The vibrant fields of narratology and biblical narrative criticism provide common ground from which scholars who either accept or reject the historical reality of the Book of Mormon may speak to one another. To encourage research that may speak across divisions, this article provides a theoretical overview of some of the major areas within the narrative-critical approach (i.e., the intricacies and subtleties of setting, plot, narrative time, characters, point of view, narrators, and implied readers). The applied analysis of select Book of Mormon passages that accompany these overviews illustrates how borrowing from more established fields may expose new considerations, explain different aspects of the text, make familiar narratives fresh, and stimulate greater appreciation for its literary design.

The Pawnee people endured many hardships through the years, but EchoHawk explains that out of that pain was born promise. During his childhood, EchoHawk and his family had no expectation of achieving a higher education, but he, along with all of his siblings, was able to attend college. Through a football accident in high school, he gained the personal testimony he hadn’t possessed when he was baptized at 14. His testimony and his football took him to Brigham Young University, where President Spencer W. Kimball influenced him to become a lawyer, and later the attorney general of Idaho, to help his people and to be an instrument in God’s hands.

Review of How to Get the Most from the Book of Mormon (audio cassettes, 1987), by Daniel H. Ludlow.

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

In this essay William Eggington suggests that Lehi and his descendants functioned in a society that exhibited strong characteristics of an oral society, one that had access to print but retained many features of a nonprint culture. He concludes that readers of the Book of Momon today need more effective study strategies. Readers who understand the different discourse structures, cohesive devices, rhetorical patterns, and world views used by the authors better understand the authors’ intent.

Investigates aspects of the socio-cultural structure of the Nephite, Lamanite, and Mulekite people of the Book of Mormon from the point of view of those who study the nature of oral and literate societies.” Lehi and his descendants functioned in an “Oral residual culture,” a culture that writes to accomplish some very narrow functions, but acts, to a large extent, like an oral culture. “If we somehow can begin to understand the discourse and socio-cultural structures of the Book of Mormon authors, and the natures of their text production constraints and our text perception constraints, we may more clearly comprehend the text and its vital messages.

Review of Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1875-1896 (1998), by David L. Bigler

Review of The Lives and Travels of Mormon and Moroni (2000), by Jerry L. Ainsworth

Review of As One Crying from the Dust: Book of Mormon Messages for Today (1999), by Brent L. Top

Review of Gordon L. Weight. Miracle on Palmyra's Main Street: An “Old-Time” Printer's Perspective on Printing the Original Copies of the Book of Mormon.

Many Christians and their churches have seen the fall of Adam as a great mistake that ruined God’s plan and offended him. They have assumed that God was unhappy with humanity for what Adam did in Eden. This led to the idea that we must win back his love and favor. If we could not do that by our own actions, then it had to be by Christ’s suffering, as a kind of gift that would please God. But the scriptures are clear that God did not reject us; rather, mankind rejected him. We do not need to win back God’s love; he is always ready. Instead, we need to be reconciled to God.

Review of The Folk of the Fringe (1989); Seventh Son (1987); The Red Prophet (1988); and Prentice Alvin (1989), by Orson Scott Card.

Review of Homecoming (5 vols., 1992-95); A Storyteller in Zion: Essays and Speeches (1993); and “An Open Letter to those who are concerned about 'plagiarism' in The Memory of Earth” (1993), by Orson Scott Card.

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.
Until recently, attempts to vindicate the central claim of the Book of Mormon about itself—that it is a divinely inspired book based on the history of an ancient culture—have focused mainly on external evidences. Such attempts examine parallels in the geographies, cultures, and literatures of the Middle East and ancient America (especially parallels to knowledge that have become available only since Joseph Smith’s time). These parallels are used to prove that the Book of Mormon is consistent with ancient knowledge and forms which Joseph Smith could have known only through an ancient manuscript and revelation. This essay takes a different approach, based essentially on internal evidence provided by the book itself. My reflections, stimulated by the work of Mormon scholars such as John Welch, Noel Reynolds, and Bruce Jorgensen, examine techniques developed by non-Mormon literary critics Northrop Frye and Rene Girard in their work on the Bible.

Each of us has been asked to address some important questions about the intersection of our own faith traditions and higher criticism — an apt metaphor, since “intersections” are where collisions often happen. This brings me to my topic, Protestantism and higher criticism, a messy subject to be sure.

Given the remarkable story of the discovery and divine translation of gold plates hidden in a hill by an ancient Amerindian prophet, nineteenth- century readers could be forgiven for expecting an exotic new set of doctrines in The Book of Mormon. Instead, what many readers found (when they bothered to read the book at all) was an often dull, frequently complicated narrative with the veneer of biblical language and themes. Where they expected to find a heretical “Gold Bible’’ designed to supplant and erase biblical authority, they instead found chapters lifted directly from the Bible itself. The Book of Mormon was a strange document indeed, having at once a “foundational role’’ in but also a “theological irrelevance’’ to a newly created religion, so that it was actually “the miracle the work embodied, not the doctrine it presented, that gave offense.”

Robert Espinosa was approached by Royal Skousen in 1991 with a request for him to join Skousen on the critical text project of the Book of Mormon. Espinosa shares his experience working with Skousen and the developments that they were able to make. After meeting with the owners of some fragments of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon, Espinosa and Skousen were able to conserve, examine, and photograph the fragments. They also carefully analyzed the physical characteristics of the printer’s manuscript.

The Joseph Smith Papers Project seeks to do for Joseph Smith what has been done (and is being done) for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other important early Americans: Make their papers easily accessible and more intelligible by publishing them in a carefully prepared, comprehensive scholarly edition. Historians rely on documents to gain insight into the facts, relationships, and other realities of the past, the raw materials from which they construct their narratives and interpretations. The task of scholars functioning as documentary editors is to help readers and other scholars understand the documents without getting too much in the way themselves, leaving others to construct their own narratives from these (and other) documentary resources.

Few passages in the Book of Mormon have inspired more criticism and moral outrage than the account of Nephi slaying the unconscious figure of Laban. Many point to this episode as evidence against the Book of Mormon being an inspired document. In this study we will attempt to examine the legal as well as the extra-legal ramifications of this incident. Since the law of ancient Israel was inexorably tied to the religious and moral code of the Israelites, any attempt to divorce the two would be patently artificial. Therefore, while this study will emphasize what we know about the operation of justice, that, by necessity implies a discussion of Israel’s relationship to her lawgiver, Yahweh. In analyzing this slaying, a determination must be made of which Hebrew law codes would most likely have applied during Nephi’s time. The Book of Mormon places the slaying between 592 and 598 B.C.1 The primary sources for Hebrew law of that time are the law codes of the Old Testament. They are three in number: the Code of the Covenant (Exodus 21-23:33), the Deuteronomic Code (which includes Deuteronomy 19), and the Priestly Code (which includes Numbers 35). Although there is some difference of opinion among scholars about the compilation dates of these various codes, the general consensus is that the Code of the Covenant was compiled before 800 B.C., the Deuteronomic Code around 700 B.C., and the Priestly Code in about 350 B.C.5 Comparing these dates to the date of slaying, it can be seen that the Code of the Covenant and the Deuteronomic Code were in existence before the time of the slaying and date in roughly the same time period as the slaying. The Priestly Code, however, was compiled after the exile in Babylon and almost 250 years after the slaying.