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Great review; Skousen’s review was, if anything, even more damning.
I’m mostly baffled why Signature chose to publish a Book of Mormon critical text at all, much less one that appears to be as full of errors and poorly laid-out as indicated by both Smith and Skousen. Most of the reasons that come to mind do not reflect well on Signature, so I will leave them unexpressed.
Excellent article.
“Royal Skousen’s dictum that such texts should never be keyed in by hand is proven yet again.”
I have heard Brother Skousen say that before, but is there an alternative for the lay scholar? I looked recently for electronic copies of the Book of Mormon, and all I found were 1830 editions of dubious quality. Electronic copies of the Earliest Text and 2013 editions would be very useful.
Prof. Skousen is preparing a complete electronic collation of all editions. Hopefully, all editions will then be searchable and subject to analysis by WordCruncher. Until that time, we must be patient.
Robert:
Excellent review. Skousen also has a rather negative assessment of this volume coming out in BYU Studies Quarterly, from what I understand. My one quibble is with this statement:
“Dinger erroneously lists the books of Enos, Jarom, Omni, and Words of Mormon as having chapters. As for the biblical book of Obadiah, the epistle of Paul to Philemon, the epistles of 2 John, 3 John, and Jude in the KJV, one does not properly insert chapter numbers in a book with no chapters. References in such cases are to the verses only.”
Standard LDS practice has generally been to give a chapter 1 designation in from of the verse number on single chapter books of scripture. As such, I feel that any volume that targets an LDS audience is better to include it, so as to not generate any confusion.
Skousen’s web only review is available free at BYU Studies, https://byustudies.byu.edu/showTitle.aspx?title=9301
Yes, you are undoubtedly right about LDS practice, Neal. And perhaps this review is not the place to impose my personal preferences. However, I take my cue from standard non-LDS practice in citing the KJV (and from the 1611 KJV itself), and also from John Dinger’s habit of placing “CHAPTER I” at the head of books which did not have such headings in PMs (Words of Mormon, IV Nephi have them added later by PMs-cor), and failing to provide a note to that effect. Of course such false chapters were added to the 1830 edition, but were dropped by Elder Talmage in 1920 (as currently). I was taught the correct mode of citation (by analogy from proper outlining) long ago during my year of freshman English at BYU, later reinforced by biblical study at other universities.