Item Detail
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33603
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1
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7
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English
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Nephi's Project: The Gold Plates as Book History
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Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity
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Salt Lake City, UT
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University of Utah Press
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187-204
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"While Joseph Smith's translation process is largely conjectural, there is a great deal written about the process of scripture making within the Book of Mormon. The book reveals its own editorial processes with unusual candor. The reception of inspiration, the delivery of prophecy, and the writing down of the words; forming them into sermons, treatises, and histories; collecting, editing and abridging-- all these are remarkably clear. Scholars do not have to tease out how texts were blended and editors intervened as students of the Bible do. Smith's book freely confesses itself to be the product of editors working over old texts for their own purposes. The book discusses at length how it was made: its motivating purposes and political intentions, its physical construction and laborious inscription, its editing and abridgement, its intergenerational transmission and future publication, and its anticipated readership and expected reception. The book provides a transparent account of how scripture emerged from a prophetic society. The Book of Mormon begs to be read as book history and, more particularly, as scriptural book history. This revelation of editorial process does not clarify exactly how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon: Was it pure inspiration or partly the work of his own imagination? Still, reading the text as book history does have bearing. Understanding how the Book of Mormon was made permits its readers to see translation as part of an ongoing process originating within the book itself. Joseph was one more scripture-maker in a long line of makers beginning with Nephi. Seen in that light translation takes on a new guise. It appears as more a collaboration between God and man than an entirely miraculous intervention." [Abstract from chapter]
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Charting the Book of Mormon : Visual Aids for Personal Study and Teaching
New Views of Mormon History : A Collection of Essays in Honor of Leonard J. Arrington
Opening the Heavens : Accounts of Divine Manifestations 1820-1844
Performing the Translation: Character Transcripts and Joseph Smith's Earliest Translating Practices
The Book of Mormon in Early Mormon History
The Joseph Smith Papers : Documents, Volume 1: July 1828-June 1831
The Joseph Smith Papers : Documents, Volume 2 : July 1831–January 1833