Review: Volume 23 of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies

There’s a huge, but underexplored, problem with the Book of Mormon: it don’t get no respect.

Richard Bushman bemoans the fact that the Book of Mormon can’t get a toehold in cultural history classes or the Harvard Divinity School, because the world outside of Mormonism gets stuck on its origins. The angelic delivery, the miraculous translation, heck, the gold plates mean must be a hoax. And, as a hoax, they don’t even get to the point where they confront the text.[fn1] 

It’s not just in the world outside of Mormonism that the Book of Mormon gets no respect, though: even in Mormonism, too frequently, rather than engaging the Book of Mormon’s text, we use it as evidence of the Truth of the church (“If the Book of Mormon is true, it means Joseph Smith was a prophet; if Joseph Smith was a prophet, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must be the True Church!”).

Mormon engagement, in other words, has often “focused either on evidence for the book’s historical claims or correlations with current LDS theology.”[fn2]

As Grant Hardy explains, both the Mormon and the non-Mormon approaches have something in common: they use the Book of Mormon to examine something extrinsic to its contents.[fn3] As a result, it often feels like the text itself gets neglected.

Enter the most recent Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, published by the Maxwell Institute. Beginning with volume 23, the editors tell us, MI intends to “increase the academic focus and broaden the intended audience of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies.”[fn4] They hope that this serious study—by and for Mormons and non-Mormons alike—will help the Book of Mormon take its place among the other world scripture in the eyes of academics, while helping members of the Church better engage with the text of their sacred scripture.

Will it work? If this volume is any indication, yes. Stunningly well.[fn5]

A couple caveats on this: first, the articles are not primarily interested in convincing you of the historicity of the Book of Mormon, or its truth. That’s not to say that either historicity or religious truth are not valuable inquiries, or that apologetics is somehow bad and shouldn’t be done. It’s also not to say that they do the reverse; in fact, most (if not all) assume the historicity of the Book of Mormon, and take its truth as a given. This allows them to move beyond questions of truth and historicity, and instead focus in detail on the content of the Book of Mormon.

Second, I didn’t find every article convincing. In particular, I’m skeptical of Roger Terry’s ultimate conclusion in “The Book of Mormon Translation Puzzle.”

But!

But that’s not to say that Terry’s article–or the Journal itself—isn’t valuable. Even if I don’t agree with Terry’s ultimate conclusion, he provides a careful, thoughtful walk through the questions of translation. While I may end my walk in a different place than he did, he made me think. And every single article made me think, showed me connections (both within the Book of Mormon itself and between the Book of Mormon and other religious texts) I hadn’t noticed, and shocked me out of any kind of stuporous reading. Every article, in other words, respected the text it focused on, and gave it a careful and critical reading.

Likewise, the fact that it is not focused on apologetics or on historicity has no moral valence; it is neither good nor bad. It is simply the focus that the current editors have chosen; in the 200 or so pages available, it cannot be all things to all people.

That said, if your interest expands into close readings and careful analysis of the Book of Mormon’s contents (and it should), you should definitely check it out.[fn6] I found the volume intellectually stimulating, and a worthy introduction of the Book of Mormon to the Academy at large, but it was more than merely an intellectual exercise. As I accompanied careful and thoughtful people fitting together the puzzles they explored, I found spiritual stimulation. The Book of Mormon, it turns out, stands up well to a careful exploration.

You can read samples from volume 23 of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies here. You can subscribe here.

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[fn1] See Richard Bushman,  On the Road with Joseph Smith: An Author’s Diary 47, 114 (2007).

[fn2] Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide xiii (2010).

[fn3] Id.

[fn4] 23 Journal of Book of Mormon Studies vi (2014).

[fn5] Note that I’m not saying that the previous iterations of the Journal didn’t work. Frankly, I haven’t read them, and I don’t know what their goals were. What I do know is that, based on this volume of the Journal, it meets the goals that the current editors have set out for it.

[fn6] You know what else you should check out? The MI podcast. Every episode has been great, but if you want what, for my money, is the best two hours of listening you can enjoy, listen to Blair’s discussion of race and the church with Paul Reeve and Ardis Parshall in episodes 22 and 23.