Comments on Life On Gold Plates: Review: Royal Skousen's "The Book of Mormon: The E...

Incidentally, there's an ongoing project to put to...

2010-03-18T16:08:56.569-06:00

Incidentally, there's an ongoing project to put together a critical text of the Qur'an using the oldest available manuscripts.
http://jeffreyblack.co.uk/2010/03/13/german-researchers-preparing-quran-the-critical-edition/

Loyd, I wonder if Skousen talks about this in the ...

2009-09-21T15:44:45.046-06:00

Loyd, I wonder if Skousen talks about this in the Critical Text volumes.

Perhaps then the subtitle "Earliest Text" is a bit...

2009-09-21T14:09:40.351-06:00

Perhaps then the subtitle "Earliest Text" is a bit misleading then. I don't have my copy with me right now, but if I recall from what I read in his preface correctly, it seems that Skousen was not trying to provide the earliest text (as in written text), but was rather trying to reproduce the actually words spoken by Joseph Smith. If this is the case, then it seems that the text in the book should have been printed in the order it was given.

This is especially true for a critical edition which is supposed to have academic value. To place 1 Nephi at the beginning of the text seems to imply that there was in fact an original ancient text that Joseph was translating--something which I believe should have been bracketed out of this edition.

Furthermore, for this text to have even more academic value, structuring the books in the order that they would have been dictated by Joseph gives scholars a more "correct" look at the text as it was given, enabling scholars to look at the intrarelational structures of the text.

There really was no way that Skousen could alter t...

2009-09-21T13:49:22.871-06:00

There really was no way that Skousen could alter the order of the books, since his intent was to produce the earliest text of the Book of Mormon and the only text that was ever published uses the order we are familiar with. There is perhaps more analysis that might be made about what is missing, but that is speculation and his text is based on what he can document.

If we have to be careful of our definitions, it is the earliest text of the English Book of Mormon. From what I have seen of the way Skousen works, I don't think he would even entertain attempting to reconstruct what was on the plates themselves (except as his hypothesis of tight translation would suggest that the English text really is representative of those plates).

Very nice review, thanks.

2009-09-21T10:41:26.506-06:00

Very nice review, thanks.

I can't remember if he holds the Mosiah-first theo...

2009-09-21T09:40:39.599-06:00

I can't remember if he holds the Mosiah-first theory. I meant to mention that, Metcalfe has an article on it in one of the Signature volumes he edited. Good catch.

My copy came in from Amazon last week. I also foun...

2009-09-21T09:39:15.902-06:00

My copy came in from Amazon last week. I also found his use of punctuation to be a little be problematic--especially considering the purpose of the book. I also wish he structured the book in the order it was most likely translated, beginning the text with Mosiah and placing the first several books at the end.