John A. Tvedtnes notes that in many instances “Nephite writers relied on earlier records as they recorded their history.”1 He makes a convincing argument that the description of King Benjamin teaching his sons “in all the language of his fathers” (Mosiah 1:2) is modeled on Nephi’s account.

In his foreward to this book, Richard Bushman praises it for its meticulous attention to the historian’s craft. Michael MacKay and Gerrit Dirkmaat have served as editors on the Documents series of the Joseph Smith Papers Project-spending months documenting, annotating, and organizing the surviving historical material from the early years of Joseph Smith’s religious career-and their experience with those primary sources shines in this volume. They have tracked down scraps of information in archives from New York to Utah, from obscure nineteenth-century publications as far-flung as the Ohio Observer and the Milwaukee Sentinel, and even from much better-known sources like the Joseph Smith revelations, which they have reread with a keen eye for detail and often-missed nuance.

Review of The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (1997), by D. Michael Quinn.

Also available for free at BYU ScholarsArchive.
A review of Approaching Zion, Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, vol. 9.

Review of Trent D. Stephens and D. Jeffrey Meldrum. Evolution and Mormonism: A Quest for Understanding.

One of the most moving accounts in the Book of Mormon is of the people of Ammon, their covenant to bury and never use again their weapons of war, their faith to sacrifice themselves instead of fighting back against their Lamanite brethren, and their sacrifice to send their children to war to aid the Nephites. Some interpret the stance that the Ammonites took against war to be pacifist. Some indications point toward this conclusion: their burying their weapons, covenanting never to fight again, allowing themselves to be slaughtered twice, and being motivated in these actions out of love for their Lamanite kin. However, when the text is read more carefully, it can easily be seen that further actions would not necessarily have reflected a pacifist view toward war: not objecting to the Nephite war in their defense, providing Nephite soldiers with food and supplies, and sending their own sons into battle would surely indicate that their personal opposition to war stemmed from the covenants they made during repentance.

Review of Ross Anderson. Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Quick Christian Guide to the Mormon Holy Book.

The Maxwell Institute makes every effort to keep most of the books we produce and publish, either on our own or with others, in print. At the same time, we face increasing costs to do this. Many of our recent books (and all of our periodicals) are available digitally, and we are working to ensure that our past titles will be available both digitally and in print. In the future our publications, includ- ing our periodicals, will come out in both formats.

This review enthusiastically endorses Boyd Petersen’s biography of his father-in-law, Hugh Nibley. Petersen intersperses narrative chapters with thematic ones in Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life.

By Miles Gerald Bradford, Published on 01/01/97

Introduction to the book.

Bradford introduces reviews of Royal Skousen’s work on the critical text project.

Review of Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Thomas A. Wayment, eds. From the Last Supper through the Resurrection: The Savior’s Final Hours.

Study of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has become a topic of increasing interest to universities and scholars around the country. Bradford addresses this new attention and discusses topics that scholars should research in more depth in order to achieve an accurate academic view of Mormonism.

This colorful, informative book features reports on the multi-pronged effort to determine as far as possible the original English-language translation of the Book of Mormon. Royal Skousen, the editor and principal investigator of the original and printer’s manuscripts of the Book of Mormon, details the project’s history and some of the more significant findings. Robert Espinosa reviews his team’s painstaking work of preserving and identifying remaining fragments of the original manuscript. Ron Romig narrates the investigation into the printer’s manuscript, and Larry Draper explains how the press sheets for the 1830 edition reveal overlooked details of the printing process. In an insightful response, Daniel C. Peterson interpolates evidence from Skousen’s research to show the divine manner in which the Book of Mormon came forth.

As a new faith’s purported “Gold Bible” began rolling off the presses at the E. B. Grandin print shop, the public was curious to know the nature of that faith. Protestant sects proliferated wildly during the Second Great Awakening, particularly in the fertile soil of upstate New York’s “Burned-over District:’ And restorationists, like the Christian primitivist Disciples of Christ, who aimed to restore the New Testament Church, were a familiar breed among them. Such sects provided the best model for what the public might expect Palmyra’s new faith to become, but actual information was still hard to come by.

This article explores the ancient Near Eastern rituals that endowed kings with this power, specifically the rites suggested by the Investiture Panel at the palace of Mari, with specific focus on the motifs of creation, sacred garden, and divine kingship. Because contemporary evidence at Mari relating to an interpretation of the panel and the functions of various rooms of the palace is limited, it will be necessary to rely in part on a careful comparative analysis of religious texts, images, and architecture throughout the ancient Near East, including the Old Testament. Comparative analysis not only has the benefit of increasing our understanding of ancient Mesopotamian religion but also can enrich our understanding of the Bible.

Stela 5, a large stone monument discovered in 1941 in Izapa, Mexico, was identified a decade later by M. Wells Jakeman as a bas-relief of Lehi’s vision of the tree of life. Scholars and laymen alike have both accepted and scoffed at this theory. This article provides a historical sketch of reactions to this claim and discusses some of the implications of accepting or rejecting Jakeman’s theory. Jakeman was the first to publish an LDS interpretation of Stela 5; later V. Garth Norman proposed a different interpretation based on a series of high-quality photographs of the monument. Suzanne Miles, a non-Mormon, postulated that Izapa Stela 5 presented a “fantastic visual myth,” and Gareth W. Lowe proposed that Stela 5 presents an original creation myth. Further criticisms and responses ensued over the years.

Review of Sally Denton. American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857.

Review of Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard. Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy.

The publication of the Book of Mormon brought forward the first of many comparisons between the restorational work of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his surrounding environment, including Freemasonry. One point of comparison has been the lambskin apparel mentioned in 3 Nephi 4:7. A possible connection exists between this item of apparel and ritual clothing that was worn in ancient Israel, Egypt, and Mesoamerica. I suggest a possible reason for the use of this item of clothing among the secret combinations in the Book of Mormon and discuss the lambskin apron used in Freemasonic ritual.

Review of The Mysteries of Godliness: A History of Mormon Tmeple Worship (1994), by David John Buerger

The following is part 1 of a two-part series of articles written by S. Kent Brown, executive producer of Messiah: Behold the Lamb of God. During production he was director of the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies and FARMS at the Maxwell Institute. Messiah: Behold the Lamb of God, a documentary produced by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, the College of Religious Education, and BYU Broadcasting, received a sneak preview at BYU’s Education Week in August. For the first time ever, teachings of the restoration, sound academic views from faithful Latter-day Saint scholars, and state-of- the-art documentary production have been combined to produce this seven-part series on Jesus Christ, the Messiah. BYUTV will air the documentary beginning on January 10, 2010, and copies will be available for purchase in the spring.

The following is part 2 of a three-part series of articles written by S. Kent Brown, executive producer of Messiah: Behold the Lamb of God, a Neal A. Maxwell Institute, BYU Broadcasting, and Religious Education production. BYU Television will air part of the series on December 6, 2009. The entire seven-part documentary will air beginning on January 10, 2010. Copies will be available for purchase in the spring. This second article explores the path by which the film climbed from a simple concept to a completed project.

The following is part 3 of a three-part series of articles written by S. Kent Brown, executive producer of Messiah: Behold the Lamb of God, a Neal A. Maxwell Institute, BYU Broadcasting, and Religious Education production. BYU Television will air the seven-part documentary beginning on January 10, 2010. Copies will be available for purchase in the spring. This third article reviews unusual occurrences tied to the early filming in Egypt and Israel.

Editor’s introduction to a four-part series on the relationship of DNA studies to Book of Mormon origins.

The lengthy sojourn of Lehi’s family in the Arabian desert invites the almost inevitable question whether circumstances forced family members to live in the service of tribesmen either for protection or for food. In my view, enough clues exist in the Book of Mormon—they have to be assembled—to bring one to conclude that the family lived for a time in a servile condition, a situation that apparently entailed suffering and conflict.

Review of LDS Perspectives on the Dead Sea Scrolls (1997), edited by Donald W. Parry and Dana M. Pike

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A canyon in northwestern Arabia, Wadi Tayyib al-Ism, appears to be a strong candidate for the Valley of Lemuel in the Book of Mormon. Although its rare year-round stream seems to confirm this site as the valley, other locations must be considered. Brown gives arguments both in favor of and against three other propositions, all of which are within a few dozen miles of Wadi Tayyib al-Ism. The aspects of the river and the Red Sea, the drainage areas of wadis, and the character of the valley are all evaluated. Despite his one serious objection to Wadi Tayyib al-Ism—the difficulty Lehi’s family would have experienced in reaching the site from the north end of the Gulf of Aqaba—Brown argues that it is the most viable candidate for the Valley of Lemuel.

In many places in the Book of Mormon, the authors refer to writings known to them but not included in the book. One of these is the record of Lehi. Nephi reported that he made “an abridgment of the record of my father” (1 Nephi 1:17), which he included on his own original (large) plates. An English translation of that abridgment was included in the 116 pages of manuscript translation lost by Martin Harris in 1828. Someday we will have that record restored; meanwhile, we can discover some of what it contained because both Nephi and Jacob included parts from it in their records.

The account of the journey of Lehi’s family through the wilderness mentions one local name, Nahom, where Ishmael was buried. The discovery of the tribal name NHM on three altars from the seventh and sixth centuries BC provides a likely location for that stopping point on their trip. This site is located at the bend of the incense trail that went in the opposite direction of Lehi’s group—westward to NHM and then turning northward.

In February 1998, five Brigham Young University professors spent more than a week together in southern Oman to collect data for future research projects in the area, which seems to correspond to the end of Lehi’s trail in the Old World. Future research must be performed in a professional manner and seek to reconstruct that part of the world in 600 BC. Botanical, archaeological, chronological, mineralogical, geological, and inscriptional studies in the area would depend on acquiring sponsors in Oman and on the availability of resources.

The wide-ranging sermon of Samuel the Lamanite, spoken from the top of the city wall of Zarahemla, exhibits poetic features in a censuring passage—features that bear similarities to laments found in the Bible, most notably in the Psalms. Like the laments in the Bible, those in Samuel’s speech show contacts with worship. In distinction to the biblical laments, but like the Thanksgiving Hymns of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the poetic pieces in Samuel’s sermon reveal a set of prophecies that find fulfillment in later periods, including the days of Mormon, the compiler and editor of the Book of Mormon.

Royal Skousen’s endeavor to recover the original text of the Book of Mormon is more complicated than it seems because it involves more than simply reproducing the original manuscript. Rather, what Skousen means by “original text” is the very language that appeared on the Urim and Thummim. Every subsequent step, such as Joseph’s reading, his scribes’ understanding and transcribing of that utterance, and Oliver Cowdery’s copying of the manuscript for the printer, exposed the text to the possibility of human subjectivity and error. This paper explains the nature and scope of Skousen’s monumental undertaking and presents some of the methods and reasoning he employs to resolve disputed textual variants in search the Book of Mormon’s original text.

Introduction to the following four articles on early translations of the Book of Mormon into French, German, Italian, and French.

This new selection of materials from the incomparable Encyclopedia of Mormonism includes 151 Book of Mormon articles by 115 scholars and articulate authors.
Within this compilation, readers will find: 45 illustrative photographs, maps, and charts, bibliographies, a unique list of entries by category, and a full index of passages.

Kent Brown and John Tvedtnes examine the question of when Christ appeared to the Nephites in Bountiful, offering different interpretations of 3 Nephi 10:18. Brown asserts that Jesus appeared near the end of the thirty-fourth year after Christ’s birth, almost a full year after the crucifixion. Tvedtnes proposes an earlier date, possibly as early as the same day of or the day following Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem.

Review of Mormonism and the Nature of God: A Theological Revolution, 1830-1915 (2000), by Kurt Widmer

Review of Christopher Kimball Bigelow. The Timechart History of Mormonism: FromPremortality to the Present.

The Liahona was given by the Lord as a communicationsdevice for Lehi to determine the appropriate direction of travel. This device contained two pointers, only one of which was necessary to provide directional information. But the Liahona was more than just a simple compass in function, for it additionally required faith for correct operation. Since a single pointer always "points" in some direction, the additional pointer was necessary to indicate whether or not the first pointer could be relied upon. This proposed purpose for the second pointer conforms to a well-established engineering principle used in modern fault-tolerant computer systems called "voting," in which two identical process states are compared and declared correct if they are the same, and incorrect if they are different. Hence the second pointer, when coincident with the first, would indicate proper operation, and when orthogonal, would indicate nonoperation.

After Joseph Smith’s death, the Saints still had many questions regarding the soteriological problem of evil and the doctrines about redeeming the dead. This paper details what leaders of the church after Joseph Smith have said in response to these previously unanswered questions. They focus on the nature of Christ’s visit to the spirit world, those who were commissioned to preach the gospel to the departed spirits, the consequences of neglecting the gospel in mortality, and the extent and role of temple ordinances for those not eligible for celestial glory. This paper focuses on both the early and the late teachings of President Joseph F. Smith. It explains the doctrinal and historical contexts for his vision in 1918 and the further insights provided by this vision.

Review of Book of Mormon Stories (CD-ROM, 1995), by Michael R. todd, Ted E. Van Horn, and Mark Van Horn

Reprinted in Hugh Nibley Observed.
Just as attorneys representing the church wouldn’t bear their testimonies in a courtroom, Hugh Nibley defended Joseph Smith through facts and scholarly dialogue, not testimony bearing. Although Nibley did, at times, discuss the Prophet specifically, his defense of Joseph came primarily through academic vindication of the Book of Mormon. When others made scholarly attacks against Joseph’s character, Nibley would move the debate to a discussion of the historicity of the book on its own terms. When Nibley did directly discuss the Prophet, he portrayed him as a humble, loving servant of God.

Review of Inventing Mormonism: Tradition and the Historical Record (1994), by H. Michael Marquardt and Wesley P. Walters.

This second of two volumes of essays honoring Hugh Nibley includes scholarly papers based on what the authors have learned from Nibley. Nearly every major subject that Dr. Nibley has encompassed in his vast learning and scholarly production is represented here by at least one article. Topics include the sacrament covenant in Third Nephi, the Lamanite view of Book of Mormon history, external evidences of the Book of Mormon, proper names in the Book of Mormon, the brass plates version of Genesis, the composition of Lehi’s family, ancient burials of metal documents in stone boxes, repentance as rethinking, Mormon history’s encounter with secular modernity, and Judaism in the 20th century.
There are enough clues scattered through the Nephite record to offer a few conjectures about a Lamanite history of Lehi’s descendants.

Richard Bushman compares the limitation of Joseph Smith’s language with the striking linguistic features of the revelations he received that are now included in the Doctrine and Covenants. Of particular interest to Bushman are those sections in which the Lord is speaking directly to his people— revelations that mix sublime religious teachings with ordinary details of church business.

For six weeks this past summer, eight scholars from all over the United States and from Eu- rope met daily in the Maxwell Institute library to discuss and research the topic “The Cultural History of the Gold Plates.” They were the lat- est rendition of a seminar that has met every summer since 1997 under the direction of Richard Bushman, with the aid of Terryl Givens and Claudia Bushman, to explore as- pects of Mormon culture.

Review of Carl Sagan. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

Butler discusses the premises of the DNA argument between supporters and critics of the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon does not give sufficient information about the background of Ishmael’s wife, the wives of Ishmael’s sons, and Nephi’s sisters to test the mitochondrial DNA of the group. Other problems for critics’ assertions include the uncertainty of Lehi’s possession of an Abrahamic Y chromosome and the complete disregard for the entire Jaredite population (remnants of which may have survived their final battle). Confident scientific conclusions are difficult to attain and cannot replace a spiritual witness of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.

Often overlooked in scriptural text, hand and arm gestures are often used to convey meanings that complement the verbal lessons being taught. This article discusses the meaning and significance of four specific gestures referred to in the Book of Mormon: stretching forth one’s hand(s), stretching forth the hand to exert divine power, extending the arm(s) in mercy, and clapping the hands to express joys. Beyond the fascinating meanings of these gestures in the Book of Mormon are the correlations that can be seen in the biblical text and in other Near Eastern cultures. Also insightful, specifically in reference to Moses’s hand movements at the Red Sea, is the way in which the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and other extracanonical writings build on each other to give a fuller interpretive picture.

Review of The Lands of Zarahemla (1993), by E. L. Peay.

Cannon’s examination of news articles and stories concerning the publication of the Book of Mormon helps provide a greater understanding of its initial reception. Most news coverage first appeared in Palmyra and the surrounding areas, but articles on the Book of Mormon appeared as far west as Missouri and Arkansas and from Maine to Georgia. Even with this seemingly wide range of coverage, the overall quantity of news articles on the topic reveals how few people knew about the book and the early LDS Church as a whole. Although the majority of the news articles concerning the Book of Mormon were negative, some assumed a neutral stance and a relatively small number were positive about the book and its publication.

No abstract available.

When Carr traveled to the Middle East, he observed the local birds. In this article, he suggests the possibility that the Book of Mormon prophet Lehi and his family relied on birds for food and for locating water. Carr discusses the various birds that Lehi’s family may have seen on their journey and the Mosaic law pertaining to those birds.

Review of Refuting the Critics: Evidences of the Book of Mormon's Authenticity (1993), by Michael T. Griffiths

Review of The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (1996), by Rodney Stark

Seasoned archaeologist Jeffrey R. Chadwick responds to studies done by Warren Aston (see page 8), Richard Wellington and George Potter (see page 26), and Kent Brown (see page 44) pertaining to the trail that the Book of Mormon prophet Lehi took after fleeing Jerusalem. Chadwick uses his archaeological, historical, and scriptural knowledge to comment on the claims made by the other scholars. He specifically analyzes Lehi’s life in Jerusalem, the route Lehi took from Jerusalem to the Red Sea, the Valley of Lemuel, the route from Shazer to Nahom, the route from Nahom to Bountiful, and the building of the ship at Bountiful.

A small stamp seal bearing the inscription belonging to Malkiyahu, son of the king, arguably belonged to Mulek, son of Zedekiah, who accompanied one of the Israelite groups that settled in the New World. Jeremiah 38:6 mentions Malchiah the son of Hammelech, which could also be a reference to this same Mulek. Discussion centers on similar seals, the meaning of Ben Hamelek, the possible age of Malkiyahu, and Book of Mormon claims about Mulek. This seal could conceivably have been left behind in Jerusalem and found centuries later, thus representing an archaeological artifact of a Book of Mormon personality.

Until the discovery of Ostracon 2071, dating from the fifth century BC, in the 1930s on the shores of the Red Sea, the name Lehi (l?y in the discovered text) had been unattested in any extant document outside of the Book of Mormon. However, Nelson Gluek, along with many other scholars, including Hugh Nibley, vocalized l?y as “La?ai,” which pronunciation would have south Semitic roots. Chadwick argues, instead, that a Hebrew context for the ostracon would be more plausible and that therefore the more likely pronunciation would be “l??y.” He also argues for a Hebrew origin of the compound name ?bl?y, found in the fourth-century BC Samaria Papyri. Both of these names, given their strong Hebrew context, seem to confirm that Lehi was a name in use in ancient Israel and its surrounding areas.

Unlike the Old and New Testaments, where a variety of Hebrew and Greek texts exist to aid us, for the Book of Mormon we have only the King James English translation produced by Joseph Smith. The languages of the Book of Mormon were hardly the same throughout the original composition. Chadwick continues the onomastic discussion of the names Lehi and Sariah by suggesting that the Book of Mormon name Lehi matches the spelling in the King James Bible in the place-name Ramath-lehi; therefore the two must necessarily represent the same Hebrew term. He agrees with one of Hoskisson’s meanings for Lehi’s name— “jaw”— and indicates this may be a nickname rather than a proper name. Sariah is attested as a female name in a Near Eastern document. Although not found as a female name in the Bible, it is well documented as a male name in ancient Israel. In this light, the name means “Jehovah is Prince,” meaning Jehovah is the son of a king.

A previous report characterized a metal blade discovered at the site of biblical Ekron in Israel as a steel short sword dating from the late seventh century BC, shortly before Lehi left Jerusalem, thus corroborating the much-criticized account of Laban’s steel sword in the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately, these assertions are incorrect. Jeffrey R. Chadwick, who is personally acquainted with the excavators who unearthed the blade, explains here that the blade is not a short sword but probably a ceremonial knife. Additionally, the knife is likely from the eleventh century BC and cannot properly be described as steel. Though this artifact does not support the Book of Mormon account of seventh-century steel swords, much better archaeological parallels do exist. Chadwick mentions a meter-long steel sword discovered in Jericho that dates to around 600 BC. This genuinely steel sword from the proper time period makes Nephi’s description of Laban’s sword entirely plausible.

The Book of Mormon name Sariah does not appear as a female name in the Bible but has now been identified in a reconstructed form in an Aramaic papyrus. A Jewish woman living at Elephantine in Upper Egypt during the fifth century BC was identified as Sariah daughter of Hoshea.

Review of Raphael Jospe, Truman G. Madsen, and Seth Ward, eds. Covenant and Chosenness in Judaism and Mormonism. Review of Frank J. Johnson and Rabbi William J. Leffler. Jews and Mormons: Two Houses of Israel. Review of Harris Lenowitz. The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights.

Review of George Potter and Richard Wellington. Lehi in the Wilderness.

This second of two volumes of essays honoring Hugh Nibley includes scholarly papers based on what the authors have learned from Nibley. Nearly every major subject that Dr. Nibley has encompassed in his vast learning and scholarly production is represented here by at least one article. Topics include the sacrament covenant in Third Nephi, the Lamanite view of Book of Mormon history, external evidences of the Book of Mormon, proper names in the Book of Mormon, the brass plates version of Genesis, the composition of Lehi’s family, ancient burials of metal documents in stone boxes, repentance as rethinking, Mormon history’s encounter with secular modernity, and Judaism in the 20th century.
An exploration into Quetzalcoatl—the white, bearded, blue-eyed king of gods for many ancient cultures—and what that might represent in regards to the Book of Mormon and its message.