front cover of American Apocrypha
American Apocrypha
Essays on the Book of Mormon
Brent Metcalfe
Signature Books, 2002
 A fine line divides scripture from non-scripture, writes Robert M. Price in American Apocrypha. There are books that are not in the Bible that are as powerful and authoritative as anything in the canon. At the same time, much of the Bible was written centures after the events it narrates by scribes using fictitious names. Clearly, the hallmark of scripture is not historical accuracy but rather its spiritual impact on individuals; exclusion from the canon is not reason to dismiss a book as heretical.

Consider the Book of Mormon, first published in 1830. The nature of this volume—in particular its claim to antiquity—is the theme of nine ground-breaking essays in American Apocrypha. Thomas W. Murphy discusses the Book of Mormon’s view that American Indians are descendants of ancient Hebrews. In recent DNA tests, Native Americans have proven to be of Siberian ancestry and not of ancient Jewish or Middle Eastern descent. Nor is the Book of Mormon a traditional translation from an ancient document, writes David P. Wright, as indicated by the underlying Hebrew in the book’s Isaiah passages. Other contributors to American Apocrypha explore the evolution of ideas in the Book of Mormon during the course of its dictation.

Editors Dan Vogel and Brent Metcalfe have chosen essays by authors who represent a wide range of disciplines and perspectives: Robert Price edits the Journal of Higher Criticism; Thomas Murphy chairs the anthropology department at Edmonds Community College; David Wright teaches Hebrew Bible at Brandeis University. They are joined by Scott C. Dunn; Edwin Firmage, Jr.; George D. Smith; and Susan Staker—all of whom explore what can be reasonably asserted about the Book of Mormon as scripture.

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An Imperfect Book
What the Book of Mormon Tells Us about Itself
Earl M. Wunderli
Signature Books, 2013
My first impression in reading this text was that it was rightly named in its title. Indeed the author intends to lead the reader through an exploration of a book that he describes as an imperfect book, and does so in a way that enables the book to speak for itself. Given the fact that so many approach the Book of Mormon through lenses already adjusted to read the text for apologetic purposes, I found the author’s engagement of the Book of Mormon to be respectfully and critically refreshing. Feeling unable to rely on historians, archeologists, self-designated authorities, or others with sure knowledge of the Book of Mormon, the author turns to the book itself for what it might reveal about itself. Rather than turning to external evidences to vindicate the central claims of the Book of Mormon, the author invites the reader to explore internal evidences to be discovered in the book itself. He does this while engaging a broad range of contemporary scholarship.

Dale E. Luffman, Association for Mormon Letters
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front cover of Losing a Lost Tribe
Losing a Lost Tribe
Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church
Simon G. Southerton
Signature Books, 2004
 For the past 175 years, the Latter-day Saint Church has taught that Native Americans and Polynesians are descended from ancient seafaring Israelites. Recent DNA research confirms what anthropologists have been saying for nearly as many years, that Native Americans are originally from Siberia and Polynesians from Southeast Asia. In the current volume, molecular biologist Simon Southerton explains the theology and the science and how the former is being reshaped by the latter.

In the Book of Mormon, the Jewish prophet Lehi says the following after arriving by boat in America in 600 BCE:

Wherefore, I, Lehi, have obtained a promise, that inasmuch as those whom the Lord God shall bring out of the land of Jerusalem shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land; and they shall be kept from all other nations, that they may possess this land unto themselves (2 Ne. 1:9).

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Open Canon
Scriptures of the Latter Day Saint Tradition
Edited by Christine Elyse Blythe, Christopher James Blythe, and Jay Burton
University of Utah Press, 2022
The publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830 began a new scriptural tradition. Resisting the long-established closed biblical canon, the Book of Mormon posited that the Bible was incomplete and corrupted. With a commitment to an open canon, a variety of Latter Day Saint denominations have emerged, each offering their own scriptural works to accompany the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and other revelations of Joseph Smith. Open Canon breaks new ground as the first volume to examine these writings as a single spiritual heritage.

Chapters cover both well-studied and lesser-studied works, introducing readers to scripture dictated by nineteenth- and twentieth-century revelators such as James Strang, Lucy Mack Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Harry Edgar Baker, and Charles B. Thompson, among others. Contributors detail how various Latter Day Saint denominations responded to scriptures introduced during the ministry of Joseph Smith and how churches have employed the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Lectures of Faith over time. Bringing together studies from across denominational boundaries, this book considers what we can learn about Latter Day Saint resistance to the closed canon and the nature of a new American scriptural tradition.
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Producing Ancient Scripture
Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity
Edited by Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid
University of Utah Press, 2020
Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of the broader Latter-day Saint movement, produced several volumes of scripture between 1829, when he translated the Book of Mormon, and 1844, when he was murdered. The Book of Mormon, published in 1830, is well known. Less read and studied are the subsequent texts that Smith translated after the Book of Mormon, texts that he presented as the writings of ancient Old World and New World prophets. These works were published and received by early Latter-day Saints as prophetic scripture that included important revelations and commandments from God.
 
This collaborative volume is the first to study Joseph Smith’s translation projects in their entirety. In this carefully curated collection, experts contribute cutting-edge research and incisive analysis. The chapters explore Smith’s translation projects in focused detail and in broad contexts, as well as in comparison and conversation with one another. Authors approach Smith’s sacred texts historically, textually, linguistically, and literarily to offer a multidisciplinary view. Scrupulous examination of the production and content of Smith’s translations opens new avenues for understanding the foundations of Mormonism, provides insight on aspects of early American religious culture, and helps conceptualize the production and transmission of sacred texts.
 
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Studies of the Book of Mormon
Foreword by Sterling M. McMurrin
B. H. Roberts
Signature Books, 1992
Available for the first time fifty years after the author’s death, Studies of the Book of Mormon presents this respected church leader’s investigation into Mormonism’s founding scripture. Reflecting his talent for combining history and theology, B. H. Roberts considered the evident parallels between the Book of Mormon and Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews, a book that predated the Mormon scripture by seven years. If the Book of Mormon is not historical, but rather a reflection of the misconceptions current in Joseph Smith’s day regarding Indian origins, then its theological claims are suspect as well, Roberts asserted. 

In this and other research, it was Roberts’s proclivity to go wherever the evidence took him, in this case anticipating and defending against potential future problems. Yet the manuscript was so poorly received by fellow church leaders that it was left to Roberts alone to decide whether he had overlooked some important piece of the puzzle or whether the Mormon scripture’s claims were, in fact, illegitimate. Clearly for most of his colleagues, institutional priorities overshadowed epistemological integrity. 

But Roberts’s pathbreaking work has been judged by the editor to be methodologically sound–still relevant today. It shows the work of a keen mind, and illustrates why Roberts was one of the most influential Mormon thinkers of his day. The manuscript is accompanied by a preface and introduction, a history of the documents’ provenances, a biographical essay, correspondence to and from Roberts relating to the manuscript, a bibliography, and an afterword–all of which put the information into perspective. 
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front cover of The Testimony of Two Nations
The Testimony of Two Nations
How the Book of Mormon Reads, and Rereads, the Bible
Michael Austin
University of Illinois Press, 2024
Understanding the Book of Mormon on its own terms and through its two-way connection with the Bible

Like the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible, the Book of Mormon uses narratives to develop ideas and present instruction. Michael Austin reveals how the Book of Mormon connects itself to narratives in the Christian Bible with many of the same tools that the New Testament used to connect itself to the Hebrew Bible to create the Christian Bible. As Austin shows, the canonical context for interpreting the Book of Mormon includes the Christian Bible, the Book of Mormon itself, and other writings and revelations that hold scriptural status in most Restoration denominations. Austin pays particular attention to how the Book of Mormon connects itself to the Christian Bible both to form a new canon and to use the canonical relationship to reframe and reinterpret biblical narratives. This canonical context provides an important and fruitful method for interpreting the Book of Mormon.
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front cover of A Word in Season
A Word in Season
Isaiah's Reception in the Book of Mormon
Joseph M. Spencer
University of Illinois Press, 2023
A groundbreaking look at the relationship between two sacred texts

The Book of Mormon’s narrative privileges Isaiah over other sources, provocatively interpreting and at times inventively reworking the biblical text. Joseph M. Spencer sees within the Book of Mormon a programmatic investigation regarding the meaning and relevance of the Book of Isaiah in a world increasingly removed from the context of the times that produced it. Working from the crossroads of reception studies and Mormon studies, Spencer investigates and clarifies the Book of Mormon’s questions about the vitality of Isaiah’s prophetic project. Spencer’s analysis focuses on the Book of Mormon’s three interactions with the prophet: the character of Abinadi; the resurrected Jesus Christ; and the nation-founding figure of Nephi. Working from the Book of Mormon as it was dictated, Spencer details its vital and overlooked place in Isaiah’s reception while recognizing the interpretation of Isaiah as an organizing force behind the Book of Mormon.

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