. ." So begins the first book in the Book of Mormon, as the prophet Nephi brings us through the wilderness to a promised land where his family fractures rather than flourishes. But in spite of that tragedy, Nephi points us to the hope he found in his father's inspired dream for the future. Driven by his father's fears and faith, he sought and received his own revelations about how his people might someday find redemption and might ultimately help bring about the redemption of Israel and the entire human family.In this brief theological introduction, philosopher and theologian Joseph M. Spencer investigates the central themes and purposes of a book he calls a "theological masterpiece." What was Nephi trying to accomplish with his writings? How can readers today make better sense of Nephi's words? What can an ancient seer offer readers in the twenty-first century?

    Those pages containing the only copy of the first three months of the Joseph Smith’s translation of the golden plates were forever lost, and the detailed stories they held forgotten over the ensuing years—until now.In this highly anticipated work, author Don Bradley presents over a decade of historical and scriptural research to not only tell the story of the lost pages but to reconstruct many of the detailed stories written on them. Questions explored and answered include:Was the lost manuscript actually 116 pages?How did Mormon’s abridgment of this period differ from the accounts in Nephi’s small plates?Where did the brass plates and Laban’s sword come from?How did Lehi’s family and their descendants live the Law of Moses without the temple and Aaronic priesthood?How did the Liahona operate?Why is Joseph of Egypt emphasized so much in the Book of Mormon?How were the first Nephites similar to the very last?What message did God write on the temple wall for Aminadi to translate?How did the Jaredite interpreters come into the hands of the Nephite kings?Why was King Benjamin so beloved by his people?Despite the likely demise of those pages to the sands of time, the answers to these questions and many more are now available for the first time in nearly two centuries in The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Book of Mormon’s Missing Stories.

    Reflecting his talent for combining history and theology, B. H. Roberts considered the parallels between the Book of Mormon and Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews, which predated publication of the Latter-day Saint scripture by seven years. If the Book of Mormon reflects misconceptions current in Joseph Smith's day regarding Indian origins are its theological claims suspect, Roberts wondered.In this and other research, it was Roberts's proclivity to go wherever the evidence took him -- in this case to anticipate and defend against potential future problems but also to discover for himself the truth of the matter. Yet the manuscript was poorly received by his colleagues. For other church leaders, institutional priorities overshadowed epistemological integrity; the questions Roberts raised would remain unaddressed.Roberts's path-breaking work has been judged by editor Brigham D. Madsen to be methodologically sound and as relevant today as when it was first penned. Madsen includes the documents' provenances, a biographical essay, correspondence to and from Roberts relating to the manuscript, and other scholarly apparata.

    And its defenders too often fail to ponder it deeply enough to respond effectively to such criticisms.But, as author Bob Bennett writes, “For anyone truly interested in the Church and its claims, a thorough examination of the Book of Mormon as a possible forgery is a requirement. Instead of being just a footnote in an overall review of current Church activities, discussion of the book should be a primary focal point of the investigation.” with that in mind, he brings to bear his own fascinating experiences with the world of forgery in this careful examination of the Book of Mormon and its claims.In his role at billionaire Howard Hughes's company, Bennett had opportunities to help disprove two significant attempts at forgery: Clifford Irving's supposedly authorized biography of Hughes and later the fake Hughes “will.” In the process, he became acquainted with several tests commonly used to help identify a forgery. Leap of Faith chronicles the discoveries he made as he applied those tests to the Book of Mormon.Though Bennett concludes that “no final answer can be drawn about the authorship of the Book of Mormon on the basis of analysis alone,” his exploration of the book and explanation of its contents will be invaluable to anyone interested in understanding it more clearly. His own leap of faith provides a springboard for meaningful discussion by people of all faiths.This compellingly written work offers a unique perspective about a book beloved by tens of millions. It is made even more interesting by the author’s experiences working for the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, the victim of more than one attempted forgery.

    And the book itself provides some intriguing clues. But only recently has enough information come to light to make it possible to place the book in a plausible geographical, historical, and cultural setting. In An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, Dr. John L. Sorenson, chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Brigham Young University, presents a credible model for an ancient American background for the Book of Mormon. This model takes notice of extensive details given in the Book of Mormon descriptions of the land southward and of the land northward, of battle movements, of cities built and abandoned, of population and demographic data. Hundreds of geographical, historical, and cultural facts fall into place as his model is carried to its logical conclusions. How does Dr. Sorenson proceed? In a word, he asks more questions than he answers. His words are probing and carefully weighed. The results are great surprises and rewarding insights on every page. He asks questions like "Who were these people?" "What might they have looked like?" "Who were their neighbors?" "How many of them were there?" "How did they live, eat, speak, work, or fight?" He finds plausible answers to these questions by matching specific data from reliable archaeological and anthropological studies of Mesoamerica with the entire spectrum of cultural and historical information from the Book of Mormon. An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon is a thorough work of scholarship, a book that must be read by every serious student of the Book of Mormon.

    Yet it is unquestionably one of the most influential books ever written. With over 140 million copies in print, it is a central text of one of the largest and fastest-growing faiths in the world. And, Grant Hardy shows, it's far from the coma-inducing doorstop caricatured by Twain.In Understanding the Book of Mormon, Hardy offers the first comprehensive analysis of the work's narrative structure in its 180 year history. Unlike virtually all other recent world scriptures, the Book of Mormon presents itself as an integrated narrative rather than a series of doctrinal expositions, moral injunctions, or devotional hymns. Hardy takes readers through its characters, events, and ideas, as he explores the story and its messages. He identifies the book's literary techniques, such as characterization, embedded documents, allusions, and parallel narratives. Whether Joseph Smith is regarded as author or translator, it's noteworthy that he never speaks in his own voice; rather, he mediates nearly everything through the narrators Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni. Hardy shows how each has a distinctive voice, and all are woven into an integral whole.As with any scripture, the contending views of the Book of Mormon can seem irreconcilable. For believers, it is an actual historical document, transmitted from ancient America. For nonbelievers, it is the work of a nineteenth-century farmer from upstate New York. Hardy transcends this intractable conflict by offering a literary approach, one appropriate to both history and fiction. Regardless of whether readers are interested in American history, literature, comparative religion, or even salvation, he writes, the book can best be read if we examine the text on its own terms.

    This is not as easy as one would imagine: She was born in the church, educated at BYU, married in the temple, and is raising more Mormons. She faced a serious conundrum: keep quiet (and avoid losing everything dear to her), or tell the world what being raised LDS does to a person's psyche, especially when they realize that everything they were taught and everything they hoped to believe is a lie. To expose the difficulty faced by Mormons who leave the Church and to seek support for their plight, Regina offers a first-person confessional memoir recounting her many atrocious experiences, managing to weave in enough humor to keep you turning pages, and enough brutal honesty to bring you to an understanding of what it is to be a Mormon, and to try to leave it behind...

    The subject of the class is The Book of Mormon. Professor Nibley has an unequaled knowledge of ancient scripture and their translations.

    Ecclesiastes is gloomy, skeptical, and irreverent. It is caustic and drolly splenetic. It is unapologetically human. It refuses to abet our hunger for clean narratives and happy endings. It is a hopeless book. Insisting on life’s futility, the world’s capriciousness, and God’s inscrutability, it deliberately cultivates despair. It sees such bone-deep hopelessness as the only cure for what ails us. Ecclesiastes is a hard book full of hard sayings. It is an anvil against which our hearts must be hammered. No wonder we avoid it. But the cost of avoidance is high. As Paul insists, in order to become Christian, we must first learn to be hopeless. Hopelessness is the door to Zion. Hopelessness is crucial to a consecrated life. Before we can find hope in Christ, we must give up hope in everything else." In "Nothing New Under the Sun," Adam S. Miller provides a sharp, contemporary paraphrase of Ecclesiastes, continuing to work in the same vein as the popular "Grace is Not God's Backup Plan: An Urgent Paraphrase of Paul's Letter to the Romans" (2015).

    Before the Internet, historical and doctrinal questions not addressed in LDS Church curriculum were mostly found in the scholarly articles of academic journals. This is no longer the case. These topics are now widely debated and discussed online and in other forums. And when members of the LDS Church come across information that is unfamiliar, they may feel surprise, fear, betrayal, or even anger. Laura Harris Hales has assembled a group of respected LDS scholars to offer help in A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine and Church History. Together these authors have spent an average of 25 years researching these topics. Their depth of knowledge and faith enables them to share reliable details, perspective, and context to both LDS doctrine and Church history. The information in these essays can begin an exciting process of discovery for readers as they learn from a source they can trust. Each chapter is engaging and thought-provoking, providing an invaluable resource for both the merely curious and the seriously concerned.

    While a cursory reading of the text seems to relay a simple story of a righteous man whose love for God was tested through life's most difficult of challenges and rewarded for his faith through those trials, a closer reading of Job presents something far more complex and challenging. The majority of the text is a work of poetry that authors and artists through the centuries have recognized as being one of--if not the--greatest poem of the ancient world.In Re-reading Job: Understanding the Ancient World’s Greatest Poem, author Michael Austin shows how most readers have largely misunderstood this important work of scripture and provides insights that enable us to re-read Job in a drastically new way. In doing so, he shows that the story of Job is far more than that simple story of faith, trials, and blessings that we have all come to know, but is instead a subversive and complex work of scripture meant to inspire readers to rethink all that they thought they knew about God.

    It was published under the direction of the Mount Ogden Stake Genealogical Committee.

    After delivering the final proofs of his landmark study, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling to Knopf in July 2005, Bushman crisscrossed the country from coast to coast, delivering numerous addresses on Joseph Smith at scholarly conferences, academic symposia, and firesides. This startlingly candid memoir concludes eleven months later with an article written for Common-Place in August 2006. Bushman confesses to hope and humility, an unexpected numbness when he expected moments of triumph, and genuine apprehension as he awaits reviews. He frets at the polarization that dismissed the book as either too hard on Joseph Smith or too easy. He yields to a very human compulsion to check sales figures on amazon.com, but partway through the process stepped back with the recognition, "The book seems to be cutting its own path now, just as [I] hoped." For readers coming to grips with the ongoing puzzle of the Prophet and the troublesome dimensions of their own faith, Richard Bushman, a temple sealer and stake patriarch but also a prize-winning scholar, openly but not insistently presents himself as a believer. "I believe enough to take Joseph Smith seriously," he says. He draws comfort both from what he calls his "mantra" ("Today I will be a follower of Jesus Christ") and also from ongoing engagement with the intellectual challenges of explaining Joseph Smith.

    While officially intended to preserve the sacredness of the experience, the silence leaves many Latter-day Saints mystified. What are the derivation and development of the holy endowment, and if these were known, would the experience be more meaningful? Modern parishioners lack context to interpret the arcane and syncretistic elements of the symbolism.For instance, David Buerger traces the evolution of the initiatory rites, including the New Testament-like foot washings, which originated in the Ohio period of Mormon history; the more elaborate Old Testament-like washings and anointings, which began in Illinois and were performed in large bathtubs, with oil poured over the initiate’s head; and the vestigial contemporary sprinkling and dabbing, which were begun in Utah. He shows why the dramatic portions of the ceremony blend anachronistic events—an innovation foreign to the original drama.Buerger addresses the abandonment of the adoption sealing, which once linked unrelated families, and the near-disappearance of the second anointing, which is the crowning ordinance of the temple. He notes other recent changes as well. Biblical models, Masonic prototypes, folk beliefs, and frontier resourcefulness all went into the creation of this highest form of Mormon Temple worship. Diary entries and other primary sources document its evolution.