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

Review of Robert A. Pate. Mapping the Book of Mormon: A Comprehensive Geography of Nephite America.

Review of Earl M. Wunderli. “Critique of a Limited Geography for Book of Mormon Events.” Dialogue 35/3 (2002): 161–97.

Gardner examines the timeline and process that Mormon plausibly underwent when he compiled and added to the Book of Mormon. Mormon’s message is the cycle of history—the Messiah will come again.

Nephi was a younger son of a wealthy family. As one who might not inherit his father's business, it is possible that he was trained for another profession. One of the high-status professions open to him would have been a scribe. Beyond the fact that Nephi produced at least three written works (1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, and the nonextant large-plate book of Lehi), there are other evidences in his writing that betray the kind of traning scribes received. His early professional training may have been an important preparation for his later role in establishing his people as a true people of the book.

Review of David G. Calderwood. Voices from the Dust: New Insights into Ancient America.

Review of Nephite culture and Society: Selected Papers (1997), by John L. Sorenson

Review of Edwin G. Goble and Wayne N. May. This Land: Zarahemla and the Nephite Nation. and Review of Wayne N. May. This Land: Only One Cumorah! and Review of Wayne N. May. This Land: They Came from the East.

Nephi and Mormon, the two writers responsible for the largest amount of text in the Book of Mormon, both similarly used reference material and quotations in their work. Despite that basic similarity, the way each writer used those references and quotations is quite different.

Review of Diane E. Wirth. Decoding Ancient America: A Guide to the Archaeology of the Book of Mormon.

Review of John L. Lunds. Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon: Is This the Place?

Review of Heroes from the Book of Mormon (1995), by Deseret Book

A glossary of archaic words

Review of Restoring the Ancient Church: Joseph Smith and Early Christianity (1999), by Barry R. Bickmore

Review of “The Question of the Validity of Baptism Conferred in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (unpublished), by Luis Ladaria

As a missionary in the Eastern States Mission, Crawford Gates participated in the Hill Cumorah Pageant in 1941. Although he loved the music and considered it appropriate to the Book of Mormon scenes of the pageant, he thought then that the pageant needed its own tailor-made musical score. Twelve years later he was given the opportunity to create that score. Gates details the challenge of creating a 72-minute musical score for a full symphony orchestra and chorus while working full time as a BYU music faculty member and juggling church and family responsibilities. When that score was retired 31 years later, Gates was again appointed to create a score for the new pageant. He relates further experiences arising from that assignment.

Several maps from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries support details of Lehi’s journey as recorded in the Book of Mormon. In 1751, the renowned cartographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon D’Anville became the first to include Nahom (or Nehem), Ishmael’s burial place in the Book of Mormon, in his map of Asia. This map and a 1771 map of Yemen are the basis for most accurate maps of Arabia from 1751 to 1814. The spelling varies among the subsequent maps, with most using either D’Anville’s Nehem or Niebuhr’s Nehhm, but the location of Nahom does not differ between those maps that include Nahom. The mention of Nahom on the finest maps by the greatest cartographers of the times, in a location that corresponds to Lehi’s account, gives credence to Lehi’s travels.

Review of “The Use of Egyptian Magical Papyri to Authenticate the Book of Abraham: A Critical Review” (1993), by Edward H. Ashment.

Idrimi of Alalakh lived in Syria about a century after Abraham and left an autobiographical inscription that is the only such item uncovered archaeologically from Middle Bronze Age Syro-Palestine. The inscription of Idrimi and the Book of Abraham share a number of parallel features and motifs. Some of the parallels are a result of similar experiences in their lives and some are a result of coming from a similar culture and time.

Although much attention has been paid to those who have possessed the Joseph Smith Papyri in modern times, relatively little attention has been paid to the ancient owners of the papyri. This lecture examines the ancient owners, the world in which they lived, and their contact with the Book of Abraham.

The fragmentary text on a stele erected at Karnak seems to be connected with the volcanic eruption on Thera. The phraseology in many instances bears uncanny resemblance to the Book of Mormon account of the destruction in the Americas at the time of the crucifixion.

Review of Written by the Finger of God: A Testimony of Joseph Smith's Translations (1993), by Joe Sampson.

Review of Christ and the New Covenant: The Messianic Message of the Book of Mormon (1997), by Jeffrey R. Holland

In recent years, a large number of ancient writings have been found in and around Israel. While many of these include names found in the Bible and other ancient texts, others were previously unattested in written sources. Some of these previously unattested names, though unknown in the Bible, are found in the Book of Mormon. The discovery of these Hebrew names in ancient inscriptions provides remarkable evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and provides clear refutation of those critics who would place its origin in nineteenth-century America. This article explores several Book of Mormon proper names that are attested from Hebrew inscriptions. Names included are Sariah, Alma, Abish, Aha, Ammonihah, Chemish, Hagoth, Himni, Isabel, Jarom, Josh, Luram, Mathoni, Mathonihah, Muloki, and Sam—none of which appear in English Bibles.

The verb to seal occurs some 34 times in the Book of Mormon. In most of these instances the verb takes (is followed by) a direct object referring to such things as the law, a book, records, words, an account, an epistle, an interpretation, revelation, the truth, and the stone interpreters. Twice, however, the verb to seal takes a person as a direct object that is qualified by a possessive pronoun: Therefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, that you may be brought to heaven, that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of him who created all things, in heaven and in earth, who is God above all. (Mosiah 5:15; emphasis added)

Review of The Encyclopedia of Mormonism (1992), edited by Daniel H. Ludlow

Using different methodological approaches and considerations, Thomas Wayment and John Gee each approach the question of whether Paul was speaking to his spouse in Philippians 4:3; their intent is to determine if the question can be answered with any degree of confidence. The related question of whether Paul was ever married is not addressed here, although that issue has been of interest since at least the second century AD and perhaps earlier. Instead, these authors consider only the question of whether a specific noun that is sometimes used to refer to a wife was intentionally used that way by Paul.

Introduction to the current issue, including editor’s picks. So-called biblical scholarship is supposed to be able to differentiate between authors of various texts. A test devised by students for their professor showed some of the flaws of those methods. Though critics complain about the lack of archaeological evidence supporting the Book of Mormon, even the Bible has few archaeological supports.

The plausibility of the attempted offering of Abraham by a priest of pharaoh and the existence of human sacrifice in ancient Egypt have been questioned and debated. This paper presents strong evidence that ritual slaying did exist among ancient Egyptians, with a particular focus on its existence in the Middle Kingdom. It details three individual evidences of human sacrifice found in ancient Egypt. Four different aspects of the attempted offering of Abraham are compared to these Egyptian evidences to illustrate how the story of Abraham fits with the picture of ritual slaying in Middle Kingdom Egypt.

A recent issue of a popular journal on ancient Egypt discusses a number of sheets of gold foil incised with Egyptian writing. These artifacts provide some interesting parallels to the Book of Mormon.

Having studied Janne Sjodahl’s work on the number of plates required for the original Book of Mormon text, John Gee examines the potential drawbacks of Sjodahl’s experiment. He concludes that the size of Miller’s script suffices for Sjodahl’s test.

The question of where Joseph Smith received the text of the Book of Abraham has elicited three main theories, one of which, held by a minority of church members, is that Joseph translated it from papyri that we no longer have. It is conjectured that if this were the case, then the contents of the Book of Abraham must have been on what nineteenth-century witnesses described as the “long roll.” Two sets of scholars developed mathematical formulas to discover, from the remains of what they believe to be the long roll, what the length of the long roll would have been. However, when these formulas are applied on scrolls of known length, they produce erratic or inconclusive results, thus casting doubt on their ability to accurately conclude how long the long roll would have been.

The Greek term often translated as “grace” has a broad range of meaning. Neither Jesus nor the Gospels teach that man is saved by grace alone; Paul is the predominant New Testament writer to use the term. The Protestant concept of grace stems from the time of Augustine. Book of Mormon prophets specify what actions are required to lay hold of the grace of Christ, a boon to be desired.

Since the rediscovery of the Joseph Smith Papyri in 1967, the papyri have been the center of conflicting, and often confusing, claims. This full-color, reader-friendly guide contains an overview of the basic facts and major theories about the papyri, along with helpful maps, illustrations, charts, and glossaries of terms and names.
Written by Egyptologist John Gee, this guide reflects not only the latest Egyptological research but also the most recent Latter-day Saint thought about the papyri. It deals with the nature of the papyri, their contents, their provenance, their relationship to the Book of Abraham and the Book of Breathings, current views of believers and detractors, and more.

Review of Quest for the Gold Plates: Thomas Stuart Ferguson's Archaeological Search for the Book of Mormon (1996), by Stan Larson

News reports from 2013 identify the site of Oylum Höyük with both the city of Abraham and the ancient city of Ulišum. The latter has been identified with the Olishem of Abraham 1:10. While the preliminary reports are encouraging, the evidence upon which the archaeologists base their identifications has not yet been published. So while there is nothing against the proposed identifications, they are not proven either.

Transcript of a lecture presented on 3 March 1999 as part of the FARMS Book of Abraham Lecture Series. John Gee recounts the history of the Joseph Smith papyri, their discovery, travels, and eventual translation. Particular attention is devoted to the reconstruction of the papyri and their relationship to the Book of Abraham. The origin and contents of the Book of Abraham and the Kirtland Egyptian Papers are also discussed.

Hugh Winder Nibley (27 March 1910–24 February 2005) was a gifted writer, a prolific author, a first-class scholar, and, above all, a committed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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

Analysis of comparative data and historical background indicates that the quotations in Mosiah 7–22 are historically accurate. Further examination of the quotations of Limhi shows that they depend heavily on other sources. This implies some things about the character of Limhi and provides as well attendant lessons for our own day.

Review of Allen J. Fletcher. A Study Guide to the Facsimiles of the Book of Abraham.

Two Egyptian shawabti-figurines, reputedly discovered in Acajutla, El Salvador, in 1914, are likely forgeries. Had they been authentic, they might have helped to establish cultural contact between Egypt and Mesoameria.

Gee shares the results of his twenty-year studies of the Joseph Smith Papyri, discussing matters that are not widely known.

The name Nephi is attested as a Syro-Palestinian Semitic form of an Egyptian man’s name dating from the Late Period in Egypt.

Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (1998), by D. Michael Quinn

Review of Kenneth A. Kitchen. On the Reliability of the Old Testament.

Review of Chrsitian Smith. Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. and Review of Mark D. Regenerus. Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers.

Review of Thomas D. Cottle. The Papyri of Abraham: Facsimiles of the Everlasting Covenant.

What we have of Jesus’s ministry to the Nephites is an abridged version because the Lord wished to “try the faith of [his] people” (3 Nephi 26:6–13). Dutiful to his charge, Mormon did not provide a full account of Jesus’s teachings, but his son Moroni provided three quotations of portions that his father did not.

Review of By Grace Are We Saved (1989), by Robert L. Millet.

John Gee provides an overview of how the Book of Abraham came to be in the possession of Joseph Smith, and how it was translated by the Prophet. Gee also discusses three aspects of the book that had doctrinal impact on the restoration, particularly in relation to doctrines of premortal existence.

Review of Translating the Anthon Transcript (1999), by Stan and Polly Johnson

This article explores what we know about the Joseph Smith Papyri, whether they are connected to the Book of Abraham, and the approaches that Latter-day Saints and non-LDS scholars take when trying to understand such a connection.

Review of The Facsimiles of the Book of Abraham: A Study of the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri (1990), by James R. Harris; For His Ka: Essays Offered in Memory of Klaus Baer (1994), edited by David P. Silverman; and The Story of the Book of Abraham: Mummies, Manuscripts, and Mormonism (1995), by H. Donl Peterson.

Review of . . . By His Own Hand upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri (1992), by Charles M. Larson.

Possible scripts for the “reformed Egyptian” referred to in the Book of Mormon include abnormal hieratic and carved hieratic.

The Book of Mormon was written in a language that was grounded in Hebrew and Egyptian; the people of the Book of Mormon most likely spoke this same language. It is interesting, then, that the Book of Mormon authors periodically included definitions for certain terms that they used in their writing, as if their audience did not understand them. This technique, known as a gloss, suggests that those terms may not have been a part of that ancient language. In an attempt to uncover the true origin of such words, this article dissects the Book of Mormon term Irreantum and delves into its linguistic characteristics to determine whether the term could have originated from Hebrew, Egyptian, ancient South Semitic, or another language.

Review of Who Was the Pharaoh of the Exodus? (1994), by Jeff Williams

Review of A Book of Mormon Guide: A Simple Way to Teach a Friend (1988), by Wilford A. Fischer and Norma J. Fischer.

From the time the church acquired the property comprising the Hill Cumorah, artist and sculptor Torleif S. Knaphus had often spoken to the Brethren about creating a monument on that hallowed hill. His testimony of the restoration of the gospel created a desire to honor in a tangible way the sacred event of the angel Moroni’s visit to Joseph Smith and Moroni’s eventual transfer of the gold plates to Joseph for translation. This article chronicles Knaphus’s upbringing, artistic development, and conversion to the church. The design and creation of the Hill Cumorah monument were his consuming passion for five years and a rare opportunity to add his testimony to the great latter-day work. He was commissioned to create many statues and bas-reliefs for the church, some of which are featured in a sidebar to this article.

The complete Book of Mormon has been translated into Japanese no fewer than three times. The first translation was done by a young American missionary, Alma O. Taylor, the second by Sat Tatsui, the first native Japanese person to undertake the challenge, and the third after World War II by a committee appointed by the First Presidency. The challenges of translating concepts such as God, Spirit, or atonement into a language that shares no linguistic or cultural commonalities with the language of the inspired translation of the Book of Mormon are overwhelming. When attempting to communicate in a culture that does not acknowledge supreme deity or the kinship connection between God and man or life after death, a simple concept such as damnation can be challenging to convey. In addition, dramatic changes have occurred in the Japanese language over past century. The written Japanese language has changed with a rapidity that is unfathomable in English.

Review of Norman the Nephite's and Larry the Lamanite's Book of Mormon Time Line (1995), by Pat Bagley

The Book of Mormon offers four keys essential for understanding Isaiah: (1) the spirit of prophecy or the Holy Ghost; (2) the letter of prophecy or the manner of the Jews; (3) diligent searching of Isaiah’s words; and (4) types, or the idea that events in Israel’s past foreshadow events in the latter days. When we apply these four keys to Isaiah’s writings, a message unfolds there that is immediately applicable and recognizable to Latter-day Saints. The developing spiritual and political shape of the world in which we live parallels precisely the prophetic scenario Isaiah drew up millennia ago.

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.
This essay serves as a testimony to modern Israel—the Latter-day Saints—that we are beginning to resemble God’s ancient covenant people in ways that conflict with our high ideals.

Review of Eldin Ricks's Thorough Concordance of LDS Standard Works (1995), by Eldin Ricks.

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.
Although Latter-day Saints have a knowledge of the process of repentance, they lack a complete understanding of how the scriptures use the term repentance: repentance consists not only of remorse, confession, restitution, and forgiveness, but a literal changing of one’s entire perspective on life, so that eventually a Latter-day Saint may “repent of having to repent.”

Review of A Sure Foundation: Answers to Difficult Gospel Questions.

This article has been adapted from the author’s book By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion. The author discusses three common understandings of the term revelation: (1) revelation as doctrine, (2) revelation as history, and (3) revelation as inner experience. He suggests that the Book of Mormon introduces a fourth type: revelation as dialogue. This form of revelation allows individuals to have direct contact with God, rather than only through the scriptures, and can be applied to our lives just as it was to the lives of those living in Book of Mormon times.

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.

This essay challenges criticism of the alleged origins of the Book of Mormon and argues a common-sense approach to support the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon treats many topics that most nineteenth-century Christians would have been thoroughly familiar with: the fall, atonement, and resurrection, just to name a few. However, the Book of Mormon treats these subjects in a way that would have required such readers to rethink their relationship with the divine, their place in Christian history, and God’s relationship to history. Christ’s visit to the New World, the continuance of the scriptural canon, and abundant personalized revelation all create a text that is both familiar and radical.

Givens first recounts the six visions that Nephi records in the Book of Mormon. He then suggests five themes from these visions: personal revelation, focus on Jesus Christ, wilderness and varieties of Zion, new configurations of scripture, and the centrality of family. Finally, he expands on each of these themes individually, explaining how they are illustrated throughout the Book of Mormon.

Because of the religious diversity in the United States, the different religions have struggled to be tolerant of each other, especially at the time when Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Givens examines this situation and suggests five factors that contribute to the success of new religious movements such as Mormonism.

In June 1834, members of Zion’s Camp discovered skeleton bones that Joseph Smith reportedly revealed as belonging to a “white Lamanite” named Zelph. Many Latter-day Saints have referenced this unearthing as evidence that the Book of Mormon took place in North America, rather than in Mesoamerica. This article explores the significance and reliability of the accounts concerning Zelph’s existence, and it claims that although such a discovery is exciting and insightful, many of the accounts are inconsistent and most of the details surrounding Zelph and his life remain unknown. The skeleton cannot, therefore, provide conclusive evidence for anything, and Latter-day Saints should remember that more important than identifying the location of Book of Mormon events is strengthening their belief in the book’s divinity.

Ancient texts are too often approached using modern assumptions. Among those assumptions obstructing an understanding of ancient texts is the modern emphasis on originality and on writing as intellectual property. Ancient writers relished repetition—stories that were repeated in succeeding generations—over originality. The Bible is full of repeated or allusive stories, and the Book of Mormon often reinscribes this biblical emphasis on repetition. One such biblical reverberation in the Book of Mormon is Nephi’s ocean voyage, which evokes biblical stories of origination: creation, deluge, and exodus. These three stories of beginnings are carefully alluded to in Nephi’s own foundational story, exactly as we would expect to find in an ancient Hebraic text.

Review of ?Apologetic and Critical Assumptions about Book of Mormon Historicity? (1993), by Brent Lee Metcalfe.

Review of Dan Vogel. Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet.

Positivist historiography has always maintained an impermeable boundary between history and literature. But positivism is itself a historical sediment whose time is now past. Recent literary theory and historiography emphasize the continuities between history and literature. Under the domination of historiography by a positivist epistemology (from about 1880 to 1960), history attempted to free itself from its literary heritage. More recently theorists from a number of disciplines have recognized that history, both ancient and modern, has been informed by literary motifs, themes, and strategies. The repetition of the exodus literary pattern, for example, through the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and Christian history does nothing to bring into question the historical status of the events. The exodus patterns evident in Mosiah do not force the Book of Mormon to surrender historical claims just because they also happen to be literary.

Review of Dan Vogel. Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet.

The death and burial of Ishmael at Nahom (see 1 Nephi 16:34-39) can puzzle readers who are uncertain about how the story fits into Nephi’s overall account or uncertain about why the incident is included at all. This section, however, is one of those parts of the Book of Mormon that contain hints of a deeper meaning than what appears on the surface. At least one important meaning of the Nahom episode is connected with the word Nahom itself.

Review of Brent Lee Metcalfe. “The Priority of Mosiah: A Prelude to Book of Mormon Exegesis.” In New Approaches to the Book of Mormon: Explorations in Critical Methodology, and Review of Edwin Firmage Jr. “Historical Criticism and the Book of Mormon: A Personal Encounter.” In American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon, and Review of Susan Staker. “Secret Things, Hidden Things: The Seer Story in the Imaginative Economy of Joseph Smith.” In American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon

Review of The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (1992), by Harold Bloom.

Review of Digging in Cumorah: Reclaiming Book of Mormon Narratives (1999), by Mark D. Thomas

A minor story in the Book of Mormon provides an example of how complex the task of reading the book can be. It also illustrates how much richer our understanding can be when we remember that the Book of Mormon is an ancient record with connections to other ancient records, particularly the Old Testament. In the book of Mosiah, a band of wicked priests hid in the wilderness and kidnapped some young women to be their wives (see 20:1-5). This story can be read as an adventure tale. If looked at carefully, however, it shows the kind of connections between the Book of Mormon and the Old Testament that demonstrate that the Book of Mormon is an ancient book.

Review of A Reading Guide to the Book of Mormon (1989), by David H. Mulholland.

The early church was unable to continue once the apostles had departed. Bishops were only local officials and could not speak for the entire church. Beginning with the later second century, philosophy plays an increasingly important role in the church—this appears to be an effect rather than a cause of the apostasy.

Review of Richard Dawkins. The God Delusion.

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.

This article surveys the past and current research on Huqoq, an ancient Jewish village near the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. Historical sources and modern explorations show that Huqoq was a small agricultural village during the biblical and postbiblical periods. Formal excavations of the site began in 2011 and have uncovered portions of the ancient village and its synagogue. This article highlights the discoveries made during the first two seasons of excavation (2011-2012), including pieces of a mosaic floor in the synagogue’s east aisle that depict two female faces, an inscription, and an illustration of Samson tying lit torches to foxes (Judges 15:1-5). Because of the rarity of Samson in Jewish art, the religious significance of this mosaic is difficult to explain. However, liturgical texts from late antiquity indicate that some synagogue congregations celebrated Samson as an apocalyptic image and messianic prototype, whose victories against the Philistines fostered hope in the eschatological messiah expected to appear and deliver the Jewish community from foreign oppression.

In the summer of 2016, the editors of Studies in the Bible and Antiquity (Brian Hauglid, Matthew Grey, and Cory Crawford) organized a one-day workshop sponsored by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship to consider the relationship between modern biblical studies and various faith communities who view the Bible as sacred scripture. This workshop, which was held on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, included essays presented by six outstanding scholars who approached the topic from Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, and Latter-day Saint perspectives, and we are pleased to publish the revised versions of these essays in this roundtable forum.

If God is good, why does he permit evil to exist? People through the ages have wrestled with this philosophical question, often called simply “the problem of evil.” The Bible contains one of the earliest works to address it-the book of Job.

Introduction to the current issue.

Introduction to the current issue.

Introduction to the current issue.

The mother tongue of Jesus and his disciples was not Greek or Latin or even Hebrew, but Aramaic, the language of Israel’s Babylonian captors. Aramaic, and in particular the dialect of Syriac, has continued to be spoken by many Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere down to the present time. This Semitic language became the vehicle for a vast body of early Christian literature that expressed Christian theology in singularly Semitic forms. For example, just as the Hebrew prophets expressed themselves primarily in poetry or rhythmic prose, rich with symbolism and analogy, so also early Syriac teachers composed didactic hymns and even their sermons in poetic meter. In contrast to the philosophical theology of western churches, Syriac Christians articulated a symbolic theology that drew on images from nature and scripture to express the Christian mysteries.

The birthplace and spiritual heart of Christian monasticism is the Nitrian Desert of Egypt and the long, shallow valley of Scetis (Wadi el-Natrun). It was to here, from the fourth century onwards, that Macarius the Great and others of the sainted desert fathers retreated from the world, devoting their lives to worship and prayer. While some monks chose to live in isolation as hermits, many others banded together to establish the first monasteries, building churches for worship and libraries for study.

On June 20, 2001, representatives of BYU’s Maxwell Institute, The Catholic University of America (CUA), and Beth Mardutho, a Syriac studies institute, met together to discuss the digital imaging of key holdings in the Semitics/ICOR Library of CUA’s Mullen Library. CUA’s Semitics/ICOR Library houses one of the largest collections in the world of early and rare books on the Christian East. All parties shared a particular interest in early Syriac printed works, both for their continuing value to contemporary Syriac Christian communities as well as to Syriac scholars. Many early printed catalogs, text editions, grammars, lexica, and other instrumenta and studies have never been superseded or replaced. Their rarity and inaccessibility to scholars has long been a serious problem for the field of Early Christian Studies. The faculty and staff of Catholic University recognized this need as well and generously agreed to work with BYU and Beth Mardutho to provide digital access to their collection. BYU and Beth Mardutho entered into a three-way agreement with CUA to scan a broad selection of their Syriac book holdings, with BYU focusing on titles of primarily academic interest and Beth Mardutho on materials of broader interest to the Syriac churches. The results of this Institute project are now avail-able free of cost on the Web as the Brigham Young University & The Catholic University of America Syriac Studies Reference Library (http://www.lib.byu.edu/dlib/cua/).

Revelations and Translations, Volume 1: Manuscript Revelation Books, the second out of thirty expected volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers, reproduces in textual and photographic format two books used between 1831 and 1835 to record revelations given through Joseph Smith. This volume marks the first time that scholars and other interested readers will have broad access to these books of revelations. The text includes color-coded transcriptions of the various redactions made by Smith, Cowdery, Williams, and others. The revelations included in the volume consist of both canonical and noncanonical revelations; some of the noncanonical revelations give an intriguing glimpse into the early LDS Church. While this volume will be a great asset to any reader, its full potential may not be realized until the publication of later volumes, which will include a general index, contextual footnotes, and historical introductions to the revelations.