Royal Skousen

On Saturday evening, 12 November 2022, Royal Skousen delivered a talk at Utah Valley University under the title of “Textual Criticism and the Book of Mormon”—a subject to which he has devoted meticulous scholarly attention extending over the past several decades. In his remarks, Skousen made two very important announcements (for which, see below). He […]

Abstract: Royal Skousen’s essay shed light on enigmatic references in Jacob 6:13 and Moroni 10:34 to “the pleasing bar of God.” After establishing that the term “pleading bar” is an appropriate legal term, he cites both internal evidence and the likelihood of scribal errors as explanations for why “pleasing bar,” instead of the more likely […]

Abstract: Royal Skousen’s essay shed light on enigmatic references in Jacob 6:13 and Moroni 10:34 to “the pleasing bar of God.” After establishing that the term “pleading bar” is an appropriate legal term, he cites both internal evidence and the likelihood of scribal errors as explanations for why “pleasing bar,” instead of the more likely […]

We are pleased to announce the publication last week of Part 6 of Volume 3 of the Critical Text, Spelling in the Manuscripts and Editions. It will be available shortly from BYU Studies at $49.95. Summary of Spelling in the Manuscripts and Editions,Part 6 of Volume 3, The History of the Text of the Book […]

The Yale edition of the Book of Mormon is now in its fifth printing, which means that we have exceeded 10,000 copies and going upward. A number of people have been asking me when will this fifth (corrected!) printed appear. Well, it appeared in April and Yale UP didn’t even tell me. This printing is […]

[An interview of Royal Skousen by his friend and colleague Dan Peterson regarding the Book of Mormon critical text project to which Skousen has dedicated his career. This interview was conducted September 10, 2019, via email and was published in the quarterly magazine of BYU’s College of Humanities.] What is a critical text of the […]

On 6 April 2016, at BYU in Provo, Utah, Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack presented a lecture on "Editing Out the 'Bad Grammar' in the Book of Mormon." This lecture was already available in video format, and is now available in written form.

The Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, under the editorship of Royal Skousen, began in 1988 and is now nearing completion. In 2001, facsimile transcripts of the two Book of Mormon manuscripts (volumes 1 and 2 of the critical text) were published by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). From 2004 to 2009 the six books of volume 4 of the critical text, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, were published, also by FARMS. Parts 1 and 2 of volume 3 of the critical text, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, will be published in early 2015. These two parts will describe all the grammatical editing that the Book of Mormon text has undergone, from 1829 up to the present. When all six parts of volume 3 of the critical text have been published, volume 5 of the critical text, A Complete Electronic Collation of the Book of Mormon, will be released. Within the next couple years, the Joseph Smith Papers will publish photographs of the two Book of Mormon manuscripts, along with transcriptions based on volumes 1 and 2 of the critical text. Nearly all of the work of the project has involved the knowledge and periodic involvement of the Scriptures Committee of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The project itself, however, remains independent of the Church, and none of its findings have involved any ecclesiastical approval or endorsement.

In 1526 William Tyndale’s English-language The New Testa-ment started showing up in England, printed in the Low Lands and smuggled into England because it was an illegal book. It represented an unapproved translation of the scriptures into the English language. In theory, a translation would have been allowed if the Church had approved it in advance. In reality, the Church was not interested in any translation of the scriptures since that would allow lay readers to interpret the scriptures on their own and to come to different conclusions regarding Church practices and doctrine. Moreover, scripture formed a fundamental role in the rise of the Protestant Reformation and, in particular, Lutheranism, which King Henry VIII had officially opposed, in the governing of his realm and in his own writings in defense of the Catholic Church (for which the Church had honored him with the title of Defender of the Faith).

In that part of the original article (here presented with some minor editing), I first describe the different kinds of changes that have occurred in the Book of Mormon text over the years and provide a fairly accurate number for how many places the text shows textual variation. Then I turn to five changes in the text (“the five chestnuts”) that critics of the Book of Mormon continually refer to. At the conclusion of the original article, I provide some specific numbers for the different types of changes in the history of the Book of Mormon text, including the number of changes introduced in The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, the definitive scholarly edition of the Book of Mormon, published in 2009 by Yale University Press.

Carl T. Cox has graciously provided me with a new account of Moroni showing the Book of Mormon plates to Mary Whitmer (1778-1856), wife of Peter Whitmer Senior. Mary was the mother of five sons who were witnesses to the golden plates: David Whitmer, one of the three witnesses; and Christian Whitmer, Jacob Whitmer, John Whitmer, and Peter Whitmer Junior, four of the eight witnesses.

I begin this brief historical account of alternative work on the critical text of the Book of Mormon by including material that I wrote in an original, longer review of John S. Dinger’s Significant Textual Changes in the Book of Mormon (Smith-Pettit Foundation: Salt Lake City, Utah, 2013). The final, shorter review appears in BYU Studies 53:1 (2014). The Interpreter recently published Robert F. Smith’s review of Dinger. In these additional comments, I especially concentrate on work done in the 1970s by Stan Larson on the text of the Book of Mormon. In the latter part of this account, I discuss the more recent work of Shirley Heater in producing The Book of Mormon: Restored Covenant Edition.

An earlier version of the following paper was presented 5 August 2010 at a conference sponsored by FAIR, the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (now FAIRMormon). The text of this paper is copyrighted by Royal Skousen. The photographs that appear in this paper are also protected by copyright. Photographs of the original manuscript are provided courtesy of David Hawkinson and Robert Espinosa and are reproduced here by permission of the Wilford Wood Foundation. Photographs of the printer’s manuscript are provided courtesy of Nevin Skousen and are reproduced here by permission of the Community of Christ. The text of the Yale edition of The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (2009) is copyrighted by Royal Skousen; Yale University Press holds the rights to reproduce this text.

This is my analysis of the changes in the 2013 edition text of the Book of Mormon, which will be discussed in my lecture on Tuesday, March 5th.

Evidence from the manuscripts of the Book of Mormon (as well as internal evidence within the Book of Mormon itself) shows that for one sixth of the text, from Helaman 13:17 to the end of Mormon, the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon was set from the original (dictated) manuscript rather than from the printer’s manuscript. For five-sixths of the text, the 1830 edition was set from the printer’s manuscript, the copy prepared specifically for the 1830 typesetter to use as his copytext. In 1990, when the use of the original manuscript as copytext was first discovered, it was assumed that the scribes for the printer’s manuscript had fallen behind in their copywork, which had then forced them to take in the original manuscript to the 1830 typesetter. Historical evidence now argues, to the contrary, that the reason for the switch was the need to take the printer’s manuscript to Canada in February 1830 in order to secure the copyright of the Book of Mormon within the British realm. During the month or so that Oliver Cowdery and others were on their trip to nearby Canada with the printer’s manuscript, the 1830 typesetter used the original manuscript to set the type, although he himself was unaware that there had been a temporary switch in the manuscripts.