A New Book of Mormon

When we got home from visiting Mitzi's family in Arco over General Conference weekend, I was delighted to find a box from Amazon.com waiting upon our doorstep. I knew what it was and couldn't wait to get inside, open it up, and sit on the couch to admire the newest edition to my library...The Book of Mormon! But this is not just any Book of Mormon; this is Dr. Royal Skousen's twenty-one year magnum opus! For the last two decades, Skousen (BYU professor of English and linguistics) has been analyzing every variation in the text of the Book of Mormon from the original manuscript dictated to Oliver Cowdery, through thirty or-so editions between the LDS and RLDS churches on down to the present day. His actual project consists of some eight or more volumes, but what I had ordered was the synthesized product of all of his research, the aim of which was to establish, as far as humanly possible, the earliest text of The Book of Mormon. Hence the name: The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text.

This edition of The Book of Mormon contains over 600 significant changes from the current (1981) edition used in the Church today. What is a "significant change" you might ask? According to Skousen, any change in the text which would show up in a translation to a foreign language is considered to be "significant," such as replacing the word "scourged" in Mosiah 17:13 (1981 edition) with the word "scorched."

I actually had the opportunity to e-mail Dr. Skousen with two of my Book of Mormon questions a few months ago, prior to the publication of this new edition. I had discovered what appeared to be textual errors in Ether 1 and 11 as well as Alma 51 and 59. I found his e-mail address through the BYU website, sent him my query, and he responded back the very next day with his findings. Pretty cool. I also found out that one of my old roommates from the BYU Jerusalem Center was now a graduate student in Hebrew Studies at the University of Chicago was also one of Dr. Skousen's primary peer review editors on the project.

A few of the most fascinating changes, to me, involve some of the proper nouns in the text. Based on his research it appears that the Amalekites, to whom the sons of Mosiah preach fruitlessly in the Book of Alma, are actually the same group as the Amlicites, the rebel faction that tried to overthrow the Nephite government after Alma became high priest. It turns out that Oliver misspelled (and Joseph probably inconsistently pronounced) the peculiar name "Amlicites" resulting in several spelling variations (i.e. "Amelicites," "Amaleckites," "Amelekites" etc.) that were later standardized based on the familiar Old Testament spelling "Amalekites." Due to the span of pages between the first mention of Amlicites (Alma 2-3) and their second mention (Alma 21), it's easy to see how the printer could have mistakenly concluded that they were two different groups of people.

From the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies article "Alma's Enemies: The Case of the Lamanites, Amlicites, and Mysterious Amalekites" by J. Christopher Conkling (link here)

A second fascinating change is the name "Mulek" to "Muloch." Skousen states that the corrected name of king Zedekiah's surviving son may allude to the idolatrous and apostate nature of the kingdom of Judah prior to its destruction and capture by Babylon, with the heathen god Moloch (to whom people burned their children in sacrifice, see 2 Chron 28:3; 1 Kings 11:7) figuring into their corrupted theology.

Anyway, I just wanted all of you to know about this rather exciting event in the history of the Church and The Book of Mormon in particular. It makes a nice edition to my collection:

I also wanted to show everyone the latest updates to my Book of Mormon maps project. Let me know if you want me to send you electronic copies (if you can't just grab them from the blog, that is).

This is based largely on John L. Sorensen's fantastic book Mormon's Map but which I have applied (as I believe he would) to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico and Guatemala.

This is based on my own internet research on the locations of known Mesoamerican civilizations that would have been contemporary with the Book of Mormon peoples. For more information, be sure to check out this fantastic article by the aforementioned Dr. Sorensen on internal evidence from The Book of Mormon that there were "others" in the promised land with them.