Faith-Promoting Rumor

In my last post, I introduced two lines of questioning that Timothy Beal has raised in his book The Rise and Fall of the Bible concerning biblical texts. Part of Beal’s intent in writing is to introduce the reader to how a bunch of disparate religious writings came to be known as “The Bible.” Two main points are important in such a discussion: (1) that there are a great number of biblical manuscripts in existence today, and (2) that there are a significant number of differences in how these different manuscripts read. In this current post I would like to (begin to) do something similar with regard to the Book of Mormon. While I was originally planning on accomplishing this in one post, the amount of information has proven worthy of two separate posts; therefore, this post will focus more on the first point raised above, i.e. the different editions and manuscripts of the Book of Mormon, while my next post will focus more on the second point, i.e. the variant readings found in the aforementioned editions and manuscripts.

Such a discussion requires somewhat further explanation when dealing with the unique circumstances of the Book of the Mormon—for while we in fact do possess ancient manuscripts of the bible that we can examine, study, translate, and re-translate, the Book of Mormon provides somewhat of a different situation. Though most Latter-day Saints have a firm belief  that similar manuscripts, in the form of metal records, stand behind the English translation of the Book of Mormon, these records are not available for scholars to study today. Thus, whatever an individual may think and/or belief concerning the historicity of ancient plates or reformed Egyptian, the current situation is one in which readers of the Book of Mormon (believer, non-believer, and everything in-between) experience the Book of Mormon in its 19th century translated form, and (at least to some extent) through the lens of Joseph Smith. This is not to say that there is not worthwhile work being done under the assumption that there were indeed ancient records and ancient editors [1]—only that as far as manuscript evidence goes, we can only examine what we have: and what we have are documents that date from the early 19th century forward. But, let not anyone concern themselves that there isn’t a whole lot to study, examine, and/or learn. On the contrary, there is a wealth of knowledge and understanding to be gained from a close reading of the modern manuscripts and editions of the Book of Mormon—far more, I believe, than most Latter-day Saints assume.

Just as Beal suggested that “there never has been a time when we could really talk about the Bible in the singular,” [2] one could, with good reason, say something similar about the Book of Mormon. As part of the humanist revolution that transpired during the European renaissance period, and particularly due to a renewed interest in classical languages, close readers of the biblical texts began to ask questions regarding the correctness of biblical manuscripts. This line of inquiry would blossom into its own academic discipline called “textual criticism,” a method of examining different manuscripts (in this case, biblical) in order to theorize about how, when, and why scribal alterations were made. Such examinations have revealed, and continue to reveal, much concerning scribal culture and practices. [3]  In general, however, text criticism has shown that any biblical text contains a substantial number of scribal alterations (both intentional and accidental) made at different points during its transmission. [4]  This principle alone adds a layer of complexity to the oft said/heard proclamation: “well, that’s what the scriptures say.” The findings of textual scholarship, at the very least, beg for a follow up question to such a statement: “which particular (manuscript of the) scriptures are you referring to?”

Lack of physical records make it difficult to apply these principles to the the ancient records spoken of regarding the Book of Mormon; however, it is quite possible, and worthwhile, to examine the modern manuscripts and editions that are extant. Any discussion about Book of Mormon text critical work owes much to BYU linguistics professor Royal Skousen, whose nearly completed The Critical Text of the Book of Mormon (CTBOM) has provided not only an invaluable resource for mapping out the manuscript and edition/version history of the Book of Mormon, but also for acknowledging and analyzing the textual variants that can be found through the aforementioned manuscripts and editions. [5] By Skousen’s count, there are 2o editions of the Book of Mormon text and 2 manuscripts. As stated above, in my next post I will review several of the many significant and fascinating examples of textual variants found in Book of Mormon text(s); thus, a brief mention of the available sources is in order:

Manuscripts

The Original Manuscript (OM)

Most Latter-day Saints are more than aware of the scraps of parchment used by various scribes to record the words of the Book of Mormon as Joseph Smith dictated them out loud. Perhaps less known is the current state of what has come to be called the “original manuscript.” While OM represents the earliest text that we possess for the Book of Mormon, a difficulty exists in the fact that most of it is no longer extant. After making some editorial changes in 1840, Joseph Smith placed OM in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House. Some 40 years later, Lewis Bidamon removed OM only to find that mold and water had mostly destroyed the manuscript. Today, approximately 28% of OM remain (1 Nephi 2–13; 1 Nephi 15–2 Nephi 1; Alma 22-60; Alma 62–Helaman 3; along with a number of other more fragmentary sections [6]). Of the extant 28% of OM, the LDS church owns about 25% while the Wilford Wood Foundation, the University of Utah, and other various individuals own the remaining 3%. [7]

The Printer’s Manuscript (PM)

Unlike OM, PM is virtually 100% extant. At Joseph Smith’s direction, scribes prepared PM to serve as a guide for the typesetter (though one sixth of the type was set from OM [Helaman 13–Moroni 10]). In many cases PM stands as our earliest textual evidence in light of OM being so fragmentary. Even in the copying process from OM to PM, scribal errors entered the text. [8]

Editions

Though there are 22 editions of the Book of Mormon, some editions certainly play a more interesting role in the textual history of the Book of  Mormon. Aside from the current edition, the 1830 edition is the most well known and most referenced by Latter-day Saints today. Equally important editions include the 1837 edition completed in Kirtland and the 1840 edition completed in Nauvoo, both under the supervision of Joseph Smith. It precisely because Joseph Smith’s authority plays such a integral role in Mormon thought that these first 3 editions are of such interest, particularly the textual variants that exist between them. Numerous other editions would be published including the Liverpool, England edition, the first over-seas edition, published in 1841. Interestingly, the 1841 Liverpool edition came about at the hands of a group of missionaries who left in obedience to a July 8, 1838 commandment to “depart to go over the great waters [to England], and there promulgate my gospel” (D&C 118:4). Since Joseph Smith’s 1840 revisions would not be complete until after they departed, the 1841 Liverpool edition does not reflect any of the changes found in the 1840 edition. The 1879 edition is significant in that a committee led by Orson Pratt divided up the text into much smaller chapters and verses (nearly identical to the current edition), a process that began with Franklin D. Richard’s editorial work for the 1852 edition. The 1920 edition introduced the double-columed format familiar to Latter-day Saints today in order to appear as bibles of the time did. The 1981 edition, the most current edition contains interesting changes including the introduction of the subtitle: “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” [9]  Even subsequent changes to the peripheral text in the online version of the Book of Mormon adds to the discussion of the fluidity of texts. [10]

Having provided a brief sketch of the numerous extant manuscripts and editions of the Book of Mormon, I will, in my next post, look to address several of the more interesting textual variants that I’ve come across in my (admittedly limited) study of Book of Mormon text criticism. At the very least, the existence of multiple editions and manuscripts suggests that while the situation is not identical to that of the biblical documents, Beal’s question about the use of “The Bible”  is not all together unrelated to the question of the Book of Mormon as compared to the iconic Book of Mormon.

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[1] I have particularly enjoyed Grant Hardy’s volume, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Hardy’s volume, interestingly enough, attempts to look at the narrative of the Book of Mormon without becoming too entangled in questions regarding historicity, a goal that I think he accomplishes to a great degree. I ultimately agree with Hardy that the game of finding parallels to try and “prove” the Book of Mormon to be this or that has become fatigued and stagnant in many regards. Nevertheless, I am intrigued by some of the possibilities presented by Hardy regarding individuals authoring, editing, compiling, and/or abridging records and find his book a valuable catalyst for discussions about the Book of Mormon regardless of one’s religious views.

[2] Timothy Beal, The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 22.

[3] On scribes and scribal culture, see: David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Philip R. Davies, Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures, Library of Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998); William M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

[4] For a brief overview of biblical text criticism, see Moshe Goshen-Gottstien, “Hebrew Bible Textual Criticism,” 19-26, and Kurt Aland, “New Testament Textual Criticism,” 27-34, both in Methods of Biblical Interpretation, Forward by Douglas A. Knight (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004), a condensed version of John H. Hayes (ed.), Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999). For a more exhaustive treatment, the classic works are: Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3d ed. revised and expanded (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012); Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

[5] Skousen’s The Critical Text of the Book of Mormon (CTBOM) project has been a life-long project that is nearing completion. To date, 4 of the proposed 6 volumes have now been published: The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Extant Text. CTBOM 1 (Provo: FARMS, 2001); The Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Entire Text in Two Parts, 2 vols; CTBOM 2 (Provo: FARMS, 2001); Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 6 vols; CTBOM 4 (Provo: FARMS, 2004-2009); The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). Two volumes are still to come: The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon and A Complete Electronic Collation of the Book of Mormon.

[6] Book of Mormon references are to the current edition of the Book of Mormon. Prior to 1879, the chapters in the Book of Mormon were divided up differently.

[7] Royal Skousen, “History of the Critical Text Project of the Book of Mormon,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 11 (2002): 5-21 (6).

[8] Skousen, “History,” 6.

[9] Much of my information for the different editions comes from Richard E. Turley Jr. and William W. Slaughter, How We Got the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2011).

[10] For example, while the “Introduction” to the 1981 edition reads “all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians,” the online version, available at www.lds.org reads, “all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians” (my emphasis).

Two anecdotes: 1) Recently our bishop was teaching an Aaronic Priesthood lesson to a small group of young men that included a newly ordained deacon, the only deacon in the ward and the de facto president of the quorum. The earnest (and highly educated) bishop was zeroing in on the deacon, explaining that as the deacon’s quorum president he was one of only four people in the ward who hold the power to turn keys. 2) A (different) bishop was teaching a sharing time lesson in Primary in which some Aaronic priesthood holders were present. Speaking of Joseph Smith’s restoration of the priesthood, he said that the priesthood is the power to act in God’s name, which is perhaps the most common definition of priesthood in the church. He pointed to one of the priests in the audience and said “Matt has the power to act in God’s name, isn’t it great that Joseph Smith restored it?” I happened to be looking at my (9-year-old) daughter, and she was crestfallen.

Aside from the obvious problems of a) how this means the deacon in at least one sense trumps the Relief Society President, b) how easily adopted this kind of rhetoric is in all-male contexts, and c) how characteristically blind men are (myself included) to the way such rhetoric affects non-males, another problem strikes me: that of agency.

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*follow-up to this.

Three vociferous cheers for Old Joe and his Indian Bible notwithstanding, a lot of what the Book of Mormon says about colonization and colonialization is liable to make current readers squeamish. After all, it has been some time since the president of the United States, for instance, was systematically removing Native Americans to west of the Mississippi. Today there is actually concern about the loss of Native American languages, if not religions.

It doesn’t matter much whether 1 Nephi 13:12 is to be understood as referring to Columbus himself, another explorer or conquistador. God was behind Gentile discovery and colonialization of the Americas, according to the Nephite record. The Gentiles’ crossing of the many waters, Bible in hand, was divinely inspired. Which should come as no surprise in a book of holy writ that features other providential voyages of boats and bibles, ships and scriptures.

Among other things, the story of the Book of Mormon is one of ongoing colonialization, beginning with attempts to Christianize Lamanites through the use of the Brass Plates centuries before the Spanish arrived in the New World and ending with prophecy of widespread Lamanite conversion post-1829 due to the instrumentality of the Book of Mormon itself. Still, some of what the Book of Mormon says about colonialization is fairly critical.

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With the arrival of Salt Press at the Maxwell Institute, we have finally entered an era of “theory” as part of mainstream LDS scripture studies. At the same time, we LDS have not fully processed the moves made in biblical studies. There was a short spurt of LDS feminist criticism in the 1990′s, but this did not engage the scriptures as a primary point of inquiry. Poststructuralism, cultural criticism, and queer studies have had almost no impact on LDS scripture studies.
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In his recent book The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book, Timothy Beal offers an insightful and timely assessment of what he calls the “the iconic cultural meaning of the Bible.” [1]  Beal proposes two main arguments in his work. First, that “there never has been a time when we could really talk about the Bible in the singular,” [2] and, second, that there is a marked difference between what the Bible actually is and the way in which many have come to view it. This post will serve as an introduction to a series of posts interested in exploring how (if at all) Beal’s ideas regarding the Bible might apply to Latter-day Saints and the Book of Mormon.

To Beal’s first point, while the Bible is often thought of today as a book (leather bound of course, with your full name on the cover, and, if you are lucky, tabs for better scripture chasing skills and perhaps a sensible tote), in reality, the Bible contains numerous pieces of writing that span nearly 1000 years of history. Not only do these disparate texts each contain their own respective historical, textual, and literary contexts, but they have been edited and copied numerous times. Furthermore, these groups of texts were later translated as well as gathered together in particular collections that would later be canonized and held as authoritative by various religious groups. Many, in responding to such a scenario, have suggested that, “we need to get back to the original.” Beal addresses this by saying: “It’s a reasonable assumption. But it’s nevertheless wrong. There is no single, unadulterated Bible, no pristine original, at the base of this crazy biblical family tree. In fact, the very idea of the bible as a fixed canon of scriptures, not to mention believed by many to be the literal, divinely authored Word of God, would have been completely unfamiliar, indeed inconceivable, not only to Jesus and his disciples but also to the first few centuries of Christians.” [3]  That the Bible did not appear in book format all at once is only one side of Beal’s argument against there being no such thing as the Bible. Even today, a number of factors support Beal’s conclusion that to speak of bibles, in the plural, would be a more accurate descriptor. While many may assume that all bibles contain the same books, there are, in fact, a number of different biblical canons that are actively in use today among different religious groups. [4]  Furthermore, the sheer number of bibles available for public consumption, even among those that contain the same books, is staggering. This abundance is not a recent development. Beal explains that, “even in the early centuries of the print era, after Gutenberg, we find a burgeoning Bible-publishing industry with literally thousands of different editions and versions [of the the Bible].” [5]  Because of an officially endorsed version of the scriptures, Latter-day Saints are generally not accustomed to the extremely wide range of bibles available: everything from the NIV Teen Study Bible from Zondervan, to the fully armored Metal Bible, to Thomas Nelson Publishers’ Shiny Sequin Bible, to the Bride’s Bible. [6]  With such choices, no wonder “the average Christian household owns nine Bibles and purchases at least one new Bible every year.” [7]  Whether one is speaking of how the Bible came to be, the different canons in use among religious groups, or the copious editions and versions of the Bible available for purchase, Beal’s point seems worth noting: it is difficult to speak of the Bible.

Beal’s second argument regarding the way in which many US Christians perceive of the Bible is equally fascinating. While biblical consumerism is at an all-time high, biblical literacy is at an all time low. “Could it be,” Beal asks, “that biblical literacy is being replaced by biblical consumerism?” [8]  Following up on this question, Beal asks what is it that Bible believers do believe about the Bible if biblical literacy is so low but opinions about the Bible remain intact and enthusiastic nonetheless? He suggests that despite not reading and being particularly familiar with the Bible, that many Americans have nevertheless constructed an idea—what he calls an iconic view—about what the Bible is. So for example, while the Bible is made up of a plethora of writings from various authors and editors, Beal suggests that many have nonetheless come to view the Bible as univocal, in that “it speaks for itself in one, unified voice, without contradiction,” or, by way of another example, while there are many issues and questions concerning contemporary ethics and/or morals that receive little or no treatment within the biblical texts, many nevertheless view the Bible as both practical, meaning that it “promises to serve as a reference manual and a dependable guide,” as well as comprehensive, in that it “cover[s] everything human beings may ever possibly need to know.” [9]  Such an iconic view of what people want and/or need the Bible to be, Beal argues, is quickly supplanting what the Bible actually is. For Beal, treating the Bible as a “closed book of answers,” rather than an open “library of questions” is problematic in that “when we try to make a text univocal, ‘one-voiced,’ of one voice with itself, we deprive it of its richness”—or, in Derrida’s words, it becomes subject to “impoverishment by univocality.” [10]

In my next post, I begin to apply these ideas more specifically to Latter-day Saints and the Book of Mormon and see what happens.

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[1] Timothy Beal, The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011).

[2] Beal, The Rise and Fall, 22.

[3] Beal, The Rise and Fall, 85.

[4] For example, the Roman Catholic canon contains books not included in the Protestant canon, the so-called Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books (Tobit, Judith, Greek additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ben Sira, Baruch, Greek additions to Daniel, 1 Maccabees, and 2 Maccabees). Likewise, additional books are included in canons such as those of the Greek Orthodox, Coptic, and Ethiopic traditions.

[5] Beal, The Rise and Fall, 22.

[6] See chapter 3 in Beal’s work, which discusses the “values added” by dozens of different types of Bibles.

[7] Beal, The Rise and Fall, 36.

[8] Beal, The Rise and Fall, 35.

[9] For Beal’s complete list of characteristics (authoritative, univocal, practical, accessible, comprehensive, and exclusive), see Beal, The Rise and Fall, 4.

[10] As quoted in Beal, The Rise and Fall, 148-49.

As a LDS studying religion, it’s not uncommon to hear the claim that Mormons have a hard time getting hired in religious studies departments; especially if they study Mormonism.

Before 6 or so years ago there were 3 LDSs I am aware of that had a tenured (or tenure track) position in a religious studies (or theology) department:* [Read more...]