Church Acquires Printer’s Manuscript of Book of Mormon

This is a pretty big deal:

“Church Acquires Printer’s Manuscript of Book of Mormon:  Historic documents purchased from Community of Christ”

It also carried a pretty hefty price tag:  $35 million.

To put that in at least some perspective, though:  I noticed an online comment from an experienced dealer in historic Mormon documents indicating his belief that the market value of the Printer’s Manuscript should have been in the $50-100 million range.

Next, I would like to see the Kirtland Temple come back to its rightful owners . . .

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I think, at this point and in this context, that I’ll invent an utterly baseless rumor and send it into circulation.  (It was first suggested to me during a phone call from one of my very creative sons.)  But, first, another bit of news:

“BYU to sell caffeinated sodas on campus”

Now to my baseless rumor (or, if you prefer, my baseless conspiracy theory):

The Coca-Cola Company bought the Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon and presented it to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in exchange for access to the lucrative BYU market.

You heard it here first!

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Incidentally, the leading authority, by far, on the manuscripts and the textual history of the Book of Mormon is Royal Skousen.  He has published extensively on the subject, including a number of pieces in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture.  For a list of Professor Skousen’s Interpreter publications, see here:

Royal Skousen

Some of his textual work can also be read online at Interpreter:

“Volume 4 of the Critical Text of the Book of Mormon Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon“

And you can watch this on the Interpreter website:

“Video Presentation: Celebrating the new edition of Royal Skousen’s Analysis of Textual Variants“

Working along parallel lines with Professor Skousen — and, in recent years, working with him — has been Dr. Stanford Carmack, who has also published extensively in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture:

Stanford Carmack

Periodically, I run into mockery of the claim, by Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack, that Early Modern English is detectible in the Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon.  This mockery invariably comes — I can think of no exceptions — from people who haven’t the foggiest clue what Drs. Skousen and Carmack are actually saying.

There is no excuse for such ignorance.  Their work is publicly available, easily accessible, and, in many cases, free of charge.

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And, while we’re speaking of textual-historical matters relating to Latter-day Saint scripture, here’s an item on the Interpreter Foundation website that some of you will find of interest:

“The JST in the D&C with Kenneth Alford”

It runs about 45 minutes.