Royal Skousen - The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (Yale 2nd edition)

[caspianrex]

[This isn't breaking news or anything, but it looked as if the topic had not been discussed yet on this forum.]

For several years now, one of my favorite editions of The Book of Mormon in my collection has been The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, edited by Royal Skousen. Originally published in 2009, this edition of the BoM attempts, insofar as it is possible, to reconstruct the earliest text as it was dictated to Joseph Smith's scribes. Based on Skousen's work on the Critical Text Project for the past many years, the edition represents some of the best work in LDS textual scholarship out there, in a format that encourages the reader to understand the text they are reading. Skousen's use of "sense lines" in a single-column format helps to achieve that goal, I believe. The recent 2nd edition of the version almost flew under my radar, as it was published in 2022, and I almost missed it. The updated edition reflects some of Skousen's textual choices based on the work he has done in the years since the first edition was published. 

The first edition had an excellent Introduction by Grant Hardy (whose Annotated Book of Mormon published by Oxford University Press will be coming out soon), as well as a Preface by Skousen. The second edition has a brand new Introduction, penned by Skousen himself, and it is a wonderfully concise guide ro the work of textual criticism as it applies to The Book of Mormon. My only disappointment with the second edition is that the publisher chose to issue the book only in paperback, albeit a fairly sturdy paperback. At least the new format is considerably easier to carry around than its predecessor, which is a pretty hefty volume.

I would be interested in hearing any perspectives on this publication that people on this forum may have. 

(By the way, if you're not familiar with Skousen's Yale Edition, you can read the first edition on the Book of Mormon Central website.)

Edited August 3, 2023 by caspianrex

[JustAnAustralian]

Any ideas what the corrections in the second edition are? Are they just the addendums at the end the analysis of textual variants? 

[caspianrex]

10 hours ago, JustAnAustralian said:

Any ideas what the corrections in the second edition are? Are they just the addendums at the end the analysis of textual variants? 

I haven't done a systematic comparison of the two editions, but I'm pretty sure he made some changes in the text itself. I know one punctuation change off the top of my head: on the Title Page, he added a comma between "plates" and "taken" in the phrase "upon plates taken from the plates of Nephi." (I think, based on a discussion I had on this forum a few years ago, that punctuation change may have been added to a later printing of the first edition.)

[caspianrex]

Looking more closely at the two editions, it seems to me that the major difference (apart from minor punctuation changes mentioned in my previous comment) between the editions is the completely different introductory material. Just looking at random spots in the text, everything seems to line up identically. 

That being said, this information is found on the back cover of the second edition:

Quote

 

This second edition of The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text is the culmination of [the Critical Text Project], and includes:

• 615 readings that have never before appeared in any standard printed edition
• 251 readings that make a difference in meaning
• 19 corrected spellings of names
• 133 readings that make the text more consistent in phraseology or usage
• 38 readings that restore a unique phrase or word choice to the text
• A completely new introduction by the editor
• An appendiz listing 724 significant changes in the history of the text

 

Edited August 4, 2023 by caspianrex

[the narrator]

My biggest criticism of the volume is that this it is meant to be the dictation text for academic and scholarly use, and yet it is presented out of order (beginning with 1 Nephi, rather than Mosiah) and barely, if at all, makes mention of this in the introductory material. Several years ago at a conference I asked Skousen why he did this. His answer was that he put it in that order "because I believe that is the order that God intended the Book of Mormon to be in." If I had the opportunity for a follow-up question, it would have been, "Did you tell Yale University Press this?"

If the volume is intended to be a scholarly tool, then presenting the dictation out of order does a disservice to those who utilize it for that purpose.

[webbles]

48 minutes ago, the narrator said:

My biggest criticism of the volume is that this it is meant to be the dictation text for academic and scholarly use, and yet it is presented out of order (beginning with 1 Nephi, rather than Mosiah) and barely, if at all, makes mention of this in the introductory material. Several years ago at a conference I asked Skousen why he did this. His answer was that he put it in that order "because I believe that is the order that God intended the Book of Mormon to be in." If I had the opportunity for a follow-up question, it would have been, "Did you tell Yale University Press this?"

If the volume is intended to be a scholarly tool, then presenting the dictation out of order does a disservice to those who utilize it for that purpose.

Where would Words of Mormon and the Title Page fit in a dictation text?  Where does Skousen place them in the dictation timeline?

[Benjamin McGuire]

38 minutes ago, webbles said:

Where would Words of Mormon and the Title Page fit in a dictation text?  Where does Skousen place them in the dictation timeline?

The title page - according to Joseph Smith (and I assume that Skousen accepts this), the title page was the last page of Moroni's text.

As far as the Words of Mormon go, its complicated. Skousen puts the Words of Mormon as the last part of the text translated - but, I don't think that he has taken a firm position on the status of verses 12-18 as either a part of Words of Mormon or as a part of Mosiah 2 (chapters as originally numbered). I don't think that he believes that they are part of a summary written by Joseph Smith. Those are the three main views of the origins of those seven verses. I know that Skousen points out that not having the original manuscript for that section makes it harder to make any sort of certain determination. If it was a summary by Joseph Smith, then it was probably written during the process of preparing the text for printing. If it was part of Mosiah 2, then it represents the oldest part of the text. If it is part of Words of Mosiah, then those last few verses were the last things translated.

Perhaps publishing it in the order in which it appears in the published Book of Mormon was an easy way to avoid having to weigh in on this problem.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[caspianrex]

 

Quote

 

Posted yesterday at 01:04 PM

My biggest criticism of the volume is that this it is meant to be the dictation text for academic and scholarly use, and yet it is presented out of order...

 

 

I am not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so I don't really have a horse in this race, but I would point out that there are plenty of scholarly Bibles out there in which the books are not presented in the order in which they were written. Granted, with the Bible, a much longer work that was written over the course of several hundred years, it is much more difficult to determine the actual chronological order of the writings. All I'm saying is that, whereas it might be interesting for readers of The Book of Mormon to see the books in the order in which they were dictated, I suspect the vast majority of readers would not find it useful to do so.

[the narrator]

On 8/5/2023 at 2:35 PM, caspianrex said:

 

 

I am not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so I don't really have a horse in this race, but I would point out that there are plenty of scholarly Bibles out there in which the books are not presented in the order in which they were written. Granted, with the Bible, a much longer work that was written over the course of several hundred years, it is much more difficult to determine the actual chronological order of the writings. All I'm saying is that, whereas it might be interesting for readers of The Book of Mormon to see the books in the order in which they were dictated, I suspect the vast majority of readers would not find it useful to do so.

The difference here is that Skousen's book was not intended for regular scripture study. It is supposed to be a scholarly tool for those who want to study the Book of Mormon as it was dictated.

[Benjamin McGuire]

13 minutes ago, the narrator said:

The difference here is that Skousen's book was not intended for regular scripture study. It is supposed to be a scholarly tool for those who want to study the Book of Mormon as it was dictated.

While I can provide a good explanation for why this is important to me, I suspect that the number of people who can articulate why this might be important is not very large at all.

What is fascinating for me, in regard to the comments by @caspianrex , is the sort of problematic view that the comparison with the biblical text makes. After all, I would love to have a copy of the biblical text with an accurate apparatus indicating the chronological aspects of its composition. But this is a controversial topic. What parts of Jeremiah are the earliest parts? What in Deuteronomy should we take as a proto-Deuteronomic text? How do these kinds of questions even relate to the Book of Mormon? Skousen's work is valuable, and it is helpful, but the presentation of the full text like this is about as meaningful in some ways as a recreation of the original text of the King James translation of the Bible ...

Edited August 7, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire